RPG in game crafting needs to be nerfed

[Roas]

Follow me on this one. I've been thinking about it for a while.

So, it's one thing for MMO's to have crafting be a big deal, because that always makes up a large part of the MMO experience for large portions of the player base. There is even a part of that base that ONLY crafts. It's what they like to do and why they play.

What I'm talking about is the console RPG as it is today. In a lot of the sandbox and semi-sandbox RPGs today, they have opened the doors to crating being a big deal. They give you tons of options and let you go at it. Two of the best examples on my shelf are Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Skyrim. Others like Fallout 4 and even Tales of Berseria/Zestiria had big crafting as part of the game play.

So what's my problem with this?

It breaks down into a few of things.


1) Super crafting in regular RPGs breaks games. DA:I and Skyrim are perfect examples. The recipes and options provided by each game allows you to be WAAAAAAY too powerful if you take the time to gather the mats for gear. This allows you to just mow down everything in your path without a challenge. Yeah, we all know I'm "Mister Power Gamer" where I like to be over leveled and geared, but there comes a point where when the challenge is gone games lose a bit of their shine for me.


2) Power crafting destroys what I've always seen as that incredible feeling of joy when you find that awesome piece of gear in the game.

"Oh, wow! This sweet weapon/armor just dropped! Looks awesome! Let me just compare it...oh...my supped up iron sword/leather armor is way better...yay..."

Power crafting has robbed players of that chance to find that great piece of gear from a boss or extra dungeon/quest. The non-crafted gear is just never good enough. Skyrim is really a perfect example. Due to my diligence in mats and crafting, I was in Dragonbone gear as fast as I could get there. Once I got it...that was it. Nothing has been better. Best I can do after that is tweaks when my blacksmithing or enchantment was leveled higher. I mean, I burned down the final boss of both expansions...and I knew before I even looted the bodies that even though their gear looked great, it was shit in comparison to my crafted gear.

So not fun.


3) Okay. This one is really just more of a pet peeve opinion based upon esthetics and also being forced to choose something because of a programmer's opinion. So, DA:I and Skyrim are both guilty of this IMO. First, DA:I gets angry because, let's say, I want to use a one handed sword as a main weapon, or even a great sword if I'm a warrior. Sorry, player, but the axes are superior in stats, so even though you are a sword guy....you have to use an axe otherwise you're gimping yourself.

Skyrim likes to make it's armors look cool...too bad the Dragonbone armor set makes you look like a wandering barbarian covered in bones, while the Daerdra gear which looked sweet as hell has to be shelved.

I am really tired of being forced to use weapons or wear armor that I dislike because the programers and designers decided it had to be that way. I can sorta live with the Skyrim example, but DA:I forcing you into weapons you are unhappy using is dumb if you ask me.


In the end, I think going forward games need to really have their crafting nerfed so that getting gear out in the wilds actually means something again. I'm not saying get rid of crafting completely, just tone it down so that the quest gear actually means something again on multiple levels.

Now, I know the easy counter argument is that there are people who play the games and don't like to craft, so the in game gear is good enough for them. That has some validity, but show me a player base these days that does not dive head first into crafting in these games. I think that those who are in the "I don't craft" section are a tiny percentage by comparison.

[Rune Lai]

Crafting only really gets on my nerves when it's necessary. My experience crafting in DAI was like "Oh! I can make this thing! I'm done." And then I never crafted again.

Well, maybe that's not entirely accurate, I might have crafted a couple other things. But I'm the kind of person who doesn't craft unless I happened to have the materials on hand and actually remember to go craft, which probably wasn't often in DAI since it wasn't necessary. I haven't played the DLC, but I did all the side quests, and by end of the base game everything was so ridiculously easy that I can't imagine what kind of edge craft could possibly have given me.

I don't go out of my way to min-max. If I like something, I don't care if it's non-optimal as long as I can get through the game, assuming we're talking single player. (If it's an MMO and I'm part of a raid group I'll wear an pinata costume and duel wield fish if that's the best gear. Doesn't mean I'd like it, but I'd do it.)

I wish DAI had more variety for warriors though. I miss how the original DAO warriors had four different fighting styles. Now it's just two-hander or sword and board.

[northlander]

The Daedra gear has the best defense, actually, even compared to heavy Dragon armor. It's just the Dragon weapons that are better than the Daedra ones, and they weren't even IN vanilla Skyrim. I see your point, but you're mixing them up here, I think. ^^;;

But yeah, if you liked the look of the Dragonborn in the Skyrim ads (mostly Iron armor) and want to stick to it, you're pretty much nerfing yourself. Interestingly, FF XIV sort of "solved" the problem by introducing glamours, although that added the layer of ridiculousness that there are now tanks running around in bikinis/thongs or dress suits, which aren't exactly known for their great defense against weaponry.

I kind of like how Skyrim's weapons run with the "daggers to warhammers" spectrum in that the stronger they hit, the slower they also are (in a fairly logical sense.) Of course, that leaves out the fact that there are some weapon types out there, like spiked hammers/mallets, that were developed specifically to deal with heavy armor by utilizing momentum and piercing power, but I'm not going to hold it against a game if most of them don't want to lean on that level of realism. Same with "boob plates" and such.