Crafting mechanics, what games do them well?

Discussions and debates about video games

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Crafting mechanics, what games do them well?

Post by OgreBattle »

In games like MH it's as simple as getting the right parts and handing over some money to a weaponsmith NPC, though other games it gets more complex than that.

What games stand out in that regard?

I'm somewhat familiar with the FFXIV system, which I've heard is basically the Everquest 2 system:
*Durability - Durability is the number of steps you can take when you're crafting an item. Each crafting action that alters the item's progress or quality consumes 10 points of durability by default, and some abilities can reduce the consumption or restore durability. Your crafting session ends when the durability of the item hits 0. If the progress has not reached 100% at that time, your synthesis fails and you lose some or all of the crafting materials. The starting Durability varies depending on the item. Items used mainly for further crafting (such as leather, bars of metal, cloth etc) usually have 40 points, equipment pieces have 60 or more.

*Progress - Progress is the measurement towards the completion of the item. You successfully craft an item when the progress bar becomes full. If you fail to reach the maximum progress before the durability reaches 0, your synthesis of the item fails and you lose some or all of the crafting materials. No further actions can be taken after the progress bar is filled, regardless of CP or Durability remaining. The higher your Craftsmanship stat, the more progress is made with most actions if successful.

*Quality - Quality is the probability that the item you're making will be a High Quality (HQ) item. You can increase Quality % by performing certain crafting actions and by initiating the synthesis using HQ ingredients. Quality is dictated by the attribute Control. The higher the % reached the more experience will be gained from the crafting as well. Not all items have a HQ version however. Using HQ crafting materials also affects the % that the item starts with.

*CP - CP, or crafting points, are required to use some of your crafting actions. While crafting, your CP will decrease as you perform your abilities according to the indicated number on the ability icon. If the CP cost of a crafting ability is greater than your remaining CP, you cannot use that ability. CP regenerates to full after you complete a craft. A few abilities can restore CP during the crafting process under the right condition.

*Condition - Condition is visible just below durability and is visually apparent on the glowing ball of energy that represents the item. The condition of the item only effects the increase in quality of the item from touch commands. Each action or "step" taken in the crafting process can change this condition, and other than Normal these always last for only one step. There are four conditions:
Excellent - Gives a large bonus to the efficiency of touch commands. The glowing ball rapidly changes colors. This has a 10% chance of occurring but will not happen after an Excellent, Good, or Poor condition.

--Good - Gives a minor bonus to the efficiency of touch commands. The glowing ball is a orange red. This has a 25% chance of occurring, but can not happen after a good, excellent, or poor status.

--Normal - Efficiency of touch commands remains as stated. The glowing ball is white. Every synthesis starts on this.
Poor - Gives a minor demerit to the efficiency of touch commands. The glowing ball is purple and black. This always and only occurs on the step after Excellent.

The goal of the process is to get the highest quality possible and complete the progression of the item before the durability reaches zero. Success means the item is crafted, but failure means a loss of materials (some materials can be salvaged randomly). High quality items have higher stats where applicable, affect the base quality if used in further crafting and double the rewards when turned in for Tradecraft leves, Grand Company supply dailies and Ecatl Nine Delivery. Class quests and most story quests do not take quality of the item into account, although some quests (particularly crafting and gathering class quests and Ecatl Nine dailies) will explicitly demand HQ items.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Mar 18, 2016 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Stahlseele
King
Posts: 5974
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:51 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Post by Stahlseele »

Fallout 4 has a good crafting system for example.
Every bit of lint you find in the world can be broken down into components which can then be used for crafting other stuff.
That what you are looking for?

And of course, there is always Minecraft . .
It's right there in the fucking name after all.
Especially with mods you can get some incredible crafting and other stuff going.
Last edited by Stahlseele on Fri Mar 18, 2016 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
User avatar
Leress
Prince
Posts: 2770
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Leress »

Mana Khemia.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
]
The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.
User avatar
GreatGreyShrike
Master
Posts: 208
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2014 8:58 am

Post by GreatGreyShrike »

First off, the game Factorio is basically a logistics game that is nothing BUT a crafting system, and it's amazing. You mine ore to make plate to make components and drill oil that you then refine and do all sorts of shit and eventually make robots and trains and guns and everything, in a giant mess of a factory. It's wonderful and if you want a game that is basically purely a crafting system, I strongly recommend it.

In terms of RPGs or other games that have things in them besides the crafting system... the game that comes to mind the most is the Diablo 2 mod Median.It's based on Diablo 2, but it's crazy and super fun. The crafting system makes a lot of the normal grindiness of D2 a lot better, along with making the mod's ton of endgame content more interesting and accessible. Some of the highlights of the mod's effects:

1) All mid-tier gear items are basically guaranteed and fairly easy to obtain any one you desire for all characters. These items, called 'tiered uniques', have various internal levels from 1-6 with better stats but higher requirements at each level, and if you don't like one that drops you can turn it into a currency that you can spend to *make* any other 'tiered unique' you want (at about 10 found items -> 1 made item). This means that you can guarantee a certain minimum level of gear for every character with minimum amounts of grind, with luck in drops mostly relegated to "I found that item that I wanted without having to make it" so that you can save the currency it gives you. This mid-tier gear is really quite powerful and will carry you through all the normal (non-endgame) content, and let you get to places where you can find crazy good gear that drops more rarely. Also, this currency is used for later crafting recipies so finding these basically never is bad. In this way, the crafting system guarantees you have some minimal level of gear across the board before you start doing crazy endgame content that can get you to the absurdly powerful gear that is not guaranteed.

2) A vast majority of end tier items that drop can be turned into a type of currency your character can eat a large number of (500) for permanent stat bonuses. If you find some end-tier item you don't need, you can do this so it's never disappointing when your Sorceress find a end-game bow or whatever - you always get *something* out of it. You don't feel nearly as much regret if you are playing in singleplayer and not participating in trading etc.

3) All items are super customizable. Almost every item has slots for runes and gems and jewels that allow for the item to get a bunch of bonuses, and the jewels themselves can be crafted, AND every item can be 'mystic orbed'. Mystic orbing gives the item bonus stats like elemental resistance, damage, chance of casting a spell, bonuses to stats, all sorts of stuff... and also raises the level requirement on the item. So stuff that has lower level requirements and lower built-in bonuses can be raised to have custom bonuses on them, and even the highest tier items can have a few of these used on them to make them more powerful and different. If you find an amazing sword except it has no +life after every kill and you need that stat to sustain yourself... you can just put a bunch of it on the weapon to 'fix' it and make the sword useable for you. Runewords, from the original D2 a set of specific runes in an order, are in the mod a bunch of jewels +1 rune at the end- this gives the items a lot of flexibility and customization.

4) All sorts of different endgame content areas with unique challenges and different drop rates. Unique items have a better chance to be found in a level based on the Amazon D2 lore with a huge number of Amazons with bows and stuff in it, while high-tier set items are found in a level based on Kurast's backstory, etc. Each of the farming areas is super challenging, fun, and difficult to play, and each plays differently, and different classes excel at each. However, all the endgame spots can in principle spawn basically almost everything, even if each area has a 'specialty' - so just being bad at one of these areas doesn't really lock you out of much.

5) The items themselves are super different from one another and fun to use and experiment with. A lot of them give chances to cast spells on hitting enemies or on killing enemies or on being hit or whatever. A lot of them give bonuses to custom skills you can't get elsewhere in the game. A lot of them give things like reanimates that have unique abilities. Some items give amazing bonuses but have giant penalties and drawbacks as well that makes your character play differently. A lot of different builds are enabled just by crazy items that give unique bonuses.
User avatar
maglag
Duke
Posts: 1912
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 10:17 am

Post by maglag »

For me, the favorite crafting system is no crafting system. I play video games to relax my brain, not to do glorified lists of taxes.

I can kinda tolerate something where the crafting components don't consume main inventory space. So that after some hours of playing I can just drop by the workshop or whatever and turn all the crap I collected into a bunch of random stuff for shit and giggles.

When playing Fallout/Elder scrolls, I basically skip the crafting choices whenever possible and abandon the weighty crafting stuff, just loot money and potions/drugs and new interesting pieces of ready-to-use gear.

Yeah, I'll never get the super/duper custom item that abuses the hell out of the crafting rules. I think I got a flaming sword in Fallout 3 once, but that was mostly because I stumbled upon the recipe early on and just happened to have the right components to craft it right away and HOLY HELL FLAMING SWORD IN MY POST-APOCALYPTIC GAME! Never bothered with the custom craft guns even when I tripped on the recipes for those, plenty of other guns to use.

I also never got in the Minecraft craze. I could go assemble some real solid miniatures or paint a drawing or something if I feel like putting brainpower into being creative.
Last edited by maglag on Sat Mar 19, 2016 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

maglag wrote:I also never got in the Minecraft craze. I could go assemble some real solid miniatures or paint a drawing or something if I feel like putting brainpower into being creative.
You... are really dumb.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
PhoneLobster
King
Posts: 6403
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by PhoneLobster »

What do you want in a "Crafting Mechanic".

Because if it turns out to just be another fucking excuse for more dumb fucking Grinding it can fuck off.

Most crafting mechanics by that reasoning can fuck off.

Indeed it seems like much of the time if it doesn't involve stupid lot of dumb fucking grinding the words "crafting mechanic" don't get used to describe it.

Hell it's almost like these days any game that talks up it's awesome "Crafting Mechanics" pretty much might as well just be yelling "GRIND GRIND GRIND! THIS GAME HAS IT, THEN WE ADDED A WHOLE EXTRA BIT FOR NO REASON THAT WAS JUST NOTHING BUT EVEN MORE GRIND, BECAUSE THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH FUCKING GRIND! ARE YOU HAPPY YOU FUCKING GRINDERS? NO? THAT'S RIGHT YOU FUCKERS ALWAYS WANT EVEN MOAR GRIND!"
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

PhoneLobster wrote:What do you want in a "Crafting Mechanic".

Because if it turns out to just be another fucking excuse for more dumb fucking Grinding it can fuck off.

Most crafting mechanics by that reasoning can fuck off.

Indeed it seems like much of the time if it doesn't involve stupid lot of dumb fucking grinding the words "crafting mechanic" don't get used to describe it.

Hell it's almost like these days any game that talks up it's awesome "Crafting Mechanics" pretty much might as well just be yelling "GRIND GRIND GRIND! THIS GAME HAS IT, THEN WE ADDED A WHOLE EXTRA BIT FOR NO REASON THAT WAS JUST NOTHING BUT EVEN MORE GRIND, BECAUSE THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH FUCKING GRIND! ARE YOU HAPPY YOU FUCKING GRINDERS? NO? THAT'S RIGHT YOU FUCKERS ALWAYS WANT EVEN MOAR GRIND!"
That's a drop rate issue, not a crafting mechanics issue.

A well implemented crafting system resolves drop rate issues, since they let you turn common loot into the shit you want, instead of being forced to fight the same damn enemy 1000 times for that 1/50 drop rate sword you need.

Heck, a badly implemented crafting system can go the other direction. Take, for example, smithing in Skyrim. There isn't enough useful shit for you to smith. You'll just keep improving your best weapons and that will be that. The problem with that system isn't the crafting, it's the learn by doing skill system, which forces you to grind iron daggers all day to get a useful skill level. And then when you do you make one set of armor and one or two weapons and that's fucking it. And that's because materials are extremely common and there isn't enough variety in equipment. If you're a one-handed specialist you can get by with literally four weapons and a shield. If you're a two-handed specialist you only have three choices.

A good crafting system is an open-ended toolkit that permits near-infinite variation.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

All games with crafting need to accept that there is this thing called the Internet, and thus everyone actually does have every recipe at hand. So trying to make "recipe books spread around the land" a limiting factor* or making "trial and error and wasting ingredients" a big thing is automatically doomed to failure.

So that kind of rules out a whole bunch of things, and overall I'd say the Atelier _____ games do it pretty well? You're still probably going to just use gamefaqs, but even if you don't, you'll find they work pretty well:

You have a bunch of recipes known, and you can't wildly experiment by just saying "I'm blending X, Y and Z!" You have to start with a recipe, and then where it says "one water, two flour, one milk, one arcane crystal", you could try different "It's close enough to water", different "It's basically flour", different types of milk, and different magic rocks. This might just alter the quality (and thus the sell cost and the effectiveness), and it will from then on tell you what changes that combo will make, and will show it's suggestion for the best quality from the things you've tried.

Or doing that might result in you just ruining it. Or it might result in you creating something completely different and getting a new recipe. Also, when you encounter weird new items, it sometimes "unlocks" recipes for making more of that, or for using that item in other things, so your character sort of does think like an engineer, going "Hmm, a rubber band, interesting, I bet I could use this to hurl rocks at people!"

Admittedly, the RPG part is quite laughable in many of these, because the game really is about crafting (and building up relationship values like a dating sim), so you just craft a bunch of bombs and win every fight ever.

*Unless you do the Storm of Zehir thing, where you literally need the recipe book in order to do the crafting. This takes the fun and discovery of trial and error out of it even more than the "just look it up on gamefaqs" they are trying to prevent, and as such is dumb.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
PhoneLobster
King
Posts: 6403
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by PhoneLobster »

hyzmarca wrote:That's a drop rate issue, not a crafting mechanics issue.
It's entire additional (and usually needlessly additional) categories of items to be generated through various and most commonly in association with the words "crafting mechanics" terrible drop rates. And all too often the things that generate crafting drops are the least interesting and interactive (and most blatantly tacked on) activities in the game.

In fact even in the "better" cases Crafting mechanics routinely almost entirely consist of interacting with drop mechanics. You need this many of this this many of that go collect it from the drop mechanics THE END.

OCCASIONALLY they tack on a fucking wait bar on the end of that. Maybe a mini game that might as well be five whole seconds of babies first difficulty level guitar hero. Maybe they do the thing minecraft does, which is an "experimental" tile pattern memory game that is actually when you think about it not so much a "game" as it is a disguise for an inefficient UI that requires a surprisingly large number of superfluous clicks and wiki look ups.

But even on those occasions the vast bulk of crafting is going and collecting those drops. You don't get to say "no thats the drop rates!". Fuck you the drop rates ARE the crafting mechanic. Even mine craft with it's really relatively generous crafting drop rates and really relatively elaborate "actually assembling it bit" is a crafting system predominantly about, and in which you spend the most time, GATHERING.
A good crafting system is an open-ended toolkit that permits near-infinite variation.
No. That isn't a good crafting system. That is an imaginary fucking ideal fantasy inside your brain.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sun Mar 20, 2016 5:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
K
King
Posts: 6487
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by K »

The Witcher has a pretty great crafting system. You collect loads of materials all the time from monsters from normal fighting and the basic limit is the kind of alcohol you find. You never need to farm anything because different items all represent a basic set of components, so sometimes the same potion is made from flowers on one day and ghoul brains the next.
Last edited by K on Sun Mar 20, 2016 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
maglag
Duke
Posts: 1912
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 10:17 am

Post by maglag »

Koumei wrote:All games with crafting need to accept that there is this thing called the Internet, and thus everyone actually does have every recipe at hand. So trying to make "recipe books spread around the land" a limiting factor* or making "trial and error and wasting ingredients" a big thing is automatically doomed to failure.
...
*Unless you do the Storm of Zehir thing, where you literally need the recipe book in order to do the crafting. This takes the fun and discovery of trial and error out of it even more than the "just look it up on gamefaqs" they are trying to prevent, and as such is dumb.
I do not understand.

If a player wants to be surprised and get "the fun and discovery of trial and error", why would they go check gamefaqs right away? Isn't that basically counter-productive for the objective of being surprised?

That's like reading a police mystery book and then jumping straight to the end to see who the actual criminal was all along.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

In the NWN games, you don't necessarily want the fun of trial and error, you just want your Staff of Power or whatever. In that case, you just check gamefaqs, find out the basic requirements, then hurry to do that. Or for Flaming Acidic Shocking Frosty weapons and so on and so forth.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

Crafting mechanics, like most mechanics, can be designed (well or poorly) to evoke different kinds of fun.

Minecraft is a game about discovery and exploration, so the hunting for materials requires exploration and discovery, and the most important part of crafting (the recipes) was clearly just outsourced to a wiki since one guy was making the game alone (and now NEI, and look at the console versions, which just let you create things if you have the components).

But crafting systems don't have to be about discovery in the crafting system. If something locks recipes behind finding the recipes in the first place, then it just means they want you to explore the world, not the crafting system.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
User avatar
maglag
Duke
Posts: 1912
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 10:17 am

Post by maglag »

Koumei wrote:In the NWN games, you don't necessarily want the fun of trial and error, you just want your Staff of Power or whatever. In that case, you just check gamefaqs, find out the basic requirements, then hurry to do that. Or for Flaming Acidic Shocking Frosty weapons and so on and so forth.
Maybe my question wasn't clear enough.

You: People can't enjoy the fun of trial and error anymore because they can just go check gamefaqs.
Me: If people want the fun of trial and error, they could just choose not to check gamefaqs.
You: Actually, people may not really care about the fun of trial and error, they just want a Staff of Power ASAP.

So I'll repeat, if we have player A, and player A wants the fun of trial and error, why would player A check gamefaqs for spoilers? I'm not talking about player B who just wants to get the big numbers and shiny effects ASAP.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
MGuy
Prince
Posts: 4774
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:18 am
Location: Indiana

Post by MGuy »

maglag wrote:
Koumei wrote:In the NWN games, you don't necessarily want the fun of trial and error, you just want your Staff of Power or whatever. In that case, you just check gamefaqs, find out the basic requirements, then hurry to do that. Or for Flaming Acidic Shocking Frosty weapons and so on and so forth.
Maybe my question wasn't clear enough.

You: People can't enjoy the fun of trial and error anymore because they can just go check gamefaqs.
Me: If people want the fun of trial and error, they could just choose not to check gamefaqs.
You: Actually, people may not really care about the fun of trial and error, they just want a Staff of Power ASAP.

So I'll repeat, if we have player A, and player A wants the fun of trial and error, why would player A check gamefaqs for spoilers? I'm not talking about player B who just wants to get the big numbers and shiny effects ASAP.
mag you missed the part where she specified that in NWN games you don't want to do that because trial and error directly fucks with your ability to succeed.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
Koumei
Serious Badass
Posts: 13871
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: South Ausfailia

Post by Koumei »

Yeah, in NWN the crafting system is a very small subsystem tacked onto the main game, and not very good. In NWN2, your main use of it is still likely to be "making cheap shit that sells okay", and your actual reason for finding ore deposits has fuck-all to do with crafting, it's all about making your base stronger. Crafting is still not the point of the game, and if you're even bothering with it beyond "Craft (Alchemy) + Craft (Trap) = Money", you're not there to experiment and see the joys of discovering you can give your armour Spell Resistance 10. You're there to tailor-make equipment for winning the game (in case you specialise in a weapon that doesn't have any fancy unique named weapons for a long time).

Compare with Atelier ___ or Mana Khemia or Minecraft or Terraria, where crafting is actually the point of the game, so people might genuinely want to play around and discover things, and explore the world for new ingredients.

So perhaps the big thing is "If you want a really good crafting system, your crafting system should probably be the core of the game. If it's just tacked on as a way to customise your gear for more power, then everyone will know it's tacked on for that."
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
User avatar
maglag
Duke
Posts: 1912
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 10:17 am

Post by maglag »

But in Terraria and Minecraft, if you don't check gamefaqs and go by trial and error, there's a very high chance of "directly fucks with your ability to succeed" happening. The mobs will have a higher chance of killing you, or you may just immolate yourself in lava.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

maglag wrote:But in Terraria and Minecraft, if you don't check gamefaqs and go by trial and error, there's a very high chance of "directly fucks with your ability to succeed" happening. The mobs will have a higher chance of killing you, or you may just immolate yourself in lava.
Except that is completely wrong.

First, your ability to succeed in the game is never effected in any way, because they are open fucking world, which means that you never have to deal with anything until you choose to deal with it, which means choosing to deal with it after or before you do the things that make it possible to do has literally zero to do with the crafting system.

Secondly, at this point between 0 and 5% of those games actually require or even particularly benefit from gamefaqs or trial and error.

Terraria tells you what you can make with the stuff you have on you. PC minecraft has an whole interface where you can type in any word and see what makes it. Console minecraft just uses the terraria system of giving you a list of all the things you can make with what you have in your inventory.

It's 2016, it's time to stop complaining about how because the alpha version of a game was missing half it's interface in 2010, it therefore follows that all games (even ones that released with a complete interface like Terraria) force you to use wikis.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
schpeelah
Knight-Baron
Posts: 509
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 7:38 pm

Post by schpeelah »

Kaelik wrote:PC minecraft has an whole interface where you can type in any word and see what makes it.
NEI is a mod. Vanilla Minecraft doesn't tell you shit.
Korwin
Duke
Posts: 2055
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:49 am
Location: Linz / Austria

Post by Korwin »

Path of Exile has random crafting*.
And the crafting materials double as currency.

*There is some non random crafting, with the Masters, when you Level them.
Red_Rob wrote: I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
DSMatticus
King
Posts: 5271
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 5:32 am

Post by DSMatticus »

"Shows you what you can make with what's in your inventory" is not super useful. First, it does a very bad job of telling you what's actually in the game. If I want to find out what kinds of potions I can make, do I just... grab every plant plus some water bottles and head over to check? Jokes on you, the spelunker potion uses gold ore. Second, you're probably going to have a couple dozen chests worth of crafting ingredients stored at your base - many times more than you can fit in your measly inventory. Even trying all the combinations that way would be brutal. Not to mention Terraria doesn't even teach you how to create potions to begin with (you put a bottle on a flat surface). Terraria is nightmarishly unplayable without a wiki. And from a design standpoint, the only real solution is "put the wiki in the game." I.e. add a giant searchable database of items and recipes into the game. I'm not sure that's a significant issue - very few people are playing Terraria without access to the internet, and Terraria's crafting really is (thankfully) click-and-go.

Vanilla Minecraft survival doesn't have a search bar or recipe look-up function unless they added it very recently. That's NEI, a utility mod that does basically exactly what I said above (put a searchable database of items and recipes into the game). It's very, very, very nice when you are playing modded minecraft, because instead of having a billion different wikis open (one for the base game and one for each mod) you just use the game itself. Minecraft's crafting system (when wiki-assisted/NEI-assisted) is really not that annoying. All of the vanilla recipes are very simple. The problems with the crafting system only become apparent when you get into modding, and suddenly you have recipes that are 6+ steps deep with each step requiring a full grid of 4+ different materials. The complexity rockets out of control. IC2 is basically a joke at this point, and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemies. Even Thermal Expansion - the hip new user-friendly alternative - is fairly difficult to teach to casual players (Minecraft's core audience). Part of that is a limitation of the system itself (without mod-specific components like gears and plates and shit, you risk recipe collisions and make one or more items uncraftable), and part of that is a simple lack of discipline on the part of mod creators.

But principally, Terraria and Minecraft are solid examples of videogame crafting mechanics in use. Without crafting, you could barely call either a game. Crafting is the game's advancement system, and it's not clear what you could replace it with that wouldn't completely destroy the experience. Both systems could be improved by having an NEI-like system as a vanilla mechanic, and Minecraft in particular could be improved by one-click crafting. But otherwise, they're the least tacked-on crafting systems you'll probably ever find.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Mon Mar 21, 2016 7:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
maglag
Duke
Posts: 1912
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 10:17 am

Post by maglag »

I remember now that there is a video game crafting system that I reasonably like-the one in Dominions 4.

You need magic gems for crafting (or blood slaves), but said gems/slaves can also be used for summoning monsters or powerful battle magic, and usually you'll want to distribute your gems along those three paths, which I consider pretty good game design.

The paths needed to craft shit also just happen to be the same exact paths for using other types of magic. So any fire mage can craft any of the minor fire shit, and you need a high fire path mage to craft the more powerful fire shit. All the parallel resource you need to invest is research in the Construction school, and even then said school comes with a few extras like learning how to summon robots and buffing your troops armor/weapons in battle.

Also the UI is pretty simple, just select a mage, select forge, and you can see what they're able to craft right away, including items that would demand strapping one or two boosters to your forger.
Last edited by maglag on Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Post by Judging__Eagle »

GreatGreyShrike wrote:First off, the game Factorio is basically a logistics game that is nothing BUT a crafting system, and it's amazing. You mine ore to make plate to make components and drill oil that you then refine and do all sorts of shit and eventually make robots and trains and guns and everything, in a giant mess of a factory. It's wonderful and if you want a game that is basically purely a crafting system, I strongly recommend it.
If any game is to have a crafting system; Factorio is certainly a good example of how to do it.

The recipes are all known from the start of the game (even in the Alpha builds of the game); and a player can determine how they will climb the tech tree to get what they want, from where they are now.

The fact that an efficient and long-minded enough player can build Von Neuman (i.e. self-replicating) factories and/or use templated factory sub-systems; means that the game is gives you tools for mass factorization of the environment.

Additionally; all of the foundation ingredients are able to be collected by the player, without needing to actually automate. The automation simply means that the player can walk up to a chest (or have ferried to them via Drones) and scoop up gathered resources/items without having to spend their own play time mining up every unit of copper/iron/coal they want to use.

I will admit that my own Factorio skills sort of chug along the time that the 5th tier Factory Modules that need to be mass-produced for the Alpha state of the game's "Rocket Tower" structure (I know it's changed; I just haven't played since then). Also, I've never quite figured out how to set up effective rail-mining camps.

Really my rail-laying has been to get rapid transport through forests to Alien nesting grounds to slaughter them.

The really ironic thing about Factorio is that it's crafting system fades into the background if you're good enough; and you can focus instead on getting unnecessarily large amounts of resources via train-mining; or ramp up the Research by designing more and more efficient ways to slaughter alien nests.

My best method for scrounging up Alien Nest items involved using railways as ways to reach very far from my base; and return; so that I could reach the Aliens that I hadn't wiped out. Wearing power armour with Auto-Turrets installed allowed for constant fire; even when fleeing; and makes kiting hordes easier. By day I'd tool around in a Tank + Explosive rounds; and only pick up the tank during the night to not wreck it on trees too much. A lot of generator capacity with low shields was really effective at soaking hits. Being able to throw Attack Drones/Freeze/Poison/etc. from vehicles is nice; but I prefer to round up enemies before grenading them.

Later I figured out that I could stack Speed modules into my Power Armour. Six of them in a Mk II Power Armour pretty much makes any non-train vehicle obsolete.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

Odin Sphere's alchemy, cooking, and planting seeds to water with souls of the slain for sheep to grow out and eat is among my favorite crafting systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJeYpwxqGOQ
Post Reply