Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

[Qzipoun]

I read the first 19 pages of this thread but couldn't keep going. Most of the people are saying very similar things anyways. I will post my thoughts below:

TL;DR = This should not go live (ever, but definitely delay the patch)

Longer version below -

Issue #1 - Crafting should not use BTC or BTA items

I have a deep hatred for BTC and BTA accounts. They make the game economy too boring and there is less incentive to farm quests (compare Gianthold era to recent updates, everything is bound these days. Unless you need something, you don't run the quests at cap). With that aside (and that's a huge thing for me to put aside) crafting really cannot use bound items. On any one account, it only makes sense to have one crafter. It would be too painful to have multiple crafters and it just doesn't work out since you need to pool all your items anyways. If you have a BTC item on an alt that is not a crafter... out of luck! This alone should eliminate the need for BTC items but there are more reasons. BTC items are a pain when they drop in chests, since you can't buy them you have to be there when they drop. If a BTC item drops for someone else, there is still a chance they dont need it so there is a big incentive for them to pass it to you. If ANY BTC items are used in crafting, everyone will loot what they get. It does not matter if the item is needed for crafting or not, it MIGHT be in the future. We already see this with raid loot. People don't need an item but they loot it anyways 'in case they make it epic' or 'in case i TR'. Chattering ring for a greater halfling bane is so silly I just laugh but it doesn't even have to be that huge, it could be the worst BTC item and still have the same effect because 'it COULD be used for crafting in the future'. Now you might say "ok fair enough, let's only use BTA items". Well that has an even worst flaw. We already have people looting random useless Epic Seals and Shards just because they are BTA and they might, someday, possibly, roll an alt that could use it. There is no incentive to pass any epic piece unless you have 5 of them or have a friend in the party. It is also really bad for crafting because if you want to craft an unbound item, YOU have to find the item. You cannot sell your services to someone else and have them provide the ingredients.

Issue #2 - Crafting should not use Raid Items (incl. +3/4 tomes)

I don't even have to explain this one, guys. I'm not going to ask for anyone to get fired but please, if you made this decision and are reading this, just think about it for a second. If you know the person who made this decision, please have a friendly talk with them. The fact that this is even considered is really frightening. Raid loot items are by nature rare. Not only are they BTC (see Issue #1 above) but you can only get a CHANCE at having one every 3 days. Even if the item you want drops in the party, there are 11 other people that probably want it too. People are already greedy, people already take raid loot just because it's called "raid loot" (I have seen a drow take the Titanic Docent because it was 'his raid loot') but this makes it so much worse. Now there are three reasons to take raid loot: You need it, you greed it, you destroy it for crafting. Seriously? You have 11 other people in your party eyeing the raid loot you can't use but you will take it anyways and break it down? Come on... This is even worse for tomes because TECHNICALLY any character can already use any tome and many people take tomes which would be MUCH more useful to others, this makes it even worse. Like I said, I should not have to explain this one, I think it's self explanatory

Issue #3 - Crafting should not REQUIRE DDO store items

Crafting cannot be dependent on DDO store items, even things like Astral Diamonds which do, every time the moon is aligned with the stars, drop in quests. I understand the business requirement here, there is a huge interest in including DDO store items in game mechanics to boost revenue, that's a good thing for the game in general. However, this should be restricted to recipe chance boosters, crafting xp pots etc... Things that are really nice but only avoid some REASONABLE grind (ie you can do the same without but it will take you longer, but reasonably longer). Leave the DDO store for what it should be, meta-game. Sure it is a great revenue stream when you include things that shouldnt be there (+2 tomes...) and I really disagree with that but it's not gamebreaking, i don't HAVE to go to the store to play the game itself (as opposed to having kickass hair or good looking armor). This is discouraging because those that want to craft will HAVE to use the store. My guess is anything bought from the store will be bound, which leads us to Issue #1, you cant craft anything unbound for someone ELSE without hitting the DDO store yourself, many will not be able to do this. Leave ingredients out of the recipies, use the store to help people level faster, succeed more etc...

Issue #4 - Major changes to the game like this should not go live on Lamannia after it is 'too late' to undo

I will keep this one short because we say this every time but the devs never listen. Either show something on Lamannia and have time to change/cancel/fix it or do not show it at all. It is frustrating to see broken stuff but it is even worse to see it coming and not see anything being done about it. Trust us, we wont mind if you cancel this update, even with the other nice stuff bundled into it. You can release this now and undo the crafting changes later but people will still thing 'they might try X again, I'm hording my leuts!'


Non-issue #1 - Using ingredients, collectables and unbound named loot is a GOOD thing

Using small/medium/large devil scales for lesser/-/greater outsider banes? Great! Using tasty ham for animal bane? Fun! Using Yark!Yark! Prayer Beads for Kobold bane? Kobold Never Forget! These things are good, they add flavor to crafting but also appropriately increase crafting costs without hurting the crafter. Crafters can still get ingredients from loot/trade/AH which boosts the economy or have people bring their own ingredients and supply the crafting level chances for a fee. Heck, if you want to go for some old, never-used named items like Rusted Shamshir and the like, go ahead! It breathes new life into these items, just make sure they are NOT bound items (Issue #1) and aren't items currently useful or sought-after. Kardin's Eye for crafting would be silly but Royal Scimitar? Meh, sure! It will make people run PoP again! Many will not want to grind old quests but that's fine as long as the items are unbound! The DDO economy is tanking, there are very few things worth buyin/selling these days due to excessive BTC/BTA loot, this shakes things up a bit.

--

Anyways, for what it's worth, those are my thoughts. As many people have said, if anything this tells us (ONCE AGAIN) that there is an insane gap between what the DEVs understand in this game and reality. Chattering Ring for Greater Halfling Bane? ... Seriously? *MegaFacePalm*

[gloopygloop]

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.

I will say that what MadFloyd posted is infinitely better than the compete and total silence that Turbine offers on most of their **** ups.

[phalaeo]

This is flat out ridiculous. I HOPE I'm getting trolled.

Seriosuly, I've put a huge investment into this BS- no longer. I'm done with it. You've just killed rolling on raid loot. Congrats,

[CeltEireson]

Basically I think Turbine have realised that tmany more people than they expected have already hit high levels of crafting and can see that the market is going to be flooded with crafted items and thats with the cap at 100. What happens when the cap goes up to 150 or beyond and folk can basically craft whatever they like for guild mates and friends under the current system. Getting to high levels is a grind but once youre there all you need is a comparatively small number of essences to outfit your characters. And for those who have an excess of platinum it hasnt even been that much of a grind as they can buy either the essences off the auction house etc, or raid the vendors / auction houses for items to deconstruct.

So they've decided to make it difficult for us to make certain of the more desirable shards - fair enough and I've been expecting it. But raid loot, tomes etc - an unbelievably bad decision. Not to mention the not too subtle new ingredient which is obviously designed to encourage people to buy astral diamonds off the store.

If you're going to restrict the number of such crafted items then do it the same way most mmogs do - by restricting the availability of dedicated crafting materials. So introduce new rare drops on kills or new collectibles - which drop in level appropriate quests so the ingredients for holy burst would be found in medium to high level quest whereas those for holy in low to medium etc. It has the advantage that its easy to control and has no impact on anything else as the only thing theyre good for is crafting - all you need to do is adjust the drop rate, change whether theyre unbound or bound to account. Extend the idea of certain rares occassionally offered as end reward to any quest but requiring an increased number of them. You can also up the number of essences required for certain recipes (leaving sufficient recipes as they are currently, or close to it, at each level that characters can still progress in crafting wihtout excessive cost or grind) or even adjust the skill requirements for certain items (although this only puts off the inevitable I guess).

Even the non raid rare named items are probably a bad idea, possibly even worse in that there is no guarantee it will ever drop for you whereas you have a reasonable chance on the 20th run of a raid. I've been through the desert countless times with multiple characters and there are still some items that have never dropped for me. Not forgetting the whole idea of forcing level 20 characters to possibly run and rerun a quest well below their level in the hopes that a particular rare item will drop - its bad enough having to do it for favour but running the same quest several dozen or more times with no experience, favour or useful loot being provided by those runs - it is in no way enjoyable or fun. Although, as someone hinted at earlier, using rares and items from various packs does make one think that a large part of the exercise is to sell those packs to people who are into crafting.

I don't often write on the forums as I prefer just to play the game but this was such a bad decision I felt i had to say something even just to echo what others have already said.

[pjw]

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.

Using *any* rare or hard to find named loot is a big mistake.

The strength of Cannith Crafting is that it replaces grinding a single quest repeatedly with "just running quests" to gain ingredients. This is GOOD.

Please, if you want to include named loot, make it do one of two things:

- substitute for, say, 1000 essences
- grant extra crafting slots
- allow *shards* to be extracted from named loot

ie. in each case, make them a shortcut, or allow the creation of something better than 'normal' crafting.

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.

This is not a good line of reasoning.

In general, people chase these items because they want the item. There are few if any named items that crafting replaces.

If crafting *does* replace a named item, then make the named item better. Don't turn it into a consumable.

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.

Honestly, I'd suggest skipping the patch.

At least update the crafting hall beta message to say that a bunch of the recipe changes will be reversed.

[Mister_Peace]

Couldn't see past 75 this end. still reviewing...
Purified eberron dragonshard fragments?
silver flame healing potion for holy burst
dreamspitter for greater lawful outsider bane
demons blood AND tyrzza's bane for greater chaotic outsider bane
chattering ring for greater halfling bane

This has to be a joke. Right?



Right?

As I said in a different thread, grinding for named loot for the ability to create items you would use to avoid grinding for named loot seems like a horrible idea. Plus inventory space is already a problem without factoring in non-stacking, BtC "ingredients" which cannot be put in a bag or shared bank.

[Postumus]

-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.

I agree. The new recipes clearly demonstrate that the devs of this game view any and all rare loot as fair game for ingredients. They might roll some of it back... maybe... but probably not much.

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 did 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.

I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist, but this part has me thinking they are trying to see just how far they can push it. How far will enough of the player base go to craft items? How many dragons bloods, astral diamonds, etc are they willing to purchase to craft shards?

Even though Mad said they will be making a change 'later,' if enough of the player base doesn't notice or care about the changes, why would they follow through on an ephemeral commitment made on a forum post?

[ddoplayer064]

What's even more amazing than the 100% disgust shown by the forumites here is the number of players that either never, or very rarely post on these forums coming out and giving there .02$. This change to what is already a pretty **** poor crafting system is DDO's equivalent to SOE's NGE, and may have similar results...

[Mister_Peace]

We will make changes. Unfortunately, they will not be made in time to alter the upcoming patch.
Our apologies and thanks for the swift, clear feedback.

Why do you let players onto Mournlands if you don't listen to their feedback?

[Bufo_Alvarius]

DDO's equivalent to SOE's NGE, and may have similar results...

Hit the nail on the head. This is so big i still cant wrap my head around it.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I'm just wondering what is really going on here....I mean you honestly cannot be that ignorant to release this kind of implementation after an outcry like this......

Are you trying to get a social measure to sudden and obscene changes.........I really think the Turbine Devs are from another planet and they are trying to judge how people on Earth react to things like this.....which doesn't say much for the common sense or intelligence of non-earthling life forms....at least not from the solar system they flew in from.

Something this absurd has some kind of conspiracy going on...because it's just outright absurd......so how about a little respect and honesty here. Why don't you just tell us what's really going on. Honestly....you should have never even bothered putting this crafting system in....at this point...it's not an option we have now that we didn't have before.....it's just a bunch of extra work that's not worth the time.

I for one will boycott it for sure unless drop rates for the items needed are increased 100-fold

[StoneGiant]

From some of these changes, it would seem that someone somewhere in the development cycle has lost touched with common sense (playing with Xoriat madness, perhaps?). I would hope that the developers of this game actually have playing the game included in their work cycle, to encourage them to remain in touch with the game and the effects of the changes that they make. If they don't currently spend an avg of 10% of their work week playing the game they are helping to create, then they should. These kind of out of touch implementations cause people, including me, to completely lose faith in the direction of the game. I hope this fiasco is rectified, and soon.

[Cyr]

The truly depressing thing here is just a trial ballon on Lamaland will forever alter how people approach bound loot changing behavior just in case the devs decide to use item X in a recipe in the future.

You can't unring this bell. The damage to the game is irreversable at this point. The only thing that can be done now is reduce the bleeding in the future.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I have always gone into raids with the mentality that if someone else pull something I am looking for and there class doesn't need it......I still don't expect it at all in any form...this is now more so true then ever before.


Now is a really really really really really good time to also implement making loot pulls only visible to the person who pulled it and only shown to everyone else if the person intends to give it away.

You already shot one foot......make sure you have one good one to hop around on.....because you guys sure aren't gonna be walking gracefully anymore.

I hope the DeVs for DDO are never allowed to transfer to LoTRO.

I wonder tho....the threads for the TWF, THF, alacrity, and spell pass nerfs/changes were all just as long if not longer and the game is still going strong...will this thread even make a difference?

[Arkat]

Have seen the bug reports on this already, thanks! Having to re-open the window every time is not intended.

Are you sure???

MadFloyd said something else was unintentional, yet clearly, it was.

[sirgog]

...
Non-issue #1 - Using ingredients, collectables and unbound named loot is a GOOD thing

Using small/medium/large devil scales for lesser/-/greater outsider banes? Great! Using tasty ham for animal bane? Fun! Using Yark!Yark! Prayer Beads for Kobold bane? Kobold Never Forget! These things are good, they add flavor to crafting but also appropriately increase crafting costs without hurting the crafter. Crafters can still get ingredients from loot/trade/AH which boosts the economy or have people bring their own ingredients and supply the crafting level chances for a fee. Heck, if you want to go for some old, never-used named items like Rusted Shamshir and the like, go ahead! It breathes new life into these items, just make sure they are NOT bound items (Issue #1) and aren't items currently useful or sought-after. Kardin's Eye for crafting would be silly but Royal Scimitar? Meh, sure! It will make people run PoP again! Many will not want to grind old quests but that's fine as long as the items are unbound! The DDO economy is tanking, there are very few things worth buyin/selling these days due to excessive BTC/BTA loot, this shakes things up a bit.

--

Depends upon the rarity.

Using an item like Dusk Heart, Giant Stalker Knife or a Large Gnawed Bone (high drop rate, frequently looted chest, and the items aren't 'used up' in any real sense) - 100% fine.

Using an item like the Globe of Imperial Blood (very low drop rate, frequently looted chest, item never really 'used up') - Borderline. These items are scarce (there may only be a dozen looted per server per week), and if they are used up in a remotely useful recipe, well, they will become an absolute nightmare to obtain.
This gets much worse if it's an item that is desirable on its own, like the Firestorm Greaves.

Using an item like Large Devil Scales/Stones/Shrapnel, FRDS, Blue Scales, to a lesser extent TOD boots mats (high enough drop rate, frequently looted chests, but the items are used for other purposes and people already grind for them) - ugh. No. No more reason to grind Shroud. Please. And surely Warner Bros wants people to get to the point that they are 'finished', forever, with one adventure pack so they can move on to the next one?

[le_goat]

Instead of raid loot, just switch all recipes to include the weeping handwraps from the Captives quest...nothing will get made then.

[skaltervox12]

I still have faith in the Dev's that they know in their heart of hearts that this is a terrible idea, and they know that pushing this misguided update is wrong.

I can only assume (Hopefully) That they are being pressured by the upper management and owners (read: Shareholders ) to punch this stillbirth update out in a sad attempt to glean tons of ddo store point bucks to their media mavens.

I hope that the devs will have the courage to Champion us after reading our response.

I hope...

[khaldan]

I wonder tho....the threads for the TWF, THF, alacrity, and spell pass nerfs/changes were all just as long if not longer and the game is still going strong...will this thread even make a difference?

All of those threads had people that agreed with the changes, and there was a bunch of discussion going on. This thread is full of people going OH GOD WHY NO DONT DO THIS NO

[Cyr]

Depends upon the rarity.

Using an item like Dusk Heart, Giant Stalker Knife or a Large Gnawed Bone (high drop rate, frequently looted chest, and the items aren't 'used up' in any real sense) - 100% fine.

Using an item like the Globe of Imperial Blood (very low drop rate, frequently looted chest, item never really 'used up') - Borderline. These items are scarce (there may only be a dozen looted per server per week), and if they are used up in a remotely useful recipe, well, they will become an absolute nightmare to obtain.
This gets much worse if it's an item that is desirable on its own, like the Firestorm Greaves.

Using an item like Large Devil Scales/Stones/Shrapnel, FRDS, Blue Scales, to a lesser extent TOD boots mats (high enough drop rate, frequently looted chests, but the items are used for other purposes and people already grind for them) - ugh. No. No more reason to grind Shroud. Please. And surely Warner Bros wants people to get to the point that they are 'finished', forever, with one adventure pack so they can move on to the next one?

Yup, putting an extremely increased demand on certain unbound items can be damaging to the game also. Particularly if those quests are lower levels then what the recipes they will be used on are likely to create gear for.

It's not a fun mechanic for people to suddenly need imperial bloods for example to create an epic item equivelent. They could run epics for a rare ingredient that might be remotely challenging...or they could run completely trivial lower level content instead.

If the increased demand on unbound loot is largely irrelevant then there is not a strong enough incentive for most high level toons to spend time grinding out an item.

Long story short. Unbound loot can face the same issue as bound loot in that it can create upside down incentives that have capped toons grinding trivial lower level content.