Enchanting! Bad and Worse.

So, the current state of Enchanting.

Get your mining to 75+ in all skills.
Go harvest hundreds of ore, copper, iron, and especially gold.
Smelt it all, costing hundreds/thousands in fuel, tools, and ingot molds, depends a lot on whether or not you have access to an Expert smelting station.
Neither Alchemy skill nor station has any bearing on Enchantment success or failure, so at least you don't have to grind Alchemy or try and find an Expert Alchemy station. Success is fixed at 90% on the first attempt and 50% on the second. I can't imagine anyone trying for a third, but it's probably 10% based on that progression. Recipe is 5 gold ingots, 10 mandrake, + the item.
So, get your alchemy tool, make your item, and press the Craft button on 90% success which you can't change or adjust or affect no matter what.
And... the interface locks up. No, that's not quite right. It doesn't lock up, I just can't click on anything. Escape does nothing. Can't do anything. Yay.
My selection of enchantments are: +10 Focus, +10 Health, +2 Int. But I can't pick them. Well that's kinda poor, but ok, kill the client, come back in, and try again. Now the selection window just.. doesn't appear. Again, that's kinda poor. After 3 or 4 client kills, hey look, it ... selected the enchant for me?!
So, first impression, very bad. My item was enchanted, but I had no input into what enchantment. Huzzah for bugs.
Tried to enchant it again, item lost, /wave goodbye to 40 gold ore.

On to the worse.

Make dagger #2
Enchant it once. Note the selection of enchantments are: +2 Dex, +10 Health, +2 Int.
Enchant it twice, fail, everything lost. Buh bye 40 gold ore.

Make dagger #3
Enchant it once. Note the selection of enchantments are: +10 Focus, +10 Health, +2 Int.
Ok, clearly this isn't a regional thing, it's just random. I've done everything in the same zone and I'm getting different enchantments effects.
Enchant it twice, fail, everything lost. Buh bye 40 gold ore.

Make dagger #4
Enchant it once. Note the selection of enchantments are: +2 Dex, +10 Health, +2 Int.
Enchant it twice, fail, everything lost. Buh bye 40 gold ore.

So, burned 160 gold ore and got nothing. Good times. Yeah, not so much.

Spoiler: Don't Click If You Have Thin Skin

In my opinion, the current enchantment system is overly punitive, tedious, and random. You can no more affect the outcome than you can affect the outcome of a dice roll.

Personally, I won't be testing this system again unless significant changes are made. The enhancements aren't even close to worth it, and being completely random, you can't even guarantee to the customer who you're making it for that you can make it at all. Customer wants Dex? Oh, sorry, only Int came up. Sorry, all those materials, they're lost. All that time? Wasted. Enjoy! It would take at least double the time and materials to even attempt to make a full suit of armor with the desired effect. And all that for +10 to a stat (combined total), OR +50 health/focus (combined total)? Ha. No.

Finally, I have no idea how such a system made it past QA as remotely entertaining, fun, or rewarding. It's none of these things, in it's current form, and there's less than 56 working days until persistence. The time is long since past to be mucking about with fundamental systems like this. Put simply, even if it was all implemented today, there wouldn't even be enough time to gather metrics regarding it's affect on the economy, because there's no more wipes before persistence.

 

so why not bug report it???

 

Bug report what? The client crashes, locks up, freezes, hitches, pauses, shows disco lights, and has horrific memory leaks all the time now in R29. The lockup/can't click state may not even have been related to Enchanting. Who knows?

The lockup isn't the problem, from my perspective. The entire Enchanting mechanic is the problem, in my opinion. Hence, feedback. But feel free to go harvest another 160 gold and try it yourself to replicate the bug.

 

So what is your expectation for this system? Do you just want to be able to handpick specific set of bonus and want the success rate for 2nd enchantment to be higher than 50%?

 

I disagree. The enchanting system fulfills the same function as that of critical success where you have a probability of success beyond normal that you can eventually end up with a superior item.

However, previously critical success was poorly implemented because it was arbitrarily taken from the "difficulty" of the crafted item... which meant things were constantly running into issues of being arbitrarily harder to have (why should a 2h axe user have a harder time getting a superior weapon versus a 1h weapon user?).

Enchanting also prevents the market from being flooded with discarded gear(as anything not crit suddenly has no value.. instead of being a component to get better gear)

Additionally, the probability of losing a enchantment on the second attempt 4 times in a row is about 1/16. That is not to say that everyone's experience will match the probability but you should not use a case which is moderately rare to represent the normal scenario.

As for selecting enchantments, if you select the 3 you want from the total set, every single enchant will let you select one of those 3.

Finally, the only reason you walked away with nothing is that you gambled more than you needed to. If you had picked one of the initial enchants you liked most (sure, you didn't roll strength but odds are you can use the other stats), you would have walked away with a + item AND gold that you didn't spend.

I currently am wearing an entire set of + armor (white iron) with at least one ++ piece in it and wielding a +++ weapon. It is an expensive system, but the idea is to make the best gear in the game not trivially easy to get.

(I totally agree that it is absurd that the table and alchemy skill mean nothing in regards to success chance)

edit : I've never run into the bug you mentioned by the way.

edit 2: I would also note that i don't really like that enchanting means there isn't any purpose for leveling production skills except saving low cost fuel currently. I do expect them to change this later, and will be very frustrated if they do not.

 

Seems like good feedback. I don't even think your spoiler was all that harsh.

Since it seems community feedback is at times QA, thanks for doing your part!

 

ESO had it that you got to decide on the success of anything you created, by putting special (I forgot what exactly) gems you find in the world, or off of drops or from mobs, in chest etc that you used to add to crafting the gear, for success chance in creating it. The more gems you added, the higher the success rate. 10=100% success rate depending on how many gems are needed to successfully craft that item. There were diff types of gems that could be used on lower-higher lvl gear. You had to use the specific gem for that lvl of gear. AND IF U FAILED, you only lost the fuel not the materials and you would loose the gem of course. And I got to choose what I wanted my stats to be, if my memory serves me right. MAYBE they could do that here....

 

I like the thoughts behind the current system, but I feel like it needs to be tuned up.

Positives:

• Item sink for the world, which is completely at the players choice
  
• Slower deeper progression model for obtaining and improving gear
• Random elements (probably not fully implemented yet with zones/astronomy) so it's not just make the best first time for min/maxers

Negatives:

• Levelling Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Carpentry is irrelevant for making the best gear. I would much prefer to have the enchants applied by these respective trees
• Static Chances. I would prefer (skill+150)/2 % chance of success for first enchant, (skill+50)/2 % chance of success for 2nd enchant, and something like (skill - 90)/2 % chance of success for 3rd enchant. With numbers like this you would have a 75% / 25% / 0% chance for the enchants at 0 skill level, and a 100% / 75% / 5% chance for the enchant at GM skill of 100.

 

I like your ideas for correcting the "negatives" and especially the idea to make the enchants applied by the respective producer skill trees.

And I like the idea of changing the static chances to being skill based... except that formula won't work for the Static Chances fix. You are basing it off of a max of 100 in the skill when there technically isn't a skill cap. While extremely difficult, you could potentially get a skill up to 200 before being limited from progressing it further. So, at skill level 200, you would have 200% / 150% / 10%. So even though the 3rd attempt chance seems reasonable, it gives greater than 100% chance for the first 2 attempts.

So you would need to alter that formula so that your intended "best" chances for each stage of enchantment would happen at a skill of 200.

Static chances may just be the first iteration and perhaps additional skills will be added that will let you improve your enchantment chances? In another thread, I suggested adding skills that you can select to specialize crafting % chances, whereby each level of that skill adds +0.5% chance. At a skill of 100, you would have a +50% chance (which would either add or multiply with the base % they establish) and at a presumed max obtainable skill of 200, you would be adding +100% chance.

The problem with my idea here though is that you don't want that 3rd tier chance to be anywhere near 100%. So, maybe combining my system with your formulas would work... if the "skill" value you have was changed to the accumulated % of my new skill? And the Tooltip of the skill would show the varying improvements to all 3 enchanting stages with the formula all calculated out.

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

 

Pre-alpha, which means systems are not even complete yet. This is exactly the time they can make changes to this, not once everything is locked down into beta.

Persistence means they won't wipe your characters, not that they won't change items or processes. Adjustments will continue to happen.

 

While those would be a step in the right direction, I think the whole philosophy/design is fundamentally flawed. Punitive mechanics like this are, well, they just narrow the target demographic and frustrate the players in the long run. It's all stick and no carrot, in the hands of random chance. I see no upsides other than a horrific time/resource sink that has been done better in other games.

"Fixing" this enchantment system is a bit like continuing to wrap a wound when you know it's gangrenous, imo. Pointless waste of time and energy, and ultimately harmful. Better to fix the root of the problem and design with more carrot, more positive/rewarding loops, actual innovation, and a system that will attract and retain a larger demographic.

 

What would be your golden proposal that would give more carrot, more positive/rewarding loops, actual innovation, and will attract and retain larger demographic? Let's all hear/see it

 

I honestly don't see a problem with this new enchanting method from the standpoint of philosophy/design. I do believe that numbers probably do need to get tweaked based on what I am seeing in this thread. As a player and a crafter I would definitely like to see actual craft levels play more of a role in the system because right now you can pretty much just power through low skill by buying tons of fuel.

This enchanting method is used by many...many...many games and is often used as a way to keep the economy healthy (absorbing materials, items, and cash from circulation). Often times this method is used as a way to get players to participate in micro transactions (Essentially pay for an "Add-on" item to bolster % chance or item retention) which is something I would not like to see personally.

What I do think would help this system is to allow more of a slow escalation of risk/reward. This current system seems very steep since there are only three steps. For those with ++ and +++ my question would be did stat selection change as you got to the next step, or is it linear? For example if + gave 10 hp, does ++ give 20 hp, and +++ give 30hp netting in a total of 60 hp for a full upgraded piece? Or does it stay 10, 10, 10 through + to +++? If this is the case then I really don't think the reward is there for such a high cost and low chance. My other thought would be that perhaps giving the item "raw" statistical bonus would be nice also, so a weapon may do 7-28 dmg but a weapon +++ may do 10-38 (spitballing numbers) to make the weapons scale upward and feel significant instead of just upping your HP or whatever other stat. This is what many other games do as well and if this is the path we are going down then why reinvent the wheel just because.

I think if there was more steps and more exponential growth of stats it might "feel" better to get that upgrade and to challenge people into playing the "Enchanting Lotto". Obviously if more tiers were added then materials would need to be re-evaluated I'm sure.

That's my thoughts
~Woden

 

Three years of better solutions proposed on these forums by everyone not me. Feel free to search. Alternately, look at any other crafting system in any other production MMO since 1996 and you'll have a better system.
I've contributed my share of good ideas over the years that have all been ignored, and the glib responses aren't constructive, in my opinion. But by all means, defend bad design and implementation. You'll continue to get more of it.
Random chance "press and pray" crafting (or anything, not just crafting), without time investment, skill or interaction, is the worst form of game mechanic ever designed, in my opinion.
If I wanted to play the lottery, I would waste my time and money buying tickets for people bad at math. A 50% success rate, hard coded, is an insult.

 

I cannot view your profile due to your settings, so I can't look up your threads or posts that directly discuss about the crafting. I tried to search your post, Xenforo only went back to late April, which is mostly about the new control. I'm sorry if putting smiley face on the post made you feel like being glib, but I am genuinely interested in about discussing any alternative/potential improvements to the game.

The concept of enchanting with the chance of breaking the items has been around in other games as well. It's giving a chance for people to push their gear a bit further and at the same time potentially help curb down the availability of the "high-end" items from staying in game for the long term. There were some UO free shards out there that implement this feature. Some of them ended up becoming a way for low level guys being to take a shot at upgrading their equipment to catch up with other shard veterans. In some case it became overpowered due to RNG giving a chance of making the super armors/weapons even with low success chance.

I do not have enough of the strong feelings to "defend" this design, which is why I asked you what concept do you think would be worth dumping the current system to pursue the it instead before going any further.

 

The bonuses are static and you can't get the same bonus twice.

I don't really see how 3x as many bonuses is not significant. As far as I'm concerned +++ should not be insanely powerful compared to other tiers.

More bonuses and different bonus management make some sense.

 

I think the biggest issue is that the risk is NOT worth the reward currently. I agree that +++ shouldn't be overpowered. However, the risk of loss shouldn't be overpowered either. There needs to be a balance there.

 

Actually this enchanting system screams "minecraft" to me... which is rather disappointing. But hopefully just some place holder as things gel. Thank you for your research / testing contribution.

 

I don't really see how that argument can be made. All 3 stats are incredibly important to all types of characters and focus and health are both nice as well. Pushing in the short term for the upgrade may not make sense, but long term going from + to ++ equipment is probably one of the easiest power increases and even ++ to +++ eventually might be.

 

The bonuses are nice, but not game changing. I agree. But 10% or everything already attained is lost? Losing everything should be a critical failure, not just a lack of success. Not apply the new bonus? Fine. Lose what's already on it? That's punitive and too harsh for the rewards you are getting in my opinion.