Suggestion Retool/Simplify Crafting

['77 East]

Suggestion:
Simplify the crafting system by cutting out the MMO grind/fat.


O Streamline all materials into a single resource, call it something like 'Improvised Resources'.
You want to craft something? Need # amount of them.
You want to repair something that's not a weapon? Need # amount of them.

O Replace the workbench, furnace and reloading presses with a simple 'combine fabricator'.
Make them rare, runs events around them breaking or needing new parts.
Give people a reason to give a shit about needing them working.

Why it would be worth adding:
It's shit, no one enjoys grinding pure materials or haggling over filler items.

Necessary content:
Combine Fabricator model.

 

[Raiden]

/radio Selling: Metal Scraps 10k | Wooden Parts 5k | Glass 2k | Gunpowder 1k | radio “Johnny Trader” for prices.

 

[MaXenzie]

while standardizing the crafting is nice i think there would still need to be some tiering of materials

maybe just 3, a common, uncommon, and rare one

otherwise the gulf between "you need 5 scrap to make a baseball bat" and "you need 500 scrap to make a AR2" is gonna make a new and separate grinding problem

if we have low-tier scrap, mid-tier scrap, and high-tier scrap then it's enough variety to have crafting that isn't "get a FUCKTON of this stuff" and also isn't "you need some incredibly niche items to make this"

 

[Komchan]

I think the fabricator idea just makes it overly gamey/annoying, but the other streamlining is a good idea possibly

runs into the issue that someone ass-pulls a bunch of stuff they don't have after gathering wood to make a nuclear reactor or summat tho

 

[MaXenzie]

idm the idea of a fabricator, HL2 is basically a science fiction universe it makes sense to have something akin to all-in-one machine at this point, especially since teleport tech is possible

 

['77 East]

I think the fabricator idea just makes it overly gamey/annoying, but the other streamlining is a good idea possibly

we already have to run around dealing with 3 separate filler benches (workbench, furnace, reloading press) which exist for 0 reason beyond forcing people to hoard entities. what do they do? nothing. there is no urgency for "uh oh furnace broke, can't craft stuff we need" or "someone stole all the workbench tools, oh no!"

a fabricator is something that can and likely would go wrong in dingy conditions.
it provides roleplay, it provides an excuse for people to go out and do things. it provides both entertainment and a reward in fixing it.

you will simply not get that from dealing with 3 entities that you never interact with besides placing them down wherever people set their camps.

maybe just 3, a common, uncommon, and rare one

otherwise the gulf between "you need 5 scrap to make a baseball bat" and "you need 500 scrap to make a AR2" is gonna make a new and separate grinding problem

but that's pretty much the cloth/metal/wood problem as it already is, just with new names.

you know it's fucking annoying to try to run around collecting stuff only to hear that you don't have enough X, despite having plenty of Y and Z for what you need.

 

[MaXenzie]

we already have to run around dealing with 3 separate filler benches (workbench, furnace, reloading press) which exist for 0 reason beyond forcing people to hoard entities. what do they do? nothing. there is no urgency for "uh oh furnace broke, can't craft stuff we need" or "someone stole all the workbench tools, oh no!"

a fabricator is something that can and likely would go wrong in dingy conditions.
it provides roleplay, it provides an excuse for people to go out and do things. it provides both entertainment and a reward in fixing it.

you will simply not get that from dealing with 3 entities that you never interact with besides placing them down wherever people set their camps.



but that's pretty much the cloth/metal/wood problem as it already is, just with new names.

you know it's fucking annoying to try to run around collecting stuff only to hear that you don't have enough X, despite having plenty of Y and Z for what you need.

hmm

make it so you can convert them at differing ratios?

so even if you have a fuckton of one thing, you're still able to make shit

otherwise we'll have issues of storage because we have to scale up shivs, baseball bats and regular clothing to high-tech endgame items with the same crafting currency so we'll need to store hundreds of them

 

[Deleted member 374]

the resources should be handled like rimworld: archetypal (Metal, Wood, Plastic, Glass, Components etc) as opposed to concretely defined (Scrap Metal, Metal Bar, Spring, Frame, etc). recipes should be like balanced equations of resources to final product: instead of a gun recipe being Broken Gun + Spring + Frame + etc it's just Broken Gun + x Metal + y Components; a shank is just x Metal + y Glass; a bat is x Metal + y Wood etc.

recipes would be easier to write and balance; resources would not get bottlenecked in-game; there is more room for roleplay and interpretation on the player's part. if storage is a concern, then we could have some kind of mechanic for condensing each of the resource items into a stored variant to conserve space (Boxed Metal etc)

 

[Tyrone]

while standardizing the crafting is nice i think there would still need to be some tiering of materials

maybe just 3, a common, uncommon, and rare one

otherwise the gulf between "you need 5 scrap to make a baseball bat" and "you need 500 scrap to make a AR2" is gonna make a new and separate grinding problem

if we have low-tier scrap, mid-tier scrap, and high-tier scrap then it's enough variety to have crafting that isn't "get a FUCKTON of this stuff" and also isn't "you need some incredibly niche items to make this"

easy fix: introduce resin for combine tech recipes at the fabricator

use the standard resource thing suggested for everything that's ""human tech""

 

[Erkor]

I do agree that crafting should be simplified, but I feel that a Combine fabricator is a very particular thing with a very particular use case considering its very particular resource consumption. While Resin-based recipes would be a cool addition, I agree with Tyrone's mindset that something made with a fabricator should have a unique, separate set of items that can only be made with a Combine fabricator and nothing else.

I like Dee Pixel's approach to this issue, primarily because it allows for a bit of roleplaying flexibility while also knocking down the load on people's inventories. One way or another, I agree with the mindset that the crafting system as it is has always been incredibly gamey. It's one of those things that I look at and get a bit depressed by because it seems like it's set up for an RPG. I don't remember who posted it, but I recall a dialogue screenshot of someone walking up to someone else, unprompted, and saying something along the lines of "I've got X pieces of plastic on me. How much are you going to pay for pay for it?".This kind of vending machine-style roleplay always rubbed me the wrong way and I feel by simplifying the resources across the board, this kind of mindset can be grown out of.

Obviously, I'm not trying to say that it'll remedy every problem, but I imagine whenever people stop the constant crafting-scavenging grind for incredibly hyperspecific materials to make their HL2RP version of the [Lionheart Helm] people might be able to focus a bit more on the roleplaying part.

I do like the concept of fabricators being useable for something specific, though, like giving some weapons cool combine-y attachments or something. That'd be neat.​

 

['77 East]

the resources should be handled like rimworld: archetypal (Metal, Wood, Plastic, Glass, Components etc) as opposed to concretely defined (Scrap Metal, Metal Bar, Spring, Frame, etc). recipes should be like balanced equations of resources to final product: instead of a gun recipe being Broken Gun + Spring + Frame + etc it's just Broken Gun + x Metal + y Components; a shank is just x Metal + y Glass; a bat is x Metal + y Wood etc.

there is more roleplay to be gained out of needing to keep the main crafting machine (fabricator) maintained, working and running instead of just sitting around going "oh someone stole the tools from our workbench, bummer, guess we'll walk across the map and use the other one"

needing 5 different catagories of materials just means people will hoarde/throw away their surplus instead of sharing it, shit from certain categories will be considered worthless and wasted, this exact problem happened to plastic all the time.