Opinion

Your favourite game would be just as good without crafting

18.12.2023

Translation: machine translated

Hardly any crafting system enriches a game. Because crafting and improving items in games is either tedious or doesn't play an important role - in the worst case both.

I'm in the alchemy lab in "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", combining various ingredients whose effects I don't know at random in the hope that I'll end up with a useful potion. The result: a "Wonder Potion of Lightning Resistance", a "Summoner's Potion" and an "Essence of Additional Magicka". The catch: I'm unlikely to come across a lightning mage any time soon. And as a Stealth Archer, I don't cast any summoning spells, so I don't need magicka.

So the items I craft are useless. And this is exactly the phenomenon I observe in many games. I do have the option of crafting items. However, these are usually weaker than the items I receive as quest rewards or loot from slain bosses. And if I do have plans for a useful robe, there's always just one ingredient missing to make it.

An upgrade is available! However, the armour I found in a cave hours ago is much stronger (and it looks cooler). «Assassin's Creed: Mirage» wouldn't need crafting.
Source: Valentin Oberholzer

Gaming should not be a second job

But there really should be games where you can craft useful items. But you'll have to find out for yourself where you can find the resources for a flaming sword - in other words, google it, if we're being honest. The moment you press Alt + Tab or pull out your mobile, the immersion fizzles out. I think that's a shame. So you get the materials scattered around the world and work through the intermediate steps. "Working" is no exaggeration here, because that's exactly how it feels. Gaming becomes a grind, which brings me to my next point.

Crafting 100 iron daggers just to improve my virtual forging skill? My time is too valuable for that. And yet I have to admit that, strictly speaking, the repetition makes sense. After all, to master a craft, you have to practise - even in real life. "I do not fear the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times", as Bruce Lee said.

Especially annoying: In «Warhammer: Vermintide 2» you don't craft specifically, but throw magic glitter dust at a talisman and hope that it gets a useful bonus.
Source: Valentin Oberholzer

Developers go to great lengths to establish reasonably realistic crafting systems. Unfortunately, when trying to get closer to reality, they often forget that things in games have to be reduced and simplified. Fighting, talking, riding, exploring - all these things are infinitely more complicated in reality than in games. However, developers are particularly keen to make crafting realistic.

Haaland in the Nike factory

This is why games often overwhelm us with overly complex, bloated crafting systems. Items not only have "properties", but also "values", "specialisations", "enchantments", "bonuses" and "skins". This means that you have to learn a lot more for successful crafting, but you hardly notice any improvement in gameplay. There are too many resources, too many buttons, too many interdependencies.

After all, my character is first and foremost an adventurer, in some games even a god or the saviour of the world. Dealing with tailors, blacksmiths or brewing potions is hardly worthy of such a character. I would even say irresponsible. After all, I have to protect the town from robbers, fight monsters and slay necromancers. The least the NPCs can do in return is to watch my back and equip me as best they can. Nobody expects Erling Haaland to sew his own football boots in the factory. He just has to be in the opponent's penalty area at the right moment and heave the ball over the goal line.

This is not how I imagine the game to be fun. The iron dagger as grind item number one has meme status in the «Skyrim» community.
Source: Youtube/That'sCoolDude

Meanwhile, I ignore crafting in practically every game. I sell materials from the merchant without batting an eyelid before hopping through the world with a light backpack. Fortunately, crafting is not a compulsion in almost any game. While you're stuck like Sisyphus in an endless loop of animations, I show my new brawling hammer what the brain matter of a bandit leader looks like.

Cover image: Youtube/That'sCoolDude

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Valentin Oberholzer

Freelance Editor

v4lentin.oberholzer@gmail.com

My retreats have names like Middle Earth, Skyrim and Azeroth. If I have to part from them due to IRL commitments, their epic soundtracks accompany me through everyday life, to a LAN party or to my D&D session.

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