There are quite a few things people already suggested on how to make crafting better. Still I'll do my own take on things and my own set of suggestions.
But first I do have to say that crafting right now seems broken because of not finished UI.
Things that have to be done to make current crafting workable:
1. Fix UI updates on screens like backpack when you are disassembling grenades or weapon mods for example. Disassembled item remains there until screen is refresh but you can not disassemble it again. Clearly not finished/missed logic for particular set of screens. QA and DEVs are probably aware but still
2. Allow to have disassemble all option(and it could also be applied to certain filter, like all green weapons are to be marked as disassemble-able and you can do it to all of them at once, read 4th number for more info)
3. Allow to craft X items or craft all
4. Add filters to loot you pick up. Meaning you as a player can automatically mark items and similar set of items as "disposable" and to be disassembled automatically via perk(like it does already with trash) or drops new picked item with such a tag in there. Or certain item categories, ie pistols are to stay in your back pack to be disassembled. Or sniper rifles of only rare or higher are left in your inventory, while others are to be marked as trash
5. Add sell all trash option to trade. Right now vendors have a limit as to how much money they have and drop points as well(20 k eddies), but there is no option to instantly sell them up to their limited cash amount and you have to go manually. Especially annoying if you sell consumables for some reason. There is no way this could not be implemented
6. Remove alcohol disassembling into components. This does not make any sense at all
Reason a lot of people wish for trashy MMO mechanic like transmog is because they want to look how they want but remain relevant. While it is cool to have it in MMO, this is not the single player RPG kind of way. So let me suggest a way to make it work in a reasonable amount of time while making it RPG kind of a way and making basic, child level, economy system in the game.
So what I suggest is to do the following:
1. Disassembling item allows you to craft it. Meaning that you got a fancy item you enjoy wearing or it looks cool and you would want to stick to it. You disassemble it to learn how it is done. Now you can do it yourself if you want to. If not - hope it has quality higher then common. Even because if it is common, you will still be able to craft uncommon version with one mod to slot armor in there. Meaning that you will lose possibility to make your item insane, but it will be relevant in terms of defense no matter what. And this would make crafting a valuable option
2. To make crafting meaningful each tier of clothing will have not a random but a set amount of mods. Ie common - none, uncommon - one, rare - two, epic - three, while legendary - six. And since most legendary stuff has some special modifiers, most of them will come as mods and any crafted legendary would be able to contest that. Unless some things like 500% crit damage on certain Katana remains as a weapon perk to allow edge to those iconic weapons still be a bit superior choise. Making it worth for a player to actually commit to buying/using legendary items and updating them or crafting it themselves and meaning that if you as a player spend valuable attributes and perk points to be able to craft, your gear will be at least 10% better itself(and even more because you will craft your own mods to it as well making it something around 12% more value)
3. Do not allow mods to stack(which I believe is already a thing, but it might be just a bug). This also means introducing more mods to allow more variety
4. To craft your own for example nice CORPO shirt you got as a common item you will have to craft it X times to unlock next tier of this craft. And to get next tier you would need to craft previous tier X + X amount of times(it could be fixed number for each tier, could be some linear scaling or other for of scaling). Meaning that crafting items has actual meaning instead of just XP grind and it also makes player actually commit to getting resources and crafting stuff he wants. And this will actually make last perk in crafting tree valuable because you will craft rare or epic gear to sell for profit giving players a way to get money for cars and other possible additions to the game to use money without some messy grinding or exploits
5. Remove armor and damage scaling from loot according to levels. It is great that common items are dropping as upgrades anytime you go anywhere, but it, honestly, just breaks immersion making this a de-facto MMO type crap. Making vendors and items they sell of no value. That supposedly insane iconic pistol you get in the start of the game. Well tough luck, my new shiny, insert generic name multiplied by my level common weapon, is better so screw you. To upgrade your weapons you either need to buy new ones or drop really good ones with full set of better mods. Or buy new set of better mods. Like ones from NCPD sidekicks. This would make weapons relevant and would make crafting relevant. Meaning that "Dying Light" will be of use through the game even if it is rare quality because it would have 2 mods(that still scale from levels and can be replaced). Meaning that only mods on weapons scale. Meaning that if you as player want better gun - drop or buy it OR invest in crafting and have no need to actually visit vendors to upgrade your weapons. You would still need vendors to get unique/icon weapon/clothing recipes. IE some iconic weapons crafting specs are coming from NCPD missions. Same would go towards specific weapons or clothing. And they would only be purchase-able if player has reached certain level of Street Creed
6. Add weapon mods that increase weapon damage or add new damage type weapon will be able to deal. Like if we want weapon to have chemical damage it would come from mod not weapon itself and only this damage will actually scale with levels. Lock new mods behind Street Creed. It fits what current system already has by default because it will remove weapon damage type from being random to being set via mod(meaning that it can be customized, allowing players to have A CHOICE). So if you have poison perks, you would switch damage mod to chemical instead of crafting/buying/dropping X amount of weapons to get what you want and have it synergized with your particular build. I do understand that introducing weapon ammo type would make much more sense, while allowing players to customize weapons via mods to actually enhance weapon capabilities, like changing barrels, handles, magazines, you name it. Why I think my suggestion is better for now? Because this change would take from 3 to 10 people to do within a sprint or two(assuming sprint will be week, or better two) and test it and deploy it to players in January patch instead of complete extension that would take management, designing, implementing and testing to do. Meaning that is at least 3 to 20 people with a set of time of 4 sprints at the bare minimum. So it means February update at best of the best cases. Actually I am wrong about timings. Just had a look at how crafting stuff is implemented in engine right now(you can see https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/543). This tells me that any kind of overhaul to crafting will take more work than it seems. Like way way more work
7. Change perk that allows to retain mods from weapons/clothes to allow it to not only have disassembling but also replacing mods. That would make a huge difference. You are a skilled tech engineer and you all of a sudden can't replace a scope without destroying it. RPG experience
8. Remove updating weapons/clothes. Allow only to update mods. Meaning that if you crafted common Armadillo mod, you can increase its stats up to your level making it better and without adding the need to change your clothing, BUT, put a limit to how much it can be upgraded. Meaning that on level 1: common mod will have range of 1 to 2, uncommon 2 to 4, rare 4 to 8, epic 8 to 12 and legendary 12 to 20. Numbers are subject for a balancing not crafting topic. Also you get better quality of a mod you would need to either buy it or craft it or drop it. Meaning that crafting common Armadillo will only net you a Armadillo of your level without updates. No randomness involved. Which also means to get best mod damage for your level - you still need to upgrade it. Which means that buying grants you maxed out directly, while crafting has a sense of progression. Drop can remain random in terms of mod that are slotted in clothing/weapons. This would also entail that disassembling drop for mods will be meaningful. This also means that only buying or dropping a mod within a weapon of a certain quality(like epic) is only way to get that mod of that particular quality until you unlock it from vendors via street creed and also have a perk to be able to craft it thus making your damage never the best possible until you get best mod in any way possible and update it
If I missed something or you think logic is not as good as it seems to me, please feel free to critique, but please, please, be constructive about it.
But first I do have to say that crafting right now seems broken because of not finished UI.
Things that have to be done to make current crafting workable:
1. Fix UI updates on screens like backpack when you are disassembling grenades or weapon mods for example. Disassembled item remains there until screen is refresh but you can not disassemble it again. Clearly not finished/missed logic for particular set of screens. QA and DEVs are probably aware but still
2. Allow to have disassemble all option(and it could also be applied to certain filter, like all green weapons are to be marked as disassemble-able and you can do it to all of them at once, read 4th number for more info)
3. Allow to craft X items or craft all
4. Add filters to loot you pick up. Meaning you as a player can automatically mark items and similar set of items as "disposable" and to be disassembled automatically via perk(like it does already with trash) or drops new picked item with such a tag in there. Or certain item categories, ie pistols are to stay in your back pack to be disassembled. Or sniper rifles of only rare or higher are left in your inventory, while others are to be marked as trash
5. Add sell all trash option to trade. Right now vendors have a limit as to how much money they have and drop points as well(20 k eddies), but there is no option to instantly sell them up to their limited cash amount and you have to go manually. Especially annoying if you sell consumables for some reason. There is no way this could not be implemented
6. Remove alcohol disassembling into components. This does not make any sense at all
Reason a lot of people wish for trashy MMO mechanic like transmog is because they want to look how they want but remain relevant. While it is cool to have it in MMO, this is not the single player RPG kind of way. So let me suggest a way to make it work in a reasonable amount of time while making it RPG kind of a way and making basic, child level, economy system in the game.
So what I suggest is to do the following:
1. Disassembling item allows you to craft it. Meaning that you got a fancy item you enjoy wearing or it looks cool and you would want to stick to it. You disassemble it to learn how it is done. Now you can do it yourself if you want to. If not - hope it has quality higher then common. Even because if it is common, you will still be able to craft uncommon version with one mod to slot armor in there. Meaning that you will lose possibility to make your item insane, but it will be relevant in terms of defense no matter what. And this would make crafting a valuable option
2. To make crafting meaningful each tier of clothing will have not a random but a set amount of mods. Ie common - none, uncommon - one, rare - two, epic - three, while legendary - six. And since most legendary stuff has some special modifiers, most of them will come as mods and any crafted legendary would be able to contest that. Unless some things like 500% crit damage on certain Katana remains as a weapon perk to allow edge to those iconic weapons still be a bit superior choise. Making it worth for a player to actually commit to buying/using legendary items and updating them or crafting it themselves and meaning that if you as a player spend valuable attributes and perk points to be able to craft, your gear will be at least 10% better itself(and even more because you will craft your own mods to it as well making it something around 12% more value)
3. Do not allow mods to stack(which I believe is already a thing, but it might be just a bug). This also means introducing more mods to allow more variety
4. To craft your own for example nice CORPO shirt you got as a common item you will have to craft it X times to unlock next tier of this craft. And to get next tier you would need to craft previous tier X + X amount of times(it could be fixed number for each tier, could be some linear scaling or other for of scaling). Meaning that crafting items has actual meaning instead of just XP grind and it also makes player actually commit to getting resources and crafting stuff he wants. And this will actually make last perk in crafting tree valuable because you will craft rare or epic gear to sell for profit giving players a way to get money for cars and other possible additions to the game to use money without some messy grinding or exploits
5. Remove armor and damage scaling from loot according to levels. It is great that common items are dropping as upgrades anytime you go anywhere, but it, honestly, just breaks immersion making this a de-facto MMO type crap. Making vendors and items they sell of no value. That supposedly insane iconic pistol you get in the start of the game. Well tough luck, my new shiny, insert generic name multiplied by my level common weapon, is better so screw you. To upgrade your weapons you either need to buy new ones or drop really good ones with full set of better mods. Or buy new set of better mods. Like ones from NCPD sidekicks. This would make weapons relevant and would make crafting relevant. Meaning that "Dying Light" will be of use through the game even if it is rare quality because it would have 2 mods(that still scale from levels and can be replaced). Meaning that only mods on weapons scale. Meaning that if you as player want better gun - drop or buy it OR invest in crafting and have no need to actually visit vendors to upgrade your weapons. You would still need vendors to get unique/icon weapon/clothing recipes. IE some iconic weapons crafting specs are coming from NCPD missions. Same would go towards specific weapons or clothing. And they would only be purchase-able if player has reached certain level of Street Creed
6. Add weapon mods that increase weapon damage or add new damage type weapon will be able to deal. Like if we want weapon to have chemical damage it would come from mod not weapon itself and only this damage will actually scale with levels. Lock new mods behind Street Creed. It fits what current system already has by default because it will remove weapon damage type from being random to being set via mod(meaning that it can be customized, allowing players to have A CHOICE). So if you have poison perks, you would switch damage mod to chemical instead of crafting/buying/dropping X amount of weapons to get what you want and have it synergized with your particular build. I do understand that introducing weapon ammo type would make much more sense, while allowing players to customize weapons via mods to actually enhance weapon capabilities, like changing barrels, handles, magazines, you name it. Why I think my suggestion is better for now? Because this change would take from 3 to 10 people to do within a sprint or two(assuming sprint will be week, or better two) and test it and deploy it to players in January patch instead of complete extension that would take management, designing, implementing and testing to do. Meaning that is at least 3 to 20 people with a set of time of 4 sprints at the bare minimum. So it means February update at best of the best cases. Actually I am wrong about timings. Just had a look at how crafting stuff is implemented in engine right now(you can see https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/543). This tells me that any kind of overhaul to crafting will take more work than it seems. Like way way more work
7. Change perk that allows to retain mods from weapons/clothes to allow it to not only have disassembling but also replacing mods. That would make a huge difference. You are a skilled tech engineer and you all of a sudden can't replace a scope without destroying it. RPG experience
8. Remove updating weapons/clothes. Allow only to update mods. Meaning that if you crafted common Armadillo mod, you can increase its stats up to your level making it better and without adding the need to change your clothing, BUT, put a limit to how much it can be upgraded. Meaning that on level 1: common mod will have range of 1 to 2, uncommon 2 to 4, rare 4 to 8, epic 8 to 12 and legendary 12 to 20. Numbers are subject for a balancing not crafting topic. Also you get better quality of a mod you would need to either buy it or craft it or drop it. Meaning that crafting common Armadillo will only net you a Armadillo of your level without updates. No randomness involved. Which also means to get best mod damage for your level - you still need to upgrade it. Which means that buying grants you maxed out directly, while crafting has a sense of progression. Drop can remain random in terms of mod that are slotted in clothing/weapons. This would also entail that disassembling drop for mods will be meaningful. This also means that only buying or dropping a mod within a weapon of a certain quality(like epic) is only way to get that mod of that particular quality until you unlock it from vendors via street creed and also have a perk to be able to craft it thus making your damage never the best possible until you get best mod in any way possible and update it
If I missed something or you think logic is not as good as it seems to me, please feel free to critique, but please, please, be constructive about it.
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