Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

[Yaga_Nub]

We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this. In the past we've underestimated player's abilities and it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.
..

That would be less than 5% of the player base though. You should expect those kind of outliers.

MF, I know you guys definitely realize that there are always going to be people who "break" the system but it seems like you want to punish everyone for those outliers.

I'd also like to ask where your development team is getting most of it's feedback from? Bug reports? The forums? Somewhere else that has a very limited number of people giving feedback? I ask that because the crafting system that we are seeing now is not what Fernando said it was going to be. I also ask because almost nothing that the community has ever posted about crafting is what we are seeing now. Crafting is something that players on the forums have discussed for years, yet it seems like your team ignored it all and went with something that your team thought would be fun and workable.

For instance, we asked for the ability to craft items with no slot restrictions since the first day that crafting was announced. What did we get? Slot restrictions.

We never asked for raid loot effects on crafted items. What did we get? Raid loot effects, often at much lower levels than something basic like a Greater Bane effect.

I know you enjoy the game as much as we do so what I'd really like to see if for you to have an open and honest discussion about crafting with the community. A discussion in which you are willing to admit your team's mistakes with the system but also willing to defend it's strengths. One where you are willing to explain why you choose to implement crafting the way it is now. I think the community would be more understanding if we had an explanation for things like why an effect that drops on ML six items comes on shards that are CL 75. We just don't understand why there is such a huge disparity between random loot and crafted items, at least I know I don't.

If you had that open and honest discussion with us and you had the immediate and overwhelming response that you did when the 10.1 changes were announced; would you be willing to make the changes that community wants? You've shown that your team can make changes and actually make them fairly quickly. Would you be willing to do more changes just as quickly?

[Dagolar]

Stop catering to the power gamers and "uber" guilds that have nothing better to do than to see how fast they can break the game. Realize that MOST of us aren't anywhere near that and want a chance to enjoy the game too. They're going to ruin the game for themselves no matter what you do, so let them do it. Let them seriously burn out and move on to something else. Focus more energy on keeping the "average" players involved in the game. Just keep the "ubers" from ruining it for everyone by putting serious limitations on unbound shards. If your goal is to keep ubers from breaking the game for themselves and still keep it playable for everyone else, you're never going to do it.

This lesson is one of the most important for any pen & paper dungeon master to learn. You'll always have players that'll break the game- but you have to be creative in how you deal with them (Personal example: If they choose to be an uberpowerful werebear build, make shapeshifters common and make silver items readily available because of it). You need to take an approach that balances, rather than submits to the gameplay style of the element; Else, that poor halfling in the party'll become even more of a dungeon fodder than it already is.

[Buggss]

This lesson is one of the most important for any pen & paper dungeon master to learn. You'll always have players that'll break the game- but you have to be creative in how you deal with them (Personal example: If they choose to be an uberpowerful werebear build, make shapeshifters common and make silver items readily available because of it). You need to take an approach that balances, rather than submits to the gameplay style of the element; Else, that poor halfling in the party'll become even more of a dungeon fodder than it already is.

Yeah, it's a tough choice between preventing characters from getting over-powered but still rewarding creativity and ingenuity.

Personally I find it one of the most challenging jobs of a DM but also the most rewarding when you manage it.

[Dagolar]

We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this. In the past we've underestimated player's abilities and it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.

Have to view those gamers as the alpha testers, that show the limits of and solidify the foundations of the system. Then, keep an eye on the beta testers as they prove or disprove the stability and functionality of the system.

As long as you don't remove crafting levels on TR at any point, I can't say I mind the slow grind (for us whom are slightly more casual about it). So far it seems reasonable enough; Though, the early crafting levels are pretty awful, given that you'd never actually use any of those elements on an item (+1 skill? Right.. Even +3 or +5 isn't worth it) except to deconstruct it again and again. And that sort of farming doesn't appeal to me in the least.

Thankfully, you can make a decent chunk early on just with deconstructing, but.. you're still only making about a third the progress that'd you'd be comfortable with. Of course, once you reach access to decent shards, that's not as big of an issue, as you can typically find a use for them, even a temporary one.

As someone mentioned on this thread, the trade of essences and the willingness of people to endlessly deconstruct and reconstruct to farm the xp means that some people WILL make it that far- and, part of that is the glut of money some players have- which will always be a factor, but addressing it can't be allowed to ward off new players, either.

If you really want to ward it off, make some high level crafting materials that can only be bought (or found as really rare drops) at, say, 100K+ each. Sure, some of us will rarely see those items, but that's fine, it makes for a good sink, and we'll all benefit in the long run from an economic balance.

[Altaweir]

We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this.

Crafting becomes a pain from level 30 on because every shard requires huge amounts of Essences.

Getting Essences is very difficult if you don't have a capped toon. Auction House proves impractical to get essences in sufficient amount. And deconstructing items is a viable option only if you are high level enough.

Let's take an example. One toon is level 20. In any quest chest of his level, he gets Dexterous +1 Boots of Swimming +10 or any other similar junk loot. These boots are a +6 item, minimum level 13, with a +1 Prefix and a +5 suffix. If you have half a brain you'll deconstruct the suffix for the best yield, Level 5 Body Essences, an average of 35.52 lesser and 1.15 greater essences (figures courtesy of DDO wiki) and up to 49 Lessers and 7 Greaters. Wonderful!

Another toon is level 13. He gets much lower level loot on average - say, a +4 Impact Mace of Shattermantle. That's a minimum level 10 weapon. But when you try to deconstruct it for the best yield, you can choose among a useless +4 Enhancement Spirit, a Level 2 Earth Essence or a Level 2 Chaos Essence. That's 4.12 lesser and 0.53 greater on average, accordingly to DDO wiki. Almost 1/6th of the net amount of essences obtained from higher level loot.

A mid-level character will have to put five or six times the effort of a high-level toon to get the same amount of essences. That's rough figures. And with 10.1 update adding Soul Gems to the mix, it will be even worse for lowbies. Trying to earn crafting experience with a non-capped toon is simply a dead-end. Better cap your toon first.

Oh, and anyone thinking Soul Gems is the "answer" and telling anyone "can simply purchase them over the AH" should have a look at the price of Soul Gems: Essence of Earth on a server. And these gems are only used for Adamantine Rituals so far.

I don't have any instant idea to fix this issue, but clearly, generating essences is crippling if your character does not have access to high level random loot. That's probably why some claim that "getting essence is easy" while others complain that it's "too **** expensive".

[wickedwarrior]

The dev team over at Turbine really needs to come up with some way to smooth over their interaction with the community. Mad seems to be the only one with the social skills necessary to diffuse the situation in a calm, polite, and understanding manner. Where is the middle man between the angry mob and the agitated developers? Seriously.

We're all here for the same goal. It was said before, but the importance of it cannot be stressed enough. Players and developers need to work together to make a better game. Understandably you can't always make everyone happy, but you can at least make an attempt. With the level of dissatisfaction that seems to go on around here I don't think it would hurt to try.

Also, I'm sure Mad isn't the ONLY reasonable mod here, but I don't often search the forums and I stopped reading somewhere after page 30. Hah, 5 a.m. what do you people expect from me????

(edit) Just to mention, I started playing DDO when it was first released so don't you dare bash my join date!



DDO Developers

Diplomacy -15

[EllisDee37]

Oh, and anyone thinking Soul Gems is the "answer" and telling anyone "can simply purchase them over the AH" should have a look at the price of Soul Gems: Essence of Earth on a server. And these gems are only used for Adamantine Rituals so far.

x1000

I don't have an arcane, I deleted my only arcane by level 5 because I don't like playing them, I'm a new player who has yet to cap his first toon, and everything in this patch seems designed specifically to make me give up on crafting. Soul gems is one of the more annoying aspects.

New Player: "What class is best for crafting?"
Ideal: "It doesn't matter."
Now: "Arcane, by a wide margin."

That's full of fail.

[Ironforge_Clan]

Crafting becomes a pain from level 30 on because every shard requires huge amounts of Essences.

Getting Essences is very difficult if you don't have a capped toon. Auction House proves impractical to get essences in sufficient amount. And deconstructing items is a viable option only if you are high level enough.

Let's take an example. One toon is level 20. In any quest chest of his level, he gets Dexterous +1 Boots of Swimming +10 or any other similar junk loot. These boots are a +6 item, minimum level 13, with a +1 Prefix and a +5 suffix. If you have half a brain you'll deconstruct the suffix for the best yield, Level 5 Body Essences, an average of 35.52 lesser and 1.15 greater essences (figures courtesy of DDO wiki) and up to 49 Lessers and 7 Greaters. Wonderful!

Another toon is level 13. He gets much lower level loot on average - say, a +4 Impact Mace of Shattermantle. That's a minimum level 10 weapon. But when you try to deconstruct it for the best yield, you can choose among a useless +4 Enhancement Spirit, a Level 2 Earth Essence or a Level 2 Chaos Essence. That's 4.12 lesser and 0.53 greater on average, accordingly to DDO wiki. Almost 1/6th of the net amount of essences obtained from higher level loot.

A mid-level character will have to put five or six times the effort of a high-level toon to get the same amount of essences. That's rough figures. And with 10.1 update adding Soul Gems to the mix, it will be even worse for lowbies. Trying to earn crafting experience with a non-capped toon is simply a dead-end. Better cap your toon first.

Oh, and anyone thinking Soul Gems is the "answer" and telling anyone "can simply purchase them over the AH" should have a look at the price of Soul Gems: Essence of Earth on a server. And these gems are only used for Adamantine Rituals so far.

I don't have any instant idea to fix this issue, but clearly, generating essences is crippling if your character does not have access to high level random loot. That's probably why some claim that "getting essence is easy" while others complain that it's "too **** expensive".

While I agree with what you have to say here I would disagree with one thing you said:

you can choose among a useless +4 Enhancement Spirit

While I would agree that the +4 Enhancement Spirit is not the best I would not classify it as useless simply because of the disparity between the crafting levels needed to use/craft the +4 and the +5. Most players would agree that the difference between the various required crafting levels is out of sync and needs to be reworked into something that makes more sense. Honestly having to reach a crafting level of 75just to be able to create a +5 Enhancement Spirit shard is a bit steep. It is far easier to temporarily craft an item at +4 and other lesser abilities so that you can use an item now instead of having to wait to raise your crafting levels necessary to create the best of the best.

What makes very little sense is that I can craft said shard on my crafter (once hitting the appropriate level or lower using a booster) but then transfer it over to a character that has NO crafting experience to craft it onto an item.

[Altaweir]

While I would agree that the +4 Enhancement Spirit is not the best I would not classify it as useless simply because of the disparity between the crafting levels needed to use/craft the +4 and the +5.

By "useless +4 Enhancement spirit" I meant that any player attempting crafting can have countless Enhancement spirits from +1 to +5 should he so desire. Enhancement spirit are used for nothing else than an Enhancement Bonus or an Armor Bonus shard, and in extremely small quantities. I haven't bothered checking if you can burn them for Shards of Potential but even then, using lesser Essences is a more cost-effective choice.

In other words, deconstructing an item for some Enhancement spirit is the exception, not the rule.

[Cyr]

We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this. In the past we've underestimated player's abilities and it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.

As for your second paragraph, I think we have a smarter than average player base who wouldn't fall for that sort of tactic, nor do I think it is in anyone's best interest to operate like that.

There will always be someone who spends tons of money and time beating out your expectations. That should be irrelevant to your decisions about system design unless that system design is mostly targeted at those players.

Cannith Crafting is a game wide system. It effects all levels of play and all types of players. Yet, it does a truly horrible job of trying to reward lower level players and more casual players. Heck, it barely is worth while for top end gamers due to the very combinations of effects that you seem so fixated on.

Cannith Crafting as it is currently designed is NOT SO GOOD THAT YOU WILL NOT USE RAID ITEMS OR OTHER NAMED LOOT AT ANY LEVEL. Seriously I've got decent crafting levels on my main and on my alts there are 0-2 body slots used by cannith crafted gear with most having 0 body slots used. As far as weapons go great I have some nice devil, low level undead, and demon beaters (I had some pretty good ones before too...), but for everything else I most certainly am not pulling out a cannith created item. Most of my body slots are filled with named gear and as long as cannith crafting remains as a prefix/suffix system there is very little reason why that will change.

[ValenGodspeed]

I dont know if this is the right place, but anyway - tried crafting on live servers, and a failed craft now cost full ingredients. This means fail a Holy burst shard and you loose: 21 Greater Good, 192 Lesser Good, 1 Purified Dragonthingy shard, 2 lodestones and a silver flame pot, is this really WAI?

[MrkGrismer]

We are worried that the grind is too much around the high 30's onwards and need more feedback on this. In the past we've underestimated player's abilities and it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.

As for your second paragraph, I think we have a smarter than average player base who wouldn't fall for that sort of tactic, nor do I think it is in anyone's best interest to operate like that.

As others have mentioned the issue with people obtaining cap when you release a new cap is that players that have been around for a very long time have a huge amount of various things, if you want to shut those players out (and I am not sure if you do) then you simply make it so that the new cap requires a new thing that those old players simply can not possibly already have. I thought part of that was the point of the new ingredients that dropped as end rewards for various quests. There is no possible way veteran players can have a bunch of those items, and since they are bound they cannot be bought with the millions of plat vets have.

The problem (if you want to call it that) tho currently is that leveling cap does not require those items, so people that have max characters with max plat will have a 'relatively' easy time leveling to the new cap, because they can mostly just 'buy it' (with plat). Part of the ddo economy is that the 'newbies' do the farming of 'this new thing' and sell it to the vets who have plat coming out of the wazoo. It is not necessarily a bad thing IMO. But if there is nothing that a vet player has to get themselves, and cannot simply buy from other players, then getting those items does not take much more time then hitting the auction house (or trade channel).

So if you really want to limit the speed of craft-capping you either have to make each and every recipe that gives xp require some type of new bound ingredient or you somehow cap the number of levels that can be gained in any set period by requiring an unbound ingredient be turned in for a bound ingredient (those purified shards or whatever) and limit the number of turn-ins for that ingredient within a set period ("Sorry the Coin Lords are rationing these items"). Of the two options I think the later one is a better option, since it still allows for unbound trade but limits leveling speed, albeit artificially.

Personally I would prefer not to worry about the 'plat-fat powergamers' (no offense meant) but if you must put limits on things because of those people then you could at least use a fairly straight-forward method.

[Primalhowl]

Oh, and anyone thinking Soul Gems is the "answer" and telling anyone "can simply purchase them over the AH" should have a look at the price of Soul Gems: Essence of Earth on a server. And these gems are only used for Adamantine Rituals so far.

The problem with your reasoning is that there is exactly *1* use for exactly *1* kind of soul gem. Which means that there is really no reason for anyone to use Trap the Soul or collect the soul gems when they drop.

In contrast, if a wide variety of soul gems were a regular part of crafting, many more people would be taking and using the spell, creating a glut on the market as they all tried to sell them, thereby dropping the prices.

And if availability is still a problem, add an exchange vendor in game that will "distill" collectables into the "soul" of the creature that dropped them (e.g. allow the exchange of collectables for soul gems).

I actually see the lack of usage of soul gems and the entire range of collectables in game as ingredients for crafting as the largest flaw in the system. The exponential increase in essences as recipe level increases could be reduced to a linear increase by implementing a system of requiring specific collectables (at lower levels) and soul gems (at higher levels) with the scarcity of the collectible or soul gem being the limiting factor, rather than the (grind inducing) number of essences.

It is also a more thematic decision... we are supposedly making powerful magic items! Shouldn't we have to seek the right special ingredient to make our item?

[MadFloyd]

MF, I know you guys definitely realize that there are always going to be people who "break" the system but it seems like you want to punish everyone for those outliers.

I'd also like to ask where your development team is getting most of it's feedback from? Bug reports? The forums? Somewhere else that has a very limited number of people giving feedback? I ask that because the crafting system that we are seeing now is not what Fernando said it was going to be. I also ask because almost nothing that the community has ever posted about crafting is what we are seeing now. Crafting is something that players on the forums have discussed for years, yet it seems like your team ignored it all and went with something that your team thought would be fun and workable.

For instance, we asked for the ability to craft items with no slot restrictions since the first day that crafting was announced. What did we get? Slot restrictions.

We never asked for raid loot effects on crafted items. What did we get? Raid loot effects, often at much lower levels than something basic like a Greater Bane effect.

I know you enjoy the game as much as we do so what I'd really like to see if for you to have an open and honest discussion about crafting with the community. A discussion in which you are willing to admit your team's mistakes with the system but also willing to defend it's strengths. One where you are willing to explain why you choose to implement crafting the way it is now. I think the community would be more understanding if we had an explanation for things like why an effect that drops on ML six items comes on shards that are CL 75. We just don't understand why there is such a huge disparity between random loot and crafted items, at least I know I don't.

If you had that open and honest discussion with us and you had the immediate and overwhelming response that you did when the 10.1 changes were announced; would you be willing to make the changes that community wants? You've shown that your team can make changes and actually make them fairly quickly. Would you be willing to do more changes just as quickly?

We always have a dialog as long as it remains civil. Regarding transparency, there will always be certain things that I cannot disclose, but other than that the biggest obstacle is that we have to be extremely careful in how we word things. For example, where did we ever say or infer that we want to punish the majority of players because of a small number of hard core players accomplishments? For whatever historic reasons, the tendency to jump to the conclusions that devs aren't trying to do the right thing for the game makes it tricky for many to communicate here.

Did we ever say that we wouldn't relax slot restrictions? I can't say that I have personally noticed anyone asking for it (doesn't mean you haven't, just means I haven't seen it), but I do know it's something high on our list of considerations and we have been debating it.

We plan to make more changes for the next update and of course we want to make the right changes. That's why I'm here inviting feedback and I think we're getting a lot of very constructive thoughts.

I'll go a bit further: if anyone is intimidated to post on this thread (I know that some of you are), I invite you to PM me your thoughts.

[Tirisha]

Instead of shrouds mats I'd like to see some rare drops that can only be used in crafting. You could put them in the new raid you guys are working on, or make it random across the board to make crafting an alternative to raiding.

Personally:

I'd make them at varying degrees of rarity depending on the shard *greater bane vs bane type thing* and drop in any quest so that you aren't forcing people to run specific content to make the shards they want.

For similar reasons I'd reconsider making Favor rewards an ingredient. Forcing people to run specific content to craft items in what is supposed to be a generalized crafting system directed at all of the games player base, is simply in my mind, a bad idea.

[Rinnaldo]

Did we ever say that we wouldn't relax slot restrictions? I can't say that I have personally noticed anyone asking for it (doesn't mean you haven't, just means I haven't seen it), but I do know it's something high on our list of considerations and we have been debating it.

Please relax slot restrictions.

[EllisDee37]

For example, where did we ever say or infer that we want to punish the majority of players because of a small number of hard core players accomplishments?

This patch says that loud and clear. Actions speak louder than words.

I can't say that I have personally noticed anyone asking for it (doesn't mean you haven't, just means I haven't seen it), but I do know it's something high on our list of considerations and we have been debating it.

It has been asked countless times in countless threads, to the point that I think people tended to stop asking for it because the request was so ubiquitous it became a given.

The most classic example, of course, is not being able to craft one of the most fundamental staples of D&D: Ogre Power Bracers.

[BoBo2020]

Did we ever say that we wouldn't relax slot restrictions? I can't say that I have personally noticed anyone asking for it (doesn't mean you haven't, just means I haven't seen it), but I do know it's something high on our list of considerations and we have been debating it.

Thank you for mentioning this. I have started a new thread in the crafting forum petitioning for a relaxation of slot restrictions. Please sconsider signing it.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=329286

[somenewnoob]

Please relax slot restrictions.

Please

[Ironforge_Clan]

In other words, deconstructing an item for some Enhancement spirit is the exception, not the rule.

Personally I look at my return. If I'm not getting at least a "level 4" return I'd rather grab the Enhancement Spirit since I know I'll use it at some point for twinkage.