Building Better Crafting Systems
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2021
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Crafting systems are one of the most popular mechanics in all of videogaming, appearing in everything from open world games to shooters to MMOs, and if there's one thing that most crafting systems have in common it's the fact that they... sort of suck.Whether they're boring or time consuming or overly simplistic, there are a lot of potential problems that can plague crafting systems, and to make matters worse - a lot of the bad ones look just like the good ones.
So, what’s the solution?
Well, after some tinkering, salvaging and refining, The Architect has come up with a three-step formula to fixing every crafting system, focusing not on their mechanics, or their balance, but the way they affect their parent games - it makes sense in context, trust me. - Hry
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I believe crafting system is good if it's not extremely completed look at toram online weapon crafting player version I don't want to have to need a math degree to figure out how to make a meta armor should I add +23 crit rate or a 8% str stat which would be meta is this armor gonna be useless if crafting fails should I aim for 100% crafting success by reducing stats from the crafted armor can I sell it when I craft a better one when the next update comes out all that stuff is worse then a fixed boring crafting system what's worse then a boring mechanic is a easy to fail mechanic
@@poetryflynn3712 lmao how many people have ever told you that they like the crafting in AC? Personally i've only ever heard complaints about it and would feel remise to base an entire argument off an assumption that contradicts actual player feedback whilst providing caveats to support the point I'm supposedly arguing against but hey you do you
Please for the love of god man use bows to power level smithing.
I remember the crafting in Worlds Adrift (R.I.P.), where much of the game was about crafting, and exploring for new recipes and materials.
The best was that everything had material properties, as somebody interested in engineering, it was a dream come true of a game.
I miss the game very much, but I’m glad I got to experience it. I think it’s an example of what crafting centric games should strive to be (despite the flaws)
@@GuacJohnson Count me as one person who likes the ACNH crafting system, it's very fitting for the rest of gameplay
For everyone else frustrated by the Skyrim mining animation: Equipping the pickaxe and beating the shit out of the ore vein works just as well, and is much faster.
True, it makes the whole process way less tedious. Too bad the game don't tell you clearly that it's an option.
WHAT
I shiver to think that there are people out there who use the animation to mine an entire dungeon instead of hitting it 9 times and being done with it lol
@@ArchitectofGames lmaoooooooooooo
WHAT???
You know you've got a good video when Minecraft and Modded Minecraft are treated as two separate games, and discussed in their own contexts.
Y e s
pog
@Blue Neon modded minecraft isn't even the same as modded minecraft.
@Blue Neon true, its like FtB RF-focused mods to Magical mods like Botania
@@exudeku Botania is a tech mod. Fight me.
Watching the part about Fallout 4 made me realize something. Preston's "Another Settlement needs your help" line isn't just annoying because he comes out of nowhere to bother you while you're playing elsewhere, it's annoying because it's a reflection of the lack of agency you actually have. You can spend hours clearing all the camps around a settlement, and placing defenses, and assigning villagers to posts, etc. but it won't make a lick of difference. Preston can still say that the settlement needs help from some random bloatflies or something. It's another way the settlement crafting in FO4 is just a tacked-on mechanic rather than an integrated mechanic.
You're missing the point of the mechanism. Some players wanted to rip through F4 in ten hours and some wanted to play for hundreds of hours. Preston has shit for you to do if you're looking for shit to do, but it's optional. Base-building is the same. The notion that everything in a game has to reward you with ammo and plus tens is dumb. F4's base-building is its own reward if you're interested (I got plenty of fun out of many of my bases), but you can take it or leave it.
@@chaosordeal294 fallout 4s base building is dog shit, without mods i would rather play fnv wasteland defence at least there the settlement i build gets attacked. Fallout 4s building is discount sims and at least in sims theres things to do. Its fine if you like it but its nothing more then an empty sand box equivelent to minecraft creative mode.
@@chaosordeal294 the very idea that you need to babysit the settlements with no choice to delegate or see any actual development in the settlements you establish outside of your direct actions killed it for me. It's just busywork for a character that is supposed to be at the top of the hierarchy.
@@deezboyeed6764 Id argue that in Minecraft creative mode you can plan builds that you then build in survival - so it would have more of a goal than the game mechanic you described.
@@chaosordeal294 I think it does fail and is a tacked on piece of game play. I get your settlement. I put walls all around. Guns at every wall segment. Food and water in excess of your needs. Entertainment etc. I get back to Preston, and you managed to get kidnapped right out of your farm. Because the RNG does not factor your work. When there is an actual attack on a settlement. It only looks at the defense score up to an arbitrary number. So building beyond the arbitrary number is pointless. Oh and the armor and weapons those people all have? Not counted in the defense score at all. Put a town in power armor and arm them with gauss rifles. Counts the same as naked and unarmed. It only matters if you happen to even be there during an attack. Those walls to keep raiders out? Do not actually stop any raiders unless you are there. The system is coded to let raiders inside after a certain amount of time after you are warned of the attack. Which renders the base building mechanically pointless.
I have seen some awe inspiring builds. Towns more full and alive than Diamond City. Some managing to not look wasteland. But in those cases it is not an actual living town or city. Just less of an illusion than a Sims game.
Weapon crafting does indeed offer a specific improvement as you progress however.
The best crafting I've ever tried was in Noita. You put spells into slots in a wand basically like writing a code with projectiles, paths, effects, projectile modifiers etc. You can have game-ending wands 20 minutes into the game that slice through enemies or fire at machinegun rates or you could misplace something and kill yourself when you first use it. Doesnt get more tangible than that
Noita is a goated game
Dang that sounds cool
Two Worlds II had a spell crafting system, too. It is the only thing I remeber from it XD I will look into the other game you mentioned. sounds fun
Noita is really a deck building game, except your opponents are just hp sponges that will most likely overwhelm and kill you if your wands aren’t strong enough.
Noita requires a master's degree in it's crafting system to even attempt to make anything useful
10:40 - Even worse, settlement building in Fallout 4 gets close to useless in the game's general mechanics such as combat when you find out that the massive fortification wall that took you _dozens_ of hours of grinding to build doesn't do shit against enemies invading your settlement - because their spawn points lie *_inside_* the boundaries of your building site. What the actual ffff!
I spent _ages_ building the perfect fort with heavily armed airlock-style gate yards and watchtowers, building as many automated turrets evenly spaced out on the wall as the game would let me - all to find out that whenever my settlement was attacked, enemies do not even need to get through the fortification to get in, because they _start out on the inside_ to begin with.
Well, just like with everything made by Bethesda...There are mods that fix this.
The worst part of that is that the raids are preventable and underwhelming
@@shrimpboom8 The very things that you make to deal with raids, and that you want to see used in raids, act to lower the chances of raids occurring, and make them smaller if they do. Who thought thought that was a good idea?
Those pesky mole people
@@KaosFireMaker it's Bethesda, what did you expect?
I'm so glad that
Adam Millard - The Architect of Games™ had talked to me, and only me, at the end of the video.
I can feel your jealously from here
That can't be right.
He was speaking to me he said so himself
@@marioguy5443 You must be mistaken, he clearly was talking to me and only me
This is so accurate, am biting my handkerchief very comically right now.
I don't get it. It just goes straight into the Patreon thing?
Wait he didn’t say anything to me, what did he say to you guys
Over the years I've grown to dislike crafting systems because most of the time they're only inserted thoughtlessly into games as "just a way to get something" instead of actually rewarding choice and effort with unique options
Exactly. So many games I'm like why is this here?
I love how he says "crafting should let you express yourself" while building wooden pp in Minecraft
You mean a wooden woody?
@@torgranael wooden wood
A Woody Willy
11:50
my favorite moment was seeing the Taj Mahal build from dirt.
"Oh you built a dirt hut? So did I!"
But yes, creating the massive dong is almost a rite of progression.
Star Wars Galaxies had the best crafting system in any game I've ever played. All crafted gear was better than all dropped gear, but you could find rare drops that allowed you to craft the best gear. The quality of the materials you crafted allowed you to craft better gear. You could buy swords for 4k credits that did 100 damage, or you could buy swords for 200k that did 120 damage. All based on supply and demand of the players in game. The better quality of the ingredients you used during creation, the more stats you could spend to make the weapon. So new weaponsmiths would make low stat items like powerups (optional ammo to increase stats) or components to other items like barrels for guns, or lower-tier leveling weapons, while master weaponsmiths could do anything. All items had durability, so gear would constantly break and need to be repaired or replaced. So people constantly needed crafters. You could play as a weaponsmith and have a full experience in the game without ever killing a monster. The richest person I ever met in-game was a tailor who made +skill mods for high-end pvp gear and fancy unstated clothes like custom wedding dresses for roleplaying. It was a really good balance where some players would resource hunt. Other players would mob hunt. Crafters would buy resources and mob drops to craft gear to sell back to the other two groups and pvpers.
I've heard a lot of great stuff about the crafting in galaxies! Shame I never got the chance to play it
This was the first thing I thought of when I saw this video in my sub feed. SWG's crafting is far and away the best crafting system I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with. It's a big part of my motivation for learning gamedev. I want to recreate a similar system some day. The statted resources being the primary difference between it and every other crafting system I've ever seen. There were also factories that you could plug a blueprint into that would make identical items or you could hand-craft things to roll the dice each time and possibly get a better result. It also took into account the combat character builds by using looted resources. I'll never forget the experience of taking down a Krayt dragon, looting godly tissues from it, taking those and a pile of credits to the best weaponsmith on the server to ultimately end up with a speed and damage capped T-21 rifle for my rifleman character.
Sooooo, a functional economy in a game that isn’t too overly complicated. Nice!
@@KillerBot5100 oh no the functional economy could get wildly complicated. But you figured it out pretty quickly or at least whatever sub section you needed or often someone would just show you their favorite places and methods.
Always a pleasant surprise seeing SWG brought up. Crafting was robust and a corner stone to the whole game, and also had enough player agency in it to where every hammer or blaster weren't created equal with the market having a list of interchangeable items. There were known crafters who cornered the markets and that you went back to time and time again. Iirc, it was a city on Lok called Pompeii were I always got my weapons and armor.
A psychologist once actually came up with the term "The IKEA-effect", to describe how people feel way better about things they themselves contributed into.
Interesting
cake mixes dont come with eggs thanks to that effect too!
people felt like they were cheating buying a cake mix that only takes water so they removed the eggs and let the buyer add it so they would feel more involved
@@FantasmaNaranja To be fair, I can imagine how cake mix that doesn't include (preserved and dehydrated) eggs is probably cheaper to make and lasts longer on store shelves. There might be a more straightforward incentive to remove that ingredient from cake mix.
@@General12th doesn't cost much at all. It really was just so people could feel like they were doing something.
Yeah, seems about right.
I just recently bought Skyrim on Switch and got back into it, and one thing I've always loved about its Alchemy system is that all the resources are laid out in bioregionally sensible places, and that you use all the same ingredients regardless of what crafting tier you're at. It supports the unleveled zoning and "go, anywhere" ethos. When I walk past a farm, I think, "Oh, I wonder if they have wheat I can harvest," and not, "Oh look, the level one health potion ingredient." Smithing in Skyrim however, locks you into a specific progression of different metals and armor styles as you level your crafting ability, undermining the core promise of "make the character you want to play." Using heavy armor? Well I hope it's your vision that your character wants to wear dwarvish armor, then orcish, then daedric.
This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that with a high enough smithing and armour skill, you can reach the maximum armor count with all of the top 3-4 tiers of armour IIRC which at least leaves you with some options for your appearance
Skyrim's smithing is why I have so many armour/weapons mods to give more freedom
I present the cooking system in Skyrim. If I had a Septim for every time I've cooked a cabbage stew, I'd have two Septims. (Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. I'm sorry, I could resist the joke.) It's only benefits (health/stamina restoration) are already covered by alchemy, which does it better, and has other uses. If you run out of potions, there's always restoration magic. And if magic isn't your thing, you have the ability to swallow your own body weight in cheese, before washing it down with enough alcohol to poison an elephant to death, all in less time than it takes for a bandit to walk two steps.
It would have been better to just loot cheese and beer, and cut the entire cooking system to save storage space. I don't think I've ever met someone who actually uses cooking, because it's so redundant, and overshadowed.
@@torgranael i wonder if mods can fix cooking
@@RedTed75universesChannelBITCH There's a mod for nearly everything, so I'd assume so.
I fucking love the system Prey uses, even though I haven't played much of the game. Just having this big machine suck up all the trash you throw inside it, cube-ify it, then spit it out is *so* fun to watch.
I think you can almost completely shortcut all considerations of good design or fun by just having a skeuomorphic crafting system. It feels so responsive and it really does take you out the tokenization mindset. Prey did this so well and it’s such a fun game :)
I think most modern games add crafting into their games just so they can add loot to locations, without really adding loot. Like, just throw some crafting materials here, some over there, and presto! You've got a location full of loot! How wonderdul.
I think it's better then garbage loot you see in Diablo.
At least the Player has the agency in what they use it.
Yeah, crafting systems are a shortcut to keeping players engaged, and that's why they're shoehorned into so many games that don't benefit from them. Empty areas that seem to have no gameplay purpose can be filled with resources so the player has to visit them and press buttons. Games with bad pacing can disguise it by making the player increase a few numbers so they think they're progressing something. Both of these have the added benefit of making games take longer to finish, too.
Ticking boxes.
@@QuintessentialWalrus The unnecessary progress bar is a plague on the video game industry. Even more so when you have to pay real world money to unlock those progress bars, but that's a whole different thing.
Far Cry New Dawn
One thing that I find diminishes a crafting system is when the items that you can craft are ones that you can also find in the world, like how as you level up in Skyrim, enemies start spawning with higher-tiers of weapons and armor, making it so that there's little incentive to invest in smithing in the early game, because you're always going to be finding better armor and weapons by scavenging than you'll be able to make by crafting. Since players can get away with ignoring it in the early game, the smithing stat only truly becomes relevant in the late game as it impacts how much you can improve the stats on equipment by tempering. Which could cause players to need to craft dozens, if not hundreds of junk items before they can make anything that they actually intend to use.
I really felt it too in games like The Witcher 3 for example. The only pieces of armor or weaponry I ever crafted were the different Witcher Gears, as I knew that I was going to loot or buy better equipment soon enough anyway.
I always get the transmutation spell, harvest ALL the iron ore, turn it into gold and then turn it into gold rings, which then i enchant with leftover low grade soulgems
leveling up my smithing, alteration skill and enchanting skill
and i have always something to legally rob merchants with.
I kind of felt it was the reverse situation, but creating a similar problem. Due to the hefty stat bonuses smithing gave you, I found after only dabbling with it for a while that the only weapons ever worth using were the ones you crafted yourself. I'd find a cool new Glass weapon, only to realise that the steel sword I was already using significantly out ranked it in damage. If the smithing system had actually been interesting and more involved, this might have been a little more ok, but as it was I attained this power by repeating the infamous dagger crafting spam. It was boring and only locked off aspects of the game.
So for me, it was loot that became highly irrelevant, even from the early game. Anything that I wasn't able to boost via that grind wheel, was simply worthless.
The fact that we both had entirely opposite problematic experiences, and that both are kind of valid in their own way, shows just how poorly conceived that crafting system was.
@@UnknownSquid I mean you could have just used the tempering on the glass blade and made it better, no? If you level up your adventuring skill and get better drops from adventuring vs leveling up your crafting skill so you get better gear from crafting sounds to me like it's working as intended? Also making iron daggers is probably the slowest way you could level up smithing. Transmute the iron into gold and make jewelry since any crafting related experience is determined by the final value of the item you create.
@@UnknownSquid I have experienced that "reverse situation" too, but also have experienced what Aderon is describing. I think that even though these seem opposite things they are just different player experiences of the same issue: a system where how powerful the item is is simple arithmetic of (base stats + crafted stats). Which of these two experiences you have just comes down to subjective experience driven by how much crafting you decide to do early game (when you haven't figured out the game mechanics yet!). If you craft your early items then everything in the world will look worse and you won't want to give up the sunk cost of your "good" crafted early game gear. If you _don't_ craft your early items then the power-curve of world items becomes clear as you play and you are disincentivized from crafting anything but the best item.
Good crafting systems aren't a simple arithmetic with buckets of stats; either crafting needs to be more a customization layer, or there needs to be different crafting possibilities driven by different base items. (All of which require more development time, of course!)
Seeing Sev Tech discussed reminded me of one of my favorite crafting examples: Vintage Story. It’s developed by some of the team working on Hytale a stand alone MC inspired fantasy game but VS is more slow paced and survival focused. In Vintage Story even crafting a pickaxe is locked off until you can make a clay forge and burn it. Super captivating survival external vs internal crafting mechanics.
Vintage Story is incredible
You should have covered Vintage Storys crafting system because I love it! It uses a mechanic I've seen in VERY few games. You have to make molds for metal tools, pour the metal in the mold and wait for it to cool, little and carve wood for tools, knap rocks for stone tools, use clay to model and mold different molds and pots.
Yes!!! I really like Vintage story's crafting system because of that. It just makes everything you make feel so much more precious and meaningful, and makes you cautious on how you are using your tools, or what material you are making them out of. Without even mentioning how you are making alloys, that gives you a bit of flexibility in the amounts of its components, so you can use a few more pieces of your more abundant resources to increase your alloy yield!
In addition, in the start, your inventory is very limited, until you make some bags (which is tedious when you re-start often), but then you have to manually make a clay container, which takes time and resources, it then has to be put into the ground, covered in grass, sticks and logs aka Pit Kiln, then burnt for days without interruption, in the end it is fired and gives you 12 or so slots of permanent inventory to store stuff or food, which can be further preserved underground. There's even a inventory mod that lets you pick up and carry storage objects on your back. Everything feels more involved and immersive.
TerraFirma Craft mod for minecraft is very similar to Vintage Story in that regard, i like it although some modpacks featuring it are heresy and creators of them should find god or go to therapy, or both
the actual crafting of basic stuff involving that slow placing of pixels in a janky 3d space is so tedious and mind melting that it really removes any appeal the rest wouldhave
I think Astroneer has my favorite crafting systems. The fact that all items always stay within physical space and not in an inventory, it mean you have to physically pick up things and put them in the multiple crafting stations. It can also be automated towards the end.
it is very cool in astroneer, but i played it the most before auto arms and automation, so i cant for the life of me get used to it
I agree, the lack of menus and the physicality of everything meant that picking up items from around the base felt kind of rewarding instead of frustrating. I think it fulfills the three stages really well, with exploring, planet hopping, and paying for materials, physically inputting and transforming those materials, then using the new tools to further creation and exploration. It was also more fun to lose stuff by accidently kicking it into a hole instead of forgetting it in a pile of unsorted chests.
@@featherflight3493 exactly, I feel like it is the most tactile you can get in a video game
@@featherflight3493 to be honest though, it doesnt feel great with controller. i can imagine it would be a far better game with mouse and keyboard, but it's still an excellent system
agreed. too bad the game feels a bit empty after a while
My least favorite crafting system are ones where most of the crap comes out weaker or more pathetic than the gear you can pick up as loot. And its easy to fix. Gear you pick up as loot is weaker because its used or damaged. By repairing it you get a blueprint to make a better version. Then its a cycle of getting crap, then making a better version to use to find other loot and repeat.
It's a big problem (among unfortunately many) that WoW's crafting system has had for expansions now. I remember when crafted gear could be useful. By the time you can craft something in more recent expacs, it's probably already been obsoleted. They've tried to fix it a bit in Shadowlands with limited success (reasonably good basic crafted gear - but you can only have one crafted piece). But it's still pretty frustrating.
It was a surprise going into FF14 that what sells in shops is crafted gear, and it's good for leveling your jobs and professions, and you have the option to (often) save money and gain exp by just crafting that same gear yourself. The combination of usefulness and flexibility is really working for me. Especially since the crafting system itself is reasonably engaging.
The issue then is you're FORCING the player to focus on crafting above all else.
This means every single material becomes impossible to sell/toss as you need it.
You might not... but you don't know.
It is now inventory management and not crafting.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 Some games solve this by making bosses drop gear but also materials that can be used to craft the gear. It's not the most interesting choice but at least players can choose if they want to do crafting or not.
Another cool way would be if you had to assemble parts of loot, so crafting a weapons would be almost like choosing a gear set. For Example, let's say you found a weapon with a beautiful hilt but a damaged blade, a crystal that can be turned into pommel that can be used to change Damage into some elemental type, as long as you enchant in a ritual like killing some elemental creatures or something and you craft a blade.
Now you can combine both looted gear with crafted gear and make a completely unique weapon, and the weapon variety would go bonkers, because instead of creating 125 unique assets for swords that all play the same, with just different numbers, you could have 5 different blades, 5 different hilts and 5 different pommels that all do completely different effects that synergize and multiply with one another. 15 assets, 125 different swords, so what if the artists went and did another 110 assets?
Another idea I had for a smithing minigame, and If I know how to do it, I would even make a Skyrim mod out of it, would be so you took the ore and burned into a smelter or bloomery and made a billet of an exact alloy you want, say for example a silver-steel-mythril alloy where 50% still makes it 50% effective against werewolves, steel makes it heavier thus adding DMG directly but also adding weight for incumberance and making it's speed slower and Mythril adds resistance without adding any damage. Choosing the right alloy makes you the right sword for a job.
Then you come to the forging type. The more you hammer the billet, the longer and flatter it gets, but the more material you lose through oxidation. You throw some flux and send back to the forge and repeat, until you reach the size you want for a blade(Maybe the game gives you a prompt that you reach the blade dimensions you wanted for a specific schematic you bought/looted, so the game converts that billet into an actual asset in the game files in the end of the process).
After that, you quench it and temper it, with looking at the color of the blade(maybe with some special color settings for color-blind people) to achieve the exact hardness and toughness you want, so you blade has the best amount of damage and durability. Each blade would be time-consuming and hard to craft, but it could be rewarding as every step would be controlled by the player, with only the final asset being not, a you cannot have infinite assets.
@@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person This
This is just the video I needed, I just finished the base building part of my game and was moving on to the crafting system, This video helped me realize that I need to make sure my crafting system is tied to the world and benefits the game without being pointless!
Always ask is this needed? That's what alot of games miss they either make crafting so useless that theres no reason or it so vital its the core of the game
My personal favorite crafts are ones that don't have set recipes, per say. Skyrim's alchemy is one example. You can combine different things to do different stuff how you see fit. It just need more diversity like that.
This^, I’ve always lived this way of crafting in harvest moon and then in games like rune factory and dragon quest games. Once you made something successfully then it unlocks a recipe to remake it quickly in some games. In others you have to perfect it several times over to auto create stuff as a reward for your successes.
More games should do stuff like that
I don’t like it when they do that, because then I’m overwhelmed with all the optimum and poor combinations I need to remember, and there’s no way to tell if I’m making the best version of whatever it is that I’m making.
I guess "Is this [crafting system] necessary?" is another one of those questions that seems really obvious to all but the person who should be asking. Thank you once again for bringing to light a game design concept I would never have thought before putting it into a game, your videos are always helpful and insightful for the not-so-informed!
crafting annoyed me so much in CP2077. "Oh hey, look at that, there's a legendary item there" legendary crafting component. Now I can combine this nondescript crafting component with some empty cans to make a high tech railgun in seconds while standing in the middle of a desert. You'd think it would require thousands of cutting edge parts manufactured by huge corporations in clean rooms and high precision robot arms using exotic materials.
It just clutters the menus and the loot, while adding nothing of actual value to the gameplay or storytelling while taking away from the immersion.
Crafting systems always feel like those things that are kind of available in games but most people will never have an incentive to truly get into.
Have you ever seen crafting in Path of Exile? That shit is a dumpster fire
I think on some level many dev teams realize crafting is tedious garbage and they make it as optional as possible
@@Inojin67 We're gonna predent Minecraft doesn't exist I guess.
@@Inojin67 Other way around. They think it's a required mechanic and spend the minimum effort to make it engaging.
@@gettingshotsomeonesgonnapa8635 Ngl, I think Minecraft's crafting system is its weakest aspect. Let's be real, it may call itself MineCRAFT, but the game is a building sandbox game at its core. Crafting is simply a means to an end, and there really isn't much variety in it (unless you count cosmetic variety, or the enchantment system, which could be better if it wasn't so RNG-dependent.)
I know this video is a bit old, but it is a perfect explanation of why I've fallen in love with a game called Vintage Story recently. As the almost seems to treat time as one of the most major resources. A number of the key early resources can be found a few ways. For example copper can be Foraged from rock bits on the ground while exploring, Panned from sand and gravel, Bought from certain traders. Then in later game when you have Pickaxes and proper tools you can mine and prospect for it. Making the process of collecting items even more efficient as you progress, and in some cases a single ore vein found from prospecting is enough to sustain you throughout the rest of the game. Then as you get better ores you can mine better resources with pickaxes of significantly stronger durability, making each level of progression feel so powerful. Not only just being better, but also leaving time for other tasks.
Since the game has days, months, and seasons. you have to pick and prioritize. Do you go mining or make more food to store for winter. Maybe it might be better to craft that new tool at night, so you can use the daylight to get some scavenging done instead. So many things seem to interweave. Additionally with the concept of 'time as a recourse', a large number crafting processes act as minigames. Your first few tools are cast and take time to cool, but once you have an anvil you can forge. Forging tools makes you actually move metal with a hammer into the tools final shape. Something that becomes a bit of a skill. Because resources can be scares you first few might be slow, so you don't make a mistake. But as you become comfortable and more resources means mistakes are less of a concern, you can start to pick up the pace pounding out pieces and eventually introducing a level of automation for more tedious tasks like making ingots.
It feels like a game about crafting in a way where it wants you to spend less time doing it. So you can instead spend more time appreciating what you've made and accomplished. To have the abundance to spend on luxuries and time to explore the other aspects of adventuring that the game has to offer.
*4:23* I would say that Don't Starve Together is a perfect example of this. Some items you may craft are incredibly specific, but overall help your goal of surviving in different ways.
agreed, i absolutely despise crafting in most games (even minecraft, it just gets boring after a while) but gathering resources in DST and making a good starter base in one go will never get old and i have no idea how it manages to keep my attention span for so long
@@ImTheGherkin lol imagine surviving long enough to make a starter base
Content bloat, DS was fun before, DST has too much stuff
@@htlchtlcnah
Bad opinion are *usually* kept within@@htlchtlc
The trick with valheim is: Get only the minimum copper you need to make the jump to iron. It's incredibly cheap and usually stronger in comparison.
Valheim is weird because as grindy as it feels, the mining of metals really forced you to engage more with all the core mechanics.
@@restlessfrager I agree. Considering you will have your starting base in Meadows and that Tin and Copper are found in Black Forest, it makes sense to establish a second base, somewhere between all copper ore veins and close to shore for tin ore spots. A proper base requires a stock of food and defensive walls (which trolls make kinda obsolete, but oh well). Then you must make a decision: do I smelt the metals here or do I transport them. If you want to transport them, then you require either a cart for land transport of a Karve for water transport. Tin, copper and bronze also unlock other mechanics, such as farming or the aforementioned Karve for water exploration.
I also think the crafting of Valheim changes a lot when you play multiple people and co-operate. Suddenly, finding supplies and mining is a team effort. You often head out together and co-ordinate how to approach it; Who mines? Who pushes the cart? What do we do when enemies show up?
@@Desteroyah195 the most difficult part I've found is the mining itself. Unlike iron it is laborious and imprecise. Thankfully the only things harassing us at any time we grey dwarves.
@@gabrielledebourg2487 YES! I play both single player world and 3 ppl coop with my friends. It's much different. I usually smelt ores and do other base renovations/upgrades while my buddies venture into the lands and bring rer
sources (which somewhat tires me out after singleplayer world), but we always go as a team against serious threats (like doing a raid on Fuling camp).
Crafting is an illusion, return to spamming fire on a wall for the last heart in zelda
I'd also argue that along with collecting the craftable items, there's the actual item use itself. So many games have it so half the items are just things to sell. They're junk items with the express purpose of either earning a quick buck, or clogging up your inventory so that you'll buy the 'optional' inventory expansions.
Good games make uses of ALL, or at least 99% of their items.
One positive example I feel is 7 Days to Die - almost every item has another use, even bits of scrap cloth, feathers, random bits of metal and plastic, and old clothing can be scrapped for other resources, or used in recipes. There are some items specifically to sell, like precious trinkets and precious stones.
Similar for Darkwood - most items have another use, with only maybe Shiny Stones being Vendor Trash but you have to use a source of light to find most of them, and nothing lasts that long.
Don't you love it when the grind of collecting materials to craft something progresses the game to the point where the stuff you wanted to make is out-leveled by the time you get it?
Me playing Kingdom Come : "Damn, brewing potions seems like a hell of a chore..."
After brewing potions for 2 hours: "I think it's kind of a fun activity after all."
Dude idgaf what people say, Kingdom Come: Deliverance has the best alchemy crafting system. They could make an entire game just on the mechanics from Deliverance and I'd play it.
@@jasongibson1225 czcams.com/video/iGNAAflyjac/video.html
@@jasongibson1225 Even when you get the skill that automates the brewing, it is still fun to look for ingredients and get filthy rich by selling the potions.
Oh I've heard of that, and it's cool. Although I think the first person perspective from Deliverance is really nice. Potion Craft lacks that.
"water, add nettles, pump bellows, add marigolds, add marigolds, bottle" will forever be burned into the back of my skull from grinding to alchemy 10.
On a side note, deciphering alchemy recipes with an illiterate character is some of the most fun I've had, especially not realizing until several attempts in that I was reading the recipe for savior schnapps and not marigold decoction, thinking I needed training in alchemy to actually do it.
I don’t think of Ghost of Tsushima’s gear progression as a “crafting system.” You just progress toward upgrades, and can only buy so many because of limited money
It's a glorified EXP bar, really.
Yeah the same with God of War 4 its not really a crafting system so speak just a more involved leveling system to get specific builds.
@@anderss.viking3084 well that game has a bit more crossover in where you can use materials at least, and you do actually craft unique items, whereas in GoT you get the unique items, then upgrade them with their very specific materials.
One of my favourite things in recent memory was the potion making in Kingdom Come Deliverance. It's like a little cooking minigame that turns into "Gimme instant potions" after enough practice.
I really hope that VR games result in some really interactive and interesting crafting mechanics
I can highly recommend Cyube (yes that's the actual name) if you want neat VR crafting. The game itself is very limited and very early access but it goes for that voxel based mining and crafting gameplay but built for VR from the start. I'd call it a Minecraft clone but Minecraft VR, either official or modded, is awful.
In Cyube, you open your bag, dump out 4 little wood blocks and 3 stone ones then you pick them up and stick them together with your actual hands into the shape of an axe. Or you place or into an actual furnace to smelt them. Aside from accessing materials from in your inventory, there's almost no interacting with menus in any of the crafting and it's fantastic
Personally, I love gathering resources in Valheim. I actually found most of the stuff that you do before killing the first boss (like hunting) to be more boring and grindy than mining copper or tin. When mining copper, I find myself building roads (complete with repair stops and bridges) back to my base to allow for easier carting of resources back and forth, planting torches around the copper deposits to ward off greydwarfs, building a small hut nearby so I could always have the rested bonus, occasionally enslaving trolls, etc.... Also, the ambience in Valheim is unbelievably relaxing and peaceful, which makes me not feel like I need to hurry as much. I see your point, but bear in mind that other people may think differently.
People can think differently, but that doesn't make the problem not a problem. In this case, you're doing a ton of extra work to cut down on the slow tedium that is simple resource gathering. The fact that you have to (or want to, in your case) do that to make the initial activity less... awful is a sign of bad game design.
@@Rasea611 oof. By that logic, working to upgrade weapons to cut down on the tedium of fighting a boss is a sign of bad game design.
Sometimes, yes, problems are issues that should be fixed by developers. As discussed in the video.
Other times, problems challenge the player, and developers intend the players to overcome that challenge. Dark Souls is great at this.
I happen to be overjoyed at the fact Valheim got me to organically create roads and paths between my villages/outposts, and plan trade routes by sea. It got me to think about the world as a world, instead of a collection of menus as some other sims can be.
Even in minecraft (including any modded with a minimap), I only build roads between places to appeal to my own vanity. In Valheim, I wouldn't bother making a road if it didn't have a significant or tangible benefit.
@@Rasea611 Yeah you're just kinda... wrong here. Valheim's grindiness really just serves to push you to engage with the mechanics more, which while it might not be enjoyable for everyone, is a legitimate path to take your game towards. Not every game needs to appeal to the lesser common denominator.
@@Rasea611 what if find is yes the mineing is grindy but that grind encourages use of mechanics that otherwise would serve no purpose and encurages creative transport logistics and base building in addition there are different ways to take on mineing such as encouraging trolls to do it for you or collapsing the ore by digging around and under it
[ _grabs the mic_ ] And this is why Tinker's Construct should be ported to vanilla Minecraft
Just the system, the traits, modifiers, and additional ores could do with a lot less linear progression.
There's no progression in TC. The second you scrounge enough Iron to make a bucket and a flint-and-steel, you can forge an obsidian pickaxe and go hunting for Ardite and Cobalt in the Nether. There's several dozen intermediate materials that have little reason to exist. Even the obsidian pickaxe is only used to mine a dozen or so blocks before it's replaced. You basically go straight from stone to Manyullan.
Ehhh, I think Tinker's is a bit too much for Vanilla, especially it's power level and all the excess items that could REALLY be cut down on.
Something like Tetra would be much better. All the same depth with none of the inventory management.
The Tinker's Construct smelter is what made me fall in love with modded MC. What an incredible multi-block, first thing I made every new world.
TiCon is amazing as hell, but in my opinion, it would be god awful in vanilla as there isn't exactly too many items to make stuff with, or even items to make by that logic. Like a pasta, it's the additions that really bring the mod together. Kinda bad by itself, but amazing when combined with other mods for materials.
Vintage Story is a game with crafting in it, i think it does the crafting very well. bash tiny voxels of rock to make tool heads, shove around tiny voxels to smith yourself a epic sword, and dig a big hole to burn logs 4 charcoal
Vintage Story crafting system is really interesting, majority is done in the world with physical items instead of just a grid in the inventory.
I think kerbal space program is a pretty good crafting sim
Think about it
Jeb approves of this message.
I mean... yeah?
I guess you could say you were crafting explosions.
Its the best spacecraft crafter. Also the best spacecraft destructor.
Noitas wandmaking is by far the best crafting system I've ever seen, I don't think any game even comes close. It's definitely really hard to compare to most normal crafting systems (in part because it exists to genuinely be a unique design space rather than just checking off the "we need crafting "checkbox). But it absolutely fits all 3 criteria mentioned here.The actual process of getting wands and spells is core to the main gameplay loop; exploring the different sections of the game in search of either gold to buy wands/spells, or to actually find randomly generated wands placed everywhere. The crafting system is far more involved than most others; as opposed to simply filling out a list of components or being an arbitrary skillcheck, it actually requires you to think about how the different components interact with one another. Not only are wands insanely useful (they're the primary way you interact with everything else in the game), but the satisfaction of seeing your dumb abomination of a wand obliterate enemies is unparalleled in any other crafting system.
FEITGD!
XD
no matter how compelling it was, the permadeath made it immensely frustrating to lose an item you spent so much time to craft
rng for components and store purchases didnt help
i tried played with a mod that lets you respawn, but the gameplay itself doesnt really work without permadeath
Noita's wand crafting would have shined far brighter in an entirely different game.
Noita's loot/crafting/progression system is revolutionary and this otherwise good video essay is rendered terribly out of touch by its absence.
@@FractalPrism. What I have done once with Noita is make backups of my save so that if I die I just load up certain points in the run. That being said, I wouldn't do that anymore now and if I died too much I just would stop. Its only something you do once or twice when you are not as good at the game and are on a really good run you don't want to lose.
im so happy to see noita comments
deathray shotgun that fires black holes? yeah thats just a normal tuesday
A few corrections to the prey material-gathering description from a prey player:
Organic - You never run out of it
Synthetic - You never run out of it
Typhon - You never run out of it and it's barely used
Mineral - *_Recycle the entirety of Talos 1 and you'll still feel like you don't have enough ammo_*
I really liked the alchemy and herbs mechanic in kindom come deliverance, you get real life knowledge on herbs and you actually have to make te potions step by step, it so relaxing to go and gather a lot of herbs put some loffi and start brewing
A game that I have been loving lately is Noita, it's extremely satisfying when you finally line up the spell parts you have been collecting to make an amazing powerful wand
Then you suddenly die and mourn the loss of that beautiful wand...
Noita?
You mean
I CAST FUCK EVERYTHING IN THAT GENERAL DIRECTION
XD
(That’s what CZcams showed me)
FEITGD!
XD
ah yes noita
im so bad at it but its gloriously fun and so underrated
its hard, but when you FINALLY get that perfect wand it feels so rewarding and you just go "hey nerds i can now cast 'deletus your peenus' you better run" and you feel like a god
foolish enemies, you shouldve fled, as now i have the MACHINE SHOTGUN OF FUCK YOU ALONG WITH ALL ENEMIES AND TERRAIN IN A 4 MILE CONE
then you fuck up and die lul
@@harpoonlobotomy Trying out a powerful wand only to die from it is so cruel. :(
Yeah, in terraria I find it a bit frustrating that in the later parts of the game most of your upgrades come from boss drops and your progression is a lot more tied to them than in the early game where you explore new places
It honestly probably comes from the fact that the worlds are finite. Mods try to address this, such as calamity, but eventually you will hit that same point too. That being said, I have not forgotten the feeling when I first explored the abyss in the calamity mod.
Yes i love the crafting aspect in terraria most
But sadly
It isn’t as developed as i would want
@@AJ213Probably kk Nikki k by
Blame Hardmode for that. Hardmode shifts the design focus entirely into a pseudo boss rush, as the world is ultimately too small to have meaningful exploration past wall of flesh.
Personally I’m a fan of it as it starts off by being about exploration But slowly transitions more into a boss rush as you progress further and further. I feel it does both really well but I can see how some might want more exploration than it has already
The game with the *BEST crafting system* to me is *The Long Dark.* It perfectly reflects how creating something IRL takes time. And time is an important resource. On top of that crafting is very impactful.
So The Long Dark is an indie survival game where you survive on an abandoned Canadian island in winter after an event called "the first flare" knocked out all electrical systems. You have to fight off the cold, stay fed, and protect yourself against hostile wildlife. Despite having a more hand-drawn look to it The Long Dark tries to be more on the realistic side of things when it comes to survival. And that includes the previously mentioned crafting.
Let's take crafting a bow for example. To craft it you need a cured maple tree sapling and two cured animal guts, as well as a crafting bench and a tool to craft it with like a knife. So how do you get a cured maple sapling? Well, it's simple. You find one in the wild and chop it down with either an axe or a saw, they're pretty rare all things considered. Then you drop it on the ground indoors and let it sit there for *6* in-game days. And cured gut? Well, you need to harvest it from an animal. Rabbits only give one gut so you'll have to hunt and kill two which isn't too hard. Or you harvest the gut from a larger animal which may or may not take more time. Once you have the gut have to drop it on the ground indoors just like you would the sapling for *5* days.
Once you've got all the materials you need to craft the bow which can take anywhere between 5 in-game hours with the perfect tools up to more than double that if you don't have a knife.
Great! Now you have a bow. But you'll still need arrows. So go out, find some raven feathers, some birch saplings, cure those birch saplings for another *4* days. Craft those birch saplings into arrow shafts which takes 30 minutes with the perfect tools. Find scrap metal, find a forge (there are only 3 forges in the game and the map is larger than Skyrim), heat up the forge to 150 degrees Celcius using a huge amount of coal (the only fuel that can heat up a forge that hot which is mainly found in caves and mines), don't forget the forging hammer, and now finally you can forge arrowheads. Making 2 arrowheads takes 1 in-game hour, and you're going to want way more than 2.
*That was a lot to read, right?* That's because it's a lot of effort to craft a bow. And that's what makes it so satisfying to create one. A functioning bow and arrows represent what is more than a week's worth of effort and in return you get a genuinely useful tool that significantly changes how you can play the game. The bow is a much more sustainable and stealthy hunting tool than the rifle, though it does require more skill to properly use. Not every craftable item in The Long Dark requires this much effort to craft, but the good ones, the ones that will really change up your game. They will. The bearskin bedroll that will let you comfortably sleep outdoors, the moose hide satchel that increases your carry weight, the various animal skin clothing items. They all require a lot of time and effort and they're all worth that time and effort.
I have that game!!!
@@luisapaza317 Sweet.
Yeah, it's really, really well made. I especially love how interloper is all about crafting that first bow. No game gives you a feeling of power quite like when you first equip it. Now suddenly you can fight back. The hunter becomes the hunted. (Then you miss your shot and die to a wolf, lol)
@@Thetarget1 Interloper too hard for me lmao.
Honestly interloper is not for everyone. I'll just miss the firearms and crafting ammo too much.
@@Thetarget1 i use the rifle for them
One of the most interesting crafting systems I've experienced is actually really old. It's in a psx game called Legend of Mana, and it's the weapon tempering system. A weapon can hold elemental charges and up to 3 effect cards with different triggers. The one you insert can only trigger after it's placed, and everything you can add will either increase, decrease, or do both to any of the eight element charges. Most effect cards need specific element levels to be triggered. After getting 3 effects you want you have to seal them with a sealant item to keep going, which also alters the element levels and if the levels drop below an effect's requirement, it gets removed. The end result is a very complex system where making really strong weapons is actually rather quite difficult, and requires keeping tabs on what's going on behind the scenes (as almost none of this is directly visible to the player, but can still be inferred) and planning ahead. Iirc a maxed weapon has like 150 to 200 steps in its tempering process, with the last one being a varnish effect to trigger the last effect without booting the first one out.
Crafting systems staying out of your way is a very important aspect to me. Take Factorio or Satisfactory as an example. You essentially spend the whole game crafting, but it's an amazing and fun experience because it almost never gets in your way by forcing you to stop doing something. The entire premise of the game is getting it out of your way so that you can go do something else, and as it turns out, that's what makes the game really fun. The longer I have to stand waiting at some stupid table or staring at your sprites in an inventory screen, the less fun I'm having. Even in Minecraft crafting is a very fast process that doesn't stop you for more than a few seconds. Crafting systems are tools by which you can interact with the world, they shouldn't be taking your attention away from the world.
I like factorio because, despite being a "crafting" game, it properly changes what crafting means in the game itself.
Step 1, you mine yourself and make stuff in your inventory
Step 2 You use that to make tools what automatize mining and refining
Step 3, you make buildings that make more buidings
Step 4, you make drones who place those buildings for you
You don't just craft the next tier, you go bigger in scale at each step too.
That last line is a thesis that should be written in stone.
@@diersteinjulien6773 That's a good way to explain it! Well said, king. 👑
A game i have a love/hate relationship with the crafting system is a 3DS game called Fantasy Life. in it you pick one of 12 "Lifes" (basically classes) to play as [though you can pick up more pretty early]. Out of them, 4 are combat focused Lifes, 3 are resource gathering Lifes, and 5 are Crafting focused Lifes. the issue is that all the crafting is the same; throwing random sequences of mashing X, holding X, or pressing X with perfect timing, all of which is pretty tedious and a bit nonsensical. of course to upgrade your life you have to complete the life quests, which more or less amount to crafting 1 or more of every item you can, which can take forevere. and that's if you decide against the options of crafting until you get the top quality gear or crafting 20 to 50 of an item in order to master it. of course there are benefits; in addition to the gear/items themselves you get decent amounts of exp for every item you craft. but this can easily go too far if combined with a combat class and suddenly your steamrolling everything that isn't a special boss, and basically blitzing through the story sections until you reach the next area you can acquire new materials.
To summarize, Fantasy Life's Crafting is tedious, you can easily spend more time crafting than playing the quirky story/fighting monsters, and can easily mess up the difficulty curve.
Fantasy Life is such a mixed bag. I really want to love it, but some features like the horrific story and tedious crafting systems ruin the pace of the game.
I agree with your points wholeheartedly. I love the smithing system, but it is just a bit too random at higher levels with the quality of the items. Also the new game experience is horrendous. I still do love the game though, despite the annoying grind
I made the mistake of deciding to start off as a Tailor. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a God rank Tailor now, but MAN I'm sick to death of that crafting minigame now, and I know I have to do it for the other crafting Lives...
I wish Fantasy Life's crafting was better, but god damn if that game didn't have a great take on your typical harvesting Jobs. Boss Encounters with a giant tree or mineral have to be the most unique way I've seen it done. (It's just a shame they can still be frustrating.)
You don't have a lot of good things to say about it... where's the "love" part of this relationship?
I really like the idea of just having NPCs doing the actual crafting part in the 3 main steps of most crafting systems in games. What I mean is you still would have to gather base ingredients, with the most key ones being in place surrounded by powerful enemies or even just environments challenges to overcome. Then you bring the ingredients to an NPC blacksmith or craftsmen who will actually forge or create a requests item or weapon or peace of gear. It never made much sense to me to have players do the whole crafting itself in most games because blacksmithing, jewelry making, and other skilled crafts well...take alot of time and effort to get actually good with which doesn't lend much to being a strong combatant in most cases. (exceptions exist ofcourse but they are still rare) That is why I liked the old mod for Skyrim called "forged metal" that had to were the NPC blacksmiths could actually be hired to forge custom weapons and armor for players who provided materials and then asked or selected from a number of recipes for whatever they wanted to be crafted, there was even an in game waiting period for commissions which could be tweaked but it all worked really well abd felt WAAAAAY more immersive to me. (plus it actually allowed NPCs to y'know do their stated professions!)
Heck you could even have ot to were later on during a player's journey they could eventually delegate most of the gathering to hired NPC gatherers save for obtaining the most valuable materials that would be in extremely dangerous places. There could even be quests involving a player clearing a safer path to various areas where important ingredients could be harvested like say destroying a nest of giant spiders in a cave system that leads to a chamber full of rare mushrooms for potions so your mushroom pickers could safely gather them or say use some sort of ice magic relic to cool of a river of lava into harden basalt rock so as to allow safer passage to the opposite side of this once environmental hazard that leads to some precious gemstones used for powerful enchantments for your gear that your newly hired miners can extract. You could even mix things up by having periodic threats or obstacles appear at some of these places or pathway that would need your attention to deal with like say a roaming band of orcs has scared away your miners from the gemstone caves and so you must drive them of or maybe you find out some of your caravans are being assaulted by predatory griffins that kill and eat the animals pulling the carts full of valuable materials for crafting. My point is the more a crafting intersects with the actual gameplay the generally better that system is in my humble opinion. (creates story and gameplay opportunities!)
I really like your ideas!
The crafting system that left the biggest impression on me was in the (old) French MMORPG Ryzom: in it, you could make an item out of various source materials, but depending on the material the properties of the crafted object (including its color) would change.
There was also an ecological aspect, because hunting all animals of a species in an area would durably deplete the area of them (and indulge the wraith of the forest guardians).
EDIT: Looks like it's still playable, with a freemium model.
Dark Souls and it’s black smithing system has what I think is an unintended effect.
By upgrading one of your weapons, the game encourages you to commit entirely to that weapon, lest you waste the limited valuable resources on a weapon you won’t even use.
To an extent, I agree with you here, but since weapons can be upgraded multiple times, and the materials used to upgrade weapons the first few times, (+1 - +5 or so) are farm-able (or straight up buy-able, looking at you Bloodborne), this lets you grab a weapon, bring it up to about mid-tier upgrade and test it out without committing something you can't lose. Late game upgrade materials are, yes, VERY LIMITED and your point makes a lot more sense there, but the early materials being farm-able / buy-able means that most weapons you can just keep at around +4 - +5 and try them out at comparable levels to see which you like more, then when one really resonates with you, push it up to +10. I will admit that the late game shards should be more farm-able, and it's odd how in bloodborne, which has SIGNIFICANTLY less weapons than any other soulsborne game, there are multiple ways to farm late-game mats and basically upgrade everything, whereas it's a real chore in something like DS2 or DS3 which has not only tons more weapons, but special boss weapons (DS3) and armor as well competing for your mats
@@D2.159 But you still need to farm specific areas in order to make the switch. Titanite shards are straight-up non existent after Sen's Fortress unless you buy them from blacksmiths, and the only renewable source of slabs are the Darkwraiths in New Londo. And you have to go through all material tiers: you can't use a Slab in place of any amount of Shards, and turning a Slab into Shards requires returning to Firelink Shrine every now and then and siding with a specific NPC that locks you out of another one's favor. And that's without going into the alternative weapon paths, which requiere different materials from the regular one.
It runs into the problem of halting the game's progress, and it does so for the sake of being able to use an item that might not even be worth it in the end.
@@Sagethe7th And yet you still have to go do that instead of just using the fucking weapon you just found. OP is 100% correct, and I hate that aspect of the souls games.
10 seconds in and the "To tools" got me.
Well played.
The potion crafting in Kingdom Come: Deliverance was really cool imo.
IMO Kingdoms of Amalur has one of the most rewarding crafting systems in any RPG I've played. You get components by just breaking down trash gear you find, and the gear you make with them is actually really powerful and higly customizable.
"you get that exact same feeling of growth and mastery leveling a blacksmith as you do leveling a black mage"
I see what you did there
Main thing is I want my crafting to feel both unique AND meaningful. I want to feel like *I* made this, otherwise it just feels like I checked some boxes and out pops the item and it's just meh.
Basically let me make choices within the crafting itself that determines the outcome beyond just a few pluses here and there. Even better if I get to mess with the cosmetics as well.
I've always had this idea for an optional crafting system, that's exclusively for creating gimmick weapons/armor. You can and are encouraged to play the game normally, buying what you need. But if you wanted a self imposed challenge, you can make these gimmick items.
Things like a weapon that's super fast and great at stunning, but deals abysmal damage. Or an armor set that makes you practically invincible, but also you move slower than a snail. They would be the types of things that encourage you to develop unique playstyles, and force you to become very familiar with different mechanics. Like a tailor made hard mode.
And also I'd possibly make it so that if you complete certain challenges with those items, you'd unlock the ability to upgrade them and get rid of their detriments. But that seems like a slippery slope of locking the best items in the game behind a wall most players don't want to have to climb.
Sounds similar to the weapons in American McGee's Alice. The game was designed with the principle that enemies have easy to use weapons that deal little damage while you have impratocal weapons that deal lots of damage
I loved the crafting of potions in candybox -- you have to learn how to cook the potion. Heat up the water, while it's heating up, throw in so many candy canes or lollipops, then wait until it's boiling, do something different, ... And often the preparation process had something to do with the thing you are making. And there are some surprises and room for creativity in the crafting process, that can alter what is making, and needs to be explored. Loved it.
Thanks for calling out Breath of the Wild. I found myself using "hearty" meals for the vast majority of the game.
Remember to maximize efficiency by cooking single durians at a time until your meal inventory fills!
@@magetsalive5162 or just never upgrading your health or armor at all since you can't be killed from full health, in which case it doesn't much matter what you cook as long as it can give you 3 hearts. I hate the instant-kill prevention and really hope we'd have the option to turn that off so that armour and health upgrades had an actual point beyond the armour set bonuses.
Yes, Master Mode exists and would probably otherwise be exactly what I'm looking for but the monster HP and especially their health regen is way too excessive for my tastes
@@houndofculann1793 yeah, the botw master mode is SUPER lazy. it's exactly the same fights, just 100x the length. it sucks the one unique combat mechanic, the floating bokoblin platforms, is locked in master mode, meaning i've never experienced them.
I think Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead strikes a fairly good balance. The crafting recipe list is enormous but starts quite small and only expands as your character's skill in certain fields improves. The skills even intersect at times, where some recipes require a proficiency in multiple skills, thus leading to a better item than of those skills can produce alone. None of this would matter if the world was abundant with killer weapons and sturdy armor, which it isn't. Most items are useless on their own or extremely hard to find. Crafting is almost necessary. Rarely do in-world items surpass the highest of craftables, sometimes even mid-tier craftables can tear shit up. Spending a few in-game hours working on a souped up weapon or pooling in several resources to make the best trenchcoat of all time feels extremely rewarding and, at times, almost like crossing a significant milestone in progression.
The systems also encourage the player to try new game mechanics out and go exploring. I would not have gotten into C:DDA's super involved vehicle welding if I wasn't motivated by the prospect of being able to explore for new types of locations that spawn specific materials and being able to lug more of those materials with a V8 engine. Then that branched off into things like building vehicle-mounted weapons and armor plating that add an extra layer on the combat mechanics.
Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought "Cataclysm" when crafting systems was discussed. It's such a niche title that I'm surprised I found a comment on it.
I love the crafting system in cdda. You can get by without it but it makes the game so much more rewarding.
I would say though that I'm not a huge fan of the relatively new proficiency system. Like sub-skills within tailoring or smithing. Yes it's more realistic but it makes progression in a crafting skill more of a grind.
Also cddas crafting system is insanely expansive with how you can say break down a few hot plates to retrieve the heating components so you can make a forge or cooking station for a vehical. The fact nearly every item can be broken downjnto something useful is why i love it
I must say, I enjoyed Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's approach to crafting, at least in one part. You can craft multitools out of rather large quantity of scraps, and use them to bypass almost any numbered locks. What I like about it, is that while crafting is nowhere needed in the game, it offers ways to alternatively progress through the game if other ways are not to your preference.
I have a design philosophy for survival games, which in list form looks like this:
1) All items a player can use should be physical
2) All physical items should be placeable in the world by the player
3) All physical items should have a use inherent of themselves, outside of being placeable and craftable. As long as it has one, its use need not be beneficial or contribute to the player's goals. However if your concern against giving a raw item/ingredient a use is that it would make a crafted item not worth doing...consider that the problem might be with the crafted item, not the raw item.
4) Crafting may gate mechanics, player choice, and/or player agency, but should be agnostic to gating pure strength: don't lean on crafting to balance your game - it rings hollow and creates a zero sum game between crafting and exploration/looting
5) All items used in crafting should be at least visible in the crafted product
6) Any game designed for a single player, no matter how "realistic", should always balance its carrying capacity and item acquisition speed in a way that lets the player make subjectively significant progress in a single run of actions *over* realism. ie if you want to make a realistic survival game but the only way it's fun for your testers is when they can carry half a ton of sticks, let em carry half a ton of sticks.
7) If you want to design for more accurate realism, you need to make your game multiplayer, or start programming NPCs. That's the cold hard fact of the matter.
You know the only thing worse than a crafting system that doesn't feel rewarding? A Crafting system where you can only make stuff that isn't as good as you can find elsewhere dotted around the map. God what is wrong with Skyrim's Enchantment skill
If the crafting allows you to make things better than what you can find, people will complain. If crafting doesn't let you make things better than what you can find, people will complain.
@@Grangolus Easy fix. Just make them both about equally good and let people invest in them how they see fit.
World of Warcraft crafting since WotLK
The issue with Skyrim enchanting is that it's useless at low levels and the best skill in the game by far at high levels.
you know all those iron daggers youre making? Enchant them with petty/lesser soul gems and sell them. Disenchant everything not useful. Get Mage or Lover Standing Stone for EXP skill boost. You'll level up enchanting fast and it becomes an OP skill.
Lost in blue 2 I think did it really well.
Especially the building aspect, with you placing where the logs would be in relation to each other so the rope would tie them afterward. Cooking minigames also had their little charm too.
And you needed to build that stuff to improve your chances to survive (some of them being needed to the best ending) reverting back to the core of the game: keep yourself rested, fed, and hydrated with less effort on your part.
9:28 The moment you get a normal crafting table (so you dont have to click 10 different things to craft something) feels so amazing
I personally really enjoy the crafting in Subnautica and Subnautica below zero. You get more complex items as you go into further and more dangerous buomes. The things you get have varying rarities, making you pick and choose what you want to build next.
The only downside with this system in Subnautica and BZ imo is the fact that you don't always know where to look for in order to find the specific material you're looking for and it can get quite frustrating, as it can feel like a complete stop in the progression until you finally find it or surrender and check on an online guide.
But the core system is excellent indeed.
It's my opinion that if a game doesn't need or involve crafting as a primary element - you should just get rid of it. It's like cutting down on your word count in an essay.
For real. Less is always more.
@@DonVigaDeFierro if less is always more then pong would be the ultimate game.
@@diablo.the.cheater idk what you're talking about, pong IS the ultimate game.
@@shards1627 it unironically has dozens of hours of content
@@thisaccountisntreal107 Only if you have another player who "makes" the content. The original Pong was only 2 players, there was no "AI". Alone, it has 0 minutes of content.
imo Don't Starve has the most elegant single-player crafting system. Most importantly to the characters have static abilities, making crafting fundamental to your survival and learning recipes integral to the game. It also features resource collecting in increasingly dangerous territory, pushing the player to challenge themselves and explore in the quest for better resources. It was also doing "add anything" recipes since way back in 2014, so take that, breath of the wild!
It needs to be said, though, that the best crafting systems are those in colony sim games where you have multiple pawns, like Rimworld. The key problem with resource collection is having to devout 100% of your attention to something you've done a thousand times. When you have multiple pawns you alleviate this problem. This is also one of the reasons Don't Starve together is so much fun - everyone shares the chores.
I think Vintagestory's Knapping, Clay forming, and Metalworking mechanics also deserve a mention here. And the cooking is pretty good too, especially if you get the culinary artillery and immersive butchery mods.
Thumbnail: "why most crafting sucks"
I feel spoken to, understood, and validated, on a fundamental level
4:04 I can't help but love this this cursed mess of boss arena
Potion Craft is a great example of a good middle section of a crafting system. It's extremely tactile and engaging. The problems arise in its "Collection" and "Usage" sections. The resources often are too plentiful or too scarce, and you only ever sell your potions. Exploration and discovery are not incentivised well. There is a lot of potential, and even now it is one of my favourite games, but it doesn't have that external polish that it needs to shine as a full game.
Incredibly well done video, I feel like I'll need to watch it about 2 more times n order to fully grasp and appreciate all of the points you made
As a big fan of the atelier series, I love how much crafting system evolved along the way.
First thing I did upon seeing this title was scroll down to find someone mentioning Atelier
I like that they change a lot how it works, makes every new game worth to play. The arland trilogy was the most straightfoward from teh ones I have played. The Dusk trilogy had powers/Skills you can do in alchemy. The mysterious trilogy made a tetris-like game. And Ryza has tech trees.
For me (crafting wise): Mysterious > Dusk > Arland > Ryza. I feel Ryza is too comboluted imo. Arland is simpler, more elegant. And the other two are just fun.
They are all fun in their way as well.
Figuring out how to utilise them properly are sometimes hard yet fucking fun and addictive as fuck, damn love this franchise
@@kittyshippercavegirl I did the exact same thing xD
Never heard of Potion Craft, actually looks like a step up on crafting and haggling.
it's pretty fun, it's a free demo right now but there's plenty to do. It held my attention for a few days.
@@InsanePigeon yeah, tried it just today and it has a LOT of things I've been looking for for years.
I absolutely adore the forest’s crafting system, especially how you can specifically place the upgrades on your weapon exactly where you want them. I feel like the Forest is the peak of the crafting system.
I love any tactile crafting system. Minecraft, potion craft and game like that which let's you pick up and put items together. It's the best 😍
i think this video really captures what i love about making tools from the minecraft mod Tinkers' Construct: each resource requires you to go to different places to get it (cobalt or netherite from the nether for example), but early game resources arent a complete chore to get at once you already have late game equipment, and theres a lot of choices and steps you have to make along the way to make and upgrade a tool. each item is completely unique, from the tool type, to the materials and sometimes alloys used in each individual component in it, to the over a dozen upgrades and abilities you can add to it. and its done in such a way so you cant just make an item with maxed stats in literally every department, you have to choose; if you want an unbreakable pickaxe, you can have one, but you'll lose out on a lot of upgrade slots that could've been used towards mining speed, or fortune, or any number of other things
another simpler but similar mod that does this quite well too is Tetra, which uses a system of item integrity
"Iron Ore - Too Unique?"
Every WoW expansion just got called out.
WoW crafting is the most depressing thing I've ever done in a game. You spend a ton of gold getting to max skill by watching a bar fill up over and over making stuff nobody will ever want, for the privilege of competing with 2000 other people making all the exact same stuff. The payoff is getting to see the value of your crafts drop exponentially day by day while you do daily chores for no benefit.
Normally you have to get a college degree to see that kind of lack of return on investment.
@@michaelleue7594 It was a lot better in vanilla days, the gear that wasn't end-game could be sold since it took time to get there, versus the rapid-fire levelling nowadays.
@@JM_Traslo This is true, I'm currently only playing the Classic version of WoW and, while far from perfect, the crafting system is more useful in actually generating revenue and useful adventuring gear, rather than just being a time and money sink, as it seems to be in versions later than maybe WotLK or Cata.
Kingdom come deliverance has the best crafting system in video game history with alchemy, doesn't have the skill based feature but once you master it you feel rewarded
Agreed. Pretty much every other crafting system is just clicking a button. How boring.
Yeah,it can feel tedious but damn does it feel good to actually MAKE the potion you drink
It does have a skill based feature for the skill level. There is a hidden counter or the tracks mistakes. The fewer mistakes you make the more copies of that potion or poison you make. Having a higher skills gives you more room to screw up a step before the max potion count drops.
I love these kinds of videos. As someone who aspires to create. It's nice to have something to refer to with decent points, that would help not only me, but others too. Knowing some of the fundamentals to good game design, (and having a nice place to get those ideas from), eases my nerves in a nice way.
Good to know for things I'm slow-burning the design of. Thank you for your wonderful insightful input
I really like the system in TLoU games. In addition to what you mentioned, the fact that crafting happens in real time, when you’re surrounded by enemies that could easily kill you, makes the system that much more engaging. Especially when I have to decide what to use my resources on in the moment.
I liked it because it felt like part of the survival experience. You had limited resources and you couldn't have everything. So you'd have to make interesting choices, do you want a medical kit for emergencies or a powerful molotov. The game would have been weaker if you just found completed stuff
A very good point indeed.
It made me think that crafting systems could be ever better when you have to factor in not only what to craft but WHEN to craft, and make it a tough decision.
Like in TLoU for instance, perhaps make it so you can only craft when close to infected/enemies, so there are no safe time to run all your crafts, and each craft can potentially cost you your life.
Or something like that, I think it would improve player agency even more, but I don't really know how this could be implemented well, just a trail of thought!
Green Hell has one of the best crafting and UI systems I've ever seen and had the pleasure to experience. The game takes The Forest's "put stuff together and see what you get" crafting system and takes it to the next level. You can mix literally anything that you want, and depending on how smart or lucky you are, you can craft new items or materials.
You want a stone axe? Grab a small stone and embed it into a stick. You want a PROPER stone axe? Well, you have to add another small rock and tie them with a rope.
You want a spear? That's just a long stick. You want a PROPER spear? Well, you can add a stone blade and a rope to hold it tight and presto.
The fact that you HAVE to put those things together and think "Ok, what can come up out of this?" is what made the game's crafting system stick out to me. When the game has you saying "OH GOD, THANK YOU, ANOTHER COCONUT!" out loud, you know it's good.
I really enjoyed the upgrade system from Dragon Quest, and the whole crafting idea from Fantasy Life on the 3DS. There were minigames for each of the tradeskills, but you had to do all the other classes in order to get all your supplies.
I still think Minecraft has the best crafting system since you actually have to move the resources around to make them, kind of like a small puzzle, and it's fast enough that you don't even notice it
Minecraft has S tier crafting,terraria also does,but not the little puzzle
Let's hope the flagship game with "craft" in the title actually does crafting correctly!
The Minecraft crafting system is really pretty good, it even allows some customization. I would even say that smelting and banner crafting is really good. But the brewing system needs an update.
I shudder to imagine what kind of crafting recipe you would need to make a tool like ted cruz
Well, for starters a pea for a brain and a rotten heart
I've been waiting for this video since i learned about potion craft!
The main Minecraft mods and modpacks with good crafting trees are the ones that require you to use one resource for numerous recipes. For example, I'm playing Create Above and Beyond. Kelp is something I need a lot of for both the Andesite Alloy (which itself is used in dozens of recipes) and Belts, which are needed for transporting items.
Witchery was also an excellent mod in 1.7. It required you to tend a witch's garden of about 5 or 6 magic plants and to get your hand on a good handful of vanilla mob drops. It was far less tedious than other mods because each ingredient had 5 or 6 uses.
In my opinion, if you can get a player to think "Now should I use this clay to craft some bricks for my house or porcelain for my crucible?" when they come to the table, you're well on the right track.
Yeah, I was thinking about this myself, and I especially agree with the part about making the middle part interesting; games that can make crafting more interesting and interactive than just “pick recipe, confirm, ingredients are used” make it far more purposeful. Stuff like how BotW and Atelier are more freeform with their recipes, minigames like FFXIV’s, or something like Minecraft letting you freely arrange items, are some of the big things that make these stand out.
Monster hunter also has an amazing system where you have to damage certain parts of the monster like breaking the horns or cutting off the tail to get parts to make equipment. The skill system is also great but it's a bit complex so i won't explain it here.
"Tools" lol
Already a banger at the start. Lmao
Another way to make crafting impactful is to only have it where story requires it. As an example, in Ultima 8, when you get around to learning Pyromancy, you have to make talisman McGuffins to hold the spells and there's not an infinity of candles and ingredients to make them so choose wisely which ones you're going to make and don't waste the spells otherwise you risk being soft-locked. Yeah, U8 had some small issues but it was still a cool game.
In most of my modded minecraft playthroughs I like to include Tinker's Construct, because it's just really satisfying. It has set recipes in the form of parts that you need to craft any kind of tool or weapon (for example, every pickaxe is made of a handle, a bind, and a head); but it also allows for self expression in the form of different materials that you can use to craft them, which contributes to stats along with changing the different colors of the tool. And it also has a decent progression system; in which you start with wooden molds to do parts out of basic materials, until you move onto the forging, where you have to make stuff like gold/clay molds for parts and a smeltery to melt metal in order to open up even more possibilities
Reject crafting
Return to monke
You don't need to craft bananas. monke wisdom - 1 human wisdom - 0
@@ArchitectofGames
- Ook.
- What did he say ?
- Life is way easier when all you have to worry about is "Where will the next banana come from ?"
Haha?
@@_Pike Never heard of the Discworld novels ?
Another bonus to FFXIV's crafting system is the little name tag so your friend knows that yes, you did really craft all of those 400 high quality boiled eggs in their inbox.
*holy shit, you can name the shit you craft?*
@@Ch4pp13 No. There is a little signature near the bottom of the item window that tells you who crafted that item.
@@DarkLotusAlpha dang.
Though still nice that you can leave a reminder on your items that you made them.
This is such a profound examination of a deeply complex system that most people assume is simple, and thus fail at... both in execution but also in explanation. Quite a rare, careful and overwhelmingly accurate explanation of the complexity lurking below, indeed. I am a big fan of your videos. Don't stop.
Monster hunter has always been my favorite in terms of it's main crafting for armor/weapons. I also like what they've done in rise in terms of the consumables crafting by letting you chose what items are auto crafted upon pickup.
Oh no, I didn't hear Samuel Vanderplats at the end of the video! That was always the best part of every video. I'm gonna miss that guy...
"crafting systems dont exist in isolation" merge game developers: allow me to introduce myself
I disagree with the Valheim being tedious.
Personally I feel that is the charm, maneuvering a cart a long way with just enough materials to make it maneuverable, possible even creating a central road to make it go faster to go back and forth.
To go over seas with a boat hunting down Iron, or even creating outpost and make the items you want where you gather you gather the material. gives it a whole different feel to the game. What you make has more value, in my opinion, and is also, essentially, a big part of the game's progression
Discover g how to make carts is a godsend haha
Was going to say this exact thing, if I did not find it in the comments :)
I wish I felt that way. I loved the game until I got about to the swamp boss. At that point, farming and toting about all of that ore just became too tedious for me. When I was younger I probably would have loved it. I just don't have enough time these days to spend hours and hours sailing across the waters just to get a few stacks of ore home.
I just spent 7 fucking hours for iron I disagree
I feel like the main thing most games suffer from in this area is that the collection process for simple materials lets say wood should be both collectable by yourself and buyable from someone else. There are so many games I've played and I have everything I need to upgrade something but as I've not got into a specific area of the game I can't get what is a fairly basic resource to complete the recipe.