Craft Fake % succes

General
83

Without seeming confrontational, I must admit I find all the crafting threads very odd…
Yes the system may not be perfect yet but I honestly do not understand all the emotion & frustration in these threads…

I use the exact same system that everyone else has yet I regularly craft T18+ items and quite often T20s… One in every 10 is probably a good end game BiS slot item with ideal or almost ideal affixes for a particular build but all are useful in some way or form depending on build requirements.

I did a quick count on new forges since 0.8.2 and I forged:
11 x t20
2 x t19
6x t18
2x T17

Of these, most of the t18/t19s are ideal affix gear for specific builds… a one or two of the T20s. most of the T20s are Okish in terms of affix selection but usually have one less than ideal affix so are likely not BiS for end-game

I have forged plenty more before this and honestly never really had such a polarising view on it… Yes… it has issues - the devs have made leaps and bounds in addressing things but to me it works fine and I like that it comes with the perceived high potential for failure… in fact, I would hate it if every craft just worked… I think that would be like firing up a savegame editor and ruining any hope of some fun…

What i have realised over the odd 800h of play is that you need a few rules around forging to enjoy the experience more… If anyone is interested here are a summary of mine:

  1. Never Ever Ever craft on a primary piece of gear you are currently using. Just dont. Murphy is NOT your friend and he will have fun at your expense. Only craft on something new. No exceptions.

  2. You cannot forge a white drop to a T20 - just forget it - the odds are not in your favour and I dont think EHG intended for you to do this. In fact, dont use whites for ANY crafting period - I dont care how good the implicits are…

  3. You dont need greater than T13/14 for the early stages of the game - you barely even need any crafting imho till you hit lvl50ish because everything dropping is likely to be an upgrade on its own. You dont need more than T15/16 for most of the early end-game content… realistically I have found T18/19/20 only really beneficial when you start hitting empowered content.

  4. You dont need T5s for everything, you need a combination of affixes across your gear that matches what your build needs at the levels you are at. E.g. you dont need T5 poison resist on every single item that you can have poison resist on… If you only need another 10% resist, then settle on a good T2/3 and leave it.

  5. Magic number 8… I figure that you can only realisitically/regularly/successfully craft about 8 tiers onto anything before it breaks. So base your starting piece of uncrafted gear on what your target total Tier is… So if you want T20s, then dont craft on less than T12s… As a general rule obviously - for me its anecdotal based on my experiences crafting but there may be some math involved - I couldnt be bothered to work it out.

  6. Exalted items are a great crafting base. Mainly because they usually have lower instability AND the additional tier already in place can make a big difference to how affixes can be spread over various gear… One extra tier can mean not needing to push the craft on another piece of gear to get what your build needs.

  7. Maths is your friend. But only to a point of watching the % failure - Nothing else. Use Stability Glyphs to try to keep instability down as much as possible when crafting on lower tiers with high success rates. When it gets around 70% then wing it if you are not worried about a fracture or change to Guardian… Make a rule for yourself that you will never push a tier beyond a base % success rate - this is all about feelings - personally I could care less if something fractures so I tend to push it, even if something has as low as a 50% success rate. Obviously less than that is just silly buggers…

  8. A set crafting sequence is Ok but doesnt always work I dont think that there is a real specific sequence of performing the actual process of crafting… For me it all depends on Stability - if I am getting lucky and have a generally low instability then I have found that i can push a single affix to T5 and then move onto the next… Other times I have found that its better to round robin the affixes to similar levels as i go… Generally I default to alternating the two best affixes on gear and then if they successfully hit T5 each, I will do the same for the next two… Sometimes I will do the same but for the best 3 but I never do it for all 4 at the same time.

  9. Each craft is its own event Just because you managed to craft an item to t15 has zero impact on the next item you craft… Each fracture has zero impact on the next item you attempt to craft… Dont count sucesses and failures… that is a demon of another kind and will only eat you whole. Approach crafting fresh each time.

  10. There will always be another drop to craft on… Seriously… I ignore more than half of the T12s that regularly drop for me… If something fractures, who cares, there is PLENTY of loot in this game and you WILL find something else…

I no longer have any negative view of crafting after using these rules and while its nice to get a juicy T20 with decent affixes, I honestly dont feel like every single craft has to be this and I dont expect it… Failures dont bother me at all because by the time the item fails, its still pretty good and on the occassion that a damaging fracture occurs, I just shatter it and move on to the next…no problem whatsoever…

Hope that helps someone…

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84

I fully trust the % odds, but I also understand OP stance, which I think was kinda badly explained.

Past 4xT3 we are looking at a triple/quadruple 75-60% (roughly) attempt for T4, then another pass at like 50% for T5.
This justifies/explains what OP meant by “9/10 brick”.

In truth i think it is more like a 1 in 100s success.
As mentioned already a 4xT5 is almost unrealistical from a blank base, this means that you: need to drop the right base with the right affix.
I am kinda fine with it ideally (especially now with the loot filter), but it’s still to be considered as an added RNG wall.

But it doesnt end here. Not only you need to luck out on a random base+affix, you have to add that if you drop the right affix together with spurious ones, you need to go with rune of removals which is an ADDED and BIGGER rng wall

We are looking at this example: good affix + 2 bad ones → Removal attempt nr1 chances 2/3 then attempt nr2 chances 1/2 (fifty fifty ouch) → proceed with the normal crafting.

Now add to this t6/t7 affix for yet another RNG wall. The right base, the right affix, the right tier of t6/t7, the right removals, then good luck with multiple passes of 80-50% crafts. And don’t forget farming for those super rare “class affix”

I think it is not “9/10 brick” more like 1 in 1000 bricks. It may be fine for someone, but i personally cannot justify and find it a big waste of time to be nolifing 1k hours just for a single char/item set.

85

I’d rather say never risk damaging fractures on gear you’re currently using (or at most take that sweet, sweet 5% risk, but no more).

I think you’re mostly right, but here are the rules I set for myself.

High potential item with good tiers to start with (at least 2x ideal T4-5 affixes with no trash ones):

  • Rune of Stability raising most important affix(es) until 75-80% risk of fracture. (Stopping at 80% if high priority upgrade)
    Switch to the second highest priority affix until same failure risk as above.
    Now switch to Guardian and raise affixes in order of importance to T5 until 5-10% risk of damaging fracture.

For lower potential items (meaning highly desirable affixes but at a lower tier meaning they need to be put through higher risk in order to be usable, usually 2x T3-T4), I apply the same method as above but go as low as 65-70% during the stability phase.

I’d almost never go above 10% damaging, but 15% could be a risk to take if I still consider the item to be subpar. Feeling the need to push any higher than that would mean I made a mistake choosing the base.

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86

I can’t help but feel like many of the “problems” people have with LE’s crafting come from trying to approach it the same way they would a certain other game’s “crafting” instead of understanding that this system is different and must be used in a different way. For example, the number of people I have seen on the forums and in chat lamenting that they “brick” their items after trying to craft a T20 starting with a white base is genuinely shocking to me. And it seems to me that many people who have complaints are looking only at the surface of the system - the control they have over the affixes - but stopping short of looking deeper to understand that they must use that control with thought and strategy instead of just mashing the Upgrade button and expecting greatness.

So, many of the suggestions I read in threads like this feel to me like thinly veiled asks for a “Generate Exactly The Item I Want” button. I have known the frustration of Fracturing a craft at a high success chance, and yeah when it happens it really sucks, but I remind myself that the amount of control I have over crafting has to be balanced in some way and I think other people need to do the same. I don’t like fake slot machine crafting any more than anyone else, but having as much control over success rate as some people seem to want is not healthy for the game either. I prefer this kind of control with this kind of balance to some of the alternatives, personally.

All that being said, one area I do think it would be good to improve is how visible the possibility of failure is, and its consequences. The new UI makes the success chance so much more prominent than the Fracture chances that it’s really easy to forget that you can fail. It seems to me that a common perspective is to expect success with something like 80% and be mad at failure, when it would be more appropriate to expect failure and be happy with success at even something as high as 80%. I won’t pretend to be a UI/UX guy but that might be worth playing with to help players set more appropriate expectations?

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87

I realize you’re a bit more on the fence in regards to the crafting system and not hardcore against it, but I’ll quote you anyway because you made me think of something.

Relatively speaking, this is the most lenient ARPG crafting system I’ve experienced in terms of RNG.

This is basically crafting in Grim Dawn. You tell the blacksmith to craft X base item. It’ll have 1-4 affixes (2 pre, 2 suff).

It’s entirely random from start to finish and you can’t affect the final result, what’s more is that a lot of the rolls can have a power range where the lowest rolls is half of the highest.

Just getting 3 desired affixes this way can take many hundreds of crafts, and it’s still considered easier than just farming items and hoping for it to drop.

As a result, all builds use the predetermined “Epic” and “Legendary” items whilst considering “Rare” items as the utmost minmax luxury.

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88

For me it’s exactly the opposite, the more i use the system the better it felt.

It’s just about expectations.

We still ahve to remember that this crafting system is 100% determinsitic in terms of outcome.
The only “bad” thing that can happen besides fracturing would be a critical success of the the least important affix, making further crafts on important affixes a little less unlikely, but this happens very rarely on already close to 15/T20 items anyway.

I also think alot of people might not look out or hunt for the correct items as crafting bases.

Just by the shear amount of loot filters i already have seen that totally hide blue items, it make me sad =C

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89

Yeah, I know where you’re coming from. The sound of an item fracturing cuts into my soul. Which is saying something. I still prefer it to PoE’s endless throwing crap against a wall & hoping something sticks (to be clear, that you have to spam currency on an item & hope you get some decent tiers of some affixes that are useful).

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90

This is one of the reasons I consider PoE’s crafting to be among the worst in the genre.

Yep. It will brick your item 100% of the time! :wink:

Jokes aside, I just dislike both systems. I feel like people get caught up on false binaries on this, like it has to have RNG no matter what. GD’s is a little better in some ways. Still has that pesky RNG, but it’s more feasible to just make a bunch of something to get something close to what you’re after, but many of these item bases already have implicits you want.

It’s hard to say what a “good” system might look like, but I’m tempted to point to Dark Cloud for some inspiration. The idea that you might start with something basic, grow it into something that suits your needs, and customize it along the way… sounds really attractive, especially if it’s less reliant on RNG.

I think the current system attempts this at a very basic level, but doesn’t have that “growth” step that made Dark Cloud so much more satisfying.

91

All your tips are great. It’s exactly how to use the current system to make the most out if it and describes what to expect.

But:

I share this feeling.

Early crafting feels nice and is very easy. Its deterministic because you will have more success than failures. You don’t care that much for your gear and you don’t fail that much because your chances for success are high. If you fail you get similar bases relatively easy, because gear doesn’t need to fit in that perfectly.

But the further you progress the higher the chances for failure. Later you get to a point, where you have 90% of your gear fractured and 10 is at high risk so you don’t craft further. You then rely on rng to find item with specific affix combinations and then craft successfully.

I just xant count how many items I have on my chars, currently that have not optimal stats, but I fail to upgrade because every item with better affix combinations fractures too early to be an improvement.

The new monolith helps with that as the rewards are relatively target farmable (exalted helmets, rare rings, etc.).

But the crafting system is something that creates more situations of frustration than excitement. After all the failures I personally don’t feel lucky if I get a t20 item. It feels more that I deserved it as a compensation for all the fail attempts I had to go through.

All the reasons behind the system are reasonable. If crafting was too easy, the whole itemisation would feel to easy. That’s what I’ve told people in the past, too.

But this doesn’t change the fact that crafting is no crafting, but a gambling system. And the irreversible fracture mechanic is something you usually see in Asia grinders. It’s a slot machine.

Other games have less layers of rng. Crafting is always successful, the rng is only with finding the right materials to need for crafting. That’s something I’m used to and what I like. I’d rather have shards being much much more rare, but crafting will be always successful.

The grind might be the same. But not finding a rare material you need to craft is less frustrating than finding mats easily but bricking the items when crafting.

Or implement a mechanic that let’s me use very rare materials to

  1. Craft with 100% success or
  2. Repairs fractures

At the beginning i liked the crafting a lot. But with the time I’ve spent in this game, my perception has changed.

ARPGs are grindy, that’s not the issue. But it’s not the grind but how it is done. Some people like high risk, high reward. I prefer slower but steady (guaranteed) success. Give me a progress bar and let me grind to fill it. But give me that damn reward guranteed, when I’m at 100%.
How would you feel, if you’d level up 100% faster but only had a 50% guarantee to actually level up?

3 Likes
92

This is really close to my approach too. I think it’s weird people are trying to assume the problem is with people not knowing how to use it rather than that the system inherently triggers negativity bias more than positivity bias simply due to human psychology.

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93

Nailed it.

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94

Honestly I get what you and others are saying… I really do… Thats why I prefaced my post with the statement that its not perfect… I dont think anything LE does will be perfect but its probably got a ways to go before it reaches a happy medium. I just really hope it doesnt end up with everyone and their dog running around with perfectly rolled T20 gear. Sure it will not but hey…

I suppose my general view on this is very much related to how I play games. Its obviously not a common thing, but I spend more time trying to figure out how to play within the parameters I am given than worrying about how to change it to something I would prefer or that I think would be better. I suppose its this approach that makes me less frustrated about things… Not saying I like every game I play and I will definitely stop playing a game if I find that how the game wants me to do something sucks beyond my tolerances but it does make for a more relaxed time overall… :wink:

2 Likes
95

It was intended as a tip rather than “here’s what you need to do to stop hating and instead start loving the crafting system.”.

I love GD but outside of crafting epic/legendary items, it has an absolutely terrible crafting system for rares. What’s that, you crafted 500 boots and only got a single pair with the 1 desired affix and another decent one? Wow, that’s damn lucky.

Pic related, it’s what 20 million iron bits look like:

https://i.imgur.com/mQUYM8k.png

Just so people understand, there are 285 prefixes and 544 suffixes these boots can roll, additionally, only half of those are the higher tiered “rare” type affixes, and an item doesn’t even have to roll both a pre and suf, and instead leave it blank.

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96

I understood that. I was just highlighting how odd it is that people are assuming other people can’t/haven’t figured this game out and want to form their points around that assumption.

I agree, mostly, but the base implicits on a lot of rares you can craft make it so you might be able to choose 1 of 20 or 30 suffixes that are ‘close enough’ even if it doesn’t land on “of Kings.” To truly min-max your build, however… you probably should just get an item editor, lol. That system does have its weaknesses too. The difference is that it seems a lot easier to make something usable with that system than with LE’s XCOM-style crafting.

https://i.imgur.com/ow012BU.png

One thing that might help a bit, though, is that instead of the craft being strictly pass/fail, have a step between success and fracture which is just “Failed, but nothing happens.”

I don’t think it would eliminate the core problems of this system, but it might be a bit more palatable.

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97

I take a little exception with the XCOM comparison because you have a real world representation of the scenario that makes the percentage seem ridiculous. That’s not what’s happening here at all.

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98

Something like critical success but when it would otherwise have fractured the item, nothing happens, would be a good addition (though should be at a slightly higher rate than crit success).

But like you said, if someone is dissatisfied with the RNG’y nature of the system, this is just adding another layer on top of it.

Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the system so it’s hard for me to think of solutions for the things people dislike about it.

What games? Western MMO’s like WoW where all crafted items are identical? Again in terms of RNG in ARPG crafting, this is very lenient.

How do you define “success”? Anything besides terminal failure?
Your system just switches the value of shards and a good base around. Now bases are worth less and all you need is a dumptruck of material. But looting material is far less exciting than an item with nice affixes.

Thing is, if the loot is gotten by RNG and the stat values are determined by RNG, how would you realistically make a crafting system with no RNG at all that is balanced by being neither a waste of time nor the only way of getting gear?

We both know what makes ARPGs grindy, of course it’s the hunt for loot.
But what game in the genre offers a guarantee system similar to what you describe?

99

That’s fair, but the binary nature of those failures seems ridiculous–especially when it’s like 2-5% chance to fail. It just hard bricks the item, period. It just doesn’t feel good when crafting boils down to a game of Russian Roulette.

100

Well for me its still broken, 320 hours played and two tier 20 items.

Hence why im no longer playing outside maybe 1 hour a week. When I check this thread though and see people talk about how easy it is to make tier 20 items it just reinforces my desire to not play b/c I know im the one getting screwed over.

102

I’ll repeat the question I posed RawSuicide:

Thing is, if the loot is gotten by RNG and the stat values are determined by RNG, how would you realistically make a crafting system with no RNG at all that is balanced by being neither a waste of time nor the only way of getting gear?

Or maybe you simply want to make the RNG of crafting more lenient, rather than remove its chance completely? But again it comes down to balance, if you want to keep the concept of the current crafting system you still need to figure out a way to not make the quality of the item base redundant.

103

I sort of answered this before you even asked, but I’m really torn between whether the RNG should be removed entirely in favor of another system or if it just needs more adjustments made to make this one not just tolerable, but actually enjoyable.

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