Devil Scale demand and alternate recipe idea

[Grendyll]

As most veterans know, shroud crafting often depends on the elusive Large Devil Scales. Often 10 times more expensive on the auction house than the least valuable crafting ingredient, the Large Gnawed Bone, the Devil Scale is generally the bottleneck, gating mechanism that limits shroud crafting.

In a shroud group recently, the leader made the comment that he felt Devil Scales must surely drop less frequently than the other ingredients, but I truly believe that this is not the case.

If you study the recipes for shroud crafting, you quickly notice an imbalance in the demand for Devil Scales within the sub-component recipes.

Every shroud shard must be imbued with power by combining it with 3 items produced by sub-combines from the raw ingredients, a focus (earth, air, fire, water, positive, negative), an essence (material, ethereal), and a gem (dominion, escalation, opposition).

One half (50%) of focuses require devil scales, this is fairly balanced. However, EVERY ESSENCE AND EVERY GEM requires a devil scale to manufacture it.

This has several consequences :

No single shard shroud item requires less than 2 devil scales. They require either 2 or 3 devil scales (3 is the most that can be used of any single item for single shard) , never 0 or 1.

No double shard shroud item requires less than 4 devil scales. A double shard item requires either 4, 5 or 6 devil scales to make, never 0, 1, 2, or 3.

In fact, I created a break down of the demand for the items in the recipes and attempted to normalize them by the number of sub-combines for each type of component (each component type carrying equal weight relative to the others) :

Arrow : (6/6 focus, 2/2 essence, 0/3 gem) = 66.7 demand factor
Bone : (5/6 focus, 0/2 essence, 2/3 gem) = 49.9 demand factor
Chain : (3/6 focus, 1/2 essence, 3/3 gem) = 66.7 demand factor
Shrapnel : (4/6 focus, 1/2 essence, 2/3 gem) = 61.1 demand factor
Stone : (3/6 focus, 2/2 essence, 2/3 gem) = 72.2 demand factor
Scale : (3/6 focus, 2/2 essence, 3/3 gem) = 83.3 demand factor

This break down assumes that all recipes are equally valuable, which is actually a faulty assumption. However, it is a good starting point. I would qualitatively say that there is higher demand for material essence over ethereal essence (all hit point mods use material, all weapon damage mods use material), this would probably increase demand for shrapnel (used in material not ethereal) and decrease demand for chain (used in ethereal, not material) and would not affect any other ingredients which are either used in both (scale, arrow, stone) or not used at all (bone). I suspect that there is also a higher demand for positive focus than other focuses (used in dual shard radiance, mineral, and lightning) which would increase the demand of scale and stone further and depress the demand of chain and shrapnel further. The reason increased positive focus demand would not affect arrow and bone much is because they are used (almost) universally in all focuses, so focus preference has little affect on arrow/bone demand.

OK, so what is the point of all of this?

I would like to ask/beg the developers to consider adding alternative recipes for the essences that do not include devil scales, similar to the vale recipes that reduced the greenbriar twig demand in a similar fashion.

Something like :

Ehtereal Essence : Arrow, Chain, Bone, Stone, Energy Orb
Material Essence : Bone, Chain, Shrapnel, Stone, Energy Orb

These recipes are currently available to the best of my knowledge (they don't lead to any current valid combinations).

These two alternate recipes would do a lot to balance the demand for the various ingredients. Also an alternate recipe for positive focus might help to equalize demand as well. But I think just these two recipes would do it.

Other than potentially upsetting the economy which has become virtually based on devil scale barter (barter is a bad thing I think, but it would certainly upset folks who have a significant amount of their personal wealth tied up in devil scale inventory), I don't see any harm in this idea...

[sirdanile]

+ rep, I agree completely.

And while they're at it triple the drop rate of small shards!

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Since I don't believe the devs are stupid... I have to believe they deliberately broke the system when they created it to leave us with artificial shortages of some items.

If that was in fact accidental, the easiest solution would be to allow, as has been asked for several years, for an exchange mechanic similar to GH. That they haven't done it confirms for me this is another place where the devs were thinking grind=fun.

[Grendyll]

+ rep, I agree completely.

And while they're at it triple the drop rate of small shards!

I was thinking about this the other day as well, and got to wondering. I don't think I have ever received a small shard from the chest at the end of part 2. There are two shard dropping chests in part 3, and the part 4 and part 5 chests can drop supreme shards. But I don't think I have ever seen a small shard from part 2. Has this oversight given rise to the ridiculously low drop rate / high demand for small shards? If they dropped sometimes from part 2, it would certainly help, and fit with the drop pattern for other small ingredients.

[Grendyll]

Since I don't believe the devs are stupid... I have to believe they deliberately broke the system when they created it to leave us with artificial shortages of some items.

If that was in fact accidental, the easiest solution would be to allow, as has been asked for several years, for an exchange mechanic similar to GH. That they haven't done it confirms for me this is another place where the devs were thinking grind=fun.

That is also a solution I would love to see! I still hold out hope that it is an oversight on the developer's part rather than intentional. I guess I have not had all of the optimism crushed out of me yet, give it time...

[Propane]

At the very least I with they should do the 3 for 1 exchange (similar to GH)... that would go a long way....(while keeping us running the shroud....)

[Baahb3]

While I wouldn't mind a 3 or 5 for 1 trade on large ingrediants, I also don't mind the use of Devil Scales in more crafted materials than other ingrediants.

GS is already considered a mistake by many and overpowered by others so I don't see the need to make these goodies even easier to obtain.

You need to make choices in your crafting do I want that dual shard Min II or will I be happy with my tirple positive single shard weapon. Do I make my SP item normally or hold out for the Concordant Opposition item. These items are very powerful, they should take us a long time to gather the materials to make them. Afterall you don't hear people complaining about their shortage of small or medium devil scales, the usage rates are just fine on those when charging up a single shard.

[Grendyll]

At the very least I with they should do the 3 for 1 exchange (similar to GH)... that would go a long way....(while keeping us running the shroud....)

Yeah this would also be a good solution, and this exchange mechanic should limit the price differential among ingredients to where the most expensive would at most be 3x - 4x the price of the least expensive ingredient. Although I am not sure where exactly the prices would settle down (maybe the mean or the geometric mean of the current prices?)...

[Kaldais]

sell large devil scale in DDO Store. way to make extra buck.

[Grendyll]

While I wouldn't mind a 3 or 5 for 1 trade on large ingrediants, I also don't mind the use of Devil Scales in more crafted materials than other ingrediants.

GS is already considered a mistake by many and overpowered by others so I don't see the need to make these goodies even easier to obtain.

You need to make choices in your crafting do I want that dual shard Min II or will I be happy with my tirple positive single shard weapon. Do I make my SP item normally or hold out for the Concordant Opposition item. These items are very powerful, they should take us a long time to gather the materials to make them. Afterall you don't hear people complaining about their shortage of small or medium devil scales, the usage rates are just fine on those when charging up a single shard.

I am all for making choices in crafting. What I am arguing for is the limiting of exposure to the random number generator for ingredient pulls. Waiting on a single ingredient has a much broader probability distribution curve with a greater standard deviation, providing an unpleasant experience for a more significant portion of the population. I.E. You are likely to have bad luck pulling at least one type of item, for 1/6 of the population, that bad luck falls on the devil scale. These poor folks are probably very disappointed/frustrated with the game. It is bad to have 16.7% of your population disappointed/frustrated.

There are other mechanisms in the game with similar problems (where you are waiting on a very tiny percentage chance of an event to occur for your character), and they are some of the most universally disliked/frustrating parts of the game (Bloodstone farming, DT armor). However, I would argue that in those cases there are decent interim/alternate gear choices to make. However, the power of shroud crafted items has no other alternative, it is the single largest barrier to a character to do later game content.

You could argue for a greensteel nerf, but I think that ship has sailed. A nerf at this point would generate so much bad blood with the player base that it is not feasible. The time to nerf anything is right after it is introduced. If you wait for players to devote years of their lives and 1000s of hours of gaming to a gain a reward from a game mechanic and then nerf those rewards, you invalidate the time investment and people get upset (often to point of quitting because they begin to ask the question, "why spend all this time playing, when they so callously invalidate that time").

Yes, I know that you can answer, "you play because you enjoy the time spent playing". But sadly, that is often not the case. I enjoy playing. I really enjoyed the shroud raid the first few times I ran it. Now I don't enjoy it so much. But I also want to enjoy Amrath, Epic, and the Tower of Despair, and these quests are tuned with a certain gear level in mind, gear that can only be had (for the most part) by grinding the shroud 40 to 80 times on each character. In MMORPGs sometimes players sit down at the computer and acknowledge that they might not have as much fun as they would like during that play session, but they will grind out the in-game rewards necessary to have "fun" at a later time.

I think this is a sad reality of this game genre, and wherever possible it should be minimized or avoided (trust me devs, I'll still play, I'll just get to spend more time on more alts). And I think equalizing the demand for shroud ingredients will go a long way toward removing the grind from greensteel, and simply keeping the "fun".

[oweieie]

I'm sitting on about 15 devil scales. I could really use 2 or 3 power shards and another 2-4 supreme power shards.

[MalakRevan]

I agree wholeheartedly.

+1 to you.

[Missing_Minds]

Since I don't believe the devs are stupid... I have to believe they deliberately broke the system when they created it to leave us with artificial shortages of some items.

Actually, I believe more of the following.

They are using a "rand" generator that is default.

1. shrapnel
2. shrapnel
3. chain
4. chain
5. bone
6. bone
7. horn
8. stone
9. stone
10. scale
11. scale

now, just based on my dice, I will always roll 5 more 1s than 11s, and average about 5 and lower for the most part for 10 rolls.

This model tends to fit exactly what I end up getting as far as ingrediants.

aka, I believe that the table value placement of scales is on the high end, rather than the middle, as a standard "rand" function is not very kind.

[Aspenor]

Actually, I believe more of the following.

They are using a "rand" generator that is default.

1. shrapnel
2. shrapnel
3. chain
4. chain
5. bone
6. bone
7. horn
8. stone
9. stone
10. scale
11. scale

now, just based on my dice, I will always roll 5 more 1s than 11s, and average about 5 and lower for the most part for 10 rolls.

This model tends to fit exactly what I end up getting as far as ingrediants.

aka, I believe that the table value placement of scales is on the high end, rather than the middle, as a standard "rand" function is not very kind.
You forgot power shards and depleted cells (do those count as ingredients? blast my lack of observation) ;) But other than that, yeah I tend to agree with this post.

[sacredtheory]

I have nothing constructive to add other than I remember reading a post a long time ago about a conspiracy theory of sorts. The theory was that loot drops and stuff were set up upon character creation, where some characters would pull plenty of one thing, but nothing of a different thing, or something like that.

But I wonder if there's any truth to this, as my sorc has done exactly 23 Shroud runs, only pulled 2 large stones, but a crapload of large horns and large scales. My problem isn't scales, it's those darn stones.

[Irinis]

Yeah, it's usually scales but stones can bottleneck crafting as well. Concopp requires only 5 scales but 6 stones.

As for mediums, I'm sitting at 3-6x the mediums of EVERYTHING BUT scales, to the point where I could craft up to t2 on 5 items if not for the lack of medium scales.

Small scales don't seem to be nearly as much of a problem, but maybe that's just me.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

That is also a solution I would love to see! I still hold out hope that it is an oversight on the developer's part rather than intentional. I guess I have not had all of the optimism crushed out of me yet, give it time...

I'd love for you to be right and for changes to show up... but I wouldn't hold my breath

[Angelus_dead]

In a shroud group recently, the leader made the comment that he felt Devil Scales must surely drop less frequently than the other ingredients, but I truly believe that this is not the case.
Yes, people pointed out the real problem back when Shroud crafting was brand new: the consumption of ingredients is very unequal, with Scales and Stones being used much more than the others. This leads to Scales being the limiting factor for Greensteel items, and the value of the others eventually sinking to almost nothing.


That is also a solution I would love to see! I still hold out hope that it is an oversight on the developer's part rather than intentional.
We know for a fact that it was originally an oversight, as Turbine is on record in public saying that there is no inequality with shroud ingredients because the drop rate is the same for all of them.

What's unknown is whether they ever learned the truth since then, and if they had some reason to decide not to change it, such as reluctance to retroactively revaluate players' stockpiles, or being unwilling to admit a mistake.

However, if we take a look at other problems with Shroud items like that stupid "Collect 100 Infernal Pacts" quest, we get the impression that the reason is most likely to be obliviousness.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

However, if we take a look at other problems with Shroud items like that stupid "Collect 100 Infernal Pacts" quest, we get the impression that the reason is most likely to be obliviousness.

Correct.

Emphasis mine.

[Rice]

Devs don't play their own game at high levels the way the players do. That's a fact.

[Lorz]

So the shroud last night i ran i pulled 2 Lg DS....that didnt happen?

If you run it enough you get what you need....

It seems to me people dont want to put the effort in...they have never just been common but they shouldnt be....nor should a lot of stuff people seem to feel entitled too.

Tier 3 items should not be as common as Minos Ligons.

My 0.02 worth.

/Oh an a 100 runs on a raid....that is nothing.....if you think 20 is a lot...you really are new around here.

[Bobthesponge]

/not signed

this is just another Easy Button. so some ingrdients are hard to get? deal with it. it makes them rare and the items crafted from them special.