POE: The Best of Games and the Worst of Games

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Peace_Frog wrote:

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ntall1 wrote:

By calling it "crafting" you lead one to believe that you can actually craft an item into something you want or into an upgrade. This is the wrong term. "Crafting" is not crafting at all. There is nothing you can do to increase the outcome of better random rolls. It is gambling and nothing more.

You have set yourself a set of expectations based on the terms you use. The current orb system works very well imo. Instead of having to go farm items over and over receiving types you don't want. You just pick up the type you do want and gamble roll it over and over until it has stats you want.

If you really think you are going to make that awesome piece of gear by alting -> augmenting -> blessing -> exalting -> eternal -> exalting, etc, etc, than you are dreaming. This is possible with great wealth but not practical and was never meant to be practical.

Gambing is Gambing, and RNG is RNG.

To call it crafting one would assume you could get better at it vie experience or build. There are no +% increase to gambling nodes.

Have you ever tried crafting something with a lot of IIR gear on? You never know what might work...

That makes no sense whatsoever. If the effectiveness of your crafting was proportional to the amount of IIR you had on, then the optimal playstyle would be to go balls-to-the-wall in killing power, have a whole set of uber iir in the stash (2 andvarius, aurseize, uber gold amulet, pandon's blazon (sp? That IIR belt), and any other IIR you can find), strap it on when you get to town, and start rolling, without taking any risks whatsoever for the additional IIR.

So either what you have to say is complete nonsense, or it simply stratifies the population into those who have vs. those who don't, in terms of IIR.

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Crystalgate wrote:

This is the kind of items I have trouble finding upgrades for. Any upgrade I've found within the latest 20 or so levels had to be adjusted in some way. I have not played any other ARPG where it's even close to that hard to find something better. Diablo, Diablo 2 and Titan's Quest to name a few, had me upgrade gear quite frequently. I didn't get amazing gear, but I kept getting gear that's just a little better than what I already had. This rarely happens in PoE, if you get even decent gear, expect to go for over a dozen of levels before related slot changes.

THIS THIS THIS
The vendors in trading of exiles are worthless as you start getting close to merciless. not too bad in normal, but normal's freaking easy.

WHY WHY WHY do the vendors not have rares ?

When I played Torchlight 2 the vendor items leveled nicely. Sometimes as I was beginning to have trouble with gear I would find something consistent with my level. Not GG, not OP, just enough that I could make it through the next couple of levels without getting dying all the time.

And could we please, please stop pretending there is no currency in this game. Oh how I wish this game did have gold, and I might have a chance to buy something wortwhile from the vendor, instead of some joker who thinks that an ammie with quantity and flat damage is worth 3 ex.

BTW, I notice that no one is mentioning the elephant in the room which is RMT. It's destroying the ability of people like me to enjoy the game. It's _extremely_ difficult for me to find the gear I need, and I'm not looking for Kaom's either.

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Runeword wrote:

disagree totally with the negative comments about crafting. yes it's hard to get the mods you want and yes it's expensive. it should stay this way too. do you really want every noob in the game running around with the godliest gear? the game rewards the people that put in the time playing and also learning all there is to know about it. the crafting is the most innovative system i've ever seen in a game.

There's a difference between "hard" as in "there is a massive amount of depth to the game and if you understand it to the very last detail you can get a piece of godly gear in a few days completely self-found through various vendor recipes" and "hard" as in "even if you're Kripparian, you're still at the mercy of the RNG just as much as someone playing their first maps".

Hard, to me, implies that player skill can overcome barriers in a very short amount of time. For instance, Justin Wong (champion fighting game player) would master a new fighting game much faster than someone who hasn't yet developed the mindgames or muscle memory to compete, even if they both got the game the same day.

In this case, getting a godly item isn't *hard*, but is simply directly proportional to the amount of time one spends grinding. That isn't hard. That is tedious.

Far different connotation.

In response to the OP there is an idea i'd like to throw out there.

That is, when it comes to finding loot items they currently drop with random properties that any lesser level item may have. So you might find a level 66 rare weapon but it may only have mods that a level 14 can have at best. This means as the item level increases so too does the chance for it to have even more crappy mods that you never want to see. This makes crafting all the worse as you then have to gamble at trying to get one of the higher item mods (if you know what to look for) in a gigantic pool where no only are you wading through different mods you don't want, but ones that are too weak as well.

There is no current incentive to even attempt crafting because of this unless you've got a full page of orbs to spend on an item and even then it may be questionable.

I think a solution GGG may like ( as opposed to changing the current system entirely) could be to instead make higher level items only draw out of a minimum level mod pool. So for example a level 66 weapon can at worst only draw mods from item level 40 mods and up. Who knows, we might actually start seeing good gear more often if they did this.

Let me just say, i love this game and just making new builds and trying to reach level 100 is enough to keep playing. I don't need what feels like an artificial time sink in order to stick around. In all honesty it's driven me to frustration and taking lengthy breaks from playing because of it instead.

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drewiey wrote:

Isn't the all fun of the crafting system the fact that it's random? lol.
I mean if you don't like that, find another game.hahaha

hahahah! Thanks for your very limited and obtuse suggestion!

I mostly get my characters to level 70-72, realize I can't progress due to poor access to upgrades then leave the game for weeks before starting something new.

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Runeword wrote:

disagree totally with the negative comments about crafting. yes it's hard to get the mods you want and yes it's expensive. it should stay this way too. do you really want every noob in the game running around with the godliest gear? the game rewards the people that put in the time playing and also learning all there is to know about it. the crafting is the most innovative system i've ever seen in a game.

I don't get this attitude. First of all, item creation orbs are UBER rare, to the point that they are never used, as GGG themselves stated in this thread. Second, even if you use them the odds on getting a piece of godly gear is literally almost nothing. GGG could increase drop rates of ALL orbs by 10X and it would not dramatically increase the amount of "goldliest gear" in the game. You are in the vast minority on this.

But even if everyone was in the godliest gear, playing a ton and having FUN, which will also lead to more shop purchases, how could that possibly be bad.

But the reality is that the crafting system is so bad you cannot even get halfway decent levelling gear from it. It is completely useless, sorry except for the vast minority that only wants a select few to have anything even good.

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CirePadela wrote:

In response to the OP there is an idea i'd like to throw out there.

That is, when it comes to finding loot items they currently drop with random properties that any lesser level item may have. So you might find a level 66 rare weapon but it may only have mods that a level 14 can have at best. This means as the item level increases so too does the chance for it to have even more crappy mods that you never want to see. This makes crafting all the worse as you then have to gamble at trying to get one of the higher item mods (if you know what to look for) in a gigantic pool where no only are you wading through different mods you don't want, but ones that are too weak as well.

There is no current incentive to even attempt crafting because of this unless you've got a full page of orbs to spend on an item and even then it may be questionable.

I think a solution GGG may like ( as opposed to changing the current system entirely) could be to instead make higher level items only draw out of a minimum level mod pool. So for example a level 66 weapon can at worst only draw mods from item level 40 mods and up. Who knows, we might actually start seeing good gear more often if they did this.

Let me just say, i love this game and just making new builds and trying to reach level 100 is enough to keep playing. I don't need what feels like an artificial time sink in order to stick around. In all honesty it's driven me to frustration and taking lengthy breaks from playing because of it instead.

I can see the merits in that, but what you describe is exactly what GGG wants to avoid because over time there would be a glut of awesome items in the economy. Keep in mind in domination and normal, good to great items NEVER go away, so the average level of gear gets better and better.

The ideal is to find a way that provides continuous minor upgrades and interesting items without flooding the economy with the best items. D2 solved this through additional item types such as gems, jewels, charms, runes, set items, class specific items, horadric cube upgrade recipes etc, so even if you didnt find better gear for the character you were playing you still found cool stuff.

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

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Runeword wrote:

disagree totally with the negative comments about crafting. yes it's hard to get the mods you want and yes it's expensive. it should stay this way too. do you really want every noob in the game running around with the godliest gear? the game rewards the people that put in the time playing and also learning all there is to know about it. the crafting is the most innovative system i've ever seen in a game.

There's a difference between "hard" as in "there is a massive amount of depth to the game and if you understand it to the very last detail you can get a piece of godly gear in a few days completely self-found through various vendor recipes" and "hard" as in "even if you're Kripparian, you're still at the mercy of the RNG just as much as someone playing their first maps".

Hard, to me, implies that player skill can overcome barriers in a very short amount of time. For instance, Justin Wong (champion fighting game player) would master a new fighting game much faster than someone who hasn't yet developed the mindgames or muscle memory to compete, even if they both got the game the same day.

In this case, getting a godly item isn't *hard*, but is simply directly proportional to the amount of time one spends grinding. That isn't hard. That is tedious.

Far different connotation.

On the flip side, whats the solution? Super hard unkillable yellows / bosses like d3 had for a while so that you have to Grind lower level zones for ages for upgrades until you can venture there to not get destroyed so badly and get upgrades that will only serve to kill the same content with more ease?

im not saying the crafting system is perfect or even sure i like it that much but i gotta say, what IS the non tedious way to play an AARPG like this for countless hours without having to repeat content?

In fact id dare say im more motivated to play this and farm tediously for the chance at decent rares to further improve my builds.
THEN
once I have a strong farm char, I can start a tons of other toons with different sets of abilities using some of the gear I accumulated to se how well they go and if they can be a more efficient / fun farmer.

This is a loot based game and as such farming tediously is a must....its why you like the game in the first place. Where d3 failed miserably is by having no customization...once you level the 5-6 classes, you have nomoe reasons to want to start a new toon and this is a huge time sink killer for me anyways.

anyways, I propose people take the future of the game into account and propose constructive change ideas instead of keeping it to the Scrap the crafting and rebuild it from ground up! its not realistic.

Be careful what you ask for: Gear progression and power creep

Linking to my thread that got unceremoniously dumped in Gameplay Discussion. While I am confident most of you already understand the theory behind power creep, it never hurts to ensure we all have the same level of understanding.

I recognize that it would be nice to have a deterministic component to the current orb system so that there is more certainty to the player in terms of gear progression. I am actually of like mind. What I don't want to see is the ability to guarantee BIS.

In other words, allow people to craft to get themselves out of the 'unlucky' side of the item distribution/power curve, but reserve the very top tier mods to items dropped in the real world. BIS should have some degree of exclusivity and should not be craftable, otherwise nothing that ever falls on the ground would be worth anything. In my opinion, being able to craft god tier gear or biasing mods to higher tiers would dramatically reduce item variance. The ability to access really good gear really easily would make the game really boring.

Keep in mind current the main progression content (not maps) only goes to level 68. Levels beyond 68 are intended for the addition of new content over the years. Owning gear powerful enough to faceroll maps should really be an exceptional challenge, not a mandatory expectation.

<edit> Oh. And I think a viable stop gap until there is a deterministic means of crafting would be to dramatically increase the drop rate of eternal orbs. This would permit people to use them to protect their gear while rerolling using orbs during mid-level gear progression. i.e. Have eternal orbs drop in sufficient quantity so that players can use it on a piece of gear before rolling a fusing/jewellers/chaos on it. This preserves the player's gear, yet allows them to actually use orbs without fear, instead of simply hoarding them for trade or late game gear.