Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

[gloopygloop]

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.

Those players who hit the new cap within a day of seeing the level limit raised have truly obscene amounts of gear already (and I'm saying that as a character with some fairly profane amounts of gear myself). They have big amounts of greater and lesser essences just waiting for the cap to be raised. If you count the amount of play time that went into actually getting all of those essences, it's a lot more than one day of "regular" play.

Since those players often run quests in half the time that other players do (Star is seriously disappointed by quests that offer less than 1000 XP per minute while I'm pleased when I get 500 XP/minute in those same quests) and usually have far less down time between quests. The top 1% of the player base will do just about *anything* within a day of release. The rest of us are taking a lot longer.

I do think that the balance for the first 30 levels is great. You get to level quickly in crafting and when you get into the low to mid 30's, you finally start to craft some things that are useful. It would be nice to have those useful things at the same ML as their lootgen counterparts, but that's another issue...

The exponential increase in the number of essences required to reach the higher levels does bother me and it makes the 22,000 clicks method a lot more tempting. I don't like the idea of having part of DDO that works better with a keystroke/mouse click macro recorder than it works in just regular play. Part of the release notes makes me think that the 4 lesser/1 dragonshard fragment recipes are going away in 10.1, so the "carrot" of playing with a macro is going away. I'd like to see the "stick" go away too.

Maybe we could get the exponential increase in shards required dropped to just a quadratic function?

[Aelonwy]

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 has been said before the hardcore players with all the resources you can imagine will ALWAYS be able to exceed your expectations of their capabilities. That leaves the majoritiy of the player population somewhere in the middle and the opposite extreme of the hardcore playerbase the utterly casual struggling along somewhere in the beginning. Trying to balance things around the hardcore players is probably futile.

By the way Kudos to you for speaking up again.

[Darkrok]

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.

Without knowing what 10.1 is bringing I can't really comment intelligently on whether you've addressed this or not but the version on Lamannia right now will definitely make the high 30's and onward more of a grind - not less.

The fact that players are capping their crafting levels within a day of you raising the limit can not be stopped by any sort of item-based restriction. The same people capping them that quickly now will be capping them that quickly if U10.1 as constituted on Lamannia went live. It would sting a bit more for them but they'd still find a way. Balancing based on those people from a leveling standpoint would be a mistake. But bound to account items like epic tokens being needed for shards of potential and/or cooldowns on the high level shards of potential could limit the effect those high level crafters have on the rest of the economy.

As I mentioned, I did that test on my kid's toon specifically to get an idea of what it took to craft when you weren't being funneled plat or essences. It took just as long to go from level 9-20 as it took to get to high-20's/low-30's in crafting. That takes it out of the 'well, you played a bunch' or 'you're casual' argument. I converted all loot to essences, took essences as end rewards when practical, etc. I leveled naturally from 9-20 and leveled the crafting along with it hand in hand, teleporting back to the crafting hall any time I was going to redo ship buffs so I could deconstruct. So a typical player leveling from 1-20 will only get into the 30's for crafting. Even if they keep up with it without funneling funds it will be many months before they even see the 50's.

I sincerely hope that the balancing is done in a way that doesn't restrict leveling nor the creation of nice items like a simple +3 holy silver weapon of lawful outsider bane. That should not even be remotely difficult to make - it requires crafting in the mid to high 30's (including the shard of potential needed) - and as such shouldn't be expensive from a materials standpoint. As I mentioned earlier, there've been a few suggestions of how to balance weapons like that as well as the leveling process so that it's possible to have fun with crafting still without huge materials costs as long as you're not trying to replicate epic and high quality raid loot.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

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.

I appreciate the direct response. I do think that especially if you're making it significantly harder/more expensive to craft holy burst and banes/greater banes, something does need to be done to lower the difficulty of leveling beyond 40 or so. My crafter is currently 76/78/60-something and I have spent way more plat and other resources than I should have, or ever thought I would when I started out. I honestly regret it - we're talking several million plat that I had accumulated for years (nothing from the first CC event - I wasn't even online for it). Looking at what that expenditure has gotten me I don't feel it was remotely worth it, and apparently tomorrow the value of having done so is going to plummet much further.

Of course that's on me for using a system I knew was in beta, but regardless it still makes me a very sad panda. I probably am going to stop leveling once this patch goes live and cut my already enormous losses before they get any worse. Because all this patch looks like it's doing for me, at least as far as crafting changes, is making things worse. I would have been better off not bothering with crafting to begin with.

FYI, the people who hit cap within a day or two of a cap increase are almost certainly having many other guildies or friends funnel them all their essences and/or junk loot. That or they are buying out nearly every item from the auction house using dozens of formerly plat capped mules. Please don't balance the system around those people. I'd consider myself a pretty hardcore player, but hitting level 100 even with my own built up resources is pretty much out of reach.

[My2Cents]

There are "power players", then there are "casual players", then there's me, a power-casual player.

I mostly solo (with hirelings.) I will not have access to raid loot.
(This is due to schedule and family obligations and distractions.)

What I want to understand is: should I just assume DDO is focused on groups and not be concerned with whether or not any feature suits my play (which, I might add, a lot of newbies might mimic while they're getting used to DDO.)

Or, if players like myself are part of the equation, how much a part?

Because crafting allows people like me who will never run Shroud another avenue toward crafting. If you make ittoo hard in the guise of "trying to keep hardcore players from capping in a day" you will of course be making crafting less available to people like me.

I have absolutely no problem if DDO wishes to focus on other groups than people like myself, I just wish I could get a bead on the game designers intentions. I keep seeing discussions about "power gamers" and "casual gamers" and feel like I'm not part of either.

I log on every day, sometimes for many hours a day, yet some days I get little or no XP, I may well go a couple of days without completing a quest. I buy points and am VIP. I'm not a power gamer or a casual gamer. I have been playing for 2 years and have two main characters around lvl 16/17. What am I?

[Polarkin]

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.

My suggestion would be a revamp on how exp is *earned*...

If you give something away for free then somebody will always use that to their advantage. That is why some players will craft and deconstruct 65,000 shards to gain 1 exp per deconstruct. It doesn't matter if it takes them 8 hours a day for an entire week. But they are usually the exception, not the rule.


This is what I would change (these are intended as examples, actual numbers would need to be tweaked):

1. Remove all exp from deconstructing items
2. Introduce the concept of recipe "challenge" rating.
   1. Recipes that are players_craft_level - 5 are *trivial* and players get no exp for making them.
   2. Recipes that are (players_craft_level - 4) thru (players_craft_level + 5) are *normal* and players get x experience per successful combine with a 90% success rate.
   3. Recipes that are (players_craft_level + 6) thru (players_craft_level + 10) are *difficult* and players get 1.5x experience per successful combine with a 75% success rate.
   4. Recipes that are (players_craft_level + 11) thru (players_craft_level + 15) are *challenging* and players get 2.5x experience per successful combine with a 60% success rate.
   5. Recipes that are (players_craft_level +16) thru (players_craft_level +20) are *very challenging* and players get 4x experience per successful combine with a 45% success rate.
   6. Recipes that are (players_craft_level +21) and beyond are not attemptable.
3. The experience per crafting recipe is static and does not get reduced per attempt.
4. Experience target to obtain 1 crafting level should be progressive but reasonable. For example:
   1. Crafting levels 1 thru 5 should take 5 *normal* rated successful shard combines each level.
   2. Crafting levels 6 thru 10 should take 8 *normal* rated successful shard combines each level.
   3. Crafting levels 11 thru 15 should take 12 *normal* rated successful shard combines each level.
   4. etc... except that there should be a cap as to the maximum number of shards crafted necessary to advance 1 level. Something like 40-50 for levels 90 thru 100.

I have no issue with requiring special ingredients for upper level crafting as long as they are NOT named equipable items. Special ingredients should be tailored by the complexity and/or desireability of the item they are making and should not start being required until a minimum of a level 50(ish) in crafting recipe.

For example:
level 90-100 crafted shards could require a large shroud ingredient (type dependant on perceived desireability)
level 80-90 crafted shards could require Mystical X ingredients
level 70-80 crafted shards could require medium shroud ingredients
level 60-70 crafted shards could require small shroud ingredients
level 50-60 crafted shards could require collectables or consumables (CSW pots, wands, scrolls).

The key here is COULD... the highly desireable shards I can see requiring special ingredients but there absolutely must be a way to level up to at least level 80 in each school without requiring special ingredients outside of the essences/fragments already needed.

[Failedlegend]

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.

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

QFT there will ALWAYS be a SMALL percentage of the community that destroys anything you put out and thats not limited to MMOs there's people who will beat 40+ Hr RPGs in 1 hour...trusty me just search "Insert Popular RPG Here" Speed run.

The point is balance things based off the majority of your community not the uber power gamers.

[Seikojin]

What is the point of Mournlands again? So Lammania's is the Alpha, Beta and Testing 'live' server now?

Mournlands is several builds ahead. What people fail to realize that Mournlands is several BUILDS ahead, hotfixes are not Builds in the traditional sense. They need ot be tested quickly and worked on quickly to fix something severely wrong. In the case of an MMO; something like an exploit, game crash, server crash, or major complaint.

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.

The big grind anywhere in crafting comes from lesser essences. The change to transmuting should help resolve this.

As has been said before the hardcore players with all the resources you can imagine will ALWAYS be able to exceed your expectations of their capabilities. That leaves the majoritiy of the player population somewhere in the middle and the opposite extreme of the hardcore playerbase the utterly casual struggling along somewhere in the beginning. Trying to balance things around the hardcore players is probably futile.

By the way Kudos to you for speaking up again.

I think there is very little being done around hardcore players. That is why I think they are making the challenge system. Something you can do to push the boundaries towards complete failure, and by succeeding you earned your place to brag? LOL

[Carpone]

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.

You can't use hardcore players who stockpile thousands and thousands of essences as a yard stick. There will always be the small-but-extreme population that will do it to be 'first' (and to make things before they get nerfed, like when Vampirisim was removed as a level 46 shard).

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

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.

The grind isn't a grind until the 60s...IMO. I think that people who feel that it is a grind at the early stages were being inefficient with their platinum and their essences during the leveling process. From 60-80 was a grind, but wasn't horrible. I can feel 80+ getting very, very tough, (especially when I try to use some of my essences to actually MAKE something for myself) but I don't mind working to be able to do the things I will be able to do with crafting.

The people who craft are guild funded or already had an insane amount of resources/platinum. I spent millions myself, but got no outside help.

It's not too much of a grind. At least up to 80ish.

[Tirisha]

it doesn't help when we see players cap their crafting levels within a day of us raising the limit.

That's because Essences are trade-able. To somebody with several max plat characters, it's not difficult to max level crafting.

[EllisDee37]

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.

Your worry is well-founded. See the link in my signature to gauge how invested in crafting I am. (That thread took a lot of work to make!) I'm all about crafting. I've deconned every deconnable item since 9.0 went live. I've spent hundreds of thousands of plat on essences and ah loot to decon into essences, and I'm a new player who currently (between all four of my characters) only has around 100k total plat left. Everything has been about crafting for me.

I'm at level 41/40/37, and before I read anything about this patch I'd already pretty much given up the idea of going any further. That's how "easy" it is to level past 40. I had already resigned myself to +4 Holy of Regular Bane as the pinnacle of my crafting ability, and was perfectly fine with that. Way better than any random loot I'd ever find, that's for sure. But after months of diligent work, this new player never saw a reasonable possibility of getting to the burst/greater bane level, which is a shame because I really really want to craft deathblock and heavy fortification. Oh well, too bad for me.

Now you're taking even my lowly "good enough" weapons away from me by requiring Astral Diamonds (total non-starter), tomes (way out of my price range, by orders of magnitude) or eberron dragonshards? Eberron dragonshards are 95% of my plat income in the game. Seriously, I decon everything and hold onto all my collectables in case they get used in crafting. The only things I'm left to sell in the ah are special-metal weapons and armor, unpurchasable scrolls, and eberron dragonshards. I just pulled a medium today -- the fifth I've ever pulled in the six months I've been playing -- and was planning on selling it for ~50k plat to help get some money going.

If these new recipe adjustments apply to bound shards -- which obviously they shouldn't because your stated goal was to curb the dissemination of overpowered loot -- then you pretty much just shut me out of crafting altogether. Not cool.

EDIT: I see epic tokens are also a way to get them, and clearly this is the method for me. I'm a first-lifer, my highest character is level 16, and I don't have a single piece of raid loot; not one. I've only ever run 2 raids ever. (One Tempest Spine and one VON5/6.) The plan is to somehow TR my three 28pters into 34pters after getting the minimum Greensteel required to run epics. So that's how many shroud runs for a guy who doesn't like to raid, followed by 60 epic runs with an underpowered toon, before I can begin to farm epic tokens for crafting. I guess tomes are the way to go for me? Yikes.

[sirgog]

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.

Gaining a level (after the first 20 or so) requires about ten times the XP provided by the first creation of a level-appropriate shard. The issue is the combination of sharp diminishing returns from repeating the same shard and the high cost of about 75-90% of medium to high level shards.

Shards around level 45 mostly require about 10 Greaters, 80 Lessers, and random other stuff. Even without diminishing returns on a recipe, gaining one level requires 100 Greaters and 800 Lessers. At typical Khyber prices, that's about 50-70k PP for the Greaters and 80-100k PP for the lessers for one skill levelup. Call this 150k PP - in other words, 5 skillups requires about 1 Flawless Red Scale or 2 Large Devil Scales in trades.

The few lower cost recipes at these levels do reduce this cost a bit, and unbound crafting has produced more of those lower cost recipes. However, I don't think it would hurt to make the following changes:

- Bound shards that require 6 Greater Essences have their XP increased by 50%
- Bound shards that require 10 Greater Essences have their XP increased by 100%
- Bound shards that require 15 Greater Essences have their XP increased by 150%
- Bound shards that require more than 15 Greater Essences have their XP increased by 250%
- Unbound shards with 18+ Greater Essences get similar boosts to XP - 18 is 50%, 30 is 100%, 45 is 150%, and 48+ is 250%.

Oh and on using Epic Dungeon Tokens as ingredients (indirectly through Purified Eberron Shards) - you might want to consider reducing the costs of augment crystals now that there's a higher demand on our EDTs.

[Ookami007]

On the grind...

Yes... it is GRIND. For the normal to casual player, it will take a LONG time to get there.

For hardcore players, it's a breeze, as they have millions of plat, tons of characters to farm and more time than those of us with jobs, families, etc.

One of my guildies has spent over 16 million plat to get to level 75. And now that everyone knows the value of silver, etc. items... not only are essences at a premium, but so are craftable silver, cold iron and flame touched iron weapons.

Even regular items are generally more expensive, because most items are being decon'ed unless they are exceptionally valuable on the AH.

Requiring expensive or rare items is only going to impact the casual players - NOT the hardcore. From overpricing items to loot hoarding, adding rare or raid drop items as ingredients ruins the game for the 95% of the gamers who play the game for fun - not those who play to live!

[Rumbaar]

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.

Power gamers will always be power gamers. Just like in WoW the day after a level cap release or new content hundreds of power gamers have capped their toons or finished new content.

As a dev, I would hope someone at Turbine has statistical information on the percentage of users that are at cap.

I've been 'actively' crafting for person stuff and leveling and reaching 30+ has really slowed down.

Those at the beginning that could purchase all the resources and items to craft/deconstruct was never a true indication of longer term server level viability. There was an abundance of resources that were not sustainable for the majority of user base.

You can see this at pawn brokers and the such, which have no 'decent' content anymore.

[Grindor]

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.

Hey MadFloyd, I'm glad to see you guys are still talking to us after the backlash that this thread started out as.

As for the paradox that you guys have (crafting is trivial to level up for some, nearly impossible for others) it comes down to the fact that there is ONE thing that slows down crafting (besides the annoying animation) and that is simply availability of essences. If you gave me (i.e. just handed them to me) thousands of each type of essence, I'd level from one up to cap in maybe a day. If you make me run around killing stuff and looting chests for all my essences, I'll never reach cap. The difference in leveling speed is the same as it is for many other parts of this game... it's the haves versus the have nots. Someone with many millions of plat and part of a massive raiding guild that has nothing better to do than break the game will level up to cap the same day the cap is raised. 50 players with multiple characters, most of which running epic content is going to feel NO speed-bumps in raising crafting skills because the one speed-bump got jumped over. And don't forget all the plat they could want to raid the AH with reckless abandon...

Now take a solo player that's in the teens levels that doesn't really do raids or many PUGs and isn't "rich" by any standard. He's just not going to be able to collect the essences needed to level up. With the current crafting requirements, there's no way he'll ever reach cap before burning out.

Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm decently well off (a few million plat saved since the game first started), but I'm mostly solo or very small groups (friends) and I basically rarely raid and never do epics (not for lack of desire but for lack of ability to do so with just my friends). The end result is that I level up at a reasonable pace. It takes substantial work to level up because I have to farm a ton of things to deconstruct and I have to be moderately frugal with my plat (I've spent probably between 1 and 2 million plat so far). What has this got me to? 81/66/60 and I'm sooooo sick of a couple of quests that I've been hitting like mad to get my resources. To get that high, I've given up leveling up any of my low level guys and I've also given up faction grinding (working on unlocking favored soul still). The game has been almost completely about either crafting or collecting materials for crafting to get to where I am.

So from my perspective, it's too hard to level up, but not outrageously so. If someone couldn't OCD quest the way I can at times, they'd have no chance to get this high. If someone had all the resources thrown in their lap, then they'd be way beyond me with much less effort than I've put in.

What's the answer? Up to you all to decide, but I'll share my thought on the subject as a whole... 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.

And while you're at it, let us small guys get to experience more of the game by letting us bring hirelings into raids and epics. haha ok, another discussion for another day.

Edit - one more quick note, my characters are spread across multiple accounts and none of my accounts have a shared bank, so all this work is really just for ONE character. Not being able to hand my stuff to my other characters with out having to spend $10-$15 is a major sore spot, so please don't think that BtA is some great blessing to all of us. It's bunk for some.

[Grindor]

Oh here's an idea... if you want to get it so people can't level more than "x" levels of crafting per day, just put in a hard cap on how many levels per day you can gain. Cheesy but it would work.

[sirgog]

And while you're at it, let us small guys get to experience more of the game by letting us bring hirelings into raids and epics. haha ok, another discussion for another day.

You can bring Hirelings into epics; before I respecced my Wizard into a Pale Master I used Hirelings to scrollfarm and also to solo.

Of course, Hirelings have downright awful survivability and aren't really epic ready.

As for raids - I really don't want hirelings attacking Titan pillars, dealing an early killing blow to the Stormreaver, or smashing part 3 Shroud crystals.

[RandomKeypress]

One thing that might help make the 1-xp at a time grind less attractive - let us learn from our mistakes. If the crafting activity doesn't work then let us get exp anyway (enough to make it a valid advancement path).

[Dagolar]

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"

Thank you. Forgetting any other elements for a moment, the concept was ridiculous in basic principle; A lot has been shifted in DDO from the pnp basics, but DDO has always maintained the core concept of D&D- the lust for items. Making the top-tier items, of any category, into generic crafting materials completely diminishes their value.
It makes me think of a level 19 toon suddenly having to go back down to level 2 before making it to 20. Not only is it a hassle, but it destroys the entire point of the affair.
Now! As a counterpoint to this, if- when?- epic levels finally get introduced, then a new 'epic level crafting' could be implemented that DOES use rare items as ingredients, to make new, 21+ level plus items. At that point, it would make sense, and remain true to the point of the game. In fact, that's probably a better way to approach epic level items than simply adding in new base items.

Edit: The post directly above this makes a decent point. I wouldn't mind getting some small amount of xp (Say, 20% of successful xp, min 1) for failed craft attempts. Though, to be honest, I haven't paid enough attention to see if that isn't already in effect.