[Soki]

(ARGH!!! I hit the darn back button on my house, and I lost my original post. I'll try again.)

I absoutely LOVE crafting on games. I should say, however, that I completely detest games that have crafting as a "side dish" to combat. Anyway, here's what I love about crafting:

1) I enjoy having my character "create" items that are in demand. I also enjoy finding out what is IN demand.

2) To be honest, I really hate the "set backs" that come with death in combat. Almost all games involve penalties when a character dies in combat. Since I almost always choose to play support characters, mine usually go first and fast. Crafting provides a fun way to advance my character without having to suffer the penalties of death. I may not go up in levels as fast as my neighborhood barbarian, but they're not going to be dragging my mutilated corpse into town either.

3) In a way, I view crafting as another form of combat without the risks. You still use strategy and thought in a well-designed crafting system, but you're just not very likely to die. (Well, okay, there's the occassional explosion in a laboratory or you might get trapped in your bakery while it burns down around you, but those are extreme circumstances! I just don't see much difference between typing: attack joebubbamob and craft uberitemoftheday.

4) Although I do enjoy combat, I think that a good crafting system allows for more player interaction than a fight. There's the whole bartering and bargaining phase that I absolutely adore. I also enjoy trying to manipulate the economy of a given world.

Anyway, crafting might not be for some, but I know that there are others out there like me.

[Ogma]

No risks in crafting? This is my favorite line from the deathlog:

Joecrafter at (sometime) by a tragic lumbering accident.

[Soki]

Originally Posted by (Ogma @ Mar. 17 2003,15:03) No risks in crafting?  This is my favorite line from the deathlog: Joecrafter at (sometime) by a tragic lumbering accident.

Hey! I pre-empted my comment with the whole tragic bakery fire and the lab explosion!

One time in a mining camp....

[Molly]

Originally Posted by The actual number of rooms in the mud matter very little when you're trying to retro-fit something that would affect the entire economy of the game. The number of players, however, matter a lot. Let's face it, it's often much easier to build rooms than get players sometimes.

Perhaps the number of rooms doesn't matter all that much, but it does matter. I mainly mentioned it  as an illustration of our world size. What REALLY matters however, is the number of existing objects, in particular the objects that are either wepons/armour or potential raw material for crafted items.

That's where the balancing problem comes in. If the crafted items are too good compared with the effort needed to get a similarly valued item by just playing the game, then most players would stop playing altogether, and just sit there forging weapons and armor all day long. If the items you make are too crappy, nobody would bother with the crafts. That's how most players work, they go for the easiest option.

So you need a range of crafted items that correspond with the already existing equipment. The easy-to-make stuff is for Newbies, nobody but the shopkeepers will buy those, but Newbies usually are in need of money. The high class items will need a lot more time, effort and legwork, and also potential dangers, which will be achieved by planting the raw materials for those in some pretty nasty locations - (and that, incidentally, is why world size matters too). But then you also need that little extra incentive, like the artifacts in the game that load very seldom, or that legendary sword in the Mine. If the players know that there is a chance - however slim, maybe 1:10 000 - that they might actually create a 'kick-ass' item while crafting, then many of them will keep trying.

But I still fail to see how the size of playerbase affects it. Regardless of size all muds have a similar problem; the old players, the ones who have been there for ages. If they are 50 or 500 doesn't really matter, the problem still exists. We have players who have been with us since before we went out of beta. They know the world inside out, they have seen it all, done it all, defeated all the toughest mobs in the game, collected all the best available equipment, maxed their stats in any possible way. They don't really have any incentive to play any more.

If they had any sense they'd leave the mud and start fresh somewhere else, but sense very rarely enters mudding. Players are amazingly loyal to their home mud. So they stay on, and either turn to roleplay or just sit at the fountain all day, bitching about how bored they are. And, as most Administrators would agree, bored players are the devil's best friend, since they are likely to get into mischief.

So the crafts are partly for the oldtimers, something new for them to try. Not all of them will bother with them, since player preferences are vastly different, but some will. In fact the demands for the crafts came from just that category of players. The other target group for the crafts is the Newbies. We'd like to attract a slightly different clientel than we have right now, more roleplay oriented. And with the crafts new players get a chance of advancing without the mindless killing of mobs. They get exp. points from crafting, and they get money. And they also get a sort of platform as roleplayers, an actual trade, where your skills can develop with time.

As for the economy, we already have two parallell economies in the mud. One is money based of course, the other is Quest tokens. The tokens are used to buy things like personalised equipment, crashproof houses, personal pets and vehicles, and also to restore lost personal equip if you hit a DT or lose you gear in another way. The tokens have a floating market value in money, which is set by the players. Supply and demand. Some are good at Quests, others couldn't solve the easiest riddle, but are good at powerplay. Buyers and sellers.

So the craft system will just have to fit into that system. For the easy stuff you get money, for the harder you get yet another chance to earn Quest Tokens. And of course the off chance of every once in a while actually succeed in creating a top item. The best crafted things will be quite as good as the best ones you can get from killing mobs. But not quite as good as the stuff you get from the toughest Quests, because we want to reserve that for the really good players, the ones that use their brain as well as their fighting skills.

But the size of the playerbase just doesn't enter this equation. Sure, there are problems that need to be dealt with while introducing the system, but the playerbase isn't one of them.

[Soki]

Originally Posted by (Molly O'Hara @ Mar. 18 2003,17:31) But the size of the playerbase just doesn't enter this equation. Sure, there are problems that need to be dealt with while introducing the system, but the playerbase isn't one of them.

While this may be true for your mud, I don't think it's true for many muds (games), and of course, it all depends on the crafting system and the current system of each particular mud. Some systems can defintiely incorporate change better than others. I have never played the game on which you work, so I will take your word that it is easy to implement it on your game. I simply don't think it would be easy to implement in several multiplayer games that I play, and in some cases, it would completely change the face of the game. Without some severe recoding, it would completely make it feel like the crafting system was a side dish or an after thought rather than an intregral part of the game.

In a playerbase of say 20 people, what 1 person does affects the game a lot more than what 1 person does in a game of 200 people. In a game of 1000 people, 1 person's actions/decisions are diluted even more. I've played on small muds and huge muds. It seems to me that a mud that has less players is more flexible, more able to adjust to major changes in the game than a large mud (which is why I still have the desire to PLAY small muds). There is also a lot less to baggage to deal with, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's my reasoning based on the current muds that I've played. One of them is not your mud, I believe, so your opinions about your mud are much more valid than mine.