How Crafting Should Work in MMO

With the upcoming release of Albion Online, a game that focuses entirely on a player driven economy, I wanted to throw my concept for true crafting into the ring and explain why I think it would be simply the best crafting system period.

First, games that had crafting, but dropped the ball.

World of Warcraft

Artificial Restrictions

As a base level comparison, no game should lack the crafting features that were available at least here in World of Warcraft.  Players had restricted professions, used specific tools and materials and they were extremely linear in progression, but also due to these restrictions, only certain professions of certain levels could create certain items with even more specific materials which gave rise to an economy.  These restrictions are artificial though, and we will take the concept and evolve it later on.

Guild Wars 2

Lacking Broad Use

Guild Wars 2 crafting is the most sure way of getting the strongest items in the game and it is also a good way to level up characters.  However, it promised a Minecraft-esc experience but gave us a hugely linear and watered down version which resulted in crafting to be a chore, not a fun gameplay mechanic.  When ingredients are more lucrative than the finished product, selling your items is a waste of time and so the player economy for Guild Wars 2 is almost non existent.  Especially considering that the strongest items in the game, which are only craft-able or found through intense RNG, CANNOT BE TRADED "barring Legendary Items".  However, in GuildWars 2 we are able to custom craft items with specific skins and stat alignments but the problem is these had no difference from world drops which were easier to find than craft.  Guild Wars 2 who's gameplay focused on the leveling pve experience, had meaningless crafting as that system only really starts to work at the end. game.  Some items can be crafted for aesthetics, but even those are easier found.  We will take that with us on our journey to find the best crafting system

Runescape

No Custom Creation

Now there is much more to Runescape's crafting than simple combat stats, but in a game that lacks mechanics, having tactical differentiation is important and for the most part Runescape, despite its no class system, doesn't offer enough customization with armors and weapons between it's different tiers.  Not being able to tweak or customize the individual items damages the complexity of the game and results in an overloaded inventory focus especially on foods for healing and attack resources like runes and arrows.  Overall Runescape has a great crafting system that happens to be lacking in combat diversity specifically which Albion Online succeeds in expanding.

Albion Online

Ability Diversity

Very similar to Runescape, Albion Online would have a similar economy and crafting but their added ability slots truly change the game.  There is not a lack of builds, but there is a lack of types of spells.  Many are just alterations of point and click damage, or different kinds of defenses or speed buffs.  In a game who's crafting is essentially focused on the skills slotted, there should be more offered in terms of gameplay mechanics than the strategic choices we have now.  Pulls, Leaps, Cloaks, Devours, Knock Ups, Walls, even abilities that focus on non combat mechanics like Instant Node Mining, Instant Tree Chop, or better gold find.  It is still in alpha, so it surely can improve and introduce more variety and will certainly do so.  Luckily, Albion Online seems to have solved or at the least alleviated the issues in previous games and so more than most, Albion has great crafting potential.

This trailer inspired this blog post as one developer stated how a player would be able to specialize and potentially be "the best at making" a certain type of weapon or armor.  With the game as it is now, I do not see that as a truly reachable statement.  In order to bring "Skill" into crafting rather than just sinking more time, I have a proposal.

A game focused on crafting, should still give the strategic, tactical, and mechanical diversity that a standard MMO build would.  There are entire sites dedicated to sharing build combinations in games like League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars 2.  Players are ranked in these sites and this should be evidence of a skill and mastery that comes with "crafting" these builds.  Taking these systems; talent trees, sphere grids, rune slots, and making them apart of the item crafting would add a sense of mastery for crafters and expansion for players.

Being able to make a weapon simply "stronger" is not good enough to consider another crafter better or more specialized than another.  Give them the tools to really CRAFT and to create a trade.

EXAMPLE

When making a sword, the crafter should be able to choose the active abilities slotted with it, passive mutators, as well as individual stat allocation.  If they have power over cosmetic choice, that is bonus.  

Strategy

Higher piercing increases critical hit chance and attack range , crushing increases white damage and attack AOE, and handling increases attack speed and cool down reduction.  Higher handling will lower the total durability, Higher piercing will increase the durability loss per hit, and crushing will increase overall weight/inventory space.  However, just raw stat upgrades, even if specialized, is not enough.  

Tactic

Different potential abilities based on depth of trait specialization.  Down the Piercing line will offer up more aggressive assassination based abilities such as lunges.  Down the Crushing line will give crafters the option of choosing from disabling type of skills and CC.  Down the Handling line will let players have more control over their other skills with abilities and spells that can be activated to cancel or modify others such as dodges, parries, or combo linking.

Mechanic

And at the highest degree of play, at the most intricate level of inspection, crafters should be able to enhance the actual game mechanics and give players a sword that they truly FEEL comfortable using. What is the shape of the AOE?  A cone?  A circle?  Maybe even a crescent, with a unique combination of handling and piercing, auto attacks can be modified to both slash and lung which gives an alternating sweeping auto attack.  With levels instead into crushing, the attacks would hardly lunge at all but instead encircle the player character.  

Of coarse, this is just a single weapon.  Imagine what could be done with dual items and also in combination with accessories and armor.  Who makes the most effective long range bows?  Who sells the most mana efficient staffs?  Not who has the highest tier materials, but who really is crafting the best items.

Add this into what Albion Online has already, and you would have an unrivaled crafting experience. 

"this is not supposed to be a recommendation for Albion Online specifically but my personal view on what crafting could be like in an MMO"

The "Overloaded" character kit, is what defines League of Legends.

The characters of a character based game; MOBA, fighting, or otherwise, obviously holds a lot of weight. but it is how Riot goes about defining these characters that makes League of Legends something special compared to others.  Certainly limited by many of the game's mechanics, we are going to be talking about how many characters break those limits rather by defined by them, and in that brokenness we find the secret.

First, understand that League of Legends had carved itself out of DOTA but shaped itself as a wholly different game.  DOTA character kits are rather complex descriptively but simple mechanically and visually because of its item shop which is grossly more active oriented compared to League of Legends.  This void was filled directly with the characters in LoL so from the start, we had "Overloaded" kits just to a much smaller less original degree than we do now.

A few of the many stand out characters among the League of Legends roster;

These handful of Champions are all very distinct from other MOBA characters.  Some of them have many defining traits versus any single and that is why many players consider their kits "overloaded" as historically, the MOBA character kits were rather simple especially with the inspiration from DOTA.  Every time Riot releases a new champion or updates an older character, we see their kits becoming ever more complicated and involved.


More Skill Shots
Because simple numbers being added or subtracted is boring and hard to watch.  It is clear to the audience and the players when we have epic tornadoes crossing the screen or laser blasts shooting out. E.G [Yasuo] "has windwall which can block skill shots and has a melee skill shot"

More Passives
Because sometimes a characters active kit is not actually the component that defines them rather the passive traits and then the actives work together with them. E.G [Kalista] "passive radically changes her movement in between auto attacks compared to any other character in the game."

More Mobility
A mechanical based game should strive for an ever increasing skill cap mechanically, and the MOBA genre is very much focused on movement rather than pure aim.  This creates a much more dynamic game.  Mobility is much more visible compared to outplays resulting from hidden math. E.G [Lee Sin] "who's entire kit is defined by him moving in and out of position and doing it often."

More Crowd Control
With such mobility, and a reliance on skill-shots and positioning, CC is required.  However, CC is not an answer to a problem but the final ingredient in a formula for an awesome viewing experience and a challenging competitive atmosphere.  E.G [Gnar] "having multiple forms of AOE CC in the form of skill shots and abilities that interact with the environment itself making player positioning just as important as enemy awareness"

In the end, its not like a complex character is better than an older champion, see [Annie] vs [Ahri] but more that the playstyle for one character is more often stagnant compared to other and in a competitive environment, you want anything but stagnancy.

A passive, three active abilities, and an ultimate active ability.  These have been broken by adding passives inside of active abilities, or making actives toggles.  Some characters even have toggle forms which allow them to effectively have 6 or more abilities.  Other characters even get unique items and who knows what next will be invented.  These rules are made to be broken because League of Legends itself is in a genre that was previously known as having very strict rules, and LoL has grown to what it is today because it set out to change that.  So as time goes on, it must and will expand and become more overloaded as some would call it, but it won't ever be diluted.  We can trust Riot to ever be expanding in new ways to interact in the game.

Different Kinds of Skill Shots!
Bolts, Blasts, Waves, Stabs, Swings, Chains
League felt much more mechanical compared to DOTA, so it made sense to have fighting style abilities and combos which required melee range aimed skills. [Riven]

Different Kings of Passives!
boons, debuffs, entirely new stats, new resources, hidden situation actives
A separate passive skill was new for LoL and with this comes new territory to expand kits situationally such as the ability to create towers out of tower ruins. [Azir]

Different Kinds of Mobility!
Leaps, Blinks, Entity Based Dashes, Terrain Based Movement
Bushes were unique to League of Legends, they put a character that could leap if he was standing in a bush next to an enemy [Rengar]

Different Kinds of CC!
Knock up, Knock back, Fear, Pull
DOTA is known for having huge CC timers but League has many/varied CC instead, so a character kit focused on crowd control would need control that could be stacked and used together or separate for optimum results depending on the situation. [Thresh]

Complexity in a kit does not always beat out raw stats, and complexity is not always more fun to watch, but the direction Riot is taking LoL is not pure complexity with their characters but rather reworking strategic diversity and translating that potential into more spectacular and visceral mechanics.  To make something new mechanically and to always differentiate itself from more strategic competitors, League of Legends has some regulations to simplify certain game-play elements and what is fun about these character kits is that often they are inspired by the very breaking those rules; this gives League an overall very understandable and watchable game flow, but potentially infinitely deep game-play.