作者：Sande

武器/道具锻造系统很早以前就是MMORPG中非常重要的一部分，它丰富了原本空洞而单调的游戏世界。然而，对于这样一种有效的娱乐手段，锻造系统的发展史却并非一帆风顺。以前的游戏总是充满各种刷任务机制，无所用处的组件，并强迫玩家使用无聊的锻造系统，甚至完全采纳毫无用处的交易技能。

锻造系统也可以是维系着玩家与开发者关系的一个“弹簧”。如果玩家自己创造的内容与游戏所提供的道具力量不均，那么锻造者和非锻造者就会认为锻造系统是无用的，而不再与其他玩家进行比较，并责怪开发者糟糕的设计。

如何才能避免这种矛盾？矛盾的根源在于，锻造对于开发者的作用与其对于玩家的作用是完全不同的。而平衡双方需求便是化解这种矛盾的好方法，并且能够帮助游戏创造出一个合适的锻造系统。

所以，锻造系统对于玩家有何作用？

有助于缓解刷任务现象

对于玩家来说这应该说是最重要的作用吧。玩家总是喜欢变化，如果一款游戏只是让玩家一整天都在打怪，而没有其它任务，他们肯定会对此感到厌烦并最终退出游戏。而锻造能够在原本的杀戮-抢夺-杀戮模式中为玩家提供替换式选择，让他们能够以不同的方式控制角色的发展。

同时开发者还应该确保锻造的易用性。这就意味着玩家能够同时拥有战斗技巧和锻造技巧，并且两者间不会产生相互抵触。玩家不需要非得从中做出选择。同时锻造还需要具有吸引力，不论是资料还是产品，都应包含有趣的选择。肯定没有哪个玩家希望用一种更无聊的刷任务机制取代原先的刷任务机制吧。

crafting(from massively.joystiq.com)

它是一种道具和货币来源

玩家可以从自己所创造的道具中获得更多可观的收益。甚至，如果玩家能够使用自己锻造的道具，他们便会萌生出一种自力更生感，即通过自己的努力而不断增强战斗技巧。

而对于开发者来说，锻造道具应该能够有效地说服玩家愿意花费他们辛苦所得的货币。这时候他们就需要想办法保持锻造产品与游戏掉落道具之间的平衡。一大策略 便是在锻造中包含非装备性质的选项。如锻造一些能够消耗的物品，如药剂，以确保需求的稳定，以及强化装备威力的功能，如宝石或者能够让锻造者提升道具（游 戏邦注：可同时适用于游戏掉落道具、玩家自己锻造的道具）等。按照这种方法，获得最佳装备的角色便能够同时地利用两种游戏玩法的优势。

吸引建造和社交型玩家

有些玩家喜欢游戏中的破坏，杀戮和掠夺；也有一些玩家更喜欢在城市中闲逛，与人交流并创造神奇的道具。他们会喜欢锻造所推动的相互依赖和相互交流，愿意与合作伙伴和好友分享并共同创造资源。

这些玩家便是这类游戏最重要的玩家基础，游戏应该想办法留住这些玩家。开发者应该努力创造一个具有吸引力且有趣的锻造系统，但是却不应该强求所有玩家不得不关注锻造系统。一些系统采用即时战斗类行动而取代无聊的进度条。但是这么做却适得其反，因为这会强迫玩家不得不在锻造道具时停止社交行为。相反地，锻造应该更加灵活，让玩家能够按照自己的节奏进行。而这些有趣的行动应该在玩家点击“创造”之前就表现出来，例如在选择特定资源，资料或使用方法的时候。

创造有效的自定义机制

锻造功能能够按照不同方式吸引不同类型玩家的注意。对于那些喜欢角色创造的玩家来说，交易技能能够让角色更加与众不同。对于社交游戏玩家来说，他们能够锻造装饰性道具去自定义角色和环境的外观。对于战斗策略型玩家来说，定制属于自己的装备能够增强角色的实力并提高战斗效率。

开发者总是会忽视自定义机制，因为这需要花费他们更多的额外成本。但是如此做法所造成的损失却是我们不容小觑的。如果锻造者能够定制角色或道具的外观，这可以进一步增强玩家的沉浸感。游戏掉落的道具只有原来的固定属性，而如果锻造道具的配方也只有一种固定属性，那么对玩家来说，锻造道具与游戏掉落道具之间并无多大区别，其吸引力也将大打折扣。

Vanguard-Crafting(from mmorpg.com)

那么，锻造对于开发者来说有何作用？

强化游戏的合理性

让人悲哀的是，很多开发者只是因为外部需求而在游戏中添加锻造机制。如此心态最终只能够创造出糟糕的设计系统，并破坏了整款游戏的合理性。

在设计一款强调用户留存的游戏，开发者在设计锻造系统时更是应该仔细考虑玩家的想法。如果游戏的目标是吸引特定玩家类型，如休闲玩家或战斗型玩家，游戏可以适当放松锻造系统的作用，但是同时应该添加能够创造出同等利益的功能。如果锻造系统是游戏所必须的内容，开发者就应该关注预算分配等问题，而如果玩家不喜欢你的锻造系统，那就只是徒劳无功的做法。

它能让玩家投入更多游戏时间

MMO中的任何系统都必须对玩家具有吸引力，并让他们愿意长时间玩游戏。锻造系统其实也是玩家角色发展的体现，结合战斗进程更能够调动玩家的积极性，在游戏中投入更多时间。

但是如果使用不合理，这种理念将会导致玩家不得不在锻造系统中耗费更多时间。不必要的刷任务机制，较长的进度条以及对失败的严厉惩罚都会导致玩家在锻造中投入更多时间，但是同时却会导致玩家在游戏中产生更多挫败感。带有过多挫败感的玩家很可能随时停止玩游戏。为了避免这种情况，游戏应该确保玩家始终能够感受到某种意义上的进步。或许可以让他们按照配方上的材料或其他交易技能中的组件来锻造道具，或者通过经验值而非随机性的技能增长，让他们获得这种进步感。

创造玩家间的相互依赖感

作为一种多人游戏，MMO自然应该包含推动玩家交流与协作的机制。而锻造系统便具有这种功效。它让玩家能够为好友创造及增强道具能量，同时还能够与他们分享所得的资源和材料。

创造玩家间相互协作的一大方法便是引入一种包括稀有掉落道具（或由其他交易技能锻造材料）的配方，但这种配方必须具有特殊性，能够制造出更多有益的道具。它不需要特别要求玩家为了获得一些基本道具进行协作，更不能对玩家做出升级技能的要求，否则只会让玩家因更多时间和金钱投入而备受挫折。

创造强有力的经济系统

强大的经济系统能够提高游戏的用户粘性，而如果开发者允许游戏内部的货币交易，他们便有可能从中获得更多实在的利益。锻造系统是玩家间一种重要的交易方式。除此之外，它让毛皮，尖牙，宝石等能够用于商业交易的材料更凸显其价值，并有效缓解游戏经济系统中的通货鼓胀现象。

使用锻造推动经济发展的一大方法便是，引进可以让让所有玩家都受益的道具配方。其次就是提供多种材料的来源，例如交易商品，掉落的道具（稀有和普遍的），资源节点以及其它配方。设计适用于多种配方的材料以提升它们的需求量，同时增加仅适用于一种配方但却极有用处的掉落道具数量。

总结

上述内容并非创建优秀锻造系统的完整列表，其中要点也未必适用于同一款游戏。开发者应该在衡量玩家的游戏目标前优先考虑自己的目标，以便创造一种能够让大家各取所需的锻造系统，并最终制作出一款强大的游戏。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2011年1月31日，所涉事件及背景以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Role of Crafting (Part I)

Sande

In this article, game designer Brendon Trombley looks at the various ways crafting adds to player experience in MMOs and how developers can use an understanding of these roles to build better crafting systems.

Since early on, crafting has been a major staple in the design of MMORPGs. Without some sort of crafting system, most online worlds would seem empty, nothing more than hack’n'slash mechanics wrapped around a leveling curve. Yet, for such a peaceful pastime, crafting has a sordid history. Past games have been fraught with resource grinds, wasted components, forced participation in crafting systems, useless recipes, and sadly, sometimes even useless tradeskills entirely.

Crafting can even be a source of strain between player and developer. If the balance of power between player-created and dropped items isn’t carefully calibrated, crafters and non-crafters can feel useless and neglected compared to the other and will blame the developer.

How can all this strife be avoided? A source of conflict is that crafting’s role for developers can differ greatly from its role for players. Reducing this conflict by addressing the needs of both parties is a good step towards a designing a successful crafting system.

So what’s the role of crafting for players?

It breaks up the grind

This is probably the single most important aspect for players. They crave variety, and if they get bored with fighting monsters all day and don’t have anything else to do, they might as well just log out. Crafting offers a satisfying alternate activity to the regular pattern of kill-loot-kill by giving them a separate form of character advancement.

Keeping this in mind, developers should keep crafting accessible to all players. That means allowing players to take both combat and crafting skills without negatively impacting each other. Players shouldn’t have to choose between the two. Crafting should also be kept engaging and include interesting choices, whether in the selection of materials, or the choice of product to make. No one wants to replace a grind with an even more tedious grind.

It’s a source of items and cash

Players derive a great source of satisfaction earning a tidy profit from the items they personally created. Even better, if they can personally use the items, they get to feel self-reliant seeing their own efforts augment their combat skills.

For developers, this means of course that crafted items must be useful to convince players to spend their hard-earned cash on them. This is where the tricky balance must be struck between crafting and dropped items. A great strategy is to include non-equipment niches in crafting. For instance, crafted consumables like potions ensure a steady demand, and equipment augments such as slot gems or enchantments allow crafters to increase the power of items, dropped or crafted. In this way, the best-equipped character is one who has taken advantage of both styles of play.

It appeals to constructive and social play styles

Some players don’t find rampaging around the world, destroying, killing, and pillaging everything they encounter terribly fun. Some would much rather hang out in cities, socialize, and create cool items. They enjoy the interdependency and community that crafting promotes, sharing or creating materials with their guildmates and friends.

These players are an important part of the player base, and retaining them should be prioritized properly. Developers should keep them in mind by creating a crafting system that is engaging and fun, but not demanding of all the player’s focus. Some systems have included real-time combat-like actions to replace boring progress bars. This could be a mistake, because it forces the player to stop socializing while they craft. Instead, crafting should be more cerebral, taken at one’s own pace. The interesting action should happen before the player clicks ‘create’, such as in the choosing and collecting of specific resources, materials, or recipes to use.

It creates greater customization

This is a feature of crafting that can appeal to different player types in different ways. For those interested in character-building, taking a tradeskill is a way to further differentiate their characters. For social players, making decorative items allows them to tailor the appearance of their characters and environments. For the combat strategists, the ability to customize their equipment allows them to maximize their stats and effectiveness in battle.

Fostering customization is a facet that is often neglected by developers, being as it tends to come with extra overhead cost. However, the loss of the potential benefits should not be taken lightly. When crafters can tailor the stats or appearance of their items, it greatly increases their engagement in the activity. Dropped items, by their nature, come as they are. When recipes also have locked-in stats, it seems to be a missed opportunity to differentiate those items from drops.（source:gamedesignaspect）

So what’s the role of crafting for developers?

It adds legitimacy to the game

It’s a sad fact that many developers include crafting in their game simply because they are expected to by the outside world. This leads to poorly designed systems that are added seemingly as an afterthought and can end up dragging the game down.

When designing in a genre where player retention is vitally important, developers should think carefully about their audience while considering crafting systems. If the game is meant to appeal to a specific player type, for instance casual or combat-oriented players, it may be possible to leave out crafting but include features that create similar benefits. Otherwise, if it’s decided that including crafting is indeed required, it should have the proper attention and budget allocated to it or players won’t use it, making it a wasted effort.

It gets players to spend more time playing

The goal of any system in an MMO should be to engage players and keep them willing to play the game over a long period of time. Crafting offers a form of character advancement that, when combined with combat advancement, creates plenty of motivation to spend time in the game.

When taken too far, this concept may lead to the addition of artificial time-sinks to crafting systems. Unnecessary grinding, long progress bars, and harsh penalties for failure may require the player to spend more time crafting, but at the cost of increased player frustration. Too much frustration, and there’s a chance they will stop the activity entirely. Avoid this by ensuring there’s always a sense of progress for the player. Perhaps the items they grind are ingredients for recipes down the line or components for other tradeskills. Perhaps advancement is based on experience rather than random skill-point increases.

It creates interdependency between players

MMOs, being multiplayer games, should of course include mechanics that foster player interaction and cooperation. Crafting systems are an effective way to do this. They allow players to create and enhance items for others, and promote the sharing of resources and materials.

A great way to create more cooperation between players is to include recipes with rare dropped components or ingredients crafted from other tradeskills. However, these recipes should be special exceptions that produce extra-useful items. Don’t require too much collaboration for basic items and especially not for regular advancement in the skill, or players will become frustrated at the extra time and money costs.

It promotes a strong economy

A strong economy increases player engagement and, if the developer so desires, can be a source of income if real-money trading of in-game currency is allowed. Crafting is a major source of trade between players. Additionally, it creates value in all those skins, fangs, gems, and other drops that would otherwise be merchant fodder. Merchant-bought components can help remove currency from a mostly positive-sum money system, reducing inflation.

Use crafting to promote the economy by first and foremost making the results of recipes worthwhile for all kinds of players. Then, create a variety of sources for ingredients: merchants, drops (rare and common), resource nodes, and other recipes. Create demand by designing ingredients to be useful in multiple recipes, and maximize the number of drops that are useful in at least one recipe.

Final thoughts

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the ways to create a successful crafting system. Nor should all the tips here be included in the same game. Developers should instead prioritize their goals while thinking carefully about the goals of their audience. That way, they can craft a system that satisfies the needs of everyone as best they can, creating a stronger game in the end.（source:gamedesignaspect）