Feedback - Crafting - Update 10, Patch 1

**cforce** · 07-07-2011, 05:01 PM

Not like we need too many more folks piling on, but yeah: some of those ingredients a over the top.

One of the beauties of the crafting system was that it gave players that didn't road as much the opportunity to put together some near-raid-quality loot. Adding unique rare loot is a bad idea, and scuttled a system player like me were starting to spend a lot of time on.

Return this patch to sender, please.

**Ganak** · 07-07-2011, 05:02 PM

Originally Posted by MadFloyd

Our apologies and thanks for the swift, clear feedback.

Thanks for the outstanding responsivness!

Now to make up for it, please share any little U11 detail you can

**tkscience** · 07-07-2011, 05:08 PM

No, seriously, must be a joke.

Downloading Lamannia to see for myself...

**altrocks** · 07-07-2011, 05:13 PM

Worst idea since the offer wall. Still, is anyone actually surprised? Turbine has been making horrible development decisions lately. Maybe it's the fault of Warner Bros., maybe not, but the timing is odd. This is just another example of the bad decisions getting worse. Was considering reupping my sub since things were seeming better but, meh. Not now. If this is how they think, I'll just wait for something else.

**Nyvn** · 07-07-2011, 05:13 PM

Originally Posted by MadFloyd

Whooops. We clearly were out of line with several of these ingredients. Including items like Dreamspitter and Chattering Ring is an embarrasing error on our part and was in no way intentional.

Our motivation to add these extra ingredients (which was only made to a subset of recipes that concerned us) was to preserve and not devalue the efforts made by players to obtain many of the existing powerful named items in the game.

We will make changes. Unfortunately, they will not be made in time to alter the upcoming patch. As you know, the system is still in beta and we will effect changes as soon as we can.

Our apologies and thanks for the swift, clear feedback.

It really shows that there is zero testing done on changes.

Please delay the patch, this is not something you want to go live... wait another week, or 5, remove this addition and release the patch.

**Drfirewater79** · 07-07-2011, 05:16 PM

Originally Posted by Scraap

Couldn't see past 75 this end. still reviewing...

Purified eberron dragonshard fragments?

arcane
tasty ham for animal bane,
spiderspike for vermin bane,
guardkiller for human bane,
giant stalkers for giant bane

divine
medium sulferous for lawful ousider bane,
prysuuls bane for chaotic outsider bane
stormreaver fresco for construct bane
minotaut hair belt for monstrous humanoid bane
rusted shamshir for aberration bane
zulkash's bone necklace for orc bane
blue dragon scales for dragon bane
ring of elemental essences AND spiked mace of the elements for elemental bane
medium chain AND medium devil scales for evil outsider bane
margurites necklace for undead bane
silver flame healing potion for holy burst
dreamspitter for greater lawful outsider bane
razorend for greater magical beast bane
demons blood AND tyrzza's bane for greater chaotic outsider bane

elemental
zaraming's longbow for halfling bane
sword of the giant slavemaster for elf bane
moog's ornament for reptillian bane
daggertooth's belt for gnoll bane
fist of darguul for goblinoid bane
zaraming's longbow for dwarf bane
chattering ring for greater halfling bane
mystical plant for greater plant bane

I'm... going to leave that there, and take a few minutes...

In the mean time, I would ask if you really, truly want an honest response.

This is quite possibly the biggest mistake ever made ... just when we think you guys have stopped making the dumbest choices for this game .. just when we thought you guys had already made the biggest mistakes and things where going well .. you do something like this.

and how can you say you cant stop it? the game is working fine now .. its easy to stop it .. you dont launch update 10 till its fixed. Period.

the only way using named loot as requirements works is if you increase the drop rate of named loot to 50% on normal 75% on hard and 120% (1 for sure and 20% chance at 2) name item drop rate so that named items are worthless cause everyone has them (including raid items)

and that would be ******** cause then everyone would have all the raid gear they want in weeks instead of years it took most of us to get the gear we have ... and crafted gear is already garbage with the exception of two or three combinations as is.

Who the hell is gonna trade a chattering ring for greater HALFLING bane???

are you guys trying to kill this game so SWTOR beats wow for subnumbers and player ratings?

This isnt something you fix later (like so many other bugs that are still not fixed) this is something you never introduce and delay a patch and update for.

**lopkon** · 07-07-2011, 05:16 PM

Well very hard to draw a line here.
The idea itself is very nice, since some stuff shouldnt be as easy to craft as now. And seeing that crafting lvl is supposed to go to 150, there should be crazy stuff coming- so it needs balance. Using rare integrends sounds good. Flaws on the other hand are:

a) Bound Loot - BtC integrends for a system that relies on BtA shards is a bad idea in my opinion, since you most likely have only one crafter and he might not be able to aquire certain loot when you need it (due to TR or whatever)

b) Raid Loot (this includes +3/+4 Tomes) - It's probably bad to add those, since 1. for most cases a) is true 2. Greed will break any roll now and if people just loot whatever they get since they can use it for crafting, it might get frustrating, same goes for Dragon Blood and Epic Seals and Shards

c) Effort/Gain ratio - Well who gets a full set of tomes for Elf Bane? Elf Bane is not that useful in general only very few effects are worth a full tome set (Taps would be fine, maybe even shield pieces for the good stuff those arn't really useful anyway)

d) Crafting lvling - it will get awful since you are not only using essences but tons of those Purified shards as well not to talk about the 'special integrends' seeing something like 'blank' shards for all lvls just for lvling would be awesome

I started off with critic, but here are the things I really like about the build:

a) Balancing - mentioned before and kinda obvious

b) Use of named Loot
b.1) regular named Loot - Yes give us some use for all this Stings, Shield of Scorpions,... they can also be useful items like spectral gloves (good shards should work with sacrifices), I could even imagine to use epic scrolls for later recipes (Put Ringleader loot in there as well, hehe)
b.2) chain end reward - Running Threnal a few times more might get annoying, but it keeps us playing it at least, heads up good idea
b.3) Collectible turn ins - apart from the tome thingy (which doesnt count since I dont like it) I saw only this Lordsmarch Turn In, let us get more special Collectible turn-ins for crafting (for special limited stuff you can use cookies too)
b.4) Tomes - +1 Tomes are useful again! The Shard ratio of +1 and +2 Tomes is still a bit off though
b.5) item use in general - using items already ingame instead of new Shards, Essences or whatever else lets our bags explode is a good idea

c) Using of other already implemented Crafting systems- Yes this Sovereign Rune of Smiting was nice, DT is not as uber as it used to be, so reusing is very nice, also Shroud integrends/Boot Material are nice, Shavarath Trophies might be viable as well

Well that's my opinion- not all bad, but change it, please

**phayth** · 07-07-2011, 05:18 PM

Has anyone in turbine actually played the game, Do they know the ammount of time and effort involved in getting some of the stuff like +4 tomes? epic marilith?

**Brennie** · 07-07-2011, 05:22 PM

This looks like a fun bandwagon, I think I'll join

Raidloot as a ingredient is obvious-bad. I don't think that needs rehashing.

HOWEVER, a lot of people seem to be glossing over the "lesser" new costs. Astral Diamonds, Epic Tokens, Tomes, Shroud Ingredients...

As a moderate player (Somewhere between casual and hardcore), I grind out Epic tokens and Shroud ingredients for very specific purposes - And it takes me months to even get up enough of either to meet a goal (Slotting another Epic CC item, or making a teir 3 GS). Frankly, i do not have enough of these that i feel i can easily funnel off some "extra" into crafting.

I have never, and will never buy astral diamonds.

Tomes are hardly reliable drops, even +1s. Dumping several +1 tomes into ingredients to make a single weapon seems like a poor investment!

As it stands, crafting is already a MAJOR grind to get to "the good stuff". I questioned some of the effects that were available in crafting form that were not available on randomrolled items, but Devs seemed to plow ahead anyway. Now, we are seeing the balancing act to keep it "in line".

If unbound shards are the issue, then put a system in place for the unbound shards, that skips the BtA shards! That way, anyone who wants a super-cool crafted item has to either a) craft it themselves, or b) pay the outlandish prices associated with a crafter spending devil scales and epic tokens as ingredients.

Lastly, if you are trying to encourage crafters to buy specific content packs, or slow the creation of a select subset of "powerful" shards, heres an idea: Take those "mystical" items we find as end rewards and add them as a bonus (Like guild renown and festival coins) item in the chests of their respective packs (And make them BtA if they're not already). Then add some combinations of these items for the "special" recipes (Like banes, holy, Elemental Absorb, etc). End result - Players MUST own packs to utilize certain crafting options, and players MUST run through these packs enough to build up a stockpile of ingredients - very similar to players running through shroud enough to be able to put together greensteel. However, this utilizes already in-game items (So no more inventory glut), without detracting from already established systems that are THEMSELVES major grinds.

My suggestion is a very imperfect solution, since it does mean extra grind to crafting, but it may be a workable compromise.

DO NOT LET THIS PATCH GO LIVE.

**Spoonwelder** · 07-07-2011, 05:31 PM

21 pages of No. Kind of says it all.

Now I am glad (and sad) I only ever stepped into the crafting hall once or twice and saw the huge grind that it would be to stop and just go back to selling all my vendor trash.

Changes of some sort are needed to balance crafting in the long run - and we haven't really even got it unbound crafting....but to me it is mostly in the unbound area that I worry. Bound stuff means you have to craft for weeks of actual playtime to get the top tier gear. And i thought the broccoli and bottle etc....were the solution to this (ie. had to have one of them to get the top tier crafted stuff in the bound category). Thus bound crafting even would still be constrained.

Unbound stuff needs major impediments or else the game will be flooded with ubergear.....but raid gear.....bad choice. I'd rather they just not allow unbound crafting - or make it a Trade window and Crafter all in one...- ie. crafter supplies shards of X prefix and Y suffix- I supply dreamspitter and some agreed 'crafting fee' - I get X Quarterstaff of Y - the crafter keeps the 'fee' item.

Even then I'd just rather not have unbound crafting because it will either mess up the game or provide trivial garbage gear. I don't think unbound crafting can ever be balanced since there are only a small number (wild guess of less than 200 - ie 16 worn slots and maybe 10 iterations of the best in slot item depending on class) truly great items. Every other combination will be sub-par and thus never built (except in the training process). So they will either have to make the top 200 insanely stupidly hard to make or have these top 200 items widely available. Neither will work so they are better off just shutting down unbound.

In the meantime shut down this update and revamp AND PUBLISH your plan for crafting.

**LordTigerDawn** · 07-07-2011, 05:32 PM

Well here is some feedback about crafting that does not require raid loot:

The reason I did not like Mabar is the epic items required epic tokens to craft. If you did not have some saved or were in the middle of a TR and not have a lvl 20 toon you could not participate in these lvl of items. I realize crafting will be around for a long time, but the idea of adding fragments for something you have to make 15 times just to lvl high enough to make something worth making and you get 1 fragment for 1 token...

I mean seriously... even the idea of this has completely removed any chance f2p can use cannith crafting. In a selling world, you would at least make enough of it worth lvling to get f2p interested enough in crafting so they would want to upgrade.... as for now, they can make +5 skill items for 40+ hours of crafting grind. Now you add fragments you get from tomes and epic tokens...

Devs might say it is too late, but personally they need to skip releasing it altogether... pull 10.1 from lamania... Fire the people that made the decisions in the first place. Because if this is released globally, they will just have paying customers drop like flies.

Jumping the shark... right now it is Lamannia, the players know it, they are screaming for Turbine to get out of the way...

Will they listen

**dingal** · 07-07-2011, 05:32 PM

Originally Posted by zorander6

That's just it though, make something intolerable, reduce it slightly, and people will tolerate almost anything. Then move intolerable to the next level until you reach a point where no one can do anything other than sit in korthos weeping over their uber weapons of old.

Once the game is dead file for bankruptcy while the top execs run away with their millions.

Edit: The real reason offerwall went away is they got a lot of negative publicity. Unfortunately that is probably the only thing that would stop this from going live.

This is a very common political strategy when creating new laws, for players unions and team owners when negotiating new contract deals etc.

You start with something so outlandish that what you finally settle on (While still in itself outlandish) seems normal by comparison.

If Turbine wants me to simply slot my credit card to use the crafting system then they should just say so and be straight with it. I get that the game is driven by microtransactions and I spend my fair share in the store despite being a VIP but the use of these kinds of diversionary tactics is insulting to my intelligence as a person and as a consumer.

**Jahmin** · 07-07-2011, 05:34 PM

Originally Posted by gloopygloop

I find it impossible to imagine that the development staff was so stupid that they could have believed that these recipe changes were a good idea as they are written now.

Sadly I find that possibility quite believable

**jakeelala** · 07-07-2011, 05:34 PM

This truly, is madness.

In the heartwrenching, authority demanding, immortal words of my mother:
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

**Postumus** · 07-07-2011, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by Brennie

a lot of people seem to be glossing over the "lesser" new costs. Astral Diamonds, Epic Tokens, Tomes, Shroud Ingredients...

That's because when someone slaps your face and then kicks you in the privates, no matter how much your face hurts, your full attention is still on your privates.

**Drfirewater79** · 07-07-2011, 05:38 PM