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Why is refining/crafting such a time sink?

Discussion in 'Release 32 Feedback Forum' started by Sara Dreygon, Aug 20, 2016.

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  1. Beaumaris

    Beaumaris Avatar

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    It enables the refining part of the game to be a relevant profession. Many crafters want to be able to collect and refine quickly to make and end product. The end product is viewed as the crafting part, not the rest. But SOTA's slow collection and refining times changes that a bit, making the results of the laborious earlier efforts somewhat of an 'end product' themselves. And therefore those skills somewhat of a profession in themselves. I don't think its a bad thing for those like gamers more interested in resource collection and refinement than making the end product.
     
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  2. kaeshiva

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    Staring at the refining interface for several hours isn't engaging or fun, though. Seems anyone who has to do it in bulk tabs out to the forums (guess what I'm doing right now!) or watches netflix or something else.
    I don't think a system within the game should be so time consuming and repetitive that it causes people to seek outside entertainment while they wait.
     
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  3. Tahru

    Tahru Avatar

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    At least crafting produces useful goods. Unlike other games where you craft fast, but have to spend tons gold on vendor trash.

    I don't mind the way it works.
     
  4. Anvar

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    And thats it in a nutshell, refining materials is never going to be engaging, if your at work repeating the same manual process youll be seeking outside entertainment too ;)
    Point is its a laborious process, but it always is, and when people try and make crafting more fun by turning it into a minigame (warhammer Im looking at you) it ends up making it more of a tedious process once the novelty has worn off.

    You do have a valid point though on smelting skill should speed up the process , not too much obviously but 20-25% for gm atleast to make it feel worth the effort.
     
  5. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    As others have stated crafting time is supposed to replicate adventuring time in regards to amount of effort vs. amount of reward. Without a time sink to balance the reward then the economy would be upended within a few weeks.

    With that said we have not yet spent any time on the Refining skill trees so there is no advancement advantage yet. When that comes online there will be some speed up on the top end for Refining.
     
  6. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Yeah, I don't want a minigame version either.
    I think here is the fundamental problem:

    My husband plays a blacksmith.
    He'll already spend 10-12 hours mining enough ore to make a single suit of armor, plus silver & gold for masterworks. Add on a few more hours if anything breaks and needs more ore to replace it.
    Alternatively, he could spend 10-12 hours fighting and buy these ores if he focused on mass-grinding-of-green-mob tedium cash-grind. Whichever.
    Clearly crafting does not have enough time sink yet and material gathering/acquisition is not punitive enough.

    Now we need to spend several thousand gold on ingot molds and coal.
    Nope, still not punitive enough!

    Lets smelt 1000 ores at 8 seconds per smelt for 31.25 glorious minutes of staring at the yellow bar going across.
    This is BORING and there's NO REASON for it.
    What is this delay achieving?
    The number of ores is limited by the time required to pull them out of the ground, why does refining have to be a drag?
    At the very least you should be able to mitigate it by levelling smelting skill, to something reasonable like 1 second/smelt at GM.

    Crafting as implemented is not fun, its a boring chore of tedium punctuated by disappointing enchanting/masterworking rolls and exploding items with actual crafting 'skill' not meaning much of anything after about lvl 60 when you pretty much cap your exceptional chance.

    Grandmastering a trade should be an achievement, allowing the player to make better items more consistently, more reliably, and more quickly.
    At the moment there's zero difference between a sword made by a GM blacksmith and a lvl 60 blacksmith like myself (ok, he has a 1% higher chance to get an exceptional, wooptydoo). There's very little noticeable difference in smelting speed from increasing the skill. There's no progression to it, its just 'plug all these materials into these boxes, wait an hour, and maybe get a usable piece of gear'.

    With the exorbidant costs of materials and the randomness and the breakage, I'm just saying, is it really necessary for it to be horribly slow as well?

    EDIT:
    As an aside, if you know its going to take half an hour, get rid of the 20 at a time cap and let me queue it up and go do something else. Or at least make it give meaningful experience!
     
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  7. Hermann von Salza

    Hermann von Salza Avatar

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    In a small way I'm kinda glad mining isnt as fun as in uo. I can just focus on my warrior as much as possible, before falling asleep. The whole smith and mining in sota doesn't even come close to UO. Im so bias.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2016
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  8. Brass Knuckles

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    Agreed im looking forward to skipping crafting in this game. I did buy a good weapon and with a single coto every once in awhile i can keep it for a while. ill reconsider in eps2 mabey ill get a new wep.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2016
  9. Alex_Wildeagle

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    Except now I spend all my time gathering and crafting with no time to adventure. I can only gather decently in single player mode and that still takes hours. The crafting side of it takes to much time to gather and craft as compared to adventuring, I don't have time to adventure as I spend all my time gathering/refining making parts and then making the new item.

    Then there's enchanting, I'm at 81% and just failed 4 out of 4, I know small sample size but at 81% I should have at least one or two success's and then the items are destroyed to I have to start all over. HUGE waste of time.
     
  10. Spoon

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    Restarting the client from desktop will reset the RNG, so whenever I get two unlucky strikes in a row during high end crafting, i simply quit and relog.
     
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  11. Snazz

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    There's 2 things wrong with this.

    First of all, the time and hitting a GM second tier ability doesn't seem bad at all. It's just tedious as hell to do in one shot (like the OP)

    Second, if you actually click everything vs batch, you will crit a lot, which translates to way more xp. So there is a benefit to not walking away. Perhaps more so when exceptional components help with exceptional combine %s


    My 2 coppers
     
  12. Alex_Wildeagle

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    I will give that a try next time.
    This system seems to me to be a very sadistic joke.
     
  13. Lifedragn

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    I personally think that the time expenditure is perfect. If it doesn't take any time then everyone will become grandmaster craftsmen and the value in choosing to pursue that route loses all value. What I do agree needs to be fixed is the engagement during the process. The notion of a mini-game was thrown out. That adds to engagement but can also lead to tedium. I believe the best balance is in an optional mini-game.

    From the top of my head, a good way to implement an optional mini-game in the quickest fashion would be to have it provide a bonus or penalty to your crafting skill (and thus success/exceptional chances). If you opt out, you get your current base skill and un-modified chances. If you choose to burn an extra fuel, you get to play the game. More advanced reward systems could be the chance of recovering scraps from what you just created. Say you did awesome in your mini-game to make that Iron Longsword. Not only did you get a higher chance at an exceptional outcome, maybe you retrieved some extra leftover metal scraps in the process. Not a huge difference, but adds up over a lifetime for crafters that are engaged vs. batch-it-up and take a break crafters.

    On the topic of wanting to make massive amounts of items, or refining massive amounts of items. I think Bulk Refinement recipes would be a good idea to add in for highly skilled refiners. Could be a useful idea to keep in mind for future episodes as well.
     
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  14. Sixclicks

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    I doubt they'll just change the crafting times. Maybe they'll add more to the refining skills to make crafting faster however at higher levels. My solution: use a second monitor so you can watch something on it while the game runs on the other monitor.
     
  15. Captain Beefy

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    I have to agree with the negative reviews in this post, crafting is obfuscated and uninteresting 8/
     
  16. Snazz

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    Which is the only reason that there are dedicated crafters instead of everyone crafting everything they need.


    I don't personally like the huge time sinks from start to finish and the heavy reliance on RNG... But I do understand the devs logic behind it.
     
  17. majoria70

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    The problem isn't the time IMO, it is the crafting system itself. If crafting were an interesting adventure in itself then no one would be watching their clocks. Requesting different time more or less is not the problem here. Hopefully crafting is in it's incomplete state and more interest is being added to it. To me this would be to GM crafting in any area of it would be the adventure. Doing a zillion ingots to GM is not it. Also IMO Instead of asking for less or more of a time sync, lets ask for changes to the system that would add engagement and fun. Now is the time to ask. :)
     
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  18. Solazur

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    Crafting ... and refining in particular is about as exciting as watching your nose hairs grow. I get that it should take some time but it's just SO damned tedious. At the least it'd be nice if we could refine in quantities greater than 20 at a time. This should really only affect the refining process... as it is you can't make exceptional items in a batch so that's one at a time on crafting items and tbh I think that's as it should be but a little refining <3 would go a long way.

    I have also read the comments regarding length of persistent game time as relates to how much stuff the OP is processing. I can attest that @Sara Dreygon is insane. Anybody that wants to complain about her levels.. or how much ore she has or anything else should friend her in game (same name) and ask for a party invite to go hunt.... but put your running shoes on! If you do I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I have.... anybody that driven is gonna get where they are headed no mater what.
     
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