Durability Costs for Ench/Mw are Too High

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Elrond, Mar 5, 2020.

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  1. Toular

    Toular Avatar

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    Here's a thought ... just putting it out there. When I'm refining materials, I make tons of "exceptional ingots" or "exceptional timbers". How about making those "exceptional" materials actually "real". If you craft something from an exceptional grey pine timber (a long bow, for example) you have a chance of getting a random "Free" masterwork that does not impart a loss in durability. The "free"masterwork would depend on your masterwork skill, but you get no choice in which one you get (it is a freebie after all...)

    Likewise, a bowstring from exceptional supple leather could get an extra "masterwork". This is problematic since bowstrings can't be masterworked currently, so this would be totally new.

    Enchanting/masterwork with exceptional gold/silver ingots could allow lower durability cost.

    Make all those (not) exceptional silver ingots I seem to make actually useful.


    Always wondered what an "exceptional Spool of Cotton Thread" is. o_O
     
  2. Barugon

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    You get double 5x the experience for crafting that spool of thread, that's what it is.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2020
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  3. kaeshiva

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    The limiting factor is the max durability of the item or, in extremely rare cases of exceptional plus durability bonus plus absolutely cosmic luck, there's an actual hard limit of 5 of each.
    At level 140 skill, nailing the 4th enchant is 17% to succeed and the 5th is like 8%, so the only time you see stuff that goes beyond the 3rd (which is 54% chance) is typically if its already 3/3 and still doesn't have anything decent on it because of the RNG and you might as well hit it again because its crap anyway. We call this "death or glory" and it does occasionally result in an amazing item, but with the current percentages its not something you typically set out to do. Except maybe on extremely cheap to craft things, such as cloaks, where you know going in that you're trying for something that's likely going to burn 1000 ingots and you don't care. Its extremely impractical, however.

    Honestly, I never saw the need for items to blow up, and I see no need for max dura hits on failures. The hard limit is how much durability the thing's got. If you wanted to keep throwing money at it and burning materials until you maxed it out, its still got a hard limit. The problem is, as always, the unreliability and inconsistency because of the RNG. You might decide you want these 5 specific bonuses, which cost dura of X, but you can't set out to do that, even with rerolls there are some items that have so many (crappy, imo) choices in the option pool you just keep rerolling them again and again. The odds are weighted against the 'nice' stuff (ie majors) to deliberately force players to waste more and more materials.

    When players waste materials making crap, its natural to want to recoup some of the cost of that crap. Which is why there's a glut of unwanted crap clogging up vendors all the way cross Novia.
    The problem is the system screws you multiple times along the way: from exceptional chance (waste 3/4 of your stuff on nonexceptionals which have no use, even salvage/vendoring isn't worth it), to rng mw chance, to rng enchant chance, then 2nd goes, then 3rd goes if you push it, and even if you never fail a single roll you can still end up with garbage. I would say this is all fine, if once you get it right, the item lasted. Sadly, it doesn't. And making items break faster not a viable solution unless you can reliably craft something. Either difficult to make, but durable, or easy to make and disposable/replaceable. Difficult to make and disposable is just a recipe for frustration and a large reason why we are where we are.

    When crafting specialization was first announced, that you could have direct control over the bonuses, I thought we finally were approaching a sensible system. I assumed durability loss would be cranked to compensate and we'd now have demand for replacement items, custom orders, consignment work, etc. But that got backpedalled and now we're left with rerolls, which helped a bit, and then we added more rare choices into the pool, which moved the goalpost out of reasonable reach again.
     
  4. Adam Crow

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    You get 5 times the experience on an exceptional craft.
     
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  5. Barugon

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    Thanks, fixed.
     
  6. OzzyOsbourne

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    Not if the component is additive to the assembly. Same mats but with an extra item to give more durability.
     
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  7. OzzyOsbourne

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    Then what happens when all the noobies complain that no one is buying their 'normal' ingots anymore?
     
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  8. Pifester

    Pifester Bug Hunter

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    I am up to about 20ish items with 5x on either MW or Enchant side. Most of those are accidents - or just working skill gain up for a bit. I used to do exceptional rings (before the "flavored" rings came out - ie ingot type mattered) And getting 5 enchants on those was not easy, but not impossible. I do use a 5 MW / 3 Enchant wings - started out as a disappointment, ended up as jaw dropper. 30+ dex, movespeed and safe fall. Max Durability is 47.

    Durability is a issue, salvaging (to me) is a bigger issue.
     
  9. Charon

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    This right here is the root problem. When I was skilling up weapon enchanting I may have had a few craft beers that night and since I didn't care at all if the items were good or bad I just enchanted everything as many times as possible. The result of that was 107 weapon enchanting and a 4 durability shortsword hanging on my wall with 17+ dex and 17+ str with 5 enchants and 0 failures.

    I've managed that once but with a 7% chance of success that's to be expected.

    For all intents and purposes the only thing a non exceptional item, due to it's low base durability, is good for is raising skill because at best you'll be able to make something that A. Has low durability and B. Doesn't have the traits that anyone would want to buy so all you'll accomplish by trying to mw/enchant it is throw additional resources down the drain. Salvaging or selling to an NPC just pours a little more salt in the wound.
     
  10. ShurTugal

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    Wait.. amateur crafter here so excuse my ignorance but this is accurate? at most you can only get 5/5??? So basically they implemented a restriction on crafters and then implemented a secondary system to denied people the ability to hit the first restriction?? I assume there are no 5/5's out there.... What kind of masochistic stuff is that????
     
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  11. Elnoth

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    At least you have some sort of grasp of crafting.

    I will recount a story of one of the first weapons Lord British crafted that he handed out just after persistance to one of my guildies. A wonderful sword that was enchanted and masterworked and had 0 durability left on it due to the applied enchants and masterworks, rendering it completely useless o_O

    Now on to your question :)

    With these new durability changes (particularly to rings/necklaces) it is quite possible to put 4 or 5 enchants onto some items. I actually put 5 enchants onto a necklace and it still had over 70 durability left! Some items though, such as two handed weapons, are out of sync now since they doubled the power of the MW/enchnants that go onto them (heavyweight masterworks etc) but they also increased the durability cost to apply these, while leaving the base durability of the crafted item untouched.

    I'd suggest a pass at item durability + enchant/MW cost should look at normalising the costs so that there is less discrepancy with how many enchants/masterworks can fit on an item. Try to have it more consistant.

    Also, at 125 enchant with a legendary ring, I am still only 16% on 4th enchant and 8% on 5th, so basically as others have said, these are only ever used if the item is junk and you don't care if it gets destroyed, you might just get lucky and hit that major stat that the item needed but was missing.
     
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  12. Uncle Ben

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    As many have mentioned it isn't that easy to push over 3/3 at least with the current system and success rate. Therefore reassessing the durability for different crafted items will not be an issue at all. That been said the exceptional rate for gm crafters are pretty pathetic right now. Increasing to exceptional rate to maybe around 30 -40% at gm may be more appropriate given the time/materials invested into leveling the skill.

    I agree that uber gears should come with the disadvantage of having lower durability; however currently, the durability loss due to enchant/mw on a midcore gear is already brutal especially for melee guys.
    As a melee player my gears' durability go down pretty fast even with gm preservation + obsidian potion. Certainly I will not invest gold/time on a newly crafted gear that only comes with 15 max durability.
     
  13. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Great input guys, thanks - always nice to see the many thoughts and opinions about the state of crafting. I'm going to keep reading and eventually do a write-up on this thread for team summary review. Keep it coming :) I guess I'm not as hopeless of a crafter as I thought. I understood all the comments, haha :p
     
  14. Boris Mondragon

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    Brother; here is a suggestion.

    How about we use the glut of useless elven and other essences out there that are not working for dungeons to increase starting durability as an extra crafting mat. Let’s say 3 essences for an extra 50 dura on each piece we craft. I am sure an extra 50 durability would work as a bandage on this crafting wound until something better is worked out over time. R/Boris/El Pirata
     
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  15. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Honestly, whoever decided originally that MW/ench needed to be tied to durability needs to be fired.
     
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  16. Adam Crow

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    That sounds like a great idea if you want to make the rich even richer. A lot of established players, have pretty big hoards of elven essence at this point. And only 3 for 50 durability? Are you really serious?

    Sorry Boris, but adding something to crafting that players already have hoards of, is a very bad idea in my opinion. Also it doesn't really make any sense when you look at how the other essences work.
     
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  17. Jefe

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    Two/Three thoughts for improvement.

    1. Add to the Mastery skills a % cost reduction. So a crafter who has invested in enchantment mastery will have a % cost reduction in both the cost of a failure and the cost of a success. It gives more reason to take mastery higher and higher.
    2. Have the resistance to wear aspect lower the cost to enchant and mw. (Enchant option gained at 98) Also new harvestable materials can have this attribute on them. Plus possibly set this on tier 2 materials existing out there so a meteoric can last longer and take more enchant mw than a regular iron item.
    3. Add Efficiency skill that lowers cost and offers something like material consumed reduction on critical. Such as 3 ingots and 5 mandrake consumed on enchant versus 5 and 10.
     
  18. Boris Mondragon

    Boris Mondragon Avatar

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    Ok, what is your solution then ? 10 essence , 20 essence or do you have a better plan? If so bring it out for discussion. We are either part of the problem or part of the solution. R/Boris
     
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  19. Gia2

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    Bump!
     
  20. Illiaro

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    Greater control over the outcome is the essence of this discussion, I think. The costs for a perfect 3/3 look like they are all +3 level effects - which really would be perfect. Personally, as level 105-110 in enchanting and master-working; +2's and +3's are acceptable and tend to fit in the current costs. All +3's should be expensive.

    The RNG is terrible. A craftsman should know what he/she wants to make and the only difference should be the level. Even the level should be able to get a re-roll.
     
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