I personally don’t like the crafting system in Last Epoch, I prefer one in PoE. Mind you this is probably because this game is in beta and there might be more complexity and flexibility later on. My experience with Last Epoch, though the game presents a different style, the crafting seems very one dimensional and not as rewarding. I hate those moments were I have a 99-95% rate of success and my item fractures. It’s not a good feeling, I wish it didn’t even tell me the statistic openly and it was hidden. Unlike PoE, Last epoch crafting is more like “upgrading” a piece of gear not like crafting it up. The best scenario is you find the gear you want almost perfect already and do the least amount of crafting on piece of gear as possible. That the stats you want are already rolled well, have the right mods on it and also all close to t5.
I wish Last Epoch crafting had more complexity to it, also either removed the % of success and just listed only the % of failure. High rates of success I expect mentally that something will work and when it doesn’t it feels like I am scammed; might be a mental thing but i rather see the displays flipped. It’s technically the same thing but there is less hope involved.
Yes, and that’s the problem. I was speaking of perception of that risk and how it relates to your (play time) investment. I expect to have less risk if I invest little (time), but I have the same amount, irrespective of my investment. Equal for all is not always fair
If not removed completely, I’d like to see a rune that completely removes the chance of damaging fracture. Wouldn’t necessarily have to guarantee success, but would just protect a favored item from going backwards. I’d expect this item to be extremely rare.
The kick in the stomach I got from hitting a 1% damaging fracture was pretty palpable. Its not like I had gambled like this a 100 times. This was really the first time I was emotionally vested in an item. I knew what I was doing. I was prepared for that 24% chance of minor fracture. Hitting the one percent chance at a damaging fracture like I did has affected the way I play the game (and I feel not in a good way).
If the crafting system remains the way it is, I’ll still play. I’m not issuing any ultimatums.
I feel you disagree and want to set me up, but that’s ok (and my feeling, don’t feel obliged to oblige me )
RNG is exciting (element of surprise), until it’s not. That’s what it boils down to. That’s why I said what I said. You need to give players a feeling of agency (and taking that away is one of the most annoying things you can do, like stuns, cut scenes, totally unpredictable behaviors etc.), so when a system is too unpredictable, irrespective of the time and effort a player puts into it, the thing you realize is that it’s out of your control and essentially a gamble.
A crafting system should feel ‘fair’, and ‘rewarding your effort’ as an alternative to ‘just killing mobs and waiting for the drop’ - both are good strategies, and different people prefer one or the other. The overwhelming sense I get from this thread is that the crafting system in LE does not feel fair, no matter what algorithm or bug is the foundation of that system.
Realizationas are notoriously difficult to pin to an example / observation Nothing specific comes to mind.
I’m also curious in which way excatly your experience is the opposite from mine? Do you mean ‘rng heavy crafting systems are good’, or something more general? As a scientist I realize I’m always wrong, or temporarily right until proven otherwise, so I’m open to your counterarguments and alternative theories
As a semi-off topic side note: I have seen many definitions of a ‘game’ in literature, but have yet to find one that everyone agrees with. Funnily enough though, when you ask people to give you a definition of a game, most (laymen) will struggle, or start naming the characteristics of a game (nr one given is probably: ‘it’s competitive’, which is sad and untrue, but I digress), but when you show the same people an artefact/design they can recognize when this something is or isn’t a game, with little dispute between them.
Same with ‘fairness’. Maybe you’re familiar with the ‘Condorcet paradox’, where a number of individually undisputably fair characteristics, cannot be combined (satisfied) at the same time in any voting system (I’m explaining it wrong probably, but it’s an interesting topic with many striking examples) - while people are good at naming components (fair rules) of something (fair voting system), they tend to disagree about a definition that must encompass all the characteristics and preferably also name all exceptions…
That’s a tough one. D3 has a fair crafting systems in my opinion, but it’s very limited. POE = you know what I think of it if you’ve seen the picture I posted here = it’s basically an unending stream of dice rolls, with few good (but limited and resource-expensive) exceptions, like some beast crafting options or the temporary Harvest league options. Grim Dawn has a good system I feel, it’s grindy, but at least there is some determinism in several ingredients and the rng is in the form of a random bonus to your crafted item, instead of a random failure.
Nothing else comes to mind atm, hope these are useful examples nevertheless (as most likely many readers here will have their own views on these games).
There are many alternative solutions to the rng vs deterministm vs grind problems, like in crafting, but mostly, these are never seen in an actual product because they are ‘too’ complex / laborious to implement.
During my short crafting career I had some bad rolls, fractured with 2%, 5% and 6% chance, all in the span of 2 days, last two within 10 minutes. I would like to think that it was rigged, but probably just bad luck.
Maybe what you have worked on then so I’d have a better idea where you come from?
I have very strong disbelief towards the fact that RNG is not the way to go if you want to make a successful game.
In my view, games which are able to abuse our heuristics better, are almost by definition more likely to be more successful.
If the goal is to make as emotion inducing and intriguing game as possible - I don’t see any problem in it being even a casino or the individual being addicted to it - our affective states should be analyzed psychologically and anything philosophical is auxiliary at best.
Posts 24 - 30 between me and @SirRaiuKoren in this thread should be elaborative enough, I hope. If something’s missing or you think is flawed, quote it for me and we can start from there.
We can also take a more axiomatic approach and declare what our axioms are.
I’ll still try to address some of your claims here so far, although not as long as I normally would.
You explained it correctly.
As snobbish as it sounds - in most scenarios, most opinions( votes) are not equal.
I asked specifically multiplayer games because as far as I know this game will have be multiplayer with a marketplace; so if items are too easy to accumulate, it will be essentially useless to have one.
Another problem with these games is that they seemingly don’t provide best in slot items( correct me if I’m wrong) through crafting which seems to be the vision for LE for at least half the equipment.
I will still engage with your examples.
I never played D3 because I realized from the very beginning that this game is too deterministic to be interesting but correct me if I’m wrong, the clips that I’m checking there is quite a lot of RNG involved and you very much can get a bad item - doesn’t this go against the whole RNG is bad agenda?
I barely remember Grim Dawn as well but not having a random bonus is essentially the same as having a random failure?
If the person is educated on the fact that specific bonuses are possible for the item, then the expectations will be set on getting the item with the specific bonus. I would say that quantitatively a player will go through more negative emotions by having many failed crafts, rather than LE’s option of having many successful upgrades and then one negative event - having a fracture( doesn’t render the item useless) or a rarely a major fracture( sometimes renders the item useless).
PoE is very good at pulling players down their rabbit hole with their psychologically manipulative methods.
The game is ultra RNG because that’s how players like the game the most even if they whine and moang about; and with a simple explanation - it abuses our heuristics nearly to it’s fullest potential and behold, it’s the most successful ARPG on the market.
If the game was merely tame deterministic crafting and had drops with little to none RNG - I’d make a bold statement and say that the game would have been dead 5 years ago.
I’d like to ask - what’s the harm or problem in PoE being a casino?
I think the difference between us is you taking a more psychophilosophical approach to this while I’m strictly stuck with established models and look at things more teleologically.
I want players to feel as engaged and emotional as possible in the bigger picture while the status quo here is on a more present resolution, the affective state relating to that and what we ought to want.
So, dear gamer, you have your 4x t4 item with a success chance of ~50%, now, you could take your chance, but maybe we could tweak the RNG a bit if you sent some coins our way…
I saw a guy once say he wants to find a game to be good enough that it totally and completely ruins his life (literally), like WoW once did for him. I thought for a moment… that is an excellent way to put it.
I like Robin Hanson’s “Elephant in the Brain”. Probably because I love it when people have a cynical view of the utter atrocity that is the human being. Hidden motives are always fun motives for me when demystified, especially in public to the naive.
Jim Sterling and other freelance critics on youtube, as near to all of them to make no difference have been propagandized to for so long they can’t see behind the curtain. Thus they signal (unwittingly) the holier than thou shtick to nauseating degrees. Maybe you should have a talk with him, and see how far you get with these priests.
Seems like a fascinating book! It’s great that you have interest in such a book - it shows that you value truth very highly!
Self-deception is a very interesting topic for me as well; I was starting an article recently on “Lies as a psychopathology” as I see lying as a very complex and interesting phenomena which requires great courage to even start to dissect but my writing has stayed in the “starting” state for quite a while for this very reason.
To have a truly truthful perception of the topic at hand, once you start dissecting your own deceptions and lies, you’ll have to start retroactively reconfiguring your whole past! How scary is that!?
One day I’ll take it on, right now I’ll just enjoy the Summer (:
This can be solved by framing things differently and I do have to admit that I intentionally make things as explicit as possible to conflagrate discussion.
Saying that your girlfriend loves you because you’re both made for each other does nothing for the discussion.
Saying that the reason why your girlfriend is with you is because her brain chemistry overrides her perceptions making her mentally too handicapped to see you objectively while you’re bribing her emotionally and materially through small favors to be more attached to you due to your insecurities of being afraid of loneliness paints a more thought provoking picture although they stand for the same thing : = )
This isn’t a good way to view the world and neither do I have a permanent vision of such but if we want to discuss about psychology, we should talk about psychology.
I know they exist and I know what they do but there are far more curious and exciting ventures to invest my intellectual wherewithal into : P
Small edit: I saw “Elephant in the Brain” having comments on Joseph Heinrich’s book “The Secret of Our Success” which I very highly suggest - he also has a lot of awesome and information dense talks on Youtube which I’ve probably sucked in half of them.
I completely understand just got a minor fracture on my chest with super rare affix of bones, so I cannot update it anymore and it’s just T2 and rest T3
I love the game, playing a lot but I really wish there is a kind of super gardian glyph, can be expensive, just to secure more the super rare craft
You won’t learn psychology at school or in books. Not the dirty stuff. The interesting stuff. Books and woke education is apt to be true (sometimes) where political correctness isn’t required and false where it dare not tread. Lies of silence.
There are worlds to which you probably haven’t even considered in your area. Go off trail to find the answers. Avoid the status seekers, authors and thus publishers etc. etc.
Onwards and upwards… I make a habit of not responding to replies. Don’t take it the wrong way.
Ok, then I think we misunderstood each other a bit - I’m not opposed to RNG, the only point I try to make is that it has it’s uses and its limits.
I also agree with you that ‘abusing’ human mind’s way of working is a way to achieve a ‘successful’ game ( which depends a bit on your definition, but we agree about the 3 R’s I think (reach, retention and revenue) being a good summary of a ‘successful game’).
There are plenty of voices on the forums in the POE community that are dissatisfied with the huge amount of RNG involved, so I don’t believe I’m the only one. But, I also realize, that as someone who’s studied the mechanics of the games and how our minds work, have lost the true ‘naive gamer’ (and I mean that in a positive sense) that approaches a game without suspicion and looks into gathering knowledge about ‘good’ builds instead of trying to find out ‘how the game deceives me into playing more than I should’
I think it’s also good to mention my ethical struggle, that once you start to see what impact a ‘successful’ game can have on the lives of the players, that you wonder about how far do you want the game to be abusing our heuristics. It’s no longer just about ‘making a nice game so people have fun playing it’. This might also be the reason why I’m hesitant about too much ‘grinding’ and rng in games, because, even if they achieve better ‘RRR’ scores, my utility extends further that the business objectives of a game company, and it also encompasses the players. Maybe that’s another reason I dislike too much rng and mechanics that make you spend more time and money than is good for you. I believe game designers have that ethical responsibility, just as weapon manufacturers do.
Which is related to your question:
Related to this, D3 is where I feel they struck a good balance between enticing the players to play, and the time required for players to reach (some or other) end goal. This is of course also a matter of personal opinion - how much time do you have for playing the game and when do you feel you’ve gotten what you want out of it (or maybe you never want to stop playing it, and are looking for a ‘life long partner’ kind of game). I think this might be one of the causes of so much discussion and differences in opinions about trading, balancing and crafting.
Of course, D3 is also balanced around single player, that is the time/effort required to find/craft your ‘end game’ gear.
In multiplayer games like LE, the objective is (I believe) to have this balanced around the fact that trading is involved, as this promotes interaction with other player’s MTX, which is one of the money making schemes. Like in POE, this leads to SSF players feeling ‘penalized’, which is an unfortunate but unavoidable (?) effect of this balancing strategy. I think Crafting might be the solution such SSF players turn to then, as the drop chances are based on a large population of players, so it’s expected 10 other people have an item drop, that you are looking for, but they have no use for. Unfortunately, having the crafting a legitimate alternative for this, also effectively diminishes the need to interact with others via a marketplace, which is bad for profits…
There are no failed crafts in GD, you have recipes for items you can craft, and the ingredients are often also lower tier (sometimes craftable) items. The result is determined by the recipe, with one random ‘bonus’ affix, which you can see as a ‘free gift with your purchase’ kind of deal. So no disappointments. What I also like about it, is that you recycle the items you previously crafted / found and used, making them a part of the new item you will now use, which feels more like an actual upgrade isntead of a replacement - this aligns nicely with the emotional investment you might have with these items.
Interesting discussions btw, though I think it’s clear now that many players feel unjustly ‘punished’ by the probabilistic approach to crafting and the ever present chances of failure. It’s also obvious the true probabilities and human expectations of outcomes are not aligned (which is a well known and studied fact). And, it’s also clear that opinions are divided on this front, with some feeling completely happy about the current system, and fearing making crafting less punishing/rng based, as it will destroy their motivation to play, while others feel the exact opposite.
This is the reason I suggested a non linear system, and one that focuses on the expectations, feelings and perception of the different kind of players, rather than pure math.
Finally, it seems also clear, that a solution to the crafting approach cannot be made without involving discussions of whether the game is balanced around multiplayer or SSF and the money making scheme chosen for the game. Then there is also the not insignificant preference of the designers to account for
I agree with most of what you say. To many times when i craft something goes wrong early while having great odds of not being bricked or not removing the only stat that i actually need. It seems always to remove my stat that is the most powerfull or iam just unlucky.
The same goes for the brick as you say. even with 86% chance to not brick it bricks a lot of times.
The thing i heavily disagree with is removing the chance of having zero negative outcomes.
It feels good for me to have a chance to brick an item and more exciting if it doesnt brick.
I love the gamble that they put in the game. And i had some good items with it. However it cost me a lot of gold to only get a few oke ish items so maybe it needs to be changed a little bit or i was just unlucky since it is gamble for a reason.
A solution for the crafting might be that you got a higher chance of bricking items when you try to craft higher tiers instead of bricking already at tier 1. I also had some bad experience with tier 1’s bricking already which left me with a bad taste in my mouth since i lost my crafting materials and the item again… so overall i agree that it would be nice if they tinker a bit more in the crafting department. Its to RNGish now at low tiers aswell.
I see crafting as a system which is a way to reliably get to where you want to be, given enough time/effort investment.
The alternative is the rng based ‘loot drop’ system, in which you hope to invest less but accept that the chance of obtaining the item is probabilistic. You do expect the chances to approach 100% of success, given enough time (sooner or later, that item will drop).
The third system is the market place, where you exchange your currency (time/effort) for items you want, and the supply & demand are the fluctuating levels of randomness (how much the item you want will cost / is it available).
What I feel the crafting system is missing now, is that limit of certainty, you have with loot drops. Instead is has an increasing chance of failure (a totally different formula, from the loot drop in fact: it seems modelled after some kind of ‘relaistic’ simulation, which is interesting, but not desirable in a fantasy game like this. If it was, then your character should age and each hour spent battling would increase the chance of your hero dying of a sudden heart failure ).
I sort of agree. at the same time i disagree that crafting should be 100% realiable.
Some unique items etc could be outgeared to easily if you make crafting 100% realiable in this game imo.
It should be way more rewarding however to craft in this game though with maybe extra crafting options which are more crazy and have an option to brick your item.
Just adding basic tier 1 stats already have a chance to brick which sounds crazy to me and doesnt motivate me to craft anymore. I think the biggest problem in this system is that they already let you break items at low tier crafting. I would understand this RNG system if they would only add the chance to brick the item at tier level 4 or 5 for example.
Then you still care about looking at items on the ground in maps and still care about crafting. There should be a balance if you know what i mean. Thats why i disagree with crafting being 100% about what you want. Even path of exile doesnt have all crafting options with a 100% chance of getting it. You can block some suffixes to still get it sometimes for example. However the most basic things are easy to craft in POE.
Last epoch is missing a basic crafting system which allows you to get basic crafts easily.
Instead you have a chance to get punished for even trying to get a basic stat which is a shame in my opinion. This problem could be easily fixed by:
Making basic tiers 1 and 2 for example immune to brick.
Change percentages at tier 1 till 3 to brick so fast.
Check the system if it doesnt pick the lower percentages to often. What i mean by this is if they say it has a 3% to brick that it doesnt brick to often still. I remember with the game xcom 1 that enemies had a 1% chance to dodge and they dodge almost every shot. Thats when my friend and i quit the game. I hope this system does work like that aswell but sometimes it does feel like that, sadly enough.
That does not need to be the case, you can have a 100% reliable crafting where end results can not be better than 95% of a similar unique item, if you want uniques to be BIS. More likely, uniques will have certain affixes that outrange those craftable, but overall (on average) a crated top item will be a more ‘reliable’ / consistent , while uniques excell in one areas, but are weaker in others. This makes uniques and craftables complementary.
I see what you mean. My opinion differs, as I see crafting as a viable alternative to loot drops (or gambling, or market place), and wich this was a player’s choice which system of acquiring their items they prefer, rather than being dictated by the game (designers), as in: ‘we want you to do this in that way, and in order to get anywhere, you must utilise all thses tactics and systems we designed’, a.k.a 'you’re holding your phone wrong (Steve Jobs).
It’s inveitable that in a system where there is a non-zero probability for a binary outcome (brick or no brick), even that 0.1% chance of total failure will be annoying. You seem to be looking for a system that has more than 2 outcomes, with something in between I think. Tweaking probabilities will not take the frustration away, you need to decrese chances of ‘hard bricking’ your items in some way (and I believe it’s fair to have these chances reduced to 0%, but that’s just my opinion). Maybe a system where you can undo a bricked/failed craft, with some vendor recipe, special currency or occult ritual?
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Nothing specific comes to mind.
