Suggestion Remove Randomness from Crafting

There seems to me to be one main problem with the end game in DSO: The Workbench. Yes, it is a massive grind, but more importantly, it is unfair. One player could spend a month of grinding and spending gold at the workbench and get nothing, while another player could craft once and get a 4/4 Leg. Yes, this is very unlikely, and on average this won't be as much as a problem, except for the following scenario. If two player grind equally and craft the same way, the player who gets lucky earlier will be more powerful in the long run because after the initial lucky craft, they can farm faster (especially if they craft a weapon first). Runes, gems, glyphs of power, xp, group xp, wisdom, materi fragments, etc are all fair, but the crafting bench is not.

How can BP fix this? Simple. Whenever one goes to the workbench to craft, they will be given the option to select which enchantments will be up for crafting. Take for example magic to extraordinary. If you have 1/2 Gold Lines on two out of the four items, the probability of you getting those two GLs on the extraordinary is 3.57%. On average (including reverting) it will cost you 320 gold to craft a 2/3 extraordinary from this method. So, instead of making us farm those 54 junk items and pay and fail repeatedly, we should be able to just click on those two enchantments, pay the 320, and get a guaranteed 2/3 extraordinary. If we had more GLs, the cost would be less, again, depending on the probability and expected number of fails. See the complete table below.

See westernranger below for a better explanation.

Table for Gold crafting costs::

https://ibb.co/c1tPFe



Based on this table, if one could obtain 64 1/2 magic items, and 2,794 Gold, they would be guaranteed to get a 4/4 leg. Or they could get 8 gold lines and 32,257 gold, they could. (And many middle combinations) I think this is much more fair than the current system, even though that is still a loooot of farming. The real gold saver for the cheaper process is that you are not losing crafted 2/3 extraordindary and 3/4 legendaries when you aren't lucky.

Table for Ander crafting costs::

https://ibb.co/hAS6Tz



Link where you can view these spreadsheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16GQJy7Iq1VcSmJtulgsM6F3RVuIAOHs1c0LMQDnMB_o/edit?usp=sharing

As Baragain has said in his crafting guide, crafting costs way too little andermant. According to my calculations a 4/4 leg bought with andermant would give an equivalent of 12 ander for 1 gold!!! Glyphs of power are a main progression method and are a very poor payer investment. Crafting should also be that. Payers should be able to buy gems, cosmetics, essences, and premium/deluxe to reduce the grind of crafting, but they should be punished for trying to buy endgame progress.

Why I think my idea is beneficial for everyone::

For weak lvl 55 players like me: Crafting simply is not fun and a lot of us dont do it or give up after some time. Having an end in sight, a guaranteed upgrade after x grind, would actually make it fun for me. I like the core(draken, solid, pristine, etc) crafting system, and the gem crafting system. Both are grindy but fair. They are not random, even with drops.

For BP: Taking out the randomness from the crafting would get more people into crafting, and I think it would make the crafting cost reduction from premium much more enticing. "Want to spend 5000 gold now or pay for premium and get x% off..."

For Payers: I think if one knows what they are getting, they are happier and more willing to spend money on it.

For strong endgame players: In one way of thinking this is actually bad for end game players because they have spent the most time/gold on the bad system and now us newbies could have an easier trek to the top. However, do these end game players want all their future progress to be as unfair as it currently is? I don't think so, but this thread might prove me wrong. One way to off set this unfairness is to improve melt amount and gold amount of junk items for higher tiers, this way those who have already crafted have another little edge on us newbies.

For other crafting bench ideas: My idea is compatible with both Baragain's and Trakilaki's crafting bench ideas. Baragain's is to add a farmable item to go in junk slots, and Traki's is to have a after purchase item stored on the servers so players don't lose their craft if they lose connection to the servers.

For the end game as a whole: As other threads have pointed out, there is mostly a monotony of end game gear. Dragan set, q7, medusa amulet, new moon cloak/adornment seems to be the most common build. If crafting was made more accessible, I think I would (after I get the most powerful), also try to craft Balor's corruption set because I think it looks cool, even though its a bad set. Maybe someone would craft Tiamat. How epic would that be?

Baragain already warned me that he didn't think the devs would ever do this, but I had fun thinking it through and would like to hear other players thoughts.

EDIT: I now think leg to leg crafting should stay the same as it is in the game currently and have explained why below.

 

Only he who has patience will inherit the kingdom of DSO Craft everyday and don't despair if you fail, don't give up. Your day will come when your crafts will succeed and then the satisfaction you'll get will compensate all the frustrations you may have now. Don't look at other players that are stronger and have all items crafted. Concentrate on your character. And an advice from a player that has all items crafted, the biggest fun I had was building this char. After that it kinda stopped. When not even inf3 is a challenge, the game gets a bit boring and you just remember the fun times and the satisfaction you had when together with your friends did inf3 in 30 min and numerous deaths.
The only frustration you might have during char building is the pvp. But even then, after you craft everything, there are still older players that will easily kill you, so this frustration will never go away the way the game is now.

 

Definitely yes.

You still have to find good items and you still have to grind gold. So it's not like your idea removes all that.

I also like your fair-play based reasoning in the first paragraph.

 

I think you have missed the main point of my suggestion. Your response would be better suited to a suggestion that said the workbench is too grindy and takes too much time, but this is not my complaint. My complaint is that it is not fair. Imagine this scenario: Instead of having Christmas (or your favorite Holiday) once a year on the same day, every day has a 1/365 chance of being christmas. On average, christmas would happen just as frequently, but some years would have multiple christmas days and many years in a row would have no christmas. I like christmas the way it is. BP doesn't??

You give encouragement not to give up on crafting. I am not, but many are.

What this tells me is that you had fun getting stronger, sorta the main point of RPGs, so I completely agree with you there. But it also tells me that after you maxed out your character, you were not interesting in crafting more. This was the underlying point I never explained in my post. The crafting bench is simply not fun. You seem only to have done it so you could be strong. If BP put my suggestion into place, I personally would think crafting is fun in itself and I would craft equipment just to mess around with it. I also think they should add more challenging content.

I think I completely messed up the poll question. Your comment seems to mean you agree with my suggestion, but the "Yes" in the poll question meant, "Yes I like the crafting as it currently is in the game". Sorry for the confusion.

 

I've changed my vote then.
Randomness in crafting as it is, is too unfair and it frustrates me.

A little story of frustration:
I have a friend with whom I've been playing along since 2 years ago. We've always been at a similar power level. But then she got super lucky and crafted a 4xgold weapon quite soon after we started seriously some crafting. I haven't still and will most likely never craft a 4xgold anything. Well, ever since then she sort of plays a different "league" so to speak... It annoys me that I can't be much of a help for her anymore because now she clears everything twice as fast as me :/ Take this as an example how the unfair random crafting system hinders friendships.

 

Friendship should be something beyond character's level...

 

Ye I know. We still play together a lot, but I feel useless just because I have less luck at the work bench.

 

I get that you disagree with our points. That is totally fine, but you are again misrepresenting them. Akageshi said the friendship was hindered. What I take that to mean is that since they are not at the same power level it is not as much fun to play together. What Akageshi is not saying is that the two of them are less good friends now.

 

I suggest to improve current craft system:

When you put 4 same items on workbench, and choose Inherited Enchantment crafting you are able to mark checkboxes, which enchantments you need in result item:

link

* "Total enchantments" is number of enchantments (A.E. on picture below), used for crafting, it may be 0-16.
** 3 marked checkboxes should be as "default setting".


About crafting cost:

Spoiler: moneyyyyy

link

For example: I put 4 extraordinary weapons on workbench, and I want to get 3/4 (gold) legendary item with "increased DMG on this item" and "use only Gold enchantments".

Those items have enchantments: 2 2 0 1 gold increased DMG on this item, so total A.E. n = 2+2+0+1 = 5.

Total amount of enchantments is N = 3+3+3+3 = 12.

So probability = n(n-1)(n-2) / (N(N-1)(N-2)) = 5(5-1)(5-2) / (12(12-1)(12-2)) = 5*4*3/(12*11*10).

probability = 0.0455 (4.55%).

improvedCraftCost = (73.6+24*) / 0.0455 - 24 = 2121 gold.
(* I dont remember revert cost for extraordinary items, so as example there are 24).

If items dont have enough A.E., crafting is impossible.

And result is legendary item with 3 inherited enchantments only from those 5 gold from 4 extraordinary weapons.

So, according to this system, if you have a lot of gold, you can choose enchantments for result item, but also you can craft items as it is now: just mark 3 enchantment checkboxes (as on 1st picture).

P.S. I know, that my idea have some conformity with this suggestion. Thats 'cause that idea I got after reading his suggestion

 

This is less grinding for people, i doubt that it will be in game in any way. I try to craft a 4line belt like 5months now oi feel your frustration.

 

Thank you for posting this suggestion. This is actually identical to my own suggestion, but you have explained it much simpler and better. Your gold total 2121 is a little more than the 2005, I calculated, but that is probably because of the revert cost number. I used 25% of cost to be the revert cost
see https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16GQJy7Iq1VcSmJtulgsM6F3RVuIAOHs1c0LMQDnMB_o/edit?usp=sharing

They could easily make it more grindy by upping the gold cost. The main complaint I had in my suggestion was that the system is not fair. This makes it more fair, I am fine with the grind.

 

So, after the leaderboards season is ending every player in the game will have 4 gold lines. Why not giving items with 4 gold lines in a bonus code ?

 

I have even better solution.
All you need is 4x items of a same rarity ... in fact because of the nature of the crafting improved to magic, magic to exo and exo to leg won't be needed. You will only need 4x leg items of a same type. The enchantments would be irrelevant ... since you won't be needing them at all.



You can select the desired enchantment per slot (you don't even have to have that type of enchantment on item or any of the used items) ... and then simply input the desired value for the enchantment in the field next to the drop-down menu (you don't have to have that value on any of the items).
Example: If you are crafting legendary gloves you will need 4x junk legendary gloves. You just select 4x enchantment of your liking and then enter the value for each enchantment. If you select attack speed in all four slots ... and then you can enter any value from min to max value. You can enter in example ... 10.00% ... do that in all slots and you get 4x 10,00% attack speed gloves. If you select lower value than the max ... the workbench would display a message: "Are you stupid or something?"
That would be best for the game.
We want to steal other players items , runes and gems in PvP and make them all play with same gear at same level ... so why not making everyone same in PvE too. Everyone would be having same Items ... same 2H q7 set (we will remove all other sets and items from the game ... we will only leave one item per type in game ) ... everyone would be having same stats and items.
Why making someone use items that the devs are not approving ... when we can force all players to use one item of everything. Same helmets, same weapons, same amulets, same enchantments, same gems and runes ... etc.
This way we will make the game balanced and no one will complain.
Why having smart players who are doing their own builds and calculations when we can make everyone stupid.
Plain and simple.
Drakensang Online would change the name to Dumbengsang ... and the expansion would be named "Stalin strikes back".
Dumbensang - Stalin strikes back - Operation "Dumb and Dumber".
Developers would have a new fancy name "Dumbelopers" and the players would be having title "Idiot" before their name.
in example ... my toon named trakilaki would be displayed as "Idiot Trakilaki"
And of course you can rise through the system of ranks and titles ... the greater your dumbness the higher your rank ... "Royal Idiot Trakilaki".
Awesomeness!!!
However ... I personally think that no player should be allowed to have highest title/rank as the dumbelopers would have. That would be cheating.
Lets give them a credit for making the game Great Again!

 

Did you even look at the calculations I gave? In order to craft a leg 4/4 with 3K gold, you would need to farm 64 gold line blue items. You can do this in one season? If so, then fine, make the gold cost much higher. Changing the grind is not the point of this suggestion.

Sorry Traki, your sarcastic, straw man argument against this suggestion completely misses the point. We are not asking for an easy access to god level gear. We simply want two players who farm the same amount to get the same progress. Did you read Akageshi's post? Should glyphs of power give a random upgrade? Should gem crafts have a chance to fail?

Did you read my suggestion about crafting? Taking randomness out would make the crafting more fun and hence would lead to many people crafting sets that would not be op. I certainly would do this. I don't want your runes, gems, etc, and I dont give a **** about PVP, I only play PVE and I want to have a fair and rewarding endgame. Please tell me how this suggestion, not your mockery of it, would fail to do that.

 

I don't get trakilaki's posts. Is he sarcastic to make the devs look like idiots, or forum users, or what is really his point?

Suggestions that remove randomness and make you pay a lot more gold instead are clearly better than the crap we have now.


--- MERGED ---

Yes, exactly. The frustration comes from the fact that I know I cannot be a full-fledged part of the team until I have a fully crafted gear, mainly weapon. But no matter how hard I try, it's still just a matter of luck. So I can as well remain stuck for months or whatever, while my friend will slowly get tired of me being just a burden. Well not too much of a burden, but still less effective. To think she is so much better just because she had more luck at the work bench, it's just .... uhh.

 

I dont know waht is the problem of craftim i literary crafted 3 weapons with 295 and more
And i dont even need them like if you are keen on farming farm gold and trash legend and just perma combine it takes like a week for 2h to craft and then it will serve you months.
Crafting has always been like this And on lv 50 and 45 it gave you the final product with get this "random stats" so now its actually pretty good development. kind of frustrating but] its keeps you with a job.
Bp are slowing our progresion so that they dont need to bump new inf modes fast if they speed up our development they need to put like inf mode every 2 -3 months

 

You answered your own question. It is

It could be worse of course, but it could also be better, hence the current suggestion. Also, the main point of my suggestion is NOT to reduce the grind but to make it fair for all players.

Even if they did massively increase the rate at which we progress, I do not think they would be obligated to do this. I think there should be a new tier every year (on average). We are entering year 8 and we have 6 tiers, which is fine. I think there should be many more sets with "side grades" instead of direct upgrades over sets. We should all be arguing more about set balance, when really, we all know what the best gear is. DSO has a relatively easy way to introduce this "side grade" system. They could add sets that increase the players elemental damage. The new enemy system has the fire ice poison lightning system. The different sets could work together in ways to, for example, increase your fire damage while decreasing your lighting resistance. This could affect the pvp meta a lot and they could be constantly balancing this, which would keep people crafting, upgrading, etc, for awhile before everyone really would need a new tier.

 

I appreciate that you included math, but you are more than a little naïve on this topic... you make this seem like this would even be slightly difficult. The top 1% would be able to craft just about anything they want in a matter of days after this is released. But that isn't why this idea will never see the light of day.

Easily... now, if they are up to my standards of what a gold line should be... that is a whole other question. I only accept the best of the best gold lines these days or else I'd have no inventory space at the moment. I could easily get 64 gold line damage torsos in a less than a month, but that would include lines any where from 9.10 all the way up to 9.95. In my day to day playing, I'd sell anything that is less than 9.90%

His sarcasm is poking at the OP and KingKrazy because the idea, while attractive on the surface, is incredibly naïve and will never happen. Here is why...

Spoiler: BP's Motivation

Bottom Line Up Front:
BP will never do anything unless it also makes them money.

The original version of Crafting 2.0 that showed up on Test Server over two years ago (what I called Crafting 2.0.2) was amazing. If you were patient, you could craft a 4/4 with relative ease (compared today's system). But, based on some crybabies on other forums saying that getting monster items was too easy, the devs nerfed the system and gave us what we have today. The current system is much more grindy, and grindy means BP earns more money. So, tell me how the system you describes actually makes BP money as it seriously reduces grinding.

I've had several ideas on this topic that are actually much more likely to fit with BP's business model. And because I never point out flaws without offering solutions, check out these ideas that are much more reasonable to ask BP to implement:

Method 1:
"Item Of Enhancement"
Though rare, we currently have both a Jewel of Enhancement and a Rune of Enhancement in the game. If you use one of these with two like gems or runes, you are able to craft the next higher tier. This proposed "Item of Enhancement" would have no stats or enchantments and can be used in slots 3 or 4 on the crafting bench. This reduces the number of stats to pull from and greatly improves your odds of getting the item you want. For example, if you have 2x 3/4 gold line legendaries, a 1/4 gold line legendary, and this item, you would have "12 chose 7" instead of "16 chose 7" and your odds would improve from 1.92% to 7.07%. Or, if you could use two of these proposed items in slots 3 and 4, your odds with 2x3/4s would be 21.43% as opposed to the 0.82% that you would usually have when using only two 3/4 legendaries... or you could use 3x 3/4 legendaries with one of these items for a 25.45% chance of success, but with the risk of losing one of your 3/4s.

So, it is easy to see how this idea could help players, but how does it help BP? Simple, these items have to be as difficult to get as the Jewel of Enhancement and Rune or Enhancement. They'd be available from select events and from Daily Deals. People would have to spend Andermant to get them from the Daily Deal, and the event would likely require a lot of grinding to get (like the 5 key chest in the Dragan event). Given that these items are consumed without a guarantee of success (unlike the rune/jewel of enhancement) it is only fair that they come in small stacks (5 or 10 to a bundle) for a comparable price or amount of effort.

Method 2:
Allow same rarity crafting Magic and Extraordinary items.
Right now, we craft 4x legendary items to get one legendary item where all four of the enhancements come from the ingredient items. Extend this system to crafting blues and purples and a whole lot of possibilities open up. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Right now, we craft blues like this 1/1/0/0. But, if you could make a 2/2 blue item with the same ingredients (and a little luck) you could make 2x2/2s and use those to craft your 2/3 exos. Your odds would go from 3.57% with the normal method to 21.43%, and you'd only lose 2x gold lines in the process. Or, if you wanted to be really patient, you could craft even more 2/2s and use 4x2/2s and be 100% sure to get a 2/3 exo but at the cost losing six gold lines in the process.

Another example... Right now, if you get a purple item with one amazing gold line, it is pretty much useless for anything other than throwing in slot 3 or 4 and hoping for the best. More often than not, it will be lost and you will have to get on with life. But, if you could do exo to exo crafting, you could combine that 1/3 with another 1/3 in an attempt to get a 2/3, or combine it with a 2/3 in attempt to get a 3/3. Of course, you could also try to get a 3/3 with 2x2/3 and or really burn through a bunch of gold lines by making 4x3/3s and being 100% sure to get a 3/4 legendary, but at the cost of 9 gold lines (plus what ever you lost to make the 2/3 ingredients that you used to make the 3/3s)

Now, this doesn't do anything to help make 3/4 legendaries into 4/4 legendaries, unless you think it would be easier because you could make 3/4 gold line legendaries easier. The truth is, adding this doesn't make as huge of a difference as it sounds. It would have niche uses to improve the current system (use of 1/3 exos for example) and would give users greater control over where they chose to accept risk. Because the high success probability situations involve a lot of sacrifice, you are still looking at a system that is rather grindy (thus making BP more money). Also because it is making an item of comparable strength to the next rarity item, the cost should be the same, even though the resulting item is the same tier (eg, it costs 75 gold to go from exo to legendary, it should cost 75 gold to go from exo to exo). This doesn't break the system because there is still some randomness and the grind doesn't disappear. It just removes a little of the randomness from the early stages of crafting and helps people to the 3 or 3.5 gold line place holders that they should use while working on the true prize of a 4/4 gold line item.



These ideas are ideas that help the players by improving the crafting system, while also accounting for BP's motivation of making money. Unless you share ideas that are either common sense QoL improvements (ex: revive group member by clicking stone icon next to their name instead of fumbling around in the inventory), you should also consider how BP can make money off of it... otherwise, you can safely assume your idea will never find it's way into the game.

And that is why I voted "No" on your poll.

 

In that case I propose that a crafting success is 80% more rare than now and as an addition it should also cost 10 times more currency. I mean, BP has to make their money somehow, hasn't it?

I'm sorry? So you turn down ideas because you know they won't make it to the game? Idk, I'm from a different dimension probably... You're supposed to vote for good ideas regardless of the chance for their implementation. The only negative aspect you could find about the OP's idea is that it can't make it to the game due to BP's financial interests. So maybe if you lived some 100 years ago, you would also be against women being able to vote because there was no chance they would ever be allowed to.

Did you vote literally "I don't like the proposed idea" or "I don't like the current system"? Your plain no fits both... I'm slightly confused.

Strictly speaking, this is not in BP's interest either. They make money also off of player revivals. What makes them more money - 40 ander revive or 120 ander revive? Let players fumble around in their inventories! It makes the chance they die while doing so higher, so they have to revive themselves for 120 andermant.
I'm actually surprised they allowed us to revive others more effectively. Perhaps BP hoped we would be more likely to spend ander on spirit stones so our spending of ander would be pretty much the same in the end as before.

Increased essence stack size that we got lately, why did it take so long? I assume that even this super common sense thing took so long because BP were in doubts if it wouldn't free up too much space in the bag which is never a good thing business-wise, right?
Worry not though! They are already planning to give us a lot of new items to take up more space, so all's fine. (I like items but you know what I mean.)

 

First things first. Thank you for the post, Baragain. I think method 2 of your suggestions is great. I do have some responses to your criticisms though. BLUF: You don't respond to my main point about fairness and you confuse the situation with new lvl 55 and maxed out players.

By naive you mean... I don't know how fast op end game players farm. Fair enough, I am a self described casual end game player. I don't play 5 hours a day on average and I don't have all crafted tier 6 gear. I can easily survive the anniversary arena on normal, so I am not a new LVL 55 either.

On getting 64 GLs in a season for the same item

As I have said multiple times, I am NOT trying to reduce the grind, so you tell me a fair gold cost that would make this suggestion acceptable. Also, your point explains why it would be reasonable. As a low lvl 55, it takes me a long time to get 9.1% GL, but you can get them easily. However, they don't improve your stats, so you sell them. You need GGL or 99% of the available enchantment. This makes perfect sense, and is just more reason to support my suggestion.

This is not a whole other question. This is the main point of all of this. You say it would be easy for already crafted endgame players to craft more. Ok, how would this change anything? Then you go back on this and say, well no, we need GGL instead of GL (99 instead of 90) so it would still take awhile. So which is it? Yes, I am naive about the speed of maxed out farming, but you seem to be naive about the situation of new-mid range lvl 55 toons. In the system I propose, it would still take me a long time to get 3/4 crafted on all my uniques. Remember, I am weaker, I farm slower, I get weaker and less frequent GL. I am not coming after your god level. I don't see a single response in your post about the main point of my suggestion: The current crafting system is not FAIR to equal farmers.

Further more, I think it should be relatively easy to get 3/4 legs, but hard to get 4/4. Therefore, maybe we could leave the leg to leg as a random craft?

Again, I am not asking for the grind to be reduced. If its not grindy enough, increase the gold.

Also, I suggested for the andermant cost to be increased, thus making BP more money.

I really like this idea, as it fixes most of my problems and is an easy addition to the game. More gold, less randomness. Thank you, that is what I want.