Range of Forging Potential to depreciate is too high

General
1

Probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but IMO the crafting system, while great and intuitive especially early game, it gets very frustrating far late game in large part due to the heavy FP costs to crafting. Like, you finally find a good T7 affix drop with okay affixes to work around and/or tinker with, building toward something decent (for slamming) or twisting luck with Glyph of Chaos or Removal, but then “-23 FP lost from a mere T4 > T5”, and then all a sudden, no more FP — item is bricked.

That is punishing is heck and very deflating.

I think the whole recent “LP2 argument” could go a long way simply by making the crafting just a tad less RNG-taxing.

Here are just some suggestions.

Current:
1-18 FP cost to put an new affix.
Suggestion:
IMO, this baseline range is too high considering you start at T1 and want to build added affixes to max T5. Counterintuitive in what crafting is trying to do. Range should be a lot lower, like 1-10 FP.

Current:
1-10 from T1 > T2
1-12 from T2 > T3
1-18 from T3 > T4
1-24 from T4 > T5
Suggestion:
T1 > T2, T2 > T3 are fine ranges, imo, but then the range jarringly increases by 6 from then on. Again, alot. T3 > T4 = 1-16… T4 > T5 = 1-20. IMO are better. I don’t think ANY craft should have a higher range than 1-20.

Current:
1-25 for Rune of Removal and Reshaping
Suggestion:
Same goes for these; these too lowered to at least 1-20 FP cost ranges. Its already RNG which affix Removal removes and what the Implicit ranges you will get with reshaping

Current:
1-20 for Rune of Havoc and Redemption
Suggestion:
These are very powerful Runes and, for what they do, 1-20 is fine.

Current:
1-15 for Rune of Refinement
Suggestion:
This is fine too, imo. Probably could go 1-10 range, but I won’t complain if this stays untouched.

6 Likes
2

While this can be frustrating it is very far from the norm.

With the ranges you presented you can get a very skewed picture of how likely it is to consume certain amounts of FP.
But in reality the average is way lower than these numbers let people to believe. FP consumption is always rolled twice and it takes the lower result. Plus here are still critical crafts and glyph of hope (for all crafts that can have one applied).

If a craft is way more successful than you initially expected, that is very exciting, because of all these expected values, thus the contrast between good and bad crafts is very high. I really like that.

The only thing I agree with would be the Rune of Removal, I think this could be lowered slightly or anotehr idea: Have it consuem different amounts of FP based on the nubmer of affixes present on the item. e.g. 1-18 for 4 affixes, 1-21 for 3 affixes and 1-25 for 2 affixes. Because Rune fo Removal already has inherent rng and can brick in item it is much more likely to fail regardless of FP consumption.

1 Like
3

I find the crafting off-putting at the endgame and it’s killed my interest to play, again. Too much RNG feel like my time is better spent elsewhere. I often get hit for 20+FP rolls. 100% agree with OP, great in beginning, at the end not so much.

2 Likes
4

I dunno, man. I’ve had T7s and double-T6s brick real fast just because I tried to fill their last slot / upgrade an opened one three times.

Even with thousands of glyphs of hope at my disposal, the 25% chance of it activating combined with the massive ranges (seriously, 18 FP just to bump a rank by 1??) can absolutely ruin that great new drop you just got.

I’ve lost way more items than I care to think about because of this.

2 Likes
5

The fact that it rolls twice means that the average number it will roll is 6.5FP.
Not only that, but it is much more likely that you will roll a 1 (11%) than you will roll an 18 (below 1%).

However, perception bias means we are way more likely to remember the negative outcomes than positive ones, even if positive ones roll more often.
So this isn’t so much a math issue but a perception one.

1 Like
6

It’s beyond perception bias. We can observe the final statistics when we store a full stash tab over a month, then brick through the entirety of its contents in 30 minutes trying to craft a 4-affix item to swing at the only LP2 of a unique that we have.

There’s no bias in this, because we’re not looking at one individual click and saying, “OMG minus 25, I hate this.”

We’re looking at the final results of a LOT of crafts, and seeing that we didn’t even get something that we can move forward with our plans with (which is ANOTHER step where we have to get lucky yet again, with odds against us yet again).

I haven’t played this game in a hot minute (and still won’t be playing) because the path to upgrading my character from here is just… too discouraging. (We’ve already talked about it elsewhere!) Yes I could just go “play another character,” but I have no motivation because I, unfortunately, KNOW the path that lies ahead for new characters as well.

I dunno, man. We can sit here and tell everyone why we don’t play the game anymore, and I guess the devs can either care or not care. We’ve done our part by expressing the issues that we have with the game. (Crafting, in this particular thread.)

People want to see their plan come together. Not fail to even be able to wind up the crank.

7

Funnily enough, we had this exact statement in the old crafting system so Mike ran the code to generate a million crafts & guess what? It was perception bias.

Have you been noting down each craft, what was being done & how much fp was being used? No? That’s what perception bias is, we rarely remember the 4-5 long streak of glyph of hope procs, but we definitely remember the 2-3 long streak of max, or near max, fp consumption 'cause it feels bad.

If you feel that fp is being consumed inappropriately/unreasonably/whatever, go on discord & ask the devs to check to see if it’s working properly & have a conversation with them about it.

Yeah, and that’s what needs to start the conversation with the devs.

8

I don’t think @Unlovable questions if the system is working properly or not, they simply voiced their unsatisfaction with the system and that across dozens or hudnreds of carfts they didn’t get any upgrade for their character.

I personaly think its very hard to judge somewith with this sort of feedback, because there are simply so many factors:
What is your current character/gear
What pieces of gear do you try to craft
What are the original gear pieces you try to craft
What is your desired outcome
Do you use all the available ressources to their fullest potential?

It very well might be that the expectation vs reality are very unlikely to ever get fulllfield anway, if you starting parameters or strategies are lacking.

There are so many small intrecate thigns about crafting to optimise the outcome that it migth as well be a user issue. Maybe its a expectations issue. Maybe its spending too much time and ressources on gear that has very low chances to succeed to begin with.

Up until 2LP (even before 1.2) Legendary Crafting with desired T7 exalted affix on a desired base I never felt the crafting system to be this disappointing. Once you get into multiple desired exalted affixes or trying to craft input gear for 3LP+ stuff it can get a bit frustrating. Also the new Set Craftign can sometimes be frustrating because in many cases you want to seal the set affix, but set affixes don’t naturally drop (except imprints) and thus you need to add it onto a free afix and THEN seal it, which are two of the highest FP cost crafts.

So I personally can’t judge @Unlovable’s feedback, because i don’t know what the character and expectations look like.

1 Like
9

Those are 2 different things, though.
What I was referring to is individual rolls. What you’re referring to is the total sum of actions you need to take to get to your final desired outcome.

For example, your item could require more than 10 actions (between removals, sealing, adding new affixes, etc). At 6 average, a 60FP item would still run out of FP before you’re done with it, even with favorable rolls. And the average is higher for many of the actions you will use.

Like Heavy said, it depends a lot on the strategy you’re using to reach the final outcome.
There are many items that shouldn’t even be used to try to reach it because their starting point is unlikely to lead to your result and would be better off crafting something else in it. Or even just ignoring it altogether and shattering it.

But regarding individual rolls, it really is perception bias. We remember those 20-25FP costs a lot more than we remember the 1-5 ones, even though you get way more of the latter than the former.
That doesn’t mean that maybe the overall number of estimated actions couldn’t be increased. to allow for more successful items. Either by decreasing the total FP costs (which would average to a lower number) or increasing FP overall on gear.

Mostly, I don’t feel like this is required, though. Crafting feels like it provides more than enough successes for up to mid-game gear and becomes much harder when you’re trying to min-max into endgame gear, which feels like the way it should be.
Either way, this is what the discussion should be about, imo. Early and mid-game crafting is fine, so the discussion should revolve more about the difficulty of endgame crafting.

1 Like
10

I can’t account for @Unlovable, but my thought process when it comes to crafting is to at least max out the other desired affixes before slamming it into something. For instance:

-Let’s take a Wand with 48FP as well as T7 Cast Speed, T5 +% increased Fire Damage, T1 +% Increased Chill chance, and a free suffix slot.
-Let’s say I’m playing a Fireball DoT build and planning to slam a LP3 Cinder Song, building to scale DoT damage.
-Prefix’s are already in shape albeit with low rolls on their ranges, so the goal is to get good suffixes while hoping to have FP left to adjust ranges with Rune of Refining.
-Seal the chill chance. -1 FP cost thankfully. All good.
-Then, slot in +% Ignite chance in the free suffix and build it to achieve T5. Was able to achieve T5 with a Glyph of Hope proccing along the way. But even still, only have about 18 or so FP left to not only deal with that last free suffix slot but also fix ranges. Not looking too good.
-Slot in +% Fire Penetration. -11 FP. Upgrade to T2. -7 FP.
-That’s it 0 FP, leaving me with a t7, t5, t5, t2. The right affixes, yes, but middish range on the t7 that I no longer have the opportunity to fix as well as a subpar T2 affix that MAY happen to be randomly chosen when slamming into a rare LP3.
-Because of the RNG nature of slamming, this, to me, is a failed item. I am not risking to ruin my LP3 slam with this.
-Start the search and find process of a T7 Cast Speed or Fire Damage Wand all over again, in addition to the crafting process and hope the RNG works more in my favor… ad neasuem.

3 Likes
11

This is a wonderful specific example that can be worked with a lot more in terms of feedback.

While there are always multiple solutions, some are more effecient then other and some are more risky.

Couple of things for your example:
If you already know that you desired endresult needs to be T7 T5 T5 T5 to be “worth” in your opinion, your approach was already not fitting to the endresult you would have liked.
Increasing one affix to T5 and then increasing the next one to T5 is inefficient from a FP consumption perspective. You should always craft the lowest tier affix and alternate between crafting different affixes (always the lowest one). This gives you lower FP consumption and more crafts on average, increasing the chance to have a few glyph of hope procs and crits.

Second thing because you already said you want a very very high affix tier item on all affixes. If you don’t seal with 4 affixes, the chance to seal T1 is not guaranteed. Sealingchance is dependent on the rarity AND number of affixes on the item, being 100% on a exalted item with 4 affixes for T1. T1 seal on a exalted item with 3 affixes is “only” 94,5% chance.
Depending on the endresult you want it might be worth risking a 94,5% chance. The “worst” thign that could happen whiel filling the open affix would be a critical craft increasign the T1 affix to T2, which would reduce the chance of sealing to 69%. But a crit, that also then hits that specific affix is very unlikely as well.

12

I agree with this. There are some intricacies to add in, but that’s merely clarification on proper crafting. The reason I myself didn’t go into specific details is that there is a LOT of different ways to craft on an item properly, depending on how that item starts off. I was hoping it would be assumed that I am crafting optimally, since there is no reason to have the discussion assuming the opposite. And we all know that the argument remains valid if we assumed everyone is crafting properly.

That does lead us to the next question, which is more valid of a QUESTION than the previous one of asking if we craft properly: “What are your final goals for a LP fodder item?”

I think it’s pretty obvious and universal; you want 4 good affixes. Depending on the rarity of the LP#, you may give more “gamble” leeway since you won’t mind giving it multiple attempts. For example, if an item is commonly LP2, you might slam some items with “perfect” double ideal affixes, and up to LITERALLY ANYTHING as the other two affixes. But we can put this over to the side, since we are clearly not complaining about things that are so easy to obtain that we don’t mind missing some gambles before landing what we want.

“Our” criteria (if I may be bold enough to speak for everyone) for rare LP# crafts is that we would like all 4 affixes to be something we at least get benefit from (even if it’s something we don’t need, maybe getting it here lets us take it off of some other slot, and gain something in return over there), and the roll ranges will be ideally around 80+%. (And sometimes, we may need a specific range, like in the case of reduced crit damage taken, where we may need a near-max roll.)

So let’s try to wing an actual specific example off the top of my head…

Let’s say I collected a ring that’s t7 intel, t2 cold dmg, t1 ward per sec, and t1 fire res.

Well, what if the intel is min rolled? Maybe the first thing I wanna do is reroll that. By taking this path, I can use Glyph of Order on any of the other affixes at any point during their tier-ups to maintain any good rolls they may get during that phase. This means I’m not using Glyph of Hope, so my Forge might tank immediately. But at the same time, that has greater odds of giving me good affix rolls than just getting 4x t5+'s and shoving range rerolls at it, where all 4 affixes are getting rerolled.

So is that the path I take? Or do I indeed get my 4 ideal affixes first, and then indeed start force-feeding it range rerolls, ALL in the name of being able to have Glyph of Hope attached to as many stages as possible?

The problem is that it’s a trick question; both paths are doomed.

The starting item has 3 affixes I like, and 1 that I don’t (fire res). I can luckily seal that fire res (good thing it wasn’t any higher than t1, or I may get unlucky in this). But then I now have to get my 4th affix in there, starting all the way at t1.

This ring can start with something like 48 Forge. But it’s almost certainly bricking. Despite having THREE of four affixes, and a guaranteed seal, this thing still bricks. ELEVEN tier-ups is just too much.

The bottom line is that you have to get LUCKY to get a craft to work out, rather than UNLUCKY for a craft to not work out. And the problem with this is that it’s just one layer of the crafting. You still need that rare LP unique in the first place, and you still need it to pick the right affixes unless it’s an LP4 (which it isn’t). The fact that you can brick 99.9% of your items on the craft phase, and that one golden item that actually makes it through that filter might STILL brick at the Julra step, is totally insane.

We know what the runes and glyphs do, we know what items MIGHT get lucky enough to survive the crafting, and we know very basic mathematics to determine the best course of action for the crafts. The problem is that it still sucks, lol.

Crafting LP1’s was so peaceful. Just reroll the affix until it’s 100%.

Once I hit the LP2’s, I lost motivation. Character progression effectively won’t happen anymore. And even worse, THREE of my uniques are timeline boss uniques, so LP2’s themselves are already rare - let alone having THOSE even be a GOOD BASE ITEM! (Last Steps below 15% ward generation or even 200 threshold, or Undying Heart having low Health, Strength, and Cast… Or that belt I use, that has an Intel range of like 4 to 25?!? Come the frick on, now…)

Uhhh, so yeah. I dunno if that clarifies anything, but yeah. The final result of the craft needs to be 1 affix that’s great (the one I can pick on the merge), and then 3 affixes that I can utilize well if they get picked. And those ranges need to be roughly above 80% each, because in most cases, a min rolled tier X is almost the same thing as a max rolled tier X - 1. And you wouldn’t merge your LP2 or LP3 with an item with t4 affixes, would you?

13

There is absolutely the necessity to understand how and under what cicumstances someone who gives feedback crafts. Especially when someone might not know that they possibly don’t use all the tools that are availalbe to them or crafts very inefficiently and thinks the crafting is pretty bad, but there are some ways to improve results significantly. This could steer the discussion into a very different direction liek better tutorialzation and explanations for example.

While everyone is entilted to their opinion, but opinions still hold different values objectively when the circumstances are vastly different and some of these opinions in the worst case even stand upon factually wrong assumptions. That is why its important to clarify these things.

And this is already where some of these different approaches and desired endresutls come in. Some people (a lot here in the forum at least) more often than not aim for the stars and always want BiS items. But in reality most legendary crafts have like 1 or 2 “mandatory stats” (for example +X to skill Y etc) and then for the remaining stats there is a plethora of stats that are useful in different capacities. But some people only think the world is black and white and there is only “good items” and “trash items”, even though the “trash item” can still be used and will yield perfectly fine results.

But what is your item you want to replace? That is an important information in this context.
Do you already have a T7 Int ring with a bad roll?

Your approach to reroll values as teh first step already is a very very min-maxing approach which will yield much less successful outcomes if that is your main criteria.
If you have a T6 Int max roll on the item you want to replace evne if the T7 is min rolled it would still be an upgrade. So rerolling affix values at the end of the craft if you have some FP remaining would be the much saver way.

If we are talking on the absolutely top end, yes I agree, but at that point you are already hundreds of hours into your character and at that point you also need to optimize the hunt for gear pieces to a point where you literally need dozens, if not hundreds of crafts. So there is another axis to optimize, which is not directly tied to crafting, but to how many crafting attempts you can do within X playhours.

No, not everybody inherently understands all the use cases for runes and glyphs, especially some of the runes have some more non obvious applications.
Also human inherently suck at maths and statistics. And our feelings are heavily biased because of negative experiences.

I personally have a complete different experience. With Patch 1.2 and the 1 guaranteed Legendary Affix Craft 2LP’s became almost too easy of an upgrade. In the majority of cases there is only one absolutely best in slot affix and then the 2nd, 3rd and 4th affix are less important. So if you use a good input item your 1LP to 2LP is basically guaranteed to be an upgrade which almost feels too good adn easy to get.

I still think the 1guaranteeed slam needs to be gated behind T4 Temporal Sanctum.

Boss Uniques are much easier to target farm though and not all of the mare very rare. Last Steps of the Living is a really bad example IMO, because its a insanely common drop (literally 50% drop chance). And with the new Woven Echoes you can even reroll badly rolled ones. So when you drop a 2LP with bad ward generation roll just stash it, its still progress.

It is completely fair if you feel this way, but at the same time you might hold yourself back a little bit here. This is already a very restrictive way of wanting upgrades.

A max roll tier X affix is always worse than a min roll tier X - 1 affix.
Yes the upgrade will be less big, but nevertheless it would be an upgrade.

If you aim for the stars you will get disappointed more often.

14

I don’t think that would be effective, though. With the power creep, T4 Julra isn’t the hard fight it used to be.

Yes. Like I said before, I think this is mostly about the very endgame-y min-maxing.

Crafting feels perfectly fine for early and mid-game. Even for early endgame. It’s not hard to make a craft that will definitely upgrade your build.

But for min-max endgame, you will fail hundreds of crafts. In my opinion, as you should. You’re already hunting BiS gear. It should require a considerable time and currency investment.

And if that frustrates you (as it frustrates me) then stop chasing the BiS gear. Your build is already pretty good. Now go make another and you’ll be back to having fun playing the game and succeeding at crafting again.
Builds don’t all need to reach corruption 1k and kill Uby to be complete. They just need to be fun to play. When they’re not fun anymore, they’re done and it’s time for a new one.

15

What has this to do with effective? T4 is noteable harder than T3 already and T2 is a joke. It is simply that something like this needs to be earned IMO and right now it feels handed to the player without any effort.

Gating this behind T4 dungeon would require some players or builds to improve and progress their character a bit more before the “unlock” the ability to guaranteed legendary craft 1 affix.

16

That was what I meant, but maybe I didn’t explain myself properly.

I meant that raising to T4 Julra wouldn’t be very effective as a gatekeeping measure because, with the power creep, almost any build can do that now without much difficulty.

Maybe, instead of that, it could be a dungeon charm drop that allows you to select an affix? One that starts dropping in empowered monos and has a rarer rate than the other 2? I feel like that would have been a better solution for 1.2.

Sadly, the cat is out of the bag and I don’t think this will change back, as many players would be very unhappy about it.

1 Like
17

Agreed, but one can still hope.

I was very perplexed by the decision to do it with T2 already. With things like this its always easier to lower the threshold than increasing it, so not sure why tehy didn’t stat with T4 or T3 and then lowered it if the perception was overwhelmingly negative.

2 Likes
18

I think you’re overcomplicating it, and in doing so, you’re missing a lot of my post on accident. For example, I literally said that I shoot for a solid t7 to guarantee on my LP’s, then I’d like the other 3 affixes to be something that I can use. This is just about as low as the bar can go; I’m not even trying to make the other affixes higher than t5, and I don’t NEED the guaranteed affix to be t7 necessarily. I’m merely not trying to add Dex to my Mage’s body armor, and there are a bunch of resists I don’t need (Mage gets easy fire and lightning resists, and the blessings give a few of the other resists single-handedly, and automatically by merit of the other blessing options not being ideal).

The fact that my bar is so low that I’m okay with cold resist, because I’m using the lich gloves that give me ward retention for cold resist, says a lot about how lenient I am with it. I’m not looking for perfect BiS gear, that was a total misrepresentation when I’ve only ever alluded to the exact opposite.

The crafting just aint it. Let’s zoom out for a second. It’s the same 4 people talking on the official forums. What would it take for you to agree that it needs to change? Honest question.

-And yes, I can assure you, it’s the crafting processes that makes players stop playing this game.

19

Your bar is definitely not low. You are literally talking about using Glyph of Order, which is incredble min-max already and risks a lot of FP for potentially no benefit or very little benefit.

And my honest answer is, that I personally think that crafting, specifically FP cost and consumptions are fine. The only thing I could see gettign a reduction would be Rune of Removal.
Other than that I don’t really want any changes other than more high end crafting options like new runes or glyphs. Runes of Redemption and Havoc were excellent new interesting additions.

No you can’t. Every person “who stops playing” will stop for a variety of different reasons, some might be crafting related. but on the other hand the crafting system was and still is also praised by a lot of people, because even with all its annoyign and frustrating moments its still one of the best and most loved crafting system among similar games in the genre.

Patch 1.2 added so much things that go hand in hand with crafting, without really changing crafting directly and I think that is the way to move on. Give us more broad applications with different runes, glyphs etc. new crafting options that make items that previously were useless or very bad potentially useful. (Like Rune of Redemption).

20

Again, I don’t think you’re reading me fully. Maybe skimming?

I almost never use Orders. I’ve probably used less than 5 in my life. I was presenting it as an option, while also stating that it is probably not worth it since you need Hopes as often as possible (which isn’t good, by the way, it means FP is so starved that you can’t even use all of the different crafting angles simply because you’ll lose all your FP).

Thennnn I guess we just disagree. Except for Removals, of course, I agree with all FP lowerings (and that one in particular makes sense for a lot of reasons).

Yet, to emphasize my point I made up above, Redemptions and Havocs can hardly even be used without totally bricking an item anyway, because of FP. You want more Glyphs??? How are you going to justify using whatever the new Glyph might be, over a Hope? Tell me an effect you can think of, without having it interfere with regular FP costs (such as, you can’t say whatever your new Glyph idea is automatically only consumes 1 FP, or something), and we’ll step back and assess if it’s even something you can see yourself using.

-But, yes, I can. Obviously I can’t prove it in a court of law. But we aint in one.

I quit for this reason. My friend quit for this reason. And if we just think logically… anyone coming INTO this game can happily get all of the ARPG elements that they enjoy from other ARPG’s. The real big difference is the crafting.

Nobody came into this game because they saw the gameplay, and then left because of the gameplay. Nobody joined because they liked a class, and then left because of the classes. Et cetera, et cetera…

So, yes. I can assure you. Not in a court of law, no. But in a… “court of logic”? Yeah. Yeah, I can assure you.

The crafting gets “praised” in the same way a Steam game gets a positive review from a newbie with 2 hours in. It seems nice at first, and it may even be objectively better than other things from other games. But once you pump a lot more hours, you start to see the downsides. Nobody’s going back and editing their Steam review, and nobody’s going back and making followup YT videos about second thoughts on Epoch’s crafting. Everything is inflated “hype” because of the aforementioned first impressions. I know this personally. My friend wouldn’t shut up about this game, and largely emphasized the crafting. He was playing it before me! I finally jumped in, and was enjoying the game. The crafting was good, and everything seemed promising.

But as the demand for better gear went up… Forging Potential really didn’t. And then came LP’s, and the growing need to run a lot of uniques instead of just raw exalted items. And that’s when the limitations and problems started to show. All those hyped YT videos started to look like those early Steam reviews. People burned out from PoE, coming to Epoch, and speaking too soon. Even if it’s still BETTER than PoE, it’s still not good. That is to say, the final result isn’t. The idea is there. It just needs some number tweaks.