I get where you’re coming from, there are various levels of abstraction (or possibly metaphor) that can be applied to sit between what crafting is IRL & how it’s presented to the gamer & they don’t necessarily sit on one single axis (RNG a’la PoE versus deterministically using recipies/blueprints like in GD). I’d probably say that PoE’s version of crafting is the furthest from how making stuff is IRL, but since a full on “realistic” crafting “minigame” is probably a bit beyond the scope of PoE.
I always thought the leveling of skill, in order to use specific materials, or have the chance for special outcomes was a good place. Instead, we end up with these majority-rng systems, on top of the rng systems to obtain the materials and bases in the first place. As a bonus, it makes for an interesting ‘craftsperson’ economy, where those who have put in the time, effort and resources to get really high levels in a craft, can offer their services for a fee/trade. Which enhances the community in Multi-Player games (or, at least in theory).
I’d stop woodworking (at least with high quality materials), if there was a 25% chance that every time I screwed a piece together, that it would shatter into a pile of trash at my feet, or that I wouldn’t be able to make any other changes to the project, and be forced to start over from the beginning.
“Ok, just let me glue these 2 pieces of Black Walnut together aaaaaaand…POOF WTF?!!??!?!!? Now it’s Pine?!?!?!?!?!”
You mean like Morrowind or Skyrim? 
I’m going to disagree with you on that. If you’re on Jeopardy or Who want to be a millionaire, is that gambling? Crafting can be done without skill but with knowledge as well, which is what applies to LE (and pretty much every other ARPG). You can apply your knowledge to limit the result to some more desired ones, rather than just any of them (like what happened in D2).
There are lots of RPGs out there that use that system. However, ARPGs don’t. Maybe some more obscure title will, but the big shot titles don’t. ARPGs were founded on RNG and it’s part of their core model.
I wouldn’t call that a minigame & while you did have crafting “accoutrements” they were just to buff the positives & reduce the negative effects. I don’t think you had to do specific things to get different outcomes (eg, boiling sugar at a higher/lower temperature to get caramel, toffee, fudge, etc).
And heaven forbid we have a title think outside the norm there? Most of that is also due to short-lifecycle nature of many ARPGs. Although, some have done it in a more round-about method… where skill points and masteries are allotted to crafting-specialist characters, allowing them more advanced crafting options.
Sure, that system is usually found in all MMORPGs, but it’s not alien to ARPs titles either. Daggerfall series is a big title that comes to mind.
Presumably, that’s similar to what we’ll get with CoF faction. From what has been described, you’ll get “prophecies” that allow you to work towards what you want. From what I understand from that, it will change the weights of drops/crafts to favor more desirable outputs.
And the trade faction only needs enough numbers to work.
So all this is kinda moot, since there won’t be further patches (other than bugfixes) until 1.0 anyway.
Yeah, who knows how that’s going to work…
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Yeah, but it’s as close to a “crafting minigame” as I could think of in any ARPG I’ve played.
That would be great. I thought CoF (no relation to EQ’s Cloak of Flames), would just give more RNG %, with higher multiplicative levels of RNG % at higher faction levels.
Well that escalated so quick I think I time jumped to the Void Era.
WTF no it can’t! There are enough manuals on how to do stuff but they don’t enable me do do the labour tasks to craft the stuff described in the manual. There is a reason why I call a plumper insead of just looking for a tutorial that explains how to do stuff. This is wishfull thinking at it’s finest.
If you are lucky you might find some crafting vids from Vanguard Saga of heroes somewhere. Morrowind and Skyrim crafting is a joke ^^.
Yes heaven forbid! For normal H&S games this would most likely be terrible even if it’s something I would like. If you change the rng formular of a H&S game you most likely do a H&Sish game of another genre.
I thinka mmo H&S done right would make a ton of money.
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No thats skill… wtf? If you are trying to invalidate the difference dont bother
If I KNOW the answer from experience or skill, there is isnt gambling at all. I KNOW the result
Blueprints in GD are exactly the same except one click = crafted item. No skill involved, no skill to increase the crafting vendor, only luck and how much money you can throw at it
I actually tested this in GD anyway by spending millions of gold on garbage boot crafts
PoE = how much money you have
Torchlight Infinite = how much money you have. In TI I spent roughly 1500 ‘Chaos orbs’ of materials crafting one single item (Flame Elementium) as ive wrote before Ive spent 2-3 hours in town just spamming materials until I hit 99% perfection as the game allows it
Every aRPG = how much money you have. LE is no different except your ‘money’ is endless Shards/Glyphs? No the currency is actually the base item you are crafting on. We all know how much gambling there is here. Once you hit 0FP you are done, nothing you did could change that (except a Rune of Redemption or w/e but that aint happening)
My best gear recently in LE was created with Chaos glyphs to get Life+/Life% because of my ‘skill’ to know there is only a handful of suffixes everytime you click a Chaos Glyph on a Chest Armor you have 10-15%? chance of hitting Life EVERY time
All crafts have to start with knowledge on how to do a craft. You don’t become an electrician by practice, tearing apart people’s walls and going “Oh well, next time I’ll do it better”.
The reason you call a plumber is because you don’t want to waste time learning that craft.
The point I was making is that it’s NOT skill. It’s knowledge. All crafts have to start with knowledge, always. Then, for manual crafts, comes skill.
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The RNG formula is in the drops themselves. In order to craft, you still need to obtain the materials and bases (and even RNG in the rolls on the base stats themselves). The problem is, not having the entire game to be RNG. That just feels… bad. Playing the entire game, left up to chance. No control. Just throw shit in a UI, push some buttons, and pray for the best?
That’s the difference between playing the stock market or slot machines, trying to obtain your fortune. Sure, with slots, you might hit that jackpot, but the odds are always in the house’s favor, and more often than not, you leave empty-handed. With stocks, there’s some skill involved, you can learn to analyze trends, highs/lows, and invest your money in high risk/high gain, low risk/low gain, etc etc. And there’s still an RNG factor involved, since you can’t control how the stocks (or associated businesses/sectors) actually perform.
Well, if you look at Grim Dawn, which has one of the most deterministic crafting systems in ARPGs (I haven’t played Torchlight Infinite, since I don’t enjoy mobile ARPGs, so I can’t say anything about it), you basically ignore crafting. Other than relics, almost all builds use either mythical gear, which is an RNG drop, sometimes a targeted one, and they use MIs which you have to farm over and over and over again until you get one with a decent prefix/suffix. So you have a pretty much fully deterministic crafting system which you only use to craft relics and components.
Basically, ARPGs all have RNG. There is a big spectrum from low RNG (D3/D4) to very high RNG (PoE). At least when talking about the bigger titles.
In the end, ARPG devs decide where on that spectrum they want to fall in. Wherever they land on, there will be players that really love it and players that really hate it.
Personally, I like where LE landed, even if I think it could use some tweaks. Some stuff is too hard to get, especially idols.
On the other hand, 1.0 will bring us trade and CoF, so maybe everything will be fixed, or we’ll get tools to work with.
But in the end, RNG will always be a factor and players have to decide if they like this much RNG (or, to some players, this little RNG) and decide if LE is the game for them or some other ARPG on another point of the spectrum.
Which is also why save game/stash save trading and GD Stash were(are) so popular. RNG is ‘fun’ and tolerable… to a point. After that, it encourages cheating and the use of tools to get around it, just so players can play the game. Yes, RNG is part of playing, but when RNG must be depended upon, just to play a build you want to play, and it takes longer than (what many would agree to be) a reasonable amount of time to farm the required items, frustration sets in, interest wanes, and RNG becomes a hinderance to the fun.
And yes, some people will be fine with any level of RNG/grinding… just look at the fact Korean MMOs exist. And still others will want the opposite end of the spectrum. And there’s a middle ground. And while where LE landed might be perfectly fine for you, the fact this topic keeps getting brought up means it’s not fine for everyone. The easy answer, and one that gets thrown around too often, is “LE is not for those people, then”. LE still has a lot to offer, even tho the nested RNG might been too much for some. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be examined, and maybe a way both sides of the line can be happy(ier) about where LE lands, in the end.
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Regarding GD and cheats, that depends on the player, really. I tend to prefer Item Assistant as opposed to GD stash because of the ability to cheat. And I only use it because the stashes in GD aren’t enough.
I did once cheat in some stuff into GD, but all that made me was get bored with the game really quick and stop for a while. To me, a big part of the fun for ARPGs is working towards making builds work. I know that is not for everyone, but I do like that.
As for where LE lands on the grind, yeah, I agree. I’m not saying I like where LE lands so nothing should change. I was just clarifying my position on where I stand.
I agree that these discussions are useful (as long as we remain civil and cool headed), not just for the devs so they can make their decisions, but also for the players, so they know where their fellows opinions stand.
Ultimately, it’s EHG’s decision on where they want to land on the RNG scale. From what I understand, they’re all players, so they’re probably making the game they feel they want to play.
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I agree, I used GD Stash as well (other than for the expanded stash space), to gear up one of my characters, and never really played that character after.
But, IIRC, the crafting in GD evolved over the course of the game’s life. Early on, it was just a way to craft random Yellow/Green items, and transmute components. Later, they added the Relic creation, and eventually Mythic/Legendary ‘crafting’ and even allow set duplicate ‘swapping’, ala D3 cube. All of this, to overcome the frustration on RNG reliance to gear up characters with required items for their builds.
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A big part of it was also to help ‘game’ the RNG since the pool of legendries and MIs kept getting larger and larger. Made it even harder to get what you wanted.
In fact, in the big upcoming new expansion they’re actually CONSOLODATING a lot of stuff (like getting rid of certain mat drops that are never used) and Monsters will now 100% drop their MIs, etc.