Crafting/Fracturing Mechanic

[Royals]

I think I’m on board with @doombybbr .

While I enjoy the gambling aspect of making your good gear better, there is a point to which it is a punishment system and not a reward system.

I would bet that by release the “damaging” or “destructive” fractures will be a ghost story we tell the noobs that never played beta.

Not being able to enchant up an item is punitive enough, let alone it becoming completely unusable.

This is why I still am holding on to the very few Minion Reflect (Splintering) and Minion DOT damage (Sorrowful) shards I have. I’m not going to use them until i get a purple that is worth using them on.

We shouldn’t be encouraged to hoard our shards for that ONE item that is so very unlikely to drop.

[kiss_me_quick]

@doombybbr

With this crafting system to get anything good you need to get lucky 5-10 times in a row with the crafting AFTER getting lucky with a drop that has the right affixes. Even with a ton of grinding for gear/shards you may never see results due to bad luck, bricking tons of items along the way - this will have a psychological effect over the long run, most likely a negative one.

You state that the player experiences being many times “lucky”( which I assume is a good thing) and then a single time “unlucky” - why are you discounting the many times over a single time and how do you reach the inference of the overall experience being negative?

@doombybbr

You tend to hover at 95 then 90 then 85 when starting out , this is actually a 27% chance of fracture when you combine each roll.

@doombybbr

The fact that it is framed as “this is your chance of NOT bricking your item” instead of “this is your chance of getting something good” is probably the source of most players complaints.

This is mathematical inadequacy and statistical illiteracy amplified by availability heuristic.

My solution to this problem or at least the starting point is to hide the numbers - in fact I will make a brave statement right now and state that in some day in the future the numbers will be removed from the crafting screen - it’s simply inevitable.

[Llama8]

@kiss_me_quick

@doombybbr

You tend to hover at 95 then 90 then 85 when starting out , this is actually a 27% chance of fracture when you combine each roll.

@doombybbr

The fact that it is framed as “this is your chance of NOT bricking your item” instead of “this is your chance of getting something good” is probably the source of most players complaints.

This is mathematical inadequacy and statistical illiteracy amplified by availability heuristic.

While you are likely correct, you are talking about “normal” people & statistics are difficult for “normal” people.

@kiss_me_quick

My solution to this problem or at least the starting point is to hide the numbers - in fact I will make a brave statement right now and state that in some day in the future the numbers will be removed from the crafting screen - it’s simply inevitable.

That would, unfortunately, be even worse, you’d be removing all “player agency” & knowledge & just replacing it with a system where the player gets hit by a (metaphorical) stick randomly with no warning. If you think the “WTF, my item just fractured” posts are bad now, just you wait till the “WTF, my item just fractured with no warning & for no apparent reason” posts start coming with that suggestion. It’d be like giving a child a cute puppy, then taking it away after a random number of “interactions” (strokes, cuddles, throwing a toy for it, etc).

Unless you were just making a psychologist joke.

[Vatni]

@kiss_me_quick

@doombybbr

With this crafting system to get anything good you need to get lucky 5-10 times in a row with the crafting AFTER getting lucky with a drop that has the right affixes. Even with a ton of grinding for gear/shards you may never see results due to bad luck, bricking tons of items along the way - this will have a psychological effect over the long run, most likely a negative one.

You state that the player experiences being many times “lucky”( which I assume is a good thing) and then a single time “unlucky” - why are you discounting the many times over a single time and how do you reach the inference of the overall experience being negative?

I am sorry, I understand your reply to doom, but don’t think I understand your response regarding doombybbr’s statement. I’m not sure you/doom/or I even understand what doom was trying to iterate lol.

I believe he’s saying you can have thousands and thousands of drops, and then, from those drops, have to get lucky more than a few times to find decent base items to craft on. THEN you must get lucky again on the craft itself. At least, I think this is what doom mean. The amount of RNG regarding crafting is astounding, but I like that this game has this approach. Its… different. I do like it, but I can see why most wouldn’t.

I don’t know how he would answer your question about the experience being negative ultimately, but I will say it is indeed a negative one.

His math is off, but to some, that’s likely how it feels, despite not actually being.

I don’t know though, I feel a lot of talk about the crafting system is more negative than positive. I wonder how the devs feel about this and am curious how things will turn out ultimately. I feel your solution fixes nothing, merely shrouds it from view. Sweeping dirt under a rug vs cleaning it. Keep aliens from public view. etc. Just some thoughts I have on things.

(posted quick at work so sorry for missed statements/grammar!)

e1: Llama beat me to it!

[Llama8]

@Vatni

His math is off, but to some, that’s likely how it feels, despite not actually being.

I don’t know though, I feel a lot of talk about the crafting system is more negative than positive. I wonder how the devs feel about this and am curious how things will turn out ultimately. I feel your solution fixes nothing, merely shrouds it from view. Sweeping dirt under a rug vs cleaning it. Keep aliens from public view. etc. Just some thoughts I have on things.

Yeah, that’s what Mike’s post is about:

@EHG_Mike

I’m still running tests in different scenarios to try and find a problem. So far I have done a few million tests with all combinations of shards and glyphs. It’s a lot of tests. I’m getting near perfect distributions with automated testing. I’ve been running manual tests in the live version and so far after 200 crafts, I’m within 2% of theoretical. I did have several fractures at 85%+ estimated success rate. I’m not done looking at it but initial results indicate the displayed chance for success is accurate.

This isn’t where this conversation ends though. We are still expanding the crafting system and it will be getting updates that improve the functionality and feel of this fracturing system.

It is working properly, but people seem to be a lot more pissed off about it than they want.

[Vatni]

Yeah, Mike’s post really makes me comfortable moving forward. I feel this system is great and revolutionary, just needs tweaks to get both what EHG and the players want. HIGH hopes for the future.

[kiss_me_quick]

@Llama8

@kiss_me_quick

This is mathematical inadequacy and statistical illiteracy amplified by availability heuristic.

While you are likely correct, you are talking about “normal” people & statistics are difficult for “normal” people.

Exactly, something which will not change and the developers themselves have to make adjustments according to it.

@Llama8

you’d be removing all “player agency”

I don’t see how removing percentages would remove the player agency? The player is still as full in command as before.

@Llama8

knowledge

I don’t see again why this part should suddenly emerge once we remove percentages. Knowledge on how the system works can be introduced easily.

@Llama8

just replacing it with a system where the player gets hit

All that I have stated so far is that removing the percentages is inevitable and must be done due to the statement which preceded that.
These could be replaced with something like dices which you can roll 3 times for free and then you have to get above 4 to rank up. This lets the compounds do their magic without leaving space for the players biases and heuristics to take advantage of them as much.

[kiss_me_quick]

@Vatni

I don’t know how he would answer your question about the experience being negative ultimately, but I will say it is indeed a negative one.

Maybe there’s something more to it than just how the crafting is designed? This game has an awful a lot of crafting, maybe that’s it?
As an example in PoE there is no prevalent unavoidable crafting exhaustion since you can just buy the items and if you do want to craft - you won’t have enough currency to have a proper crafting session even once a day while in Last Epoch you craft or roll the dice almost all the time.

@Vatni

don’t know though, I feel a lot of talk about the crafting system is more negative than positive. I wonder how the devs feel about this and am curious how things will turn out ultimately

You are being somewhat contradictory now as you’re saying that things might not be negative but it feels negative and when I introduce an element or removal of one which could help this feeling part; the response is that it isn’t actually fixing the issue although it does fix or at least alleviate the issue which you presented.
While you can cognize right now that the developers might be doing it to sweep things under the rug - you will not remember it in a few days and a new player won’t be aware of it and even if they do become aware, won’t care about it.

[Llama8]

@kiss_me_quick

I don’t see how removing percentages would remove the player agency? The player is still as full in command as before.

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

@Llama8

knowledge

I don’t see again why this part should suddenly emerge once we remove percentages. Knowledge on how the system works can be introduced easily.

Yes, but without the percentages, the player wouldn’t know “where” they are with regard to fracturing the item, should they continue to use glyphs of stability or is now a really good time to switch to glyphs of the guardian? Am I getting close to getting close to damaging fractures but I only need 1 more craft to get that t5 set glancing blow?

The player needs to know the risks, but the majority of people don’t really get probability.

All that I have stated so far is that removing the percentages is inevitable and must be done due to the statement which preceded that.
These could be replaced with something like dices which you can roll 3 times for free and then you have to get above 4 to rank up. This lets the compounds do their magic without leaving space for the players biases and heuristics to take advantage of them as much.

Ok, they could remove the probabilities, but they’d have to fundamentally change the way crafting works & how the player is informed of the risk, or whatever the downside of crafting is. If all they do is remove the percentages, all players will know is that sometimes crafting works & other times they have their favourite shiny toy taken away by a capricious ineffable black-box crafting system.

The player needs to feel in control, but be aware that something bad might happen if they press the button now. Otherwise, it’ll be a much better idea to go to PoE’s fully RNG system where the base doesn’t break & if you “fail” your crafting roll (don’t get the affixes you want) you can just have another go, crafting currency depending.

[Vatni]

@kiss_me_quick

Maybe there’s something more to it than just how the crafting is designed? This game has an awful a lot of crafting, maybe that’s it?

Oh yeah, its mostly crafting. It’s great imo. But when you have a LOT of something, there’s typically more room for a few problems to come up. And that’s all this whole process is (I hope). Us talking about it is what the Devs likely want and need.

Big PoE player here so I’ll bite. I feel this isn’t a good comparison (or any comparisons to PoE/D’1,2,3’, grim dawn, etc.) as each of these Arpgs are vastly different than the others. One formula in any of these games likely won’t work properly in any of the other titles, even if allowed to tweaked a small bit. (But maybe if allowed a lot a bit)

@kiss_me_quick

You are being somewhat contradictory now as you’re saying that things might not be negative but it feels negative and when I introduce an element or removal of one which could help this feeling part; the response is that it isn’t actually fixing the issue although it does fix or at least alleviate the issue which you presented.

You’re telling me to take a pain pill instead of fixing the cause of the pain. That’s what I got from the solution. You’re focusing on my literal words instead of my meaning, so I will try to remember this moving forward.

Ill rewrite what I meant and apologize.
I don’t know though. I think that, based on my experience in reality, on these forums, and with this game title, a lot of talk about the crafting system is more negative than positive on the forums as I have read and understood them. I am quite enthusiastic and excited to see how the devs tackle this topic: change in some way or let it be.

Hope this helps! Thanks!

[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?

@Llama8

The player needs to know the risks

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.
What do you gain other than your extremely flawed perception of control which will backfire in you being emotionally upset?

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.

@Llama8

The player needs to feel in control, but be aware that something bad might happen if they press the button now.

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.

BTW I get interrupted all the time so some of my replies might be in a “Replying…” state for a long time

[Jerle]

@doombybbr

You tend to hover at 95 then 90 then 85 when starting out , this is actually a 27% chance of fracture when you combine each roll.

Actually, when you combined the rolls, the chance you fracture on the 3rd attempt is approx 13%. Stats is hard, I know

[UltraboltNovacrunch]

@kiss_me_quick

This is mathematical inadequacy and statistical illiteracy amplified by availability heuristic.

Settle down there Mrs. Sesquipedalian. This is a video game forum after all, an action role playing game forum to be exact.

[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?

edit: Man kiss is really repl- oh! posted! -Goes to read-

[kiss_me_quick]

@Vatni

One formula in any of these games likely won’t work properly in any of the other titles, even if allowed to tweaked a small bit.

What exactly doesn’t work? In your case I’m using PoE to egress a plausible crafting exhaustion, not justify the crafting system itself.

@Vatni

Ill rewrite what I meant and apologize.
I don’t know though. I think that, based on my experience in reality, on these forums, and with this game title, a lot of talk about the crafting system is more negative than positive on the forums as I have read and understood them. I am quite enthusiastic and excited to see how the devs tackle this topic: change in some way or let it be.

No need to apologize at all!

Forums are a terrible place to perceive the emotions of the player base as a whole since we have a tendency to engage with the negative( danger) more and people almost as a rule post more negative( stronger emotion) than positive.
Majority of the game forums are riddled unproportionally with anger, complaints, threats and disputes.
I think when we’re making judgements on how something should be built - we should be appealing to working models and a holistic perspective, not our very flawed perception of a small bubble in which we have found ourselves comfortable through constantly affirming our possibly flawed beliefs to each other.

Although it sounds harsh, I mean no offense with it (:

[Vatni]

All good! I agree 100% with this sentiment.

And back to it! Path’s crafting system is a much more forgiving system. You have zero chance of losing any items you have drop/buy/craft with. By losing, I mean destroying. In LE, all of this is possible. (Well, buying from players might be a thing eventually) I’d say thats night and day different, yes and no. Yes LE can destroy your items regardless of its aquisition, no PoE won’t destroy said items.

The part that doesn’t work is comparing these two opposite methods and comparing them to make a point in one or the other that it works in this one, can in the other’.

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.

Your suggestion in hiding the figures is an interesting perspective. I did a double take and made sure I read what I did. I am sooo not okay with this method of ‘tweaks’, but this is EHG’s game. So here’s hoping whatever they decide is amazing for the masses. (Probably will be)

TL:DR PoE’s crafting is more different than LE’s crafting. So much that comparing them doesn’t seem feasible im my brainz! Also I liek numbarz!

[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.