Crafting Forge

So I do find the crafting menu convenient. But I am also wondering if there might be merit to limiting crafting to crafting forges (such as those found at the End of Time).

My thinking is that stations like this, and others, such as the Bazaars, really is where you see fellow adventurers “idling” in town, which would give opportunities for other players to notice you and interact.

I also think restricting crafting to towns isnt that big a problem since it would probably be quite rare for players to be doing any serious crafting in the field. What do people think?

PS: a few posters have mentioned this. And I agree. I generally don’t consider shattering items as “crafting” and absolutely agree that being able to shatter equipments in the field is a “necessary” quality of life.

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I’m really interested in what people think on this topic. It’s something that comes up in discussions for us and hearing how the community feels about it would be great!

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Since I earned a dev response :slight_smile: thought I might elaborate a little about what I think.

My own sense is that for a game that pays attention to lore, it is better to keep functional features integrated within the world. Of course, in doing so, we should make sure the game is still fun to play. But I dont see this inconvenience would necessarily make crafting unfun. And as in my OP, I do think it provides a platform for social interaction.

The image that keeps coming to mind is that of an adventurer coming back to town, to restock and to prepare for the next adventure. And you have all these townsfolks/fellow adventurers who may chance upon you in town.

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I don’t really have an opinion about that, I understand both point of view. However, I have always thought it was weird that the forge opens the crafting window even if you can open it wherever you want. It makes the forge interaction “useless” imo.

It’s mostly there as a tutorial to ensure you know about the window.

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In my opinion, so long as the breaking down of items doesn’t require going back to town (simply because this is a real quality-of-life feature). But for actual crafting of items [adding to or upgrading of] affixes it is not a as much of an issue since one would already need to clear an area enough for crafting ‘safely’ and a simple town portal back isn’t as jarring since one would already be halting progress to do this.

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I could get on board with the idea of crafting at forges. I also really like the idea of being able to shatter items in the field.

Maybe some kind of hybrid approach for crafting, too - allow crafting T1 and T2 affixes in the field, but if you want something stronger, you need to find a forge?

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I enjoy being able to slap an affix on in the field on at lower levels. Maybe if there was some sort of RNG bonus at the city forges? But I’d like to keep forges as is.

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I think that an RNG factor added to the forges would be very interesting just as a little spice, nothing serious or anything but it feels like there should be some type of bonus to crafting at the forge, OR it should be the only place to craft. I think that we should still be able to use like runes of shattering or runes of cleansing and such out of the forge but for putting affixes on items it would be neat if there was an actual purpose to the forge. Also the mention of making it so that it kind of acts as a central station in places such as The End of Time would be cool in the purpses of feeling like youre playing alongside other people.

I’m close to the idea of crafting in benches. Having the crafting panel available anywhere doesn’t feel precisely… immersive, or natural. In addition, I like the idea of Jerle about the adventurers coming back to town to craft, sell, restock and prepare for the next danger, and meet fellow adventurers that you will find in town and the possibility of interacting with them.

That being said, maybe the crafting benches should be more visible and in key spots of the towns. The benches don’t have to be only in town tho. Other maps may have one too.

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Oh. Absolutely. I think when I was thinking about this, I was really thinking about crafting and modifying items, and not so much shattering. I can definitely see how needing to go back to town to shatter items can be annoying. Especially since we still have limited inventory space.

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I prefer the idea of crafting (in all capacities) whenever you feel like crafting. I don’t see myself doing a ton of deep crafting in the field, however, I’d prefer to be able to do so if I wanted to.

One argument for this is the counter to Jerle’s social item: If you prefer NOT to be noticed (many people prefer playing primarily solo) crafting in the wild would better enable this.

Similarly, even if you do prefer a social aspect to your aRPG experience, while you’re busy in a crafting session may not be the time for that. Sure, you can set yourself on ‘away’ or ‘dnd’ on the social pane to accomplish this too, but taking options of play styles away from people doesn’t seem like it’s the best idea.

If I had to guess, most people would just craft in town anyway, but I don’t see any sense in limiting this option for players who would choose to do otherwise.

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Crafting from the menu is great and I vote to keep it that way. This comes especially handy when wanting to extract affixes from items on the road in light of the limited backpack space. Diffuculty should come from tackling the mosters, not inconveniences.

Lots of great feedback in here. I didn’t want to make mention of how we were considering it at first just to see how people were feeling about it.

Some ideas that have been proposed are restricting some more advanced crafting methods to town, giving lower fracture chances in town, allowing you to “buy” infinite shatter stone uses in town with lower shard output than normal, and several others that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

We aren’t really sold on any of these ideas right now and it appears that most of the people here aren’t huge on the idea of location specific forging. I think that if we did go forward with something like this, it would be adding in more options in to the town version instead of removing what’s already available. The danger with that is we might make it feel mandatory to go back to town to craft anyways. We do want it to feel good crafting out in the field.

If you have any ideas of things we could add to town with regards to crafting that would be cool but wouldn’t make it feel mandatory to go back to town, please leave them here.

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Hi, it’s hard to find some good point that don’t imply to feel more powerfull to go to forge…

I feel like dismantle and craft could be done in the field, but removing affix orclean item could be only done at forge.
It feel logical because this kind of operation need more planification and concentration. So be in town where there is no monster feel right.

An other way is to give very little cosmetic point :slight_smile: Don’t feel necessary but for big player it’s cool.
To go further, perhaps give the option in forge to shapeshift the item for cosmetic point only at the forge. Or give discount if you want to shapeshift the item if you have forge it at the forge…

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How about giving each town’s forge a specialty? Something like Grim Dawn’s Blacksmiths? Each Blacksmith has a particular attribute they add to things crafted at their place, similarly each Era’s forges can be given a specialty.

But implementing something like this would pretty much force players to use the Town Forge.

I hated the blacksmith specialiation in Grim Dawn. Articifical difficulty and having to keep a Wiki open at all times.

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I think the whole craftin aspect is fine as it is. The only thing I would change is a benefit for walking up to a froge and use it because you backtracked all the way there to use it. Itcould simly increase the min rolls on stats because you are dedicated to crafting at said moment instead of out in the field and occupied by monsters who could shoot you in the back, so the quality while using forges in a save space could be simply higher.

Is there some kind of design philosophy or reason for wanting to make the forge different from crafting in the field? If not, I’d recommend just tweaking the system as a whole to get the balance correct, and not separate crafting locations by utility.

If there is some kind of design reason behind making crafting in one location different from another, I’d be curious to hear what it is. If it’s just a, ‘it could be cool to make it differentiated’ I would strongly recommend against that kind of design - refresh what your goals are and ask how changes to this system do or don’t support those goals. Don’t add extra stuff just to add extra stuff, please!

Well it was merely a suggestion. The idea is to make the forges worthwhile. What is the point of having forges when you can simply craft in the field. If someone backtracks all the way to make use of a forge then he\she should be rewarded.

The rewards should naturally be minimal so that it doesn’t upset the meta otherwise it’d force all the players to use forges only rendering crafting in the field useless.