Crafting/Fracturing Mechanic

[UltraboltNovacrunch]

@Vatni

I was trying to politely get this message across. Not sure it did, but I also wouldn’t want to change how anybody is. We all have google and dictionary.com right?

I just think its funny. She must be fun at parties. I think this crowd can be as easily impressed with half the number of syllables.

[Llama8]

@kiss_me_quick

I understand your analogy but I have to reject it because it lacks some important parallels so I’ll appropriate your analogy with what I deem crucial ones and reflect it with a question.

Analogies aren’t binary, you don’t have to accept/reject them, there is scope inbetween to accept the bits that get across an idea. If an analogy went into such detail that it covered every single detail about a situation, it wouldn’t be an analogy, it would be a detailed description of the situation.

While I agree on some level, I’d still like to hear the instrumentality of the players knowing the risks and not working with their intuition and the excitement of the unknown.

You’re going to need to explain why you put “instrumentality” in there as the sentence doesn’t make much sense to a native English speaker.

If PoE displayed the percentages of an item having 0.2% chance of having acceptable affixes to wear through the currency used - I don’t think the game would exist.

I understand your analogy but reject it because it lacks some important parallels… In PoE, if you don’t get the affixes you want, you just keep on crafting, the item doesn’t fracture preventing crafting unless you use a Vaal orb on it. It’s a pretty key distinction between the two games’ crafting systems. If you could keep on crafting an item in LE and when a fracture happened it just reduced the levels of one or more affixes, that might be different.

They know that with and without percentages. Losing percentages doesn’t mean that the control is lost but let’s say that the control is lost through the removal of percentages - another method can simply replace it to create a new illusion of control.

Yes, they would need to change the crafting system, not just remove the percentages.

What if they got rid of fractures, but crafting an affix to a higher tier required more shards with a random chance for the craft to not work & consume the shards (like a fracture) but not break the item so you could carry on crafting but getting to a higher tier of an affix would have a higher chance of not-working-but-consuming-your-shards? You’d still have an increasing cost to get the high tier affixes, the player wouldn’t loose their item if it didn’t work but it would make getting high tier crafted rare affixes harder. It might also make found items more useful.

Would that remove some of the frustration of crafting? Probably, though it would shift it to the “damn, I’ve lost a load of rare affix shards”. But at least they wouldn’t have lost the item.

Edit:

@Vatni

Also I liek numbarz!

Numbarz are your friends.

[kiss_me_quick]

@Llama8

Analogies aren’t binary

They are binary in the sense of them either being accurate representations of analogous scenarios which the discourse is about or not.

We were talking about player agency:

• Being blindfolded = unable to produce any action by being unable to perceive things, superpositioning agency

• Not being aware of future outcomes = able to produce actions, not having agency over future effects

Correct me if I’m wrong here.

@Llama8

You’re going to need to explain why you put “instrumentality” in there as the sentence doesn’t make much sense to a native English speaker.

Why do we have to have it communicated to us? We know the risks and now what important role does it play in our adventure?
Instrumentality = usability as a tool, no?

@Llama8

I understand your analogy but reject it because it lacks some important parallels

My mistake here in not being clear enough - I’m talking about the perception of possible outcomes, not what outcomes they produce. I believe seeing 0.2% odds of success is too scary of a number for players to work with to a paralyzing effect.

@Llama8

Probably, though it would shift it to the “damn, I’ve lost a load of rare affix shards”. But at least they wouldn’t have lost the item.

Yeah!

I’m also suspecting that the larger numbers might come in handy here for our imagination! If we’d have no percentages for crafting and we’d use your method mentioned above - do you think that it would be completely fine and maybe even good to not show percentages of really small numbarz of success rate?
This is regarding to:

@kiss_me_quick

They know that with and without percentages. Losing percentages doesn’t mean that the control is lost

Also my exclamation marks are simply enthusiastic as I am a very enthusiastic person!!! !!! !!! !!! !! !!!

[LokiGoC]

So, sorry to come back to the thread after an extended leave of abscence, but I thought I should probably weigh in on my own topic lol.

Risk is all well and good, players want it and usually they can opt for it by choosing something harder than the base game, for example Hardcore players, but in this scenario, fracturing is part of the base game.

I will never be ok with bricking items, it does not fill me with excitement, it fills me with anxiety. Then, when they inevitably fracture, all I feel is frustration and anger. At no point during the crafting process am I having fun, or feeling excited, or even relaxed. This is not what I play games for and if this system is kept then unfortunately Last Epoch will lose me as a fan.

I’m not saying the system is bad, and that people can’t enjoy it, they absolutely can and it might seem perfect to other players that have not had trouble with it or enjoy those risks, but I am not one of them. At the base game level, normal mode, there should not be something that loses or wrecks or bricks your items (however you want to put it) as that is not gonna be okay with a good portion of the player base. Something like the fracturing system should be something you opt into, not a main feature.

Can you imagine saying to your friends “a main feature of the game is that you can brick your items if you are unlucky!”… I have said this to my friends, some of them like playing Hardcore too, but they have all made a “ugh” sound at that and proceeded to not buy the game because that sounded terrible to them. They are staying away from it at the moment purely based on the crafting system. Same thing drove us all away from Wolcen too. We are all mainly Grim Dawn players though, and that doesn’t involve a crafting system, you just farm what you need and the RNG is on what the item drops with (which can still be super hard to get the right items for your build), so take that with a grain of salt I guess, but still.

Crafting as a whole should be a method to improve your game/build and help push your character further than you have before, not be a game in itself of risk and gambling to end up bricking everything you’ve farmed and end up back at square one, to then go run the same monolith levels again for another 2 hours before it bricks all your shit again, and end up making no progress at all for an entire day of gaming.

That does not feel satisfying to me, that is frustrating and feels like a plateau or like the game can get stagnant if you cop a run of bad luck with crafting. The way it works currently there is all likelihood that this can happen too, as is the nature of probability and chance. Who would ever feel ok with stagnating or plateauing and feeling like you are making no progress purely due to bad luck? Even locking your items so you can’t make them better is counter intuitive to progress and the reward scheme that most games base themselves off.

I’ll feel rewarded if I work for it, and would love a system that rewards playing and earning your items, etc. Make the fights hard, make the rewards/drops worth it, but make everything earnable through playing. But a system based on random chance as to whether you progress or not? That is not a good system. There will be people that plateau and quit with how the game is currently. This crafting system does not favour progression.

[kiss_me_quick]

@Vatni

Path’s crafting system is a much more forgiving system.

It’s perceptually & psychologically more forgiving but in any other sense I cannot make the connections.

You need the:

1. Correct base
2. Correct influence
3. Correct ilvl
4. Correct affixes
5. Correct rolls

With:

1. Much less currency
2. Much higher rates of failure
3. You will practically never get max tiers, not to mention rolls
4. Getting even correct affixes of the lowest tiers is noteworthy

You can still lose the item:

1. Vaal orbs
2. Sacrifice altar
3. Orb of annulment
4. Getting a bad affix which destroys the build( Elemental Overload, Wise Oak etc.)
5. Simply getting a low tier roll even if you have 4 other mods max T1( phys on a foil)

@Vatni

I know this is putting a lot of words in your mouth, err post, so no one think that please! But, I feel this is an important distinguishment for everyone to understand. Le isn’t Poe, GD, etc. It’s LE. Comparisons can be made all day to the other giants, but doesn’t mean it matters, at all, in any other game.

Why can’t we compare crafting exhaustion in these two games? Or what is it that we can’t compare? I’m not really certain what exactly are you talking about.

@Vatni

I am sooo not okay with this method of ‘tweaks’,

Why not?

[Llama8]

@kiss_me_quick

Correct me if I’m wrong here.

You’re wrong & apparently missed the point of my bit about analogies, by definition, not being exact matches (“a correspondence or partial similarity”). I’m all for accuracy, but not when it requires a war and peace amount of text to communicate something.

I’m talking about the perception of possible outcomes, not what outcomes they produce. I believe seeing 0.2% odds of success is too scary of a number for players to work with to a paralyzing effect.

Not necessarily, if the cost to attempt is very cheap & the cost of failure is similarly cheap (ie, not loosing the ability to continue to attempt the thing) then I don’t think people would be paralysed.

If PoE’s crafting had an increasing random chance to apply a Vaal orb, it would freak people out (of course, that’s still an iffy metaphor since the crafting systems are so different). Would people be worried if they knew they could brick their item? Would they be more worried if they weren’t told the chance & as far as they knew, the item just broke randomly and capriciously?

All the threads about crafting & fracturing are because most people don’t “get” probability so they start assigning motives and intent to a system that has no malicious intent. I’m pretty sure Boardman said that he fractures a different item because he thought it helped not fracture the item he’s trying to craft!

@boardman21

while i agree, a temporary solution i have found is always fracturing another item before enchanting on the one you want. Doesnt always work, but has helped me and others alot!

That is to LE’s crafting system what leeches are to modern medical procedures…

Edit:

@Vatni

Path’s crafting system is a much more forgiving system.

It’s really, really not.

[Travoas]

This is part of the problem I agree, but also finding some of the shards is extremely rare. I understand some rarity but at level 70+ when you don’t have even on of a number of shards it gets really frustrating, then you use one and you fracture an item you need for your build…

[kiss_me_quick]

@Llama8

apparently missed the point of my bit about analogies

I think I understood you loud and clear - analogies don’t have to be the exact replicas of the scenario presented. I was arguing that they do at least have to have analogous scenarios / content.

@Llama8

You’re wrong

How was I wrong? You don’t have to but I would appreciate if you could elaborate on that as I deemed there being a categorical error - perception vs predictability.

@Llama8

Not necessarily, if the cost to attempt is very cheap & the cost of failure is similarly cheap (ie, not loosing the ability to continue to attempt the thing) then I don’t think people would be paralysed.

You could use the costs in PoE but it should be an exercise in practicing relativity. Which would encourage players to engage more - an extremely small number or not seeing a number at all? Thinking about casinos could help here!

@Llama8

If PoE’s crafting had an increasing random chance to apply a Vaal orb

You are correct in the sense that it’s an important variable to crafting as a whole but I’m not sure why do we have to bring that into this analysis since it only makes this discussion harder? Bricking is a tangent topic which does not have to be a part of the discussion of “perception of percentages” - these can be discussed completely separate from each other.

You are still experiencing losses in PoE in the form of losing currency which does follow with regret - it’s not a game without stakes.

On bricking I would say that if the game would visually display the odds on Vaal orbs as:

25% White socket
25% Brick
25% Nothing
25% Improvement

Then my guess would be that there would be far less people making attempts with Vaal orbs as this brings sense to the players and disillusions them from their imagination of success which in their head previously was let’s say 80% - now probably still not an accurate 25% but definitely lower than their previous abstract sense of 80%.

@Llama8

All the threads about crafting & fracturing are because most people don’t “get” probability so they start assigning motives and intent to a system that has no malicious intent.

What would be your solution to that?

[Vatni]

@kiss_me_quick

It’s perceptually & psychologically more forgiving but in any other sense I cannot make the connections.

This is the only sense I was speaking of given your response above. All we’ve been talking about is the ‘feeling’ of LE’s crafting, right? Have I been out of touch? Oh gods…

You keep referencing ‘exhaustive crafting’, so Ive been trying to keep that frame of mind.
Main issue seems to be it doesnt feel good or is simply disheartening/anger inducing regarding LE’s crafting and losing items. Poe doesn’t have this. Afaik anyway.

@kiss_me_quick

Why can’t we compare crafting exhaustion in these two games? Or what is it that we can’t compare?

Well, to me, since LE’s crafting is wholly different than poe’s, I feel we can’t compare in certain terms. We can compare them on how they work, feel, etc. But saying LE should do this because poe did it right just does t work for me. I don’t think that’s exactly what you’re saying of course, but I just want to be transparent with my thinking. Paths crafting is a different beast than LE’s. I feel it’s too different.

@kiss_me_quick

@Vatni

I am sooo not okay with this method of ‘tweaks’,

Why not?

If a general fix of any problem is to hide it from sight, it’s not going to garner a lot of support. Not from me anyway. Might be the times talking but I like my numbers and data. I need it.

Work has been busy so I fell behind on posting. Meh.

@Llama8

@Vatni

Path’s crafting system is a much more forgiving system.

It’s really, really not.

We merely disagree.

[kiss_me_quick]

I understand your position better now (:

@Vatni

If a general fix of any problem is to hide it from sight, it’s not going to garner a lot of support.

What if almost everyone is miserable and complains about feeling that 90% success is actually 50% failure - is it still worth showing the numbers?
How would you combat it?

[Vatni]

If 90% causes enough issues that people think its 50%, very much sounds like a bug or an emotional/entitled response. Both are not likely currently.

I get your example, but 90 and 50 are extreme. But make the numbers anything you want and I remain the same: What people feel about things is a huge deciding factor in whether they continue to do said thing. In this case, play LE or don’t.

Mike is doing a lot of tests apparently. Any why? Because people feel this crafting system isn’t enjoyable. Mike said the tests show everything is correctly doing what they were programmed to do. Yet EHG still feels they want to change it. Why? Because people feel angry/disheartened about it.

If I made a game, these words are at the bottom of what I want people to describe my game as. I rushed some of this post due to work, but I hope it made the point I am trying to make lol.

[CaiusMartius]

@kiss_me_quick

@Llama8

Put on a blindfold, get into a car (ideally yours) & tell me how in control you feel.

I understand your analogy but I have to reject it because it lacks some important parallels so I’ll appropriate your analogy with what I deem crucial ones and reflect it with a question.

How would you feel if every time you get into a car and wouldn’t know if you’re going to die on the highway today or not? Will you stop driving your car if you did not know what the odds of dying today are?

Table top gamer here. The recent addition of call of Cthulhu introduced an aspect of the game called “pushing”. Call of Cthulhu is based on a percentile roll. Pushing allows you to re-roll a skill check (d100). So you always know the percentile. But with pushing, a failure is actually much worse than a simple failure on a normal roll. However the GM just tell you exactly what that failure would be. If you remove knowing what your skill level is (how good you are at it) this would be a bad game mechanic because it would take away the PLAYER being able to make a better informed decision on risk vs. reward. That DEFINITELY doesn’t feel good.

Essentially removing the “numbers” from the crafting is removing knowing “how good you are at crafting” on this particular roll and therefore taking away a good deal of player control.

[Vatni]

@kiss_me_quick

Then my guess would be that there would be far less people making attempts with Vaal orbs as this brings sense to the players and disillusions them from their imagination of success which in their head previously was let’s say 80% - now probably still not an accurate 25% but definitely lower than their previous abstract sense of 80%.

I did another double take. So I has a question: Are you fine with making the player experience as best it can be through lack of information? Denying information about the game would net result in greater player satisfaction? Genuinely curious, I am so excited about this topic right now lol

[Llama8]

Not wanting to get into a semantic argument about the rest of your post, I’ll just reply to this bit.

@kiss_me_quick

What would be your solution to that?

Either
a) implement a capricious AI that governs whether the crafting attempt is successful & improves the item or bricks it. Then at least the player would have good reason to complain about it.
or
b) as I mentioned above, change it so that what is now the chance to fracture an item becomes:

• minor fractures (the first one the player comes into contact with) becomes a failure to improve the tier of the affix, consumes the shards but does not increase the instability & you can have another go if you so desire (& have the shards)
• major/damaging fracture (where the current affixes are reduced to a random tier below where they were) has the same fail state as the minor failure but also reduces the tier of the affix being crafted by 1-2 tiers, but also reduces the instability by the amount that were added by those tiers (5 instability per tier), otherwise it would be impossible to craft higher tiers as the instability would continue to increase
• destructive fractures (never experienced this, but presumably the item is destroyed) has the same fail state as the major/damaging fracture but reduces several affixes by 1-2 tiers, while still reducing the instability by 5 per tier reduced.

Adding to that, if the number of shards required to do a craft increased with each tier you were trying to craft (so crafting a tier 5 affix would cost 5 shards) that would make crafting in general a bit more punishing to offset the fact that you can continue to craft after “failing” an attempt. They might also want to make shattering items provide a few more shards as well to not make it “too hard” to craft the very rare class-specific affixes.

[Llama8]

@kiss_me_quick

What if almost everyone is miserable and complains about feeling that 90% success is actually 50% failure - is it still worth showing the numbers?
How would you combat it?

Give them a remedial probability class.

Or implement my idea above.

[powiux7]

I did not liked complexity of POE for crafting . I would not want this kind similar have LE.

I suggest make some changes to mechanics of this existing instead changing entirely.
I have to suggest have these changes :
– 1. Do not shatter right away if supposed by current mechanics , instead gives 1 pre-shatter point . Next time it will shatter , also point add also instability by 20% as penalty.
– 2. Each tier should give more value of affixes by 50 % increase value by each tier up to max tier. Max tier should be tier 7
– 3. Unique items should hold minimum 8 affixes with great values than 65% or more .
– 4. Legendary items - up to 6 affixes with greater values of 45 % or more.

[Pauly99]

I confess … every time an item is broken, I scream WTF!!. Until I can’t stand so I stopped playing until Dev improved craft system.

[Vatni]

Did you scream because you felt angry? Robbed? Disheartened? Did you see the %chance to fracture the item? Would you have been less angry/etc if you didn’t see the % chance to fracture before it fractured? Questions for the curious!

[kiss_me_quick]

@Vatni

I get your example, but 90 and 50 are extreme.

You know, I would say that it’s not.
If a player:

• Starts the day with a 90% failing,
• Breaks a very good item fail at 90%
• Repeats to his friend 5x that his craft failed at 90%
• Has a friend who said that his 90% failed
• Reads on the forum that crafting is broken
• Ends the day with a 90% fail

All that over a few hours while having the statistically accurate representation of the success rate over all of the other crafts; then I’m certain that we would have people who would make honest to John statements that 90% is broken and it’s actually 50% in this game.
The scenario provided isn’t utopia either!

@CaiusMartius

Essentially removing the “numbers” from the crafting is removing knowing “how good you are at crafting” on this particular roll and therefore taking away a good deal of player control.

The statement which we’re dissecting is:

@Llama8

you’d be removing all “player agency”

While I agree that your predictability of the future outcome can be lowered with the less information you have( not always), the agency is still not lost. If the numbers would not be presented, players would still be able to recognize patterns and adjust behaviors accordingly without losing any agency while even having a great possibility of being able to have more accurate results in future by relying on a pattern, not a mathematical formula.

@Vatni

I did another double take. So I has a question: Are you fine with making the player experience as best it can be through lack of information? Denying information about the game would net result in greater player satisfaction? Genuinely curious, I am so excited about this topic right now lol

Yes, I would care about the player experience the most above all.
I see this necessity for information as being some sort of dogma, a conviction - a philosophical concept which stands on premises which would collapse immediately once we apply some psychology in the mix.

We’re emotional beings with a very flawed perception and interpretation of the world where more information or how it’s presented can make us more miserable or misinformed even if the source is 100% true. Rationally it might make sense to be more informed about something but metarationally not. This applies to countless things in countless forms - I’m certain if you galvanized your walnuts in your cranium, you would be able to abstract scenarios where knowing more makes you feel worse or be misinformed.

[kiss_me_quick]

@Llama8

destructive fractures

Although I like the direction of at least alleviating the pain and making it more currency heavy while the negative outcomes aren’t so sudden - the issue of:

@Llama8

All the threads about crafting & fracturing are because most people don’t “get” probability so they start assigning motives and intent to a system that has no malicious intent.

would still exist while having the ability to essentially clone this whole thread.