This game is so focused on making crafting rewarding that it makes adventuring feel pointless.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Sep 7, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Scoffer

    Scoffer Avatar

    Messages:
    905
    Likes Received:
    2,651
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I'm not sure at all how you even came to this conclusion.

    Crafting generates zero gold into the economy as everything it produces and is sold is just moving cash from one player to another (not generating it). Most of the cash sinks in game are aimed at crafters since you have to buy fuel and the process is extremely loss making. The fact that you HAVE to adventure to become a crafter in the first place compounds this. You need to fight in order to gather materials, you sell the loot and get cash from adventuring to feed your crafting costs. There are best in slot items and a lot of these are artifact drops and are not even crafted.

    The "down side" you mention about adventurers having an exponential cost for advancement is exactly the same for crafting. The one difference is that crafting xp is much much harder to get consistently.

    I read through your entire post and found the opposite in almost every single point you have made.
     
    Gravidy and calkano (PAX) like this.
  2. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

    Messages:
    6,194
    Likes Received:
    12,076
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    @Scoffer I think you could slot your paragraphs in between his and you would both be right.
     
  3. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    Actually not quite true, when you're talking about gear.
    • There are best-in-slot artifacts for many equipment slots that far outshine top tier crafted goods.
    • There isn't "demand" in the sense that a crafter is able to sell crafted gear for a profit - the raw materials are 99.9% of the time worth more than anything you can make out of them once you account for the waste. This above and beyond the extremely costly process of levelling crafting to begin with, both in money (which you can't earn crafting, so you earn fighting), and in time, since the XP rate for crafting advancement is orders of magnitude slower than the combat equivalent.
    • Also wrong about it not being rare resources - most of the better crafted items require components that come from, you guessed it, fighting! And as there is nowhere you can really harvest anything without having to stop and fight something every thirty seconds (with very few low-tier scene exceptions), crafting is 100% contingent on combat survivability/kill speed in order to acquire even its basic components.
    • Also adventuring is a requirement both for gold to buy basic crafting recipes, and months of grind/luck to get rare drop supply bags with a huge RNG of the possible crafting recipes to even approach something resembling a complete recipe book for gearcrafting.

    So, adventuring produces very little.... except 99% of all the money in the game, all of the artifacts, all the special crafting components, most of the recipes, and with the exception of deco items every single item you can craft either requires something you get as a drop or you had to kill something before you could harvest it. I agree this is imbalanced and broken.


    I agree with your conclusion about harder tier content being mostly pointless, the drop rates and loot tables on 'high tier content' are frustrating at best and insulting at worst.
    But if you think those rewards are in the crafting side - you are sorely mistaken. You're also forgetting the hundreds of hours of refining, and the hours and hours of fighting you have to do to fund-raise to afford to buy crafting fuels and recipes. And then the fact that 90% of the materials that you spent all that time/effort getting just go down the RNG drain. The reroll system helped mitigate this a bit, but more and more options in the pool are going to put us right back where we were. Its such a problem that many new players, enticed by the idea of a complex crafting system, have so many barriers to entry into the system that they simply don't bother.

    In crafting its just as steep, except there's no further advancement at all. Crafters get 1 crafting ring artifact for each of the gear-crafting trees that at best, adds 1% success chance. That's it. Guess where you get that? FIGHTING! ;)


    I agree adventuring needs to be more rewarding. These and many other good suggestions have been posted over the years. And I 100% feel your frustration with how unrewarding adventuring can be, if you're not trying to 'work toward' a crafting related goal - after all, most of the stuff you get adventuring is used for some crafting related purpose. If you're not a crafter, what do you do wtih this? Save it, take it to a crafter to outfit you. I can understand wanting there to be something more significant that you get for going out and fighting stuff. But crafting is equally unsatisfying, equally frustrating, and impossible to do without financing it by adventuring. The two systems are intertwined.

    I'd be curious what you think players should 'get' for doing challenging content. Raid tier gear? The best in slot artifacts are already a step in this direction. I'd love to see achievement based unlockables that improved your character in some way, for example. Crafted gear has been more and more marginalized by artifact drops that some builds, such as a tamer, have best in slot pieces for nearly every slot that only drop off high tier creatures. Any magic user at the high end wont be caught without their dolus hood and sage's sash and warlock chain , since there are no crafted belts at all and even with the new major stat effects no crafted gear can come close to the stats these add in the other slots. not even close.

    At persistence, crafting someone a set of gear was 5 pieces of clothing, 2 pieces of jewelry, and usually a weapon and you could as you say, go mining/chopping/gathering for days to get the materials and make this. Now you need to fight things for special handles or special hilts or special bowstrings, if indeed you're even a crafting a weapon since ....there's artifacts for that. These have low drop rates, low salvage rates once you get a drop, and then if you don't exceptional the item, you end up with junk. So prepare to -fight- and gather a few dozen of whatever rare component you want and hope you get lucky. Nobody wants a helmet anymore since even the low level outskirts reward helmets give better pure stat additions higher than the highest tier craftables. Warlock chains tend to be a better bet even for non-mage builds (or a taming collar takes this slot) so...now we make 4 pieces of gear and a ring. Sometimes. If the person isn't using one of the many artifact ring options.

    I'm not saying artifacts should be abolished. I'm just pointing out that even as an extremely invested crafter, half the gear I wear to go fight is not crafted, and nothing I could possibly craft would be better than the artifacts in those slots, artifacts which are exclusively from killing monsters. Both adventuring - AND crafting - need a serious rethink on the reward schema. I'd love to see crafting quests, work orders, more crafting gear (that you could you know, actually craft), I'd love to see actual things you could craft and make more money than you could selling the components other than a handful of low demand consumables. It seems everything is on the adventuring side, and the only reason to craft at all is if you enjoy crafting since spending even a fraction of the time you'd spend crafting fighting something instead is much more lucrative.
     
    Wilfred and Gravidy like this.
  4. 7thRankedNoob

    7thRankedNoob Avatar

    Messages:
    13
    Likes Received:
    38
    Trophy Points:
    3
    There's very little concerning the current crafting system that I like. I particularly do not understand how a Master Crafter has virtually no control over the end result of what he's doing. There should be no endless crafting until you get the result you were looking for... You should be able to clearly pick what you want to make, with the values you want attached to the end item .. You either have the skills to make the item or it fails ... get rid of this randomness the system currently has.

    Imagine hiring a painter with 25 years experience to paint your house. When he's done, there is all kinds of weird texture marks in your house because "something went wrong" .. it just doesn't happen. Experienced Crafters should have a threshold of what to expect and should be able to choose a specific outcome. If I want to make a wand attuned to Life Skill, I shouldn't have to make 20 wands to finally get what I'm looking for...


    How I'd like to see the game change:

    - Populate the world with meaningful, interesting dropped treasure. If you kill a big Boss, you want it to drop something... and not the same thing all the time. It should be from a table of X items so the kill doesn't always produce what you are looking for
    - Allow said treasure to then be upgraded one final time by a Crafter with some type of enchant that improves the item. Noticeably, to ensure the enchant would indeed be sought out

    This gives adventurers a 'reason' to adventure and also ensures Crafters have a raison d'etre ...

    Crafter leveling:
    - Along the rise of a Crafter's career, they should produce equipment that is marginally better than what an adventurer 'could' find dropped at level. This allows the adventurer to decide if he wants/needs to spend the gold for better equipment (crafted) ... but they could still function with dropped gear
    - Drop the material count for Crafters during the level rise as its currently insane (at least I think so) compared to the skill gains an adventurer gets doing what they do. The amount of material needed vs gather time just doesn't compare to the gains an adventurer gets

    With these changes, I think adventurers would be happy ... hopefully Crafters would be happy ... win-win. Serious adventurers are still going to seek out Crafters for all upgrades throughout their lifespan.
     
    Chatele, Gravidy and kaeshiva like this.
  5. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

    Messages:
    607
    Likes Received:
    1,243
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I don't think this is answer to the material cost of levelling crafting. What is needed is for the stuff that low level crafters level up on to be useful somehow so they can sell them at least at material cost. This is only a really problem with enchanting and masterwork. As for the others you can use salvage to spend the XP, though not to gain it, and cooking you can make consumables components like pie dough that don't matter what level you are.

    If you could level enchanting and masterwork on an item that did not actually enchant or masterwork an item, but could be used in future enchanting or masterworks to some advantage and the item is the same regardless of the crafters level. Then new crafters can level on these and either stockpile them for later or sell them to higher level crafters to save the higher level crafters time creating them themselves.
    Or create a consumable used by adventures that uses enchanting and masterwork that again is not affected by the level of the crafter for low level players to level up on. Say for example a whet stone for sword masterwork that adds +1 damage for a sword for 30 minutes etc.


    Regards
    Spung
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2019
    Gravidy and Violette Dyonisys like this.
  6. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

    Messages:
    789
    Likes Received:
    1,725
    Trophy Points:
    93
    All the people saying that adventuring isn't sans reward because that's where gold comes from: Yes, but you don't have to finish Despair to get gold, it's just sort of a constant reward for no matter what you fight. The dropped crafting resources also don't really boil down to making adventuring feel rewarding. You just farm them and then sell them for money, it's not like having an elven bowstring in your bow proves that you've tangled with the elf king and walked away the victor.
     
    Xee, Cordelayne and the Lacedaemonian like this.
  7. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

    Messages:
    607
    Likes Received:
    1,243
    Trophy Points:
    93
    This game has trophies for that. This is why you can display mounted heads, cabalist robes/boot/hoods, boss weapons etc.
    It would be nice if they retro fitted the fishing mechanics to the trophies, so that these trophies said who, and when the creature was defeated, displaying a full party not just final blow for killed done in a party.

    I'm certainly not against them adding more trophies.


    Regards
    Spung
     
  8. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

    Messages:
    789
    Likes Received:
    1,725
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Most people don't care about trophies. Basing the entire reward scheme for adventuring on trophies and cosmetic items is absurd when you can point to several decades of game development having very obviously converged on leveling up and acquiring better equipment as being the reward that is most desired by players. Of course this has problems, and probably every game designer has at some point contemplated how to make a game that doesn't eventually self destruct from its own power creep, but it's also the formula that produces results so reliably that there are multinational corporations dedicated to developing hundred million dollar entertainment products based on this idea and make significant profit on them. It just isn't up for debate what creates the most engagement from players.

    The essence of adventure is: Go into the unknown and bring back something useful. That's built into human nature, because that's how a hunter gatherer society survives. There is a reason why we call it farming when we've eliminated the unknown from acquiring useful things. Adventure is something humans crave that they usually can't get in the world we now live in. If you don't need to go to a place you've never been before to find more useful things, or if going to those places never yields anything useful then your game simply doesn't provide people with an adventure.
     
  9. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

    Messages:
    1,497
    Likes Received:
    3,223
    Trophy Points:
    113
    The rewards for adventuring are not entirely cosmetic. There are cabalist hoods, savage/zombie/sage/bacchanal belts, brittle/wisdom/lich/jump rings, harp and fleet flute, vexlyn's ember, xen loot/envy bows, sylvan blades, mossy handles, vrul heart, and probably quite a bit more that I am forgetting. That's all very usable stuff and isn't even counting crafting rings, dungeon blueprints, and supply bundles that can have recipes, artifacts, and deeds.

    I'm sure loot could still be improved quite a bit, but it's definitely way better now than it used to be, and to say that there aren't rewards for adventuring just isn't true.
     
  10. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Though, all that is a direct contradiction to the "great system" of player crafting. They have generated a lot of pushback for that. Originally, artifacts weren't supposed to compete with crafting. They were themselves supposed to be enchanted/masterworked. Some of them only don't compete because they never made craftable equivalents. Citing components as non-cosmetic rewards only falls into either selling for gold, or being a crafter, which is categorically not what OP is talking about.

    There's a few mage spells, like the fire elemental and the firebird thing, that you have to defeat specific difficult bosses, to complete the quest. I tend to think almost all skills/spells should be like that.

    It's never made sense to me that the lowest-levels skills cost 100g to unlock. Then the swirling blades of doom-death skill you can unlock in Ardoris for... 100g.
     
    Vladamir Begemot likes this.
  11. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

    Messages:
    1,497
    Likes Received:
    3,223
    Trophy Points:
    113
    A lot of components aren't much different than artifacts. It doesn't take a crafter to make a spear out of a mossy handle and a unicorn horn. You just need 3 wax or something and combine. It's also way better than any spear that can be made with gathered resources.
     
  12. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    It's a component. That much is factual. It's a resource. He's not talking about gathering resources. It's described in one of his paragraphs:

    This happens a lot in Metroid. You defeat whats-his-face and you get the Varia Suit, permanently.

    Of course, that's not really compatible with a player-crafted driven economy.
     
  13. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    It's too late for Portalarium to really fix this issue, but I at least understand where Aetrion is coming from.

    I could try to defeat the clockwork dragon...but why would I want to? Lots of death and frustration for pittance. If I was looking to farm components, or make money, there's easy low-level zones I could grind for that. There's this other game I play... you go do a high-level zone with a bunch of your friends (setting aside that in SOTA there's an apparent goal for most things to be soloable), defeat the high druid in the tower, and he drops a tablet. You sit and study the tablet, as a druid, and learn Stoneskin, which now makes you badass. And in that game, if you die, you don't just go to an ankh.... your gear is probably very damaged, and if you die, you could lose hours to days of progress. Yet here in this game, with our no-risk gameplay, I can't be bothered to try.
     
  14. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

    Messages:
    1,497
    Likes Received:
    3,223
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Out of the things that I listed, only 2 of them are components, one which doesn't even require salvaging, and the other which comes from an artifact weapon that is decent pre salvage anyway. The rest of those things are just drops.

    If people want there to be more Flamin' Pants of the Phoenix type stuff, that's debatable I guess, but to say that there are not already quite a few very strong gear drops is just not true.
     
    Sean Silverfoot likes this.
  15. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

    Messages:
    789
    Likes Received:
    1,725
    Trophy Points:
    93
    The Cabalist Hoods are actually a rare example of a really good reward for taking on specific content in this game. The only problem is that they are also an example of where crafters get cut out of the equation completely, so they can't be the model for how to fix this issue.
     
    Sol Stormlin likes this.
  16. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Then maybe don't bring up components exclusively in your rebuttal? May I remind you, this is what you said, that I was responding to:

    I had no issue with the non-components you listed, other than to say - and I quote:

    It's almost as though I didn't say, in any way, shape, or form, that they don't exist in quantity. I do, however, recall making the point that this fact is in antithesis to peoples' arguing that it shouldn't be that way, because player crafting.
     
    Cordelayne likes this.
  17. sarbonn

    sarbonn Avatar

    Messages:
    72
    Likes Received:
    134
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Corpus Christi, TX
    I don't normally agree with complaint types of threads, but this isn't really that kind of thread. I do completely agree that the game is missing one component to it, and that is because the developers decided to allow crafting to be based on the simplest items in the game. Unlike most other games, you have to gather higher level items to make higher level things, but this game requires you to only gather the simplest of items in the game, and those items spawn everywhere. At one point I was glad to see that I could get the common items pretty much everywhere, but it also led me to realize that it would seriously limit the need for any higher level things.

    While I realize the horse has already left the stall, there is a bit of a solution they could utilize to fix this, and they've already introduced it with the whole artifact and essence part of the equation. If the higher level things (new things from this time forward) needed special items that you could only find in certain higher level areas, so that, for example, a simple pair of cotton gloves would require the same components but if you added "Superextrawowie" component to it, it would then make it a Superextrawowie cotton gloves that will have stats that reflect how awesome the new gloves would be, but that component would only come after defeating the Superextrawowie monster boss.
     
  18. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    This is kinda the difficulty. The moment you need a drop from "superextrawowie monster boss", crafting ceases to be about crafting and becomes about farming boss drops. The fact that the boss drop then needs to go through the hand of a crafter is kinda inconsequential - the superextrawowie monster boss may as well just drop a Chestpiece of Wowieness. The fact that there is a fixed recipe to turn item A into item B does not constitute a crafting system.

    In most games as you've pointed out there's a progression in which you are able to get better and better materials from higher and higher level areas. And its a good point that we don't have this, that everything's equally easy to get. However if I think about it, in all those games, the lower tier stuff is for levelling up and then after that, its the highest tier commodoties that tend to be in demand and the rest of the stuff gets largely ignored unless the items you craft are level restricted (IE, until you are this big, you can't wear gear made out of xyz). Sota has no such restrictions. I made a level 1 alt, stuck it in a +17 weapon and sent it off to obliterate the outskirts. Additional material diversity may help the problem but I don't think it will solve it.

    At the end of the day, someone who wants to play as a pure crafter will probably give Sota a miss. Because financing, fueling, and getting materials for crafting is almost entirely combat-centric. There is no real "industry" - its all based on kill things, take their stuff, or take the stuff they were standing in front of. That's just how its designed. The reason why we don't get a Superextrawowie chestpiece 'drop' is that the original premise was to allow crafters to customize gear according to various material bonuses. The material bonus system in itself is quite robust. It seems like the ball was then dropped with the random slap-on mw/enchant system that has never made any sense when you consider the highly customizable foundation. So now crafting's about combat, luck, and mitigating how much stuff you waste. Presumably because of the lack of satisfaction in adventuring, we got artifacts. And more artifacts. And even more artifacts. So now instead of a diverse, customizable system we have people farming boss drops to outfit themselves. We're already there. Which is why this original post was very confusing to me since while the initial vision of the game may have been a player-crafted economy we are drifting further and further away from that.
     
  19. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

    Messages:
    2,199
    Likes Received:
    2,993
    Trophy Points:
    153
    I think this is exactly the issue. that Drops are all random for the most part and only a very few bosses or boss types drop specific loot.

    Each boss imo should be unique not just in looks, but skills and loot options. Give a reason for adventures to go to specific bosses for that type of loot. Many other games do it.
    I also think they should make bosses more random and have place holders so that when there is a boss you know there is always loot but the chance of the boss being there is less. that way its more rewarding when you see a named creature / boss that you know you will get something 100%.

    this is just my thoughts, I am a crafter, and I do adventure alot to get random artifacts from bosses but there is really no drive to explore short of the few quests, and very few locations for loot/xp grinding. If we had a more random world boss spawn locations it would drive more people to adventure the zones.

    Another would be to add more rewards for adventure like random spawning chests or as they are doing treasure maps soon same sort of thing. I hope those are more rewarding and perhaps lead people into random zones.
    If they designed it like UO with map levels, traps, and spawns on trigger based on map level it would make things more interesting that is for sure. I loved having to dig around to find stuff.


    As to Crafted stuff vs loot, I think perhaps they could keep the balance have powerful items but make it so that each one of those when broken down have special components to enhance or make new items. That way it could be used either way. perhaps add an additional type of slot on items to add new fx or abilities based on additional ingredients. like that of enchant / mw these are just additional materials added to give it further things and it could even be fluff like lighting fx, particle fx etc for cool factors beyond just skins.
     
    Sarek likes this.
  20. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

    Messages:
    789
    Likes Received:
    1,725
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I think there really needs to be something in the game that can't be traded. Especially since in this game you can sell COTOs and rewards it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when extremely powerful gear is freely tradable and just winds up with whoever has the most gold. Theoretically you can make a level 1 character, buy a bunch of COTOs, sell them, and buy a set of legendary artifacts and top end mastercrafts right out of the gate.

    I'd much rather have a system where when you do something like beat Despair you get some kind of sigil or runestone that is attuned to your character, can't be traded, but can be slotted into a crafted piece of gear to give it more power. That way you can have a loot hunt with bound items where you gather up these sigils that go with specific pieces of gear, but crafters aren't cut out of the equation, because the sigils do nothing unless they are attached to an item. Attaching them to a random rusty plate piece or shoddy longbow will give you the bonuses of the sigil, but you'll still have to find a crafter to get a really great item to use them in.

    You can pull the sigils out of the gear whenever you want, they are yours to keep, and when you trade a piece they are attached to they are automatically removed and placed back in your inventory.

    That's the best of both worlds scenario to me. It's a fusion between SOTA's crafting system and a more classic loot hunt where you actually have to go out there and do the difficult things in the world to earn the best rewards.
     
    Cordelayne likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.