MRY
Wormwood Studios
I despise crafting in RPGs, so I am happy to chime in here.
(1) Often if not always, it is used to justify repetitious or degenerate behavior: it is almost never the case that the materials you need for crafting are obtained through meaningful and interesting gameplay; rather, you inevitably gather them by clicking on loot boxes with various kinds of window dressing. A typical crafting design is: click on 100 boxes to find stackable 83 items in 43 of them, then expend 27 of those stackable items to create an item. In short, it expands and aggravates the already awful looting / operant conditioning / padding crap that has made RPGs unplayable for me.
(2) Even setting aside this fundamental awfulness in their design, they -- like most consumables in RPGs -- produce neurotic behavior because it is impossible to know whether [ingredient/material X] which would be consumed in making [marginally less mediocre item 3] will be required in some later formula/plan to make [even less mediocre item 17] or perhaps even the elusive [actually materially helpful item 93]. Because crafting is almost always present in games that are already heavily focused on incremental and tedious progression, there will always be an incentive to hold onto ingredients. Thus, #1 and #2 combine to produce the magpie/packrat behavior that is so unpleasant (but so addictive) for players.
(3) Because crafting typically is tedious and meaningless, meaning has to be given to it by having crafted items surpass looted items. This breaks the game's balance, except that usually the solution is to have crafted items overpowered relative to the balance (to avoid making crafting required), which means ironically that most players (being munchkins) will feel compelled to engage in the dumb crafting process.
(4) Even setting aside all of these flaws, crafting almost never makes sense thematically. Even games that try (like MotB) to give a thematic logic to it fail to realize that "scrounging around for garbage and making stuff all the time" is not a part of any fantasy epic. Very occasionally crafting an important item is part of fantasy epics, and this would be fine from a thematic standpoint, but this is not what crafting as a game mechanic is about. In fact, you essentially never craft important items because crafting is never viewed as a critical path requirement.
(4a) Crafting is almost required, however, in certain settings -- post-apocalyptic settings in particular, but more broadly any "survivalist" setting. Thus, I think that crafting significant thematically enhanced AoD and generally was the least awful crafting I've encountered in any RPG, although it did suffer from the need for magpie/packrat hoarding behavior. Because these settings thematically compel you to encourage the player to scavenge, husband, and cobble together resources, the crappy gameplay entailed in crafting is redeemed as mimetic: the player's misery and meager rewards mirror the character's suffering.
Basically, I think crafting is awful because it fits into that category of stuff in RPGs that isn't meaningful, isn't fun, and isn't thematic -- it's just there because it has become a box to check, because it occupies players' time, and because (provided the right reward structure) players will get a "kick" out of it.
(1) Often if not always, it is used to justify repetitious or degenerate behavior: it is almost never the case that the materials you need for crafting are obtained through meaningful and interesting gameplay; rather, you inevitably gather them by clicking on loot boxes with various kinds of window dressing. A typical crafting design is: click on 100 boxes to find stackable 83 items in 43 of them, then expend 27 of those stackable items to create an item. In short, it expands and aggravates the already awful looting / operant conditioning / padding crap that has made RPGs unplayable for me.
(2) Even setting aside this fundamental awfulness in their design, they -- like most consumables in RPGs -- produce neurotic behavior because it is impossible to know whether [ingredient/material X] which would be consumed in making [marginally less mediocre item 3] will be required in some later formula/plan to make [even less mediocre item 17] or perhaps even the elusive [actually materially helpful item 93]. Because crafting is almost always present in games that are already heavily focused on incremental and tedious progression, there will always be an incentive to hold onto ingredients. Thus, #1 and #2 combine to produce the magpie/packrat behavior that is so unpleasant (but so addictive) for players.
(3) Because crafting typically is tedious and meaningless, meaning has to be given to it by having crafted items surpass looted items. This breaks the game's balance, except that usually the solution is to have crafted items overpowered relative to the balance (to avoid making crafting required), which means ironically that most players (being munchkins) will feel compelled to engage in the dumb crafting process.
(4) Even setting aside all of these flaws, crafting almost never makes sense thematically. Even games that try (like MotB) to give a thematic logic to it fail to realize that "scrounging around for garbage and making stuff all the time" is not a part of any fantasy epic. Very occasionally crafting an important item is part of fantasy epics, and this would be fine from a thematic standpoint, but this is not what crafting as a game mechanic is about. In fact, you essentially never craft important items because crafting is never viewed as a critical path requirement.
(4a) Crafting is almost required, however, in certain settings -- post-apocalyptic settings in particular, but more broadly any "survivalist" setting. Thus, I think that crafting significant thematically enhanced AoD and generally was the least awful crafting I've encountered in any RPG, although it did suffer from the need for magpie/packrat hoarding behavior. Because these settings thematically compel you to encourage the player to scavenge, husband, and cobble together resources, the crappy gameplay entailed in crafting is redeemed as mimetic: the player's misery and meager rewards mirror the character's suffering.
Basically, I think crafting is awful because it fits into that category of stuff in RPGs that isn't meaningful, isn't fun, and isn't thematic -- it's just there because it has become a box to check, because it occupies players' time, and because (provided the right reward structure) players will get a "kick" out of it.