Depth Vs. Complexity

[Ksenia]

You can't really do complex in a video game. All it really turns out to be is time consuming. Original crafting in FF14 was 'complex' and it was a royal pain to do.

Once you know how to do something, it's more about repeat and rinse, determine the fastest way from point A to point B and in the case of FF14, manage inventory. Anything mechanics try and do to diversify that ends up being convoluted and a time sink.

[Shougun]

You can't really do complex in a video game. All it really turns out to be is time consuming. Original crafting in FF14 was 'complex' and it was a royal pain to do.

Once you know how to do something, it's more about repeat and rinse, determine the fastest way from point A to point B and in the case of FF14, manage inventory. Anything mechanics try and do to diversify that ends up being convoluted and a time sink.

Complexity is fine its more of the elegance of the design (and ensuring you arent doing something that less could do better).

The massive amounts of resources needed to make items could have worked but they didnt design the whole system to flow with those requirements - like the inventory management, recipe management, the power from craft, number of times making the same craft.

I think that's the danger of this video is some people will be convinced complexity is inherently evil and it is most certainly not. (Not that it is inherently good either, you have to deliver it efficiently and elegantly, which is why they spent time talking about tutorials and making sure you are getting your "depths worth")

[Shurrikhan]

You can't really do complex in a video game. All it really turns out to be is time consuming. Original crafting in FF14 was 'complex' and it was a royal pain to do.

Once you know how to do something, it's more about repeat and rinse, determine the fastest way from point A to point B and in the case of FF14, manage inventory. Anything mechanics try and do to diversify that ends up being convoluted and a time sink.

You can definitely do complexity in a video game. For one, it just as easily can start with having more to the game than moving from point A to point B. In fact, it can start such that moving from point A to point B are a means to those ends, rather that the complexity simply categorizing various means to accomplish that same goal. After all, no part of the means of a game should be, itself, a goal for addition. You move from point A to point B for exploration, pursuit, so forth. Any complexity should be part of doing the same, and altogether wrap the child elements of its mechanics together into a elegant and fluid whole that gives the non-visual aesthetics of the game.

Think of it as a language vastly different from one's native tongue. It may seem like a waste of time to learn more than the practical translations of key phrases, but then the language as a whole is wasted.

I can't say that this is the norm for how complexity's been used in game design, but it is at least an ideal, and is 'possible'.
Less in theory:
I wouldn't call 1.0 crafting a matter of 'complex' so much as 'poor design'. Items of code were used without any underlying mechanics (which would actually be an addition of "complexity"), and without that they could only be tacked into rigid lists. While the result may seem 'complex' in that it required memorization, a high-depth rendition of the crafting system would have greater complexity on the developer's part and likely require greater complexity in terms of actual understanding of the sub-mechanics, without the rigidity or frustration of the original crafting system and all the ingenuity, exploration, and theory-crafting of an enjoyably deep experience.