Secrets of the Craftingbots

[Postumus]

Imagine if making a Fighter took 1.9 million XP to cap on your first life, but making an Artificer took only 1.1 million XP to cap on your first life.

Can you see how that might be perceived as something other than a non-issue?

It is a non-issue if:

A- I've already capped my fighter.

B- My fighter has already passed 800k xp

C- My fighter has less than 800k xp

D - I don't want an Arti.

E- I don't want completionist


This only affects me if I wanted an Arti all along, or if I just wanted a L20 of ANY class. But since Arti wasn't available when I created my fighter, it's still a non-issue.

The more I see arguments against this, the more it sound like it's just sour grapes.

[Rodasch]

I think that's exactly what people are mad about... They are losing all that real-world cash, and all that in-game plat without being compensated.

No they're not. They're keeping everything they bought, they're just not getting the boosts being added for DM's and artificers since they're not artificers or dragonmarked for cannith house.

Not getting a new bonus is not the same as losing what you already have when what you have does not include that bonus.

So what they're mad about is really that they spent all that time and money early, and someone will be able to come in later and do it cheaper by picking cannith marked artificer for their "crafting" toon.

Any other notions or reasons presented are mostly self-delusion or response to broken self-delusion about the most basic premise of what crafting system is "about" in their opinion vs. what it is becoming through the Beta process.

[Rodasch]

A few +2 to hit goggles, some fun twik robes, and some otherwise easily SP items? Not nearly worth the millions I put into this.

If that's all you used crafting for, why DID you put millions into it? Maybe you should ask yourself that, really.

[Seikojin]

Some lol to me is people complaining arties can get +20 to craft, but at the same time, everyone who has crafting levels basically got +10 for nothing. I still fail to see the problem.

[Rumbaar]

Just like people had a Haggle-bot, they'll have a crafting-bot.

Leveling one to L20 just to craft is a pain for me, so I'll guess I'll stick with my current one. But they are only ~40.

So maybe it might be more cost effective to start again ...

This was my first thought when I saw the UMD crafting focus of them, that they'll be a crafting-bot.

[Dandonk]

If that's all you used crafting for, why DID you put millions into it? Maybe you should ask yourself that, really.

Because I wanted to make the higher level items, but haven't gotten there yet. And at this point getting there will be cheaper with a new craftbot.

[kernal42]

Just like people had a Haggle-bot, they'll have a crafting-bot.

Leveling one to L20 just to craft is a pain for me, so I'll guess I'll stick with my current one. But they are only ~40.

So maybe it might be more cost effective to start again ...

This was my first thought when I saw the UMD crafting focus of them, that they'll be a crafting-bot.

It is worthwhile to start a new toon unless you don't plan on advancing more than ~2 more levels.

Reaching level 23 osts 1284 experience. Going from level 40 to level 43 costs 1230 exp. With the dragonmark/artificer benefits, it is vastly more advantageous to just start levelling an artificer.

Suppose you want to reach crafting level 62 to craft Holy Burst of GLOB. This costs 17048 exp from scratch, or 11110 more exp than what you earned to reach level 40. Or, you could just earn 6748 exp on a crafter to reach level 42, and then be able to craft Holy Burst of GLOB!

The benefit gained by the artificer/dragonmark bonus is simply staggering and, quite frankly, basically breaks the crafting system because now getting +5 Holy Burst of GLOB is easy.

-Kernal

[PsiGuy]

So you have buyer's remorse. I get it. But what could you reasonably expect to craft? Torcs and Esos?


I'm happy with my +4 holy silver of EOB and +4 silver ghost touch of undead bane weapons. It sure beat grinding for a min2 just to run shroud and for a few other things.

Well you made what you consider a profit from your investment, of course you don't have buyer's remorse. What many seem to be missing, is that many, myself included, semi casual players are just below the "worth it to continue" threshold, whatever that is for each person, and have basically wasted our efforts.

Those efforts or investments include:

Not vendoring items for plat.
Time spent shuffling gear to our craft toons.
Time spent breaking down items.
Time spent building and breaking shards.

None of this is actually fun activity, it is only activity.

The real pain of this is that the more you invested up to this point, the more you helped Turbine test their system, the worse this is. That is unless you got far enough that your over the time/cost threshold anyway. The closer you are to this threshold, the worse this change is for you.

Since crafting has started, I have leveled a TR to 17, started another TR to 9, ran some "collect stuff to deconstruct quests" on my main, who I certainly do not want to TR into an artificer, dropped at least 900k plat on buying up extra essence, and played almost every day and ground every single thing I could into crafting since it was BtC.

I would not consider that exactly casual, and perhaps I did not do it all in the most efficient manner. I also did the make your eyes bleed method for 20 or so divine levels because I really wanted to get to holy burst. I would say from an hours invested point of view, I am pushing 80 hrs minus the eyes bleeding method, and have 42/71/38 to show for it.



With these levels, I can just craft useful end of game items in divine, and basically lvl 1- 12 stuff in the other two. To find out that all those hours, all that time, was basically for nothing, because for the most part I am well below the "worth it to continue" threshold, is maddening and disheartening. Now imagine how much worse that would be for casual players who are close to the threshold, and paid REAL MONEY to buy craft XP pots. Not that my time isn't worth real money. I invested the time I did with a certain expectation that this time spent would allow me to later improve my game experience.

With this change it feels a bit like I invested in a ponzi scheme. Buy just a few more essences and you will be in the big leagues. Oh wait, no, to make the big leagues you have to start all over again.

I vote for Craft XP to be account wide. It would settle this issue once and for all, limit the transfer/breakdown and other PIA activity that crafting can be.

Either that or the first time you create an artificer, allow players to enter another toon's name that will then move the XP over.

Anything else is just a slap in the face, and not something you should do to paying customers.

Oh and one more thing. If this isn't such a terrible thing, think about how much this is going to tick off a truly casual player that never planned on TR'ing and jumped aboard when they saw all the marketing and "this is really good for the casual player" hype. If I can't even make Heavy Fort after all of what I described, then the only "casual" option for crafting is to make an Artificer.

[Rodasch]

Because I wanted to make the higher level items, but haven't gotten there yet. And at this point getting there will be cheaper with a new craftbot.

Not necessarily, that depends on your current crafting levels.

[MaxwellEdison]

Partial transcript of an interview with Mr. Iverson d'Cannith, Artificer.

Iverson: "It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about crafting. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the House Artificer, and we're talking about crafting. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about crafting, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about crafting. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game last it's my last but we're talking about crafting man. How silly is that?

Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do but we're talking about crafting. We're talking about crafting man. (laughter from the media crowd) We're talking about crafting. We're talking about crafting. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about crafting. When you come to the Manufactory, and you see me work, you've seen me work right, you've seen me give everything I've got, but we're talking about crafting right now." (more laughter)

Reporter: "But it's an issue that your patron continues to raise?"

Iverson: "Hey I hear you, it's funny to me too, hey it's strange to me too but we're talking about crafting man, we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we're talking about crafting."

[Dandonk]

Not necessarily, how much are your crafting skills now? Are they over 20 in every spot? If so, you're already ahead of the crafting bot and would actually lose "work" only if you scrap your current crafter and start over. That would also be your choice, but not turbine's fault.

If you're not at 20 at least in all three crafting skills, then you didn't spend millions yet, or you're really bad at crafting skillups.

In the 60s atm.

And that's not the way you use the new bonuses. You level to what you want minus 20, and then get them. At that point, for example 130 (or 180 later), the savings become huge.

[Rodasch]

In the 60s atm.

And that's not the way you use the new bonuses. You level to what you want minus 20, and then get them. At that point, for example 130 (or 180 later), the savings become huge.

Yeah I realized that after I posted initially and edited, you are just too fast at reading :P

[kernal42]

Not necessarily, that depends on your current crafting levels.

Your analogy is pretty terrible in general. To actually understand the topic you are discussing, take a look at how steep the exp curves are for crafting: http://ddowiki.com/page/Cannith_Craf...el_Progression

Unless you're satisfied with only ~2-3 more levels, it will be worth it to build a human artificer to do your crafting for you, starting from scratch.

This is doubly bad, actually. Such strong encouragement for players to crafting only using their level 20 human artificers enforces a flood of artificers (not good), specifically artificers of a sup-optimal race (human) and who waste three feats (on dragonmarks). So, every player that cares about crafting will have a gimped, capped artificer that they probably won't ever want to play. How is this even plausibly a good design choice?

-Kernal

[fyrst.grok]

Dunno.. I actually like the idea, cannih is = crafting, it makes sense.. it's ot like they are nerfing our old crafters. Plus I really like the dragonmarks to be useful for at least something.

The way I see it we can craft on our mains and use them to play the game or we can make dedicated crafters, who won't be of much use.

Or TR into artificer, level crafting to cap and Tr again

/not signed.. And I even have to buy the class.

EDIT: I do see it's a problem that there will be a lot of gimped crafters running around after this.. Sigh.. Choices.

[Rodasch]

Your analogy is pretty terrible in general. To actually understand the topic you are discussing, take a look at how steep the exp curves are for crafting: http://ddowiki.com/page/Cannith_Craf...el_Progression

Unless you're satisfied with only ~2-3 more levels, it will be worth it to build a human artificer to do your crafting for you, starting from scratch.

This is doubly bad, actually. Such strong encouragement for players to crafting only using their level 20 human artificers enforces a flood of artificers (not good), specifically artificers of a sup-optimal race (human) and who waste three feats (on dragonmarks). So, every player that cares about crafting will have a gimped, capped artificer that they probably won't ever want to play. How is this even plausibly a good design choice?

-Kernal

Side note, while xp required curve is impressive, you're neglecting the fact that xp gained curve is also similarly steep if you are doing the proper combinations for levelling up. It's not like you only get 1 xp per combine. Sure there's a divergence in the curves but nonetheless it is not as bad as you're presenting it.

The overall difference between 130 and 150 would need to be less than the time invested already to your current level of crafting for your statement to be true. I suspect that in many people's case it simply isn't the truth, and emotions are driving people to irrationality.

[Jahmin]

Ah, yes, the exploit. Forgot about that.

Apparently a lot of people did...

That doesn't justify any and all reason for it to change.

Agreed Beta should not mean change just for the sake of change, but it does mean that they CAN change it.

I'd say crafting is a huge benefit to PnP Wizards. It was removed.

Wizards have bonus feats that they CAN choose to use on crafting feats - that is very different from a class that is a crafter.

And the bonus that DDO artificers are getting is vastly less significant than what PnP Artificers got.

Debatable - especially since you still feel it is overpowered...

This is the clearest indication, which I took as confirmation of my already held belief that the Devs knew what they were doing when they didn't give casters bonuses to crafting: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=21

This one is a little more indirect, but serves as confirmation that the Devs recognized the importance of keeping the character separate from the crafting: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...0&postcount=39

So you are saying that your entire indignation is based upon a pair of quotes that quite probably have nothing to do with what you are claiming? Both point towards a Dev understanding that BtA crafting should not require the CRAFTER to actually have to quest - which is essentially the complete opposite of what you want.

But overall, the biggest confirmation was: we went many months with many modifications to the crafting system with nothing added that made build matter for crafting, and a patch was even modified to keep character separate from crafting (removing BtC gear and favor potions). Actions speak louder than words, and those were some very significant actions, in a lot of ways unprecedented.

It may have been before your time, but the Evasion nerf took over a year (nearly 2 if you count beta). Same with the enhancement nerf. The Barb PL feat is still waiting for its fix as well. SIX (6) years on Barb & Ranger abilities still work when in Heavy armor. So forgive me if less than half a year is not a long time in this game, and as such is hardly worth of past precedent.

Character does remain separate from crafting: your crafter can be a lvl1 mule or a lvl20 completionist - there is no difference.

[kernal42]

So you are saying that your entire indignation is based upon a pair of quotes that quite probably have nothing to do with what you are claiming? Both point towards a Dev understanding that BtA crafting should not require the CRAFTER to actually have to quest - which is essentially the complete opposite of what you want.

Huh, I didn't realize you could get an artificer to level 20 and take feats without gaining exp via questing.

I think it's because you can't.

-Kernal

[kernal42]

Side note, while xp required curve is impressive, you're neglecting the fact that xp gained curve is also similarly steep if you are doing the proper combinations for levelling up. It's not like you only get 1 xp per combine. Sure there's a divergence in the curves but nonetheless it is not as bad as you're presenting it.

The overall difference between 130 and 150 would need to be less than the time invested already to your current level of crafting for your statement to be true. I suspect that in many people's case it simply isn't the truth, and emotions are driving people to irrationality.

Not really true; you're right that the xp per craft also increases, but so does the essence requirement per craft. The number of crafts was never really the important thing anyway; the essence cost is the limitation. Since the exp/essence stays roughly constant (decreasing slightly on average, but in effect it's dominated by certain effective recipes), the exp curve is an accurate representation of the cost to level your crafting.

-Kernal

[Jahmin]

Shade also says that Gianthold Tor's Epic version is complete. He is incorrect about things sometimes.

Indeed he is - but he was not wrong about BtA crafting and incidentally he is not wrong about Epic Tor either.

ALL CRAFTING SHARDS WERE BtC WHEN CRAFTING WAS FIRST INTRODUCED.

You're mistaken. The first crafted shards on live were BTC, not BTA.

Seems like you are wrong again:

There is a way to use BtC Shards to make BtA Items. I consider it an exploit. I would consider it rather foolish to base a build decision on an exploit. Especially one that doesn't even overcome the benefits, at the time, of crafting on a main.

[gloopygloop]

Indeed he is - but he was not wrong about BtA crafting and incidentally he is not wrong about Epic Tor either.

Do you think that Eladrin is lying or that Eladrin stayed up all night finishing epic Tor and just doesn't remember it because it was all an Ambien fueled, amnesia filled night of coding?
Edit: I should also point out that there's a good change that you're just misreading Shade when you think that he said Crafting started with BtA shards.

Seems like you are wrong again:

If you actually remember that (and that workaround still works to create BtA crafted items, by the way), it was using BtA items to make BtA crafted blanks onto which you would apply the BtC shards (because all shards were BtC in the beginning), resulting in a BtA item.

The Shards were BtC. Putting those BtC shards onto a BtA blank that you made from a BtA item resulted in an upgraded BtA crafted item - just like how Binding and Attuning a BtA item in the Stone of Change results in a Bound and Attuned BtA item. I'll point to my Bound and Attuned BtA Carnifex as an example of this.

But in spite of the fact that you could create *some* BtA items with the BtC shards, that doesn't change the fact that the shards themselves were all BtC in the beginning.