Ravielsk
Magister
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2021
- Messages
- 1,514
The less intertwining of game systems, the less abstract it gets, the more easier is to create the game. That's why games with statically placed items are hard to balance, and then you get players who can finish the game in 30 minutes doing some absolutely crazy shit[morrowind, fallout etc.]. Crafting is a great equalizer and stopper of such practices. You can't get around the fact that you need to harvest 250 gems or other shit, which are only dropped by monsters.
Correct me if I am wrong but as far as I know people who "speedrun" Bethesda games usually do that by exploiting the crafting system. In those games its actually the painfully basic nature of those crafting systems that lets the player abuse them to break the game not the other way around. If equalizing is the goal than hand made itemization is far better at controlling pace than any crafting system.