I read this article here: http://www.gamesradar.com/fallout-4s-crafting-system-explained-bethesda/

and I couldn't help but notice the pic of the Bayoneted Pipe Rifle. I can't help but wonder how many different variations of that gun I can make ... and if any of them are better than the rifle I find on the next bandit I kill. I mean sure it's cool that I can make a thousand combinations of guns, but if there is nothing really significant about what I craft over what I can just buy or find ... isn't just kind of fluff with no real substance.

I've played Divinity Original Sin and that game has a crafting system that is just overkill. You can find wheat, grind the wheat in a mill to make flour, add water to the flour to make dough, put an apple in the dough to make apple in dough, put the apple in dough in an oven to make an apple pie, which you can then eat for very little benefit or sell for next to nothing. The point being you do all this crafting and all this work to make an item that is basically worthless. And what makes it worse is there's an apple pie sitting right over there on the table you can just grab now and avoid all the crafting and hoarding.

My fear is that FO4 will end up like this. That you can collect hundreds of items to make thousands of things that in the long run are not any better than what you can just find laying around. I think I would rather there were only a hand full of items that are very rare (as are their ingredients) and very useful once made, or at least a happy medium between the two. So far FO4 just looks like it went off the deep end.

There is no guarantee, though i have doubts that the bandits/whatever will have anything other than bog standard versions.

Likelihood is that Crafting is OP, but we'll see.

Todd Howard said there are over 50 base weapons and over 750 weapons modifications in Fallout 4.

So if Fallout 4 has over 750 weapons modifications, then yes I say Bethesda Games Studios went overboard with the crafting system in Fallout 4.

Well I like this house system of theirs as there could be various environmental hazards that certain materials protect you from or possibly raider attacks as stated in previous threads.

As for the weapon crafting; I hope they put weight and item balance into the equation, possibly decrease swing speed for every addition of an accessory or compromising iron sights, making the crosshair shaky due to the knife or at least decrease durability so you can't just carry the same weapon throughout the whole game.

I need more apples in dough in my life.

Well, part of the purpose of an expanded crafting system is "freedom". The ability to tweak things to your preference, whether that be stats, or performance, or aesthetics. The ability to say "I made this!"

Yeah, if you look at crafting systems entirely from the standpoint of "is it better than what I can buy"/Maximum Efficiency!?, then sure - sometimes it won't come out on top. (That's one of the balance issues with crafting - do you make it weaker than anything you can find, in which case min-maxers say "but why bother?", or do you make it the source of All The Best Gear, in which case the people who're into variety moan about "being forced" to be crafters. The mid-range that many games end up with is crafting making some unique things that can be the best at what they do, while leaving lots of other stuff only findable as loot.)

Personally, I wonder if every weapon you find will be built out of modules, too. Or if random loot guns from bandits will be like ones from FO3/NV, and you need to learn/find module patterns in order to make them and then build a gun. Or if, sure - guns you loot are built out of modules, but you need X crafting skill in order to mix-n-match them yourself. Or....

Well, we'll see.

edit: and yeah - Divinity had a whoooole lot of crafting recipes. Few of which were actually spelled out in the game, so you had to figure them out by trial-and-error (or google a wiki). And yes, I didn't bother with a good % of them. But others ended up pretty useful.

i think they should of gone farther with crafting more guns the better my fallout 3 and nv has at least a hundred gun mods min more guns and gun veraiyents the better

I don't mind if all the weapons in the game will be variants on a theme, aka, random variations of mods. The fact is that if you can't find or are struggling to find what you want you have a way of making them. That to me is worth it. I mean, how common is it going to be for you stumble across a weapon that is actually perfectly set up for you with the potential ways guns can be set up now. I dare say most people will at least need to do a basic scope change or mag expansion or something eventually?

Plus you will get players like me who simply like the knowledge that their weapon is their own; in Skyrim I would only progress beyond basic Iron weaponry once I'd mined the required materials and made them myself, not because they were any better (they were identical to any other standard weapon), but just because I was role-playing characters that liked knowing every intricacy of their equipment.

Their ratios are backwards... its annoying to read 405/5 units. Why not 5/405?

that'd be 15 mods per gun, if we break it down a bit I could see a few easy groups:

1. red dot/close range sights.
2. scopes.
3. stocks.
4. grips.
5. Long barrels.
6. melee attachments.
7. large clips.
8. silencers.
9. Converters for energy weapons.
10. beam spliters.
11. regen for energy weapons.
12. recoil reduction.
13. weight reduction.
14. fire rate modifications.
15. ammo type changes.

Just what I can think of off the top of my head. How much it impacts the game we will see. It's options and give some choices in weapons so not a huge problem.

Well in Skyrim as your skill went up so did the quality of your weapons, which was always better than what you could just find laying around. I don't see that system in FO4, where if I make Gun A and my skill is only 30 that it's not as good as the same Gun A that I make when my skill is 75. I don't see quality levels with the weapons, like a Legendary Hunting Rifle.

That only factored into the tempering system. Crafting a base weapon yielded an identical version to the standard one that can be bought. So while crafting certainly had an additional benefit, making base weapons was pretty superfluous if you had the coin to simply buy one or find one. Still, people did it for *reasons*, usually increasing the skill level so the tempering bonus was better.

I'm highly expecting there to be some crafting perks which do make a difference to weapons you make yourself, or upgrades that can only be done yourself. Quite frankly it would be daft if they didn't. I'm just generally a fan of tinkering and doing things myself, I guess that's why I'm a PC gamer too. It's in my nature to want to take things apart and make them do different things. I like the personal touch.

So we have to many options? Some mods will probably have the same modifiers as others but they'll be more for cosmetic purposes. "my rocket launcher does the same damage as before but now it looks like a 18th centuary cannon! Woopee!"

I can't believe people are actually complaining about having an in-depth, complex crafting system rather than your average boring crafting you have in every game. Meh.

Note that lots of the modifications will work on lots of weapons, mostly stuff like scopes but I guess stocks are also fits lots of guns.

Also that its actually pretty realistic: scopes its loads of versions for sale, stocks are not uncommon to customize.

You get various sized magazines, many also have various barrel options and receivers.

So say you have 15 types scopes and sights not all can be used on all guns so say 8, 2 magazines, 3 stocks, 4 bayonets, and 2 barrels and receivers.

I like it, guns I have dropped in FO:NV as I did not like the sights. they was to inaccurate or slow to use, other has too small magazines or are too inaccurate as in machine pistols. Having an longer and heavier barrel, better stock and an short scope on some of the large caliber machine pistols would make them an obvious favorite outside of sniping, now with an silencer they might work for shorter distance sniping too.

And yes this is an realistic weapon.

(Yes I know in real world an rifle bullet has far more power than an pistol one and at the ranges in fallout an carabine could be used for sniping)

its just...its.....its depressing I know.

I don't think it's possible to go overboard. I look at it this way: There are people who LOVE crafting and will make it a massive part of their game. This allows those people to immerse themselves in that aspect and get countless hours of pleasure from it. If we are lucky, maybe they'll post pics of the very cool weapons they make. Meanwhile, if people don't want to get into crafting, they don't. But you have the option.

Thinking it's gone overboard is kind of like saying there are too many choices at a buffet or complaining that there are ones there that you don't like. As long as it has what you do like, how can it be a bad thing to give more options?

Yeah it is.

I wouldn't call it 'in-depth' if most of what you can make is junk that is never used or not comparable to what you can find. That's not in-depth, that's just overkill so you can have something for the PR to spout off about.

It's like buying a game that brags about having 100 unique monsters, then only to discover that all they did was re-texture 15 base monsters and change their stats. Makes a great selling point, but not really what it says it is.

Nonono, you don't understand, we wants to make dakka dakka.
Cut the dialogue, cut the story, cut the crafting, it's all just going overboard!

More seriously though, how does that kind of complex mix/match crafting system NOT fit in perfectly into the Fallout universe, where you basically have to scrounge for every piece of tech and put it together into something that works?
From what I've seen so far, this system pretty easy to understand, giving you plenty of alternatives for acquiring base materials, and allows you to tweak your favorite kind of weapon or adapt it to specific situations.

All that's left to do is making it balance out well with unique weapons and loot.

If FO4's crafting system isn't in-depth, then I don't know what you would call in-depth. And where the hell did you get the idea that craftable weapons aren't "comparable to what you can find"? This is not Divinity Original Sin. Player-made stuff in Skyrim was excellent.

Sorry, but complaining about having too many options just sounds like complaining for the sake of complaining. If you don't want to craft, don't. No one is forcing you and that's the beauty of it.

Like what I said before I wasnt expecting every mod to be unique but a few would be like those pokemon nobody really wants on there party because there boring with no cool moves to take advantage. So there will be alot of cosmetic mods that do nothing much but if you like the look of it use it.

Yes because an apple pie has the same relevance as a weapon in a game revolving around fighting and survival. It alllows players much needed customisation. Not everything is for statistics. It is also largely aesthetic. Otherwise everyone would just use a modded vault suit with extremely high stats and wear nothing else.

Skyrim's system was sorta boring...

Yes, but that's not the point: I meant that the created stuff in Skyrim was powerful. For some reason, the OP thinks that the crafted stuff in FO4 will be useless and won't be on par with the weapons you can find in game, which has no basis based on Bethesda's previous game.