I could swear I’ve posted about using mini-games for tradeskills before, but damned if I can’t find it. Not here, not on blogs I frequent, not on message boards I visit.
In any event, what I’ve posted before is that I don’t agree with either extreme. World of Warcraft’s click and create method is just so lifeless, no skill required at all. Then there are games like EQ2 which required you to “battle” your crafting every single time (no idea if this has changed, but that’s how it was when I last played).
What I think I would love to see is a system where a mini-game is used to set a “quality” bar, or several to set several bars, and then click and create to actually craft the items. Expertise in the mini-game would equate to better crafting, but once set you wouldn’t have to play over and over just to make items if you are happy with the items you are making.
Anyway, not going in to much depth here, just a broad stroke idea… thoughts?
In most games you use 3 resources when you craft and get 2 other resources (if succesful) as a result:
Primary resources:
1.-Materials/money: this are spent, and if you fail, usually they are lost.
2.-Skill: you need to meet a certain level to craft the thingie you are crafting.
3.-Time: it’s not the same to craft 1 thing, than crafting 3000 thingies.
The products are the “thing” you are crafting and crafting experience (most of the time)
If you add the “quality gauge” you are only adding time to the mix, players that do craft the most (in my humble experience) want to get the most out of their time, just like people hate the go-fetch quests, crafters will hate the added time to craft.
Unless;
1.- You get to retry endlessly
2.- You get to “take 10” (get the average, like in dungeons and dragons)
3.- You create gameplay that uses that time.
For the option 3 you got to keep in mind that most crafters (Again in my humble opinion, as i’m an alchemist in the game i play) are not exactly twitch players, so even a procedurally generated sudoku board is better than whack a mole with a “quality gauge” attached to it.
Or even better, in a game named something like “burning sands” (i can’t recall exactly), you can multitask your crafting/gathering/farming because of the extra time you need to do stuff, and in the end you should feel even more productive.