End game and crafting: a topic for discussion

[Jynx]

If you didn't know a good crafter or is a good crafter yourself, you are pretty much screwed.

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

[raelgun]

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

Depends, you can look at this in a few ways, spend 30 plus minutes to find that right crafter at the right price etc..., the searching alone for that 1 person isn't very social.
Raiding with 7/23 others in a common goal for a few hours a night is more socialable no?

[Moomba33]

I personally do not enjoy crafting and do not want to have to rely on crafters for gear progression.
I would accept crafted equipment as bring equal to dropped equipment but I do not want it to be necessary.

[Jynx]

the searching alone for that 1 person isn't very social.

Yeah that's why games would form communities and guilds. You would know multiple crafters and the crafters would know multiple gatherers, who would in turn know you.

Everyone would work together to accomplish their goals instead of raiding with 7(23 you can't pick who to raid with so that's pointless to mention) other people isn't a social experience it's a experience in silence for the most part.

Knowing people allover the world, working together, traversing a dangerous overworld to gather materials and bring them back to your comrades to in turn make you gear to be more powerfull...now that is a social experience, not hitting the qeue button.

[raelgun]

Everyone would work together to accomplish their goals instead of raiding with 7(23 you can't pick who to raid with so that's pointless to mention) other people isn't a social experience it's a experience in silence for the most part.

You can actually form a full 24 premade group btw.

Also everything you have just described is also identical for raiding.

working together to accomplish a goal in raiding is the same concept, its just subjective preference, and its up to the person themselves what is deemed a social experience, not you as an observer.

[Jynx]

Also everything you have just described is also identical for raiding.

Can't say I agree with you but your entitled to your opinion.

I'm just not how you equate a dungeon to Crafting/gathering/battle all in one, spanning a community wider than 7 other players (Sorry even if you can pre-made Crystal tower the only relevant content happens with 7 other people and you can only do it once a week) involving a entire overworld.

But you could be right...in perspective that's all the same as a tightly controlled corridor.

[Hyrist]

Can't say I agree with you but your entitled to your opinion.

I'm just not how you equate a dungeon to Crafting/gathering/battle all in one, spanning a community wider than 7 other players (Sorry even if you can pre-made Crystal tower the only relevant content happens with 7 other people and you can only do it once a week) involving a entire overworld.

But you could be right...in perspective that's all the same as a tightly controlled corridor.

Except the corridor works both ways. The crafting market really isn't a social function, in fact, most people in an 8 man raid group is bound to find at least one dedicated crafter among their static.


It's a failing of logic to say that a singular game mechanics is responsible for encouraging social function. A mechanic a veteran of FFXI often makes. This is simply not true. The higher social functions of older MMO titles such as Everquest and FFXI was due to a large, overcast environment of progressive inconveniences that forced players to interact. A lack of recruitment functions, exorbitant pricing and investments for any sort of accomplishments, high participation requirements for content to be completed and long... oh so long grinds.

People grouped out of desperation to get things done, not out of a desire to connect. This lead to many abusive social systems and stigmas that we are still dealing with in the genre today, in addition to it being one of the major factors that kept the MMO market highly niche.

If anything, the ease of play availability is allowing players who are more social in nature to actually socialize, to gather together for player-made content and open events, and the ease of FC recruitment and social interactions. The difficulty is, the scope of an individual player is narrowed the larger the actual player base becomes. The narrower the base, the more repeat faces you see, and the more social you become with them. The less you see them due to the wider group you're dealing with, the less social they become.

Thus having the social skills to actually get involved with someone becomes all the more important. The mechanics of the game aren't doing the work of establishing familiarity for you, at least, not unless you find yourself in more remote corners of the game where you see the same people more frequently. (PvP, high end crafing, Roleplaying, etc.) And still, more legwork on behalf of the player is needed because the average requirement for a play session is lower. Far less waiting around, more getting things actually done. A player with outside interests or obligations are far less likely to be social. And in a game with greater ease of time investment, there are going to be more present than before.

So, no, tieing crafts to progression isn't going to magically make the game more social. FFXIV 1.0 was more social due to the much smaller, closer knit base that stuck around in spite of the game's faults, not due to any one mechanic. Players who want to socialize in a modern MMO, need to do the necessary legwork require to sift tough the players who are not interested in a the trappings of old MMOs as an excuse or instrument to get others to socialize with them. It actually takes some networking.

[Illmaeran]

Interesting thoughts and opinions folks, thanks! Let's keep it going.

Upon reading another Massively article regarding crafting systems, I'm seeing some irony (in a good way) that many people feel this WoW clone, FFXIV, has the best/most robust crafting system of the current crop of major titles.

How then, can we increase the synergy between high-end crafting and high-end content while ensuring that players who place importance on their time spent on said high-end content feel satisfied while also giving continued relevance for the time spent leveling crafting?

Some more of my thoughts going on the assumption that most high-end FCs have at least one max level DoH for each discipline in them:

1. Give high-end raiders/PVPers access to content/ranke-exclusive glamour skins to go over crafted gear.

2. Make all materials needed to make and upgrade high-end gear exclusive drops in specific raids (FCoB gear mats drop in FCoB, etc) or require a certain PVP rank to purchase.

3. Make raid/rank exclusive crafting patterns available as drops (PVE) or for purchase (PVP).

Just some idle musings from a guy bored at work today...

[Stihllodeing]

...snip (post#10) ...and the economy were controlled by the crafters back then.....

While I liked the entire post, this is what I thought was most relevant to the thread. I immediately thought about what Hyrist eluded to in post #20. If you were to have the class players dependent on disciple players, you would create an environment directly manipulated by those with access. You would essentially influence players to become segregated and recluse to the population as a whole.

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage, when the sample group is large enough, they will. You will have players who feel the game is social, when in fact they are disillusioned to the fact they are only social within their small demographic and antisocial to the player base as a whole. It's not intentional for the most part but people tend to mistake their experiences with 10-20 (or so) individuals in an mmo as an accurate measure to judge the social activities as a whole for that mmo, which is of course unknowingly ignorant and bias but understandable as it is natural.

The following quote is an example of the aforementioned misconception:

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

post #11 in response to a post by Enis

[Jynx]

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage

But nobody has or ever will be "Held hostage" unless they choose to allow it. Everyone can craft, everyone can battle, everyone can gather. Allowing people to specialize and require each to rely on eachother is fundamental to community building not a powerplay to see who can screw who over.

That's pretty much allready in the game when you see materia prices, it sure isn't the "People with the power" it's the people who have the time to spiritbind and sell materia taking advantage of the people who either don't have time or are too lazy to do so.

I'm also unsure where you get the magic (10-20 or so people) to be considered what a hostage population considers social interaction because in games where people are reliant on eachother for progress and development you certainly mingle with far more than 10 people unless your avoiding social contact then nobody can help you, thankfully the game allows you to do everything and you don't need to be reliant on others, it is mutually benificial to do so but not required.

Currently it's hardly benificial and in many ways discouraged to socialize once you have a group of several people because anyone beyond that is bound to be left out of activities due to silly things such as lockouts and other restrictions.