Feedback - Unbound Crafting

[dkyle]

So when you say BPM you are referring to the Enchantment Level? Is BPM something the devs came up with or something that someone on the forums decided to coin? It's awful misleading regardless when it comes to the crafting discussion. Price to me refers to something monetary. I initially assumed that it had to do with how the platinum values of items were determined for random generated loot.

It's from the PnP 3.5 rules. Before crafting, there wasn't really an official name for it in DDO, since it was largely meaningless. So I'm used to using that term.

In PnP, price is the primary limiting factor of items (other than a few other limitations for non-epic items). So, various enchantments come with a price modifier associated with them. In DDO, however, ML is the primary limiter of item power, but DDO uses the same BPMs as PnP does, just turns them into MLs. It also determines base price, but noone really cares much about that here.

EL would make more sense to me if we were using an acronym describe shard levels.

MEL for the level of a craftable blank...After all that is pulled right from the item description.

Yeah, that probably makes more sense. Only issue I see is confusing Enchantment Level with Enhancement Bonus.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Ahh ok thanks for the clarification. I'm obviously not a PnPer. I totally agree that the Enchantment Level and Enhancement Bonus could get people confused. I have personally referred to it as Potential Level too as the Shards of Potential are what increase the Maximum Enchantment Level. I'm sure a common term will stick at one point or another.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

While I will agree there is little point in discussing what was cut and not cut from Unbound until the system is live.

However, You are incorrect, Plant Bane, & Halfling Bane are both level 40 Shards, which would make it 75th (if it was +35)

Just want to add that I don't think the +35 thing is correct. From what I have seen on Lamannia, the unbound version of each shard is exactly double the level of the bound version +/- 1.

So the lowest available banes are currently looking to end up at 79-81 (Plant and Halfling).

[9Crows]

most normal players who do a couple quests a day find the crafting excedingly hard to get past any mid lvls if you listen in gen chat or ask why people arent collecting all the trash from quests thats what you hear and its true 5 to 10 quests a week arent going to get u far the unbound shards were looking forward too by them as a means of customizing equip without obsessivly playing most toons are still poor so they sell thier shards for money for pots/scrolls and other stuff make undound items easier to get not harder dont just cater to the hardcore gamer with lots of time resources or a superior understanding of game mechanics because those are niche players not the majority dont believe me pick out 10 random players in harb or market then look at thier equip on myddo its pretty apparent

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

+7 skill shards for Haggle, Swim, Bluff, and some others are craftable, but others like Heal and Hide aren't, simply because the Lvlx2 for unbound crafting formula puts them just over lvl 75.

Doesn't make much sense.

[MrkGrismer]

Ahh ok thanks for the clarification. I'm obviously not a PnPer. I totally agree that the Enchantment Level and Enhancement Bonus could get people confused. I have personally referred to it as Potential Level too as the Shards of Potential are what increase the Maximum Enchantment Level. I'm sure a common term will stick at one point or another.

Note also that in PnP the maximum non-epic BPM is +10, with a max of +5 enchantment and +5 in 'magical powers'. DDO already 'ups' this to +15 with the prefix/suffix thing (does not exist, per se in PnP). Above +10 BPM an item is automatically 'epic' and automatically x10 price. Also in PnP you can 'craft' any and as many 'powers' onto an item as long as you do not exceed the +10 (unless you want to go epic), and at least one of the + has to be an enchantment bonus, so it has to be at least a +1. So you could have a +1 weapon with +9 worth of 'powers'.

Note also that BPM in PnP is pretty much just for weapons and armor/shield. Other items use different rules.


All that aside I do agree that crafting level should be based on BPM and not on some arbitrary 'how good it is' that is different than BPM. If 'how good it is' (HGII?) is significantly different than BPM then there is an issue with something else. In the case of pure good the issue is that pure good is a suffix, and changing it to a prefix (so you could not have holy of pure good) would be the 'proper' fix. (I am not saying that I necessarily want that done, just that I think that is the actual issue). Personally I would make the law/chaos tiers be one (either prefix or suffix, probably prefix to echo the alignment system) and the good/evil tiers be the other (either prefix or suffix, again probably suffix to echo the alignment system). But that would be talking about a major change to the game that is probably not going to happen.

[le_goat]

Because it's nothing more than psychology. Since it has nothing to do with DnD, they could make it only 20 levels if they wanted to or 1000 but they didn't they choose 150 for some god forsaken reason. Have you actually tried crafting? Why worry about making levels so small that you craft two items and you're at the next level? It's a waste but they know that psychologically we are smiling when we level up because people like to be rewarded. So I'll see your comment and say I see no particular reason why we should cap at 150; why not 20? Why not 42? Why not 99? Why not 1000? Why not 9000?

Why not over 9000?!?!

[Krell]

Unbound Item and Shard crafting is open on Lamannia! Please take some time to review the new devices in the Crafting Hall and share your feedback here.

Have the crafter's name permanently signed in the description for unbound items. A nice personal touch that I enjoyed in other Turbine games.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Have the crafter's name permanently signed in the description for unbound items. A nice personal touch that I enjoyed in other Turbine games.

I think this would be a very nice touch. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how they would pull it off since it is the shard that we make and not the weapon/item. If a character buys my prefix shard and your suffix shard off of AH and sticks them in a machine to create a completely new item, who gets the credit and how would Turbine transfer the crafter's name over anyhow?

[Ungood]

Just want to add that I don't think the +35 thing is correct. From what I have seen on Lamannia, the unbound version of each shard is exactly double the level of the bound version +/- 1.

I half expected this to be the case.

By the way, are Lesser Banes open as Unbound Shards?

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Yes. All of the lessers can be made.

[good_ole_corwin]

A lot of what has been said is true, however, I feel that the people complaining about grinding for crafting and worried about the market getting flooded are missing a few points. On one hand you complain that it is too tedious to be fun to be a crafter, yet you are worried everybody will be doing it. On one hand you complain that it takes too much resources to get to high levels in crafting (=its too expensive), yet you are worried that the market will be flooded by cheap items. You are worried that people will be doing it for free for friends, but Im regularly being offered low-mid level stuff for free by complete strangers.

As has been said numerous times in these threads, the vast majority of players arent the grinder types. They dont do more than a few quests per login, even if they log in every day. You just wont see them much on this forum either, because the forum sign-up procedure is complicated/hidden enough to discourage those people IMHO.

Heres a radical thought, do NOT have any crafting lvl cap at all. Make as much stuff craftable as possible, dont choose whats possible to craft as bound or unbound, only differentiate the un/bound by crafting levels and cost. Better yet, do not make unbound shards, just unbound items, and in order to perform a disjunction for an unbound item, require a special ingredient (mystical dried fish, goblets and stuff, perhaps) - trading shards just IMHO takes away any roleplaying/personal touch feeling from the crafting profession ("Can you make me a supersweetmegasword, oh master blacksmith? Sure, here, take this shard and put it in that sword over there, Mr. Fighterwhoshouldnthaveacluehowtodoanyofthis." Erm... No, thats just stupid).
Change the XP gaining procedure - do not gain crafting XP at all for items of your level or lower, only for those with a chance of failure. Keep the XP gain curve steep and progressively worse - are you afraid of flooding the market? You only want a few very determined and dedicated people to be able to craft that good stuff then and discourage most people from even trying to get there.

Make no mistake, there are people that dont mind grinding the crafting XP, just look at all the people who dont mind grinding the quests (staying at a crafting machine and clicking for a few hours or running the same quest over and over and over and over again, IMHO same diff). There are people who actually enjoy it and would even more if there was any sense of achievement and/or exclusivity and usefulness in crafting.

Unbound crafting as it is on Lamma right now IS completely useless and will do more harm than good, I agree with that.

[Tillann]

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...

(+1)

I like this idea... creating a blank should require something else. And we already have ingredients which come from questing, but just sit around in inventory, or in many cases (read: mine) get thrown away: collectables. How about requiring a Khyber Prayer Pamphlet, or Phoenix Tavern Purchase Order to create a blank item.

Likewise, Cyr's idea of increasing unbound crafted items by ML +1 is also not a terrible idea. It both helps limit what can be built unbound, and encourages people to craft for themselves, using a simple solution.

.

[Ookami007]

I read alot of comments about crafting being too easy to level... blah.. blah... blah...

Keep in mind... in live... you can't just buy essences in the store. Unless you have TONS of cash to buy up items, it takes a while... especially if you have an active raiding live and are TRing any toons. The time alone is alot... let alone the cost in essences, either in items or essences on the AH.

If... on the other hand... you have no life whatsoever, no job, no social life on the server either, don't have any relationships with any one of the opposite sex and don't have family... it's not quite as easy as you make it out to be.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

I read alot of comments about crafting being too easy to level... blah.. blah... blah...

Keep in mind... in live... you can't just buy essences in the store. Unless you have TONS of cash to buy up items, it takes a while... especially if you have an active raiding live and are TRing any toons. The time alone is alot... let alone the cost in essences, either in items or essences on the AH.

If... on the other hand... you have no life whatsoever, no job, no social life on the server either, don't have any relationships with any one of the opposite sex and don't have family... it's not quite as easy as you make it out to be.

For a person with at least 6 level 20 toons "and friends" that's an awful lot of insult tossing no matter how long you've been playing =P. After 25-30 it's definitely a grind, especially for a casual player, but up to that point it's pretty easy. If you pay attention to which pre/suffixes give the highest essence return rate and don't just choose your end loot based on plat value or something else, it's even easier.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

This isn't so much an update 10 comment as much as a crafting observation in general, but I noticed that if you strip a once unbound, but now BTC craftable item back to a blank, it remains BTC. Given that stripping a piece of gear brings it to its lowest possible value, it would be nice if the BTC could be stripped as well. Maybe it's not doable, but it would be nice to be able to reuse previously crafted items as blanks if what you had on them wasn't as worthwhile as you thought when you wanted to test its worth, or if your toon just didn't need it anymore.

[Junts]

It's from the PnP 3.5 rules. Before crafting, there wasn't really an official name for it in DDO, since it was largely meaningless. So I'm used to using that term.

In PnP, price is the primary limiting factor of items (other than a few other limitations for non-epic items). So, various enchantments come with a price modifier associated with them. In DDO, however, ML is the primary limiter of item power, but DDO uses the same BPMs as PnP does, just turns them into MLs. It also determines base price, but noone really cares much about that here.



Yeah, that probably makes more sense. Only issue I see is confusing Enchantment Level with Enhancement Bonus.

BPM is used in DDO to determine what kinds of energy cells weapons can charge.

Enchantment level is exactly equal to this figure as its been used previously.

[Ikuryo]

So when you say BPM you are referring to the Enchantment Level? Is BPM something the devs came up with or something that someone on the forums decided to coin? It's awful misleading regardless when it comes to the crafting discussion. Price to me refers to something monetary. I initially assumed that it had to do with how the platinum values of items were determined for random generated loot.

EL would make more sense to me if we were using an acronym to describe shard levels.

MEL for the level of a craftable blank...After all that is pulled right from the item description (Maximum Enchantment Level - All Words Capitalized).

IF BPM is carrying over from a Random Generated discussion I don't think it applies very well to the new crafting discussion. After all my +2 Flaming Scimitar of Lesser Undead Bane has a "BPM" of +4, a plat value of 2 plat, and is unsellable.

Just so you know your weapon has a BPM of +4 because that is what it adds up to.

+2 enhancement = +2
Flaming = +1
Lesser Undead Bane = +1

For a total of +4.

The chart of which powers equal how much of a + modifier is from the 3.5 books. You can learn most of it by looking at items and subtracting the enhancement from the BPM. The elemental effects are all +1 modifiers for instance. Vicious is also a +1 effect, which is why it needed the penalty to make it balanced.

[Kathul]

You know what they should do.
Make an exp cost just like in real DND. With the insane exponential rate, so that it matches the gold cost to produce. If you really wanna gripe, use the real DnD book numbers for any type of crafting.

Just Sayin
DDO needs resources to make the game operate, and in NO WAY makes them the bad guys.
Free to play is a gift the company of great developers, and all involved. Keeping the concept of DnD alive is worthy of respect.

I was once VIP status, but I realised that i had not the personal time to view all the content ( at 12 hours a day /3 days a weeeeeeeek )
Then I Tr'd all my toons, which is awesome, and realised i had the advantage of building and perfecting my toons before i got to see it all. Please if you are free to play, do not hassle the pay to play players and the the group that invest' in this game.

The new crafting sounds really awesome, and I may try to do it someday. If i can collect and craft GS/quest/XP in the meantime i guess i will, but i really feel that the new crafting system was a way to introduce new/F2P players crafting in general.

Tis a fun game , just don't let it Retrovert into NwN style F2P.
Peace and Chicken grease !!

[Dilbon]

Have the crafter's name permanently signed in the description for unbound items. A nice personal touch that I enjoyed in other Turbine games.

Noooo. I hate that feature in MMOs. I don't like to use crafted items if the crafter has a stupid name.