Random Quality and Random Stats Create More Problems Than They Solve

tazok

Hi,

So in a recent dev update Steven mentioned having a mini game for making items and how well you did this game it would effect the quality of the craft. This is a bad idea. Let's list the pros and cons and I'll reply to the pros which create more complexity than they simplify.

Pros:
1. Spices up gameplay for the crafters.
2. It's easier to randomly distribute stats and effects onto gear from a dev perspective. You don't have to manually create gear and balancing the gear is now not in your control but in the roll and randomness...
3. Creates a longer time to progress in game.

Cons:
1. Complicates the gameplay loop of progression and gearing.
2. Takes longer to complete a character this is a bad thing with an alt heavy game like Ashes will become.
3. Needless loot rolls for builds. Oh here's int with agi. Oh that's not what your build needs well I guess it's trash.
4. The trash roles will pile up in the inventories/banks of characters. Leading to complex inventory management systems ala destiny 2. With third party software made like light.gg and destiny item manager to fix a self made problem.

I want to address the 1st point. It doesn't feel good to me when I create an item and it's random. So if I'm int build can I make a staff with int or is random and so I have to find someone to pawn off my item, or you create trashing mechanic to salvage components and then component bloat happens and it's just a headache that I despise. look at new world and the gear creation there it's annoying and I've used to while leveling and it takes too much in game time to progress through crafting with this system. Frankly it's a deal breaker for me. It over complicates the gameplay loop and should be tertiary to gameplay xploration, socialization, monster fighting and pvp. I think it causes way too many problems and it lazy on the dev side to say oh why balance when we can have random perks and stats and that way we don't have to work on unique and powerful items!!!! It's frankly a horrible idea and people will not like it. Please don't go the borderlands, destiny2, and even modern day wow path of generating an endless pile of junk items. Items should have meaning and value and be unique and hard won not some constant recycling bin of trash.

Ludullu

Crafting in Ashes of Creation is recipe (blueprint, schematic) based, not RNG based.[22][23]

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

Depraved

tazok wrote: »

Hi,

So in a recent dev update Steven mentioned having a mini game for making items and how well you did this game it would effect the quality of the craft. This is a bad idea. Let's list the pros and cons and I'll reply to the pros which create more complexity than they simplify.

Pros:
1. Spices up gameplay for the crafters.
2. It's easier to randomly distribute stats and effects onto gear from a dev perspective. You don't have to manually create gear and balancing the gear is now not in your control but in the roll and randomness...
3. Creates a longer time to progress in game.

Cons:
1. Complicates the gameplay loop of progression and gearing.
2. Takes longer to complete a character this is a bad thing with an alt heavy game like Ashes will become.
3. Needless loot rolls for builds. Oh here's int with agi. Oh that's not what your build needs well I guess it's trash.
4. The trash roles will pile up in the inventories/banks of characters. Leading to complex inventory management systems ala destiny 2. With third party software made like light.gg and destiny item manager to fix a self made problem.

I want to address the 1st point. It doesn't feel good to me when I create an item and it's random. So if I'm int build can I make a staff with int or is random and so I have to find someone to pawn off my item, or you create trashing mechanic to salvage components and then component bloat happens and it's just a headache that I despise. look at new world and the gear creation there it's annoying and I've used to while leveling and it takes too much in game time to progress through crafting with this system. Frankly it's a deal breaker for me. It over complicates the gameplay loop and should be tertiary to gameplay xploration, socialization, monster fighting and pvp. I think it causes way too many problems and it lazy on the dev side to say oh why balance when we can have random perks and stats and that way we don't have to work on unique and powerful items!!!! It's frankly a horrible idea and people will not like it. Please don't go the borderlands, destiny2, and even modern day wow path of generating an endless pile of junk items. Items should have meaning and value and be unique and hard won not some constant recycling bin of trash.

this guy /facepalm

making the items stats rng is not lazy dev, its more work because you have to design and code all the constraints, and then balance. making unique items is actually easier and that would be "lazy dev".

since crafting will be hard, there probably wont be too much rng. and if you read the wiki, you can add any stats to any gear, and you can move stat blocks around (i guess re roll some stuff?). this adheres to the design philosophy of player agency and incentivizes interaction, cooperation and competition.

Savic Prosperity

my opinion is if it was a random tier/stats on gear, this can be fun as long as you give the player enough systems where you can control rng