After playing Aion for almost half a year now I've come to realize that not everyone plays the game the way I do. For some it's not about "wtffacepwning" asmos in the abyss or getting 1337 lootz. In fact, some play this game casually or with the purpose of just PvEing. I do not understand why these types of players chose Aion and not WoW as their primary MMO but judging from Aion's fleeting player base they might be regretting their decision. But I digress, when I first started thinking of becoming a game designer I felt that no MMO, RTS, RPG, or some combination of the aforementioned genres should be made for the 'casual' gamer. My reasoning for this was that you can never satisfy the casual gamer in the sense that attempting to quell the massive amounts of complaints they file on forums would break any semblance of game balance and these players could choose to become more than casual with a greater time investment. However, adjusting classes balance is not always the solution. Instead one could improve upon other aspects of the game to satisfy these players' needs. One aspect of MMOs that desperately needs an overhaul is the craft and gather system. In a game one buys up all of the materials needed for the Berserking Bone-wand of Bile and clicks a button while praying to the RNG (Random Number Generator) god to be kind and grant one perfect damage values. There are entire professions dedicated to gathering and crafting so how is it possible that we have reduced this art to a mouse click? Furthermore, this is a game world with limitless possibilities so why not expand upon what we have already?
Some fixes I came up with while browsing the d'Orsay museum in Paris:
Weapon/Armor/Jewelry Sets from the same gathered source yield bonus (bonus stats, a cool neon green glow, ability to transform, new skill, etc). This deemphasizes gathering en masse and is not reliant on RNG procs (high grade, pure, etc). Resource nodes should visually represent quality and quantity (i.e. X type, Y Quality, Z Quantity). One could easily make a mine full of resources or a riverbed with small quantities of rare materials. Between types quality can be further discerned by a signature on the resource. In life, it is difficult to say A is strictly better than B since the term better quantifies something subjective which is inherently qualitative description. In fact the way we get around this idea is by creating rubrics and standards but without these tools we can only raise comparisons and assign adjectives. This line of thinking led me to believe in this new form of item sets. Instead of sets of items baring the same name they should be made from the same piece of metal or tree. One could easily come up with some backstory for this revolving around the circle of life and the dead returning to earth (i.e. cutting a tree down that is the spirit of some old commander in a previous war and making a badass bow out of it). The way that this improves gameplay could be from fighting the spirit or searching for some special tool to harvest the material. There does not need to be one way to do this either. One could take the Good/Evil approach that Fall Out 3 used (i.e. Fern Gully/Avatar harvesting vs Native American harvesting methods).
Crafting should not be a click and go afk action in MMOs. Also one should remove RNG as much as possible. It can be made more challenging by acquiring special (mob dropped vs purchasable vs quest) tools. Furthermore, it should be based on timing and spacing. There are lots of fun casual games that are based solely on this type of game play one could easily dig something up and replace the shoddy crafting systems most MMOs use (Berry mixing in pokemon comes to mind). Some other gameplay mechanisms that could arise from this include:
Competitions between craftsmen. Who can build the best sword?
A "Phonebook" of craftspeople and all of the items they can make.
Trade for craft system. This avoids giving mats+money and not getting stuff back.
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