Make crafting worth doing again.

7

7DTD_Player_545342

Refugee
As it stands currently, crafting has taken the last seat on the bus.

It never fails.... you excitedly spec into X to get magazines for X weapon/tool crafting...  only to be disappointed when you consistently loot (or get as a reward) better than what you can currently craft, every flipping time.

It makes crafting in this game a worthless waste of time.

 
I have noticed this trend. While playing, I craft stone tools and Q1 padded armor at the beginning, but after that I just use whatever I find. The things I regularly craft are consumables, food, medicine, ammo, fuel, repair kits, seeds if I'm ready to farm, and a motorcycle or 4x4 if I cannot buy one. I might craft armor or weapon mods on occasion.

But, I think to your point, I very rarely craft weapons, tools, or armor. My crafting ability usually advance at the same rate loot quality advances. I might make a Q5 top tier item instead of waiting for a Q6 to drop -- this frequently happens with military stealth boots.

I vaguely recall a suggestion about typing the ability to repair an item to crafting ability. I think that might be neat, if the highest level you could repair was one level higher than you could craft, so that you could maintain a Q6 item.

 
In vanilla, I found that I was constantly crafting items throughout my gameplays, but I don't fast track progression and don't go to higher biomes to boost my lootstage.  I also dropped the rewards on the floor since I didn't like them advancing me too fast in progression.

I removed the ability to repair items in my modded game.  That seemed to balanced out finding items and crafting items since you will be having to constantly replace your items as they break.  - also removed trader rewards completely.

 
An unfortunate side effect in games that have both crafting and looting (including quest rewards) is that you are generally going to find that things you find or get as rewards will be at least equal to, if not better than, what you can craft unless you're unlucky.  Crafting in such games is more often a way to make money or to fill in gaps where you aren't getting lucky with loot, or for those who really love to craft.  It just normally doesn't work out to being the "best" option for having items and equipment and is often not even equal.

In this game, if you do a lot of quests, you'll usually progress faster in rewards than in crafting.  This is definitely something that should be balanced as the rewards are considered to be too much by pretty much everyone who has commented on it here.  If you do a lot of looting, you're going to usually progress faster than crafting unless you're purposely going out looking for magazines.  That isn't really going to change other than perhaps increasing magazine drops.  But even with that, you're going to progress faster if you loot a lot and that's true in almost any game that combines looting and crafting.  If you go to higher biomes early in the game, you're going to progress faster than crafting.  That's also not going to change other than to perhaps make going into higher biomes than you can handle more difficult at lower levels.

If you absolutely want crafting to be better than looting or quest rewards, you have to either use a mod that will change the dynamic in some way or else limit yourself in some way like BFT2020 said.  Vanilla isn't going to change too much in that regard because you're going to find more gamers like an active playstyle (this includes looting and questing) than a slow/passive playstyle (this includes crafting).  The only thing I see as really making much difference besides a balancing of quest rewards is to make money much more difficult to obtain so that crafting things to sell is actually worth doing.  But I have a feeling they won't go that route either.

That being said, I do craft more in A21 than I did in A20 because of the changes they made.  So they are at least moving in the right direction for crafters.  They just aren't moving very far or in a way that many people seem to like.  For me, I craft tier 1 weapons and then rarely craft any more because of the increased costs at the higher tiers being more than I feel is acceptable.  I'd rather wait to find something than to "waste" resources crafting something even if I have the resources.  But that's just how I feel about crafting.  I'd craft far more if the costs were what they were in A20.

And regarding crafting progression... I use spears, so put points into them and get a lot of magazines for them.  The crafting progression for spears is usually right around equal to my looting/questing if I wanted to use the higher resources for the higher tier spears.  For other things, this isn't the case, regardless of points.  Armor takes forever to level up in crafting and I've never found any reason to craft any armor in the game.  The same for clothes.  Most things just don't rank up as fast.

 
IMO, quality 6 items should not be found in the wild or from quests/chests, but only crafted, maybe only with high enough skill (so magazine, attribute and skill). Players al;ready have to loot a lot to find magazines, parts and materials to craft things, and current ability to find better gear than is available for crafting just kills whole crafting system except some basic tools and early game.

 
Try playing without doing Trader Quests, or better yet, do not allow yourself to visit the Traders at all.  I think you'll find you need to craft much more, out of necessity.  This can be circumvented a bit by going into the Snow and Wasteland biomes early due to the increased loot stage but still you will need to craft more than you would if you utilize Traders.

That's been my experience anyway.

 
Problem with limiting Q6 to crafting only is that people that like to loot now have to expand their crafting skills, and once you craft that Q6 item, you don't have to craft it again.  There are a lot of ways to make crafting more important if you are willing to mod the game and try out different things.  List of what I did in A20 (and slowly working on my mod for A21) to make crafting more important in my playthroughs:

  • Removed trader rewards
  • Trader stock of items / weapons / armor Q6 only (thinking of limiting it to max of Q3 for A21)
  • Removed the ability to repair items
  • Added the ability to craft weapon parts (takes time to do so though)
  • Removed food / drinks in loot and reduce trader stock - everything was reduced to basic stock and required crafting to use
  • Reduced medical supplies in loot and limited in trader stock
  • Changed mods from attachments (able to remove) to mods (once installed cannot remove)
  • Added Q6 crafting
  • Adding new mods to firearms to reduce degradation with use

I think I captured a majority of the changes I made to affect crafting (I might be missing some).  The last run I did in A20 before A21 dropped had me setting up a base eventually in the Wasteland and I was constantly having to replace gear, mods, craft food and supplies in addition to repairing my base and horde base.  For some that might be too much, but I found it very exciting to constantly have to figure out what I needed and plan out what I needed to be crafting to stay ahead of the zombies.  You still were able to loot and use the traders, but you couldn't use the to get to the best gear right away anymore and then cruise to the end of your playthrough and not require any additional work on your part.

 
Another thing that comes to my mind is that the items degrade each time after getting/having them repaired. So for example Q6 AK after some repairs might turn into Q5 AK. Then also crafting Q6 would be available.

Or the Q6 item would degrade after 5 repairs.  Q5 after 4 repairs to Q4. Q4 after 3 to Q3. Q3 after 2 to Q2. Q2 after 1 to Q1. So players would not have the opportunity to keep the same Q6 items for good. They would have to craft stuff back again or find it. 

Players would have to chase the rabbit constantly. 

 
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