rpgs and gathering skills

[serpentblade]

I have played a number of Multiplayer Online RPGs made with free software, (the mana world, daimonin, crossfire) and one thing that I noticed that none of the games I have seen, have character skills for gathering resources (mining, lumberjack, farming). In fact, of these only crossfire has crafting skills. I realize that there may be games that I have not yet played, that are free software, that have gathering skills; if so, please point me to them. I realize that some game developers and players expect certain things to be possible without training a character in an action, which might explain the apparent scarcity of free software games having gathering skills. Players of Ultima Online, WoW, or Runescape would know what I refer to, but these are not free software.

[Julius]

Ryzom has a quite extensive set of gathering, mining and crafting skills. Lips of Suna I think too (at least crafing).

[Evropi]

I personally have never liked crafting and such things in RPGs (save for MMOs like RuneScape where this is done very well).

They basically turn the game into a giant fetch quest. Especially when there's a high power curve. In game design, this is when the character you start the game out with is fundamentally different at the end - quite probably a lot stronger. The game turns into a grind very fast, which is not very fun at all. That's why I really enjoyed games like Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls series, where gear is somewhat de-emphasised, or at least, you're never expected to go out of your way to get/create the best gear like in most MMORPGS. The reason RS (which I have many years experience with ) did this well is because you can ignore the crafting aspect.

Full disclosure: I'm a Hacklike (subset of the roguelike genre) fan, though I actually like story in my RPGs so I'm not your traditional rogueliker.

[beoran]

I do like quite a bit of crafing and gathering in my RPG's, that's why I enjoy games like the Atelier series (that's 75% crafting and gathering, and leveling up your crafting skills). But I dislike it when it is too difficult to get the items you need for crafting, or if it takes too long to see results, like, say Dragon Warrior for PS2 did.
I think the best idea for crafting in a free RPG would be to have it but keep it rather casual.