Question as to why the recipies changed from how they where being learned?

Ok been thinking as to why this was changed?

Economy - does not make any sense since having a recipe does not affect the economy at all and the gold used to buy them is minute and will not affect gold other than really hurt the slow casual player. SO I cannot see how economy was a driving factor.

Crafting limiting? not a chance since there are players who have already learned each and every one they could so all you are limiting is a casual / new player and why would you want to limit them for something that really does not affect much. If you are thinking to limit players to one field, i.e. carpentry then this also is a complete failure since all this does is make it difficult but again there are players who already know them ALL soo unless you clear the books and every starts over from the same starting point - useless. Also the only way to truly limit crafter to one skill set is cap how many you can GM / and if oyu do that you kill each and every crafter sonce we only have one char.

So after thinking over and over I can not see any reason why this change was made -

It does one thing and only one thing - make it harder on a player who did not power game to get crazy gold or resources or exploit / abuse the systems to learn each and every recipe out there before this was implemented. I know there are players who did not exploit and abuse the game to learn all they know but as soon as you mentioned it I know a lot of player worked one way or another to learn as much as they could and some know / knew them all already.

All you have done is convolute and complicate something that should have stayed easy.

Now if the problem was because players are just looking at another web site and reading a recipe then that is your fault since as soon as it started and was brought up you all said it was how the system is designed to work.

changing it now ???

Sorry to go back again but if you are not going to level the field for everyone this change was and is a bad idea.

A brain dump on the why a might be nice but I doubt you can validate a good reason? (at least one that would change my mind)

 

Agree completely, @Weins201 - especially since there's so many new ones that should be combined into a single one that can use different materials.

Please consider the casual player much more - or - there just won't be many left...

 

A quote from another new thread on the topic.

 

I was doing all the recipes before the change was even talked about. You can earn a lot of producer exp doing the recipes the first time. A exceptional roll on the large ward gem gave me nearly 12,000 exp. I earned about 1.8 mil exp doing this, it cost about 150,000 in fuels before the mats. I don't know why they made these changes.

 

If the current alpha players are only 5-10% of the optimistic player target numbers, then I guess these changes are intended to shape crafting for a new starter player and impact the macro economy post release? Maybe us early adopters have a bit of a distorted perspective on these system changes, especially when we have evolved though several previously.

My best guess is crafting is intended to be tough and challenging with Masterwork items fairly uncommon and available to players only with great effort, but with great reward. The cat is however out of the bag on Masterwork skills with many of the current group of players and not easy to claw back, but maybe with significant player growth the economy impact will be diluted. Maybe we have been rewarded?

 

I love crafting, and was really enjoying this crafting system prior to R36. Now I don't and am no longer excited about mastering crafting trees I was working on, so not really motivated for resource farming either. This is making SOTA a smaller game for me.

will focus on adventure but... meh.

 

unless you figure a limited number of players have already mastered the crafting tree, and even less new players will be able to afford to buy into the system by way of PTW to purchase recipes and skillup mats outright... and even less who will actually take the time to master the system by way of starting selling spider legs and rusty daggers to buy npc supplied mats, recipes for *every* component, not to mention the time to gather farmed mat components. I bought 100k gold the week prior to R36 for the sole purpose of learning as many recipes as possible and I barely made a dent in the system without buying recipes and I'm not new to it. I spent a month last winter learning the SOTA crafting system when people were giving away stacks of mats, so I had an idea of what I was doing.

For me, I don't have time or cash or it. I'll have to pay one of the above crafters, assuming there is still game left for me to keep interested.

 

Well IMO and I could be wrong, but this is how it has seemed to me. So here is how it looks to me, so players asking for discoveries saying this is one thing missing to come into the game. I know I request more interest and things, but the way this was introduced is haphazard as mentioned. So many of us do know many or most of the recipes anyway. I do not think we should have been able to teach except quest rewards stating teachable and perhaps a recipe here and there. We should have been able to 'know' these recipes from our skills being worked and from learning adventures we do making us actually have to personally do the work. I can't state how sorry I am that we are not getting crafting quests that are interesting and public work orders to do to add interest to crafting for high level crafting. It does not seem that this request is being heard and I have been saying it for years. I never wanted crafting or skills to be gotten from buying them but having to get them in interesting ways like actually using them and other criteria. Not a complicated system but a system that rewards us for our work and then we will see the note that says for example 'hey you are better with fire now' and then perhaps 'you are a master with fire' etc. Which makes you better at casting it and better at enchanting with it and better at resisting it. But thus I don't see this happening at the degree I was wishing for but I will still ask for changes that have it so it is our character verses the environment, not just meaningless or less meaningful.
edited to make a point
So under a system where working the elements would be in place, it allows for some distinguished differences to craft-able items and to combat. Others may say hey they must be a master in fire. Also allowing that master skills is limited to a couple or something so not everyone is a master in all elements.

 

My guess as to why the recipe system was changed:

1) Gold Sink (players paying 250-700g per recipe, with over 400 recipes...that's a lot of coin out of the economy).
2) Try to stimulate a crafter economy with the new item decay.
3) Try to stimulate a crafter economy by allowing players to sell recipes they know to others. (or share freely).
4) Put third party web sites that contained all the recipes, like sotacraft.com, "out of business". (since they pretty much made in-game recipes pointless).

 

I'm glad I paged into this thread--I thought the reason I couldn't make hardened leather was because the ingredients had been changed. Apparently, now, I've gotta run all over the country looking for a recipe--agreed, this is stoopid.

Cornfellow

 

Recipes is another gold sink, this change doesn't promote anything else, only damage, AND there is no gold to sink. They have nerfed gold drops, so people have a lot less money now, but they didn't adjust any other game elements that was taking advantage of the old gold drops. Recipes, taxes, repair costs etc etc... everything made sense when you could make more gold, crafting made sense and people bought things. Now, there is little gold, prices are the same high, taxes are high, fuel prices are considerably high too... I don't think there is a lot of brain behind these changes, or the brain can't think ahead or through. They prevented people from grinding gold, but didn't balance other game elements along with nerfing gold drops.

They make decisions that they think "make sense", but they don't look at a bigger picture. They say housing supposed to be an "end-game". With all the changes to drops, spawn rates for both monsters and nodes, crafting is becoming a big nuisance now and sort of an "end-game" too and quite annoying "end-game". They want to balance the economy by making crafted items more rare, but all they do, is alienate the crafting from the new player completely. I dunno, but the changes they do just feel asinine to me. They keep saying they are trying to 'fix the game' before it is released to masses, but all they do, is make it very unfriendly towards new players... And all the changes so far, made the game even more tedious and mundane. I am not seeing a lot of new players enjoying the game in the future because of the balancing steps that devs are taking now...

If you don't consider reward-vs-effort ratio, the grind will keep people's interest only for so long, and as more tedious the grind will be, as fewer people will bother with the old school game like this. Maybe Port only cares to make so much dough from selling items on Cash Store and then just throw the game out into trash. The changes they are applying to the game at least, make me feel this way. These changes don't increase lasting value of the game. I guess it's the curse of all the games with 5 developers. They can only make very tiny steps and those steps usually damage the game in a long run.

I know what they can do now... Why don't they allow us to gather half a log from every tree without exceptions, and half of the ore rock, increase the number of required materials for every item you craft, increase fuel costs and make people fail the craft 2x times more often. This will show the 'balance' that the crafting in this game is in right now... Oh, also increase recipe price 4x times because it "just makes sense" to "someone"... /sarcasm

 

I take most changes to the game in stride, but I have to admit, I was pretty irritated when I read about this change in the publish notes.

(Sorry for that outburst, I don't normally use such strong language)

 

I think this game is not for causual players.

Also with the change of COTO repair, why craft items. Specially for people that doesn't play a lot of time.
Note: Also with Skill decay. The causual player lost always maximum of EXP (because that is not based on game time).

(sorry for my English)

 

Sigh....I don't understand the "development" cycle much. Everyone keeps saying this is Alpha, things will change. I mean if you have children on a diving board over the deep end and none know how to swim, is it wise to tell them to jump in just to see what will happen or if anyone will drown? Sometimes that's how I think this game is developing. We need to make decisions for changes to a lot of these systems, but for gosh sakes we should have some common sense. I feel the common sense is missing a lot. So much so it seems we are just wandering around lost. We are at the verge of essentially eliminating crafting from the game. People who love to craft and willing to put in the work are frustrated. Imagine how the less dedicated or people new to crafting are going to feel. I am finding it harder and harder to remain optimistic. I wish the devs would respond to our concerns in a sober environment here on the forums rather than in a telethon or "autopsy" after a release. It's not us verses them but I feel that they are starting to think that way.

 

This might be a bit of an odd thing, but I feel one influencing factor to adding recipes was the fact that they also added expiring craftables.

They added 2016 stockings and wreaths. If they were to have those discoverable, they would need to change the recipe every time the drop the same items for another year. Having recipes also frees up the crafting system to allow two items to have identical material requirements if they decide they want to take that route in the future.

I don't actually think this change is meant to be a gold sink, I think it was actually done to add options in crafting while also making it so some players have exclusive crafting rights.

 

@DarkStarr @Chris I think you all need to consider the question here. I love SoTa and left Warcraft,deleted a bunch of level 100's and didn't look back. But if I have one concern about the game, it is communication and explanation. Yes we all now there is a Q&A that some people get to test and report bugs,but when a major change is rolled out, as in the example of recipe changes, it would be nice if at least a discussion thread is opened by you that says "We are looking at changing _________ in the next release and why.
This way people will be able to see the reason why and your process for believing there needed to be a change. I am not saying you need to "bend to the will of the posters" against or for an idea, but at least your player base would not be in the dark about the reasons why.
Just my personal thought, but I am hearing from a lot of players that there isn't enough communication between the developers and players to explain the reasoning behind major changes. Pretty please with sugar on top, please consider this idea.

 

Nice idea but how can that even remotely be true if there is a large group of players who are here now already know everything they need and therefore can be the sole cornerstone of the economy basically just shutting any and all new comers out completely.

Sorry but your thoughts are counter productive to a good expanding game with longevity.

Leaves a game with few player and new players last about a week before they just say screw it.

 

Considering there is no "business" from those we site that is not an argument at all

Now just to let you know this was brought up as soon as it was found that recipies could be "learned" by just placing items on the table. IMMEDIATLY after it was introduce and it was put out - over and over - that this was how it was designed to be done. It was not a chore, it was not complicated. It was argued that this was a bad idea (learning) but shot down as not a big issue.

Now all the sudden it is somtihg the game needs to make it what???

That is the question - why - it was always presented as the way it is and will be and now?

There is no (as most see it) logical reason at all for it - none.

 

Well hopefully there is more to the reasoning behind changing the recipes to being discovered. This is not enough to take crafting from raising a crafting skill 10 or so points in 10 minutes like I did last night. This is really not going to help in longevity for the game. I should not have been able to do that.

Perhaps the road from crafting level 1 to crafting level 10 is easier but after that we should have interesting ways to advance our craft or skill. For example in the form achievements and quests that may advise us to seek out knowledge. Could we please take a step back to make crafting and skill raises a process instead of haphazardly adding things to the game. Could we be advised if there is a rhyme or reason to advancement coming into this game?

We have a chance to make this game an interesting and fun adventure. Everything we are doing is disconnected and we click and raise, click and raise with very little feeling that there will be more. For me I feel that in designing a system like this it takes away the possibility of having longevity be possible in many aaspects of this game. This is why many of us are here. We want this to be 'our' game. We need the quest lines that take us in search of knowledge. We need achievements and reasoning as a reason to advance. True to the developers there could be more to the plan that we don't know and I am not trying to be a naysayer but to let you know we are here. The reason we question the design is because we care. In some ways being here early is our curse. We need reasons for things happening and take the click and raise out of it. This is not a Richard Garriott way. Some of the choices we have in game should be: we need to eat or we get starvation, we need to sleep when logging off or we do not get the 4 hour 'rested bonus' and we need reasons for doing things that connect the world. We just want to help and some decisions will hurt atm but in the long run they will make a much, much better game. Please @The development team don't give up on us for help.

We are all here to help if ideas for systems coming in need ideas to make them have what is missing. We would love to help because we care about this game so much. Please don't have it click and raise and be done. @DarkStarr @Lord British2 @Lum the Mad @Chris

 

1) 400 to 500 recipes, at 250 to 700g a piece is "a minuscule amount" of gold? Man, I want to know how you're making money...because I'm not pulling any where near enough to think that dishing out that sort of money is a minuscule amount. And for starting crafters, that do little fighting for their gold...how will they be able to pay the price of those recipes when no one is buying the starter recipe items from them? There's too many holes in the economy, so much so that it can't support itself at the moment.

2) RE: trading recipes / rich get richer...yup. But it also gives power to guilds. Join a guild and they'll share their recipes with members for free. It can be played out several different ways.

3) Web Sites. I didn't mean that these web sites are making money (I run one, and I'm losing money for doing it, with the hosting fees and domain registration/renewal fees). The recipe web sites shortcut the in game recipes. Why pay 250g for a recipe when you can go to a web site, find out the ingredients, plop them onto a crafting station and click "create"? That's less money coming out of the economy, and hundreds of items that very few people would use.


Overall, it's about control. When you get right down to the nitty gritty of it all, it means Portalarium maintains control over the recipes. No third party sites to catalog recipes for people "to discover". That means if a super secret recipe drops from a big mob, it cannot be cataloged and everyone in the world then has it. That means that in order to know how to create a "special" item, you need to have killed that mob, found that secret chest, complete that quest, or whatever. That's what I think the MAIN reason behind the change is. The gold sink, the "exclusivity" of recipes, the invalidating of recipe web sites...those are just minor caveats.