We all know what crafting in video games is so I won't mince words. The ways most games do crafting. You get a blueprint and you get the materials that match the requirements for the blueprints and then you have whatever is was that you wanted. You don't get a blueprint and instead you have to use logic or luck to throw in a pot whatever looks like it'll fit until you're told you were successful and get a recipe for whatever it was you just made. The two main components of crafting are obtaining the means to craft and the actually process of crafting. Now we all know how most games do crafting: they give you a workstation and the blueprints, so all you're left to do is go out into the game world and find the mats and bring them back. But some games require you to find the blueprints or lock them behind safes where you have to find the keycode, like in Prey. And some games require minigames in the process of crafting, like a bar that needs to be filled at near half way or else the craft will fail, like in FFXIV and DQXI, where in these minigames they add the possibility of creating a craft above average grade i.e. high if it hits exactly half of the bar. And it adds an element of chance/rng and skill with each swing at the anvil varying in intensity/how far the bar fills. But then it adds abilities you can use to control the chances of the strength of the swing. While usually the process of crafting is a mind numbing one where you simply need the materials to fill the slots by adding in these extra steps or minigames in between the start and finish you add in other game elements such as exploring to find the keycode or using the right skills to make the bar fill exactly or near half. What I'm saying is is that crafting can be fun. Now here's my question for this discussion: can you remember any notable crafting systems in games that weren't the average go get the mats and then you get the item? And I'm not disparaging the simpler forms of crafting. If a game doesn't want to focus on it then that's fine too. Also, if anyone remembers the specifics of the crafting system in FFXIV or DQXI and want to tell me about them that would be highly appreciated. I can only find the summary of them online and I'm too lazy to go back to playing those games just to check how the crafting system specifically worked; and I'm too lazy to watch hour-long youtube videos about it. Also I heard that the atelier games have a great crafting system and would like to know more about them.
Well, I know of a slightly different crafting way, in Atlantica online, in order to do crafting, a player will take a slightly different approach, anyway, if you want you can learn more visiting this website
i enjoyed the way everquest 2 handled their crafting, before sort of slaughtering it in favor of casuals. basically, you'd level up on a progression system (craft to raise level), buy blueprints from the shop for basic stuff, advanced recipes for masterwork stuff would be found in the world, and then you'd have to craft individual items to eventually make up the whole. crafting would have its own skill sets and you'd try to boost the progress bar, while maintaining the quality. the higher the quality, the better the item. want a table? craft 4 legs, a large board, and some screws. as each of these items would have their own quality levels, as you combine them in further crafting products, the initial starting quality would adjust. so, if you had a full set of top quality items, your quality bar would be at 100%, when starting. if everything was poor quality, you'd start at around 30%. so, if you wanted to make the best stuff, you'd have to keep making good items. it was a bit convoluted and used up more materials than it should have, but crafting felt a bit more complete, like you were actually trying to make something, rather than magicing everything together.
Goblin Workshop required a little more effort to do the crafting. Moving the control stick, mashing buttons at specific times or rhythms. It wasn't bad, but I was playing the beta and it turned out to be a lot more boring than I thought it would be. It could have changed dramatically but despite looking forward to the more involved crafting, I instead became disinterested. The crafting I've favored most is actually Elder Scrolls Online. Despite being a basic fetch/gather system, it's one of the very few crafting systems I've played both in single player and mmo's that has actually maintained relevance from the beginning to the end game.
I played Atelier Sophie before and the crafting is intricately designed. the crafting is done with a cauldron, represented by a 4x4 checkered space with a few different colors in each box inside. some of the boxes are light up and would give a bonus when an ingredient put there. when an ingredient is placed, the surrounding area around it will also light up and the light becomes bigger if there is already one before. you can put ingredient on top of already placed ingredient, removing the overlapping one from the space but also consuming the light it uses. each ingredient has a different size, shape, color, quality, and trait. the same ingredients are identical in color but may have a different trait, size, and shape. each ingredient placed give score plus the bonus to a few bars on the side. when the bar reaches a certain point, the item made get the corresponding effect stated there. so you have to consider the placement, order, and also which ingredient to use when making an item. later on, you can upgrade the cauldron (become 5x5, 6x6) and also get some different cauldron with a different attribute (vertical flip, rotate, no failure, etc.).
Would you consider the way of upgrading items in Disgea games a from of crafting? You enter the item's "inner world", a dungeon, clear levels to make item stronger, subdue specifics monsters and force them to reside in the item world to give the item specific properties.