I spent some time messing with the crafting lately and it wasn’t too bad. It follows a similar scheme of the rest of the game, with the different crafting professions branching up and specializing (as the former class system) and the souce nodes stratified by level. The first impact is quite chaotic and you get swamped by an high number of recipes and odd things to figure out. As I already commented for other parts of the game, this is both a good and a bad thing. It is bad because the overall design is quite messed up and hard to understand and use, it is good because it hands you many “hooks” and things to discover, making the game involving and addicting. You always have a lot of stuff to look forward to and figure out, so you start to play and continue for many hours without even noticing the time is passing. This is always one of the best qualities for a game.

I don’t know exactly the current state of the crafting. I know that to craft something you have to go through multiple sub-combines, but I heard that the designers want to change this and are moving steps to get rid of this mechanic. I cannot comment these changes because I only know what I’m playing right now and I have to say that I don’t see these sub-combines negatively. I don’t think they are the real problem and I think they also mirror a specific quality of the crafting that should be retained. The idea of crafting something is about the possibility to build smaller pieces and then combine them. I think this is something that makes the crafting feel “right” and I had fun browsing and researching the sub-combines before going to build what I needed. It’s gameplay that “I see fit”, that is appropriate and that I would encourage instead of minimize. A different play-style in a game that recycles many ideas. It needs work to be polished, but it shouldn’t be obliterated. It’s probably the most faithful part of the crafting because the rest is all about gathering resources and then abstracted to an absurd mini-game that still makes little sense to me.

There are also other “issues”, some of which I already commented. I can confirm again that the skill up rate of the gathering skills is completely fucked up. If you outlevel the gathering skills, it will become increasingly harder to catch up and rise them to match your level, while if your gathering skills are close to your current level they grow at nearly every attempt. This makes no sense to me since it would make sense exactly the opposite: the skills slowing down the higher they are, so that in the case you leave something behind you can also quickly catch up instead of harvesting for HOURS in the noob zones in the hope of getting a couple of points. If this is the intended design I really wish someone could explain it to me.

I won’t comment the crafting mini-game because I really don’t know how it works. I’m “using” it, but with very little understanding. The overall “flaw” of the whole system is that more than once I had to look up guides to figure out something. The game does an awful work at explaining things. So without clues you are left with google, out of the game.

These comments just to introduce an idea divided into three steps that I think could improve significantly the crafting system. The goal is to streamline the system. Mostly UI changes so that things work more smoothly, so without gameplay changes. This is another case where is the presentation to be the problem, and not what is presented. These ideas also hook back to what I said about the sub-combines. I still believe they are are an integral part of a crafting system and shouldn’t be removed. The reason is that it’s not the need for the subcombines to be unfun, but the clunky interface that makes these sub-combines counterintuitive and quite annoying. The point is to remove those flaws and retain the value of the crafting system.

Three steps to make EQ2 crafting more accessible and usable

– Step 1
For the basic mats the description of the item should tell clearly the source node from where the material comes and all the zones currently in the games where the material can spawn. For example for “electrum cluster” the description should say that it can be harvested from a “wind swept rock” and a list of the zones where the player can find that source node. Right now if you examine a piece of electrum cluster you just see “NO-VALUE” and nothing else.

– Step 2
When you look in the “recipe book” for a particular item and then “examine” it, the “components” section in the delve window shouldn’t just list the mats names as it does now, but also hotlinks icons next to each component to further delve that particular mat. By left clicking on the hotlink a new window will pop-up with the details about that item. This way if the crafting recipe needs multiple combines you can easily explore back to the original sources you need without being forced to search through the recipe book every single item.

– Step 3
Along with the hotlinks there should be also a checkbox near each component. This checkbox works along a new “components” UI window. Every time you toggle a checkbox next to a component, all the components needed (factoring *all* the previous combines and mats up to that point) will be added to the new crafting window that will then dynamically check what you currently have in the inventory. For each component you’ll see how many you currently have and how many you still need. The component will be colored yellow if it is present but not in a sufficient number to fill the requirements, green if you have enough components for the recipe and red if you have zero units of that particular component.

For example, a “Primitive Elm Chair” requires:
1 Planed Elm
1 Threadbare Padding
1 Elm Dowel
1 sandpaper (vendor)

(items that can be bought from vendors should be tagged *explicitly* so)

Next to each of these mats you’ll see an hotlink and a checkbox. The hotlink can be pressed to open a new window with the detailed informations for that mat, for example if you click on the “Planed Elm” hotlink a new window will pop-up with the description for the “Planed Elm Lumber” which then requires 1 refined elm, 1 chloro resin and 1 sandpaper. Instead if you toggle the checkbox next to the “Planed Elm” you’ll have a new craftring window (also toggable) that will list all the mats (minimum, not counting failures) you need to create the planed elm, including all the sub-recipes. In this case:
0/3 raw elm or 0/2 roots
0/2 liquid (vendor)
0/2 candle (vendor)
0/2 sandpaper (vendor)

Let’s say the player has already in the inventory 1 chloro resin (which comes from: 1 raw elm, 1 candle, 1 liquid), 1 candle and 1 sandpaper. This is how the window will look:
0/2 raw elm or 0/1 roots
0/1 liquid (vendor)
1/1 candle (vendor)
1/2 sandpaper (vendor)

Note that this window doesn’t show the crafted subcomponents, but exclusively the source mats you need up to the item you checked and that you cannot craft. The subcomponents that you can craft and you already have in the inventory are dynamically deducted from the window. The purpose of this window is to tell you exactly all the source mats you need to collect in the various zones before going back to the crafting station and start the crafting chain.

To conclude:
Saying “I hate the ‘reverse engineering’ aspect of crafting” is superficial and of no use. What is relevant is *why* this reverse engineering is felt as annoying. My belief is because it has a bad presentation through the UI. If the crafting is just about “harvesting, final combines and playing the market” it means that the crafting just doesn’t exist on its own. It’s not a case that no game managed to design a good crafting system on its own and all the recent ones are opt-outs. Withdrawals. Imho the crafting can have its own value that isn’t borrowed from sister-systems and this value can be represented in two ways (and not fancy mini-games): research and personalization.