Generally people ignored usage XP, which was probably the ideal situation the designers hoped for. Good crafters who made things that people used should do better (advance faster) than grinders, but I doubt this was observed. I don’t actually remember usage XP being explicitly removed.

This reminded me alot of the discussions between Raph when he was designing Star Wars Galaxies and the pre-release community.

Raph, as always, had big plans to revolutionize the way crafters gained xp. No more endless clicking, making 2 million gnarled staves which would be thorwn directly into the trash barrel, crafters in SWG were to gain crafting xp by making an item, selling it, and the player that bought it using the item. No XP was granted for the actual process of creating the item.

So if you created a blaster, and the person that bought it went out and shot so many Nerfs with it, then and only then would the crafter gain xp for making the item.

The vast majority of the community hated the idea (though of course the same people complained about all the clicking after release) Many claimed to like the mindless clicking over and over, hard as that is to believe.

Eventually the idea of usage xp was scrapped and went to the conventional “make a blaster, get some xp”. They fixed the glut of crafted items on the market by adding a handy little box that if you clicked would not actually create the item in exchange for a little additional xp.

Its one of those love/hate things that are so prevelant in MMOGs.

What if instead, we had all players just click on an attack button once every 1-2 minutes, and wait to see if they succeeded in combat or not. Failure didn’t mean death, it just means they didn’t manage to defeat the target, Perhaps it ran away or they flead from combat. Perhaps a critical failure could mean death for the player. This leaves them all that free time and room to chat with each other and really build that social aspect of the game we all talk about. I mean seriously, why should the combat get in the way of good interpersonal relations.

I’ll tell ya why, and we all know this. It’s boring like hell! Plus, if every combat worth fighting only resulted in a 50/50 chance of a general success worth a damn, then the game would get real boring, real fast!

Active and engaging systems should not be left to just the combat system. Let crafting and all other subsystems in the game be just as fun and engaging to do.

It feels like I’m actually playing a game instead of working. Although MMOG’s sometimes make you feel like you’re working anyways but that’s besides the point.

Adding twitch would held stop the trades farmers for one. For another it would add an element of difficulty and even fun for some gamers.

Then again, I play Puzzle Pirates, so there’s probably a connection here.

Another though would be full interactivity, where the systems are designed to be just as engaging as any other kind of gameplay. Always easier said than done. Just because some people want these crafting systems to basically be an idle activity doesn’t mean every last one of them needs to be devoid of gameplay. These are still being called games, after all.