R36 Recipe changes have really screwed the pooch

You may have misread or read into my post. I'm not a master crafter in any way. All of these were for items in skill level 40 at below, some so low they don't require a skill level.

I have zero issue with high level crafting to be "exclusive". I've been that crafter before. You have to let people try crafting, and now people wanting to sample the craft must put in thousands of gold to do so, which is foolish.

I've actually worked on a crafting system from development to release in a game that sold millions of copies. I clearly remember the mistakes we made, both in testing and released versions, some of which SoTA is heading straight towards. That was one of the reasons I made the points I did in another post providing some suggestions. You always want to avoid the potholes in the road.

 

No one wants maximum crafting to be too easy. We're just saying it's prohibitively expensive for the basic, simple recipes everyone can learn without any special skill.

 

THIS!!!

I posted this a min ago -

"Perhaps it's already been pointed out but this;

"Recipe Discoverability Limited: NOTE: This was an R36 Experimental Change. We are satisfied with this experiment based on metrics and behavior observations. Discoverability on Recipes will remain as no longer universal to all recipes. Certain recipes can only be found through purchase, quest rewards, or as loot. Please note that this is not fully implemented and recipes are mainly only available for purchase."
is a real kick in the nuts for all of us non-wealthy as hell people trying to make crafting a large part of our game play. I don't know if there is some secret that lets people make millions I'm unaware of but when you can barely afford the fuels of crafting even after gathering all your mats it sucks having to find 250 gold for every recipe and variation."

 

It just benefits those who already had the recipes before they had to purchase them. Screw everyone else.

 

There were two ways of general crafting I've encountered in the game. The first one was in Soltown where crafting and harvesting are introduced to the player by Irwin or something like that. The NPC would give you fuels and tell you to go gather stuff and then he'd teach you the recipe and ask to see your work. To me, this was a cool concept and could have been expanded upon to create a crafting career where a player can progress through tiers of proficiency and discover quest-based specialized training.

Then there's the way that's implemented in order to support the gold sink. That's the "pay-to-learn" b.s. for the sake of convenience and feeding that gold sink that's prevalent if not foundational throughout this game. It has gotten worse when those recipes become specific. Since it's relatively easy to make enough gold to fund this model, this is what we have to be stuck with unfortunately because folks would claim that it is too punishing and that it's harder to find the materials necessary to support their playstyle. I don't see this changing.

On a larger scale, the problem actually extends to the presence of merchants who sell arrows, reagents, recipes etc. rather than allowing the player to learn those recipes through player-NPC interactions and quests, players to craft ammo with resource-based bonuses for sale, players to become gardener/suppliers for reagents to sell to those wishing to specialize in alchemy or cooking or those who need them for spell casting, etc. If merchants were relegated to sell fuels only instead of reagents and ammo, it would shift focus towards the player-run economy and facilitate the need for players to follow the market, explore for the best deals, build client-crafter relationships, develop reputations, etc. Getting rid of the easy availability of these recipes has the potential to slow down player progression because a dependency between PC to NPC and PC to PC would be established. Thus, we wouldn't have folks rushing towards "end game" content, becoming bored and dropping out because the pace towards progression becomes more difficult. Other things like melee combat becomes a bit more attractive/dependable and ranged/ magic use becomes tied to necessity based upon the availability of reagents and ammo. Does it tilt the game towards more grind? Yeah, but the benefits outweigh that bite.

As to discoverability, that is a tough one to tackle. I don't think it has a chance when you have external sites that can list how to make things because it does not allow for true experimentation. That's not to say those sites don't have a value. For example, not knowing how material bonuses affect the finished product would be a gamble if not for someone having it on a spreadsheet and putting it on a site (keep in mind someone took that risk to discover that information too). If crafting worked under the quest-based way, then learning a generic recipe would allow for player experimentation once properties of materials were understood. Outside sites might show how material bonuses would figure in a final product which would be helpful for those less inclined to experiment or learn properties; however, using those sites to skirt having to earn those recipes without a gold or quest-based requirement reduces the information's value and the work those have put into discovering and disseminating that information.

 

Highly disappointed that this "experiment" has been considered a success. Perhaps I simply end up with extreme newbie by luck but I am seeing a lot of frustration with early crafting. Most nights I am sharing recipes with people who are confused why they cannot make a simple item.

For those of you who want to be the crafter of the rare Golden Bloody Sacred Widget of Unguoth, I would expect that this would involve more than simply collecting the 17 relics, the 97 enchanted gems, forging the bar of unobtainium, and slaying the Bugbladder beast and obtaining his skin and then just tossing that all on a table and BAM, I am set. That's a special recipe. Few crafters should know it.

Let's face facts - this game has 600 subscribers online at prime time. If we have a highly restrictive entry to the new player, they will leave. The newbie experience should be inviting. You want to invite people in to sample what you have. The few recipes that are there now are not sufficient, mainly because they don't address the materials you will be getting as a new player. I should be able to take my found gathered items and craft something from it. It will probably be worthless for me to use, but for some people they will go "hey, that was a fun thing. I want to try that more". Luckily, copper weapons are still discoverable. Sadly, butchering the carcasses I loot are not.

The experience curve needed to level up is already fairly strong. Adding another barrier to access does not entice people - it instead only protects people who have the skill/recipe already. There certainly is value in making your existing playerbase have desirable skills, but you MUST have new players coming in to make this a viable game. As I mentioned before, I was involved a crafting system used in a major game. One of the other things that same game did was put a high barrier to crafting. Crafters fled that game when another game released that allowed a simpler system. They later had no option but to make it easier (much much easier) to retain some players and of course encourage some new growth.

This game has other opportunities for cash sinks - putting that cash sink upfront in a major system is wrong. When the original pledgers are gone, the new players will need to be the ones crafting those decorations for homes. Instead of the basic recipes being locked down, the rare ones should be. Let me figure out how to make a basic chair but have to buy the gothic one, for example.

Edit - I've been told separately that my 600 subscriber figure may be actually "600 active players" not even online at a time. Regardless of that, it's still a low low number.

 

Basic recipes should be discoverable or sold in a low cost newbie recipe bundle for IN GAME GOLD.

 

You know, that's a solid idea that still allows them to have a slight gold sink. A "sample pack" of recipes by craft that provides all basic recipes and let's say pulls 2-3 intermediate randomly for flavor. That way it's not simply there for everyone (I still think this is the better path, but if you need a sink...) and then if you want to try you pony up your reduced entry fee and try it out.

You want to go deep into the craft? Yes, you'll pay. I think that is completely to be expected.

 

I'd like to put a reminder here to everyone to trade recipes with your friends!

Sure, you may have a lot of stuff that got in your recipe book by looking at a wiki and throwing crap on the table and isn't re-teachable, but even then you probably still have a lot of teachable recipes. Guess what, other people do too!

If you're in a guild, it should be easy to find people to trade recipes with.

Just start a trade, open your recipe book, and start dragging the icon from each recipe with "Teachable" next to it. Note that the trade window is currently limited in how many items you can put in; you have to drag into the blank space at the end of your trade list. I have found that just going through your entire recipe book page by page for everything teachable is the best way, even though you will end up "trading" a lot of recipes that the other guy already knows.

 

This is the next important step.

 

Some of us did try to point this out to the Devs before the change was made. It would have been better to make non-discoverability a thing for all new recipes going forward (and then give us a bunch of new, high level recipes to find). It's pretty clear, though, that the devs have no problems balancing the game in a direction that makes it progressively more difficult for people just starting. Play now, I'm sure it will continue for many other systems.

 

I'm sure that more and more things will be made more difficult only for new players as development progresses while older players benefit from those same changes.

 

the problem i have with crafting is that you HAVE to buy certain items for everything coal wax ..... i just think as a crafter these items should be able to be made for free if your willing to put in the time or you can spend the gold to buy it if you dont want to pay for it i always have a problem having to buy things to make things there should be a way to make it

 

When I was reading "Sword of the Avatar", I was thinking they were giving us some hints about relation between magic items and avatars. I got the impression that magic stuff was not going to work except "in the right hands".
And !! hey !!! I thought it was a great idea it seemed like they found a nice way and a creative solution in order to implement a magical crafting system that was going to be hard to just list in a web page. Obviously and sadly I was wrong.

They decided to create a crafting system based in hard to figure out ( and sometimes in a meaningless way) ingredients and quantities combination. They reduced recipe discoverability to a statistical matter. I was not getting fun trying to discover how to light up that crafting button, so like many others, I just decided to better invest my time harvesting and exploring and visiting recipe list websites when needed in order to learn new recipes.

When I was reading "Sword of the Avatar" my mind envisioned a magical crafting system that was going to be tied to our destiny, somehow, upon character creation the system would give us an innate and unique fingerprint that would be used when crafting and using magical stuff to determine crafting results and magical final output. And notice that I'm talking about magical stuff , not about common items like chairs, chests, tools, house addons etc, those should be universal recipes for everyone.

But talking about magic stuff I was really excited thinking about a game giving us a new experience, we should be in a quest not only to discover a new world, but also in a quest to discover our Avatars innate talents and the way to develop them along with virtues and basic stats (Int/Str/Dex) using the Oracle as guidance and counselor. A magical crafting system taking in account synergies between ingredient magical properties and crafter innate fingerprint, that would reduce web site recipe lists impact. It could be possible to create web sites giving us general tips and guidance but in order to create powerful magic items we should need to learn how our Avatars unique Fingerprint/Virtues/Stats would influence the final result and making recipe discovery system viable. This would also give players the chance to create unique items based on their fingerprint so making crafters mark a real thing.

About the magic item in the right hands is just another topic, but it would clearly give more depth to this system.