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Crafting can be quite a divisive topic when it comes to deciding whether it’s a good or bad thing in RPGs. It can often feel like it’s tacked on due to its popularity, rather than serving a purpose.
It’s usually a major part of a game or a completely optional content with no bearing on gameplay and story.
For now, let's focus on the general idea of crafting in RPGs!
Crafting has been popular for quite a while with the success of games like Minecraft and Terraria. People simply enjoy the idea of creating something from gathered resources, whether it’s monster parts or some ore/materials collected from nature.
With time the options grew into crafting all kinds of equipment, brewing various types of alchemical potions, cooking various types of food and so on.
The point being, there are a LOT of things players can create themselves, which brings a question that many players keep asking, “what’s the point of crafting?”.
Crafting in RPGs must serve some sort of purpose. Some games focus heavily on its crafting systems to balance both the difficulty and its usefulness. More often than not though, it's simply added on as an afterthought and is entirely optional and just not fun to use.
Putting effort into crafting a powerful gear feels more fulfilling if it’s a process.
From gathering resources, finding out a recipe and finally crafting the item it can be very rewarding. But there’s something very important that is often forgotten and that is the usefulness of the item you craft.
What you create should be useful immediately after you craft it, otherwise, do you really need to craft that new cool weapon if you’ll just loot a better one after 15 minutes of gameplay?
It’s a really tough balancing act of giving players options but also making those options meaningful and worth dedicating effort into.
There is no one correct way of making crafting engaging for the players. Some may enjoy trial and error, where you can discover something by combining things together to discover new combinations/items(bonus points if its semi-logical combination).
Others can be more inclined to fulfil requirements, like gathering enough resources and receiving an item (including recipe finding if required). Some enjoy systems that employ actual skill based mini-games on top of other stats/ability boosters to allow even more immersive experience.
Crafting can be a very meaningful addition if done correctly. In more resource limited games with survival mechanics, it’s often a necessity (especially on higher difficulties) incentivising players to learn and master the mechanics put in place.
No matter what though, the reward should be at least equal to the effort the player put into crafting, otherwise it can come off as time consuming and unfulfilling.
Here’s a few game titles/series which interesting and fun crafting systems put into them.
Final Fantasy XIV being an MMORPG couldn’t not have crafting. But It didn’t need to go into the amount of effort that it did to make it so engaging and fun to basically play as a full time craftsman rather than spending time fighting powerful enemies and raiding bosses.
There’s 8 crafting classes to choose from and level up as with each focusing on their own speciality. At their peak ability, they’re capable of creating gear that is nearly on the same level as those you can get even from the end-game bosses but without relying on RNG to get it.
But do not be fooled, it requires a lot of time, effort and skill from the player to create these legendary items. The players’ level, characters abilities/gear, gathering resources and the mini-game to combine it all are necessary to create powerful equipment and getting everything is quite a laborious task.
While the initial grind can be a little off putting, after some time and effort, your creations become much more powerful and useful, just like in real life! And you can be sure that there’s plenty of people out there happy to purchase your masterpieces at a high price!
It’s the pride that comes from creating something worthwhile with our own (virtual) hands that makes crafting in FFXIV a worthwhile endeavour.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a more immersive sim than an RPG but we’ll just disregard that for now.
There isn’t even that much in terms of actual crafting, despite the fact that the protagonist, Henry, is a blacksmith. You can sharpen your weapon to maintain it at best.
The interesting part comes from creating alchemist potions. To create them you must learn how to read, find/buy a recipe along with the right ingredients and finally use an alchemist station to follow the actual process yourself!
Each missed/incorrect step lowers the chance of creating the potion, making the whole process this much more personal.
There are some really useful potions you can create, even a potion that allows you to save game when consumed (you can only save by sleeping in a bed or using a bath), making alchemy a very useful ability.
To not overstay its welcome as a novelty, high enough skill allows you to autobrew potions that you’ve created at least once before.
It’s a good mix of testing players’ skill, along with item utility and immersion. A very interesting approach to crafting in RPGs.
The Atelier has a lot of titles in its IP and crafting is very essential at its very core concept. Exploration, resource gathering and synthesising (crafting) are basically tied up to the main story. Even the name itself translates roughly into “workshop”, which should leave no doubt as to the nature of the series.
Thanks to that crafting plays a large role in the game and there’s a lot of effort put into it. The players discover new resources and recipes through exploration of various areas filled with enemies and environmental challenges.
The crafting itself is done in the protagonist's atelier, where you can synthesise new gear or enhance/transform your existing one to open up new possibilities and empower your characters to tackle bigger challenges. Creating a very satisfying gameplay loop.
Since synthesising is a very important mechanic, there’s a skill-based system that grants extra bonuses once mastered, allowing players to become more adept over time.
A good example of the game acknowledging the effort of the player and rewarding it.
A very fun series for anyone who enjoys JRPGs with focus on crafting.
C:DDA offers a very robust and engaging crafting system, as it is often necessary to the survival of your character. As a sandbox game, you’re not bound by anything other than your own objectives and self imposed challenges, meaning that you can craft anything so long as you’ve got the resources and skills to do it.
Your crafting choices range from basic spear to building your own car almost from scratch (or mobile fortress if you’ve got the patience for it!). There are hundreds of recipes to discover, practise and master, with skills and abilities to further enhance your success rate and speed of their creation.
Breaking things down using tools and repurposing them into something different, maintaining existing gear or building your own base, all of it is possible and surprisingly intuitive once you learn the basics.
A really fun mix of survival RPG with really extensive crafting mechanics.
Yes and no. Crafting is very easy to mishandle.
It can ruin the game balance or simply be unengaging and easily skippable. But if it’s done correctly it can improve the gameplay exponentially.
The ability to create gear/items can be very beneficial both in terms of gameplay and fulfilment of creating something through one's own effort, yet the resources to create such a system by the game developers can cripple other aspects of the game.
Not having any kind of crafting, on the other hand, takes away a lot of potential options from the players. Even if the systems are not very engaging, some games can mitigate this by allowing players to mod the game themselves.
Unfortunately, there is no clear answer or a solution as there are pros and cons both for keeping and removing crafting systems in RPGs.
If done correctly, crafting can be quite vital. It lets players customise/craft their equipment, create items they need for the adventure or just give an opportunity to role-play a craftsman in a fictional setting.
Absolutely! If there aren’t any limiters, like in-game skills/traits requirements, limit in access to resource or limited resources, players can quite easily mass produce powerful items to trivialise challenge.
