Essay: The real problem with Crafting and Skills in Project Eternity

[mcmanusaur]

 

I'd even say that clumping weapons, armor, and clothes all into "smithing" is too generalized for my tastes, but hopefully at least cooking, alchemy, enchantments, and smithing are all separate skills from each other. Damn you Minecraft for making everyone believe that crafting is an adequately specific term!

 

I'm not sure Project Eternity is the type of RPG you're looking for. It sounds like you want a skill-heavy, Fallout or Realms of Arkania type thing:

 

 

The Infinity Engine games were never this skill-centric and it was never a given that Project Eternity would go that way.

 

Past "skill-heavy" games have tended to handle what constitutes a skill in a completely arbitrary and unintuitive manner, in my experience. However, as Project Eternity has long been touted to include "crafting", I don't think it's out of line to wish that this new feature is treated with a decent degree of complexity, given that the games responsible for inspiring Project Eternity omitted it entirely and thus there is no established model for crafting. Personally, I think that inconsistent criteria in what constitutes a skill was one of the weak points of many "classic" cRPGs (including those utilizing DnD-based systems), and I merely hope that "crafting" isn't treated as a monolithic gimmick with no depth, and to me it seems that Obsidian has the right idea. In fact, I'd rather see crafting omitted than have a single, shallow catch-all skill, since the latter can quickly become very tedious; a certain level of depth is required for crafting to constitute an interesting and worthwhile mechanic in its own right.

Edited July 6, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Infinitron]

Well, it already has been omitted, so...