Durability Costs for Ench/Mw are Too High

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

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  1. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    Leave the essence for totems and elf spawns for player dungeons once they are implemented.

    The base durability needs to be raised a bit for a bunch of things in the game. Especially 2 handed weapons. They already did it for gloves, boots, leggings, rings and necklaces, so im sure more will be updated too.

    I also really like the mending idea in that other crafting thread.
     
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  2. Numa

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    This is the root of the problem. Unless it's addressed we're merely master gamblers and not master craftsmen. Just remember re: gamblers the house always wins in the end.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2020
  3. Mugly Wumple

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    The root of the problem if you ask me. Gathering should involve quality as skill increases, not just quantity. Refining should add additional qualities beyond the meager ones we have now. Manufacture should get its varieties from skilled refining which in turn relies on skilled gathering. By ignoring any complexities to refining and gathering, two thirds of crafting is ignored.
     
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  4. Jefe

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    One thing to note as Elrond said, it is currently impossible to go to 5/5 because the durability will hit minimum long before you get there. So that is a ceiling above the current ceiling.

    I am hopeful that material progression will get some advancement within the year. The more I think about an attribute on the material to affect the cost of masterwork and enchant, the more I like the idea. It adds the mechanic for some materials to be more receptive of mw/enchant bonuses than others. This assumes we will be able to gather more and more types of materials and refine them to newer and better things. This mechanic also would not require changes to durability in gear.

    This would also allow for materials that have large bonuses and can accept fewer bonuses but still provide the crafter with the option of masterwork or enchant. (a -% to durability reduction effectiveness)

    Lastly, enchanters can have an enchant option to make the material more accepting of mw/enchant by using one of the enchants.

    This change would provide some head room for enchant/mw both based on materials harvesting/refining and skill in enchant weapon/armor.
     
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  5. Xiones

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    Agree, and fire the person who came up with RNG on crafting.

    Dark Age of Camelot and a great idea when it came to spell-crafting (Putting Stats on Crafted Gear). Make the Gem of the stats you wanted slot it on the armor (No RNG).
     
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  6. Sentinel2

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    IRL I would be considered a Grand Master in my field. I'm very very good at what I do. There isn't much randomness in the results.

    Other games I've played in recently, when it comes to crafting, I'm not randomly producing anything. If I add part a to part b and meld the ingredients, I get an expected result.

    This is one of those things that drives me crazy with SOTA crafting.

    It's not magic. It's madness! :)
     
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  7. Illiaro

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    High quality pieces come with a cost of time and/or money to produce it; you know what you want to produce when you start. Dozens to hundreds of re-rolls and re-try's are hardly ever part of that kind of work.
     
  8. Barugon

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    As I like to say, this is a game and not real life. In real life it may take a crafts-person weeks to produce a single piece of quality armor. How do you think they should simulate that and keep it fair and fun?
     
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  9. Illiaro

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    Great point. Like I said - a cost of time and/or money. Would a material that we could add to the crafting process to make things higher quality or give us more control make that work? Not necessarily an organic essence or an essence from salvaging artifacts, but something that would limit the rate of creation; but give us control over the process.
     
  10. Toular

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    You mean like "Exceptional Ingots"? Or "Exceptional Hardened Leather"? :cool:
     
  11. SmokerKGB

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    @Elrond ,I think that you and the other crafters here are missing the point...

    Sota was never designed to "Mass" produce items (like in UO), here they put limits on materials, so much that we need an extreme amount just to build skill... What this has done is make materials "rare" and there for the price has gone way up for materials, so high that it's now unfesanable to "Buy" all your materials to craft because when you figure all the material costs into making many "Good" items, the price of the final product is so overpriced that the average player can't afford them...

    I think you are trying to over work the item with ench/mw (pushing the limits as you say) AND your customer are asking you to do the impossible AND your trying to give it to them for the sale...

    @Elgarion ,you are right, the players will always want more, then more, then more again, you as designers need to stop listening to them because you will get caught in a serious trap by doing so...

    @Elrond , what I try to do is make exceptional marked items with the highest durability, then sell them to players... If they chose to ench/mw the item, then it's their choice to trade durability for the extra spec's (this leave you out of this equation)... You can charge them extra for the work you do, but I see the problem: you want to sell off your vendor and not face to face... This is tricky to do because now you need to "guess" (your guess would be better than mine) what spec's your customers want AND what durability they're willing to go down to to get those spec's...

    @Elgarion ,@Elrond , I propose this: modify ench/mw so that the spec can be placed on a scroll for sale/use by any player instead of the item itself... the crafter would still need the skill and the items/materials needed with the addition of an appropriate scroll type (repair deed of blacksmithing or carpentry or tailoring) placed on the crafting table, the item is needed just to complete the ench/mw, but the spec is now placed on the scroll (color changes to gold or silver to differentiate from repair deeds), the item could be transformed into scrap or lose it's durability as usual until zero durability then manually scraped...

    With a system like this, the customer makes all the choices, the crafter just supplies the ench/mw in scroll form for sale... The system works the same as now, the more ench/mw a player tries to put on an item, the lower it's durability goes... The crafter still takes a chance for the exact spec to come up, but it just requires a "junk" item (in this case a junk crafted item)... I'm also hoping something can be done with "Jewels" because more spec's come out with jeweled items, hoping the jewel can be savaged or maybe not, as it does contribute to the spec on the scroll...

    Sell the scrolls for what "the market will bear"... Same as the exceptional items... For me I just ench/mw once or twice to build skill then sell the items... They generally sell because I use this formula:

    -game says it's worth 80 gold, I add a zero for 800 gold
    -its an exceptional +1 or +2, for each + I add 500 gold

    So I price it as 1800 gold as a base price, if I add a jewel I add 200 gold and any additional +s 500 gold for each... I try not to let durability go below 90 or so, 100 prefered, as it started at 150...
     
  12. Adam Crow

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    I don't agree with that at all. I buy all my materials, figure out material costs and i sell tons of "good" equipment to the average player at reasonable prices that I also profit on. That isn't what the OP is about tho.

    Elrond is talking about the highest end pieces and the fact that some of the masterworks and enchants just cost too much in general - especially in the case of two handed items. They didn't increase the base durability when they doubled the power and cost of the two handed heavyweight buffs. So you can't make the same type of high end two hander that you can with one handers. Hes not "overworking", he's providing high end items to high level end game players, and a lot of players are willing to pay for them once they reach that point. I don't think he's asking for more and more and more, he probably just wants either the costs to be lowered a little or the durability raised so they are more balanced with the one handed equivalents. So in the case of swords, your still better off using two high end "perfect" one handed swords which is making the 2 handers useless for end game players. I agree that it should be adjusted in some way so that one handers and two handers are more on par with each other.
     
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  13. SmokerKGB

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    Can you post a link please...

    Oh, so you're talking about 1 class of weapons (2hd swords)... I reread the original post and @Elrond only used those for the example, the whole of the post is for general (all classes weapon/armor) and I stick to my opinion: most all crafters and customers want to push the limits and place 3/3 ench/mw on everything they make/purchase... And I also feel that once the developers give 3/3, then players will want 4/4, then 5/5 and they will keep complaining until they get what they want, saying anything off the top of their heads to prove their point of view....

    This is conjecture: post some screenshots of your receipts and prove what you saying is true, not just 1 receipt as many as you got over the last week... It's my opinion that the "high level end game players" are of the Top 1% of players... Players who have millions in gold just collecting dust, so they're willing to spend... I feel for all crafters, myself included, I would like to be able to make as much gold as adventurers do, through sales, some of you "claim" to be doing that now: I would like to see some screenshots of weekly receipts... Maybe the game can supply a d/b of receipts, I can search through as an alternative to a global search engine...

    It would be nice to know exactly how many players we have currently, but it would seem that info is "top secret", so all we can do is speculate...

    How can the "Game" control "costs" of resources? If you're going to try and read "His" mind, then try to influence resource sellers to lower their prices.... If they stopped doing "price checks" and monopolising the market pricing with it, we might have a free market in place, but no one wants to think for themselves when it comes to pricing AND no one wants a Global market search engine so they can see what their competitors are selling for what price... That might stimulate competition and undercutting and no one wants that... Seems to me if you're going to complain about "cost", then don't "push the envelope" too far, be satisfied with 1/1 or 1/2 or 2/1 and leave it there... If your customers want "more" carefully explain the durability issue to them, and let them take the chance of destroying their items durability...

    Ease your mind and stop worrying about it... Let your customers do the thinking and charge accordingly... Why put a Ruby gem on, when your customer actually wants earth, oh sure, your solution is to have the ability to make all, then let you customer decide if they want to buy... When the Life doesn't sell, you call it "junk"... or the Moon or whatever...

    Durability is really not the issue: but customer relations and who's to blame...

    I suppose the game could take the "socialist" point of view and set the max price for all resources, so that overpricing "can't" occur, after all it would be a "rule" change AND "everyone" would have to be satisfied with the new rules because they would have no other choices, but to follow the rules... Do you think anyone would want that? I can hear the complaints forming now...

    Or maybe the Game could give crafters "subsidies" (it's the Democratic way, tax the rich and subsidize the poor), you know pay them gold to craft: this way all crafters could make as much gold as adventurers do...

    Just kicking around ideas...
     
  14. SmokerKGB

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    I think you're stating the obvious here, so what would you propose it be like?

    Level 10 ench/mw be able to do 10 str, .001% crit, .oo1% damage increase or just a flat .001 increase across the board?
    Level 20 ench/mw is +20 str or int or stam, etc...

    At least with rng, I have a chance (although small) of winning the roll... Should I expect to win the roll 100 time out of 1000 attempts? or 500 attempts? That would be 1 in 10 and 1 in 5 odds in Vegas craps, that's pretty good odds... I think @Chris plays craps, doesn't he?

    If we're just talking about durability, then why not have a progressive system where the lower your skill is, the "more" durability is removed, then as your skill builds, it reduces the loss, never going under a set amount of durability loss at your highest skill level, let's put the cap @100 skill (so there would be no point of going over 100 skill)...

    So, suggest a progressive durability chart, what would be the max durability loss? and where in skill would it start? Lowering to what amount? and at what skill level? I'm just throwing suggestions out here, since no one else is... Get rid of rng without a replacement suggestion is what I read in every thread... That sounds like an emotional plea to have someone guess as to what you want done to make the durability loss more palatable...

    @Elrond it would be nice to see a list of all the spec's possible from ench/mw, is there any around? Do they "stack"? Actually?... I'm just a mediocre crafter at best, so my experience is few and far between when it comes to ench/mw... Maybe someone else has list to share? I rely on material bonuses the most, there is a list for those (not sure if they still apply now, though)...
     
  15. Numa

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    Sorry for the delayed reply, had to give it some serious thought.

    Just to be clear, I'm no master craftsman but do have a good idea of what these guys go through just to make that one perfect piece.

    When master swordsmith Miyairi Norihiro recreated the famous lost sword Shokudaigiri Mitsutada he did go through a process of trial and error before achieving success. But you can bet he would be able to create a second piece with just a fraction of the effort & errors of the first attempt. The greatest weakness of SOTA crafting is that the (supposedly) master craftsman gets amnesia after the first successful attempt so it's ALWAYS the first attempt for him/her.

    When I see echoes of what I read in the article below whenever a player talks about SOTA master crafting is the time when it will be worthwhile for me to invest time and effort to try it out. Hasn't happened yet.


    https://www.nippon.com/en/people/e0...-with-master-swordsmith-miyairi-norihiro.html
     
  16. SmokerKGB

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    Sorry, but that link gives me "error 404", I'm in the USA west coast, not sure if makes any difference...

    After reading SotaWiki here: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Enchantment I can see where all the complaints are coming from -40 just to add certain enchants IS pretty steep, IMO... I couldn't find anything about MW durability reductions...

    The 5s, 10s I can see, but anything over is a penalty, IMO... Still doing research for base durability and it seems like for a 2hd sword, it gets a max of 100, so IMO, that's pretty low...

    I still hold the opinion that: if you over work an item with ench/mw, the durability will suffer, so don't do it, IMO, let the customer decide later if they want the item to suffer durability reductions... I still like the idea of being able to place the ench/mw onto a scroll for sale would be a solution...

    I did like the idea of "shards of mending" in the other thread until it was pointed out that a failure was needed to apply it, items with NO failures would fall through the cracks: possible solution is to allow Shards of menting to add durability only, but there could be a high chance of failure AND destroying the item, this would eliminate all the so called "junk" items crafters are holding onto...
     
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  17. Numa

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  18. Odyssey2001

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    100% agree in this. I think I said something similar before as " The more work you put in for something the more you should get out of it " and this system does not seem to effectively do this at the moment. Their should be another pass on this.
    at the moment I see little use to go pass 100 in the top skill and 100 in the masterwork skill of any crafting skill as it give you next nothing in return and it should not be like that at all. their should be different between 100 and 120 and 130 etc.. in all of the levels ( Not just the third levels ).

    Crafting can certainly use more work for sure as of now their is little incentive to invest passed Grand Master and the ones who do just do it because their is no other option and all say it needs work or tweeking !
     
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  19. SmokerKGB

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    @Elrond ,I don't think @OzzyOsbourne is specifically talking about: "Loot drops"... I think he's talking about "cutworm" drops & "ash borer" drops and in the past "zinc" drops when using gathering skills...

    Wouldn't it be nice if when you were crafting a 2hd sword, that if you were to add 4 zinc to the table, that it's durability would also increase by 100 (25 per zinc) or add a cutworm or ash borer to their specific tables and it doing the same thing?

    Would that give you as a crafter, the control you're looking for? I can see these getting into the loot tables because there isn't a use for them and I for 1 just sell them to an NPC merchant when ever I get too many (their sell price is pretty high)... This would give them a use... Not to add to the components needed to craft, but something extra, you as a crafter decide to add... I'm sure most crafters would use them, but if the drop rate remains the same, there would be limits already in place... @Elgarion ...
     
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