Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Useless thing and crafting

Except exactly this one.
Wich sounds exactly as something that could easily be part of tutorial tips. :P

But even if, the game certainly do have means to tell the player exact oposite ...
I didnt play Zelda, so i dont know what you were referencing ... but personaly i would expect if the game will require me to kill last boss with a weapon that my character will personaly forge, to warn me about it before i go to that boss ... and there is many ways to do that.

It should just be a thing in items tooltip and every readability issues would be solved (misc, decoration, crafting,...)
But then there's still the items management and I'd hate to gather tons of crafting ressources for nearly common arrows, potions and so on.

I would like a crafting system for rare items. With not even "rare" consummables.
Let's say you can find a receipe and the first component to craft a Wyvern poison (item that is way too OP but anyway) in the Hag's Lair. It could be cool.

But I'd hate a crafting system like in DoS with so many components for so many "common" items. There are already way more healing potions and magical OP arrows than necessary.
If rare component are used to create rare items, it's seems good to me. If there are plenty of common component to create plenty of common items, it's boring and not rewarding.
And it's even worse if some common component are necessary to craft rare items... Because it would mean that we'll have to gather everything, just is case...

Again. Treating games like it's some kind of choose-your-own buffet does disservice to the medium. Everything that is in the game is relevant. Having too much stuff is just as damaging and having too little. Editing in gaming exists and is needed just as much as in other mediums. Any addition to the game has positive or negative impact on the experience.

Assuming crafting will be the thing, it's speculative implementation impacts both exploration and inventory management - whenever you decide to engage with the system or not. And possible encounter balance later down the line. How one acquires new stuff in the game is an important design that will define the experience.

We apparently play the games in very different way ...

For example i just now play Witcher III.
And i never felt any urge to craft every single sword, or armor that is there ... i just created Armor and Weapons from the School of Cat ... and everything else was there for me just for immersion, since it showed that Blacksmiths can do even other things.
Sure, you can create every single armor and during leveling it might even come handy, since there are level requirements for stronger type of the same Witcher Gear ... so you can for a while be actualy stronger in some other gear ...
But still it just is there, and its not relevant for me at all.

I like this.

Or you can simply turn back and gather them after? O_o
I mean they are "common" after all, arent they? :P

I think we all should know by now, that if there is any certainity in this game, it is that the game WILL ALLWAYS wait for you.

Having to walk back onto every corner of an empty map to find the good plant I need to create my speed potion sounds very fun.

Another problem with a crafting system is that Crafted items tend to fall under three categories:

1) Consumables that help the player in battle (IE healing potions, potions of resistance etc)

2) Gear that is sub par and not worth crafting because doing a simple task/ quest replaces them

3) Gear that is so OP that it encourages you to make said item and skip side quests and leads to the cycle of get better gear to defeat bigger bosses to get better gear mentality


I got no problem with the first type in general other than the fact that in this game what you can carry is based on weight based on your strength score thus making hauling about lots of materials a pain

The second is problem that can be solved in MOST MMOs by making the gear just good enough to allow you to do the quest/ dungeon/ raid to get the item you really want, but this game does not in anyway function like an MMO (at least not any current MMOs) since there are no instanced dungeons with a "Gear Score" it would make it difficult to know if gathering the materials to craft a piece of gear is worth it or not especially in D&D setting where sometimes you stumble across magical gear just by looking in the correct crate.

The third... as I stated before it encourages you to skip side quests... something that can be done easily in an MMO as you can always go back to them and do them, but in this type of game which encourages exploration and doing the side quests (which provide not only gear, but the XP you need) its not a good idea/ takes away from the game to skip side quests. Which brings me to the point that I am sure Larian didn't go through all the trouble of writing all this storyline with multiple permutations based on our actions as players just to have us get bogged down in a tiered crafting system. They'd probably rather we enjoy playing out the story.

Honestly all in all (and I am sorry if this sounds hostile) if you want an entire crafting system just play an MMO...

The crafting system and random detritus was the worst part of Witcher crafting. I can't remember from NWN.

I'm playing Solasta and I'm digging the system there. It tracks the recipes you have learned, which ones you can make with the ingredients you have, and which ingredients you are missing. I don't particularly care for managing my inventory, but at least I CAN just go around merrily picking up plants and stuff. Although I'm never quite sure what might be a needed ingredient down the road and which is sellable loot. I see the "Ingredient" tag on the item, but not sure if I can always trust it.

What I liked about crafting in D:OS, I was being able to make weapons I couldn't buy or find. They weren't Specialist flashy, but the damage was amaze-balls. Then they ditched it in D:OS II.

Joe

THAT would be awesome.

Joe

All these things you've said... That's why I really don't craft in video games. I don't care for it at all.

That said, Solasta did crafting okay but still not great. I did craft some in that game because I had to in order to get some better gear. Doom Gem + Greatsword + something else = Cool Greatsword that was better than other greatswords.

Problem was, it wasn't long before I didn't need to craft anything else or buy anything else, and most items I found were boring because I already had better gear.

So then, still picking up useless junk and managing it for nothing and then items I'd find that might have been super cool were not.

Kinda like how they let you acquire Zalk's sword in the prologue. No other weapon in EA compares. So, everything else is boring at that point.

Balance seems to always be the holy grail.

Joe

Sure... crafting in WitcherIII (and in general RPG systems) were pretty poor. Considering that after 10+ hours of gameplay I outleveled any content I wanted to tackle, yeah new gear acquisition was pretty irrelevant outside looking nice. That's also good example, thanks. Erase power progression, and RPGness of Witcher3 and you immediately get a better game. Do something well, or don't do that at all.

I know a game where any object that is used in crafting has, on its tooltip, "used in:" and then a short list of small print lines for the crafting recipes it's used in. This doesn't spoil anything in advance, since you only know what something is useful for when you've gotten your hands on it - not that you need a specific dragon's heart to make something before you even meet said dragon. In a game where certain items are used in many recipes, it can cut off after three entries with a "(and 27 other recipes)" line, which can be popped out further with another key stroke if you want to read the full list. Something like this could work here, to stop you worrying about what useless clutter to pick up and what not to.

But why? Why craft swords, axes, armor, etc. that are normal at all? To make more junk that doesn't sell for much?

I agree with those who say the only worthwhile items to craft are items like Sussur weapons or Adamantine or whatever. All the crafting you can do with spoons, knives, forks, plates, cups, etc. would be boring junk items you probably won't ever actually use. You'd just sell them.

So why not cut out the useless junk in the game and just have useful items, more gold, rather than collect and sell useless junk, and so forth?

At least make all the useless stuff things I'd actually have to pick up on a table or shelf, not within lootable inventories.

Right now, if an enemy has even one useless item, like a bone, I have to either take it with good stuff, with Take All, or I take each item I want one item at a time. So, my inventory winds up filling up with garbage I just sell, one item at a time, because it's just easier to Take All.

Well, I'd love to be able to craft a full plate - I don't see them being sold anywhere.

Also, I tend to like the crafting system in NWN2. Sure, most of the recipes were useless, just like most mundane items are useless. However, the ability to choose a different base material for some items was a really nice touch - Mithril Chain Shirt, anyone?

Why not? O_o

My Dwarf, Guild Artisan, will allways rather fight with arms and armor that he made himself, than in armor he find on (or in) some corpse ...

Well the answer to why not is that if you're also able to craft magical weapons, then as soon as you're able to do that, the normal weapons and any ingredients reqauired exclusively for them become useless, because why would you craft and use a normal weapon when you can craft and use a magical weapon that's just objectively better. That means the devs are investing time and money into content that's going to see very little use, as well as cluttering up the world and system with undesireable stuff that players don't want.

Also your argument about crafting that if a player doesn't like it they can just not engage with it rings false for several reasons. The first is that, as it was pointed out, unless the game explicitly says that players don't have to engage with the crafting system, players won't know that they have a choice, and they're going to waste time gathering up all the overabundant resources Larian has dropped in the game, which slows down gameplay. And honestly, do you actually think Larian will explicitly say "don't worry about crafting, it's entirely optional for you to do"? Why would they invest time and effort into a system that can be ignored without impacting the game experience? Why would we assume that they would tell us if their crafting system was totally optional? I can give you a reason they would not do that; because they worked hard on it and want players to interact with it. If they didn't want players to interact with it, they wouldn't have included it in the first place.

Also, the idea that crafting will actually not impact the game experience and it's a thing that'll be completely optional is just silly. On lower difficulties you'd probably be able to ignore it, but for anyone who wants to play on higher difficulties, I've yet to see a game like this where part of the higher difficulty doesn't involve making serious use of items and constantly having the best possible weapons and potions and items, which pretty much always involves some level of crafting. Then there's the fact that if the system exists, then the devs are going to let that impact other development aspects. It'll impact loot at the very least, because crafting supplies are going to be all over, and it's inevitable that players will pick some up even without going out of their way to get it, which will clutter up their items. Then we have no idea how it will impact power scaling. Will there be stuff that can only be crafted? Does all this mean that someone who dislikes the crafting but is finding the game too easy at the level which allows them to ignore the crafting will have to pick between two unpleasant experiences?

Not necesarily ...
Personaly i still believe that +1 crafted items should be treated as meere upgrade of regular weapon ... meaning requiring you to use regular weapon as one of ingredients ...
Sure, you can also totally use litteraly any other weapon you just looted somewhere, but if you just happen to not have any ... regular weapon have still its uses. :P

One old expression say: Those who wants, are looking for answer to how ... those who dont want, are looking for answer for why.
Or something like that.

Its funny how often players want to decide what investment is meaningfull and what not, purely on their own desires without any context. Thanks Gods it dont work this way.

I wonder why are you talking about yourself in plural ...
It would be much more acurate if you would say "stuff that i dont want".

Nah, just messing with you ... im aware there are certainly "more than 1" people against it ... but im also aware there is certainly "more than 1" people waiting for that feature ...
Now wich group is bigger?
That would be good question ... but i doubt any of us even can know.

So please, dont make yourself majority ... it dont give your arguments any value ... at best it have exactly oposite effect.

Sad story ...
But how is that an argument? And what are you even trying to say?

"It should not be implemented at all, bcs otherwise people would use it." ? O_o

Im really confused by this logic.

I feel like im just back in Barrells topic, where some of you were trying to persuate me that people will waste hunderts of hours to move Barrells around, just to blow up whole Goblin camp "easily" ... instead of making it the "hard and skillfull way" and kill them with their spells and abilities ... wich is both more fun and faster ...

Or in that short topic about rolling our stats, where someone was trying to tell us that people will waste whole months, maybe even years, trying to get 18 18 18 18 18 18.

Yeah, some certainly will ... and they mostly will bcs they choose to.
Same as every time before ... if you do something you dont want do ... there is something horribly wrong. :-/

This is a good question ...
I would like to point out that we will have 12 classes, of wich every have at least 2 sub-classes ... wich means certainly more than 24 options, lets say "around 30" +/- ...
And our group will be able to contain only 4 characters ...
And yes, im aware that we could technicaly play more than 4 since Multiclass is a thing ... but that only alterns the question to max level features.

I would also like to point out that there is really MANY magical items in the game, and quite honestly no matter how hard you try you will never be able to use them all.

Same goes with races, same goes with backstories, same goes with alternative quest decisions, same goes with main questline (support, or fight the Absolute), same goes with spells, same goes with consumable items, throwable items, ... basicaly freaking everything in this game.

So why would they invest time and effort into a system that can be ignored without impacting the game experience?
Oh thats right, so people have OPTIONS!

Im not quite sure what are you talking about here ...
"Best possible weapons"? Come on, every common vendor offers you some +1 gear.
"Potions and items"? In my last play i gathered around 60 Healing potions ... i dont see any reason why would i craft more.
Same goes with throwable items ...
Im not quite sure how resistance potions will play ... are you allowed to drink two of them? Or all of them? And if so ... what would be the reason to double your enemy damage by setting game on Hard, if you would imediatly lower it back in half by crafting resistance potions?
So you can tap your own shoulder that you beated the game on Hard?

About loot ... i dont think it will affect this aspect of game ... well, at all to be honest ... since we allready have herbs, empty vials, bottles, ropes, hammers, ignots and tongs all over the place. :-/

The rest is your pure fantasy with no real tie to the game ... so i shall ignore that if you dont mind.
Bcs the only acceptable answer for "what if" in my eyes is "what if not".

Yes and no.
With the system of sending items directly to the trunk the inventory is not really a problem. But sorting and organizing it is. In general, you have a bad overview of the inventory. This is general to games of this type for the most part. I think there is really something to develop there. I mean the organization of the inventory (not SAP please)
BUT personally sending the items to the chest directly bothers me. It's too "magical". So do the camps that come out of nowhere. Maybe the heroes have a purse with the camp in it and they take it out of their pocket when they want to camp? This is 'Jack Vance' not 'The Forgotten Realms'

+1
Idem for for gems and parchment scrolls
same as BG2

+1