I’m looking forward to finding a great purple affix only to have the other 3 be garbage and then getting the purple affix removed when using a Rune of Removal. 3 good tier 4/5 affixes will be better than a single good tier 7 affix.
yep me too like fractured affix on POE
I like the idea of making endgame items harder to get, but It would be great if you reduce the amount of RNG and make it somewhat achievement based. I feel like you have seen the top 10-12 players in the game get those perfect items relatively “easy” and you guys decided that It was too easy for everybody. Imo, the average player would rarely get items to perfect t5s with the current amount of RNG. Just something to think about.
My question about crafting is this, why does it have to be a completely random chance for success/failure, why not add hard to acquire materials that in sufficient amount guarantee a craft. Isn’t it much better for me to work toward something for a week or two and guarantee a craft rather than pray to god that I don’t brick an item in the last 3-4-5 affixes.
Not to mention, this sort of crafting mats that improve/guarantee success rate would automatically create an economy within the game. All you have to do is come up with a creative and balanced way to get them.
PS: A quick and easy improvement could be allowing multiple glyphs to be used to increase the success rate even further, with progressive diminishing returns. In that case, all you gotta do is find the sweet spot for the curve that this diminishing returns would follow.
We need to play a little bit more in the new patch so give better feedback, but T5 should be more accessable now. And devs said they try to balanced around not requireing any T6 or T7 affixes.
But i strongly dislike any guaranteed stuff in aRPG-like games. For me it feels like a asia mmo grind, depending on how much you have to grind for.
People tend to remember more of the bac experiences, than the good. But having thise RNG involved makes you really excited when finally getting a BiS item or an above average item.
And that is exactly the “feeling” that i consider worth playing those kind of games alot.
You and I have a different idea of good and bad experiences. Just because you get the dopamine hit that the RNG system was designed to provide, doesn’t mean that system is good for the community. This is the same reason loot boxes are prevalent in most competitive games nowadays, no matter how much “bad luck” you get, once in a while you hit that one good thing/item that provides that “good” feeling.
I agree that item drops should be based around RNG, but the whole point of crafting items is that the given item is under your control and about how you craft it, not randomness. Not to mention, I’m not proposing making the entirety of crafting guaranteed, just adding things to dull down the complete rng behind it. To give us a little bit more control over our own gameplay.
Might be the case, yes.
With those new T6 and T7 affixes i can see how crafting can become a little bit easier. As i already said, it seems that devs don’t assume that most players will have alot or any T6/7 affixes at all. So i could arrange with some stuff to make crafting up until T5 even more accessable or in some cases even guaranteed.
Still i would strongly dislike any kind of “put X amount of mats in” to make it guaraanteed. I would prefer some optional crafting material on top of the current one that is decently rare that can guarnatee certain crafting outcomes.
I think that commentaries on the psychological realm should be based on more than just wishful thinking.
Before I started studying psychology and neurobiology, I used to be adamant on the fact that any and every sort of user manipulation is unethical and immoral but then at one point I had to ask - what’s the solution?
You would not like to play a game where you can predict your progress accurately all the time and know how big the reward is all the time. There is a reason why almost no aRPG is like that.
Without going on a long tangent, we need to abuse our heuristics in order to feel enjoyment in games like these. It just happens to be that Pavlovian conditioning works the best!
This unconscious psychological warfare is also why PoE is so successful. I can tell that they’re very well versed in psychological models and how to abuse them, which I have no problem with.
To add to that:
The current league in PoE is very strong on deterministic crafting and that was the fastest league that I quit, although I’m one of the richest players there every league through crafting, which I enjoy.
That is a highly interesting standpoint. I never thought about from that “more professional angle”.
All i can say, since i played alot of aRPG’s (thousands of hours combined) is that i generally prefered RNG based system in conjuction with “some” guaranteed success systems, which often let you gear up for the actual endgame experience.
So for example guarnateed “mediocre” items (example would be Grim Dawns Factions Gear)
When there is any kind of guaranteed thing accessable in endgame it should be a very rare drop, in LE’s example there could be some sort of rare rune, which highly impacts certain crafts, maybe even multiple different specialised runes.
Yeah, that’s how I like crafting as well but only if it’s not in an obvious way. If it’s not obvious, it creates a sense of pride in the form of being proud to have discovered a possibly overlooked method of increasing your odds of success which other players and developers did not have the capacity to realize. It doesn’t feel like a chore then, but something exciting; as the excitement of the unknown, possibly great success starts to choreograph itself out in your mind. Even if your method came to be not ground-breaking and you were not successful, you still felt the rush of discovering a possible gold mine. If you know that your crafting is not based on uncommon knowledge, this phenomena will never play itself out.
Crafting is a complicated topic and I feel like I should make another thread on it just to explain the psychological aspects of it, at least from my perspective.
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How about a counterfactual? I’m enjoying a ton of harvest crafting and its the longest league I’ve stayed on after getting my 40/40.
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As someone who prefers playing self-found, I’m absolutely loving Harvest crafting too. 
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I absolutely believe that but I feel that your idiosyncracies and inclination for strong dedication play a role here as well.
A normative value system typically has a singular goal set in stone and the pathway to the goal is how the player’s emotions and actions will play out.
Not denying your prerogative for different values but I’m assuming that you’re treating Harvest more like a sandbox now, which is not how most people play or enjoy games. I would draw a parallel of normally players quit playing the game after they’ve killed the final boss but some still fiddle around for hundreds if not thousands of hours after it. I think the design decisions should be focused more on those who share the behaviors of the majority( quitting after the final boss is dead).
I usually have a single goal most leagues. And that is to achieve 40/40 each league. Once that is done, I quit the league. You may call that my “final boss”. So I have no idea what you think are my “idiosyncracies and inclination for strong dedication”
I am sure you know how much most people play or enjoy games better than me. Because you studied psychology and neurobiology?
So you’re telling me every league, once you killed the league boss you quit the game? If not, and if you agree that different people have different league goals then it is no different from what I reply in the first quote. I usually quit the game when I finish my “final boss” - 40/40 challenges. But Harvest is interesting enough that I stay on to play even after I am done which is not usual.
I think you have no idea how peopl play ARPG. Most ARPG veterans dont quit the game after the final boss is dead. I dont think you do that either. ARPGs are a grind. We kill the league boss over and over again.
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Achieving 40 challenges is idiosyncratic and I see you being engaged in aRPG communities more than the standard. This is not a value statement, but an observation. Minus the challenges, I’m similar in that aspect and I take that into account.
If 40/40 was your singular goal and you have reached it but kept playing, it has to mean that you’ve adopted a new set of goals or a style of engagement.
I do know that most people quit after killing the game’s final boss or chapter / tier, I hope I don’t have to start finding studies for something like that to convince you?
Path of Exile also understands it very well, that is why new quests were added after Kitava - to relay information that this was not the final boss which at least some players thought.
I bolded it for you and was explicit on the fact that what my hypothesis is on how you’re playing the game specifically now is an assumption.
I have not made any value judgement and I was very succinct on the fact that I am completely a-okay with everyone having different values.
My goal is typically reaching X amount of mirrors within a specific time frame( 1-3 weeks) but If it ought to be my goal to kill the final boss then yeah. I hope it’s not an alien concept that human beings need a perceivable end-goal in order to start a journey.
If I reach my goal of let’s say 2 mirrors then the next day I give all my currency away and uninstall - every league.
Emphasis is on the word “veteran”. That is why I also made it very distinctly clear that the discussion is about the majority, not the “veterans” who are a minority.
I do not belong in that majority either.
Thanks for engaging me. I want to be sure that I am not accusing you of value-judging me.
I was just making trying to make the point that I dont agree with you that my continued engagement with Harvest was expected. I think it was unexpected and precisely because it provided deterministic crafting. I also want to emphasize that I agree too much determinism makes an ARPG uninteresting. But I argue Harvest is the right amount of determinism and RNG for me.
This we agree. But I dont agree that Last Epoch should be a game made just for the casual majority. The voice of the veterans are important. And as far as I can tell, EHG pay enough attention to the voices of veterans.
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I did not state that it was expected. The “now” in my original text was a very important signifier for the idea that it changed from being a 40/40 singular goal to something else, which is not a normative cultivation of goals. There is nothing wrong with it, if anything it’s great that people can galvanize more meaning through more places; it’s just not the template on which one should forge models on as it does not represent the majority.
Yes, all populations should be heard (:
If you read my comment in it’s entirety, you should have understood that I do not want a completely predictable/guaranteed crafting. I just think that there should be less RNG or more ways to dull it down or reduce it. I see having more control(not complete) over your gear as an absolute win, the only thing that the devs would need to be careful about would be determining the difficulty of reducing that RNG being through crafting materials or something else.
Sure, there are big players in the aRPG market such as Diablo 3 and PoE, but there is a reason why they will never, ever, be as iconic as Diablo 2 was for example. The only way to make your mark in an oversaturated market is to risk doing something new and to do it well. Why follow a practice that has already been proven to be mediocre at best.
I just got an exalted Two-Handed Staff with 1 good and 1 bad affix. Tried to remove the bad affix, ofc it removed the good one. I am discouraged now, can’t beat the abomination boss because it’s so terribly unbalanced. Gotta stop playing, I’m sad af
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Why don’t you start a thread in the General section of the forum & tell us your build & we’ll see what we can do to help.
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Hey LLama8, thank you for trying to help me. How do I create a post there?
I’m currently running a lightning sorcerer Level 63 as a crit mage. My damage is okay, but I’m getting one shot from this one particular boss all the time.