Is crafting killing modern games?

Is crafting killing modern games?

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youtu.be/dNE7J0UnXJQ?t=12m17s
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Crafting where you have to meticulously place sprites onto a 3x3 grid with no option for automation or one-click crafting and having to craft precursor ingredients for another item by hand?

Why yes, yes it is.

yes

I have no idea why people find crafting appealing.

I see it as just padding. Instead of collecting the item you want, you have to collect a bunch of other items first. Probably have to farm and grind for them too, if they're any good.

The only game with good crafting is Kirby Crystal Shards.

Crafting in general is fine as a side-mechanic.
But when it's a tedious, mandatory part of the game and not overly appealing to delve into, it's bad.
>MC Crafting
bad
>Underrail crafting
fine
>Path of Exile
Haha.
>Skyrim
Eh.
>Factorio
GIVE ME MORE, DAMNIT.

>Crafting
>Upgrading
>Open World
Into
The
Trash

>it's an indie survival crafting co-op early access episode

>people actually play Ark

I felt Assassins Creed IV did crafting quite well, even though it was basically "go to this island and kill 2 monkeys, you can now make a pouch", as it actually encouraged you to explore the world to find fauna, rather than just being an arbitrary block to you getting upgrades. If you wanted to you could just sail around and have most the upgrades the moment they were available

Ubisoft games in general I feel have just become atrocious with their absurd amount of crafting, meaningless side-quests, and bullshit like that.

It's busywork that's only fulfilling to OCD people who like to check things off lists.

>my friend exclusively plays shit like this

RIP shithead

Okay qualified as "When they do a good job".

It makes for a more in depth experience where you have to think about what you need and build up to it. It's engaging and fun. It combines good items with exploration and collection.

Now what really happens is people put the lowest of the low efforts into it and it's neither engaging or rewarding. Take MGS 5 for example. Crafting felt like a fucking tacked on feature that someone on some board said they needed. Even in the open world setting, it felt unenjoyable. It broke up the pacing and encouraged the player not to do what the game was designed to do - sneak around enemies. Worse, the diamond/money aspects WERE placed near enemies so they had a good idea. They just didn't execute it all the way.

Now look at Project Zomboid. Crafting makes sense. You can turn basic supplies and forage into something better. Going off of the biggest mod, Hydrocraft, you can collect grass and straw and shit while foraging. You take that and dry it then weave it into thread or mats. This is very useful for fishing, weaving, and used in many other recipes. Likewise with metal crafting you need to scour for clay, build a clay kiln, fire the clay into ingot molds, build a furnace, get logs plus metal ores, smelt the ores and pour them into the ingot molds. Then take the ingots and hammer them into whatever thing you want (plus the additions for that thing like a sword would need a hilt and so on so there's some twine and other things).

PZ makes a lot of sense, isn't really required to do to have fun, and adds a lot of depth to the game.

But then you look at the bog standard shit in games like MGS 5 and it doesn't even fit. You're collecting Devils Anal Weed fucking way out of your way so you can use some item at a later point when you're actually having fun. The collection and crafting isn't enjoyable.

TL;DR games need crafting to be integrated into the experience and not slapped on.

When video games have a mechanic "just because it fits the genre," then the mechanics will eventually start to feel stale and annoying.

It's kind of like stat allocation in RPGs. They're intended to force you to make hard decisions about what to prioritise and to make each individual character feel unique.

Nowadays, RPG stats are done so poorly that it usually feels like tedious busywork (grinding) that keeps you from getting the skills that you want. That's a huge reason why Skyrim was so unappealing to me (haven't played other TES games so I don't know how bad it is in the older ones).

>then
>MORE OPEN WORLD GAMES AND CRAFTING
>now
>OPEN WORLD GAMES AND CRAFTING ARE CANCER

Does anyone have that old ass image of Courage making dinner for kid Muriel? You know, the Zelda edit? Because that image is incredibly fitting right now.

>That image
Really doesn't go with your argument, but I want to punch that shitdick in row 1 seat 2.

You're retarded.

No, but I have the video, which also describes the situation VERY well.
youtube.com/watch?v=GHusS6Yd5A8

I feel unless the entire premise of the game is about building and trading items there's no reason to have a "Crafting" mechanic. I don't approve of a "combine it" window without tools or work benches to be labeled crafting either. That's not crafting, that's combining.

So opinions and taste can change over time, especially when a market gets oversaturated with a mechanic or formula?

>I'd like some water
>flood your whole fucking neighborhood
>woooow I thought you liked water

>PZ
>using vapor ware as an example

>To get new equipment, you need to collect materials AND pay a blacksmith

PZ gets a major update every 2-3 months. Retard.

That's utter bullshit.

Hello shill and/or dev

I enjoy crafting in multiplayer games with an active economy. Gathering shit etc. feels useful since you're making items other people will use and you're making jewgold in the process and so on. Or in games like Wurm where you're the village's blacksmith for example and people depend on you for tools, then crafting becomes god tier for me and I could autism for that forever.

When it's in games where everyone can craft everything and there's no trading or specialization required such as Minecraft, then I feel it's pointless.

>bring him raw ore and xxx gold
>he "crafts" you a sword in seconds

Sneaky cunt got you to stock his inventory for him and just sold you a blade he had in the back.

>AND pay a blacksmith

Crafting can be great if it isn't
a) your only means of obtaining equipment
b) unnecessarily complicated
c) require hours upon hours of tedious grinding just to get some decent stuff

I mean if you find a game like Minecraft, pick it up on a whim and say "what the fuck it has mining and crafting, shit game", I think some re-evaluation is necessary. But you're right, it never felt rewarding.

dunno about those other two, but Path of Exile's crafting was too integral. Having a barter system alongside a crafting mechanic will never be a good mix when it takes up most of the experience.

I liked Skyrim's crafting because I could create and customize what I wanted and I could hang it up on a display rack or whatever to admire. Unfortunately it was one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed about the game

I like crafting when it is the main goal, like in Minecraft or Subnautica, but I fucking hate it when it is in stuff like TLoU or RPGs.

no rpg elements are

>its a post apocalyptic open world multiplayer zombie survival game with a crafting system

there is literally nothing wrong with crafting, as long as it offers players an exploration element and doesn't turn into a chore

Mortal Online has hands down the best crafting I've seen in a game but you'll need like 3 or 4 alts if you want to do the whole process from 0 to a weapon or armor, which is annoying.

But that extreme customization when it comes to weapon, weights of the materials, etc. etc., I've never seen anything like it.

It's sad the game is dying and as such the economy is practically dead, if it wasn't for that I'd be autism crafting all the time and working to become best blacksmith NA.

Crafting isn't necessarily bad but if it kills the reason for exploring for good items or if it turns exploration into a grind for materials then it ruins the game.

>Is crafting killing modern games?
I'd say MOBAs, esports, and CoD4 style progression systems in online games are bigger problems than something like crafting.

Equipment crafting in MMOs would be 10x more enjoyable if I had options to customize the gear I was crafting. Feels kinda dull when you realize that the shit everybody crafts is the same and it's faster to just farm gold and buy whatever I needed.

crafting done right:
>click on cosmetic item recipe
>you see what ingredients are missing and farm them
>fight your way through epic dungeons to see the blacksmith
>you "craft" it the cosmetic item
>apply the item to the gear with your preferred stats

crafting done wrongly
>look up on a website which items you need
>open crafting interface in the middle of nowhere
>place items in the grid
>craft wood into logs, logs into sticks, sticks into spikes. then some logs into staffs and some sticks into handles.
>craft a smelter
>craft metal into bars and bars into knobs and blades. then some bars into trip wire and small trip wire
>buy bags because you ran out of storage
>proceed with the other 15 steps of the recipe
>for the final product, you have a chance of 4% to succeed
>find out you don't actually want the hypercutter but the superscythe

I feel like every game has crafting now, I fucking hate it

>Grind for hours to craft item
>Find a better item minutes later
>MFW

All that shit in the "wrong" section is what happens when a developer isn't willing to admit that the core gameplay is way too shallow, so he just shoves a bunch of busywork to pad it out.

Bad crafting is the equivalent of a shitty platformer or walking simulator where the puzzles just pad out the time between the developer's awful, poorly edited writing.

You would love Mortal Online's weapon crafting.

guidescroll.com/2012/02/mortal-online-weapon-crafting-guide/

youtu.be/dNE7J0UnXJQ?t=12m17s

As I said though, game is dying.

I don't care if it's there, as long as I don't HAVE to do it.

Holy fuck that's cool

And the combat is really nice, too, Mount and Blade style combat with more weight to it, and the choice of weapon really does matter a lot. It's hardcore full loot pvp and every wep and armor is player made, which is even better, meaning people replace shit constantly and so on, and you can really make a name for yourself as a smith.

Thing is, builds are EXTREMELY specialised, so for example if you want to craft weapons from 0 you'll need a miner/refiner character and a weaponsmith character. And a third one if you want to fight, etc. They designed the game based on specialization and so on but that doesnt work that well if you dont have enough people in the server.

Also, as a f2p player anything you craft will be pretty shit.

All in all, its the best crafting and combat I've seen in an online game but attached to a dying game with some poor decisions, which is sad as fuck.

I think crafting is fine if its not the only method to get said item

For instance Terraria is a bad example.There are items where you have to collect 12-9 items to make a good one and shit gets annoying really fast to the point I will just cheat to get the item.

Nostalgia baby

Everyone be shitting on minecraft, but that game is the shit with a modpack and some friends

>Terraria

>Play MMO
>Crafting is either useless because dungeons drop better gear
>Or it gives BiS and takes months to collect the materials for it

I know most of y'all don't like fallout 4 but I absolutely loved the gun crafting. It's just a shame there's barely any guns though

The crafting system reminds me of Crowfall, a new MMORPG coming out "eventually" that claims it will have a world where the main draw is PvP as you lay siege and conquest to guild forts with your guild or castles people have built out in the world.
I don't really believe their lies, but it sounds promising.

Runescape was the first open-world survival crafting game

And it was multiplayer

And it still hasn't been beaten by anything besides Terraria in the genre.

Fallout 4 crafting is good, but really limiting without Mods.
>Can't even make an Electric Flamethrower
Etc. There were several best in slot modifications and that's it. No real choice, just "which will kill them 4 seconds faster, this faster trigger or this slower trigger, with no other difference besides weight?"

The only fun I had in that game was practicing against the skeletons and trying to fuck up the assholes that jump of front of people to get them tagged

true. I also liked how you could break down an item in various resources.
so you could look out for item x that had both resources you need, or items y and z each of them containing a resource you need.

That's exactly what Mortal Online is senpai. There's sieges, player made towns, etc. If the game wasnt dead and it wasn't so hard for new players to start up (full loot means starting over a lot before you're set), then the game would be GOAT.

Yeah, that's part of the problem, most people quit within the first 30 minutes of play due to stuff like blue blocking and such. There's so much to the game, but you end up having to hang out at the graveyard for hours before you do anything else, which kills most people's fun in the bud.

Factorio

I liked when New Vegas did it.

Fallout 4 went overbeard with it.

PZ is the best game out there for survival.

the worst.

Maybe.
youtube.com/watch?v=Zfxutd2RDxM

Fuck you Terraria is amazing and if you cheat you're an ADD riddled casual millenial who doesn't have even a shred patience. The only shit you actually have to grind for in that game are the keys and the two super accessories

I mean even after leaving the starting town there does not seem like much to besides grind skills until you can be useful, the world seems pretty empty in relation to resources and mobs, and it takes quite a while to travel by foot to other towns safely

>The way the bellows moves
That is fucking pleasurable, my god.

I want to put a crafting mechanic in a game I'm developing. What is the best way to do it?

Inb4 not doing it

You're right, Terraria's crafting is fucking awful.

Depends, really.
What's the game about and/or genre?

Shit was neat, but you only got to do it in like two areas of the game if you wanted to. I can't say if it would get old in a more sandbox style RPG but hey

Tactical role-playing game. Just like FFT, but you walk through a world and can see your enemies, like Chrono Trigger. You obtain resources by slaying monsters.

Good:
>all items in game have a use
>you can combine the items to make something else
>think of paper mario zess t. and how fun it was to combine and mix stuff
Bad:
>billions of useless junk solely for crafting
>better not be some boring shit like jeans or an AK-47
>and it certainly better not be a zombie co-op fps survival

You need to join a guild and get involved in their politics desu.

I played with a couple of buds I met off of Wurm on a Sup Forums village and had a blast, but eventually the lack of current population ended up boring us.

It's not hard to get a mount, you shouldnt be walking to the other towns desu. Once you get fast-ish mounts the world isn't that big, you can get around relatively fastish.

There's a LOT to explore and a lot of random dungeons and stuff. I was surprised by how much small random content there was but literally 99% of players quit before leaving the starter town just because starting up is simply that hard.

I hate all those yet they all describe my favorite game of all time cataclysm dda. Feels weird.

Thanks. It sounds so obvious, but somehow many developers don't take that kind of things into account.

How do they keep getting away with it?

I see.
Then perhaps a good choice would be a minigame of some description I feel.
Bejeweled if nothing else.
Or you know the Sphere Grid/PoE's Skill Tree? Something like that, but for crafting.
>Several starting points, which define the type of gear you're making
>Socket in various materials on a branching path to decide bonuses it gives based on what is socketed and any special sockets you put stuff in up to a given point based on the item and quality of parts used, higher quality parts allow you to branch farther out because they use less GP or Grid Points.
>Really high quality armor, weapons, rings can branch so far, they could have stats in other parts of the gear tree
For example, say a special node gives a weapon "X% chance to instantly kill an enemy with

It's realistic. Feel like making wood planks? Refined tree.

You're right. Let's take out the primary thing to be spending money on so you can stack 9,999,999z while not doing anything with it. While on this rate, we might as well make it so the monster dies in one hit as well. Also, you should get potions for just playing the game, along with honey to craft-

Oh wait, crafting is bad.

you should just get everything handed to you. You might have to actually buy some of it though. That would be the perfect game.

Keep it simple. Make it a quicktime event to get bonus yields for consumables like potions, poisons, weapon coatings, etc.

Keep the RNG low for equipment. Consider adding item slots for jewels, runes, addons for equipment to allow for customization. Don't go for straight stat upgrades and instead do interesting things like goggles for helmets to prevent Blindness, lightweight fibers to increase move distance, item/ammo pouches to increase item/ammo count per unit, etc.
Make players have to choose between the added utility of equipment with custom slots with pieces of gear that might have slightly more attack or defense. Give them horizontal progression.

Why not just be given the option to buy gear with that 9,999,999z rather than only having the limited initial armor set be the only purchaseable equipment?

Variety is nice to have, user.

The game is SUPPOSED to take time to play, not just be trivialized in ten hours and whoop you've beaten it.

Purchasing armor instead of purchasing with monster parts+money?

You would be taking the fundamental away from Monster Hunter. It wouldn't be about hunting monsters so much as it would be trying to grind for money to purchase equipment then.

At least in Etrian Odyssey you'll never be out of money as long you do all the quests and skip two or three weapons that overall give no decent upgrades.
Still quite annoying though.

I'm just saying that if you're on HR, what's the harm in being able to buy LR armor/weapons at ridiculous prices?

It'd certainly make more people try out other weapons and would make branching out into gunner more easily.

Sounds good, but I'll try to see how to make it a bit simpler. You see, I just want the crafting system to be a minor mechanic in the game. Just something to do after clearing a dungeon, and to give the player some choice on how to equip himself. But not so deep into stats and the like

Sounds pretty good. Yeah, sometimes stats are boring because players can't see the effect on the character and abilities are ar more noticeable. Also qte are funny if they are part of the minor mechanics of the game. Thanks

>Simple, like on a per-dungeon basis
Then instead of a Sphere Grid style thing, why not have "gear Trees" with pre-defined upgrade paths, you craft a piece of gear with Dungeon loot and the better the parts you toss in, the more "Gear Points" you get to just upgrade it, with no turbo-extreme super-autismo tree, just like 3 branching paths for each with a keystone at the end of each that has a notable effect, the BEST gear if they grind for it can have 2 Keystones each, moderately augmenting their abilities/giving them a decent health/damage buff.

Because that effectively makes doing anything in Low Rank pointless. You wouldn't benefit from any quests in Low Rank if you could just buy all of the armor and weapons, especially considering High Rank quests have a higher payout with monster parts that are worth more to sell.

You would effectively eliminate Low Rank after people have gotten through it.

And zombies.

That's something I was planning to do. Yeah, it sounds better when I hear it from another person. Thanks. I'll keep it simple, then

Cheers then, good luck, user.

>DSP plays god

What are some games with crafting done right?

Hard mode: It must be RPG.

>It must be RPG.
Runescape.

Diablo 2

Dante must die mode: It must be a music game.

...

>one group of people is catered to and content
>some would like something else
>another group is later catered to and content
>some would like something else

are you literally retarded or merely so socially stunted from the neet lifestyle you've never interacted with more than two people at once

Harder question:

How do you make skill progression feel meaningful without reducing it into tedious grinding and busywork?

It's chicken and the egg. Either make the crafting so straightforward that it's trivial or so complicated that it becomes annoying? Is there a happy medium that was ever achieved?