Beginning Design Work on a Crafting Mobile Game and Need Input (Survey)

[tigerusthegreat]

I'm beginning the visioning phase if a crafting mobile game and would like some input in the form of survey responses (or respond here if you would like).

Survey link:
http://goo.gl/forms/vHE0gYdegM

Thank you

[Domochevsky]

Whelp, there ya go. However... shouldn't you be making a game that you'd want to play yourself? >_>

[tigerusthegreat]

Whelp, there ya go. However... shouldn't you be making a game that you'd want to play yourself? >_>

With some small exceptions to give more options on questions, I would play various iterations of this game listed on the survey.

Thank you for participating.

[Erloas]

I'm not actually sure of any crafting games I've ever played. I've used plenty of crafting systems in games, but not a game that the crafting is the whole thing.*

I guess maybe some of those bakery sort of games? I don't know, I've never actually played any of them.

I looked at the survey and I really have no idea how much of the questions would even apply to a game that doesn't have a game outside the crafting side of things.

*I guess Minecraft would be considered a crafting game? It is kind of in the title and all. I haven't ever actually played Minecraft, but it mostly seems like an RPG with very large crafting elements, but I guess that might be a bit of semantics.

But depending how much you want to stretch the idea, EVE could be the biggest crafting game of all time with levels of complexity in the interaction of crafting and the rest of the game that is really hard to summarize.

I think the theme of the game world is very important to picking many of the things you ask about. Gathering mechanics that would work very well in a space based game would probably make no sense at all in a steampunk or fantasy setting. And working with the setting and making sense is usually a lot more important than exactly how the mechanic functions. Same with a single adventurer, or a leader of an up-and-coming corporation/guild/nation, all of those types of thematic choices changes what feels right in the game and what doesn't. If I'm a lone person in nature having materials steadily showing up over time makes no sense, but it might be perfect for a steampunk corporation that has people working for it. And killing a wolf shouldn't drop logs to build a new house, but destroying an enemy ship might very well lead to useful and salvageable materials.

[tigerusthegreat]

You bring up some interesting points. The goal was always to have a robust crafting system be the driver for the game (much like eve has a vast chunk of the economy driven by player made items). The original inspirations come from games like swg and eve in fact.

The game works itself is important but I want crafting to be the driving vehicle.

[NichG]

The fact that it's a mobile game throws a wrench in conceptualizing it for me. Normally for a crafting-focused game I want the challenge of crafting to be to make something which is fun to use and is customized to non-numerical matters of preference. For example, building a car and then driving it - do you like stable or responsive or maneuverable or high capacity or...?

If the crafting results in something with direct, totally objective worth, it's less interesting unless each object is a random puzzle (otherwise I could just look up optimal recipes).

But I think for a mobile game it may be too complex to have an interaction mode where you 'use' what you make.

Maybe just something with context-dependent worth is enough. Then you have the metagame of adapting crafting to context. Imagine something like a market of all the items every player is making. An algorithm assigns extra value to combinations of traits that are rare on the market. So if one player makes an item with high Style and Convenience, another player is rewarded more for making high Convenience and Strength rather than just copying the other guy's recipe.

Another way would be to make the ingredients so diverse that a player can't reliably get the same stuff again, even if they once found a cool combo. You could literally have every ingredient be totally unique and randomly generated.