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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperDesignHow do you like crafting your items?
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Tosty
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« on: November 18, 2014, 08:38:36 PM »

How do you like crafting your items?

Do you want the "craft" ability to add more bonuses to the item (more fire damage, defense, life regeneration, critical attack, etc).

OR do you want the craft to change the design of the item? Instead of short sword it becomes dagger, long sword, broad sword, etc?

What other things could crafting to your items? Do you want only special crystals to be able to craft an item, or you must add another item of the same time?

Tell me some good crafting practices/features.
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Savick
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« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2014, 12:15:12 PM »

There's a wide variety out there these days. My favorite is having lots of recipes, but with like a search and refine feature plus it noticing what mats I have available to use. I sometimes play an MMO called Fallen Earth that does this well. Lots of crafting, but it works on a real timer.
     Like, you want to make 500 light pistol rounds, you press craft and it takes 12 minutes and the mats required. Just an example I like.
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PappaWayne
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« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2014, 03:17:18 AM »

I was working on a prototype a while back where the player had to craft traps from a wide variety of materials. The idea was they never got access to actual recipies but all material combinations would work. So it was all about experimentation and adapting to what sort of traps the player would end up with. Was an interesting design experiment trying to come up with 50+ useful item combinations.
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michaelgabrielr
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« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2014, 06:26:28 AM »

What I would like to see one day is a crafting system that would require actual skill to craft an item.
For example arranging the pieces, being careful not to grind/chop off too much of the crafting material or sewing the pieces together.
The power, quality or eventual bonuses would then depend on how well you did.
It would essentially be its own minigame.
What do you think?

Note: for tedium reasons, this could be saved as a recepie for later or if you wanted 40 copies of the crafted item.
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ThemsAllTook
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« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2014, 08:23:50 AM »

In a lot of games, I think I might enjoy collecting materials more than actually crafting stuff with them. When I'm wandering around in Skyrim, I can never resist picking every herb and flower I can reach, even though I hardly ever brew any potions. In Terraria, if a monster drops something I haven't seen before, it's kind of a thrill - "ooh, new stuff! I wonder what can I make with it?" I also like it in games when I can break down old/unwanted gear to recycle some of its raw materials into new stuff. Much more satisfying than just letting it collect dust or throwing it away/selling it.

Things I don't like are needing a large amount of a particular rare resource to make something, and being required to farm/grind in one spot for a long time to get what I need. I'd prefer materials to be plentiful once they become available at all - not to the point where they're totally devalued, but if I've been picking stuff up and playing at a normal pace, I'd rather not have to make too many trips to gather what I need to craft a particular thing. It is a tough balance, because coming across something rare when you weren't specifically looking for it is a great thing to have happen as a player, but actively seeking it out and having to wait for a stroke of luck to get what you want is usually not.
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valrus
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« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2014, 11:03:13 PM »

What I like is when recipes have a learnable system behind them, so that each success you have/recipe you find tells you a little more about how the system works.  I like when there's a "grammar", of sorts, behind it, that you can remember and use.  (I haven't played Minecraft all that much, and not in a while, but I could tell you off the top of my head how to make a golden axe.  I'm sure I never even made one, it's just that the core system has a logic to it such that if you know how to make any axe, you can make a golden axe.)

What I don't like is when recipes are just lists of arbitrary things.  "Fur armor is 12 square feet of bear hide and six yards of leather cord."  "Well, I don't have bear hide, but I've got that much wolf pelt. Can I make something?"  "No!"

If you contrast, say, Oblivion and Fallout 3, I enjoyed making potions in Oblivion, because there was some logic to it, and the more I understood the more possibilities opened up for me.  I didn't enjoy making anything in the new Fallouts because it just felt like a chore (find surgical tubing, wonderglue, 4 scrap metal, and whiskey), not something to learn and remember.  It didn't bring me into that world; it just revealed the hand of the designer.
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Rarykos
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« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2014, 11:11:37 AM »

I actually enjoyed Skyrim's system where I couldn't craft any better armor until I got better at armor-making(blacksmithing?). It was fun to collect everything and know it can either give me some cool items or at least some XP so I can craft even better items.

Just combining different herbs to get different potions is fun but gets old really quickly and I haven't seen a single game do it well. Once you know how to get healing potions you don't need any fire restistance +10% so you experiment only for the sake of it - 'Oh I got poison immunity, that's interesting but I'm never going to use it"

Also I'm all in for a crafting minigame like those cooking games!
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baconman
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« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2014, 09:38:12 PM »

Two core materials (of a set of like, 5-10 or so) * various amounts = basic items.

Color variable material = color/enchantments, when combined with the above. I would suggest red/green/blue variants, that can be mixed to vary the colors as well as the % of effects.

Some recognizable patterns in the system.

What you CAN craft:
- Stat-modifying gear
- Basic weaponry and/or tools, for navigation and environmental influence.
- Ammo for firearms
- Potions for temporary effects
- Foods or consumables for statistic growth

What you CAN'T craft:
- Metroidlike passive ability items
- HP/MP RECOVERY ITEMS!! :D


Things I don't like in crafting systems, even though I still love Terraria:

- Enemy found in a single area drops a single, dedicated-to-that-enemy material
- Enemy-dedicated material is useful exactly once, maybe 2-3 times max.
- Drop rate is absurdly high or low on said item (you need 10 of these to craft the item; either one trip gets you fifty, or fifty trips gets you one)

This is even WORSE when it's combined with that annoying quest system that's complete when you "collect 87 of this thingamajig." >.< JUST. STOP.
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Jordgubben
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« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2014, 10:53:58 AM »

First rule of item crafting and abundance:
Assuming that a the same ingredient can be acquired again and again by completing same set of actions again and again and that there is no practical limit to how many times this set of actions can be repeated, then it does not make sense (from a mechanics perspective) to require more that one instance of that ingredient for the same recipe. This is extra true if the crafting system has a non-realistic context such as the making of magic potions.

Only exception I can thing of for this is setting and flavour text. If the recipes are in rhyme or verse adding "two" of something might be required.
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oldmanmike
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« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2014, 11:52:12 AM »

What I like is when recipes have a learnable system behind them, so that each success you have/recipe you find tells you a little more about how the system works.  I like when there's a "grammar", of sorts, behind it, that you can remember and use.

This is why I don't like Minecraft's crafting system - it's just a hashtable that matches up hard coded recipes with some value that might or might not resemble the recipe. It's really cute when you first start playing the game, the basic vanilla recipes are pretty intuitive. But it doesn't scale to more complex items with less obvious recipes like the piston, boy does this become painfully obvious when playing with mods.

A crafting system should really be like valrus said, it should have a "grammar". The recipes shouldn't form a big-ass symbol table that you have to memorize. It should be a language. In fact, it should be a full blown embedded domain specific programming language right there in-game, disguised as an editor or interface...or just raw gameplay. You should be able to compose ingredients together like legos and be able to reason about the results before committing to them. It would be pretty hard to implement as you would have to be able to guarantee that the crafting system will always yield a product that is balanced within the game system, but that's what the closure property is for.
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valrus
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« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2014, 01:55:05 AM »

A crafting system should really be like valrus said, it should have a "grammar". The recipes shouldn't form a big-ass symbol table that you have to memorize. It should be a language. In fact, it should be a full blown embedded domain specific programming language right there in-game, disguised as an editor or interface...or just raw gameplay. You should be able to compose ingredients together like legos and be able to reason about the results before committing to them. It would be pretty hard to implement as you would have to be able to guarantee that the crafting system will always yield a product that is balanced within the game system, but that's what the closure property is for.

That raises an interesting question, of how (if at all) the player's access to the full capability of the system is parceled out.  What, if anything, prevents the player from making the best stuff at the outset?  (Beyond lack of knowledge, of course, and not including "you have to have found the recipe to make something".)  I can think of three:

  • Lack of access to important requirements (ingredients, machine, etc.).
  • Walling off some aspects of the system, or making success at them unlikely, until particular "levels" are reached.
  • You can craft anything at the outset but the best things are relatively useless until later.

The first is almost ubiquitous, the second isn't uncommon.  I can't think of many games that do the third.  The spellcrafting in Rudra no Hihou does this, though; you could craft the game's most powerful spells at any point, but until you have enough MP it's counterproductive to carry them around, since they take up inventory slots that would be better used on spells appropriate for your level.

Regarding balance in general, I have a soft spot for combinatoric systems that aren't particularly balanced, that just let you break the game if you manage to figure out the right combination.  But I suppose it's got to be a game where that's really what the game is about, working out the (potentially absurd) possibility space that the systems give you, even if that "breaks" whatever appears to be the game.  (That's for single-player games, of course, but for multi-player there's always the option of letting hosts/servers decide what aspects of the system are and aren't appropriate for competitive play.)
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s0
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« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2014, 02:40:50 AM »

i only like crafting systems when theres an element of customization to them
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jgrams
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« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2014, 01:55:35 PM »

  • You can craft anything at the outset but the best things are relatively useless until later.

The spellcrafting in Rudra no Hihou does this; you could craft the game's most powerful spells at any point, but until you have enough MP it's counterproductive to carry them around, since they take up inventory slots that would be better used on spells appropriate for your level.

Discworld MUD does a little of that as well. Actual crafting is more limited by your character's lack of skill, but you can often get hold of more powerful weapons or spells, they just don't do you much good. E.g. if you're a wizard, you can usually find spells which you can't possibly cast, but you only have so much space in your memory, and more complex spells take up more space (and might be more likely to make your head explode just by being in there?). Ditto weapons which are too "advanced" or which you don't know how to use: you can buy them and carry them around, but if you try to use them you'll just miss a lot, and even if you do hit, they don't do much more damage (or maybe even less damage than a weapon you can use well). Gives a nice feeling of freedom without messing with balance much.
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baconman
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« Reply #13 on: December 15, 2014, 05:50:57 PM »

What Terraria does is it clusters materials, then makes each cluster dependent upon reaching the peak of the one before it.

You can do Tin/Iron/Silver/Gold from the outset, but that's just the beginning. You need to up your pickaxe to Gold in order to acquire Osbidian/Demonite, and you need those to get Hellstone... then when Hard Mode kicks in, it transforms some of the base elements into the third tier of them, where the same weapons/tools take on drastically different properties (Drills that are relatively ineffective weapons, Crossbows with autofire, etc.).

There's a fair amount of uncraftable items in the game that must be obtained via treasure chests and NPCs, both of which become accessible as a feedback loop of the exploration aspect of the game, rather than hoarding and crafting alone. It creates the sense of progression that is necessary - and yet lacking in Minecraft mods, which are more about instant-gratification/access; and while they add new things to the layout of the game, it's just layers upon layers of existing content, rather than adding TO THE WORLD ITSELF.
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s0
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« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2014, 03:19:38 AM »

now i wish i wouldn't always lose interest in terraria before i get to this stuff
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baconman
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« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2014, 11:39:37 AM »

ProTip: Load yourself up with shooting/throwing weapons and a good pickaxe, then head to the Jungle on one edge of the map (if you find the dungeon, it's on the other side). That's where most of the gold and the treasure chests are located - but the enemies there are ones you'll want to snipe from afar, and the bees will shoot stingers at you. You don't need to be there long, just enough to score a gold hoard and a couple of the treasure chests. Tunnelling will help you more than you think there, too.
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