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Some Assembly Required: Bringing the 'craft' back to crafting
A recent comment made in regard to crafting in an upcoming game gave me pause. It went something like this: If the gameplay fails, the crafting system won't matter. My first thought was that this person must have accidentally tripped over his tongue and mistakenly substituted words, meaning to insert pwnzer PvP or some such instead of gameplay. Why? Because we all understand that as a part of playing the game, crafting is inherently gameplay. But then another explanation for this wildly inaccurate statement came to me; perhaps the speaker had actually never seen -- let alone experienced -- real, meaningful crafting in a game! After all, there has been a serious dearth of deep, involved crafting systems where skill and dedication are valued for quite some time in MMOs. Crafting, if it exists at all, is often relegated to some mechanic that can be slept through that results in uniform, standardized products. It's no wonder that some folks might not realize that crafting is gameplay. But change is a-comin'! Some upcoming games are returning to the idea that robust crafting systems are a deep and engaging part of games. Heck, the whole premise behind one is crafting! Two titles, The Repopulation and Pathfinder Online, seem to have really hit the nail on the head when it comes to developing sophisticated crafting systems that have purpose and meaning. Today in Some Assembly Required, we'll take a closer look at how both are putting the "craft" back into crafting.
The Repopulation's crafting is serious business
See that flowchart up there? That's a recipe visualization of a single crafted item in The Repopulation. The dodge fitting that it represents is one of the most complex items in the upcoming sci-fi sandbox, and while not all of the game's craftables are equally complex, the fitting serves to illustrate that the devs are serious about a meaty crafting system and a heavily player-driven economy. In addition to gathering the necessary materials and producing all of the sub-components, crafters will also need to take into account the potential quality of the final dodge fitting, which is affected by recipe mastery, resource quality, sub-component quality, skill level, and luck. The Repopulation dev team explains it all in greater detail on the game's official website.
