Feedback - Unbound Crafting

[Lurdlurd]

Seriously?
Come on! This is the worst system ever. Everybody in a week will became a lvl 75 crafter, and the market will be flood with lame gear in 1 or 2 days max.
Why not just lower the rate of success for unbound, or multiply the necessaries ingredients? would that be too simple? Not frustrating enoutgh?

[tihocan]

Btw, for what it's worth, I was happy with bound crafting, and I don't really see the point of trying to add unbound crafting to the system.

[garynash7070]

Seriously?
Come on! This is the worst system ever. Everybody in a week will became a lvl 75 crafter, and the market will be flood with lame gear in 1 or 2 days max.
Why not just lower the rate of success for unbound, or multiply the necessaries ingredients? would that be too simple? Not frustrating enoutgh?

Trust me, not everyone, as a matter of fact; percentage wise I would say maybe 5-10% could get to 75 in a week. The majority of people will not have the resources, i.e; greaters, lessers, and collectables to get to 75. I don't know what crafting level you are at, how often you play, or how many characters you have. That said, do you actually realize how many items have to be deconstructed, made into shards, then rinse and repeat to acquire enough resources? Not to mention, the time spent running quests to get said items etc.

I think that the resources required to get anywhere near mid 50's is ridiculously high as it stands now, not even mentioning 75. I am in the mid 50's on divine and arcane, and I can tell you that if I was to have vendored all the items I deconstructed it would have to be somewhere in the 1.4-2.0 Mil plat range. All the money that people gained via THE EVENT selling dowsing rods is mostly gone. I didn't sell many at all compared to most.

They need to lower the resources required just a bit to level. Yes, it should be semi-difficult and semi-expensive, but when is enough enough? I like the crafting system and I like that they are trying to evolve. They just need to iron some things out. Hopefully they will!

[Beldain]

From a levelling standpoint... nice work on the unbounds... just got up to 71/72/71, added more recipes for extra variety, was running out of xp granting recipes..

[Ryiah]

Trust me, not everyone, as a matter of fact; percentage wise I would say maybe 5-10% could get to 75 in a week. The majority of people will not have the resources, i.e; greaters, lessers, and collectables to get to 75. I don't know what crafting level you are at, how often you play, or how many characters you have. That said, do you actually realize how many items have to be deconstructed, made into shards, then rinse and repeat to acquire enough resources? Not to mention, the time spent running quests to get said items etc.

Someone on the forums detailed a method you can use to get all the crafting levels with very few shards. I can't find the thread at the moment, but basically it involved crafting low-level shards and then deconstructing them. Every time you deconstruct a shard, regardless of level of the shard, you get 1 XP. It is a very slow process but very cheap.

[Beldain]

Yes.. incredibly slow process, thousands of mouseclicks with the ~2sec delay between each...

One major issue - the new unbound shards have the same 'Shard' description bug inside bags that the unbounds originally had...

[Beldain]

Woops nevermind... opened wrong ingredient bag, had some of the old ones in that one =)

[EustaceTrevelyan]

I disagree that unbound crafting is a problem for flooding the market. What is happening is all the items that would have been sold on the market that are nice are instead being converted to ingredients and are taking away from the market on AH. At the very least what needs to be done is offer crafters an actual profession. The ability to after having deconstructed all those items to craft what would have been sold on the market to compensate for the lack there of.

I take it eventually this will be done hopefully.

Well, disagree humbly that stuff that's nice would be deconned. If it has a useful property in isolation, then it's going to sell. If it has a useful propert plus **** that raises the ML and provides nothing, then yeah, it might be broken down. It's good, removes a lot of the garbage from the AH.

[Wizard_Zero]

When I first heard unbound crafting shard: I thought, there goes the neighborhood. The system isn't that bad as the Devs made it now, sure there could be some improvement. Nothing is too powerful, and new players to the game can have some amazing gear for a cheap price. I just don't want shards like Holy and Bane to be rolled out like candy.

Here the problem with making unbound powerful shards:

1.) Everyone knows someone or is in a guild. Guilds will make their members shards at no cost, heck you don't even need a guild, I'm sure you will know someone who will give you the shards, at the very most, you would just have to supply the essences. No one would need to craft individually, people will have done for free by someone else.

2.) +4 Silver/Holy/bane beats out Min II. Basically, you are allowing something better than Min II to be traded. Granted, you can make your own within a week by getting your crafting level up. I find it weird that I make make something equal or better than a Min II in about a week, but grinding Shroud takes a lot longer to get a Min II. Then again, Shroud items have been all-powerful for a long time. The only hard thing about crafting a BB is finding two of the same artwork silver khopeshes.

3.) Flood of the market. No one would buy a Holy or Bane, etc. shard for much money (unless they know nothing about crafting). I wouldn't even pay 5k pp for one. As mentioned before, you can get your crafting level to 30+ in less than a week or two with no grinding involved. Even if Holy Burst/GEOB were possible, they wouldn't go for much, because the market would be flooded within days with shards.

4.) And finally, the feeling of success after Super-Amazingly-Inconceivably boring crafting. I'm spending all this time on crafting, I don't want people just to buy stuff I'm working hard for. I invested a lot of money in crafting. It would technically be cheaper to have someone else craft for you, than doing it yourself for high level shards.

Crafting unbound shards should be VERY essence expensive and Very high level, it would help not to flood the game with amazing shards. Those that grind and spent a lot of time/money, shouldn't have to compete with people who crafted one week and then put the same exact shard on AH for 1 cp.

Just my opinion.

[Full_Bleed]

It probably takes about an hour or two to level up to 30 in all schools assuming you have the resources. Even a brand new player could probably get there relatively easily over the course of a week or with the help of a higher level friend. So unless you are supremely lazy or have a major major distaste for clicking the crafting buttons, where is the market for unbound shards going to be when anyone can and should craft their own account mule and just make the same stuff for themselves for half the mats?

This!

It may be tough/expensive to get to 75, but with a system that basically only allows us to craft unbound shards at half our crafting level (at 3 times the essences if I'm reading this correctly), is useless. And this coming from someone who really had no intention of crafting for the AH/profit.

I play in a casual (1-2 times a week) 6 person guild. So we split the crafting amoung three people (1 school each) and everyone has been pouring everything into the crafters. The idea was to get 3 co-dependent crafters that could put together some stuff we all could use. But this system destroys that option and basically tells everyone, "You're on your own. You want anything decent from crafting, you're going to need to max out all the schools for yourself."

D&D has always been a socially co-dependent game where a group effort garnered the best rewards. This crafting system works totally against that. There is really no reason to contribute to others when the best anyone else can do for you is half of what they can do for themselves.

Now I've got to go to the guildies that have been contributing and tell them that their efforts were wasted and that they need to start crafting for themselves because none of our crafters will be able to make them anything worthwhile.


I understand that unbound crafting needed a higher cost and should be rarer, but there has to be a better way.

Heck, for unbound I'd be willing to...

1) Pay XP.
2) Need rarer crafting ingredients.
3) Be limited in the number of things that we could create over any given time.
4) Have a higher chance of failure.
5) Have a higher ML.
6) Have a higher essence cost.


But if someone can craft what you can do for them at half your crafting level for 1/3rd the essences... I don't see how this unbound system has any real utility.

I feel like there must be some major part of the big picture that I'm missing.

Maybe it might help if the developers gave us an idea of where this is all going.

[pjw]

1. Resources Required to Level

While adding a bunch of cheap higher level recipes has gone some way to alleviating the escallation of costs, it has by no means solved the problem, or reduced the likely future problems.

Below are two charts showing the resources (in essences, assuming 1 Greater = 5 Lesser), required to gain one level at each level for Arcane and Divine.





On the X-axis is the level, and the y-axis shows the number of essences to gain the next level.

It is still rising steeply, giving very little hope for later levels.

IMO, these lines should be straight; the same basic model used for XP when gaining character levels.

(These charts were derived from current lama data and selecting the best xp/essence shard to craft at any given point; they take into account XP degradation and XP from essences).

2. Unbound Recipes

I am going to make a couple of assumptions here:

a) Bound shards will go up to level 100 (+15 Skill, +6 stat etc)
b) Unbound shards will continue to be roughly 2x bound shard level.

If both of these are true, then combined with point (1) above, unbound crafting for high level gear will be more or less unattainable. I don't really mind this; I don't want to spend my days building stuff to sell, but it does seem an odd design choice.

Also, I see no good reason (other than providing cheap recipes), to make unbound shards twice the level of their counterparts.

3. What to do?

1. Make the resource requirements increase linearly with level.

2. Make the level bound shards = unbound + 20, and give them a cost comparable to bound item of the revised higher level.

3. reserve levels 121+ for epic and other goodies.

[Lurdlurd]

Except for the "121=epic", I think pjw's solutions would be a pretty good idea.

[My2Cents]

I haven't tried Lamma yet, but after reading Lamma my reaction to the discussion is:

While I agree with many of the theories discussed here, they are premised upon very knowledgeable players, and the assumption that crafting should "cost" or be a "challenge."

It would be a grave mistake in game balance to assume that the vast majority of players were very knowledgeable about what specific items are "the best" (Holy/GEOB, etc.) and it would be another mistake to not understand that crafting is not just a means for generating weapons and items, but it is a way for players to find a sense of accomplishment with a new activity besides adventuring.

If you make it cost too much, it won't be fun, and will only be used by a select few. If you focus on making it "fun" by providing a sense of "accomplishment" you will make a happier player base and create a more positive "public relations" reaction to the crafting system.

Its very much a mistake, IMO, to apply such measures as "the typical player will attain X in a week", or "this doesn't cost enough for me or challenge me enough", as gaming experiences can vary so widely.

I guess what I'm saying is, for the good of DDO, remember the broad picture, and that this is in the end supposed to be "fun." I -am- glad so many people are thinking about this deeply and giving it very serious thought.

Now to go have a peek at unbound shards for myself and see if I just stuck my foot in my mouth...

[jamestheman]

Tried Lama update, made a ring and a sword with unbound shards, went to the local bartender and they don't show (could not sell them).
Went to AH and you could put them up for auction, but the base price the posting window showed was WAY low for the items (base item price, ring was less than a plat).
Guess AH is going to get the flood and everyone can name their own price...

[patang01]

I really don't see a purpose with unbound items if you don't have the same freedom to craft as you do with bound. If it's limited to lower-to-mid there's no one that will bother making a career out of crafting to create items for the market, nor any reason to recoup the cost of crafting within the system.

This crafting is once more a step back from being a step forward; I personally don't see why it has to cost more as suppose to require a special essence. I would've been smarter if the final crafted item required a special essence that require you to do a specific quest. Make it a P2P quest if you want. Or maybe a quest similar to Pirate Cove to collect something needed for crafting.


Since the system is still limited to 1 prefix and 1 suffix and what you can put what on, more barriers to crafting simply lower the appeal of even bothering.

To tell you the truth that is why I haven't played for over a month now other than maybe a handful of times. It seems to me at least that the fun is taken out of the game.

[Cloista]

I like the proposed solution by pjw, though I'd drop it to bound = unbound + 10, and that once we reach cap (150), the unbound versions (which would be level 160) are still available to craft, subject to the standard reduction in chance of success. I'd look at increasing the non-essence cost as much if not more than the essence cost for the recipes that require special ingedients/collectibles, as they are more likely to be a limiter than essences in the long term.

[Ungood]

Someone on the forums detailed a method you can use to get all the crafting levels with very few shards. I can't find the thread at the moment, but basically it involved crafting low-level shards and then deconstructing them. Every time you deconstruct a shard, regardless of level of the shard, you get 1 XP. It is a very slow process but very cheap.

I know that post, and It requires 22+ Thousand Deconstructs (for exp) of level X shards (4 leasers) and it takes IIRC, something like 47 hours straight of clicking.

Feel free to try it out.

[Ungood]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I first started to craft, and realized that there were some special shards (Vamprism, Blood Rage, Aligned, Luck Bonus) etc, etc, that, these abilities were not open to normal loot-gen items, and that only special items carried these qualities.

That was when I began to ponder DDO's MO, which is, basically the best stuff is bound stuff, so I looked at the lists and wondered which shards would make the cut to Unbound, and which would not.

I will say, I did not expect Bane to be cut, but as I think about it, given how some have made a huge fuss about how adding Bane (Type) makes a weapon that is better then GS, I can see how Turbine might be inclined to eliminate that Shard from going to the open market. I might not even be surprised that if people make a bigger stink about it, that Turbine might consider removing the Bane Shard from crafting all together just for "Gear Balance" issues.

But, as it stands, I have not liked the exchange of deconstruct/construct ratio, so if that have fixed that to some extent, that would only be for the best overall for the game.

However, since I am not on Lammania. I'll reserve any judgment till it goes live.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Its very much a mistake, IMO, to apply such measures as "the typical player will attain X in a week", or "this doesn't cost enough for me or challenge me enough", as gaming experiences can vary so widely.

I'm thinking that this is probably referring more to this craziness...

"Everybody in a week will became a lvl 75 crafter, and the market will be flood with lame gear in 1 or 2 days max."

...than my assumption that any player could reasonably attain a crafting level of 30 in a week and never need unbound when it hits live.

But I will add that when my crafter hit the mid 40s and things started to slow down due to the ramped up essence costs I temporarily passed all of my essences to a friend so that he could level a bit. He was at level 20 in all three schools in about 15 minutes without even using an xp pot. (And it wasn't THAT many essences) This along with the early shallow curve that pjw shows in his charts supports that I think.

No doubt I have multiple toons and way more resources than most, but that is why I projected out to a week or so. Regardless, I don't think that this system is going to hit live with any success at all. Hopefully they will reassess based on some of the suggestions that people have given and will continue to give.

This also raises one other point that I didn't put in my initial post on this matter. pjw touched on it but I just want to reiterate. With Turbine's current decision to simply double the crafting level for unbound shards, what is currently in the machine is for the most part all we'll ever be able to craft for others. Anything further will exceed the level cap of 150 and be uncraftable. (Except for a few that might just be over the 50% success rate required to even attempt them).

I hope that isn't the case, because for me that makes unbound crafting never more than a LVL 1-18ish endeavor at best. Capped toons will almost always find named or high level random generated gear more beneficial.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

I personally like the idea of bringing the level to craft requirements down and adding another factor to the creation process that forces either the crafter, the buyer, or both, to do some added work to allow the unbound process to happen.

Perhaps something similar to the initial greensteel blank creation process where the disjunction process for making a (+5 craftable) item would be more involved than just sticking it in the machine and stripping it.

If making a "blank" that would accept an unbound shard required some additional component in the machine along with the Dust of Disjunction, that component(s) could be lootable via questing only. The drop rates could be adjusted enough so that you really had to think about where and how you were going to "spend" those mats. It shouldn't turn into a large scales kind or rarity, but something so that high level crafters couldn't just grind stuff out without consideration for anything other than the current double the large essence formula. Having to give a crafter 30 Greater Divine essences instead of 15 Greater Divine essences to make what they want isn't going to hit anyone's pockets (or ingredients bag) very hard at all.

I dunno. Not a fully fleshed out idea, but maybe someone else can go somewhere with it...