Efficient Refinning... Why Roll the dice????

This should really be a skill based increase instead of a random roll of the dice in order to get +1 every once in a while..

There are enough places in this game already where the RNG has a huge impact, please just make it a skill based return on your investment instead of just another roll of the dice.

Could be very simple....
0-20 normal production
20-40 + 1
40-60 + 2
etc....

Please remove some of the dice rolls and let skill actually be a factor, instead of just a chance....

 

Hmm…thinking about your suggestion I would say at first it is too excessive. Following you numbers at GM you would already produce 6 (1+5) resources and that is way too much…at most at GM you maybe could get a +1 but I would think even this would be a too large benefit.

Second I like the randomness at lot and would prefer if there would be even more randomness like sometimes you try to smelt an iron ingot but because of the circumstances (impurities, a mysterious magical influence, a epiphany moment,…) you instead create a different product like a steel ingot. A random based system is also offering everyone a chance to have this effect even to new avatars even if adepter avatars will still profit a little more from the effect.

And third a fixed production bonus would drop the prices making it for no one new possible to be competitive and would require at least GM skills to make profit and that would be a quite awkward situation for new avatars to be "just" raw material suppliers.

 

Yeah the number were for simplicity and would need to be balanced for the economy. But a random dice roll on anything is crap... if you put the time in the skill you should get a benefit for the time.

So maybe make the refining a range like combat. Right now you get 2 timbers for 4 wood. With efficiency at 0 you would get 1-2 timbers, 20-40 you would get 1-3, 40-60 would be 1-4, etc... again numbers are for simplicity and would need to be balanced.

 

Taking your example and making it a little less increasing…normal production would be 1-2 and at GM it would be 1-4 timbers. The problem with this out of my perspective is that everyone will value the products based on at least the GM skill and this would mean the price would be based on the average outcome of 2.5 timbers…everyone below GM could not make a profit out of their products and this is not a working economy as I understand it.
With a random system you just can take the for everyone same base value as reference for pricing as the random bonus is…well random and that way hard to value as even with GM you might sometimes create 100 timbers without any additional bonus while others had more luck.

Edit: I simply fear that such a change would make it just good for the experienced avatars while the new avatars would have to suffer a lot as they do have to stick a lot of money additional to a lot of time into developing a skill until their revenue at least compensate their expenses and I think selling intermediates or end products at least cost-covering should be an option for everyone.

 

The skill cost for GMing efficiency doesn't feel rewarding. I debated stopping at lvl 90 so many times in that final climb to 100. Relative to the total bonus, the 90-100 sink was some 1 mil xp. I should have stopped somewhere around level 80, but I wanted that GM next to my name. Not because of the flat 20%, but I wanted the prestige of the gm, and to give that boost to others.

 

In a perfect world, the efficiency at GM should (even with the RNG) translate to 20% more 'stuff' out of your stuff. I'm reasonably happy with 20%, though I think the exp cost is extremely overblown for what you get. The fact is that the refining skills were sorely needed to try and make crafting profitable vs. selling raw mats, and even with the new skills at grandmaster it still falls far short of doing this, particularly with items such as beetles that can't really be farmed very quickly or reliably. I think the batch/speed skills are pretty underwhelming, too.

 

Was smelting the other day and would normally have gotten 129 ingots, but instead I ended up with 144(I think I was around level 75 at this time). I'm perfectly fine with the random system.

 

I don't mind the randomness of the efficiency skills. Refining is somewhat low cost and high volume, so it's usually not a big deal.

I also think that these skills are very much worth the xp cost. Before this, all production skills had such steep diminishing returns that specializing was just lighting xp on fire. Someone with GM or slightly higher in blade masterwork can add glyph bonuses to weapons of over 16%. At level 200 blade masterwork, which is obviously completely unattainable, you can get 18%. These efficiency skills are the first production skills that make specialization a practical possibility. I put every free bit of producer xp I have into one of them, and as a result, I can not only save a lot of money on my own things, but I have a competitive edge against most of the other people in the market on certain items. Hopefully there will be more changes in the future that create practical specialization options, because it's a lot more fun than everyone just GMing everything and being roughly equal at everything.

 

Pretty much how I feel about it too. The minimal increase in chance is not worth the extraordinary amount of xp to take it above 80... but having the GM flag and the ability to mentor others to help them raise it would be the only reason I take them above 80.

And for the record, I'm opposed to any sort of randomness in crafting. I want to make exactly what I plan to make when I start something. If I train a skill that helps me get better yields from the same materials, that should work every time, not once in a while if you get lucky.

Crafting should be a skill, not a luck roll.

I like that these new skills give us the ability to at least make some extra components, but I would have preferred if they weren't dice rolls too.

 

Relative to my own experience (only done smelting so far)
The dice roll for a large enough batch DOES seem to be on point/actually 20%. Somewhere north of 100 ingots it evens out. Which means some 400 ore needed to see the benefit. I appreciate that working as designed even if I disagree with it being 20% at GM. Hopefully they will review the rate of ingots flowing into economy and tweak it upwards in r51.

 

sheesh....the skill means I get even more ingots. BONUS. The exp was sitting wasting away in my pool anyways....if you mine enough to worry about having this skill, then you will have enough exp to GM it.

I love how I can turn 200 iron ore into 120 iron ingots. Then turn those 120 iron ingots into 72 meteoric ingots. Before I would be turning 200 ore into 50....clearly there is nothing to whine about, and my skill is definetly making a difference.

EDIT: I just smelted 2000 silver ore. Without the new skill I would have had 500 silver ingots.
With the new skill I now have 576 silver ingots. An extra 76 ingots.

 

If you're turning 200 iron ore into 120 ingots, you are getting way more than a 20% increase. That is a 140% increase from the 50 that you would get without the refining skill. The silver you mentioned makes sense, as 576 is about a 15% increase over 500.

 

Not whining about the amounts but just stating my opinion about using a random number generation for the bonus instead of just a flat skill increase. The RNG is just overused on simple skills that should just be a flat skill based increase.

So yes this time you got 576 ingots for 2000 silver, next time with higher skill you get 552, then you drop the skill and get 596. All because it is a random 10% chance for a bonus ingot, not, I am getting better at this smelting, I use to make 500, then 552, then 576, and now I am making 596.

It’s more of a blind squirrel finding a nutt, than an actual skilled crafted getting better at something. The randomness just needs to be removed from a lot of useless areas and applied better where it is needed.

Another example:
A master blacksmith takes his order... hello sir, I want armor with A,B, and C on it and I hear you are the best blacksmith in the land. And the master blacksmith creates his masterworked piece with A,B, and D. Well that doesn’t seem to masterfull. Seems like a random chance and not truly skill based.

Or two blacksmiths with huge skill differences are trying to make the same piece.
Blacksmith A has to throw away 50 items for just random deuce rolls and he has the highest skill.
Blacksmith B only had to throw away 10 because he got a lucky roll of the dice.

 

Probably referring to the scrap recipe. Who seriously makes iron and copper ingots without scrap?

 

I had hoped that the mastery would allow for (using the smelting as the example since its the cleanest numbers) using half as much ore at GM flat out. So instead of 4 ore, using 2, scrap recipes being 1 ore, etc and it being a flat benefit instead of RNG was idealized. But at the same time I kinda understand due to how the economy is now. If you effectively doubled the amount of ingots on the market with no significant uptick in demand, prices would drop, and economy would be problematic. Perhaps if the prices dropped, more enchanters/crafters would be making more gear for sale due to the increased profit margin potential. Additionally, making the skill increase every level/every 20 levels would be difficult.

But since it would be a fairly sizable adjustment instead of the 20% RNG we got, the version we got was the 'safer' economic version.

 

Yeah I understand why they did it, just don’t necessarily like it, or agree with their reasoning. Honestly the market needs a major correction anyway to get things going. Flooding the market with resources and driving mats down would hopefully bring the cost of production down for finished items. Currently the atrononical cost of all the crafting randomness is killing the economy. Go buy a bunch of Mats, make 20 pieces of armor, trash 15 of them because they are not exceptional, break one in masterwork, break one on enchant, one lost due to just crap dice rolls, and maybe get 2 decent pieces. Now try to sell those for a profit, lol... doesn’t work. Unless, the mats are easier to get or cheaper to buy, or you have what we have, most crafters working on demand where you bring your own mats, and they will attempt to get you something out of it.

 

Getting NICE 3 enchant/3 MW gear is a major dice role, and especially when dealing with items made from rares, not hitting exceptions hurts. Now there is commentary saying that there is change a brewing related to failures - so MAYBE its the not crafting decay Chris aluded to during the development of r50 (sac some xp, save the failed MW/enchant), or something similar...we shall see...

 

It will be interesting to see how well that goes over.

But still doesn’t solve the everything’s a dice roll problem and skill really has two little to play in it.

 

That would make more sense, but he said: