Crafting Is (Kinda) Pointless 

It is me, Razbuten, back at it with another "This Thing About Video Games Bothers Me" video. I hope you're all doing well, and let me know what you think about crafting. How would you like to see it used in games? Would you even like to see it used in games? Also, how is your day?

There's also a very high difference in excitement/satisfacton level between _"You beat Ignitorax, the Fire Mage boss! You get Inferno, the Flame-Sword as your reward!"_ and _"You beat Ignitorax, the Fire Mage boss! Your reward is 16 Fire Gems that you might be able to use to make or upgrade fire-based weapons at your next crafting station, if you have the right recipes and some additional materials."_

"uhh anyway, heard about raycon?" 10/10 transition

Kingdom Come Deliverance does potion brewing right. You actually have to follow recipes and perform actions, and the better you get at it, not only does it look like you went from sheepishly pouring everything and slowly pulling the bellows to a master alchemist brewing with ease, it also feels like it. I think in the sequel they're planning on implementing forging, and I hope its just as fun.

"It should be in a game cause it adds to it. Not just cause it checks a box." Honestly this should be true for any mechanic in a game.

0:53 square clouds with realistic textures scare me

I found that the Tinkers Construct mod for minecraft nailed the feeling of “actually crafting” perfectly well!

Me: *crafts hundreds of consumables, never uses them* Also Me: "Why am I always over-encumbered??"

My favorite games are always the ones where crafting is a mini game in itself. It actually makes me feel like I'm in the world doing the thing.

I think crafting is best when used as discovery, as in when you have to figure out the recipes yourself, but in order to do this you have to do a good job of keeping the crafting recipes consistent, this would also work best with the Minecraft system of crafting where you have to put items in a certain place. I love the idea of using an ore to make a new pickaxe, then finding a new, rarer, ore and making a new pickaxe based on what you know about the recipe for a last pickaxe. You can also use properties of materials, like a plant that works really well as a firestarter which could make something like fire arrows, to help explain the crafting recipes of materials without just telling the player outright.

Crafting systems in most AAA titles have the same problems as RPG elememts: They add absutely nothing to the experience, just busywork bullshit that gives the impression of progress.

For me, Subnautica is the gold standard for a crafting game. It wasn't just that you crafted simply to go deeper and further into the game (though it's definitely a large part of the gameplay loop), but it was that nearly every item you crafted gave you new abilities or had some practical use to it and were rarely just purely cosmetic. The improved diving tanks weren't necessary but you'll definitely have an easier time if you do make the effort to craft them. It helped that the game world was unique, beautiful, and interesting because it was always exciting to venture into a new biome, not knowing what new things you would see (both good and bad). The narrative played a huge part because those logs left behind really do flesh out this alien world and what is going on behind the scenes, and give you just enough breadcrumbs to pique your curiosity and keep you pushing further and deeper into the unknown with equal parts wonder and terror. While I generally have never been a huge fan of crafting in games, or find it mediocre busy-work, at best, in Subnautica it felt super rewarding and not a burden or annoying in any way. I think my only gripe with the game was that I had to resort to Google a few times because I just had no clue how to find or do certain things. I guess you can technically figure it out if you read every single inch of every single file you find, which i admittedly didn't do when it came to most things that didn't relate to the narrative. It wasn't bad in the first game, but in the second game I ended up hating it because it was like every 30 minutes I had to resort to Google because I just didn't have the information on hand while trying to do 3 things in a single trip.

I literally cannot play a game these days without picking up every single thing I find. It sucks.

One of my favorites in crafting in a game that is not centered around it is "Kingdom Come". In alchemy you actually have to create the potion. Sharpening a blade, you have to make the wheel turn and angle the blade with certain amount of pressure. It is just amazingly done and also fun because it feels like you are doing something

Shops with extra steps

"the time it takes to make stuff helps it feel more rewarding" try saying that after trying to make five fish bait in animal crossing....one at a time....with a 3-5 second animation between each one...and mashing a in the menu. Then realizing you don't have enough for 5, so you have to exit that menu, go into your home storage, put it in your pocket, then reopen the crafting table menu

100% agree with this crafting philosophy. if i need 300 budoompuses and i need to gather 4 quomduks and 2 kwukies and combine them together to make 15 budoompuses, it really makes me wish they made quomduks and kwukies less excessively abundant and gave some more weight to the crafting so that maybe i only need one budoompus and i don't need to sit there for 45 minutes watching a crafting bar fill in over and over again, or just mash the craft button until i see the number 300 pop up.

shoutouts to subnautica. Playing in hardcore mode in subnautica is the first and ONLY time I have ever crafted every item in a game because they were literally all useful to some degree. The pathfinder tool? Incredible. The air bladder? Life saver. I have some qualms with the inventory management of subnautica, but the crafting system specifically is so top notch. Superb video, Razbuten. Loved it

"Using a menu to craft is boring" Whereas having to do some minigame every single time I want to do something is tedious, unfun, and the minigames themselves usually have nothing to do with the actual process of crafting whatever it is... which would need a fairly unique minigame for every single item in the game if you wanted to avoid them being arbitrary.

I've also found that most crafted gear ends up being easily replaceable by gear you just find for free in the wild. I therefore end up feeling like crafting is a waste of time and materials.

I like when crafting materials are used as subtle hints to suggest an alternative to the obvious path you would take. For example one path has a puzzle to solve, while the other one is a gauntlet of fire and lava. Conveniently the devs placed iron shavings next to the entrance which are used to create fire immune potions. So you can either solve the puzzle or use crafting to walk through the fire directly. This gives you a sense of accomplishment, understanding, and choice.

Every single video this man makes has a moment where I realize he has put into words something I’ve felt for years.

How many videos are you going to make where the most common comment is "why didn't you mention Terraria?" lmao

The most fun I've ever had with a crafting system is in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, even though it's technically optional (but still incredibly useful). It's so detailed that thinking about how you would make a thing in real life will usually be the way you do it in the game. Which ends up making it incredibly satisfying to craft something as simple as a pair of leather boots since scavenging or crafting all the tools and materials you need to do it is no small task and now you can make all kinds of other leather items.

I really get what you're saying with this one. In Skyrim, I LOVE making potions; collecting ingredients, finding out what each one is for, and what goes together, but I never use them. On top of the throwback problems with consumables, there are so many out in the world that are often much better than the ones I can make, I don't even need to go to a shop to have more than enough. I personally really enjoy crafting in games but that usually turns out with me having huge stockpiles of crafted garbage that's too much to even sell. Outside of the crafting itself, most games would hardly change without it.

Have you ever heard of the Atelier franchise, all those games revolve around crafting and has probably one of the most robust but fun crafting systems. Recipe have different ingredient that can be switched with materials having properties unique to them that carry over to the crafted item. This way crafting items because more of puzzle as you have to choose when to use rare items or how to transfer properties from one item to another even when it is not a direct ingredient for the final product you want.

The Subnautica section filled me with a strange nostalgia made up of both excitement and terror.

Crafting is often employed in the same way as weapon durability: a minor chore that doesn't really add any immersion or depth to the experience.

I think the Atelier games have my favorite crafting systems. Sophie 1's in particular I've liked out of the two I've tried I really love because of the little puzzle game you play with the ingredients. Which makes the kinds of ingredients you pick to use not just a matter of grade qualities and what the items do, but also one of "Can I even fit this shit in the grid?" But like I think the main thing I like so much about the Atelier games beyond just being games based around crafting that have actually interesting crafting is that you aren't a big fancy adventuring hero or something. You're an alchemist and you're doing alchemist things. While there is combat systems in the games and while Ayesha does have more plot stakes than several of the other games you are still just an alchemist. And that, I think, matters more to me than the fun exploration progression loop of Subnautica, as much as I love it. Because I like being able to play as an alchemist. And that I think is what I ultimately want most out of crafting systems. I want to roleplay as someone who can do a skill.

Fun thing that I thought about: Rimworld has one of my favorite ever crafting systems because of how grounded and heart wrenching it can be, you need a good amount of materials that have to be mined, bought or processed, the crafting itself takes many in-game days (and more if your colonist has been crippled in any way) and it can lead up to a bad end result if the character has a low skill, bad health or again is a cripple, but when you nail a legendary assault rifle everything is worth it

I love how Red Dead Redemption 2 handled collecting animal parts. In every other game you just kill an animal, press a button and the needed materials are magically teleported to your infinite inventory. It's mindless and boring! In RDR2, I actually felt like I was doing something when I was collecting supplies. If I wanted a perfect bear hide, I had to find a bear, stalk it, line up a perfect headshot, take the time to skin the carcass, put the pelt on my horse and then physically deliver it to the trapper. A lot of people complain about RDR2 and say that the animations and crafting are too time consuming but I think it's absolutely amazing. This approach makes the whole process feel special. Every little thing like hunting a deer feels like a mini mission or a small adventure where I have to take care of everything every step of the way. It's engaging and immersive. Throughout my first playthrough of RDR2, I shot and skinned about 3 Grizzly bears in total. But I remembered every encounter and each one felt special! In games like AC Odyssey, I could butcher hundreds of bears and none of the encounters would be memorable or interesting. It would be just another mindless task of killing an animal and pressing a button to collect all it has. I really hope more games take inspiration from TLOU2 and RDR2. For example, I think Ghost of Tsushima would be way better if it had some of those realistic elements: an animation for skinning animals like in RDR2 or Assassin's Creed III, a quick animation where Jin cuts a plant with his tanto, an animation for looting corpses or picking up supplies. Of course, not every game needs extremely slow and realistic animations for everything like RDR2, but I will always take animations over lack of them. They can be quick and simplified but I love it when they are there.

That sorta reminds me of the crafting system in "The Long Dark." I haven't played that game in years at this point (about two or so, and I know there's been some huge changes since then), but the crafting system was top notch from what I remember. The crafting was absolutely vital to your survival and progression through the game (you had to craft better weapons, snares, fishing line and hooks, even tinder boxes and bandages) but at the same time, you were keenly aware that the time you spent sitting down to rip that newspaper up into tinder for your fire, you were getting closer to freezing to death, or starving to death, because it was -30C out, and night was quickly falling. And then, for certain things, you needed to track down the work tables that had specialized tools, or you had to have the specific tools yourself. It was a good game, and I really should go back to play it again...

Thanks for reminding me how incredible Subnautica is. Can we all just appreciate how the sound design alone made the crafting in Subnautica satisfying?

The crafting system in ACNH I find is specifically so frustrating because none of the materials are actually *difficult* to get, instead they range from mindless to *annoying* I'm low on wood? well it's incredibly easy to grab some from my storage, or even go chop down some trees if I'm totally out But WHY? Crafting doesn't feel valuable because the resources I put in are damn meaningless. I'm far more concerned with bringing bugs back from an island, and choosing which to toss in hopes of bringing a more valuable one to sell but wood, soft wood, and hard wood? I can harvest way more from my own island than I'd ever need Finding one of my favourite furniture pieces in the store is *genuinely* more exciting than "saving up" the materials to craft one I like just as much Actually, getting the *recipe* for something I like is infinitely better than making the thing

crafting was actually my favorite part of skyrim. Everything else i did there, including story and fighting, was with the purpose of getting new skill levels in crafting so i could mass-produce stuff. I was always filling up them soulstones by using that particular weapon and enchanting all my stuff before selling it. To me, it was all about those skill levels and i guess money didn't hurt. To buy all the houses.

Everytime I play a game with crafting I always spend multiple real world days trying to find the materials to craft something like a powerful weapon. After crafting the weapon i remember all the hard work i put into it and get excited about how powerful it'll be. Then I do a 15 minute story mission that rewards me with a weapon twice as strong.

another game to note would be one called "the Forest" though i wouldnt say the crafting is the best, it forces you to mix certain items together via trial and error and once you learn to make something, just hovering over one of the items took to make it will show its recipe, and you can only carry a certain amount of any certain item at a time, for instance i could reach the item cap on rocks but still pick up sticks becuase i havent hit the stick limit. but the most interesting part is the building, you build to save your game, to sleep which is its own mechanic that you need to keep on top of, to stay warm, to protect yourself from cannibals, store things, but unlike other games where you build it at that same moment of time, you can place down the blueprint of it and slowly build these items up overtime It isnt the best out there and i frankly am not nearly experienced or have enough time to be able to touch on what it is or why it works but it definitely makes the world more diverse and interesting, and deserves some kind of accomplishment

4:16 Subnautica is an *excellent* example of a well-balanced crafting-focused game. It never distracts from the world, never feels like a chore or an add-on, and never hits a point of irrelevance. Everything is important, but only at a certain time in the games progression. And what's especially crazy is that as a player you mostly remember the exploration and the base-building, but looking back like 80% of gameplay is collecting and crafting resources.

I think the title should be "triple a games implement crafting in a pointless way" because on it's own, crafting is a beautiful mechanic.

Are we just going to ignore Horizon: Zero Dawn? It's very rare that you just stumble upon ingredients. And because what creature they come from and where they are located, they are not only consistent, but marked. You always know where you need to go for what you need to reach your next goal, but you have to work for it. Plus tying money to bartering and ammo crafting is great because you can just blindly spend all of your money or you may just not be able to make arrows. I'm currently playing on very hard mode, and the rarity of the items, tied with the availability of them is just great.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot over the last 10 or so years. As crafting has gone from a rarity outside of MMOs before Minecraft, to something that you see in a lot of games that it fit with conceptually, to virtually all AAA games having it. The biggest thing that sticks out to me about it is that it is yet again one of these situations where devs have taken the shape of a thing and grafted it onto their games without any real understanding of why that thing worked in the game in question. Happens all the time in this medium. However, with crafting, because the game that started this trend is so big. I mean. SO BIG. I mean, spawned an entire genre of youtube video big. I mean so far beyond big that it really isn't a stretch to call it the biggest and most influential game ever made. Because the game is Minecraft - and Minecraft totally baffles the AAA market - we see this problem happen with features from it continuously. There are games that get it. Subnautica, as you said, is one of these games. But I don't actually think the issue is the usefulness or requiredness of the items you craft that is the key here. It is tied to that, but it is deeper than that. The reason I don't want to craft things in FO4 but I do in Subnautica - and the reason Minecraft was so successful - is that Minecraft and Subnautica have you crafting things you want to craft. Let me rephrase that, because it sounds obvious and tautological. When you play a game, there are really 3 perspectives involved. There is the you that's playing the game to have fun, this is the experiencer you. There is the you that is pretending to be a character, this is the character you. And there is the you that is performing game actions, the player you. The experiencer you wants to have a good time, they want to be entertained by the narrative of the game and/or influence it. The character you has story-based motivations and wants to progress in the game. The player you wants to have cool interactions that feel good to do. Games that you enjoy the most not only cater to these three perspectives, but unify them. The opposite of this state is often called ludonarrative dissonance. However most correctly that only applies to the player you and the character you being at odds. The classic example of that is a game where you are supposed to be a good superhero, but that game asks you to kill thousands of faceless baddies along the way. People your character doesn't know, who that character would probably be terrified to be killing over and over in terrible ways. But when you include this third perspective, this problem takes on a new dimension. You can have a character that wants to do something, and a player that is enjoying what they are being asked to do, but have that be at odds with what the experiencer wants to be doing. This is that feeling you've had where you know you enjoy the game, but you kind of don't want to be doing what the game wants but you just want to be doing something else the game isn't asking of you right then. For example, you are going along having fun and the game tosses in a puzzle that makes logical sense to be there, and the character would want to solve it, it might even be a fun puzzle all on its own; but you aren't there for puzzles. The games that feel the best align all three of these things with motivations that appeal to each of these at the same time. Let's start with Subnautica. When you are first crash landing; the experiencer wants to understand how to play the game, the game wants to teach you, and the narrative is merely about basic survival. Then, once you've got the interface down after dealing with the fire and your first craft, you want to branch out. The game puts you out where you can test things out, and the narrative in the moment is about getting basic initial survival items like food and water squared away. At each phase of the game, what the player wants, what the game play is saying and what the narrative is saying are aligned. The key here is that the experiencer you can task switch from one thing to another and it doesn't break the narrative. At all times you are doing what that character would do. Minecraft is the same. I won't rehash over the details. But pay close attention to how Minecraft doesn't have a story that's being told to the player, but instead has systems that enable the player to tell their own story. At every point along the progression, the player is able to decide what they want to do. The goals are designed, as much as modern quest task lists are designed, but they are goals that don't need to be told to the player because they happen to also be the goals the player has on their own. The AAA industry saw Minecraft and they saw a game with no narrative. I see a lot of folks saying Subnautica doesn't really have a narrative, even. But in both cases, the narrative just so perfectly aligns with what you already want to do and what your character would be doing and what the game play is telling you do to, that they blend together. The AAA industry looks for ways to shoehorn a story into something like Minecraft - neglecting the fact that one already existed. You are a lone survivor in the wilderness, you have to survive zombies and skeletons, you gain power and strength to use back against those forces only to discover deeper and darker forces. You fight and defeat those, and your strength makes you greedy for more. So on, until you kill a dragon and get credits. Subnautica has a lot of explicit narrative that's more traditional. But they took care to think about how to incorporate it in a way that didn't break these three perspectives. If the experiencer you decides not to go help out the deep sea survivors, or not follow up on things you find on the floating island, it makes sense from the game play and character perspectives too. That's just not the order the story was in. AAA games that do this well exist. But it often either feels like an accident or the result of other decisions. And if the experiencer you is already in the right mind for it, just avoiding ludonarrative dissonance is often enough. If you are in the mood for what The Last of Us has to offer, it will scratch the itch and still give you fun for a dozen hours straight. However, when a AAA game listens to the real lessons. Well. You get Breath of the Wild. A game where you can just follow the random whims of the experiencer you wherever they go, the game play will match the mood, and the character's actions make sense in the framework of adventure. The crafting feels good, not because you will use the items. You will use the items because they feel good and make sense to use them. The player drives everything, and the narrative matches what the player does and wants to do. Everything aligns. Some things I am not saying. I am not saying that AAA games are bad and no one should play them. I'm not saying Minecraft, BotW or Subnautica are perfect. I am not saying you can't have fun with games that have ludonarrative dissonance or that doesn't satisfy all three perspectives at once. I am just saying that the AAA industry has largely missed the lesson from Minecraft, and when they accidentally or intentionally do learn the right lesson, the games are better for it. ----- It is worth pointing out that there are a lot of lessons the AAA industry failed to learn from Minecraft. Here is a short list: - They failed to notice how important being open, transparent, clear, supportive of wikis and modding, and otherwise crafting a positive community through clear and open communication was. - They failed to notice that what makes the building work so well is the lack of fidelity in the graphics. Because stairs are vague, they can be used as chairs, roofs and other details. The flexible nature of the visuals means creatively reimagining what an object _is_ is part of the building meta game. When bigger games with higher fidelity graphics came out that had all the same technical abilities of Minecraft, they usually lacked this flexible nature. By having stairs that look like stairs, they designed out those stairs being roofs or chairs. - They failed to notice that Minecraft is played by non-gamers. AAA games fall into two buckets - full gamer games with complex controls and hardcore graphic and cute games for casual gamers with simplified controls and simplified ends. A game that bucked this trend lately and won was Animal Crossing New Horizons. Minecraft has simplified controls, but great depth. It is the perfect game to transition from a casual player into a hardcore player with, because it is easy to start and hella deep. - They fail to understand the pricing. Minecraft basically invented early access, but the way it has been implemented by the AAA industry has largely been a cavalcade of missteps. It isn't that hard. You need to have a solid initial offering that is enjoyable from the start, you need to have clear goals and milestones along the way, and you need to never let up on the promise of the final version. And I would argue, you need to not stop at the final product and continue to release new things for as long as people keep buying the game. - There is a lot more, but that's enough for now.

I was waiting for an Atelier series reference the whole time. The only game series about crafting items that actually matters.

I really liked the way Kingdom Come did their alchemy system. It actually was a process and felt... good/rewarding

For me, Fallout 4’s crafting is a core mechanic. I spend hours exploring the waste before heading back so I have to decide “should I take this, or drop this? Maybe I’ll just take this...” as I keep exploring.

My problem is when games just make their crafting options overblown, along with the materials in the world. It's the key before the door vs. the door before the key. If you get given a key, you think "Huh, neat". But if you get shown a door, now you're intrigued. You WANT to get through it. So when you find the key now, it means so much more. I think a weird solution to many open world crafting options is "General Use Ingredients". Something where "Fallim Berries", "Maple Leaves", "Gacho Moss", etc aren't specifically required for any craftable items, but are general ingredients that can all be used to make Healing Salves or another item that is used often by the player. That way when the player crafts a bunch of Healing Salves and they look in their inventory to see that "Patterned Dew Leaves" weren't consumed, they can then realize that not only is it an item likely used for something else, but that they should pay more attention to where they get them from now on.

I enjoyed the "minigame" of pre-bedrock Minecraft crafting.

As a tabletop RPG player I have to question the necessity of making item creation "impactful". From my perspective in RPGs at least it seems like it should just be an optional play style.

A while ago there was an RPG I played called Fantasy Life. Players have an option of starting in a certain “life” (basically an occupation). You could be everything from a mercenary to a wizard to a chef. You can switch your life at will. There were three main types of lives: gathering, crafting, and combat. The three types of lives fed into each other very will, meaning that everything you were doing could help with everything else you needed to do. You could gather special wood from a tree as a woodcutter then craft a magic wand as a carpenter then use that wand as a wizard. It was a very fun and cool experience.

I actually really like Fallout 4’s crafting system. It makes sense that people would be scavenging in a post apocalyptic wasteland full of broken building and it makes total sense that you’d do this too. It also makes sense that you can buy or find modified stuff in the same way that people can make food or buy it or buy materials to make it. It’s a great way to feel like you’re in the wasteland when you’re rummaging through ancient buildings to find that one thing you desperately need to finish a project

"Sir Henry, did you sneak into the apothecary's backroom to make your potions again ? "

him: shows factorio and how it gas good crafting me: subs

one of my biggest gripes with crafting is when you don't include a crafting tag on items. especially when you don't start out with all of the recipes, because that way the player will hoard a lot of junk that might or might not be useful.

You and I had VERY different experiences with Fallout 4, and I'm sad to hear you didn't enjoy the crafting aspect as much as many of us did.. I probably wouldn't have spent half the time on it that I have if it wasn't for all the crafting options (primarily base building, but I also use the item/mod crafting extensively). It's definitely not an 'add-on' for me, it's a core part of the gameplay. I've had entire play sessions where my goal was to go to a specific place for a lot of a specific item. (Fort hagen for Aluminum, Super mutant encampments for Bone, etc). This gives repeatable, player-driven reasons to go to certain places.. not because the story tells you to, but because you WANT what's there. And I know i'm not alone, b/c there's entire communities of crafters/base builders for FO4. Though, I must agree that crafting minigames that reward you for doing well are fantastic, and would have made it even better.

"Crafting doesn't feel like crafting" When you put it like that, want to know a game has a very easy and simple system that would make for a good crafting system: HouseFlipper. (not joking, i'm serious) Every aspect of what you are doing, you manually have to do it through quick and simple movements. Installing a shower would have you have to move your mouse to the left to screw in a bolt, then drag the shower-head to where it tells you to. Yes, it is very hand-holdy process but that only simplifies it for the causal players but not to the point where the game just "does it all for you". A false sense of manual labor does help create the illusion of crafting. I don't like a mini-game system. That much trivializes it. As if it's arbitrary and not actually related or relative to what you are trying to do. Want to make a sword? Time to play guitar hero by swinging your hammer when the bar is at max. It's not just arbitrary but arbitrarily obtrusive. Every single motion within the crafting process should feel rewarding to the player. Again, like with house flipper, when I screw in the bolt to the shower, I know im not done crafting, but I know that one simple motion that took less than a second put me that much closer to being done because I got that one section done and it was super quick. That's why it SHOULD feel like manual labor, because if it does, it has a better sense of progression when you actually are in the crafting process. The moment you turn it into a mini-game it not only becomes repetitive, but also isn't even remotely relative to the think you are trying to accomplish as crafting isn't a game, it's a step by step process, like building something out of legos. Here's an example for you: Lets say you want to craft some arrows, you have to drag your gamepads thumb stick up and down a few times to sharpen the stone for the arrow head, after that you then press R2 to saw left on the twig that is the arrow stick, then release R2 and press L2 to saw to the right. This is for both where the arrow would rest on the drawstring, as well as the split for where the arrow head goes in between the bold stick. After that, it's just 2 circles of the analog stick to tighten the grip the bolt as around the arrow head as well as tying the arrow head to the bolt. After those 3 simple actions that take like 4 seconds each, you just crafted a set of 20 arrows in 12 seconds. Yes, it is a long time, but that's what meaningful crafting is supposed to be. But with ever action, you feel the impact of it, as if what you are doing as the player with your inputs, actually has weight to it where it actually matters. This could be just for early game and can then later can just be bought at a store, but the option still being there should you find your self low on amo and are currently hiding in enemy territory. Another example of this is Saticefactory, in the early game, you manually had to click a button to swing your hammer x amount of times to craft a iron bar out of iron ore, after awhile, you can automate this and have machines do it for you by feeding those machines fuel. In this case, fuel acts the same as money would where you are paying NPCs or Non-Player "Machines" in this case to do the work for you. It does give you a good sense of progression, but you can always go back to doing something by hand should you find yourself low on fuel.

Crafting is meant to be a slow paced thoughtful thing. It doesn't mesh well when a game is fast paced and doesn't take much forthought for engagements. I think it works best in survival type games where you have to struggle to survive and can't just buy stuff from an NPC. I think crafting has much more potential than its being used for.

An interesting mechanic that exists in Genshin impact is when cooking food, the first so many times you make it, you have to time stopping a dial, in the correct area. Do it too early or too late, and the food will be of lower quality. Once you’ve done it correctly 20 times (varying depending on the food) however, you will be able to autocraft it from there on. For it too always require that or to be able to autocraft from the start would be tedious and boring respectively. With this system though, it’s very rewarding and you’ve had to earn the ability to auto-craft.

9:52 ”ultimately, I just want to feel like I’m Batman”

A game that I like the way it does it, is Dragon Quest Builders. For while there is some craftings that are simply en-masse, there are also some that are important and engaged, with the story, current mission and etc. We go out of the base getting ready and specifically towards a quest or for gathering specific materials.

I missed this one from you! One of my favourite examples is Fantasy Life, where crafting /is/ the game. Each vocation carries different recipes and mini games, and you level up and get skills for the crafting systems. They fully lean into it, and it works very well! It’s just as fun as the combat and exploration.

But when Breath of the wild didn’t have arrow crafting I flipped my mind

I love the progression through crafting in MH and GoW. Kill stuff, get parts, decide how to utilize them. It's the last part where I get some choice, either in how the parts are used, or where I went to get the parts, that I love.

I can see a use for crafting some RPG's at least, particularly post-apocalyptic RPG's like Fallout, Wasteland, & Atom RPG. It'd be interesting to see characters recycling tech & materials that were made before the apocalypse into something new or more useful in a post-apocalyptic world. Unfortunately, not many games have actually tried to show OR tell players about characters who do that sort of work for a living. If they do show or tell players about it, then it's usually underutilized as very few characters are EVER shown performing such actions or even talking about it.

As was noted in this video, most games these days actually have Item Shops or Upgrade Menus purposely mislabelled as crafting. Even from a design perspective the mechanical programming between an upgrade system that requires a resource and an item shop that requires curency is almost identical. The best actual crafting system I've ever known is in Star Wars Galaxies whereby item blueprints simply specified a type of resource such as metals or chemicals but the worlds contained a randomly shifting quality, quantity and location of dozens of these resources for each type. Consequently, if a blueprint for something like a blaster required a type of metal then you could use Titanium, Steel, Iron or Copper for example. But these all changed the stats for the item. Copper had higher conductivity so the blaster would do more damage, but resulted in lower durability compared to Titantium so the blaster would need to be repaired more. Further to this the quality of these resources changed every two-three weeks and you could end up with a period whereby the copper was very bad so you'd use some other metal of a higher quality to get higher damage. Servers experienced literal gold rushes when a particularly good resource cycled in with respurce nodes being covered in automated harvesting structures as far as the eye could see. Some players sold the resources immediately, but the smart ones would stockpile until the resource cycled out. In the end, it came down to crafting systems needing to have scope for experimentation and customisation within themselves in order to be meaningful and engaging, but the systems that dictate the availability of resources need to also drive players to continually adapt their crafting methods so that it doesn't become a stagnent activity once you've figured out an optimum combination of resources.

im reminded of that scene in SAOA where liz makes a sword by playing three minigames at the same time. "the crafting system is seizure inducing" bwahaha

1:30 who on God's green Earth builds the teleporter in Hangman's Alley?

How to Train Your Dragon for the DS also makes crafting into a minigame. Several, actually. And how well you do in the minigames affects the quality like Dragon Quest 11.

I find the crafting system in resident evil the perfect one, you cant farm, every medkit you make, is only one and you won’t be able to get another for a while

I’m surprised you didn’t come back around to mention Minecraft again at the end there, which, personally, has one of the best crafting systems ever. Makes sense since it’s in its name and really started the trend. But the fact that it’s an interactive grid where you form the shape of the item, which can be done fairly quickly and stacked to make multiple is just perfect

EverQuest 2 had the best crafting system ever made. Back in the day, the best armor you could wear was crafted. But to make a vest, you had to collect the materials, craft them into string, leather strips, ect. THEN, you could craft the actual item. The items you were crafting had durability bars and progress bars as you made them, and you had to increase progress without weakening durability of the item. This applied to making food, drinks, poisons, potions, arrows, ect. Not only did you need crafted gear to survive, you either had to spend HOURS gathering and crafting just to make one set of armor or pay somebody gold to do it for you, which created a healthy economy in the game. Players that loved crafting didn't even adventure. They would stand in town and just craft gear for people and become filthy rich. The adventurers loved it because they could let somebody do the crafting work while they run a dungeon with their buddies. Every 10 adventure levels, you need a new tier of upgraded gear, which enriched the economy even more.

A lot of times crafting also boils down to repetitive grinding until you have 50 of x, and instead of making it a challenge someone just put a higher number or a rarer drop. What I like more are recipes you have to figure out at first, but are easy to use after that.

Honestly I loved fo4 crafting mechanics I found myself boosting storage space when upgrading armour adding things like scopes I also used a ton of the consumables like with thing like radx radaway medx jet psycho and the like especially intergrated in survival with me also having to cook food and water to fix the consumables drawbacks also the dlc which allows you to craft ammo greatly increases the need for crafting and settlements on thing I think would be cool though would be if you would actually be able to take apart the gun a reassemble it with different guns it could be really cool and I do agree that settlements need to have more rewards and endgame should feel like diamond city

I actually like the crafting in the space game Elite Dangerous. I have played that game for nearly 2000 hours, and just now did I realize it was actually a crafting system I was interacting with. Say you're driving your Surface Recon Vehicle, and you took damage. Be it from combat, or you took a tumble down a mountain. You could either go back to your spaceship to have your SRV repaired, or "craft a hull repair". With the crafting option can you either use 2 pieces of iron and 1 piece of nickel (which are found on practically every planet and moon) to fix your vehicle, or use more difficult to find items to make the hull stronger. Things like this applies for everything you can craft (except for refilling oxygen in emergency life support and limpets). Hull repair (stronger hull), fuel resupply (more efficient / lasts longer), ammunition (more damage), limpets (you forgot them again, didn't you?).

I am surprised you didn't mention Factorio or Satisfactory at all, where the crafting system is literally the hook of the entire game. If there were no crafting system, there would be no game to play. I think that's a great example of how to make a crafting system meaningful part of the game

My biggest gripe with crafting systems in some games is when either I get a better weapon I found in a secret area, or from some form of drop that was better than what I can make. Or if there are 2 types of weapons, one better than the other, that uses the same crafting item, then I'll craft neither thinking there's something better i can make with the same materials.

You are so good at explaining what you are trying to present. Personally, I do use consumables A LOT, more than just health ones. When I played Fallout 4 I never built a base, only for the achievement, I didn't see the point of it as I wasn't going to ever be there, only on the move. So I spent my resources on armor and weapon upgrades, as well as consumable items. Love your videos a lot btw!

When it comes to the systems being "intrusive" I feel like genshin impact made a good job, the cooking system has a mini game that is obligatory at first but it becomes automatic after getting multiple perfect scores

For ghost of tsushima (i saw you included it a few times i would argue they dont have a crafting system and instead its a trading system i think the thing thats closer to the crafting systems you were talking about is when you pick up poison to ceaft into darts

The point of crafting should be, that limited recourses can be decided where to put to. Also, instead of just money, the materials could bring other forms into the mix. They could be found in differnt areas and make so a progression system. However, if the materials are everythere, why even bother? You have everythin all the time, why not cut crafting? That would be a bad crafting system.

Imagine how much dev time could be cut by just getting rid of pointless crafting mechanics.

Imagine a game with a crafting system that is actually custom, where you actively have to shape metal into a sword, axe or whatever you want shape and the combination of weight, size of sharpened edge, sharpness, length, etc. decided how much damage you do.

Your points about about interactive crafting reminded me a lot of the systems in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Brewing potions requires the player to manually grab ingredients and manually cook them, grind them and such. Also if your swords become to dull you have to take them to a grindstone and sharpen them yourself. Obviously KC:D prides itself on its realism and not all of the systems in it are this thought out but I still found them pretty engaging.

A well-designed crafting system can play a major role in how the game's rewards work -- giving the player substantial choice on their ultimate reward (unlike receiving random, complete items) while still being able to skew how often players have access to certain rewards (largely unlike shops -- shops can get some of this from price differences, but that is having the rare rewards be at the expense of the common ones)

The concept of crafting taking time and effort instead of being a menu interaction is what makes minecraft redstone so satisfying.

The Last of Us did, imo, the best job so far with crafting. It made the player get out of their comfort zone (when certain supplies were super rare in some areas)

A game I played that did this well was this small-potatoes platformer in the DS era called Mushroom Men: Rise Of the Fungi. I'll save my glowing memories of the story for another time, but what impressed me was that there were little odds and ends you'd collect around the levels which could be combined into weapons of different types with different effects. The menu used to combine them was very Minecraft-like: Where you put which component affected what the weapon was or did - put a cork on top of a toothpick and you'd make a hammer, but if you got a piece of string and put it between them you'd have a flail! Or something along those lines, it's been a decade or so.

I'm not gonna lie, i love your videos, they give a lot of new perspectives I'd never think of otherwise. Thank you!

I doubt any one remembers this game but I remember as a kid playing a how to train your dragon tie in game for the dsi that had a neat albeit gimmicky crafting system. There was a blacksmithing mini game where the quality of the item was determined by a series of mini games where you'd blow on the microphone to heat up metal, pour the exact amount of metal needed for the item, etch the sword by drawing with the stylus, and. properly sharpen the sword. The minigames changed for armour pieces as well such as removing slag from the surface to polish it. It was strange and it's been long enough that I can't remember how good the game is but that system stuck with me. I remember having a lot of fun frantically trying to make a good item as a kid.

Every time I think about starting Skyrim again I think of the crafting/enchanting loop and I happily forget thinking about playing Skyrim again.

that's fair, anyway love all the stuff you do your videos have made me think about gaming as a whole but also how to approach real life situations, your videos make a difference.

Far Cry 3 used to be my least favourite in the series before Far Cry 6 came out, but I love the way skinning is done there. It is acknowledged with an animation of you shoving a raw hide into your backpack complete with the protagonist going ‘ew’, but it takes a couple seconds at most. I think that is the golden spot between Super Mario and Operation Flashpoint

Here's a legit, verified and 100% sincere hot take: Best crafting in video games? Yohoho Puzzle Pirates

One of my favorite crafting styles is from A Township Tale; You take two items, like a stick and some flint, and you attach them together on various nodes. For example with a flint and a stick, you can attach flint to the front or top of said stick to make a shovel or pickaxe. You can also manually smith metal items, such as swords, axes, pickaxes, and more, as well as chisel wooden handles and bow pieces. It feels way more impactful than a menu where you just press a bunch of buttons in a certain order and somehow an advanced weapon comes out like a machine gun or longsword, or a crafting grid where you stick a bunch of giant wood planks and sticks together. Though it does take a really long time to craft anything using the ATT system.

MGSV: Ahaha its super easy what do you mean MGSV Late game: 500000 biological material and 25000000GMP For WHAT?!? Sniper: Hehehe I pew harder

i feel its only really good in games with base building and survival as a focus, because getting this one but of furniture or this one item is kinda less fun than going "cool with this wood i can make this raft bigger" or "this is what i need to make some turrets", thats fairly fun but if the main focus of the game is going out and doing stuff and fighting monsters then just tacking on a crafting system means it'll be ignored

The potion brewing in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is great

Crafting makes sense in survival games but is usually just an expected extra in everything else. Tomb Raider had a good idea with crafting arrows on the fly but it should’ve been extended to crude ammo as an opportunity to make real ammo scarce. It would’ve helped the difficulty a lot.

Crafting systems were, once upon a time, something I loved and looked for in games, for many of the reasons you mentioned. Then every single game has one without much thought and it just makes me groan. Similar thing happened to the concept of open world games too, for that matter.

Just stumbled across this older video however, it has aged well! Excellent essay on the topic. Thank you.

wanting crafting to be more intrusive is an unironically "you think you do, but you don't" opinion, tbh

This is a good point (as well as your other video about consumables) that goes to show your concept of really implementing the feel to the player of immersion to the game. If it's "just another health potion" kind of situation, you may just think it's pointless and never worry about health potions. If the game is designed where health potions are a necessity, or at least a challenge to not have, then it makes people feel the damage they take each time and consider using items like that. I only ever had a free account (and now I don't think I could get on), but Final Fantasy XIV did an amazing job with crafting in my opinion. The game has players pick a class like any other fantasy RPG but lets you swap between that one or other classes, all (or at least most) of which level up independently of each other. At some point you can pick up a crafting *or* gathering class, which is a completely unique system. The gathering classes have a certain amount of energy, similar to mana, that is expended and recovered over time to limit harvesting things. This energy is used just like mana would be in combat though, making your gathering more efficient, more likely to work, work to gather better materials, etc. Crafting is a different ballpark again. You pick an item from your crafting menu and sit down to work on it. Each item you work on starts with a full energy bar and a certain crafting durability (which most actions reduce). There are basic things like progressing crafting or increasing the likelihood of the item being rare, then there are more complex things like repairing the crafting durability or buffing your future actions. Overall it makes for an incredibly immersive system, since while there may be a specific "best" way to craft any given item, you still have a sort of pattern of actions to follow just like others might have when fighting in a raid. In the end you feel like you worked for that item, and it's because you did!