Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

[simo0208]

I already thought that most collectible items are rare, considering most people have always just let them stay on the ground. The crafting system was largely good as is; I can see making changes to the unbound shard crafting; I have only some reservation with changing that, but I really fail to see the problem with bound crafting AS IS.

Bad idea, bad implementation, bad everything.

Decisions like this end games. Literally. I know someone here can point out numerous "changes" MMOs made to their games that ended their lifecycle.

[simo0208]

I agree with this completely. I'd love to hear from the person that just has to release this mess of a patch instead of holding it back a bit. I can accept that mistakes were made and I look forward to seeing what the real patch 10.1 will look like, but rushing it out to live right now is just a horrible horrible idea and whoever is responsible for that decision has to realize it's a bad one. If not, I'm not sure I can have any faith in the game anymore.

That is the real 10.1 patch. It will not be changed before going live. Then you can expect another month before 10.2 comes out and "fixes" it to still be awful but still involve turning in tomes and diamonds and all the other stuff that is awful.

[jejeba86]

Well, I really enjoy (ed) playing ddo since I knew it. About an year and a few months.
I don't have much time to play, so I'm not a vip. But I have spent something like 150$ on it. I spent some time deconstructing loots with my capped fighter in order to get ingredients and some levels on the new crafting system. I was really hoping for some improvements. This release notes made me really happy. But the happiness quickly turned to serious disappointment after I read the information about the new crafting requirements. More disappointed with myself than with turbine, for spending money I work towards getting it (just to point out I'm not rich) on some game that gives me this kind of reward. I was hoping to craft some nice items to all my characters, without meeting to spend the absurd time we have to spend so we can get good named loot, with just deconstructing normal loot from my games, and spending some time creating shards.
These new changes are one spit on my face from the company. I really hope you forget this raid loot and rare items requirements. I can't afford to lose some tomes or epic tokens to craft items, nor have the time to farm for more items that I currently do.
So, from a big fan of the game, I kindly ask all developers that may read this to stop this foolishness and continue to improve the crafting system in a way that all the casual players that really enjoy this game can handle and make it a time viable alternative to have good items and play better.

[redspecter23]

That is the real 10.1 patch. It will not be changed before going live. Then you can expect another month before 10.2 comes out and "fixes" it to still be awful but still involve turning in tomes and diamonds and all the other stuff that is awful.

That's my point. This should be changed before it hits live. Having this abomination on live is just plain lunacy when it's such an easy thing to not release it. I believe Madfloyd said that it will in fact go live and there is no way to stop it. I say there is a way to stop it and there is someone, maybe someone high up at Turbine, that just has to give the word and it won't go live. I want that to happen. Send it back for fixes, then try again. Saying this has to go live is like saying that you have to demolish a building even after you know there are people still inside. Just don't push the button!

[Tirisha]

Silver Flame pots for Holy Burst has got to change. Nobody wants to farm Silver Flame Favor on their PM because they didn't forsee this little cookie before choosing a crafting toon.

[Ookami007]

It is inconceivable how bad this change is.

It is inconceivable that nothing can be done to keep it from being implemented.

Who, specifically, is the person that is authorizing turning on patch 10.1 knowing that it has such a terrible, system-breaking change in it? Someone has this authority, and I would like to personally address this person.

You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Steiner-Davion]

Whooops. We clearly were out of line with several of these ingredients. Including items like Dreamspitter and Chattering Ring is an embarrasing error on our part and was in no way intentional.

Our motivation to add these extra ingredients (which was only made to a subset of recipes that concerned us) was to preserve and not devalue the efforts made by players to obtain many of the existing powerful named items in the game.

We will make changes. Unfortunately, they will not be made in time to alter the upcoming patch. As you know, the system is still in beta and we will effect changes as soon as we can.

Our apologies and thanks for the swift, clear feedback.

While we are Glad to hear that Turbine can admit it has made a mistake, in this case, it would be best if the patch was postponed until these changes to crafting could be removed from the patch. While the other fixes are welcomed, we would be more than happy to wait on those to avoid the game breaking, enjoyment shattering changes to Crafting.

[bigolbear]

adding my voice to the cacaphony (which now probably requires a bloomin voice of the master to craft)

1.First let me say that 'crafting is in BETA' is a pathetic excuse to sideline blame, one used by facebook games and pay to win games. Id hate to think ddo is going in that direction but...

2.Astral diamonds. NO. I will not pay real money for ingame weapons and items. If this trend continues, if players will have to pay real cash for items i will leave, i will be sory to go but by that point the game will be ruined. I truly hope this does not happen. aparently astral diamonds drop in game... yeh well ive been playing since WAY before they existed, i play most days for a few hours and ive never seen one.

3. raid gear being used is very bad for the game, more importantly it will destroy utterly any passing of raid loot and comunity spirit. Further more 'crafting is in BETA' is no excuse here because its impacting the rest of the game.

4. if crafted banes and greater banes need restricting for balance then remove them until such time as you can find a decent solution that does not involve 'pay to win'

5. we do not want to have to grind low lvl chains and quests to get crafting ingredients. no one wants this, grind is dull. The idea of getting all you need for recipies randomly in chests UNBOUND was great, it has generated a decent economy.

6. We do not want a bank full of non stacking items that dont fit in ingredient or collectable bags that are used in crafting. ALL CRAFTING ITEMS SHOULD BE EITHER INGREDIENTS OR COLLECTABLES. If you want to sell packs through crafting then more items like brocoli and fish are the way to go.

7.If any crafting recipies use epic tokens then the resultant item MUST be epic. No requirement of epic tokens for anything less than epic items, Many players loathe epic and only run it to get tokens to tr, epic is not fun, not balanced.

8. Do not release this update, it will seriously negatively impact more than just crafting. It will destroy raiding comunities.

No one expects a free ride even in a free to play game, but YOU WILL DESTROY THIS GAME if you continue down the pay to win path, Its not even subtle anymore. Content sale is the way forward if you want to maintain a robust game.

OR

Just have done with it and start selling finished mineral2's, lit2's, EPIC SOS and all that other stuff we strive for at $50 a pop and the mmo crowd can move on to swotor and the pen an paper crowd can get back to roleplaying.

[stainer]

After reading this thread I got the impression some people find the crafting changes to be less than desirable. Am I reading that right?

[karnokvolrath]

After reading this thread I got the impression some people find the crafting changes to be less than desirable. Am I reading that right?

lol. Im not sure, it seems a bit still on the fence.

[Cryohazard]

uh Turbine? This is horrible timing for an April Fools joke

[Teelk_Jafffa]

If this is the case with the direction of crafting it will be the last time I spend turbine points (IE real cash) for a waste of time. The idea behind the crafting was so I didn't have to waste my time farming items I could create my own. Thanks for taking a part of the game I was enjoying and sending it down the crapper.

[stainer]

A chattering ring? I think Mithran ran Titan 60 times before he finally got one. Are the drop rates changing too?

[Barashkukor]

I'm really, <i>really</i>, <b>really</b> regretting buying my fourth (fifth? meh) big point-bundle a few days ago, just thinking that they've spent so many man-hours and so much of our money on creating this quite appealing (in a weird way) crafting system just to have it end up universally hated disgusts me on a personal level.

We don't want it Easy - We just don't want it Stupid.

Stop the patch, cut out the offending code (include the Greater Banes temporarily if you want), print the code and use it for wallpaper around the office. To remind yourself that some ideas should be run by someone who cares more than two licks for the game and the community.

[steelblueskies]

Whoops is when you are working with some sensitive equipment, drop something and fry a part.
What we have here is : working on a small thermonuclear detonator with five redundant safeties, and the fissionable material and power intact, the somehow dropping a bit of wire in just the right configuration to short/open every single redundant safety and cause detonation, then yelling whoopsnwhen the guys standing nearby turn around at the sound, and have just enough time to drop their jaw, look at you, and think w.t.f. Simultaneously.

You just did the one big thing you should never have done. You destroyed player trust. You did this in four significant ways.

-Firstly you demonstrated you were considering using the named and rare loot as trash ingredients.
Player speculation will forever be the specter raised by this and will hurt the game evermore, even if this never goes live. You cannot patch player speculation causing deterioration of community quality, when the players cannot trust you.

-Second. It's in beta. You have now added a second tier of pay to advance.
Should we expect lammania to require store bought points?
What else? If it's not finished or stable you feel justified in added real money options before it's working as intended.
See my point in item one on trust and player speculation.

-third. You made two claims. The first was that this was unintentional and a whoops.
A person could be contrived to accept or believe in this were it akin to the crown of flame from stormcleave showing as terazas sight ingame, by name at least.
That is a whoops.
One or two recipes with unintended ingredients in a system rendering it clear to a greater or lesser degree that one of these things is not like the others.
What we have is clearly a set of systemic changes all in the same veins.
This coupled with four below brands the individual and the company as dishonest, and insults the intelligence of the community.

-fourth. You claim that it will be passed on to live as is and cannot be stopped.
As one individual praising the efforts to work on and revise things before the live release during the spellpass, we saw situations less than four months distant where your company sid what you claim you cannot do.
Again while it may be conceivable that it would be very difficult to stop the patch, modify it before it goes live, or the like, it is absolutely and unequivocally untrue that the company can not stop or change the patch.

Technically there is an implied fifth point in that if this somehow were a clustermug of happenstance, chance, etc. That defies probability or plausability but is nonetheless the truth in whole, that information in as honest a fashion as possible would be due, in order to engender trust and understanding. But that has not occured. We got "whoops".

Stop the entire patch. Of the things put in almost the gamut of the crafting related changes are either partially or totally broken, or part or the "whoops".
It is therefore indicative that many of the remaining changes are likely incomplete or broken in some fashion as well.
Might I remind you of the we changed nothing response to comments about chest and end reward loot?
It's time for an official team meeting and formal response, as well as a flip the switch on the patch delay, or a few crunch time days doing some heavy disabling and editing before live.

Any other response affirms that you are in fact lying through your teeth and unapologetic about a single or series of errors, that chained together into a clustermug that you would normally never let happen.

P.s. I believe I have followed the guide to actionable feedback in this post, and managed to refrain from speaking like a sailor or directly insulting or threatening anyone. If an ambiguity or perception along those lines exists please let me know so I may address it.

[Persiflage]

While it is nice to get devs responding to stuff like this, this line makes me wonder what the point of Lamannia is. If something which is called out on by hundreds of players on the first day of Lamannia can't be changed for upcoming patches, why bother even having a place to put the changes on before the actual servers. A system where the developers give a preview of upcoming changes but are unable to change the changes after hearing feedback from players seems pointless.

This. This +1. This +the number of atoms in the known universe. What are you THINKING? The "oh the chattering rings thing was unintentional" excuse is utter nonsense, and obvious as such to anyone with a dozen brain cells to rub together. It was a *mistake*. It was absolutely *intended* but nonetheless *mistaken*. What, are you suggesting that the raid loot was added as crafting ingredients by accident? Really? Someone's finger slipped on a keyboard and all those ingredients got added to recipes as a result? HONESTLY? There's no stronger word I can use than "nonsense" without being potentially in violation of codes of conduct, but whatever expression seems to you to convey the uttermost depths of scorn, imagine I used it just then.

Do not roll out this patch. Seriously. We'll wait until you can cobble together another one to fix the things this patch was intended to fix, but without screwing up the entire crafting system indefinitely.

Cannith crafting had provided me with a reason to keep on playing, to buy more character slots and to generally have a ball outfitting new toons with decent stuff until I could get raid gear for them. It was a time-saver (with a lot of time invested up-front, sure, but I tend to take the long view) and an exciting, if buggy, new part of the game. Now it's a reason for me to throw my hands up in the air and play something else. Empty threat may be empty, sure, and I'm not an excitable customer-is-always-right kind of fellow, but I've dropped north of $1,000 on this game in the 8 months I've been playing - by all means go and check this figure, you Powers That Be - and screwing up something I've spent weeks and weeks of constant, brow-fevering effort on is sufficient incentive for me to not drop any more cash. At all. Ever.

You see, "Beta" means "may possibly not work quite as intended because we're not sure we've tested everything yet", not "We're going to completely change the functionality for all practical purposes", and as such is not an excuse for this debacle.

Do not roll out this patch. Do not roll out this patch. Do not roll out this patch.

Pretend it never happened, decrement the version number of the *next* patch and forget about it. You don't *have to* roll out this patch, and it's laughable to suggest otherwise. NOBODY WILL THINK THE WORSE OF YOU IF YOU DO NOT GO AHEAD WITH THE PATCH!!! It isn't embarrassing, it isn't backing down, it's purely and simply listening to customer feedback and modifying your responses accordingly. Please, do NOT roll out this patch.

I daresay I'd be more compos mentis in my response if it weren't such a long time past my bedtime, but I think Iv'e covered the salient point, which was to agree with everyone else on this thread!

[theboyftw]

Whoops is when you are working with some sensitive equipment, drop something and fry a part.
What we have here is : working on a small thermonuclear detonator with five redundant safeties, and the fissionable material and power intact, the somehow dropping a bit of wire in just the right configuration to short/open every single redundant safety and cause detonation, then yelling whoopsnwhen the guys standing nearby turn around at the sound, and have just enough time to drop their jaw, look at you, and think w.t.f. Simultaneously.

You just did the one big thing you should never have done. You destroyed player trust. You did this in four significant ways.

-Firstly you demonstrated you were considering using the named and rare loot as trash ingredients.
Player speculation will forever be the specter raised by this and will hurt the game evermore, even if this never goes live. You cannot patch player speculation causing deterioration of community quality, when the players cannot trust you.

-Second. It's in beta. You have now added a second tier of pay to advance.
Should we expect lammania to require store bought points?
What else? If it's not finished or stable you feel justified in added real money options before it's working as intended.
See my point in item one on trust and player speculation.

-third. You made two claims. The first was that this was unintentional and a whoops.
A person could be contrived to accept or believe in this were it akin to the crown of flame from stormcleave showing as terazas sight ingame, by name at least.
That is a whoops.
One or two recipes with unintended ingredients in a system rendering it clear to a greater or lesser degree that one of these things is not like the others.
What we have is clearly a set of systemic changes all in the same veins.
This coupled with four below brands the individual and the company as dishonest, and insults the intelligence of the community.

-fourth. You claim that it will be passed on to live as is and cannot be stopped.
As one individual praising the efforts to work on and revise things before the live release during the spellpass, we saw situations less than four months distant where your company sid what you claim you cannot do.
Again while it may be conceivable that it would be very difficult to stop the patch, modify it before it goes live, or the like, it is absolutely and unequivocally untrue that the company can not stop or change the patch.

Technically there is an implied fifth point in that if this somehow were a clustermug of happenstance, chance, etc. That defies probability or plausability but is nonetheless the truth in whole, that information in as honest a fashion as possible would be due, in order to engender trust and understanding. But that has not occured. We got "whoops".

Stop the entire patch. Of the things put in almost the gamut of the crafting related changes are either partially or totally broken, or part or the "whoops".
It is therefore indicative that many of the remaining changes are likely incomplete or broken in some fashion as well.
Might I remind you of the we changed nothing response to comments about chest and end reward loot?
It's time for an official team meeting and formal response, as well as a flip the switch on the patch delay, or a few crunch time days doing some heavy disabling and editing before live.

Any other response affirms that you are in fact lying through your teeth and unapologetic about a single or series of errors, that chained together into a clustermug that you would normally never let happen.

P.s. I believe I have followed the guide to actionable feedback in this post, and managed to refrain from speaking like a sailor or directly insulting or threatening anyone. If an ambiguity or perception along those lines exists please let me know so I may address it.

well stated. I'd also like to thank the community for bringing this to the attention of those that never read what's going on on the test server. you guys stepped up big time. lastly, a big finger of shame to the devs for their continued silence in this matter. the 'woops' message has to go down as one of the worst excuses for justification and or an apology ever.

[Bigrtt]

Feedback? Hmm....what else can I say, except whoever came up with the idea of using RAID items in CRAFTING needs to have a stern talking to. Idiotic idea, and for it to even make it as a possible (let alone the chosen) part of an update is even more idiotic.

This patch is why you devs NEED to ask for feedback from the community who are playing the game, listen to it, and really consider some of what we say. Otherwise you end up with a big screw up like this.

Crafting was supposed to be an alternative for players to get some nice non-epic, non-raid gear. It was supposed to be player friendly. It was still a big grind to get the good stuff, and some of the shards were available at silly levels. The grind though, to get to the greater banes is more than enough effort to warrant being able to make them though, IMHO. It's not something everyone will get to, I know I won't get to that level before Christmas. There's only a very select few on each server that have that sort of level, and they're the sort that were always going to get it that high and that quick. They're the power gamers, the ones that can stand the massive grind, the ones that could afford to buy all the essences.

The only reason I could see these changes even being suggested is because you think there's going to be a sudden influx of holy silver greater banes on peoples toons. So what? There's NOTHING in the game that really offers a big challenge to people (and I mean challenge, not try and try again re abbot raid). The last thing alot of people are doing is just getting the best gear on their toons as they can.


As for the patch and this going to the live servers...I'm all for getting the bug fixes, but no. Sometimes a patch does more harm than good, cancel it and fix the problems NOW rather than force us all to have to endure some stupidity.

[FastTaco]

/snip

Well said sir!

Devs, do you realize tome pages go for 1-3 LDS EACH? A player looking to farm his own skiver can run litany 100+ times and still not have his own full set of pages. That's an insane price for a greater bane. Raid loot placed on a few shards sets a terrible precedent. 400 silver flame favor for Holy burst... I'm just going to stop there before my brain explodes into a series of unintelligible insults and curses.

[BitkaCK2]

I just have a quick question and a quick comment.

Why would anyone pay money for this?
I now have to edit my post in another forum recommending this game.

ttfn,
bitkaCK2