Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

[Thrudh]

get rid of the unbound crafting and leave it the way it is..

Yeah, I think the real issue here is they realized that a few high-end crafters were about to spam the market with nearly unlimited raid-quality loot.

So they wanted to make it painful to craft the high-end stuff... but they went way overboard...

They probably should just get rid of the unbound crafting all together...

[Altaweir]

After sinking 2.5 mil plat in Crafting material, and untold $$$ in DDO Store to increase recipe chances and crafting XP, I barely attained level 40. I must admit, I don't work full time as a DDO player. I wonder what kind of animals are already at level 100, good for them.

Anyone telling that crafting high-level shards is "too easy" has obviously never climbed the mountain to get there.

Controlling high-level recipes by adding insane ingredients is just reaping you from the reward of reaching the top.

If you wonder if Turbine developers actually play their game, the mere process of Greater Essence sundering is telling.

But I fear that update going live or not, the damage is done. The days of /roll are over.

[Jandric]

I don't know if this will be noticed by the devs amidst the torrent of posts, but we've pretty much established over the last 29+ pages that we almost universally hate this idea. There have been a few positive suggestions on how to change this, and I'd like to concentrate some of them in this post and offer some of my own.

1. If you want to implement a mechanic that forces people to get ingredients from raids, then invent a mystical pickle, mystical goat cheese, etc and put in the raid loot tables in an extra slot just like you're implementing for essences in chests. It will make it much harder for casual players to get these shards, which I think is a huge downside. People will still grumble, but it's way better than trying to crunch dreamspitters, etc.

2. Please take out having to crunch ultra rare drops like golden greaves and spectral gloves, and replace it with a mystical french fry, etc, that only drops in the wilderness zones and quests where all the non-raid loot named items you want to use drop. Everyone's focused on the raid loot since it was the most egregious example of the problem with the update, but using highly sought after items items with ridiculously low drop rates (like the sands items) is a bad idea, too. For that matter, the chance of anyone ever crunching their spectral gloves for a +4 to hit in the standard prefix/suffix system is so low that you may as well remove the shard from the list.

3. Others may disagree with this point, but please do NOT radically increase the drop rates of these items instead of implementing the above suggestion. Spectrals, Greaves, etc are supposed to be hard to get. If it becomes a commodity for the purposes of crafting, it'll increase power creep and decrease the specialness of these items. I say this, btw, not as someone who has alot of these items.

4. I'm basically OK with using shroud mats as ingredients to drive up the cost of the better shards, but I think it's the wrong approach. As Egon said, "Don't cross the streams." Cannith crafting should be kept separate from Greensteel crafting, and it breaks the paradigm of it using collectibles. Why not replace the Shroud/Amrath mats with an entirely new collectible (or set of collectibles) that you control the drop rate of? Old hands that have stockpiled collectibles won't have a built in advantage over new players, and the economy will do the rest of the work for you to increase the cost of the shard to the player. By controlling where these new collectibles drop, you can still force people to buy packs (if that was your intent) without negatively impacting people trying to get boots for ToD, etc.

5. I'm really not sure how to fix the Tome/astral diamond crunching issue. Turbine clearly feels that some recipes need to be more expensive, and I can't say that I completely disagree. I don't like what this will do to tome prices, and I don't have a suggestion to fix it, per se, other than to suggest that a different approach is used.

[Arkat]

They probably should just get rid of the unbound crafting all together...

While I think that would suck for a few people, I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it.

If I had to choose between accepting the new shard recipes and dropping unbound crafting, I'd say "bye bye" to unbound crafting gladly.

[MariJay]

Do I need to cast a vote on how bad of an idea I think this is?


For those people who think this is a response to high level crafters being able to inundate the market with boss beaters, think again. I've been offering a FREE unbound shard service on Thelanis since crafting began and you'd be surprised how few people have used the service. Seriously, I've probably crafted less than 20 shards for people and I've made myself very available. I've made a grand total of one unbound boss beater (a +4 silver greataxe of lawful outsider bane) for someone and nothing for myself (I can't afford a silver falchion.) The secondary market for unbound shards does not exist. The only "killing" anyone ever made off crafting was buying and reselling essences to dummies like me!


After achieving 99 in all three schools (Arcane/Divine on one character and Elemental on another), this will probably be the end of the road for me. Being able to do things like Holy Burst and Greater Banes for a static group of casual players was the driving force to achieve what I have... and now I'm not likely to be even remotely capable of making these things.

I thought Cannith Crafting was going to be an alternative to serial raiding, epic farming, greensteel, and the need for uber rare items. Now it looks like Cannith Crafting will require nearly all of those things to be of any real use.

Casual players need not apply.

[Persiflage]

BTW...in the Khyber Marketplace forum, there are TWO (yes TWO) people advertising that they'd make items for you.

Settle the heck down. It's not NEARLY as bad as you're making it out to be. In fact, I think it's good. There are MANY other MMOs where people have taken the time to get their crafting up and have settled into a nice business in the game of crafting things for others. Since some of those games are still going strong, I don't see why Cannith crafting (the way it's implemented on Live servers now) would ruin DDO.

Really, until I see evidence to the contrary, DDO is fine and the 10.1 changes to Cannith Crafting (recipes) are unnecessary.

As one of the aforementioned two people who's crafting for others - and probably the only one who's doing so FOR FREE - I'm here to tell you that the mass-crafting thing just hasn't happened. Hardly anyone has asked, although I do expect requests to ramp up once word gets around to the larger player base about the forthcoming death of crafting. As for making an actual living out of it... well, forget it. Not gonna happen. Admittedly, that's partly my fault on Khyber as I keep posting shards for cost instead of the insane prices others are charging, but hey

Oh, and the xp for decon? Forget it, it's not having much of an impact, leave it where it is; seriously, it's a non-issue. A minor help, nothing more. Let me put it this way, I've deconstructed 2,761 items to get where I am. Of those, at least half are 1st-level shards that I've ground and broken to try to pop greaters from lessers. So if we're generous and say that everything else was L5 (ridiculous, but let's say so anyway), that's 9663 crafting xp from deconning items and shards.

Sound like a lot? Well, I have 108,145 total crafting XP, so the ludicrous overestimate of what I've earned from deconning amounts to 8.93% of the total*... and you know what? It took hours and hours and hours just to grind those shards out, so I eventually got wise and stopped because it's Just Not Worth It. It's better just to run around the Vale farming 15-minute loot runs and randomly generating greater essences from rare chests.

Crafting is fine as-is, or will be once the animations and handwrap issues are fixed. An insane grind to get there, but useful when you do and not game-breaking in any fashion so far as I can tell. The stuff you can make just isn't so good that people are going to buy adventure packs just for the privilege of grinding out rare items over a period of months just to be able to attempt to make a single shard. Please, please, please DO NOT THROW THE SWITCH for this patch.


*A more realistic figure would be that I've earned maybe 4-5% of my crafting XP from deconning items and shards; it's a nice little bump, nothing more.

[karnokvolrath]

If this hits live it will be such a joke.

If you want it to be hard, increase the collectables or add more/new ingrediants.

Even the idea that raid loot or even rare loot was remotely exeptable makes me want to vomit.

You said you wanted to make use of old items no one liked? Maybe upgrade some of them. You make chrono gear trump almost every old lowbie item in the game by a mile, then wonder why no one likes some old junk sword of thirty.

Lately this game is really making me wonder...ya new content is great, new crafting is great.

But wouldnt it be REALLY great to see some old junk reworked? Borky quests, failed chains, bad items, not to mention some of the more infamous maps on here. I just wonder if the bulk of the time at turbine is spent slapping eachothers butts and making mom jokes. (not that i dont like a good mom joke, but you got work to do)

Or more closer...something like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vzEIgBuZqw

[societal]

No BTC items should ever be required for crafting. BTA okay, but BTC never. Of course, that makes everyone roll for everything which is another problem (like the sup 8 items out of the new pack being better than some epic items that are only sup 7). I'll wait and have somebody craft my stuff for me. They will never do it for money because it would only take a handful of items to max out all of their bank accounts and money is mostly useless anyway.

[apep1412]

As most people are saying, the requirements as they are now seem a little ridiculous. I do like certain aspects of the changes, but not to the degree that they are presented.

The requirement for a specific, BTC raid item to make a specific shard is the most mentioned problem. I do like the idea of requiring raid loot to limit the crafting of some of the powerful shards. I would personally prefer to see this replaced with some sort of 'essence of the demon sands', created from deconstructing any named or raid item from the sands, for example. Even if it is restricted to raid loot, I can't see too much of a motivation for people to loot a good item just to craft when they could roll on a less desired item to obtain the same ingredient.

The other aspect is that the items are BTC. For myself, personally, my barbarian is my crafter. I'd prefer to not have to flag him for titan and run it in hopes that raid loot drops for him. If the essence idea is used, it would be nice for it to be BTA or unbound.


I don't really see too much of a problem with the purified essence crafting. A couple things that would be nice are:
- for the astral diamonds to be exchangeable in units of 1;
- perhaps have the turn-in amounts increased for +2, +3 tomes (on the argo market, +1 tomes go for about 1/10th of +2s and it'd have to be a significant amount for most people to give up a +3, even in an undesired stat).

[Wrendd]

The sad thing is, the devs know that even after all this outrage, people wont really stop p(l)aying when crafting gets screwed over. Sure we will be peed off, sure we will cry on the forums, sure we will feel -insert an expletive here-. But since nobody (or a very small minority) is hooked on the game because of Cannith crafting, I do believe that only very few people will actually do anything to hurt Turbine, like cancel their subscriptions or stop buying TPs. And most of those who quit will be f2pers and by definition, that doesnt cost Turbine money, might actually save a bit.

I understand what you are saying, and in most situations I would agree with you, but in this case I am not so sure. For one thing, this is the *only* thread that I have seen that did not have even ONE dissenting opinion. Second, the changes really are crazy. Third, people have limited ways to make their displeasure known. The 2 main ways that we can demonstrate our displeasure to Turbine are: On the forums and with our wallets. Since Turbine has already stated that they can not change the patch (which makes no sense to me either), it is obvious that the forums complaints are most likely not going to get this fixed. So I think that there is a distinct possibility that many people will actually use the second method of showing their lack of support, and cancel their account and go F2P. I may be wrong, but this is the first issue in DDO that I think has an actual chance of causing a large exodus.

What really astounds me though is the "we are on a timetable, wont be able to fix the patch before it goes live" attitude - ok, timetable for what? Either you have a set date for patch 10.1 no matter what the patch entails (=you have to release A patch, even if you know its detrimental to the game) or you have a set date for patch 10.1 as it is (=the **** in it IS planned and not "unintentional"). Either way really only shows poor managerial skills from Turbine, because who cares about the deadline? The bulk of your customers dont even know about a deadline, nor do they care - so if there is a deadline, its a deadline just for the sake of having a deadline. And arent deadlines in IT development more of a guideline thing anyway, not real unbreakable rules?

If its the latter though (=the **** in it IS planned and not "unintentional"), then your sincere and apologetic response is not so sincere after all - and Im afraid I agree with the others who said theres just no way you could have "accidentally" screw up those recipes, because its not only about the recipes, its also the item descriptions and stuff like that. Thats like saying "It was an accident officer, he fell on my knife, I swear! And then 25 more times..."

Also, if you cant take out changes in the recipes out of the patch without a lot of coding effort, Im afraid youre doing your coding wrong. That should be only about editing database records, not really changing any actual code. I am not a programmer, so I have no real basis to disagree with you on this one. But, even if Turbine is correct and they can not easily change the code right now, I can NOT understand why they can not delay the patch from going live. Then they would have all the time they need to fix the code.

Blue for emphisis
Red for Response

[karnokvolrath]

I would personally prefer to see this replaced with some sort of 'essence of the demon sands', created from deconstructing any named or raid item from the sands, for example. Even if it is restricted to raid loot, I can't see too much of a motivation for people to loot a good item just to craft when they could roll on a less desired item to obtain the same ingredient.

This is slightly less horrid but still wouldnt work, people would still loot the torq on there fighter and give you the "my loot, my rules, you know where to stick it", on the other hand.....maybe they do it off the list of epic items from sands? Just an example, then any crafter with a functioning brain would just go farm tinder or whatever and crisis averted.

I dont know what the RIGHT answer is, but the wrong one is pretty clear.

[karnokvolrath]

The sad thing is, the devs know that even after all this outrage, people wont really stop p(l)aying when crafting gets screwed over. Sure we will be peed off, sure we will cry on the forums, sure we will feel -insert an expletive here-. But since nobody (or a very small minority) is hooked on the game because of Cannith crafting, I do believe that only very few people will actually do anything to hurt Turbine, like cancel their subscriptions or stop buying TPs. And most of those who quit will be f2pers and by definition, that doesnt cost Turbine money, might actually save a bit.

Uhm...No. (other then the part about the devs not giving a toot, that part is clearly right on target)

I dont craft at all, my fear is the affect on the rest of the game, i never favored unbound shards from the start, it was promoting people like me to be lazy. Why would i bother crafting, i got two guildies already crafting anything you can dream of.

Now you want to tell me you basically removing any -need before greed- instance? That essentially increases all raids to 60+ completions to get what you really wanted. And that my friends, is a fail, if i have to run hound 382578645207 more times, it will be my last.

[IONDragonx]

Making the ingredients required for greater banes a bit more rare and difficult to find is good.

Making those ingredients raid gear that is often more difficult to acquire than a random drop of said greater bane is bad.

Making those ingredients raid gear that is often far more desirable to keep than the greater bane is REALLY bad.

I'm just a newbie to DDO but I have to voice my agreement here. I've got a premium account, I pay Turbine with real money. Just because my content is "free to play" doesn't mean that I'm not here for "fun to play!"

Do NOT make the game similar to work. I'll drop it in a heartbeat.

[apep1412]

This is slightly less horrid but still wouldnt work, people would still loot the torq on there fighter and give you the "my loot, my rules, you know where to stick it", on the other hand.....maybe they do it off the list of epic items from sands? Just an example, then any crafter with a functioning brain would just go farm tinder or whatever and crisis averted.

I dont know what the RIGHT answer is, but the wrong one is pretty clear.

In my opinion, the line between the people that would loot a torq on their fighter 'in case they tr' and those that would loot it to craft is thin, at best. I would hope that most people that play enough to get that far in crafting (greater banes start at about 70 or so) would have the resources to run 3-4 toons through dq to get any undesired piece of loot. While I agree that this would probably increase the chances of this happening, it wouldn't be the core issue when a fighter decides to loot a torq or a wizard that decides to loot a chaosblade or maralith chain.

[steelblueskies]

look if they said you can use any named item of this ml or better, OR you can use new crafting mat xyz, it would be bad, but not this scale of bad.

rendering rare/hard to find/ inaccessible/ timelocked by raid timer/ransack loot items some may actually want or need to USE, to be the only option to craft a shard is the... okay stopping myself.

it.is.the.worst.posible.choice.

if its an or situation and you suddenly have a use for that named item x that absolutely noone wanted that dropped for you. that is good. rendering it such that we can expect that you may decide to make said item required at some future point for some staple item we may wind up needing, or making it the only option for creating item x, that is bad.

dungeon tokens for the new shards. okay.
tomes? as people will not commonly blow +2 or greater tomes for the likes of this, you just drove the market for the newbie accessible +1 tomes to dust.

man. as i sit here playing torchlight and occasionally checking for a reason this game is still worth any time, the implications of this mess just keep growing, uglier and uglier.

[svinja]

Yeah, I think the real issue here is they realized that a few high-end crafters were about to spam the market with nearly unlimited raid-quality loot.

So they wanted to make it painful to craft the high-end stuff... but they went way overboard...

They probably should just get rid of the unbound crafting all together...

I agree, unbound crafting is not really necessary. BtA, yes, that was a needed change. Unbound? No.

The main thing that needed to be fixed with crafting is how long it takes to transmute greaters to lessers. I think I spent around 30 minutes clicking a single button the other day. I hope at least this is fixed?

[MadFloyd]

Everyone,

The train has been stopped. The patch will not ship in its current state.

I will update (probably via a separate thread) when I have more news, but I can say this:

We will NOT require raid loot as ingredients.

We will NOT require bound named items as ingredients.

Many ingredients, and the *amount* of some of these ingredients were out of line.

These changed recipes should have been reviewed by various designers, but weren't (a hole in our process that we have identified and corrected to avoid for the future).

Mournlands did not have an opportunity to see or comment on these changes.

Again, I'll post more info when I have it.

Our sincere apologies for causing panic, and many thanks to all players who offered their well-thought out and constructive feedback on this issue and tried the changes on Lamannia.

"MudFloyd"

[Persiflage]

Oh, fantastic, plus several million! Let me be the first to say: THANK GOODNESS!!!!

Consider me both bowing and taking my hat off, I am delighted that you guys have listened to all the feedback.

Speaking as a player who has gone all-out to level crafting but who - like many more casual players - has no desire to run Epics, dare I hope that we won't be needing Epic tokens or tomes either?

[rest]

Everyone,

The train has been stopped. The patch will not ship in its current state.

I will update (probably via a separate thread) when I have more news, but I can say this:

We will NOT require raid loot as ingredients.

We will NOT require bound named items as ingredients.

Many ingredients, and the *amount* of some of these ingredients were out of line.

These changed recipes should have been reviewed by various designers, but weren't (a hole in our process that we have identified and corrected to avoid for the future).

Mournlands did not have an opportunity to see or comment on these changes.

Again, I'll post more info when I have it.

Our sincere apologies for causing panic, and many thanks to all players who offered their well-thought out and constructive feedback on this issue and tried the changes on Lamannia.

"MudFloyd"

Cool.


I will, however, never ever ever put my raid loot up for roll. Just in case. Because you never know.

[Ruphus]

Everyone,

The train has been stopped. The patch will not ship in its current state.

I will update (probably via a separate thread) when I have more news, but I can say this:

We will NOT require raid loot as ingredients.

We will NOT require bound named items as ingredients.

Many ingredients, and the *amount* of some of these ingredients were out of line.

These changed recipes should have been reviewed by various designers, but weren't (a hole in our process that we have identified and corrected to avoid for the future).

Mournlands did not have an opportunity to see or comment on these changes.

Again, I'll post more info when I have it.

Our sincere apologies for causing panic, and many thanks to all players who offered their well-thought out and constructive feedback on this issue and tried the changes on Lamannia.

"MudFloyd"

And the crowd rejoices!

Way to go Turbine, you just made amends with me and probably every other person in this thread.

What we should do now is start a thread on what "Should" be done, to get the problems fixed properly