Why do many RPG fans hate crafting?

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Crafting in RPGs is often an extraneous system that encourages bloat and tedium. It is almost always either irrelevant or broken. Most critically though, crafting typically operates as a tangent which does not contribute to the core experience or game play.

This is why Arcanum stands nearly alone receiving praise for crafting. Crafting is a fundamental and inseparable aspect of half of the game's skills. It is a concise system where later skills build on earlier ones that never truly become obsolete. Furthermore, progressive complementary skills dramatically reduces bloat, which is one of the prime sources of tedium in a game's crafting system. It's all relevant, purposeful, efficient, and gives a distinctiveness that forms part of the core game play.

 

[fantadomat]

about how I hurt you.

You can't judge modern crafting if you haven't played all the various types.

 

[anvi]

Yep you're retarded like your generalisation.

 

[mohrg]

Crafting is repetitive, boring and a serf's occupation. You don't forge your swords, you get a bright NPC to do it for you. The best crafting system would be to find the coolest craftsmen and get them to work (exclusively) for you, keeping them motivated, fed, protected, paid and providing any strange ingredients they require. Somehting like getting Q from the James Bond movies to make crazy artifacts for you. You walk up to him, describe the trouble you're having with these incorporeal, flying monsters that kick your ass, and after a while Q provides some prototypes, either ludicrous, usable or overkill.

 

[Agesilaus]

Crafting is repetitive, boring and a serf's occupation. You don't forge your swords, you get a bright NPC to do it for you. The best crafting system would be to find the coolest craftsmen and get them to work (exclusively) for you, keeping them motivated, fed, protected, paid and providing any strange ingredients they require. Somehting like getting Q from the James Bond movies to make crazy artifacts for you. You walk up to him, describe the trouble you're having with these incorporeal, flying monsters that kick your ass, and after a while Q provides some prototypes, either ludicrous, usable or overkill.

This. It's like a stupid minigame that involves being a massive hoarder.

In terms of having a special NPC that makes you cool items, agreed, that is fun. The Avadon series has a magician who make you new items before each mission.

 

[Chippy]

Also; most people can't defer immidiate gratification. Even most of the Codex apparently.
"Ooooh look! A magical weapon as awesome as kardashian tits an ass! Why bother with crafting".
-Jizz.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Also; most people can't defer immidiate gratification. Even most of the Codex apparently.
"Ooooh look! A magical weapon as awesome as kardashian tits an ass! Why bother with crafting".
-Jizz.

Erm…

In order to get that jizz you have to trawl 3 levels of a particularly trying dungeon, fight off all manner of horrendous beasts & no doubt solve some pretty infuriating puzzles. Hardly 'instant gratification' now is it.

However, just putting some bits and bobs together that you find willy nilly, kinda silly really isn't it & much more prone to instant gratification. Unless the crucial part for the item is at the bottom of that dungeon. In which case, why not just make that item the special weapon & save all the non-rpg busy work...?

 

[Tigranes]

I would probably like/tolerate everything else about crafting systems, if we solved the problem that you spend the entire game finding and picking up and sorting 8000 useless ingredients. It's even worse than grinding trash mobs for XP, because at least with trash mobs if your combat system is good you might have a smidgen of fun.

Combined with the obvious solution of fewer cool craftables over many meaningless craftables, I think: declare recipes from very early on. You get to your first town and there's a big board somewhere that tells you 80% of the recipes in the game (which means like 8 or 16, not 200). That really alleviates the gameplay tedium because if you know that you are looking for 8 Goblin Testicles to make a Testicular Flail +3, then every goblin testicle you find means something to you as a player. You're not just meaninglessly hoarding every retarded piece of shit, only to find 80 hours later that you have 99 eyeballs that you don't need and 3 testicles when you need 4. The added bonus is that, just like showing Irenicus' high-level magic up front for the player, it gives you a set of concrete gameplay goals to look forward. It can also help with your builds, if you know that the Testicular Flail can Terrify your opponents.

 

[anvi]

It doesn't have to be a crappy minigame and mass hoarding. M&MDS has you craft your own sword by pouring molten steel into a mould and creates a sword. All you do is pull a lever. The only thing I don't like is harvesting plants or skinning animals or whatever. That is a deliberate time sink. But if you can deconstruct some of your lower level gear to make a new item, that is good, especially if you get to choose the stats of the item. Crafting can be good if it is done well. It is just never done especially well.

 

[Xeon]

I love crafting and alchemy and cooking and that kinda of stuff in games similar to Elder Scrolls, Atelier series and whatever.

Only reason to dislike for me it I think if its just there for the sake of it being there. PoE1 (Only played it when it first came out so that's what I am talking about, don't care about its current state or the sequel) is an example, I was kinda looking forward to seeing how it will work but it was shit, the one in BG2 was a lot better. The crafting sucked and the rare uniques sucked as well because of it.

 

[Apostle Hand]

crafting is nice concept but its flaw is that options for crafting are imposed on general rules, and in that way you can not choose your own personal weapon, armor..

it would be cool if you could choose from list of components and craft your own unique weapons with as many special properties but that would not be too overpowered.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

A RPG where you start as a noble lord of a double border province ravaged by war,religious turmoil,famine,bandits,enemy raids and few other bad things. Then you have to fix the shit and carnage your enemies trough the power of the divine and absolute might! It will be set in a old empire crumbling to arrogance,laziness and debauchery. You will have to bring the glory days of old trough mountain of corpses! It will be hyper fanatical and epic game,something like warhammer 40k!

I think you just posted that in the wrong thread there fandy, the ideal cRPG you'd make is a different thread.

 

[fantadomat]

A RPG where you start as a noble lord of a double border province ravaged by war,religious turmoil,famine,bandits,enemy raids and few other bad things. Then you have to fix the shit and carnage your enemies trough the power of the divine and absolute might! It will be set in a old empire crumbling to arrogance,laziness and debauchery. You will have to bring the glory days of old trough mountain of corpses! It will be hyper fanatical and epic game,something like warhammer 40k!

I think you just posted that in the wrong thread there fandy, the ideal cRPG you'd make is a different thread.

Yeah,thanks mate .

 

[anvi]

A RPG where you start as a noble lord of a double border province ravaged by war,religious turmoil,famine,bandits,enemy raids and few other bad things. Then you have to fix the shit and carnage your enemies trough the power of the divine and absolute might! It will be set in a old empire crumbling to arrogance,laziness and debauchery. You will have to bring the glory days of old trough mountain of corpses! It will be hyper fanatical and epic game,something like warhammer 40k!

I think you just posted that in the wrong thread there fandy, the ideal cRPG you'd make is a different thread.

Yeah,thanks mate .

I guess that happens when you struggle with reading and writing, and thinking.

 

[111111111]

A RPG where you start as a noble lord of a double border province ravaged by war,religious turmoil,famine,bandits,enemy raids and few other bad things. Then you have to fix the shit and carnage your enemies trough the power of the divine and absolute might! It will be set in a old empire crumbling to arrogance,laziness and debauchery. You will have to bring the glory days of old trough mountain of corpses! It will be hyper fanatical and epic game,something like warhammer 40k!

I think you just posted that in the wrong thread there fandy, the ideal cRPG you'd make is a different thread.

Yeah,thanks mate .

I guess that happens when you struggle with reading and writing, and thinking.

Shut the fuck up bro you ruined the thread

 

[Average Manatee]

I like the limited "crafting" in games like BG2 where you simply find components to be assembled into stuff.

Generalized crafting systems where you can craft anything or almost anything tend to either degenerate into being easily overpowered or being indistinguishable from random loot, and always degenerate into going through every trashcan in the city to find shit to shove into your storage.

I mean jesus christ, in what world am I supposed to look at this

and get excited or care?

>mod inventory size to infinity so you can just hoard it and not need to sort through the bullshit.
>game lags several seconds opening inventory screen
>craft uber level 12 sword of baddie slaying and exterminating
>becomes obsolete when you hit level 14 and find a random drop off dumbass NPC #6261

 

[anvi]

A RPG where you start as a noble lord of a double border province ravaged by war,religious turmoil,famine,bandits,enemy raids and few other bad things. Then you have to fix the shit and carnage your enemies trough the power of the divine and absolute might! It will be set in a old empire crumbling to arrogance,laziness and debauchery. You will have to bring the glory days of old trough mountain of corpses! It will be hyper fanatical and epic game,something like warhammer 40k!

I think you just posted that in the wrong thread there fandy, the ideal cRPG you'd make is a different thread.

Yeah,thanks mate .

I guess that happens when you struggle with reading and writing, and thinking.

Shut the fuck up bro you ruined the thread

You ruined the forum's average IQ.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

You ruined the forum's average IQ.

The marginal cost of going from 100 to 90 isn't that much.

 

[anvi]

 

[Ranarama]

I still don't get why some character who does crafting part-time could ever get better results than the NPCs who devote their lives to it.

 

[anvi]

Yeah bra, totes unrealish.

 

[Cael]

Yeah bra, totes unrealish.

In a world where people throw around fireballs using bat guano, a neutronium dense partial abortion cries, "muh realz!!!!"

 

[Elemental_wanamingo]

Crafting is great if you can make stuff with it that you can't get otherwise but it sucks if you have to learn crafting to get some things. I dislike crafting mainly because of couple reasons. First you simply come across tons of useless junk that is heavy to carry and worthless to sell. I'd prefer if I could just take the drawings and the parts to a local blacksmith and pay to get it done. Why do I always need to collect the junk instead of just buying it. I don't like wasting my skillpoints on annoying skills. I also dislike how vague the crafting system is. Literally every gadget has its own requirements which is a pita to keep track when leveling. It is difficult to gauge beforehand how useful some inventions are and if you spend many sp on something that is just shit then it is frustrating. The system itself is most often times just skill checks which is something I hate.

Typically the crafting system is pretty boring because there is no room for personalization or even tweaking your creations. You just invest 5 levels worth of sp to become qualified to make a flamethrower by combining gasoline, barrel, fire and a metal pipe. Let me add a bigger fuel tank, two pipes or make more potent gasoline. I also dislike how you need to become expert in everything crafting to create something. Why can't I just focus on chemistry and create better gunpowder or napalm and use it to make better guns and ammo without having to learn how to become gunsmith as well? Why can't crafting be something you can do without having to specialize in everything? Why is it always about making new stuff from junk instead of improving existing junk. Crafting ui is usually pretty shit as well and you need to memorize the recipes yourself instead of trusting the system.

How to improve? Make crafting skills require less specific junk instead of allowing you to build more specific junk. Make crafting open to everybody but with better skills you can modify the stuff more and make stuff with less materials or to take benefit of better materials. Lower the cost of entry but reward progression. Give me more ways to make the same thing. Rifle could be unreliable gun with great ammo or fast firing but heavy gun. Depending how you make it is little different. Make the system work more like so you buy the stuff you need instead of having to carry tons of useless junk just in case some of it is useful. Allow you to craft stuff to sell it. Not just for yourself. Make the different npcs in the game specialize in different aspects of crafting so you can pay to get stuff even if don't want to craft anything ever.

Allow the user to learn the actual skills and not some "chemistry or gun making". Welding, knitting, metal working, measuring, gluing, taping, leatherworking, etc. Learning those skills allows you to make same stuff with better quality or allows you to build the same thing differently. Make that one time use shotgun so it works more reliably or is not single use or is more accurate or does more dmg. And randomize the junk itself. Some pipes work better for shotguns while other work better for pistols. Different diameters, materials, straightness, weights. So to make a shotgun you don't need to buy that one metal pipe that costs 1200 magical pesos but you can buy the 299 one, the one that doesn't quite fit but is 495 or the 3999 that is just totally wrong for the project but if someone wants to make sniper shotgun. Let him. Instead of giving the user list of things that can be made allow him to combine almost anything with everything so he can make lots of junk as well. If the player wants accurate machinegun he can make one. If he wants one with more spread he can make one as well. Heavier, lighter, fragile, undestructible, silenced, loudered, one barrel, 5 barrels. Basically you can give the same materials to two different players and they can make two different weapons.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I think people that enjoy the busywork crafting where you collect hundreds of dumb things appeals mostly to autistic types. Probably the severely autistic sorts that hum out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song hundreds of times a day while obsessively typing out the same sentence in Microsoft Word.

There's no other explanation.

 

[unfairlight]

I don't. It is all dependant on what game you are playing and how it is done. I think Fallout 4 did do one thing really well and that was the ability to modify weapons with a lot of liberty, it was a really cool feature and I'm a big fan of it. Expeditions: Viking also had a neat system where you could make all sorts of consumables and traps while camping to make combat easier.