Crafting, RNG and Specialisation

So, the official stance is effectively, "sorry guys, but nobody is ever going to enjoy crafting."

 

I don't have the numbers, but hope this is not true.

If they can not make something rare by it costing a huge amount of raw materials (or gold as materials and gold should be interchangeable at the player set exchange rate) and player time (in refining making the components etc) with ANY level of threshold. Note I have not said what the threshold should be, I used 200% of GM RNG chance as an example for illustration, they have more information than me to work out what would work for consumption in the economy.

If the consumption is there then the demand is there for the raw materials. If the raw material demand is there then the price is high. If the price is high then it should be prohibitively expensive for everyone to make exactly what they want using the thresholds.

If the above statement does not hold in this player economy then the economy is already dead, gold is already worthless and by extension so is everything else outside the cash shop.... So I only hope that quote is false.... And from what I can see in game, it is false ....


Regards
Spung

 

If they're going to keep, or even expand, the RNG aspect of crafting Enchanting/MasterWork...I guess I won't bother making armor and weapons, and wasting XP on "Specialization" then. I'll just stick to crafting deco and the like...items where I get exactly what I want, every time I click the Craft button. Tired of wasting hours gathering and spending hundreds of thousands of gold on raw materials, just so I can create junk weapons/armor to stick on a vendor where they'll sit, unpurchased, for months. (Or I could sell them to an NPC for 100g...yay.)

 

To me it's simple, keep the rng but put %chance of success on a sliding scale depending on skill and or materials.

 

I recently blew through my supply of beetles to make a leather chest. I haven't been specifically collecting them, just holding on to what I got here and there over the past year. Had maybe 150 or so. The only chest I got which was close to the one I wanted had a durability of 25, and was still not quite what I wanted.

A year's worth of collecting, gone just like that, and nothing to show for it. To make the item you want under this system can only be done if it is your sole pursuit while playing the game, instead of playing the game. Maybe.

 

I don't see a problem with removing, or severely decreasing, the RNG aspect of Enchanting/Masterwork.
Who cares if players can actually craft the armor/weapons they want?
The market will dictate the prices the armor/weapon is sold for any way.

Wasting hours/days/weeks/months of game time collecting mats to make "the perfect" item is not fun.
A game that is not fun eventually dies.

 

If the rng is completely removed in the set up we currently have, whoever has the highest skill in the game will be able to make the only high-end desirable item for the entire player base. For example @Sara Dreygon will be able to make perfect swords for cheap and nobody else will be able to sell swords anymore. Why buy a sword I or anyone else crafts when you can get one with better stats for the same price? Everyone will just buy swords from Sara, why even be self sufficient anymore when you can get the best for a decent price? It wont hurt the crafting market, it will remove it from 99% of the players. Only the select few will be able to sell items, everything else made by other players will be junk.

@kaeshiva if you crank up the equipment decay like you mentioned that will only increase sales for those elite players. Everyone else is screwed. And players will still complain like crazy because their equipment keeps breaking and they have to buy a new sword from Sara every few days.

To me the biggest issue with crafting that needs to be dealt with is what we do with the "junk" items. The combining idea @Elrond proposed seems like a fun solution. Or being able to scrap those items for an amount of useable crafting materials would help too.

If anyone can explain to me how removing the rng would not create monopolies for the players with the highest enchanting/masterworking, I would love to hear it.

 

Answer: So what? Who cares? Shouldn't the player with the highest skill be able to make the highest end equipment? I mean...isn't that the whole point? Why else would you spend months of time gaining tens (if not hundreds) of millions of XP to raise your skill so you could be "the best"?

And if the person charges too much for their items, there are other people to go to in order to equip yourself. The market will correct itself. And if Sara is getting 200 requests a day to make swords, is it possible to fulfill all those orders? Probably not.

Honestly, adding RNG to artificially gimp players to provide some semblance of "everybody gets a trophy" is creating a very not-fun crafting system. There are literally hundreds of comments on these forums complaining about how RNG is horrible.

 

This wouldn't be the first game with non-RNG economies to not have monopolies. People keep balking about removing RNG as though we're pitching perpetual motion machines.

If there's enough demand, individuals could not keep up, to monopolize. Market pressures would have people undercutting, preventing monopolies. If we restore the prerequisites to regional economies, it'd be much more difficult to monopolize. There's numerous ways this could be avoided, but the devs seem hell-bent on creating one of the most wonkiest "economies" I've seen, that only happens to accidentally-but-only-marginally work, while alienating most people who want to do crafting.

 

The question about what to do with junk items is a symptom of the corner that we've painted ourselves into... a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

This is not a problem in Eve. Anything produced, from the most top-end items, to the crappiest, can be sold, because there's always a use. Frigates, one of the smallest and cheapest ship types available, are widely used in small-scale warfare. They're consumed, which generates the demand.

The closest analog we have is potions/kits/scrolls.... none of which I've purchased in forever, because they're constantly dropping as loot.

 

1. I am fine with rng being in crafting, but skill level should mitigate it much more than it does. Maybe it takes Sara four attempts to make a particular sword that takes me ten attempts. The problem is it probably takes both of us thirty or forty (or more) attempts to get that sword.

2. I should feel like if I spend a certain reasonable number of resources, I can get the item I want. If I had spent 150 beetles and gotten one good chest, I'd have been happy. With the current system, I could have spent 300 or 600, and still not gotten one good chest. And by reasonable, I don't necessarily mean easily achieved. If it takes me forty hours to gather enough things to make what I want, then fine. But if I spend that forty hours, and I don't get what I want, I have wasted forty hours.

 

That's comparing apples to oranges. Eve is a pvp game where you lose half your stuff every time you die. And the components are the same for everyone, you don't make better components with a higher skill. Every item is the same.

Not the case here. You can't make the sword Sara is selling so its not possible to undercut. And with no risk of losing anything in the manufacturing process Sara will have the ability to set the price at a little above material cost.

I just think there are much better options to improve crafting then removing the rng completely.

 

Rather than a random option for crafting, why not incorporate fizzle into the mix since it's magic.

When casting we can fizzle when the spell fails. Why not do something similar with crafting instead of RNG. The fizzle drops durability in every case. And to make more powerful equipment, maybe follow the path we're pushing with artifacts. Combine several together to make the next level.

If this is bad, how do other games handle crafting? And are they successful?

I'm looking for some way for player made equipment to finally be better than artifacts (or at least in the same league). We can't even make low durability equipment compare to artifacts.

The most powerful players I've ever seen in game all wear artifacts from hoods to rings to belts to get the high stats. There needs to be a path somewhere to craft with higher stats and compete with these item drops.

 

I think that specialization should eliminate durability loss on success.

 

What he said. I will add to it as well. Elrond’s idea for junk to be combined is the start.

So you made 4 bronze longswords and the RNG took 4 massive dumps on you, combine those 4 to make an uncommon with 200 durability. Up to two re-rolls on uncommon or higher pre day. First one free if specced and second cost you one arti essence.

You now have the motivation to craft and work up to rare or legendary items and the gatherers have a demand to produce and sell mats to the crafters.

How difficult can that be to implement. R/Boris/El Pirata.

 

Dura from combining should still result in lower dura than a "natural" exceptional.

But still doesn't change the fact that I may still end up with a weapon with 25 durability and enchants I didn't want.

 

As for fizzle, isn't that pretty much what we have?

 

Added an edit to my second post.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...g-rng-and-specialisation.156758/#post-1243531

Kudo to @Malimn

Regards
Spung

 

That's a good idea, but you also need a mechanism to take gear out of circulation. Setting shitty RNG mechanics aside, the next biggest problem with crafting is that there isn't a good way to remove items from circulation. Durability is bad because it's frustrating and denies player agency. It also conflicts with stated design goals of wanting to make an item that you hang onto for a long time special ("of troll slaying" and so on). This is why I like the idea of dropping a piece of equipped gear when you die. It gives players agency because it happens when a player makes a mistake and also because if they succeed at a corpse run they don't lose anything. If you combine that with drastically reducing the cost of gear in general (by removing the RNG mechanic everyone hates) then you have a constant demand for new gear which circulates the economy. Then you let GM repair people fix max durability (perhaps with a scaling cost of materials e.g. Malimn's post) which adds another element to the economy.

 

Thank you Sir or Madam