Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?

[Lephys]

In regards to the logic of an artisan/craftsman being superior due to pratice and skill. How about adding in a time component for reagents, or the created item?

 

Some poisons for instance wont last forever, a poison may last for a day or maybe a few hours. Since traveling is a time consuming occupation, chances are you wont be able to use the poison bought in a store should the traveling distance be far enough. Whether the craftsmanship of a fulltime craftsman is superior, a poor quality poison would still be superior to none at all.

 

The time component could also be applied when crafting weapons and armor. What if a master blacksmith wants to craft a powerful blade with special properties yet it requires demon blood. Since demonblood goes bad after an hour or so, aswell as demons making poor company, would it not make more sense for the blacksmith to make the blade "base" and give instructions to the adventurer on how to apply the demonblood to the sword to gain the desired effect?

 

Also i´d like to see usable items such as wands, potions that on impact creates slippery grease on the ground and/or applies status effects on enemies etc, whether bought in store or crafted by oneself.

 

Oh and hi )

 

Excellent ideas, 8D. I agree that crafting shouldn't be made mandatory in any way, but it seems like it's always SO optional that there's pretty much no incentive unless you just happen to enjoy crafting systems in general. I think if you build the item tables/system properly, you can have craftables provide benefits and variance without them being inherently better OR worse than all other items/loot in the game.

 

Durability/longevity is one area that provides a good example, but most other games take this to the extreme. If you make weapons break and become useless after 2 fights, then any kind of increased durability from crafted weapons would basically turn into "I have to craft to avoid this huge invonvenience." BUT, you could use something like durability if it weren't quite so extreme (ranging from my sword is so awesomely durable it has added benefits down to my sword is literally unusable), or allow customization and variance in an otherwise non-randomized loot system.

 

It should be like picking characters for your party when you can have more companions/followers than you have party slots. You shouldn't feel like the game is worse or incredibly inconvenient without every single one of them at the same time, but there should be a clear benefit to having each one of them in your immediate group.

 

What's highly annoying is when something is blatantly made optional by having it provide pretty much no benefit. In some RPGs, you specifically make sure you have a Rogue in your party at all times and/or put enough points into lockpicking, only to find that 90% of the lockables you unlock provide pretty much nothing (like 100 gold when, at the point in the game you're at, standard foes are dropping 300 gold a piece). Or, anything of any significance is actually hard-wired with one of those "You cannot pick this lock and must have a key" systems, even when getting past it is simply one option among various quest solution branches, or something of the sort.

 

Implementing a system that's intentionally optional and never provides anything that any player might consider something to "miss out on" is a waste of resources, and crafting is no different.