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Crafting In CRPG's.

VentilatorOfDoom

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Demnogonis Saastuttaja said:
You could just have only a small amount of magical items to be found, and only a small amount of the best crafting materials. Mass producing magical items is what is stupid.

QFT


Crafting sucks and alchemy too.
Why?
I think it can enrich the gameplay if not overpowered, because it provides interesting non-combat gameplay.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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One aspect of this which I've missed (or can't remember) seeing is if you have the "recipe" for an item, but lack the skill, to just find some bloke who is skilled enough and hire him to do it for you. By this, I mean have someone do something for you which you can do yourself if your skills are good enough, not for a quest-vital item or unique stuff you can't make yourself.

good idea, you don't have to cripple your char by taking a lot of crafting feats (instead of combat feats etc) and of course the guy would charge a lot of money for his services with further limits crafting possibilities and avoids mass production of überitems.
 

Raghar

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Star ocean had excellent crafting. Do you know another RPG game thad had painting and sculpturing? The sucess and result was dependent on skill, talent, and creativity. Basically an excellent weapon that nobody seen, could be made only by creative person. Of course nobody started with creativity. (It was either hidden talent, or some characters were able obtain it after crafting for a while.)

The most powerful weapon was hidden in secret research facility in a demiworld rigged to explode if someone who wasn't part of original team, or theirs direct descendant, entered. AFAIK theirs daughters would work, theirs granddaughters not as they weren't present during research and that space was forbidden to enter afterwards. They were somehow pacifists so they feared these weapons, they only had weak weapons that could destroy military space cruiser without breaking a sweet. The research happened 1000 years ago...

So no, crafting doesn't decrease possibility for a large powerful artifact, quite opposite.

Now in DnD, crafting took quite a while. During that time characters could be on adventure. Would they rather spend few months to create a sword + 2 which can be stolen, or would they go to adventure?

There is also problem nicelly shown in Morrowind. Shopkeepers have only limited amount of gold, even if they want these things found at adventure, they could pay only as much gold as they have. Bankrupting themselves wouldn't be nice either.

It's often about implementation of correct economy and social structures.



Now lets look at situation when a goblin finds a rod of lighting and successfully applies it few times. This is often followed by remembering what spell had perfect probability of hit, and incinerating that bastard by a fireball. Followed by wanting to do something really nasty to him when you discover the goblin used all charges, and that rather powerful enemy doesn't look amused...

Yes of course easily obtainable artifacts are cute until they are used against you, and destroyed in the process.

I'd rather have RPG with crafting, than play collecting game with exciting loot everywhere.
 

PorkaMorka

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Crafting was the biggest flaw in Knights of the Chalice for me.

Instead of using all the cool magic items my enemies dropped, I simply sold them to the vendor and crafted a set of statistically optimized weapons and armor (several sets of weapons actually).

This ruined the fun of loot whoring, luckily the game had strong tactical battles so the lack of loot whoring wasn't a big deal. Towards the end I was literally just selling +4 Scythes of Death from the bosses to the vendor to get more gold to craft shit.

Also, it ruined the resource conservation elements when I was out of cure spells and could not rest, but i could still craft a wand with 50 charges of a cure spell.

It's another instance of a modern feature diminishing gameplay value.
 
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The idea of someone who adventures for a living being able to eat solid steel/gold and shit out magical weapons of uberpwnage while the blacksmith dedicated to their profession for their entire life can only make generic longsword + 1 is stupid.

Arcanum-like methods of having rare, hidden knowledge in the form of schematics worked very well.

Potion making though IMO needs to be much more important then generic weapon/armor crafting. Its a simple skill that reasonably most RPG characters would have, as its a means to provide for yourself.
 

Norfleet

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Blackadder said:
Perhaps everyone would have been happy with seperate gun skills in Fallout? Instead of Small, Big and Energy, perhaps you could have a 10mm pistol skill? No?
The real truth is, even this trichotomy is a bit silly. In real life, there aren't really entirely different, totally unrelated skills involved in using different types of gun: There's Marksmanship, and then there's a factor of acclimation to a specific weapon, which is not so much a skill as it is a familiarity, and would be lost over time if you switched to a completely new and different weapon of a similar class that you then became accustomed to. Silent Storm had this, but you also lost your familiarity with your gun from stabbing someone with a knife, even though these are entirely unrelated skillsets that don't relate to each other, and familiarity with one weapon didn't translate at all to an identical model of the same weapon.

Blackadder said:
In any case, the conclusion of my thoughts is that I believe this whole crafting business has gotten out of hand, especially as it is added in to every game on the market that I can think of. It invariably unbalances games, lessens the payoff of finding a decent item considerably if not totally destroying it, and further continues the trend to teaching gamers that everything should be provided on a platter to them instead of having to achieve something in order to enjoy the spoils of their labour.
I think this is an overgeneralization. Firstly, "unbalancing" is a relatively meaningless concept in a single player game. The player's side always wins! How is that EVER balanced? And are you seriously arguing that the labor of ACTUALLY MAKING THE ITEM is somehow more "handing it to you on a platter" than "simply finding it in a treasure chest mentioned in the walkthrough" or worse, "found in a random barrel"?
 

Wyrmlord

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Wow.

This morning while playing Skyrim before leaving for my examinations, I spent some time grinding my Smithing skill a few points upwards. It took only 10 minutes maximum to get it up to 30 and I had two perks to spare.

Apparently, with Dwarven or Elven Armour, you just get marginally better or even the same quality equipment. Except it takes far more effort and it is far more expensive to get the right smithing materials just to get that one additional point of armour rating. And on Master, boss level two handed weapon wielders can smash you on the head instantly whether you have 20 rating Steel Helmet or 21 rating Dwemer helmet. I like most things about the game, but this was unfortunate.

I had the same annoyances with crafting in Neverwinter Nights 2. Crafting was a lot of work for what amounted to getting a weapon no better than the last dungeon's best loot anyway.

On the other extreme, you could have super-weapons crafted in Knights of the Old Republic 2, which produced enough damage to kill enemies five times over. But if you did not bother crafting, you'd do enough damage to kill a standard enemy two times over. So it made no difference, because the game was easy anyway.

A game that really pulled off weapons and armour upgrades well was....a first person shooter. In Call of Pripyat, every upgrade was difficult to procure but was also visibly beneficial. And unlike the simplistic upgrade system of the above games, you had upgrade trees in which you gave up one possible upgrade by doing another upgrade, each with two very different benefits. Obsidian and Bethesda could learn a lot from the folks in Ukraine.
 

Surf Solar

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As long as the stuff you can create through crafting is unique and different to the items you can normally buy/find, I have nothing against it. It also makes use of some otherwise junk items in the game.

Think of a rather large quest where you find schemes for a certain item, then you need to find the ingredients to craft it and so on. Feels much more rewarding than just throwing item xy at the end of a dungeon.

It is also very cool to give the player some sense of accopmplishment if you tie crafting requirements to different skills, rather than just "crafting" skill.
Want to create some healing items? Take some survival skill, or an alchemy skill. High Repair/Science skill? Upgrade your weapons, other builds won't be able to do it that easily, etc.
 

Captain Shrek

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This is a problem of LARGE numbers: Large numerical values of health, attack and armor. This makes small changes insignificant and skill improvement unrewarding. I see you have jumped to the conclusion that crafting is useless, not that I expected anything different.

The solution is of course a thoughtful design where these values scale slower and give you better output when leveled.
 

Zomg

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Crafting for raw power stats like the D&D equivalents of AC and damage bonuses is bad because it's just another way to grind, except you are usually navigating menus instead of bopping goblins which at least might theoretically be interesting. Crafting for money is even worse.

Crafting for "customization" that enables you to use character specialties etc. is not inevitably shitty and boring, but it usually is.
 

Gosling

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Wyrmlord said:
I had the same annoyances with crafting in Neverwinter Nights 2. Crafting was a lot of work for what amounted to getting a weapon no better than the last dungeon's best loot anyway.

Um, actually in most cases in the second half of NWN2 you can craft weapons that are way better than those that you find in dungeons or can buy from merchants.
 

Zed

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for skyrim... crafting with double enchanting perk (and gear with fortify smithing, phial of blacksmithing + phial of enchanting) gets you the best items in the game (daedric weapons, dragon armor for light armor and daedric for heavy armor) so I wouldn't call it a waste.
 

MMXI

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Excidium said:
I hate crafting, it's boring as fuck. I'd rather kill people and take their stuff.
This.

I don't find crafting fun and I don't think crafting has ever been done well in a cRPG. I even prefer Ultima VII's LARPy pseudo-crafting than most crafting systems in games. I just prefer finding or buying the best items than making them myself. I'm not even sure why. I think it's something to do with finding it retarded how a random bloke on a quest to save the world has time in the day to become a better crafter than those who dedicate their lives to it. Buying great and expensive items in shops, made by dedicated craftsmen, makes more sense to me.
 

Surf Solar

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MMXI said:
Excidium said:
I hate crafting, it's boring as fuck. I'd rather kill people and take their stuff.
This.

I don't find crafting fun and I don't think crafting has ever been done well in a cRPG. I even prefer Ultima VII's LARPy pseudo-crafting than most crafting systems in games. I just prefer finding or buying the best items than making them myself.

In the end, it's just another way to reward the player with the stats/skills he has chosen. I don't see what's so bad to allow the player who wants to avoid combat with some additional protection by crafting a better armor kit that "brute" characters wouldn't be able to create.

As long as the action to find the needed ressources aren't boring and the actual crafting process (combining items in some menu) is short and doesn't consist of clicking on a button thousands of times, what's the big deal?
 

MMXI

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Surf Solar said:
In the end, it's just another way to reward the player with the stats/skills he has chosen. I don't see what's so bad to allow the player who wants to avoid combat with some additional protection by crafting a better armor kit that "brute" characters wouldn't be able to create.

As long as the action to find the needed ressources aren't boring and the actual crafting process (combining items in some menu) is short and doesn't consist of clicking on a button thousands of times, what's the big deal?
I added more to that post.

Thinking about it some more, I think crafting could work in a game with a decent economic model, with primary, secondary, tertiary sectors. All the in game "jobs" could be represented as individual trade skills, and the player's starting trade skills could be determined by a mixture of free point allocation and character background. For example, if the player came from a farming family then they would start off with a higher skill at farming. Then the player could effectively work in the game by slotting in to the in game economy. If they have skills in jobs relating to the secondary sector they will need to obtain natural resources through purchasing or even stealing them. They could then either use the items themselves or sell them on to merchants. That's how crafting should be done in a game.
 

Erzherzog

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Are we including alchemy and enchanting as 'crafting' when discussing Oblivion? Because those two are not too bad.

What games have good crafting anyways?

Even in Arcanum you can find just about anything in the schematics, right?
 

Renegen

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There are times when crafting is fun, like in crafting arrows or potions. I think Drakensang had decent crafting, of course the problem there was that you'd spend half the game time picking up shit. Then there's Diablo 2's crafting, which is an eternal fight between gemming "ok" crafting materials in a weapon you'll discard in 1 hour, or upgrading your gems to gem more powerful gear in some nebulous future. That crafting system sucks.

I actually think the best way crafting can be well implemented is when it allows you to survive in the field longer. So its purpose is to turn monster guts, bones and flowers into ready to use items without having to ever go to town. It saves the player time since the player was just going to drap every crap he found to the merchant, convert it to gold and buy the same items anyway. This system also allows mobs to have realistic drops.
 

MMXI

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I also prefer cRPGs that feature throwaway equipment rather than lots of "uniques", simply because the developer can play around with mechanics that would otherwise piss the player off, such as thieves stealing items from you and items getting permanently damaged over time. What this also does it make crafting easier to get right as it only needs to act as a utility to top the player's equipment up rather than act as a whole mini-game on its own with collect-them-all blueprints to potentially get the best items in the game.
 

deuxhero

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While it's very luck based (but not hard to replicate without), I liked forging in Way of the Samurai. A tad simple, but it worked

Basicly you went the black smith and payed him to improve attack, defense or "whatever you like" (random, but chance of a higher total mod), with raising attack coming at a high possibility of lowered defense.

The interesting part was the titling system, where based on what you did with a sword (killed a lot of people, what its stats are being the two most basic, but there are some others), you could title it (only one title a sword and titles are permanent) for various bonuses. One example I used heavily in 2 was a Yaso which because of its high attack (I ignored defense on it), I could title "Ogre", giving it large boost to attack. The Ogre Yaso was a very solid weapon, able to chop through normal mode enemies.

You were expected to have your sword improved by the balance.

In 3 you can find weapon parts that you assemble into a custom made new weapon as well.

One final note (it's what really made the system work) about the system was that movesets were tied to the sword you used as a base, and you unlock new moves as you use the sword. Also there were a lot of swords in the game with their own unique traits (most noticeably the swords of important characters who you could collect if you killed them in a playthrough) making the choice of sword a much more permanent effect than most crafting games .


Also of note is the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story games. While the main draw are the lesbians, it has item crafting. EVERY weapon you use is crafted, with each class (sword, axe, spear, drill, knuckle and in the Japan only third, bow) has its ups and downs. The first had issues with grinding for materials (not enough mystic ore), but both US released ones are solid fun otherwise.
 

J_C

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I hate crafting in the way it is in modern RPGs. Crafting a weapon should be a special thing, which yields a great equipment. In games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3-NV, you just collect random crap to make bullets, standard weapons, armor. I never do this, because I can buy those stuff, so why should I bother.

What I really liked in Baldur's Gate 2, is that I could find special items in different places of the world, and a blacksmith could assemble them and make a rare, really good weapon/armor. That is the kind of crafing I want to see in an RPG.
 
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Excidium said:
I hate crafting, it's boring as fuck. I'd rather kill people and take their stuff.

'xactly. Leave smithing to the blacksmiths. Take Skyrim, for example. So you suddenly craft legendary this and that... Why do you do carrot-fetching quests, you should be forging the weapons of the nobles and the best warriors. You're the best smith in the region... Whatever. It's equally stupid that you're supposed to be the destiny chosen dragon slayer and even still people treat you like crap and want you to clean their toilets. Then you shout them down into a river and they angrily charge at you with a dagger while you wear armour made out of dragon.

Anyway. The point is creating weapons and armour is a time-consuming craft, and if you're the best at it, why are you even adventuring anymore?
 

Surf Solar

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J_C said:
I hate crafting in the way it is in modern RPGs. Crafting a weapon should be a special thing, which yields a great equipment. In games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3-NV, you just collect random crap to make bullets, standard weapons, armor. I never do this, because I can buy those stuff, so why should I bother.

What I really liked in Baldur's Gate 2, is that I could find special items in different places of the world, and a blacksmith could assemble them and make a rare, really good weapon/armor. That is the kind of crafing I want to see in an RPG.

:thumbsup:

That's what I meant above only with the difference that you can do it on your own on the fly (provided you have the neccesary skills).
 

Ebonsword

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Gosling said:
Wyrmlord said:
I had the same annoyances with crafting in Neverwinter Nights 2. Crafting was a lot of work for what amounted to getting a weapon no better than the last dungeon's best loot anyway.

Um, actually in most cases in the second half of NWN2 you can craft weapons that are way better than those that you find in dungeons or can buy from merchants.

I agree. I thought crafting was actually one of the things that NWN2 did fairly well.

There was a wide variety of different items to construct, and it allowed for some cool weapon customization. Yet, you were limited (at least for most of the game) in the amount of raw materials you had, so you were forced to make choices like do you use your one canary diamond to craft a Medallion of Thought for your main tank or use it to craft a Weapon of Life Stealing (Improved) for your rogue?
 

Qwertilot

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The 'standard' stuff got rather overbalanced in MoTB mind (esp elemental damage dice on weapons!), although the interestingly unique bits related to the story rather nice. Seemed most logical to me in SoTZ really as they kept it sensibly modest and its very nice to make party appropriate stuff when you've got so much freedom there.
(even that was seemingly abusable to get daft armour classes mind.).
 

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