Features Developers! Here's how to fix your stupid crafting system

To be fair to We Happy Few, the game started out in early access as a sandbox survival game, and it was only after the feedback started coming in of how this could be the next bioshock, mainly because of the artwork and tone, that the developers decided to go down a story driven route. The early game was very different to what they ended up with, but the crafting system, which was going to be much more integral previously, got repurposed into the form that is in game, as they didn't want to remove it entirely.

And this I think is the cause of your problems with the crafting in the game, it is a compromise in the implementation of crafting which shows through in the game.

 

Funny you should mention NMS. I'm finding the crafting much more frustrating since the Next update! pre-update lutonium was almost everywhere and made launching easy. Now I have to use that stupid portable refiner thing, and the materials I need seem much more sparce.

 

For me it depends entirely on the game that I am playing. Take No Man's Sky for example, a game that I am thoroughly enjoying getting back into after putting it down with about 10 hours on it until the NEXT update came out. For me, as has been said, the crafting takes over too much from the main premise of getting out there and exploring. I don't mind collecting resources and making stuff like fuel or repair items, but what galls me is that if I want to craft an item I first need to make another 2 or 3 items, sometimes made from components that have to not only be mined, but then refined, then mined again, and refined again because the stack size is reduced on refining.

What I want there is you need to make x, put in y and maybe z mineral and job done. Single stage, fast, and simple.

Now if I am playing a game like Minecraft where the whole aim is to build and craft things then that's a different matter entirely, that is the point of the game.

 

Star Wars Galaxies was the best crafting system I have played. Nothing else so far has come close to it.I loved the fact that resources has different qualities depending on where it was mined and when it was mined, meaning that a gun or armour crafted with the same resources could have better damage or resistance than anything else.

It actually meant that some of the player shops became very popular due to the high quality resources that they had and their schematic was better than any other player came up with. I miss SWG

 

Yes, this was awesome, I was an architect for a long time before moving onto Squad leader and I prided myself in making the best crafting machines possible, selecting the best materials, batch producing the best modules, and so on. But that multi layered crafting worked as that was the game for me during that time.

 

I *loathe* crafting, and will never buy a game employing it. There aren't good and bad systems - only bad and worse. I want games that are fun to play; not tedious. Crafting is tedious by definition and, while some elements of it might be OK in Minecraft, it has no place in FarCry X. As you imply, it's just tacked-on game-extending fluff. I believe devs like it because it's much easier to program than intelligent AI, proper ranged combat, and good level design.

 

So perfect for Far Cry 2?

A certain amount of crafting I like. But when getting "the best kit" (which is 2x or more better than the next one down) involves jumping through hoops like, "Be at this place (doable), at this time (doable), in this weather (which is random), then wander around hoping and praying for a random spawn to the [insert-thing-needing-to-be-killed-here]." Then... then I say, "Stuff this." Then throw in random drops (which can be improved but not guaranteed by items you may-or-may-not have yet) and any motivation I had to play has now completely vacated the building.

I think part of the problem is that nagging desire of devs to "improve" upon what older games did. So things get more and more complex... to no benefit.