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I have always wanted to have a talk about different systems in video games, so I'm going to try it. First up item crafting in video games. As a whole, I feel that item crafting hasn't been well developed in most games. Maybe that's by design as most games use it as a side activity that dosen't tie into the main game.

I can think of two games that do crafting well. Arcanum and dead rising. Both use basically the same system where you stick two unrelated items and get a third one. A very simple system, but they work very well in practice. The simplicity works as an advantage because it lets you start crafting right away.

Now I pass the ball to you. What experiences have you had with item crafting. How did the systems work out and how do they compare to other systems you have seen? Do you have ideas that you think would be neat to see?

For most games, absolute game breakers.

Game that did it right?

Diablo 2, horadric cube ftw.

I once had an interested Crafting idea, but it tied into the entire game, and it wasn't too useful without knowing the rest of the games mechanics :/

Bout time for supper, so I'll explain when I get back.

I really like the system described in the OP because I love experimenting with different combinations of items.

Guild Wars 2 uses that system, thankfully.

Soladrin wrote:For most games, absolute game breakers.

Game that did it right?

Diablo 2, horadric cube ftw.

Ugh, my least favorite part of the game...

To each their own

I loved making rare weapons, to stumble upon that min-maxed awesome thing I've always wanted.

I love making rare weapons too, purely because they are rare and few people know the secret recipe.

Apart from it being listed on the old arreat summit site, right?

Shebang, it still exists.

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/cube.shtml

This is why I hate wiki's.

I played Ladder on b.net, not knowing that would seriously cripple my efforts, especialy when I was doing hardcore...

Oh god... I just remembered my lvl 83 barb dying because of a dill weed betraying me at diablo on hell. :(... the horror...

I'm not terribly into Diablo to be honest, I haven't played it in years.

I haven't either, I'm talking about back in the day, I was hardcore into it... and into hardcore, huh, funny how that works.

Though I never grabbed a Ladder spot below 100 on the euro ladder.

Spent to much time being a dick to opposing clans I guess.

Anyway, lets end the diablo off topicness. Back to craftyness!

I loved the crafting system from amalur. Salvage gear you find for all kinds of parts, then use those to make new items, with stats based on your skill and parts levels.

I played it a few times casually many years ago, that's about it.

Amalur is pretty good.

Ok, so first, my game:

For those of you who played Shadowbane, imagine that. For those of you who didn't, imagine that everywhere is a PVP zone, and you are never truely safe except for one or two Safe Cities, and any city your guild/nation has fortified. Your level 20, and a level 70 just showed up? I hate to say it, but your going to die. This makes going anywhere incredibly dangerous, and you need PVP characters/Players to escort people.

There are Dungeons, like in Guild Wars; out in the open areas, but once you get into them, it's completely instanced; your safe. Inside these dungeons, you fight 2-3 (optional) Sub Bosses and one Major Boss. These Sub Bosses all drop peices of an Item, and going about collecting them would take you two hours to complete the dungeon. Skipping them would decrease it down to One hour, Fifteen Minutes.

But wait, what if you don't like PVP OR Organized PVE? You don't have the time to do anything that long, and you don't like PVP. Well... you Farm creeps outside of each dungeon, granting you..... Turtle Claws. Now, the entire area is themed around Tutles, and the Dungeon is apart of this Theme, so it's a Turtlely area. Each Turtle Claw gives you .025% increased damage against the Turtle Boss, but after the boss Fight, it's completely destroyed.

So, how does all this fit into the Crafting System?

Well, the Crafter (Which you have to completely spec into, not just add it onto any build) can take those Sub Boss Items, mix them together, and make the Master Key! With the Master Key, the moment you step into the dungeon, you can use it and skip directly to the Boss, turning that 1h 15m raid into a short Boss Fight for Loot. After five uses, the Master Key breaks, forcing you to collect the peices again.

But what about the Turtle Claws, you say? Well, the Crafter can turn those into the Turtle Claw Staff, increasing the damage bonus to .035% per Claw, and allowing them to be used up to Five Times. So 20 Claws could be used without a Crafter for .5% increased damage once, but they could be turned into the staff for .7% increased damage for five uses. Yeah, that's not alot, but once you get 100 Claws into it, that's 3.5%. 200, and that's 7%. Not alot on Paper, but once you put it on someone who already does crap ton of damage.....

Crafting isn't necessary, but it does help alot using this sort of system.

I play this game, I think it's called Minecraft or something.

It's got a decent crafting system. It can be fleshed out a bit, but it's Ok.

Anyone recall the sequence in Dark messiah where you can hand forge your own sword. There was also a mode for oblivion that did a like thing. Crafting not through a menu, but through interaction with the world.

I'm also going to make mention of the sims medevil. The actual crafting is very basic (It's a menu with results based on happiness), but the game dose a good job of involving crafting in quests and setting entire quests around forging of a item. Something most games don't do.

Fallout 3 had rudimentary crafting, but there is one thing that it did really well. The game knew that it would take you a long time to round up all the parts to make things, so they made there crafted weapons unique and powerful so the effort was actually worth it.

Another thing I like in crafting systems is having different stations as it were, being able to make EVERYTHING at an omni-potent "crafting bench" is a bit of a mood killer.

Minecraft does it alright, I suppose. Terarria's is minimal, but it works. x+y+z= A

No order or placement to consider.

I dislike terraria's system as there is no experimentation aspect at all, you can't fail to produce something.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Minecraft does it alright, I suppose. Terarria's is minimal, but it works. x+y+z= A

No order or placement to consider.

Minecraft's draw your item style works rather well when the item your making actually looks like the recipe. The pick, the axe, ect. Other times the recipe is less clear like the cake.

Terarria's is what I like to call shopping list style. I have never been a huge fan of shopping list crafting, but it's the most common type of crafting. I wonder why that is?

Assasins creed revelations has thebest item/ weapon creations (bombs) in history nuff said

I'm going to assume that's trolling or you've never played a game that actually has a crafting system before.

Dead Islands crafting system was fantastic, you could make so many different weapons to play about it, only broken by the item dupe glitch that you could take advantage of.

At the end of the day any game that lets me make a power sword/thors hammer/flaming fire axe to go chopping/smashing/hacking zombies with is a win in my books.

TF2's crafting is awsome.
I have made my Tomislav machine gun out of:
-a shield
-a grenade
-boots
-a sandvich
-a chocolate bar
-and some other neat stuff.
Cant get more realistic, eh?

I like the various crafting classes in EQ2 and the sheer amount of items that each class is provided with to make, some of which, at the end-game (heck, certain recipes, at any stage of the game) make being a Crafter a very attractive option.

My only real beef with the system is that the crafting mini-game is pretty much the same thing for every class to actually construct an item, though in a few rare instances, failing to complete the minigame perfectly kills you and prevents you from making the item.

I really like the Fallout crafting system, with the idea that you need to find schematics and certain parts in order to craft things. It was a real shame they gave it a massive nerf in New Vegas.

Although minecraft definately has a good system going. However I can't help but sit there and want to produce a cooking mod, that adds kitchen implements (certain foods must be stored in a fridge, a 'kitchen counter' that acts like a crafting bench but for food items and an oven, which acts like a furnace). The downside is the need to add more plants to eat...

i have played a ton of MMORPGs and some of them had some very interesting crafting making each one different in some way.

first ill talk about EQ2 as it had a bit of a random chance for sucess and failure, however unlike other games where if you fail you just lost the materials EQ2 had you take damage from a really bad fail and you could actually die from crafting...

next ill talk about Horizons, this was a GIANT crafting MMORPG. you went out and manually gathered your materials and refined them into usable materials and then refined those into your specific items. there was a good bit of customization but that was more for looks than for making uber gear, they did add effect mods to items later.

the hugest thing with crafting in Horizons was your ability to craft your own house. im not talking like in EQ2 where you bought a house and decorated it. you had actual crafting classes dedicated to different structure classes (carpenter, mason etc.) there were tons of things you could build for your own personal plot or rebuild destroyed community structures. it was pretty fun and quite different.

Lineage 2 had some interesting stuff going on for it. first they had their own race dedicated to crafting. which might sound like it sucks but players were able to set up shops so that anyone could use their recipies for a fee with their own materials. however this was a very grindy game and for a while ony the Dwarf race really could gather materials well as they had a class for it. they eventually added a system for gathering resources from any mob by any player and it fueled the player owned town economies.

then we have the most in depth crafting game i think that is out there... Eve Online. This game ends up being like your day job. material gathering, refining and then using production facilities to make components which are used to make your final products. 90% of the game is player made items so if crafting is your thing its very easy to follow the market trends to make loads of cash.

that being said, Eve is a HUGE time investment for the crafter. getting in a production corp gets you started off and can act as a guide but it will take you a while to be really ready to make complex items at a profit. however resource gathering is a HUGE source of income and once you can refine well your profits really increase.

I think Skyrims alchemy system was pretty spot on. You could experiment to get potions or sometimes find a recipe. The whole eat an ingredient to find out an effect is kinda stupid imo.

I dont mind the whole Wow style of paying somebody to teach you to make say a Warhammer, as that is usually how people learn in the real world.

Saying that I really did like PWI's crafting system, gather raw materials and make an item with a random chance of being better than the basic weapon.

If there was a way to combine all 3 successfully, say only really rare stuff could be learned via dungeon loot and basics taught by trainers, while the actual crafting has a chance to be better, I think they could be onto a winner imo.

I did like skyrim's alchemy and also weapon crafting to an extent. No money had to be spend and you could find all the resouces and make things like leather all in one spot. I do feel, however, they eventually break the game. Skyrim was a good example with enchanting, alchemy, and weaponcrafting. Basicly the buffs could keep growing even though they didn't stack. On a lvl 13 character i had a bow dealing 500 dmg... I liked wow in that the items,though nice, didn't really break anything plus there was a whole economy around it. Oh, and you can't get to the highest lvl by making hundreds of iron daggers.