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Crafting Exceptional armor dream...

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by Pifester, Nov 14, 2019.

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  1. Pifester

    Pifester Bug Hunter

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    I am a crafter, I consider myself fairly as far as crafting goes, and one thing that irks me is the exceptional chance. You work your crafting skill up to 100(1.2 mil XP), and BAM - you are now a grandmaster. Grandmaster...AWESOME, I am a grandmaster...Smith. I can make awesome stuff for friends and maybe sell some of the stuff that is leftover.

    You go make your first few things, and look at the chance of making an exceptional item - its only 25%. You think to yourself, thats not so bad, 1:4 items should be an exceptional. I know I am not the greatest smith, but decent, so - I can live with that. So you do...but you keep thinking to yourself - if I level it up, it should get better. So you do. You level to 120 (where everyone that does crafting all the time, says thats a good point). But you still cant make things exceptional very often. But you think to yourself - 120 is only 8.1mil XP, thats nothing really in the grans scheme of things) Then you get to 130 (21.1 mil XP)...and its still not where you mentally think it should be....So you bite the bullet...and go to 140 (you have now dropped almost 55mil XP into this skill) And your exceptional chance is only 29%. You talk around to some of the other crafters you commiserate with and you find out the next "break point" is level 145. At 145 lacksmithing you will be at a impressive 30% exceptional chance. (88.3 mil XP to get there). You are now in the highest tier of blacksmiths in the game. (no real idea of numbers - but I cannot see more than 25-30 players at that level - I may be wrong, but not feeling it.)

    What does a crafter get other than the sadomasochistic pleasure of saying "I'm level 140+ something in this crafting skill.

    I know that the exceptional chance really cannot get bumped higher, it would really screw things up economy wise. I get this. But, in real life, if you have devoted that much time into a skill, when you focus on it, you WILL make amazing items. If you have devoted 80X the XP required to GM something, shouldn't you get at least the chance to make something "exceptional" a little more than 30% of the time?

    One idea I had while driving home tonight, give each one of the crafting skills, at GM, a Exceptional Glyph that can be dragged to the toolbar (similar to fishing / agriculture) This glyph, when activated, will give you a token that you can use while crafting that will guarantee a exceptional item. The cool down could be 24 hours at GM, and adjusted accordingly the higher your skill level gets. The token is a consumable, that only has a ...say...5 min lifespan. So at GM, you know that at least once a day - you will make an exceptional item, you no longer have to save up 100 beetles to make that one hardened leather chest piece for your friend (well - you know that once you start enchanting and masterworking - you are gonna need more than one to get what you are looking for) but its a start.

    Maybe at 110, you can make 2 a day and at 120 its 3 a day, and so on and so forth. But you can only have 1 token at a time for a skill, and there is still a cooldown between uses(cooldown between immortality fruit use is 24hrs BTW). So you cannot crank out 10 exceptionals in a row.

    This would give someone thats devoted a TON of time and XP into a skill the chance to make a single exceptional on "demand" or over the course of a few weeks - stockpile 5-10 pieces for a suit set, and go to town masterworking and enchanting them at the end. (without going bankrupt or crying after crafting a bunch of armor pieces.)

    what do you mean by going bankrupt or crying over pieces - say you wanted to make some bone gloves for a guildmate, and after killing the phoenix multiple times every day over multiple weeks with multiple members - you have 10 phoenix talons (or you bite the bullet and spend 20-50k a talon to get the 10 talons)

    You que up 10 constantin bone gauntlets.....close your eyes and hit craft....or leave the room after hitting the craft button. You go grab a pepsi...and focus on the screen. Not a single exceptional out of the 10 (happened more than once on multiple different items). You just burnt up ~300-600k worth of items for stuff that you will never be able to get rid of. Your only hope, is masterwork first and pray for a durability increase effect.

    I might be a little overdramatic on that last paragraph, but not that far off. I've turned my computer off and left for a day or so after results like that. But like the pixel crack addict I am, I will roll the RNG dice again later in the week and celebrate the +40 STR cloak that I will never use (only took ~50 cloaks for that one).

    Tell me what you think of my idea, not sure if this is the keyboarded ramblings of a sleep deprived maniac, or a rare fleeting glimpse of "WOW - that could rock"
     
  2. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    I like your idea, but I don't think its ambitious enough.
    If you've invested enough experience in a skill to grandmaster, I'd expect a grandmaster to make something exceptional more often than not.
    If you've invested enough experience in a skill to grandmaster it 50 times over, it should be a literal guarantee.
    The current exceptional chance is, and has always been, a farce - particularly at how little it improves with months of dedicated xp investment. The only thing we're talking about here is extra durability which means a failure or two might not ruin the item completely.

    (I also think a grandmaster artisan would have absolute control over their masterworks and enchants instead of just hammering a bit randomly on this sword and saying "oh look, its a thrusting sword", and is unable to replicate that at will, but nevermind).

    An "active skill" in the crafting tree that basically says "I'm a grandmaster, I know what I'm doing, I'm going to take my time and get this next item right" is a reasonable band-aid. This active skill should 'buff' your exceptional chance and be scaled so that when levelled to GM, it plus the base GM crafting chance = 95% or so, and people who have invested the additional millions into their base crafting skills should really be at 100% on this, subject to sota-math, of course.

    I don't see the need for a long cooldown on said skill. What I think would work better (and more logically) is that using such skill increases the craft time of the item. Instead of 'hammer hammer hammer 5 seconds, wham, shiny sword' using this skill should make it take, I dunno, say a minute? Hell, make it consume more fuel too. You're really taking your time to get it right.

    This should keep it from being used while cranking out tons of stuff for experience purposes since the increased time/fuel cost would make such 'bulk crafting' uneconomical, but when you're actually making an end product, you can affect the outcome if you spend a bit more time on it. Which makes sense.
     
  3. Elrond

    Elrond Avatar

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    With such a skill players will start using 40-50 accounts just to make exceptional items once a day ...too easily exploitable .
     
    By Tor, Mac2, Ataniiq and 3 others like this.
  4. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    Sounds like fun in theory, but go look around at vendors for the high level crafters. They have a lot of amazing items already.

    There are a lot of players out there currently, myself included, that are not involved much in the crafting if equipment. The only stuff i have listed for sale in the past 6 months have been leftover pieces that I made while i was trying to craft a piece for myself. There are many players out there that have the skills to craft but aren't actively participating in the market. Changes like the two above would flood the market with gear from the active crafters and the many that will come out of hibernation.

    I love the ideas, don't get me wrong. But i think the exceptional change should be kept in check for the time being when it comes to skills.

    I would instead like to see rare ingredients for each type of crafting. So for cloth maybe if you used some pristine spider silk in addition to the normal ingredients, you would be guaranteed to craft an exceptional. Adding a rare ingredient to the game that all players have a chance to find, therefore increasing trade and helping the economy.

    This would make loot better too so you're helping adventurers, gatherers and crafters have more fun.

    I totally agree that raising skills above a certain level just doesn't help much for the cost, but that is the whole basis of the soft cap system. It works that way for every skill in the game, not just crafting.
     
  5. Rowell

    Rowell Avatar

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    "Is that a Hanzo sword?" (referencing the movie "Kill Bill").

    Hanzo is a grand master sword maker. Every sword he makes is unique and powerful; an exceptional thing of beauty and strength. He does not make junk 75% of the time.
    Hanzo is what a grand master sword maker should be.
     
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  6. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    Hanzo would destroy the economy. If being a grandmaster made it that easy to make a great sword we'd have about 200 Hanzo's. Grandmaster in any given field is not hard to obtain, it's 1.2 million producer experience.

    If you had to get your 1.2 million making swords I would agree, that would be an achievement. But in this system you can just mine or cut trees or harvest cotton.... or refine materials you acquired from someone else. Its not an achievement, it's not difficult, it's just a quick grind.
     
  7. Toular

    Toular Avatar

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    Not only that but, a "Hanzo" model of crafting would take 5 days to make a single sword and a month to make a set of armor.
     
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