Crafting/Fracturing Mechanic

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)

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.

Why not?

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.

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!

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

Edit:

It’s really, really not.

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…

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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.

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.

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!

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%.

What would be your solution to that?

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… :confused:

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.

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.

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.

We merely disagree.

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I understand your position better now (:

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?

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.

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.

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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

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

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.

Give them a remedial probability class.

Or implement my idea above.

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.

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.

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!

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!

The statement which we’re dissecting is:

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.

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.

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:

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

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While I appreciate that you guys are discussing the intricacy of the fracturing mechanic, I’d like to point out in my previous reply that it still doesn’t address the fact that fracturing is not a very pro-progression mechanic. Stagnation and plateauing is a very real possibility and currently we have no way of addressing this.

I screamed when the item was damaged at 90%. I was angry but also gave the game a chance because the game was still in EA. I hope that when the game full release, this system will be improved to satisfy the player’s satisfaction.

Like when I play a game for 8 hours of a day I want to come away feeling like I accomplished something, like I got somewhere and when I stopped playing my build that it was better than when I started playing it. At present I have hit many runs of bad luck and come away from a full day playing this with no new items, and everything I crafted either fractured way too early or damaging or destructive fractured. This leaves me stuck on certain monolith levels and arena levels, not being able to progress despite all the time and effort I put into it. This does not feel rewarding in the slightest and kills any motivation I have to continue playing said build.

The only other way to alleviate this, other than scrapping the mechanic entirely, is to have items mean so little that a fracture on a good item does not mean your build can’t progress. Which is not ideal, so my suggestion is to revise crafting to a system that promotes progress and hard work and effort, rather than one that brings frustration, anger and a potentiality to stagnate play.

This scenario, while crafted, is interesting. Ill bite again! (because I like eating)
If everything happened as you said, then the player(s) feel like they had a bad time/luck/etc.
The point of a game for me is the enjoy yourself. So since they dont feel they are enjoying this due to fallacy of their perception that crafting is 50-90% broke, whether true or not, they probably didn’t like that experience. They might even…-gulp- quit. If this scenario did happen, I don’t think there’s anything one could do about it other than changing the game. I am in no position to even try to do that lol.
(If I am following this right. Damn Im tired now.)

Oh, I try to avoid that with general population and the internet. Psychology has a time and place, and honestly it should be all the times and all the places. But I have found that can lead to emotional responses that I simply do not want lol. Dogma? I’d say requirement. Though some people require a dogma of some sort I suppose.

First time I’ve seen this and it makes perfect sense. I can get on board with this reasoning. A streak of bad luck could make that plateauing thing real. -shudders-.

Ah, thank you. I don’t feel your scenario is really that uncommon. I’ve let my jaw drop once or twice in disbelief when I failed a 90%+ craft on a decent purple item. So if this is a common, or at least uncommon, then it stands that the game offers a mixed bag of emotions depending on the player(s). Just my two shillings.