Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #13: Mega Dungeon, Crafting and Enchanting

[Grunker]

So, why isn't crafting a standard in RPG's at this point?

Because crafting is, at best, a mildly fun aside, and, at worst, a gamebreaking system that makes loot matter less?

Unless you craft upgrades, in which case it can be cool I guess.

 

[Jaesun]

What cRPG specifically DID do crafting adequately?

 

[Grunker]

What cRPG specifically DID do crafting adequately?

None. Well, maybe Arcanum. At least I can't recall any off the top of my head. The ones I recall that were okay didn't really add that much to the game.

 

[Jaesun]

What cRPG specifically DID do crafting adequately?

None. Well, maybe Arcanum. At least I can't recall any off the top of my head. The ones I recall that were okay didn't really add that much to the game.

Yeah. Just wanted to be sure it was not just me.

I cannot think of one. Yes Arcanum's was possibly...... the better? It was still a mess.

 

[Jasede]

I can only think of Arcanum. Hated it in ToEE and KotC.

 

[Brayko]

I didn't take the time to read through this thread but... is it me or is their Kickstarter dragging at a snails pace? I mean sure towards the middle most Kickstarters go slow but for an esteemed middle developer like Obsidian this does seem rather slow for a studio who matches the Kickstarter demographics like a glove.

I blame it on the poor project approach. Face it, it was quite an underwhelming proposal especially for Indie standards.

 

[Infinitron]

I didn't take the time to read through this thread but... is it me or is their Kickstarter dragging at a snails pace? I mean sure towards the middle most Kickstarters go slow but for an esteemed middle developer like Obsidian this does seem rather slow for a studio who matches the Kickstarter demographics like a glove.

I blame it on the poor project approach. Face it, it was quite an underwhelming proposal especially for Indie standards.

 

[Cynic]

I can only think of Arcanum. Hated it in ToEE and KotC.

Why did you hate it in ToEE?? I thought it was done really well in this game. Sure some of the UI was a bit fucked up but that's easily fixed.

 

[Jasede]

I think it's just me being dumb more than anything about the implementation. Something about being able to make weapons better than what you can find makes weapons you find feel less rewarding. I dunno. I just don't like making weapons, unless I make them out of parts I find. That way it feels more rewarding than clicking through some menu and paying an arbitrary amount of gold/xp. Am I alone with this?

 

[Jaesun]

I think it's just me being dumb more than anything about the implementation. Something about being able to make weapons better than what you can find makes weapons you find feel less rewarding. I dunno. I just don't like making weapons, unless I make them out of parts I find. That way it feels more rewarding than clicking through some menu and paying an arbitrary amount of gold/xp. Am I alone with this?

No you are not alone.

I also don't like how crafting has been implemented (so far) in cRPG's. It just comes off as... strange.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Fallout New Vegas crafting wasn't good? (survival, etc)
TOEE I thought was good. It didn't diminish what you found. Rather, it let you expand on what you found.
Arcanum's was simplified. But it was also the first game to really offer it if I can recall.

 

[Jasede]

I liked Arcanum's because it let me make stuff out of stuff I found. I love that! It rewards you for finding stuff, scanning stores and trash-bins. It's more game than menu.
NV... can't say. I never played that game much myself (watched friend play it through)... it looks interesting, with the survival aspect and all, and it has "finding stuff", so that's a big plus.

 

[kazgar]

I think it's just me being dumb more than anything about the implementation. Something about being able to make weapons better than what you can find makes weapons you find feel less rewarding. I dunno. I just don't like making weapons, unless I make them out of parts I find. That way it feels more rewarding than clicking through some menu and paying an arbitrary amount of gold/xp. Am I alone with this?

No you are not alone.

I also don't like how crafting has been implemented (so far) in cRPG's. It just comes off as... strange.

Like the concept making something as difficult as a high quality/unique weapon should be left to someone who's been studying and practising the skills required for half a lifetime, not some 18 year old amnesiac with a mysterious past who is able to understand the many intricacies of blacksmithing and enchanting in his spare moments between saving the world, whacking kobolds and having meaningful romance options?

Can't see how that's strange at all.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[tuluse]

Fallout New Vegas crafting wasn't good? (survival, etc)
TOEE I thought was good. It didn't diminish what you found. Rather, it let you expand on what you found.
Arcanum's was simplified. But it was also the first game to really offer it if I can recall.

It's kind of a mess because inventory management so fucked up in that game.

 

[Brayko]

I think it's just me being dumb more than anything about the implementation. Something about being able to make weapons better than what you can find makes weapons you find feel less rewarding. I dunno. I just don't like making weapons, unless I make them out of parts I find. That way it feels more rewarding than clicking through some menu and paying an arbitrary amount of gold/xp. Am I alone with this?

No you are not alone.

I also don't like how crafting has been implemented (so far) in cRPG's. It just comes off as... strange.

Like the concept making something as difficult as a high quality/unique weapon should be left to someone who's been studying and practising the skills required for half a lifetime, not some 18 year old amnesiac with a mysterious past who is able to understand the many intricacies of blacksmithing and enchanting in his spare moments between saving the world, whacking kobolds and having meaningful romance options?

Can't see how that's strange at all.

an 18 year old protagonist is considered an advanced age by JRPG standards.

 

[Cynic]

ToEE had it right because you were able to craft fairly good stuff but nothing that was super godly. You could also improve on stuff you found making it viable to use weapons you found quite early on for quite some time. It also had a lot of unique items that you found that could never be crafted. I think as long as you use crafting as a supplementary system to loot, then it is fine. It shouldn't be the way to get the best items in the game, just a way to buff up existing items and maybe just give your characters a bit of an edge in case you haven't found anything great. It should also always come with a tangible cost, draining both gold and EXP is a good way to do this. I don't mind finding very rare crafting components but that shit can go overboard turning the whole thing into ridiculous fetch quests.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I like crafting.

And sometimes I play with Alchemy in games that have good systems. Most of the times it's unnecessary though and you never really need the hand-crafted potions and shit.

If they made it so that things like poison cures had to be mixed or something, as the only way to get them, it might be worthwhile keeping an alchemist on the party.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

ToEE had it right because you were able to craft fairly good stuff but nothing that was super godly.

My lvl10 fighter using a +3 holy, axiomatic, flaming burst, shocking burst, defending, keen, mighty cleaving two-hander agrees 100%.

 

[Grunker]

What cRPG specifically DID do crafting adequately?

Jasede

Just remembered a game that had great crafting. As in; crafting that a) didn't interrupt other systems, b) didn't break the game and c) felt like a necessary part of the game's system that worked on its own. Now drop your preconceptions for just a minute:

The Witcher.

Say what you want about the game, but Alchemy was complex, fun and multilayered. There were a bunch of different potions with multiple effects. It even made the loot system better, since you always found something you could use on monsters (they didn't have to have 10 gold on them like in most games). It didn't break the game since it was a necessity. Much like armor. The Toxicity-system made it so you couldn't just chuck healing potions (which were probably the worst potions in the game). Most importantly, it was a system on its own. You couldn't buy or find potions or anything of that sort, it was a complementary system, like a spell-system.

This was of doing crafting I can get behind. However, in the Witcher it was like 1/3 of the entire character system. That's the amount of effort you need to dedicate to crafting to make it work. Usually it's just a footnote in the character system.

 

[Grunker]

ToEE had it right because you were able to craft fairly good stuff but nothing that was super godly.

My lvl10 fighter using a +3 holy, axiomatic, flaming burst, shocking burst, defending, keen, mighty cleaving two-hander agrees 100%.

Bingo. Dunno what you're on about here Cynic

 

[Clockwork Knight]

iirc Cynic played it first with the Co8 mod, perhaps it changes how crafting works.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I think it's just me being dumb more than anything about the implementation. Something about being able to make weapons better than what you can find makes weapons you find feel less rewarding. I dunno. I just don't like making weapons, unless I make them out of parts I find. That way it feels more rewarding than clicking through some menu and paying an arbitrary amount of gold/xp. Am I alone with this?

Yeah, I've always found this to be the case with crafting systems. So much less fun than exploring. But if you have to explore to find the schematics and components, its an extra layer of complexity on the looting.

Plus, for skills based systems, weapons/armor crafting is difficult to balance well with looting. Either the weapons/armor you craft are more powerful than what you find, in which case a character is at a disadvantage if they don't craft, or they are comparable (or weaker) in which case its dumb to put any points into it at all, because what you find will be just as good or better. This is less of a problem with consumables, because having an extra way to obtain a scarce resource provides a benefit that doesn't inherently supercede buying them - its more about tradeoffs between money and skill point allocation. You get more potions for less gold, but at the cost of lower skills elsewhere.

Maybe crafting would work better in a game in which money is a constraint through the entire game? If you will never have enough gold to buy everything you would want, then perhaps crafting actually can be balanced?

 

[almondblight]

Diablo II had some decent stuff at the low levels. Not really crafting though.

One of the problems is that crafting is usually extremely boring. I think choosing crafting (or alchemy) as a skill in any game means that I'll spend much more time managing inventory because of all the trash I need to keep to craft than doing actual crafting. To paraphrase someone talking about ADOM's blacksmith class, why do I want to spend 5 hours doing something boring like mining rocks just so I can make the rest of the game a cakewalk? As long as it's "I can make my good swords even better," it doesn't add anything to gameplay.