Zero Crit Crafting Events Throughout R27

Thanks Gingerloaf, that explanation makes sense, and likely explains why at least some of the time, I wouldn't see the crits showing up.

Looking forward to testing it further in R28.

 

Not a problem at all. Remember that you should always let us know about things like this. It's a tough balancing act to try and hear what every single person says and also make our own progress towards a quality product, but we can not try to improve on things we don't identify as problems... It is so important to get feedback from our users and our users are particularly amazing at letting us know what is going on and how we might make it better. Thank you so much for the feedback you've provided .

 

@GingerLoaf

Thank you for the reply, we as testers love to have that affirmation that you guys are listening to our feedback.

That being said and with this topic at hand, I would like to suggest a change to how crit crafting works in a general sense. Right now (or as far as I can tell) all crits result in a +2str gain. I think that this effect should change to encompass the number of materials being used to make all crit crafts feel equally fulfilling. For instance right now you would typical only aim to craft helm, boots, and gloves due to the significantly lower material costs (especially if you're considering augmented materials). Chest and legs often feel like more pain than they are worth; Material costs and failure chances are significantly higher and result in the same bonus if you would have just done the other pieces.

I think it would also be interesting to see different stats obviously; I really like what was done with armor/weapons having different effects of crafting. But I think right now the benefits are REALLY not there for critting higher costing equipment.

~Wodin

 

You are very welcome! I have heard quite a lot lately about this bonus and I will do my best to make sure we find a better solution to it.

 

The crit crafting / refining effects shown on the wiki: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Weapon_Enhancement was active at least through build 318 to 364.
After that, at some point, it was all changed to the +2 STR for everything, apparently?
These are the effects I'm referring to (as was expecting to be able to purchase from others or make myself, eventually):

Are those effects gone for good, Gingerloaf ? Or just temporarily gone? (Yes, I know the 200% air damage shocking one was probably a bug )

 

Please look into alloy creation as well. I am much better at smelting 100 to 73 on tanning. I have a 43% chance on alloys atm and a 67% chance on fancy leather types. Same holds true for carpentry and cloth. So metal alloys seem harder than the average bear.

 

Those were not crit effects. The 200% air was a sapphire gem(10% fire was a ruby), the others were all from resource type except for the +3 str which is what a crit used to be.

 

Ok, so.. if they weren't crit effects from refining... what were they? Just inherent in all the materials?
Same question applies... are they gone forever? That would be a real shame, if true.

 

As far as i know they were placeholder values until the current system got implemented (this you should be able to read in patchnotes somewhere). At the time Stat armor seemed to overshadow just about everything else(it was magnitudes better) and attack speed weapons were used the majority of the time. I think the new system is much better(though it could use refining in a few ways). The attributes themselves coming back is entirely up to the devs of course.

 

That's weird, because none of those effects are in the current systems... so... I hope R28 has some big crafting fixes/changes.

 

To balance stats with the other armor benefits right now you'd probably be looking at something like .01 per crafting component. Attack speed is actually on cotton bowstrings right now, though I'm guessing that's not what you're looking for.

With specialized crits, more material types(which I'm assuming is going to happen at some point with the existence of zinc/tungsten) and further system revamps - we might see some of the bonuses again. However, I still think the current system is a big step forward from the land of universal attackspeed and plate stat suits.

 

A very real, open, and meaningful response. Thanks to the dev team! I love this game dev model

 

I can confirm that our current solution for bonus effects is temporary. Crafting has gone through several iterations as we try to determine the best gameplay for it, and it is still undergoing some iteration. Changing these systems is not an overnight effort and needs to be thoroughly analyzed by the dev team before implementation. We have identified that we need to iterate on the crit chance and bonus but it is gated by other changes to the crafting infrastructure. Likely, you will not see the change you are asking for in this thread during R28 because it is already here and there are plenty high priority items to work on during a release, but it will show up in R29... I am passionate about making the crafting system even better and hearing your feedback is really helping us along the way. Hold tight, feel free to ask questions, and we will get the crafting system to where it needs to be in the coming releases . All of you are the best backers ever!

 

On one hand, it's disappointing to hear that the past bonuses are more or less gone for good, (they were really good!) and/or that there are significant changes still to come, with so little time/few releases left until persistence.
On the other hand, it's good to see that it's being fixed, so there's that.

For me personally, GingerLoaf, crafting is a primary driver for why I play. I fully intend to get to the point where I can craft my own gear. However, there would appear to be a trend, in the past two releases, where "GM" (or 100 skill) is just the starting point of valuable proficiency in many skills. This is concerning to me, but mostly because I don't think the vast majority of players will be willing to put in the time to acquire the producer XP to be able to level up Smelting, Blacksmithing, Milling, Carpentry, Alchemy and possibly Tanning and Tailoring just to craft and socket their own "metal" armor and weapons. It's quite a broad range of skills that require very high levels to do reliably, given the very low success rates on many common recipes.

I guess what I'm saying is, if it's going to be a design goal that "Grand Master" really starts at 120 or 150, please tell us all this as soon as possible, so that we can make informed decisions regarding how much time we're willing to invest just to get to the "good stuff" (crit crafting) if that's going to be the so-called end game for crafting. I completely understand I can make my own gear at skill 1 to 119, but if the odds of reliably crit crafting are going to be less than 1% up to 120, then I won't bother pursuing that goal at all, and will instead spend my time more efficiently. I just want to be able to make an informed decision.

Last question I'll ask you, for today is: Is it currently a design goal that players will be able to create/craft Level 2 (Expert) crafting stations/benches on or before July 28, 2016? I want to know if I will be able to craft those myself (even if each one costs 20 obsidian chips) or if I will have to rely on the charity of my neighbors, and thusly choose a lot in a neighborhood with generous Expert crafting station owners. Knowing the intended goal would put some of my anxiety to rest, regarding R32 lot location selection.

Thanks very much for the interaction today, it's refreshing and most welcome.

 

I hope the crafting skill tree gets more tiers
The first iteration of crafting trees i read was : https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/magic-combat-and-crafting-skills.3937/
Probably quite different ideas now but i think still would be good to have 'weaponsmith' and 'armoursmith' as seperate skills in the blacksmithing tree.

What would be suitable affects for critical successes ?
atm you has to add one extra component. could simply add the normal stats you gets from that component.
For heavy armour could be so the result was half weight .

 

You are most welcome! I must emphasize once more how awesome it is to get this type of feedback during development of a game. Historically, games are developed in secret and are not shared or shown to the public during development... this can work but has significantly higher chances of steering off in the wrong direction because your target audience isn't there to help you understand what they value in a product... especially your own product. This feedback is such an important thing to us! I can't thank you and everyone else enough for providing it .

To answer your questions (and address a few things) Agra,

1. There will still be stat bonuses, they just need more variety and to be properly balanced. We do not want to throw the combat system into chaos because of a crafting bonus modifier (though that sounds like fun from the player's perspective).
2. I will be taking a heavy pass over the crafting math next release and will find the opportunity to revisit these difficulties. I've heard a lot about players struggling with having to be very high level to see success. One thing I will mention though, is that some recipes are harder than others, and your chances at success go up if you have a tool with a good bonus. If you are trying to craft the most difficult recipe and you are not at an expert station you may not get the chances you desire. There are a lot of variables in play here. In the coming releases I will be making efforts to show you more data that contributes to your total... such as table and tool bonuses. This will help clear things up on the players side.
3. I do think that grandmaster at 120 or 150 is our design. I will talk to design and see if I can get more information but I think that is by design. We are currently trying to disconnect the crit chance from the crafting level in order to allow you to reach it much faster than getting to skill level 120 or 150.
4. Players can not craft stations (including the expert ones). You can be considered lucky if you move in next to someone with the best stations in town, however our design is to have stations provided by the town as well. I am unsure of whether or not this is implemented so far but the idea is that there should be public crafting areas in towns and between the players with crafting stations and the town crafting areas there should be plenty of stations available.

Now,

(None of this is official... it's just detailing what I've been through with the crafting designs and may be prone to change based on higher priority items or other influences outside crafting)

In recent discussions I've had with our design team, we have concluded that there is some more re-balancing that needs to take place. Here is what I would like to tackle in R29 and up:

1) Break apart recipe skill calculations from the producer level - This does not make sense anymore. Crafting has changed a lot and I think it would suit us better if we watched the top level node in your skill tree for each crafting category (or another node if we make one or want to watch something else) and use that as the primary driver for success in each category. For example: if you have blacksmithing proficiency up to 50 then you should be moderately successful at blacksmithing recipes, however if you have a level 1 alchemy skill at the same time you will be a beginner alchemist and will not inherit any skill from the "over-arching" producer level.
2) Find global meaning behind a crafting crit - One of the reasons we haven't fully completed the crit bonuses yet is because we saw a flaw in the design we implemented. Crafting critical success means something when it happens on an equipable item, but it means nothing on consumables or potions or decorations. It seems a bit silly to allow you to attempt criticals on non-equipable items and never yield a result. We have discussed the possible bonuses for criticals and thought through things such as giving the player all the xp (without the diminishing returns applied) or weight/value modifications to the item. For certain items we have even discussed resulting quantity multipliers.... you might get back three potions instead of one, for instance.
3) Removing additional ingredient prompt on critical - This one is simple. If you crit and you don't have the doubled up materials you will be asked if you would like to add ingredients to create a powerful item. In the case that you do not have the proper materials you will never see the crit window. This is leading some people down the path of thinking that criticals do not happen. Opposed to the alternative of showing a dialog that basically says "congrats! you critted!... uhh... sorry... you dont get anything" to inform the player that they critted but dont have the right items in their bag... it would be better to just remove the additional ingredient requirement altogether and make crit chances a little less frequent to counter how accessible they will then be.
4) Rethink crit chance bonuses - For a few releases now I have wanted to add in a per recipe progression that denotes whether or not you are a master at any particular recipe. The thinking here is that, regardless of skill level in the category, if you've made a recipe 100 times you should be a master at making that particular weapon. This means we can reward you with higher chances to make something better than normal using things like critical chance. Aside from the recipe's own crit chance (based on this per recipe progression) we have things such as the tools used and the crafting table used. We've spent some time re-thinking our formula for criticals in the past releases and have been moving towards disconnecting outside dependencies on crit and allowing it to be controlled by things outside producer level and category level in order to give us more flexibility. This progression may also play a part in recipe teaching/learning but we haven't gotten there just yet .
5) Crafting skill trees - For a while now our skill trees have been somewhat naked. I have been discussing ways to specialize crafting in the skill trees by breaking it down into categories such as weapons or armor. We have even discussed having offense or defense. The skill tree modifications are just theorized at the moment and are prone to change as we fix the other issues here. The goal is to have more variety of skills that can create useful gameplay for crafter types.

If we stay the course and accomplish the above items, this will give us a lot more flexibility to create more granular specializations within the crafting skill trees. Once all this is done you will, hopefully, have a better sense of control over your critical chances, have a wide variety of skills to conquer in the skill tree, have an easier time becoming a master in a specific category, and have a better sense of being rewarded in general (being that there is a global application for all items if a crit happens instead of just equipment).

We are not planning to remove the bonus effect but those are going to be drastically changed in R29 to provide more variety and make crafting more fun .

Once again, this is all just me to you... this is what I want for the system as well as the design team. I am just trying to be as transparent as possible with our backers. We will do all that we can but sometimes it isn't as easy as it sounds. I seem to think that these changes are completely possible in the coming releases, but we will see what comes our way.

(once again, keep in mind that this information is not final and is prone to change when it goes through design iteration or technical implementation)

 

The skill trees are slated for additional tiers. I just now got back from the design team's room after discussing the possibilities. It will no longer be naked... let's just say that .

"What would be suitable affects for critical successes?" - That's a very good question. On one hand we want to give you super power-ups, but on the other... we don't want to break the game entirely (specifically the combat system). We have to find things to add that will not break other aspects of the game... this is actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. A current problem we are facing when coming to combat is that effects on armor/weapons will be added together and this is very difficult to balance. For example: if you craft a 1H sword and crit and get a +2 str bonus... then you do it again and get another 1H sword with +2 str bonus and equip both of them you will now have a +4 str bonus.... but if you craft a 2H sword you can only ever get up to a +2 str bonus instead of the +4 for dual wielded swords. Armor amplifies the problem being that there are many more involved parts. We have had a few discussions wrapped around this and how we can control the outcome in a more predictable way to make balancing combat easier for us internally.
"atm you has to add one extra component. could simply add the normal stats you gets from that component." - I think we will be removing the component addition for criticals... otherwise this is not a bad suggestion .
"For heavy armor could be so the result was half weight" - You hit it on the head! We have been discussing ways to add modifiers that don't directly effect combat as well and this was one of our own suggestions. Good work!

 

If you make it so crit chance increases the more you has done a specific item it will help making crafter's different that's good
Bit annoyed to hear can't craft crafting tables.
I hope we soon will be able to craft all the tools including improved versions of them.

 

I really like where you're taking us with these changes GingerLoaf!

The critical bonus for heavy armor that is half the weight reminds me of Kate from A Knight's Tale who made armor that was lighter but stronger, brilliant concept.

I really like the idea of mastering certain items, make 100 long swords and you're probably going to be wicked awesome at making long swords, maybe even develop a reputation for it.

Nice work!

 

If you don't mind me asking... what annoys you about not being able to craft tables?