Crafting/Fracturing Mechanic

Feedback and Suggestions
4

magus424: “would be nice if crafting lower tiers gave less instability or something
give you more of a chance of building an item up”

My reply: “I mean I probably wouldn’t mind if the fracturing was just a “you can’t craft any more on this item” instead of potentially ruining the item completely with damaging or destructive fractures… and yeah less instability at lower tiers would work wonders as well, give us “scratch/base crafters” like myself the chance to build the exact items we want with good base innate rolls.”

Jerle: "Damaging Fractures

we need a petition man"

My reply: "Yeah and I know there’s an item you can get from a destructive fracture on, like, (I think) the starter circlet for mages but yeah, I really don’t think I’ll ever like the idea of losing tiers and an item being ruined by sheer chance. It’s like a step away from that whole “Lifebound” bs in TL3 lol nobody likes the idea of losing their item that they’ve worked hard to find/craft to perfection. Leave that as a Hardcore mechanic. Even the hesitantly named Wolcen doesn’t run the risk of you losing your item entirely (though you can still ruin your items in that as well, due to randomness of crafting, which is a big downside to Wolcen too).

I get it though, some people like the risk, some people like the buttock clenching, but not everyone does. I like playing my build, running harder content and trying to push the build further, risking my self on harder challenges like harder monolith levels, but when I have to worry in all that about whether my item is gonna break if I try and improve it too, that’s just an extra level of frustration and rage that I don’t need in my life.

Not only does it mean I can’t safely upgrade any of the items I’m using currently, but it also means that I need to find another better rolled item than the one I’m using and then try and upgrade that (which can potentially end in a ruined item anyway) or have a backup ready to go if I try to upgrade my currently used item, in case it comes crashing down in a fracture. All of this is just extra levels of stuff to manage and every time an item fractures the only thing I feel is frustration and disappointment, that’s not what I play games for.

Even Grim Dawn doesn’t risk you losing items, the mark of a good build there is if you’ve put it together right and geared it right, not if you got lucky on crafting (although it is largely luck through drops there, as there is no real crafting system)."

5

magus424: “On the other hand you can’t go too far to RNG-free crafting or it becomes trivial to create exactly the item you want and then what are you left going for? It’s practically an item editor at that point”

My reply: "Farming and theorycrafting should be what makes a build work, not luck. Ultimately what drove me away from GD was that certain builds couldn’t work unless you got lucky with rolls on random drops, which meant that the unlucky people out there just suffer.

You make the shards harder to find, or make shattering items for the right shards more important, or trading for the right shards a large factor in getting the right stuff for your gear. That way if you are unlucky and don’t find the shards, you can at least farm stuff to trade for the right shards, then use said shards to make your gear, meaning you build it through hard work and not luck. PoE has a similar system with having craft-able stuff as trade currency, etc."

magus424: “but PoE’s currency is RNG on what you get. It would feel really bad being blocked by never ever getting a drop of the right affix, IMO”

My reply: “Yeah which is again something that drove me away from that game ultimately lol”

magus424: “there’s definitely room for tweaks but it’s just a balancing act”

My reply: "You also have the RNG of what value the shard is gonna roll on your item as well though, and the RNG as to whether you get the shards from any items you smash, and the RNG of getting a good drop on the innate base value of the item, and then a huge pool of items/shards/affixes to drop, there’s already plenty of RNG, I just don’t think you need to add losing your item entirely to the pool, even the damaging fracture is too harsh and makes the item useless.

I’d be fine if it fractured meaning you couldn’t craft on it any more (though this is the large portion of the fractures I’ve received that still piss me off every time because they happen really early on) but it gets worse the more you craft onto the item. Honestly I just hate the idea of being completely at the mercy of luck as to whether I get the item I want/need to progress further in the game."

6

The other option I thought of since these posts and replies, was a Scroll of unique rarity, that gives you a guarantee of a successful craft, like a “Master Scroll” or “Scroll of Mastery” or something like that, which would then provide a way of farming for the things you need, meaning that you can craft the perfect item but only if you put in the work to farm the crafting aid.

It means the system largely stays the way it is, but if someone wants to craft the perfect item, it’s a unique rarity so hard to find and must be used wisely, and then you satisfy both kinds of players. For anyone that wants to risk their item crafting without the Scroll of Mastery could do that, but if you have an ideal item and you want to perfect it, you then have the option to, and just like farming uniques for your build, you can farm a scroll to perfect your item for your build as well. It would even make a good trade currency as well, something that could sell really well in trades, giving the people that don’t want to use them something to trade instead.

I honestly think an option like this would provide a way for the more cautious of us out there, and the people that don’t like losing their hard work, to craft safely and perfect our items without having to constantly run the risk of breaking our precious items. And having it be unique rarity and hard to find would make the use of it need to be calculated and not too easy that you can just perfect every item you find. This would hopefully keep balance in the end.

7

While I only skimmed this thread and there are many points that are valid, I would like to point out that crafting is a good idea and as an early access ‘version’ its showing some promise. It definitely needs more work, but I generally do not have such a negative view on its current form.

However, I agree that the actual fracturing mechanic needs to be verified for potential errors as it seems a little to skewed toward failure at the moment. Perhaps the RNG gods have been kind to me and allowed me to create items with 3 T5 affixes but at the same time the number of fractures I have experienced that should have had a low probability (2%) make me wonder if the formula for the instability of an item needs some tweeking.

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8

TBH, I TLDR’d this (sorry).

That said, @EHG_Mike did say that he would look into it but I’m not aware that he’s got back to us on this.

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9

I didn’t get back to you on it. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll get this going for ya.

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10

:smiley: ta. I knew I’d wear you down & get a response eventually.

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11

Not sure this would be relevant currently, but Ill add some thoughts.

Fracturing sucks. It just doesn’t feel good. That said, it’s still good for LE imo. If you take that leap and chance a craft at say… 25% you either get a better item, or you keep it and, get no upgrade, and lose an affix and ability to continue upgrading. Find and dandy.

Same scenario, but instead 25%, you have a spread of 255, 25%, 8% (Just a numbers example.), then it goes to 1: an upgrade!, 2: an unusable item, so basically 3: Item is destroyed. Not so fine and dandy.

As a rule, I always try to keep in mind “A game’s purpose is to be enjoyable. Entertaining. Fun.” Scenario one accomplishes this without ‘fracturing’ the experience too much. The latter scenario… I’d wager roasted quail to quesadilla burgers that losing your item completely has triggered more alt+F4 rages than most others lol.

Some thoughts I’ve tried to brainstorm with regading this:

Perhaps a timed solution, in that once you craft, and say end up with a 20% chance to fracture, there could be currency/usable items that reduce current instability on non-fractured items. So you could ideally really pamper an item with time and effort to try and get it t-20+ if you so desired. How to do this? Ill leave these details to the devs lol.

Perhaps over in game playtime, the fracture chance and/or instability could slowly diminish to zero or a certain point. This would allow you to craft an item over time, while playing, with much to gain regarding fracture chance and such. Again, no details how, just an idea on the topic.

Just suggestions and my thoughts on this mechanic.

Thanks,
~Vatni

12

Fracturing itself is fine but the real problem is the awful process it’s at the end of. If finding desirable items was a little less of a crapshoot this wouldn’t be so bad.

The item progression in this game is just plain bad. I appreciate that legendaries and sets are more peripheral to the experience, but that means that quality yellows/purples are far more important. Yet there are so few and they’re so random. People pine for the loot filter but that doesn’t address the central flaws.

First, itemization is boring. Since so many stats are mandatory (GB for example) then 3/4s of your affix decisions are made before you plan a single build.

In other ARPGs the gearing decisions are largely centered on answering the question: “How am I going to slay tons of stuff?” Which is the right question for a hack-and-slash game. LE forces you to answer the question “How will I avoid getting one-shot?”

Second, the vast majority of yellows/purples that drop are bad stats on bad bases. Not even things worth shattering or worth the consideration of crafting. You just need way too much to go right. And this is before you ever get to the fracture mechanic. So, finally, you get that good drop, you carefully craft, and still it breaks. And this is your job for every single slot. Fun?

So between boring crafting decisions and a lot of cascading RNG mechanisms before you ever get to crafting to begin with, there’s just no reward to it.

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13

I pretty much agree with you. I’m trying to think up ideas about how this could be solved/get ideas running for the devs. I feel the best method would be player interaction with Instability.

Instability only grows when crafting, but if there was a way to reduce current instability or something, we’d have, as players, a bit more interaction and control in crafting an item. It still seems % based rng so even if its a 2% chance to fracture… they do. and it seems often tbh. So I’d personally like the devs to loot at that bit of code to make sure its all working right. Just feels off.

Anyway, again, its my personal opinion that if they allow us to interact with instability somehow, things would be a lot more interactive and dare I say… more fun?

Item drops and bases, etc… that’s a whole separate problem in my opinion. It all needs work, but the crafting needs 90% of then attention. Without crafting… there is no real loot hunt at the moment. (imo)

14

I love this crafting system. Way more deterministic than any other ARPG i’ve played.

It’s also simple and straightforward.

It values every loot, even the blue ones. Your goal is to find a good blue / rare with the right base, and a few affixes that you want on it. I’ve crafted several double t5 items at the moment. The rest of the affixes are t3 usually, maybe T4 for some.

I could risk them and try to finish them. Instead, i’m going to wait for another base with decent affixes and craft on it. Once i have two items, i’ll try to finish one of them.

The major problem I see so far is that with the absence of the lootfilter, it sucks to read all the item on the ground and decide what could be good or not. Therefore, you’re probably not picking every item with affixes (to shatter or use them) you’re interested in, and you’re pretty much obliged to gamble to get the bases you want. I’m hunting for a really good wand, and have yet to be successful.

But it gives me incentive to play. And when I consider one of my craft ready, i’m really satisfied.

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15

When would u consider 1 craft is ready?
If there are rooms to progress, normal people would push it. That’s human nature.

So unless it’s at least 4x T5, or more, people WILL try to keep crafting it.

Then come the “Diablo 3” kind of success percentage. When you spend 45mins to copy-paste your stash to make a 61% success T3-T4 but fail with 50% of the result is dmg fracture (which has 15% chance), you have a serious problem.

If we all want to be masochists, at least make those % of masochist a reality.

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I consider my craft done when the two main stats i’m looking after are T5, the rest being T3+.
I’m talking about mainly defensive affixes.

If i want to make an item 4 x t5 i’ll go for a replaceable part. (so if i have another chest with two t5 stats that i need etc.) Gambling without having anything left is not my type.

If you played PoE, it’s like rerolling your 5L chest to have a 6 link with a hundred of fusings. Do you go for it, and take the risk of having a 4L back (or worse) for a while ? Or you try it to 6L another chest piece ?

Again, from my experience i don’t think there is something wrong with the values. Yes sometimes it will fail at 90% chance. that’s normal. Ofc it happens when you have your dream base with very decent affixes on it.

But maybe we could guarantee a craft outcome ? With a lot of affixe shards ? For example, the number of instabilty on your item, multiplied by the actual tier of the affix.

Let’s say i wanna guarantee a t5 glancing blows on a 25 instability item. That would take 4 x 25 = 100 glancing blows shards.

The cost to finish an item (especially with rare affixes) would be insane, and incentivize trading affixes, but you could have your 4xt5 item without problem. I certainly wouldn’t be against such an idea. (giving the oppurtunity to craft safely to those who would want.)

I also want to point out that i actually like the present design, where every item i loot is appealing. I don’t want to equip quickly 4xt5 items then and consider my character done.

What would happen in a case where you wouldn’t have the fracture mechanic ? We would be wearing the same item from the lvl 10 and onwards (yeah okay maybe until we loot the highest level base type) and just craft on it everytime we could. Then we would hide all blues/yellows from our filter and hunt purples.

That would be a terrible design. That’s exactly what’s plaguing both D3 in PoE in different manners. Eleventh Hour Games HAS TO artificially gate the access to the gearing process. Because it’s the game’s goal. The question is which way ? how many time should be required to finish a character ?

What i’m sure of is that i prefer 100 times more the deterministic gating Last Epoch proposes against the insanely idiotic RNG gated PoE proposes. (Where the only certain way to gear your character for 98% of the playerbase is to buy item from others.)

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17

Agree.

But just to clarify. If you accidentally make your 5L a 2L, you still have the chance to make it again to 5L or 6L.

Here in this game, there are great chance your items will be destroyed.

The fail rate is being investigate by the devs, so there is sth wrong with the shown chance and the actual one.

Again, Im good with grinding everything for an eternity as long as there will be a success dream outcome for me. As in this game right now, you can farm for 10000 hours, preparing 10000 back up, and with bad luck, you will still end up with 0 usable outcome.

Guarantee success is a must, as in PoE, you can pay alot of fusing orbs to get guarantee 6L. Ofc you have to pay more for that.

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18

Personally, I would COMPLETELY OVERHAUL HOW AFFIX CRAFTING WORKS.

As it seems they want to make it hard to get t5 on everything I would propose a different system.
Instead of the whole luck based system, just have crafting instability affect the shard cost instead, where a high instability could double or even triple the number of shards and high tier affixes cost more than low tier ones.

This method would mean that players will actually look out for gear instead of gold farming in order to gamble, if only to fracture it for the shards.

It would mean that getting good tier items would take longer, but it would be a guarentee, both eliminating the frustration and giveing an actual reward for the work that would need to be put in.

It may also mean that people will make perfect rolled items, but that would require a very significant amount of time and would not really effect anyone who isn’t doing hours and hours of end game grinding.

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19

Your 'first four layers of RNG" are virtually no effort at all. After you have played any decent amount of time you will have as many shards as you need to craft T5x4 on every piece of gear you own in whatever combination you want. The only thing that serves as a barrier is fractures, damaging fractures and, because of the latter, the number of Glyphs of Guardian that you possess.

If you took out the fracture process, the gearing process in this game would be way too easy, which means in all liklihood the content would be way too easy. So, then you would have a new problem: Content would be scaled up, but the casual players who lacked the play time element to get the shards to make T20 gear would struggle to keep up with the scaled content. Or, players with max gear would find the game a horrible bore due to its ease.

I get that certain players will have worse luck than average. But, I have multiple characters with multiple pieces of T20 gear and my luck hasn’t been unbelievable. I’ve broken plenty of gear, some with the perfect combination of mods. It’s part of the grind that we all embrace when we play ARPGs. If there was no grind or progression, this genre would lack the pscyhological fullfilment that gets us playing in the first place.

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20

PoE & LE have very different ways of crafting. PoE’s currency sink is to have the affixes you get random (mostly, with a push in the direction of certain types of affixes if you do essence/delve/harvest crafting, but it’s random if you just throw chaos at an item). LE’s currency sink is that while you can choose the affix, if you push it too far you can break the item & then you need to find another base, more affixes shards, etc. Either way you go, they’re both designed to slow down your access to power.

There might be something wrong, alternatively it might just be our perception & getting hung up on the 1 failure while not remembering the 10 successes that preceeded it. @kiss_me_quick if you want the War & Peace version of how that works… But I’d advise you not read it until you want to get to sleep.

Yes, that’s RNG, sometimes it ****s you. Again, @kiss_me_quick for how that works.

Yeah, and that’s an option though I’m not sure how they could implement something like that in LE, other than creating a crafting bench with recipes like PoE. It’s certainly not a bad idea depending on the balancing.

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1.Different doesn’t mean better or good. Not saying PoE is any better though.
But again, at least there is no “destroying your items” “making it useless” in pushing for better items in PoE.

Rare affixes are hard to come by in both game, so your point is kind of invalid to me. At least, spam chaos make you feel like you in control of some sort, while hoping it to drop feel like u’r behind your luck 100%. Regular affixes are every where, so it “easy” if you don’t want perfect items in both game.

2.I’m fully aware of how collective memory works. Just like how I disagree w/, back in D3, people claim push on a rift after RG net more legs. So, when I said there is sth wrong with the %, I don’t bias.

Again, as I said in most of the “crafting” thread. I cheat by copy/paste my craft. So I continuously crafting 1 set of items over and over until it all perfect T5. The “memory” of how there are way more failure at 80+% is right there in a very short amount of time, not lagging out over a long session. So, it’s not collective memory.

But ofc, it’s RNG. Someone always has the bad end of the spectrum.

That’s why, we need some guarantee way to have good gear, not all RNG base. As in PoE, you collect enough currency, you trade for the items u can never create w/ your stupid luck. We don’t have trading here yet, so we need another way to help bad luck people.

Just trying to make less people rage quit the game. Because, for me, it’s nothing, you can make crafting 2x worse, I still cheat and have all the items I want anyway.

22

So how would you take a deterministic crafting system like LE’s and make it hard to get the “perfect” item (4x t5 affixes)? Maybe instead of preventing continued crafting a fracture reduced the afix you are crafting by 1 level, a major fracture reduced several affixes by 1 level and a destructive fracture reduced all affixes by 1 (or more) levels? They would probably have to reduce the instability as well otherwise it would be impossible to get high tier affixes after a certain point.

Why should a player be guaranteed good gear? It’s not even necessary to do the highest tier content (LizardIRL has done the hardest monolith bosses with just a staff, boots and a belt).

I think we need a way to ameliorate the hardest parts of RNG and I think fractures are part of that.

23

1/Seriously, Idk how would a good crafting be. Maybe instead of fracture, you remove the affix lvl or completely like u said.
Ofc, we need some rune to reduce the instability of items as well. No need to reduce it automatically.

2/Player should guarantee some progress after hours of gameplay. Without it, most people will just quit the game. Not all player are hardcore. Likewise, you can’t take what a handful of elite players like LizardIRL can do and balance the game around that. You have to balance the game around average joe, if you want the game to appeal to more players.

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