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WHAT MAKES A GOOD CRAFTING SYSTEM?
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Strak
1560
Strak
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CloseQuestion to the community. What in your opinion makes a good crafting system? Be it for weapons, armor, potions, other items, whatever you want, what are some of the elements that you look for? What makes crafting tedious, and what makes it fun?
For me, I can't stand crafting systems where you don't know what an ingredient does, or it's not clear what could potentially be an ingredient for crafting. That kind of system creates a terrible case of item hoarding, and can be extremely complicated. I like when things are simple and clearly communicated.
The crafting in Diablo 3 was pretty good, in that you could break down old equipment into crafting materials which you could then turn into new items, and they were clearly labeled. If you wanted to make a new legendary weapon, you'd first need to find a plan for it, and the materials needed would typically be much rarer.
What about you? What are some of your favorite crafting systems and why?
For me, I can't stand crafting systems where you don't know what an ingredient does, or it's not clear what could potentially be an ingredient for crafting. That kind of system creates a terrible case of item hoarding, and can be extremely complicated. I like when things are simple and clearly communicated.
The crafting in Diablo 3 was pretty good, in that you could break down old equipment into crafting materials which you could then turn into new items, and they were clearly labeled. If you wanted to make a new legendary weapon, you'd first need to find a plan for it, and the materials needed would typically be much rarer.
What about you? What are some of your favorite crafting systems and why?
I think what pisses me off the most about crafting systems is that, 90% of the time, the items that are used for it serve no other purpose outside of the crafting. Like, if a game has a separate item category for just reagents, I worry about stuff like, how often does the game expect it's players to forage for reagents, and how difficult it is to know what reagent is used for what formula. To say nothing about how rare reagents are. If there's a reagent that has a > 1% chance of spawning, or being dropped, or whatever? Screw. That. In most cases, in games that have any element of alchemy/crafting, I wonder if I can ignore the system entirely, and sell off any and all reagents I find because I just don't want to engage in that system.
I think that's why I like Vagrant Story's system. The formulas on both the reagent end and result end is equipment. I can't say for sure how often the "rare drop" issue I mentioned previously comes up, but, I do know it's possible to forge the second-best pieces of armor after maybe... two runs of the game?
I think that's why I like Vagrant Story's system. The formulas on both the reagent end and result end is equipment. I can't say for sure how often the "rare drop" issue I mentioned previously comes up, but, I do know it's possible to forge the second-best pieces of armor after maybe... two runs of the game?
Strak
1560
So in Bloodstained Hands, there were two types of crafting, alchemy and smithing. With alchemy, you used a kit to combine the herbs you'd find along the way into potions. The herbs themselves had a minor healing effect, but had a chance to inflict poison, so they could be used on their own but were much more valuable as crafting ingredients. You'd find them from just about any monster you fought. Smithing required metals that you could find in various dungeons that you'd take to a blacksmith who'd forge them into new weapons and armors, but would also cost a small amount of gold. That was fine, but it was basically just a shop with a slight hurdle.
In my newest game, I'm trying to put together a crafting system, but I'm not sure how well it's working. Equipment is randomly generated, and every monster drops a few items. You can take them to use or sell, but you'll quickly run out of room in your inventory and end up needing to discard what's left. I'm working on a system where instead of discarding, you Salvage any loot left behind into a universal crafting material that doesn't take up inventory space, sort of like an alternate currency. Different quality equipment provides different amounts of materials. When you have enough, you can convert the materials into a new piece of equipment, and you can determine the rarity by increasing the amount of materials used.
There's two main problems I'm seeing, however. One is that this is basically just a shop. The difference is that you don't get to see what you're "buying" or crafting, it's a random drop, but you do get to determine the quality and the resource used isn't money. Cool, that's workable I guess, but I don't know if it really feels like "crafting." Second issue is that it's SUPER simple. Like, to the point where I'm wondering if it's even necessary. I'm wondering if there's any way I can spice it up a bit, maybe add some more player agency or something.
In my newest game, I'm trying to put together a crafting system, but I'm not sure how well it's working. Equipment is randomly generated, and every monster drops a few items. You can take them to use or sell, but you'll quickly run out of room in your inventory and end up needing to discard what's left. I'm working on a system where instead of discarding, you Salvage any loot left behind into a universal crafting material that doesn't take up inventory space, sort of like an alternate currency. Different quality equipment provides different amounts of materials. When you have enough, you can convert the materials into a new piece of equipment, and you can determine the rarity by increasing the amount of materials used.
There's two main problems I'm seeing, however. One is that this is basically just a shop. The difference is that you don't get to see what you're "buying" or crafting, it's a random drop, but you do get to determine the quality and the resource used isn't money. Cool, that's workable I guess, but I don't know if it really feels like "crafting." Second issue is that it's SUPER simple. Like, to the point where I'm wondering if it's even necessary. I'm wondering if there's any way I can spice it up a bit, maybe add some more player agency or something.
Gari
127
I'm unsure a crafting system would be serving your random generating dungeon drops well since the interest of your game is finding loot when exploring dungeons (the player is happy when he finds a rare drop, and the interest is to construct your team around the strenghs and limits of found equipment). Maybe you should stick to adding elemental or other properties to your equipment, like explained Davenport? There are already quite a few properties in-game equipment (learning, thorns, critical, elementals, freeze, burn, etc), you would just have to make them rawer to find in the dungeons so that the crafting would be interesting for the player.
With what Marrend said, maybe you should add an ally that can extract the elements of some items, so that it would have some building value (i.e you can extract fire from an old armour, but you will lose the armor in the process).
With what Marrend said, maybe you should add an ally that can extract the elements of some items, so that it would have some building value (i.e you can extract fire from an old armour, but you will lose the armor in the process).
Strak
1560
That's a decent thought. I may be misinterpreting your reply, but I do want to steer away from "upgrading" equipment, since the idea with the game is ultimately to replace your old outdated equipment. The idea behind the crafting isn't necessarily to be a focal point of the game, but rather a way to control the odds somewhat. With a rarity based loot system, it's all too possible that you could go hours between finding a good drop, or you could find three in a row. This way, if you go too long without a good drop, you have the ability to make one yourself, but the material costs will be high enough that it can't be done all the time. As well, it gives more purpose to discarding equipment, rather than simply abiding by inventory limitations.
Actually, thinking about it from that perspective, as a safeguard instead of a main gameplay aspect makes me think that simplicity is just fine. No need to be too complex with something that you won't be using too often, but is still a decent safety net.
Actually, thinking about it from that perspective, as a safeguard instead of a main gameplay aspect makes me think that simplicity is just fine. No need to be too complex with something that you won't be using too often, but is still a decent safety net.
In my personal opinion, crafting is done best where there as few materials as possible, and those materials also have some other use no matter that being merely selling them for extra cash or having some sort of extra use in battle. When there is a separate crafting material for every enemy in the game, that requires you to have to grind a very specific enemy over and over again to get a singular drop to craft a singular item. It's beyond tedious. Instead, crafting materials should be genericized like having only one item for each enemy type for example. Crafting should also be an extra thing you do to obtain certain rare items, not a main form of progression as grinding for materials to make anything can be extremely tedious. Crafting should also never be mandatory for main story progression, either to offset the difficulty or to clear some arbitrary quest. From the games I've played the Kingdom Hearts series (the mainline numbered games specificly) does crafting the best. It's completely optional and only used to get some cool additional gear, but you can already get through the entire game without crafting once and it's never outright required for progression. The only time it's actually needed for real is either for 100% competition/platinum trophy or to get the Ultima Weapon.
Like, in my game Chronicles Meteorfall crafting is only used to craft very specific items using various materials. Like crafting the strongest sword in the game by combining every previous sword and x7 rare items called Oricalcum, (inspired by Kingdom Hearts) crafting a special magic armor by combining all the superboss drops, combining "sealed weapons" with a "heavenly seal" to unseal the weapon and unlock their hidden power, and various other small things. My next game, Chronicles 2, will have 10 enemy types with each enemy dropping one of three tiers of shard based on their type and their level, with shards being used specifically to craft items called "animus" which teach new spells to characters when used on them.
Like, in my game Chronicles Meteorfall crafting is only used to craft very specific items using various materials. Like crafting the strongest sword in the game by combining every previous sword and x7 rare items called Oricalcum, (inspired by Kingdom Hearts) crafting a special magic armor by combining all the superboss drops, combining "sealed weapons" with a "heavenly seal" to unseal the weapon and unlock their hidden power, and various other small things. My next game, Chronicles 2, will have 10 enemy types with each enemy dropping one of three tiers of shard based on their type and their level, with shards being used specifically to craft items called "animus" which teach new spells to characters when used on them.
Lokishade
50
I had a game idea floating around in my head for quite a while, one based around crafting. One way I found to circumvent the tediousness of grinding is to have the protagonist be in charge of all the operations.
He's the one to gather intel on the type of monsters encountered and what they drop, monstly through cataloguing his own observations. Then, he goes into battle with the people he selected and instructs them *how* to kill the monsters so they drop the desired loot every time.
Example: Defeating a Slime will only yield the Slime Core, the magic gem that suffused itself with Ooze to become a monster. But defeat it with Ice magic and its Ooze will freeze in place and be collectable instead of the Core. There is also a way of defeating a Slime instantly by driving a spear through its Core, thereby shattering it. Of course, this method makes the Slime drop nothing.
By making the type of attack matter for drops, you now have tactical decisions to make. Do you want this item instead of the other? Maybe there is a third, hidden item that can be obtained through less obvious means. Or maybe you just want to breeze past that encounter to preserve your resources.
He's the one to gather intel on the type of monsters encountered and what they drop, monstly through cataloguing his own observations. Then, he goes into battle with the people he selected and instructs them *how* to kill the monsters so they drop the desired loot every time.
Example: Defeating a Slime will only yield the Slime Core, the magic gem that suffused itself with Ooze to become a monster. But defeat it with Ice magic and its Ooze will freeze in place and be collectable instead of the Core. There is also a way of defeating a Slime instantly by driving a spear through its Core, thereby shattering it. Of course, this method makes the Slime drop nothing.
By making the type of attack matter for drops, you now have tactical decisions to make. Do you want this item instead of the other? Maybe there is a third, hidden item that can be obtained through less obvious means. Or maybe you just want to breeze past that encounter to preserve your resources.
Strak
1560
That's a clever idea, actually, but I think would best be implemented in a game where the focus of the gameplay is around said crafting system.
I will say, one of the worst crafting systems I've seen is from one of my all-time favourite games, ironically. Which goes to show, a great game can have bad systems and still be great if it's not the focus of the game. I'm talking about Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles. In that game, there were dozens of crafting recipes, which were MANDATORY to upgrade your equipment. You couldn't buy equips, only craft them. Problem is, some higher tier items needed monster parts to craft them. Another problem, almost EVERY monster dropped a unique crafting item. And there was no way to know if you'd need it later unless you looked it up (which was also a chore, because you'd need to look up EVERY ingredient and see what crafts correspond to it, whether or not it's applicable to your race, and whether or not there's something better you could make instead). Add to that that the ultimate weapons requires crafting materials that only had a 33% chance at BEST as drops from bosses at the end of dungeons, and you're doing a lot of runs and a lot of grinding just to get a weapon that offers maybe 5 more points of damage. It was an awful system that promoted item hoarding, which is even worse when you consider that the original version had limited inventory. In a nearly perfect game with one of the best co-op systems I've seen (original not remaster), it was the only real glaring flaw. If the rest of the game wasn't amazing, it might have killed it.
I will say, one of the worst crafting systems I've seen is from one of my all-time favourite games, ironically. Which goes to show, a great game can have bad systems and still be great if it's not the focus of the game. I'm talking about Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles. In that game, there were dozens of crafting recipes, which were MANDATORY to upgrade your equipment. You couldn't buy equips, only craft them. Problem is, some higher tier items needed monster parts to craft them. Another problem, almost EVERY monster dropped a unique crafting item. And there was no way to know if you'd need it later unless you looked it up (which was also a chore, because you'd need to look up EVERY ingredient and see what crafts correspond to it, whether or not it's applicable to your race, and whether or not there's something better you could make instead). Add to that that the ultimate weapons requires crafting materials that only had a 33% chance at BEST as drops from bosses at the end of dungeons, and you're doing a lot of runs and a lot of grinding just to get a weapon that offers maybe 5 more points of damage. It was an awful system that promoted item hoarding, which is even worse when you consider that the original version had limited inventory. In a nearly perfect game with one of the best co-op systems I've seen (original not remaster), it was the only real glaring flaw. If the rest of the game wasn't amazing, it might have killed it.
LadyMapi
30
I'm of the opinion that the best crafting system in videogames is the herb-mixing mini-system from Resident Evil. Which might seem like an odd claim, but consider:
In general, the reason why a lot of crafting systems suck is that they're not really a part of the game as a whole. Like, if I'm sitting down to play your JRPG, I'm there to talk to fun NPCs and fight cool monsters, not fumble through a menu to see whether or not I can combine Fairy Dust with Jelly Jam to make a Rainbow Longbow.
- It's incredibly minimal - you only have 3-4 ingredients and a handful of recipes you can create (the exact number varies from game-to-game).
- The limited number of ingredients allows the recipes to be designed around easy-to-remember rules. If you're playing RE4 (for example), you only need to remember that Green herbs heal you, Yellow herbs increase your max HP, and Red herbs make stuff stronger and you can figure out all of the recipes from there. It makes the overall system really intuitive.
- The limited number of ingredients also makes it really easy for the game to signpost their value as treasure. There's a world of difference between having to remember that Fairy Dust is a super-rare crafting material and just getting that a Yellow herb is a character upgrade.
- If we look at the rest of the games' systems... Resident Evil is a survival horror series with limited inventory space, which makes crafting obviously useful. Combining two Green herbs together makes a super potion AND frees up space - score!
- On top of that, there's an interesting tension between your inventory space and the rarity of the best herbs. Do you mash together the herbs you have now just to free up space for more ammo, or do you hold off so that you can make a better item later on?
- Finally, the system is quick and easy to actually use because there's no separate crafting menu. You just pick the "combine" option in the menu, slap one herb on top of the other, and then you can go back to trying not to get eaten by zombies.
In general, the reason why a lot of crafting systems suck is that they're not really a part of the game as a whole. Like, if I'm sitting down to play your JRPG, I'm there to talk to fun NPCs and fight cool monsters, not fumble through a menu to see whether or not I can combine Fairy Dust with Jelly Jam to make a Rainbow Longbow.
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