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Original post by Kest What about simulation-like experiences? One could say The Sims is like one big crafting system, since a large part of the player's objective is to build a house and family. The same is true with the Sim City series, where the player lays out zones in a completely custom fashion that is not regulated or limited in any way by the game designer (other than tile blocks). Would it not be possible to create smaller-scale crafting systems that function in this manner? Think of a city in Sim City as a circuit board that produces electrical energy power instead of sim tax money. The power could be supplied to some weapon or equipment to boost it's effectiveness. Just as there's no clear optimal way to build a city in Sim City, there would be no clear optimal way to create this power circuit item. A player could experiment to find totally original methods of producing power. Some circuits might maintain a consistent output rate, where others would be better at producing large amounts, periodically. Would something like this be considered crafting? I suppose the player could still be charged with obtaining gadgets and artifacts to attach to the circuit board (like individual buildings in the city) that have certain effects on it.

Ho ho! I would love to play such a system. For one thing, the state of your machine/equipment would actually be dynamic and require constant interaction rather than static like we see in many crafting systems in games.

This also reminds me of that Dungeons & Dragons RTS game Dragonshard where your building placements within your cities produce certain bonuses depending on how you arrange them.

Now if one could similarly apply that dynamism to a fantasy-genre game (some sort of magical item crafting system), that would definitely be pretty cool.

I could also imagine this be used for some sort of organic-building tech (like a body-building game or a life-form creator) as the state of organics are always fluctuating.

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Original post by Kest Have there been crafting systems that allow the player to artistically design something that influences the gameplay? If so, how does one maintain balance with it? Or are most of them just artificial gimmicks that influence appearance and atmospheric elements?

Well I don't know if this counts as crafting in the sense of creating a tunic +1 or etc, but Little Big Planet does have some sort of form = function mechanic in their crafting system (in that game, you're crafting objects and props to which could allow you to build simple machines for fun or to achieve some sort of objective such as overcoming an obstacle). And to craft in that game, you select stock shapes or objects from a pop-up catalog to which you can put together to achieve various results.

Also, there are games where the strength or durability of the crafted weapon/armor depends on the skill of the crafter.

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Original post by Kylotan Sure, but I think calling Sim City a small-scale system would be a gross understatement.

Actually, I meant smaller-scale when compared to games like Sim City.

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Can you think up a miniature version of that which would be complex enough to be non-trivial to 'solve', but simple enough for designers and players to have a decent appreciation of how the system works?

It would take a lot of time to design something worthy, but the answer is yes. There are countless simple simulation games out there to demonstrate the possibility.

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Ultimately, I think most game design problems come down to this question, and the usual answer is 'no', which is why we regurgitate previous working designs.

I think you're just giving up too easy :)

Yeah. It's not that I don't think it can be done, it's just that time and time again people get as far as saying they want a system pitched at that level, but never actually get around to specifying one.

The problem with using simulation games as an example is that it's showing bottom-up design - you take an existing system that has been created in the wild, presumably by someone else, then tweak the factors to make it a fun game. I would suggest it's far harder to do the top-down approach, ie. start with nothing, take an abstract idea like "crafting", and come up with an interesting system of components and interactions to make it work.

Perhaps there is (or needs to be) some sort of vocabulary of interactions between aspects of a system, so that a designer could take a game like Sim City, decompose it into several instances of abstract systems, and recompile those building blocks into a new game.

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Original post by Kylotan Yeah. It's not that I don't think it can be done, it's just that time and time again people get as far as saying they want a system pitched at that level, but never actually get around to specifying one.

For the record, I wasn't pitching, I was just exploring.

It's not just about simulation games. It's about letting the player use creativity to craft items. What games give players the most room to be creative? The sim games are somewhere near the top of the list. To be more general, building games. Games that let players arrange items in any fashion, then have those items generate gameplay effects that relate to their placement.

I think one "feature" that makes it so complex to build the perfect city in Sim City is the fact that the player is working partially blind. They get general global information about crime and health, and they can get very detailed information about specific buildings or objects. But they can't zoom out and see exactly why their city is producing so much money.

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Original post by Kest Quote: Original post by Kylotan Yeah. It's not that I don't think it can be done, it's just that time and time again people get as far as saying they want a system pitched at that level, but never actually get around to specifying one. For the record, I wasn't pitching, I was just exploring. It's not just about simulation games. It's about letting the player use creativity to craft items. What games give players the most room to be creative? The sim games are somewhere near the top of the list. To be more general, building games. Games that let players arrange items in any fashion, then have those items generate gameplay effects that relate to their placement.

I know, but are there actually any others? That's the crux of my question... has anybody ever set out to make a creative game that wasn't effectively just mimicking a system that we already discovered in the real world? If so, which? If not, can we codify what is in these systems that permits and encourages creativity and reuse that knowledge?

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I think one "feature" that makes it so complex to build the perfect city in Sim City is the fact that the player is working partially blind. They get general global information about crime and health, and they can get very detailed information about specific buildings or objects. But they can't zoom out and see exactly why their city is producing so much money.

Yes, it's quite hard to perform ruthless maximisation of your income when you can't easily push one dial or change one setting and instantly see the corresponding benefit or defecit elsewhere. I think the time lag aspect helps here also, in that you can't always match up a gain or a loss to one individual action.

i would also love to see a crafting system which was creative instead of combining recipes, materials and time.

If you're interested in more involved crafting processes, then I'd recommend checking out the systems in Everquest II and Saga of Heroes.
Warcraft's crafting system is essentially just combining items and you either succeed or fail, whereas these two systems have degrees of quality of the final item, and the process iself is more involved - having problems arising that you need to react against using various skills.
I've not played SoH yet, but I think that's even more like a minigame, and turn based I believe so there's more of a strategy element to it.

I think it's important to point out why World of Warcraft (for example) uses the crafting system that it does.

Personally, I'd prefer a system that offers a little more variance and depth, like the Ryzom example. That's part of the reason I got a kick out of the Horadric Cube in Diablo 2.

But to a lot of people, those systems are perceived as punishing in that they don't deliver a predictable result and it makes the effort/reward balance really unstable. That tiny little bit of randomization can too easily be seen as a negative.

An underlying thing that the plan/recipe type of system does is that it provides an immediate and somewhat solid/structured goal. Players see a cool item that they can now craft. They know exactly what that item is and how it will benefit them in terms of stats/upgrades/perks, etc. Crafting that item can now become a little bit of a quest, and because the result is clearly defined, there's predictable value involved.

In the case of a more complicated crafting system with item variance and randomization of properties, all of those things mentioned above become a little bit harder to achieve.

The draw is obviously that occasionally some players will create a truly unique and epic item and everybody will want it - which is a great feeling. But you can achieve the same thing with the other system, just by making the plan/recipe really hard to obtain (for example). But the drawback is that there can never really be any demand for what you might call "item potential".

For example... in World of Warcraft, there is a vast series of items - all in one class - that have varying stats. Like, [Fiery Gauntlets of the Whale] with +1 Health, whereas [Fiery Gauntlets of the Monkey] might have +1 Agility. The variation in Fiery Gauntlets goes down a list of animals and each version has slightly different stats.

Now... imagine that you could craft [Fiery Gauntlets of the...], and some kind of conceptually cool "crafting dynamics" would vary the item stats. Would you really care? Would anyone else care? Sure, you might have fun gathering different recipe components and playing with your crafting skill to see what you can achieve. It would certainly be a fun little toy for that one person, for a little while. But in some ways, that's the only value that the variation may yield - the experimentation on behalf of the player doing the crafting. Otherwise there's likely to be no practical benefit. Someone might want you to craft them the [Fiery Gauntlets of the Bear] because it has some added Strength on it, but would you even know how? Would the randomization work against you? And if you could find out how, wouldn't that then relegate the system to the more simple version, in which case you'd suddenly be wishing that it were all just a little more straightforward? "I just want to know how to make the damn bear Gauntlets, why won't it let me do that!?!?"

The point I'm trying to make is that in considering crafting systems, don't underestimate the value of simplicity and a predictable result in areas where its really helpful.

You can always add depth and variance in different ways, like making individual plans/recipes really fun and interesting to find - same thing with ingredients and places you have to go to do the actual crafting.

Effort vs reward is everything... and sadly, players investing any level of effort in something with varying levels of reward can start to work against you pretty quickly.

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Original post by littlered If you're interested in more involved crafting processes, then I'd recommend checking out the systems in Everquest II and Saga of Heroes. Warcraft's crafting system is essentially just combining items and you either succeed or fail, whereas these two systems have degrees of quality of the final item, and the process iself is more involved - having problems arising that you need to react against using various skills. I've not played SoH yet, but I think that's even more like a minigame, and turn based I believe so there's more of a strategy element to it.

My opinion after playing Everquest II : The crafting system is another typical recipe based grind.

I felt that the "problems that need to react using various skills" is just "when A happens, push button B". Not much thinking required, just mechanical button pushing.