Guild Wars 2

One of the issues I’ve had with crafting mechanics in MMO’s is that it’s not at all skill-based. You get your materials, you press the magic button, and you suddenly have a sword. Compared to the revolutionary fighting mechanics/dynamic event mechanics in the game, which seem to have turned out fantastic, I think crafting is the weak point in GW2 at the moment. If you don’t believe me, look for a page on the website that describes the crafting system in GW2. There isn’t one.

To make crafting more interesting and allow there to be a difference between good crafters and bad ones, why not implement minigames for crafting?

For example, say I want to cut a gem. The minigame would bring up a screen with a gem, and show a line that the player should try to cut on. The player would then have to draw that line with his mouse (or some other mechanic,) as accurately as possible. This would probably repeat several times, until the gem is finished being cut.

When the gem is cut, its final stats reflect how well the player did in the minigame. If you did poorly, it would give 2 power, if you do ok it gives 4 power, if you do well it gives 6 power, and fantastic gives 8 power. The game would have to be difficult enough that well-cut gems would be very rare and difficult to get, but it should be easy enough that the average player could get a regular-quality gem fairly consistently.

Each profession would have a different minigame, perhaps a simon says game for cooking, an accuracy game for armorsmithing, etc.

Of course, it would have to be a kind of game that a bot couldn’t easily complete, or a game that can be easily cheesed.

Any thoughts on this?

Edit: kitten meant to post this in suggestions… can a mod please move it?