In my opinion, and hopefully others will agree, the crafting system should be:
1. Rewarding: putting in some work should bring compensation (keeping in mind we are playing a game, let’s not go overboard with the work). Nothing should come for free, and nothing should come by chance.
2. Versatile and comprehensive: players should be given an open array of options, and be able to create the items that they desire. The crafting system should ultimately facilitate experimentation with different builds.
3. Engaging: players should want to spend time with the crafting system because it is fun. It should not be a chore, and it should not be a mindless succesion of actions.
From what we have heard, I would say the planned crafting system doesn’t satisfy all three of these points (if any), so here is a collection of suggestions and ideas on how I would like crafting to work, based on the thre points mentioned above.
I. Item upgrades, perks and blessings
At the moment item upgrades are based on paying currency for an RNG roll with a limited chance of getting a desireable outcome. I would prefer to have this handled by an experience system, where using one class of weapons progressively allows you to implement better upgrades. I would do this based on weapon families (i.e. including all the Mk sub-variants in the same group). As you use one family of weapons you gain experience with it, and as you level that up you open up slots for higher tiers of perks and blessings. As you add perks and blessings to your weapons they automatically increase their rating (grey → green → blue → purple → orange).
Maybe something like this:
In this example, at lvl 1 you open the 1st perk slot, at lvl 3 you can upgrade that perk to second tier, at lvl 4 you get the 1st blessing, and so on and so forth.
Unlocking and upgrading each slot could cost crafting materials (or not). All perks and blessings of the appropriate tier would then become available as soon as you unlock that slot, and you should be able to swap them as you please (ideally for free, or perhaps at a very small cost).
Another option would be to unlock specific perks and blessings for a materials cost, perhaps even based on RNG, but with the ability to freely swap them around once you have unlocked them.
In the above example I suggest having about 16 levels per weapon family. This could scale similarly as character level (so it would take about 20 games to bring a weapon family from lvl 0 to maximum level). I would also add a substantial weapon experience multiplier (maybe around x2) for characters that are already at lvl 30, which would give a bit more purpose to experience curios. An experience-based crafting system would also encourage players to play on higher difficulties, while not blocking any options to those who can’t or don’t want to play them.
Note that this would be totally independent from what you can find in the shops and what you get from the Emperor’s Gift. If you get your hands on a purple item you can keep it, but you can only upgrade it past a certain point after levelling up that weapon class. Also note that I have been talking about weapons, but this could apply to curios too.
II. Stat upgrades
I think it would be good to be able to increase weapon stats. I don’t think that perfect stats or god-rolled items are needed to clear any difficulty level, but let’s be honest, it is satisfying to have 10/10. Especially if you have done some work and some planning to achieve it.
What I propose is a system by which you can combine one stat of one weapon with the same stat of another weapon.
Something along these lines:
In this example you upgrade the Cleave Damage of Item 1 by combining it with Item 2. The latter will be destroyed, and the rest of the stats will remain untouched. This process could cost some ammount of crafting resources. The final value would not be that of Item 2, but rather a weighted mean between both values, so the system will have diminishing returns. Repeating this process enough times, however, will allow you to have max stats in all categories.
III. Materials harvesting from items
I think other than selling an item in the shop we should be able to have it disassembled to generate a (small-ish) amount of crafting materials, based on the perk and blessing tiers of the disassembled item. This would introduce a way by which standard currency can be converted into crafting materials (and therefore make it useful for those who already don’t know what to do with it). The conversion ratio should be quite unfavourable, though.
Concluding
The way I see it it all comes down to the three points I mentioned at the beginning. The crafting system (and any other system, for that matter) should be rewarding, versatile and engaging, and the current RNG implementations are anything but.
I am aware that Fatshark will have their own plans and ideas for the crafting system, and I have zero hopes that any of this will get implemented as presented. However, I do hope that a little bit of constructive criticism may inspire them to align their design intentions with the player wishes. These are just my wishes, though.
Sniff.