I've not used that many, but I've played a few games with crafting in them including Witcher 2, dying light and Don't Starve. So far Witcher 3 is my preferred. This is because once you've crafted something whether it be a sword or a potion you don't need to craft it again. There's often a "something" that you use to revitalize the usefulness such as alcohol for potions and repair kits for swords. I rather like this approach. What do you guys think is the best crafting system.

Well, technically, what you decribed is just an automated function for your convience and not part of the underlying crafting system itself. After crafting once you simply press "meditate" instead of "craft" to create all previously crafted bombs an potions instead of crafting them all individually. The crafting system used for the process however remains the same in both cases and is pretty standard: "Find X amount of Y and Z, combine to create Thingamajigger."

Ahh good point

I hate crafting. I'm not playing a game to be a blacksmith, a shoemaker a chemist or a tailor. I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And if I'm out of bubblegum, or potions or arrows or anything, I'll just buy it, or loot it.

So Terraria, Craft the World, and Don't Starve are not on your wishlist?

Ditto. Pretty much any game that touts crafting as one of its main feature will be blackballed. Same goes with roguelike, permadeath, and procedural generation (because we couldn't be arsed to actually create quality content). Fucking indie garbage trend.

Side note: The next indie game dev exclaiming that their game was exquisitely handcrafted I just want to murder straight off. Fucking hipsters.

That's too bad because this game tries its damnedest to put you in the boots of a Witcher (especially on higher difficulties), and one of a Witcher's regular activities is the making of potions.

I realise that, and that's the reason why I didn't mind alchemy in the first Witcher (in the second the potions were entirely useless anyway and I haven't played the third yet), but still I did get a tad tired of it as the game went on. I appreciated it for the sake of immersion, but it's also something of a chore. Especially on replaying the game I wished for some option to skip it and just get my potions refilled at every rest or something like that. I brewed the damn things twenty times already. Like, I trust Geralt to do that, ok? He'll make the potions and tie his shoes without my help. I actually tried playing Don't Starve, and I'd rather staple my dick to a burning log than craft another fucking hatchet again. Crafting AND permadeath. Fuck that game.

I did that once but I really don't think this is the time or place to discuss it.

For me it's confusing precisely because of the automation so I avoid it. I like the potion and spell making in Morrowind.

You are depriving yourself of some of the best games available. And all because of some morbid fear of being trendy. You're the hipster.

I've been looking for an excuse to post this link again. :D

Eh, I prefer the second Witcher's crafting. If you want to ignore it, you totally can. If you want to craft 20 bombs for a certain situation, you can (only having a couple of each in the third game and having to constantly jump back into the inventory screen to swap between them once used up was needlessly tedious). Same with traps, which I missed terribly in the third game.

Mostly, though, crafting is used by games in an annoying way. I'd rather not feel compelled to pick up every random scrap of leather and child's Push Pop in the off chance that I'll eventually be able to craft the Venomous Push Pop of Ultimate Destruction later down the line. Sometimes that's enjoyable like in Terraria, but in most games it ends up feeling like unnecessary fluff shoehorned in at the behest of a focus group.

You could probably tolerate it in the Witcher 3, then. As noted, you brew potions/create bombs only once and then they're replenished automatically when you meditate. The annoying part is what 227 noted, in that you have to switch bombs in and out, which becomes tedious.

As for crafting itself, I tend to dislike it as well. I've rarely seen a game where there's a good balance. It seems it's either crafting gives you by far the best gear - which means you pretty much have to do it, and the game is balanced around crafted gear, so it becomes a fucking uber-hard nightmare if you don't craft (or it's balanced around the non-crafted gear, which means if you craft it becomes a complete cake-walk snooze-fest) - or you can buy/find better gear which makes crafting completely pointless - but then you're often stuck hoarding ingredients because you're not sure what you may need to fulfill a quest, crafting or not.