A game where the best gear is made by crafters ---Good Luck with That

To those stating we are "Complaining" about the new changes, Lace is right... it is becoming harder and harder for newbie crafters to even get started in game. Unless your backed by a HUGE guild who already has the resources to help you get started, and know where all the recipes are at, your going to waste a LOT of time just getting started.

Sooo..... lets put this into combat using same comparisons...

You start the game with NO weapons and armor and you do not find any lootable weapons or armor for about 16 hours of gameplay (estimated amount of time it takes to find the recipes crafter's need). Ok.. your now past the mandatory "Safe" period of 16 hours and you can now use said weapon and armor... OH you can only use one for now so you must choose between the two and now wait another 16 hours to be able to use the other piece of gear. (Time needed to obtain enough materials to make a couple of pieces of armor or weapon).. Ok... so now you can use weapons and armor, which if you spent 2 hours per day only took you two weeks just to be able to use them, and now you can raise experience for your weapon / armor. Your goal is to reach GM status... You now have to kill 8500 beasts / mobs to gain enough experience to raise ONE skill to gm... As you get better and you can farm higher areas, it now takes only high level 4250 beasts to raise enough experience to GM the next level and you have now hit the cap to where it now takes 4250 beasts to gain enough experience to hit GM skill.. So lets say you can kill 100 beasts per hour and it takes 42.5 hours to gain enough experience to hit GM in said skill, now they move all of the harder beasts to different areas and now you spend an hour or two to find them or they have been changed where they only spawn 1 hour a day and in different locations. No matter where you go, what you fight, it will take the same amount of beasts to gain enough experience to be GM. So now that you have a couple of GM skills they now reduce the amount of gold you can get by 75% because they state your making gold to fast.

Welcome to what it is like being a crafter in SotA where it is a ROYAL pain.

While I am not near Lace's level, I currently have 9GMs in Blacksmith/Mining/Enchanting and have had to build up my producer skill again and have 5m producer pooled experience. I am GM Blacksmith, GM Enchant, GM Blade Weapons MW, GM Weapons Enchant, and GM all mining skills. It literally takes me an 2hours per day and 4 hours per day on the weekends (which is all I can do when real life issues take priority) and that only gets me half the experience needed to GM producer skills. Unfortunately as you make items, the amount of experience you gain degrades over time, which does not happen in combat, and it takes longer and longer to gain experience crafting items.

Now that they have nerfed both Serpents Spine and Verdantis where they are no longer MINES and are now Adventure zones. Sucks because Verdantis was a good place for Copper and now the only spot is at Graf Gem mines. Serpents spine was good for mid level miners and now you have to be higher level and the resource per hour rate is a HUGE joke and your better off resource wise in the lesser mines.

So with the above... Welcome to the crafting world comparison between crafting and combat and I feel sorry for the newbie crafters who are starting out now because it is a ROYAL pain.

Just my .02

 

I think you are referring to Verdantis here. Etceter (Crag Foothills) is mostly iron and gold and hasn't changed in a while.

 

Thanks

Been in mines too long forgot which is which Changed it

 

So since Prism and Diamond Fields once a month opens up our hearts and does mentoring, and then also opens up a shared guild chest of recipes, one of my officers said, lets start dumping the drop recipes in there to share and advertise that.

We are a small guild and cannot help as many as large guilds with huge amounts of players can, but we will be doing the same with the newly screwed recipes that are drop only as we have for others. Huge guilds will be seen as heroes if you do this, I challenge you to think of others rather than selfish guild only pursuits.

Attend our once a month events and donate to the community chest for the benefit of all crafters, not just those in your clique

 

Looping in @Brass Knuckles and Lady @Hornpipe

 

Im pretty much with @Sir Leonard as per my thoughts on this... its a work in progress, and i think it should be required to be higher level, have a fair amount of money, and to travel all of Novia, to get high level recipes etc. It requires much iteration, but a crude system which accomplishes this is currently in place. The backbone is there, it just needs a couple of releases worth of focus over the months/years and it will be a much deeper and engaging system.

 

You just did.

 

Lace,

I have some things I can drop off to you Just let me know when you will be up for another event!!!

Malimn

 

I really have absolutely no clue what the purpose of making recipes "rare drops" was.
The discovery system was great. It was unique to Sota, and even though yeah, you could look up the components on a wiki, you still had to gather the components and make the item once to add it to your recipe book. This had a cost.

So we got rid of that and added must-buy-everything-but-some-are-teachable.
A step backward, really, but ok, we adapted. At least you could, after you farmed a couple hundred thousand gold and went rummaging through shops - compile a complete recipe book.

And then we added "drop only" recipes - another step backward. Not only do you need to spend hours grinding to farm components, you now need a special random rare drop to even make the thing. And the drop rates on these recipes are abysmal and some of them are costing 6 figures for SINGLE RECIPE. Really?

And now, we've decided to take the recipes that were previously buyable for 250 gold and add them to rare drop loot bags.

What is the point of this>?
What is the objective /what are you hoping to achieve, other than putting a huge barrier to crafting for new folks?
Did we really need more BS recipes clogging up vendors or laying around taking up space, unless someone happens to need that particular one?
Did we really need to make amassing a complete recipe book a near impossible endeavour without forking over a ton of cash, assuming you can even find people with the recipes you want?
Since this release, I've gotten a grand total of 6 of these recipes out of bags. Umm..really?


If you are going to do this, at the VERY LEAST all the "drop only" crap should be TEACHABLE. Not necessarily re-teachable, but come on.
Considering all of the other problems with crafting and the economy, I'm really curious how this "idea" even made it off the drawing board.

We see key features in agriculture, fishing, etc. delayed but yet somehow time is found to make things less enjoyable.

I feel so terribly sorry for the new folks who will never get to have the full crafting experience being constantly frustrated by the inability to customize even the material bonuses of gear. Its bad enough w have RNG for masterworks/enchants but now you can't even make bronze unless you win the lottery on the supply bag.

The only thing this achieves is promote mediocrity, more unwanted gear, and make crafting's dependence on adventuring moreso than ever.


If I am a grandmaster who can make a sword out of every other metal, it makes sense that I could figure out how to make it out of bronze (discovery) or that another player could teach me how to make it out of bronze (teachability) or even that I would have to perhaps, say, go to a master blacksmith npc and pay/get him to teach me. You could even add crafting related quests to these unlocks. What makes no sense whatsoever is that I can't make a sword out of bronze unless I've found a very specific piece of paper that was in some bandit's pocket.

 

Grind. It is a loot box hamster wheel.

 

Grind as much as possible to make the game as tedious as possible to minimize fun as much as possible. It's the SOTA way currently. 8^(

 

I say let them keep hashing it out until the game is officially released. I've been playing a year now... GM crafter in Blacksmithing, carpentry and almost Alchemy and Tailoring. So for the person who said years? Not so much.

Changes are changes... Discovery was turned off, because of all the websites. Recipes changed to loot, was because buying every recipe was too expensive, and now all the people clamoring to be allowed to specialize get their wish.

Seriously, as someone who has only been playing a year, the changes don't bother me. The developers listen. They can't satisfy everyone. They need to balance for official release. However, telling your friends etc not to play because your hurt about one aspect of a game still in alpha is sad, because you are only hurting the experience long run.

I've been trying to stay out of the forums, because I see a lot of whine with crappy suggestions on how to fix. Everyone has an opinion... *I think we all know where I'm going with that* However, at the end of the day, if you REALLY think Portalium is not giving there all to make this a great game, and want to cry foul about one feature... it's REALLY time for you to move on.

 

Now I have to pay 5000g or more for a recipe instead of 250g, so I don't buy your reasoning.

If I want to complain about a feature I will, thanks. I'm not here in Early Access to play a finished game, I'm here to take part in the development process and that is necessarily going to involve some complaining. If you REALLY can't handle that then it's time for you to move on.

 

I'm playing the game, my gaming experience has nothing to do with you. Sorry this is your life, but get over yourself.

 

You're posting on a forum telling other people what they can and can't post, it has nothing to do with your gaming experience or my life.

 

Hmmm... never said anyone could or could not post. So it's just you wanting to speak out for... the whiners as being one of them, never offering constructive criticism, but quick to jump on a post you disagree with, because? Wintermute... I've played with you in -game / in voice channel... your character is VERY clear. Go by your name and just stay muted for the winter.

 

This is what you said:

Please explain further what you meant by "moving on". No-one had posted on this thread for three weeks until you came along.

Feedback is feedback, not everyone is a game designer who can come up with a solution, that doesn't mean their feedback should be dismissed.

 

Move on... find something else to do that they enjoy. If you actively tell people to steer away from a game because of X feature, then wtf is the point in playing it?

Feedback is constructive, everything else is bellyaching. People who have not played yet, and come in and see constant whine after whine with no solutions being offered, think A) community is toxic and they want no part of it, or B) that the game really does suck, because of X feature.

None of it helps make the game better, and it doesn't help the game community grow. This is not speculation. This is from many years of collected data, and studies done on adverse behavior policing of forums. Meaning it's based of science. Some people just like to be miserable. Misery likes company. So instead of trying to better the situation, they drag it down, because X doesn't fit their personal needs.

And yes people are not recommending the game based on one feature they don't like is in direct correlation to this. I read through the forum before realizing, "Wow... if anyone outside of the game reads this and tries to base a decision on it, they are going to bolt for the hills." So go ahead and complain... use the not being a developer as an excuse. If the game fails, only realize that you contributed.

 

OK, I must have missed or otherwise overlooked this step in your reasoning. I have not seen anyone on this thread anyone actively telling people to steer away from the game, though of course I could have missed a post or interpreted a particular one differently to you.

It clearly isn't because if it was the phrase 'constructive feedback' would be redundant and yet it's a phrase we see used a lot. There have also been many suggestions in this thread on how to improve the situation, so I would say this thread qualifies as constructive and an odd target for your apparently wide ranging criticism of what goes on in these forums.

Neither does jumping on a thread which has been inactive for three weeks and indiscriminately labelling all the participants whiners. Or to put it another way: you have provided feedback on this entire thread and your 'constructive' suggestion for everyone is 'stop whining or go away' (for your own definition of whining). I don't see that helping either.

I am a developer, thanks (though not a game designer). As a developer I understand that feedback comes in many forms from many people, I don't automatically dismiss it just because the people giving it don't have the same technical knowledge I do to be able to articulate a solution.

 

It's there and what prompted my post. Pisses me off when I see people saying that.

Was meant to be "Feedback SHOULD BE constructive"... I was drinking at the time is my only excuse.

Touche. However, telling people to Move on is not the same as saying Go away. Moving on is coming to terms with a situation, and deciding to not be a part of it. Telling someone to go away, is saying just leave. Also, I stressed "if you REALLY think Portalium is not giving there all to make this a great game" to move on. Sitting here complaining and actively diverting your friends and family away from the game pisses me off.

I've been a developer (now devops) for years and have developed several indie games in the past, and saying someone cannot make an informed decision/comment/contribution because they are not is a cop-out.