How to fix crafting

Long story short, RNG on top of RNG just doesn’t feel good. I also feel like I can almost never even get close to crafting that item I want. Exacerbating the frustration is that attempting to craft a single item feels like a very time consuming process. And when you run out of shards, it’s like “o crap, now I need to farm shards before I can TRY to roll again.” I want a goal that I can clearly see and work towards without having to have my progress constantly reset.

I feel like the purpose of crafting should be to add determinism to a loot system that is already non-deterministic and may never give you the item you want.

Here’s what I propose:

Runes for shattering for extra shards (no change there)

Runes for cleansing (also no change)

A special rune let’s call it “Excellence” for removing t6 versions of a stat. It’s very rare, just like items with that tier. Let’s say this produces a “gem” of the corresponding stat

Other runes removed entirely. Support glyphs for crafting removed (or integrated into the system below)

Basically I think that itemization should work like GW2 crafting in this game, you salvage materials into raw materials for a deterministic result, but higher tiers are significantly more expensive. The numbers here are toy numbers, the devs should tweak them to match what they expect crafting a similar item should look like.

Basically you add a white item, select the attributes, and the tiers and hit “craft”, BUT:

The amount of shards scales much higher the higher the tiers:

Doing an item with all t3s let’s say would be 10 of each shard for the attributes selected.

Doing an item with all t4s would be something like 50.

Doing an item with all t5s would be something like 100 of each.

The system will allow for mixing and matching of tiers, if I select a t5 attunement, then i need 100 attunement shards, but I can still select t2 for cold resist and only pay like 3 cold resist shards for that stat.

Additionally a SINGLE stat gem extracted from an Excellence rune can be applied to a t5 affix slot to boost it to a t6 tier. (i.e. you can’t build an item of all t6 slots).

I don’t know what to do with affix stat value ranges, I really want a way to craft the “perfect” item if I put in the work and I know what I’m collecting, so I want the RNG out in this regard, but I also accept that this is often the “long pole” of a build is rerolling forever for that perfect item in a typical ARPG. Perhaps a compromise would be is you can repay the same shard cost for a given affix to reroll it. I.e. I could pay another 100 attunement shards to reroll my t5 or t6 stat range if I so desired. A deterministic alternative would be you pay n shards to increase the stat value within the affix range (and the affix value is only rolled once, at creation). But perhaps it wouldn’t be as simple as repaying the cost, see my note at the end on how we can make a functional equivalent to this rng without all the frustration in between.

basically what this does is it gives someone the ability to make a “decent” set with relatively few materials and then gradually work towards better gear that may or may not drop in the mean time. Giving value to the RNG to generate some form of determinism is what makes GW2 tolerable and I believe would be an improvement to the current model of ARPGs basically being the world’s worst slot machine.

Implicitly in this system, I want crafting instability completely removed, but perhaps crafted items can’t be shattered, so there’s a real cost to making one.

Note devs, if you’re reading this, it can absolutely be turned into a functional equivalent of the current system. It takes on average n # of shards of each type to yield the target item. All I’m asking here is that you remove the frustrating RNG in between and just tell me what n is, and save me about 1000 disappointing trips to the forge.

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Not a fan at all, Exalted items should remain drop only IMO

Generally i don’t like your suggestion.

LE’s crafting system is already so deterministic, the amount of RNG that is involved is totally justified.

Making a medicore item is SOOOOO easy in LE compared to any other similar game.
Making a “good” Item is also way more easy than in most other games too.

Making a Godtier item(from a pure craft only standpoint) so 4x T5 is really really hard and involves alot of luck, which is totally fine IMO

You basically need to “find” a semi-good item to icnrease your chance to make it god-tier, which is totally in the sense of an aRPG. FINDING the loot.

Exalted items are the pinnacle of LE, being able to craft them, regardless of the “effort/ressources” takes away everything i personally play an aRPG for. HUNT for loot.

BTW: Stuff like this should be posted in the Feedback & Suggestion Section

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Okay, but on average it takes n shards to do said thing. What would be so terrible about translating that to a raw number instead of making me do 1000 disappointing visits to the forge? what advantage are we gaining from the RNG aspect? Also it hasn’t been deterministic for me at all. I’ve had so many crafts fail at reasonable successes it feels broken.

Not a fan at all, Exalted items should remain drop only IMO

They’ll still stay that way with this system. Exalted items are still translated into god tier by using runes of removal for undesired stats currently. And as I stated above, they can tweak shard costs or other material costs to make it functionally equivalent without all the RNG.

What do we really gain from all the RNG? Why isn’t the random item drops enough for your slot machine fancies?

Because after failing so many times makes the 1001 time you succeed feel so f’ing good. Im with heavy and prefer the current system to your suggestion

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It’s deterministic in the sense that you can choose which affix to put on. Can’t speak for everyone else but most games I’ve played you can’t really choose what stat to put on an item or improve.

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I guess anyone still playing with game would because that’s how it functions. Okay fine, this will be another slot machine like every other ARPG. Got it. That will probably not help me keep playing.

I don’t have a gambling addiction and don’t miss it. How about they have both systems, one for addicts one for non-addicts? I find the 999 times I try for the perfect item very boring and annoying: I don’t feel it enriches gameplay. And honestly, a good slot machine only has 1 lever, not 4 and lets you pull alot of times in succession. I find the current system painstakingly annoying. It’s too much thought for that much randomness.

Yeah man I gotta say, this is the most deterministic crafting in any ARPG and it’s probably the right amount of crafting vs rng. If you don’t like farming loot, ARPGS aren’t really gonna be for you. So no, your suggestion of both systems is not really even slightly ok lol, for one that’s double dev work, that has to now be taken away from other more important stuff than catering to non ARPG players. The current crafting system allows you to pick which mods you want on an item and even allows you to determine to what level each stat is important to you. (Do you REALLY need that T5 stat in stat X or would that instability be better getting T5 in stat Y). It’s probably the most fair system while keeping the spirit of a hunt, you’re still chasing those god crafts.

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Don’t agree with the OP either…

Crafting in 7.10 feels like its on the right track… Its easier than before to get to T15 items (imho) and barring a few tweaks and suggestions I am ok with it… T20 items have moved from the impossible to get into a more “if you are feeling lucky” mode. Loot filters have helped tremendously with farming the gear to craft on and the combination has made crafting “feel” less “FFS another fracture” into “Woah, thats a tier 17… do I really need to push the last few tiers”

One thing the new 7.10 changes have made me realise is that they CANNOT make it too easy to get godtier items - that could ruin the game - imho there always needs to be something to aim for and if everyone is running around with t20 gear by the time they ding 80, then why bother…

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LE’s crafting system is deteminisitc, that is no opninion, that is fact, you CAN choose the outcome of a craft. You cannot guarantee that it succeeds, but that’s not what “deteministic” means. It just means that the outcome is always the same.
(The only thing that you cannot control is the affixes that get reduced/increased when you have a damaging fracture/critical success)

No other similar aRPG has a crafting system that is remotely similar. Even the beyond broken PoE Harvest craft was not as deteminsitic as LE’s current crafting system.

I do NOT want a crafting system where i can farm X amount of items to get a guaranteed success.
This would feel like a bad asian grind mmo to me.(no offense here if there are people liking that, but that’s nothing belonging in an aRPG IMO)
The only thing i would be ok with making an addiotnal glyph/rune which guarantees the outcome, but that thing needs to be insanely rare and like a very valaubeable thing where you think about it when to use it.

I do play aRPG’s for the “YES MOMENT”, when an items drops.
In LE alot of my “best items” were dropped and than crafted upon, which is ok, if it’s not guaranteed, but i will never want this to become some sort of guaranteed thing if i have X amount of shards grinded beforehand.

Also LE does show you all the possibilities, which is also something no other similar game does show you.

I would never compare that to a slot machine, not at all.

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It’s a mixed system, what affixes you get is deterministic, whether it fractures or not is RNG. So if Nelluced was talking about the fracturing items not being deterministic, he’s not wrong…

Ok, technically you are right, if you count the outcome of “not succeeding”, it is not determinsitic.

But OP stated:

Which was the main statement led me to reply to him in the first place.

Everything else i said still holds true, there is no other similar game that has a remotely close system where you can detemine what stats you want.

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With 0.7.10 and the critical success along with the deletion of destructive fractures have made the system a lot better.

As stated before the lootfilter adds a lot, too. I find tons if craftable items now. And even if a craft fails and fractures, it’s only a few runs until I have a new good crafting base.

When I started LE in April 2019 I really loved the crafting right from the start. It’s such a great tool early and mid game.

When I got a lot off high level characters that couldn’t improve because I found few good crafting bases and had a lot of ractures, it got a bit tedious.

With the last update I really like it again.

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Bricked an item at 90% success rate. How has crafting been “improved?”

What makes you think that 90% is a guaranteed success? Doesn’t it state that you have a 10% chance to fail? So 1 of 10 attempts will fail.

If you read the parchnotes you can see that there has been added a critical success, that gives a free tier level for an affix. Also Destructive fractures have been removed.

Wait… why exactly do I have to repeat my post from above?

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Crafting feels a lot more satisfying now with the removal of damaging fractures and the introduction of the critical success mechanic.

It has changed the way I craft items.

Before 0.7.10, 5/5/5 could be better than 4/4/4/4 on some items and I also had items I wanted to upgrade but the risk of damaging fracture was too great.

Now, you may as well craft until fracture as you can’t reset a 5/5/4/4 to 3/3/2/2 anymore with the removal of damaging.

Also, it is worth getting all 4 stats to at least 1 early on as this will give more critical success options … not more chances of critical success, but more stats available to upgrade if it does hit. For example, if I have an item with 5/4 it is best to add the other affixes first to get 5/4/1/1 because if you upgrade 5/4 to 5/5 and get a critical success, it is wasted. On the other hand, while adding a stat to get 5/4/1 you may get lucky on the critical success and come out with 5/5/1.

Acquiring craftable items has also been speeded up with the loot filter.

I think the changes are very positive and I’m not sure adding more complexity would make it better or more interesting right now. After all, affixes introduced in 0.7.9 don’t exist anymore.

Crafting items is simpler now with less reliance on prefix set mods and the rationalisation of resistances.

As a side note, constant comparison to other games’ methods of looting, filtering or crafting denies LE the individuality it deserves.

Otherwise, we are doomed to a world of bland-blend, where all cheese is cheddar in 1,000 different packages.

Vive la difference!

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From your reply (pretty snarky) it sounds like you’re having a rough day. I hope it gets better for you.

I didn’t say it should be guaranteed

You don’t HAVE to repeat anything. It’s a choice to do so.

I have 5% critical hit chance and I get critical hits at the target dummy.

How is that any different to having a 10% fracture chance and getting a fracture?

I’m not having a go at you … but %age chance is %age chance. Sometimes the dice rolls badly.

Also, the improvements were removal of damaging fractures and introducing critical success.

No changes were made to the “chance of success” mechanics, afaik.

So my answer was even more snarky?

But thanks mate. I’ll hope it gets better soon.

Yeah, it kinda was, sorry…

Hug?

Ok… :slight_smile: