John Ringo posted this on Facebook, and while I don’t play the particular games he references, I’m also finding that in-game crafting (which seemed like such a cool idea when I first heard of it) is really just an extended PITA:
On one of the many reasons I have started to lose hope I will ever find a game I enjoy again. (I’m over NMS and Fallout 4 managed to lose me in mere minutes.)
I played (Fallout) 1 & 2 back in the Paleolithic of Computing when we all we had was the 255 Megalith. 🙂 (Terry Pratchett reference for anyone who got it. [Explanation here]) So I’m familiar with the back story. I played 4 up to a frustration point and dropped it.
This frustration point involved… crafting.
I REALLY don’t like ‘crafting.’ I think it’s a ‘thing’ that game developers think is really cool and important and mostly appeals to the ‘I have not a fucking thing better to do in my life and I’m very OCD’ crowd. The whole ‘crafting tree’ thing is IMO utterly fucking idiotic. It’s what’s turning me off of both NMS and Fallout 4. You can’t play the damned game without every three seconds having to go around searching the entire damned world (or worse universe) for the left hind leg of a Tibetan Mastiff puppy. And woe betide you if all you’ve got is the other three legs.
Give me a quest to go rescue a princess (or, hell, a container load of kids) or slay a dragon or something for loot, loot, loot and I’m your guy. But if I want a suit of Unobtainium I want to go to an Unobtainium suit maker and buy my Unobtainium suit. If I need to upgrade my ship what I should have to search for is a really good SHIPYARD. Not a fucking flower on some hell planet.
I should not have to spend an entire day RT looking for a fucking rare violet that only blooms in the dark of the fucking moon every alternate fucking Lemisnacht which is only one item necessary to craft one particular portion of a fifteen step recipe for a fucking stick that will give you the power to tend sheep.
Crafting. Needs. To. End. It is ruining gaming. It’s a sign of game developer who have no new or interesting ideas and can’t even rehash the old ones well. They just sit around going ‘what’s the stupidest thing we can come up with for crafting? That’s what gamers REALLY want! Stupid crafty things!’
Cause…yeah. We love the shit out of trying to figure out which fucking useless spugm we’re supposed to have ready for the next totally useless crafty thing. Not actually going and DOING something awesome. That’s no fun at all.
/sarc
When Guild Wars 2 was in development, they said we’d be getting an in-game crafting system so we could make our own armour, weapons, and other items. Sounded great to me. Then when the game released, it became quite clear that the crafting system was going to be tedious as all heck … and you pretty much had to use it to get the game’s highest-tier equipment for your character. And a lot of the “ingredients” you needed were not available for purchase at the trading post because they were locked to the character (or account) that found or created them. Then they introduced new, even higher tiers of weapons and armour (which were pretty much required to have a chance at being successful in the toughest environments), which added even more stuff you needed to accumulate to craft (or spend significant amounts of real world money to obtain … if they could be obtained). I still play the game, casually, but most of my characters tend to look like they found their armour on the battlefield because none of it matches, and I’ve never bothered to try crafting any of the higher level gear just due to the required investment of time and money.
