Coded Artist @coded_artist@gameliberty.club

What are some examples of games that actually make crafting interesting? I feel like most games with crafting elements just copy-paste the same system where you collect guff strewn about the floor then select the item you want from a menu.

Fuck, dude. Even minecraft, the game that popularized all these incessant crafting mechanics did it better than 90% of games that have come out since. There is (or used to be) a trivial amount of skill required to memorize all the different recipes in the game and where things went in the crafting grid so you didn't have to keep looking at the wiki on a second monitor.

Most games that feature crafting seem to do it out of obligation. They make no attempt to make their implementation of the mechanic unique or engaging, if it even fits into the gameplay loop in the first place.

I want to help highlight examples of games they know that implement crafting as an actual mechanic that asks something of the player. Mainly because I want to play such a game but I only know of like two

One such game is Path of Exile, a free-to-play diablo clone that Sseth made a video on that one time. PoE's success with crafting comes down to its unique approach to currency. Rather than having come quantity of gold that can be used to buy and sell items, players instead barter with currency items: Every currency item in the game does something to your gear and the value of a currency item isn't just informed by scarsity, but also the effect that currency has on your gear.

Crafting is baked into PoE's DNA. Every piece of gear you drop can be crafted. Every piece of currency you trade can be used to craft. The crafting process itself is massively complicated and heavily RNG-dependent. Inexperienced players that don't know what they're doing can burn through mountains of currency and end up with a lemon. What distinguishes a good crafter from a bad crafter amounts to hundreds of hours of experience as well as deep game knowledge of the cheapest and most effective way to craft specific gear worth a small in-game fortune to the right player.

There's countless different ways to craft in PoE and countless different things to craft. Not just gear can be crafted, but also maps, the skill tree and even certain currency items themselves can be crafted using special currency items. Each group of currency items has their own corresponding gameplay mechanic you need to farm for them and players are free to choose what mechanics they engage in, allowing for a bafflingly wide range of content that keeps tempting to pull me back in with each new update they put out.