Explanations on monetization thinking on SotA

The stat difference between Augmented/Epic gear from NPC vendors (which is cheap) is minimal compared to the best crafted gear. And that was always part of the intentional design of the game, to not make it gear centric.

But crafted gear costs exponentially more, and is less durable.

Grinding for GM skills matters a lot more than gear in this game.

If the entire point of reducing durability is to limit enhancement slots, then just create actual enhancement slots.

Making enhanced gear worse by lowering durability, you are killing crafting.

 

Oh no I think that is perfectly legitimate issue to raise, and offer suggestions for.

Maybe to simply change the durability display to include repair count e.g. instead of 10/90 it would show 10/90 (5) because it would take 5 crowns to restore max durability again

Maybe a good suggestion more inline with what you would like would be to replace increasing costs with dimishing returns?
E.g. First Max durability repair restore, Max Max Durability is reduced by 10.

 

Please no. The age of trust that UO existed in is gone even in UO.
If you wanna give crafters the ability to make a repair deed I can buy and apply myself, I'm ok with that.
But if you want me to trust some random stranger with my Longbow +5, and 5 of my crowns to repair it then My name is "No", Ny sign is "No" my number is "No"....
If you want me to give up my using my bow while I wait 24-48 hours for a crafter I know and trust to login, then My name is "No", Ny sign is "No" my number is "No"....

I'll just do the same thing I do currently.
Buy a ton of repair deeds, and repair all the looted long bows I loot, until my skill is high enough I don't need you again.

 

I'd like to move to player repairs to put money in the hands of player crafters, but surely the game could provide a secure way of doing that without losing your items to scammers.

Put a "repair" button in the trade window. The crafter agrees to repair the item with a checkmark, and the player puts gold in the window with a checkmark. The player crafter's skill is applied to repair the item without it ever leaving your inventory.

 

Except that would remove crafting stations and their bonuses. I do not want to find you and open a trade window when I need repairs. I want to stock up repairs and use them on my timeline not yours.

I currently have around 400 of every repair kit at my house stocking up is what I do.

You seem to want to force me to go into Multi-player, Spam scene chat and noble chat looking for a repair crafter, waste an hour or two of my time going from town to town looking for someone that's actually working when I want repairs.

Please No.

Now if you want to talk about introducing Global Trade chat, letting me bypass public vendor commisions, and exploring POTs for good vendors, so that instead I have a great chance of finding a crafter that is willing to repair what I need in a short timeframe... Then maybe it will be worth it, but I'd still rather not.

 

No crafter repairs please.
It's just the next annoying Bottleneck.

 

@Chris - Thank you for the in-depth explanation of these changes. I now understand the plan much better and can agree with most of it, except the snipit I quoted from your OP.

I apologize for the wall of text, but Please allow me to explain and PROVE why I think this "plan" is a bad idea...

Part 1
That 1st paragraph says the intent is to make it so "the best gear will only come from the most dedicated crafters." But, from how I've seen the crafting system progress, I think by "dedicated" you mean those willing to fail repeatedly... destroying many good items in an attempt to get lucky enough with RNG's to create "the best" items.

The crafter's skill level doesn't seem to have any major impact on his/her ability to craft the best items. Anyone can make or buy a cheap Epic Plate Chest Piece (material choices as personal preferences) with no masterworks/enchantments... and then attempt to roll the dice themselves to try to make them into the "best items".

Even with very high skill levels in the masterwork/enchanting skills, there will still always be a small chance of failure even on a first attempt of these. And the failure chances increase with each additional stat attempt.

I did a small test in SP Offline. With the save game feature and a simple edit of the save file, it was easy for me to alter all of my crafting skills (including the masterworks and enchantment skills) to 200. I probably could have raised them higher, but I thought this was already a level that we would likely never achieve online for a very long time so felt that was a good testing point.

Before I post my results, lets define "the best" items. Based on the current crafting system, I consider the "best" crafted item to be one made from a "basic" recipe (which can include any combination of raw materials and rare ingredients) and this can be either "epic" or "augmented" based on preferences of the end user. Then, you take that basic item and add 5 masterworks and 5 enchantments, along with socketed gems. The socket part is not really relevant since failure doesn't lose anything except fuels... so I'll just ignore that part here and assume a socket is just another part of the "basic" recipe. To further define "best" items, I would say that would be a +2 for each masterwork/enchant added, but since the +2 choices are random in the 3 options you have on a success... we can't count on that ever happening. So, let's just define it as: a basic crafted item with 5 masterworks and 5 enchantments.

OK, so with everything at skill level 200, the first disappointment I noticed was that the "Exceptional" chance was still only 20%. I was expecting this to be much higher for such high skill levels! The next thing I noticed was that 1st attempt chances for masterwork went up from 90% to 95%. One would think that's foolproof, but even with that good of a chance, I failed on several first attempts! Luckily it's just as easy to dupe items in SP Offline so I made many basic epic pieces to test with. The 2nd attempt was also at 95% as expected, but the third attempt my 200 skill level only increased my chances to 60% and the 4th attempt was only 20%. I was never successful on a 4th attempt at 20%, so not sure what the 5th attempt chances were at skill 200. I should note that most runs ended at failure at the 60% chance.

My conclusion here is, even with Godly skill levels, the ability to make the "best items" is negligible, and only slightly higher than someone with no skills at all. In fact, even then, the chance to make a piece with 5 masterworks was pretty much impossible without destroying many many basic pieces first. Now, compound that same skill irrelevant problem by adding all the Alchemy Enchants to that same piece. Having 200 in all Alchemy skills still didn't prevent me from failing to add even 1 enchantment to a 4 masterwork stat item... let alone allowing me to add 4 or 5 enchantments to that same piece.

Can you imagine if someone was lucky enough to add 4 or 5 stats that they wanted via masterwork... and then having it destroyed on a first attempt of 90-95% chance enchantment? That's going to cause some serious backlash!

Making all of these masterworks and enchantments RNG based (both in what stat choices you can add and especially the chance of failure and destroying the item) DOES NOT PROMOTE any advantage to a "skilled" crafter at all! Only those with extreme luck will be able to craft the "best" items... not the most dedicated crafters.

Oh, and to top it all off, if you didn't start with an Exceptional item to begin with... even if you could luck into a 4 mw/4 ench item... the decreased durability penalties severely lower the use time you get out of that "best" item. It's almost better to stick with a basic crafted item with 1 or 2 stat boosts and get a longer life out of the item.

Part 2
I get that having items break at some point is the only way for crafters to have repeat customers (unless you are banking on all the mw/ench failures to keep crafters busy). But adding a system where ONLY rare drop or store bought items can keep an item from breaking doesn't benefit a crafter at all. Why can't a skilled crafter also provide a max durability service?

Magic coin repairs give people with real $$ and those who can grind a few hours for in-game gold to buy COTO's an easy fix every 3 months to keep an item from breaking. This system literally prevents a player from needing a highly skilled crafter's service to keep their items. It's like the exact opposite of what you are saying it's supposed to do!

A coin should have nothing to do with repairing an item's durability. It would be much better if a crafter's skill level would dictate the max durability repair that can be done to the item. That way, the highly skilled crafters will be sought out to fix broken items.

 

I read a few posts that popped in between when I started my novel above and when I posted it... so I'll reply to those who don't want to trust or wait around for a skilled crafter to fix their max durability.

The best solution would be to allow crafters to make repair deeds of varying repair ranges. The amount of max durability repaired would be noted on the repair deed so those who need repairs can buy the best one to suit their needs. The ability to make the "best" max durability repair deeds would require the highest skill levels.

That gives everyone a readily available, secure trade-able item to do the job and promotes high crafting skills.

If someone prefers the "pay real $$ to save time" method, they can still purchase the COTO's and then sell them for in-game gold to buy the repair deeds.

 

~COTO vs Crafting Bots?~

Just sayin'...
These are far worse for any crafting "player" economy than any COTO ever could be...
"and I highly suspect are used"...
The COTO ain't nothin' by comparison...
~Time Lord~

 

We have that. The repair kits.
Let's keep crafters out of repairing.

 

Thank you for the time & effort that went into testing this, Daxxe.
It's clear to me that currently there is too much risk and not enough reward in enchanting, and I'll continue to fight naked or with NPC purchased armor and weapons.
The chasm (yes, chasm) between NPC purchased armor and enchanted is too vast for me to traverse as a lowly human, currently.
Great post. Love it.

 

You can't spend 2 hours grinding for a full set of armor and a brand new weapon?

 

How long do the crafters have to grind to gather resources now that you break gear randomly when you're trying to enhance it?

Prices will have to spike on the gear since gathering is such a pain and time is money. If crafters can make vastly more money killing mobs and selling trash, then why bother crafting?

 

Didn't talk about enchanting.
That system needs some love for sure. It's just too hard.
But farming mats for a set of armor and a bow took me two hours yesterday.
Building stuff isn't that hard. Enchanting is, yes.

 

But that is what we're talking about. Crafters want to sell the best gear for a considerable profit for their time.

Basic gear you can get from NPC vendors on the cheap.

The current system makes it so that enhanced gear will be super expensive, but have no durability. And when the durability is gone you throw it away and need replacement gear (carrying multiple sets of armor with encumbrance isn't feasible) so you have to stop playing and look for replacement gear.

Or you pay pennies on the dollar to have gear that is more convenient since it doesn't break as easily, and you get it from NPCs.

All of these concerns were called out to the devs repeatedly and none of these concerns have been acknowledged or addressed. So we're just willfully moving forward with a system that will kill off crafting. Why?

 

I would argue that enchanting isn't hard in the "hm, this is hard to master, but I can get better at it" sense, but rather hard in the "holy crap this progression is punitive" sense.

 

Well if a skill of 200 gives you 20% then i would say impossible and not punitive ^^

 

That's the finest quotable advise I've seen on this thread


~Trust Greymark Forest Brand Swards & Shields~

"A Name You Can Trust Open 24 Hours a Day With Run Through Swards & Shields Services" (*not accepting COTO)
I do!' ~Time Lord~

 

@Chris Very well written explanation, makes sense and is a good way to keep funding SOTA. I was wondering if the you all are considering a system such as a premium account where I can get X amount of COTOs each month or can I set up a recurring payment system were I can buy 5 COTO's each month for $5.