Crafting, RNG and Specialisation

So Chris said in the live stream that RNG is not going from crafting. In principal I don't have a problem with this.

The re roll for specialisation I prefer to the proposal of letting specialists pick.
The re roll gives the specialist an advantage, without making all non specialist unable to compete. A specialist has a chance to make something cheaper but it is still only a chance. Making non specialists obsolete was not a good move from my point of view. A non specialist can supply everything a specialist can but with an average higher cost.

The problems with the crafting system as I see it are the following.
Specifically these are the problems in GEAR crafting and even more specifically in the ENCHANTING and MASTERWORK steps and creating EXCEPTIONALs.

1) Unable to price custom orders for gear, as if the customer want specific things there is no way to know how many attempts that would take.
2) RNG can feel like you have no progression. If you get unlucky for multiple 10s of attempts in a row (it will happen, seen 13 reds in a row in casino and that just under a 50/50) it is demoralising.
3) The RNG system create a lot of junk gear in the economy for which there is no demand as there is no use for it.

Finding solutions to these problems I think should be the priority of the crafting, and I believe solutions can be found that still involve RNG.

I would like the team to brainstorm how to change gear crafting, enchanting and masterwork to address the above issues. I think the solution should not involve specialisation. It should be a gear crafting fix, not a specialisation implementation.


Regards
Spung

 

My suggestion has always been the following.

It fundamentally is summed with allow RNG, if RNG fails beyond a fixed threshold then you can use all the resulting failure gear to create a GUARANTEED result.
This fixes the issues above as follows.

1) When a player asks for something specific you can give the maximum price (or materials) they will need to supply based on if you fail all the way to the threshold.
2) You always see the light at the end of tunnel, as you know after the threshold you will have what you want.
3) The crafter will use failure gear to make certain gear, or crafters will buy other crafters failure gear to create certain results. Turning junk gear into something with value, as it is now 1/threshold of a good piece of gear.

The threshold should be high, as even if you create what you want on try 5 or something, the other failures are a road towards a certain result.

Considerations
1) Need to ensure it is like for like.
EG you should not be able to use a bunch of cotton failure gear to make a certain carapacion piece of gear.
EG you should not be able to use lots of first ENC/MW to make a certain 2+ ENC/MW etc.

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EDIT (Note this is after the first two likes, so it may invalidate those.) 11/07/2019

Credit were credit is due, I can't say this is my solution but thought it was worth adding to the suggestions as it I think it is a great one. It was @Malimn
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?posts/1245325/
(Linked to my post that quoted it because easier to find the URL

So this suggestion that I really liked is, that would augment my suggestion, mitigating some of the risk of newer crafter never being able to compete with higher level crafters if cost are more certain.

Make the higher end gear cost more to MAINTAIN than a lesser product.

Thus putting the additional cost of the high end items on the user of the item rather than the crafting process. This then would make demand for lesser crafted gear, as it will be cheaper for the buyer to maintain. The higher end gear, though costing the same initially would have a higher Total Cost of Ownership to the buyer in the long run.

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EDIT 12/07 Invert bonus for materials and the MW/ENC

So I was thinking on this some more, maybe the fundamental problem is that TOO much of an items power comes from the masterworks and enchantments.

Raw stats are so powerful in this game, that items with the wrong stats become useless to high level characters. High level players want the masterworks for the skills that are in there deck only.

Perhaps the components should determine stats, and skills which are specific things you want and the masterworks and enchants should add more "nice to haves". So not getting exactly the perfect item is still a useful item.

So the specific things come from the components that you can choose and the generic things like weapon damage % or crit damage, focus etc come form the MW and ENC. So the MW and ENC are still useful but they make an already useful item MORE useful and better, rather than a useless items BECOMING useful or good through MW and ENC.

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EDIT 12/07 Oakenhammers idea

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...izations-and-masterworking-enchanting.157105/

liked this idea, think this would fix all the issues in post 1.

Kudos @Oakenhammer

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Note edits above are ideas I have had and ideas I have heard that I think address the 3 issues posed in post 1. Been adding them here as post stay around longer in this forum than the general forum.

Regards
Spung

 

Hopefully the rerolls can happen for MW/Enchant failures too, and not just the choices you get. RNG is fine, but if you've got GM everything and spec, there needs to be a way to make that substantially better than having sya, 80 in everything and no spec. Or, at least, ramp up the success chances a bit after GM. Isn't it something like an extra 1% exceptional chance for going from 100 to 120? And I thinkthe best anybody can get ever on the third ench/MW is like 46% Maybe give us a break on that? GMing everything and spec ought to at least get that third to 75%ish.

 

Underwhelmed.

What happened to "You get to pick your enchantment" that was promised?

 

@Spungwa ; There is a solid plan as well as yours that was proposed by @Elrond. Maybe a combination of both can be proposed to @Chris. R /Boris

 

Having crafting be RNG-capped is a horrible system. If it was RNG-limited, but uncapped, the system would benefit specialists without being completely worthless to everyone else.

What I mean is, enchanting and masterworking would continue to provide options (more options and more slots, at GM say choice of 5 options), but you can re-roll these as many times as you want. Each time you re-roll, you lose the silver or gold (but it does NOT "use up" the slot/cause durability damage). Specialists would have a small chance to recover one of these for every 20 points of skill (a small chance at all 5 at 100 skill). Thus, you can ALWAYS create the gear you want, but it is very expensive in terms of materials.

Now crafting becomes skill-based, but still limited by RNG and available materials. No more crap gear, but still space for alternative special items so not everything is cookie cutter. Its actually useable offline (currently, crafting is useless offline).

 

Another good solution to 3 issues I posed with gear crafting. Though does not completely answer 1, as still no maximum price to quote to a customer. But this is the kind of brainstorming on the solutions I want the Devs to do.

The only problems I see with this is that you are continuing the current demand for gold and silver, but not for the gear materials, as you will not use as many gear items getting the master works and enchants you want.

It also does nothing to create demand for non exceptional gear wasted before enchants and masterwork.

In my solution I would also have a way to combine a threshold number of non exceptionals to get a guaranteed exceptional. Thus creating demand for non exceptionals.


Regards
Spung

 

I love all these suggestions. I just wish my inner Debbie Downer thought any of them had a shot in hell of ever being implemented. The devs seem fixated on giving us a terrible crafting system.

 

I don't recall ever hearing them "promise".

 

It does still focus on gold/silver (which I still would like to see changed to material-specific components, i.e. rare wood/silk/etc), but it opens up tiers of gear:

• Low level gear created with non-exceptionals, likely with a failure in mw/enchant.
• Mid-level gear with non-exceptionals and full mw/enchant, or exceptionals with a failure or two in mw/enchant.
• High-level gear with exceptionals and good mw/enchant.
• High-level+ gear with exceptionals and gm/specialist mw/enchant.

With other solutions I've seen, its only focused on throwing away the lower tiers to power through the last tier. Thats not what everyone needs. Progression allows players of all types and playstyles, including a thriving newbie economy and PvP players with high turnover of gear.

 

All very solid points, but for this one in particular, I would feel much better if you had a decent chance of getting back the ACTUAL materials you used to create it during salvage. For example, I have scrapped Grey Pine longbow made with imbued elven strings and on the ultra rare occasion that I don't just get 6 wood scrap, I have gotten Maple bowstaff or plain cloth bowstrings. It is demoralizing. My other option is to sell my wildly awry Frankenbows to the vendor for a 1000th of the cost into it just to have some other player scrap it, but they get to think, "WOW, Kid Twist sure makes crappy bows." before they do.

 

This is exactly why they are not giving us "Pick your Stat". They don't want the economic impact on the ore/ingot market if a crafter doesn't have to try 12 times to get a decent item. I understand that logic, flawed it might be. Its is the bedrock upon which a substantial portion of our in-game economy is built. I hate it, but it must remain intact for the sake of the economy. THAT SAID, I propose that we simply divert the resources not being used on wasted attempts to much higher costs for choosing your attributes. say 5 ingot cost for the standard "get what you get " roll, or 50 ingots to pick from the list you are eligible to choose from. (Base attribute only, modifier, i.e. 17.9%) still based on the RNG . It would also be fine to limit the number of attempts that can be made in a period of time. 50 ingots and a 6 hour timer until you can make the 2nd pass. It roll plays the amount of time needed to create a MASTERPIECE, and also limits crafters from just cranking out mass quantities of exceptional gear.

Thoughts?

 

So for this point, I would expect the threshold to be 2 times the average number you would expect it to take for a GM from RNG.
This way it is only for the very unlucky, or the very rich that will buy twice as much "junk" failures to beat the RNG.

Sets a maximum price, but still consumes generally the same amount of materials, will be a slight saving overall as the "junk" even from successes will add up over time. But with this kind of level of threshold it would not be order of magnitude change from the current demand/consumption.


Regards
Spung

 

Again I like the idea, but it does not address my point 3. Players that decide to not do this are still creating junk in the economy that has no demand.

The time limit thing is a good idea though to help make thing rare, can be overcome with alts, but that would be ALOT of producer XP needed to create multiple alts that ALL have repeated good stats. Specialist alts i'm against as it is the same amount of XP just split between multiple characters. This idea actually multiples the amount of XP the PLAYER has to gain as each alt will need to repeat the same learning.


Regards
Spung

 

There will ALWAYS be HUGE amounts of junk in the game for us to wade through, from the millions of broken potion bottles littering every square inch of Novia, to all the rusted/dirty/worn/crappy item drops the devs push down our throats because they are certain that EVERYONE loves it, lol. Seriously though, yes some people will make crappy gear to train up their skills, so you will never get away from it. If we could tie this in with my other idea about getting back some of the actual materials used in crafting when we salvage unwanted gear, I think we could really improve the current system, with minimal coding efforts. What do you think?

 

So months ago I had a thought about a lot of these thing. I'm not an RPer, so when my guild did Mardi Gras, I sat with my character at the bar (to be half supporting the event) and wrote the following doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVY8EZKc82g-Ic7pNXuhq5DAUFJothtutwAYL06anHQ/edit?usp=sharing

Not sure many read the post though.

Regards
Spung

 

Since I'm sure you're all DYING to know what I want, I'd like to see:

1. The ability to combine x number of unexceptional items into an exceptional. (Maybe four, maybe more. Probably more.) Or, maybe each one you combine adds +x in durability, to a limit of five combos or so. So exceptionals made this way are still not as good as "natural" exceptionals, but still better than non-exceptional. Actually, I like that better, then increasing the odds of exceptionals through Spec still has value.
2. A reroll button for MW/enchants that costs additional ingots to press. Spec gives a chance for that reroll to be free. (But you have to risk the ingots to find out.)
3. A reroll button that pops up on failure, costing additional ingots. Spec again gives a chance for that reroll to be free. (Also again, you have to risk the ingots to find out.) If you accept the failure, Spec can reduce the durability loss a little.
4. Scrapping crafted items ALWAYS gives back either materials or components. Always less than what it took to make. (And when I say "materials" I mean beetles/suet/sooty bark etc., not leather/wood/ore.) Preferable to get back components over raw materials. Spec increases chances.
5. Nuke the crap out of the odds of patterns showing up. They should appear a little more often before the chances were adjusted a few releases ago, but not nearly as often as they do currently. Maybe a quarter as often as now. Maybe more. I like them being in the game, but when I junk 30 rusty swords and end up with 25 patterns, that's bad.
6. Long term: The ability to "socket" ancient essences to give artifact-like qualities to crafted weapons. Probably a roll just like MW/enchanting, but just limited to one round only. Maybe no rerolls, either. Between that and combining artifacts to get better ones, nobody in Novia will ever have a ton of artifacts on their vendors again.
7. Additional MW/enchants only available at GM.
8. Additional MW/enchants only available with Spec.
9. Spec improves odds of success at exceptionals/MW/enchants.
10. Add in gold and silver scraps. Make them only appear when scrapping MW/enchanted items. With the above changes, there won't be a huge amount of scrapping crafted items anymore anyway, so there shouldn't be a ton of them coming into the game.
11. Let scrapping result in multiple drop types. Scrap AND/OR components AND/OR patterns. Not necessarily always all three, but the chance of getting up to all three.
12. Spec increases number of results of MW/enchant rolls that can appear.
13. Base skill adds slightly to MW/ench success chance and stat results. More reason to dump xp into the base skill, but not as good as leveling the specific MW/ench skills.


I realize this doesn't address pricing items; I don't think that we can have RNG in the system at all if we want predictable prices, and I don't think the devs will allow an RNG-free crafting system.

[EDITED to include other option for combining non-exceptionals.]

 

In general I like the ideas. But I do see some problems.

2, 3. need to consume additional things than just more gold and silver or it massively reduces the amount of materials consumed by failures as the base item is never wasted.
EDIT ADD: Maybe as 4 is going to return more components you have to add more components to the item as well as the gold/silver.

5 While I agree that getting patterns instead of scrap is not good in general, that is very much down to the item. I don't want scrap, only looking for patterns when I scrap low drop rate Gambeson armour. But for most other once I have like 10 of a pattern I would rather have the scrap. So would rather have the choice ahead of time to try to for pattern or not, or just give both.

7 and 8. I only want more options if the number of options you get to pick from is based on the percentage of available options. So it self balances the chance of getting a specific option as more options are added. Else this just makes getting what you want from the RNG even worse.......


Regards
Spung

 

Ah, yes, forgot that one. Added, along with other ideas.