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Random Modifiers on Crafted Gear
jackal1701apw
Member Posts: 669 Arc User
Apologies in advance for the negative feedback, and I DO appreciate the time and effort that Devs have put into attempting to improve the crafting system but, NO.
The system is a shambles... Science consoles with Engineering modifiers. Engineering Consoles with Science modifiers. Scores of grandfathered consoles created before the last patch totally messed everything up and added the [Modifier] nomenclature.
Crafting was launched too soon. Feedback from players was ignored.
And now we are left with this mess of a system.
The main problem: THERE ARE TOO MANY MODIFIERS AND THEY ARE TOTALLY RANDOM.
I want to take a chance at trying to craft a Conductive RCS Accelerator. Not only do I have the chance of creating UR vs VR (which is fine and I can improve that by using better doffs, catalysts or waiting until I am at a higher level) but I also have a one in god-only-knows chance of getting a modifier that is actually useful.
In order to take this gamble I require (amongst other more common items):
44 (FOURTY-FOUR) VERY RARE materials - bear in mind I could and have run dozens of Queued events without getting ANY VR mats.
14,000 Dilithium - nearly two full days worth of the refine cap.
And all in order to get a [Tet] or [Stealth] mod?!! The same can be said for crafting weapons (and NOT TO MENTION HALF THE MODS STILL DON'T SHOW UP - [Pen] on torps, [Run] on ground weapons, new mods on deflectors, engines and shields).
Relying on random luck after putting in a huge amount of effort, time and/or resources is very poor game design.
It is just like the old prototype salvage debacle of the old STF system, where it was total luck whether you got the necessary drop to pick up your set piece (and yes I was one of the poor sods that had 387 runs of Cure Ground across two toons with no ground weapon salvage). That system was removed in favour of the new reputation system. One that rewarded hard work and players have a clear goal to strive for and know what they are going to get at the end of it with stores or set equipment requisition missions.
This is the same with the fleet system. You work hard collecting and donating EPIC amounts of resources to slowly level up your base and at the end of it you have a Store type system, where you can choose your gear from lists to suit your build/preferences.
In my honest opinion crafting is a mess. If and when I ever get up to lvl 15/20 I still don't think I will ever pour my resources into the system that is totally dependant on luck, and especially where I don't even know the list of modifiers available (and therefore chances/possible outcomes I could have).
At the very least - if you want to keep the random element narrow it down and allow players to craft [+Res] consoles, [+Power], [+Science] etc, narrowing down the possibilities to a more managable number. Oh, and remove [Dmg] from weapons.
However, I wouldn't mind if you doubled, tripled or even quadrupled the cost of the gear within the crafting system - AS LONG AS I COULD PICK EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING TO GET... If that was the case I would have already spent all my dilithium getting up to max level straight away in every school. As it is currently the whole system is DOA and not something that I want to mess with other than a few months of dailies to get the traits - which is a shame.
/rant over.
The system is a shambles... Science consoles with Engineering modifiers. Engineering Consoles with Science modifiers. Scores of grandfathered consoles created before the last patch totally messed everything up and added the [Modifier] nomenclature.
Crafting was launched too soon. Feedback from players was ignored.
And now we are left with this mess of a system.
The main problem: THERE ARE TOO MANY MODIFIERS AND THEY ARE TOTALLY RANDOM.
I want to take a chance at trying to craft a Conductive RCS Accelerator. Not only do I have the chance of creating UR vs VR (which is fine and I can improve that by using better doffs, catalysts or waiting until I am at a higher level) but I also have a one in god-only-knows chance of getting a modifier that is actually useful.
In order to take this gamble I require (amongst other more common items):
44 (FOURTY-FOUR) VERY RARE materials - bear in mind I could and have run dozens of Queued events without getting ANY VR mats.
14,000 Dilithium - nearly two full days worth of the refine cap.
And all in order to get a [Tet] or [Stealth] mod?!! The same can be said for crafting weapons (and NOT TO MENTION HALF THE MODS STILL DON'T SHOW UP - [Pen] on torps, [Run] on ground weapons, new mods on deflectors, engines and shields).
Relying on random luck after putting in a huge amount of effort, time and/or resources is very poor game design.
It is just like the old prototype salvage debacle of the old STF system, where it was total luck whether you got the necessary drop to pick up your set piece (and yes I was one of the poor sods that had 387 runs of Cure Ground across two toons with no ground weapon salvage). That system was removed in favour of the new reputation system. One that rewarded hard work and players have a clear goal to strive for and know what they are going to get at the end of it with stores or set equipment requisition missions.
This is the same with the fleet system. You work hard collecting and donating EPIC amounts of resources to slowly level up your base and at the end of it you have a Store type system, where you can choose your gear from lists to suit your build/preferences.
In my honest opinion crafting is a mess. If and when I ever get up to lvl 15/20 I still don't think I will ever pour my resources into the system that is totally dependant on luck, and especially where I don't even know the list of modifiers available (and therefore chances/possible outcomes I could have).
At the very least - if you want to keep the random element narrow it down and allow players to craft [+Res] consoles, [+Power], [+Science] etc, narrowing down the possibilities to a more managable number. Oh, and remove [Dmg] from weapons.
However, I wouldn't mind if you doubled, tripled or even quadrupled the cost of the gear within the crafting system - AS LONG AS I COULD PICK EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING TO GET... If that was the case I would have already spent all my dilithium getting up to max level straight away in every school. As it is currently the whole system is DOA and not something that I want to mess with other than a few months of dailies to get the traits - which is a shame.
/rant over.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
...#LLAP...
...#LLAP...
Post edited by jackal1701apw on
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Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Funny that being an alternative to fleet gear and giving players access to gear as strong or stronger than fleet gear was one of the primary reasons they stated crafting was such a major concern
... it's awesome you threw 200 $ worth of dil into it just to show your total lack of support.
I think you mis-read my last paragraph.
I said that IF the system allowed you to choose the exact mods on the gear you crafted (and even if that gear had 4x the cost it currently has) THEN I would have blown the purple to get up to level 15/20.
As it is, I have not spent anything. I am at lvl 10 in each school, slowly slotting dailies - JUST TO OBTAIN THE TRAITS. As the system currently stands - I will not actually craft anything for all the reasons stated in my OP.
...#LLAP...
Cost to craft a Purple MK XII mine aprox 3 million, 4500 Dilithum random mods.
Or in other words you can spend 100million on crafting projectiles to produce 1 million worth of goods to sell.
Don't want to craft? Buy from us who do.
You are missing the point in what I am saying and I lack the will to go over it all once again. I am not talking about early adopters - once more people get to that level without rushing prices of those WILL drop and the issue of crafting random modifiers you don't want will still be there.
What I will say about your little story is this:
There is no such thing as an EC equivalent of REFINED Dilithium apart from the mess up with Uncommon Unreplicatables when 9.5 hit. That valued buying REFINED dilithium at c. 900 EC per 1 dil. (The cost of buying refined dil rather than selling it which is c. 200 EC via keys/R&D packs). Buying contraband, kdf prisoners or colonists does not count as you still have the time gated doff missions/daily refine limit.
Spending 2 million dilithium to get to lvl 15 to be able to craft your torpedoes therefore set you back the equivalent of 1.8 billion EC. Each torpedo costs the equivalent of 22.5m EC to craft in dil and materials, giving you a profit of c. 18m per torpedo.
We will put the fact aside for the moment that those torps crafting missions are currently bugged and always giving UR versions when more than half the time they should be giving VR versions worth alot less.
Therefore you would have to craft over 100 torps (even with the bug giving all UR versions) just to break even, which is nearly 3 months back-to-back crafting. Once the bug is fixed you will make a lot less per run.
So when you say you are back to even, I don't believe you.
...#LLAP...
Right if that's the case then I have no need to ramble on. But if it's true it does bring me on to my next rant.
WTF are the community devs doing and why do they keep thinking it is a good idea to give us snippets of information on social media and in podcasts/interviews?
They have forums, subdivided into seperate sections for different parts of the game and for giving and receiving feedback on live and testing material. They have a website where they can post Dev Blogs on their current and furutre plans for development. Podcasts and interviews are just plain lazy and don't provide a firm, searchable source of information.
Fine - this is crafting phase 1. I get that. Fine - they apparently have said that they intend to remove random modifiers at some point in the future. There are plenty more examples of the game where things have been promised and never delivered. PVP, exploration to name but a few.
...#LLAP...
Remember the time when the gateway went out of beta.... oh wait.... it still is......
But they fixed the broken anti-bubble ability from the undine set......oh wait.... it's still broken.
A long time ago (december?) there was some big talk about sci ships getting a second deflector, was there any word on it recently?
I spent 400,000 during the crafting Bonus Weekend to get from level 8 to level 15. Which by my reckoning is ~2,600 Zen or just under 23 Master Keys, which sell for about 63m EC. *MAYBE* that's how much it'd cost if you were an idiot and spammed the 20 hour project, but that's just not efficient at generating XP.
Worst case scenario they cost 14k Dilithium (2.2m EC) plus 8m Dentarium + 2m Radiogenics + a smattering for the other common materials. So about 12m EC.
Best case scenario (crits on the component building) they cost 4.6k Dilithium (0.74m EC) plus 2.7m Dentarium, 0.7m Radiogenics. So about 4.1m EC.
Worst case you get a Very Rare that sells for about 10 to 15m EC. Best case you get an Ultra Rare which sells for about 30 to 45m EC.
I've more than made my investment back in EC terms.
What bug? I'm getting Very Rares/Ultra Rares in the EXACT proportion I'd expect from the displayed odds. The numbers on the Exchange also back this up.
That's because your maths is just plain wrong.
But yeah no everyone should either not be playing it at all or doing the 20 hour daily since they said crafting was rushed out unfinished and so supposedly they want to change it, for example the modifiers, at some point but knowing the developers...
I say start playing it when they start taking it seriously.
And I think part of that is ultimately taking so much heat for so long they can't handle it anymore and have given up on pretending to care or even caring about devlivering solid releases, taking it seriously - what's the difference if you get flamed to hell and back either way?
I really don't know what kind of NBA all star plaza hotel life with justin bieber fans screaming their name they had pictured, when they decided to work with IT.
Seems like exhaustion/depression written all over it but at the very least giving up on your customers, is giving on yourself and your professonalism, and just doesn't seem a healthy way to live your life does it
"I don't care anymore, nothing we do matters anyway, nothing is ever good enough, things will never change"
They need to fix the following imho:
1. Either reduce the quantity of mats or guarantee the modifiers and quality.
2. each ESTF should guarantee 1 purple mat to go along with the rep item. Right mow the same thing is happening, no one pugs anything other than ISE, CCE or fleet SB Alert.
The plan for non-random modifiers:
1) You choose the mods (duh)
2) costs a bit more than random (both will be present)
As for PUGs:
I regularly PUG:
Undine Ground elite
Starbase Defense
Gorn Minefield
Borg Elites
CCE
The occasional Undine Assault Elite (DOES NOT turn out well)
Atmosphere Assault
R'iho Station
Colony Invasion
Starbase Blockade
so yeah....maybe few people pug them, but people do.
And as for guaranteed rewards.....suddenly there would be 0 profit in farming vr mats
Kinda this. To me, the new system is actually like the older system: max it and don't use it because not much (if anything) is worth the time/investment.
Crafting is a mini-game that is optional to the players. What says anyone has to use it at all. Before 9.5, hardly anyone used the items crafted seriously. Why does the new system suddenly give players the *need* to use it?
at the moment, i have leveled most schools to an ok level (would be lvl 8 if i wasnt lazy) but i found the system's low level gear helpful for less painful alt leveling, just my 41,600 ec (=2 zen at current master key prices)
Of course you can pug ALL of them. But for those of us that maybe get an hour a day and a few on the weekend, we don't want to wait for a 20 man queue to fill or any of the others that take over 5-10 minutes to fill. Why do that when I could run my 3 50s through multiples of each in the time it takes for the queue to trigger.
As for the guarantee of one per, that would hardly kill the demand for them. If anything the demand would increase because people would be willing to craft. The fact that I have run dozens of ESTFs and only have 9-10 VR Mats is a telling tale. Plus if there was a guaranteed drop they could even increase the quantity.
It's also cute that they plan to allow us to pick mods, but how long to do you think we'll wait? Hell, we're still waiting for Secondary Deflectors....
Because they're baiting people with stuff you only get through crafting. Weapons with the supposedly OP [over] mod, the kinetic ground weapon (forgot it's name), 360° beams (btw who are the geniuses who craft and try to sell the crafted 360° AP beams, is the free one too expensive or too difficult to obtain?
I didn't spend a single dil on the crafting and I still don't see a reason to do so.
The problem tho is the mods are messed up, the omnidirectional beam arrays are all stuck with [acc][arc][dmg] mods, the wide arc cannons except AP are all missing [arc] and essentially have a free 4th mod, [pen] is missing from the torpedoes - in fact the new mods aren't showing up on anything besides the energy weapons... basically fix THAT.
This goes back to what I said pretty much. You can have the RNG for everything if the resource requirements are small or there is an abundance of the vr mats. Since VR mats "should be scarce" being able to pick mods is the only way to make it feasible. The current system just screams cash grab and a lot of players like myself that are willing to drop money on zen are giving Cryptic the finger and either spending money elsewhere or not bothering with crafting at all.
If one can afford the rather large dilithium costs involved in raising an R+D school to 15 and also have enough other resources to acquire the necessary mats, then there's EC to be made. Especially if one had exploited the so called 'bug' and spent those first few days running multiple research projects.
However, until the system gets a number of tweaks, all I do is run research projects.
Maybe, by the time I reach 15 in something, the system will be wai.
I do have to say....orion corvette vs [Plasma Dual Beam Bank IV [CrtD]x2 [Acc] + Beam Overload is quite fun ^.^
throw in [Quantum Torpedo Launcher MK IV [Who Cares]x2 [Acc] + THY 1
Pretty much where I stand as well, just leveling the schools for the traits.
I have no desire to re-grind queued events I already did hundreds of times before, for a chance at getting vr mats, and then not even being able to craft the gear I want.. :rolleyes:
The problem there is if you make the resource requirement too low you run the risk of pushing people away from fleet and rep gear entirely. I agree the VR crafting mats aren't well distributed and not rewarded from enough activities, but the fix there is to bring craylon gas's availability closer to trellium-k's, not to nerf the mat requirements in general.
So yeah .... lets completely ignore the FACT we have a test server for such things.
I hear you OP and you made a good CONSTRUCTIVE argument as stated in the forum rules but now the wolves are circling looking for any opportunity to jump on you and rip you apart for DARING to be negative in a constructive way.
To those that are saying "Wait and see" just so they can say "we told you so", are deluding themselves or shill's. What is the point of tribble if not to get these things sorted out ? I will tell you why, Tribble is a lip service to keep the illusion that Cryptic/PWE "care" about you. They dont, they never will and have said so on MANY occasions, yet you all still wander around in a stupor convinced they are doing things in your best interest.
Deluded fools, keep following that carrot, you will get it one day !
Such a shame really, what really makes me angry is how they just want listen. There are many crafting systems in many games. It has long since reached the point of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Yet the dev "tried" to do something different and it failed...just like other crafting systems that are the same.
Crafting is control...random mods means no control.
Anyways...moving on
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree