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?

"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.

I am definitely one of those players that saves everything until I "need them" the end result is I beat the game with all those extra buff potions and stuff that I never used.

One of the reasons I like the crafting in The Forest is because your character lays out your items on a tarp when you open your inventory. This way you actually see all the things you have with you.

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.

Okay, but being able to hoard hundreds of useless items in games appeals to the goblin side of my brain.

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

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

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.

Already agreed. I’d rather do a hard task to get one thing I need, rather than several mundane tasks just so I can craft a thing I need.

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."_

Nothing feels better than playing Last of Us, feeling hopeless in an encounter but finding two bullets, some sugar and some tape and going "I can make this work."

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've found that in most games, crafting systems have been more invasive than helpful.

0:53 square clouds with realistic textures scare me

I find crafting and repairing in The Long Dark very satisfying. You explore an area or brave the weather to go check your traps and collect resources, then struggle home under the weight of your haul, warm your space against the dark night and mend your boots with rabbit fur so you don't lose your toes in the night.

Interesting take. I think you might have missed the fundamental problem, though, one that is shared with many game mechanics and design principles. I'm talking about the difference between what we _imagine_ something will be like and what that thing _actually_ is like. For instance, when we imagine MMO games, we picture ourselves experiencing something like what the named characters in .Hack and Sword Art Online experience: a world where our personal narrative is unique, where we become famed heroes known by all players, where we carve out an alternate, digital life. In reality, everything our characters do is something that every other player will also do, word of our adventures will spread nowhere, and the digital world is too static and immutable too be anything like a life. The truth is that for most people, the first M in MMO is hardly _ever_ relevant to our experience. If you play solo, other players might as well not exist. If you spam LFG and play with randoms, that's no different from a squad-scale game with random matchmaking. If you play with a guild, then you play with them and all other players might as well not exist. None of this means that MMOs are bad, merely that they don't match the implicit, unconscious, unspoken desire. Crafting is similar. The dream at the heart of crafting is _not_ to collect ingredients for a recipe. The dream is to do something _without_ a recipe-something that's unique to us-or to solve a problem in a way that's unexpected. Crafting from a list of prescribed recipes is no different from shopping from a list of items; it just uses a different currency. What makes the prospect of crafting compelling is the possibility of combining components in ways that the game doesn't expect. Imagine if Morrowind's spell crafting system, instead of letting you combine components to create whatever spells you wanted, provided you with a list of approved spells and didn't let you make anything else. Conversely, imagine if Skyrim's smithing system didn't just give you a list of approved products, and it instead let you combine components and produce results purely from some algorithm rather than a predetermined list. The crafting we want is algorithmic. The crafting that disappoints is list-based, whether hidden or not.

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

"oh boy, I just defeated the space lava spider demons in this secret underwater sanctuary! I hope there's something good!" *box of popsicle sticks and a pack of gum*

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

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.

Me: Trying to escape realism Games: Here this gameplay mechanism is realistic Me: ...

Crafting is shoved in "so many games." I legitimately heard "Sony Games" and i still agreed.

interesting, I had a completely different experience with FO4, i spent a massive amount of time building my base and upgrading and customizing weapons and armour. I think the base becomes quite usefull late game as you can set up markets and actually buy things from your settlers, giving you a really good supply of relatively cheap, easy to access ammunition and other gear, as well as a place to store all your excess shit.

This is one of my issues with breath of the wild, I could cook a really fulfilling meal that recovers all my hearts in one go, or I could just stuff a dozen apples down my throat and not worry about gathering the ingredients and finding a pot. I could make a powerful potion, but why bother when it doesn’t significantly affect how I interact with the game?

Cheeky of you to mention "Not wasting the player's time" while scrolling through the Animal Crossing crafting menu.

4:56 “inventory space is pretty limited” *Laughs in putting lockers on every square inch of the submarine.*

Thank a lot, we're designing the game mechanic and were looking to add a crafting system central to our game pace. Your video highlighted the issues and how it can be solved !

I really enjoy how in Breath of the Wild, in order to cook something you just need to physically drop them into a pot with a fire and listen to the jingle either become more harmonious or more discordant depending on the imminent outcome.

Shops with extra steps

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.

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 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.

Crafting can be good but most of the time it's just used as a way of avoiding fetch quests since instead of just doing random things to get an item you get the resources in place of a list of tasks to craft the item

"Alien: Isolation" has an on-the-fly crafting system that while not necessarily taking up much time, provides a good example of a game where crafting is intensely useful and nerve-wracking because it won't pause when you go to check if you have the right items or supplies in stock. You need to prepare as much as you can with stuff as you go along, but will need to use many of the items and often can't craft everything in the menu because materials are sparse.

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.

THIS. This is everything I thought about and wanted to change ten years ago when I came up with the idea for a game I call "Build & Break". It was planned to be an asymmetric, asynchronous co-op game based around one player crafting stuff (The Builder) and the other player exploring the world they've crash landed on and procuring materials (The Breaker). This way, crafting is so integral that it can't possibly feel like the tacked-on afterthought it did/does in so many other games. It's gotten better over the years, but I still like my idea; I even envisioned a sequel called "Build, Break & Negotiate" where a third character (A parent of the other two) has to convince the local population to help them escape this latest crash landing through social options.

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

Most games with crafting systems only have them for two reasons: 1, they're "expected" to have it. 2, they exist to pad the playtime without adding additional content.

"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 actually love the excitement in anticipation of waiting 3.5 days to complete a new frame (mostly the last 12 hours of it) and makes each new item feel like counting the days to a new car or holiday or something. It really lets it set in that I really worked hard to get it as I've probably already been collecting all but a few resources already. It goes from a menu interaction to a life event

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.

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

crafting and inventory management mechanics in games often just annoy me, and i think that this video quite nicely touches on some of that... its just an extra thing to worry about that wastes your time unless it is added in a way that elevates the core of the game.

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

I have a good example of simple, unobtrusive crafting done well in a Triple AAA Video Game: Dead Rising 2 Crafting Recipes were really simple in that game, usually only two to three items, but inventory space was INCREDIBLY valuable and very limited in the beginning of the game, and some items were so large they had to be carried, not stored. However... discovering what tongue and cheek, rediculous yet undeniably badass items and weapons you could make from everyday store items was a blast and often a laugh, and in some cases the weapons you could make were SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful or reliable than what you could find in the open world map. The first game also did this to a much lesser extent by providing a drink recipe system. You could craft health items with food by using blenders sparsely populated in stores around the game map, but certain combinations of items would get you health drinks with unique and often powerful abilities, like tripling your movement and attack speed or upping the spawn rate of a powerful drop item.

"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

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.

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

I quite like how Kingdom Come Deliverence handles crafting: to brew potions you need to follow a recipe with specific steps to get the wanted final result. It puts a ton of agency onto the player's shoulders instead of being just an animation so mastering it is so very satisfying

I found that the best way to actually engage with crafting and use consumables was cranking up the difficulty. When challenges are high, you have to use every tool at your disposal to win and have to engage with every system in the game to even stand a chance.

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

This immediately made me think of the Atelier games. In them you play as an 'alchemist', which in that series basically means 'wizard who can make anything'. On the face of it these games are your usual turn-based combat JRPGs, but crafting is a HUGE component of advancement, not just to give your team stronger gear, but main story beats are often locked behind crafting specific items. While you don't HAVE to craft absolutely everything in the recipe tree and can just barrel down the main questline, the Atelier series sells itself on its crafting sooo... why are you here if not to craft? The exact crafting method differs from game to game, but it is generally speaking some kind of puzzle minigame. I chose to buy the episode that I have, Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream (yes, they all have titles like that), because it was a spatial puzzle a bit like Tetris where the point is to make everything tesselate neatly, but the pieces don't fall from the top of the screen and you can just slot them into the grid in whatever order as long as they fit. You have some leeway in which materials you use, but your choice WILL affect the end product. Each crafting recipe has material requirements, and if it's something broad like (Metal) you can choose ANY metal you have collected. Every material has certain elemental affinities and the resulting item gets boosts depending on how much of a given element it has. There's a bit of random generation to a material's elements and the piece shapes that it gives you, so you actually feel like a craftsman evaluating how useful each mat will be for the product you want to make; you can even choose to use a mat for only one of its pieces or just for its special item bonuses. You can remake the same product with different materials and get wildly different properties. I particularly like the way the game handles consumables: when you craft them, they come as an item that has a set max capacity and which doesn't disappear when used up, so there's no fear of losing them or having to recraft them after use: every consumable stack is essentially a potion bottle that refills when you get back to your atelier - but you can't refill mid-adventure. The crafting process becomes vital here because you can give consumables properties like '+1 Capacity but less Power' or '-1 Capacity but MORE Power' (this applies to all refills of that consumable 'item'). The game even has some nice anti-frustration features like the duplication system. Got a material with such great RNG that you wish you could use it multiple times? Made a cool item that you need two of, but can't be bothered to make it again? Just pay to get it duplicated, simple. That way the focus of the game stays on making new stuff - OR on remaking an item in a different way to change or improve its properties. You get a real feeling of mastery from remaking the same thing, but better - bringing out the full potential of the item by using the best mats and crafting techniques at your disposal. A lot of the satisfaction of the game is equipping all your characters with gear SO ridiculously powerful that they can just walk through bosses. Imagine being the blacksmith that the hero party bought all their gear from and just watching as they fight the big bad evil dragon: its scales are like butter before their swords, its claws like rubber on their armour, its fire like a refreshing breeze against their shields, and you grin to yourself thinking 'yup, that's a job well done'. That's the Atelier crafting fantasy right there.

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

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.

With Fallout 4, if you dive deep into the crafting system you can alleviate most of those issues. Scavenging stations, the adhesive recipe, and the ability to have unlimited caps by creating a moisture farm all have a major influence on your character's power level. The problem is that the main story of the game is exceptionally easy and doesn't need a high power level, so without modded-in content it is unnecessary. Even survival mode doesn't really make much of a difference once you are used to it. So while the crafting system is very deep, and there are some crazy things you can do with it, there's no reason to do so.

Something that can make crafting different from shopping is if you have a way to intentionally search for a given material, instead of just gradually accumulating random bits and bobs then seeing what you can make.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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

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.

This is why Atelier is so great: it's ABOUT the crafting. The crafting system itself makes you think, and the fact that the best way to deal damage is with an attack item and the best equipment needs to be crafted incentivizes crafting further. When these games occasionally drag, it is because I have some less useful items lined up to craft, but the game still incentivizes me to craft at least one of almost everything, and once I have it I might as well use it, and often l find it's more useful than I thought.

7:20 that sword is absolutely cursed

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

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.

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.

Removing the ability to craft saddles in minecraft is something I shant soon forgive.

I really like what they did in Breath of the Wild. Crafting is a little more hands on and experimental. Throw wood and a flintstone on the ground, hit it with your sword and you got a campfire, stick the tip of your arrow in the fire, and you have a fire arrow. Throw some meat on a freezing surface and you get a frozen steak wich helps in hot places. You could use octoballoons on a raft to make it hover. You could use a steel treasure chest, a mine cart and your magnetic powers to make a flying cart. During a lightning storm you could drop a metal weapon that an enemy could pick up and it would function as a lighning rod. Throw your rusty sword into an octo rock and it would come back new and shiny. The cooking was more like your traditional crafting, but even that still required some experimentation. This is one of my favorite crafting systems and I hope they expand on it in the sequel.

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.

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

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.

Reminded me of Kingdom Come: Deliverance with potions. The crafting requires alot of player interaction ( from heating pots to certain temperatures, preparing materials in a specific way, etc) so the process felt pretty fun to me. The potions were also helpful (the only way to quicksave on the harder difficulties) and expensive in stores, though the economy in that game still gets fucked later on.

I really liked the weapons crafting in Boktai 2 and 3. There was a whole mini-game involved and it integrated the solar sensor which is a major part of the game outside of it. The weapon you get for finishing has different stats and potentially, hidden abilities depending on how well you do in the mini-game

1st playthrough: Save every single scrap for the love of god incase I will need it somepoint in the near future!!! 2nd playthrough: How can I spend my resources the most efficiently so that I minimize the time spent and reach my goal?

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

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.

The feeling when you've neglected crafting element in some game, but still picked up stuff, and then started crafting, feeling super rich, by all the recources you unknowingly picked, but then, when you crafted some items you found yourself lacking some basic materials, and you don't know where to find them.

I often play open-world games, and a lot of times, the crafting becomes another checklist in my completionist brain and less of an actual interaction. You pretty much nailed the sentiment! Sometimes a little inconvenience and a little more expectation out of me makes me more appreciative of it being in a game.

For me the game that best implements the crafting system into the gameplay loop is the monster hunter series. Crafting equipment to fight monsters to craft better equipment so as to fight tougher monsters etc. It feels worthwhile and integral to the loop because there is no levelling up of the player character. It is through crafting that you progress and unlock skills and various builds.

Since you brought up Subnautica, it's impressive how satisfying the act of crafting items at the fabricator menu is. And I think that's in no small part due to the music picking up in intensity when you craft a large number of items in quick succession. It's also really cool how you can place multiple fabricators right next to each other so that you can craft even faster.

this is a ridiculously good review / viewpoints on crafting tbh! been watching more and more of your vids you are doing a really great job on all this bud keep em coming.

Sometimes when I play games that I need to craft things it makes me annoyed because I’m the type of person that always work towards one item and then never use it again

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.

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.

Crafting is just more interactive and gives more choice. If done right.

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

I always saw the inclusion of crafting in modern AAA titles as a hold-over from when RPGs like Fable, Mass Effect, and Oblivion ruled in their time. Corporate, as whole, saw RPGs elements as necessary "things to have" in order for a game to be successful and essentially mandated them to be included in virtually all games since. Similar to the appeal of "open worlds" in titles today, or level-up-able stats for your hero, corporate thinks that you simply gotta have it in order for it to compete despite. Of course, what ends up being truly fun for hours on end is not the same as simply copying elements from other games.

9:00 You're sounding like you're about to bring up building your base in Sons of the Forest. Most satisfying base building mechanics I've seen. Honestly if they took the blacksmithing minigame from Wartales a few steps further and made the item being visually crafted as you progressed in the minigame, that'd be a pretty cool crafting system no matter how many items you crafted, imo.

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.

Love that you used Spiritfarer as an example, such a niche meditative game I enjoyed it.

I've been gushing over Star Wars Galaxies for the past few weeks now, but the addressed points just make me think happily of the crafting you do in SWG. Not only do many of the classes craft different stuff, there is an entire class (with four subclasses) dedicated to crafting things. I'll break down how it works in general, starting from when you notice a craftable item that tickles your fancy: 1. You check the required materials. It can be as simple as "10 of ANY mineral" (so you would be able to use 10 iron, 10, copper or 10 ore) or as complex as "10 Tattooinian Wooly Hides" (meaning you'd need not only hides, but ones that come from mobs on Tatooine that are also wooly). 2. You write down what material stat influences the item stat you desire positively. 3. You survey the different planets for the material(s) that is/are required. Then you take a sample of the resource and see if its stats are desirable for the craftable item. 4. Once you found the good stuff, you can either keep taking samples by hand (sufficient if you don't want to craft a large quantity) or plop down a harvester that requires you to fill it with money and a power source (you can buy power generators from other crafters or build one yourself if you're that certain type of crafter). 5. Once you have a sufficient amount of resources, you can either craft the item on the spot (if it's a "simple" item) and have its stats solely be determined by the quality of your tool and the stats of the resources OR you can go to a dedicated crafting station (which can also be crafted in that same manner) and try to apply boosts to the stats of your choosing in addition to the stats being determined by the tool and material quality. Also, you cannot just put down a harvester at the best resource of any type because every one or two weeks the distribution of the resources shifts randomly. So once a vein runs dry, you get back to exploring the planets to find the most suitable spots for your harvesters.

In regards to Fallout 4, crafting and looting is much, MUCH more important when you're playing on Survival mode. And so does H E L P I N G S E T T L E M E N T S, as when you've claimed a decent number of them across the map, they serve as rest stops to feed/hydrate yourself, resupply and generally provide sanctuary. Then again, it also helps that I've got a mods that connect storage between all settlements. And instead of desperately searching for something to sleep in every time I wanna save, I have regular saving enabled because fuck that other noise. And fuck not fast traveling, the map is way too goddamn big for me to run back and forth constantly. But even with those mods, I felt more like I was scraping by in the wastes and having to make tough encumbrance decisions on whether I should drop my aluminum that I wanna use to upgrade my power armor, or pick up a typewriter to break down for a sniper rifle part (sniping is pretty much paramount to succeeding in Survival mode)

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

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.

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.