I am so sick of crafting mechanics

Remember when the reward for beating a difficult boss was an amazing new weapon that doubled your attack power? Or when you got a new item in a Zelda dungeon and it felt like the whole world opened up to you? Well, I do. And I'm so sick of crafting mechanics taking this away from me.

Back in the day it was simple. There's a big chest. You open the chest and find a fully usable item. It was exciting and constantly kept you wondering what kind of item would be in the next big chest. But now it goes more like this:

  • Find chest somewhere in the world, seemingly placed completely at random.
  • The chest contains 10 crafting parts and 2 rare crafting parts.
  • Go to workbench to see that you can craft a hookshot for 200 crafting parts, 10 rare crafting parts, 200 iron bars and an iron handle.
  • Notice that you're missing the recipe for the iron handle.
  • Finally get enough materials and find the recipe for the iron handle. Unfortunately the handle needs another 100 iron bars. Back to grinding iron ore and randomly find coal to smelt those iron bars.
  • Craft the iron handle. Craft the hookshot. Great, I feel nothing. I'm just glad it's over.
  • Use the iron hookshot 2 times and get to a ledge that you can't get up to. "Your iron hookshot is not strong enough." Realize that you need a silver hookshot, then gold, then mythril. Back to grinding.

I've lost count of how many games I've played in the last few years that were exactly like this. There's zero excitement and I constantly feel like the game is trying its best to waste my time. Instead of just getting the item itself, now there's 1000 extra steps. And by the time I've gotten the item, I don't really care anymore. And I don't even want to open any chests, because I already know they'll just have more crafting materials to waste my time.

I'm so, so sick of this. Maybe the generation that grew up with Minecraft gets a kick out of this, but I certainly don't. I just want the entire item to be in the chest in the first place. I hate crafting and I wish games would stop overcomplicating simple mechanics that already worked perfectly 30 years ago.