How to fix epic 'crafting'

[Riggs]

Remove scrolls, remove shards.

Seals + 10 or 20 epic tokens, + item = epic item.

Complaining "I need a reason to kill things on epic" - weak.

Make monsters all drop 1 fragment.

Easy. Simple.

[Bloodhaven]

Remove scrolls, remove shards.

Seals + 10 or 20 epic tokens, + item = epic item.

Complaining "I need a reason to kill things on epic" - weak.

Make monsters all drop 1 fragment.

Easy. Simple.

That is one way. There would be a lot of complaining from most of the epic scroll farmers on this one thou..

[Zharfie]

Makes it too easy...

but then, most epic items suck so much that crafting them would be fine in this way, but it's already too easy to get certain epic items which are way overpowered..

[Riggs]

That is one way. There would be a lot of complaining from most of the epic scroll farmers on this one thou..

A section of complaining players because they one single part, of one single crafting type, is nonetheless not a rational reason to leave a loot/crafting mechanic that is unlike every other loot/crafting mechanic in DDO as is.

There will always be something to farm for people that only like farming stuff for cash. I am extremely unconcerned about the size of farmers bank accounts.

[Riggs]

Makes it too easy...

but then, most epic items suck so much that crafting them would be fine in this way, but it's already too easy to get certain epic items which are way overpowered..

As it is now epic upgrades require 0 tokens, so the only drag is getting the 4 items.

If every epic upgrade took 10+ tokens(depending on power level say) to upgrade, that would very quickly also be a brake as you will need to run like 30 quests for every upgrade, even if you get the seal.

The fact that many epic items are not worth the name epic is a another issue altogether.

[Cyr]

That is one way. There would be a lot of complaining from most of the epic scroll farmers on this one thou..

I have more scrolls then the average epic gamer sitting in bags.

I would be fine with getting rid of 2 of the 3 crafting components though.

Scrolls are and were a dumb idea as they only promote boring gameplay (kill every mob guys for scrolls or more likely solo arcane/divine kill farming).

I would say that SEALS are the other component of crafting that should be eliminated though as random chest drops should not be where you get your best loot from. I think epic junk chests should drop random epic augement crystals, epic token fragments, loot from the ddo store, and high level junk loot. This would make epic junk chests worthwhile in most cases while not making farming them the method to get your epic items.

Shards would have to be re-assigned to come from all epic quests end chests for this to work of course. And as always drop rates will determine the overall viability of this method.

I think a logical way of doing this would be for the raids/end quests to drop any shard from the pack with a chance of pulling a shard (not a specific shard, but any shard) the same as the chance as pulling it from one of the quests from the pack (while the quest from the pack only has a limited number of shards possible from the end chest). This would provide good reasons for people to both run the side quests (specific shard drop rates would be higher) and reasons to run the end quests (chance of anything possible).

[Tat2Freak]

...or how about, epic items come fully formed out of chests that they would normally drop out of...with a percentage chance(more/less) of say like GS Blanks from coin turn-ins...now this would require making some explorer zones epic optional...but I think it might do the trick...

[Thriand]

Your suggestion makes things a bit too easy, especially for packs like the red fens.

While something could be done to make desert items more accessible, the system is perfectly fine for all other packs.

[Cyr]

Makes it too easy...

but then, most epic items suck so much that crafting them would be fine in this way, but it's already too easy to get certain epic items which are way overpowered..

Well the best solution to this sort of issue is as follows...

Dynamically alter how many tokens an epic item requires to be upgraded based upon the times the item has been upgraded since the last update compared to other items in the same pack. Make the min. number a non trivial number like 3-5 tokens to prevent players from intentionally altering these statistics. Basically if an epic item is horrible and no one bothers updating it when you want to bother upgrading it will be cheap and likewise the best epic items that everyone wants will be nice and expensive to upgrade.

On the big plus side it would provide a very obvious way for the developers to identify bad epic items and upgrade them as well as understand what makes epic items valuable to players as it would show the complete continum of popularity among epic items.

[Carpone]

Remove scrolls, remove shards.

Seals + 10 or 20 epic tokens, + item = epic item.

Complaining "I need a reason to kill things on epic" - weak.

Make monsters all drop 1 fragment.

Easy. Simple.

Do you realize any class can solo ransack epic ADQ (3 chests), VON 2 maze (4 chests), VON 4 (1 chest) and Claw of Vulkoor (1 chest) to get seals? Seals are by far the easiest part of an epic item to obtain. Arcanes have access to several more chests they can ransack, like Wiz King entrance chest (which anyone can loot, even after it's been opened) or the first OOB chest.

I'm all for an epic crafting revamp, but this is not it.

[Riggs]

Do you realize any class can solo ransack epic ADQ (3 chests), VON 2 maze (4 chests), VON 4 (1 chest) and Claw of Vulkoor (1 chest) to get seals? Seals are by far the easiest part of an epic item to obtain. Arcanes have access to several more chests they can ransack, like Wiz King entrance chest (which anyone can loot, even after it's been opened) or the first OOB chest.

I'm all for an epic crafting revamp, but this is not it.

Then it can be shards - I dont really care.

it should be simpler than it is in either case. As said repeatedly here and in other threads - scrolls encourage solo arcane farming - which is the antithesis of what DDO is supposed to be about - and every other raid/loot mechanic in the game.

Sure make it shards. Small chance side chests, bigger chance end chests.

[AtomicMew]

Well the best solution to this sort of issue is as follows...

Dynamically alter how many tokens an epic item requires to be upgraded based upon the times the item has been upgraded since the last update compared to other items in the same pack. Make the min. number a non trivial number like 3-5 tokens to prevent players from intentionally altering these statistics. Basically if an epic item is horrible and no one bothers updating it when you want to bother upgrading it will be cheap and likewise the best epic items that everyone wants will be nice and expensive to upgrade.

On the big plus side it would provide a very obvious way for the developers to identify bad epic items and upgrade them as well as understand what makes epic items valuable to players as it would show the complete continum of popularity among epic items.

I like this idea very much. Sort of like a free-market implementation of epic crafting. The better items would automagically be more expensive, because more people would be trying to make them, so turbine wouldn't have look through every epic item to determine how rare it should be.

[Riggs]

Well the best solution to this sort of issue is as follows...

Dynamically alter how many tokens an epic item requires to be upgraded based upon the times the item has been upgraded since the last update compared to other items in the same pack. Make the min. number a non trivial number like 3-5 tokens to prevent players from intentionally altering these statistics. Basically if an epic item is horrible and no one bothers updating it when you want to bother upgrading it will be cheap and likewise the best epic items that everyone wants will be nice and expensive to upgrade.

On the big plus side it would provide a very obvious way for the developers to identify bad epic items and upgrade them as well as understand what makes epic items valuable to players as it would show the complete continum of popularity among epic items.

nice idea.