Crafting, what it could have been

[Hikup]

In light of recent changes and the closing of a beta, I thought it would be an appropriate time to start a thread where the community could discuss a viable, fun crafting system that would meet requirements of being somewhat friendly to casual players while still challenging and entertaining for vets.

So, let's hear your ideas and see if we can come up with something that makes a sort of sense the current/former does not.

[waterboytkd]

Sadly, I don't think you could do anything casual-accessible that a hardcore player or vet won't be able to just dominate. That said, I would still go casual-accessible.

My crafting would use the current crafting as its base, but with some serious changes:

1) Abolish crafting levels. This is what really keeps casual players out, and as hardcore players have already shown us, doesn't keep hardcore players from being able to mass produce shards. So what would happen is that all shards would have 100% chance of success, and putting shards in an item would have a 100% chance of success. Obviously, this is the mega change and would force a number of other changes to try and maintain some semblance of balance.
NOTE: As a way of sorting of compensating players for leveling up their crafting levels and, you know, testing this beta, when the levels are abolished, everyone who had crafting levels above one would receive X amount of shards of each type per school, where X would equal some constant multiplied by that schools level.

2) Adjust Shard Recipes. I'm going to ignore the new recipes introduced in 10.1, and instead go back to the old recipes, where it was just essences, siberys/khyber fragments, and sometimes collectibles. Those recipes would have their essence cost seriously adjusted based on the usefulness of the shard (ie Holy Burst would be quite expensive, while Righteousness wouldn't). All recipes would most likely have their essence cost increased. I'm thinking really high values for the top shards (Holy Burst, Greater [useful enemy type] Banes, and, um, that's about it?), like maybe around 4000 or 5000 of the appropriate essence to make. Holy and the regular Banes could be 2k-2.5k to make. So on. The idea is that the shards don't require any grind to make other than collecting the needed amount of essences, but gathering that many essences could take time. I mean, 5k would take a hardcore player who deconned everything a week to make (depending on how hardcore), while a casual player might be able to make one after a month-ish of collecting essences and deconning. The benefit of this is that you don't have to spend any time in the crafting hall grinding away just to get to the point of being able to attempt the desired shards. Just keep collecting, and you can eventually make what you want (this would put the focus back on questing).
NOTE: This would be a bit more work on the devs part as they would have to go through and individually evaluate and price each ability. Also note, that some abilities which were/are great on random loot are not so great on crafted loot. Prime example: Metalline. Before crafting, this ability was the bee's knees as, if paired with Pure Good, it could bypass any monsters DR. But with crafting, this ability is not so good. Why? Because you can just craft holy or holy burst (or even pure good/righteousness) onto a weapon of the appropriate metal type. Really, other than making some decent twink gear, this crafting system allows people to make actual good DR beaters. And Metalline isn't an actual good ability when you can put holy on your silver weapons.

3) Consolidate Greater and Lesser Essences. I get this a little. They have different rates of acquisition, but there is a problem with them. It's hard to get any Greater essences on a low level toon, yet many/most of any ability worth putting on a weapon requires Greaters. It seems like an unnecessary complication. Change it so that there's only one type each essence, so you would just have Arcane essences, Mind essences, Good essences, Chaos essences, Fire essences, Water essences, etc. Maybe I'm off on this, but I think this change would make it easier to balance how much you want shards to cost, especially the top end shards which you want to cost a lot of essences. To me, it would just seem easier to regulate essence income if there was only one type to worry about.

4) Abolish unbound crafting. Sure, players who wanted to turn it into a profession won't be able to, but as the big area of concern for the devs is they don't want unbound shards flooding the market and making it unnecessary to craft (just buy your shards), this would take care of that. Plus, without the concept of crafting levels, there's no more need for unbound crafting. Essences and blanks with special metal types would become the currency of crafting, and if it were difficult enough to obtain large amounts of essences, they could even become good currencies of trade along with LDS and FRDS.

5) Deconstructing. The returns on this would have to be evaluated and adjusted based on what the top tier shards would cost. But, if there's only one type of essence (no greaters and lessers), then it could be a lot easier to regulate and estimate how many items with what abilities need to be deconned in order to make that great shard.


The idea is that crafting is only regulated by supply of essences. Yes, it's very dumb-downed, and hardcore players could get whatever they wanted relatively quickly, but again, if the top tier shards had extreme costs, it could slow down the hardcore players enough that they can't just instantly outfit all their toons with a golfbag full of perfect beaters. But the big thing is that it would be accessible to casual players, though they, too, would have to collect for a while before they could make what they wanted. But at least, for them, there is a very real light at the end of the tunnel (unlike with the current implementation of crafting levels, which pretty much locks casual players out of top tier shards).

[Letrii]

Who cares if people got max crafter level in a day? It doesn't hurt anyone, until Turbine punishes casual players to spite the hardcore players that won't be affected.

[Altaweir]

My suggestions. I really did my best, so I hope they won't be turned down in flames too quickly

1. Remove crafting levels. No more grinding puh-lease. If efforts are demanded, it must be in other places, like gathering ingredients (ie, doing quests!)

2. Increase a lot the amount of ingredients required to create any shard since the grind for crafting level-up would be gone. A shard could demand 500*level Khyber or Syberys dragonshard fragments and 20*level*level Greater Essences in its base recipe for example; so a +1 shard would imply 500 fragments and 20 Greater Essences, while a +5 shard would require 2500 fragments and 500 Greater Essences (ouch!). Shards would be costly, but you would only craft those you *really* want. Since Shards would be so expensive, Shards of Potential would become unnecessary. An item would just be "Craftable" and its actual bonus and ML would be the result of applied shards.

3. Propose alternate recipes, or even better, flexible recipes going from minimal chances of success to maximal depending on ingredients. Essences alone could yield a small chance of success (~30%), Essence + Uncommon Collectibles could provide greater chances of success (~50%-70%), while Essences + Uncommon Collectibles + Rare Ingredients would allow for 100% success. In case of failure, most or all of ingredients could be lost.

4. Named items abilities should be severely examined. Greater Stability or Blood belong to named loot, not random loot. It's not just a question of power but of consistency. As it would be slightly extreme to remove them completely ("songblade" enhancement is hardly game-breaking) they could stay but only in special recipes involving Rare collectibles or Rare Ingredients. Shards giving effect of what we find on "random junk loot" should be easily craftable, shards duplicated effects found on named could ask for more.

5. Control the power of crafted items by adding requirements to apply shards on non-standard blanks (like a Silver item, an item with Guild Slots, etc.) I don't see why some combinations should be prevented - the whole point of weapon material is to bypass monster DR - but if devs want a close control over Holy Burst Silver weapons of whatever, it's when applying shard on blanks that it can be enforced.

6. Rare ingredients should be BtA. They could be given either as quest rewards or through turn-in of extremely rare, but unbound, collectibles (Eberron Dragonshard fragments, +1 Tomes.)
- Nothing BtC should be involved in crafting.
- Nothing favor-related should be involved in crafting.
- Nothing named should be involved in crafting.

7. Unbound shards should not be made from raw ingredients but from their bound shard and some unbinding ritual. Not all bound shards would have an unbound shard equivalent. Unbinding shards could be a process demanding the rarest ingredients, like Dragon Blood or Refined Eberron Dragonshards - that's the place where requirements can really go overboard

8. (minor) get rid of Greater / Lesser separation. It's annoying and unnecessary. Use only Greaters in recipes please. Lessers should be combined for Greaters at a 5:1 rate in some device, or accepted as such in crafting devices (putting 5 greaters and 10 lessers would be the same than putting 7 greaters, or 35 lessers). This allows Lessers to continue existing in the game (to give some flexibility in deconstruction of various abilities) while removing boring steps like now, when you have to sunder Greaters into Lessers for hours.

9. If you really wish to add Soul Gems in the mix, which is a good "roleplay" idea, then you should do so in a non-threatening manner. For example, appropriate Soul Gems could be used as an alternative to some ingredients. A Soul Gem: Weak Animal could be substituted for parts of the ingredients required for a Lesser Animal Bane shard (dragonshard fragments, essences, collectables or any combination thereof). If Soul Gems have to be absolutely required, Devs must definitely find a non-AH way of letting characters of any level and class gather them.

10. Do not waste efforts already made by people involving in crafting. If crafting levels are being abandoned, a vast number of Essences should be given to compensate.

We all love the idea of crafting. It can be wonderful without grinding and without being game-breaking, so powergamers prefer doing their daily couple Epic raids instead of wasting time in the crafting hall.

[Mister_Peace]

{a suggestion}

Great stuff. +1

[brian14]

+1 on pretty much all of this

[gwenniez]

the old system wasn't all that bad to begin with..

it beats looking at a barred door in house kundarak..

[Arnhelm]

it beats looking at a barred door in house kundarak..

Hear! Hear!

[somenewnoob]

Something more like the Asheron's Call crafting system would be much much better. With the ability to fletch arrows, make potions, and foods to heal. IMO that was the best crafting and tinkering system to date in any MMO.

And being able to incrementally improve an existing weapon. IMO that is a big flaw. Would possibly make crafting USEFUL if at lower levels you could ADD a +1 to a weapon. (Not make a +1 weapon, but to have a +3 and add the +1 to make it +4) At higher levels you can add greater bonuses, more prefixes and suffixes, etc. With a fail chance that would destroy the weapon and the essence the more times you added a bonus to it (with a max of maybe adding 5 bonuses) .......like the AC crafting system. So maybe there would be a high chance to add something the first couple times......but on your 4th attempt you might have a large fail chance, so do you risk adding holy burst to it and destroy that sweet weapon and all the essence, or do you just leave it with 3 craft upgrades.


I ramble. I just loved AC's crafting system. Start over with something more along those lines. Turbine.....if those guys are still on the payroll......get em over here!

Lets say maybe you find a +2silver khopesh of some garbage prefixes and suffixes.
Step 1: Disjunct the item's prefixes and suffixes, leaving the +2, your palette to paint on

Step 2: Gather enough essence to add a +1 to it. This is the first time you've crafted on this weapon, so even at low crafting level the chance for you is 98% to add a +1 to the weapon. You do.....success!

Step 3: Later you want to add holy to the weapon......you gather the essence and have gained a few crafting levels.......change to succeed....this is the 2nd craft on it......hmmmmm 78%.....oh what the hell, let's go for it......success!! So now you have a +3 holy silver khopesh

Step 4: Even later you want to add another +2 to it.......you've gained more levels......3rd craft........recipe is easier than holy so your success chance is 89%.....success, you add the +2 and now have a +5 holy silver khopesh

Step 5: You are uber leet crafter man now, and want to add GEOB to your super **** fine killer khopesh..........you're very high level, you have the ton of essence needed........chance to succeed for a high level recipe on your 4th craft on the item 35%......oh no....what do you do.....risk blowing up that khopesh? I can add pure good instead with a 68% chance to succeed......no hell with it.....I'm feeling lucky.......OMG I just blew up that +5 silver holy khopesh and lost the essence.

IMO, having a chance to destroy the weapon would keep the flood of +4 Holy Silver of GOEB from hitting the market since it would be very risky to make. Better solution than requiring ridiculous ingredients....and also make lower level crafting useful since you can incrementally upgrade your weapon.

[Blank_Zero]

I love the idea of removing crafting levels and then increasing the amounts of essences needed. I also love the idea of making 1 essence. No more greater/lesser. As it stands now, only Greaters are really worth anything as far as selling.

Also, the unbound shards being made from bound+ritual is a cool thought too.

I am repping both posts, and I hope these get read and looked over.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

I mentioned this once in the main feedback thread the other day, but it either got buried amidst the massive amount of posting or it was just a stupid idea. I'll post it one more time here in hopes that I might get a thought or two on it. I personally don't have a problem with the leveling / xp process. I liked it. I have a problem with the cost they are now trying to place on creating shards and consequently leveling up.

I wouldn't have a problem crunching a +1 or even a +2 tome to create a weapon that I knew I was going to utilize often, whether as a boss beater or a situational type thing. Crunching those tomes over and over again along with things like demon's blood and large scales on half or more of the high level recipes is ridiculous to me.

So here is my question/idea. How bad would the addition of the new purified ingredient be if you knew that you could create the shards you needed to level up without them in the recipe, but then had to combine said shard with Turbine's Purified Shards to "activate" it and actually make it a shard that could be slotted.


That would then allow Turbine to limit how easily and cheaply shards like GLOB could be created, but still allow us a workable xp system for leveling. New players would obviously still have a harder time leveling than a vet, but they wouldn't come to a screeching halt when they all of a sudden had to come up with epic tokens, astral diamonds, and skill tomes to progress.

Maybe it is unworkable or maybe it is just a horrible idea, but I'm curious what people think about this idea or something like it.


-Merrill

[somenewnoob]

So here is my question/idea. How bad would the addition of the new purified ingredient be if you knew that you could create the shards you needed to level up without them in the recipe, but then had to combine said shard with Turbine's Purified Shards to "activate" it and actually make it a shard that could be slotted.


That would then allow Turbine to limit how easily and cheaply shards like GLOB could be created, but still allow us a workable xp system for leveling. New players would obviously still have a harder time leveling than a vet, but they wouldn't come to a screeching halt when they all of a sudden had to come up with epic tokens, astral diamonds, and skill tomes to progress.

Maybe it is unworkable or maybe it is just a horrible idea, but I'm curious what people think about this idea or something like it.


-Merrill

It's an EXCELLENT idea. Dev's read that.

[WangChi]

One of the biggest crafting sinks in the game is GS crafting. When you get to end-game, everyone wants/needs to craft their GS HP item, GS weapons, etc. Why not use that kind of system with regular crafting?

Why crafting levels? I'm pulling a lever on a machine, how does that require any kind of skill as long as the recipe is correct?

There really isn't anything stopping players from farming GS ingredients till their eyes turn blue (ddoor shroud completions, amrath quests, DA elite/epic), so why not use that exact same method for regular crafting to prepare newer players for the near end-game of GS crafting.

You could still use a "crunching" machine to grind out essences as ingredients, but the ingredients wouldn't have to "essence", they could be "frog legs" or whatever, but that would prep incoming players for the "raw ingredients -> manufactured ingredients -> item/power/upgrade".

I just don't understand the need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to crafting, I mean, honestly, how many different crafting systems are in place right now? If DDO had one consistent method to crafting, everyone would benefit, especially the newcomer who gets overwhelmed and intimidated by the shear complexity and size of GS crafting.

Make materials the limiting factor on crafting, not some arbitrary leveling structure.

I also think that choosing to crunch off the prefix or suffix of an item is ridiculous. If I put in a +5 Shock of Pure Good weapon into a machine that rips apart the item for magical essence, I should get some elemental essence and some good essence and some enhancement essence (yes, make enhancements powered by essences, +1 = 24 enhancement essences or something, you get the idea).

So, to sum up for those TL;DR folks:

1. Make all crafting systems use the same interface and process. (Greensteel)
2. Utilize crunching machine to grind out ingredients from items, including deconning GS. (Plat sink)
3. Remove crafting levels (I've already ground to 50/45/48, but this wouldn't bother me at all).
4. Make ingredients/rarity the determining factor for recipe success. (Add more ingredients for base crafting to allow for more granular control of drop rate %, etc to control high end recipes).
5. BtC/BtA/Unbound are all driven by recipe changes, and an item can be "upgraded" to unbound with later recipes.

That's just spitballing really, but I think a system like that would work for everyone, just grind out your ingredients and have at it.

[hermespan]

1) Abolish crafting levels.

If you don't want to craft, buy your shards like everyone else. You already have this ez button in essence. You can abolish crafting levels yourself by ponying up the money to buy unbound shards.

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Even though the system is in beta, they did say that while anything could change, people would keep their levels. I'm pretty sure a TON of people would have a problem with the full removal of the leveling process. I personally would. If tomorrow I found over a months worth of platinum, resources, and time simply erased with nothing to show for it, I'd have a major problem. If people don't want to 'grind' it out for the satisfaction of having the skill to create what they want I'd be more than happy to craft them an unbound when I am high enough. I'll prob end up doing it for no profit most of the time too. Just the cost of ingredients.

[brian14]

If you don't want to craft, buy your shards like everyone else. You already have this ez button in essence. You can abolish crafting levels yourself by ponying up the money to buy unbound shards.

Actually, you can't. Crafting hall is boarded up!

[Flavilandile]

There's really nice suggestions here.

I'll just add my two cents to the list :

- Use all the collectables in recipes.
From my point of view the epic failure of the 10.1a ( 'Spitter and all ) came because somebody wanted to add variety to the crafting recipes.
Using all 90ish ( yes that's more or less the number of collectables in game, including Doubloons and coins ) of the collectables ( and combinations of collectables ) will make some recipe more difficult ( you have to get the collectables ) while not rendering them ridiculously difficult.

[Sheep_Stealer]

Sadly, I don't think you could do anything casual-accessible that a hardcore player or vet won't be able to just dominate. That said, I would still go casual-accessible.

You could. You just have to add a system that makes excessive crafting exceedingly expensive. Provide a crafting pool (craft mana, construct lore, essence of magical engineering, whatever) for each toon (or maybe account) that governs the expense of each crafting attempt. Each successful attempt lowers the pool and makes subsequent attempts more expensive (exponentially so). This pool would regenerate at a fixed rate (regardless of toons level or skill or time logged in). A casual player will typically have a high pool and low crafting costs. A hardcore player who crafts a lot would consistently have to pay significantly more to do so. To make this work you'd probably have to place some controls on how shards are traded (and keep some semblance of crafting levels to prevent one-off throwaway account crafting) but it can me managed (one mechanism is the power of the essence/shard is linked to the crafting pool of the creator, low pool toons create low power essences/shards so more of them are needed to create something. So trading the low power shard/essence to a high pool character would infer no benefit). This would keep crafting on even footing between casual and hardcore and serve as a natural limit to crafted items flooding the market. Personally this is what I'd like to see implemented.

[kernal42]

Actually, you can't. Crafting hall is boarded up!

Yet people can still buy/sell unbound shards that had previously been crafted.....

[dunklezhan]

One of the biggest crafting sinks in the game is GS crafting. When you get to end-game, everyone wants/needs to craft their GS HP item, GS weapons, etc. Why not use that kind of system with regular crafting?

Because its awful. Its very clever, true, but its possibly the worst crafting system I've ever encountered in any game, anywhere.

Its a horrible grind where you don't make any progress for run after run after run of the same quest, its completely random what you might get beyond knowing you might get small, medium or large ingredients from x y or z chest, there's no 'recipes' to view in game - if it wasn't for the wiki and other sites that the community has created (heaven forbid Turbine should document their systems or ever update their game manual for instance) it would just be a total crapshoot trying to make even a blank let alone apply any effects. By all accounts when it launched that's exactly what it was. And you want more of that?

I've been dreading the GS grind since I started playing back in '09 and I finally got there at about christmas just gone. And it was everything I dreaded. I've made 1 T3 and 1 T2 item for my monk. I'm still missing four Large ingredients even running it twice a week, and without ever finishing out before completion.

I very much doubt I will ever bother with another character. I take my sorc in there, but mostly I'm just hoping to get the ingredients I need to finish off my monk so I never have to go in there again. I'll dump the rest in the guild chest and be done with it forever.

Cannith crafting has its issues, but please. As far as I'm concerned nothing like the GS crafting system should ever be replicated anywhere, ever again.

*shudder*