Well, people fixate on overly tight definitions of what “crafting” is. If we broaden it to mean “Items are alterable toward a desired purpose/function,” I would argue that Grim Dawn has the best crafting in the genre. Yeah, the “crafting” most people think of in that game is just the bench with some RNG recipes, but it’s not hard to find usable items that drop, then further modify them through augs and components. This is why the item grind in that game is so much more satisfying than in LE–not to mention the sheer variety of base items that can drop and the volume of affixes that can be “good enough” for a build. There’s plenty of room to min-max, but your build doesn’t feel lacking if you don’t as long as you hit the appropriate thresholds for your damage output and defenses, which is very achievable. Further, it accomplishes this in interesting ways–LE does not.
The itemization in crafting has two valleys of death.
- From levels 30 to around 45
- From normal to empowered monoliths.
A lot of this is plain and simple RNG of the loot drops, which affects the motivation to pursue improving an item or character based on how it is performing. I had a fireball mage that was in the 55 mono at 36 destroying the content, drops plenty for the next few levels. Once the levels start to balance out at say 75 then satisfaction for the usable crafting drops plummet. Empowered seems lackluster on the surface because the crafting time and affixes are just not as appealing as they could be.
So many uses of determinism in this thread. It is hard to keep it straight. But at what point, within an adequate indeterministic version, can we produce one that gives the illusion of determinism that a broad range of players will find enjoyable and useful (long term viability).
I dont understand why some of you are discussing the semantics of the word deterministic. If you know the aRPG genre, you know the meaning. Being able to pick what affix goes on an item = deterministic, end of discussion. A layer of rng deciding if an item breaks does nothing to change that point.
With that said, I enjoy the system. As an ex PoE junkie, I welcome being able to get what I want, when I want…to some extent.
So you are determined to dance around aspects of the whole thread, but seem determined to land upon “if you get what you want when you want it” … as determined as you need be. To some extent.
Thats almost as rare as PoE crafting.
my Forge Guard gambled all their gear at level 83. at lvl 100 ive had ONE upgrade - 350 echoes later
I gambled a T5/T5/T3 helmet straight up that cannot be replaced by anything but an exalted roll on the exact base which means I keep this helmet almost forever. Ive never seen an exalted Bronze Helmet with T6/7 Manifest Armor lket alone also rolling with Attunement/Hp Regen/Health etc.
This is really what you mean. you get to have good gear without putting in hardly any effort = LE crafting
Do I really need to elaborate further?
I can get 4 affixs I want on any item at any time, 100% guaranteed. Deterministic.
Do I want to continue gambling on how far to take these previously guaranteed affix’s? Thats now in the hands rng. This does not make crafting any less deterministic. I may end up with a couple t3s a t4 and a t2. So I did get what I want, to some extent. And thats a shit ton better than a lot of games in the genre.
I have an incentive to keep grinding, I have something worth using right now. Arpg win/win
If so, why bring up semantics? Or are we circling back on ourselves again?
This is exactly my type of experience. See #2 point above.
In the movie Chernobyl, your point #2 is AZ5.
You mean just like every single other aRPG that uses RNG in their item generation. Quite what that has to do with crafting, other than the fact that you don’t like it & will use any chance to bash it, I don’t know.
So LE is bland & PoE’s bipolar (for anyone that doesn’t know, if someone has bipolar, they swing from low/depressive emotional states to high/manic states & the swing is much “broader” than those that arem’t bipolar). But you can’t just tease us with continuing to say “LE is bland” without, at some point, telling us what you would do to fix it. At some point you need to put or shut up. Saying you it feels bland but don’t know what could be done to improve it is also an acceptable option.
I have often wondered if we could ever quanitfy bipolar.
This is pretty dishonest, man. I’ve proposed many ideas across many threads for possible directions for improvement. I don’t know how you can possibly come to any conclusion to the contrary. In some areas, I don’t know what the best solution is, and I have already stated that too.
I think it’s like Autism, it’s only mentioned if it becomes “problematic”.
In which case, I don’t remember your fix for LE’s bland itemisation (but I do remember you mentioning it a lot. Ask my wife & my parents what they think about my memory…
lol, alright. Many of those suggestions are present in the trade threads, so if you have only been closely following this one (or simply not those ones), it might be easier to miss. Let me pull one of the more detailed ideas for you.
Since they are lists, I dropped them behind spoiler tags to minimize the “spam” of a huge wall of text for those that don’t want to read through them.
Bars on the windows.
I had the same sensation playing D3 trying to level up gems at the end of grifts “90% chance of success” fail, fail, fail, success. I’d jokingly call this “Blizzard math” with my brother. Of course, the roll of the die on Blizzard’s end was just fine I’m sure, it’s just easy to fall into the trap of weighing unlikely failures much higher cause they hit you in the feels.
That has not been my experience at all. I have had plenty of T6 items drop that I was able to craft into decent/good items that were either direct slot upgrades, allowed me to upgrade a different slot, or allowed me to rearrange some passives/skill points in a more powerful direction.
And? It’s apparently taking you a lot of effort to get the best gear. What problem do you think you’re seeing with good gear being relatively easy and the absolute best gear being very hard?
If we think of gear quality on a scale of A to Z, I think most players find “good enough” gear for early/mid echoes around M or so. If I’m reading @Shrukn correctly, the problem is that the slope from A to M is very shallow while going from N to Z is extremely steep. It doesn’t feel good because the game up to that point as given you a set of expectations and then sharply begun to violate them.
He can correct me if I’m not interpreting him correctly, of course.