Quest revamps, its effects on crafting.
-
I absolutely love that all these quests are getting revamped, it keeps the server fresh and makes it feel like I just started playing all over again, it's awesome.
Along with these quest revamps come loot table revamps, new flavorful loot is also amazing fun, I deeply enjoy these changes but (yes there's a but in here) while the flavor being changed and the quests being changed is fine, the power of these items is being upped quite a bit.I say quite a bit but what I mean is that, previously +1 gear or their equivalent was an endgame almost, now you find it on a level 1-5 quest, while that seems small it affects other things drastically, the issue I'd like to address in this topic is its effect on the crafting system.
The crafting system is very fun, in fact it's just about the funnest thing going on for my character right now and half of my reason for playing him, it generates the perfect excuse to not only go out and about exploring the world and doing stuff when your quest log is full but also it requires you to get people involved in it if you want to get good at it. You need to explore to find creatures or reagents or mining locations and you need a group to survive doing any of these things a great balance of risk vs reward and more importantly one more thing that keeps people from spiremancing.
TL;DR: The crafting system is fun I like it and it's a very beneficial mechanic for the server.So here's the issue I noticed or rather how I myself feel about it. When I started my character, +1 gear was almost an endgame loot you could find something close to its equivalent but it usually had flaws to it so it was either a high level quest reward, an endgame crafting reward or a dm reward and if you wanted to one up +1 gear you needed to find damage bonus gear and combine it with magic weapon spells for the one two combo of doom.
I've been walking around with cold iron fullplate since creation till, today it's practically mundane plate but that's fine, I decided that I wanted to make Steel Fullplate, which is the absolute hardest thing to make in the absolute hardest crafting skill to level up. Steel plate is pretty much +1 fullplate with a few minor stats ontop and was my endgame of sorts, after roughly three months of working towards upping my blacksmithing skill and probably something around 20000 golds worth of expenditures to raise it (some of it I got back by selling gear some not) I've finally done it, I've reached a skill level where I can actually make this monster plate of ultimate doom as well as steel greataxes and all that jazz.
So the next step? I need to gather up 20 iron ore (iron ore is half the ore you get when you mine so you have to mine about 40 ore before you get 20 iron)
And then I need 10 netherese alloy, which requires finding a creature which drops the alloy that is hidden away in an area could take a few minutes to find it could take hours and there's usually only one per reset. Now this thing can be taken on if you're properly equipped and prepared for it with the right group, if you're not however it has been known to take down entire groups of level 8+ characters with relative ease, so it's not only hard to find and scarce but also deadly as hell if you aren't properly prepared for it.After doing this over and over until you get all your alloy and gathering up 200 pounds of iron ore, and spending months and over 20k gold to get your skill up. And only IF you managed to find the recipe for it can you make this +1 fullplate of ultimate badassery, so here goes I've decided to take on the challenge and am 100% stoked to do it because despite the effort the entire thing is totally worth it if only for the prestige of being able to say you did it.
So golw makes a new character, I think he made the character 3 days ago? Cool character btw you should totally check em out, anyways 1 or 2 days after he makes his character he does the new revamped Haunted painting quest (I hear that revamp is really sexy btw the quest is fun) and what does he find? a +1 fullplate with better stats than the Steel Fullplate has…. So I go "Well alright....that's....okay, the fun is in the journey right?"
So the next day I deleveled my character to 4 so that I could play with the newer members of core, and I decided to do the new and revamped Gilmors quest, I hear it's been revamped as well and is very nice (the rumors were true the quest is awesome btw) and what do we find? a greataxe that has +1 ab vs everything except undead, and +1 damage, effectively making it better than the Steel Greataxe that I was also working towards making for one of the dwarves in our faction... You know, one of those axes you'd expect to pay over 2000 gold for.....So I try to convince myself that it isn't really any biggy since I already managed to get my skill up to steel fullplate level so I don't need to be able to sell any of the gear I can make anymore in order to raise the skill since I've already reached the endgame after-all. But then I stopped and asked myself..... What if I had made my character today.... would anyone of have ever bought any of my gear at all with all this stuff dropping? Would I of have had any motivation what so ever to even try to level blacksmithing if I'd of known the endgame would pale in comparison to a piece of gear some character found on his second or third day of playing a new character?
I absolutely love the idea of quest revamps and flavor reworks but I think boosting the power level of items needs to be taken more seriously, it negatively impacts a lot of things and I believe doing it too fast will do more damage than good to the server, the prospect of having sexier loot is a lot less appealing to me then the prospect of being a master craftsmen was, but said sexy loot drains a lot of motivation towards crafting.
An obvious solution would be to raise the power of the crafting items, and that was actually in the works actually, but it takes about ten times as much effort to revamp the entire crafting system from the ground up with the power level of the server in mind than the ammount of effort it would take to simply, dim the power of a few items on some of the revamped quest, hence my reason for making this post/topic.
TL;DR: Flavor changes are awesome but please dim the power of some of the new gear because it unbalances a lot of the things that make the server so fun to play for me.
-
TL;DR response.
Crafting gear needs a little boost anyway, a lot of the stuff isn't that great on it. The gear on quests isn't a sure "chance" as its random. You could do a quest a dozen times and never get what you want, but you can always know what you're getting with crafted gear. So there is an inherent trade off.
-
I almost, rather defensively, feel the need to also point something out:
I've been BALANCING this server longer than you've even been playing on it. ;)
Nothing is going to happen too fast. Though there was a bug with the Haunted Painting loot I have now fixed.
-
No need for hostilities, I was just expressing concerns hoping to get some insight on what was in store and make sure this was being covered.
-
There is no hostility dear, there were obvious issues with too good to be true "opportunities" rebalancing will take time :)
-
Sorry if you take that as hostility. Surely wasn't meant with an ounce of ire.
-
I'm glad to hear that it's being looked into though, I just thought the kind of gear that was dropping on Haunted painting was going to be everyday stuff from now on so I figured I'd make a post to check and see if that was the case.
-
Crafting will be buffed to make it worth it. it -was- indeed, made with +1 being upper limit. That's no longer true, and so it will need a redesign.
I have made sure to explain this to team as loot power changes and we end up with really cool stuff and loads more possibilities. The monsters you fight will also start to… find better loot soon too.
-
Yes, on crafting I think we need some more 100 difficulty awesome stuff that's at the +2 power level which is the upper limit for stuff you can craft or find on the absolute hardest dungeons.
I think the balance the DMs will aim for (but we're still discussing it so we get it right) is that you will always be able to predict what you'll get and have access to via crafting and can build a character with stats aiming for that stuff, but you can find randomly very awesome stuff on quests that may occasionally you'll want more than the crafting stuff because its a little better (but often not what you were expecting like a very amazingly enchanted hand axe). We're not sure ourselves yet and I think Zool and I will work out some very COOL ideas when we're all set.
-
Can we get a writeup on the guidelines when you are finished discussion?
Does this about monsters finding better weapons mean blur will totally be useless? :) -
not at low levels, it's a level 2 spell remember.
But I think it will be more about +1 weapons not bein te best for you, because thins have +2 DR, so you need to find a +2 weapon.
-
Makes sense, wizards and clerics past level 8 can give you +2 weapons so monsters on level 7-12 quests could/would/should have dr +2
Especially if said quest drops +2 ab gear
-
i don't know the stats of what i can craft anymore… if they have changed... with no buyers, and little money, there hasn't been much reason to craft, so if there have been any changes, I don't/ won't know about them. It makes it harder to aim for certain recipes or crafts, even for myself, when I don't know what the stats are... and if my main weapon is going to be essentially useless against powerful monsters by a certain level because it can't beat dr (and rarely have I ever had magic weapon etc cast on any of my characters by a spellcaster)
People who play a lot are going have a lot more money and gear than people who can't afford to play as much.
I was thinking about the crafting system; having crafts that you can slot gems into, and having more expendable powers on items would increase demand and retiring of items (as much as I am against a disposable economy in real life...).
Perhaps some items could be a lot 'easier to make', a lot cheaper to make, and have more of a shorter term lifespan... and perhaps they could, when they've run out of charges, say for a bow, the wood got warped or snapped, or something, and it changes to an item that is sellable for a small amount at a merchant, but is essentially 'used up'. But then still having a class of items which is a lot harder to make or requires more 'high level' components for more 'permanent' bonuses... maybe mythalite or other reagents could be added to the short term expendable power up gear... something not too rare, that you could potentially buy from a store...
and then the kind of epic gear which will require more questing, searching for the parts, and much more expensive and rare components. Or even break the awesome items up so that you build components at a time, and then assemble the parts (makes more sense with smithing, but yeah). It might even be cool to be able to use old, damaged/ discarded materials and items, ie the power up expendable armour, once it has become damaged/ weakened/ used up, can be reworked as part of the component for something again, potentially something much nicer... if not as a component, then maybe to be able to break down into something else after, long oak longbow becoming 3 oak stakes and 1 tinder or coal, or that sort of thing. I guess this could be kind of complicated, but you could probably start with the things people are most interested in/use the most... heavy armour comes to mind... -
Zool was working on a system for items that 'wear' down.
-