I agree that something does need to be done to make both crafting & not-crafting as your source of items feel better. The loot filter has been a significant improvement to the not-crafting side of the loot hunt since it allows you to tune what you see to a very high degree.
I think part of this is also based on where the devs want crafting to sit in terms of
do they want you crafting to act as a minor fix to items that drop (D3), whereby you can use it to replace a small fraction of the affixes on the item?
do they want crafting to exist in parallel to item drops as a valid source of where the player gets their (non-unique/set) items from?
do they want to allow the player to be able to craft up a āgoodā item from scratch (& what good is is a separate conversation) like in PoE?
do they want crafting to lean towards the RNG side of the spectrum (PoEās currency crafting) or towards the deterministic side (where LE is at the moment)?
Personally, one of the things I really like about the current crafting is being able to choose what affixes you have, thatās different to everything else in aRPGs (as far as Iām aware, though I do remember a mod for D2 that had only lvl 1 items drop & then you craft up from materials that dropped from mobs) & I really like that difference. But it needs to come with a cost which is currently fracturing items.
Many different suggestions have been made, so itās not like they donāt have a lot of things to work with in terms of making it feel better.
Iām personally not a fan of picking and choosing stats and the ability to upgrade. Have both be random, but give tools to tackle the randomness. Keep the ability to add stats, but randomize the stat and the tier. Have crafting options that influences your chances to a certain stat. Have crafting options to increase the rate to get a higher tier. I know it sounds awfully like POE but all game mechanics boil down to the same core mechanics. It can always be implemented differently and dressed up differently. Being unique is nice until it doesnāt work.
My experience with LE so far has been underwhelming when it comes to the item hunt. Almost no T6 or T7 items worth using and the ones with the stats are on the wrong base or with really crappy side stats. The jump from relying on crafted items to getting high tier items was too much.
This sounds terrible. Iām so tired of ARPGs doing this. Thereās already too much RNG in them. It doesnāt have to be fully deterministic, but I donāt feel a sense of āhunt/chaseā with RNGājust gambling and time sink with very little payout. Thereās a balance that needs to be struck. I donāt want this to be a PoE Cloneāand I think most of this community doesnāt want that either.
Because it is. Full stop, you are literally just describing what POE already does. If thatās what you like in a game, cool! Get it from POE.
POE has extensively explored the avenue of a 500 lever slot machine - it is an avenue filled with the smell of garbage and bodily secretions. LE does not need to delve further into that territory in the hopes that some lonely alley will have a pile of undiscovered gold, or conduct an experiment in how much digital ammonia it takes to deaden the nose to the stench of dung.
The control of picking specific stats balanced by the RNG of how far you can upgrade them is a good system thatās player friendly without being a āPrint Amazing Itemsā button. It is a breath of fresh air that feels good to use. The balancing and tweaking of the existing core concept to see what feels even better is the avenue that should be explored here.
I donāt want this game to be PoE, Iām really hoping for a middle ground between D3 and PoE to hit that sweet spot. That being said the current system of crafting I donāt feel is a good one. The devs seem to partially agree at least as in the dev streams recently they have also talked about changes coming that will render some of the crafting components we currently have obsolete.
What confuses me though is the perception that the current system we have now is a breath of fresh air or player friendly. This crafting system we have is pretty close to the system used my many Korean grind MMOs except instead of cash money items to reduce the risk of crafting failures we have in-game glyphs.
The system further presents problems for trading (ie. why buy a piece to craft with if odds are good it breaks and is a waste of gold). You also canāt be excited about a perfectly rolled implicit base because unless it has stats you want already on it, the item will break before itās usable most likely.
Iām hoping in this crafting update they are teasing they get rid of fracturing all together. Iām not sure what to replace it with to continue to have friction in gearing up but I really hope we are heading decidedly away from the current system.
Reminds me of trying to craft anything reasonable worthy of āend gameā in PSO2, actually.
I wonder if it would be okay to just dump the fracturing in favor of higher chances of the deleveling from more severe breaks. Not necessarily saying this is the better approach, but maybe worth trying out.
Great logic. The other game has it so get it there. Never mind what I said about different implementation. Iāll also add to a different degree. What often sounds and looks the same can be drastically different depending on how itās implemented and to what degree.
The ability to pick and choose your stats and upgrade with % chance shown to your face is not going to work in the long term. Yes, the current system can be tweaked to feel different. But fundamentally it goes against what an ARPG is - the exhilaration of getting that one drop that takes you to that next level. Instead, what we have right now is the relief the item didnāt break or the rage when it fractures. Hey I got this perfect T7 with the stat I want and on the item base I want. Letās try to craft it and bring it up. Chances are itāll break and more often than not itāll break early. Itās not a good feeling.
You canāt have deterministic crafting without introducing certain penalties. Right now itās fractures. EHG can change it to something else, but the penalty has to exist. Penalties will always feel terrible especially when the chances get higher and higher that youāll have to deal with the penalty. Low chance of a good item dropping can feel numbing when on a dry spell, but great when you finally get it. Low chance of your crafting succeeding is rage inducing when it fails, but relief when you do succeed. The emotional roller coaster is too wide in the current system. Especially when getting a proper exalted item on the proper base is not that easy to get.
Just to clarify I donāt want something similar to POE. But it doesnāt hurt to study other games and learn the good parts and understand what to avoid (which Iām sure theyāre doing). The current system obviously doesnāt work. Whatās critical is they need to figure out whatās the main issue - is it implementation or is it the core mechanic/concept? We can harp all we want here based on what we want and itāll hopefully end up as feedback they can use to make a decision along with the other tools and data they have. I can be wrong and I hope to be proven wrong if it ends up with something brilliant. Iād just hate to see it go down this path and be a blemish on an otherwise outstanding product they are building.
Iāve thought about this it probably would be better need better balancing of affix shard acquisition. A system like this would be trivial if you were trying to get like a resist or stat affix up because they are so plentiful but I could see class specific ones or skill levels being a real pain.
You keep saying that, but I do not think it means what you think it means. Because you also say things like this:
Which, again, is literally describing POE, and claiming both of those opinions simultaneously is so bafflingly contradictory itās like reading Orwell to see you do it. Which you do again here:
By following it up with:
The way youāre trying to argue here, I donāt know what to conclude other than either youāre two different people writing single comments without consulting each other, or youāre talking just to talk and you donāt actually have a real position on anything.
But the bottom line is - The changes you have proposed are awful. When it comes to penalties and balance, the system weāve got now is not perfect, but it feels orders of magnitude less adversarial and punishing. It gives you agency and control that isnāt based entirely on how many hours you dump into farming. If chat is any indication, lots of people are playing LE because it does things well that POE did terribly. If you want POE, go play POE. Quit trying to bring POE here.
I donāt need you to tell me what I want. I know that myself perfectly well. It literally describes POE if I ask for something specifically. If you have problems reading, Iāll state it here for you again:
I donāt mind it if you disagree with what I have to say. But donāt try to guess or tell me what my thoughts and opinions are, especially if you have a hard time understanding what Iām saying by picking and choosing my statements without the context around it and my explanation. I am a fully grown adult who knows what I want and fully capable of expressing it. And I have done that. Itās not my problem you conveniently omit the other statements that changes what is being communicated.
And how are the last two quotes contradictory? The first describes the current situation. The second explains why a deterministic crafting system has to have penalties.
And not sure who thatās aimed at Silver moon, but I hardly find myself whining and being immature. I described my experiences with the system, tried to diagnose the problem, and offered suggestions. If people donāt like it thatās fine. Weāre all just passing time on this and the real decision makers are the devs. Point to a passage where itās immature and whiney. If I agree Iāll apologize. I work as a business analyst testing systems in the healthcare industry so I canāt help but look at these things and try to dissect it. I try not to go out of my way to attack people (happened once here with someone incorrigible) because that never gets anywhere. I expect the same from others. Disagree if you will, but do it on the merits of the argument. Donāt try to guess what I want or twist my statements.
How many times in a gameās development have you heard, āwhah whah unfair want to quitā, during beta? F-them, they should be ashamed at themselves.
I think EHG should remove the % numbers from crafting, I think thats causing most of the issue
I also finally got a weapon upgrade last night on my 100 GF, a Lucerne dropped with 3x T5 stats with 19% base crit, Mele phys/crit/armor shred, cannot have Minion damage so I chucked T4 Frailty. I can roll it to T5 but its a 20 // 25% chance of failure dont want to risk breaking it.
if the % numbers werent available to turn me off I would of already done itā¦
