Crafting systems are fine. Just don't make them super complicated and irritating.

Crafting systems are fine. Just don't make them super complicated and irritating.

variety can be good also

the crime is the UI/gameplay loop is forced the user into

A crafting system isn't fun if the grind to obtain the crafted item is not fun, and especially if the crafted item is required to progress

there is no inherent gameplay disadvantage to crafting, only bad implementation

it's possible to have a game where the variety of craftable items supplements the gameplay rather than stopping the "fun" part, and this includes searching for the materials up until the crafting process

if you just put a component from some npc with a super low drop rate because it has to be somewhere in the game for you to get the item, that's not a game built with crafting in mind, it's a game with crafting tacked on to tick the feature box