Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 7 Feedback: Crafting System Enhancements
More testing showed:
- Often times, 1 or 2 amazing successes thrown in with a bunch of great successes on single-line crafted items often allowed the crafter to "bust the cap" that was formerlly in place due to resource quality (i.e. reach a "perfect" item without "perfect" resources). I like this changed.
- Multi-line crafted items were NEVER, no matter what, better under the new system than the old system. You might have been able to get better results on your primary experimentation line if you got a couple amazing successes, but your secondary lines would be at least 30-50% worse than they were under the old system.
- To get the best result possible, you could no longer be satisfied with great successes. Items made with ONLY great success no longer reached the item's maximum attributes (and were slightly WORSE than pre-patch items made with all great successes). To acheive maximum attributes, you had to scrap a lot of resouces and start over in order to hopefully get amazing successes. This was frustrating, especially for items that were being made with loot drops.
- The probability for getting an amazing success seemed broken. It seemed more dependant on the quality of the resources than on the level of the crafter. Using very high quality resources, I seemed to get more amazing successes than with lesser resources.
I saw leave in the Crafting system. I didn't find anything wrong except a 2 - 3 points different in the finsihed product. Some good some bad.
And most of my friends didn't see anything different ithere.
I'm sure the people who were complaining whenthenew Craft system was in test center being testedwere the ones who play live and never went to test it out.
Casper
While making a schematic with 900+ material I was able to hit 100% for the first schematic. For the remaining attempts it maxed out at 94% with one point left over using the exact same materials?
Lakys wrote:
Thunderheart, this patch is nice. The change makes the crafting work more realistic. As a master weaponsmith I could make twenty items with the exactly same stats using all the possible bonus tapes. Now it is really hard to get twice in a rowthe same stats to some components. It probably creates a greater gap between novice weaponsmiths, master weaponsmiths and confirmed master weaponsmiths with +2 exp points. But I believe the system is not unfair as it gives the game other achievements than simply grinding weaponsmith to become master and makesimilar stuff than other masters.
But, reverting to the previous system would be bad. Several weapons or components have probably been made with the new and improved stats. So it would be even worst to see those changes canceled for the economy as the thousand items provided by schematicsmade today will remain and screw the whole economy.
Please do not revert. The experimentation system (and consequences) is now live. It is TOO late to come back.
Kyo - Master Weaponsmith - Farstar.
How is that more realistic? A master crafter should consistently get the same results. This system is WAY too dependent on the rolls in my opinion. Now you can't just hope to avoid moderate successes, you need to keep going till you get a couple of amazing successes. If I wanted random chance to play this big a role in my entertainment, I would be playing a casino game....
The new system has a bunch of bugs too btw, the percentage you experiment the item up to and the stats on the item are not consistent, it depends on what your last result was unless you max it out at 100%.
I agree it was horrible that they let this go live, and will screw up the economy for awhile in the future. But that doesn't mean that they should keep in a bad system. They should just cap items, and retroactively nerf them like they do everything else. For example no BER 14 heavies should be allowed, there should be a hard cap at 13; and 10 for mediums, and so on. They obviously have the ability to do this since they have done it with other things.
Then after actually testing their system and thinking things out (which they obviously didn't do before developing this system), they can reintroduce aspects of this system. I still want a dev to explain with any logic how this change achieved or was supposed to achieve any of the goals they said it would in their "understanding" post. It takes about 5 seconds of thought to see it does just the opposite on every point. It is really shocking how clueless the devs are sometimes. More variety? umm, no, less variety because you have to use all your points on one line now. Help the economy? No, makes it much worse by first creating a pre and post patch supply; and then also makes it worse by further restricting supply of key combat craftables to those with 12 points of experimentation. These 12 pointers can and will jack up prices, and given the endless amount of credits everyone will still buy from them, causing all non 10 points to sell their wares for almost nothing and more likely just quitting all together. On some servers there would literally be about 1 or 2 master crafters in certain professions. It is really amazing the ignorance of the devs on this one. They have totally screwed this game up so many times in so many ways. I am almost tempted to start contacting high level Sony execs and explaning to them just how much revenue they are losing on this game....
The should have just left the system alone and fixed bugs 
But that is just too obvious a thing to do I guess.
Demane wrote:
If anyone creates another post like this...admins please ban them for life.
...no really, I am serious. My eyes cannot take this abuse again.
Oh ya, about the crafting changes: I have a second accound. She is newWS and AS. Seeing how I have to either spend millions to get skill tapes from nerds who afk camp 24/7 or camp myself in order to make the best items I have to say that this character and account will shortly be cancelled.
Please feel free. Honestly, this "If you don't do this, I cancell my 54875875743 accts." gets old, and nothing productive .
I want to be able to make the best things and if I find I have to be a min/maxer powergamer like the elites out there then crafting has no appeal to me.
It depends on the definition of your "best"?
The current system in place for aquiring tapes is terrible.
I fully agree with you on this. Tapes should not be camped by anybody. Tape drops should be very random, also, should be dropped by a reasonable levels mob depending on the power of the given tapes.
Fist off needing things like taped in order to be the best crafter out there is a lame idea anyway.
Like I said, it depends on the definition of your "best".
Crafting should stress player skill and time investment in order to make good products.
Yes, it does.
It is understandable that certain things like good resources and schematics collected before nerfs will give some players and edge but things should be thought out to give players the ability to produce exceptional results if they just take the time to find good ingredients and puta little elbow grease in it...not just click one button and get the best results because they have the most uber skill enhancements.
Don't you think one has to go LONG way to get to "just click one button and get the best results"?
Or you believe all 12 pointers obtained their tapes on the silver platter catered by somebody else?
Somehow, I don't believe that.I believe most of them worked for them.
If long time crafters want to prove themselves better than others there should be quests and a means to obtain legendary statis to give bonuses in place of skill tapes.
Who wants to prove themselves "better" than others? That sounds very condescending.
Whydo I feel that somehow you are wanting everybody to be the same?and, there should not be any incentive to work harder, and goany higher in terms of skill?
This way a crafter 4 months old could have done (or can do) a crafting quest 4 times in order to get bonuses to their experimention or anyting else of their choice. The only way you could be the best is to be the most experienced crafter.
Keeping a character/crafter longer does not make you "experienced" crafter. There are more to that.
As it stands now anyone with a ton of money or an alt with uber items can grind an armorsmith and be better than 99% of the rest out there. I am sure the players who stuck it out from day one would like their experience to count toward something. I believe this would be a much better system and reward the pure crafters out
Their experience and the time invested in the profession speak in their products.
And why are you afraid of this 1% of smiths with tapes? Pre patch or post patch, 12 pointers always make the better stuff than 10 pointers. That is nothing new. Anybody with different background can be an armorsmith if one choose to be so also. Didn't you become a smith because you love to craft an armor?
I did. So. I don't care what other smiths make, and certainly, I am not afraid orhostile to 12 pointers.
Extra 2 points will give me the incentives to work harder to further make better armor with whatever is available to me. (and, I can live my smith lifeno problem without skill tapes. Skill tapes are just added incentive. not a must. at least, not to me.).
My 2 cents
Pann
Shadowfire armorsmith (6months old and counting.)
Bryan1138 wrote:
Zutan wrote:
Im hoping you guys will chose to leave the "new" changes to experimentation/resource in effect for at least a few days. I suspect most of the complaining was from people that had not really tested it and/or where not realizing the point of the change. The new system does seem to create more of a benefit for masters vs non-masters and even masters with extra experiment points vs standard masters.
Let us see how it works for a bit, if it truly is worse, or heads towards messing things in the economy then do the hotfix.
And thus you miss both the point of the Devs and the point of those of us who said this change will wreck the economy and lead to a crafting monopoly.
The Devs goal for the crafting nerf (paraphrased for brevity).
1) Help fix the economy (I assume by reducing inflation)
2) Allow new crafters and easier time entering the market successfully
3) Provide for a little more variety in crafting
What actually is happening:
Only crafters with +2 to experimentation (which would be the wealthiest and most established crafters) are able to experiment items to the levelsthat previously only required master to achieve (max a single line and put 2points in a secondary stat)and only masters can max a single line if lucky where previously anyone with techniques 4 could do the same. In some cases masters with +2 exp actually make better items.
A) This directly reduces variety as usually one stat far outweighs the other possible lines of experimentation so #3 is not achieved.
Since the faucets providing rampant credits to individuals (especially combat players) have not changed, money is still flowing into the system faster than it flows out. This means that evenif +2 master craftsmen raise prices on their items, the combat players can pay those prices by running a few extra missions.
B) Thus, this change actually increases inflation in the economy forcing all players to run even faster on the mission hampster wheel to keep up. The economywill get worse until the schematics all the master +2 craftsmen made today work their way out of the economy. Thus the change works against goal #1.
Combine the increased inflation with the fact that resource quality has an even greater impact on crafted items now (so older craftsmen that have gathered supplies since the servers went live) and you get:
C) Anyone trying to enter craftinghas an even larger barrier to overcome. They can'tsell sub-par products because anyone buying anything crafted can simply run a few more missions and easily afford the item they desire, regardless of cost - only"the best" items are ever sold. The only way to enter the market is grind your way to master, run enough missions on your own to pay the 1 -2 million per point for + exp gear (+2 expermentation requires +20 skill, so 20-40 million credits), and then wait for months collecting the "best" new resource spawns to even approach the quality of an established master. Thus the change works against goal #3.
So to recap, the three goals the Devs wanted to achieve with the crafting nerf are not achieved. In fact, most of the goals are further away due to this change. The point of the change isn't so people with +2 to experimentation can make a better gun, armor, crafting station, stimpack, food, etc. The point of the change is to help newbies establish themselves and fix the economy. That won't happen with this change. The opposite will.
Also, since I'm surea few+2 masters have spent most of the day making new schematics, if the change isn't taken out by tommorrow and all the schematics made using it wiped, I doubt any crafter with less that +1 or +2 to experimentation will be selling much of anything until these nerfed items leave the economy. If it takes more than 3 months and I still can't recover my character from this ill-advised change I will have no choice but to not renew my account as I will have nothing to do in the game crafting wise and should be able to visit all of the static content with my alt by then.
Thank you. This IS why they have to remove the patch. It will ruin the economy even more. Glad some people actually read the devs reasons for the patch.
Just as a post-mortem:
BE experimentation on pets almost got destroyed by this patch. I was trying to make some low level pets last night, while the experimentation patch was in. It took me 6 xp points to raise hardiness from the initial 80 to 120. With the standard rule set, it would have taken me one xp point to raise it well over 140.
I, for one, am glad this is being taken out.
People were stuffing their datapads and vendors (storage vendors!) with schematics of things they can craft better than before. And making factory runs of them.
Architects were able to make BER 5 personal, BER 11 medium and BER 14 heavy harvesters with this system in place. They stocked up 20-40 of those schematics for these harvesters. Artisans were able to make maximum efficency carfting and repair tools with non-optimal resources, also saving a lot of these schematics for the time the crafting system was reverted.
I have noticed that all of these schematics and items still remain in the game after reverting the crafting system. This is an unfair advantage versus those players who were not able to play on this trial day. An architect unable to build those new uber harvesters will be out of business for months. The same is true for weaponsmiths who don't have the extra damage on their weapons that could have been achieved with 12 experimentation points with the new system.
There must be a rollback or a wipe of all schematics and items build on this test day. Or you would have more players affected by this unfairness leaving.