Why is refining/crafting such a time sink?

@DarkStarr

I've been refining 1300 ingots for the past few hours... it currently takes 2:40 for 20 refining attempts... I've now moved on to making bindings... 340 times. My Saturday "play" day is now gone and I haven't even gotten into making necklaces let alone enchanting them.

Is there a reason why refining/crafting has to be such a huge time sink that keeps me from adventuring? I already have the materials. Is there a reason it isn't as fast as say salvaging?

Anyone else? Does refining/crafting take too long to do? Thoughts?

 

How many are you making?

 

refine as you go then it wont take so long?

But yeah every time I see something like this for amounts times . . . all I can say is we are less than a month into the game and you are modifying 1300 ingots

There are many issues with balancing game play / time / resources / . . . . but the time sink is not all that bad

 

Shouldn't you be resting?


I agree though....wow!

 

Here's the thing. (all IMHO )

Even if every harvesting, refining, and production action took only one second each, and only travel time & clicking were involved? It still wouldn't be enough.
What these designers haven't learned from all the other games that have tried (and discarded) punitive resource throttling is: It doesn't work.
The fundamental design involved here is broken. Requiring more of a raw that produces less of an interim and even less of a final product does not scale across 5 episodes. Every game that has tried this has had to make massive sweeping changes to their entire crafting system at episode 2 or 3 because mathematically, things start getting truly obscene quite quickly. (requiring dozens or hundreds of raws per item instead of 5-10) It will happen to every game that tries it, can't be avoided, historically proven to be true multiple times.

So, short version? The refining time sink is there to hide the other glaring and fundamental problems that they're ignoring (for whatever reason).

Just consider... even if you had acquired all the raws, and the XP pool to increase the skills at a reasonable rate, and everything was quick-n-click? The masterwork & enchantment system guarantees most of the items will be destroyed/useless because of two things: Items are destroyed on failure, (the failure rate percentages are guaranteed to make you fail, even at 200 skill in everything) and you can't choose the effects. They're random, and mostly not what you would ever want. And finally, people will simply buy from the infinite supply of COTO's on the cash shop to keep their gear once they get it. If all gear degraded, no one would spend the time and effort on the gear, because the entire gathering, refining, and crafting system is pure stick. (no carrot)
I mean really.. it's so hard to acquire the massive amounts of materials a single crafter needs, everything is almost priceless, if you consider your time valuable.

There's only a few ways this plays out properly. It can be fun, they can change it, but I suspect they won't. In any event, if they removed the item destruction OR permitted you to choose from the entire range of effects, it might be possible people will actually use that part of the system. As is, though? Nope. Not enough people will ever put themselves through that pain to supply the thousands of players the game needs. And that ignores the continual (and just starting, just you wait) punitive harvesting. You know how you need thousands of silver and gold to advance? Yeah.. brace yourself, dark days are coming.

There are a myriad of broken parts here, and I suspect it's going to get vastly worse before it gets fun. I mean, COTO's for max durability repair undermine the entire system. /sigh

 

I don't really mind things being difficult or taking a long time, but when there is no engagement at all it becomes pretty lame. Clicking a button every few minutes and then going to do something else isn't engaging. I don't know what the best solution is, but I agree with the OP that refining and crafting involves a ton of wasted time where you're basically not even playing the game.

 

131 necklaces... For the RNG fans, I got 35 exceptionals (26.7%). Now time to enchant them all a couple times.

I have played a decent amount of hours during my three-week vacation .

 

I'm not inherently against the time sink.
Perhaps more could be done with a trade off between faster, cheaper, safer or more procs.

I don't actually mind the idea that a crafter is spending many hours just crafting if the right trade offs are in place.

 

First let me say I agree with you that it takes to long to smelt etc but why oh why would you save up and make all that at once? ofc it's going to be tedious

 

I tend to just smelt, tan, etc everytime I'm in Brit or near a craft station before I log off. It'seems a bit mundane at times.

 

I see a new reason for a new obsidian potion.. ( Haste Production Potion )

There is something similar but its for Salvage and Repair.. perhaps one for +50% production would help in this case

NOTE: 1300 ingot -- 100K+ arrows. I guess where in the same boat

 

Why should making

take no time?
I mean that's a rather extreme amount.

 

Okay... so 1615 gold ingots later and enchanting is GM'd. The amount of time I spent just refining the gold at 8 seconds per ingot (not counting the time to click and lost time due to laundry, cutting hair, cleaning cat box, etc.) was 3.58 hours. That's just for smelting the ore - that I already spent the considerable time to mine - into ingots.

Personally I believe anything that you click and have to find something to go do for 2 minutes and 40 seconds instead of playing the game is an excessive metric whose benefits - whatever they are - do not outweigh the negatives stemming from lack of engagement in the game and refining anything should take no longer than salvaging does.

 

Hi Sara... I've seen your shop in Aerie by the crafting pavilion and you are already offering some extremely high-end items. I want to support the sentiment here, that crafting is tedious, but I really worry about what the economy would be like WITHOUT time sinks. Just like gold sinks, time sinks are necessary in MMO's. Without them, no specialization or economy.

Think about this: lowering the time sinks make more people able to crank out the items they need themselves. There will be less a market for you. Most of us are able to be pretty self-sufficient as it is.

I understand the pain of doing all that crafting, but I would hate to think what would happen if that level of production became available to everyone. We are not even a month into persistence and people are already pushing the limits. I understand the achievement play style, but what you've been able to accomplish seems lightning fast in the timeframe we hope this game to have.

Let's hope you remain a unique feature of Aerie - something that pulls people into our little corner of the world!

 

In my opinion there are two approaches. Crafting as part of the adventerous life in Sota means collecting some, crafting some, spending time, having fun. And crafting as part of a factory-work means trading 1000 of items, crafting for hours and gaining high ranks. The second should last a very long time because you craft the top of the craftmanship - after that there is nothing and we are in pre-alpha. To establish a business in Sota crafting shouldn't be an easy job but should take time, many reagents and be extraordinairy complex. At least the high items. You will make it impossible for people who are "just dabbling around" and get good prices at last for crafted items. A counterpart to grinding mobs, grinding quests or grinding ressources.

 

If I craft 3 ingots or make 2 bindings with resources I've collected during the day, the "time sink" won't bother me in the least because I'll just take a peek in the forums or fetch something to drink while I'm waiting.

The people who are most seriously impacted by crafting sink time are people who do it in bulk. I can think of a few reasons why someone would want to craft 1000s of something:

• to become a master crafter
• to supply a guild or group of friends with finished goods after they contributed to collecting the raw materials
• to sell the finished goods en masse at a huge profit

Are these things we should make really quick and easy to do?

 

Being a GM crafter should take the roughly the same time and grinding as a GM adv.
If we take this into account I would say you are still too fast tbh.

 

Now if it was UO youd have no business being out advnturing, youd be a town living 7x crafter, just be glad you can do both

Seriously though yeah it can be a bit damn slow, but you can always speed it up with enchanted crafting tools, not sure if any potions raises it or not though.
At least this isnt like dark ages or other MMOs with a 2min+crafting bar, that was soo much fun, like watching paint dry .

 

IMO, having to invest time in something is part of "earning" it, and there should be no "instant" gratification. For someone making a few of something the amount of time needed doesn't seem like a lot, and the time only seems like a lot when someone is, as stated above, smelting thousands of ingots, or making hundreds of something.

The time it takes to smelt is fine as it is...you are smelting THOUSANDS OF INGOTS...and you want it to happen instantly. No.

 

I don't have an objection to the basic speed rate on refining, crafting, and gathering.
I do however think that the effects of levelling up refining skills should be significantly tweaked.
Once you've made your 2000th ingot, you really should be noticeably faster at it. Currently there's no real reason to level up refining skills.
If doing so upped the max of 20 or increased the speed in a significant way, I'd sink xp into it.