BG2 Vs NWN2 crafting

[Lephys]

That's oppossed to BG2's system, which is just collect and then turn into another item. No skills, no gathering 15 wood. Just unique items to found and make.

Perfect!

 

What makes collecting unique items fine, but collecting non-unique items (such as wood) not-fine? Also, for that matter, how is collecting amounts of anything for crafting at all different from collecting amounts of gold for the purchase of new items? If collecting things, itself, is troublesome, then shouldn't we do away with loot all together?

[Alec20]

Crafting is definitely one of my biggest dislikes in modern games. I don't want crafting to be superior to finding a special item or getting one from a series of quests. Amalur and Skyrim are awful at it - crafting Daedric/Dragon Equipment in Skyrim which you can't get anywhere else, and creating your own weapons in Amalur making the whole loot aspect pretty lame when nothing you find is anywhere near as good as what you have.

[Kissamies]

Oh, I agree that you shouldn't be able to craft items that are as strong or stronger that legendary artifacts in the game, but that's no reason to do away with crafting completely.

[Hassat Hunter]

What makes collecting unique items fine, but collecting non-unique items (such as wood) not-fine? Also, for that matter, how is collecting amounts of anything for crafting at all different from collecting amounts of gold for the purchase of new items? If collecting things, itself, is troublesome, then shouldn't we do away with loot all together?

So you're asking me, why is hiding 3 unique items on locations and make finding them a treat is fine, but collecting 15 wood, 120 iron, 15 other-craftable ingredients and 5 acid stones found randomly in the world sucks.

 

Well, if you didn't already get it from above line, I don't think I can explain it...

[Sacred_Path]

Crafting epic items is just too darn cheesy and uninspired in BG2, let me cite two reasons.

 

1) Like Mr Sawyer would say, there's no choice involved. You happen across parts of an epic item, of course you take them with you. Of course you will have the item assembled later on if it's useful.

 

2) It offers nothing that couldn't be achieved by simply placing the whole item in that location. "Gee, I wonder when I'll find the blade to that hilt" isn't exciting at all.

Both of those are easily solved by, for example, making it so that there are multiple items which could be made from the parts.

 

Just to give some examples:

 

Perhaps the Pommel Jewel of the Equalizer, in addition to its obvious use in reforging the sword, could instead be used to make a powerful amulet. Or the Wave Blade could be mounted onto an axe handle instead of being reunited with the Wave Shaft. Maybe that Ankheg shell, in addition to being made into plate mail, could be broken up into smaller pieces and used to make scale mail for a lighter alternative, or even turned into a weapon of some sort. The possibilities can be even better if this sort of idea is incorporated from the very start.

 

I'd rather the (re)forging wasn't trivial in the first place. In that case items that have so many different powers that they're useful to all parties would be ok IMO. Reforging Narsil wasn't trivial. I could do with outrageous sums charged for a repair, so you really have to weigh it against other things you could spend your cash on.

[uaciaut]

NWN2 crafting system seemed to kind of take away from the heart put into weapons because by the end, especially if you were aiming purely at maximizing damage, the best weapons were crafted ones and it seemed like a tedious thing to do.

I don't even know if BG2's system could be called crafting, you were effectively finding item parts and having them assembled by someone, it's not like said parts had any other role on their own really, so you could just consider them "incomplete items".

 

Thing is if you're going to make crafting skills how powerful do you want to make the items that you create with said skills? Obviously you want to make the skill a worthwhile investment and if you constantly find better items, well then crafting would be a waste of a skill and thus a disappointment. Balancing items so that relative strength of found loot is very close to crafted loot would be very hard (with small differences depending on the stage of the game - because you could potentially buy/steal a powerful sword early one with high risk and you wouldn't be able to craft a sword that good with your current skill unless you add a randomness factor into crafting which would encourage grinding and is kind of lame).

 

Overall i DO want consumable (potions and scrolls) to play a bigger role and a fallout-like crafting system of consumables to exist there, it would be very meaningful and i also like the idea of having powerful items that were split up in multiple pieces and can be found and reassembled a lot. Crafting stuff from 0 to strong items that are comparable to found items would be interesting, especially if you can split the crafting process between multiple classes (like only fighter types can blacksmith and type of metal plays a BIG part in weapon strength and mage-types enchant based on success of blacksmithing) but would be something harder to balance.

[Failion]

Crafting sucked in neverwinter nights 2 too many variables. It was well done in storm of zehir.  It was more balanced in that you couldn't put everything you want on a item. All they need is some equivalent to storm of zehir with a better interface. As long as they do not have a crafting system that breaks the game or makes it more rewarding to craft then finding things in your adventure. Then I'm fine. Skyrim crafting was awful in that it took out all the fun in exploring. Morrowind was awesome exploring because of all the artifacts and powerful items you can find. That are way stronger then anything you could get out of crafting in that game which was enchanting. Made the whole dungeon crawl experience not boring hack and slash.

[Aenor]

I say "yes!" to crafting, yes to more realistic crafting (not like in WoW). I mean that you have to do something before you learn (more challenging). No easy teacher-recipe-learn concept. You can't learn blacksmithing or mining of ore by one click. And also ores are often in mines and not at flowerfields.