Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Heroes Don't Craft

Richard Cobbett in the latest RPG Scrollbars laments crafting in games.

Not only should blacksmiths be able to craft better gear than my guy, who's just taken a few experimental whacks at an anvil, they're probably able to order moon-rocks and whatever at trade prices instead of having to scour the entire countryside in the hope of stumbling across some that aren't too badly guarded by fire-ogres.

That hunt for resources would be a lot more relaxing too if you could do in games what you can in real life - find someone in the know and politely ask them where you might find some blofindo mushrooms or silverleaf instead of having to go to a wiki or just assume that they're out there, somewhere. Sometimes it's fun to explore the forest and simply see what you find, but again, when crafting is basically optional 99.9% of the time, having to pixelbitch through an entire map in search of what's been presented as common as a daisy doesn't help build my desire to keep it up when I'm done.

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Ah yup. I've never found crafting systems to be particularly immersive either. I'd much rather be able to set up an economy to take care of that stuff for me while I go out and adventure. Get a stronghold, find an expert and some laborers, and occasionally hunt down the rare ingredient.

I'm a fan of crafting mostly.
I don't do much of it unless there is a reason, but I like the option.

I love crafting when it's done like it was in Divinity Original Sin. It also looks great in Balrum.

I dunno. Think of Siegfried reforging Nothung, thus proving he's worthy of the sword. Or Aragorn with his knowledge of herbalism, showing that he has the "hands of a king". Or any of a hundred heroes (Herakles is the obvious example) who skin their monstrous foe and wear its pelt. Etc.

None of these is craftsman-as-tradesman -- the magic craft is one aspect of how their heroism is expressed.

I don't get into crafting much either. I prefer collecting the rare ingredients to give to some master to do the work option personally.

I like crafting when it's about getting specific items to craft really import stuff. In most games, crafting is about getting 10 herbs to craft 1 potion, though. That's really boring, even though I enjoy extra potions for herbs I was going to pick up anyway cause I'm a hoarder. Some specific games I remember had cool crafting were Dragon Quest VIII (don't remember much, but I remember those crafted items were really useful) and Baldur's Gate II (really cool and strong exclusive weapons). I think the point here is that crafting meaningless stuff using junk is a waste of time. But having to gather really specific items to get items that really can chance your game is a totally different level. Wish they did this more.

This is one thing that Should be streamlined more...crafting should be simple, powerful, without slowing down game play.
Dead Space III and Bound by Flame are good examples.

Crafting in mmo's makes sense to me, but I hardly see the need for it in single player games. Someone should be better at it than I am, after all I spend all my time murdering monsters and such. And stealing their potions afterwards!

I have a mixed opinion on this one. I don't like crafting how its done in so many rpgs, where you have to run around and collect plants and crap like that. I hate that, so I never engage in crafting in those games. But, I do like the way crafting is implemented in say, Wasteland 2, where all you need are some excess weapons, and the weaponsmithing skill, and you can break down the weapons for new modifications. And how you can also find new mods as treasure to modify your weapons. I think that is a cool form of crafting. Make it simple enough, and it's a cool option. Make it tedious busywork, and it turns me off.

Much prefer the baldurs gate 2 approach where you can collect components that an actual smith will then use to craft some of the best gear in the game.

Hate how crafting is implemented most of the time but not really against it. Witcher 3 is specially bad at it imho and is one of the reasons I stopped playing (combat being the most notable one). Most of the time it's just icons on menus and numbers and names I won't remember

I like crafting. With plenty "ingredients", schematics or recipes, or just experimentation it's like a low level puzzle that gains a reward, small or big.

But I don't like:
- jack of all crafts master of each instead of specializing just one branch
- MMO grind everspawning ingredients instead of exploration based finite resources
- horrible mushroombased UI used for both inventory and crafting
- random loot of highvalue rarities instead of handplaced at least for those

So will disagree with previous post. The Witcher 3 is very good - you can cook meth but you can't make laser rifle by yourself.

Anyway, people are forgetting something. RPGs are trying to be as close to RL as possible. In RL everyone has a hobby. While modern kids' hobby is facebooking, normal hobbies in the past were often - crafting. Crystal meth? Sure, why not.
Well, why should an ingame hero be just a mass murderer without a hobby aside?

interesting discussion, not sure where this is leading. protagonist as a craftsman surely works, but perhaps not in the "this is a medieval questing fantasy hero who has not had training to be a vocational craftsman" realm. right now, i am playing wasteland 2, and you are basically "required" to have a mechanic, a demolitions expert, a medic/surgeon, various combat specialists, computer specialists, etc. in this game, you basically are doing your own vocational training, and are learning on the job your jobs of choice, so yeah, crafting in this game (weaponsmithing, mechinical repairs, computer repairs, etc) makes total sense, and finding crafting materials makes total sense. in this game also the economics of this choice make total sense, since there is a limited number of human beings available for the job, and you are required to scavenge as best as possible, and strangely enough, you must specialize as highly as possible to create the best possible party (mini-civilization) as possible to win the game.

I feel this game make the best use of loot of any game i've seen. plenty of everything. scrap, which you can sell for cash. random objects which you can sell for cash. random objects which might serve to help you solve quests. random objects which you might use for crafting. random objects which you might use directly.

now if you combine this with the D:OS approach of combining seemingly random objects to create new objects, (like sticks and daggers to create spears) then you really have something. but when you do that, then you go back to the original argument...D:OS is a fantasy hero game...should the traditional fantasy hero have limits on their crafting abilities for the sake of realism? i say no... in the end all fantasy games are survival games. in a game of survival, you do what you can to survive, regardless of economies. learning to craft is one of those things. learning is what people do to survive, and learning herbal lore is something people did in medieval times as a survival technique.

I enjoy crafting when the system is so complex it spawns specialized robber barons at every phase of the process. Take Star Wars Galaxies for instance (it was an MMO worth playing, once)…

Resource deposits had to be searched-for on every planet via a device, and the locations and concentrations changed daily. The stats on the resources also changed daily, so it became apparent that a dedicated mining occupation was required as it was a time-consuming, yet lucrative subspecialty. I actually became the wealthiest avatar on Corellia for a time, just by expanding my mining empire, but I digress… (yeah, it became an actual job and started to suck)

But even this spawned more occupations-- as you upgraded your miners, you needed more energy-- and energy had to be harvested with seperate machines as well, so you had power dealers who supplied the miners.

And of course someone had to build all this mining/power equipment.

Then you had vendors to sell the materials in bulk, as the market just wasn't big enough, so shops in good locations became super important, and vendors had to be managed.

…then of course you had the actual crafters of high-end weapons and armor that had to buy crafting materials by the ton because high-stat items had to be rolled, modified by the skill of the crafter and quality of the stats of the resource being used. You could spend hours making low-end stuff until you hit the jackpot on a high roll. So they went through materials quite fast.

For awhile it was a free enterprise bonanza until the devs started 'fixing' things and others found exploits, etc. But it was fun, and it made sense. Now, when I see a game where you just have to kill a couple trolls for materials and you can build an awesome sword suddenly out of nowhere, it makes me feel sad.

I like being able to choose whether or not to craft. In some games I skip it altogether. It depends upon whether it's fun as implemented in the game.

I'm usually not much of a crafter. If the system is good, though, I will. Arcanum had a good system that fit very nicely into the right character build, if you so chose. I crafted my arse off in Arcanum.