[MUD-Dev] Crafting/Creation systems

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 cheesecrow at mail.ru wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 23:33:51 -0700 (PDT)
> eric <ericleaf at pacbell.net> wrote:
>> From: "Paul Boyle" <ppboyle at centurytel.net>

>>>   Simultronics - Dragonrealms - The most complex systems I've
>>>   run across have been there.

>> Its been at least 5 years since I've seen this game, I don't even
>> remember it, so can't comment. However, overall the crafting
>> systems are soo bad in MMOGs that I would just go back to first
>> principles myself. The question I would try to answer is "Why is
>> a person crafting?"

Well, I think ideally a person is crafting to create something of
his own.  People in the physical world, for instance, don't take up
knitting so that they can crank out a billion of the exact same item
necessarily. Certainly some do but I'd argue that the actual
enjoyment (as opposed to the work) is creating something of your
own.

This is one place most graphical muds really fall down compared to
text.  There are text muds that allow players to create completely
custom clothing, custom jewelry, custom masonry items like fountains
and statues, custom woodworked items like vials, custom backpacks,
hell even custom food (Imperian has all of those, in fact). And I
mean truly custom, not just changing a color or a few adjectives on
a template. Quality control is achieved by having every single type
of crafted item be vetted by admins.

The general way this works is that there are a bunch of basic types
of items within that crafting discipline. For instance, take
tailoring. You might have a basic shirt pattern, pants, sash, bra,
gown, whatever.  Player obtains that. Player writes fully custom
descriptions for it and submits it for approval. It gets approved
and (in Achaea, for instance) it gets assigned a 'prestige'
number. This prestige number takes into account the complexity of
the item, how rare or expensive or exotic the materials are,
etc. It's not an exact science of course. In any case, once it's
approved the player goes and picks up the pattern but is charged a
price based on the prestige of the pattern. The owner of the
finished pattern can then, at a cost per item in various commodities
(depending on the type of base item), create copies of his or her
item.

What's great about these systems is that they allow for truly
one-of-a-kind items limited only by a player's imagination. Many
players pay fairly high sums to tailors in order to guarantee a
wedding dress that will only ever be worn by her for instance.

--matt
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