Update 32 on Lamannia: Cannith Crafting Preview

[Enguebert]

Of course people won't waste ingredients on leveling gear. I level with cheap **** off the auction house. Nothing more is needed to lead the kill count if you are on a good build.

It depends of your playstyle. If you play mainly epic, you have little use of leveling gear. But i know i will craft some leveling items.
As i have multiple chars, and i usually TR when i reach level 30, i will create some "generic items". Something like a CON/False Life/Ins CON item is useful for every build
Or concentration/spellsight item for spellcasters.
As the item will be BtA, and better than most named items, i will get rid of multiple low level named item/crafted item i own
I know you can find some decent items on AH, but you don't always find them when you need them

[slarden]

You are worried about lowering my interest in something that you have demonstrated will take me less than 18 minutes for my level 250 crafter to level up to make obscene endgame items? There won't be any non crafters as it will be required for end game loot.

What about the fact that this lowers my interest in trying to run endgame LE quests because there is no return on investment? Slavelords will be the only thing worth running at cap because loot jewels will just be TP you should have spent on crafting success boosters.

Of course people won't waste ingredients on leveling gear. I level with cheap **** off the auction house. Nothing more is needed to lead the kill count if you are on a good build.

The point I was trying to make with that thread is that leveling isn't a huge grind and people with essences can quickly level up and make items they need. What someone else showed in that post is that even someone without a lot of essences can get essences quickly by breaking down items. So even for new/casual players reaching max level crafting isn't that hard.

Of my main 4 characters 56 gear slots, excluding slave lord crafting which will take time, 48 will be named items or raid items. 5 will be random loot and 3 will be crafted gear. It was 4/3 but a +17 cha cloak dropped for me on the last loot bonus weekend. The 17 stat item might eventually be replaced with slave lord crafting, but it's gonna be a long process.

On my deeper alts I might use more crafted gear but it's gated by collectibles so realistically I am very limited on what I can make due to the high collectible cost.

Even as a crafter I will end up using more random loot than crafted loot.

15 stat Items I list on plat AH for 30-40k and usually those don't even sell for buyout. I don't see crafting killing the random loot. Slave lord crafting will effectively kill +16/+17 stat item value not the new cannith crafting.

[Elfishski]

So... the logic was that:

1. we know the game is too easy already for most people on TRs, (although it's a steep learning curve and can be a serious struggle for new players)
2. we wanted to make random loot sometimes of interest in comparison to named loot, because random, crafted, named, and raid loot should all have an important place in the game...

Despite (1), we decided that the only way we could achieve (2)was by:
3. giving random loot higher possible values than named or crafted or raid loot, to make up for its randomness and lack of number of effects and rare synergy between effects.

Okay... I would have liked a different solution that saw more 'horizontal' potential power for random loot if lucky, rather than vertical, but I can buy it so far.

But then we decided that...
4. named loot has to have as high bonuses as random loot (in the very next update), although not including stats at that point.

Now...
5. crafted loot has to have as high bonuses as random loot except in the extreme edge cases, but you can always have what you want, very nearly highest possible bonuses and augments etc, so in practical terms, ALWAYS better than random loot except at level 30.

And...

Slave lord crafting will effectively kill +16/+17 stat item value not the new cannith crafting.

6. named loot now has bonuses as high as random can possibly go on the luckiest imaginable day (I was aiming not to look at Slave Lords stuff in advance to have a surprise, but +17 stats there? already? come on....)


So, all we've done, in the space of just 3 updates (!) is increase ALL of the bonuses by HUGE amounts, put random loot back to being complete garbage you use while leveling if you can't be bothered finding something better, and made (1) much worse. I mean, I know heroics were super easy zergs for vets with epic completionist before, even when you could only get a +6 stat bonus, but giving us +11 stat bonus or more doesn't actually help that situation.

Devs - do you have any plan for balance at all? Because right now it looks like +20 stat bonuses next update, +25 the one after, then +40 because people are having trouble seeing the difference in killing LE mobs in two to three hits from +25 to only +30...

It's not too late to stop now and actually give each type of loot a niche:
- Random loot has niche of highest possible bonuses.
- Named loot has sometimes many effects, that probably make sense together, and that can be in unusual slots, and sometimes unique powers.
- Crafted loot has flexibility and is reliably strong yet unremarkable
-Raid loot is much like named loot, but perhaps with some crafting flexibility and generally a bit better.

When you obsolete every previous quest and all previous loot every update, it gives us less game to play, not more. Grow the endgame. Don't shrink it.

[Ebondevil]

Some interesting thoughts about crafting here I thought: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cf...d-Systems.html

If I spend three hours crafting to make an epic shield, or three hours raiding to find an epic shield the results should be the same. Unfortunately they were not, raids became more important than crafting and other MMOs followed suit. Soon what was once a complex system within a game, became an afterthought for many MMOs.

The lesson here is, if you include crafting, keep it simple. Make it so the player has fun with what they are doing and the final results are equal to the overall top tier of the game.

worth mentioning that I would be happy for the crafting process itself to actually take time, instead of 'click-done!'

[Hilltrot]

Some interesting thoughts about crafting here I thought: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cf...d-Systems.html



worth mentioning that I would be happy for the crafting process itself to actually take time, instead of 'click-done!'

Lousy idea. Especially after the first 100 times, that extra wasted time will be more annoying than

[Free2Pay]

Just throwing some ideas:

1) Choose between getting plats or Cannith Crafting Essences (at 80%) when you sell loots to Vendor(s). So players don't have to always rush to get their bags full of loots to deconstruct (at 100%) and can get back to adventuring sooner.

2) Collectible NPCs can convert collectibles to other collectibles. NPCs to display a status above their heads when players have sufficient collectibles to turn in.

[Free2Pay]

A few more ideas:

1) Collectibles NPCs now sell collectibles in exchange for plats.

2) Centralize all Collectible NPCs and put them just outside of Crafting Halls.

3) A new Collectible journal/panel that indicate quests/areas that drop them.

4) Introduce a NPC that hands out random collectibles similar to the NPC that hands out daily Challenge token.

5) All Weapon / Armor / Jewellery / Clothings vendors now share the same loot window irregardless of where players sold those gears. On top of that, they have a chance to sell 2 random Masterful New Random Loot gears that reset every hour.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

5) All Weapon / Armor / Jewellery / Clothings vendors now share the same loot window irregardless of where players sold those gears. On top of that, they have a chance to sell 2 random Masterful New Random Loot gears that reset every hour.

I've always wished that pawn brokers had a "master pool" that everything went into and so it didn't matter if you used the ones in Stormreach or Ataraxia or Eveningstar or Reaver's Refuge (or your ship, now). If the AH can work across realms, so can pawnspace lol

[ramzes7asit4]

All data from google docs (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing) now in the wiki page ( http://ddowiki.com/page/Talk:Cannith...Effect_scaling )
We need to recheck some value from the table with next lamania/live.
This table will be deleted with live release!

[Free2Pay]

A new idea:

1) Collectible NPCs grant some random daily mission(s)/quest(s) which when completed, reward players with their choice of collectibles.

[ramzes7asit4]

I delete google docs. All info in wiki.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Cannith_Crafting/table_3b

[EllisDee37]

Love the new button to go back and forth between the planner and the gear master.

I may not have been clear with my request to add a reset button. Picture I choose devotion, radiance, impulse, healing lore, radiance lore, and kinetic lore, all slots exscept runearm, go. Now let's say I want to check resistance, parrying, and healing amp. First I have to manually uncheck the 3 spell powers and the 3 lores. Sometimes I have a dozen effects checked, then want to start over.

At that point I reload the page from scratch. Which is trivially easy now with the navigation back and forth between the planner and the gear master, so that's probably good enough, but that also resets my slot choices. Maybe a button that just unchecks all the effects might be useful.

[ramzes7asit4]

Love the new button to go back and forth between the planner and the gear master.

I may not have been clear with my request to add a reset button. Picture I choose devotion, radiance, impulse, healing lore, radiance lore, and kinetic lore, all slots exscept runearm, go. Now let's say I want to check resistance, parrying, and healing amp. First I have to manually uncheck the 3 spell powers and the 3 lores. Sometimes I have a dozen effects checked, then want to start over.

At that point I reload the page from scratch. Which is trivially easy now with the navigation back and forth between the planner and the gear master, so that's probably good enough, but that also resets my slot choices. Maybe a button that just unchecks all the effects might be useful.

Ok=) But, i thing, this is wrong topic=)
Yeah, I add this feature!
But first, update wiki info (shard, scaling, etc).

[EllisDee37]

Ok=) But, i thing, this is wrong topic=)

Doh! Sorry, thought this was your planner thread.

I've always wished that pawn brokers had a "master pool" that everything went into and so it didn't matter if you used the ones in Stormreach or Ataraxia or Eveningstar or Reaver's Refuge (or your ship, now). If the AH can work across realms, so can pawnspace lol

Don't pawn brokers get reset when the worlds get rebooted? Now every Wednesday?

[btolson]

Don't pawn brokers get reset when the worlds get rebooted? Now every Wednesday?

Their inventory gets purged whenever the instance they're in gets garbage-collected (which happens on shut-downs, and also automatically after no players have been there for X minutes).

Some pawbrokers will maintain their inventory the whole week on most servers, others will dump their inventory almost as soon as the items get sold to them (like the weapon brokers in house D, hardly anybody goes there anymore so their instances don't usually last very long).

[RobbinB]

So... the logic was that:

1. we know the game is too easy already for most people on TRs, (although it's a steep learning curve and can be a serious struggle for new players)
2. we wanted to make random loot sometimes of interest in comparison to named loot, because random, crafted, named, and raid loot should all have an important place in the game...

Despite (1), we decided that the only way we could achieve (2)was by:
3. giving random loot higher possible values than named or crafted or raid loot, to make up for its randomness and lack of number of effects and rare synergy between effects.

Okay... I would have liked a different solution that saw more 'horizontal' potential power for random loot if lucky, rather than vertical, but I can buy it so far.

But then we decided that...
4. named loot has to have as high bonuses as random loot (in the very next update), although not including stats at that point.

Now...
5. crafted loot has to have as high bonuses as random loot except in the extreme edge cases, but you can always have what you want, very nearly highest possible bonuses and augments etc, so in practical terms, ALWAYS better than random loot except at level 30.

And...

6. named loot now has bonuses as high as random can possibly go on the luckiest imaginable day (I was aiming not to look at Slave Lords stuff in advance to have a surprise, but +17 stats there? already? come on....)


So, all we've done, in the space of just 3 updates (!) is increase ALL of the bonuses by HUGE amounts, put random loot back to being complete garbage you use while leveling if you can't be bothered finding something better, and made (1) much worse. I mean, I know heroics were super easy zergs for vets with epic completionist before, even when you could only get a +6 stat bonus, but giving us +11 stat bonus or more doesn't actually help that situation.

Devs - do you have any plan for balance at all? Because right now it looks like +20 stat bonuses next update, +25 the one after, then +40 because people are having trouble seeing the difference in killing LE mobs in two to three hits from +25 to only +30...

It's not too late to stop now and actually give each type of loot a niche:
- Random loot has niche of highest possible bonuses.
- Named loot has sometimes many effects, that probably make sense together, and that can be in unusual slots, and sometimes unique powers.
- Crafted loot has flexibility and is reliably strong yet unremarkable
-Raid loot is much like named loot, but perhaps with some crafting flexibility and generally a bit better.

When you obsolete every previous quest and all previous loot every update, it gives us less game to play, not more. Grow the endgame. Don't shrink it.

All good (but painfully obvious) points.

LGS "only" has stat +15 and that comes with the opportunity cost of "weapon-only". +17 stat is completely ridiculous for the slave-lord crafting. Let's just say I don't have to wonder whether I will be completing at least a 3 part slaver set and what type of bonus will be in the prefix slots.