Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?

[Grand_Commander13]

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas? I ask because it is both Obsidian's most recent work, as well as a great example of a crafting system where the player crafts gear that is unique rather than superior. (Alright, the Hand Loader perk gives purely superior stuff for you to craft, as do a couple other perks, but those recipes are specifically from perk selection and you still can't make hollowpoint or armor piercing ammunition.)

[Somna]

Most player-crafting systems not only sabotage the games economy (assuming it exists in the first place) by allowing you to make a quick buck by crafting and enchanting, but also practically force you to specialize some of your characters for crafting purposes, just to be able to get good equipment. The silliness becomes aparent when there are dedicated craftsmen that earn their living by crafting stuff but are novices compared to a dedicated adventurer.

 

Most adventurers find legendary swords or are rewarded with custom-made enchanted armor. They usually are too busy slaying evil princesses and wooing pretty dragons, to sit down and do some crafting. There may be exceptions, yes, the smith or enchanter with wanderlust shouldn't become the rule, though, and they shouldn't be able to carry on their craft in the mid of a dungeon while besieged by hordes of monsters.

 

If you have a dedicated smith in the party, you may visit the next city and ask the local smith if you can rent his workshop for a day: then you'd be able to craft the same items the local blacksmith would be able to make at cost price, but if an adventuring smith is better than a settled one, soon all smiths would be adventurers, just to be able to make the really good stuff.

 

Wow what a load of BS. Every single word.

 

I'd like to have you elaborate on that.

I for one agree with most, if not everything, he said. Of which highly similar ideas have already been brought up earlier in the thread, from what I could tell by quickly skimming through.

 

If you can make the strongest gear by yourself it for the most part makes all the professionals in the world redundant etc. If you can provide a believable explanation as to why anyone in your party would be able to outperform any professional who has years of experience in their given craft after rummaging around some dungeons, killing some goblins and picking up some materials, please enlighten me.

 

If there had to be PC crafting, I think it should be very very limited, mainly because I just don't see it feasible for your party to be capable of the same levels of crafting as professionals. I mean it could be feasible if you were already a professional before setting out on your adventure, but in most cases you would effectively learn the trade little by little as the game progresses (and as mentioned earlier by someone, you'd often use the experience gained from slaying monsters to further those skills as well). Oh and all that player crafting would have to be done, while say resting or whatever. Definitely not freely whenever wherever.

 

Since there's going to be a stronghold of some sort, I really like the idea of being able to "employ" people to practice their trade in the stronghold. Of course, assuming the stronghold would come later in the game, you would also come across professional craftsmen who you could pay to craft items for you. For some reason for the stronghold part, Crossroad keep from NWN2 is the first that comes to mind, I actually really liked that part, although it didn't offer crafting but the similar concept should still be more than viable.

 

Given the track record of the previous IE games with crafting, I have a hard time taking his complaint seriously. Generally if you were trying to get something really nice created, the party had to gather the rare ingredient(s) needed and bring them to the specialized crafter. That may change with the whole non-combat skills thing, but that's still not going to be something stupid like spam items to increase a skill level from 1-400+ to farm items to vendor. MMO style crafting is incredibly unlikely with what they've described so far, which is pretty much where his complaint seems to be rooted in.

[Solanum]

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas? I ask because it is both Obsidian's most recent work, as well as a great example of a crafting system where the player crafts gear that is unique rather than superior. (Alright, the Hand Loader perk gives purely superior stuff for you to craft, as do a couple other perks, but those recipes are specifically from perk selection and you still can't make hollowpoint or armor piercing ammunition.)

 

I think I may have played it briefly, but I can't say I remember the details of it's crafting system. I remember Fallout 3 brought crafting as mostly using weapons to repair your existing ones and adding modifications but that's pretty much all I remember. Unique rather than superior does sound interesting in a way, but still my common sense dictates that if you craft something "in the field" which is most likely where you would have to craft unless you have built yourself the needed "crafting stations" on your home or stronghold even then you would likely lack the skills to create unique work even on par of what professional craftsmen would. And I don't necessarily see the point of going out of your way to craft things yourself if you have to go back to a location which has professional craftsmen available. I think what might work better for more unique items would be some mechanic of "leveling up" the craftsmen you could "employ" in your stronghold or something along those lines.

 

Given the track record of the previous IE games with crafting, I have a hard time taking his complaint seriously. Generally if you were trying to get something really nice created, the party had to gather the rare ingredient(s) needed and bring them to the specialized crafter. That may change with the whole non-combat skills thing, but that's still not going to be something stupid like spam items to increase a skill level from 1-400+ to farm items to vendor. MMO style crafting is incredibly unlikely with what they've described so far, which is pretty much where his complaint seems to be rooted in.

 

Sure, but you have to consider that this thread started with a person more or less unfamiliar with crafting mechanics in most games opening up a discussion on what kind of crafting systems people like and what the don't. I don't consider it as much a complaint than a opinion on what kind of crafting systems were enjoyed and what kind of crafting systems likely wouldn't work in this case.

 

EDIT: Also even if unlikely, I think it's a valid argument as a worst case scenario, if nothing else, as some people have spoken for PC crafting in a way that leads me to envision trying to force some Skyrim style crafting into the game.

 

RE-EDIT: Quick re-skimming of the thread didn't turn up kind of comments I was mostly thinking about when posting the horror vision of Skyrim crafting, either I've read them somewhere else or I may have just come up with them myself from the way most people talked against such things, which in my opinion is still a valid argument in the context of this thread as even a vision of such things in this case bring about shivers.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Solanum

[Grand_Commander13]

Crafting location is just like it is in KOTOR 2: you need to use a workbench unless you have a particularly tech-savvy companion with you (and remember you can only have one in New Vegas).

 

There are a few instances where you craft pure upgrades without taking a perk, but they're all from the DLCs and they either require rare materials (for a small upgrade to your armor), exploring for the recipe, or aren't all that big an improvement (and some add a small downside to using as well). There are chems you can craft with stronger effects but less duration as well. You don't craft armor: as I said you can upgrade it with one of the DLCs, and you can upgrade some of the DLC weapons as well. What you craft are the higher-powered shorter-lived chems, ammunition, medical supplies, and food. Since the chems are a side-grade it's a money loser to craft it, since it has the same value; crafting is, however, your sole source of those chems.

[Karkarov]

Recommending Berserk and Vagabond manga to everyone here.

Kind of at a loss as to what Berserk and Vagabond have to do with crafting. Sure Guts maintains his gear, but you don't need blacksmithing training to do that. Every marine can assemble and disassemble their rifle but they aren't gunsmiths. Salvaging items to use as upgrades is fine but I would sort of rather repair be left out entirely. It always feels tedious and mundane.

 

I think HellFell got it right with his first post.

[rjshae]

In addition to the formulae and ingredients for crafting, I'd like to see more sophisticated infrastructure requirements. At the low end these could just be a few basic tools and a work bench. But as the item potency grows, so should the support structure. This would lead to a work room with tools, workbenches, a master craftsman, journeymen assistants, common and rare materials and components, plus, of course, the recipe. It should also take a significant amount of time and labor to finish a significant magic item.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I had another idea regarding crafting that they could really spend time on to make crafting more viable. They could use crafting as a game play mechanic in the storyline. As you progress into regions of the game, have an economy based upon the materiels. Early on maybe it's animal skins for leather skins and another region may be harvesting steel or iron that's not as common in other regions. The PE guys could introduce within the lore bits about the different materiels and different hero's who wore X item found in y region, slowly dropping hints of what's the most valuable or rarest materiels. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of the guild quests in Skyrim, specifically the mage guild exploring the tomb and the idea that a quest may be about studying the architecture of a dungeon and we come upon some of the resources in limited quantity's and we may not know what we found initially.

 

It's fun discovering new minerals or materiels in games. I remember the first time I played the original Final Fantasy was one of the first RPG's I played, and it was really cool there was armor that was different than the standard leather, steel, silk, etc. I think they used platinum and diamond armor which a lot of games have used since then, but initially it was new for its time and was really neat. The trick here is the game should make the materiels tied into the lore and world. So if you're specializing in animal armor for example it feels like a real victory to beat the Beholder to collect it's eye to craft into a special head piece, and it's not just iron armor for example for the sake of RPG trope #42 of must have leather armor, iron armor, etc. If the materiels and items have some story built into it, I think it makes the reward more viable, even if it's nothing super special.

 

In a perfect world, I would really like the spawning regions for some components to be random over time. So that maybe for example I need gas as a component to build ammo for my revolver, but there are different flavors of gas I could collect, and within that, maybe gas in region A is also in region F, but the stats on F are slightly more combustible than the stuff in A even though its the same kind of gas. Also these spawns are only available for short periods, you would just get lucky sometimes by stumbling upon a patch of a component that you may or may not need. You could farm all the stuff as you came upon it to sell, or just go get a little bit as ya need it. I personally like the exploration and scavenger hunt aspect of RPGS. The thing is spawn points expire and change. Some will be much rarer than others. If it was a MMO I could see it breaking the economy, but for a single player game I think it would be fine, and they could limit the drop rate.

[Christliar]

Dragon Age: Origins had it fine, I thought. You can only craft potions, poisons and traps, and in Awakening - runes to upgrade your gear a bit. You were never FORCED or REQUIRED to do any crafting, but the possibility was there and it was useful when you did use them. That would solve the problem with too powerful gear made from crafting which I also think is counter-intuitive 99% of the time.

[Hormalakh]

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas? I ask because it is both Obsidian's most recent work, as well as a great example of a crafting system where the player crafts gear that is unique rather than superior. (Alright, the Hand Loader perk gives purely superior stuff for you to craft, as do a couple other perks, but those recipes are specifically from perk selection and you still can't make hollowpoint or armor piercing ammunition.)

 

I think unique is fine, but not superior.

[Osvir]

Recommending Berserk and Vagabond manga to everyone here.

Kind of at a loss as to what Berserk and Vagabond have to do with crafting. Sure Guts maintains his gear, but you don't need blacksmithing training to do that. Every marine can assemble and disassemble their rifle but they aren't gunsmiths. Salvaging items to use as upgrades is fine but I would sort of rather repair be left out entirely. It always feels tedious and mundane.

 

I think HellFell got it right with his first post.

 

It's about adventurers traveling the world, how they find gear, upgrade gear and become stronger through their trials and how they grow as people through their trials. In my opinion Berserk (Later chapters) is a great inspiration to look at for crafting and party based mechanics. We have the Wizard who brews potions, uses healing magic and summoning and great at herbalism. Guts is an outright brawler berserker fighter (and even he goes to a blacksmith to get his sword hammered on). There is the calm and flexible gallant rogue, the apprentice fighter/thief as well. Most of the series (both Vagabond and Berserk) we see them wearing the same armor, using the same weapons and same techniques but the author of the series still allows some new additions to their armors.

 

In Vagabond there is a sword sharpener who is renowned for sharpening swords (as if it is an art in itself and that it took him many years to become a master and now he has left it behind).

[Sacred_Path]

I'd like to see crafting at a very basic level. Making arrows, repairing armor etc. That would circumvent the "player is a master blacksmith" problem and give you the feeling of self-provisioning. Going with that theme, I'd like to see "gold" being much rarer than in your average CRPG, so it would make sense for your party to provide for themselves.

[TRX850]

Crafting vs Character Professions

 

Hey gang, I'm new to the forums and am looking forward to contributing to the awesome discussions here. I've read a fair bit already, but there's so much on here that I hope I don't cover old ground. You'll let me know if I do, won't you? So with that, here's my two coppers.

 

In my experience with crafting, it seems it comes down to two obvious but fundamental scenarios:

 

·

Forging new items from exotic base materials (e.g. Mithril, Dragon Hide, Treantwood etc.)

 

and

 

·

Bestowing/Upgrading magical properties upon existing items, regardless of their base material.

 

The first option demands moderate to high level blacksmithing skills for arms and armour. For other items such as boots, belts or gloves, a leathersmith might be more appropriate. And a jeweller or silversmith for all your amulet, headband, and ring crafting requirements.

 

The second option calls for moderate to high level magical ability, with the likely addition of alchemical skills. Maybe that powerful item you wanted has ingredients such as Lich Dust or Scorpion Venom that need to be distilled.

 

Now, here's the thing.

 

Why not assign Professions at Character Creation that help solve some of the plausibility problems with crafting in the game world? There have been many comments about character starting age, and that the default 18-21 year old human with no life skills is an outdated concept. Why not have the option to play an older character who has already completed his or her apprenticeship in one or more professions?

 

Maybe they could choose one primary and one secondary profession.

 

- Hunter

- Healer

- Herbalist

- Alchemist

- Blacksmith

- Soldier

- Jeweller

- Leathersmith

- Seamstress

- Scribe

- You can see where I'm going with this.

 

Maybe your 30 year old ranger's primary profession was as a hunter, who then acquired skills in leathersmithing.

 

Or a fighter who served with the local militia, but ended up repairing armour on the side. (Soldier / Blacksmith).

 

Or the seamstress turned healer, who can sew beautifully tailored capes, cloaks and tabards, but also concoct basic curative potions and poultices.

 

Hopefully, you can see where I'm going with this too.

 

So both primary and secondary professions award respective bonus points towards appropriate skills. But more importantly they have some effect on your roleplaying and crafting options, and they allow you to grow as you gain in levels.

 

It's likely you'll still need to visit an accomplished blacksmith for all the high end expensive items. Or other crafting experts for non-combat items. But at least entertain the idea that the characters would have most likely had some type of profession in which they were capable of crafting basic items.

 

And in the case of upgrading magical properties, as long as it scales appropriately with say, the average party level, then you shouldn't end up with overpowered items. Remember: you're not competing with the in-game items, you're just tailoring them to suit your play style.

 

NWN2 had some interesting crafting ideas, but was somewhat frustrating. If you wanted to look at crafting in detail you had to consult the wiki and draw up a spreadsheet of who had what skills, feats and spells to craft certain items, not all of which were possible.

 

Whatever method the devs choose, I just hope it's intuitive and mature, and understands that people are resourceful when a need arises. Just because someone was a carpenter or wagon-maker years ago doesn't mean they couldn't craft a shield today. Similarly, an ex-jeweller should be able to combine a silver nugget, a mold, a coal fire, and a gemstone, and at least roll to see their chances of crafting an amulet successfully.

 

Ok, that was more than two coppers, but there you go.

[Hormalakh]

Going with that theme, I'd like to see "gold" being much rarer than in your average CRPG, so it would make sense for your party to provide for themselves.

Gold. The most precious of metals on Earth. But somehow, the most common metal found in Fantasy games everywhere. I wonder why the pro-realism people never argue this point? Edited November 3, 2012 by Hormalakh

[mstark]

^ Gold. The most precious of metals on Earth. But somehow, the most common metal found in Fantasy games everywhere. I wonder why the pro-realism people never argue this point?

On that note, I hope we'll soon find out more about the geology of "The World". What metals are precious, which ones can be worked, which ones are rare. Not to mention gems, and what kinds of stone is available. These kinds of things very much dictate what the economic situation of any given area may or may not look like.

 

Seeing as the game has medieval technology and social structure, I guess the answer is that the geology is very much like that of our own world. Hmm.

[TRX850]

Going with that theme, I'd like to see "gold" being much rarer than in your average CRPG, so it would make sense for your party to provide for themselves.

Gold. The most precious of metals on Earth. But somehow, the most common metal found in Fantasy games everywhere. I wonder why the pro-realism people never argue this point?

 

It's also very heavy. And yet we walk around with half a million gold in some games, with no encumbrance. How does that work?

[mstark]

Going with that theme, I'd like to see "gold" being much rarer than in your average CRPG, so it would make sense for your party to provide for themselves.

Gold. The most precious of metals on Earth. But somehow, the most common metal found in Fantasy games everywhere. I wonder why the pro-realism people never argue this point?

 

It's also very heavy. And yet we walk around with half a million gold in some games, with no encumbrance. How does that work?

We, sometimes, also carry 5 full sets of plate armor, in addition to a bundle of 900 arrows.

 

Seriously though, games are made to be fun. Like books--an escape, so to speak. Some systems aren't about being realistic. Most systems are an abstraction of reality, like landing a hit with a sword being a dice roll, rather than a meticulous calculation of striking angle, character background, skills, training, fatigue, weather conditions, and what ground cover you're standing on...

 

If we wanted all the tedious details of real life in our game, we could just go fill in our tax papers in real life instead

[Michael_Galt]

I like the idea of crafting basic level things, like arrows, poisons, minor healing salves, etc. Fabricating entire complex items shouldn't be allowed by the player, as the level of expertise would be too high, and the requirement for equipment too much, as well as the necessary time investment. BUT, all those "special"/"unique" items (tailored suits of armor, specialized weapons, gas bombs, magical traps, etc) should be purchasable from specific parties. Whether that is a merchant, a local lord, a blacksmith, mage, whatever. And you should be able to either pay a sum which is directly correlated to the materials and quality of the item, OR bring many of the necessary components to them, for a reduced price. That way, you have the choice whether you want to go around searching for the stuff you need, or you can just sacrifice monetarily to get it quicker, without all the extra effort. And it shouldn't become immediately available. You should have to wait a few days/weeks, depending.

[TRX850]

We, sometimes, also carry 5 full sets of plate armor, in addition to a bundle of 900 arrows.

 

Seriously though, games are made to be fun. Like books--an escape, so to speak. Some systems aren't about being realistic. Most systems are an abstraction of reality, like landing a hit with a sword being a dice roll, rather than a meticulous calculation of striking angle, character background, skills, training, fatigue, weather conditions, and what ground cover you're standing on...

 

If we wanted all the tedious details of real life in our game, we could just go fill in our tax papers in real life instead

 

Oh, I wasn't complaining. There's so much that needs to be abstract for the game to work. Combat and healing for starters. Anything they can do to streamline gameplay is good.

[Michael_Galt]

Going with that theme, I'd like to see "gold" being much rarer than in your average CRPG, so it would make sense for your party to provide for themselves.

Gold. The most precious of metals on Earth. But somehow, the most common metal found in Fantasy games everywhere. I wonder why the pro-realism people never argue this point?

 

It's also very heavy. And yet we walk around with half a million gold in some games, with no encumbrance. How does that work?

We, sometimes, also carry 5 full sets of plate armor, in addition to a bundle of 900 arrows.

 

Seriously though, games are made to be fun. Like books--an escape, so to speak. Some systems aren't about being realistic. Most systems are an abstraction of reality, like landing a hit with a sword being a dice roll, rather than a meticulous calculation of striking angle, character background, skills, training, fatigue, weather conditions, and what ground cover you're standing on...

 

If we wanted all the tedious details of real life in our game, we could just go fill in our tax papers in real life instead

 

Well, when it comes to the gold thing, I don't think it is ULTRA unrealistic. Until 1900, most places in the world relied on metal currencies, gold being the most predominant. Of course, they also used copper and silver a lot, amongst other things. The common man wouldn't have a whole lot of gold, but the common man wasn't killing monsters for lords or raiding bandit camps or participating in other potentially lucrative, risky ventures like that. And while most people used metal coins, there were "banks" and money lenders where people could go to turn in their coins to get a slip, which they used when traveling, and was counted as currency, because it was understood that the money was actually available, if not physically present. So one can assume you are turning in your excess wealth to a safe place in exchange for some receipts that you can use instead.

 

As to the weight thing, perfect opportunity for me to plug my old thread, which solves the "realism" problem: http://forums.obsidi..._+pack +animal.

[TRX850]

As to the weight thing, perfect opportunity for me to plug my old thread, which solves the "realism" problem: http://forums.obsidi..._+pack +animal.

"Trusty mule, Munchy". I like that.

[mstark]

Well, when it comes to the gold thing, I don't think it is ULTRA unrealistic. Until 1900, most places in the world relied on metal currencies, gold being the most predominant. Of course, they also used copper and silver a lot, amongst other things. The common man wouldn't have a whole lot of gold, but the common man wasn't killing monsters for lords or raiding bandit camps or participating in other potentially lucrative, risky ventures like that. And while most people used metal coins, there were "banks" and money lenders where people could go to turn in their coins to get a slip, which they used when traveling, and was counted as currency, because it was understood that the money was actually available, if not physically present. So one can assume you are turning in your excess wealth to a safe place in exchange for some receipts that you can use instead.

I think the realism issue wasn't so much about the viability of the currency, but just the idea of carrying 1,500,000 gold coins (as I have, in BG2) with you everywhere.

 

An average small gold coin weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 8-10 grams, multiply that with 1,500,000 and it equals 13 metric tons of gold. That I'm carrying. Everywhere I go.

 

I suppose the gold pouch in Baldur's Gate 2 could be an abstraction of a banking system. Like TRX850 I'm not complaining, just laughing at the plausability of it :D.

[jethro]

I did like the crafting in Arcanum. It suited the steam-punk genre, the recipes were works-of-art themselves, there was a lot of variety and you could create special items not available anywhere else. You also had to choose disciplines, which afforded some planning and decisions from you.

 

I also liked the Fallout 3 system because of the unique items. But there could be made an argument that it would have been the same if I just found the item instead of the recipe, especially since the ingredients were common/easy to get. But it also fitted nicely into the genre.

 

I can't remember any fantasy RPG crafting system to have been really fun. For example the systems in NWN/NWN2 just led to minmaxing and overfull inventories. I had the impression that the fun I get out of crafting something did take away directly from the fun of loot. Also there were no hard decisions, you always had enough companions to be able to create everything. Crafting was sort of automatic, easy, trivial.

 

So some thoughts on what would work (and I'm not arguing with realism in mind, just what would be fun to do and what not):

 

1) Crafting of consumables, like others already said. To make this workable money has to be really tight. You have an incentive to craft your arrows or anti-venom potions instead of just buying them. Simple arrows should be cheap but not effective, while effective arrows would be expensive even late in the game.

 

2) Crafting of unique items. And I don't think "Long Sword +2 +1d6 cold damage" is a unique item when there is a "Long Sword+2 1d6 fire damage" around. It should give a unique (but not essential or overpowered) ability to really make crafting exceptional and not just a loot substitute.

One variant of this would be the item slot that only holds crafted items. For example it might be unusual to wear scarfs (or amulets, belts..., take your pick) in this part of the world. Or it might just be unusual for the magically enhanced scarfs (amulet,belt...) to be found in these parts. But through a quest you get the gratitude of a foreigner who is magic scarf crafter. He tells you the secret of how to do it and from then on you can craft something that is not usually found as loot.

 

3) I really think there should be specific recipes plus scarce raw materials and not just "you can craft anything if your skill is high enough". Recipes have the advantage that you have three times the fun: When you find the recipe ("Oh, I can craft THAT. Yipee"). When you find ingredients, especially the last ingredient ("surprise. Yipee"). And when you actually craft the item ("Got IT. Yipee"). The advantage is also that you get to see the item in the recipe when it still would be overpowered. But you get to hold it in your hands only later, when it isn't overpowered anymore, but still unique (uniqueness is the reason you still desire it then)

 

4) Recipe enhancement like in Fallout 3 might not be such a bad idea (i.e. finding the same recipe again enhances the recipe) for consumables. But instead of making the product better (which would make crafting non-optional or only effective if you find all recipes (which would lead to wiki-checking)) the number of ingredients should get lower. So if an arrows need 1 wood, 1 string and 4 feathers, improving it would remove the string (because you know now how to glue the feathers to the arrow instead of binding them). Next improvement would halve the feathers you need (because you don't waste half of them or you spread them out in a cross pattern).

Edited November 3, 2012 by jethro

[JFSOCC]

So, let's brainstorm.

I like the idea of having much loot be crap, broken down and worn pieces, which with a high enough craft skill, can be made useful.

I enjoy the idea of upgrading, but not upgrading slots, or limitations. If you can upgrade a weapon with I dunno, +.05 ice damage, and +1 damage, why shouldn't you be able to add both? If the ingredients for upgrades are few and far enough between, and other weapons compete with what you have upgraded, I'm sure your upgraded weapon would never be the BFG9001. Unless perhaps you focussed all your efforts on it, in which case, why not? it'd be on par with other weapons...

 

Mostly I like the items to be fairly unique in how they play, so if you could craft to adjust. (+x damge for -x combat speed, +x combat speed for -x against zombies) you could get a fairly personalised weapon.

 

If you could craft single-use items, then they should be stackable in inventory. it might be a way of managing your inventory? Should you salvage items into component parts for that? That was one mechanic in Guild Wars that I liked, but then, that is a grind-tastic MMO. Better Crafting skill also allowed you to salvage more from items there.

The problem with this is that you might very quickly be loaded with stuff, either useless, or swimming in money. Perhaps placing a few merchants and blacksmiths that will be happy to take your stack of iron ingots for a small reward might sound good in theory, but I fear a descent into grind.

 

Then there is the special sword of awesomeness +9001 you might try the entire game of building, finding pieces. I wonder if you need a crafting skill for such a quest to exist though. I usually don't like these quests because they focus on a few weapon types which I might not want to use on my characters. And if it is so special, selling it seems a bit callous and foolish.

 

If you work with ingredients, you should ALWAYS be able to use them for something useful, and not marginally so. Otherwise you'll end up like me carrying 94 deep mushrooms in your inventory after having played most of DA:O without needing them. I tended not to sell crafting ingredients because you might not being able to buy them back, or only buy them back expensively. But most of my crafting items I was unsure what I could do with them, or their use was incidental or marginal. Or you'd be searching for certain items to reach a high enough stack for most of the game because they were random drops.

 

I enjoy the idea that you could craft forgeries, would be nice if in a quest you could steal something, and you'd be chased or there'd be an investigation, but if you forged a replacement, no alarms would be raised (provided it is good enough)

 

If crafting is going to be added, it should not be incidental (like any skill really, if it exists, you should be using it in the game at more than a few points)

Edited November 6, 2012 by JFSOCC

[Juneau]

Personally crafting has always been a funny issue for me because 99% of RPG's what you can craft is always worse than what you randomly find - However it's normally a bit better suited due to the fact you can stack stats easier whilst you wait for the better found items.

 

What I would personally like to see is ZERO crafting built into my characters/party but incorporated into the Stronghold design with improving the quality of stuff available to you by investing in them (not necessarily on a money basis as in the new Diablo game) but in a similar fashion to Diablo.

 

You don't do it, but you can improve him by delivering recipes and new materials. I don't mean "Random Name, Hide Bracers of, Random Type" because that's just **** an annoying.

 

I mean like I find a Mithril mining node or something smelting blacksmith who provides you with notes on how to craft that material - from there you then pass this note to your Stronghold quartermaster who in turns provides that detail to all your Crafters - They then incorporate this into there available craft items list within a weeks time or something and from there you then have access to all craft items of a similar type.

 

That way at least you can "easily" get access to the recipes with a bit of exploration/google and you don't spend hours farming for mats to make a sword you then replace the next day

[Hormalakh]

If crafting is going to be added, it should not be incidental (like any skill really, if it exists, you should be using it in the game at more than a few points)

 

Yeah I really like this. I hope they use crafting as an actual solution to several puzzles, e.g. crafting keys instad of picking locks, etc. The whole reason I started this thread was because I felt like crafting and enchantment are not ideas implemented as an interesting mechanic in a game, but rather they are either crutches for solving other problems or just "something cool for those interested." In MMOs, the problem is to allow multiple players to have similar items. In SP games, this problem doesn't exist and so crafting feels out of place and feels like an afterthought. I want crafting to be a thoughtful mechanic with actual utility. We did make it a stretch goal afterall. I don't want my stretch goals to be last-minute thoughtless mechanics. The crafting skill(s) should be as thoughtful as the pickpocket, lockpicking, and dialogue skills.