I'm not sure about the "people who care about consumables are the BiS crowd" comment as I heavily make use of consumables and am pretty far from BiS. Rather than argue about it here I'm sure Cryptic can just check their data to verify.
I do have to concede on your price and motivation arguments though.
So how about we change it a little and make it an AD sink?
Every time a player completes the (x) dungeon an AI seller will post the "excellent consumable rewards box" on the AH for a fixed(?) amount. Supply of said boxes strictly depends on victories. No wins = no boxes. A team of 5 wins = 5 boxes (obviously devs can change the ratio to whatever suits them). The same rules apply where if someone has beaten the dungeon, they cannot open the box and all contents are character bound and time limited or consumable.
This eliminates any change experienced by the BiS crew so they can just keep powering on while the game itself handles the "helping hand" aspect of this idea, and in this form also provides an additional AD sink. There'd need to be solid advertising for those boxes though, if they are in stock.
I suppose profiteers can also then do the whole "trading" game too, since the boxes are a tradable item - if they want to chance it. Thoughts?
I am still not sold on the idea that lots of people use consumables. I look at people's buff bars, outside of a very small minority, most people do not touch consumables. Most people (as far as I can tell) see them as a waste of AD, because you are using something that has a temporary effect. I personally use them and so do a few people I know, but the chances are in my opinion, if you use consumables, you are already in a minority.
There also exists the problem that, the moment someone can complete the content these drop from, they can no longer benefit from them. This means there is a diminishing pool of people who are interested in these items, because some of the people who are willing to use them, are also definitely interested in completing the hardest content.
Finally, a big problem is inconvenience. Lets say you have this weapon which is only available from this box, which has a duration. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my weapon disappearing on me half way through combat.
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
edited February 2020
@lordaeolos I am ambivalent about a lot of the changes you propose here, but I will touch on the ones that do concern me (any that I have left out do not bother me too much).
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Equalize “benefit” areas? 1/5 from equipment, 1/5 from enchants / artifacts, 1/5 from companion, 1/5 from boons, ⅕ from mount + mount insignia? Thoughts? For example.. Say you “could” have 200k max power.. A total of 40k could come from each “section”
I can see the benefits for equalizing the performance gain from each area, but I wouldn't do it in the form of stats, but rather in the form of different bonuses. Limiting it to stats means within that category, there isn't much choice where as if it is powerful bonuses, you can have many versions of them and people could choose the bonuses which suit their build.
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Rework Campaign Boons to Balance the “Cost” and benefits.
Remove Bonding Runestones from the game entirely. Instead give the same bonuses as bondings, but based on the summoned companion level and bolster group. Companion bonus would be greatly reduced in effectiveness from where it is currently, but should still be worth the investment. Also Augments and Actives should pass the same amount of stats to the player, but actives should come with a much higher risk profile.
I see no real reason to remove bondings from the game, or reduce their effectiveness. You can add interesting bonuses to items without reducing how much stats you gain from bondings.
Equip bonuses should be in the form of equip bonus reinforcement enchantments. meaning If a kit is acquired, it could be applied to any piece of gear for the category it's made for. Reinforcement kits should be restricted so certain bonuses/ kits can only be applied to certain gear piece slots (head,arms, etc). Equip bonuses would probably need to be re-worked somewhat to give some interesting choices here, and make sure the best in slot is a little “fuzzy”
Bonuses could be overridden for any piece of gear. “Pairings” kits could be achieved with extra RNG effort. This would create a “chase” for the newest gear, or gear with the stats you want/ need for your character, as well as a chase for the Equipment bonuses you want as a player. Reinforcements would be a separate UI slot, like an enchantment (grouped with them?), with the ability to upgrade with RP and materials.
Gear or kits can be "deconstructed" to get kit recipe, and recover materials to create new reinforcement kits, RNG the amount of “materials” recovered, deconstruction would cost gold - see crafting section
This would incentivize players to spend time in a balanced manner, keep people better informed to what they want to run, while also opening up a lot more player choice. This would also Make the newest high IL gear all chase items, while keeping older gear/ kits as chase items. As well as create whole new sinks for RP, Gold and refining materials.
I strongly disagree with this and I have seen it proposed several times. Sure, it allows you to choose which items you want which bonuses on, but it almost entirely kills the identity of items. Part of item choice is deciding between using items which have unfavorable stat distributions and finding ways for them to work. This change would almost entirely remove that element, as people would just put the bonuses they want on items that have the right stat distribution. It would kill entire classes of items.
Part of making choices, is the consequences associated with them. This change removes the consequence of, "I need to balance around this specific item" entirely, which is why it gets a big no from me. Sure, you might be choosing between which bonuses you want, but you know what you are not choosing? Which items you use. Items would be compared solely on stats and the ones with the best distributions would always win, it removes all meaningful choice in this area.
It also heavily limits where you can have item bonuses, which also makes items less interesting. This system is basically dumbing down items and I am not in favor of it.
Add Equip bonus reinforcement kit recipes. Most kits should have multiple qualities with "scaled" recipes (each kit of varying quality could use the same ingredients, but use scaled quantities for quality). Lowest quality kits to be constructed at level 0-10 crafting, highest in Masterworks (max level could only be achieved with RP +mats +wards?).
Kits would be craft-able in ranks 1 -10, ranks 11-15 would only be obtainable through refining processes (cost similar to weapon/.armor enchantment + campaign mats), but earlier ranks could also be upgraded via refining at cost.
As a hypothetical example: Step 1: +3% melee damage (feet only) kit from Barovia Hunt Step 2: Deconstruct +3% melee damage kit, which gives 8 (10 if you are a max master works) +x% melee damage recipes in leatherworking, as well as some “recovered materials”, which would be subject to RNG for how much is recovered Step 3: Farm the materials you need to construct this kit, since this is a barovia item, required drops would come from Gathering profession as well as loots items from Castle Ravenloft, and Heroic encounters in the campaign zone, as well as one other zone that would be the base zone for “feet kits”. Step 4: Craft the kit with master works. Cost would be materials + Ad +Gold. Rank 10 Kit with +2.5% melee damage would be unbound and ready for use or Sale.
To help control the supply/ ratio, remove character level crafting, and put crafting at account level. greatly expand the inventory space for crafting materials, make crafting inventory unlimited for VIP (like ESO) as an added benefit for VIP?
This would slow down the supply side in the crafting economy, create a system of near perpetual value for crafting (with less need for massive recipe updates), while also adding a substantial currency sink to the game, give players more options for acquisition of sought after gear bonuses, while leaving the top Stat gear as drops to be obtained by playing.
Again, same issue I have with the suggestion about itemization and on top of that, if bonuses become the main focus of crafting (making kits rather than items) its essentially saying, "we failed at making crafting items work, so we will kill our crafting system in favour of dropped loot." Furthermore, I don't consider that example of an item bonus to be a meaningful bonus, you cannot tell the difference between having that 3% melee damage and not having it.
Greetings Neverwinter CDP Community, it's quite rare that I decide to make the effort to share my opinions or ideas like this on an open forum. But the attitude I see from Chris in the Dev Streams that I have watched gives me hope that important improvements await for the game I came to love, so I want to contribute to the that if I can, and if I have nothing of real value to share, then at least I would like to be part of the spirit of this community focused venture. My background for context: I've been playing NW for nearly 3 years on the PS4. My main is a dwarf paladin (endgame; 24-26k depending on the gear I choose to equip) and I have all professions at Mastercraft 5.
Feedback Overview: Bottom line: I dont mind being challenged. I want to be engaged and have my skills tested. I want new, harder challenges. But I want to be rewarded in exciting, worthful (is this a word?), engaging ways. I am working now to get gear specifically for ToMM, but I dont even have enough friends that still play the game or alliance members at a high enough level to make a solid group for ten players, so I'm in no rush, especially with a new mod and new gear about to drop. I dont want anyone excluded just because my toon is more advanced, but I want my progression and effort to be meaningful at the same time. Many rewards in the game are obsolete (useless items in dungeon chests) or devalued due to their abundance (refinement). Difficult, time consuming and expensive features such as Mastercrafting have no current real value and when upgraded fails to remain relevant for more than a single mod cycle. I've always thought Neverwinter has HUGE unexplored potential. I hope we begin to see that potential become a reality as we see where this new direction actually is able to lead the game.
Feedback Goal: To make rewards feel rewarding instead of disappointing or useless and to share potential ideas regarding things becoming obsolete and thus worthless or pointless.
Feedback Functionality:
Lower Level Dungeons, scaling and disappointing rewards in chests: Currently running REQ and RTQ is a no brainer as a daily routine to cap rough AD as efficiently as possible. The scaling of the lower level dungeons such as Cragmire or Malabogs is severe enough that enemies die more slowly, the bosses kill players far more frequently, and even takes longer to run than when I run T9. However the rewards in the chest at the end are noticebly worse: less AD, absence of any special rewards (eg. UES), blue gear or lower level gems etc. Feedback: All dungeon chests should contain potentially good rewards so that players are motivated to run it, rather than inspiring groans (not due to the scaling induced difficulty or length but because the rewards are guaranteed to be bad).
Others have put forth the idea of dungeons having different difficulty modes and equivalent rewards. This is a good avenue to explore as it allows players of lower IL to experience the dungeon, learn mechanics and gain appropriate rewards whilst challenge more experienced players to test their skill against tougher enemies harder mechanics but then also earn better rewards. It was spoken about taking parts out of the game to polish them up. I hope the polishing involves this line of game development.
Obsolete items and systems: Neverwinter is in a continual gradual bloat system; each new mod invalidates most of the previous mods gear. Many potentially interesting artifacts in the game are rendered worthless because they cannot compete with the raw stats of the new ones introduced. Feedback: Either simply update all artifacts to current item level or introduce ways to the game to improve legacy artifacts to the current item level (eg. crafting > mastercrafting which would in turn add some relevancy to these redundant systems)
Potentially interesting gear is obsolete: Equipment from older campaigns cannot compete with the latest gear. This makes gear stores such as the twisted artifact gear in the Underdark, the River District Gear (making the whole bottom line of unlocking the campaign store in the RD Campaign pointless), Storm Kings Thunder (making a lot of mats for restoration that drops in chests and clog up professions worthless) and Aq. Inc (making the entire IOU 'Hard Mode' system, which in my opinion is a very fun idea and a great feature while there was some point to it ... which was a single module ... *facepalm*). I'm sure this will eventually effect Chult Hunts and Barovia Hunts fully soon too as mod 18 is about to drop, and mod 17 has already seen these largely go the way of the dodo. Feedback: Either completely remove the obsolete gear and replace it with something that has some relevance to something significant in the game, perhaps convert the items to free appearance change items, or preferably intorduce a way to make these pieces of gear reach the same IL or become relevant in specific situations eg. the frost gear that increases Voninblod rune drops to speed up the campaign. I've seen some nice ideas on how to make items relevant longer and sustainably so over time, It seems to me that crafting and master crafting would be a very sensible way to achieve this. Certainly the Hard Mode IOU system needs to be seperated from that gear and be a feature of the game that remains something you can/should do no matter what mod drops, meaning rewards gained need to be perenially attractive to players, or other rewards need to replace the outdated gear that makes trying a hard mode challenge worth it.
Potentially interesting systems are obsolete: Crafting is largely pointless with the exception of Alchemy and potion crafting (and even then only a few specific potions) and a few niche cases (Jewellery > Gold (but gold is not as valuable because the profession is largely redundant), Armor Kit Making and Stronghold upgrading ie AD boxes). Other than that people really can only make any profit from it by selling to other people who either don't know what they are doing or people who are trying to get their professions maxed or involve themselves in Master Crafting (only to then discover at the end that all that effort was mostly for naught). Master Crafting is particularly disappointing for me personally, having invested large amounts of time, resources and funds to max out all MC professions just as a new mod hit and all MC gear became instantly obsolete, and thus the entire MC sysem obsolete and the MC (and thus the GMark) economy fall into a very long slump. I have never made any profit for all my effort and I wait patiently for this to change. There is also still cases in the game where +1 items are worse than regular mundane items, because the mundane items are used in the MC quest line, but +1versions of the same gear cannot be used nor can they be converted to mundane gear as resources now can. Feedback: When change comes I believe the goal needs to include sustainable relevance. A core and elite system of the game that few players achieve should not become obsolete for long periods of time, if ever. I have already included some potential ideas as to how crafting/MC could be used to make obsolete artifacts and gear relevant. The MC gear itself obviously needs to be updated to new gear and either the bloat system altered permanently so that this gear is always relevant or is automatically updated when new better gear is introduce, at least can be imporved via the MC system to remain relevant. Allow +1 item gear to also be downgraded or accepted as valid items in the MC quest line. Decorations can be crafted for the guild hall, cool ... but give us a reason to go in the guild hall so people see the nice decorations we've made or paid for ... ie. why isnt the mimc in there? And the mailbox? And the Banks? Give people a reason to go inside, and they will go inside (It's currently just a big waste of space, making decorating it less enticing)
Crafting Storyline Fail and purple artisans: Crafting is relevant is you want to expand your Workshop to the maximum rank by donating gear to the Trading Company (although once expanded... it's redundant). You gain more slots and the ability for Purple artisans to sometimes offer their services. We follow the story of the old boss, have multiple interactions with her ... and then we fully upgrade the workshop and there is no story reward with her. She doesn't come and join us... so disappointing. Also, on the very very rare occaisions a purple artisan then comes to offer their services, they are often worse than the blue or even white artisans! This is especially prevalent with the adventurers. Yes they have higher stats, but higher stats arent really needed. Most of the resources they fetch are easily obtainable with the best tools. But the purple adventurers are either slower or way way more expensive! A purple adventurer should gather faster or gather cheaper ... that would be an epic adventurer. Feedback: Have a quest related to the workshop allow you to gain the storyline artisan as a workshop artisan. If this is possible ... ummm... make it more obvious how this is done please. Make purple adventurers gather resoures faster and more cheaply than blues. That's all you really want from an adventurer.
Refinement overdose needs to be looked at: Refinement is important obviously, but as it drops so often in normal game play it makes also getting the same gems very underwhelming as a reward. This is particularly bad with the new chests. It is very common, far too common in fact, to get all gems or all gems and r8 enchantments (which are basically more refinement) from lockboxes. I have stopped even making the effort of maintaining VIP because I can get by without the QoL features and it's not worth it to me at this stage, especially as I am disenchanted with the state of the game and getting VIP signifies a commitment to continue playing for a fixed period of time that I am currently unwilling to make. Feedback: Low level gems should be completely removed from lockboxes entirely. Dungeons should give better gems than those that drop from killing mobs, and potentially some of the really nice gems. Or refinement needs to be made more valuable ie it is used to do other things in the game as well other than upgrade enchantments and artifacts... which, once you have the relevant ones and your enchantments maxed, you no longer need. For example, using refinement in the MC system to upgrade obsolete gear or perhaps to ignite areas within a dungeon that provide some temporary buff or unlock/activate a temporary NPC minion who joins you and fights with you during that dungeon until slain. Yay we can craft gems ... boo, their value is so low and at a certain point you no longer need refinement, so its not really worth the effort.
Obsolete minor features (Skill nodes and to some degree in-dungeon/instance chests): I dont bother with skill nodes. It's not worth the 5 seconds and the inventory space it requires to stop and click on it to get a black pearl much less clog up space with the relevant node tool. I often dont bother with in-dungeon chests either. It's mostly just bad potions, chump change and a black pearl or two. Sometimes you get lucky and get a green insignia that's worth something, so this isnt so bad. But skill nodes are dead to me. There are some minor things still in the game that you cant really get currency for like the scale vendor near the dragonborn party in PE or the special red seal vendor in Dread Ring. It seems poinless to have stuff like this not be a significant part of the game. It's wasted potential. Feedback: If I can send out adventurers to get resources, why can't I, as an adventurer go out and get those resources. Couldnt skill nodes provide professions resources? Again, with the current state of the crafting system, this isnt attractive either and would require the crafting system be relevant. It would also require that the professions resource bag was expanded so that space wasnt an issue. If not professions resource, there needs to be a significant reason why to bother with this feature, or remove it and replace it with something that is relevant. Chests also seem like an pportunity to add other rewards ... it occurs to me something as simple as guild rewards that players can put in the coffer to help their guild grow and speed their guilds progress as they play the game, tyranny zones > tyranny guild campaign currency; dread zones > dread campaign currency etc. Either remove now irrelevant currency vendors or reintroduce ways to get the currency so they become relevant again.
Guild Mark Caps and donations: Obsolete gear is either converted to gold (not relevenant unless crafting is relevant), refinement (already an overdoes of refinement) or Guild Marks via donation (but this is eventually easily capped once stronghold is upgraded). Also certain guild rewards ie dungeoneer shards have such a low cap and are hardly ever used, find this resource is generally capped also and getting this quest to gain the shards limited and at end game obsolete. Feedback: Increase caps or remove caps altogether or introduce an alternatives to do with these items.
Risks & Concerns : Dev time and effort required to examine legacy gear and testing potential ingame effects of legacy artifacts if they were brought to current artifact gear levels (community testing could help with this though) Dev resources required to upgrade systems and included ways to upgrade gear that is account bound or character bound (maybe armor kit-like upgrade systems could be used that MCers could sell to get around bound issues) Bots farming more valuable nodes (surely there is an easy solution to stop bots? I dont really know how you bot something so I dont have any ideas, but I'm sure more knowledgeable folk could find an easy solution)
Personally I want more rewards or items, or materials that cannot be solved by Astral diamonds and Zen.
Currently the there is only 9 things on my character that I cannot buy, and I actually have to go out and do something specific to get them. Mainhand, Offhand, ( and this is only because there is currently no Mastercraft bullcrap weapons atm) Head Chest Gloves Boots Shirt Pants. Companion Equipment
Everything else can be bought with diamonds/Zen/cash
Mounts Insignias Enchants Weapon/armour enchants Campaign complete tokens - Boons Companions Companion upgrade tokens Bonding Runestones Runestones Rings Artefacts Belts Necks Wards, potencies and all that jazz.
Basically, throw enough money at this game, spend a couple days levelling to 80, and there is very little left to do, and honestly its being going on so long in this state I really don't know how to "fix" it. Company obviously has to make money somehow, so without a massive upheaval of the Zen market and monetisation model most of this wont change.
However, more things need to be Bind on Account. Weapons rings, artefacts and gear in general should not be able to be sold. I have no problem with Master Crafting making BiS or near BiS items if they are bound, because if you want them, you can make them for yourself and put the effort in to getting them, OR you can do the content and get stuff that way. I really do not like that you can just get virtually everything you need off the AH. Only do crafting to make profit? fine, sell the materials, no problem with that.
Add more ways in game to "earn" wards, potencies, enchanting stones, companion tokens. Sybella was a nice touch, but its a drop in the ocean. Same thing the Juma surprise bags, which is just a dungeon chest, with a loot table of a million items.
Pretty sure I have seen it mentioned before both here and the VIP CDP, but remove/consolidate a lot of the outdated currencies.
Add a Vendor that sells. Wards Companion choice pack Runestone choice pack Epic insignia choice pack Potencies etc. Rank 10 weapon enchant pack Rank 10 armour enchant pack Rank 10 bonding runstones Legendary Mount pack ( and make it crazy expensive)
stick some prices on them,
Then add a conversion for All ingame currencies to be changed into this ONE vendor currency Like doing the campaign dailies, but nothing to spend them on? no problem, convert seals guild marks Gold voninblood Black Ice, Glory basically anything and everything, give it a ratio for conversion, to be spent in this shop on things that actually matter.
for ratios, lets say 1 token gets you a presward. 100 tokens gets you a coalward, 5000 gets you a legendary mount pack. 500 seals = 1 token 2500 vonin blood/blackice = 1 token 50 gold = 1 token. Make it expensive, but achievable, by... shock horror!, playing the game. all this stuff is pretty useless, give us something to spend it on
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lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
I keep seeing ideas like, getting rid of bondings and making that bonus just there.... no difficult choices on artifact sets. get it all with no conflict in choice...
The game has already been simplified GREATLY and greatly changed, and I'm seeing talk about simplifying it even more. This is concerning. Gamers don't like change. Complexity is what gives a game like this legs. A good amount of people left the game before because of Change- Simplification...
Also the economy is at stake here. In the past this game had been very cautious to make changes because of the economy. People don't like seeing their investments turned to mush. Having trade in vendors just makes it worse imo. So you get rid of bondings. People have spent between 1.5 mil each and 2.2 mil each on these, many have spent real cash, so outrage. Cryptic says yeah ok trade in store. So that means the many thousands of bondings turn into empowereds and radiants, which in turn decreases their value on the market, because supply /demand. End result, now we have yet another worthless market. And the newer players you're trying to hook in don't have to work very hard so have little investment in the game to keep them here.
Superstore:
The superstore idea also will basically kill the economy. RNG is part of the system that keeps people logging in every day. I agree we have too many stores and too many currencies but combining everything into one store takes away flavor. and given how everything funnels into this store will make a huge dent in supply demand. even if it's all bound to account (which is also taking away value from what we already have) the demand has just crashed for things on the market already. those same new players you want to give things to all of a sudden can't make any ad on anything because it's all valueless. higher values are good for everyone.
Just update some of these other stores. I personally like the many stores. I still strongly dislike changing vip in anyway. The backlash for that from the player base will be considerable.
Earlier someone had detailed the types of players in this game. People here to play the economy are a huge part of the player base. When you start simplifying thing and changing things to the extent mentioned, you end up killing markets that many have invested in heavily already. As well as taking away something to grind for.
There is a lot of catch up for the new player but when you start taking on things like bondings you're basically making the game no work. no investment. I think that's bad for the long term health of the game. before doing things that drastic isn't it better to educate first? That's the real problem.
I would like to see more complexity added. Not more simplification. What is needed is education as to how to use this system. the reason people have a problem is because you do need to come to the forums to learn about basics of upgrading rather than it being taught in the game cohesively.
The game overall doesn't need the drastic ground up changes you're talking about in this area. it needs some updating.
Masterwork
Masterwork is fine. it just needs to be kept up to date with gear that has a place in the game strategically. Making one mastercraft toon per account will be met with outrage. people have spent time and money on upgrading mw on more than one toon. I want a universal tool box but that's it. Crafting is fine. The way it's set up is fine. Having a little streamlining, as sharp mentioned in the number of clicks needed would be awesome.. but as a whole I just needs to be kept up to date, not a rework. There is also room in this economy for master crafting for the newbie but it's been neglected so you're not seeing that right now. Normally new players can make quite a bit selling to mastercrafters. The balance needs to be restored, not bulldozed into oblivion. The economy DOES work as it is. People whine about it because it takes work but that is what keeps them in the game and that is also what makes them open their wallets.
1. Bondings are an artificial construct, are essentially mandatory, and add no choice (since M16). They are basically there as a sink for currency and nothing more. As such they could easily be removed to reduce confusion among newer players, and efforts shifted to add more choice for summoned companions. End result: Less confusing, and More choices
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
We follow the story of the old boss, have multiple interactions with her ... and then we fully upgrade the workshop and there is no story reward with her. She doesn't come and join us... so disappointing.
Actually she does join as a selectable profession artisan if you really complete questline. Not very good, but passable if you need purple for that profession. The quest starter is well hidden near bank: female halfling with blank rectangle over head (without "!" inside rectangle).
@cwhitesidedev#9752 I think current topic in this tread should be prolonged. Since both Rewards and progressions are big topics.
Other thing is, I notice that there are plenty of talks about crafting/proffesions. While it is part of chracter progression and it also cover topic rewarding. I think it would be better if so proffesions/crafting would have own seprarated CDP topic.
And for now we should focus more on obtained items from chests/bosses/monsters/quests/campaigns.
Post edited by hadestemplar#9918 on
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
@lordaeolos I am ambivalent about a lot of the changes you propose here, but I will touch on the ones that do concern me (any that I have left out do not bother me too much).
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Equalize “benefit” areas? 1/5 from equipment, 1/5 from enchants / artifacts, 1/5 from companion, 1/5 from boons, ⅕ from mount + mount insignia? Thoughts? For example.. Say you “could” have 200k max power.. A total of 40k could come from each “section”
I can see the benefits for equalizing the performance gain from each area, but I wouldn't do it in the form of stats, but rather in the form of different bonuses. Limiting it to stats means within that category, there isn't much choice where as if it is powerful bonuses, you can have many versions of them and people could choose the bonuses which suit their build.
I agree, I was merely using stats as an example, that each area should be equalized in both benefit and investment
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Rework Campaign Boons to Balance the “Cost” and benefits.
Remove Bonding Runestones from the game entirely. Instead give the same bonuses as bondings, but based on the summoned companion level and bolster group. Companion bonus would be greatly reduced in effectiveness from where it is currently, but should still be worth the investment. Also Augments and Actives should pass the same amount of stats to the player, but actives should come with a much higher risk profile.
I see no real reason to remove bondings from the game, or reduce their effectiveness. You can add interesting bonuses to items without reducing how much stats you gain from bondings.
Bonding right now don't offer any choice, or make things interesting.. All they are is a currency sink. They could be done away with, and then have dev team investment spent on making companions interesting and unique.
Equip bonuses should be in the form of equip bonus reinforcement enchantments. meaning If a kit is acquired, it could be applied to any piece of gear for the category it's made for. Reinforcement kits should be restricted so certain bonuses/ kits can only be applied to certain gear piece slots (head,arms, etc). Equip bonuses would probably need to be re-worked somewhat to give some interesting choices here, and make sure the best in slot is a little “fuzzy”
Bonuses could be overridden for any piece of gear. “Pairings” kits could be achieved with extra RNG effort. This would create a “chase” for the newest gear, or gear with the stats you want/ need for your character, as well as a chase for the Equipment bonuses you want as a player. Reinforcements would be a separate UI slot, like an enchantment (grouped with them?), with the ability to upgrade with RP and materials.
Gear or kits can be "deconstructed" to get kit recipe, and recover materials to create new reinforcement kits, RNG the amount of “materials” recovered, deconstruction would cost gold - see crafting section
This would incentivize players to spend time in a balanced manner, keep people better informed to what they want to run, while also opening up a lot more player choice. This would also Make the newest high IL gear all chase items, while keeping older gear/ kits as chase items. As well as create whole new sinks for RP, Gold and refining materials.
I strongly disagree with this and I have seen it proposed several times. Sure, it allows you to choose which items you want which bonuses on, but it almost entirely kills the identity of items. Part of item choice is deciding between using items which have unfavorable stat distributions and finding ways for them to work. This change would almost entirely remove that element, as people would just put the bonuses they want on items that have the right stat distribution. It would kill entire classes of items.
Part of making choices, is the consequences associated with them. This change removes the consequence of, "I need to balance around this specific item" entirely, which is why it gets a big no from me. Sure, you might be choosing between which bonuses you want, but you know what you are not choosing? Which items you use. Items would be compared solely on stats and the ones with the best distributions would always win, it removes all meaningful choice in this area.
It also heavily limits where you can have item bonuses, which also makes items less interesting. This system is basically dumbing down items and I am not in favor of it.
Let's agree to disagree. I think this opens up chase in multiple zones, and opens up an opportunity for more horizontal progression with more Bonuses to be acquired. The chase would be not only to acquire bonuses that you can craft, but for the raw materials that you could sell/ use for your own crafting. Gear would still have bonuses attached to it, and require "deconstruction" to move that kit, but it also means the opportunity for more variety. As part of a re-work for item bonuses I also suggest that every single positive bonus comes with a negative bonus.
Add Equip bonus reinforcement kit recipes. Most kits should have multiple qualities with "scaled" recipes (each kit of varying quality could use the same ingredients, but use scaled quantities for quality). Lowest quality kits to be constructed at level 0-10 crafting, highest in Masterworks (max level could only be achieved with RP +mats +wards?).
Kits would be craft-able in ranks 1 -10, ranks 11-15 would only be obtainable through refining processes (cost similar to weapon/.armor enchantment + campaign mats), but earlier ranks could also be upgraded via refining at cost.
As a hypothetical example: Step 1: +3% melee damage (feet only) kit from Barovia Hunt Step 2: Deconstruct +3% melee damage kit, which gives 8 (10 if you are a max master works) +x% melee damage recipes in leatherworking, as well as some “recovered materials”, which would be subject to RNG for how much is recovered Step 3: Farm the materials you need to construct this kit, since this is a barovia item, required drops would come from Gathering profession as well as loots items from Castle Ravenloft, and Heroic encounters in the campaign zone, as well as one other zone that would be the base zone for “feet kits”. Step 4: Craft the kit with master works. Cost would be materials + Ad +Gold. Rank 10 Kit with +2.5% melee damage would be unbound and ready for use or Sale.
To help control the supply/ ratio, remove character level crafting, and put crafting at account level. greatly expand the inventory space for crafting materials, make crafting inventory unlimited for VIP (like ESO) as an added benefit for VIP?
This would slow down the supply side in the crafting economy, create a system of near perpetual value for crafting (with less need for massive recipe updates), while also adding a substantial currency sink to the game, give players more options for acquisition of sought after gear bonuses, while leaving the top Stat gear as drops to be obtained by playing.
Again, same issue I have with the suggestion about itemization and on top of that, if bonuses become the main focus of crafting (making kits rather than items) its essentially saying, "we failed at making crafting items work, so we will kill our crafting system in favour of dropped loot." Furthermore, I don't consider that example of an item bonus to be a meaningful bonus, you cannot tell the difference between having that 3% melee damage and not having it.
Crafting isn't working right now because it's entirely vertical, and when it does work, it only works for a short period of time. The sheer scale of recipes that needs to be added each time crafting needs an update means that at best crafting would always be an afterthought by the dev team if equipment remains the focus. Also, that item bonus was purely a simple example, basically the idea is that the most powerful bonus is on the gear, if you deconstruct that piece of gear to get the bonus recipe, then you can never craft a bonus as high as the original, and would need to sink currency to raise up the bonus higher... Changing crafting to be able to create kits like this would bring crafted items into a more horizontal state with perpetual value, with very little need to add additional recipes (just when new bonuses are added). Add to that the idea that some of the material for Kits would need to be farmed from queued content or HE's... you can run with that yourself
Sharp, thanks for your input! In my opinion we can only help make this better by thinking outside the box, and hashing through our ideas with respectful dialog. The truth is that none of our ideas are going to be completely on target because there is a "fog of war" caused by the cliques we run with, and on data that we cannot see. Also I feel that until recently the dev team hasn't had a great feel for how the community is divided, or what it wants, so they have there own fog to clean up (which the CDP and community outreach seems to be helping with).
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
1. Bondings are an artificial construct, are essentially mandatory, and add no choice (since M16). They are basically there as a sink for currency and nothing more. As such they could easily be removed to reduce confusion among newer players, and efforts shifted to add more choice for summoned companions. End result: Less confusing, and More choices
I agree with your assessment and feel the similarly. However, removing bondings would amount to a tidal wave of change for for the dev teams to tackle. They would have to reassess player strength across multiple systems, dungeons, and campaigns zones. And somehow compensate players for all the investment they've made in their bondings.
It's difficult to see how it could be accomplished efficiently. Currently a player upgrading their bondings is the most important part of their vertical progression. It's the first thing we tell a player they need to do.
From a practical standpoint I would vote against their removal, and instead focus on explaining to a new player how important they are to building their characters' strength.
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
I agree that a combined store would be fine. Stores have several tabs. One tab could be for VIP items and only VIP players would have access to that tab. If you wanted to maintain currencies like Trade Bars, items would still appear in your general store, but TradeBars would be the currency needed to buy them. Perhaps some items like scrolls could be purchased using more than one currency.
Generally I think the one store is a good idea. It is confusing for new players just to find things.
I also think all the Seal vendors should be combined into one store. The VIP Seal vendor kinda combines most of the seal stuff into one store. Those vendors should be combined the same way so we don't have as many npcs scattered all over the place, each selling slightly different things.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
I agree with this assessment. I'm not sure how they'd implement a change without causing major backlash. I don't do Mastercrafting, but have a lot of workshops leveled up. To have my time investment canceled out would HAMSTER me off.
How to make a singular workshop work?
Perhaps you build out the South Seas Trading Company, and multiple characters gives you more opportunity to trade with the game? Your production with the game increases your rewards, but your ability to create items for trade with other players is always finite.
Perhaps multiple characters allow you to recruit higher level artisans? Your production does not increase, but you can make better items.
Perhaps multiple characters allows you to acquire new recipes faster?
Perhaps multiple characters allow you to generate gold? Gold is required to house a larger collection of artisans.
Extend SH Progression, streamline GM (Guild Mark) acquisition, rework some rewards.
Feedback Goal
The goal is to revive guild life, fill in some missing gaps, and make it so that a player does not need multiple alts in a guild to earn a sufficient amount of GMs (i.e. so that players with many alts don't have such a significant advantage over those that don't).
Feedback Functionality
Stronghold Progression
Increase maximum SH rank to 30.
Increase number of plots to build structures, introduce new structures which unlock new boons.
Increase maximum structure rank to 15.
Add new unlockable boons in each category in Guild Boons. We are missing a few boons for some stats like Accuracy iirc. I would like to see a utility boon for movement in general, not just mount speed. Can be more creative with making new options.
Increase maximum bonuses from boons to reflect higher structure level (from 8k to 12k maximum stat bonuses).
Include campaign currency from all legacy mods up to Ravenloft as donatable to the SH Coffer, the new structures and higher ranks would require these newly added currencies as requirements to upgrade.
Create a new Zone under the SH called SH Crypts or SH Catacombs. It would be a new Area to collect a new Currency similar to Influence called "Lost Mementos" or "Lost Runes" or "Lost Relics", the feel would be something similar to Underworld. This new currency would also be donatable to the Coffer and be required to rank up new Structures and old Structures to ranks higher than 10. There could be a new event similar to Dragonflight that requires 10-20+ players, but involves some powerful lich who used to be the guild leader long long ago. This new event can drop a currency used to buy a new revived version of Dragonflight gear, Gear of the Lich. This new area can be used for 10 man Guild Vs Guild PvP matches and more.
Streamline Guild Mark Acquisition
The idea is to make it so that players don't feel required to have 10+ characters to farm GM's efficiently. Remove a specific P2W aspect of MW crafting. * Make GMs an Account Wide currency and increase the maximum storage cap from 30,000 to 300,000 ( i.e. as if a player had 10 toons in a guild). * Remove the maximum amount of Influence a player can earn on a character, reduce the the steep roi on getting Influence from each successive HE (not saying this right I know), but as it is now, each HE gives less and less Influence until you meet 400. Flatten that out and at the end it gives say 50, but you can keep getting 50. This would be an account wide effect. * Turn quests that give Shards of Power and Vouchers into Repeatable quests like the ones in the new modules, you can get a new one as soon as you finish the last one, though a different quest in some cycle. * Consider removing caps on certain donatables from the coffer, such as surplus equipment and profession materials. As Sharp said, the excess from these can alternatively be "deleted", as in the coffer just doesn't gain over the maximum, but you get your gm's.
Risks & Concerns
A new area would require a lot of development time. Players may not understand that this is not a way to "give away" GM's, it's a way to put those with 2 toons on equal footing with those that have 50 (I have 10) in regards to GM acquisition.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
edited February 2020
I'm not going to be responding to the bit about enchantments or companions any further (in the case of companions because I don't see nerfing bondings as a requirement to make companions better, but I am not against nerfing bondings either, it just seems weird to lump the 2 together). I will address crafting and item bonuses though.
Let's agree to disagree. I think this opens up chase in multiple zones, and opens up an opportunity for more horizontal progression with more Bonuses to be acquired. The chase would be not only to acquire bonuses that you can craft, but for the raw materials that you could sell/ use for your own crafting. Gear would still have bonuses attached to it, and require "deconstruction" to move that kit, but it also means the opportunity for more variety. As part of a re-work for item bonuses I also suggest that every single positive bonus comes with a negative bonus.
Add Equip bonus reinforcement kit recipes. Most kits should have multiple qualities with "scaled" recipes (each kit of varying quality could use the same ingredients, but use scaled quantities for quality). Lowest quality kits to be constructed at level 0-10 crafting, highest in Masterworks (max level could only be achieved with RP +mats +wards?).
Kits would be craft-able in ranks 1 -10, ranks 11-15 would only be obtainable through refining processes (cost similar to weapon/.armor enchantment + campaign mats), but earlier ranks could also be upgraded via refining at cost.
As a hypothetical example: Step 1: +3% melee damage (feet only) kit from Barovia Hunt Step 2: Deconstruct +3% melee damage kit, which gives 8 (10 if you are a max master works) +x% melee damage recipes in leatherworking, as well as some “recovered materials”, which would be subject to RNG for how much is recovered Step 3: Farm the materials you need to construct this kit, since this is a barovia item, required drops would come from Gathering profession as well as loots items from Castle Ravenloft, and Heroic encounters in the campaign zone, as well as one other zone that would be the base zone for “feet kits”. Step 4: Craft the kit with master works. Cost would be materials + Ad +Gold. Rank 10 Kit with +2.5% melee damage would be unbound and ready for use or Sale.
To help control the supply/ ratio, remove character level crafting, and put crafting at account level. greatly expand the inventory space for crafting materials, make crafting inventory unlimited for VIP (like ESO) as an added benefit for VIP?
This would slow down the supply side in the crafting economy, create a system of near perpetual value for crafting (with less need for massive recipe updates), while also adding a substantial currency sink to the game, give players more options for acquisition of sought after gear bonuses, while leaving the top Stat gear as drops to be obtained by playing.
Again, same issue I have with the suggestion about itemization and on top of that, if bonuses become the main focus of crafting (making kits rather than items) its essentially saying, "we failed at making crafting items work, so we will kill our crafting system in favour of dropped loot." Furthermore, I don't consider that example of an item bonus to be a meaningful bonus, you cannot tell the difference between having that 3% melee damage and not having it.
Crafting isn't working right now because it's entirely vertical, and when it does work, it only works for a short period of time. The sheer scale of recipes that needs to be added each time crafting needs an update means that at best crafting would always be an afterthought by the dev team if equipment remains the focus. Also, that item bonus was purely a simple example, basically the idea is that the most powerful bonus is on the gear, if you deconstruct that piece of gear to get the bonus recipe, then you can never craft a bonus as high as the original, and would need to sink currency to raise up the bonus higher... Changing crafting to be able to create kits like this would bring crafted items into a more horizontal state with perpetual value, with very little need to add additional recipes (just when new bonuses are added). Add to that the idea that some of the material for Kits would need to be farmed from queued content or HE's... you can run with that yourself
Crafting isn't working right now because it and dropped gear are 2 adversarial systems that are both providing the same thing and both are vertical in nature which means by definition, 1 will invalidate the other. Apples vs Apples, shinier apple wins. There are lots of ways you can solve this, each with their own upsides and downsides.
Make some item slots exclusive to crafting and others exclusive to drops (for example, arms only come from crafting).
Make some item types exclusive to crafting and other exclusive to drops, this requires there to be different types of items.
Relegate crafting to an upgrade system.
All of these work, but they all have different upsides and downsides. You are proposing the 3rd, the advantage of which is that it is easy to understand for players and that its easier to implement for the devs. I don't like the 3rd because firstly, if the devs decide they DO want to make a bonus obsolete (which is fair, at some point things need to move on), they have no way to do it outside of nerfing the item. Secondly, in my opinion it removes the identity of items. Part of an item's identity is the bonus it has, now every item has the potential for the same bonus, it makes individual items less interesting (although it makes kits more interesting). Thirdly, if you can put any kit on any slot, it removes the aspect of having to make on slot choices. You pick all the bonuses you want and you never have to compromise. You could resolve this by having specific kits work on specific slots (so there is a different kit type for every item), but I still dislike the loss of item identity. Fourthly, it feels to me like this is "reducing" the scope of crafting, there are less items available that can be made.
Neither of us are really proposing the first option on this list, so I will not address it, I am personally a fan of the second however. The problem with this is it has some degree of a learning curve, players won't immediately understand it without it being explained to them, but it is something that you can explain through narrative and should be easy enough to grasp. The benefits of such a system is that items retain their identity and that crafting will always have a place in the game (guaranteed) and that items with bonuses will also see use. It is also fairly easy to forcibly outdate items without nerfing them. I do not think that bonuses should be something that you should be able to move around. If you want to use a particular bonus, you have to deal with the headache of trying to match that item's stats to your particular build, its 1 of the consequences of the choice to use that bonus.
Equip bonuses should be in the form of equip bonus reinforcement enchantments. meaning If a kit is acquired, it could be applied to any piece of gear for the category it's made for. Reinforcement kits should be restricted so certain bonuses/ kits can only be applied to certain gear piece slots (head,arms, etc). Equip bonuses would probably need to be re-worked somewhat to give some interesting choices here, and make sure the best in slot is a little “fuzzy”
Bonuses could be overridden for any piece of gear. “Pairings” kits could be achieved with extra RNG effort. This would create a “chase” for the newest gear, or gear with the stats you want/ need for your character, as well as a chase for the Equipment bonuses you want as a player. Reinforcements would be a separate UI slot, like an enchantment (grouped with them?), with the ability to upgrade with RP and materials.
Gear or kits can be "deconstructed" to get kit recipe, and recover materials to create new reinforcement kits, RNG the amount of “materials” recovered, deconstruction would cost gold - see crafting section
This would incentivize players to spend time in a balanced manner, keep people better informed to what they want to run, while also opening up a lot more player choice. This would also Make the newest high IL gear all chase items, while keeping older gear/ kits as chase items. As well as create whole new sinks for RP, Gold and refining materials.
I strongly disagree with this and I have seen it proposed several times. Sure, it allows you to choose which items you want which bonuses on, but it almost entirely kills the identity of items. Part of item choice is deciding between using items which have unfavorable stat distributions and finding ways for them to work. This change would almost entirely remove that element, as people would just put the bonuses they want on items that have the right stat distribution. It would kill entire classes of items.
Part of making choices, is the consequences associated with them. This change removes the consequence of, "I need to balance around this specific item" entirely, which is why it gets a big no from me. Sure, you might be choosing between which bonuses you want, but you know what you are not choosing? Which items you use. Items would be compared solely on stats and the ones with the best distributions would always win, it removes all meaningful choice in this area.
It also heavily limits where you can have item bonuses, which also makes items less interesting. This system is basically dumbing down items and I am not in favor of it.
I would say that I like his general idea, but would define it differently.
• First, there should be a rare class of items with the best stats and the best equip powers. Whether this is our current purple items or a new even rarer 'unique' class, they are not moddable and would be your BiS chase items. Generally, I think our purple items should be far more rare and meaningful.
• All the blue/green gear that's currently in the game, stuff that does not already have an equip bonus, can be modded. You can add more slots, give them Equip bonuses, and reinforce the stats. They will never be better than your rare purple/unique items, but you can mod them up to be usable until you can find the chase item to replace it.
These blue/green items would be the ones you'd interact with using the crafting system.
1
lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
I agree with this assessment. I'm not sure how they'd implement a change without causing major backlash. I don't do Mastercrafting, but have a lot of workshops leveled up. To have my time investment canceled out would HAMSTER me off.
How to make a singular workshop work?
Perhaps you build out the South Seas Trading Company, and multiple characters gives you more opportunity to trade with the game? Your production with the game increases your rewards, but your ability to create items for trade with other players is always finite.
Perhaps multiple characters allow you to recruit higher level artisans? Your production does not increase, but you can make better items.
Perhaps multiple characters allows you to acquire new recipes faster?
Perhaps multiple characters allow you to generate gold? Gold is required to house a larger collection of artisans.
Thanks for the comments! I see your points on all three points.. however ... any paradigm shift is going to require developer investment, so I come from the perspective of "Start Big", because at the end of the day we don't really know what resources the dev team has to leverage.
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
I'm not sure about the "people who care about consumables are the BiS crowd" comment as I heavily make use of consumables and am pretty far from BiS. Rather than argue about it here I'm sure Cryptic can just check their data to verify.
I do have to concede on your price and motivation arguments though.
So how about we change it a little and make it an AD sink?
Every time a player completes the (x) dungeon an AI seller will post the "excellent consumable rewards box" on the AH for a fixed(?) amount. Supply of said boxes strictly depends on victories. No wins = no boxes. A team of 5 wins = 5 boxes (obviously devs can change the ratio to whatever suits them). The same rules apply where if someone has beaten the dungeon, they cannot open the box and all contents are character bound and time limited or consumable.
This eliminates any change experienced by the BiS crew so they can just keep powering on while the game itself handles the "helping hand" aspect of this idea, and in this form also provides an additional AD sink. There'd need to be solid advertising for those boxes though, if they are in stock.
I suppose profiteers can also then do the whole "trading" game too, since the boxes are a tradable item - if they want to chance it. Thoughts?
I am still not sold on the idea that lots of people use consumables. I look at people's buff bars, outside of a very small minority, most people do not touch consumables. Most people (as far as I can tell) see them as a waste of AD, because you are using something that has a temporary effect. I personally use them and so do a few people I know, but the chances are in my opinion, if you use consumables, you are already in a minority.
There also exists the problem that, the moment someone can complete the content these drop from, they can no longer benefit from them. This means there is a diminishing pool of people who are interested in these items, because some of the people who are willing to use them, are also definitely interested in completing the hardest content.
Finally, a big problem is inconvenience. Lets say you have this weapon which is only available from this box, which has a duration. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my weapon disappearing on me half way through combat.
Sharp, by your own admissions you don't run with a wide variety of players and do not feel the desire to run lower level content to help newer players. Not sure you could have any sort of representational data for who does or does not use consumables at different power levels based on your narrow sample size and method of inspecting buff bars. I can say anecdotally from selling consumables frequently (never for large amounts of AD mind you, but a few thousand here and there) and based on how often they sell, and quickly, there is definitely a market, at least on Xbox, for consumables that drop in game.
To your second point, just because you might not be able to use them doesn't mean there isn't merit in them. Hell, you might even be able to profit from them, and we all know how much you enjoy earning a profit on changes in the game I would venture one point further, not every in game reward needs to appeal to everyone to have value, it just needs to be unbound.
For your third point, I don't think anyone suggested temporary weapons, just temporary buffs. Given that current buffs disappear halfway through combat anyways and you can slot another into your belt for quick access this is a non-issue when discussing new buff items.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
I'm not sure about the "people who care about consumables are the BiS crowd" comment as I heavily make use of consumables and am pretty far from BiS. Rather than argue about it here I'm sure Cryptic can just check their data to verify.
I do have to concede on your price and motivation arguments though.
So how about we change it a little and make it an AD sink?
Every time a player completes the (x) dungeon an AI seller will post the "excellent consumable rewards box" on the AH for a fixed(?) amount. Supply of said boxes strictly depends on victories. No wins = no boxes. A team of 5 wins = 5 boxes (obviously devs can change the ratio to whatever suits them). The same rules apply where if someone has beaten the dungeon, they cannot open the box and all contents are character bound and time limited or consumable.
This eliminates any change experienced by the BiS crew so they can just keep powering on while the game itself handles the "helping hand" aspect of this idea, and in this form also provides an additional AD sink. There'd need to be solid advertising for those boxes though, if they are in stock.
I suppose profiteers can also then do the whole "trading" game too, since the boxes are a tradable item - if they want to chance it. Thoughts?
I am still not sold on the idea that lots of people use consumables. I look at people's buff bars, outside of a very small minority, most people do not touch consumables. Most people (as far as I can tell) see them as a waste of AD, because you are using something that has a temporary effect. I personally use them and so do a few people I know, but the chances are in my opinion, if you use consumables, you are already in a minority.
There also exists the problem that, the moment someone can complete the content these drop from, they can no longer benefit from them. This means there is a diminishing pool of people who are interested in these items, because some of the people who are willing to use them, are also definitely interested in completing the hardest content.
Finally, a big problem is inconvenience. Lets say you have this weapon which is only available from this box, which has a duration. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my weapon disappearing on me half way through combat.
Sharp, by your own admissions you don't run with a wide variety of players and do not feel the desire to run lower level content to help newer players. Not sure you could have any sort of representational data for who does or does not use consumables at different power levels based on your narrow sample size and method of inspecting buff bars. I can say anecdotally from selling consumables frequently (never for large amounts of AD mind you, but a few thousand here and there) and based on how often they sell, and quickly, there is definitely a market, at least on Xbox, for consumables that drop in game.
To your second point, just because you might not be able to use them doesn't mean there isn't merit in them. Hell, you might even be able to profit from them, and we all know how much you enjoy earning a profit on changes in the game I would venture one point further, not every in game reward needs to appeal to everyone to have value, it just needs to be unbound.
For your third point, I don't think anyone suggested temporary weapons, just temporary buffs. Given that current buffs disappear halfway through combat anyways and you can slot another into your belt for quick access this is a non-issue when discussing new buff items.
As I said, I am not against adding them, but in the spirit of the CDP, we should still be discussing ideas and pointing out potential problems with them, so I am pointing out what I potentially see as an issue. Yes, potions do sell, but I would hazard a guess and say most of the potions sell to a small minority of players, whom are already running the hardest content. My PoV is from the PC community though, console community may be different.
I know this would be a lot of work. But in my opinion extra equipment bonuses (such as 3% encounter damage, or 5000 power when doing something…) shouldn't be tied to the actual equipment. This leads to ppl using outdated equipment just for the bonus. Instead, enchantments (radiants, azures, etc.) could hold these bonuses instead of a stat increase, and that way newer equipment would always be the bis option because of bigger stats. That way ppl can have a more intuitive concept of progression and ilvl
I keep seeing ideas like, getting rid of bondings and making that bonus just there.... no difficult choices on artifact sets. get it all with no conflict in choice...
The game has already been simplified GREATLY and greatly changed, and I'm seeing talk about simplifying it even more. This is concerning. Gamers don't like change. Complexity is what gives a game like this legs. A good amount of people left the game before because of Change- Simplification...
Also the economy is at stake here. In the past this game had been very cautious to make changes because of the economy. People don't like seeing their investments turned to mush. Having trade in vendors just makes it worse imo. So you get rid of bondings. People have spent between 1.5 mil each and 2.2 mil each on these, many have spent real cash, so outrage. Cryptic says yeah ok trade in store. So that means the many thousands of bondings turn into empowereds and radiants, which in turn decreases their value on the market, because supply /demand. End result, now we have yet another worthless market. And the newer players you're trying to hook in don't have to work very hard so have little investment in the game to keep them here.
Superstore:
The superstore idea also will basically kill the economy. RNG is part of the system that keeps people logging in every day. I agree we have too many stores and too many currencies but combining everything into one store takes away flavor. and given how everything funnels into this store will make a huge dent in supply demand. even if it's all bound to account (which is also taking away value from what we already have) the demand has just crashed for things on the market already. those same new players you want to give things to all of a sudden can't make any ad on anything because it's all valueless. higher values are good for everyone.
Just update some of these other stores. I personally like the many stores. I still strongly dislike changing vip in anyway. The backlash for that from the player base will be considerable.
Earlier someone had detailed the types of players in this game. People here to play the economy are a huge part of the player base. When you start simplifying thing and changing things to the extent mentioned, you end up killing markets that many have invested in heavily already. As well as taking away something to grind for.
There is a lot of catch up for the new player but when you start taking on things like bondings you're basically making the game no work. no investment. I think that's bad for the long term health of the game. before doing things that drastic isn't it better to educate first? That's the real problem.
I would like to see more complexity added. Not more simplification. What is needed is education as to how to use this system. the reason people have a problem is because you do need to come to the forums to learn about basics of upgrading rather than it being taught in the game cohesively.
The game overall doesn't need the drastic ground up changes you're talking about in this area. it needs some updating.
Masterwork
Masterwork is fine. it just needs to be kept up to date with gear that has a place in the game strategically. Making one mastercraft toon per account will be met with outrage. people have spent time and money on upgrading mw on more than one toon. I want a universal tool box but that's it. Crafting is fine. The way it's set up is fine. Having a little streamlining, as sharp mentioned in the number of clicks needed would be awesome.. but as a whole I just needs to be kept up to date, not a rework. There is also room in this economy for master crafting for the newbie but it's been neglected so you're not seeing that right now. Normally new players can make quite a bit selling to mastercrafters. The balance needs to be restored, not bulldozed into oblivion. The economy DOES work as it is. People whine about it because it takes work but that is what keeps them in the game and that is also what makes them open their wallets.
1. Bondings are an artificial construct, are essentially mandatory, and add no choice (since M16). They are basically there as a sink for currency and nothing more. As such they could easily be removed to reduce confusion among newer players, and efforts shifted to add more choice for summoned companions. End result: Less confusing, and More choices
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
I heavily agree with the bondings as an artificial construct comment. I've really disliked Augments and Bondings since starting the game - spend a bunch of time grinding and upgrading to make my companion better instead of my toon?!!!? Still rubs me wrong. Having said that it's a piece of vertical progression that many people have spent a long time chasing, probably best to leave bondings in game and adjust how Augments work to simplify the system while still leaving that bit of vertical progression for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
The more people talk about a super store the more it just sounds like consolidating the stores into a single place and maybe add in a section for VIP holders, which I believe we've been told in the past there are tech issues with that many tabs in a UI. Would be great to get that clarified and either implement or abandon further discussion on it already - it's pretty clear a one stop shop is widely desired.
Cannot agree with your third point enough. It really feels to me that if NWO isn't going to consistently devote regular dev time to keep crafting relevant, with gear/transmutes/consumables, then the system should be abandoned in place or removed.
1
lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
I heavily agree with the bondings as an artificial construct comment. I've really disliked Augments and Bondings since starting the game - spend a bunch of time grinding and upgrading to make my companion better instead of my toon?!!!? Still rubs me wrong. Having said that it's a piece of vertical progression that many people have spent a long time chasing, probably best to leave bondings in game and adjust how Augments work to simplify the system while still leaving that bit of vertical progression for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
The more people talk about a super store the more it just sounds like consolidating the stores into a single place and maybe add in a section for VIP holders, which I believe we've been told in the past there are tech issues with that many tabs in a UI. Would be great to get that clarified and either implement or abandon further discussion on it already - it's pretty clear a one stop shop is widely desired.
Cannot agree with your third point enough. It really feels to me that if NWO isn't going to consistently devote regular dev time to keep crafting relevant, with gear/transmutes/consumables, then the system should be abandoned in place or removed.
1. What if you just automatically got the same x% when a summoned companion is legendary, and the game compensated players with a bonding exchange for a same rank unbound enchantment, or a rank -1 weapon or armor enchantment? Then tweak augment to have a few more stats than active companions, and make sure active companions drop the bonus stats on death to introduce risk?
2. the tarmalene trade bar store is already broken up into sections, could use the same concept for the super store.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression
Hybrid progression between horizontal and vertical in the campaign.
Until now we got a vertical progression, each module we have to get more 'power' (as in stuff to get to better our role in the party), this made clear what we need to get even in the gear: stat and a bonus useful for that role. Neverwinter has (and always had) a vertical progression so it shouldn't be made entirely horizontal (that would be another game) but some new module can be made horizontally (if that make sense).
To do so player need a broader possibility of choice : no more gear with stat or useful bonus for their role in the party but one that reflect better each play style
for examples one triggered if i don't move or don't use encounter power for x sec, or if i keep moving every second, if i'm ranged or melee, if i use arcane power or weapon, .. etc
and they should not give stat nor damage bonus but an effect related to play style
for examples reduction of cooldown, reflect damage, increase running speed, increase the duration of the effect of your skill with effect over time, or you can use an encounter power without triggering a cooldown, turning invisible for x sec (once every y sec), ..etc
otherwise the choice will be 'forced'. By doing so every player will choose their gear by their play style and in the same module by using different mechanics for mod/bosses you could promote different play stile
examples first boss is easier to take down by using ranged attack (the boss may release a really powerful DoT or a stun in an area near him), second by standing still you get aggro so moving around a lot is better for non-tank , third by stealth or magic, or weapon (as in not magic) or .. dunno but something else
, this will help develop team work and make use of particular trait of some classes.
concern: some player would like to be the best in every fight by doing so they would need a lot of gear and if their class doesn't have that particular way of fighting they could lament but note:all could be killed by any class using any play style by spending more time and effort, that is only the 'easiest' one.
With new module news play styles can be promoted, and new gear for that will be released without the need to increase item level of the items, item level require to enter a new dungeon or lever cap of the stat; every once in a while the dev-team can choose to increment those, in a new module and create tier in dungeon.
suggestion: the old items, how would be if we could salvage those for campaign currency (not many) of the campaign where they belong to? it's still better that having RP, there must be a wall so that last 3 campaign gear must not be salvageable. the other option i saw was to upgrade them, like the old elemental infusion with black ice, but how popular it was that? (sincerely asking, by the time i could do that chult came)
the boons and feat:
the boons as of now are purely vertical and before mod16 they were hybrid (every campaign horizontal, single campaign vertical). the feat now are horizontal and before hybrid (same as the boons) not only that, but we lost 'personality' now there are few choice for the feat and and for the boons, and each pick will not remove choice for the next decision. to keep both of them hybrid there is a need for a more tree style evolution, and if possible some more meaningful feat for the paragon (to synergize with the skill, class feature and stat distribution chosen) and more meaningful boons to characterize the playstyle (if i want to deal damage i shouldn't get the possibility to get defensive stat, the possibility to get not only one master boons and make them more synergical to the playstyle )
for each new module you can create a new master boons specific to the playstyle proposed in the mod
concern: there are two options:
we get each mod a new sheet of boons (like we did pre-mod16) in the long term there will be a lot and the boons will be again campaign bound
the boons graphic need to be redesigned, and there is a need of a really big tree to see every boons achievable
it may not be doable to make a working expandable tree style structure for the boons, but i'm sure it will give a lot of complexity an personality to the character in the game
the boons will be a bit like the constellation of skyrim, where if you choose a path you may not choose the other but both of them can become one again toward the top
there are really a lot of ideas in the CDP, so maybe someone else talked about these stuff, sorry i don't remember,too many thing to read and i forgot around 80% of them by the time i complete the reading (the CDP about CDP will have all ppl agree in the need of order). my proposal for the item bonus should be similar (if not included) in what thefabricant said in his posts (or in the blog page) if i understood him.
I have gone back through this CDP looking only for Crafting or Master Crafting ideas and comments. (There are quite a few) I pasted them all into one document so that they are easier for me to follow. I am looking for common ideas from each author and also ideas that make each post unique. I am going to take a day or two just to concentrate on those posts before adding my contribution. Not that what I am doing matters to anyone, but it may help people like me who get lost in the sea of feedback but still want to contribute to the discussion.
On the off chance anyone is wondering to date there have been 27 posts by different members containing 9070 words about crafting in this CDP. This does not include replies by @cwhitesidedev#9752 or quotes referring to the 27 posts.
I let here my 2 cents about.
Neverwinter crafting system
and why it fails in my opinion
1.issues with market value for endproducts craft vs loot
Lot of people have pointed that out already and that's the major problem for NWO craft : reciepes adding new intersting stuff during a module are immediately obsolete in the next module, and cryptic's manpower doesn't seem large enough to consistantly add new reciepes every module to compete with stuff you can loot/obtain without crafting.
@thefabricant had some good ideas in his essay about that (especially an easy way to make it sustainable without so much effort after the work for the initial design), and i really like the upgrading system he proposed.
In my opinion, though, craft vs loot shouldn't be competing at all, but should be intricated. Back in the old days, i was playing a MMORPG where almost nothing as an intersting equipment was a direct loot (especially BiS-category ones, though there was still some rare exceptions) : you were looting ingredients (or collecting ingredients in spots sometimes guarded by big mobs or bosses) which were used to craft the equipments. Some of the useless crafted stuff (or retrograted to not BiS ones after something better was released) were used as ingredients to new things so they could keep some value.
This method was allowing a huge dynamism for trade, share, AH, craft. Some guilds were organized and specialized in crafting, other were specialized in running dungeons to provide ingredients, and at the end it was involving a lot of players in producing lines as it also was extremely hard to be completely self-sufficient even with a huge amount of playtime and toons. But I don't think it would work on NWO, as it should have been designed this way right from the beginning and switching to that now would make too big of an earthquake.
Another idea is to double sources from which you can obtain one particular stuff : 1.as loot 2.as craft (with only some few equipements as "exclusiveness" of one or antoher). What you can loot, you can also craft, and reciprocally.
Exemple : Let say the last BiS armor is an endchest loot in the last endgame dungeon. Current design would make it a 1% droprate. But in the endchest you also loot one ingredient for the recipe to craft the exact same armor. If the intended amount of armors "created" by the gamers is 1%/chest, then : - make the armor droping as a "luckyloot" with 0.5% chances - make one ingredient droping with 100% chances - make the reciepe needing 200x this ingredient as a bottleneck.
And there you are at the equivalent of 1%/chest you would have been in the current model of droprate.
Nothing different from today : players would want to farm this dungeon to get the armor (for themselves or for nice AD on AH), with only few chances to get it, resulting in some frustration vs good RNGesus, and sometimes very long infuriating consistant bad luck (like mine, with my 5 king of spine hunts without rex corona in mod 12, my 6 toons doing fane in omu every weeks during 9 months mod13-14 and who never got any ring +5, or the over 30 sister hunts to get my heels in mod14-15).
But very different from today : players would also get 1 guaranteed ingredient. So patient ones can say "ok, with hard work, not need to have luck or AD, just maybe some help from friends who have luckylooted directly the armor, and I eventually will get to the point i can craft this armor", more impatient one (or not intersted in crafting) would see "worth ~1/200 the value of the armor, let's farm and sell that on AH to fund myself and buy it". And crafters would buy ingredients as obviously BiS crafted version of the armor would sell, providing a market for any player, even those who at this point don't have the IL, the knowledgen the skill or the team to enter and finish the dungeon consistantly/with a good repeatability on success.
I don't really know how difficult and how much time it takes to create 1 new ingredient, 1 new reciepe, for 1 new equipment. But i really don't think it's so hard and time consuming if you don't create a full new set of 16 new ingredients with 4 intermediate crafts to get to the final craft. 1 new ingredient is enough : use it as a bottleneck and just use for the others what is already existing which will also helps giving interest to produce older easier (or not) reciepes and helps finding outlets to some useless crafts.
Do you have some survey tools to know which endline crafts/intermediate crafted ingredients have bad outlet and lethargic market on AH to maybe help deciding about that ?
2.Interdependence
Interdependence between professions in order to craft the "usefull" stuffs has always been, in every crafting system, a normal thing. There are interdependencies in a bunch of crafts in Neverwinter which is good.
Problem is the large ability to be quite completely self-sufficient as a crafter. Beside the "I don't want/have time/have moral to produce or gather raw materials, or to make (low level or not) intermediate crafts, let's buy those directly on AH", as you can develop all professions on one single toon you don't really have to "burden" yourself making collaborations by trading goods or collaborating with other players (or directely buy on AH).
This lead to something i find quite odd for a crafting system, as I always saw that kind of a feature in a MMORPG as a very heavy mean to provoke communication between players, collaborations between crafters (intermediate low level good suppliers/endline producers), and interactions between buyers/sellers inside the whole communty. Solo crafting everything is a sad thing if you consider we are in a MMO.
The actual design doesn't help as your toon is not the crafter, but basically the captain of a mutlinational widely diversified, and each society under your holding works for a different field or application (which can also be seen as quite a nice orignality compared to the norm in medieval-fantasy MMORPGs if you ask me ^^).
Things like forced limitations in how many professions you can handle with one given toon (not possible to do that on Neverwinter, should have be done right at the beginning), or no limitations for basic crafts but only 1 or 2 possible specializations in some professions would help in this matter (though obviously someone extremely devoted to craft would develop alts to try to be self-sufficient ^^). Make the crafters also need other crafters to complete the hardest crafts is a good way to put dynamism on the AH/market and direct trading.
Not really a problem (only very few MMORPG with a crafting system do otherwise), but more something I would like to see : some sort of a collaborative interface between players regarding crafting. This idea is grounded in the same philosophy as the previous ones : provoking as much as possible involvement of more than yourself in crafting, and more communication and interactions between players in a direct way rather than relying on AH. Something looking like the trade interface between players, but involving the crafting window for direct crafter-to-customer secured system which would also involved the ability to invite 1 player in your workshop.
As an exemple :
I'm one of the most skilled crafter for daggers in the game (level 2000 in forge/weaponsmith, MasterWork XXVII, ultrasupermythic gondhammer, and i have chosen the only specialization the game allows me to take among various ones to be daggers, so i get a bonus on success/+1 rate and maybe a little variable as a bonus on stats [nothing to strong, like daggers i craft have a rng +0.5% to +1% on base damages compared to unspecialized dagger crafters). I'm a bit known in the community (because advertising, popularity, availability, friendly, roleplay, reasonnable prices [maybe even "free" if you are roleplaying the deal], etc whatever).
A player-customer whisp me and ask if i can craft him one pair of the latest BiS butter knives, and i agree. So we meet in PE in front of the workshop door, say hello to each other, chat a bit about weather, prices, ingredients, success rate, etc, and group as a party. I right-clic on him and select "invite in the workshop" (contextual menu option, only available at the frontdoor of the workshop when 2 player and no more are in the party).
Inside, I "F" on the crafting desk opening the crafting interface, then the player-customer do the same. The interface changes a bit to the "collaborative" mode, with other ingredients sliders and a paiement field (gold & AD) the player-customer only can fill.
The customers told me he only has 3 of the 4 ingredient, so he put these ingredients in his part of the interface and do the same for the paiment (5 gold and 10kAD for exemple + a number of AD taken as a tax by the "merchant guild") (AD sink, i don't have a good idea about how it should be calculated yet, the goal is though to be somewhere around half the sink of the AH to both avoid abusive uses of this design [multiaccounts/multiboxing] but keep this way more appealing to play than the cold AH for players in order to create social interractions inside the community). I fill my part with the remainingi ingredient, the artisan, the tool, the possible adjuvant and clic-craft.
Confirmation window that sumup which one of us as put what and where, and the success/+1 rates. Both of us have to confirm.
In all the cases : the 3 ingredients the customer put are taken from his inventory (unless recycling skill proc for the artisan, in this case the ingredients are obviously returned in the customer inventory). The artisan gold (or AD) salary and the ingredient and adjuvants (unless speical skill on the artisan) I put is taken from my inventory In case of failure : nothing more is taken from any inventory. AD and gold paiement the customer put are returned to his inventory. In case of success : The customer receive the finalproduct in his inventory. I recieve the gold and AD paiement decided in the collaborative craft window, my artisan get the xp, and the merchant guild sink the AD in the tax.
Obviously, lot of work to design this kind of thing :P
I have gone back through this CDP looking only for Crafting or Master Crafting ideas and comments. (There are quite a few) I pasted them all into one document so that they are easier for me to follow. I am looking for common ideas from each author and also ideas that make each post unique. I am going to take a day or two just to concentrate on those posts before adding my contribution. Not that what I am doing matters to anyone, but it may help people like me who get lost in the sea of feedback but still want to contribute to the discussion.
On the off chance anyone is wondering to date there have been 27 posts by different members containing 9070 words about crafting in this CDP. This does not include replies by @cwhitesidedev#9752 or quotes referring to the 27 posts.
I let here my 2 cents about.
Neverwinter crafting system
and why it fails in my opinion
1.issues with market value for endproducts craft vs loot
Lot of people have pointed that out already and that's the major problem for NWO craft : reciepes adding new intersting stuff during a module are immediately obsolete in the next module, and cryptic's manpower doesn't seem large enough to consistantly add new reciepes every module to compete with stuff you can loot/obtain without crafting.
@thefabricant had some good ideas in his essay about that (especially an easy way to make it sustainable without so much effort after the work for the initial design), and i really like the upgrading system he proposed.
In my opinion, though, craft vs loot shouldn't be competing at all, but should be intricated. Back in the old days, i was playing a MMORPG where almost nothing as an intersting equipment was a direct loot (especially BiS-category ones, though there was still some rare exceptions) : you were looting ingredients (or collecting ingredients in spots sometimes guarded by big mobs or bosses) which were used to craft the equipments. Some of the useless crafted stuff (or retrograted to not BiS ones after something better was released) were used as ingredients to new things so they could keep some value.
This method was allowing a huge dynamism for trade, share, AH, craft. Some guilds were organized and specialized in crafting, other were specialized in running dungeons to provide ingredients, and at the end it was involving a lot of players in producing lines as it also was extremely hard to be completely self-sufficient even with a huge amount of playtime and toons. But I don't think it would work on NWO, as it should have been designed this way right from the beginning and switching to that now would make too big of an earthquake.
I think I played an MMORPG like that. I ran a guild of dwarves, we crafted, we hired / formed a guild of mages to buff us while crafting, and also hired and equipped many normal players to farm resources for us. It was amazing to see. I agree that it is a better system for crafting and also agree that it would not work in Neverwinter for the reasons you state. Too bad really, because I remember that being really fun and engaging for all different types of players.
I remember recruiting new players to collect sticks for me. LOL! man that was a fun game. @tchefi#6735 Thanks for reminding me about that game, it brought back many happy memories!
I keep seeing ideas like, getting rid of bondings and making that bonus just there.... no difficult choices on artifact sets. get it all with no conflict in choice...
The game has already been simplified GREATLY and greatly changed, and I'm seeing talk about simplifying it even more. This is concerning. Gamers don't like change. Complexity is what gives a game like this legs. A good amount of people left the game before because of Change- Simplification...
Also the economy is at stake here. In the past this game had been very cautious to make changes because of the economy. People don't like seeing their investments turned to mush. Having trade in vendors just makes it worse imo. So you get rid of bondings. People have spent between 1.5 mil each and 2.2 mil each on these, many have spent real cash, so outrage. Cryptic says yeah ok trade in store. So that means the many thousands of bondings turn into empowereds and radiants, which in turn decreases their value on the market, because supply /demand. End result, now we have yet another worthless market. And the newer players you're trying to hook in don't have to work very hard so have little investment in the game to keep them here.
Superstore:
The superstore idea also will basically kill the economy. RNG is part of the system that keeps people logging in every day. I agree we have too many stores and too many currencies but combining everything into one store takes away flavor. and given how everything funnels into this store will make a huge dent in supply demand. even if it's all bound to account (which is also taking away value from what we already have) the demand has just crashed for things on the market already. those same new players you want to give things to all of a sudden can't make any ad on anything because it's all valueless. higher values are good for everyone.
Just update some of these other stores. I personally like the many stores. I still strongly dislike changing vip in anyway. The backlash for that from the player base will be considerable.
Earlier someone had detailed the types of players in this game. People here to play the economy are a huge part of the player base. When you start simplifying thing and changing things to the extent mentioned, you end up killing markets that many have invested in heavily already. As well as taking away something to grind for.
There is a lot of catch up for the new player but when you start taking on things like bondings you're basically making the game no work. no investment. I think that's bad for the long term health of the game. before doing things that drastic isn't it better to educate first? That's the real problem.
I would like to see more complexity added. Not more simplification. What is needed is education as to how to use this system. the reason people have a problem is because you do need to come to the forums to learn about basics of upgrading rather than it being taught in the game cohesively.
The game overall doesn't need the drastic ground up changes you're talking about in this area. it needs some updating.
Masterwork
Masterwork is fine. it just needs to be kept up to date with gear that has a place in the game strategically. Making one mastercraft toon per account will be met with outrage. people have spent time and money on upgrading mw on more than one toon. I want a universal tool box but that's it. Crafting is fine. The way it's set up is fine. Having a little streamlining, as sharp mentioned in the number of clicks needed would be awesome.. but as a whole I just needs to be kept up to date, not a rework. There is also room in this economy for master crafting for the newbie but it's been neglected so you're not seeing that right now. Normally new players can make quite a bit selling to mastercrafters. The balance needs to be restored, not bulldozed into oblivion. The economy DOES work as it is. People whine about it because it takes work but that is what keeps them in the game and that is also what makes them open their wallets.
1. Bondings are an artificial construct, are essentially mandatory, and add no choice (since M16). They are basically there as a sink for currency and nothing more. As such they could easily be removed to reduce confusion among newer players, and efforts shifted to add more choice for summoned companions. End result: Less confusing, and More choices
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
I heavily agree with the bondings as an artificial construct comment. I've really disliked Augments and Bondings since starting the game - spend a bunch of time grinding and upgrading to make my companion better instead of my toon?!!!? Still rubs me wrong. Having said that it's a piece of vertical progression that many people have spent a long time chasing, probably best to leave bondings in game and adjust how Augments work to simplify the system while still leaving that bit of vertical progression for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
The more people talk about a super store the more it just sounds like consolidating the stores into a single place and maybe add in a section for VIP holders, which I believe we've been told in the past there are tech issues with that many tabs in a UI. Would be great to get that clarified and either implement or abandon further discussion on it already - it's pretty clear a one stop shop is widely desired.
Cannot agree with your third point enough. It really feels to me that if NWO isn't going to consistently devote regular dev time to keep crafting relevant, with gear/transmutes/consumables, then the system should be abandoned in place or removed.
the superstore Idea would hurt the economy because there are thousands of old players with tons of all the old currency if all th rng things were added to the store they'd be able to buy a lot of them. newer players would be able to afford alot of this stuff too. so you have all this free stuff. even if it is bound to account it's part of the supply and demand element. not just in the raw elements but the finished products too. all of a sudden the ah will be flooded with the most desirable stuff and even the stuff not being made into the most desirable stuff and resold will have an effect on economy because the demand side will be much lower for those items. it would devalue a lot of things. we already have so much that has been devalued. artifacts, enchantments of most types, Rp.. that used to hold some value for the newer players. adding more to the equation would be even less room for people to actually be able to make any ah to afford to buy things. the end effect is that while this stuff becomes cheap and plentiful for those with money those without money still won't be able to afford anything because there is no where in the game they can make ad to advance still.
imo sinks on things like low level enchants, artis and Rp need to be added to the game to give them some value back for the newer player so they can actually have some value like they used to.
while I don't agree with the choose your own artifact method of play I do think it would be interesting if they had an empowered artifact that took other artifacts and rp and maybe some enchantments to power up.
I keep seeing ideas like, getting rid of bondings and making that bonus just there.... no difficult choices on artifact sets. get it all with no conflict in choice...
The game has already been simplified GREATLY and greatly changed, and I'm seeing talk about simplifying it even more. This is concerning. Gamers don't like change. Complexity is what gives a game like this legs. A good amount of people left the game before because of Change- Simplification...
Also the economy is at stake here. In the past this game had been very cautious to make changes because of the economy. People don't like seeing their investments turned to mush. Having trade in vendors just makes it worse imo. So you get rid of bondings. People have spent between 1.5 mil each and 2.2 mil each on these, many have spent real cash, so outrage. Cryptic says yeah ok trade in store. So that means the many thousands of bondings turn into empowereds and radiants, which in turn decreases their value on the market, because supply /demand. End result, now we have yet another worthless market. And the newer players you're trying to hook in don't have to work very hard so have little investment in the game to keep them here.
Superstore:
The superstore idea also will basically kill the economy. RNG is part of the system that keeps people logging in every day. I agree we have too many stores and too many currencies but combining everything into one store takes away flavor. and given how everything funnels into this store will make a huge dent in supply demand. even if it's all bound to account (which is also taking away value from what we already have) the demand has just crashed for things on the market already. those same new players you want to give things to all of a sudden can't make any ad on anything because it's all valueless. higher values are good for everyone.
Just update some of these other stores. I personally like the many stores. I still strongly dislike changing vip in anyway. The backlash for that from the player base will be considerable.
Earlier someone had detailed the types of players in this game. People here to play the economy are a huge part of the player base. When you start simplifying thing and changing things to the extent mentioned, you end up killing markets that many have invested in heavily already. As well as taking away something to grind for.
There is a lot of catch up for the new player but when you start taking on things like bondings you're basically making the game no work. no investment. I think that's bad for the long term health of the game. before doing things that drastic isn't it better to educate first? That's the real problem.
I would like to see more complexity added. Not more simplification. What is needed is education as to how to use this system. the reason people have a problem is because you do need to come to the forums to learn about basics of upgrading rather than it being taught in the game cohesively.
The game overall doesn't need the drastic ground up changes you're talking about in this area. it needs some updating.
Masterwork
Masterwork is fine. it just needs to be kept up to date with gear that has a place in the game strategically. Making one mastercraft toon per account will be met with outrage. people have spent time and money on upgrading mw on more than one toon. I want a universal tool box but that's it. Crafting is fine. The way it's set up is fine. Having a little streamlining, as sharp mentioned in the number of clicks needed would be awesome.. but as a whole I just needs to be kept up to date, not a rework. There is also room in this economy for master crafting for the newbie but it's been neglected so you're not seeing that right now. Normally new players can make quite a bit selling to mastercrafters. The balance needs to be restored, not bulldozed into oblivion. The economy DOES work as it is. People whine about it because it takes work but that is what keeps them in the game and that is also what makes them open their wallets.
1. Bondings are an artificial construct, are essentially mandatory, and add no choice (since M16). They are basically there as a sink for currency and nothing more. As such they could easily be removed to reduce confusion among newer players, and efforts shifted to add more choice for summoned companions. End result: Less confusing, and More choices
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
For some reason not quoting correctly and I'm not sure how to fix from this point on is thefiresidecat commentary
1. Everything is a construct and basically mandatory. it is something that people have to work on to improve their character. it is a goal and it's something that people HAVE worked on and completed. you could say artifacts and enchants and gear is all a construct. Just make everything immediate and give it to us as a fully functioning toon at level 80. to heck with the grind of working and investing in your toon. and to hell with all the people who have already done that. but is this what you really want? what would there be to keep you in the game after you've done the dungeon? and then the effects of taking it out would trickle down and devalue other things in the process. it would have very harmful effects in the bigger picture. You could have argued against it BEFORE it was ever implemented and things designed around it but taking it out after this amount of time in the game would be disaster.
2. the superstore Idea would hurt the economy because there are thousands of old players with tons of all the old currency if all th rng things were added to the store they'd be able to buy a lot of them. newer players would be able to afford alot of this stuff too. so you have all this free stuff. even if it is bound to account it's part of the supply and demand element. not just in the raw elements but the finished products too. all of a sudden the ah will be flooded with the most desirable stuff and even the stuff not being made into the most desirable stuff and resold will have an effect on economy because the demand side will be much lower for those items. it would devalue a lot of things. we already have so much that has been devalued. artifacts, enchantments of most types, Rp.. that used to hold some value for the newer players. adding more to the equation would be even less room for people to actually be able to make any ah to afford to buy things. the end effect is that while this stuff becomes cheap and plentiful for those with money those without money still won't be able to afford anything because there is no where in the game they can make ad to advance still. 3. the economy has been fine over all. the shambles part is because they haven't updated the system. updating mastercrafting and adding sinks into give value to things is something that would take a lot less effort than all the changes you are suggesting.
Just want to say part of the problem for this comes from enemy design.
For example - my main is a "tripping rogue", I want things to be knocked prone (5% chance per crit from manticore) so I can do lots more damage (+10% on prone from panther). My secondary is a "bondage ranger (lol)" who is geared to stun and root enemies and then does bonus damage to stunned and rooted enemies (+5% from slyblade kobold etc).
Any additional boons / gear to help me along those lines would be great and but at the same time if someone eventually decides "oh, but so and so can't be knocked down or rooted because she's a five headed dragon" or "that giant demon monkey with a mace hand is too clever(?) to be CC'ed" well that really puts a damper on my build right? Guess that means I should go chase the +DPS gear everyone else wants and just drop the style of play I enjoy.
As silly as it sounds, letting all mobs be affected by CC is a good step in the right direction. I'm actually quite happy that all the mini-dungeon bosses in Avernus are actually CC prone. Thank you whoever decided that!
Hot take, but I'd actually wouldn't mind the ability to CC everything in the game. Yes, including bosses.
Some creative strategies could be devised by teams, such as one notable (and hilarious) example involving 5x Rogues and Courage Breaker.
(For those unaware: in the module of that video, the Courage Breaker daily attack would slow the enemy hit regardless of their CC immunity, which is why it worked on bosses. This slow going through CC Immunity was also why I recall it was a source of complaint in PvP too, though I don't know if that's still the case.)
I don't think you should be allowed to just chain stun a boss so they can't do anything, defeating the point of the boss battle.
But, say in Tomb of the 9 Gods, a team with could opt to freeze Ras Nsi for a few seconds after summoning souls, allowing your tank to not have to focus on watching over Ras Nsi, but instead assist the DPS in chipping down the souls.
Or in Lair of the Mad Mage boss 2, you could prone the Boreworm before he does his spinning attack, allowing you to get in a few extra hits without needing to worry about getting.
Little things like that could open some new strategies for teams to plan around and not make any CC related abilities useless on bosses.
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
Good argument.
For my part, I somewhat agree with @thefabricant 's statement that crafting has failed. It never should have been about making gear in the first place. As others have stated, it directly conflicts with the loot system.
My feeling is that crafting should be a system for augmenting the base-line gear in the game and perhaps a few other things. If it does make gear pieces, it's for personal use and not the economy as a whole.
I'm thinking you can craft materials and trade those with other players. (not super-profitable, but you're welcome to do it)
If crafting does make armor, jewelry, etc. are meant for personal use and doesn't enter the economy at all. (account-bound)
The general economy, auction house, would be fueled by gear drops from dungeons, etc. That way the loot system and professions are not competing.
Professions CAN upgrade baseline gear from the economy, provided it's not a rare purple/orange. Via reinforcement kits and the like.
Crafters can sell reinforcement kits and other augments to other players whom don't want to bother with crafting. This will never be super-profitable. As you've already made clear, it's somewhat pointless to try and make it a money maker.
The main 'profitability' of the crafting system, and using multiple toons, would be trading to the South Seas Trading Company for resources. ... So far I haven't figured out what the rewards would be. They should be valuable, but not so valuable that they destablize other systems.
Comments
There also exists the problem that, the moment someone can complete the content these drop from, they can no longer benefit from them. This means there is a diminishing pool of people who are interested in these items, because some of the people who are willing to use them, are also definitely interested in completing the hardest content.
Finally, a big problem is inconvenience. Lets say you have this weapon which is only available from this box, which has a duration. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of my weapon disappearing on me half way through combat.
I can see the benefits for equalizing the performance gain from each area, but I wouldn't do it in the form of stats, but rather in the form of different bonuses. Limiting it to stats means within that category, there isn't much choice where as if it is powerful bonuses, you can have many versions of them and people could choose the bonuses which suit their build.
I see no real reason to remove bondings from the game, or reduce their effectiveness. You can add interesting bonuses to items without reducing how much stats you gain from bondings. I strongly disagree with this and I have seen it proposed several times. Sure, it allows you to choose which items you want which bonuses on, but it almost entirely kills the identity of items. Part of item choice is deciding between using items which have unfavorable stat distributions and finding ways for them to work. This change would almost entirely remove that element, as people would just put the bonuses they want on items that have the right stat distribution. It would kill entire classes of items.
Part of making choices, is the consequences associated with them. This change removes the consequence of, "I need to balance around this specific item" entirely, which is why it gets a big no from me. Sure, you might be choosing between which bonuses you want, but you know what you are not choosing? Which items you use. Items would be compared solely on stats and the ones with the best distributions would always win, it removes all meaningful choice in this area.
It also heavily limits where you can have item bonuses, which also makes items less interesting. This system is basically dumbing down items and I am not in favor of it. Again, same issue I have with the suggestion about itemization and on top of that, if bonuses become the main focus of crafting (making kits rather than items) its essentially saying, "we failed at making crafting items work, so we will kill our crafting system in favour of dropped loot." Furthermore, I don't consider that example of an item bonus to be a meaningful bonus, you cannot tell the difference between having that 3% melee damage and not having it.
Feedback Overview: Bottom line: I dont mind being challenged. I want to be engaged and have my skills tested. I want new, harder challenges. But I want to be rewarded in exciting, worthful (is this a word?), engaging ways. I am working now to get gear specifically for ToMM, but I dont even have enough friends that still play the game or alliance members at a high enough level to make a solid group for ten players, so I'm in no rush, especially with a new mod and new gear about to drop. I dont want anyone excluded just because my toon is more advanced, but I want my progression and effort to be meaningful at the same time. Many rewards in the game are obsolete (useless items in dungeon chests) or devalued due to their abundance (refinement). Difficult, time consuming and expensive features such as Mastercrafting have no current real value and when upgraded fails to remain relevant for more than a single mod cycle. I've always thought Neverwinter has HUGE unexplored potential. I hope we begin to see that potential become a reality as we see where this new direction actually is able to lead the game.
Feedback Goal: To make rewards feel rewarding instead of disappointing or useless and to share potential ideas regarding things becoming obsolete and thus worthless or pointless.
Feedback Functionality:
Lower Level Dungeons, scaling and disappointing rewards in chests:
Currently running REQ and RTQ is a no brainer as a daily routine to cap rough AD as efficiently as possible. The scaling of the lower level dungeons such as Cragmire or Malabogs is severe enough that enemies die more slowly, the bosses kill players far more frequently, and even takes longer to run than when I run T9. However the rewards in the chest at the end are noticebly worse: less AD, absence of any special rewards (eg. UES), blue gear or lower level gems etc. Feedback: All dungeon chests should contain potentially good rewards so that players are motivated to run it, rather than inspiring groans (not due to the scaling induced difficulty or length but because the rewards are guaranteed to be bad).
Others have put forth the idea of dungeons having different difficulty modes and equivalent rewards. This is a good avenue to explore as it allows players of lower IL to experience the dungeon, learn mechanics and gain appropriate rewards whilst challenge more experienced players to test their skill against tougher enemies harder mechanics but then also earn better rewards. It was spoken about taking parts out of the game to polish them up. I hope the polishing involves this line of game development.
Obsolete items and systems:
Neverwinter is in a continual gradual bloat system; each new mod invalidates most of the previous mods gear. Many potentially interesting artifacts in the game are rendered worthless because they cannot compete with the raw stats of the new ones introduced. Feedback: Either simply update all artifacts to current item level or introduce ways to the game to improve legacy artifacts to the current item level (eg. crafting > mastercrafting which would in turn add some relevancy to these redundant systems)
Potentially interesting gear is obsolete: Equipment from older campaigns cannot compete with the latest gear. This makes gear stores such as the twisted artifact gear in the Underdark, the River District Gear (making the whole bottom line of unlocking the campaign store in the RD Campaign pointless), Storm Kings Thunder (making a lot of mats for restoration that drops in chests and clog up professions worthless) and Aq. Inc (making the entire IOU 'Hard Mode' system, which in my opinion is a very fun idea and a great feature while there was some point to it ... which was a single module ... *facepalm*). I'm sure this will eventually effect Chult Hunts and Barovia Hunts fully soon too as mod 18 is about to drop, and mod 17 has already seen these largely go the way of the dodo. Feedback: Either completely remove the obsolete gear and replace it with something that has some relevance to something significant in the game, perhaps convert the items to free appearance change items, or preferably intorduce a way to make these pieces of gear reach the same IL or become relevant in specific situations eg. the frost gear that increases Voninblod rune drops to speed up the campaign. I've seen some nice ideas on how to make items relevant longer and sustainably so over time, It seems to me that crafting and master crafting would be a very sensible way to achieve this. Certainly the Hard Mode IOU system needs to be seperated from that gear and be a feature of the game that remains something you can/should do no matter what mod drops, meaning rewards gained need to be perenially attractive to players, or other rewards need to replace the outdated gear that makes trying a hard mode challenge worth it.
Potentially interesting systems are obsolete: Crafting is largely pointless with the exception of Alchemy and potion crafting (and even then only a few specific potions) and a few niche cases (Jewellery > Gold (but gold is not as valuable because the profession is largely redundant), Armor Kit Making and Stronghold upgrading ie AD boxes). Other than that people really can only make any profit from it by selling to other people who either don't know what they are doing or people who are trying to get their professions maxed or involve themselves in Master Crafting (only to then discover at the end that all that effort was mostly for naught). Master Crafting is particularly disappointing for me personally, having invested large amounts of time, resources and funds to max out all MC professions just as a new mod hit and all MC gear became instantly obsolete, and thus the entire MC sysem obsolete and the MC (and thus the GMark) economy fall into a very long slump. I have never made any profit for all my effort and I wait patiently for this to change. There is also still cases in the game where +1 items are worse than regular mundane items, because the mundane items are used in the MC quest line, but +1versions of the same gear cannot be used nor can they be converted to mundane gear as resources now can. Feedback: When change comes I believe the goal needs to include sustainable relevance. A core and elite system of the game that few players achieve should not become obsolete for long periods of time, if ever. I have already included some potential ideas as to how crafting/MC could be used to make obsolete artifacts and gear relevant. The MC gear itself obviously needs to be updated to new gear and either the bloat system altered permanently so that this gear is always relevant or is automatically updated when new better gear is introduce, at least can be imporved via the MC system to remain relevant. Allow +1 item gear to also be downgraded or accepted as valid items in the MC quest line. Decorations can be crafted for the guild hall, cool ... but give us a reason to go in the guild hall so people see the nice decorations we've made or paid for ... ie. why isnt the mimc in there? And the mailbox? And the Banks? Give people a reason to go inside, and they will go inside (It's currently just a big waste of space, making decorating it less enticing)
Crafting Storyline Fail and purple artisans: Crafting is relevant is you want to expand your Workshop to the maximum rank by donating gear to the Trading Company (although once expanded... it's redundant). You gain more slots and the ability for Purple artisans to sometimes offer their services. We follow the story of the old boss, have multiple interactions with her ... and then we fully upgrade the workshop and there is no story reward with her. She doesn't come and join us... so disappointing. Also, on the very very rare occaisions a purple artisan then comes to offer their services, they are often worse than the blue or even white artisans! This is especially prevalent with the adventurers. Yes they have higher stats, but higher stats arent really needed. Most of the resources they fetch are easily obtainable with the best tools. But the purple adventurers are either slower or way way more expensive! A purple adventurer should gather faster or gather cheaper ... that would be an epic adventurer. Feedback: Have a quest related to the workshop allow you to gain the storyline artisan as a workshop artisan. If this is possible ... ummm... make it more obvious how this is done please. Make purple adventurers gather resoures faster and more cheaply than blues. That's all you really want from an adventurer.
Refinement overdose needs to be looked at: Refinement is important obviously, but as it drops so often in normal game play it makes also getting the same gems very underwhelming as a reward. This is particularly bad with the new chests. It is very common, far too common in fact, to get all gems or all gems and r8 enchantments (which are basically more refinement) from lockboxes. I have stopped even making the effort of maintaining VIP because I can get by without the QoL features and it's not worth it to me at this stage, especially as I am disenchanted with the state of the game and getting VIP signifies a commitment to continue playing for a fixed period of time that I am currently unwilling to make. Feedback: Low level gems should be completely removed from lockboxes entirely. Dungeons should give better gems than those that drop from killing mobs, and potentially some of the really nice gems. Or refinement needs to be made more valuable ie it is used to do other things in the game as well other than upgrade enchantments and artifacts... which, once you have the relevant ones and your enchantments maxed, you no longer need. For example, using refinement in the MC system to upgrade obsolete gear or perhaps to ignite areas within a dungeon that provide some temporary buff or unlock/activate a temporary NPC minion who joins you and fights with you during that dungeon until slain. Yay we can craft gems ... boo, their value is so low and at a certain point you no longer need refinement, so its not really worth the effort.
Obsolete minor features (Skill nodes and to some degree in-dungeon/instance chests): I dont bother with skill nodes. It's not worth the 5 seconds and the inventory space it requires to stop and click on it to get a black pearl much less clog up space with the relevant node tool. I often dont bother with in-dungeon chests either. It's mostly just bad potions, chump change and a black pearl or two. Sometimes you get lucky and get a green insignia that's worth something, so this isnt so bad. But skill nodes are dead to me. There are some minor things still in the game that you cant really get currency for like the scale vendor near the dragonborn party in PE or the special red seal vendor in Dread Ring. It seems poinless to have stuff like this not be a significant part of the game. It's wasted potential. Feedback: If I can send out adventurers to get resources, why can't I, as an adventurer go out and get those resources. Couldnt skill nodes provide professions resources? Again, with the current state of the crafting system, this isnt attractive either and would require the crafting system be relevant. It would also require that the professions resource bag was expanded so that space wasnt an issue. If not professions resource, there needs to be a significant reason why to bother with this feature, or remove it and replace it with something that is relevant. Chests also seem like an pportunity to add other rewards ... it occurs to me something as simple as guild rewards that players can put in the coffer to help their guild grow and speed their guilds progress as they play the game, tyranny zones > tyranny guild campaign currency; dread zones > dread campaign currency etc. Either remove now irrelevant currency vendors or reintroduce ways to get the currency so they become relevant again.
Guild Mark Caps and donations: Obsolete gear is either converted to gold (not relevenant unless crafting is relevant), refinement (already an overdoes of refinement) or Guild Marks via donation (but this is eventually easily capped once stronghold is upgraded). Also certain guild rewards ie dungeoneer shards have such a low cap and are hardly ever used, find this resource is generally capped also and getting this quest to gain the shards limited and at end game obsolete. Feedback: Increase caps or remove caps altogether or introduce an alternatives to do with these items.
Risks & Concerns : Dev time and effort required to examine legacy gear and testing potential ingame effects of legacy artifacts if they were brought to current artifact gear levels (community testing could help with this though)
Dev resources required to upgrade systems and included ways to upgrade gear that is account bound or character bound (maybe armor kit-like upgrade systems could be used that MCers could sell to get around bound issues)
Bots farming more valuable nodes (surely there is an easy solution to stop bots? I dont really know how you bot something so I dont have any ideas, but I'm sure more knowledgeable folk could find an easy solution)
Currently the there is only 9 things on my character that I cannot buy, and I actually have to go out and do something specific to get them.
Mainhand, Offhand, ( and this is only because there is currently no Mastercraft bullcrap weapons atm)
Head
Chest
Gloves
Boots
Shirt
Pants.
Companion Equipment
Everything else can be bought with diamonds/Zen/cash
Mounts
Insignias
Enchants
Weapon/armour enchants
Campaign complete tokens - Boons
Companions
Companion upgrade tokens
Bonding Runestones
Runestones
Rings
Artefacts
Belts
Necks
Wards, potencies and all that jazz.
Basically, throw enough money at this game, spend a couple days levelling to 80, and there is very little left to do, and honestly its being going on so long in this state I really don't know how to "fix" it. Company obviously has to make money somehow, so without a massive upheaval of the Zen market and monetisation model most of this wont change.
However, more things need to be Bind on Account.
Weapons rings, artefacts and gear in general should not be able to be sold.
I have no problem with Master Crafting making BiS or near BiS items if they are bound, because if you want them, you can make them for yourself and put the effort in to getting them, OR you can do the content and get stuff that way. I really do not like that you can just get virtually everything you need off the AH.
Only do crafting to make profit? fine, sell the materials, no problem with that.
Add more ways in game to "earn" wards, potencies, enchanting stones, companion tokens. Sybella was a nice touch, but its a drop in the ocean. Same thing the Juma surprise bags, which is just a dungeon chest, with a loot table of a million items.
Pretty sure I have seen it mentioned before both here and the VIP CDP, but remove/consolidate a lot of the outdated currencies.
Add a Vendor that sells.
Wards
Companion choice pack
Runestone choice pack
Epic insignia choice pack
Potencies etc.
Rank 10 weapon enchant pack
Rank 10 armour enchant pack
Rank 10 bonding runstones
Legendary Mount pack ( and make it crazy expensive)
stick some prices on them,
Then add a conversion for All ingame currencies to be changed into this ONE vendor currency
Like doing the campaign dailies, but nothing to spend them on? no problem, convert
seals
guild marks
Gold
voninblood
Black Ice,
Glory
basically anything and everything, give it a ratio for conversion, to be spent in this shop on things that actually matter.
for ratios, lets say 1 token gets you a presward. 100 tokens gets you a coalward, 5000 gets you a legendary mount pack.
500 seals = 1 token
2500 vonin blood/blackice = 1 token
50 gold = 1 token.
Make it expensive, but achievable, by... shock horror!, playing the game. all this stuff is pretty useless, give us something to spend it on
2. I don't see how a super store would "destroy" the economy, all it adds is choice to earn for those that are risk adverse, the RNG element would still be available. And while this does simplify the plethora of stores into one store, it adds multiple avenues of choice to obtaining that currency. End Result: Less confusing, More choices.
3. The economy, especially around crafting is in Shambles, has been for years, and it will continue to be that way unless a change is made. Master crafting aside, which has proven too costly from a development perspective to keep up to date i it's current state, has only every been player profitable for a small minority of us, and is only ever profitable (on PC) for a short period of time due to the lack of horizontal progression (it's all vertical), and over supply issues. When we talk about normal crafting it suffers from a supply side glut, and really isn't profitable at all. All we need is a few players like me to crank up their 50+ crafting characters and start cranking out supply to completely flood the market to the point that supply completely outstrips demand. I'm also speaking as someone who is capable of Master Crafting on multiple characters. While there may be some vitriol over going down to one crafting workshop per account, I'm sure that there would also be plenty like me that understand the supply problems the current structure creates. There could also be a means to compensate for some of the investment people like me have made in crafting.
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Since both Rewards and progressions are big topics.
Other thing is, I notice that there are plenty of talks about crafting/proffesions.
While it is part of chracter progression and it also cover topic rewarding.
I think it would be better if so proffesions/crafting would have own seprarated CDP topic.
And for now we should focus more on obtained items from chests/bosses/monsters/quests/campaigns.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
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Sharp, thanks for your input! In my opinion we can only help make this better by thinking outside the box, and hashing through our ideas with respectful dialog. The truth is that none of our ideas are going to be completely on target because there is a "fog of war" caused by the cliques we run with, and on data that we cannot see. Also I feel that until recently the dev team hasn't had a great feel for how the community is divided, or what it wants, so they have there own fog to clean up (which the CDP and community outreach seems to be helping with).
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
However, removing bondings would amount to a tidal wave of change for for the dev teams to tackle. They would have to reassess player strength across multiple systems, dungeons, and campaigns zones. And somehow compensate players for all the investment they've made in their bondings.
It's difficult to see how it could be accomplished efficiently.
Currently a player upgrading their bondings is the most important part of their vertical progression. It's the first thing we tell a player they need to do.
From a practical standpoint I would vote against their removal, and instead focus on explaining to a new player how important they are to building their characters' strength. I agree that a combined store would be fine.
Stores have several tabs. One tab could be for VIP items and only VIP players would have access to that tab.
If you wanted to maintain currencies like Trade Bars, items would still appear in your general store, but TradeBars would be the currency needed to buy them. Perhaps some items like scrolls could be purchased using more than one currency.
Generally I think the one store is a good idea. It is confusing for new players just to find things.
I also think all the Seal vendors should be combined into one store.
The VIP Seal vendor kinda combines most of the seal stuff into one store. Those vendors should be combined the same way so we don't have as many npcs scattered all over the place, each selling slightly different things. I agree with this assessment.
I'm not sure how they'd implement a change without causing major backlash.
I don't do Mastercrafting, but have a lot of workshops leveled up. To have my time investment canceled out would HAMSTER me off.
How to make a singular workshop work?
Perhaps you build out the South Seas Trading Company, and multiple characters gives you more opportunity to trade with the game? Your production with the game increases your rewards, but your ability to create items for trade with other players is always finite.Perhaps multiple characters allow you to recruit higher level artisans?
Your production does not increase, but you can make better items.
Perhaps multiple characters allows you to acquire new recipes faster?
Perhaps multiple characters allow you to generate gold? Gold is required to house a larger collection of artisans.
Feedback Overview
Extend SH Progression, streamline GM (Guild Mark) acquisition, rework some rewards.Feedback Goal
The goal is to revive guild life, fill in some missing gaps, and make it so that a player does not need multiple alts in a guild to earn a sufficient amount of GMs (i.e. so that players with many alts don't have such a significant advantage over those that don't).Feedback Functionality
Stronghold Progression
We are missing a few boons for some stats like Accuracy iirc. I would like to see a utility boon for movement in general, not just mount speed. Can be more creative with making new options.
Streamline Guild Mark Acquisition
The idea is to make it so that players don't feel required to have 10+ characters to farm GM's efficiently. Remove a specific P2W aspect of MW crafting.* Make GMs an Account Wide currency and increase the maximum storage cap from 30,000 to 300,000 ( i.e. as if a player had 10 toons in a guild).
* Remove the maximum amount of Influence a player can earn on a character, reduce the the steep roi on getting Influence from each successive HE (not saying this right I know), but as it is now, each HE gives less and less Influence until you meet 400. Flatten that out and at the end it gives say 50, but you can keep getting 50. This would be an account wide effect.
* Turn quests that give Shards of Power and Vouchers into Repeatable quests like the ones in the new modules, you can get a new one as soon as you finish the last one, though a different quest in some cycle.
* Consider removing caps on certain donatables from the coffer, such as surplus equipment and profession materials. As Sharp said, the excess from these can alternatively be "deleted", as in the coffer just doesn't gain over the maximum, but you get your gm's.
Risks & Concerns
A new area would require a lot of development time.Players may not understand that this is not a way to "give away" GM's, it's a way to put those with 2 toons on equal footing with those that have 50 (I have 10) in regards to GM acquisition.
- Make some item slots exclusive to crafting and others exclusive to drops (for example, arms only come from crafting).
- Make some item types exclusive to crafting and other exclusive to drops, this requires there to be different types of items.
- Relegate crafting to an upgrade system.
All of these work, but they all have different upsides and downsides. You are proposing the 3rd, the advantage of which is that it is easy to understand for players and that its easier to implement for the devs. I don't like the 3rd because firstly, if the devs decide they DO want to make a bonus obsolete (which is fair, at some point things need to move on), they have no way to do it outside of nerfing the item. Secondly, in my opinion it removes the identity of items. Part of an item's identity is the bonus it has, now every item has the potential for the same bonus, it makes individual items less interesting (although it makes kits more interesting). Thirdly, if you can put any kit on any slot, it removes the aspect of having to make on slot choices. You pick all the bonuses you want and you never have to compromise. You could resolve this by having specific kits work on specific slots (so there is a different kit type for every item), but I still dislike the loss of item identity. Fourthly, it feels to me like this is "reducing" the scope of crafting, there are less items available that can be made.Neither of us are really proposing the first option on this list, so I will not address it, I am personally a fan of the second however. The problem with this is it has some degree of a learning curve, players won't immediately understand it without it being explained to them, but it is something that you can explain through narrative and should be easy enough to grasp. The benefits of such a system is that items retain their identity and that crafting will always have a place in the game (guaranteed) and that items with bonuses will also see use. It is also fairly easy to forcibly outdate items without nerfing them. I do not think that bonuses should be something that you should be able to move around. If you want to use a particular bonus, you have to deal with the headache of trying to match that item's stats to your particular build, its 1 of the consequences of the choice to use that bonus.
I would say that I like his general idea, but would define it differently.
• First, there should be a rare class of items with the best stats and the best equip powers. Whether this is our current purple items or a new even rarer 'unique' class, they are not moddable and would be your BiS chase items.
Generally, I think our purple items should be far more rare and meaningful.
• All the blue/green gear that's currently in the game, stuff that does not already have an equip bonus, can be modded.
You can add more slots, give them Equip bonuses, and reinforce the stats. They will never be better than your rare purple/unique items, but you can mod them up to be usable until you can find the chase item to replace it.
These blue/green items would be the ones you'd interact with using the crafting system.
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
To your second point, just because you might not be able to use them doesn't mean there isn't merit in them. Hell, you might even be able to profit from them, and we all know how much you enjoy earning a profit on changes in the game
For your third point, I don't think anyone suggested temporary weapons, just temporary buffs. Given that current buffs disappear halfway through combat anyways and you can slot another into your belt for quick access this is a non-issue when discussing new buff items.
The more people talk about a super store the more it just sounds like consolidating the stores into a single place and maybe add in a section for VIP holders, which I believe we've been told in the past there are tech issues with that many tabs in a UI. Would be great to get that clarified and either implement or abandon further discussion on it already - it's pretty clear a one stop shop is widely desired.
Cannot agree with your third point enough. It really feels to me that if NWO isn't going to consistently devote regular dev time to keep crafting relevant, with gear/transmutes/consumables, then the system should be abandoned in place or removed.
2. the tarmalene trade bar store is already broken up into sections, could use the same concept for the super store.
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Hybrid progression between horizontal and vertical in the campaign.
Until now we got a vertical progression, each module we have to get more 'power' (as in stuff to get to better our role in the party), this made clear what we need to get even in the gear: stat and a bonus useful for that role.
Neverwinter has (and always had) a vertical progression so it shouldn't be made entirely horizontal (that would be another game) but some new module can be made horizontally (if that make sense).
To do so player need a broader possibility of choice : no more gear with stat or useful bonus for their role in the party but one that reflect better each play style
By doing so every player will choose their gear by their play style and in the same module by using different mechanics for mod/bosses you could promote different play stile
concern: some player would like to be the best in every fight by doing so they would need a lot of gear and if their class doesn't have that particular way of fighting they could lament but note:all could be killed by any class using any play style by spending more time and effort, that is only the 'easiest' one.
With new module news play styles can be promoted, and new gear for that will be released without the need to increase item level of the items, item level require to enter a new dungeon or lever cap of the stat; every once in a while the dev-team can choose to increment those, in a new module and create tier in dungeon.
suggestion: the old items, how would be if we could salvage those for campaign currency (not many) of the campaign where they belong to? it's still better that having RP, there must be a wall so that last 3 campaign gear must not be salvageable.
the other option i saw was to upgrade them, like the old elemental infusion with black ice, but how popular it was that? (sincerely asking, by the time i could do that chult came)
the boons and feat:
the boons as of now are purely vertical and before mod16 they were hybrid (every campaign horizontal, single campaign vertical).
the feat now are horizontal and before hybrid (same as the boons)
not only that, but we lost 'personality' now there are few choice for the feat and and for the boons, and each pick will not remove choice for the next decision.
to keep both of them hybrid there is a need for a more tree style evolution, and if possible some more meaningful feat for the paragon (to synergize with the skill, class feature and stat distribution chosen) and more meaningful boons to characterize the playstyle (if i want to deal damage i shouldn't get the possibility to get defensive stat, the possibility to get not only one master boons and make them more synergical to the playstyle )
concern: there are two options:
there are really a lot of ideas in the CDP, so maybe someone else talked about these stuff, sorry i don't remember,too many thing to read and i forgot around 80% of them by the time i complete the reading (the CDP about CDP will have all ppl agree in the need of order).
my proposal for the item bonus should be similar (if not included) in what thefabricant said in his posts (or in the blog page) if i understood him.
Neverwinter crafting system
and why it fails in my opinion1.issues with market value for endproducts craft vs loot
Lot of people have pointed that out already and that's the major problem for NWO craft : reciepes adding new intersting stuff during a module are immediately obsolete in the next module, and cryptic's manpower doesn't seem large enough to consistantly add new reciepes every module to compete with stuff you can loot/obtain without crafting.
@thefabricant had some good ideas in his essay about that (especially an easy way to make it sustainable without so much effort after the work for the initial design), and i really like the upgrading system he proposed.
In my opinion, though, craft vs loot shouldn't be competing at all, but should be intricated. Back in the old days, i was playing a MMORPG where almost nothing as an intersting equipment was a direct loot (especially BiS-category ones, though there was still some rare exceptions) : you were looting ingredients (or collecting ingredients in spots sometimes guarded by big mobs or bosses) which were used to craft the equipments. Some of the useless crafted stuff (or retrograted to not BiS ones after something better was released) were used as ingredients to new things so they could keep some value.
This method was allowing a huge dynamism for trade, share, AH, craft. Some guilds were organized and specialized in crafting, other were specialized in running dungeons to provide ingredients, and at the end it was involving a lot of players in producing lines as it also was extremely hard to be completely self-sufficient even with a huge amount of playtime and toons.
But I don't think it would work on NWO, as it should have been designed this way right from the beginning and switching to that now would make too big of an earthquake.
Another idea is to double sources from which you can obtain one particular stuff : 1.as loot 2.as craft (with only some few equipements as "exclusiveness" of one or antoher). What you can loot, you can also craft, and reciprocally.
Exemple :
Let say the last BiS armor is an endchest loot in the last endgame dungeon. Current design would make it a 1% droprate.
But in the endchest you also loot one ingredient for the recipe to craft the exact same armor.
If the intended amount of armors "created" by the gamers is 1%/chest, then :
- make the armor droping as a "luckyloot" with 0.5% chances
- make one ingredient droping with 100% chances
- make the reciepe needing 200x this ingredient as a bottleneck.
And there you are at the equivalent of 1%/chest you would have been in the current model of droprate.
Nothing different from today : players would want to farm this dungeon to get the armor (for themselves or for nice AD on AH), with only few chances to get it, resulting in some frustration vs good RNGesus, and sometimes very long infuriating consistant bad luck (like mine, with my 5 king of spine hunts without rex corona in mod 12, my 6 toons doing fane in omu every weeks during 9 months mod13-14 and who never got any ring +5, or the over 30 sister hunts to get my heels in mod14-15).
But very different from today : players would also get 1 guaranteed ingredient. So patient ones can say "ok, with hard work, not need to have luck or AD, just maybe some help from friends who have luckylooted directly the armor, and I eventually will get to the point i can craft this armor", more impatient one (or not intersted in crafting) would see "worth ~1/200 the value of the armor, let's farm and sell that on AH to fund myself and buy it". And crafters would buy ingredients as obviously BiS crafted version of the armor would sell, providing a market for any player, even those who at this point don't have the IL, the knowledgen the skill or the team to enter and finish the dungeon consistantly/with a good repeatability on success.
I don't really know how difficult and how much time it takes to create 1 new ingredient, 1 new reciepe, for 1 new equipment. But i really don't think it's so hard and time consuming if you don't create a full new set of 16 new ingredients with 4 intermediate crafts to get to the final craft.
1 new ingredient is enough : use it as a bottleneck and just use for the others what is already existing which will also helps giving interest to produce older easier (or not) reciepes and helps finding outlets to some useless crafts.
Do you have some survey tools to know which endline crafts/intermediate crafted ingredients have bad outlet and lethargic market on AH to maybe help deciding about that ?
2.Interdependence
Interdependence between professions in order to craft the "usefull" stuffs has always been, in every crafting system, a normal thing.
There are interdependencies in a bunch of crafts in Neverwinter which is good.
Problem is the large ability to be quite completely self-sufficient as a crafter. Beside the "I don't want/have time/have moral to produce or gather raw materials, or to make (low level or not) intermediate crafts, let's buy those directly on AH", as you can develop all professions on one single toon you don't really have to "burden" yourself making collaborations by trading goods or collaborating with other players (or directely buy on AH).
This lead to something i find quite odd for a crafting system, as I always saw that kind of a feature in a MMORPG as a very heavy mean to provoke communication between players, collaborations between crafters (intermediate low level good suppliers/endline producers), and interactions between buyers/sellers inside the whole communty.
Solo crafting everything is a sad thing if you consider we are in a MMO.
The actual design doesn't help as your toon is not the crafter, but basically the captain of a mutlinational widely diversified, and each society under your holding works for a different field or application (which can also be seen as quite a nice orignality compared to the norm in medieval-fantasy MMORPGs if you ask me ^^).
Things like forced limitations in how many professions you can handle with one given toon (not possible to do that on Neverwinter, should have be done right at the beginning), or no limitations for basic crafts but only 1 or 2 possible specializations in some professions would help in this matter (though obviously someone extremely devoted to craft would develop alts to try to be self-sufficient ^^).
Make the crafters also need other crafters to complete the hardest crafts is a good way to put dynamism on the AH/market and direct trading.
Not really a problem (only very few MMORPG with a crafting system do otherwise), but more something I would like to see : some sort of a collaborative interface between players regarding crafting. This idea is grounded in the same philosophy as the previous ones : provoking as much as possible involvement of more than yourself in crafting, and more communication and interactions between players in a direct way rather than relying on AH.
Something looking like the trade interface between players, but involving the crafting window for direct crafter-to-customer secured system which would also involved the ability to invite 1 player in your workshop.
As an exemple :
I'm one of the most skilled crafter for daggers in the game (level 2000 in forge/weaponsmith, MasterWork XXVII, ultrasupermythic gondhammer, and i have chosen the only specialization the game allows me to take among various ones to be daggers, so i get a bonus on success/+1 rate and maybe a little variable as a bonus on stats [nothing to strong, like daggers i craft have a rng +0.5% to +1% on base damages compared to unspecialized dagger crafters).
I'm a bit known in the community (because advertising, popularity, availability, friendly, roleplay, reasonnable prices [maybe even "free" if you are roleplaying the deal], etc whatever).
A player-customer whisp me and ask if i can craft him one pair of the latest BiS butter knives, and i agree.
So we meet in PE in front of the workshop door, say hello to each other, chat a bit about weather, prices, ingredients, success rate, etc, and group as a party. I right-clic on him and select "invite in the workshop" (contextual menu option, only available at the frontdoor of the workshop when 2 player and no more are in the party).
Inside, I "F" on the crafting desk opening the crafting interface, then the player-customer do the same. The interface changes a bit to the "collaborative" mode, with other ingredients sliders and a paiement field (gold & AD) the player-customer only can fill.
The customers told me he only has 3 of the 4 ingredient, so he put these ingredients in his part of the interface and do the same for the paiment (5 gold and 10kAD for exemple + a number of AD taken as a tax by the "merchant guild") (AD sink, i don't have a good idea about how it should be calculated yet, the goal is though to be somewhere around half the sink of the AH to both avoid abusive uses of this design [multiaccounts/multiboxing] but keep this way more appealing to play than the cold AH for players in order to create social interractions inside the community).
I fill my part with the remainingi ingredient, the artisan, the tool, the possible adjuvant and clic-craft.
Confirmation window that sumup which one of us as put what and where, and the success/+1 rates. Both of us have to confirm.
In all the cases : the 3 ingredients the customer put are taken from his inventory (unless recycling skill proc for the artisan, in this case the ingredients are obviously returned in the customer inventory). The artisan gold (or AD) salary and the ingredient and adjuvants (unless speical skill on the artisan) I put is taken from my inventory
In case of failure : nothing more is taken from any inventory. AD and gold paiement the customer put are returned to his inventory.
In case of success : The customer receive the finalproduct in his inventory. I recieve the gold and AD paiement decided in the collaborative craft window, my artisan get the xp, and the merchant guild sink the AD in the tax.
Obviously, lot of work to design this kind of thing :P
edit : tons of typos
I remember recruiting new players to collect sticks for me. LOL! man that was a fun game. @tchefi#6735 Thanks for reminding me about that game, it brought back many happy memories!
the superstore Idea would hurt the economy because there are thousands of old players with tons of all the old currency if all th rng things were added to the store they'd be able to buy a lot of them. newer players would be able to afford alot of this stuff too. so you have all this free stuff. even if it is bound to account it's part of the supply and demand element. not just in the raw elements but the finished products too. all of a sudden the ah will be flooded with the most desirable stuff and even the stuff not being made into the most desirable stuff and resold will have an effect on economy because the demand side will be much lower for those items. it would devalue a lot of things. we already have so much that has been devalued. artifacts, enchantments of most types, Rp.. that used to hold some value for the newer players. adding more to the equation would be even less room for people to actually be able to make any ah to afford to buy things. the end effect is that while this stuff becomes cheap and plentiful for those with money those without money still won't be able to afford anything because there is no where in the game they can make ad to advance still.
imo sinks on things like low level enchants, artis and Rp need to be added to the game to give them some value back for the newer player so they can actually have some value like they used to.
while I don't agree with the choose your own artifact method of play I do think it would be interesting if they had an empowered artifact that took other artifacts and rp and maybe some enchantments to power up.
1. Everything is a construct and basically mandatory. it is something that people have to work on to improve their character. it is a goal and it's something that people HAVE worked on and completed. you could say artifacts and enchants and gear is all a construct. Just make everything immediate and give it to us as a fully functioning toon at level 80. to heck with the grind of working and investing in your toon. and to hell with all the people who have already done that.
but is this what you really want? what would there be to keep you in the game after you've done the dungeon? and then the effects of taking it out would trickle down and devalue other things in the process. it would have very harmful effects in the bigger picture. You could have argued against it BEFORE it was ever implemented and things designed around it but taking it out after this amount of time in the game would be disaster.
2. the superstore Idea would hurt the economy because there are thousands of old players with tons of all the old currency if all th rng things were added to the store they'd be able to buy a lot of them. newer players would be able to afford alot of this stuff too. so you have all this free stuff. even if it is bound to account it's part of the supply and demand element. not just in the raw elements but the finished products too. all of a sudden the ah will be flooded with the most desirable stuff and even the stuff not being made into the most desirable stuff and resold will have an effect on economy because the demand side will be much lower for those items. it would devalue a lot of things. we already have so much that has been devalued. artifacts, enchantments of most types, Rp.. that used to hold some value for the newer players. adding more to the equation would be even less room for people to actually be able to make any ah to afford to buy things. the end effect is that while this stuff becomes cheap and plentiful for those with money those without money still won't be able to afford anything because there is no where in the game they can make ad to advance still.
3. the economy has been fine over all. the shambles part is because they haven't updated the system. updating mastercrafting and adding sinks into give value to things is something that would take a lot less effort than all the changes you are suggesting.
Some creative strategies could be devised by teams, such as one notable (and hilarious) example involving
5x Rogues and Courage Breaker.
(For those unaware: in the module of that video, the Courage Breaker daily attack would slow the enemy hit regardless of their CC immunity, which is why it worked on bosses. This slow going through CC Immunity was also why I recall it was a source of complaint in PvP too, though I don't know if that's still the case.)
I don't think you should be allowed to just chain stun a boss so they can't do anything, defeating the point of the boss battle.
But, say in Tomb of the 9 Gods, a team with could opt to freeze Ras Nsi for a few seconds after summoning souls, allowing your tank to not have to focus on watching over Ras Nsi, but instead assist the DPS in chipping down the souls.
Or in Lair of the Mad Mage boss 2, you could prone the Boreworm before he does his spinning attack, allowing you to get in a few extra hits without needing to worry about getting.
Little things like that could open some new strategies for teams to plan around and not make any CC related abilities useless on bosses.
Good argument.
For my part, I somewhat agree with @thefabricant 's statement that crafting has failed.
It never should have been about making gear in the first place. As others have stated, it directly conflicts with the loot system.
My feeling is that crafting should be a system for augmenting the base-line gear in the game and perhaps a few other things. If it does make gear pieces, it's for personal use and not the economy as a whole.
- I'm thinking you can craft materials and trade those with other players. (not super-profitable, but you're welcome to do it)
- If crafting does make armor, jewelry, etc. are meant for personal use and doesn't enter the economy at all. (account-bound)
- The general economy, auction house, would be fueled by gear drops from dungeons, etc. That way the loot system and professions are not competing.
- Professions CAN upgrade baseline gear from the economy, provided it's not a rare purple/orange. Via reinforcement kits and the like.
- Crafters can sell reinforcement kits and other augments to other players whom don't want to bother with crafting. This will never be super-profitable. As you've already made clear, it's somewhat pointless to try and make it a money maker.
- The main 'profitability' of the crafting system, and using multiple toons, would be trading to the South Seas Trading Company for resources. ... So far I haven't figured out what the rewards would be. They should be valuable, but not so valuable that they destablize other systems.
My thoughts anyway.