Crafting sucks in 99% of cases

[HumanTotemPole]

Relatedly, it occurs to me that crafting and/or an emphasis on loot are the antithesis of the design I prefer: a small selection of widely varied equipment in every category, with the best of each locked behind questlines or particularly difficult exploration. But most of the time devs can't help themselves but to instead pad their games with "addictive" time-wasting gameplay loops of some sort, be it crafting, trash loot, random drops or the like, probably because it takes very little effort to make the player waste hours upon hours in grinding

Indeed. I've intermittenly thought about Nioh's approach to items and loot since finishing it. In retrospect Irish Billy Adams does Japan can fuck off - rancid putrid loot grind the whole way through, literal chores between missions also. It compares poorly to the largely static item systems present in similar Souls-likes. Nioh isn't even a bad game otherwise but I'll probably never replay it due to how tedious the gear grind is.

 

[V_K]

Morrowind

Morrowind most definitely has a trash loot problem, 90% of the stuff you find are food and alchemy ingredients you'll never need.

Yeah that's why I just... don't pick it.

If you want to, you can even loot all the forks and plates and pots and whatnot, but why would you unless you're really hurting for gold and need to sell that junk?
I don't even open the inventory of slain beasts because I know they only drop fur and meat and shit (because they're animals, what else would they drop?).

So basically you're playing it as a walking/hiking sim: low risk (easy combat), low reward (mostly just pretty vistas). Which is totally fine, but arguably not the design descirbed by The Vanished One.

 

[KateMicucci]

Morrowind

Morrowind most definitely has a trash loot problem, 90% of the stuff you find are food and alchemy ingredients you'll never need.

Yeah that's why I just... don't pick it.

If you want to, you can even loot all the forks and plates and pots and whatnot, but why would you unless you're really hurting for gold and need to sell that junk?
I don't even open the inventory of slain beasts because I know they only drop fur and meat and shit (because they're animals, what else would they drop?).

So basically you're playing it as a walking/hiking sim: low risk (easy combat), low reward (mostly just pretty vistas). Which is totally fine, but arguably not the design descirbed by The Vanished One.

? What does that have to do with not picking up trash?

 

[JarlFrank]

Morrowind

Morrowind most definitely has a trash loot problem, 90% of the stuff you find are food and alchemy ingredients you'll never need.

Yeah that's why I just... don't pick it.

If you want to, you can even loot all the forks and plates and pots and whatnot, but why would you unless you're really hurting for gold and need to sell that junk?
I don't even open the inventory of slain beasts because I know they only drop fur and meat and shit (because they're animals, what else would they drop?).

So basically you're playing it as a walking/hiking sim: low risk (easy combat), low reward (mostly just pretty vistas). Which is totally fine, but arguably not the design descirbed by The Vanished One.

How did you come up with that?

I engage enemies, kill them, only loot what's valuable and move on. I like to push into harder regions at low levels, like making an expedition beyond the Ghostfence towards dungeons I know hold unique items. High risk, high reward.

I don't know what not looting the 5-gold-value skin off dead animals has to do with that.

In fact, not using alchemy makes the game harder since it's so broken, increasing the risk.

 

[deuxhero]

Relatedly, it occurs to me that crafting and/or an emphasis on loot are the antithesis of the design I prefer: a small selection of widely varied equipment in every category, with the best of each locked behind questlines or particularly difficult exploration. But most of the time devs can't help themselves but to instead pad their games with "addictive" time-wasting gameplay loops of some sort, be it crafting, trash loot, random drops or the like, probably because it takes very little effort to make the player waste hours upon hours in grinding

Indeed. I've intermittenly thought about Nioh's approach to items and loot since finishing it. In retrospect Irish Billy Adams does Japan can fuck off - rancid putrid loot grind the whole way through, literal chores between missions also. It compares poorly to the largely static item systems present in similar Souls-likes. Nioh isn't even a bad game otherwise but I'll probably never replay it due to how tedious the gear grind is.

The trick to Nioh's gear was to kill revanants for their shit.

 

[PorkaMorka]

- farm resources by standing next to an ore vein and attacking it with your pickaxe till it's harvested

I hate crafting too but... how often is this the case with RPGs? MMOs not included.

Sometimes single player games do make you mine, Divinity Original Sin has this, as part of one of the worst crafting systems ever.

The mining wasn't that bad but you had to loot thousands of mundane items that might be useful in recipes, then haul them to a crafting spot and store them in a barrel. You should also save certain items that can be melted down and reforged.

Crafted weapons were better than found weapons, so you had to come back every few levels and craft new weapons for all your characters.

You also had to save every single knife in the game, because eventually vendors stopped selling them and every time you wanted to craft a dagger you needed a knife as an ingredient.

The developers of that game really had a knack for wasting your time.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Relatedly, it occurs to me that crafting and/or an emphasis on loot are the antithesis of the design I prefer: a small selection of widely varied equipment in every category, with the best of each locked behind questlines or particularly difficult exploration. But most of the time devs can't help themselves but to instead pad their games with "addictive" time-wasting gameplay loops of some sort, be it crafting, trash loot, random drops or the like, probably because it takes very little effort to make the player waste hours upon hours in grinding

Indeed. I've intermittenly thought about Nioh's approach to items and loot since finishing it. In retrospect Irish Billy Adams does Japan can fuck off - rancid putrid loot grind the whole way through, literal chores between missions also. It compares poorly to the largely static item systems present in similar Souls-likes. Nioh isn't even a bad game otherwise but I'll probably never replay it due to how tedious the gear grind is.

The trick to Nioh's gear was to kill revanants for their shit.

Indeed and renevants are some of the best fights as well. The point is that the game wouldn't lose anything by having a more standard souls-like item system. Gear grind is unnecessary bloat and cheap depth.

 

[deuxhero]

Morrowind

Morrowind most definitely has a trash loot problem, 90% of the stuff you find are food and alchemy ingredients you'll never need.

Morrowind does loot very well. Merchants will never have enough money to buy everything you haul them, and that's the point. Clutter is just there to make interiors feel less empty and the ability to pick it up and sell it is just a side effect. You don't need all that much money to buy basic gear (steel or equivalent with an enchanted steel weapon), and you can probably do it with your release fee+gifts from the blades (and if not, looting the very first dungeon outside Seyda Neen is more than enough) and it's rare to find anyone selling gear better than basic (there's only a dozen or so NPCs with gear better than silver for sale: Suran pawnbroker, and Ghostgate glass seller are the only two I can think of off hand). Money in Morrowind doesn't buy you better gear, it buys you training. Nine-Toes and the rest of the Blades trainer mini-quest outright tells you this. Morrowind's problem is everything else about the economy is busted (Alchemy. With even a bit of barter skill, Wayn will pay you for the privilege of training you. The huge value increase of filled soul gems.), and the leveled loot in easy bandit caves has obscene value for its weight and non-scarcity so it's trivial to buy up every skill to mid levels near the start.

 

[0wca]

I like the way Subnautica did it.

You needed less amounts of resources but the higher tier resources were in harder to get to places which you could get to by crafting equipment from your previous resources. I know that crafting was basically a core feature with that game but it didn't feel grindy and kept you going for the next resource which was deeper than the last one.

As far as RPG crafting goes, it should follow the same principle: less nodes to harvest, more resources from each node and just place the nodes in harder to reach places. That way it feels rewarding that when you clear a bunch of mobs you might get enough material to craft a new weapon/armor/etc.

The reason games go the other direction is artificial game length - make the player run around doing chores and waste as much of their time as possible so that the creators can brag about how long their game is. It's the digital version of a dick pump.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It's become a trend to add crafting systems to games. A vocal minority of players who like repetitive resource farming for some reason even demand it to be added into classic CRPGs, and sometimes even pure action games... even though it rarely adds anything to the game. In fact, it usually massively detracts from the game.

How most crafting systems work:

- farm resources by standing next to an ore vein and attacking it with your pickaxe till it's harvested
- gather 100 pieces of the resource so you can craft a weapon or a piece of armor
- farm the next better resource to improve your equipment

It's very grindy and boring and ruins the itemization, especially in RPGs. And it's either pointless or the best skill in the game: either found unique items are better than crafted ones, in which case you can completely ignore crafting. Or crafted items are much better than found unique ones, in which case discovering a unique item isn't exciting but a letdown.

And crafting an item is usually a lot less fun than looting one off a tough boss enemy or finding one in a secret room within a deep dungeon.

Discovering a unique item is always a surprise (at least on your first playthrough). You kill a tough enemy, then get to wield his fuckoff sword. Or you explore a dangerous tomb and find an ancient king's ceremonial armor which has a unique enchantment on it. In both cases, you are rewarded for performing a core gameplay activity (combat and exploration, respectively) with something new and shiny that you didn't know you would find there.

I've never seen this system in any RPG I've played, meaning either it comes from walking simulators or from non RPG and MMO.

While I agree with you, crafting is inferior to looting (from a tough enemy, not from a trash-pile), some games nailed it like Arcanum (too many shit containers to loot though but it's independent from the crafting system), other games also did a great work with simpler systems like gathering rare ingredients.
Wizardry 8 and Fallout 2 are great examples on how it should be done with little efforts for a great results, you could do better but for a way greater cost and unwarranted results, probably for the worse.

So, instead of wasting resources on unnecessary and pointless crafting systems, just copy Fallout 2 and Wizardry 8 and use the extra time on a more varied bestiary, elite/boss enemies and a better encounter design.

 

[Dickie]

I'll get back to saving the world in a minute. First, let me check these garbage cans for bits of cloth and then go pick some flowers.

 

[JarlFrank]

The reason games go the other direction is artificial game length - make the player run around doing chores and waste as much of their time as possible so that the creators can brag about how long their game is. It's the digital version of a dick pump.

Yeah, ultimately the way most crafting systems are designed is similar to copypasta filler encounters.

 

[snoek]

I'll get back to saving the world in a minute. First, let me check these garbage cans for bits of cloth and then go pick some flowers.

The dumpster diving saviour of mankind.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Agreed. I can't think of a game off the top of my head that hits the balance between crafting being completely useless or completely undermining the difficulty. It's always one or the other.

Euotopia. You find good shit and you can craft good shit and amplify shit you find. But.... it is a mmo and not turn-based. I would have loved to see a version of it party-based with tbc but it won't happen.

I enjoyed Aion for not just skill going up but xp gained to level just like grinding. I think there is a sweet spot somewhere and the ultimate tactical tbc RPG with some empire building, crafting, and more hasn't been created. Then again, I haven't played every game.

Hoarding happens in most games I play.

 

[Peachcurl]

My default reaction to crafting is nearly always "what a shame, so much wasted potential".

Example 1: M&B Warband's crafting system.

At face value it looks awesome. You can cobble together your weapons in a very modular fashion, and each module can be customized to some extent, with very reasonable impact on what you get out of it. Pretty good. Could be even better, sure, but it's nice. Unfortunately, it completely ruins the economy of the game. Which isn't just a fault of crafting, it's a combined fault of crafting and economy. Essentially, the value of gear increases more or less exponentially. There's weapons with value in the range of tens, hundreds, thousands or even ten / hundred thousands. And crafting gives you a much too affordable way to "jump" into a value range that you can't reach that early with any other approach. And for that reason, they start to slap stupid bandaids onto the crafting system rather than solving the actual problem (fucked up economy).

Example 2: Path of Exile.

Extremely flexible system, which is great, but it uses excessive randomization to control the rarity of good outcomes, while at the same time providing motivation via high drop rates. Absolutely stupid design (I know, I know, there's always some gambling addict who loves this).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Doesn't the economy in most games fall apart? You either end a pauper or the richest group in that gaming universe.

 

[V_K]

You either end a pauper

Can't think of a single game where that happens.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

One with no currency?

 

[V_K]

One with no currency?

That's a bit of sophistry, innit?

 

[Peachcurl]

Doesn't the economy in most games fall apart? You either end a pauper or the richest group in that gaming universe.

Fair enough. But I guess it matters how fast you get rich / how much of a struggle it is.

 

[Brancaleone]

I enjoyed it in BG2, but that wasn't really a crafting system. You had a bunch of unique items that were split into pieces, and could bring those pieces to a specific NPC to re-forge them. This is just finding a unique handplaced artifact with extra steps.
Arcanum's crafting was decent too, you never had to go and farm for resources and some of the Vendigrothian recipes required unique components that had to be found through exploration.
I have no idea about Underrail's crafting because despite playing through the game twice, I never used crafting in it.

At least in 'classic' fantasy RPG¡s, I'd make crafted items 1) unique, so no multiple crafting elements; 2) that would work as sidegrades more than upgrades: the crafted unique gives you an ability/skill/spell you wouldn't otherwise be able to get, and that way it doesn't have to top the existing ones, just be different 3) obtain the crafting elements only from exploration or quests (possibly to the detriment of some other reward).

BG2 (without Throne of Bhaal) satisfies 1) almost in full, 2) not so much, and 3) in part. Throne of Bhaal only keeps 1), and it's all for the worse (especially since it is the polar opposite of 2), and systematically so. Arcanum satisfies 1) in part, 2) quite a bit, since there are so many things (although not all of them) you can make as a technologist that you cannot acquire otherwise, and are not necessarily more powerful than the top gear (although not all of them), and 3) not very much.

Overall, I agree they are among the best examples (if we leave Throne of Bhaal out of the picture). Pity that Arcanum has combat so unworthy of actually using all that crafted goodness.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Crafting has the same appeal as furniture from Ikea. When you've spent time assembling something personally, you're invested into it and would likely value it higher.
Crafting is popular for the same reason why RPGs tend to have some real estate for players to customize. Or why people spend hours polishing their minecraft mudhouse (I did).

The resources for crafted items can be gotten anywhere, unless they require a specific unique ingredient which is only dropped by a certain boss enemy... in which case you can scrap the entire crafting crap and just make the boss drop the finished item.

I liked the crafting in Dark souls - I mean, the part with weapons from boss drops. You could've chosen what you need for your build AND the item was unique and sometimes even worthwhile.
The realization was poor, but the idea is good.

I tried several of these survival crafting games, and while I like survival, the whole crafting aspect just feels boring and tedious.

Well, yes. Without constraints crafting turns into farming... Mobile and farming sim players are definitely into it. That's where money is.

JarlFrank, did you like crafting in Diablo 2?

I liked crafting in Thief DP / Thief MA.

 

[Modron]

The only game I can recall liking crafting in was Arcanum, maybe Knights of the Chalice and ToEE if you consider enchanting to be a crafting system. Suppose I didn't mind crafting in Underail either.

 

[JarlFrank]

JarlFrank, did you like crafting in Diablo 2?

I liked crafting in Thief DP / Thief MA.

I barely used crafting in Diablo 2 back when I played it, but it's been 20 years so I don't remember much about it.

Thief had crafting? That's new to me, and I've been playing that game's fan missions for 10 years.

 

[Ryzer]

Crafting is a trick used by developers to stir up game's lifespan.