Crafting Changes We're Exploring

General
41

Hi Dev’s
I’m not normally a voice on any crafting issue because I rarely use that feature, but I’ll share some thoughts in case they help.

I have a background as a long time POE player, yet I never use crafting there either. It is too much like work, too RNG dependent, and very poor on an enjoyment vs time investment scale for me.

In Last epoch I rarely craft either. It is also too much like work. I’ve crafted maybe 50 items over the last 2 years and not enjoyed any of it. Here are the steps you currently ask of players and my thoughts on them:

Step 1 - Collect affixes = fine, I start collecting them. Over time I, realise that there is only space on items for “essential” defences, which appear to be critical strike avoidance and glancing blow. This seems to me to make 95% of the affixes I picked up useless. It also makes it seem like I should not start crafting until I find glancing blow affixed and critical strike avoidance. Since I find so few of these, I figure I have to save them for a good base item…

Step 2 - find a base item = This has traditionally been really time consuming (maybe the loot filter will help). It already takes me long enough to sift through the yellow items that drop, I now have no will left to even look at blue items. Eventually I find enough items that my level 60 character can have about 30% resistances and 800 health. This character gets oneshot from any positioning mistake.

Step 3 - Find another base item that you can afford to lose with crafting. Again, very time consuming. Start crafting, it fractures. Try next, it fractures. etc. Eventually after much time, I can craft some items that might raise my resistances to 45% and health to 950. Perhaps by now I have some regen, crit avoidance, glancing blow, and some nice synergies with damage. This character still gets oneshot from any positioning mistake, but it might be a few arenawaves/monlith runs later.

Step 4 - Analyse what I got for all my time - a few extra arena waves. Did I enjoy the process of sifting through loot? Did I feel like I gained anything tangible when the crafting didn’t fracture, I got a tier 5 affix and my armour went from 1000 to 1100? No, not really.

Compare this with the passive and skill trees, where I happily spend hours planning builds. In this aspect of the game, I can kill things - anything - to gain power in these areas, there are really interesting interactions and achievable outcomes. Once I earn a passive point it never gets taken away.

Step 5 - Decide whether to continue grinding a high level character or just soft cap myself at wherever a build needs to start crafting. I choose the latter so I don’t have to use the crafting feature.

I am aware that crafting gives a lot of other players enjoyment, so I’m not pushing for radical change. I think I’d really enjoy considering whether to risk going from tier 4 to tier 5, or whether to put on a flat modifier or a % increase modifier if I felt like getting to those choices was within reach (as per passive choices or skill tree choices). At the moment I do not feel like they are within reasonable reach. Standing in their way are things like fractures, unreasonable grinds, unreasonable RNG, and a disconnect between the improvement gained from crafting vs the improvement required to have any effect on late game content.

5 Likes
42

I’ll try to provide some brainstorming with a more psychological approach.

SFX and VFX for fractures.

If the loss is slowly displayed in a manner which doesn’t jump-scare the player, the outcomes of the player emotions would be far less chaotic and impulsive. On fracture it should simply be the opposite of one of the most unpleasant sounds and effects possible - a window cracking. It should be a slow, low-pitched shut down sound with the item slowly fading or cracks forming slowly.

Last chance mechanic

This would provide the player a single craft of their choice after which the item is guaranteed to fracture. This inherent loss would actually provide a great positive effect, as the player feels more agency over their actions and feels grateful for being able to as an example upgrade the affix which they want the most up to T5 as their last craft. This also is helps the player to prepare for the imminent funeral.
I think this could be really useful in some form of implementation!

Allow only minor fracture

Damaging and destructive fractures aren’t worth it because again, I’m placing my bets on the fact that the most player disappointment comes from the readiness factor. If a player gets a far worse outcome than which was expected - the emotional output will also be much more negative than it would have been otherwise.

Crafting philosophy

This would require more balancing regarding ratios but I cannot stress it enough - work with positive effects, not negative effects. Negative effects should be done in a manner which the player is fully ready to endure and is cognizant about. As an example with the Rune of Refinement, the player is fully aware that they’re most likely going to lose the item - this is not the case with crafting right now where the expectations and readiness is applied for the opposite. The lack of readiness is also the reason why people get so aggravated over 90% fractrures and create narratives of a bugged system - there’s another crafting thread which displays this pretty well right now.

Want to be fractured

Maybe you could implement methods for the players to be happy about getting the item fractured? What if you add a special sparkly sparkle dye which can only be applied to a fractured item? An enchant? The player’s thoughts would be immediately diverted to thinking about decorating or enchanting the item after the fracture, not about how unfortunate it is that it fractured.

1 Like
43

getting a destructive fracture is so rare that I don’t think it really matters what a Destructive fracture actually does. By the time you get here, you have to be very lucky already, surviving a lot of minor and damaging fracture %.

1 Like
44

Great start to addressing the issues around crafting. Only time will tell how these changes could affect it.

Very good that you are also considering the psychological aspects by realising that the system is focussed on failure rather than success. Even if the math doesnt change, the emotional triggers are important to how people feel the system works for them. Hoping more of this is to come.

45

That’s an interesting question, would the system be worse if it only had minor fractures? From the player’s point of view probably not since they still can’t get the item improved any more so they’d likely press further in their crafting attempts. From a design point of view I don’t know, there would be less risk involved in crafting but the same reward as before.

Clearly the Guardian glyphs would need to be changed from downgrading a fracture by 1 tier to simply reducing the chance to fracture by 25%.

1 Like
46

First and most importantly, what a great game you guys are developing. It has so much potential and I love to see the journey on how it progress.

As for items/crafting I must admit that it is a bit unclear in the beginning but gets very straight forward. I really like that it is less RNG related and more risk focused. That is a good thing.

The only aspect I struggle with as someone that REALLY want to tweak and micro manage a character is the fact that you only have 4 prefix/suffix. I don’t know but it feels a bit underwhelming. I would love to see something like a 5th slot that can be used for special crafts from unique fragments or something (like changing some behaviors of a skill or someting). In short, I would love to see some more parameters to play around with.

Anyway, thank you for a great game and looking forward to see where this is going.

47

Why create meaningless risk like that? If there ought to be risk - it should not be something which you did not consider. If shown that there’s only 5% chance of a bad thing happening - we still don’t consider with it because 95% is more than 5%.

Don’t want to remove major fractures? Make a scroll which can improve two tiers but has 50% chance of a major fracture and 50% success - no bad surprises, no unexpected events. Although there are more variables to it, this idea would be a good example of how risk and reward play into the thesis which I presented in my previous post.

Yes, in order to accomodate more positive effects, the ratios have to be balanced all around.

1 Like
48

I think from a design point of view, it’s not about “meaningless risk”, it’s about whether the existing system has a risk/reward profile. If it does then removing the higher fractures removes some of the risk without removing the reward therefore it moves the system from the dev’s desired point on the risk/reward graph closer to zero on the risk axis. I was trying to disentangle this point from anything about the player’s point of view/perception.

49

Could you explain to me what’s the instrumentality of going alongside that path? Crafting is so player’s perspective centered that I cannot see how it could ever be separated.

50

I really like the direction of this idea. I also would like a Level 2 failure to reduces the affix I’m crafting on and leave the other affixes alone. So you could craft your most important affix first and once that is done, it is somewhat safe (at least as far a level 2 failure is concerned). But maybe this makes it too easy to craft good gear, so the chances for failures may have to be adjusted.

51

Yes. That was what I had in mind :slight_smile:

1 Like
52

It’s called balance & where the devs want crafting to be in the scheme of things.

For example, they could totally remove the chance of failure & that would be even nicer for the player! No scary shatter sounds! No bricking your nice shiny! Everyone would have 4 x t5 affixes on every item as soon as they met the level requirements!

53

Clearly this still does involve the player’s perspective as you’re making implications about content becoming meaningless and too easy without any sort of loss. Your example is simply and only giving a player’s perspective and nothing else.

To remove the player’s perspective is to implement mathematical modality on presuppositions about how the system ought to be without explaining or implying anything about the potential player’s feelings about it.

I have stated multiple times that the crafting ratios should be reconfigured to accomodate more positive effects in the system.
My point has been that the players should and would be taking risks on their time while they can still choose to make these dangerous moves themselves while being fully and accurately cognizant about it.
You have to make sure that the players expectations and mental maps are accurate.

To provide you some examples as well:

If you see a monolith modifier with “99% chance to get double rewards 1% chance to die at 30% boss health” and you run this modifier but you die twice in a row to it, you will ragequit and moan about it for the rest of the week; although the dangers were communicated to you!

If you see a monolith modifier with “50% chance to get double rewards 50% chance to die at 30% boss health” and you run it, then you will not be disappointed nor angry if you die twice to it because your expectations and mental maps were adjusted accordingly.

54

Yeah, you’re not quite getting it.

The devs have a vision of what they want the game to look like, how the systems work and what the intended risk/reward is of various things like mobs, crafting & the gambler. Yes?

Obviously the devs need to take into account how the player is going to feel about a thing, but first the devs need to know how they feel about it. The devs are unlikely to implement a change that totally breaks how they want the game to work. The devs are unlikely to add a button that spawns an item with 4x t7 affixes on request, no matter how much the player might want it.

55

And what is that which they want derivative from? Teleological question (:

56

It’s a game, not an opportunity for word salad.

57

Sheesh!

I was simply asking what is that which the developers end goal depends on and comes from?
To answer it now myself - it all boils down to the player’s perspective.

Money? Player’s perspective.
Satisfaction? Player’s perspective.
Population? Player’s perspective.
Engagement? Player’s perspective.
Design approval? Player’s perspective.

Making a non-statement that the developers might have a different agenda which is disentangled from the player’s perspective without giving an explanation what that ought to be based on and on which premises, is the third word which starts this sentence.

58

So why don’t they just make a mobile F2P game? They’re wildly popular now, that would get the most of those metrics you gave.

It’s not a non-statement, you just don’t like it. Everything starts with the dev’s agenda & their viewpoint. Devs don’t always acquiesce to the players desires. If they did, GGG would have implemented an auction house for consumables, but they haven’t because that doesn’t fit their view on how they want trade in their game.

59

While I personally have enjoyed the chance for item fracturing and thus ruining the item (even if it sometimes feels frustrating), but that said, I like the new changes as well.

For critical success, I would definately prefer a reduction of instability over extra tier. Because there are cases when extra tier may be actually an unwanted result (especially while leveling).

60

That’s a false, black & white dichotomy. It absolutely does not follow that mobile F2P games take care of any or all of the plausible goals which were presented to you.

If nobody would buy the game because the developers lacked the ability to take into perspective the player’s perception, then this game would not already exist; exactly the same formula applies for all the plausible goals which they have.

I haven’t made a statement that it’s not important, I’m saying that the foundation for these agendas lie in the player’s perspective. We’re not arguing which one is more important and I haven’t said that the developer’s viewpoint doesn’t matter, we’re arguing if an argument can be made without the player’s perspective.

A false equivalent. The formula is not:

  • A) Considering the player’s perspective = auction house
  • B) Not considering the player’s perspective = not auction house

The reason why they don’t have the auction house is the proof of them absolutely having the player’s perspective in mind by being able to understand the player’s neuroeconomy of the character progression throughout the playthrough.

EVEN IF

They did add the auction house, it can still be made on the premises of it being birthed due to the player’s perspective.