Thoughts on crafting systems?

[Eschaton]

Reading these two viewpoint, I have a suggestion:

What if crafting was required for every-other-tier of armor/weapons? Like you start with lvl 1 and can but lvl 2, have to craft lvl 3, can but lvl 4, etc... that way if you craft, you can get better gear faster, but the game is a noticeably harder. (or possibly only every 3rd tier (2, 5, 7, etc) is purchasable... BUT, the game *can* we won without ever crafting, it just will mean you take twice as long dealing damage to the boss and need twice as many high-potions as if you bothered to craft the ultimate armor and weapon.

Thoughts?

That sounds about right.  I think. 

Basically, you're saying you can finish the game without crafting, but it would be like beating Final Fantasy X without using the Customize command?  A self-imposed challenge?

There are a couple of ways this could be used to reward certain player types:

1.  Just like grinding for levels, players could farm drops as crafting components (I HATE the words "ingredient" and "recipe."  You're forging a sword, not baking a cake!).   Kids who love the monotonous grind would enjoy this.

2.  Sidequests that yield components.  Have fun writing them all.  People who enjoy the narrative and questing would like this.

3.  Placing them on the various maps of the world.  Bonus points if they don't respawn; the player has to make a choice with limited resources.  People who like exploring would enjoy this.

Me being the masochist designer I am, I'd force the player to go out and explore for components, rather than give them the ability to grind for them. 

In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing.

 

[Darkfire1408]

One way to handle the RNG Drops would be to have all the crafting materials craft into higher rank materials.

For example, one could craft 25 stones into a rock, smelt 10 rocks into an iron ingot, 5 iron ingots into a steel ingot. The stones would drop at an annoyingly high rate, the rocks fairly commonly, the iron ingots somewhat rare, and the steel ingot really rare. that way, you could get really lucky and get a steel ingot from a mob, or craft a crap-ton of low rank materials into one. Farming would be intregal to the game, but you wouldn't waste hours to get the one rare drop. If you don't get it, before long you'll have the materials to craft it.

One could also make use of junk from failed attempts to craft say 50 of them to a stone. That way it doesn't just sit in your inventory and sell for 1 gold each at the next shop.  

 

[TheGreatEater]

The random loot drop doesn't bother me if the item can be obtained through alternative means. The other major factor that I didn't mention, is that I'm only against rare random loot drops when the game makes it a GOAL for the player to obtain one of every item, such as the Collector's Books in Tales games. If there is no such goal, then it means little to me that there is a rare weapon drop that has no alternative means to obtain. That weapon will probably be outdated in a dungeon or two anyways. All I want to make sure to convey, is that RNG-heavy systems like Loot Drops are easy ways to make your game less fun and more frustrating, and should be looked at carefully. If your game has other systems that work cooperatively with your random loot drops, (such as your example of bosses with guaranteed rare drops), then it's not going to have that negative impact I've experienced so much recently.

Here is an example that's fresh in my mind. I played Ni No Kuni earlier this year, and that game has a Crafting System where the crafting materials are obtain as random loot drops or rewards for completing quests.

So right off the bat, we at least have an alternative means to obtain materials than the random loot drops. Complete quests and you can earn some of the rarer materials. You won't be able to get enough rare materials to complete every item, though, but it's a start.

Once you reach the end-game, there are a LOT of ultimate equipments (ultimate sword, ultimate axe, ultimate gun, ultimate armour, ultimate claws, etc, etc). There are super rare materials that have an insanely low drop chance. The game makes it SUCH a hassle to obtain those ultimate equipments, that it quickly becomes a nuisance, and detracts from my overall experience playing the game. It is within my nature and play style, to try and obtain the best equipment, fight the toughest bosses, etc, and games that actively make it annoying and frustrating to do so are not designing the game with "fun factor" in mind. If you get sick and tired of spending 5 hours grinding for the loot drops and only finding 2 out of the 15 that you need, Ni No Kuni's optional boss (and toughest boss in the game) at the very least has a 100% chance to drop a RANDOM rare material. There are perhaps 10 different rare materials. So every time you defeat this boss (you can fight him as many times as you want, but he takes about 10-15 minutes to beat even when you're at max level), you have a 10% chance to find the material you actually want. This isn't a perfect solution, but it was nice to have a guaranteed chance of finding SOMETHING. If I was to propose a fix for that, allow the player to choose which rare material they get from the boss.Because otherwise, I'm still being subjected to RNG crap.

Don't all RPG's have heavy amounts of RNG outside of Loot Drops? I mean Diablo 3 is a prime example. It drops a legendary one time every two hours [with a 10% boost every fifteen minutes past that until you get one if you didn't receive a legendary in that 2 hr time limit]. Then you have the whole Black Smith, Enchantress, and Gambling System. They are pure RNG, and have such a small chance of hitting a Legendary, or Ancestral Legendary. 

Or the Final Fantasy. I honestly never was able to obtain the ultimates without a game shark. But even they were mostly RNG. So if you're playing an RPG [at least all the ones I've played], or a game with a loot system. You'll always be affected by RNG. 

___________

As for your comment on Rare items needed for equipment. I agree that grinding for hours sucks, but I also agree that different ways of getting that item make games great [like the Mana Khemia series. That was Crafting heavy, but done right.]

 

[bgillisp]

How I'm handling crafting in my game is I'm using it as a way to upgrade your potions (so technically its Alchemy). It's totally optional, but if you don't like all those weak potions from the beginning of the game sitting in your inventory, you can upgrade them to the next level. You never need to use it, but if you do choose to use it, you can brew higher level potions a tad earlier than the game gives them out.

 

[dungeon diver]

I like the Vagrant Story approach where components can be assembled and disassembled at will, so you can carry over elements of a weapon when improving its quality.

You can win the game with the three weapons you're given at the start of the game thanks to attributes like affinity, but the player always has the option of alleviating difficulty with the horizontal progression of reassembling weapons.