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Bring back crafting.
bluhman
Posts: 2,411 Arc User
This is a repost of an old idea that was tossed around prior to archiving. It only got one reply.
The new system in place, with mods and slotted items, is quite neat. It gives us a series of drops with a bit of customization and modularity. And because of the way equipment now works, you can now get character builds to accomplish a lot more, and thus it becomes quite a bit more key to your build to choose a selection of solid items.
But then there's the flaws:
Equipment Skeletons
The idea here is that the crafting shops in all zones will now sell "Equipment Skeletons". Equipment Skeletons serve only as the blueprint for actual, usable items, and are bought from the store, always scaling to your current level. They include 3 slots in which any mod type can be placed, and a final slot where a 'type' mod can be placed. The type mod is a very cheap mod that can also be bought from the store, used to determine what equipment type the skeleton will make (Secondary Defense, Primary Offense, etc). Standard mods of any rank can be used, but using higher ranks will increase the chances of success when it comes to actually using the skeleton.
What the user has to do with the skeleton is go to a crafting table and fuse the mods to the skeleton there. This creates a completed item, according to the mods and type that have been assigned to them. The outcome item will be of the same quality the skeleton was, and will have statistics that roughly scale with this quality (Green skeletons result in green-quality items, while yellow skeletons create yellow-quality items; below that of random drops.) Your skill will determine your maximum item quality you can create, with those in the 0-100 range only capable of yellow item creation, 101-200 green, 201-300 blue, and 301-400 purple (though, keep in mind, skeletons get much more expensive as you go up each rank. Purple skeletons cannot be normally bought in the store.)
Crafting Tables
Instead of offering some strange surface where you just mod items, Crafting tables should get the old degree of functionality back. That said, you'll be able to perform some actions analogous to those present before the crafting rehaul:
Specialty Blueprints and Vendors
Finally, what makes specialization worth it, is simply bringing back some of the unlocks and special weapon replacers in the form of Specialty Blueprints. These blueprints are usually always of a set item quality, and usually have one less slot than those of standard item skeletons. However, these specialty blueprints are now the new power-replacers, capable of giving the user special on-attack effects or passive effects.
On the other side of things are the more frivolous special blueprints; the weapon unlocks, costume unlocks, and action figures. These blueprints obviously do not have mod slots, since that would be silly. Instead, they simply need to be assembled at a crafting table, no extra parts required. Be weary, though, as they, like any other crafting attempt, will have a chance to fail!
These specialty blueprints are sold by crafting stores all over. The most specialized of blueprints, however, are specifically sold in the old crafting instances, and ideally include thematically appropriate items (I.E. The fighting dojo includes blueprints for creating martial artist action figures, sword models, and martial-arts power replacers.)
Final notes
I'm mainly trying to keep things simple with this model, as well as very flexible. The system will give your crafting skill rank a bit of meaning again, as well as a reliable way to build it up by salvaging/reverse-engineering spare parts. At the same time, you will be able to craft decent items throughout (and admittedly extremely awesome items if you manage to get your hands on purple-quality item skeletons), which will largely suit your build's needs. The model also reintroduces the old unlocks and instances that were trashed with the rehaul, and hopefully offers some leeway in making those power replacers useful again. And a final few details:
The new system in place, with mods and slotted items, is quite neat. It gives us a series of drops with a bit of customization and modularity. And because of the way equipment now works, you can now get character builds to accomplish a lot more, and thus it becomes quite a bit more key to your build to choose a selection of solid items.
But then there's the flaws:
- Your crafting skill (Arms/Science/Mysticism) doesn't do anything except determine what 'nodes' you can get mods from, and your chances of succeeding a fusion.
- Because of the few applications of said skill, it is also very hard to get it very high. A 40 levelled even partially under the new system isn't going to get anywhere near 400 or even 300 by level 40.
- Aside from silver champion points, there is no reliable way to get any equipment. Random item drops from enemies are quite often, but they usually are items that will be irrelevant to your character's needs. Completing missions, which only give out items of 3 presets, are similar. Finally, using tokens to buy an equipment box, much more often than not, results in a very similar condition - and in the case of primary boxes, highly substandard items which never have slots.
- To top it all off, the crafting rehaul has now left a lot of instances and content, namely costume unlocks, weapon unlocks, and action figure unlocks, completely inaccessible.
Equipment Skeletons
The idea here is that the crafting shops in all zones will now sell "Equipment Skeletons". Equipment Skeletons serve only as the blueprint for actual, usable items, and are bought from the store, always scaling to your current level. They include 3 slots in which any mod type can be placed, and a final slot where a 'type' mod can be placed. The type mod is a very cheap mod that can also be bought from the store, used to determine what equipment type the skeleton will make (Secondary Defense, Primary Offense, etc). Standard mods of any rank can be used, but using higher ranks will increase the chances of success when it comes to actually using the skeleton.
What the user has to do with the skeleton is go to a crafting table and fuse the mods to the skeleton there. This creates a completed item, according to the mods and type that have been assigned to them. The outcome item will be of the same quality the skeleton was, and will have statistics that roughly scale with this quality (Green skeletons result in green-quality items, while yellow skeletons create yellow-quality items; below that of random drops.) Your skill will determine your maximum item quality you can create, with those in the 0-100 range only capable of yellow item creation, 101-200 green, 201-300 blue, and 301-400 purple (though, keep in mind, skeletons get much more expensive as you go up each rank. Purple skeletons cannot be normally bought in the store.)
Crafting Tables
Instead of offering some strange surface where you just mod items, Crafting tables should get the old degree of functionality back. That said, you'll be able to perform some actions analogous to those present before the crafting rehaul:
- Salvage - The first tab of the crafting menu lets you take an item in your inventory and break it down into the mods that were used to create it (that is, a series of rank-1 mods and cores). This process always works, but you will ultimately lose the components used to make the item since the skeleton the item was based around will be lost. Salvaging items of higher quality yields higher skill gains. Salvaging is the only crafting option with no chance involved.
- Reverse-Engineer - On the same tab as salvaging is the option to Reverse-Engineer an item. This process will attempt to salvage the item entirely, recovering the item's skeleton in the process. Reverse-engineering has three outcomes: success, recovery, and failure. Successes will return every possible component to your inventory, theoretically allowing you to reconstruct the item again from scratch. Recoveries will lose the skeleton and a few of the mods within the item, but always returns at least one mod. Finally, failures simply cause the item and its components to be lost entirely. All these outcomes offer skill-ups, but successes offer the largest boost.
- Craft - The most obvious option of the crafting table. Crafting lets you slot a skeleton item with mods to create a new item. As mentioned above, the skeletons can be of any quality, ranging from yellow to purple, and they become increasingly difficult to create as the quality rises. You can actually fill in as many or as little slots when crafting from a skeleton, but the more slots you fill in a skeleton, the less customization the item will have afterwards. As a tradeoff, leaving slots empty on a skeleton makes it considerably tougher to craft successfully. The capability to create items of the next quality always occurs every 100 levels, but a higher skill will notably raise your chances in creating custom items. Much like fusion, item crafting lets you use a catalyst to help ensure your chances.
- Augment Skeleton - The last option at the crafting table lets you take any 2 skeletons and attempt to upgrade one of them to the next quality level. This process can be done with different-quality skeletons, and even be done with special skeletons/blueprints (explained in next section). The window features slots for the two skeletons, specifically marked for one to be upgraded and another to aid in the upgrade. High quality skeletons are difficult to upgrade, but provide considerable boost when being used to upgrade themselves. The inverse is true for low-quality skeletons. Special skeletons are slightly more risky to augment than standard ones.
Specialty Blueprints and Vendors
Finally, what makes specialization worth it, is simply bringing back some of the unlocks and special weapon replacers in the form of Specialty Blueprints. These blueprints are usually always of a set item quality, and usually have one less slot than those of standard item skeletons. However, these specialty blueprints are now the new power-replacers, capable of giving the user special on-attack effects or passive effects.
On the other side of things are the more frivolous special blueprints; the weapon unlocks, costume unlocks, and action figures. These blueprints obviously do not have mod slots, since that would be silly. Instead, they simply need to be assembled at a crafting table, no extra parts required. Be weary, though, as they, like any other crafting attempt, will have a chance to fail!
These specialty blueprints are sold by crafting stores all over. The most specialized of blueprints, however, are specifically sold in the old crafting instances, and ideally include thematically appropriate items (I.E. The fighting dojo includes blueprints for creating martial artist action figures, sword models, and martial-arts power replacers.)
Final notes
I'm mainly trying to keep things simple with this model, as well as very flexible. The system will give your crafting skill rank a bit of meaning again, as well as a reliable way to build it up by salvaging/reverse-engineering spare parts. At the same time, you will be able to craft decent items throughout (and admittedly extremely awesome items if you manage to get your hands on purple-quality item skeletons), which will largely suit your build's needs. The model also reintroduces the old unlocks and instances that were trashed with the rehaul, and hopefully offers some leeway in making those power replacers useful again. And a final few details:
- Crafting school only determines which table you use, and which blueprints are easier for the user to craft with. That said, it is perfectly reasonable for a medium-high skill Mysticism character to successfully craft an Arms costume unlock under the model.
- Yellow items, which as of the current item setup in this game, are nonexistent, are reintroduced here for balance reasons. A character with equipment properly geared for them will do better than one with gear gotten from only drops, even if the net stat gain is lower.
- The biggest roadblock to players in this model will ultimately be getting and using high quality item skeletons. Though blue skeletons are sold in stores, they will probably be very expensive (50-150G), while purple-quality skeletons will be unpurchasable from shops, difficult to augment up to, and hard to craft successfully without putting high-quality mods in to them. The fundamentals for making decent items are easy, but to ensure the creation of top-notch custom gear, quite a bit of effort has to go into it.
- That said, I don't think it would be entirely infeasible to offer the purple item-skeleton as a Q-store product.
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Comments
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
I'm totally in favor of a crafting system where we craft our own gear, and I believe that some of the best gear in the game should be created through this crafting system. The amount of grinding required to put together the "materials" for this gear should of course be more than that required to grind out Silver Recognition gear, since it would be better... which wouldn't be much, since the SR gear takes 2 days, playing about an hour each day, per piece of gear.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Ah, there we go, someone who's not complaining about the impossibility of a suggestion!
because a new crafting system is f*#(king impossible to implement when compared to revamping every enemy in the game to be more player-like. please.
To be honest, SR Gear pretty much is the standard the game should take for items. Not quality, mind you, but for customization. You have a store that offers a bunch of highly-customizable items, which come with plenty of slots you can use to modify them to your liking, and thanks to the base selection, the sum of the choices is pretty much equal to every possibility of drop in the game. Hell, make the non-token stores work something like that and that would probably tide me over for this suggestion.
The tradeoff between SR Gear and a purple blueprint? It could easily be a combination of chance and material 'grinding'. On one hand, you could try your hand at throwing rank 1 mods on a purple skeleton and hoping for the best, but on the other, you could ensure your success by fitting some rank 5-7 items on them. The stat gain wouldn't be any larger from using the higher-rank mods, but at least you'd have your super-powerful custom-crafted gear!
I'll try and get back to this at some point when I can seriously focus.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
But that's all stuff that can shake out of it at some later point... All of the macro-level mechanics are pretty darn solid. o7 Aces, mate, I'd love for something like this to be brought in.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I was Dubsy on the Old Forums. I am still @Dubsy in-game. Also, lol.
Consolidate currency!
Munitions additions
Petition to take in game report spam function out
Why not to do surveys and free offers
Like this idea.
Would fit the genre better. Right now Im wearing some henchman's boots and gloves...odd.
Consolidate currency!
Munitions additions
Petition to take in game report spam function out
Why not to do surveys and free offers
It's a shame.
/signed on improved crafting (if we can ever get dev attention again), but no so much for power replacers. Screw power replacers, it should have been a cosmetic slot in the first place that just modifies damage type.
RIP Caine
I don't understand crafting as it's changed to in the game, but that's mainly because I'm getting muddled up over terms, since it introduces like 5 new categories of things all at once to be concerned with to craft things, I think.
But this all makes sense to me, and if it can make sense to me, it means it's intuitive to new players who probably will be better at it than me
So /signed as this is all ingenious.
RIP Caine
See, problem with most old power replacers was that they were largely chance-based, and usually weren't very viable alternatives. The best power-replacers were always for munitions, because they guaranteed a flat extra application of damage on each hit (the drawback; you had to build around them.)
After thinking through the specifics of power-replacers, I came up with basically breaking the concept down into two separate parts:
Weapon Cores
Weapon cores are a special classification of mods; they take up the same classification as other gems (I.E. Growth Amulet, Impact Prism). Only, because they're Offensive Cores, they can only be fitted onto offensive-class primaries. Here's an example of one:
(X obviously being a feasible number for your level, instead of being a stupidly broken tooltip.)
Other important notes to make here is that there's no random chances for any of these to occur, and more importantly, the damage does not scale with passives; only natural offense and critical rates. A great strategy if you were fighting Gravitar (who resists physical damage thanks to her Gravity Manipulation); take a weapon and fit a non-physical damage weapon core onto it.
Also, this is only half of the picture; In addition to the basic Weapon Cores that just offer an extra damage boost, there's also specialized cores that could be implemented. Here's a highly-theoretical example of two that could be from Giant Monsters.
You also might have noticed the effects in grey as well as their extra section at the bottom. The bottom section is basically the recommended items it should be slotted into; if slotted into a recommended item, the effects shaded in grey (dormant effects) come to surface. Weapon Cores can become way more deadly when fitted into...
Weapons
Yeah, just that. Weapons are Primary Offense items that, by and large, appear identical to your standard item, save for a few things: So much like any other item, this Claymore will have at least 1 gem slot, and anywhere from 0 to 2 stat slots; just like any other normal offense gear. The two things to note are first that "unlocks costume piece" part. Just like old times, these weapons unlock new models for you (sometimes). Second, and more importantly, is the Classification Section.
Usually just the name of one powerset, classification determines what sorts of powers the item will boost. Normally, this doesn't come into play; equipping Impact Prisms on your weapon means that it will basically operate just like a normal Offense-Primary. But if one fits a Weapon Core onto their weapon, something interesting happens:
So now the Vorpal Gem's effects have been boosted in two ways. First, the actual amount of slashing damage it's offering has been upped, so the user of the Claymore is now doing even more damage. In addition, the Vorpal Core's cooldown of 3 seconds has been removed; every hit the user does with their Claymore now has this extra damage tacked on to it. There is one drawback to this; the effect is now specifically bound to Heavy Weapon's attacks: If your character, say, used Demolish as a side-attack to supplement his normal Heavy Weapons routine, his Demolish would not get the same Vorpal damage boost. That's the ultimate tradeoff that exists between standard offensive primaries and weapons: Weapons are stronger, but are more specialized. Do you use a wide-variety of attacks from across all sorts of sets? Still want the on-hit damage boosts? Just fit a standard offense-primary with a weapon core and all your hits will get benefits from it.
Last two things to discuss is to just throw in a short reminder: Classifications tie in directly with dormant effects on some of the special Weapon Cores. So if you recall the Grond Hand item from before, you could fit it onto a Might item and get something looking like this: And now, as you can see, the dormant effect from before is now active, and you easily have one of the greatest looking items you could have. Yay. The item above also ties into the other thing I'm about to discuss: there can also be weapons that apply to multiple sets or even only parts of sets. As you can see, the item above, even though the core favored might attacks, also provides considerable boosts to users of Unarmed attacks in the Martial Arts tree. Consider this second example: Designed to boost the attacks of mainly Specialist AT's, this Weapon set will provide Weapon Core bonuses to attacks from three classifications. However, it also shows off how some weapons can be limited to even specific parts of powersets. Take note that this items' bonuses will only apply to Pistol-class attacks in the Munitions set.
So that blurb about how Power Replacers could be awesome went on for way too long, but there you go. That's a way to fix them I think.