Annie D

this is gonna be a lil longwinded and perhaps a lil repetitive, but it'll be from the heart, so bear with

we've played a lot of games, being that we used em as a substitute for social interaction for most of our life, and so we've experienced a lot of different crafting systems, from things as simple Arcanum's "just have these two things in your inventory and click the button, hey, it's done" to the huge mess of things that is Gregtech 6 or Pyanodons mods, and a hugely consistent factor in our enjoyment of it is something to the effect of a satisfaction of sorts - a game whose crafting feels fun is one that has process of putting together various steps, even if it's just gathering the stuff for a single step, and putting it together into a finished product

this probably seems vague and kinda general and it is because we're bad at words, but we can give a few examples to help. the most recent being that we've recently gotten back into the brain poison that is RuneScape, and not too long ago we managed to make a Pickaxe of Earth and Song, which had a 5 step process that honestly took us 2 days, gathering up all the various different parts and forking out 40mil gold in total for some of it, and in the end we got the best pick in the game. it was honestly kinda tedious at the time, but there was the immense satisfaction of "hey, we did that", a way that we felt about having finished it that didn't show up with Arcanum's click-to-combine-two-things, because there's something of a process to it, even though RuneScape's arguably also just "click to combine the things"

as far as this is concerned, there's a degree in which we'd argue that the construction of multiblocks in Gregtech is a form of crafting - a clearly outlined goal or blueprint, a list of required materials to do so, a process of which to obtain them (which we'd argue is important to a crafting system to feel complete) and then assemble them, and a finished product at the end that is both satisfying to have finished and rewarding to one's future gameplay experience

this is probably a more philosophical answer than the one you're after, thinking on it tbh, and almost certainly biased as all hell towards the kinds of games we tend to enjoy (a reputation we're infamous for in our polycule....) but it is an answer that feels like ours

I'm not a fan of the boring "collect this, that, the other, press a button, it's made" ones, except in Wurm Online, where the creation was rarely the end.

In Wurm, there was a quality system, and many, MANY skills governing what quality level (QL) items would be created at, but then you had to use your own created tools to improve them, and improve your tools so you can improve items more, etc. Then on larger builds, you'd need to create a lot of things, say bricks, to be able to build a wall, which would take a long time, could fail, and I enjoyed it for the time when I played it.

FFXIV feels somewhat a simplified version of this, but very, very simplified, where you have to use skills to actually craft things most of the time, calculating your resources and gear levels to be able to hopefully create high quality (HQ) things, or high level collectibles.

WoW I didn't like, because it was almost all "go mine for an hour, then click a button, wait 10 minutes, then click another button." Felt very boring and more of a... Not a job exactly, a chore, I guess, to get things rather than doing it for the liking of crafting.

Minecraft is kinda similar to WoW, in my opinion, except that it works within the context of Minecraft. There's a simplicity about it and you still (well, used to) needed to learn the patterns of things which introduced more of a skill for it. (Not needing to remember is a blessing sometimes, though!)

The two biggest things for me are either tactileness or customizability. Ff14 hits the former about as well as I've been able to find for a game that incorporates a crafting system without being just like, "Blacksmith Simulator" or something like that. I want to feel like I'm actually doing some sort of actions for the crafting process beyond clicking a Craft button, and I wanna feel like I can affect that process through my own skill.

On the other end, customizability goes a long, long ways for getting me to truly enjoy a crafting system, it's why the Atelier games have basically broken my brain forever. They always nail how satisfying it can be to make a huge, multi stage recipe from scratch, starting from carefully choosing your base ingredients all the way down to laying the finishing touches on the final product. Get me -invested- in making an item in your game, give me a reason to care about putting in the effort to learn how to use your system well, make the ACT of crafting its own reward and I'll sink HOURS into your game.

i hate crafting. i just think its boring, a chore. i've never been like, wow, this was a rewarding action.

My two favorite crafting systems in games are from Ryzom & Final Fantasy XIV. Ryzom was really cool because the game was built around crafting; the best gear in the game could only be crafted, and most monster drops existed just to hook into the crafting system. Additionally, materials were extremely modular, where any given component of a craft could be a host of different materials (gathered or hunted) and that would influence the final stats of the crafted item. The only downside was that Ryzom required a LOT of grinding; unlocking recipes & additional buffs required tons of EXP, so there was a lot of "just make the same pair of boots 50 times so you can afford to make something that's not boots."

FFXIV, meanwhile, is great because the crafting system can (and often does) involve a lot of active engagement. Random effects proc every now and again, and you have special abilities that can take advantage of that so you can complete a craft more easily. It makes it feel more like any other class, just at your own preferred pace. The downside here is that material gathering & preparation is just as dull as any other game, and once you've got the stats to not need the special procs, you're just pressing macros & it becomes a slower version of the average MMO's crafting system.

Honorable mention to Guild Wars 2's crafting system; it's by-and-large the same as any other MMO's, but its discovery system (and the diverse material streams you tend to have) incentivizes making one of a bunch of different things rather than just grinding to make one piece of gear over and over again. The optimal path (i.e. cheapest option using the player market to acquire materials) still involves some repeated crafting, but even there it's significantly reduced.

I like the sysnthesis systems in the Kingdom Hearts games. You get materials for doing what you wanted to do anyway (beating up on Heartless), so it's not too bad if you have to go and find a certain type of material. And then BAM you get something cool from a neat little menu, maybe your synthesis level even goes up and you unlock even more cool stuff, like a permanent base stat booster, some of the more powerful equippable accessories, oh and also the best keyblade in the game.

I don't like the crafting/weapon customization in the Fallout games (specifically New Vegas and Fallout 3, I didn't play 4 or 76). You have to remember a list of junk that you need and then while you're wandering make sure you pick up that specific garbage, and if you miss it tough toenails. And it all takes up space in your very limited inventory, so trying to craft stuff makes it harder to carry extra guns and armor for repairs or healing items - and if you pick up stuff you don't need by mistake, you won't realize you're carrying it around for nothing until you get back to a crafting station. And once you do actually start crafting, there might be a couple cool unique weapons you're into, but mostly what you get is weapon attachments and special ammo that offers marginal stat improvements.

Crafting is kind of like a shop, except instead of turning money into items, it turns items into other items. So the process of getting the items should be engaging, and the end result should be impactful to make the process worth it.

I do like the gathering aspect of crafting a lot. I spent a looooot of hours in Elder Scrolls Online just... farming resource nodes. I find it relaxing and being able to always make something when I wanted because I had the stuff on hand was nice. I don't like going to make a thing, then realizing I don't have what I need? On the flip side, keeping track of dozens of types of Thing and What They Do and are For like for potions in ESO or Skyrim is not fun.

I like silly yet logical crafting, like in Don't Starve, where you can generally intuit what you need to make something, yet sometimes what you need is actually a pun, or a long leap in a logical train (for example: you need an actual stick to make fish sticks, to make a fancy vest you need wolf teeth because the pattern on the vest is houndstooth)

I liked the little minigames you do (or did? I have no idea what its current state is) in Mabinogi that influenced the quality of the item; it felt a bit more interactive than most crafting without feeling too gimmicky usually (see also Dragon Quest XI; similar thing there with your pocket forge). Mabinogi's color/customization system was definitely a gimmick, tho, and one designed to get you to spend real dollars, which was annoying to me.

The biggest thing I wish was added to a crafting system is a durability/maintenance system that incentivizes caring for the weapon you have. I don't want a game where every dungeon you're going "oop, guess I gotta go back to town and pay for repairs", I wanna see a game where you go the entire game with one weapon that you've broken, fixed, improved, reforged, and renewed throughout, your equipment growing with your character. I wrote a twitter thread about it once, focusing specifically on archery; I think investing time and effort into what you already have to care for it and customize it for your needs is an important concept that could be explored much more in videogames! Give me satisfying, quiet interludes that feel like a Studio Ghibli Moment™ where you walk away with your gear slightly more tailored to you.

Don't Starve did it the best for me I think, in that it was integral to the game but not obscenely irritating. You rarely needed to craft a shit ton at one time but if you did, you could do so at night when your options are pretty limited anyhow.

When crafting structures, you can "pre-build" them so that the materials are no longer in your inventory but you can place the structure at any time, very quickly, and it's indicated in that menu if you have one pre-built.

The only thing I don't like is that I can't get the names of the materials I need for each thing, but you can always look up what you're trying to make online instead of looking up the ingredient.

modded minecraft crafting. it's so satisfying having a goal and collecting resources until you get there. starting a new world and building the prerequisites and setting up machines and stuff until you have an ME system or whatever it is you wanted.

factorio/satusfactory/... crafting. i mean the games are built around crafting. that is all you do

i don't really play many games but some games with crafting i dislike

• half life alyx. you get little dots and put them on your gun or something. idk i forgot. i really don't like limited resources placed in game worlds that prevent backtracking. like you missed the thing? welp, guess you won't see this upgrade unless you restart the game now. you can't even go back for it, it's blocked off.
• destiny 2. i guess i don't really like d2 all that much in general. everything feels so insubstantial. like "this perk increases your dps by 0.1% but you can combine it with this other perk and it makes it so when you do a triple backflip you get a perk that gives you +0.2% dps for 5 seconds". i haven't really tried the crafting system. idk.

This is probably mostly nostalgia, but I always thought there was something special about (vanilla, not modded) Minecraft's crafting before the addition of the recipe book and the wiki's migration to Fandom. The information required to use the visual crafting system being off-site really inspired learning the recipies, and asking the people you were playing with for reminders or just guessing by shape after forgetting was a fun little experience. And I always had this sense that if I assembled stuff in the right way I might come up with some new recipe I had never seen before. But, having the Minecraft Wiki as a reliable source of the recipes prevented it from being too annoying if you legitimately couldn't remember. Having the recipe book now isn't actually bad (and I like how it doesn't start with everything shown, even if the toast notifications are a bit excessive), this is just me missing the good old days when things were worse (downfall of the minecraft wiki definitely sucks though).

Best crafting systems I've played with in quite a while is Potionomics. Potion crafting is half the gameplay loop, so it makes sense, but I've seen similar games do it so badly.

Quick summary: you have to make a potion using no more than N ingredients (increasing as you get better cauldrons). You've got five, uh, energy types, and each ingredient will contribute some amount of one or more energies. (Starter ingredients might give you 4 of one; late ingredients can give you 30 of one, 20 of a second, and 10 of a third; etc.) A given potion needs a particular ratio of certain energy types - Health Potion needs 1:1 of A and B, Poison Cure needs 3:4:3 of A, B, D or something, etc. You're energy totals don't need to be the exact ratio, but depending on how close you are your portion will be slightly better or worse. Potion quality is instead mostly based on energy total, across all five energy types. So you can brute force a strong potion by tossing in powerful ingredients at approximately the right ratio, or very thoughtfully choose ingredients that total less but hit the ratio better. Then in addition there's five sensory qualities - looks, smell, taste, etc - and some ingredients will give your potion a bad sensory trait while others give good, and this doesn't affect the power but does affect the price, and special orders usually require particular good traits.

ANYWAY, the point here is that the crafting is freeform and multidimensional. Interlocking axises - energy type, quantity, and traits - all play into how good your potion is, and you often have to trade them off to hit your goals. And ingredients themselves are relatively scarce, so you can't just find One Good Recipe and keep using it, you have to constantly improvise with whatever you have on hand (but occasionally can go shopping for exactly what you need).

Also there's a very good filter UI for the ingredients. Can require or forbid certain energies and traits, and sort by any of the energies. This is very helpful since there are over a hundred different ingredients.

The whole thing is just very, very satisfying.

For me, the best type of crafting system is, when it's a way to put in a little extra work to get ahead of the curve, that never feels like an essential part of keeping up. To where you can usually turn to it if you need a hand or just enjoy doing it, but if you just want to play and don't care if you're not at full advantage, you don't feel like you must.

That's a hard bit to hit.