Crafting Changes in Update 10.1

[MadFloyd]

A patch is going live tomorrow that includes changes to crafting. Some of these changes are simply conveniences (recipes can now pull ingredients out of bags, device animations have been sped up, etc), but there are also a fair number of recipe changes.

The release notes will have more details about the patch, but here is an early look at the types of changes you're going to see in the crafting devices:

All of the regular Bane & Greater Bane recipes, as well as well as recipes for several of the other more powerful effects in game, have been updated. The changes involve swapping ingredients or adding in additional ones.

Some of the additional ingredients are new. One is called the 'Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragment' and can be obtained from the crafting vendor in exchange for various precious items and others are specific to certain regions of the game.
Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.

Named raid loot will not be used as one of the new ingredient types - it is not our intention to use named raid loot as a part of the cannith crafting so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players.

Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.

I will stress that constructive feedback is helpful; rage/quit/conspiracy theories are not. We get that many of you are very passionate about the game and we deeply appreciate that, but please continue to make sure your feedback is actionable and constructive. We're looking forward to a continued dialog with our players about crafting, and encourage you to check out the changes in the patch and share your feedback.

[Sillk]

Named raid loot will not be used as one of the new ingredient types - it is not our intention to use named raid loot as a part of the cannith crafting so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players.
I like the slayer arrow & soul gems idea over Raid Loot.

That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.But please remove Astral Diamonds and anything else from the Beta version of crafting that can be purchased with Turbine Points.

[Hobgoblin]

madfloyd:

question. you say no bound raid loot. are you going to require named items?

if so could you explain your reasoning behind that?

hob

[Memnir]

obtained from the crafting vendor in exchange for various precious items and others are specific to certain regions of the game.Examples, please?

[Jay203]

please, no favor reward stuff as materials
soul gems, yes
slayer arrows, yes
collectibles, yes
unique rare drops, bad idea
non-static quest reward, bad idea
favor-reward, bad idea

and please fix the problem with prepping throwing weapons

[stainer]

Detailed explanation of whats going on

Thanks!

[stainer]

Examples, please?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Purified_Eberron_Dragonshard_Fragment

[bradleyforrest]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Purified_Eberron_Dragonshard_Fragment

That's accurate as of last friday. We need to know if it changed. I certainly hope that it did.

[dkyle]

Please tell me that "precious items" does not include astral diamonds. Such bald-faced loot-buying does not belong in DDO.

Favor reward potions? Not a good idea. The favor rewards that provide potions (Yugo and Silver Flame) are among the most sought after already, and the most obviously tied to P2P content. If you want to incorporate favor, use rewards that are currently questionable (House J & D especially).

Slayer arrows, interesting and reasonable, but not looking forward to having to collect the dang things...

Soul Gems? Not terrible, but I'm not a fan. Games should reward fun and challenging activities, and farming soul gems is neither.

I'm hoping that unbound-but-still-ridiculous things like Spectral Gloves are gone, but I suppose that'll have to wait to see.

[Nyvn]

Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.

So crafters will have to grind for favor? And buy content packs they would otherwise ignore? Requiring bound favor rewards which require you to buy unpopular adventure packs to obtain them invites the conspiracy theorists.

[Scraap]

Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.

I will stress that constructive feedback is helpful; rage/quit/conspiracy theories are not. We get that many of you are very passionate about the game and we deeply appreciate that, but please continue to make sure your feedback is actionable and constructive. We're looking forward to a continued dialog with our players about crafting, and encourage you to check out the changes in the patch and share your feedback.

/read by a crafter :p

In the interests of maximum constructiveness, can you clarify whether the intent is for an up and coming player to craft for themselves, or if you'd rather we approach this from the perspective of semi-retired toons helping out newer players, or, if it's to be something in the middle, what weight to give to one end or the other of the spectrum? It does rather make quite a bit of difference in terms of what notions not to bother bringing up.

[Auran82]

I hope silver flame pots are not still in the recipies.

I can see the intentions, but remember:

- Bound to character (annoying if you are using a low level alt for your crafter)
- To get these you need something like 4 packs (not sure if you can get the required favor with less)

I like the idea of slayer arrows being used as well as soul gems is good, any kind of named item is a bad idea though due to the number you have to do in order to level.

[MadFloyd]

madfloyd:

question. you say no bound raid loot. are you going to require named items?

if so could you explain your reasoning behind that?

hob


There will be no named equippable items used as ingredients.

[kernal42]

please, no favor reward stuff as materials

This.

You have been good so far about separating build from crafting ability in every way, which is an excellent design decision.

Unfortunately, requiring BTC favor rewards for crafting breaks this, and is a poor choice.

Please Either:
A) Do not require BTC favor rewards to craft BTA (or unbound) shards
B) Change said BTC favor rewards to be BTA

Cheers,
Kernal

[BOgre]

...
One is called the 'Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragment'
...
That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting...continued dialog with our players about crafting, and encourage you to check out the changes in the patch and share your feedback.

going ahead with the purified shard, eh? yuck. pay-to-win. not a fan.

as to feedback, well, release notes please.

[Trillea]

this.

You Have Been Good So Far About Separating Build From Crafting Ability In Every Way, Which Is An Excellent Design Decision.

Unfortunately, Requiring Btc Favor Rewards For Crafting Breaks This, And Is A Poor Choice.

Please Either:
A) Do Not Require Btc Favor Rewards To Craft Bta (or Unbound) Shards
B) Change Said Btc Favor Rewards To Be Bta

Cheers,
Kernal

/qft

[kernal42]

going ahead with the purified shard, eh? yuck. pay-to-win. not a fan.

as to feedback, well, release notes please.

It's really not pay-to-win. You can create them in ample quantities from cheap & available +1 tomes; astral diamonds are not required.

You can save plat with TP, but that's no different from the mnemonic pots already in place.

-Kernal

[bradleyforrest]

There is some good news and some bad news in this update. I'm happy to see that all of the named raid drops have been removed from the recipes. I'm also happy that there's a reason to pick up arrows (what about crossbow bolts?) and Soul Gems now.

I'm unhappy that we are going to need to use those purified dragonshards. I suppose it makes sense for some of the high level effects, but the avenues available to gain them (as of friday) are too narrow. Not everyone plays epics. Spending TP on them is out of line because it gives an advantage to those with the most disposable income. That leaves only tomes as the final alternative, and those aren't all that common, either.

If you're going to insist on using the PDs, then take a look at the quantities that are needed for the recipes. 16 for a single shard is a bit much.

Another thought: What happens if you fail to create a shard with these special ingredients? Currently, you lose 50% of the ingredients to a failure. Will this be the case for the costly ingredients? I certainly hope not.

I'm also saddened that you're keeping in the favor reward ingredients. I assume this means the Silver Flame Healing Potion. The major issue with this is that in order to get the favor required to buy these, you must either be VIP or own 5 adventure packs. That is a problem for some people.

All in all, this looks like a step in the right direction, but there are some stumbling blocks that you're hitting. There are other better options available to make recipes harder to craft beyond PDs and favor rewards.

[MadFloyd]

/read by a crafter :p

In the interests of maximum constructiveness, can you clarify whether the intent is for an up and coming player to craft for themselves, or if you'd rather we approach this from the perspective of semi-retired toons helping out newer players, or, if it's to be something in the middle, what weight to give to one end or the other of the spectrum? It does rather make quite a bit of difference in terms of what notions not to bother bringing up.

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

[BOgre]

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

Doesn't soul gems, favor rewards, BtC vs BtA contradict/preempt this?

[MadFloyd]

This.

You have been good so far about separating build from crafting ability in every way, which is an excellent design decision.

Unfortunately, requiring BTC favor rewards for crafting breaks this, and is a poor choice.

Please Either:
A) Do not require BTC favor rewards to craft BTA (or unbound) shards
B) Change said BTC favor rewards to be BTA

Cheers,
Kernal

Excellent feedback, thanks, Kernal. I believe we have made steps toward this (and are with you in concept). I know that we have changed several rare ingredients to be BTA (formerly BTC) for this reason, but I would have to double check if the favor ingredients are BTA.

[kernal42]

Doesn't soul gems, favor rewards, BtC vs BtA contradict/preempt this?

Soul gems are unbound, so that is a fine ingredient to require.

I cannot however think of any items from favor reward vendors that are not BtC.

Cheers,
Kernal

[MadFloyd]

That's accurate as of last friday. We need to know if it changed. I certainly hope that it did.

It's incomplete. They can also be obtained via small/med/large Eberron Dragonshard Fragments.

That said, the amount required in recipes has drastically changed and in some cases (Bane recipes for example) gone away entirely.

[stille_nacht]

i am strongly against any ddo store item being used in crafting, as i am against almost all p2win things.

i am especially against the inclusion of materials like silver flame potions in crafting recipes. The silver flame potion in particular requires all 5 p2p packs run mostly on elite. this is not a fair cost in my opinion :/

[merentha]

This.

You have been good so far about separating build from crafting ability in every way, which is an excellent design decision.

Unfortunately, requiring BTC favor rewards for crafting breaks this, and is a poor choice.

Please Either:
A) Do not require BTC favor rewards to craft BTA (or unbound) shards
B) Change said BTC favor rewards to be BTA

Cheers,
Kernal

BTA Silver Flame/Yugo pots? I doubt they'll take that plunge, but if they try it for a week I'll flood my alt's banks before they retro it. (Actually, I won't..too lazy, but at least a few hundred players will and never post about it). Well I may grind out my remaining Silver Flame on my ranger, then fill up a few bank tabs on alts before I TR...

Maybe what we will find are things such as the: Tears of Dhakan..instead of turning them in for 10pp a pop..you use them in crafting. Maybe the uncut gems from Maraud the Mines. The Seals from the Undead side of sands. Maybe that bow on the floor in the shroud will quit dropping on exit and we can turn it in for some rare ingredients (they could flag it as an item that cannot be equipped for just that purpose...race required = Eladrin or some such).

Anyhow, I'll go back to read only mode now.

[Scraap]

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

That being the case, I'd probably have to say...

A soul gem for greaters may not be onerous, 3 for unbound greaters when the time comes may keep things somewhat limited, though keep in mind, this is a limitation based on some player somewhere playing one specific class, so requiring them for just normal banes would seem a bit much.

Max favor rewards from pots does not really help a player ramping up. Not unless they've got a 20 parked on top of all the pack requirements, so perhaps something more palatable would be based on the 150 rewards (say, changing the house p/j rewards to actually give buff-pots for us there rather than the current spell-casting, and using those.).

+1 tomes, epic dungeon tokens, or astral diamonds is... well, it's all over the place, really. Taking first-tier rewards from lowbies, requiring maxed toons, or flat out cash... that one is... problematic at present.

[jjflanigan]

It would be super if they could leverage the code that restricts using gear if you don't have the favor / requirement to potions. Then you could make the potions all BtA and allow anyone to use them for crafting as long as one character got the favor, but still restrict people from just using the top end potions on every character until they got the required favor.

[bradleyforrest]

It's incomplete. They can also be obtained via small/med/large Eberron Dragonshard Fragments.

That said, the amount required in recipes has drastically changed and in some cases (Bane recipes for example) gone away entirely.

That's very good to hear. Eberron shards are a great example of the better options I was mentioning. It's also great to hear that the PD cost has been reduced or eliminated.

I'm starting to feel more positive about this update, but I'll reserve full judgment until tomorrow when the patch is complete.

[MaxwellEdison]

Making favor reward potions/items BtA instead of BtC might make them slightly more suitable for crafting, but it could have farther reaching ramifications of Yugo/SF Pots in the hands of lowbies (TR bank is bad enough, IYAM)?

[slimkj]

All of the regular Bane & Greater Bane recipes, as well as well as recipes for several of the other more powerful effects in game, have been updated. The changes involve swapping ingredients or adding in additional ones.
Some of the additional ingredients are new. One is called the 'Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragment' and can be obtained from the crafting vendor in exchange for various precious items and others are specific to certain regions of the game.
Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.

No big drama, but that's probably the end of my crafting career, I think. I play a lot, have deconned pretty much everything since crafting went live and have done a few determined shard making & breaking sessions to lvl. I'm now 54/52/52 so I can make the fairly useful mid-range stuff.

Adding another layer of grind/store purchase on top of what is already there makes it far too much of an extra effort for my tastes. Pushing on to 70 odd was already looking like a steep climb given how repetitive crafting is. Now, I figure I'll just stick with being able to make mediocre stuff. The time input to reward return seems way too low for those higher levels for me to bother. I'll be questing instead.

This is assuming I'm reading the above right and SF favour, etc. is still in.

[bradleyforrest]

It would be super if they could leverage the code that restricts using gear if you don't have the favor / requirement to potions. Then you could make the potions all BtA and allow anyone to use them for crafting as long as one character got the favor, but still restrict people from just using the top end potions on every character until they got the required favor.

That would be a good way of restricting the usage of them, but it would also break potions that are being used by TRs. Currently, if you get Yugo/SF favor, you can buy a ton of the potions and then TR. You then have your potions available to you for your next life. I don't know if I like the idea of that option going away or not.

[Valindria]

I guess I will wait and see, but my but feeling is I am probably done crafting. I'm not trying to threaten or anything, I am just saying that for my limited play time it will not be worth it when I could just vendor trash everything and try to find something good enough on the AH.

As others have said, there seems to be some issues:

- If this is Beta, then you should not be selling items. I don't want ADs to be more or less required for crafting.
- Adding favor rewards I guess makes some sense, but it's still the issue, your main crafter just has to get over the hump. I don't see value in it.
- What precious items? I guess that's the problem I also so. For a semi casual player I don't have precious items to spare. I liked the idea of crafting as something I could work on and get decent gear soon with good-really good gear later on.
- Are soul gems only available from Trap The Soul AKA a Arcane only spell or on epic/green steel weapons? I see this as an issue as well. Do they still drop on the ground as others have said "loot stealing" (which I guess helps me as I have tts weapons).


Honestly I would rather the crafting cap be 75 and have it back the way it was.

[Dawnsfire]

The Devs seem to be in a hurry to get these changes into the game since they don't seem to be giving us time to preview them. I do not feel I can really give much of an informed opinion because I can not see exactly what changes will be made. I guess I will have to comment based on what was posted to Lam.

1) Tomes: I really do not like the use of +3 Tomes in crafting. Since they are mostly bound it forces people to craft on the character that pulls it and I for one would not want to level crafting on all my characters.

2) Favor potions: I personally will not grind for Silver Flame favor simply to make things in crafting. I hate the Necro series (1-3 anyways). If that prevents me from crafting the cool stuff, I'll just quit crafting.

3) The Store: I will not buy anything from the store to craft with. I think it will be horrible if that turns out to be the only practical way (again no preview so I can not be sure) to craft the better crafted recipes.

Again, since there is no preview this time with the changes I guess I will have to wait and see.

As an aside, I would like to thank Madfloyd for removing the raid loot from the recipes. That is definitely a huge step in the right direction :)

[Jahmin]

Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.


We will NOT require bound named items as ingredients.
"MudFloyd"

Currently you get the benefit of the doubt, but I guess we will find out tomorrow whether you are ‘Mud’ or not… Currently Favour Pots ARE Bound Named Items.

[stoopid_cowboy]

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

With that said, what would be the possibilty of crafting levels per ACCOUNT. Not crafting levels per character.
After all, I am the one pushing the buttons, shouldn't my experience be the same on all my characters?
That would make some of the favor rewards less painful to accomplish.

just an idea

yuda :D

[gloopygloop]

I'm very pleased that the extraordinary costs associated with creating Greater Banes/Holy Burst are being reduced (and parts of those costs eliminated). Those shards are still going to be significantly more expensive tomorrow compared to today, if I understand the update correctly, however.

Is there any chance that we could see the ML adjustment for both Holy and Greater Bane changed to match their lootgen counterparts since their cost to create is going to increase?

Lootgen Holy Burst adds "plus" 3 for an ML increase of 6.
Lootgen Greater Banes add "plus" 3 for an ML increase of 6.

Crafted Holy Burst adds "plus" 4 for an ML increase of 8.
Crafted Greater Banes add "plus" 4 for an ML increase of 8.

If we could even get an official word on whether this is "WAI", that would be nice too.

[bradleyforrest]

With that said, what would be the possibilty of crafting levels per ACCOUNT. Not crafting levels per character.
After all, I am the one pushing the buttons, shouldn't my experience be the same on all my characters?
That would make some of the favor rewards less painful to accomplish.

just an idea

yuda :D

Now that's an interesting option. It never even occurred to me, but it would obviate the issue of BTC ingredients. Also, it would make deconstructing items less time consuming. I wouldn't be transferring a boatload of loot through my shared bank just so that I can get the deconstruction XP on the correct character.

[maddmatt70]

I actually would not close the door on named loot. I think it would be interesting to allow properties that are not currently in game which can not be gotten from any other source to be crafted with named loot.
Here is how I would do crafting:

1. Players could eventually craft items at about 90% of the power of end game rare items with slightly more resources then they use to craft now. i.e. make it a little bit more costly and more time intensive.

2. Players can make items with properties not currently in the game using rare items including named loot in the recipes. The properties would not necessarily be any better then anything in the game, but they would be different and potentially better.

I actually played the first 6 months of this game and I remember alot of people enjoyed the old collectibles. Collectibles are something a segment of the population can enjoy and that is what rare and named loot would be about in this case - collecting something for crafting. Making crafting provide interesting and new things would keep the interest in crafting even after the excitement wears off which it will.

[MadFloyd]

The Devs seem to be in a hurry to get these changes into the game since they don't seem to be giving us time to preview them. I do not feel I can really give much of an informed opinion because I can not see exactly what changes will be made. I guess I will have to comment based on what was posted to Lam.

1) Tomes: I really do not like the use of +3 Tomes in crafting. Since they are mostly bound it forces people to craft on the character that pulls it and I for one would not want to level crafting on all my characters.

2) Favor potions: I personally will not grind for Silver Flame favor simply to make things in crafting. I hate the Necro series (1-3 anyways). If that prevents me from crafting the cool stuff, I'll just quit crafting.

3) The Store: I will not buy anything from the store to craft with. I think it will be horrible if that turns out to be the only practical way (again no preview so I can not be sure) to craft the better crafted recipes.

Again, since there is no preview this time with the changes I guess I will have to wait and see.

As an aside, I would like to thank Madfloyd for removing the raid loot from the recipes. That is definitely a huge step in the right direction :)

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

[Scraap]

With that said, what would be the possibilty of crafting levels per ACCOUNT. Not crafting levels per character.
After all, I am the one pushing the buttons, shouldn't my experience be the same on all my characters?
That would make some of the favor rewards less painful to accomplish.

just an idea

yuda :D

I love that idea, but I'm biased. I keep spending all my real world disposable cash on packs (Ok, and a big bag, I'll admit it.), instead of saving up for the shared bank. Whether they want to keep that particular incentive or not... is not something I should comment on, most likely.

[kernal42]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Your paraphrasing is clearer than the posts expressing this sentiment. This is phrased precisely correctly.

It shouldn't make a difference if your crafting toon is:
Your only character
Your 15x TR'd completionist+ project
Your level 1 bank toon
etc.

Cheers,
Kernal

Edit: Also, it's great to see this sort of communication, and even greater than it seems to have positive effects!

[GotSomeQuestions]

I'd like to thank MadFloyd for his excellent responsiveness in this thread. It's really great to see 4-5 replies in the first 2 pages, and makes me feel much more confident about the ultimate success of crafting.

That said, I do worry about tying favor rewards to crafting, as was mentioned earlier. People are essentially "locked in" to one Crafter on their account already, and they made that choice without knowing (or being able to know) that crafting would require a high level, powerful character. Yugoloth Potions in particular, while only requiring a single pack, require a handful of hard/elite completions on basically the toughest non-epic quests in the game (harder than many epics, even). Not every crafting character is going to be in a position to complete those quests and obtain those potions.

I'm safe because I'm crafting on my main character, but others shouldn't have to suffer because they started crafting on their Haggle Bard or the like.

edit: sweet, another reply by MadFloyd as I was typing this, to acknowledge this precise issue. Thanks!

[Quikster]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Im in favor of making high level weapons more expensive. Im not opposed to favor running to get that.

The best argument against this that i have heard so far is having a lowbie mule or something as your crafted alt. I can understand not wanting to level someone just to be able to craft certain recipes. I think making some of those favor rewards bta might make it more palatable.

I personally dont mind lowbies running around with sf pots or yugo pots. Or they can have a min level put on them. Say lvl 16 or so.

I also like the suggestion of somehow incorporating other patrons into the mix. Possibly add a house J pot selection. 10 min deathward, protection from evil, 5 minute freedom of movement. Something along those lines would be cool.

[Missing_Minds]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Very objectionable. I would love to release hoblit rage (been playing lotro) and let you know what I think of such, but instead I think perhaps it is better to state that having such required, is very anti-fun.

Players require fun to stick around.

[Jay203]

just for laughs, using ring of feathers for ingredients is fine by me :D

btw, what's the status on throwing weapon crafting? seems like the problem people are having with prepping throwing weapons without prefix and/or suffix is ignored somewhat?

[Burtle]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff294/virualt/thumbnailaspx.jpg "By George I think he's got it!!!" :D

[MadFloyd]

Very objectionable. I would love to release hoblit rage (been playing lotro) and let you know what I think of such, but instead I think perhaps it is better to state that having such required, is very anti-fun.

Players require fun to stick around.

I do very much appreciate the restraint. :-)

[badbob117]

Really not to happy you guys are going ahead with the silver flame pots for crafting. You have effectively killed it for me by doing this.

Do you fail to realize we lose our favor on our main characters when we reincarnate? I already had this favor. I have reincarnated my main crafter and kept progressing. This was the only sane way for me to level in crafting. My Character is not rich like those vet crafters who levelled in a few weeks. I would level my toon while levelling in crafting. In two lifetimes i am only at 58,57,41. This is all from loot and essences i have acquired well doing missions. I think realistically it will take me two more lifetimes to be at around 80-100, max level.

Not all of us have one character we want to permanently make our main crafter and keep them there. This effectively turns one toon into a crafter mule. Never ever to be reincarnated or levelled again.

I will not run all the silver flame missions again on elite on my main until i am done with reincarnating several times. I will not journey further into crafting with these limitations put onto me. It is to grindy to do. Crafting was the ultimate grind on live as is. Why you guys felt it needed more is beyond a lot of us. You basically just killed crafting for any p2p players and a lot of vip's who reincarnate on their main crafter.

Leave the favor rewards out of crafting Madfloyd. It is not right man!

[MadFloyd]

just for laughs, using ring of feathers for ingredients is fine by me :D

btw, what's the status on throwing weapon crafting? seems like the problem people are having with prepping throwing weapons without prefix and/or suffix is ignored somewhat?

I don't have an answer on this, but I'm forwarding this to our QA lead who hopefully does.

[cdbd3rd]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

^^^^^^^
http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/tt291/cdbd3rd/cdemotes/yep.gif



I need one that points up... (no pun intended.) :o

[BlargneyTheSecond]

Thank you for the information, MadFloyd. :)


I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.
If the problem is players not crafting their own gear, then wouldn't the solution be to make it so they can't craft for each other? Are unbound shards categorically required to be in the game?
-blarg

[Menion4702]

With that said, what would be the possibilty of crafting levels per ACCOUNT. Not crafting levels per character.
After all, I am the one pushing the buttons, shouldn't my experience be the same on all my characters?
That would make some of the favor rewards less painful to accomplish.

just an idea

yuda :D

This sounds like a good idea, especially if deconstructing items will still give some plat return along with the essences. As inconvenient as it is to move plat from one toon to another on the same account. Making it more convenient for people to deconstruct items on any toon while still advancing their total crafting xp might encourage more people to start crafting.

[Morosy]

Really not to happy you guys are going ahead with the silver flame pots for crafting. You have effectively killed it for me by doing this.

Do you fail to realize we lose our favor on our main characters when we reincarnate? I already had this favor. I have reincarnated my main crafter and kept progressing. This was the only sane way for me to level in crafting. My Character is not rich like those vet crafters who levelled in a few weeks. I would level my toon while levelling in crafting. In two lifetimes i am only at 58,57,41. This is all from loot and essences i have acquired well doing missions. I think realistically it will take me two more lifetimes to be at around 80-100, max level.

Not all of us have one character we want to permanently make our main crafter and keep them there. This effectively turns one toon into a crafter mule. Never ever to be reincarnated or levelled again.

I will not run all the silver flame missions again on elite on my main until i am done with reincarnating several times. I will not journey further into crafting with these limitations put onto me. It is to grindy to do. Crafting was the ultimate grind on live as is. Why you guys felt it needed more is beyond a lot of us. You basically just killed crafting for any p2p players and a lot of vip's who reincarnate on their main crafter.

Leave the favor rewards out of crating Madfloyd. It is not right man!

So you are going to be restricted to just using Holy instead of Holy Burst, and therefore all of crafting is dead for you. I see...

[Dawnsfire]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Thank you for the reply. I am looking forward to seeing and commenting further on the results when the patch rolls out :cool:

[MadFloyd]

Thank you for the information, MadFloyd. :)


If the problem is players not crafting their own gear, then wouldn't the solution be to make it so they can't craft for each other? Are unbound shards categorically required to be in the game?
-blarg

Let me clarify. I meant that I don't think crafters have to be dependant upon the goodwill of others in order to craft. I see nothing wrong with them choosing to purchase ingredients on the auction house.

I also don't feel it's wrong to allow crafters to sell their wares. That said, this is the primary area that we were concerned about; we don't want to see the market flooded with crafted items to the extent that it's the primary method to obtain these items. To that end, the cost to create a powerful unbound shard is not cheap and not every recipe has an unbound counterpart.

[spear67]

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

If that's the case, can we get some way to increase the essences we get? Anyone not supported by a large guild, or who has to actually hold down a job in the real world, crafting gets very painful to level around 50, mainly due to the large requirements for essences, and the small supply we can get. With 150? 200? levels planned, this is way too early for alot of people to get shut out of the crafting game.


I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.


Might also add to this, ingredients that are BTA/C that can only be obtained in paid areas. Go ahead and make them *easier* to get in a paid area, but never keep them exclusive.

[jjflanigan]

That would be a good way of restricting the usage of them, but it would also break potions that are being used by TRs. Currently, if you get Yugo/SF favor, you can buy a ton of the potions and then TR. You then have your potions available to you for your next life. I don't know if I like the idea of that option going away or not.

Hadn't thought about that scenario, whoops. I never bother with favor when I TR so I didn't even think about how good an idea that would be.

[MadFloyd]

If that's the case, can we get some way to increase the essences we get? Anyone not supported by a large guild, or who has to actually hold down a job in the real world, crafting gets very painful to level around 50, mainly due to the large requirements for essences, and the small supply we can get. With 150? 200? levels planned, this is way too early for alot of people to get shut out of the crafting game.




Might also add to this, ingredients that are BTA/C that can only be obtained in paid areas. Go ahead and make them *easier* to get in a paid area, but never keep them exclusive.

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

Your second point is noted as well, thanks.

[Memnir]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.
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http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn12/EnPsyane/conneryapproves.gif
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[Bodic]

All I am going to say is if you equal 1 epic dungeon token to 1 of these framents and 16 fragments to a +3 tome.

I want to see the +3 tome for the 16 epic dungeon tokens also. As it is just crazy silly to equate them in such a fashion as +3 tomes are extremely rare BTC raid loot. I would even like to see the +4 tomes for 32 tokens since that is the path you took. An astral diamond exchange for tokens aswell in a 1:1 ratio.

Requiring favor thus having quests packs to craft does not help the F2P it is a boon the VIP, but still requires a larger grind for little to no gain.

In my oinion a lvl1 player character should be able to craft everything in the game. I am using a 20, but if I TR then I want to craft somthing that requires Fvaor I cant do it at lvl1 I have to wait until lvl20.

[jejeba86]

A patch is going live tomorrow that includes changes to crafting. Some of these changes are simply conveniences (recipes can now pull ingredients out of bags, device animations have been sped up, etc), but there are also a fair number of recipe changes.

The release notes will have more details about the patch, but here is an early look at the types of changes you're going to see in the crafting devices:

All of the regular Bane & Greater Bane recipes, as well as well as recipes for several of the other more powerful effects in game, have been updated. The changes involve swapping ingredients or adding in additional ones.

Some of the additional ingredients are new. One is called the 'Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragment' and can be obtained from the crafting vendor in exchange for various precious items and others are specific to certain regions of the game.
Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.

Named raid loot will not be used as one of the new ingredient types - it is not our intention to use named raid loot as a part of the cannith crafting so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players.

Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.

I will stress that constructive feedback is helpful; rage/quit/conspiracy theories are not. We get that many of you are very passionate about the game and we deeply appreciate that, but please continue to make sure your feedback is actionable and constructive. We're looking forward to a continued dialog with our players about crafting, and encourage you to check out the changes in the patch and share your feedback.
Well, Mad. AS you said later, require a player to complete almost 5 packs on elite, considering specially that non vip toons would have to spend real cash on unwanted packs is a bad idea. Yugoloth? Well, not so much as the silver flame but still debatable.
Soul gems, I agree with my colleague. I don't have any caster, so I should make myself a tier 3 GS item for that. That's also a bad idea. I could buy on the auction house, but the prices will surely get astronomically high.
Why don't you try that idea, of making powerful items more difficult to make, instead of shards, so we can keep leveling without having to worry with so hard to get recipes. A + 1 holy silver of GEOB its nowhere near a + 5, so that would level things. Aim on the shards of potential.
Also, balancing the game over the hardcore players easiness on doing something is like balancing education to match the gifteds easiness. Another bad idea.

[Iwinbyrollup]

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

Your second point is noted as well, thanks.

In terms of making crafting more accessible for everyone, have you considered making low level shards for full weapons that lock out further customization? For an example, make a shard that when used on a blank craftable weapon, applies +1 Ghost Touch of Pure Good, call it a "Delera's Special" shard or something, and with pieces that can't be overwritten so you can't really make it +2 or apply Metalline or anything like that. Can't be used for uber-twinking since the parts aren't separate, but makes it so a new crafter/new player could make a handy weapon for special situations and feel much better about themselves and the game in the process.

[Bronko]

A patch is going live tomorrow that includes changes to crafting...

Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.


Best explanation I've heard in ages MadFloyd. I don't hand out rep a lot, especially to a Dev, but I now have a clear understanding of the Turbine Team's vision for what crafting will be in the long term for DDO:EU. That's all that a lot of us really wanted.

That, and more Hams. Why has the Ham drop rate been nerfed? More Hams please. ;)

[slimkj]

The best argument against this that i have heard so far is having a lowbie mule or something as your crafted alt.
Yep, that's my situation - rolled someone specifically for this, kitted them out with a Gargantutastic Bag-o-rama and lvled them in crafting only. Anything BTC or related to running content on that char kinda ruins the benefit of shards becoming BTA.

[emptysands]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Personally I don't see a problem with this - crafting is just a grind like many other parts of DDO. Although there has been a trend to BtA, there is still a lot that of stuff that is BtC.

As long as the crafted shards continue to stay BtA, focus people to plan ahead for a "crafting" toon is not a bad thing. In fact it will provide a brake to the balance.

If people need to grind 4 adventure packs in order to craft probably one of the best weapons in the game - so be it. The always have the option to grind one adventure pack instead - vale (GS) or von (SOS) or dq (CB/MC) or etc - in order to get something equal.

However, a more fully valued crafting system wont be restricted. Maybe grinding Necro 1-4 provides you one path, with various rewards/unlocks along the way. Once it is done, it only needs to be done if you TR again - however it's easy to stock pile. To balance there may be another tradable option - 2-3 LDS, crafting marks from the plaza or those new urns/etc could be combined some how as replacements.

I also like the option of requiring the player and not the crafter, when crafting the shards to the final item to be required to add some collectible into the recipe for the higher level shards. Practically no difference in the current scheme, but might provide some options to control the game balance if tweaked.

[JollySwagMan]

Just curious, were regular gems (such as Diamonds, Sapphires, Topaz etc.) ever considered as a crafting ingredient? As it is they just get sold to vendors - none of my characters have ever needed the Medium Gem bag sold in House P/J, let alone those sold in the DDO Store. I know that some (many) players would resent keeping track of yet more random small items, but perhaps they could be included in some way that maintains both flavour and balance.

Eg perhaps combining some Rubies with some Greater Fire essences could make a Fire Elemental Soul Gem. That's probably not very balanced (Rubies can be farmed from that quest in the Sands right?), but perhaps using another gem type?

[Dandonk]

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

Your second point is noted as well, thanks.

First off: I appreciate your listening to us here, MadFloyd, I like what I'm reading.

As to the crafting cost: I've been throwing all my loot into shared bank and decon'ed it since crafting came on. I'm now in the high 50s, and things are really slowing down. So yes, if you don't want a lot people to plateau out in crafting at 50-70 I believe it would be a good idea to look at xp/ingredient gain.

One thing I really despise about crafting is the need to decon on one character, making frequent character swaps necessary. Especially with the mem leak or whatever it is that slows down the game after a few relogs. I really would like some way to decon on the character I'm on and not miss out on the xp.

EDIT: Another thing I would rather do without is non-stacking ingredients for crafting. Too many non-stacking/non-baggable items for crafting would mean you'd more or less -have- to have a dedicated craft-mule that is not used for gaming. Now, I'm not sure if your plans even run to this effect so I may just be panicking without cause, but just a thought.

[MadFloyd]

In terms of making crafting more accessible for everyone, have you considered making low level shards for full weapons that lock out further customization? For an example, make a shard that when used on a blank craftable weapon, applies +1 Ghost Touch of Pure Good, call it a "Delera's Special" shard or something, and with pieces that can't be overwritten so you can't really make it +2 or apply Metalline or anything like that. Can't be used for uber-twinking since the parts aren't separate, but makes it so a new crafter/new player could make a handy weapon for special situations and feel much better about themselves and the game in the process.

No, we hadn't considered this. Interesting concept though.

[MadFloyd]

First off: I appreciate your listening to us here, MadFloyd, I like what I'm reading.

As to the crafting cost: I've been throwing all my loot into shared bank and decon'ed it since crafting came on. I'm now in the high 50s, and things are really slowing down. So yes, if you don't want a lot people to plateau out in crafting at 50-70 I believe it would be a good idea to look at xp/ingredient gain.

One thing I really despise about crafting is the need to decon on one character, making frequent character swaps necessary. Especially with the mem leak or whatever it is that slows down the game after a few relogs. I really would like some way to decon on the character I'm on and not miss out on the xp.

Hmm. That last point is interesting and definitely something to noodle on. I hadn't considered this.

Thank you, Dandonk.

[Seikojin]

First off: I appreciate your listening to us here, MadFloyd, I like what I'm reading.

As to the crafting cost: I've been throwing all my loot into shared bank and decon'ed it since crafting came on. I'm now in the high 50s, and things are really slowing down. So yes, if you don't want a lot people to plateau out in crafting at 50-70 I believe it would be a good idea to look at xp/ingredient gain.

One thing I really despise about crafting is the need to decon on one character, making frequent character swaps necessary. Especially with the mem leak or whatever it is that slows down the game after a few relogs. I really would like some way to decon on the character I'm on and not miss out on the xp.

EDIT: Another thing I would rather do without is non-stacking ingredients for crafting. Too many non-stacking/non-baggable items for crafting would mean you'd more or less -have- to have a dedicated craft-mule that is not used for gaming. Now, I'm not sure if your plans even run to this effect so I may just be panicking without cause, but just a thought.

For deconning, I bought a shared bank. You can dump lessers or greaters into is and then it becomes a resource pool.

Oh, for game speed, have you used the lotro defrag tool on your ddo dat files? It has helped for me, and I wasnt noticing the long load times from swaps.

To Madfloyd: I think speeding up the transmute rate is all that is really needed to speed up crafting. People deconned because they wanted more essences per second. Now with a speedy transmute, they can just hoard greaters and spam their lessers to need. Oh and fixing the loot tables, but that is a different issue entirely.

[slimkj]

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.
I would agree that the essence costs scale up dramatically around L50. I progressed pretty quickly to 40ish but then the regular supply of loot from lots of raiding and questing became not enough and it slowed levelling down to a trickle from around the late 40s.

It depends what you are prepared to accept as a reasonable timeframe to meet the levels required for crafting high end, good quality gear. I would consider myself far from casual and as I say, without investing significant amounts of plat, have reached 54/52/52. The more casual player (in terms of accumulating a wealth of loot to decon and then invest) will take more months to reach this level I think. Given I'm still not of a level I can craft holy burst or greater banes, even with boosters, I think the balance of grind to reward is about right now. Particularly given the task itself is quite repetitive and thankless.

I think that adding further time investment to the experience will tip it for a number of players, me included. And as I say I consider myself far from casual. There's something keeping me going back to questing into 100s of repetitions of quests & raids, but it's not there for crafting. Not enough with these additional requirements, anyway.

I think it might be the missing element of randomness & subsequent chance of reward. There's no chest pull. Just seemingly endless investment and expense after about L50.

[Dandonk]

For deconning, I bought a shared bank. You can dump lessers or greaters into is and then it becomes a resource pool.

Yes, but then you lose out on the decostruction xp, which I really don't want to. So I use my shared bank to send items to my crafter instead.

[MadFloyd]

EDIT: Another thing I would rather do without is non-stacking ingredients for crafting. Too many non-stacking/non-baggable items for crafting would mean you'd more or less -have- to have a dedicated craft-mule that is not used for gaming. Now, I'm not sure if your plans even run to this effect so I may just be panicking without cause, but just a thought.

Agreed. For example, Soul Gems need to be considered ingredients (currently they are not, but will be for next update).

[Dandonk]

Agreed. For example, Soul Gems need to be considered ingredients (currently they are not, but will be for next update).

Soul gems are cool, they go in bags and stack and stuff. I have no problem with those.

I'm not sure what people without casters will say, though - but I guess it would make a cool new market on the AH at least.

[Desonde]

...

The release notes will have more details about the patch, but here is an early look at the types of changes you're going to see in the crafting devices:

All of the regular Bane & Greater Bane recipes, as well as well as recipes for several of the other more powerful effects in game, have been updated. The changes involve swapping ingredients or adding in additional ones.

Some of the additional ingredients are new. One is called the 'Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragment' and can be obtained from the crafting vendor in exchange for various precious items and others are specific to certain regions of the game.
Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game.

Named raid loot will not be used as one of the new ingredient types - it is not our intention to use named raid loot as a part of the cannith crafting so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players.


I agree that the greater banes are the best weapon suffixes in crafting right now, and the cost and value is your call to decide.

However, the cause and effect you are describing is counterintuitive. I'm talking about, "...so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players." juxtaposed to "Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game." none of those items (with the exception to maybe the slayer arrows) are accessible to a variety of players.

Soul Gems can be obtained by Wizards and Sorcs, Epic Loot, and Tier 3 Green Steel [which should raise the question if crafted items are supposed to be listed slightly below Greensteel, why do they require greensteel to be made?]. Depending which effects require these, those that are beneficial only to Wizard/Sorc could use these without a problem, but requiring Strong Essences of Fire for flaming burst removes accessibility fast.

Favor Reward Potions, this prevents two things, crafters cannot TR as they will lose the ability to access these potions, and players require multiple adventure packs and the ability to complete many of the quests/raids on very high difficulties. Which for quests like the amrath quests, the higher difficulty levels are designed and catered to the top 20% of players to give them more of a challenge.


Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

...

This is actually the catch here, some of the items do approach raid loot quality, but few of them currently surpass random loot potential (since item effects are still bound specifically to where they can randomly generate). "We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game." the catch is that the crafting level required to create these effects is a very long and tenuous process. The saturation of cost required for xp coupled with the desaturation of viable options to level up your crafting is bad enough, but by removing sections of the possible items to grind it's also making it a lot harder to level up.

It really comes down to the socionomics of online gaming;

The top 10% will understand the game fully, know exactly how to manipulate it to it's full extent, and will never have any problems with any challenge you send them. This group of players sits so far above the the rest of the player base that catering directly to them, or attempting to curb their play style, will leave the rest of the player base in the dust confused.

The second top group 15% will understand exactly how the game works and will be able to play to it successfully anyway they choose or with a high degree of efficiency. This group of players sits at the top of the general player base, and won't have many problems with the general content or puzzles.

The middle 70% is the group that plays the game as intended, will have difficulties with all of the challenges designed, plays to complete not to be the best. This is the casual gamer group, and the group of players that ask questions to learn more about the game to enhance their gaming experience.

(10% of the players will be overwhelmed and unfamiliar with the game but will do just fine with the help of the general community. The bottom 5% are always just lost simply because the certain game isn't for them)



How all this relates is that the top group is very vocal, works hard to achieve what designers think as unachievable and they want everyone to know.

The middle group is actually the second most vocal because they have all the questions, they are learning and immersed in the designers' puzzles.

People don't often talk about progress, just hurdles and goals.

[JollySwagMan]

Agreed. For example, Soul Gems need to be considered ingredients (currently they are not, but will be for next update).

Scratching my suggestion for using regular gems, perhaps Soul Gems could go into Gem bags?

[barryman5000]

I think madfloyd has one of the hardest jobs at Turbine. He's the player's liaison more often to not. At least eladrin gets to put out neat updates to the game system.

In other words, thanks for the info. I was about to go nuts.

[Quikster]

Hadn't thought about that scenario, whoops. I never bother with favor when I TR so I didn't even think about how good an idea that would be.

I don't think that's an issue. Leveling isn't so hard you have to have Yugoslav pots burning the whole time or need sf pots to heal

[Lithic]

Let me clarify. I meant that I don't think crafters have to be dependant upon the goodwill of others in order to craft. I see nothing wrong with them choosing to purchase ingredients on the auction house.

I also don't feel it's wrong to allow crafters to sell their wares. That said, this is the primary area that we were concerned about; we don't want to see the market flooded with crafted items to the extent that it's the primary method to obtain these items. To that end, the cost to create a powerful unbound shard is not cheap and not every recipe has an unbound counterpart.

Don't worry, with the 3x cost in lessers of the potential shards, it will be extremely hard to make a profit selling unbound shards for enough to make the cost to get the required 2x level worth it. Increasing the price with rare or annoying to get items will just reduce the amount of unbound crafting that much more.

Lets take a +5 HB silver of Greater lawfull outsider bane, and the price (on Argo) it would cost a crafter to buy the ingredients at prices that are reasonable, but plentifull enough that it doenst take hours to gather enough for one weapon.

+5 enhancement shard (lvl 140 arcane):
45 greaters
192 lessers
1x +5 weapon/armor

Holy Burst shard (lvl 142 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers
2 lode stones

Greater Lawfull bane (146 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers

Potential shards (up to +13 min, probably need +14 for force ritual)
(25 + 50 + 100 + 175 + 275 + 400 + 550 + 725)x3 = 6900 lessers

Totals:
2 lode stones (insignificant)
Some siberys/khyber shards (insignificant)
7476 lessers (1495200 @ 200pp each, 1millpp at 150 each, which is the lowest price I've ever seen even 500 lessers go for)
171 greaters (171k @ 1kpp each, 86kpp @ 500 each, which is the price you can get them at if you are willing to buy a few dozen at a time)

Total Cost: 1666kpp PLUS blank silver weapon, which is another 100kpp at least for the good types. Even taking the cheapest prices players sell to each other, it would still be about 1.2million pp for an unbound boss beater. This does not include any consideration for the cost in plat to get to lvl 140 arcane and 146 divine, or the time to get to such levels.

At this point, a crafter who buys the components would have to sell such weapons for 2.0-2.5mill plat to make the crafting levels and time it takes worthwhile, and probably need to sell about 100 of them to break even from the leveling process. The cost of unbound crafting, the huge increase in grind to get the 2x levels, and the fact that everyone and thier dog will soon have a craftbot character to easily and quickly reach the levels to make their own BTA stuff (at about 1/10th the cost factoring the leveling and 1/3rd materials), means unbound crafting was dead before it was unleashed on the live servers.

TL/DR Version:

There are currently 5 nails in the unbound crafting coffin:
1) Double craft levels to make shards means 3x the grind to reach such levels (or more at higher levels thanks to sparsity of recipes)
2) 3x cost of lessers for unbound potential shards increases price unreasonably to create items.
3) BTA bound crafting means everyone has 1 craftbot (or 1 guild craftbot) to supply themselves and drastically reduces demand for unbound crafting
4) Pace of cap level increase means majority of desireable unbound shards aren't even available for weeks or months (or years?) after the bound versions are released.
5) likelyhood of the best shards being ONLY in bound versions destroys the potential of unbound crafting as a trade.

[Barashkukor]

Hmm. That last point is interesting and definitely something to noodle on. I hadn't considered this.

Thank you, Dandonk.

Obvious solution would of course be account-wide (per server) crafting xp. A bit meta maybe, but apart from roleplay-issues it seems the most seamless one.

Also, many thanks for answering questions about the current hot topic :)

[slimkj]

Scratching my suggestion for using regular gems, perhaps Soul Gems could go into Gem bags?
Don't make it so I have to buy more big bags! I like being able to manage on the free, small gem bag!

Edit: Too many alts is the real root cause. ;)

[QuantumFX]

Named/BtC ingredients shouldn’t be *required* to craft a shard. That doesn’t mean that you guys should abandon using Named/BtA items as ingredients. Using them as alternatives to the regular recipes would be a nice addition to the crafting system. They would need some sort of incentive over the regular recipes though. (ex. Double crafting XP, or half crafting level difficulty, or or requires no essences.)

[Gkar]

Hey Mad... If you intend to make soul gems valuable you think maybe you can finally address the issue of them landing on the floor? They need to go directly into the inventory of the person with the weapon/guard/spell that created them.

If you don't do this you are encouraging people to grief a party mid quest/raid by stopping fighting and grabbing these valuable ingredients off the ground before the caster/melee who created them has a chance (since he's still being a team member and killing more stuff).

Plus if they become popular enough multiple people may use the spell/weapon and no one would know who owned what stone.

[Gkar]

Obvious solution would of course be account-wide (per server) crafting xp. A bit meta maybe, but apart from roleplay-issues it seems the most seamless one.

Also, many thanks for answering questions about the current hot topic :)

That would certainly make things more fun and easier, and since the shards BtA it provides no advantage other than convinience. A good idea.

[Jacobius]

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

Your second point is noted as well, thanks.

Absolutely agree make the more powerful items harder to obtain is a good idea. That said making sure there are easier to obtain less powerful shards to make leveling crafting levels not as much of a grind is needed. Especially those of us with jobs and families also that don't have the time to quest and then deconstruct and craft shards. So that down the road I get that lucky pull and **** can't craft what I want anyways not high enough level.

[ImFour20]

seems MadFloyd is very active in this thread about crafting.

any update on crafted handwraps

[Hokiewa]

Good dialog!

More please:)

[BlargneyTheSecond]

Thanks for the reply!


Let me clarify. I meant that I don't think crafters have to be dependant upon the goodwill of others in order to craft. I see nothing wrong with them choosing to purchase ingredients on the auction house.
That seems thoroughly reasonable. :)


I also don't feel it's wrong to allow crafters to sell their wares. That said, this is the primary area that we were concerned about; we don't want to see the market flooded with crafted items to the extent that it's the primary method to obtain these items. To that end, the cost to create a powerful unbound shard is not cheap and not every recipe has an unbound counterpart.
Will there be increased costs in tomorrow's patch for crafting bound shards? Really, I just want to be able to make decent gear for the characters on my account. It's been remarkably expensive so far - will it become even more so? If the increased costs are exclusively restricted to making unbound shards, then I think I'm good to go on this!
-blarg

[FrozenNova]

I would highly endorse the account-wide crafting levels, ideally implemented before the system grows to much for this to be easily added.
It solves a few issues - players without a shared bank are no longer screwed over - it no longer requires a painfully meticulous degree of inter-character loot transfer for optimal levelling - your progress is not tied to a specific, undeletable character.

If you're going to require soul gems, I think they should be made accessable to every class - though that's difficult to set up. Perhaps - a throwable object (vacuum gem?) that, when thrown at an enemy, will transmute it into a soul gem if it is killed within the next five-ten seconds?
Craft stacks of them out of khyber dragonshards and gemstones at the stone of change, maybe.

For convenience's sake, allow soul gem strengths to be transmuted up and down, to lessen the need to farm specific quests for specific strength elementals.
I'd almost like to see them drop like collectables, applicable to everyone - after all, killing is a group effort. This may flood them a little to widely though...
I would agree that Trap the Soul needs to place the gem in the caster's bag immediately - it's a very expensive spell to cast frequently, all the more so if you get nothing out of it besides a single death.

I'll add to the pile my thorough objection to astral diamonds featuring in cannith crafting, even by proxy.

[Mastese]

If that's the case, can we get some way to increase the essences we get? Anyone not supported by a large guild, or who has to actually hold down a job in the real world, crafting gets very painful to level around 50, mainly due to the large requirements for essences, and the small supply we can get. With 150? 200? levels planned, this is way too early for alot of people to get shut out of the crafting game.Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

I agree with spear67's comment regarding the balance between the those who have access to virtually unlimited resources and those who do not. Simply make Essences BTC (and not avialble to purchase through the DDO Store) and that no longer becomes as great of an issue. This would go a long way to leveling the playing field and slowing down the power-levelers who threaten the state of Crafting as we know it.



We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this.

I have to disagre. The mindset that there's anything wrong with a percieved "grind" given a system that has so much powerful potential (both from an individual gearing standpoint and from an economic one) is simply wrong. It shouldn't be easy, and it shouldn't be for everyone. It should take some serious time and dedicaton. If that means only a small percentage of the population have the dicipline to dedicate the time and effort it requires to become an elite crafter, then all the better. We've already seen a reduction in the overall challenge of DDO due to the fact that the worlds are saturated in too easily obtained powerful loot and gear. People complain about the "grind" all the time, but being equiped with powerful gear and relics have become the expectation, which means that all these items lose the rarity that makes and keeps them special. That's why we continue to see the constant calls for rebalancing (nerfing) and ongoing complaints that Epic adventures really aren't that epic at all. Everbody wants everything essentially handed to them, and then complain when there's no longer enough challenge to keep them engaged. Keep it difficult to level, I'm patient and persistent when there's something out there worth working for.


In the past we've underestimated player's abilities and it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.

See my first point. Make essences BTC and quit peddling them through the DDO store and you will immediately normalize individuals' abilities to jump to cap with each extension.

-Mastese

[Scraap]

Don't worry, with the 3x cost in lessers of the potential shards, it will be extremely hard to make a profit selling unbound shards for enough to make the cost to get the required 2x level worth it. Increasing the price with rare or annoying to get items will just reduce the amount of unbound crafting that much more.

Lets take a +5 HB silver of Greater lawfull outsider bane, and the price (on Argo) it would cost a crafter to buy the ingredients at prices that are reasonable, but plentifull enough that it doenst take hours to gather enough for one weapon.

+5 enhancement shard (lvl 140 arcane):
45 greaters
192 lessers
1x +5 weapon/armor

Holy Burst shard (lvl 142 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers
2 lode stones

Greater Lawfull bane (146 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers

Potential shards (up to +13 min, probably need +14 for force ritual)
(25 + 50 + 100 + 175 + 275 + 400 + 550 + 725)x3 = 6900 lessers

Totals:
2 lode stones (insignificant)
Some siberys/khyber shards (insignificant)
7476 lessers (1495200 @ 200pp each, 1millpp at 150 each, which is the lowest price I've ever seen even 500 lessers go for)
171 greaters (171k @ 1kpp each, 86kpp @ 500 each, which is the price you can get them at if you are willing to buy a few dozen at a time)

Total Cost: 1666kpp PLUS blank silver weapon, which is another 100kpp at least for the good types. Even taking the cheapest prices players sell to each other, it would still be about 1.2million pp for an unbound boss beater. This does not include any consideration for the cost in plat to get to lvl 140 arcane and 146 divine, or the time to get to such levels.

At this point, a crafter who buys the components would have to sell such weapons for 2.0-2.5mill plat to make the crafting levels and time it takes worthwhile, and probably need to sell about 100 of them to break even from the leveling process. The cost of unbound crafting, the huge increase in grind to get the 2x levels, and the fact that everyone and thier dog will soon have a craftbot character to easily and quickly reach the levels to make their own BTA stuff (at about 1/10th the cost factoring the leveling and 1/3rd materials), means unbound crafting was dead before it was unleashed on the live servers.

TL/DR Version:

There are currently 5 nails in the unbound crafting coffin:
1) Double craft levels to make shards means 3x the grind to reach such levels (or more at higher levels thanks to sparsity of recipes)
2) 3x cost of lessers for unbound potential shards increases price unreasonably to create items.
3) BTA bound crafting means everyone has 1 craftbot (or 1 guild craftbot) to supply themselves and drastically reduces demand for unbound crafting
4) Pace of cap level increase means majority of desireable unbound shards aren't even available for weeks or months (or years?) after the bound versions are released.
5) likelyhood of the best shards being ONLY in bound versions destroys the potential of unbound crafting as a trade.

Thanks for the breakdown. Been trying to avoid letting that color my thinking overmuch for the sake of staying within the bounds of the expressed constraints, even though in reality, my main motivator for grinding on crafting has been helping out my guildies/genuinely new folks that could use a leg up. You do put it quite succinctly though, in terms of u10 cost-projections.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Don't worry, with the 3x cost in lessers of the potential shards, it will be extremely hard to make a profit selling unbound shards for enough to make the cost to get the required 2x level worth it. Increasing the price with rare or annoying to get items will just reduce the amount of unbound crafting that much more.

Lets take a +5 HB silver of Greater lawfull outsider bane, and the price (on Argo) it would cost a crafter to buy the ingredients at prices that are reasonable, but plentifull enough that it doenst take hours to gather enough for one weapon.

+5 enhancement shard (lvl 140 arcane):
45 greaters
192 lessers
1x +5 weapon/armor

Holy Burst shard (lvl 142 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers
2 lode stones

Greater Lawfull bane (146 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers

Potential shards (up to +13 min, probably need +14 for force ritual)
(25 + 50 + 100 + 175 + 275 + 400 + 550 + 725)x3 = 6900 lessers

Totals:
2 lode stones (insignificant)
Some siberys/khyber shards (insignificant)
7476 lessers (1495200 @ 200pp each, 1millpp at 150 each, which is the lowest price I've ever seen even 500 lessers go for)
171 greaters (171k @ 1kpp each, 86kpp @ 500 each, which is the price you can get them at if you are willing to buy a few dozen at a time)

Total Cost: 1666kpp PLUS blank silver weapon, which is another 100kpp at least for the good types. Even taking the cheapest prices players sell to each other, it would still be about 1.2million pp for an unbound boss beater. This does not include any consideration for the cost in plat to get to lvl 140 arcane and 146 divine, or the time to get to such levels.

At this point, a crafter who buys the components would have to sell such weapons for 2.0-2.5mill plat to make the crafting levels and time it takes worthwhile, and probably need to sell about 100 of them to break even from the leveling process. The cost of unbound crafting, the huge increase in grind to get the 2x levels, and the fact that everyone and thier dog will soon have a craftbot character to easily and quickly reach the levels to make their own BTA stuff (at about 1/10th the cost factoring the leveling and 1/3rd materials), means unbound crafting was dead before it was unleashed on the live servers.

TL/DR Version:

There are currently 5 nails in the unbound crafting coffin:
1) Double craft levels to make shards means 3x the grind to reach such levels (or more at higher levels thanks to sparsity of recipes)
2) 3x cost of lessers for unbound potential shards increases price unreasonably to create items.
3) BTA bound crafting means everyone has 1 craftbot (or 1 guild craftbot) to supply themselves and drastically reduces demand for unbound crafting
4) Pace of cap level increase means majority of desireable unbound shards aren't even available for weeks or months (or years?) after the bound versions are released.
5) likelyhood of the best shards being ONLY in bound versions destroys the potential of unbound crafting as a trade.

I was including this very sentiment in the post I'm working on, with WAY less detail. Extremely true. If you are singularly funded by a well organized high level guild who is investing in you and counting on you being able to make whatever they want in the future, the current requirements are a bit of a problem. But for a player like me who plays A TON, but is self funded, there is no profit to be made on the AH and I'm having a hard enough time just making the "good stuff" for my main toon without running out of essences and bringing my crafting leveling to a halt...

I'm 80-85 in all schools btw and I have poured everything I have time and resources into crafting.

[Coldin]

Very objectionable. I would love to release hoblit rage (been playing lotro) and let you know what I think of such, but instead I think perhaps it is better to state that having such required, is very anti-fun.

Players require fun to stick around.

Funny thing is, LOTRO does require a certain amount of favor (reputation) with some groups to make some of the better items at end game.

For example, some of the best good requires the first level of favor with the Elves of Lothlorien. Not all that difficult to get though, but it does mean a crafter has to get high enough level and actually run those quests. The food itself is unbound.

Personally, I don't really mind that. There should still be good stuff to craft without any favor, but some items I'd be fine with needing some favor.

[jejeba86]

About difficulty in leveling... Is there a way to make essences drop quantity proportional to the crafting level? And also make the crafting level based on account, not character?

Everything else I was thinking about is summarized in these two posts:

This:


I agree that the greater banes are the best weapon suffixes in crafting right now, and the cost and value is your call to decide.

However, the cause and effect you are describing is counterintuitive. I'm talking about, "...so that crafting remains accessible to a variety of players." juxtaposed to "Other ingredient additions include Soul Gems, potions from favor reward vendors, and various slayer arrows found in treasure throughout the game." none of those items (with the exception to maybe the slayer arrows) are accessible to a variety of players.

Soul Gems can be obtained by Wizards and Sorcs, Epic Loot, and Tier 3 Green Steel [which should raise the question if crafted items are supposed to be listed slightly below Greensteel, why do they require greensteel to be made?]. Depending which effects require these, those that are beneficial only to Wizard/Sorc could use these without a problem, but requiring Strong Essences of Fire for flaming burst removes accessibility fast.

Favor Reward Potions, this prevents two things, crafters cannot TR as they will lose the ability to access these potions, and players require multiple adventure packs and the ability to complete many of the quests/raids on very high difficulties. Which for quests like the amrath quests, the higher difficulty levels are designed and catered to the top 20% of players to give them more of a challenge.



This is actually the catch here, some of the items do approach raid loot quality, but few of them currently surpass random loot potential (since item effects are still bound specifically to where they can randomly generate). "We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game." the catch is that the crafting level required to create these effects is a very long and tenuous process. The saturation of cost required for xp coupled with the desaturation of viable options to level up your crafting is bad enough, but by removing sections of the possible items to grind it's also making it a lot harder to level up.

It really comes down to the socionomics of online gaming;

The top 10% will understand the game fully, know exactly how to manipulate it to it's full extent, and will never have any problems with any challenge you send them. This group of players sits so far above the the rest of the player base that catering directly to them, or attempting to curb their play style, will leave the rest of the player base in the dust confused.

The second top group 15% will understand exactly how the game works and will be able to play to it successfully anyway they choose or with a high degree of efficiency. This group of players sits at the top of the general player base, and won't have many problems with the general content or puzzles.

The middle 70% is the group that plays the game as intended, will have difficulties with all of the challenges designed, plays to complete not to be the best. This is the casual gamer group, and the group of players that ask questions to learn more about the game to enhance their gaming experience.

(10% of the players will be overwhelmed and unfamiliar with the game but will do just fine with the help of the general community. The bottom 5% are always just lost simply because the certain game isn't for them)



How all this relates is that the top group is very vocal, works hard to achieve what designers think as unachievable and they want everyone to know.

The middle group is actually the second most vocal because they have all the questions, they are learning and immersed in the designers' puzzles.

People don't often talk about progress, just hurdles and goals.

And this:


Don't worry, with the 3x cost in lessers of the potential shards, it will be extremely hard to make a profit selling unbound shards for enough to make the cost to get the required 2x level worth it. Increasing the price with rare or annoying to get items will just reduce the amount of unbound crafting that much more.

Lets take a +5 HB silver of Greater lawfull outsider bane, and the price (on Argo) it would cost a crafter to buy the ingredients at prices that are reasonable, but plentifull enough that it doenst take hours to gather enough for one weapon.

+5 enhancement shard (lvl 140 arcane):
45 greaters
192 lessers
1x +5 weapon/armor

Holy Burst shard (lvl 142 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers
2 lode stones

Greater Lawfull bane (146 divine):
63 greaters
192 lessers

Potential shards (up to +13 min, probably need +14 for force ritual)
(25 + 50 + 100 + 175 + 275 + 400 + 550 + 725)x3 = 6900 lessers

Totals:
2 lode stones (insignificant)
Some siberys/khyber shards (insignificant)
7476 lessers (1495200 @ 200pp each, 1millpp at 150 each, which is the lowest price I've ever seen even 500 lessers go for)
171 greaters (171k @ 1kpp each, 86kpp @ 500 each, which is the price you can get them at if you are willing to buy a few dozen at a time)

Total Cost: 1666kpp PLUS blank silver weapon, which is another 100kpp at least for the good types. Even taking the cheapest prices players sell to each other, it would still be about 1.2million pp for an unbound boss beater. This does not include any consideration for the cost in plat to get to lvl 140 arcane and 146 divine, or the time to get to such levels.

At this point, a crafter who buys the components would have to sell such weapons for 2.0-2.5mill plat to make the crafting levels and time it takes worthwhile, and probably need to sell about 100 of them to break even from the leveling process. The cost of unbound crafting, the huge increase in grind to get the 2x levels, and the fact that everyone and thier dog will soon have a craftbot character to easily and quickly reach the levels to make their own BTA stuff (at about 1/10th the cost factoring the leveling and 1/3rd materials), means unbound crafting was dead before it was unleashed on the live servers.

TL/DR Version:

There are currently 5 nails in the unbound crafting coffin:
1) Double craft levels to make shards means 3x the grind to reach such levels (or more at higher levels thanks to sparsity of recipes)
2) 3x cost of lessers for unbound potential shards increases price unreasonably to create items.
3) BTA bound crafting means everyone has 1 craftbot (or 1 guild craftbot) to supply themselves and drastically reduces demand for unbound crafting
4) Pace of cap level increase means majority of desireable unbound shards aren't even available for weeks or months (or years?) after the bound versions are released.
5) likelyhood of the best shards being ONLY in bound versions destroys the potential of unbound crafting as a trade.

[DaSawks]

Raiding vs. Crafting. (Some of you will remember George Carlin's skit on 'The difference between Football and Baseball)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om_yq4L3M_I

1. In Raiding you get to kill things in a quest. In Crafting you get to sit at the customer service desk.

2. In Raiding you get to meet new, and sometime interesting players. In Crafting you get to talk the a Crafting Device.

3. In Raiding there is the excitement of the possibility of getting good lootz. In Crafting you get to read off the menu board.

4. In Raiding you get even more excitement when you roll on gear other players do not want. In Crafting you can only read/hear about what other players have made.

5. In Raiding you will have 'the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat'. In Crafting your success percentage is laid out for you.

6. In Raiding you get to use the hard earned gear you have. In Crafting you get to build gear to use in Raiding.

Several suggestions to help add some fun to Crafting.

1. Allow players to truly "deconstruct" crafted items. Do you not learn what makes something tic by taking it apart? The result of "deconstruction" could be the original shards along with the craftable blank. There could also be a small percentage of failure when "deconstructing" based on level. The higher the level of the crafter the small percent of failure. When at first you do not succeed, try, try again.

2. Allow players to substitute ingredients. This is already apart of crafting Greensteel. Each Greensteel accessory blank has 2 recipes.

3. Create a special "Crafting" section of the Auction House were all crafted gear would go. This would allow sellers and buyers of crafted gear a better way to connect and see other players final products.

4. Minimum level requirements on crafted gear should be the same as or lower than random drops. Why craft something if you have to wait longer to use it?

5. Allow the combination of Crafting systems. Greensteel can already receive Force rituals. Why not Cannith?

6. Crafting should give some sort of rewards similar to Favor rewards. An example would be "You have reached Crafting level 50 in the Divine school of Crafting. Here is 50 Lesser and 25 Greater Divine Essences".

Just a few thoughts.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

My number one, most important opinion regarding crafting is that nothing that is BTC should ever end up in recipes. I said it somewhere else and I know that MadFloyd addressed it a bit already, but I DO NOT want to have to take my <200 HP, non healing haggle bard into any situation where I'd be trying to loot something away from another player for my own personal crafting needs. I wouldn't do it anyhow, but I don't want to have that be where crafting ends up as it would absolutely ruin it for me.


In regards to the favor grind thing, which is already problematic in that it requires certain purchased packs in order to get, I feel that it would be unfair to those who chose toons who were going to be TRing as their crafters. I made my hagglebot my crafter - they could teleport - get around quickly - buy mats for less - and I wasn't planning on TRing them. Many didn't have that option when crafting began. As a solution to this, if Turbine is determined to move forward with the favor pots plan... Allow people a one time opportunity to "trade in" their crafting xp and transfer it to another toon of their choice. Then there could be no further arguments when TRing interfered with their ability to acquire those types of ingredients.

Finally,

I think that the insane changes that are now being pulled from implementation were an unreasonable solution to a very reasonable problem. I should not be able to deck out everyone in my guild with +5 Holy Burst of Greater Whatevers without breaking a sweat. That being said, I'm a solo player for the most part who has spent over 5 million plat and burned ALL random gen loot that I have pulled since crafting began. I'm approximately 80ish in all schools. I have made two +5 Holy Burst Silver Khopeshes of Greater Lawful Outsider Bane for my main character, 1 matching longbow, and have the mats to make a pretty good portal beater. I'm absolutely essence strapped now, can barely level up, and will have to choose carefully between using essences to level effectively and making any more 'stuff'. The potential shards are crazy expensive (as they should be) and do a fine job of cutting down on the mass flow of raid content type loot coming from my account onto the AH. That just isn't going to happen when I can barely outfit my own toons. I'm only adding this to give an idea of what the limitations are on the solo funded crafter.

No doubt guilds who can fund their own crafter will have less trouble getting the levels. I saw a comment somewhere regarding essences that were BTC as a method to avoid that. This is a nice thought, but given that people would just mail/trade loot for deconstruction instead of mail/trade essences kind of makes that not workable.

[Ytteri]

Could we please have mass essence sundering at the NPCs? For example the option of 100 lesser essences for 20 greaters instead of just 5 for 1. Making high +# shards of potential can require a good 5-10 minutes of standing at the npc and pushing the same button over and over.

[Gkar]

Could we please have mass essence sundering at the NPCs? For example the option of 100 lesser essences for 20 greaters instead of just 5 for 1. Making high +# shards of potential can require a good 5-10 minutes of standing at the npc and pushing the same button over and over.

You should just be able to put them in the deconstruction alter and there should be rescipies for various quantities available for you to choose from.

[Jay203]

btw, Madfloyd, is there any chance you guys can make ingredients and collectibles weightless?
kind of stupid that my collectible bags weighs 156lbs and my ingredients bag weights 53lbs >_>

[PurpleTimb]

Definitely hear you...


We are worried that...


In the past we've...


Let me clarify...


Hmm. That last point is interesting...
Wow, I think there's been more Dev feedback in the last three hours than I've seen in the last three months, and it's all in one thread. Thanks for staying in touch and letting people know that their concerns are being heard.

[MadFloyd]

Hey Mad... If you intend to make soul gems valuable you think maybe you can finally address the issue of them landing on the floor? They need to go directly into the inventory of the person with the weapon/guard/spell that created them.

If you don't do this you are encouraging people to grief a party mid quest/raid by stopping fighting and grabbing these valuable ingredients off the ground before the caster/melee who created them has a chance (since he's still being a team member and killing more stuff).

Plus if they become popular enough multiple people may use the spell/weapon and no one would know who owned what stone.

Now that they are becoming valuable there's a few unfriendly things about them that we should consider, that being one of them.

Thanks.

[MadFloyd]

Just curious, were regular gems (such as Diamonds, Sapphires, Topaz etc.) ever considered as a crafting ingredient? As it is they just get sold to vendors - none of my characters have ever needed the Medium Gem bag sold in House P/J, let alone those sold in the DDO Store. I know that some (many) players would resent keeping track of yet more random small items, but perhaps they could be included in some way that maintains both flavour and balance.

Eg perhaps combining some Rubies with some Greater Fire essences could make a Fire Elemental Soul Gem. That's probably not very balanced (Rubies can be farmed from that quest in the Sands right?), but perhaps using another gem type?

No, we never really considered them as far as I recall.

[Scraap]

Now that they are becoming valuable there's a few unfriendly things about them that we should consider, that being one of them.

Thanks.

Kind of tangental, but... if you've now got a relatively fixed notion in terms of benchmarks of how much a soul gem should contribute power-wise to a crafted item... traps getting reviewed as well? They do use the same essential system, albiet in a much more limited fashion.

[Bodic]

I just want to point out if you require Soul gems that is 10k fragments to cast the 30 HD version 8x or +1.2kpp per spell from the portable hole purchase.

[Obbu]

If you're going to require soul gems, I think they should be made accessable to every class - though that's difficult to set up. Perhaps - a throwable object (vacuum gem?) that, when thrown at an enemy, will transmute it into a soul gem if it is killed within the next five-ten seconds?
Craft stacks of them out of khyber dragonshards and gemstones at the stone of change, maybe.

This idea reminds me of the old 'black gems' from the Ragnarok/Valhalla roguelike game.

Every implementation that has required soul gems so far has missed the mark - if you are going to provide a crafting resource that is only available to one or two classes, you have to implement similar resources that are relevant to other classes.

So, unless you are planning on making a resource that only divines can harvest via turning, or only barbarians/fighters can harvest via... killing things? then the system is biased.

Currently, in game there are two things that require soul gems - adamantine rituals, and trapmaking.

While there are usually a few random essences on the auction house, the lack of a market (due to the cost/reward of trapmaking) as well as the lack of other systems to supplement this means that most people dont bother buying, and most people dont bother selling.

If they become a new component for crafting, they will become a common trade resource, but will be limited to arcanes and people with VACII greensteels.

So the options are thus:

1. Dont use them as a crafting ingredient
2. Use them as a crafting ingredient, and implement several other 'class limited' resources to balance the economy across all classes.
3. Use them as a crafting ingredient, and increase the availability from other sources.

Option 1 fixes the bias, but leaves us with a hole where we need to implement another ingredient anyway as a replacement.

Option 2 is vastly more complicated - and while it may provide a stronger economic system in the long run, i do not think that it is a viable option to be asking for in this feedback :)

Option 3 addresses the bias (to an extent), meaning that in order to farm the ingredient heavily/reliably you still need to be arcane/vacuum equipped, but provides enough of a supplement to mean that the market is not hopelessly skewed.

One of the suggestions for fixing the trapmaking feat was to allow traps to have a chance to drop relevant soul gems, upon disarmament. I feel that this is a step in the right direction, as it allows trapmakers an influx of a resource that they require in large quantities in order to function at higher levels.

The most simple method is to include soul gems as end-of-quest reward options - perhaps biasing certain quests to drop certain types. This provides a method of acquisition for all classes, while maintaining the flavor of gems for certain purposes - do a fire elemental-laden quest to get a fire gem, and so on.

The Vacuum Gem idea could also work, and could take many different forms:

1. A consumable that traps soul when subject is killed via other means during 'vacuum'debuff.
2. A consumable item that is basically a 'trap the soul' bomb, casting the spell - like a scroll, but without the UMD check.
3. more readily available trap the soul scrolls/wands etc.
4. Non-Epic drops that can trap souls if they get a killing blow - without casting the actual spell.
5. more epic/Non-Shroud weapons that have a VacuumII style proc.

Personally, i think that the best way to solve this is:

Keep Necro-Arcanes and VacuumIIs as the best/most efficient way to get soul gems
Provide some soul-gem end reward options from quests
Provide soul-trapping consumables without super-high UMD requirements
Provide soul-gem drop chances from some traps
Implement more vacuum-style weapons
Implement soul-trapping on death-blow weapons

Now that seems like a long list, but a significant portion of those changes are to the loot table - not actual implementations of new items.

Fixes the problem with their usage in both crafting and trapmaking - and there is always room to implement 'rare drop' soul gems, if there is a need to implement items with a more valuable component.

Also might encourage more adamantine rituals, or provide room for other similar subtle rituals to be implemented.

Just some food for thought.

[jillie]

First, I would like to give mad props to MadFloyd for his insanely great live dialogue with us on these issues and questions. This is the best demonstration of what real community means in the context of an MMO. I find myself compelled to give a +1, even if he doesn't really need it :)


That said, we would like your feedback on these changes and the overall balance of crafting. Just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it is set in stone at this point; crafting is still in 'beta' for this reason and we expect to make further balance changes.

So here's my couple of coppers:

I have a single toon that does my crafting. I've been working kind of on a hit or miss basis to level her; she's at about 49/44/45 or close to those numbers. It's gotten quite a lot slower to level since passing the level 40 mark - the increased numbers of essences needed, coupled with the static number derived from deconstruction ensure that this will be the case. I don't consider this a huge issue - yet. But I can see that, unless I somehow manage to squeeze more questing into my days (hard to do when I do need to hold down a job, sleep, and sometimes do things like laundry (which really should be a four letter word)), it's going to be a *LONG* time before I see level 70!

I would very much like either Bound shards/items to be BTA rather than BTC, or to have crafting levels be applied to all characters in my account on a given server (so my toons on Khyber wouldn't benefit from the activity of those on Argonessen, but all my toons on Argo would have the same crafting levels). This would make crafting, even with high grind rates, feasible, while it's simply not worth the time if each toon has to craft their own, or my crafter has to create unbound items for them. At that point, it's frankly easier to find stuff on the AH or as random lootgen items.

[waterboytkd]

First off, MadFloyd, thank you for the regular responses in this thread. That kind of communication is really what the players want more than anything.

But my main point here is about soul gems. As has been said many times, the biggest problem with this is not everyone has an arcane or a toon with a VacII weapon to farm for these. As you stated yourself, you want players to be able to handle crafting on their own, without relying on the kindness of others. Soul gems goes against that though.

But, again, there have been numerous suggestions for this. My top two: either remove soul gems as an ingredient cost; or make them a drop in end-rewards or as a special drop in end chests for quests. Say I run a quest in Shavarath, my end reward would have the Dominator Soul Gems, or say I run Rainbow in the Dark, maybe I can get a Soul Gem for fire elementals in the end chest. Something like that would help, but it would still leave players with arcanes at yet another advantage.

And that's the dagger of it. This whole snafu is because powerful weapons are being crafted, which benefits, you know, characters that wield weapons. This crafting system is pretty meh for arcanes and evoker spec'd divines, with the one exception being sup brilliance 5 for the latter.

Again, soul gems creates a weird reliance on casters. Don't like that.

On another note: I don't like the idea of any ingredients in shard recipes that don't go into my collectibles or ingredients bag. That said, Arrows of [monster] Slaying don't go into those bags. The problem there becomes I have to find special space to horde those kinds of ingredients (or buy a big Deneith quiver, I guess). It's just more inventory ugliness that we don't need.

[Arnhelm]

Thank you for the updates here. Sounds to me as if crafting is on the right track again. Looking forward to reviewing the new recipes.

[BossOfEarth]

@MadFloyd,

I applaud auto-grabbing from bags! :D

I like increased costs per item. That is a huge improvement over the original frontloaded grind system.

Although I'm very happy that grinding raid loot isn't strictly required, I'm dissapointed to lose the option to recycle the trash-raid loot that everyone laughs at before abandoning.

Against the general consensus, I strongly recomend that DDO store items are available for deconstruction. Not because I'm an easy-button-masher but because I've pulled some rare Turbine Store stuff I that I'd like to grind. I enjoy the thrill of pulling a rare Turbine Store item, and it would be even cooler Turbine Store items could be used for a second purpose so as to Doub-Double, Double my fun.*

I hope that crafting is eventualy changed from a per character grind to a per player grind. E.g. by less emphasis on crafting level and steeper per-item costs.

Anyway, that's my opinion of the announcement. Once I get a chance to play with it I'll be back.

*technicaly it's exponential since increasing the number of doublings from 0 to 1 increases fun by a factor of aproximately 2.71828183... ...trancendental of course.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

seems MadFloyd is very active in this thread about crafting.

any update on crafted handwraps

Most of the handwrap bugs are slated for Update 11.

[MartinusWyllt]

There will be no named equippable items used as ingredients.

Thanks!

I was really really dreading thinking to have to run the flipping catacombs for the flipping necklace to make a flipping undead bane shard....yes it would be "easy" but holy cow it would be tedious.

[voodoogroves]

If we're going w/ Soul Gems, ... I'd like to see named mobs have a change to drop a soul gem on their death, much like epic scrolls. Orange/Red/Purple chance to drop their gem straight to a bag. Maybe weighted based on who killed it, maybe not (don't care). Mechanically this is similar to all of the other drops from Crystal Cove, Mabar, the new Madness chain (chance that ingredient goes straight into bag when something dies).

[KyrzaBladedancer]

Much better than it's previous incarnation! The level of communication on this issue is astounding, and for that I am extremely grateful.

I like the idea of using the Soul Gems and Slayer Arrows for bane/ greater bane, something to keep in mind is that there are 2 types of slayer arrows. Honestly find 2, 4, or even 10 soul gems is not hard to do even if you have to contract a wizard to go farm them for you. I'm also glad that you are getting rid of PDs for banes and others as well as reducing the cost for others. One thing I am sad to see is that Tomes are still on the table, considering that +3's and +4's and even some +2's are considered bound rare raid loot though the person that takes a +3 or +4 for crafting would be one greedy SOB :D. Using +1 tomes I think are fine as they are common enough and as long as you don't need to many for recipes the pricing should not change over much.

Shared Crafting XP across an account would be a great idea and it would make crafting much more convenient.

A few things that, while not exactly in the scope of the thread, I would like to see would be the addition of adding Race Required/Guild slots in exchange for potential. Another thing that would be neat would be to add an additional suffix or prefix for twice the potential cost.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

If we're going w/ Soul Gems, ... I'd like to see named mobs have a change to drop a soul gem on their death, much like epic scrolls. Orange/Red/Purple chance to drop their gem straight to a bag. Maybe weighted based on who killed it, maybe not (don't care). Mechanically this is similar to all of the other drops from Crystal Cove, Mabar, the new Madness chain (chance that ingredient goes straight into bag when something dies).

I don't like the idea of soul gems at all given the current methods of acquisition. Anything along these lines that introduces them into the game might change my opinion, but right now I think it is a very bad idea...and I have more than one caster that can farm them so I'm not operating from a position of lack when saying this.

Oh, and a toon running a cleric would definitely care if the kill shot made a difference in percentage chance =) I guarantee that would not go over well with support classes.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

I don't have an answer on this, but I'm forwarding this to our QA lead who hopefully does.


Throwing weapon crafting is in the next update. "prepping throwing weapons without prefix/suffix" should not work at all at the moment. Unfortunately my kobold sense is telling me that we probably do not give any feedback that nothing is happening. I will look into it in the morning.

[Scraap]

If we're going w/ Soul Gems, ... I'd like to see named mobs have a change to drop a soul gem on their death, much like epic scrolls. Orange/Red/Purple chance to drop their gem straight to a bag. Maybe weighted based on who killed it, maybe not (don't care). Mechanically this is similar to all of the other drops from Crystal Cove, Mabar, the new Madness chain (chance that ingredient goes straight into bag when something dies).

That would likely smooth things out quite a bit.

[jejeba86]

Mad, don't you think leveling a character to high levels is already too difficult for the majority of players?
Skip the changes on the shards.
Make the items more difficult to make.

Also the soul gem isn't quite a good idea, considering you want crafting to be acessible to all players.

[Hobgoblin]

Most of the handwrap bugs are slated for Update 11.

ouch. well at least we are getting communication from devs on it.

ty

hob

[sirgog]

I wasn't expecting feedback today (i.e. before you saw the changes with your own eyes). That said, I'm already reading loud and clear that any ingredient that can only be obtained by forcing the actual crafting toon to complete content (e.g. favor rewards) is objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Add me to the list of people that agree with this statement. My crafter is my main character and is a build that has no desire to unlock Silver Flame potions.


Let me clarify. I meant that I don't think crafters have to be dependant upon the goodwill of others in order to craft. I see nothing wrong with them choosing to purchase ingredients on the auction house.

I also don't feel it's wrong to allow crafters to sell their wares. That said, this is the primary area that we were concerned about; we don't want to see the market flooded with crafted items to the extent that it's the primary method to obtain these items. To that end, the cost to create a powerful unbound shard is not cheap and not every recipe has an unbound counterpart.

Perhaps you could add a new type of BtA token to every quest in the game that has a lockout timer (perhaps 2 in the end chest of every raid, and 1 in every Epic chest; possibly plus some in 'special' chests in other quests like the Tor dragon chests), and have some not insignificant quantity of these be used in making the top-end unbound recipes.

If, for example, an unbound Holy Burst shard required 25 of those tokens - well, it's no longer possible to mass produce these unbound shards.

This would be similar to the Chaos Orb/Frozen Orb mechanic used in World of Warcraft, where endgame dungeons of a specific difficulty level drop unique ingredients that are used in crafting unbound loot that is aimed for endgame players. At times these Orbs have been the limiting factor for crafting those items. (That game has alternated between having these Orbs be bound or unbound; in practice both work, but if they are bound you should require smaller numbers of them; if they are unbound, expect a very active market in them).

Another option (which is how LOTRO handles keeping supply under check) is making the recipes and/or recipes for a key component have a long cooldown. In LOTRO, an Etched Adamant Necklace of Morale is a very powerful item for its level, but the recipe to craft it is on a 72 hour cooldown, and the recipe to craft a Sublime Dawn-Rose Ring of Tactics is on a 1 week cooldown.


In terms of making crafting more accessible for everyone, have you considered making low level shards for full weapons that lock out further customization? For an example, make a shard that when used on a blank craftable weapon, applies +1 Ghost Touch of Pure Good, call it a "Delera's Special" shard or something, and with pieces that can't be overwritten so you can't really make it +2 or apply Metalline or anything like that. Can't be used for uber-twinking since the parts aren't separate, but makes it so a new crafter/new player could make a handy weapon for special situations and feel much better about themselves and the game in the process.

This idea is fantastic, and I see no reason to have it limited to low levels.

Among other things, it would allow the Devs to fix some of the serious holes in Monk itemization (for monks without Shintao 3). Some ability to craft +4 Metalline of Destruction or +5 Metalline of Righteousness handwraps, for instance, that doesn't also allow the same Monk to craft +5 Metalline of GLOB wraps or +5 Holy Silver-Threaded of GLOB wraps.

Presently I've never taken my unarmed Kensai 2 into Epic Devil Assault because I just have nothing to use on a 67 AC boss with 30/silver+good DR. Despite a 50 Strength, I can't hit that guy with my low-plus Metalline wraps equipped, even if he's been solidly debuffed. Recipes like this could address this issue.

Maybe you could have these use one-use recipes found as unbound random loot, with higher level recipes possibly purchasable for a modest number of Epic Raid Tokens, and/or dropping from carefully chosen, thematically appropriate dungeons (so a +4 Flaming Burst Dragon Bane weapon recipe might drop from Gianthold Tor).

As well as that, the lower level recipes could be sold in the DDO store as well as dropping in treasure. I'd keep the good recipes out of the store, however - if it's good enough that a first-life toon might use it at 20, don't sell it.

[Blank_Zero]

There will be no named equippable items used as ingredients.

This sounds like lawyer speak to me....named items aren't always equippable after all....

[Exanimus]

Soul gems required for crafting, bad idea, was a bad idea for rogue trap making and continues to be a bad idea. ANYTIME 1 class type controls a resource = drama, unnecessary difficulty, new players saying 'meh, bye' as soon as they find out they have to kow tow or pay through the nose for ingredients they need from another player.

what exactly is this fixation on soul gems? that you try to mix them into everything? if you wanted to give classes some unique properties, why not just give the their own personal crafting capabilities along with general. mage types ~> soul gems ~> can create their own wands/staves. Warrior types, weapons of war...thieves already have trapmaking, which would be actually useful if you'd remove the soulgem req, bards, instruments, clothing...almost everything else that can't be assigned to a particular class.

of course bound and unbound versions.

and ya know? saw a post that some players hit the crafting cap in a few days/week and that was cause for concern...where the frak is your head at? those players have so much pp the could by the entire game world if it was for sale, they know where to get everything, where to grind...and you're basing your concern on THEM?

here's a thought, START A NEW TOON YOURSELF, no perks from being a dev, designer or gm, lvl1 any class, then see how long it takes you to max crafting THEN think about the modifications you want to make eh? lets see if you can max it in a few weeks...

[gloopygloop]

This sounds like lawyer speak to me....named items aren't always equippable after all....

Greater Good Essence is a named item.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

One more anti-soul gem comment (as Soul Gem farming currently exists)....

If you aren't a Sorc/Wizard that can cast it, you'd have flag for Shroud, and then run it enough to burn something like...

2 Fungi
3 Funks
2 Pebbles
2 Twigs
1 Petal
2 Husks
2 Small Devil
2 Small Arrow
2 Small Bone
1 Small Chain
3 Small Stones
2 Small Shrap
2 Med Scales
2 Medium Arrow
1 Med Bone
3 Medium Chain
2 Medium Stone
2 Medium Shrap
4 Large Scales
4 Large Arrow
3 Large Bone
5 Large Chain
6 Large Stone
2 Large Shrap

...on a weapon that was only good for gathering soul gems.

Anyone got the fair market value equivalent of that in platinum? Whatever it is, that is way to steep a cost for a Barbarian to pay just to avoid paying inflated prices to a Wizard who might farm them for him/her.

[MadFloyd]

This idea reminds me of the old 'black gems' from the Ragnarok/Valhalla roguelike game.

Every implementation that has required soul gems so far has missed the mark - if you are going to provide a crafting resource that is only available to one or two classes, you have to implement similar resources that are relevant to other classes.

So, unless you are planning on making a resource that only divines can harvest via turning, or only barbarians/fighters can harvest via... killing things? then the system is biased.

Currently, in game there are two things that require soul gems - adamantine rituals, and trapmaking.

While there are usually a few random essences on the auction house, the lack of a market (due to the cost/reward of trapmaking) as well as the lack of other systems to supplement this means that most people dont bother buying, and most people dont bother selling.

If they become a new component for crafting, they will become a common trade resource, but will be limited to arcanes and people with VACII greensteels.

So the options are thus:

1. Dont use them as a crafting ingredient
2. Use them as a crafting ingredient, and implement several other 'class limited' resources to balance the economy across all classes.
3. Use them as a crafting ingredient, and increase the availability from other sources.

Option 1 fixes the bias, but leaves us with a hole where we need to implement another ingredient anyway as a replacement.

Option 2 is vastly more complicated - and while it may provide a stronger economic system in the long run, i do not think that it is a viable option to be asking for in this feedback :)

Option 3 addresses the bias (to an extent), meaning that in order to farm the ingredient heavily/reliably you still need to be arcane/vacuum equipped, but provides enough of a supplement to mean that the market is not hopelessly skewed.

One of the suggestions for fixing the trapmaking feat was to allow traps to have a chance to drop relevant soul gems, upon disarmament. I feel that this is a step in the right direction, as it allows trapmakers an influx of a resource that they require in large quantities in order to function at higher levels.

The most simple method is to include soul gems as end-of-quest reward options - perhaps biasing certain quests to drop certain types. This provides a method of acquisition for all classes, while maintaining the flavor of gems for certain purposes - do a fire elemental-laden quest to get a fire gem, and so on.

The Vacuum Gem idea could also work, and could take many different forms:

1. A consumable that traps soul when subject is killed via other means during 'vacuum'debuff.
2. A consumable item that is basically a 'trap the soul' bomb, casting the spell - like a scroll, but without the UMD check.
3. more readily available trap the soul scrolls/wands etc.
4. Non-Epic drops that can trap souls if they get a killing blow - without casting the actual spell.
5. more epic/Non-Shroud weapons that have a VacuumII style proc.

Personally, i think that the best way to solve this is:

Keep Necro-Arcanes and VacuumIIs as the best/most efficient way to get soul gems
Provide some soul-gem end reward options from quests
Provide soul-trapping consumables without super-high UMD requirements
Provide soul-gem drop chances from some traps
Implement more vacuum-style weapons
Implement soul-trapping on death-blow weapons

Now that seems like a long list, but a significant portion of those changes are to the loot table - not actual implementations of new items.

Fixes the problem with their usage in both crafting and trapmaking - and there is always room to implement 'rare drop' soul gems, if there is a need to implement items with a more valuable component.

Also might encourage more adamantine rituals, or provide room for other similar subtle rituals to be implemented.

Just some food for thought.

Good post. Coincidentally, we were discussing the second option today.

[Blank_Zero]

Greater Good Essence is a named item.

So is Silver Flame Potion. So is Essence of XXXXXX (Yugoloth potions). So is every collectible in the game.

What is your point? I'm nervous about how specific MadFloyd's answer was.

[sirgog]

Oh and for the record, I'm 100% fine with Soul Gems being used. Especially if more items with Trap the Soul and/or TTS guard are added to the game.

Maybe also consider something like 'Dueragar Armor Fragment' (chance to drop when a character lands a Sunder on dark dwarves of a certain CR), or a 'Splintered Dragon Scale' acquired the same way, so casters don't have as big an advantage in Cannith crafting as they have in Epic scroll farming. (Casters could attempt to Sunder a mob, but they'd probably miss).

I'd be fine with casters being the unquestioned masters of creating Soul Gems if melees are the unquestioned masters of creating Splintered Dragon Scales.

[Blank_Zero]

Oh and for the record, I'm 100% fine with Soul Gems being used. Especially if more items with Trap the Soul and/or TTS guard are added to the game.

Maybe also consider something like 'Dueragar Armor Fragment' (chance to drop when a character lands a Sunder on dark dwarves of a certain CR), or a 'Splintered Dragon Scale' acquired the same way, so casters don't have as big an advantage in Cannith crafting as they have in Epic scroll farming.

I'd be fine with casters being the unquestioned masters of creating Soul Gems if melees are the unquestioned masters of creating Splintered Dragon Scales.

/signed.

I use Sunder a ton (and land it often), so maybe I'm biased....

[MadFloyd]

So is Silver Flame Potion. So is Essence of XXXXXX (Yugoloth potions). So is every collectible in the game.

What is your point? I'm nervous about how specific MadFloyd's answer was.

This is exactly why I was specific. Define 'named item'. If you define it as anything that is not randomly created by the game, then we have named items as ingredients.
However I think many are referring to hand-designed, equipable items when they use this term.

[sirgog]

This is exactly why I was specific. Define 'named item'. If you define it as anything that is not randomly created by the game, then we have named items as ingredients.
However I think many are referring to hand-designed, equipable items when they use this term.

I'd be fine with high drop rate named items like the Giant Stalker Knife, Dusk Heart or the Scorched Bracers being used. It's the low drop rate items - both 'good stuff' like Spectral Gloves and even chaff like the Ward of Undeath - that would be a nightmare to hunt down if they are used in good recipes.

[Jahmin]

No, we never really considered them as far as I recall.

Seriously? After all the talk years ago about Gems going to be used in crafting, the dev team NEVER CONSIDERED USING THEM?
:eek: :( :rolleyes: :mad:

[Blank_Zero]

I'd be fine with high drop rate named items like the Giant Stalker Knife, Dusk Heart or the Scorched Bracers being used. It's the low drop rate items - both 'good stuff' like Spectral Gloves and even chaff like the Ward of Undeath - that would be a nightmare to hunt down if they are used in good recipes.

This.

But all the items you listed are equippable. This is what makes me nervous. What else could be used?

MadFloyd, could we have a sneak peek or an example? Like I said, I'm nervous about this.

It almost feels like the previous "error" was a mask to make 10.1 easier to swallow. I know you say, no conspiracies, but I can't help myself in situations like this.

[gloopygloop]

This.

But all the items you listed are equippable. This is what makes me nervous. What else could be used?

MadFloyd, could we have a sneak peek or an example? Like I said, I'm nervous about this.

It almost feels like the previous "error" was a mask to make 10.1 easier to swallow. I know you say, no conspiracies, but I can't help myself in situations like this.

My guess is that MadFloyd wants to be accurate in his description and that accuracy won in its fight against precision.

[Blank_Zero]

My guess is that MadFloyd wants to be accurate in his description and that accuracy won in its fight against precision.

I guess we will find out tomorrow...

[TheDearLeader]

I'll naturally have more feedback on this tomorrow.

But, regarding how much time/investment into crafting:

Crafting Levels 82/77/74

Saved stuff up before crafting went live.
Deconned everything I've pulled.
Spent 3 million + Plat by buying Essences from players, from AH, by buying loot from the vendors to deconstruct into lessers.
5 level 20 toons. Shrouds, Big Tops, IQ quests.
Had 3 other players supply me with their greaters. 2 of them have 4 level 20s.
And yanno what? I have maybe 10 good shards to show for it, and a couple weapons.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't make another +5 Holy Burst XXX Bane at this rate, because it takes so many dang lessers to get there, and I'm tired of buying stuff from the brokers. I have a couple shards crafted, but I can't actually do anything with them.

So.. yeah. That's my experience. Sure, I've gotten there, but it's been costly.

Edit : Also, some store bought crafting hammers and XP pots (maybe 4 orders of each?)

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

I'll naturally have more feedback on this tomorrow.

But, regarding how much time/investment into crafting:

Crafting Levels 82/77/74

Saved stuff up before crafting went life.
Deconned everything I've pulled.
Spent 3 million + Plat by buying Essences from players, from AH, by buying loot from the vendors to deconstruct into lessers.
5 level 20 toons. Shrouds, Big Tops, IQ quests.
Had 3 other players supply me with their greaters. 2 of them have 4 level 20s.
And yanno what? I have maybe 10 good shards to show for it, and a couple weapons.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't make another +5 Holy Burst XXX Bane at this rate, because it takes so many dang lessers to get there, and I'm tired of buying stuff from the brokers. I have a couple shards crafted, but I can't actually do anything with them.

So.. yeah. That's my experience. Sure, I've gotten there, but it's been costly.

Exactly my experience. Almost exactly.

[Calebro]

Exactly my experience. Almost exactly.

Then perhaps the two of you were a bit more zealous than you should have been.
I didn't *save* anything before crafting went live, but I did almost completely gut my bank toons after it went live.
I didn't decon everything that I've pulled, but I did decon a large amount of it, possibly 2/3rds.
I never spent a single copper or Turbine Point on mats, collectables, or boosters.
And yanno what? After hearing of the changes to banes, I crafted about 20 of them earlier tonight, and I still have thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of essences left.

Perhaps you're underwhelmed with the results because you were overzealous in the pursuit.

[Glenalth]

Throwing weapon crafting is in the next update. "prepping throwing weapons without prefix/suffix" should not work at all at the moment.

This isn't entirely true. Some BtA end rewards without prefix/suffix will decon just fine into craftable blanks.

[sirgog]

Oh and on using Epic Dungeon Tokens as ingredients (indirectly through Purified Eberron Shards) - you might want to consider reducing the costs of augment crystals now that there's a higher demand on our EDTs.

Running Big Top over and over gets old, fast, especially since U9 made it so much faster to burn Malicia down with arcanes.

[Glenalth]

Seriously? After all the talk years ago about Gems going to be used in crafting, the dev team NEVER CONSIDERED USING THEM?
:eek: :( :rolleyes: :mad:

Too much turnover on the dev team?

[Auran82]

I posted this elsewhere but it still applies here:

I never understood the implementation for crafting they decided on, they have a perfectly good system in LOTRO (and to be honest, this kind of system is the most common and successful type of system in MMOs) but they went with something entirely different, with chances to fail, etc.

I understand that change can be good, but not necessarily change for the sake of change. Now they are in a situation where they want to restrict the number of highly sought after enchantments being made (gtr banes, holy burst etc) but the simple fact is, you need to make a heap of these (as well as normal banes) just to level! These recipies should have been the reason you levelled your crafting, not the means in which you do it.

As a base, you should get access to 'levelling recipies' (lesser skill/stat bonuses, lesser spell boosts and clickies etc) higher level stuff should be drops from quests (not just raids) and be able to be sold, hell the really nice stuff could be single/limited use or have timers. Make everything unbound or bind on equip, create an economy for those who want to focus on it, let those who don't want to craft be able to sell recipies and ingredients to those who do. Make the levelling process take time, but not be so insanely exponential. Want to sell stuff in the store? Give crafting a chance to crit (like in LOTRO) with boosters available in the store and in treasure.

The crafting system as it is seems really confused in what they were wanting to achieve, which in a way reminds me of the epic system, rushed implementation with a confused set of future planning.

[JollySwagMan]

Thank you Madfloyd and Maj for your quick responses in this thread!

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Then perhaps the two of you were a bit more zealous than you should have been.
I didn't *save* anything before crafting went live, but I did almost completely gut my bank toons after it went live.
I didn't decon everything that I've pulled, but I did decon a large amount of it, possibly 2/3rds.
I never spent a single copper or Turbine Point on mats, collectables, or boosters.
And yanno what? After hearing of the changes to banes, I crafted about 20 of them earlier tonight, and I still have thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of essences left.

Perhaps you're underwhelmed with the results because you were overzealous in the pursuit.

No, not overzealous. My cost has almost always been lower than the costs stated by most to level on these forums. I'm certain I was more efficient that the majority of people crafting. Except when I recently did what you did and crafted some banes before they altered everything. But coming up with 2300 extra essences needed to actually have enough potential for those banes will take care of your tens of thousands. The prefix suffix cost is minimal. I'd love to see a screenshot of your bag with the the banes and the 10s of thousands, not that it proves anything, but that would be impressive.

[samho]

No, not overzealous. My cost has almost always been lower than the costs stated by most to level on these forums. I'm certain I was more efficient that the majority of people crafting. Except when I recently did what you did and crafted some banes before they altered everything. But coming up with 2300 extra essences needed to actually have enough potential for those banes will take care of your tens of thousands. The prefix suffix cost is minimal. I'd love to see a screenshot of your bag with the the banes and the 10s of thousands, not that it proves anything, but that would be impressive.

Actually, I'm more interesting about his level / deconstruct / crafted chart :p

[Quikster]

Then perhaps the two of you were a bit more zealous than you should have been.
I didn't *save* anything before crafting went live, but I did almost completely gut my bank toons after it went live.
I didn't decon everything that I've pulled, but I did decon a large amount of it, possibly 2/3rds.
I never spent a single copper or Turbine Point on mats, collectables, or boosters.
And yanno what? After hearing of the changes to banes, I crafted about 20 of them earlier tonight, and I still have thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of essences left.

Perhaps you're underwhelmed with the results because you were overzealous in the pursuit.

I feel the same way. Nobody said you have to cap in a couple weeks.

[sirgog]

I posted this elsewhere but it still applies here:

I never understood the implementation for crafting they decided on, they have a perfectly good system in LOTRO (and to be honest, this kind of system is the most common and successful type of system in MMOs) but they went with something entirely different, with chances to fail, etc.

I understand that change can be good, but not necessarily change for the sake of change. Now they are in a situation where they want to restrict the number of highly sought after enchantments being made (gtr banes, holy burst etc) but the simple fact is, you need to make a heap of these (as well as normal banes) just to level! These recipies should have been the reason you levelled your crafting, not the means in which you do it.

As a base, you should get access to 'levelling recipies' (lesser skill/stat bonuses, lesser spell boosts and clickies etc) higher level stuff should be drops from quests (not just raids) and be able to be sold, hell the really nice stuff could be single/limited use or have timers. Make everything unbound or bind on equip, create an economy for those who want to focus on it, let those who don't want to craft be able to sell recipies and ingredients to those who do. Make the levelling process take time, but not be so insanely exponential. Want to sell stuff in the store? Give crafting a chance to crit (like in LOTRO) with boosters available in the store and in treasure.

The crafting system as it is seems really confused in what they were wanting to achieve, which in a way reminds me of the epic system, rushed implementation with a confused set of future planning.

LOTRO has 'chances to fail' built in in the form of crafting crits. Most of the time you are only really interested in the crit versions of crafted items, the non-crit ones are usually vendored. Some recipes are exceptions.

I think the biggest issue with DDO's crafting is that a Holy shard always costs the same, whether you want it to make a piece of junk like a +4 Holy Greatclub of Stunning +4, or whether you want it for something potent like a +4 Holy Silver Khopesh of Evil Outsider Bane. Potential shards partially addressed this, but only partially.

If the system hadn't been set up with the ultra-customizable shards, but instead with players creating completed items, appropriate costs could have been designed from the get-go. In that situation, a +4 Holy Greatclub of Stunning +4 might cost only a fraction of the materials that the +4 HSKoEOB does.

[Yaga_Nub]

No, we never really considered them as far as I recall.

Why not? For YEARS, we've been asking for gems to have some kind of value other than for selling. For you to tell us that you never even considered using gems in crafting is kind of a slap in the face.

On to another issue. When are you or someone else that is in charge of crafting going to give us an update on the ML "bug" for weapons that has been been around since crafting started. Both Tolero and Cordovan said that they had it straight from the horse's mouth that most bound items should have a lower ML than their random loot counter-part and that is not the case with any weapon. So can you tell us definitively that MLs for bound, crafted weapons SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be lower than the same item from random loot. If the answer is they should not, then could you talk to us a little bit about why the team choose to go that route?

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Then perhaps the two of you were a bit more zealous than you should have been.
I didn't *save* anything before crafting went live, but I did almost completely gut my bank toons after it went live.
I didn't decon everything that I've pulled, but I did decon a large amount of it, possibly 2/3rds.
I never spent a single copper or Turbine Point on mats, collectables, or boosters.
And yanno what? After hearing of the changes to banes, I crafted about 20 of them earlier tonight, and I still have thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands of essences left.

Perhaps you're underwhelmed with the results because you were overzealous in the pursuit.

Or perhaps you just got extremely lucky on the weighted dice.

[BOgre]

See now, all of these questions and more could have been addressed, asked and answered months ago, problems avoided, good choices made, bugs addressed, etc., IF Turbine would allow the development team to post a .plan / Roadmap.

Would you guys PLEASE stop operating behind an artificially (and paranoidly unnecessary) velvet curtain? Transparency now.

Also, could someone please make paranoidly a real word? Thanks.

[Gremmlynn]

My concerns:

Soul gems. Easily addressed by simply adding a TTS recipe at around the same level as they start becoming necessary. (note: not an expert on TTS so if it is an insta death effect, make it lesser soul trap that adds no additional damage to the weapon, actually taking some away by using an enchantment slot, but results in a soul gem being produced). This lets the system take care of the concern...for weapon swingers anyway. For non-TTS capable casters, add it or a proxy to their spell lists with scrolls available.

Silverflame potions and other favor rewards. Personally, I don't mind having to buy the packs, it's what keeps the game going after all. My biggest concern is that only those players capable of completing the quests on elite difficulty (or who can stomach pikeing them with others who can) will be able to be elite level crafters. If this was the intent of the system, so be it. But I feel this could be a mistake as crafting actually gave some of us, well myself at least, something in the game we could actually excel at despite our less then leet gamer skills. It also, to some degree, takes away some of the freedom of being able to run varied content of our choice that crafting initially seemed to give us.

[Auran82]

LOTRO has 'chances to fail' built in in the form of crafting crits. Most of the time you are only really interested in the crit versions of crafted items, the non-crit ones are usually vendored. Some recipes are exceptions.

I think the biggest issue with DDO's crafting is that a Holy shard always costs the same, whether you want it to make a piece of junk like a +4 Holy Greatclub of Stunning +4, or whether you want it for something potent like a +4 Holy Silver Khopesh of Evil Outsider Bane. Potential shards partially addressed this, but only partially.

If the system hadn't been set up with the ultra-customizable shards, but instead with players creating completed items, appropriate costs could have been designed from the get-go. In that situation, a +4 Holy Greatclub of Stunning +4 might cost only a fraction of the materials that the +4 HSKoEOB does.

To be honese though, the 'cusomizability' is a bit misleading when you still have prefix/suffix/slot limitations in effect, there is a massive number of recipies that I would assume are almost never used (other than levelling), and if you listed the commonly used items being made, there wouldn't really be that many', there have been a couple of cases where I found an item with a large guild slot on it and though, 'cool, what can I put on this for TRing' and haven't been able to find anything useful to put on it.

[seobanio]

i Wasn't Expecting Feedback Today (i.e. Before You Saw The Changes With Your Own Eyes). That Said, I'm Already Reading Loud And Clear That any Ingredient That Can Only Be Obtained By Forcing The Actual Crafting Toon To Complete Content (e.g. Favor Rewards) Is Objectionable.

Understood. Thanks.

Qft

[LeLoric]

I am really rather concerned about these Purified dragonshard things. As far as we know theres 3 ways to get these, astral diamonds, tomes, epic tokens. This is extremely harsh on newer/casual players as they will likely want every single possible tome for their characters and may not be interested in epic or ready for it. So any newer player then is forced into the astral diamond method.

Seriously I find this particular aspect of the crafting to be the worst. Don't make up more items to complicate the system and eat up some other fairly valuable items like tomes and epic tokens. There are other ways to limit/complicate making stronger items. This seems more like a cash grab for me as it Promotes the sale of astral diamonds and dries up tome availability on the servers so more people will look ot the store for these.

For sure remove any way to break up a +3 tome for ingredients. I really don't think we wanna promote someone taking a +3 tome they have no use for that dropped in a raid just for crafting when other characters would much enjoy the tome for what it is supposed to be.

[Rumbaar]

I see the focus is for players to craft for themselves, and to this end I've approached crafting. I've added some twink gear, but of course the 'casual' gamer 30+ level is hard to get.

I've seen it mentioned before, but the need to store and swap items to my 'crafting' toon is a mini game in itself.

So you have to dedicate toon resources just to this end. Which can take away from the act of actually playing the game.

I'm worried that early adopters of the crafting game have been severely advantaged. From cheap initial resources that were brought up by this 'rich' players and at prices that didn't reflect their value at the time. With this type of situation it's given a false sense of issue for the developers, that a long term crafting community couldn't sustain.

So you've had a knee jerk reaction to a situation that would have fixed itself, resources limiting crafting. Just like after the Cove event and the influx of so much plat temporarily altered the economy of the game.

I just hope that as a player I'm able to enjoy the game to it's fullest.

[Dawnsfire]

I am really rather concerned about these Purified dragonshard things. As far as we know theres 3 ways to get these, astral diamonds, tomes, epic tokens. This is extremely harsh on newer/casual players as they will likely want every single possible tome for their characters and may not be interested in epic or ready for it. So any newer player then is forced into the astral diamond method.


I am also not sure how it is going to work. I haven't seen the new iteration either but he did say something about using Eberron Dragonshards earlier....


It's incomplete. They can also be obtained via small/med/large Eberron Dragonshard Fragments.

That said, the amount required in recipes has drastically changed and in some cases (Bane recipes for example) gone away entirely.

I am guessing there will be a few surprises in the mix tomorrow. I hope they are mostly good ones.

[ericrd]

Why not? For YEARS, we've been asking for gems to have some kind of value other than for selling. For you to tell us that you never even considered using gems in crafting is kind of a slap in the face.

On to another issue. When are you or someone else that is in charge of crafting going to give us an update on the ML "bug" for weapons that has been been around since crafting started. Both Tolero and Cordovan said that they had it straight from the horse's mouth that most bound items should have a lower ML than their random loot counter-part and that is not the case with any weapon. So can you tell us definitively that MLs for bound, crafted weapons SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be lower than the same item from random loot. If the answer is they should not, then could you talk to us a little bit about why the team choose to go that route?

This x 10 also Your Craft Changes Seem to Penalize The For The Fun Players Because The FTW Players know Every Trick In The The Book

[sirgog]

To be honese though, the 'cusomizability' is a bit misleading when you still have prefix/suffix/slot limitations in effect, there is a massive number of recipies that I would assume are almost never used (other than levelling), and if you listed the commonly used items being made, there wouldn't really be that many', there have been a couple of cases where I found an item with a large guild slot on it and though, 'cool, what can I put on this for TRing' and haven't been able to find anything useful to put on it.

Quite a number of the shards that underwhelm many people are better than they get credit for. For instance, Strength Sapping - unimpressive on random loot, but on a crafted silver/cold iron pure good weapon, it's situationally very useful.

I do however thing the slot limitations are somewhat onerous for some things. If +6 Con is fair game in the colorless slot of Epic Spectacles of Spirit Sight, it's not going to be gamebreaking to let players put +4 Con on their goggles.

[LeLoric]

I am also not sure how it is going to work. I haven't seen the new iteration either but he did say something about using Eberron Dragonshards earlier....



I am guessing there will be a few surprises in the mix tomorrow. I hope they are mostly good ones.

Yeah I can't say for sure on any of it but even eberron shards are rare enough and are generally used to get DDO store items. As such they either aren't available for crafters or crafters use them all up and the store gets more use. There is just no way around it their inclusion of these Purified eberron shards is just a cash grab.

Nothing about any of these items is a hard to get thing but almost any of them are designed towards more store use. I used to sell tomes that I pick up +1's and some 2's extremely cheap on the ah just because I didn't need them and I figured newer players that don't have the tomes may get them. Not now for me or any others so those prices now go out of newer/casual players reach and they then turn to the store.

[Seikojin]

Quite a number of the shards that underwhelm many people are better than they get credit for. For instance, Strength Sapping - unimpressive on random loot, but on a crafted silver/cold iron pure good weapon, it's situationally very useful.

I do however thing the slot limitations are somewhat onerous for some things. If +6 Con is fair game in the colorless slot of Epic Spectacles of Spirit Sight, it's not going to be gamebreaking to let players put +4 Con on their goggles.

Exactly. I was really hoping Cannith crafting would allow that.

[seobanio]

In terms of making crafting more accessible for everyone, have you considered making low level shards for full weapons that lock out further customization? For an example, make a shard that when used on a blank craftable weapon, applies +1 Ghost Touch of Pure Good, call it a "Delera's Special" shard or something, and with pieces that can't be overwritten so you can't really make it +2 or apply Metalline or anything like that. Can't be used for uber-twinking since the parts aren't separate, but makes it so a new crafter/new player could make a handy weapon for special situations and feel much better about themselves and the game in the process.

I love this idea. I think having combos available at lower levels for newer crafters would be great. I think the lower levels of crafting should have pretty low material costs, allowing casual players to achieve nice items if they put some effort in. I also think that these combos should clearly advertise the minimum level of the item made to make it easier for new players to understand.

I think one way to balance for hardcore players is to focus on things like crafting on silver/cold iron and crafting on things with augment slots. I don't think players should automatically be able to craft on these things, because they obviously can have a very large impact on the item that is being created.


In terms of decon on only one character: I think this is a big drawback to the current system. I would rather see crafting experience per shard made go up a little and get rid of this than keep it as is, but the best possible solution would be account wide crafting levels. that would be amazing.

[Calebro]

But coming up with 2300 extra essences needed to actually have enough potential for those banes will take care of your tens of thousands.

I already crafted those as well. I have everything I need to make the weapons I want except for the actual blanks, which I'll get in time from chests or when I need them from the AH.
And I still have plenty of essences left over.

When I said "thousands, or possibly tens of thousands" I was obviously talking in totals, not in individual essences.
Next time I log my crafter in I'll add it up, if you'd like.

[Dawnsfire]

Yeah I can't say for sure on any of it but even eberron shards are rare enough and are generally used to get DDO store items. As such they either aren't available for crafters or crafters use them all up and the store gets more use. There is just no way around it their inclusion of these Purified eberron shards is just a cash grab.

Nothing about any of these items is a hard to get thing but almost any of them are designed towards more store use. I used to sell tomes that I pick up +1's and some 2's extremely cheap on the ah just because I didn't need them and I figured newer players that don't have the tomes may get them. Not now for me or any others so those prices now go out of newer/casual players reach and they then turn to the store.

It all makes me pretty nervous to be honest. 3 of the 4 characters I run at the moment have used a full +2 tome loadout and I have pulled exactly none of them. I depended on people to put them on the AH. If things change the way I fear they might, then I expect that supply to dwindle pretty quick. I also expect people that pull them in pugs to keep them rather than pass them. Both of these would be bad for newer people in particular.

I hope I am reading everything wrong and I will be pleasantly surprised when the patch goes live. After all if the changes do not suit me I can just choose not to craft but if it effects the entire server economy I kinda have to participate in that.

Lets hope Madfloyd and his crew have weighed, measured and correctly set this up for everybody involved. If not, this could prove interesting :rolleyes:

[lugoman]

If that's the case, can we get some way to increase the essences we get? Anyone not supported by a large guild, or who has to actually hold down a job in the real world, crafting gets very painful to level around 50, mainly due to the large requirements for essences, and the small supply we can get. With 150? 200? levels planned, this is way too early for alot of people to get shut out of the crafting game.






One obvious way to do this is to be able to craft crafting items. Maybe a trinket that increases your chance of deconstructing greaters instead of lessers.

[FuzzyDuck81]

In terms of making crafting more accessible for everyone, have you considered making low level shards for full weapons that lock out further customization? For an example, make a shard that when used on a blank craftable weapon, applies +1 Ghost Touch of Pure Good, call it a "Delera's Special" shard or something, and with pieces that can't be overwritten so you can't really make it +2 or apply Metalline or anything like that. Can't be used for uber-twinking since the parts aren't separate, but makes it so a new crafter/new player could make a handy weapon for special situations and feel much better about themselves and the game in the process.

This sounds like it could be very nice... maybe make it a BtoA crafting shard that has a chance to drop in the Deleras chain end list.

A similar thing could be made for many of the other packs & would be a real boon to newer players while not being overpowered.

[janez]

Like some others I similarly have three level 20s and feed my crafter with mostly everything I loot
(I put rare stuff on auction house and just vendor sell items that don't return level3 or more crafting stuff).
I don't buy essences (yet?) and I don't get stuff to deconstruct from others.
I only made it to mid 40s in all crafting schools so far.

I think that leveling curve is just way too harsh. It requires too many resources and time invested.
Leveling should be faster.
However, I think that high end items should require harder to get ingredients.
This way people could craft high level items sooner. But to craft real good items some time investment should be made - just not in button mashing at crafting device. So your average basic crafter would be capped few times faster but wouldn't really be able to make any of more desired items without questing (however, should stick to BtA, do it with any character on you account) and/or help from others.
For example let people level on not that useful or game breaking items like +swimming.
Game would be more similar to how it was before crafting. People would still need to quest mostly and gather quest rewards.

[pHo3nix]

It all makes me pretty nervous to be honest. 3 of the 4 characters I run at the moment have used a full +2 tome loadout and I have pulled exactly none of them. I depended on people to put them on the AH. If things change the way I fear they might, then I expect that supply to dwindle pretty quick. I also expect people that pull them in pugs to keep them rather than pass them. Both of these would be bad for newer people in particular.

I hope I am reading everything wrong and I will be pleasantly surprised when the patch goes live. After all if the changes do not suit me I can just choose not to craft but if it effects the entire server economy I kinda have to participate in that.

Lets hope Madfloyd and his crew have weighed, measured and correctly set this up for everybody involved. If not, this could prove interesting :rolleyes:

Tbh+1 and +2 UNBOUND tomes are fine, the real problems are +3 BOUND tomes, they shouldn't be used in crafting cause it would end the good habit to put them up for roll if your toon doesn't need them.

[Altaweir]

I'm what you would call a "casual player". My highest toon is level 14, played in a static group. I've other characters of various classes and lower levels, and have been playing regularly, 4 to 9 hours of play a week on average, for a year and half. As a premium player, I spend regularly on the DDO for adventure packs and convenience items - shared bank slot, huge collectable bags, 32 pts build, classes, races, these sort of things. Turbine got a lot more bucks from me that they'd have earned should I have chosen the VIP route, but that's my choice. I rarely purchase any consumable on the DDO store, as to me they're not "worth it". I managed to get some decent plat by carefully checking prices at the AH and selling interesting items or collectables once in a while.

I do little raiding, simply because of the lack of time, despite owning the related adventure packs and doing my best to being Raid-Ready. I don't want to be a burden for my teammates. Raid is a serious thing.

This long introduction is necessary to show that I'm anything but remarkable. There are tons of players like me - you know, suddenly going AFK for a couple minutes in a quest because baby cries. :)

I Somehow think that Cannith Crafting was designed for people like me. Crafted items are supposed to be inferior to named raid loot, which is fine to me. Cannith Crafting allows casual crafting sessions of ten minutes here and there, which is exactly what I can provide. Cannith Crafting let people level one of their toon to equip their entire character collection, which was exactly what I was looking for. Cannith Crafting demands some grinding and an investment in platinum, but that's probably inherent to any crafting system and Turbines does a lot to create plat sinks, so I was grudgingly ready to pay that price.

I indulged in Cannith Crafting seriously in hopes of achieving something worthwhile.

By "seriously", I mean the same deal than many other players around:
- Deconstruct everything not AH worthy. Absolutely everything.
- Use shared bank slots to gather further junk loot / collectables from other toons.
- Use AH to purchase extra crafting material.
- Purchase Crafting Experience booster on DDO store (yes, I went that far :( )

If the first crafting levels were happily met, I wasn't long to discover Cannith Crafting shortcomings. I'm currently in the 40s with little intention to push any further.

~-~-~-~1. LEVELING~-~-~-~

What Turbine team doesn't realize is that 98% (if not more) of time and resources involved in crafting is just used to level up. During this long process, we couldn't care any less about what we craft. Superior Nullification II, Lesser Goblin Bane, Swim +3 shards - people just create anything available to maximize crafting XP. These shards get deconstructed immediately. Rince, repeat.

Leveling up requires tons of crafting essences and rare collectables (not rare by all accounts, but rare now that they are used in crafting. Just check the price of some Powdered Blood on AH for example.) The lack of collectables is crippling, since the recipes yielding the best XP / cost ratio involve them. Recipes using Essences only are much more expensive essence-wise. If on first level it gets annoying, on higher levels (40+) it gets truly insane.

I don't think any amount of plat can really overcome this - if a single greater essence is worth 800~1000 plat in the AH, you can easily figure the platinum cost of a single, mid to high level recipe (don't forget the Lessers as well). And because of diminishing XP returns you need dozens of such shards to get a single level up in one of the three schools of crafting. Ouch!

The only valid option to get essences is through item deconstruction. But that's where your toon level kicks in. Random junk loot isn't exactly the same when you're level 14 - and deem yourself lucky when you get a +6 hammer from a chest - or when you're 20, where Bracers of Sustenance +10 and similar, high-yielding essence items, abound.

Only people with at least one capped toon can get the essences they need to level up, just by deconstructing items. Others can't buy enough from the AH and don't get enough Essences from their mid-level loot to sustain crafting.

So much for the "crafting is for everyone" slogan.

~-~-~-~2. CRAFTING~-~-~-~

It's good to be the king. Leveling up involves plenty of grinding, but once you're there creating just one shard is easy. This would be true even if useful shards had their cost multiplied by ten. This would be true if useful shards required plenty of odd ingredients, as long as they are AH-purchasable. The leveling cost is so insane anything else is mostly irrelevant. You need a 50'000 plat Tome of Strength to create a great shard? Compared to the millions of plat required to reach a crafting level enabling you to actually craft it, it's still negligible.

The fun part is that powergamers Turbine seems eager to control are already beyond any control. Each will easily craft 20 Greater Lawful Outsider Bane shards, 20 Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane shards and 40 Holy Burst shards before update 10.1 goes live, just to be sure. Who cares if creating a further Greater Lawful Outsider Bane requires your firstborn? They already have all the shards they need.

Unfortunately, as it stands now, crafting is mostly useless unless you have reached the top. There are a couple utility recipes here and there (Featherfalling, Persuasion, +2 attack bonus) that are oddly affordable - let's hope Turbine didn't notice ;) - but most mundane stuff low and mid-level players would like to use in their daily dungeon is simply out of reach. Level 100 for a mere +6 stat item? Unlikely.

I don't see anything game-breaking in being able to craft a +6 WIS necklace for a mid-level toon (providing ML requirements are met) but for unknown reasons Turbine deemed such recipes powerful enough to keep them out of reach from 99.9% of the player base.

~-~-~-~3. UNBOUND CRAFTING~-~-~-~

Unbound crafting is a non-issue. With recipe costs two or three times the insane amount required for bound shards, and a difficulty level twice the one of a bound shard, Turbine efficiently neutered the option.

Anyone wishing to make a living from unbound shards is a fool, as other players already stated.

~-~-~-~4. PROPOSALS~-~-~-~

I'm glad the first 10.1 "train wreck" update has been stopped, but unfortunately, the second attempt is hardly any better. Apparently, some tell-tale combinations (Holy Burst Silver Khopesh of Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane) are in the same league than raid loot or greensteel. That's not our fault, and we get punished for that as Turbine struggles on how to control crafting and compromise the entire system. I wish I never sank so much resources in such a dead-end.

There are two ways of controlling crafting:
- Making XP gains harder by adding more collectibles, refined stuff, etc. to high-level shards.
- Requiring high-end, rare ingredients for the most powerful shards.

What bugs me is that Turbine is attempting both, thus killing Cannith Crafting effectively.

Regarding crafting levels, the damage is already done. Powergamers are already at the top and only mundane mortals are struggling. Anything affecting crafting XP will hurt only the latter. Any attempt at controlling Powergamers will fail.

Here are my suggestion. They may sound a bit extreme, but together I sincerely think they make sense.

- Drop the crafting levels. Shard creation should come from ingredients and nothing else. Since the days of grinding for level up would be over, the amount of essences required for a single shard could be higher (especially for low-level shards).

- Propose alternate recipes giving various success rates to shards. For example, 30% success if using Essences only, and up to 100% using rare, Bound to Accound rewards. A failed attempt could consume everything.

- Increase cost or add special requirements to Shards of Potential. It's combination of effects that makes crafed items desirable, hardly a single one.

- Require specific ingredients to apply shards on a non-standard blank (like a Silver Khopesh). HB Khopesh of GLOB are okay but HB Silver Khopesh of GLOB are not? Then, ask for a Refined Greater Huge Prismatic Eberron Dragonshard Essence of Doom (tm) to apply shards on a Silver item. Problem solved.

Cannith Crafting has a huge potential. Be careful. Remember not all of us are Power Gamers. Ask developers to attempt crafting themselves with a mid-level toon, it should teach them a few things, like it did to me.

Thank you for reading. :)

[ericrd]

The fun part is that powergamers Turbine seems eager to control are already beyond any control. Each will easily craft 20 Greater Lawful Outsider Bane shards, 20 Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane shards and 40 Holy Burst shards before update 10.1 goes live, just to be sure. Who cares if creating a further Greater Lawful Outsider Bane requires your firstborn? They already have all the shards they need.

. :)

this x 9000 Skulls powerfactor

[jejeba86]

Cannith Crafting has a huge potential. Be careful. Remember not all of us are Power Gamers. Ask developers to attempt crafting themselves with a mid-level toon, it should teach them a few things, like it did to me.

Thank you for reading. :)

This guy said it all. The changes you want to implement will hurt just the casual players, not the hardcore ones you seem to aim. Why don't you let cannith crafting to us casual, as the hardcore will get much more from epics and other sources?

Also please, don't mess with the economy while changing crafting. + 2 tomes are already expensive for a casual player on the auction house. Any change in crafting that involves tomes will make the prices go up and in such way it will hurt us, casual players, instead of the crafting kings you are aiming for

[Letrii]

Why not just limit it to items that can be obtained from deconning magic items?

[Fundamental]

My 2 cents are this,

Make the ingredients you pick up, find more dynamic.
Create a living world enviroment where trees, plants grow and can be farmed, or maintained.
Create house and a couple new open areas, where limited fighting is involved.

Also create a big player vs player arena, in the middle of that space.

Try to create a community out of this crafting phenomena.
You don't need to include items from the store or bound to account/char, in crafting to make it hard.
You can instead low drop rated on the items you need but aren't bound

Example, make 'Special Kobolt Mining Potion' a special high tier ingredient which only drops on vale, amrath, epic chronoscrope bosses, or something in that direction.

If this game can expand and maintain this level of quality, while added a bit more social leveling more of a community this game would not only grow a lot bigger and attract more people, it would also be much deeper and a more of a in depth experience with more actual economics going on.

Example nr2.
Houses can be bought, sold, crafted upon, etc.
Gardens can be maintained, ingredients can be mixed.
Wizards get an extra crafting feat as do sorcerers.
Bards get an extra feat for making potions and the like.
Maybe this seems very far fetched but it's not, it's possible.

All sorts of things would be going on in the world and also you wouldn't just see your basic lfm.
Nope you would see;
Wizards at house nr 15 needs some extra potions to craft this ... this ... pls help
Etc etc.

Just my 2 cents :D :D

Turbine keep tweaking! :D

[BlackyLigar]

previously only 3/per and 2/per collectable turn in's were being used as ings. why not save the hastle with this wild idea yer cooking and just go with the 1per for the rly good stuff? 1/per: tear of vulcoor, flowering hellclap, steller orbs, ocianic sphears, gold swamp perals, and truely the current lvl 100's are a real chore already i've easily destroyd 10mil plat worth of vender trash and only managed so far to get 84 68 70. some ppl have maxed out all three but they did it with ddo stuff.

+1 tomes? yah that's cool.

epic tokens? cool.

if it got these two, i rly don't care what other pay options u have. two thumbs up.

arrows, eww. no really, i play probably the most famous archer on my server and i'd cut my eyeballs out before i would ever loot these things. just take that stuff out of the game already or atleast let us craft them. with all this junk yer throwing at us only a barb could carry it without being overwhieght or simply out of inventory and bank space with the full ddo store bank package. barbs need very little gear. you would need to carry so many quivers for all the different moster types of slayer arrows that and the 3 degree's of slaying and to top it off you have the 4 different enhancment levels..... that makes soooooooooo many veriables..... it's just rediculous. i've had to people out in front of their children just for telling me they passed me some arrows and that i need to go loot them for the last year before this last half year. i just finaly have these people trained to sthu about these bloody things! AHHHHHH! I HATE YOU! DIE!

:) all that said and i still dont think u have much of a crafting system here. i think rather than all these changes you're thinking, you should just add an extended crafting durration. you dont have to be any perticular place during the extended crafting segment. like a lame lowpower shard takes a full minute to craft. but you can do whatever you want during that minute. high power shards like vorpal or banish would take a full day to maybe a week.

[ImFour20]

Most of the handwrap bugs are slated for Update 11.

ty for the update

[Yan_PL]

We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.
Too late. Some people already stacked up on unbound shards and will be making a fortune if cost to build them elevates. As eager I am to see the changes and improvements (and epic item pass Genasi posted about), I can wait until it's done right. Inconsistency and economy breaking changes on live servers aren't the best way to do stuff. Lamannia is there for a reason; and I'd rather have the crafting only in there at least until the list of ingredients, balance of costs and list of craftable shards calms down.

[andbr22]

I personaly LOLed seeing these receipes (state of day 07.13):
- Chatering ring (totally overpriced for GHalfling Bane), dreamsplitter (ok after crit changes it is woo woo woosless stick)
- Quest rewards of some choosen packs (usually these that offer less).
- rare named items (pyrsul bane etc.)
- silver flame healing potion - for Holy Burst -> you gota be kidding me why I grinded this much.
- TOME OF UNTOLD LEGENDS turn in weapons!
- FLAWLESS SILBERYS DRAGONSHARD - COOL 1 life favor reward or one of the rarest item in the game to aquire by yourself (myself got like 0,5 of it -without buying silberys DSfrags).
- blood of dragon - well you get it like 1 in 12 TOR runs (noone trade you this, so it also hurt casters that run it for blood). Probablyt geting 5 gona be more time consuming than geting 25 sclales (by yourself).

Also about useing +1 tomes for PDs. Now if someone need +1 tome then ok it is not too hard to get tome for less than 20k plat on AH. After these changes prices of +1 tomes are increase (by much). Now look at this from newbie view. Ok someone tells him to buy +1 Dex tome (that can be included into 'low cost' builds) to be able to dual wield. After these changes it is gona be quite impossible to do so (every crafting VET gona go to AH and buy every tome that gona cost less than 0.5M plat).
Not gona mention that PDs

While crafting prety much killed Brokers, this changes prety much kill crafting for none ViPs (well for me now there is no use to farm crafting more because prices of stuff is ridiculous (i have high 50ies of crafting). Nice tool for UBER guys to be even more UBER.

Generaly crafting didn't repaired a single thing (as my monk cannot make dependable DR/ breaker (because metalline is ultra high level (+rare one pack ingridient), and it is almost impossible to get silver warps), well low level beaters are availble if someone is grinding stuff (ah and super expensive radiance items for DoTs to be even more powerfull)... It was temp plat sink of downsing rod sellers...

I honestly like idea of useing of soul gems -> they generally go realy well for bane stuff (20 greater essences of dominator for Greater lawfull outsider bane seems fair price).

[haclya]

can't believe they broke crafting to make crafting more balanced.

Now crafting is no point no longer it easer to grind the items you need then to craft.

If they increased items you need make shards they wanted to balance it been best solution.

[Dendrix]

4. Minimum level requirements on crafted gear should be the same as or lower than random drops. Why craft something if you have to wait longer to use it?

The primary means of acquiring gear should be to go out, quest/raid and get loot drops and use them. With crafted items being higher level this favours questing to get gear.

If crafter loot is lower ML than quested loot, then the best way to get the great gear is get as much loot as possable deconstruct and then craft what you want. Because crafted is a make what you want system.
The same arguement applies (to a lesser extend) if the crafted is the same as quested loot.

The essence of DDO is to go out, kill bad guys and take their stuff for yourself. With crafted at +1 level that keeps the essence of DDO the same.

[Yaga_Nub]

...
The essence of DDO is to go out, kill bad guys and take their stuff for yourself. With crafted at +1 level that keeps the essence of DDO the same.

That might be your essence but that's not everyone's essence.

[Missing_Minds]

Seriously? After all the talk years ago about Gems going to be used in crafting, the dev team NEVER CONSIDERED USING THEM?
:eek: :( :rolleyes: :mad:

Because most of us sincerely were hoping that they would be used in dye recipes so we could change the look of our "clothing". Saddly... that failed us.

[zebidos]

All I ask is one thing, please, please, please do not make us get enough favour for silver flame pots to use in crafting, I find the necropolis rather boring, time consuming and annoying.

Id rather run Korthos for a year non-stop for 8 hours a day then do the necropolis.

[KyrzaBladedancer]

/snip

This long introduction is necessary to show that I'm anything but remarkable. There are tons of players like me - you know, suddenly going AFK for a couple minutes in a quest because baby cries. :)

I Somehow think that Cannith Crafting was designed for people like me. Crafted items are supposed to be inferior to named raid loot, which is fine to me. Cannith Crafting allows casual crafting sessions of ten minutes here and there, which is exactly what I can provide. Cannith Crafting let people level one of their toon to equip their entire character collection, which was exactly what I was looking for. Cannith Crafting demands some grinding and an investment in platinum, but that's probably inherent to any crafting system and Turbines does a lot to create plat sinks, so I was grudgingly ready to pay that price.

I indulged in Cannith Crafting seriously in hopes of achieving something worthwhile.

By "seriously", I mean the same deal than many other players around:
- Deconstruct everything not AH worthy. Absolutely everything.
- Use shared bank slots to gather further junk loot / collectables from other toons.
- Use AH to purchase extra crafting material.
- Purchase Crafting Experience booster on DDO store (yes, I went that far :( )

If the first crafting levels were happily met, I wasn't long to discover Cannith Crafting shortcomings. I'm currently in the 40s with little intention to push any further.

Not a direct response to you, but to all that say that crafting is to hard and grindy (yours is just the best laid out and thought out one) I'll have to disagree with most of the problems you see. I think it tailors quite well to the casual/average.

I tend more toward the powergamer side of the spectrum, but I do not play as much as I used to and some days only end up completing 3 or 4 raids and half a dozen quests across 4 capped characters and a TR. My brother is slightly more active but his play time is usually less productive as he is currently outside our guild's main activity time. My brother and I share our ingredients and end up passing a large bag around to deconstruct and gather all the essences in one place. We do not bother transferring items to our respective crafters, as such almost all our active characters are sitting at nearly or over 20 in all crafting schools just from deconstruct which as you know was added later.


~-~-~-~1. LEVELING~-~-~-~

What Turbine team doesn't realize is that 98% (if not more) of time and resources involved in crafting is just used to level up. During this long process, we couldn't care any less about what we craft. Superior Nullification II, Lesser Goblin Bane, Swim +3 shards - people just create anything available to maximize crafting XP. These shards get deconstructed immediately. Rince, repeat.

Leveling up requires tons of crafting essences and rare collectables (not rare by all accounts, but rare now that they are used in crafting. Just check the price of some Powdered Blood on AH for example.) The lack of collectables is crippling, since the recipes yielding the best XP / cost ratio involve them. Recipes using Essences only are much more expensive essence-wise. If on first level it gets annoying, on higher levels (40+) it gets truly insane.

I don't think any amount of plat can really overcome this - if a single greater essence is worth 800~1000 plat in the AH, you can easily figure the platinum cost of a single, mid to high level recipe (don't forget the Lessers as well). And because of diminishing XP returns you need dozens of such shards to get a single level up in one of the three schools of crafting. Ouch!

The only valid option to get essences is through item deconstruction. But that's where your toon level kicks in. Random junk loot isn't exactly the same when you're level 14 - and deem yourself lucky when you get a +6 hammer from a chest - or when you're 20, where Bracers of Sustenance +10 and similar, high-yielding essence items, abound.

Only people with at least one capped toon can get the essences they need to level up, just by deconstructing items. Others can't buy enough from the AH and don't get enough Essences from their mid-level loot to sustain crafting.

So much for the "crafting is for everyone" slogan.

After the original surge of ingredients from my mule characters I was able to get my crafting levels to the mid 20's in the first incarnation of the crafting hall, when essence increases from levels were an exponential numbers, in roughly an hour worth of crafting time. A day or 2 later I bumped those up to low 30's in roughly another 45 minutes. After doing the occasional 10 15 minutes crafting session I was sitting at low 40's on my crafter before the first crafting patch. After the patch I got to the low 50's and stopped. I have not crafted except for a few low level items at all for nearly 3 weeks. After I stopped my brother took all the ingredients we had saved up and started leveling his crafter. In those 3 weeks he has spent little time at the actual crafting alter, perhaps 7-9 hours at most. He is currently sitting at, I believe, nearly or over 75 in all schools, and we sitting on a rather large stack of essences as he hasn't had time to craft.


~-~-~-~2. CRAFTING~-~-~-~

It's good to be the king. Leveling up involves plenty of grinding, but once you're there creating just one shard is easy. This would be true even if useful shards had their cost multiplied by ten. This would be true if useful shards required plenty of odd ingredients, as long as they are AH-purchasable. The leveling cost is so insane anything else is mostly irrelevant. You need a 50'000 plat Tome of Strength to create a great shard? Compared to the millions of plat required to reach a crafting level enabling you to actually craft it, it's still negligible.

The fun part is that powergamers Turbine seems eager to control are already beyond any control. Each will easily craft 20 Greater Lawful Outsider Bane shards, 20 Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane shards and 40 Holy Burst shards before update 10.1 goes live, just to be sure. Who cares if creating a further Greater Lawful Outsider Bane requires your firstborn? They already have all the shards they need.

Unfortunately, as it stands now, crafting is mostly useless unless you have reached the top. There are a couple utility recipes here and there (Featherfalling, Persuasion, +2 attack bonus) that are oddly affordable - let's hope Turbine didn't notice ;) - but most mundane stuff low and mid-level players would like to use in their daily dungeon is simply out of reach. Level 100 for a mere +6 stat item? Unlikely.

I don't see anything game-breaking in being able to craft a +6 WIS necklace for a mid-level toon (providing ML requirements are met) but for unknown reasons Turbine deemed such recipes powerful enough to keep them out of reach from 99.9% of the player base.

In my example of crafting my brother and I have not spent a single piece of platinum on buying essences, and were only given a few hundred total by our guild mates. I do agree that some of the CLs for items are way out of wack.


~-~-~-~3. UNBOUND CRAFTING~-~-~-~

Unbound crafting is a non-issue. With recipe costs two or three times the insane amount required for bound shards, and a difficulty level twice the one of a bound shard, Turbine efficiently neutered the option.

Anyone wishing to make a living from unbound shards is a fool, as other players already stated.

While I agree you won't be making money on unbound crafting, to ignore it for level is simply stupid. Which is less expensive 12 lessers or 3 greaters and 15 lessers? 10 greaters and 80 lessers or 9 greaters and 15 lessers? Being able to make the cheap level boosting shards a second time can be a life saver in the 60-70 range and extends the usage of the mid level shards for leveling by nearly double.


/snip

Cannith Crafting has a huge potential. Be careful. Remember not all of us are Power Gamers. Ask developers to attempt crafting themselves with a mid-level toon, it should teach them a few things, like it did to me.

Thank you for reading. :)

Some of the suggestions you make are very good and I would like to see in game, others I could care less if they made it in game as they would not really affect me, but people who are saying that crafting is too hard or that they had to spend millions of plat and 100+ hours at the device to make anything useful, perhaps don't understand how to work the system to their advantage.

[WangChi]

MadFloyd/Devs - what percentage of the playerbase have their crafting levels at or near cap right now that has you so concerned?

I didn't start crafting until shards could be deconstructed, and I was at mid-level (12-13) at the time. I've crunched nearly everything that wasn't exceptional AH value. I've crafted the best xp/essence shards I can and deconned them to get my essence back. I think, for a more than casual but not powergamer type player, (1-2 hours day on average), I've put in a lot of work into crafting so far.

I'm not even level 50 yet in any crafting school. I've crafted a couple nice boss beaters (+4 holy silver eob), a nice trinket (+2 good luck), goggles (blindess immunity of battle skill +2), a ring (feather fall of persuasion). So far, that's the only useful stuff I've been able to craft and it's all BtC.

I can't imagine I'm in the minority of crafters and that everyone else is in the high 90's in crafting levels.

Do you have any idea what percentage of crafters will really be impacted by these crafting changes? Let's not forget that in order to achieve high levels of crafting, you really need to craft high level shards, which now cost a lot more making leveling harder. The powergamers are already past this point and these changes won't affect them. They will only affect players like me, which I can only assume is the vast majority of crafters.

I would really like to see some statistics that break down crafting levels achieved by the existing playerbase so that the playerbase can understand why the changes are necessary. Personally, I think this system is really working well as it is.

[sweez]

The fun part is that powergamers Turbine seems eager to control are already beyond any control.

This. What scares me is that Turbine suddenly got the urge to try and "control" powergamers, after a very long period of pure on low-mid tier players. I'm scared because I feel that Turbine devs and/or playtesters don't really understand the meta-game, and that this focus on slowing down people that can't really be slowed down will likely end up in losing them customers from their biggest player base, y'know, the non-powergamer one.

[sweez]

Many of these recipes, when combined with other effects available in crafting can result in extremely powerful items that approach raid loot. All in all this is a good thing; after all, crafting is a fair alternative to raiding. We just want to ensure that there's a sense of balance between the various routes. We were concerned that some of these items may be too easy to create once you attained the required crafting level and we didn't want to upset the equilibrium of the game. We would rather proceed cautiously.

That's one way of looking at it. Here's another - the epic (raid) loot that's comparable to high-end crafted boss beaters is too big of a grind, in many cases. Why not do something about the insane desert seal/shard/scroll grind, for example, instead of increasing the crafting grind?

[Mastus]

Not a direct response to you, but to all that say that crafting is to hard and grindy (yours is just the best laid out and thought out one) I'll have to disagree with most of the problems you see. I think it tailors quite well to the casual/average.

I tend more toward the powergamer side of the spectrum, but I do not play as much as I used to and some days only end up completing 3 or 4 raids and half a dozen quests across 4 capped characters and a TR. .

I don't ever post in these forums, but I do read them pretty frequently. I felt I had to comment on this though. That last statement pretty much is the exact opposite of casual. A slow day for you is "only" 4 raids and 6 quests across 4 max level toons and a TR.

I am very exited about the crafting system, but will admit I am a bit nervous on it's implementation. As it stands now it does seem like the first few levels go quickly but the casual crowd is going to hit a brick wall in the 50+ region of crafting.

[Mahulk]

I am glad that we, casual players, got an option for progression. I play a single character and I love that I can progress a little faster now. Shroud has been the most important raid since it got added to the game. The green steel items are still insanely good, but super long to farm. I feel sorry for old timers that anything to lessen the grind is kind of a slap in the face... but as a casual I was looking at the grind with a sad face...

That being said, I feel that the crafting system is WAY too rewarding as it is. Here is a list of what I was able to craft in a week:

2x +4 holy silver of evil outsider bane
2x +4 holy cold iron of evil outsider bane
2x +4 anarchic adamantine of construct bane
2x +4 holy of dragon bane
1x +4 vicious adamantine of everbright
2x +4 vicious of elemental bane1x good luck +2 trinket

That's a little insane to think that I replaced MOST of the weaponry I had accumulated since I started playing...

To me, crafting has it's place, but it should be somewhat grindy without a cheap method to bypass. Maybe the crafting would have been better if there had not been levels... just gather a ton of ingredients for the effect you want to do. Or have levels in a innovative way, you have to craft X amount of Lesser Bane until you unlock Bane, then Y amount of Bane to unlock Greater Bane...

I hope the crafting system will remain useful to me as a casual player as a way of progressing. I do not NEED to have access to the full list of recipes... that's one more avenue that could be studied.

[Missing_Minds]

This. What scares me is that Turbine suddenly got the urge to try and "control" powergamers, after a very long period of pure on low-mid tier players. I'm scared because I feel that Turbine devs and/or playtesters don't really understand the meta-game, and that this focus on slowing down people that can't really be slowed down will likely end up in losing them customers from their biggest player base, y'know, the non-powergamer one.

To control the upper tier of power gamers, that 5%-10% of players, you end up alienating the rest of the player base. This is why you'll always have people claiming XYZ is to easy to get, while the more common player base will say it is to hard.

Do you reward work in a game with "winnings" for those who put forth effort? (aka raid loot or those who run quests constantly in zerg fashion just for the loot and not the challenge)
Or do you reward the common to keep people in the game to continue to have revenue?

The happy medium isn't the easiest to find.

[Solmage]

My primary concern is that some of these changes simply add annoyance, without actually helping the stated goal. [Which is to make uber powerful items that are raid-level have a raid-level rarity/difficulty in creating EACH item, as opposed to the current free for all once you reach crafting level X approach.]

For example:

- Favour Rewards, such as silver flame potions. This is just to seriously annoy players, and possibly try to sell the necro packs which are unpopular. It does not in any way help with the stated goal, since once you have the favour reward you can just buy as many potions as you want, it just essentially adds extra grind to crafting. Even worse, it has to be done with the crafting character. And just to make it far worse, once you TR you can no longer craft since you no longer have the favour.

- Trap the soul gems: Again, just added extra grinding (collecting shards, trapping enemies, etc) with no actual increase in the rarity of crafting. What's worse now you need a pocket wizard or anywhere from 24 to 48 large shroud ingredients to be able to craft.

- What's equally bad is that the system seems to penalize creating a min lvl 6 greater bane with nearly the same penalties than a +5 holy of greater bane would have.


Now, in an ideal world, the crafting system would have been designed very differently: Greater banes would come from extracting bane essences from existing bane weapons, and thus the rarity would be preserved. You would need X greater lawful outsider bane essences to craft a greater lawful outsider weapon, and these could be obtained from greater banes (say 10 or so), medium banes (100 or so), or lesser banes (1000 or so). Deconstructing skill would be based on essence type, not schools, as would crafting skill, so that some players would specialize in specific items, and you would have an actual player economy.

But since the entire redesign of the crafting system is ... unlikely, (the only company I've ever seen fully scrap and redesign a fundamentally flawed system based on player feedback was Cryptic with STO crafting), I have some vague suggestions:

- Certain ingredients like trap the soul gems should be part of caster recipes only. A wizard won't be offended for having to provide X demon soul gems to create a spell penetration VIII item. A warrior will despise you for having to provide them to craft a greater bane. Of course, a sorcerer will be somewhat annoyed, but they can make it work.

(Incidentally, it sure would be nice if said wizards COULD craft useful end-game items! Hint: spell pen VII is not it, and is nowhere near level 90 in power when you can grab it from any pawnshop. More flexibility with slots is also truly needed for caster stuff. If a caster effect is a suffix naturally, perhaps offer a higher level prefix version too and vice-versa?)

- Don't use +3 tomes, they are essentially bound raid loot

- You need to add the rarity to "catalysts" that allow the +5 holyburst of greater banes, not to the individual effects, or at least the individual effects should be much easier to create than a combined item like that.

- Some effects should be easier to make than other similar effects, if only to help newbies at crafting: Flaming, for example, could be made a lot cheaper than acid or lightning since it becomes obsolete a lot sooner. But at low levels, it's rather nice. Kobold, Goblinoid and Undead banes (not greater) could also be made cheaper.

- +5 armour should be much easier to make than a +5 weapon. Those shards are way overdue to be split.

- Add end rewards to raids that don't take up a raid item slot, kind of like essences (are supposed to) work, that give various items used in crafting. This shouldn't be the only way to obtain them, but it could be *A* way, like say doing 20 Reavers gives you a guaranteed chance at the whateverisusedX in giant and elemental banes.

Anyway, it's hard to give feedback without seeing the specifics, but I think those general thoughts may still apply.

[Altaweir]

Not a direct response to you, but to all that say that crafting is to hard and grindy (yours is just the best laid out and thought out one) I'll have to disagree with most of the problems you see. I think it tailors quite well to the casual/average.

From your signature, I see that three of your four toons on Khyber server (Jyrja, Ploratus, Kyrzi) are level 20, some being in their third true reincarnation. You do not exactly fit my definition of "casual gaming", therefore limiting the value of your comments over this part of the server population.

And on the difficulty to get essence for mid-level characters, you missed the point entirely. Too bad, because this part is crucial in leveling.

[KyrzaBladedancer]

I don't ever post in these forums, but I do read them pretty frequently. I felt I had to comment on this though. That last statement pretty much is the exact opposite of casual. A slow day for you is "only" 4 raids and 6 quests across 4 max level toons and a TR.

I am very exited about the crafting system, but will admit I am a bit nervous on it's implementation. As it stands now it does seem like the first few levels go quickly but the casual crowd is going to hit a brick wall in the 50+ region of crafting.


That is more of an average day I guess. Perhaps I am too used to running with the top tier people and have forgotten what it is like to be a complete pug, but the people I play with do twice that on a slow day. Wanderlust usually does between 4-8 raids in what would be my morning and takes from 2-4 hours. Khyber has a very open top tier, were any of the 4 or 5 top guilds and at least a few Pugs and unguilded people are always welcome in any raid the others host. I also do about another hour questing either in the morning or in the after noon.

I believe there is a wall where people start to slow down a lot, and I think it should be that way, but I see the wall more in the 65-70 region where there is little to craft and all of it is expensive.

[sweez]

Since we have actual dev feedback on this thread, I'd like to ask:

Why are DDO store items used in a system clearly designated as beta?

[Khurse]

I out this in my thread, but I'll throw it in here as well.

Instead of requiring Silver Flame healing pots and Yugo pots for some recipes. Why not have a BTA "ingredient" pot available from the favour vendors.

This would mean you have to grind out the favour on at least one toon, (which I don't have a problem with) but wouldn't necessarily have to grind out the favour on your crafter.

[Darkrok]

That is more of an average day I guess. Perhaps I am too used to running with the top tier people and have forgotten what it is like to be a complete pug, but the people I play with do twice that on a slow day. Wanderlust usually does between 4-8 raids in what would be my morning and takes from 2-4 hours. Khyber has a very open top tier, were any of the 4 or 5 top guilds and at least a few Pugs and unguilded people are always welcome in any raid the others host. I also do about another hour questing either in the morning or in the after noon.

I believe there is a wall where people start to slow down a lot, and I think it should be that way, but I see the wall more in the 65-70 region where there is little to craft and all of it is expensive.

I play as often as possible, stay on top of all changes in the game, and have been around long enough to be able to generate several million plat if I wanted to liquidate stuff for crafting (which I did not).

Two points...

1) The moment they added crafting xp for deconstructing I started leveling a first life level 9 sorc to level 20. At the same time I took every single drop it got and deconstructed it and then leveled crafting using those essences as well as any I'd gotten from chests/end rewards during times there weren't any interesting groups and I didn't feel like running something solo. I did it this way as a test for what a truly new player could accomplish without dumping outside resources into crafting. The end result is that at level 20 this character had high 20's/low 30's in crafting. If I had to guess I'd say that leveling a first life toon from 1-20 would give you a mid-30's crafting score.

This means that while yes, you can resource dump to get there, a typical player will have an easier time getting to level 20 on a first life toon than getting to a crafting score of 40.

2) As I mentioned, I'm a savvy player that plays as often as possible. My typical night is 1-2 raids and 2-3 quests. If I don't raid I might get in 4 or 5 quests. If you figure a raid, including time to get the group filled, run the quest, and do the turn-in as about 45 minutes and a quest at say 20 minutes a piece (obviously this varies greatly) then my typical night is about 2 1/2 hours. I probably spend another half hour doing slayers, inventory management, or crafting and those numbers definitely match up with my typical play time of about 3 hours.

Obviously you can do better time-wise if you have pre-planned raids and do raid chains with the same group, etc, and it sounds like that's what you're doing but I'd say that's far from the typical experience for your average player. You either have to play much more to hit that number of raids or plan to be online at exactly the right time to run the quests. Either one of those scenarios are not what I would term as casual game play.

TL;DR People have very different definitions of casual gamer. Those definitions are going to get in the way of a well balanced crafting system. Turbine should have the internal numbers to cut through the noise of stories like both of ours and get to the actual truth of what the average player is and create a crafting system that caters to them at the lower levels but requires a long time for an average player to get to the highest levels.

[kratimas]

Sorry this is just a question not really a reply to the update, but I noticed in the update notes it says:

"Ghost Touch crafted handwraps now work."

Is this retro meaning that ones already made will start working or will we need to re-craft new handwraps with Ghost Touch for them to work?

Thanks

[BGrifter]

Adding 2-5 Purified Eberron Dragonshard Fragments to everything under the sun is a terrible change. Several worthless shards that would only ever be crafted for the XP then immediately deconstructed now require several PEDFs, making the grind a lot worse than it already is. The system already offered very little at the high end to casters, I won't be bothering to finish grinding to 100 despite making it to 82/74/76 prepatch.

I suppose the only thing left to do is watch how this changes the ingame economy. The massive plat sink of deconstructing and crafting just died for all but the most hardcore of crafters. Demand for boot mats and Large Scales should spike driving already high prices higher, demand for essences will likely plummet. None of these things strike me as positive.

[krtkoo]

Wanderlust usually does between 4-8 raids in what would be my morning and takes from 2-4 hours.

muhaha - that gave me a real laugh. and other assumption, that smth like that is on a slow day :D M8 you are in my eyes a powergamer.

For example, I am glad when I can find a time to run 1 raid a day (I count shroud as a raid too :) ) and an equivalent of your slow day once a week. And I am in the eyes of my RL friends who are playing ddo too, an active player.

so my friends play ddo lets say for max 4-6 hours a week - what chances do they have in a crafting system which requires another grind for lvling?

Dont take this post flamatory, but I dont think this crafting is an option for casual players. I dont even think this is an option for pple who play ddo 10 hours a week (1 hour a day - 4 hours lets say on friday). and this is just because u need another lvls in some sort of very boring minigame in ddo. this is imo biggest mistake in cannith crafting Turbine made. Cannith crafting is very good idea, but WHY ANOTHER LVLS? it could by done without lvling at all - you dont need lvls for any other type of crafting (shroud, DT, epic etc.)

imo wpns from cannith crafting are good, but they are good against special foes - they are good in some special quests, against certain bosses. if u need for holyburst silver GA of GEOB 1k or 2k greater essencies and this wpn is ML 20, why do you need to have spend 50 hours of game play clicking in crafting hall? and yes you will have nice wpn - but this wpn will work only in certain quests / raids (yes in most end content, but is worth nothing in eADQ, eVON) and it is ML 20 - so you should compare it to epic wpns, not to gs wpns who are min LV12 and with clickies and special abilities like +2 extra stat, +4 insight AC etc are more useful than cannith crafted wpns.

so again - why is any lvling needed for this crafting at all?

I mean u certain ammount of essencies is hard to get for average pple playing this game, if u add extra collectables or extra rare ingrediences AND YOU KEEP NEED OF LVLING IN CRAFTING, I can say just bye bye to cannith crafting.

[Cyr]

I out this in my thread, but I'll throw it in here as well.

Instead of requiring Silver Flame healing pots and Yugo pots for some recipes. Why not have a BTA "ingredient" pot available from the favour vendors.

This would mean you have to grind out the favour on at least one toon, (which I don't have a problem with) but wouldn't necessarily have to grind out the favour on your crafter.

This seems like a reasonable and logical change.

[RTN]

Let me clarify. I meant that I don't think crafters have to be dependant upon the goodwill of others in order to craft. I see nothing wrong with them choosing to purchase ingredients on the auction house.

I also don't feel it's wrong to allow crafters to sell their wares. That said, this is the primary area that we were concerned about; we don't want to see the market flooded with crafted items to the extent that it's the primary method to obtain these items. To that end, the cost to create a powerful unbound shard is not cheap and not every recipe has an unbound counterpart.

Since I can't give you a +1 without spreading more around, I'll just say that I agree with this sentiment.

I also want to add my support to all things used for ingredients should be BtA, not BtC. My original (gimp) character that never made it past L5 became a collectible mule. He does all my crafting since he already carries all that stuff and I can park him down in the crafting hall. I'd really resent needing to get him silver pot favor just for crafting when I have no intention of playing him.

[Edwinge]

One thing I noticed as I glanced through the recipes. A greater construct bane shard requires 50 adamantine ore. Adamantine ore, however, can only stack to 30. This shard is therefore currently impossible to make.

[Yaga_Nub]

MF, come out, come out wherever you are.... :)

[andbr22]

OK now I read all thread (more or less).
And there are some good feedback about crafting:
Makeing it timed -> timer for specific shards or activated after enchanting item with it
Speciall ings (tokens) dropped in raids (but have to be revised):
- I would go against them dropping in Chest (because it can be traded in chest)
- I would think the best would be adding them as additional reward after collecting quest reward. (number of tokens woud depend on Raid level / difficulty) something like:
Temprest spine -> 1 (because it not have timer)
Chrono -> 5
DQ/ Titan / Dragon / Raver's fate -> 10
Shroud / VoD / HoX / Abbot -> 15
ToD / Raids completed on Epic diff -> 20
- These should be BtC
- If person don't wish to craft there should be exchangable for Plat / Rare items (maybe even special favor rewards like - Silver flame/Yugo potions without negative effects).

Or other. Why not use rarest type of collectible more often. Give holy burst requirement of 5-10 lighting-split soarwood and market for sure won't be flooded with them. Or elemental igot (quite rare, as they drop only from elementals so you even have to kill stuff to get them).

[dkyle]

One thing I noticed as I glanced through the recipes. A greater construct bane shard requires 50 adamantine ore. Adamantine ore, however, can only stack to 30. This shard is therefore currently impossible to make.

LOL 50 ore? Really, devs?

Yes, running a level 12 quest 4 times is super fun and exciting.

[Hyalite]

Definitely hear you on the first point and this is an area that I invite all players to comment on; we need more feedback here.

Your second point is noted as well, thanks.

I am P2P and have played since Velah came out. I get to play for 100 hours a year, the money means nothing to me, its cheaper than a month of cable, but I have not bought any points. I do not grind, have two GS items no level 20's no TR's, though I am getting closer with 5 characters of above 15. I am a bit OCD and have collected every gem and every collectible in the game (even before bags, but then I turned them in) use my fully tweaked account bank to transfer these to my mule. I have yet to have on hand a million plat. Highest favor is around 2000.
I have truly enjoyed crafting, I started a new sorcerer and have deconstructed every item. I am in the low 30's and the sorcerer is lvl 10. I have not noticed that the treadmill is too steep yet. It takes a while but every once in a while I can make something that I do not have on hand from another character. I do not have a guild or anybody supplying me with comps and understand that crafting will become too steep sometime and be not fun, probably before I can craft devil killing gear, but not before I can effectively tweak any new characters up to about level 10, so what I want is to be able to craft for myself any +3 min lvl 7 stat boosting item so I don't have to keep them in my banks, any one attribute gear so if I need it I can make it- like ghost touch or +5, or superior combustion. So far its looking ok, please don't make me grind out quests for rare random drops for basic stuff. I don't mind using collectibles or gems, and think the common drop ones are great with the unusual ones fine too, you made lightning split soarwood too rare I have yet to find any since it could be used.
Hope this helps,
A member of the Legendary Heroes

[Crusad]

I hope this is the right place to ask...
When you are crafting something with less then 100% success rate, are you supposed to lose all ingredients on failure or just SOME as the message says? Im 80% sure that ive lost only some percentage before update(not 100%), but now i lose everything and doesnt matter if its success or failure.
Didnt find anything about the change in release notes, so making sure its a change and it wasnt the same before patch.

[ValenGodspeed]

I hope this is the right place to ask...
When you are crafting something with less then 100% success rate, are you supposed to lose all ingredients on failure or just SOME as the message says? Im 80% sure that ive lost only some percentage before update(not 100%), but now i lose everything and doesnt matter if its success or failure.
Didnt find anything about the change in release notes, so making sure its a change and it wasnt the same before patch.

This is very new indeed, usually you lost around one third, I just lost:
21 Greater Good, 192 Lesser Good, 1 Purified Dragonthingy shard, 2 lodestones and a silver flame pot from a failed holy burst shard.

is this really WAI?

[dkyle]

I hope this is the right place to ask...
When you are crafting something with less then 100% success rate, are you supposed to lose all ingredients on failure or just SOME as the message says? Im 80% sure that ive lost only some percentage before update(not 100%), but now i lose everything and doesnt matter if its success or failure.
Didnt find anything about the change in release notes, so making sure its a change and it wasnt the same before patch.

It was definitely "some" before the patch.

If this is true, it's very unfortunate. It means it's no longer a good idea to take chances while leveling.

I would think risk should be rewarded.


It also has very unfortunate implications for some of these new high value ingredients.

[Ironforge_Clan]

MadFloyd -

There are still bugs with the crafting UI. For example when the interface pulls items out of a bag you can only deconstruct once or twice before you have to close the window down. If the deconstruction agents are out of the bag I don't have this issue.

I've also had an issue that I need to close out the UI after deconstructing a stack of shards since the UI become unusable.

[Darkrok]

This is very new indeed, usually you lost around one third, I just lost:
21 Greater Good, 192 Lesser Good, 1 Purified Dragonthingy shard, 2 lodestones and a silver flame pot from a failed holy burst shard.

is this really WAI?

I've seen some reports that you lose everything if you're crafting out of your bags rather than dragging the ingredients out. Can not confirm that but it sounds like that's probably the issue.

[ValenGodspeed]

I've seen some reports that you lose everything if you're crafting out of your bags rather than dragging the ingredients out. Can not confirm that but it sounds like that's probably the issue.

I did that shard from my bag, will be sure to test if its just that. If it is then they can just roll back that "update" or warn people never to use it.

[Missing_Minds]

When in doubt, bug report it. That is the official Turbine stance.

And yes OP, you chose the correct area.

Personally, I hope that isn't WAI.

[Crusad]

I've seen some reports that you lose everything if you're crafting out of your bags rather than dragging the ingredients out. Can not confirm that but it sounds like that's probably the issue.

Yes, you are right. Just tried it and I lost everything when i had ingredients in the bag, and lost 5 of 10 larges and 36 of 80 lesser essences when i had them in inventory.

[psteen1]

Soul gems seem like a bad requirement. It more or less railroads you into play an arcane character if you want to craft, or count on finding something acceptable on the AH. And isn't crafting supposed to get you off of the AH?

[Raiderone]

I dont agree with needing Soul Gems or favor driven items.

What about requiring the actual item (ie Greater Banes on a weapon) in essence, in order to create some of the high level items?

Example: +5 Holy Burst Craftable Item with GEOB would require all shards and essences like before plus a looted Weapon with GEOB on it (but not specific to weapon type being crafted).

Otherwise, Increase the costs of Shards of Potential above level 9.

[BoBo2020]

Since soul gems are now used in crafting, can we please get large or huge soul gem bags in the game?

[ValenGodspeed]

I did that shard from my bag, will be sure to test if its just that. If it is then they can just roll back that "update" or warn people never to use it.

Ok thats confirmed, A fail from inventory = 1/3 cost, A fail from bag = 1/1 cost - I tihnk Madfloyd should stick a BIG warning on the crafting forums saying that the development they made is bad and should never have hit live servers, did they QA folks go on early vacation or did they only test stuff with 100% chance of succes...

[Thame]

I started crucnhing everything to be able to craft. all my toons with full banks cruched almost everything for crafting XP and currently only at approx 25 on all 3 schools. After this updated version, i can start saving items again. Ill likely pull the item I want before I am able to craft it.
No more crafting for me.

[BeccaBop]

If trap the soul is a thing we will need to cast a lot more of now, can we make it so you don't have to take the khyber shards out of your ingredient bag to cast? We don't have to take stuff out of our bags to craft now...

It would make life a lot simpler.

[Darkrok]

Otherwise, Increase the costs of Shards of Potential above level 9.

I've been beating this drum for awhile now. I really wish they'd gone this route instead as it could have been designed to be completely separate from the current in-game economy, would have been much simpler to balance (1 line or recipes instead of ALL recipes), and addresses the problem more directly. Easy greater lawful outsider bane shards weren't the problem. 'Easy' (relatively speaking) +5 silver holy burst weapons of greater lawful outsider bane weapons were. The shards of potential being harder solves all those type of problems directly instead of the patchwork that this update used to accomplish the same goal. I think they did a decent job given their chosen method...I just wouldn't have chosen that method.

[HelvanderSeries6]

Throwing weapon crafting is in the next update. "prepping throwing weapons without prefix/suffix" should not work at all at the moment. Unfortunately my kobold sense is telling me that we probably do not give any feedback that nothing is happening. I will look into it in the morning.

Read by a player

[Setin_Myways]

I have a dedicated toon for crafting and i pretty much hit the wall at about 35 to 40 in crafting. I have 3 capped toons that I run in raids several times a week. I think my numbers for a week are close to what another person posted as a average day and i consider myself more than casual (so, yeah - you are not a casual player). I filled all 12 of my toons banks and slots full before the system released, dumped it all in and have been putting 90% of all my loot into crafting 1800 items or so total so i consider it no small effort, but i know to some people, they have a heard of toons with max plat and full banks who have the ability to reach the very high levels. I am starting to think I may stop crafting and just take advantage of the guild backed crafters available to me. I think this would be counter to the vision expressed by the devs in this thread. If this system is balanced to limit the people that say things like getting a a toon plat capped is not hard, or the epic grind is fine, means this will be one more system that sits outside the grasp of the real casual players.

for constructive feedback i suggest that we look at some of the real issues as I beleive MF presented them.

1)folks are able to cap the day after the cap is increased... who are these players and how well do the reflect the comminity player base? Again, i play between 1-4 hours a day, have dumped almost everything i find into the system and still do not have level 50 in any school (i know i must be doing something wrong, but i think it would be better as a metric to say how many items you have deconed - for me 1803 as of last night so that is about 90% my loot since the system was implemented. as it has been said, you cannot make it hard for the powergamer without killing it for the casual.

2) keep the restrictions/odd items only to the unbound shards - There is no real need to worry about how easy it is to make a HB silver of GEB if it is BtC or BtA, only those that are unbound.

3) have the school level effect the number of essence produced from deconstruction so a lvl 50 arcane deconstructs more essence than a lvl 5. This will mean that a casual player will be able to continue to level without having to decon more and more items.

4) allow for a shard of learning - this would be a shard of a given lvl used only to gain exp. It is the average cost in essence for that lvl (like 10 greater 32 lesser 16shards compared to the 10G, 80L, 16) and does nothing other than allow the user access to a recipe at each new level. i seem to have hit 'gaps' in the leveling path where the only shards I can gain exp from are outside my ability or simply too expensive.

5)there is no limit on the ability to craft shards once created. If you made it so that someone had to have a crafting lvl >= the min level of the item created, it would help address this, but i think everyone agrees the first 20 lvls are easy enough to earn.

I am also concerned about the favor dependent ingredients. I have never hit the favor for Yugo or SF pots and I have all the packs, just never run all the quests on elite, and i plan to tr my crafter (so i can use what i can make)

Thank you for the feedback and responsiveness. I think the system is getting closer, but we cannot use mega power gamers and or guild backed toons as the benchmark for this system. Please address the problem that exists (unbound unbalance) without killing this as an option for btc or bta focused players.

[MadFloyd]

I'm what you would call a "casual player". My highest toon is level 14, played in a static group. I've other characters of various classes and lower levels, and have been playing regularly, 4 to 9 hours of play a week on average, for a year and half. As a premium player, I spend regularly on the DDO for adventure packs and convenience items - shared bank slot, huge collectable bags, 32 pts build, classes, races, these sort of things. Turbine got a lot more bucks from me that they'd have earned should I have chosen the VIP route, but that's my choice. I rarely purchase any consumable on the DDO store, as to me they're not "worth it". I managed to get some decent plat by carefully checking prices at the AH and selling interesting items or collectables once in a while.

I do little raiding, simply because of the lack of time, despite owning the related adventure packs and doing my best to being Raid-Ready. I don't want to be a burden for my teammates. Raid is a serious thing.

This long introduction is necessary to show that I'm anything but remarkable. There are tons of players like me - you know, suddenly going AFK for a couple minutes in a quest because baby cries. :)

I Somehow think that Cannith Crafting was designed for people like me. Crafted items are supposed to be inferior to named raid loot, which is fine to me. Cannith Crafting allows casual crafting sessions of ten minutes here and there, which is exactly what I can provide. Cannith Crafting let people level one of their toon to equip their entire character collection, which was exactly what I was looking for. Cannith Crafting demands some grinding and an investment in platinum, but that's probably inherent to any crafting system and Turbines does a lot to create plat sinks, so I was grudgingly ready to pay that price.

I indulged in Cannith Crafting seriously in hopes of achieving something worthwhile.

By "seriously", I mean the same deal than many other players around:
- Deconstruct everything not AH worthy. Absolutely everything.
- Use shared bank slots to gather further junk loot / collectables from other toons.
- Use AH to purchase extra crafting material.
- Purchase Crafting Experience booster on DDO store (yes, I went that far :( )

If the first crafting levels were happily met, I wasn't long to discover Cannith Crafting shortcomings. I'm currently in the 40s with little intention to push any further.

~-~-~-~1. LEVELING~-~-~-~

What Turbine team doesn't realize is that 98% (if not more) of time and resources involved in crafting is just used to level up. During this long process, we couldn't care any less about what we craft. Superior Nullification II, Lesser Goblin Bane, Swim +3 shards - people just create anything available to maximize crafting XP. These shards get deconstructed immediately. Rince, repeat.

Leveling up requires tons of crafting essences and rare collectables (not rare by all accounts, but rare now that they are used in crafting. Just check the price of some Powdered Blood on AH for example.) The lack of collectables is crippling, since the recipes yielding the best XP / cost ratio involve them. Recipes using Essences only are much more expensive essence-wise. If on first level it gets annoying, on higher levels (40+) it gets truly insane.

I don't think any amount of plat can really overcome this - if a single greater essence is worth 800~1000 plat in the AH, you can easily figure the platinum cost of a single, mid to high level recipe (don't forget the Lessers as well). And because of diminishing XP returns you need dozens of such shards to get a single level up in one of the three schools of crafting. Ouch!

The only valid option to get essences is through item deconstruction. But that's where your toon level kicks in. Random junk loot isn't exactly the same when you're level 14 - and deem yourself lucky when you get a +6 hammer from a chest - or when you're 20, where Bracers of Sustenance +10 and similar, high-yielding essence items, abound.

Only people with at least one capped toon can get the essences they need to level up, just by deconstructing items. Others can't buy enough from the AH and don't get enough Essences from their mid-level loot to sustain crafting.

So much for the "crafting is for everyone" slogan.

~-~-~-~2. CRAFTING~-~-~-~

It's good to be the king. Leveling up involves plenty of grinding, but once you're there creating just one shard is easy. This would be true even if useful shards had their cost multiplied by ten. This would be true if useful shards required plenty of odd ingredients, as long as they are AH-purchasable. The leveling cost is so insane anything else is mostly irrelevant. You need a 50'000 plat Tome of Strength to create a great shard? Compared to the millions of plat required to reach a crafting level enabling you to actually craft it, it's still negligible.

The fun part is that powergamers Turbine seems eager to control are already beyond any control. Each will easily craft 20 Greater Lawful Outsider Bane shards, 20 Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane shards and 40 Holy Burst shards before update 10.1 goes live, just to be sure. Who cares if creating a further Greater Lawful Outsider Bane requires your firstborn? They already have all the shards they need.

Unfortunately, as it stands now, crafting is mostly useless unless you have reached the top. There are a couple utility recipes here and there (Featherfalling, Persuasion, +2 attack bonus) that are oddly affordable - let's hope Turbine didn't notice ;) - but most mundane stuff low and mid-level players would like to use in their daily dungeon is simply out of reach. Level 100 for a mere +6 stat item? Unlikely.

I don't see anything game-breaking in being able to craft a +6 WIS necklace for a mid-level toon (providing ML requirements are met) but for unknown reasons Turbine deemed such recipes powerful enough to keep them out of reach from 99.9% of the player base.

~-~-~-~3. UNBOUND CRAFTING~-~-~-~

Unbound crafting is a non-issue. With recipe costs two or three times the insane amount required for bound shards, and a difficulty level twice the one of a bound shard, Turbine efficiently neutered the option.

Anyone wishing to make a living from unbound shards is a fool, as other players already stated.

~-~-~-~4. PROPOSALS~-~-~-~

I'm glad the first 10.1 "train wreck" update has been stopped, but unfortunately, the second attempt is hardly any better. Apparently, some tell-tale combinations (Holy Burst Silver Khopesh of Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane) are in the same league than raid loot or greensteel. That's not our fault, and we get punished for that as Turbine struggles on how to control crafting and compromise the entire system. I wish I never sank so much resources in such a dead-end.

There are two ways of controlling crafting:
- Making XP gains harder by adding more collectibles, refined stuff, etc. to high-level shards.
- Requiring high-end, rare ingredients for the most powerful shards.

What bugs me is that Turbine is attempting both, thus killing Cannith Crafting effectively.

Regarding crafting levels, the damage is already done. Powergamers are already at the top and only mundane mortals are struggling. Anything affecting crafting XP will hurt only the latter. Any attempt at controlling Powergamers will fail.

Here are my suggestion. They may sound a bit extreme, but together I sincerely think they make sense.

- Drop the crafting levels. Shard creation should come from ingredients and nothing else. Since the days of grinding for level up would be over, the amount of essences required for a single shard could be higher (especially for low-level shards).

- Propose alternate recipes giving various success rates to shards. For example, 30% success if using Essences only, and up to 100% using rare, Bound to Accound rewards. A failed attempt could consume everything.

- Increase cost or add special requirements to Shards of Potential. It's combination of effects that makes crafed items desirable, hardly a single one.

- Require specific ingredients to apply shards on a non-standard blank (like a Silver Khopesh). HB Khopesh of GLOB are okay but HB Silver Khopesh of GLOB are not? Then, ask for a Refined Greater Huge Prismatic Eberron Dragonshard Essence of Doom (tm) to apply shards on a Silver item. Problem solved.

Cannith Crafting has a huge potential. Be careful. Remember not all of us are Power Gamers. Ask developers to attempt crafting themselves with a mid-level toon, it should teach them a few things, like it did to me.

Thank you for reading. :)

Altaweir,

Thanks for your thoughts. Incidentally, your playstyle is very much akin to my own.

[Raiderone]

I've been beating this drum for awhile now. I really wish they'd gone this route instead as it could have been designed to be completely separate from the current in-game economy, would have been much simpler to balance (1 line or recipes instead of ALL recipes), and addresses the problem more directly. Easy greater lawful outsider bane shards weren't the problem. 'Easy' (relatively speaking) +5 silver holy burst weapons of greater lawful outsider bane weapons were. The shards of potential being harder solves all those type of problems directly instead of the patchwork that this update used to accomplish the same goal. I think they did a decent job given their chosen method...I just wouldn't have chosen that method.

Yah it seems they started that way. Thats why Shards of Potential were introduced.

They just needed to make the cost higher. And not single out certain items.

[MadFloyd]

Tbh+1 and +2 UNBOUND tomes are fine, the real problems are +3 BOUND tomes, they shouldn't be used in crafting cause it would end the good habit to put them up for roll if your toon doesn't need them.

Point noted, thanks.

[brian14]

Good post. Coincidentally, we were discussing the second option today.
Which "second option"?

2. Use [soul gems] as a crafting ingredient, and implement several other 'class limited' resources to balance the economy across all classes

or

2. A consumable item that is basically a 'trap the soul' bomb, casting the spell - like a scroll, but without the UMD check?

Either way, I just prioritized upgrading my Vacuum goggles to Vacuum II ;)

[ckorik]

I haven't been able to check - do these new costs only apply to unbound shards?

I would think a good balance would be to make 'bound' shards cheap as they were - but make 'unbound' shards cost even more.

Crafting for casual players or for self improvement never needed unbound shards. BTA is very 'casual' friendly.

Bound shards don't create the same game/economy issues that the unbound do - because the person has to have invested in the system to create the item.

[MadFloyd]

MF, come out, come out wherever you are.... :)

Trying to caffeinate, but Codeshaper drank all the coffee.

[Blank_Zero]

Trying to caffeinate, but Codeshaper drank all the coffee.

I don't doubt it....you guys are in for a long long long long day by the looks of things.

Can I submit my resume now?

[Gkar]

Point noted, thanks.

Even the +2 tomes are EXTREMELY valuable to anyone but a power gamer. It's too much... its way too much...

[Gkar]

Umm....when a rescipie containing valuable items like an LDS fails... can that rare ingredient also be lost?

If so you have REALLY gutted the process because there is no reward for risk and you are forcing people not to craft anything good until they are at level, even though you created the kind of fun system where you could craft above level for a little more risk reward... but losing a rare ingredient...way too much risk.

[Thalmor]

Even the +2 tomes are EXTREMELY valuable to anyone but a power gamer. It's too much... its way too much...

I agree, 100% I feel using any tomes is a mistake, they are already pretty rare and expensive in the AH as is. At least they are rare and expensive to us casual gamers. So please remove the requirement of Tomes from crafting.

[kernal42]

Even the +2 tomes are EXTREMELY valuable to anyone but a power gamer. It's too much... its way too much...

Yes, the +2 tomes are powerful and valuable. However, they are both less valuable and less powerful than the greater bane weapons you can craft by consuming them.

There is nothing amiss here.

Furthermore, it's much more cost effective to burn +1 tomes rather than +2.

Cheers,
Kernal

[MadFloyd]

I hope this is the right place to ask...
When you are crafting something with less then 100% success rate, are you supposed to lose all ingredients on failure or just SOME as the message says? Im 80% sure that ive lost only some percentage before update(not 100%), but now i lose everything and doesnt matter if its success or failure.
Didnt find anything about the change in release notes, so making sure its a change and it wasnt the same before patch.

This functionality should not have changed. If you fail, you risk losing ingredients, but each one has its own roll. It sounds like you got unlucky.

[ValenGodspeed]

This functionality should not have changed. If you fail, you risk losing ingredients, but each one has its own roll. It sounds like you got unlucky.

You are wrong here Mad, crafting from bags loose you 100% of everything everytime, I just bug reported it. Do me a favor and go test it.

[QuantumFX]

Now that 10.1 has gone live I have the following feedback for you:

Once again, players shouldn’t be required to own specific adventure packs to do crafting. Right now you guys have made the Vale, Shavarath and the Necropolis required packs. Alternative recipes are good. Forcing only a single path on a customer is bad.

Your list of options for acquiring Purified Ebberon dragonshards is *way* to small. Please consider the following options/changes:

Epic Dungeon Tokens should generate just as many fragments as a +1 tome.
Great/Supreme Shards should be added to the trade in list.
Dragonshard essences (From Reavers Refuge) should be a 1:1 tradein.
Actual Dragonshards should be on the trade list.
Random Collectors should give Purified Dragonshard fragments.


Reevaluate some of the Shroud components you guys chose to use. Making Large Devil Scales and Demon’s Blood even more valuable than they were before is stupid. You guys should be using lesser used components to make them actually worth something. (ex. Splintered Horns, Gnawed Bones, Chains)

[Gkar]

This functionality should not have changed. If you fail, you risk losing ingredients, but each one has its own roll. It sounds like you got unlucky.

Anyone think its a good idea that you can lose rare and extremely valuable ingredients?

[Cyr]

This functionality should not have changed. If you fail, you risk losing ingredients, but each one has its own roll. It sounds like you got unlucky.

What is the statistical chance of that occuring Mad?

[Ytteri]

This functionality should not have changed. If you fail, you risk losing ingredients, but each one has its own roll. It sounds like you got unlucky.

In general chat on khyber today people were saying that it was a repeatable instance of losing ALL ingredients if you left the ingredients in your bag when it failed, but a work around was to once again manually drag stuff to your inventory before a crafting attempt.

I didn't attempt it myself, which is why I'm not bug reporting it.

[Memnir]

I'm happy I've avoided the crafting-sink up till now. And, these changes do nothing to make me think I'll be changing that opinion any time soon.

It's gone from a grind to an unfun and fairly punitive grind. I don't have tomes moldering away in my account, +1 or +2. I just pulled my first +3 tome last week. Now, granted, I am playing super-casual these days... but wasn't one of the points of crafting to help casual players compete? And, requiring the purchase of any content in order to grind out materials to craft is just odious. Again, I thought one of the purposes of crafting was to level the playing field - not leverage my wallet.


I was hoping to see Crafting improve over time, and get to the point where I'd regret not having kept up with the Joneses. With this update, it's gone the other way and I feel nothing but glad that I haven't deconstructed a **** thing.

[Gkar]

You are wrong here Mad, crafting from bags loose you 100% of everything everytime, I just bug reported it. Do me a favor and go test it.

Maybe it knows how to take out of bags but not put it back in...ooops

[TempestAlphaOmega]

Even the +2 tomes are EXTREMELY valuable to anyone but a power gamer. It's too much... its way too much...

So true.

If you design a system based on what the most accomplished/long term players can do then you are designing a system that is not going to make the majority of your player base happy.

Personally I don't have an issue with Shroud ing. being used. I would have preferred that some of the lesser used ones (you could have used any and every small ing as well as med ing) instead of an LDS but this still doesn't bother me much as I have several of these stocked away.

ToD boot ing on the other hand, not as happy with that. I am just unlucky in getting them to drop even though I have ransacked several of them several times.

Not a big proponent of the favor rewards being used. This also seems odd because once you get the favor you have unlimited access to the component. Wasn't that the issue they were trying to address (once you ground to the right level you had unlimited access to crafting the shard)?

But what works for me will not work for many other people. I realize this. I know there are players out their with vastly more resources than I possess as well as many many players who dont have anywhere near what I have. Balancing the system is not easy when you have such a wide range to work with.

Many of the top tier players forget that they are in fact top tier and have access to resources that most players do not, when they are commenting on what is reasonalble in threads like this. Perhaps not all of them. I am sure some just think that is the way it should be.

[QuantumFX]

Addendum to my previous post:

Trading in disjuncted weapon blanks with a special material type should also be worth some Purified Eberron fragments.

The Dragon Gems used for SoS flagging would be a much more appropriate and reasonable component for crafting Greater Dragon bane shards.

Also, if you’re going to go nuts on the “Rare component” thing then the number of essences needed to craft a shard should drop dramatically.

[Gkar]

I'm happy I've avoided the crafting-sink up till now. And, these changes do nothing to make me think I'll be changing that opinion any time soon.

It's gone from a grind to an unfun and fairly punitive grind. I don't have tomes moldering away in my account, +1 or +2. I just pulled my first +3 tome last week. Now, granted, I am playing super-casual these days... but wasn't one of the points of crafting to help casual players compete? And, requiring he purchase of any content in order to grind out materials to craft is just odious.


I was hoping to see Crafting improve over time, and get to the point where I'd regret not having kept up with the Joneses. With this update, it's gone the other way and I feel nothing but glad that I haven't deconstructed a **** thing.

Yeah, while I very much enjoy the holy GLOB I did craft for my one character without a MinII, and while I have made a couple little toys for fun, I now wish I had never started crafting. I'm down at least 1mil plat from where I could have been, that would have bought me the larges to have made a Min II instead and it doesn't look like I'll be crafting much moving forward.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I would like to see players (not necessarily characters) crafting for themselves.

Many "favor" items are not tradable to other chars on the same account.

And TRing resets favor. :( (which btw is something I do not like at all.)

(then there is my problem if having two acounts :( Which I wish I could transfer chars from one to the other to solve my problems there....hint, hint. )


My biggest complaint about crafting right now is that it takes forever to lvl up a crafter. And that I have to make useless junk to do so. Also don't agree with how minimum lvls are determined, but it's not too bad.

[ValenGodspeed]

Maybe it knows how to take out of bags but not put it back in...ooops

Yeah, but Im totally puzzled how this sort of thing can make it to live servers. Took me a quite expensive fail on a Holy Burst shard to find this out and some cheaper unbound to confirm - and here I was all happy about not to move all that stuff around when crafting.... :(

[WangChi]

Melee's seem to be getting the ultimate crafting slap in the face here. Soul gem's required means a caster has to be around to make that happen so a melee can hopefully pick up the gem before the caster can. Or they have to run around with a trap the soul guard and/or trap the soul weapons (nerfing damage output, hurting the group). The biggest recipe costs only affect melee toons, (greater banes, etc).

So - not only can casters pretty much solo most content in the game faster than a group can run it in most cases, they also get the benefits of being the best and only self-reliant crafting class in the game?

Am I wrong here? Please, Mad, someone, anyone, is this how it is and how it will be?

[Vernah]

Has the bug been fixed where if you use a +15% booster on an originally 95% success shard (making it 110%) you can still fail? It happened to me and I submitted a bug report, but haven't heard anything back.

It's amazing that you can spend TP at the DDO Store only for the item to not work.

[Gkar]

Addendum to my previous post:

The Dragon Gems used for SoS flagging would be a much more appropriate and reasonable component for crafting Greater Dragon bane shards.

Now THAT is a cool idea.

As it is they have no use now once you have flagged.

And they are available in multiple packs at multiple levels

Drop rate isn't over the top, but not unreasonably low.

The only problem is they are BtC and exclusive. If they moved them just to BtA is would work quite well.

[Buggss]

The crafting hall vendors still don't seem to be able to buy equipment like the noted say.

[Memnir]

I know I said this in the other crafting thread from Llama - but this change to crafting just shows that there is a tremendous difference in how the players see the game vs how the Devs see it.



Still very demoralizing.

[TPICKRELL]

IMO these changes are good only in comparison to the previous really bad set of recipe changes.

Specifics -- I do not like:

1: BTC Silver Flame and YUGO pots -- I don't think these pots can be changed to BTA without serious implications on game balance, so including them is not a good choice. On a personal note, I hate most of the necro quests. I find them to be dull and I have more client lag in necro than in any other area in the game. The quests are not difficult, just annoying.

2: LDS -- Further increasing the demand for LDS is a mistake. The high end economy is based on LDS, not plat. The increase in demand for LDS could have a big impact on the economy. LDS are already more valuable than the other Shroud ingredients simply because significantly more of them are needed than drop.

3: Demon's Blood --The grind to get boots is already one of the most annoying grinds in the game. Adding to it is not good in any way.

4: Soul Gems -- Casters already have a disting advantage in farming for Epic Scrolls. Now they have a huge advantage in the ingredients for high end crafting. I've tried playing an arcane before, and I absolutely hate the way the DDO UI works for Arcane's within my play style. Guess I'll have to run up a toon in a class that I find incredibly awkward to play just to craft.

I understand that these items have a somewhat logical connection to the items being crafted and are rare enough to throttle production, but they all have implications to game play and balance beyond crafting.

These recipe changes are not game breaking, and I'll continue to level my crafter, but I do not believe they are good choices.

[WangChi]

I'm happy I've avoided the crafting-sink up till now. And, these changes do nothing to make me think I'll be changing that opinion any time soon.

It's gone from a grind to an unfun and fairly punitive grind. I don't have tomes moldering away in my account, +1 or +2. I just pulled my first +3 tome last week. Now, granted, I am playing super-casual these days... but wasn't one of the points of crafting to help casual players compete? And, requiring the purchase of any content in order to grind out materials to craft is just odious. Again, I thought one of the purposes of crafting was to level the playing field - not leverage my wallet.


I was hoping to see Crafting improve over time, and get to the point where I'd regret not having kept up with the Joneses. With this update, it's gone the other way and I feel nothing but glad that I haven't deconstructed a **** thing.

You were a much smarter person than I. My two holy silver khopeshs of evil outsider bane are nice, but I could have bought MinII ingredients for the amount of plat I didn't make selling vendor trash.