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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Gear Rarity Scaling vs Gathering Time Spent (post Dec 6th Nerf)
mrwaffles
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Background
Myself, and two other friends decided to spend 100% of our play test time on crafting until phase 2. This started on Nov 15. We spend the first weekend organizing our plan, getting the required professions to apprentice, and assisting in node progression for apprentice stations. We all played Friday-Saturday, and the entire week of thanksgiving. No official hour count can be given but a good low estimate would be 8 hours a day.
The Plan
We were going to collect, process, and combine all our mats and build as many spell bows as we could before the reset. Each had a roll as follows:
We all decided on Forsaken Blades Short Bows and went for it's materials. As a piece was completed (collected and processed) then it's player would then help another player with their work (if possible).
The Journey
After a few days we decided to spend some of our hard found materials on getting heroic versions of our gathering tools. this sped up gathering and (we think 2:1) gave us better odds. We got half of our mats bugged/deleted and filed a bug report. This was not related to duping but a few different storage bugs that later got fixed (confirmed via hotfix notes).
The Result
On Nov 30th we were able to craft 1 legendary and 2 heroic Forsaken Blades Short Bow (images will be pasted at bottom of post). They were amazing and we got to use them for 1 day. There was a HUGE difference in the stats between the Heroic and Legendary. We wanted to make an epic to see the full scaling but that didn't happen in time. Two bards, of the same level (18), were equipped with 1 of each bow. The difference was night and day. Damage, healing, HOTs, were all much higher on the Legendary (duh).
Post Nerf
We expected some balance to be done to the legendary bow and little to no changes to the heroic ones. The heroic ones were about a 55% loss , but the legendary was not just nerfed but almost made worthless (81% loss). To explain, the scaling from heroic -> epic -> legendary is cents on the dollar. From a ROI there is little to no incentive to go for legendary at this current scale. It was frustrating, to say the least, but as an alpha we understood. That being said, we are trying to better prepare for phase 2 and we've come up with that heroic is were we're going to aim for and epic and legendary are not worth it. Better to spend some time crafting and the rest of farming gear. Epic/Legendary mats would be better sold then used.
Very Opinionated Info
Getting data back from specialists should be valuable. As it stands, the nerf told dedicated crafters that a game where crafting produces the the best gear is true if you are okay with a terrible ROI. If the goal was to single out a small groups of crafters in favor of pooled guild resource crafting then mission accomplished. I think IS didn't expect crafters to get to the levels they reached in Phase one and instead of trying to balance them in waves, through player feedback, they just said EF it and slashed crafted gear. Gear stats should be based on time and complexity of the craft. The gatherable tables are constantly being adjusted and the crafting recs should see equal love.
Pre nerf
Post Nerf
I don't have an image for post nerf heroic but i think the Magic power was 146. Will update when servers are backup
Myself, and two other friends decided to spend 100% of our play test time on crafting until phase 2. This started on Nov 15. We spend the first weekend organizing our plan, getting the required professions to apprentice, and assisting in node progression for apprentice stations. We all played Friday-Saturday, and the entire week of thanksgiving. No official hour count can be given but a good low estimate would be 8 hours a day.
The Plan
We were going to collect, process, and combine all our mats and build as many spell bows as we could before the reset. Each had a roll as follows:
- Harvest trees, lumber milling, carpentry
- Mining, metal working, stone mason
- Herbalism, Weaving, Arcane
We all decided on Forsaken Blades Short Bows and went for it's materials. As a piece was completed (collected and processed) then it's player would then help another player with their work (if possible).
The Journey
After a few days we decided to spend some of our hard found materials on getting heroic versions of our gathering tools. this sped up gathering and (we think 2:1) gave us better odds. We got half of our mats bugged/deleted and filed a bug report. This was not related to duping but a few different storage bugs that later got fixed (confirmed via hotfix notes).
The Result
On Nov 30th we were able to craft 1 legendary and 2 heroic Forsaken Blades Short Bow (images will be pasted at bottom of post). They were amazing and we got to use them for 1 day. There was a HUGE difference in the stats between the Heroic and Legendary. We wanted to make an epic to see the full scaling but that didn't happen in time. Two bards, of the same level (18), were equipped with 1 of each bow. The difference was night and day. Damage, healing, HOTs, were all much higher on the Legendary (duh).
Post Nerf
We expected some balance to be done to the legendary bow and little to no changes to the heroic ones. The heroic ones were about a 55% loss , but the legendary was not just nerfed but almost made worthless (81% loss). To explain, the scaling from heroic -> epic -> legendary is cents on the dollar. From a ROI there is little to no incentive to go for legendary at this current scale. It was frustrating, to say the least, but as an alpha we understood. That being said, we are trying to better prepare for phase 2 and we've come up with that heroic is were we're going to aim for and epic and legendary are not worth it. Better to spend some time crafting and the rest of farming gear. Epic/Legendary mats would be better sold then used.
Very Opinionated Info
Getting data back from specialists should be valuable. As it stands, the nerf told dedicated crafters that a game where crafting produces the the best gear is true if you are okay with a terrible ROI. If the goal was to single out a small groups of crafters in favor of pooled guild resource crafting then mission accomplished. I think IS didn't expect crafters to get to the levels they reached in Phase one and instead of trying to balance them in waves, through player feedback, they just said EF it and slashed crafted gear. Gear stats should be based on time and complexity of the craft. The gatherable tables are constantly being adjusted and the crafting recs should see equal love.
Pre nerf
Post Nerf
I don't have an image for post nerf heroic but i think the Magic power was 146. Will update when servers are backup
1
Comments
You realize that the gear that drops from mobs most of the time are just green and sometimes blue? The drop chances aren't that high and the stats on those items were nerfed too...
The issue is not the drop chance but the time invested for higher crafted gear. For example getting a blue drop weapon with decent rolls combined with the current leveling speed would be a better ROI then spending time on crafting a higher tier weapon.
In older MMOs there were two concepts that made this situation worth it for crafters. First was very slow level progression. Investing in lower level higher tier gear would be worth the initial investment (financial or crafting time). The second was heirloom/generational weapons, where a lower tier weapon would be passed between ones alts, from friend to friend, or within a clan.
The current drop chances are to high, and the level progression is to fast to each big tier. Crafted items need to have some edge up other then a slight increase in stats. I'm not suggesting we nerf drops but instead improve crafted items. They could have special elemental attributes only available to crafts. They could have a higher enchantment probability. Heck, when skins are available they could be the only way you can attach a skin by applying a cosmetic slot only available on crafted goods.
the problem is also the disparity of the lvl gear we can craft, we are 10 lvl down respect the lvl of the drop you get from the monster.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
You also wont have the benches to craft lvl 20 gear for like a month or 2 aswell, it takes like 7 journey man banches and like 6 support building to get enough journeyman benches to craft a single item type
And we dont have enough building spot atm to cover all crafting at journeyman level either and in phase 2 it quite possible we get even less building spots due to vassal system locking some nodes to level 2 since every 4 node can have 1 3 node which can have 1 2 or lower node so effectly every 3 nodes we have only 2 will have benches in now so it depends on how many nodes they add with phase 2 and how many plots a tier 4 ndoe gets
Either the legendary mats needed to be harder to acquire or the power needed to be turned down (I would have preferred the former)
I'd be interested in if the gear was crafted or purchased, and if crafted if the materials were gathered internally or purchased. Reason being that this fact was also true on my realm but the top guilds ran a bunch of caravans to get gold. then spent that gold on materials or straight crafts. Meaning they are more involved int he economy of crafting and less related to the rarity of the crafts and gatherables.
All that stuff is being drastically nerfed and I think they disabled it?
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
I dont know what item you're crafting but that is not the case in anything we've looked at crafting / actually crafted.
All recipe parts must be of same quality. In my bow example there is the 20x lumber, 3 different flower, and 2 different ores.
The crafting clothing+tools. Instead of npc bought you can craft those and they were really overpowered.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
I see what you mean. boosting a crafters final products and overall gatherable odds/skills. Yeah I agree those were broken. i even crafted a legendary caravan out of weeping willow that had over 1mill hp using only epic level materials.
Spent 80 hours to make a single legendary item is not so ealy...and think that we are talking about lvl 10 item. THe resource of lvl 20 item are different so you must gather and craft other material more t3 resource.
For example I'm miner lvl 35 (now it's 2 week I stop gather waiting what Intrepid will do for crafter and gatherer) and in all the tin I gather I never found a legendaty tin.
Most of you make thinking with a previous bug but you must alto think that the life of a gather or crafter must be not punisced bacause you think we must go around 1000 hours to find a single legendaty resource. The game must be fun not a frustration.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
And when its done quickly, almost in panic, its usually this kind-of rough.
True, but as it is now, enjoy only having a green/blue weapon for the unforeseeable future as crafters will focus on other things.
Agreed. Both drop chances AND rarity crafts were nerfed. They should be a counter balance scale. if drop chances go up then their crafted result goes down, and vise versa.
The scale i'd be curious testing is as follows:
Common & Uncommon:
Gatherables - Easy
Craft - Used for leveling, comparable to drop equipment, and cheap node products (caravan, siege items, etc)
Rare:
Gatherables - Medium
Craft - Decent budget friendly equipment, additional stats (1-2) , stat rolls max ceiling (LOW)
Heroic:
Gatherables - Hard
Craft - Good equipment comparable to raid boss drops. enhanced additional stats (2-3) stat rolls max ceiling (MED)
Epic:
Gatherables - Very Hard
Craft - Great equipment with max stats (4) stat rolls floor (MED) max ceiling (HIGH). has additional set bonus. has a slight purple glow.
Legendary:
Gatherables - ???
Craft - Best equipment in game. Max stat slots (4) with rolls always (HIGH). Additional special ability based on recipe. Has a slight orange glow.
I like the classification, the importat I think is that the crafted item must be more powerfull of the dropped. At the same level and quality the crafted must have something more or different of the dropped. Maybe give the possibility to can choise witch stat you can put in the crafted.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE