And if crafted items are all better then that's great. With limited crafting, the crafted items are generally better items. But with crafting gone overboard, are we actually adding all these better items, or is it just a PR stunt?

I hope you're right, but I can see it being just PR fluff and curious if anyone else thinks that everything made (thousands of combinations) will all actually be useful.

There will always be people who find a reason to complain even if it's something that they don't even need to deal with. Sort of like how they added making homes into the game but it's not required as part of the game. I'm sure there are people complaining about that but by far and large many are thrilled about it. Frankly, this is one of the reasons Bethesda is great. They come up with ways to make people happy while not forcing others to follow that path. If you want a cool customized weapon then you now have the option. If you want to make a great home now you have the option. If you just want to run about killing stuff with the random weapons you find and with no home you can do that too. How anyone can not see that as fantastic is beyond me. We've been given a lot of choices. I'm not sure when being given choices became something troubling. There are people who dislike choices and want choices to be made for them though generally they still complain either way.

Of course Bethesda went overboard with crafting, and they would be the first ones to tell you that.

After a while it's probably going to just feel like playing with playdough. Inconsequential and a bit gimmicky

At the end of the day, i won't remember that the game had a good or bad crafting system, its the story that matters ultimately and i still cant remember what happened in Skyrim...

I like overboard.

I do not expect the crafting system to be as OP as in Skyrim. Note that the main bonus in Skyrim was damage enchants on armor, secondary was crafting bonus on items and last the weapon bonus then tempering.

Still increasing rate of fire and an larger magazine will help, combine this with increased accuracy

The value will be in the fact most likely all npc will wield vanilla, none moded guns, so mods in themself is the edge player moded guns will have over the guns you pic up from npcs.

Like I said, earlier, I generally find the "Everything Crafted is Better?" style to be worse than the other ways. It makes loot less interesting, and makes you want/need to do crafting on every character. Yes, the ideal is that all the different combos are equivalent, so that you can among various options depending on your preference. The reality is that, just like with normal loot items, some things are better than others.

But not everyone picks their stuff solely on "gotta use the best". Some people will want to go with a theme ("my guy is really into laser shotguns! "), or a look, or whatever. If the crafting system helps with this? That's great.

Not everything in a crafting system has to be something you'd want to use, for the system to be good/valid.

(re: Skyrim. Personally, I never really super-uber-charged anything. I used Smithing to make & improve stuff, sure. But I didn't insta-max it to 100, stack multiple bonus enchantments & potions, etc. My first character with maxed-out Smithing - first skill to 100, at level 46! - was running around with weapons that did ~110 damage.)

edit: it was also pretty disappointing in Kingdoms Of Amalur - I had really high Smithing on my first char in that game, and never ended up using any of the named / rare / unique / etc, gear that I found, because the stuff that popped out of crafting was just leagues better. Next character I made, I only took a bit of smithing skill, so that I could repair my gear reasonably.

Depends how much enjoyment you get out of it, and how important it is to you to have a set-up specific to your requirements. Personally the weapon crafting is one of the things I'm most excited about because I love tinkering and adapting things to my needs, even if overall I could just drop a few caps and buy it, I'd still rather do it myself.

However I'm sure many people will pass it over completely because they don't mind what they're using, or like the challenge of only using scavenged weapons, or the wrong weapons for a particular situation, etc. The beauty is that it's there if you want it, ignorable if you don't (or find it gimmicky, which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to form), and anything in between depending on your mood.

After playing Skyrim, I'd say there's a bigger chance of player-made items being overpowered compared to the stuff you find rather than underpowered. I have little doubt that crafting will be very useful in FO4, though I don't expect it to be as overpowered as in Skyrim(no enchanting) and you obviously can choose not to craft at all, as I did in my first Skyrim playthrough.

Having many choices in gameplay is never a bad thing. Having highly customized weapons is always a good thing in my book because I often find a weapon that I like but can't use much because of its flaws.

No, it's not gone overboard.

Why? Because, if nothing else, we have a dedicated modding community for Bethesda and Fallout games who love nothing more then putting their spin on things or "fixing" things they deem broken.

So even if we have the apple-pie situation, it would be only a matter of time until someone "fixed" it into something worthwhile.

What Bethesda supplies, if nothing else, is a valuable mechanism to build on.

i think it will end up like ds3 u could craft some op weps in that game but u didnt have to u could win the whole game with the base weps if u wanted to

I do hope it's not required. I didn't mind some of the crafting in Skyrim. I never let my characters level more than one crafting skill as I felt in one lifetime that's about all anyone could realistically do, plus mastering all crafting and using it was way OP. However any character I made that wasn't a mage just had to use Smithing. It isn't long in Skyrim where I can't do Jack against the mobs unless you've upgraded your gear ... it was all but required. I hope FO4 doesn't end up with mods at high level that just laugh at un-modded weapons. I did like upgrading my gear in FONV, but that wasn't anything like what we are shown here in FO4.

@OP:

This is an RPG. In other words, "roleplaying". As Todd points out, the world of Fallout is perfect for rebuilding efforts and creating an enormous crafting system allows the player to be involved with the rebuilding process rather than simply taking whatever limited stuff the developer might offer.

The value of such a system is in roleplaying in the world context. It's optional, of course, but it is critical for anyone wanting to actually roleplay in an RPG. It doesn't have to have some sort of higher value within the game world, especially not if everyone can do it. After all, if everyone can do it, the value of any crafted item would be pretty negligible, anyway, since they would be extremely common items.

i was abel to make a poison in skyrim that combined with my wep and enchants would one hit almost any thing i loved it my self nothing wrong with op stuff so long as its opsonal

It's incredible that some people are actually, outright asking for dumbing down.

People, sit and think through what you're asking for. You're asking for less, why? Ignore it if you don't want to do!

What's next, "too many dialog choices"? "Too many stats and perks"? "Too large world"?

This is why we cannot have nice things. I have respect for most opinions but certainly none for "DUMB DOWN THE GAME, BECAUSE!"

My opinion is generally the more options, the better.

Don't like an option? Don't use it.

What about the time spent on crafting all these items?

Would you rather have 10000 bloodthirsty cops or 100 well-trained ones

I don't really care. As long as I have a high powered scope on my high powered rifle, I'm good to go.

I like crafting sometimes. I've found myself in Skyrim picking up crafting materials more often than playing the quests in the game.

I don't really care if it's overboard or not...

If I enjoy it, I enjoy it.

If I don't enjoy it, I don't enjoy it.

It will only be revealed after the game itself is released... But so far, it's promising...

(Although to some, which is justifiable to a certain degree, it will distract people from the story/the world/etc. But that depends on how we play, no?)

Yes and Todd Howard admitted they did. It's not a bad thing though. I'd rather have too much content than not enough.

Agreed. Because if you have too much option, you can try them all until you're bored!

Yes because Todd never lies to us

So this argument appears to span a range of opinions from ridiculously overpowered to completely pointless. I, for one, look forward to making the best laser weapons possible. I don't think it's going to be ridiculously overpowered, since we're really just going to be combining a set of separate modules.