Hi guys this is something i worked on for a while to give EHG an alternative idea or way to view the potential of their crafting system. please enjoy the video and love to hear all feedback!
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Watched it, and Iām in 100% support of this new structure you have proposed. Itās simple enough to understand, while making a lot of sense, and having more reward, and value for crafting over the current implementation of this system. Good work quiet.
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Hey Quiet! I like the idea behind this. Using your numbers I ran some examples, and I have some pretty big concerns about what an implementation like this would do to the game. Iām going to provide you with those examples to see what you think. First, here are my assumptions:
- Iām using the version of your stability system that provides the most difficult path to success. Meaning the guaranteed tier is 0-19 instability and the 80% is 20-50
- Iām assuming that any tier 5 affix that is already on an item before crafting (i.e. dropped with a tier 5 in the world or from the gambler), is adding 15 instability. So an item with only a tier 5 on it has 15 instability, but one with two tier 5s starts with 30 instability, etc. I am only using tier 5s in my examples for the sake of simplicity. I believe this level of instability is likely more extreme than what you had in mind.
- Iām assuming that a very good player can run 250 waves in the arena in about 3 hours. I think this is probably longer than some of the best players would take. I am also not accounting for the very likely strategy that a player would simply run the first 50-100 waves very quickly over and over to increase their average glyph per hour, instead of running a full arena.
- Iām assuming 5 instability is added per craft. Iām also assuming that Instability Glyphs work as they do now, which would cause a craft to cost 3.5 instability, on average. Instability glyphs will only be used in my final example.
- Iām assuming that failed crafts in the second and third tier will still add the normal amount of instability to the item.
Now letās run through some crafting examples.
Example 1:
First, weāll take an item with a single tier 5 on it. This item has 15 instability on it already, so we only get 1 guaranteed craft on it. Weāll have 6 chances at 80%, which averages out to 5 successful crafts, and 5 chances at 60%, which averages out to 3 successful crafts.
This item will start out at tier 14 before we have taken any risk on the item or put any resources into it besides shards. This is already reasonable endgame gear with no risk or glyph investment! And itās from a base that only started at tier 5, which is very common.
Now letās look at using the new stability glyphs to try and get this item to tier 20. Stability glyphs drop instability by 2-5, so an average of 3.5 each glyph. We also know that in the current proposal, stability glyphs are guaranteed drops every 50 waves in the arena, so if a player did 250 waves, they would be guaranteed no fewer than 5 stability glyphs. Weāre going to assume that a very good player can do 250 waves in 3 hours. This means that such a player can farm 1.66 glyphs per hour from the arena.
As far as using these glyphs, the most efficient way would be to reduce stability to below 20, which would cause the craft to be guaranteed. 5 glyphs would reduce instability by 17.5 on average, so every 3 hours, a good player can add 3.5 guaranteed crafts to an item. At this rate, the tier 14 becomes a tier 20 in under 6 hours, and itās guaranteed to do so (no risk of breaking).
There are a maximum of 11 craftable gear slots in the game currently. Assuming a 1-hand/off-hand and no uniques, and the player always starts with an item at tier 5, this character will be equipped with full tier 20s in about 66 hours, and this is without any non guaranteed stability glyph drops, so the actual number will be smaller.
Example 2:
Now letās look at a tier 10 with 30% instability
We get 0 guaranteed crafts as weāre already above the threshold, 4 crafts at 80% which rounds to an average of 3 successful crafts, and 5 at 60% which is an average of 3 successful crafts.
This item starts at tier 16 with no risk, will be tier 20 in 4 hours of arena farming, and a character using only tier 10s as their base will have full tier 20s in about 44 hours.
Example 3:
For this one, weāll look at a white item with no affixes and no instability. This should be literally the worst crafting option, and in my opinion it shouldnāt be close, since these are the worst item that can drop.
We start with 4 guaranteed crafts, then we get 6 at 80%, which rounds to 5 successes on average, and we also get 5 at 60%, which gives 3 on average, so our item goes from white to tier 12 with zero risk. This item will also reach tier 20 in about 7.5 hours of arena farming, and a character can be geared in full tier 20s in about 82.5 hours using all white bases.
Example 4:
This will be the last example, and itās purpose is to show what the instability glyph can do to this crafting system. Weāre going to use the white base with no affixes.
By using the instability glyph, we can cut down the instability added per craft from 5 to 3.5 on average. Weāll use an instability glyph on every craft, and doing so yields us 6 guaranteed crafts, 9 crafts at 80% which rounds to an average of 7 successful crafts, and 7 at 60% which rounds to 4 successful crafts on average. This means that, with a white base and only using instability glyphs, weāve just created a tier 17 with absolutely no risk of fracture and no usage of the rare stability glyph. Weāre almost at tier 20 already, and we started with the worst base the game could offer us!
Consequences of this system:
- Early crafting is way too easy. We can take trash items and make decent gear, and we can take relatively weak items and make endgame items out of them without assuming any risk in the process. The worst that can happen is we do worse than average and instead of a tier 17, we only get a tier 15, which is still a very solid endgame item.
- Instability Glyphs are a monster. They now have massive consequences on crafting, and will simply always be used. Also note that the player can use a stability glyph, then turn around and use an instability glyph, which means that each stability glyph will be worth one full craft at the lowest tier. I didnāt account for this in my examples, so the interaction of stability and instability glyphs is even greater than what my examples would lead you to believe.
- Guardian Glyphs, in whatever form they might take, would only exacerbate the problem. I didnāt even consider them in the examples, but if they were even worth having in the game, they would have to provide an advantage when crafting becomes risky (otherwise just always use instability glyphs), which would make it even easier to get to tier 20 without using the rare stability glyphs.
- Late crafting is simply about being efficient at farming stability glyphs. Since they are a guaranteed drop in the arena, farming them is the best option, and people who can run the arena quickly and efficiently (I.E.) the best players, will be able to farm these quickly
- Because of 4, this system actually heavily advantages the best players. Being able to farm the most powerful crafting item much more quickly than everyone else means the best player will be fully geared out much faster than average players, giving them a huge advantage every tournament or cycle.
- Player retention drops. Since itās so much easier to create the best gear in the game, and itās ultimately a wholly deterministic system (players never need to engage in the risky tiers with stability glyphs) the time players spend on any one character drops substantially for min/maxers and they are much more likely to move on at this point. For average players, they can create endgame gear very very quickly, and if they arenāt interested in min/maxing, theyāll clear the content much quicker and also move on.
Suggested changes:
There are things I like about this system, particularly with it being more early crafting friendly and having a powerful chase glyph to farm, so here are some suggestions that could help alleviate some of the current consequences. Note that I havenāt had the time to run examples with these changes, so Iām going off of intuition. Further discussion is encouraged.
- Remove the guaranteed crafts completely, and drop the other tiers down 1 to compensate. This will still allow for the desired elimination of any chance to brick the item before 50 instability, making early crafting much less scary, but will help prevent the crazy tier 17 from white crafts with no risk. This might need even further adjustment, but it would be a good start.
- Remove the guaranteed drops for stability glyphs. The guarantees are what provide the best players with the greatest advantage. Making these rare drops only lessens the advantage considerably (while still providing some advantage, which is warranted for farming efficiently)
- Remove glyph of the guardian. Any purpose it could possibly serve that instability glyphs and stability glyphs do not would be far too powerful.
- Limit how many times instability glyphs can be used on a craft. If you can only use it, say, 3 times on a craft, then instability glyphs are still a valuable tool, but their impact on crafting isnāt so over the top.
- Also limit the usage of stability glyphs. Without limiting stability glyphs, we enter PoE crafting territory, where it becomes a numbers game of farming as many stability glyphs as we can, and throwing them at the item until we finally reach tier 20. I donāt want the endgame to become nothing more than farming stability glyphs, and thatās what it feels like would happen if they could be used without limit, especially with the rune of refinement offering the potential for near perfect rolls on tier 20 items.
Iām looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this @QuietForMe, as well as how others feel about the concerns Iāve brought up and the proposed changes.
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I had address most of your responses in the video. As per numbers i states these are threshold testing numbers that could be adjusted as per community and dev feedback and testing most of it was there as a baseline to prove theory! As per rune drop i states the would not start appearing in arena until the START of wave 100. meaning a player would not see any until the reach minimum require as stated in the video. Of course due account such extreme cases of most of current materials having greater impact we would adjust drop rates across the board as saying in the video we would gate drops to high level content thus making things more rare and harder to find. im find with adjusting the instability gain and tier thresholds to account for some numbers. But you took most of premise to of theory and numbers a little to far or exact. The idea of this theory is time gate crafting through risk gambling or safer route of resource grind as stated within the video.
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If we donāt take it to practice, then we have no idea if it accomplishes the goals you have while avoiding pit falls. In itās current state, I donāt believe it does, so I suggest we start playing with the numbers now, or else we have no way of knowing if this could ever be viable.
My apologies, I misinterpreted this as a rune dropping every 50 waves, and an extra small chance of one dropping every 5 waves after wave 100. The correction actually makes me think the drop system would be far worse, as high level players are the only ones who will be able to farm these efficiently, and everyone else will be left hoping for the rare drop here and there.
I think this is the only concern you addressed in the video. The others need more than just a suggestion that we could adjust the drop rates, which is why I offered suggestions for changing the system that would help make it more viable.
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I think he meant boss drops as in all bosses, not just monolith final quest echo ones, but I could be mistaken, but if that was the case, then any player could farm effeciently, and get a chance from the drops from any non final quest echo boss in a monolith echo.
Yeah, Quiet and I talked about this a lot in DMs yesterday, and I think we came to an agreement that guaranteed stability rune drops would be bad for the game, but farmable RNG drops (i.e. a boss drops these 20% of the time) that are also found in content which is accessible for the average player, would at least lessen the blow of highly skilled players being more efficient at farming. Correct me if Iām misunderstanding @QuietForMe
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Iāve (finally) watched it, I like the idea as it gives the player more āagencyā (barf), still has RNG but gives the player a way to mitigate that RNG by playing the game. Not sure if the new runes should be tradeable (one the one hand, it allows the player who has them but needs gold (like, what for?) to sell them, but on the other hand it would allow ārichā players to buy their way to power).
Should items that drop have an instability advantage over items gambled? Since gambling is so much easier to get the specific bases you want, I think world drops should have some upside for their RNG (to act as a counter to gamblingās efficiency).
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