Does Crafting Serve A Purpose In MMORPGs?

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!

Before WildStar went Free-to-Play I had spent a lot of time post-level cap working on my tradeskill (Armor Crafting). The appeal to advance this skill came about because of the allure of customized gear that I wouldn’t get from just running dungeons, or running battlegrounds. Since the Free-to-Play update, I have been looking to continue where I left off with my tradeskill and unlock access to some of the more powerful schematics. Eventually, I will have some beastly tanking gear.

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A thought had dawned on me while thinking about pursuing more progress in my tradeskill. I don’t recall the last time I was excited about getting into tradeskills. When I played World of Warcraft I always went for Alchemy because crafting armor and weapons was never appealing (nor is it worth anyone’s time, but more on that later). Crafting in Guild Wars 2 is fairly well designed, but I get the impression crafting some of the best gear in the game requires a few months to complete—per item. This brings us to today’s topic.

For today’s post, I will discuss crafting (if the intro didn’t make that obvious enough). I’ll discuss what I expect from crafting in RPGs and MMORPGs, what I have perceived of crafting in current games, and devise a possible solution for future games. However, I am not familiar with the crafting features in every game, and I would like your input. So, as I am expressing my experiences with crafting, do keep in mind the following question about games you’ve played. Does crafting serve a purpose?

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Expectations from Crafting

The expectation I have for crafting in any game is that it serves a purpose. By purpose, I do not mean that crafting should simply be a side distraction from the core content. If precious development time has been devoted to adding this feature to the game, crafting should be an important part of progressing through the core content. A player who has invested time in a weapon crafting skill should eventually be able to craft some of the best weapons in the game. Granted, crafting powerful weapons shouldn’t be an easy task, but it should be possible nonetheless.

Another expectation I have for crafting is that it is designed to be fun. By now, everyone expects crafting skills in MMORPGs to be time consuming. Players scour the game world for materials, they bring those materials back to the capital city to refine them, they may have to purchase some additives for a recipe, and then they take all of their reagents to a crafting station to begin chugging through crafting levels. For some, this can be fun. I must admit that hunting for materials is a nice break from the nonstop fighting that MMORPGs put players through, but the act of crafting itself is often the least exciting part of it all. This is especially true if a player has decided to build up a crafting skill after having reached the level cap.

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Perception of Crafting

The way I perceive crafting in most MMORPGs is that it often ends up being nothing more than a tacked-on feature. Since every other game in the genre has crafting the next game has to have it too. Many of these games have a major focus on raids, and they use gear acquisition as a means of representing character progression post-level cap. Additionally, it is within the raids that players can acquire the absolute strongest gear in the game. This often leaves any weapons and armor that could be crafted obsolete rather quickly, which in turn makes investing time in most crafting skills pointless. There is nothing more frustrating than investing time into a feature that ends up being completely worthless later on (Garrisons, for instance).

Another issue with crafting in MMORPGs is the lack of customizability. There are very few games in the genre that allow players to customize the gear they craft. Often times the stats that appear on a crafted item are entirely random, forcing players to craft the same item multiple times before they are given something remotely useful. Although, it must be stated that itemization in these games is rarely so extensive or creative that players will suffer from RNG while crafting. If one ganders at the stat options provided by World of Warcraft—there are a few options—but players will never have to decide between Strength, Agility or Intellect (that is decided for them), they will always want Mastery, and any remaining stats will be decided for them by their chosen class/spec composition (because efficiency).

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Solution for Future Crafting

I have a rather simple solution for adding crafting in future releases. The developers need to ensure that crafting gear is useful at all levels or tiers of gameplay. That is all. Crafting needs to serve a purpose whether players have reached the level cap or the highest raiding tier. If players aren’t able to craft equipment comparable to the best gear in the game, or if they aren’t able to use crafting as an additional way of gearing up, then what is the point of allowing players to craft gear? This goes with any feature added to a game. It cannot be some arbitrary addition that has no planned future.

I feel like I bring this up a lot, but Garrisons in World of Warcraft is an amazing example of how not to implement a feature to a game. It is absolutely evident that Garrisons had no planned future beyond the Warlords of Draenor expansion. This fact could have been seen when the expansion launched. Due to the narrative surrounding the expansion, and the WoW developers’ legendary lack of foresight, Garrisons would only ever exist in the alternate universe version of Draenor. Unfortunately, because people are still blind enough to keep paying the subscription for this game Blizzard can laugh all the way to the bank, which from my perspective is irresponsible game design.

Now that I’ve let that out of my system…

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Award for Best Crafting

Personally, I find WildStar to have the most customizable and useful crafting system. Players have the potential to craft weapons and armor that are equivalent in power to items acquired in raids. The stats that appear on crafted items are fully customizable by the players. Additionally, all weapons and armor come with rune slots, which are used to further customize the stats on an item. These systems come in handy if items that drop from dungeons or raids don’t provide a player’s desired stats. Since the Free-to-Play update brought a collection of new stats with it, having fully customizable gear is a necessity. However, I could still do without PvP-specific stats.

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What has been your experience with crafting? What do you expect from crafting? What would you like to see from crafting systems in future MMORPGs? Join the discussion below.

War Fist out!