I also like individual, unique craftables based on discovery in the game. Like, there's no quest to reforge that one spear. You just find half of a spear, and somewhere else you find the other half of a spear. Nothing tells you to do anything with those. But if you decide to take them to an anvil and combine them, boom, you get a cool magic spear. That's good crafting to me. Not the Divinity style where you feel like you have to collect and horde tons of possibly useless junk because it MIGHT be used in some recipe for some item you're gonna want later on.
I agree. Crafting should be, but only in such a limited way.
When the player is given a full-fledged crafting system, this leads to the following results:
1. A pile of garbage in the inventory
2. It takes a very long time
3. People who don't like crafting will suffer because their weapons and armor will be worse than what can be crafted
4. Complicates game mechanics
5. Kills the interest to look for interesting weapons, to buy something from NPC merchants. Why, if you can craft an imbalance?
In the Inquisition, I had to read forums, look for ingredients, blueprints, make dragon armor and weapons for everyone, insert runes there, look for these damn great master runes all over the world ... yes, there is excitement in this. But if I didn't, I would be in a disadvantageous position compared to those who were engaged in crafting and distracts from the plot. The plot and freedom in BG3 are much better than in the Inquisition. Companions and romantic interests in BG3 after the Inquisition are just amazing, this is a completely different level. This was the weakest point of the Inquisition ... well, this is already offtopic.