I would like Fatshark to put player agency in multiple game systems. Crafting and mission select screen come to mind first.
I would like Fatshark to remove the worst part of RNG from crafting, so you are able to customise your weapons to your liking, perk and blessing wise. The base score, perk and blessing tiers can stay. Also the Brunt’s grey item shop should have its CLEARLY RIGGED stat generation corrected.
Obviously all this would just highlight the blessing / perk inflation and poor balance. So for crafting to actually have some deeper meaning we should get a perk / blessing balance pass. Otherwise every weapon will be set to the most optimised perk / blessing combo, and that will be the end of it. Too many perks and blessings are at the moment meaningless undercooked junk, clearly added to pad the numbers, but serve no real purpose. In a perfect world different perk and blessing combination should open up players to different gameplay possibilities, but that is likely just “too much work”.
There is very little that is too much work, if it means making something successful.
If the vast majority of the player base isn’t playing your game because RNG is BS, and it’s destroying players enjoyment.
It’s never to much work, to put mechanics in place to win them back.
Sorting out a crafting system, is not like developing a new game from scratch. As 90% of it is already… The weapons, resources, perks, modifiers, shops, mechanics for resources in random places on maps, it’s all there…
You are not reinventing the wheel, your just addressing the way your accessing the database.
Give it a month, and modders could probably have a working non RNG crafting system in the game… Okay, it would get tweaked over time, bugs fixes yadda yadda yadda… But it would be in the ball park and up and running.