Crafting Feedback - Time for another thread

Active crafting systems are so much better - Vanguard SOH had the best I've ever seen imo

 

Rather than take them out entirely, how about alternate methods?

For instance, the item sink we have asked for so many times.

Go to the local town and trade your load of crafted gear AND deco (the guards need furniture after all) to the constable and get your choice of recipes, or points that you use toward recipes.

That way you can still get the recipes through adventure, if you like, or from someone who got them that way, or you can get them through crafting, which was the original promise, being able to be just a crafter.

 

The thing about crafting in Sota is we can't just slap a few more bandaids on it and make it good.
There are fundamental things wrong with the system as a whole.
Gear crafting particularly being plagued with RNG and unreasonable failure rates (considering experience investment) is just a wasteful, tiresome, expensive slog and needs to be seriously looked at.
I know this has been argued to death for years but even now with rerolls, with the additional diultion of the option pool and the weighted rarity of the bonuses that everyone wants, we're actually worse off than before in terms of how much gets wasted. Its a bad, bad system. At least let wasted materials be salvaged at some sort of reasonable rate - still requires player time to refine it all again but wouldn't be a total loss. Better yet, just let people choose the bonuses by adding another component - that component could be something that had to be made, with say, alchemy or whatever, adding more player time into the process and removing reliance on blind luck. The current crafting system can't really expand from where it is because the more options you add the worse it gets, it actually discourages expanding the system, which again, is a poor design.

That being said, gear crafting is only one aspect of what could be a diverse and interesting crafting system.
A particular area where we are weak is consumables - consumables are great because they get consumed, thus creating a sink and consumption.
We have foods and potions, 95% of which are usused/useless, and repair kits/scrolls that drop in plenty from fighting and aren't really needed to be crafted (except zone scrolls, not putting this in the loot table was a good decision).

Cooking system just needs a complete overhaul, its got no logic to it whatsoever.
It started to follow the same pattern as the animal hats (ie, bear=str, wolf=dex, stag=int, boar=str/dex) but the venison (stag) food doesn't add int. That's an easy fix to make it consistent.
I'd review the recipes and make the benefits actually reflect the constituent ingredients. This means that you can assign a value to each crop/meat/whatever and then more complex recipes using varied ingredients would have better results. Consider also the value of player time if you need to do 4 refining steps to make pie dough, that should be reflected in the resulting food. Consider all the things you could do with all the fish that are sitting in boxes or being vendored npcs like trash.

Potions - same deal. Garlic seems to be "healing related" but I'd look for an actual system. Ingredients directly affect potency.
You can make potions a LOT better than they are, too. The buff ones anyway, duration's barely worth bothering with, to compensate, make them more expensive to make, and also increase the player time. Consider glassmaking to make the needed bottles and vials and take these off the npc vendors. Leave the potions that drop at 10 minutes, crafted ones should be significantly better but significantly more time consuming to make, too.

Refining either needs to be a LOT faster, or be something that can be idled. Load up a smelter and let it cook, come back and get ingots is one method. Either that or just speed up the bars significantly. Or add bulk recipes, even make them (a little) less efficient. 4 ores + fuel = 1 ingot, so 400 ores + (more fuel) = 100 ingots, but its a single action. Why this reliance on making people stare at bars moving left to right I will not ever understand. And make sure the bulk recipes give the appropriate experience instead of some random amount.

Skill level needs to matter. The current cost to benefit ratio is just bad. Especially with all the double double exp, brand new character can in a couple weeks' time get their crafting tree of choice to 120 without ever crafting a single item, just doing the story quest and gathering stuff. Since investing beyond that point is woefully inefficient to the point of being negligible, crafting as a main playstyle is a bit of a dead end. Add this to the problems actually moving your goods in the current market (since if you're low level, high level crafters throw away better stuff than you can make, for free, cause its their mistakes - another symptom of the rng plague). That and the market system being very inaccessible. At the moment, you want something? You either go to someone you know, or you go to Crafter's Town, since that's the closest thing to an organized market where you can actually find stuff that we've got. You'll pay a bit more sure, but it beats the hassle of trying to search without any sort of search functionality.

Review item lifecycle. You can't make stuff break faster because its too hard to make- some would argue that gear impermanence is part of the problem, why pay top dollar for something that you don't get to keep? I know the reasons why Sota didn't embrace a 'bind on equip' methodology (that works in so many games to avoid this issue) is we wanted to have items dropping in PvP and wanted free trade. However, what happens is that gear gets handed down and passed around and prevents new stuff needing to be made. Since PvP ransom is just drilled down to a gold cost though, and we need to encourage more items on the market, I'd consider an optional gear-binding option. Hell, even make it cost cotos. The trade off? It no longer perma breaks. You'll find that the quest for 'that amazing item' will happen in full force. Add to that a system with choice, you'll find a big need for crafters to make gear for all sorts of scenarios and you're always chasing 'better'. Add that reasonable salvage options and you'll find the amount of junk quickly diminishes. A robust selection of labor intensive consumables will create a churning commodities market. Consider armor/weapon augment kits that add stats to an item but need to be replaced every so often as an alternative to 'my armor became unusable'. Not to mention the market for the kits themselves. Other ideas include socketable adornments for different occasions which could be slotted/unslotted (tie your 'monster learning things' to these for example).

Consider some new resources with new properties - we've had the same tired ones since forever - not more rare drop crap, but actually harvestable stuff, or here's an idea, rare drop harvestables. Pick a rate that isn't rage inducing - maybe half the rate of beetles/secondary metals. Consider entire new metals/wood types. Look at flax/linen other textiles as a base for magical gear, or fancier stuff like silk for the really nice stuff. At the moment, its pretty much if you use melee go weapon damage if you use magic go spellcrit (since its the only actual option, cloth really needs love). The rest of the options don't really get used much. Making more options on materials creates the need for more crafted variants. For example:

A set of armor that improves skill gain rate
A set of armor that adds spell damage (like, really, why don't we have this)
A set of armor that has innate stat bonuses from material (int/str/dex)
A set of armor that adds in-combat regeneration as a material bonus
A set of armor that adds damage reflection
or movement speed, or adds a stealth modifier, or has a small lifetap, or increases potency of bard songs, or attunement bonuses from materials, etc. etc. This might actually bring crafted gear bespoke to certain builds into parity with all the best in slot artifacts.

and so on. There's loads of things that could be done just with effects that already exist in some form in game.

For the furniture deco, some basics would be color/texture variants for a lot of the wall/block/structural pieces. This is a lightweight option (literally clone and change the material/texture file) which would give a huge amount of variety for the amount of effort, and is another option to sink more t2 materials into fancier things. Look at color variants of rhe rugs, or plain untextured rugs that can be dyed. We have wall cloths that hang on the wall in exactly 2 patterns - more of these please. Look at craftable trees/plants/etc. this is a big gap where almost all of these are coto store only. More paver textures. Things that people use to define a space. If I want to use my gold ingots to make gold pavers, why not? Or glowing crystalline quartz blocks? Etc. Crafted deco is the same tired items for the most part, there have been new ones added but that's dried up a lot in the last two years and the store is the main source of new deco. And I get you gotta make money but don't neglect the basics. It used to be for every recipe was added there was a fancy version of the same added to shop - this system was fine.

Look at other functional items and consumables, too.
Examples - harvesting kits that increase your gathering speed - in whatever flavor. Huge potential variety in additional crafting tools. More types of containers. Even inventory functional containers (although I appreciate this would be more tech) to auto-filter looted items into appropriate container types (think "crafting bag"). It can be even silly stuff, like single use craftable parachutes that auto deploy if you fall over a certain distance as long as you have them in your inventory or equipped or whatever. Howabout craftable teleporters (that don't look as fancy as the shop ones) but behave the same functionally but take a lot of resource/time to make. A consumable to summon an ally to you (reverse tele to friend). If crafters can make things people actually want, and its labor intensive to do so, it creates a market. At the moment its less hassle to just make everything yourself especially since getting everything to GM now can be done in a day.

 

Hi,

There is currently a great waste of resources when it comes to crafting. Just immagine a mid-range to end-game player trying to create a reasonable gear.
First creating a bunch of exceptional gear for each armor slot. Helm, Chest, Glove Legging and Boots.

Say they will need 5-10 exceptions as a buffer in order to get a chance of a really good gear, we are not even talking 4-4 or more lets just talk 3 masterwork for the specific attribute they are after (Dex,Int,Str) and 2 Enchantments.
Imagine how much resources that person is going to need just to get exceptional amounts for each piece. Now let's imagine they get their 5 exceptional pieces and are now ready to start to improve their gear and let's assume that they managed to get what they wanted for each of those exceptional gear.

Now what does the player do with all the other non exceptional pieces or the failed exceptional pieces he/she deemed useless. You see where I am going with this, the game forces you to go through this process but does not offer a way to recoup your resources.

Reprocessing needs to actually give back some of each resource that went into making the item, not just scrap. Since the new introduction of faster durability loss end game players who are soloing due to the way the game is designed will see their gear deteriorate quicker now than ever before and to replace a near perfect gear for your specific build is very expensive.

Some will say they don't need to have perfect gear, they can wear whatever and it doesn't matter. But you need to remember when you have perfected your build in such a way and have reached the level these players have. Why should they settle for less. In any other MMO you don't see end game players wearing rags just because they don't want their gear to break or it might be impossible to get back what I used to have due to RNG?

It’s not just the crafting systems that need an overhaul its resources gathering as well. Why spend 6 or hours gathering when you cannot achieve much but attempt to make maybe one armor item with your time spent.

Developers need to look at how our time is spent because that's the greatest resource there is, and if your time is not important to the developers then the game might as well be dead.

 

This is where having a game designer would come in handy. She would immediately recognize this problem 4 years ago and either figure out how to entice the players to sell their excess to NPCs as an item sink or come up with a different item sink, such as providing it to the militia to fight the cabalists in exchange for any number of things, crafting XP, crafting currency, recipes, etc.

 

This is a side effect of the original system, where there were none of those things because they exploded when you failed to MW or enchant something. Now that they don't, there needs to be a reason to sell them instead of scrap them on the off chance you get a component back. Selling it for peanuts is not an enticement.

 

I recall there still being a lot of "trash items" when stuff still exploded. Not as many, but since it was also much harder to get stats you wanted, you'd still end up making a ton extra to try and prevail over the RNG. Which is why I want to see RNG go away, even if that meant a large increase in material requirements. It feels more rewarding throwing 100 beetles into making a leather chest and getting the chest I want when I MW/ench than it does throwing 70 beetles into making 10 leather chests and still likely not getting the item I set out to make.

 

RNG is what makes crafting fun ..if you always craft what you want ..no more surprises..wheres the fun in that ? I like being surprised .... what i dont like is how the failure rates work ( 95/90/50) .

 

If I could trust Chris to make RNG still exist in crafting and be reasonable (and have the math actually work correctly, and not take a year to fix it if it isn't) I'd be okay with it. Making 3-4 of something to get what you want is not ideal, but is acceptable. Making a dozen and still failing is not. But I don't trust him to do that, so I would prefer to see it removed.

 

I'd agree, if everything you could get was pretty much equivalent. However, there are too many things that nobody wants, or only benefit a very limited number of playstyles, yet all have an equal (small) chance to show up. Getting any combination of those that is desirable is all but impossible, barring a hardcore playstyle. Casual, or offline? No chance.

If we are going to keep the RNG, then here is what I'd propose.

• Take all of the base effects for masterwork/enchanting, standardize the power and cost for each, and have them work for all players equally. This probably means multiple stats instead of one, or some give and take with effects (similar level to artifact bonuses, up to like +15 on one sta, +5 on another, -5 on the third).
  • Some effects would be dependent upon materials. You could only get the highest version of Strength on Constantan, Meteoric Iron, or White Iron; not on plain Copper, Iron, or Bronze. Similar for Dex on leather and Int on cloth types.
• Take all the "extra" effects for socketing and higher mw/enchanting skills and move them to a secondary selection. So you socket a gem and then enchant the item, you get the base effect from enchanting it PLUS a secondary effect for the socketed gem. This would be a one-time bonus "roll" on the table each time, so you get at best one of the high-tier attunement/resists or proc effects, and these should be greatly enhanced due to limited availability (and roughly equivalent to artifact bonuses). Spread it over multiple attempts, so you could get four or so big hits from multiple mw/enchants, as long as they are on different tables (socketed enchant, armor/weapon enchantment skill, blacksmithing masterwork, mastework plate armor skill).
• Always have the option to "cancel" the masterwork/enchantment attempt, which consumes the gold/silver, fully repairs the item back to max durability, but does not "use up" the chance, so if you don't like any of the things you get on that third attempt at 95/90/50, you can try again at 50 rather than trashing it.
• NPCs should buy all of these items at a reasonable (~250gp per "plus"?) markup from the base item value.

Far less "junk", and even then it is somewhat useful for others.

 

Ew, no. I hate +/- items. "I'm too lazy to figure out what a good balanced buff is, so I'll make it a little strong and throw a debuff on it to 'balance' it." In my experience, people either pass on such items, or only use them when the debuff is one that doesn't really affect their build. It's kind of a bummer to get lucky and get an artifact that isn't useful, its annoying to get one you might have used if it didn't have a debuff that hurts your build. It's not terrible to do it once in a while to make "fun" items that are kinda OP but then not because of the debuff, but doing it all the time in lieu of making actually good items is lame.

 

Whoa, snarky. You didn't design the systems I dislike, don't take it personally.

I don't see items like this as requiring any thought. Maybe if SotA had far deeper mechanics, +/- items could be designed that require some decision making. I think the only one that really qualifies right now is the warlock chain. But even then, regs are cheap, so it's not much of an issue. True decision making for gear comes when you have a choice between multiple items for a single slot, which all have good but different abilities.

 

One thing that would really help crafters is:

Remove the Maker's Mark from everything except armor and weapons, so items can stack.

As discussed further here:

Make Decorations Stackable
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/make-decorations-stackable.162625/

 

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7:27 (on short stream) ElrondKingOfElves: !question
Whisky buffs still getting a revamp ?
- Chris replied on the main stream starting about 00:41:35

8:06 (on short stream) ElrondKingOfElves: !question
Are we still getting crafting/gathering food/drinks buffs ? they wre non existent so far ..
- Chris replied on the main stream starting about 00:42:05

5:20 (on short stream) monkeysmack1: !question
What effects will increased cooking skill have on food?
- Chris replied on the main stream starting about 00:30:05

2:15 (on main stream) monkeysmack1: !Question
What are the effects of cooking level on food buffs?
- Chris replied on the main stream starting about 00:50:35

Some good updates here.
Anyone want to type up transcripts of the replies?

- Short (due to computer crash) stream:
Friday stream with Atos and FISH! All Q&A!
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/758711781

- Main stream:
Friday stream with Atos and FISH! All Q&A!
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/758725822

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Friday stream with Ravalox, Elgarion, and Atos!
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/765534808

17:03 SorginTxakal: !Question
Does producer level effect fishing results?

Elgarion and Chris answered starting at about 00:43:15
And Chris gave an overview of the effects from Adventurer Level and Producer Level.

Short answer:

Adventurer Level:
- Is a measuring stick for players who want to compare their stats with other players
- Is used as part of the calculation to determine health
- Per monkeysmack1 in the comments: and focus
- Per ElrondKingOfElves in the comments: its also a great xp indicator if you know your alvl you can check the online xp spread sheet and figure out how much xp you have

Producer Level:
- Is only a measuring stick
- Does nothing in game

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Starting at about 00:46:30,
Chris gave an update on 25 Year Whiskey buff, and other alcohol buffs

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Thank you for that quick summary. Was wanting to add that information to one of my guides. Now I have a reference to refer too.

 

I have some serious issues with some of the new food and drink changes. Yes some of it are good, but for me still I am still using the same type of food. Nothing has changed in that, the current food I am using are much better than before and therefore there was no reason for me to change.

However I would of loved to use food the works best with my class (Fire Mage) but is not practical at all with getting access to the rarest of Fish. Also if you do get access to those specific fish the quantity you get from it is not sufficient for me to use on a daily basis. Therefore the same old Dragon Stew, Venison Surprise is in my opinion is way better to use overall compare to trying to use something that specifically benefit your class or build.

My biggest issue is the gathering/production foods. They are all practically useless.

• 2 Year Whiskey
  • This is the best one that I would recommend and use all the time.
• 7 Year Whiskey
  • 4% Refinement for 1 hour, this is totally useless. Majority of people processing large resources macro them over night and therefore this drink is useless, also if you do not macro, the duration is totally too short. Refinement if your skill is 100 and swift refine is also 100. You will be able to process 90 item at a time and say 5-7 second per process. 630 second = 10.5 min to process 90 items, therefore within the hour you and perform this 6 times. If your willing to do that maybe this drink might be good for you.
• 25 Year Whiskey
  • Adventure/Produce level +3 for 2 hours. This is a great shame as Chris knew that this two stats are totally useless. Adventure level gives health and focus. Producer level does naught.
  • Why would our developer add these stats knowing they are useless to a drink that takes 365 days to mature?

It's a shame that we would spend time and effort to make these food and drinks and not get much out of them.

Pet owners are the biggest benefit overall and it's a good change. Also what does Adventure Level does to a tame, is this a mistake or is it really needed.

More work is needed before we can say this thing is complete and I can not wait till it is done, also the two new skills should affect these items as well in the future.

 

Looking through this list , a year later ..some stuff was finished but still alot more to be done ...hopefully we can see some good progress for crafters in the near future .