I Don't See Why Forging Potential Exists

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As I previously pointed out, this makes crafting not a meaningful game mechaninc, but merely a tool that carries the players from one mechanic to another. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, but it is not what I personally would enjoy. I should say that I do not think that this is necessarily more ethical than the alternative, but this is not really a discussion I am inclined to engage in, so I propose that we agree to disagree on this matter.

With regards of the discussion of puzzle, I used the term puzzle in a very loose sense. When I say puzzle I mean puzzle in the same way Zachtronic games are puzzles. You are asked to complete a complex task with a set of tools, which you need to learn and master. In these games there are different degrees of suceess, getting a solution is an option, but you can also challenge yourself to getting the most optimized solution either in terms of time or resources. Sometimes this implies creating spreadsheets and such, but these games are not worse for it. In these games it is rare that you land on the solution to the problem, what you get is a solution that you are satisfied with.

In the same way, in a sufficiently complex crafting system, there is the first challenge of being able to craft the item in the first place.
But then there is also the additional challenge of making it in the most efficient way possible, or maximizing the chances of success, or improving the outcome.
In most cases different items are going to be similar enough that a lot of what has been learned can be carried over, but still require some ad-hoc decision making for the specifics of the item you are trying to create.
But in order for such an experience to happen, the system needs to be not completely straight-forward.
If there were an Item creation wizard that tells you exactly step-by-step how to create every single item there would be no room to problem-solve, you just follow what you are told, and you get your item.

As I mentioned in my previous post, LE is still very young, so its crafting system does not really have the depth that I am describing, and instead heavily relies on RNG.
It is not even a given that this will be the direction the crafting system will go, however I would be my personal choice.

I find this quite hyperbolic, especially when refferring to LE.
But also, what is the problem with relying on community resources?

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On the contrary - The current system actually lacks the character of a meaningful mechanic, in several respects: First, you cannot know for certain (without assistance) which item is best to start with to achieve the desired final item. Second, there is a permanent indeterminate amount of effort required in order to produce the item from the process. Third, all the equipment you receive in the game must be funnelled through this process before determining if any of it is a valid upgrade in comparison to what you already have. All of this actually serves to make progress non-linear and to create an information deficit, so as to reduce the meaningfulness of both efforts players make and the rewards they receive within the game. Creating a more obvious and direct relationship between crafting and its rewards would only serve to remedy this.

With regards to the puzzle analogy, if you’re not proposing an activity that produces a setup and payoff for the player, then you’re not talking about anything that adds entertainment value. I’d much rather solve a puzzle myself than look up the answer. A big part of what playing games is about are the acts of judgment and problem solving.

No I do not enjoy looking things up. If I have to stop all my forward momentum, stop everything, in order to look something up in a game about fighting monsters and getting cool items from them, then to me that is the game failing to be very good at being that game. I don’t even get any enjoyment from looking up builds until I’ve played the game enough for myself to be satisfied with my own effort. There was a time not that long ago in which this was part of the enjoyment and content of playing the game. Plenty of people still play games that way today.

So let me tell you an interesting anecdote about this. I don’t know if you play trading card games or not, but there was actually a point in time at which publishers started printing previews for upcoming sets that hadn’t been released yet. This was in the mid 00’s, I believe. It took a massive amount of enjoyment and expectation out of those games, because people knew what the good cards were and what the meta was before they ever opened a single pack. The mystery and intrigue of getting a new card or playing against one you hadn’t seen before vanished. Prior to that it was a joyous discovery process everyone went through with their friends, discussing new cards they had found and ways to use them. Really tragic that it went away.

Incidentally, if you remember a time like that, there’s a card game that kind of simulates this called Epic Card Game. It’s a resourceless game and you can shuffle and deal the cards to players randomly and they have what they need to form combos and strategies just from what they are handed. This makes it where nobody can predetermine what their opponent’s strategy is going to be, since what they receive even they can’t know until they play. So you can know the mechanics, but you can’t know how they will be used. Super fun. If you like TCG’s and you haven’t looked into it, very much recommend checking it out.

(Edit: Grammar / Typos / Spelling)

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And until you’re playing at a very high level where trying to optimize stats makes a difference, it’s not ambiguous. It’s very simple and requires minimal thought and strategy. By that point, you’ve already involved yourself with external sources of min/maxing information because that’s what you do when your goal is to play at the highest levels. At that point, it doesn’t matter what the game has told you (or not) because you are the kind of player who was already going to be strategizing with external sources and research. All of that min/maxing is superfluous - not required to enjoy or even complete the game. The content you can handle with just simpleton level effort to optimize your items is just about everything.

:roll_eyes:

Again, this is pure exaggeration and hyperbole.

For one, what person, where, has ever been hovering over a “Buy Game” button and thought, “Hold on there, does this game tell me everything I might need to know about how to get the best gear possible? If not, NO DEAL.”? I honestly don’t know what you’re on about with saying that end game level crafting concerns not being explained in-game is going to turn people away from playing ARPGs, and I’m not convinced that you do either, because this smells less like a real opinion and more like a gish gallop.

For another, the kind of deep consideration of crafting you’re talking about is absolutely not relevant to somebody “who just wants to enjoy a videogame”. Agonizing over the process of acquiring items with optimal stats is not something that kind of player does. They don’t have any need to and often don’t even have the desire to. Whether or not they can do it doesn’t affect their ability to enjoy the game.

For yet another, the idea of a player who worries about what the best crafting base to create an optimal item from, but is also totally repelled by learning how to make that decision from any source other than the game is just… nonsensical. That isn’t a real person. You’re describing two diametrically opposed attitudes and then combining them into a single entity that could only exist through dissociative identity disorder. …Is that what’s going on here? Are we all just an unwitting audience to an internal struggle between a Hardcore and a Casual gamer occupying the same gray matter?

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I keep trying to figure out what you think you’re arguing here, but every time I read a new paragraph my bead on the point you’re trying to make blasts off to another planet. You say you’re talking about end game crafting and optimal items that take 20+ hours to acquire, then in the same breath you apply that concern to players who are so casual that they would get lost, confused, and frustrated if they’re faced with “even the slightest bit of ambiguity” (a word you for some reason keep using as a synonym for “decision making”). You talk about the difficulty in being competitive but then equate it someone learning how to play the game at all.

The only position I’m able to distill from these word salads is that you want to be Among The Best but don’t like it if you have to think about how to do it. And that can’t be right, because you also keep dumping on the established solution to that goal - use of the community. So, succinctly, what is your actual point?

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Well it’s precisely because players are motivated to continue to play past the point at which the unique and novel boss / story content of the game has been exhausted that this becomes an issue. I’ve spent a lot of time here and elsewhere pointing this out. I mentioned in a separate post after I replied to you that it is undeniably the case that what people spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours doing in these games is trying to get the best items at the end of the game. What they should or shouldn’t do, or what the crafting system should or shouldn’t be used for according to anybody is irrelevant. You or I’s opinion on this matters not at all. What truly does matter is what players are actually motivated to do in the game.

If we can’t agree that ambiguity in a core game mechanic that requires community intervention to understand, and then player research to learn how to use without confusing them and wasting their time, then I think I’m satisfied not to agree on that issue.

I would also say it’s not hyperbole at all to say that ARPG’s are not growing at a similar rate of other more prominent games and game formats. Even the most popular ones don’t have a fraction of the players or attention games like Apex Legends and Fortnite are getting these days, let alone mobile games. This is a tragic fact that I think could have been averted and might be reversed someday if ARPG content were to be critiqued and improved, which is why I’ve taken the time to do so here. That’s what the statement you mentioned was speaking to.

You’ve also overlooked one of the reasons I later gave for why this matters, and that is that this is artificially extending the time that is required for players to reach their goals, often without them even realizing it. Put aside the experience in the actual game for a moment: It turns out that people’s time itself is precious. If a mechanic is unnecessarily extending the playtime required to reach player’s goals and isn’t adding any additional unique or interesting interactions to the game, (crafting is merely a pass / fail with a lot of other convolution at the present,) then why would you want to ask players to spend that time doing it when they could be doing something else more entertaining or more meaningful? This is why I point out over and over again like a broken record that grinding is a low quality experience. If we’re doing the same things over again merely to get different results and what we’re doing is mundane and repetitive, why not do less of it? There’s hundreds of games out there we could be playing and having new fun experiences in, if we value our time properly. I believe that if players valued their time more, it would lead to better quality experiences in games and higher quality content. That’s essentially what I’m advocating for.

I’ve made all of this as clear and concise for you as possible. I hope it helps. I do like to go on a little bit, but I try not to anyway.

I will wrap this up by mentioning, you said something earlier in the thread that I very much agreed with, and I think you should consider more deeply when it comes to games and game criticism in general. I don’t think you grasp quite how profound what you said was. It has deep implications worth pondering. That was this:

“Some people seem to want to have a reason to continue playing games long after they’ve stopped actually being fun, and I think that’s really weird.”

This statement might encapsulate my entire philosophy about content quality that I’ve laid out on this forum.

(Edit: Grammar / Typos)

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Bronco, there’s no point, that is what I concluded a while back so I stopped feeding the troll.

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I’ve been pretty consistently laying out the point. The point is that I disagree with the crafting system, for specific reasons that you two may or may not disagree with.

As for brevity, ideas take time to lay out and discuss. I’ve tried to mostly lay out what’s relevant, with a few anecdotes here or there. Enjoyed speaking with you guys.

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In english im assuming you mean there is no ingame resource to tell you what bases are good which is incorrect, you have an ingame loot filter which has a list of all Bases and their implicits and level requirements

You dont need to know shit, you only need to know ‘I want a 1h Axe with base crit’ and the game tells you and then you adjust your filter accordingly and about 10 minutes later you find a T1-T4 base with prefixes you want with 4% base crit and all your item hunting for that axe is probably done which is actually the biggest issue with a loot hunting game - getting a REALLY good (not perfect) item takes almost no time and getting a perfect item is virtually impossible

So theres no point to any of it, just craft T5’s and be done, theres no way an extra 20% increased damage matters much anyway with the boss dynamic dmg reduction its mostly meaningless anyway

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I was referring to the ambiguity of what is most efficient to do created by the FP system that ExsiliumUltra discussed in an earlier post. The reality is without knowing what the rates of success are, you could be wasting your FP not upgrading rare or exalted items to T5.

Moreover, the game could still be wasting player’s time if it isn’t more efficient to do so anyway. Consider: What if you were a player who just assumed upgrading rare and exalted items was more efficient when it wasn’t? The built-in ambiguity makes it unclear what the player should do, and the only way to remedy it is for the community to test it and put that information somewhere for them to find.

I didn’t say it was the biggest problem with the system, but yes it is one conceivable issue with it. I guess this is the one that people chose to take issue with because it appeared to be the easiest to defend, I dunno.

I didn’t know about the boss dynamic damage reduction though, that’s interesting. I’ll have to look into that. If it works the way I’m imagining, that does actually reduce the need for min/maxing gear in a way I’d agree with.

(Edit: Added thought to the end)

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Some people just enjoy arguing. Not me of course…

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aRPGs by design are there to waste your time though thats the point of the entire system, they thrive off resets or having extremely almost never to happen odds of getting that ‘perfect item’

you do the same areas over and over to get slightly more powerful to do them slightly quicker and thats the gameplay loop. Maybe a boss here and there, to most people or gamers that would seem ridiculous and a pointless experience, lots of gamers chase new experiences constantly ie Elden Ring playthrough > move on to another game

I probably have vastly less expectations than you about time spent in these games

I dont know the mechanics, you do more damage they gain more reduction. the first hit(s) are generally unmitigated up to a certain% then your damage tapers off hard, thats why Kill% threshold is so strong in this game as the bosses seem in their last 15% hp live longer than their first 40% of damage received

Look at this video from perrythepig, in that part he shows the difference between not using Nightshade Briar (4% MORE) per poison and without, he applies roughly 15 poisons a second, thats at least 60% more damage increase per second, by the 3rd second 180% more. It didnt show the whole kill but using a passive that can give 1.8x your damage and you can see it doesnt really feel like that, imagine going from 180>200% increased damage you wont even notice it at all

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Not quite. Bosses gain a stack of % damage reduction for a duration for every x% of health they loose. So if you kill the boss “too quickly” the stacks can overlap. That said, the initial implementation is probably what you’re thinking of when you say “your damage tapers off hard”.

2.8x, not 1.8x. I’d also think it should be more than just 15 stacks per second.

That’s because that’s only an 11% incremental benefit, not 2.8x.

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That’s one of the primary things I criticize about these games in their current state, is that they’re basically glorified treadmills or slot machines. If you’re not being motivated by what you’re doing, but by random outcomes that happen afterwards, that’s a low quality experience, because what you’re doing is mundane and repetitive and is no longer fun in and of itself. The worst thing about crafting systems like the one in this game is that it primarily exists to waste your time while adding nothing except an additional button you have to press (or press a few times) to find out if a drop you acquired is actually an upgrade or not.

My hope would be that people would actually critique these mechanics and that content in ARGP’s would begin to improve. Being satisfied with what we’re given isn’t a great way to get better content in the future.

(Edit: Lengthend one sentence)

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You can find out how it works here in the CGG. This information was compiled from previous patch notes & developer comments on the LE Discord. It may or may not be 100% accurate as changes to this system haven’t been reflected in any patch notes since its introduction. However, it should be close enough to give you an idea of how it works.

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Oh don’t worry, I know all about what’s going on here. But I can’t really have out with it unless I want to get a warning for being uncivil, so I have to settle for letting our friend show what game they’re playing through a terminal inability to speak concisely.

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I do think that aspect of all of this is really interesting, actually. The fact that there’s people who want to get uncivil about a rational critique offered for why this crafting system isn’t the greatest is fascinating. I guess it says a lot about how pernicious the classical training and schedules of reinforcement these games can create in people really are, that they can inspire that kind of defensiveness about them, at even the mere suggestion of taking them away. I realize now that this thread itself turned into a social experiment about the very problem I was pointing out.

Very interesting. I think this is something that is definitely worth more discussion everywhere.

(Edit: Added thought to first part)

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I am not sure if you genuinely believe this or you are just trolling.
I cannot speak for everybody else, but I am not getting frustrated because I disagree with you. The problem is that discussing with you feels like a waste of everybody’s time, which is kind of ironic considering the arguments that you are making.

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I mean, you have people openly admitting they’d like to become belligerent over the fact that they don’t like what I have to say about this crafting system and the effect RNG has in motivating players. If I wasn’t fascinated and eager to discuss what I was bringing up before, I totally am now. This was all the evidence I needed that this is a sore spot with certain players who weren’t ready to hear this. What more evidence do you need that this was worth discussing?

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I think the accusations of malicious intent with the system is what might be rubbing people the wrong way. This style of system is one of my favorite things to do in ARPGs.

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Making an unavoidably uncivil observation about someone’s behavior and motivations is not the same as belligerence. Here, let’s demonstrate.

If I were to say, just hypothetically and for the sake of example, that what I don’t like about someone is that they waste the time of everyone they engage with by using extreme verbosity and gish galloping as cover for an inability to either have or express cohesive opinions, a fact that they’re unable to realize due to a preoccupation with signaling high intelligence to others while doing nothing to actually be highly intelligent…

That would not be particularly civil, would it? Which is why I’m not going to say it. But it would not rise to the level of belligerent, either. Now if I were to instead pepper some cursing and name-calling in there, that would be belligerent.

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Well, they and you have misapprehended that. I don’t think that Eleventh Hour Games necessarily knows about the psychological effects of RNG on players or how players are motivated by schedules of reinforcement. It’d be malicious if you intended the game to be addictive, but I’m not asserting any evidence of that.

I would definitely encourage you to look into it and take it seriously though. It behooves developers to take an ethical approach towards the way people interact with and use their software.

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