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Disappointed in Crafting
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Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
The mechanic is sound, but fails on several levels.
First there is very little in-game documentation, sure you can find bits and pieces online but as a new player picking a craft skill, I opted to go with what fit my character thematicly (in my case Mystiscism), unfortunately the the Devs had completely different idea about what attributes and powers, should use mysticism.
Anyway my Dimensional shifter is now learning all about the wonders of fire-arms and ammo not to be confused with the similarrly named that power set, which, if you have by-the-way means you should probably stay away from that craft skill.....
I just wish it were a little more robust, so that any power framework and ability focus could find a home in any crafting set, since a characters background and theme can range the board.
First there is very little in-game documentation, sure you can find bits and pieces online but as a new player picking a craft skill, I opted to go with what fit my character thematicly (in my case Mystiscism), unfortunately the the Devs had completely different idea about what attributes and powers, should use mysticism.
Anyway my Dimensional shifter is now learning all about the wonders of fire-arms and ammo not to be confused with the similarrly named that power set, which, if you have by-the-way means you should probably stay away from that craft skill.....
I just wish it were a little more robust, so that any power framework and ability focus could find a home in any crafting set, since a characters background and theme can range the board.
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On reflection any crafting trainer/store has all of those information boxes. Give it a try and see what all the information included is.
That, and some resources are in very short supply. That's to be expected I guess, but it's been somewhat frustrating.
That sounds good to me. I went Mysticism and I'm not seeing much in the way of gear I'm liking at 180-ish.
*grind*grind*grind*grind*
Heck the "ultimate" enhancement for arms/ordanance at the moment has the description of "test". And does nothing at all on the item.
Might be able to try for my first "epic" later though. We'll see if they work any better.
My experience this weekend: I went and researched everything I could in my inventory on a level 13 character. This got me up to around 108 (I bought the increased skill level, etc). Then I had tons and tons of ingredients. I went to purchase all of the blueprints I could (I even unchecked Unavailable in the drop down box) but for some reason I could only purchase a few pieces. There were more listed as available but it wouldn't let me buy them. On one side it said something like "1 slight insight" so I started looking through the information (which is spread into a bunch of buttons on the discussion interface and is not very convenient nor is it an obvious place to look for information) and I still didn't find anything.
So ok, I gave up on getting new recipes and went to see what I could make already. Virtually all of the pieces weren't as good as what I already had on. I thought, hey, I'll try to level up by making some of these things and then researching them again. Out of hundreds of ingredients I could maybe make two or three skill points worth of stuff.
So far I am disappointed with crafting as well. The system isn't very self explanatory, and the fact that you have a second tier of choice that doesn't do anything but add flavor boggles my mind. It seems like the flavor text of the items is more important than what the items do, which is crazy to me since the items can't be seen by anybody in game so nobody will know that your item is the Heart of Dr. Doom's evil granddaughter instead of, say, a cuddly kitten.
This is probably the biggest question I see people asking over and over in Zone chat right now. "How do you get Insights / Profundities / Epiphanies?"
I think the best thing for crafting might be to re-do the initial crafting missions. Don't just give the player the 'unique' piece they need to build the rad / cold resist items. Instead have the NPC give the player something they need to 'Research' and de-construct to get that ingredient so that they learn to use the Research tab.
It might also be wise to have that de-construction automatically give them an I/P/E and an explanation of what they are used for in terms of buying later recipes.
Aside from that question above...
In general, I wish the crafting system was really folded more into the rest of the game. I was excited the first time I went to the crafter and saw that they offered missions, I was hoping for something interesting like needing to build a device to solve a problem in the zone or something similar. Instead the missions were just to head to M.CIty and talk to trainers there.
Right now crafting just feels like this thing you can do with your spare time that exists to serve in the economy as a money-sink and at least for the first half of your leveling experience tends to not provide any benefits over the actual mission rewards.
I admittedly haven't seen crafting at 40 yet, and I really do hope it does improve, but I have to wonder if the craftable items even then are actually better than the UNITY / Omega system rewards.
An actual crafting quest line or two for each of the specialties (Inventions, Exposures, Arcana, Ordanance, etc.) would really make it feel, to me at least, like something that was more a part of the game as a whole and not just something that is stapled to the side of it. And it really would have to be by specialty and not Arms / Science / Mysticism to be fitting to peoples characters.
The crafting missions would however have to be something that people could choose to do, a story-arc that would be optional and an alternative to existing content in a level-range. It would give people added replayability through that stretch of the game and really make crafting seem more 'important' and interesting then it currently feels.
( Note: There may be such quests that I haven't leveled up enough to see yet, and if so "Bravo!" and someone please tell me when I can expect to see them. But the level 13 "Go talk to someone" quests really don't count. )
With perfect stats that fits my super stats as well.
even though the lvl 40 item is test, but you unlock tons of recipe that actually add stats or stats combo you want.
so I basically made dex/ego on every piece of my armor, and I can make them rare/uncommon if I want for decent stat boost.
at moment I crafted dex/ego items that's around 40/20....
How does that compare to the UNITY stuff?
Great to hear that it gets better later on, and really looking forward to being able to tailor the stats, just curious as to which will be the better source for end game gear.
I try to sell some of the items I craft, oh yeah I can make from lvl 24 - 34 items that customize to pretty much any stats.
if anyone read this want some items made feel free to shoot me a tell when I get on later tonight.
I don't charge much
At 225 I can make 2 items which can be customized. This may make crafting seem bad because it is very late in the game you realize you can get benefits. However, crafting as a whole is still kind of mysterious at this point. I am basically blundering my way through it to see what I will be able to obtain.
Few things would/will make it much better:
- Be able to see what the different purchase options produce in the different trees.
- Better explanation on what the different crafting selections actually do. Having the NPC tell me, "They are all sort of alike," leaves me stranded and making wrong selections.
- Ensure all of the travel powers can use the mini-map to find their resources. I have not tried them all, but I know at least Teleport, when used, blocks the icons from appearing on the mini-map. So you have to spam in and out and keep a close eye to watch for an icon. Wonder if Tunneling has the same effect. Crafting sucks when you can't find the stuff to level on.
I think the focus is just on player information. I think, at least for me, I am finding nothing useful because I choose the wrong area to work. My thoughts were hey Mysticism would have Sorcerer power stuff, but because it was based on stats it is not the case.
Perhaps it was designed to have lots of cross over so players are supposed to trade, thus only a small set of stuff will be good for any one type of character in each path? If so, that is cool, just need to know.
How do I turn on this feature? I have never seen any icons for resources on my minimap, and would LOVE to have that.
Not just skill, but by the crafting type you chose. The item customization is still very heavily biased towards the focus stats of that tree; for example, there are no +CON enhancers for Mysticism, major or minor.
Hopefully we'll see more enhancement blueprints added that will change this.
Its the icon lower right of the mini map ring. I stumbled onto it this morning. Had no idea what the little test tube was for ... now I do.
I think is by design, crafts will not cover the entire range.
This is a popular list for reference.
Arms
Utility Major - END, EGO, INT
Utility Minor - CON, END, EGO
Defense Major - CON
Defense Minor - STR, DEX, REC
Offense Major - STR, DEX, REC
Offense Minor - CON, STR, DEX
Mysticism
Utility Major - EGO, INT, END
Utility Minor - EGO, PRE, INT
Defense Major - PRE
Defense Minor - EGO, END, INT
Offense Major - REC, DEX, STR
Offense Minor - PRE, REC, STR
Science
Utility Major - INT, END, EGO
Utility Minor - INT, END, CON
Defense Major - PRE/CON
Defense Minor - INT, END, EGO
Offense Major - DEX, REC, STR
Offense Minor - REC, DEX, CON
As it turns out you were right. It wasn't an issue with too little documentation, or me not reading (sort of), but a matter of too much. I went back through the crafting trainer and discovered that I had missed one of the numberous notations, the one that explained the Stat focus.
I think reducing the ammount of clicking required at the expensive of more text in a notation would be a good trade off (that and the notation descriptors didn't make it clear what I was supposed to be reading).
As a personal observation, I would like to see something more intuitive, when I see Science, Mystisism, and Arms, I think thematic flavor, not Characteritics focus (since a "Mystic" based character could be a brick or powered armor), additionally, the sub-catagories specifically state that they have no in-game impact, meaning they are only there for thematic flavor, which seems odd.
There are things I am still very unclear about, for instance with Arms/fighting techniques, I have an arms trainer and tables or a Fighting techniques trainer (dojo) and practice dummies, the only differnce appears to be that I can get everything from my Arms dealer, but only fighting techiques from from my Fighting instructor....
Suggestions:
I'm not going to suggest anything too radical since the system is pretty good, just not intuitive. I'd suggest revamping the nformation notations, make fewer of them with more text, along with more descriptive names. The things that were important to me but unclear were differences between Arms, Mystisism, and Science, I'd give each their own notation and duplicate the text in each one where needed, just make sure to put the relavent game mechanic information at the top (like Primary stat focus, excluded statistics), list the subcategories. Text that would be duplicated would include information relating to Power Replacers, Blueprints, and Purchasing additional skill level Caps, as well as a list of components used (somehow my character had a mix of crafting components, and while it was easy to see what they were in inventory and sell them it would be nice to have a list of components, including their Conversion relationships).
And finally, I would like to see a linked icon before purchasing Blueprints so I know whether I want to purchase a particular blueprint (note this is done on the workbench, you see what you are building before you hit the create button, but you never get to see what you are buying a blueprint for).
Hmm that is good news.
I actually just posted something similar to this. It would make so much more sense to have the "thematic" choice be between Arms, Mysticism, or Science, and then the stat choice be between the specializations.
I know it's more dev work, but functionally it's a choice of 1 of 3 either way, and it gives the player more thematically appropriate choices.
THIS.
I agree with what's been said. I DO like to read, I read more than most of my friends do overall but it really is not intuitive and I missed a lot about the crafting. I went with a thematic choice, and then a specialization that sounded fun but I don't really know (with my luck probably not) if my stats fit my choices. I would be a lot happier if like it was said, it was a little more intuitive. Also, maybe when you first pick up those crafting missions, they give you a "recommended" crafting profession based on your stats? I went with Science on my main, The Teacher but maybe if someone had said, you look like you have the skills to create arms, or something?
But, I would much prefer what I quoted above. Let us pick what seems good thematically and have the stats apply to our specialization.