This is going to be a little Twitter-heavy, and I apologize for that.

The @PantheonCrafter account, posted a survey today about crafting:

Would you prefer the crafting mechanics for @PantheonMMO to be turn-based (like Vanguard or FFXIV), real-time (like EQ2), or Click-to-Craft (like WoW)? Feel free to reply and say more! #mmocrafting — Pantheon Crafters (@PantheonCrafter) August 18, 2020

I just had to question the whole idea of crafting. It’s become a checkbox item – does your MMO have… [x] crafting? [ ] fishing? [ ] dance emotes?

Oh, it doesn’t have dance emotes? Well, can’t play it your gritty, realistic Knights of the Round Table MMO without dance emotes!

In real life, crafting is an outlet for explosive creativity. Crafty people, in real life, make amazing things, astounding things, and they inspire other people to test their limits and try new things. But crafting in MMOs is just the opposite of that – you press some keys and out comes an item. Whether those keys make your character mime swinging a sword or swinging a hammer, the result is the same.

I argued that there’s only a few reasons to have crafting in your MMO:

  • You want to drain money from the economy- You want to encourage players to spend longer online, grinding- You want to allow non-raiders a path to get near raid-quality items- You want to give players another way to interact

I felt that you could get pretty much all these things just by having a vendor that would sell things priced by quality and demand. Something costs a million nitwicks, you grind for it, get the item. Call the NPC a crafter, even :-)

I knew this wouldn’t be a popular opinion, but I just thought the question needed asking. All my crafting professions are maxed or nearly maxed in FFXIV. I have a bunch of crafting alts in EQ2. I had various crafters in EQ. I have put in my time in front of a crafting machine. I really enjoyed the EQ2 group crafting instances. I love the FFXIV crafting quest lines. But, I don’t fool myself with any of this that the result was ever worthwhile. It was just more stuff to do, and mostly I would have just preferred to outright buy the finished product.

Nephele challenged me on this:

I think your first three would be valid (if somewhat cynical) design goals but this is also something that many MMO players enjoy - and it’s not a new thing. See: https://t.co/fTGTj4MzLm — Nephele 💚 (@NepheleVG) August 18, 2020

Is the game solely about hunting down and murdering monsters, or is it about presenting a world filled with a variety of ways for players to engage and have fun, fulfilling experiences? For me it’s the latter, and non-combat gameplay is a big part of that. — Nephele 💚 (@NepheleVG) August 18, 2020

I am absolutely, 100% in favor of non-combat activities in MMOs. I can easily conceive of MMOs with no combat whatsoever – Minecraft in Creative Mode. A significant percentage of the Neverwinter player-created Foundry missions. EQ Next Landmark (though they did add some combat near the end).

There’s plenty of non-crafting, non-combat activities in MMOs as well. Vanguard had the Diplomacy minigame, as well as home construction. Lord of the Rings Online and FFXIV let you form player bands and play whatever music you can think of. (Well, FFXIV won’t let you play certain songs… it’s true).

FFXIV actually has a whole section of the game – the Golden Saucer – full of non-combat activities, such as Mahjong, Chocobo Racing, Arena games played with your minions, card games… they actually have really made an effort to give players non-crafting, non-combat games.

To gain some perspective on this from a game dev point of view, I reached out to Emily “Domino” Taylor, one time the EverQuest II crafting guru and now a game designer at EA/Bioware. I honestly didn’t expect a reply, but… she did.

In EQ2? I’d say has been all those things and more, at different times and to different people. It depends who you ask and what is important to you. Crafting was never just one thing to all people, it’s a complex system that can fill many different needs for different players. — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

My personal opinion, which isn’t necessarily “right”, is that a big part of the crafting system’s value was in providing game content that was non-combat. Things to do and ways to interact with other players that doesn’t require combat is valuable to a certain player segment. — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

But it could do all those other things you listed too, at the same time, and more. And probably the more, the better, because that makes the crafting system more integrated into other game systems and economy as a whole and a more real & useful part of the big game world. — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

Some players play MMOs to murder fake things for fun. But many players play MMOs to experience a different life in a different, maybe better world. In OUR real life world, the amount of our life we spend murdering things is small. Hopefully zero for almost all of us! — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

So why would players want their entire game-world life to center around murdering virtual things? There are so many other elements of life that are fun and interesting. The more of these things are in virtual worlds, the better I think. Not just crafting but that’s one of them. — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

Anyway, games focused on killing things are one type of game, but I think game worlds feel more real and are more absorbing the more different ways we have to contribute to them and interact with them. As long as those ways feel rewarding, doesn’t really matter what they are. — Emily (aka Domino) Taylor (@pentapod) August 18, 2020

Crafting as a system to tie together the economy and the game world – sure, I can get behind that. Let players do something besides operating a murder simulator – absolutely. One thing Domino didn’t really touch on was crafting as a way of making actually useful items, or of touching upon player creativity in any way.

Crafting as an idea is fun – crafters were a hugely important part of the feudal society in which so many MMOs are set. But if I can’t bring my creativity into the game world, then I’m just pressing buttons to get the same result anyone else would get.

The original survey question asked which MMO’s crafting system Pantheon’s should try to mimic.

A long, long time ago, I went to Sigil’s first (and perhaps only) fan faire, before the game was released. I lived in the San Diego area at the time, trying (unsuccessfully) to get a job at SOE while working on short term contracts.

Brad McQuaid had a vision of crafters as every bit as vital as any other profession. I had the idea, after listening to him, of crafters who were a vital part of a raid, where they would have to make things or mine things or do all sorts of things in order to supply the raid or open up passages and so on – actual non-combat roles that would still get you in to all the cool places to go.

Vanguard never delivered on that (and I may have been extrapolating from what Brad was really saying). EverQuest II had crafting content where you would supply defenders with the gear they needed to repel attacking monsters (very fun), and of course FFXIV has gone overboard (heh) recently with their fishing raid. So crafting can be done right.

But, as a checkbox item that MMOs feel compelled to add without any really deep connection into the world – WoW and EQ, for example – not a fan. I’d rather do without.