Am I the only one that enjoys the random crafting system?

I think the crafting is really awesome.

Although I suspect that people will not want to craft everything or ultimately they will have mediocre items or be really busy gathering resources.

At some point I'm going to want to make some money. even if that is to only sell resources, and use my craft to make one particular good item for myself or friends if I cannot compete in the business of selling wands and staves. however I will still try to make a fortune selling wands and staves if I can, but I will adapt.

In any case I'm planning to start earning gold however I can to start buying the stuff I do not want to focus on mastering the craft to make.

 

I like the RNG of crafting, but hate the guaranteed impact on my wallet.

 

I don't mind a random aspect to crafting. What I don't like is having GM crafting skills and not being able to affect *ANY* of that random nature. You mention it takes a specialist to make the items, but it doesn't:

It takes a lottery winner.

A GM Enchanter essentially caps out at their first two enchants, so someone who is 120 enchanting effectively has the *exact same* odds of producing an item with the specific two enchants wanted as I do at 100 enchanting. Then, they have roughly a 1% chance higher of producing a third or fourth enchant item more than me, despite having spent ~8 million XP vs. the ~1.2 million XP I have on the skill.

Then, on the flip side, someone who has 80 enchanting has an only slightly less chance of making the same items as us, but having spent 1/10 the XP of a GM.

And then we have the lottery winner, who really hasn't done anything at all to distinguish themselves in their craft. They've made a few items in their career, but enchanting is more of a hobby than anything. They are, by no means, a specialist. However, they were able to make a very special item that makes the specialist jealous, with 1/1,000 the materials.

By the way, that specialist is down on his luck, so he's basically been performing on the same level as his apprentice... who just hit 50 enchanting and started a couple of weeks ago.

What this crafting system needs is a way to *influence* the random rolls. Even if it were something like having 5 options to choose from instead of 3 options. Perhaps also making it so the first [expletive deleted] enchant / masterwork DOES NOT fail with a freaking GM. It seems like a small deal, but when you're Sara Dreygon, who blew up 6 exceptional epic plate chests, *ON THE FIRST ENCHANT, ALL IN ONE NIGHT*, it forces them to quit the game for a while.

 

Most fun I ever had while crafting in a mmo was in Vanguard. I loved that mini game.
It's a real shame no mmo has ever taken that idea one step further of even just copied it.

 

Vanguard and EQII had somewhat fun crafting systems. At least you felt like you had some control over the outcome, even if it was mostly illusionary. Something to do instead of being landlocked into watching a progress bar.

 

I think the recipes-stacked-on-recipes foundation of crafting is quite good. As far as Masterworking and Enchanting goes, the mechanism of a random item attribute/stat applied to a random success roll feels like a cheap, unfinished design, considering the timesink involved in mining and to me is the most unsatisfying part of the game.

 

I enjoy it. and i definitly think it has to be randomized hard to make that perfect gear rare. as right now, once u get it, it lasts for ever. (really think gear should break down or something.. as theres 0 reason to ever buy gear off people i find. )

 

Great points Rosemourne. Higher skill should give better bonuses (more choices per enchant at GM, first enchant guarenteed, etc.)

 

Totally agree with you. Loterry aspect is quite ridiculous. Basically you need to roll dices until full set of "perfectly" enchanted items is done and then cover repairing needs with COTO's forever.

 

Unlike the lottery, however, you actually need very high Ench/MW skills to even have a chance to make amazing gear. But yes, it does take a lot of materials and time. Here's an example I made in the stats post on how I calculate this :

One thing for sure though, making great gear is exponentially difficult. For example i'm trying to get a 3 enchants 3 masterworks piece for my chest. I'm guessing, on average, it will take about 30-35 pieces to get the stats I want on top of the 3/3 (i'm around 75 masterwork, 88 ench).

Let's say 30 chests, so 300 bolts of fustian cloth.

1) 300 fustian bolts = 600 fustian spools = 2400 cotton spools = 4800 raw cotton + 600 suet. At decent market prices (about 130g/suet and 5g/cotton atm), that comes out to 102k gold.
But let's not forget those sneaky fuel costs.

2) Processing 4800 cotton is 1200 times the operation at 2 wax per, so 2400 wax. Processing the resulting 2400 spools of cotton into 600 fustian spools is 600 times the operation at 4 wax per, so another 2400 wax. Finally, the fustian bolts is 300 times the operation at 1 wax per, so 300 wax, for a total of 5100 wax at 4 per, so 20400g in fuel.

3) Finally, refining all those materials is about 4-5 hours sitting at the loom, depending on how fast you can process your batches of 20.
So 30 fustian chests comes out to 122,400g and 5 hours work.

4) NOW do all this math for gold & silver ingots (i'm not going to get into probabilities here since calculating the exact number of ingots you'll use per attempt on average would take way too long). But let's ballpark and say 20 ingots used per chest, overall, to get the 3/3 I want, so 600 ingots total.

600 ingots = 2400 ore + 600 coal, and a bit less than an hour at the forge.
Right now gold is 3-3,5k/100 and silver about 5k/100. Let's average at roughly 4k/100 with coal at 6g per.
600 ingots = 96,000g of ore + 3600g of coal = 99,600g + a bit less than 1 hour at the forge.

5) Finally, the fuel cost in mandrake root. 600 ingots = 60 attempts (ignoring the 60 silver attempts since there's no fuel) = 600 mandrake root at 4 per, so 2400g in mandrake root. And about 30 minutes work processing and picking enchants/MW.

6) Let's tally :

Gold required = 122,400g for the 30 chests, 99,600g for the ingots and 2400g in mandrake root = 224,400g
Time required = 5 hours + 1 hour + 30 minutes = 6h30mins



FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF!

Gold : 224,000g at current market prices
+
Time refining materials : 6 hours and 30 minutes
=
ON AVERAGE, 1 really great chest piece (but not anywhere near "max")


Seems fair to me. Keep in mind those number could be, probably, 20-25% lower if I was GM Ench GM MW instead of 75/88 (but lets not even get into how much ore, gold, XP and time is needed to get there).


Finally, if you go for a 4th enchant OR Masterwork, those numbers are multiplied, easily, by a factor of 6-8. So 1,2M+ for a 4/3 or 3/4 piece of gear as a GM/GM. And don't even think about a 5th So yea, "good" gear is easy, "great" gear is VERY hard and expensive, and "amazing/max" gear is just pure insanity. Which IMO, is fair!

 

@Zapatos80 You have perfectly illustrated pointles grinding model for crafting, but in the end it boils down to participation in lottery with resouce and time involment on dicing. I can't see how people can enjoy such mindless process. Btw, the whole system is easily botable and that's what meny avatars do.
In my opinion "hardness" is applied in wrong way. Crafting should be hard, but also fun and engaging as much as possible. Bone armor is step forward into right direction.
I would prefer to see some demanding rituals and quests for endgame crafting rather than boring and easily botable RNG system.

 

Yea, too bad bone armor is pretty worthless for almost all builds atm =/

 

I am talking about mechanics behind gathering/crafting bone armor, not actual usage in the field

 

Yea, although to compensate for the big time sink in getting mats, the % chance on ench/MW needs to be higher. System needs tweaking either way. Still though, amazing gear should take a lot of time to make and require a big investment. One way to achieve this is randomness, i'm not sure how else you can make the system without it being a simple step-by-step everyone can easily follow for the exact same results.

 

You could componentize more of the process to increase uniqueness. Perhaps exceptionally crafted components add something to the final item's stats. Masterwork components to add more stats to them. RNG Failures would be a loss of the component, not of the whole item. Then you combine your components into the finished item. You could hunt down specific components and bring them to a master craftsman for construction.

Things like this, coupled with a non-destruction, progress-locked failure to items could be something that makes the system more fun and challenging without feeling like you're playing some kind of double-or-nothing lottery.

 

Yeah, there is no easy answer or quick fix for this.
Anyways I would go into direction of bone armor ingridiens and small luck factor spiced with hardcore quests or some kind of demanding rituals.