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Crafting: For or Against?

J

jtb

Banned
I love crafting in RPGs. I love being able to tailor my gear to my character's needs. I love anything that makes loot drops more engaging. I even enjoy inventory management, if it's tied to a rewarding loot system.

It appeals directly to my lizard brain. Gets the dopamine pumping.

I know some hate it for devaluing in game economies (they're always terrible), making loot useless (most loot should be worthless - I hate picking up great weapons from generic mobs). Ideally, the best loot should be unique crafting materials.

Crafting also solves the problem that is level-scaling loot. Which I hate.

Discuss. Also, which games have your favorite/least favorite crafting systems?

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a game with flaws so large you could drive a truck through them, but I found its crafting system to be well-balanced and a ton of fun. (Only flaw was I wish you could breakdown all the useless gear you pick up)
 
P

pizzapizza64

Member
Absolutely hate it but am dealing with it to advance in Breath of the Wild.

My main issue with it is having to remember the ingredients to make something. I thought Dead Rising 4 did a decent job of just showing you when you had the right ingredients to make something.
 
J

jiggle

Member
I like it if the results are visible


If it's just medicine or arrows and shit
Then meh



Enjoyed it very much in DAI
 
H

Hippopuncher12

Member
Depends how it's done. Crafting in say The Last of Us I think is great. In BoTW I don't like it, at least not yet. So sometimes it's cool sometimes it's just annoying.
 
F

FrontalMonk

Banned
Against.

I don't particularly love loot in games generally speaking, though.

One of my favorite parts of Mass Effect 2 was the fact that they kept the number of guns low but made each one unique, as an example. Sifting through garbage in ME1 was sucha chore.
 
H

Holy Order Sol

Member
Crafting in Divinity: Original Sin was sick except the inventory quickly became a mess. I don't know it that's fixed in the new version of the game.

Also do the Chemist jobs in the FF series/its counterpart in Bravely Default count? Because doing near game-breaking things with those was fun as hell too.
 
A

ambar_hitman

Member
I don't particularly like it but I have learned to deal with it. I hate inventory carry limit though. Every RPG should give us storage box.
 
L

LewieP

Member
I am not entirely against it, but for me to really like it, it needs to be:
  • Meaningful, where you are making interesting decisions about what to craft.
  • Streamlined, so it has a good/quick UI, and doesn't resort in too much busywork.
  • Consistent with the narrative and has a reasonble internal logic (ie components are found in sensible places and the list of components needed to craft a given item make sense).
Most games fall at least one of these hurdles.
 
L

LinkSlayer64

Member
It's really fun to just throw a load of shit into a pot in BOTW and see what comes out.

I would love if crafting arrows was a thing.
 
M

maxcriden

Member
bearcatjosh said:
Absolutely hate it but am dealing with it to advance in Breath of the Wild.

My main issue with it is having to remember the ingredients to make something. I thought Dead Rising 4 did a decent job of just showing you when you had the right ingredients to make something.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping that for the cooking in BOTW there will be some kind of place to store recipes or look up previous recipes in the future. Maybe a cookbook sidequest (I don't want to know if there is any such thing, though - just speculating).

P.S. I'm unaware at this point of any non-cooking-related crafting so please don't tell me if there is any. Thank you.

Hippopuncher12 said:
Depends how it's done. Crafting in say The Last of Us I think is great. In BoTW I don't like it, at least not yet. So sometimes it's cool sometimes it's just annoying.
Click to expand...

What aren't you liking about the cooking? My only small gripe is no quick select menu for healing items. I'm not sure what they could have mapped it too, though. But I do find pausing fully to select edible items and heal myself feels a small step back from touchscreen menus.

With that said, I tend to use the full pause and not the JCL* buttons for selecting runes, shields and melee weapons so I feel a bit hypocritical in saying that. But I'm trying to train myself to use the quick menus instead.

*this is my abbreviation for the left Joy-Con. The other one is JCR. ^^
 
?

____

Member
I don't really like it.

Seems like an okay concept, but it doesn't seem like it's usually any fun....

Disclaimer: this is coming from someone that's never really played RPGs except for The Division and recently Horizon.
 
E

eizarus

Banned
LewieP said:
I am not entirely against it, but for me to really like it, it needs to be:
  • Meaningful, where you are making interesting decisions about what to craft.
  • Streamlined, so it has a good/quick UI, and doesn't resort in too much busywork.
  • Consistent with the narrative and has a reasonble internal logic (ie components are found in sensible places and the list of components needed to craft a given item make sense).
Most games fall at least one of these hurdles.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. Especially the part about it being streamlined.
 
F

firelogic

Member
I'm for it if it's easy to do like in The Last of Us and currently in Horizon Zero Dawn. You just pick stuff up while you play and when you want to make something, select what you want and hold X. If you don't have the right materials, it tells you. And you only need a few. Easy as pie.
 
Kadin

Kadin

Member
If crafting is done right where I know what's involved with it and can see how to modify things, I'm all for it. If I'm left guessing on how to do stuff and need to figure it out by random experimenting, I'll quickly avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

In Breath of the Wild, I've done some basic recipes but I have no real desire to try a bunch of random combos. Too many other things in the game (at this point) to spend my time with. The lack of a static recipe list also doesn't help. It's great to see it on items I have but what about when I run out? I can't be expected to remember what made it.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
I like the IDEA of crafting, but I've never loved a crafting system in a game, and I'm trying to figure out why.
 
V

Vital Tundra

Member
Depends. I love Breath of the Wilds because all ingredients are important. Everything in the game does something useful and food is a simple enough mechanic.

When you have to craft literally everything I get annoyed.
 
F

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Crafting is very rarely enjoyable for me. In fact I would even go so far and say I FUCKING HATE CRAFTING.
I can at least understand it in some cases. Minecraft for example. The entire game is about crafting. I don't care for Minecraft but I understand why people like it. I understand why crafting is a huge part in survival games too. I had fun finding parts in Day Z when I played it. But it was super hard and risky to even try and find those things, so that's why it was fun.

But I don't understand how anybody can find enjoyment in the crafting systems in Horizon or Far Cry. It's just mindless busy work. It's almost worse when they clearly mark where you get the stuff you need on a map because then it's just "go there, pick 3 herbs, go back". Don't know how Horizon handles it, but say I need some tiger skin in Far Cry. So I just look at the map, look at the area that says "There be tigers here", go there, kill a tiger and move on.
Where's the fun in that? On the other hand I also don't find much enjoyment when I have to hunt down ingredients which usually results in me googling "Witcher 3 where do I find fucking monster teeth?!". So I don't understand the point of them and I don't understand how people like them. Either of those scenarios above are boring and terrible for me. Hearing that a game has a crafting system instantly lowers my excitement for it nowadays.
Because in the best case scenario I don't have to engage with it at all or already have enough Elf Root to upgrade my fortress tower.
 
N

Nabbis

Member
I have yet to see a game where i found crafting to be well implemented. I would rather have unique loot hidden. The alternative would be to have unique crafting material to be hidden in a nuanced manner which kinda goes against why crafting was put in the first place.

Basically, i see it as a lazy design direction. Yes, lazy.
 
K

kadotsu

Banned
Crafting can elevate a game but there has to be a game there to elevate. Just steadily decreasing bars don't count.
 
O

Opticability

Banned
I hate it when it's done like in the later Far Cry games. You have to kill a different animal to craft an even bigger wallet? Wtf. Just use more skin from the same animal, dumbass.
 
V

Vincent Grayson

Member
I'm fine with crafting so long as it's not cumbersome or clunky, and it contributes meaningfully to the game in a way that say, simply buying or finding gear doesn't.

But am I ever like "Oh fuck yeah, crafting!"? No, not really.

I did really like Fallout 4's take on it, with lots of visual and gameplay modifications to your weapons. If not for the visual changes, it wouldn't have been half as cool.
 
Dsyndrome

Dsyndrome

Member
I'm fine with it if it at least records when I find a new recipe, like in DQ8. Games like BOTW and the enhanced version of Divinity: OS (they did away with the recipe book) turn me off something fierce.
 
G

GuitarAtomik

Member
Mostly against. Certain games are built around it (eg Survival games, Minecraft) and that's fine, but a lot of the time I don't find it a fun thing to do. Usually when I hear it's inclusion in action games, my first reaction is to groan. For example, the fact that the new God of War is going to have crafting is an immediate put off. That said, there are ways to implement it that makes it relatively painless. I don't have a problem with it in Horizon. Let it Die is kind of built around it and it works there imo.
 
packy34

packy34

Member
Depends on the game, depends on how mandatory it is.

I'm finding that crafting doesn't go far enough in Zelda BOTW - I wish I could craft arrows/simple weapons when I'm running low.
 
Vigilant Walrus

Vigilant Walrus

Member
I like crafting in Black Desert because it's about planning your crafting empire. You don't craft yourself. You do quests in the world to collect contribution points, and those points can be invested into workers, houses, crafting houses, resource collection areas.


Because of the manner of upgrading equipment in the game (people risk lowering the durability of an item if they try to upgrade it) they constantly need new supply of the same item to make it better. that means that making 50 grunil Helmets get sold as soon as they hit the market. people needs lots of it to make their own gear better.

So unlike a lot of games where I feel like I am making 50,000 of the same item just to level up a skill, what I craft in Black Desert has a lot of value. Both to myself and others.
 
T

Tangeroo

Member
bearcatjosh said:
Absolutely hate it but am dealing with it to advance in Breath of the Wild.

My main issue with it is having to remember the ingredients to make something. I thought Dead Rising 4 did a decent job of just showing you when you had the right ingredients to make something.
Click to expand...

You don't have to memorize recipes in BOTW. You just have to understand how the cooking system works. Spoilered below in case people don't want to know:

You have five basic ingredient types:

1) Basic food ingredient (apples/rice/eggs/Hylian Bass/etc)
2) Stat boosting food ingredient (stuff with an attribute like "Mighty Bass" or "Spicy Pepper")
3) Flavor enhancers (salt/acorns/herbs)
4) Critters (frogs/bugs)
5) Monster parts (horns/nails)

1-3 are used for making food which will always boost your health and assuming you use at least one ingredient that boosts a stat, will provide that specific stat boost. If you mix a food ingredient with an elixir ingredient (4 & 5), you're going to get gross food as a result.

Want to make an armor booster? Use ingredients that boost armor. The strength is based on how many of that particular ingredient. The length of time depends on the flavor enhancer. Want more health instead? Use more base ingredients. Do not mix and match different stat boost types because you will still only end up with one kind of stat boost.

Same rules apply for elixirs but you can only use critters & monster parts.
 
K

Kalentan

Member
jiggle said:
Enjoyed it very much in DAI
Click to expand...

I liked Dragon Age Inquistions crafting as well. I really liked how you got to choose what crafting mats you used in the armor rather than requiring specific materials and how hey changed the color of the armor based on each piece. It also gave you a lot of choice since a lot of recipiees scale with the materials.

Hope they keep it for DA4.
 
Strangelove77

Strangelove77

Member
Depends how necessary it is. If you can run by most craft items because you hardly ever run out then that's good, but if you have to pick each and every thing you walk past then that's not good.

In short - if you have to constantly farm shit, that's lame.

I dislike degrading weapons more to be honest. That's real bullshit.
 
Nose Master

Nose Master

Member
Depends on the execution. If it's clever and useful? Sure. If it's got too many components or limited inventory, I'm never touching it. (Sup, Bethesda)
 
T

TheBowen

Sat alone in a boggy marsh
I don't think I've ever enjoyed crafting

Means to spend more time just picking up tons of shit in the environment instead of enjoying it, and then the menus for crafting are usually endless menus. And you don't even get cool stuff from it
 
G

GSG Flash

Nobody ruins my family vacation but me...and maybe the boy!
Hate crafting. Right now, that and breakable weapons and shields are my least favourite parts of Zelda BOTW.
 
MrS

MrS

Banned
Against. It slows things down needlessly imo. It was fucking terrible is Fallout 4.
 
A

Arrrammis

Member
I like the concept, but only for some things. I like it in RPGs like Skyrim where I can learn recipes and weapon crafting, but it's not required at all. Games like Far Cry where you need a specific material for an upgrade and then a completely different material for the next level of that same upgrade are just irritating.
 
F

fireflame

Member
I would say it depends on how it is handled, the quantity of items, the durability,etc. I am not a super fan of crafting in general.
 
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