Make crafting higher level items deterministic cost

[kamap]

Might be but then everyone has a chance on those yummy 77 celestial items.
As a weapon is the most important thing to get at high level to farm more efficient in ANB, most people will first go for that and then after they will go for extra gea.

I've had the luck to roll a 77 weapon the last 4 ANB's but I never gotten a lvl 77 anything else, a few 76's though.
So my main BH now has 3 lvl 77's pistols, my exp grinding mage a lvl 77 staff, next ANB I'll probably go for a mage again and I'll be concentrating on getting a high lvl staff first, I hope to get 2 lvl 77 items so I can take a staff and something else to my pusher mage and exp grinding mage.

So it's either be less efficient in grinding exp, while hoping for 2 lvl 77 items that aren't weapons, hope for a lvl 77 item out of ANB that you can then CT later on, ...

So getting a lvl 77 Cbox would solve that, you reach TL80 and you open that cbox for a weapon, when reaching 100 you can take that second weapon or the worst item and make that a lvl 77 celestial. Then after ANB ends they get reverted to cboxes again and now any character can have any item it wants at 77 and celestial.
I'm holding onto 4 ct's since I haven't gotten any item that is good enough (read not 77, I find it a waste using ct's on not 77 items) to make into a celestial.

With a lvl 77 Cbox I wouldn't have that problem and my exp griding mage would be rocking 8 lvl 77 celestial items.

[Shilien]

But isn't a L77 Cbox just a gift?

[ShotDead]

It seems to be completely random, I've been recrafting my green lvl 77 gold farming gear and have gotten 2 lvl 77's in less then 5 attempts and I've also have gotten a streak of 50 craft and the highest was a 75.

I would like less RNG for obtaining the gear you want, a few ideas in no particular order:
- Put in something that lets the player work towards getting a guaranteed lvled item of a certain quality.

This is exactly why I was against awarding a CT in ANB. L77 Cbox was a much better choice for those who don't wanna exploit. Devs don't seem to agree.

[sutcliffe]

Why are we calling it RNG and not what it actually is? It's gambling.
I've spent 99% of my time in the season shooting ducks with a bazooka (what it feels like to do hundreds of 1.5 minutes TLL100 runs with a CL2200 BH) so that I get enough coins to use in the slot machine that is Ingrid. Because trying to hunt the biggest beasts that my toon can hunt (TL130+) takes more time and gives the same loot.

Back on topic, I like the idea, but crafting should be one of the many ways to get to the endgame, not BE the endgame.

or make the loot of TL110/120+ way better and a bigger chance for lvl 75+ items

[MetalMan]

I see your point and it is a valid one. Also I have to mention that if salvaging returned more materials and gold, we would have more attempts to craft (still it would not guarantee a max lvl item, of course).
Now given the effort and time required to introduce a new point-based system vs to adjust salvaging, I would vote for the latter :-)

[kamap]

The points system is there that after you have crafted an x amount of gear you are certain to get a max lvl one.

[MetalMan]

I don't think there is a need for points system - what you describe is pretty much covered already by salvaging items. You farm trials and get drops - you salvage most of dropped items. You craft items - you salvage the bad ones. And so on. I believe the only thing that needs to be corrected - unbalanced salvage operation, which returns too few materials (and no gold).

[kamap]

It seems to be completely random, I've been recrafting my green lvl 77 gold farming gear and have gotten 2 lvl 77's in less then 5 attempts and I've also have gotten a streak of 50 craft and the highest was a 75.

I would like less RNG for obtaining the gear you want, a few ideas in no particular order:
- Put in something that lets the player work towards getting a guaranteed lvled item of a certain quality.
Make it kind of like a bank, you build up credit by crafting, that you can then spent to get an item of a certain lvl and quality that you can choose, the chosen level and quality determines how much credit is used up.
Every item gives x credit if you have crafted for example 29 green ones you have enough credit to get a lvl 77 green item or you could keep on crafting till you have enough credit for a guaranteed lvl 77 orange item. The higher quality you craft the more credit you get.
There is still RNG involved and you can get a lucky high level craft but while you are still working towards a certainty.

- Make it possible to to lvl up an item, make it a quest or a bunch of resources, the higher the level the more resources you'll need or the harder "longer" the quest takes.

- The more trails you complete the higher chance that you get a lvled item.
Every trail has an amount of points tied to it, they keep adding up till a lvl 77 drops and then the points get reset, the higher your points rise the higher chance you have for a lvl 77, till it's 100%.
For example every trail up to 60 gives 1 point, 60-69 is 2, 70-79 is 3, 80-89 is 4, 90-100 is 5 and so on, half the points are converted to % so after 40 runs of TL 90 you have 200 points which is 100% and a lvl 77 will drop resetting the points.
Let the player know how many points are gathered and how close that item is, a small text when selecting a trail should be enough "You have x% for a lvl 77 item to drop".
Maybe tie the next 2 ideas into this one, if both are tied into this the points need to be tweaked, it should take a lot of "work" and time but eventually you should get it.

- Let us select an item that we really want and that gets a higher chance to drop, first selected item is free, for the next ones you'll need to do a quest, pay gold or farm something.

- Let us set 2 stats that should always be on the items that drop, more chance of the items with a decent level to be usable and when salvaged will give the corresponding materials so easier to farm what you need for crafting. Make it changeable with a quest, gold, farming something.

- Some kind of fusing of items, you need x items of x level that you can then fuse for a higher level, you can then choose 4 stats that were on the original items.
Lets say every lvl above lvl 70 gives 1 "point" and you need x points total for a certain level, like 2 points for 72, 4 for 73, 8 for 74, 16 for 75, 32 for 76 and 64 for 77. So a full inventory of crafts should easily yield a lvl 77 item.
We'll need more storage space to make this feasable for orange crafts since they require so much resources its either farming till you have enough to make that lvl 77 a certainty or go in lower increments that will then cost so much more.

[Calin Chc]

We have now max level 77 gear items. Just a question...is it normal to spend 30-40M gold and not get a single lvl76-lvl77 item? I am not that sad about the money, but my crafting materials(especially greater essence) are all gone now. I mean, gathering all that gold and materials took many months of playing/farming.

Is my spending registered somewhere on the server, do I hit a reward limit eventually? Like "ok, this guy has spent 50M crafting garbage, now I'm going to give him a lvl77". Or is it just forever random? Could I spend even 500M gold and still not get a decent item?

All those people in the leaderboard with full lvl77 gear...I guess some of those items might have been obtained during ANB events, but still...are they really lucky, am I unlucky, did they spend 1B on crafting them?

[MarkHark]

Thanks for the correction!

[lmcelhiney]

EDIT: In practicality (is this an english word?), this would offer a 3x higher chance/cost ratio for crafting L75s. Not an automatic L75 for everyone, but definitely a much more comfortable odds ratio.

Practicality
noun

1. 1.the quality or state of being practical.
   "there are still major doubts about the practicality of the proposal"
   Similar: feasibility; possibility; practicability; viability

However, I would normally expect this, "In practice, this would offer..."

[MarkHark]

Another possibility would be if heroes were allowed to craft items up to two levels higher than their own. Crafting L72 items directly might yield very reasonable chances to get L74-75s as a result.

Also, this might make crafting at lower hero levels far more useful than it is today (i.e, a level 12 blue XP gear crafted and immediately usable by a level 10 hero might hasten the leveling up to 20+, and so on).

I do believe, however, that doubling the price for each level is too steep a curve. Something closer to 40-50% per level feels more adequate, making L72 gear double the cost for L70.

EDIT: In practicality (is this an english word?), this would offer a 3x higher chance/cost ratio for crafting L75s. Not an automatic L75 for everyone, but definitely a much more comfortable odds ratio.

[RedJiminy]

There is distinctive difference between farming mats in trials and farming gold in story mode. Both mats and gold is being constantly wasted in the crafting lottery thats granted. Yet for running TL100 in XP gear (however its boring), if all the mats gathered will disappear on failed attempts to craft decent gear - you will not have the feeling that time spend in trials was total waste of time as one of the golas was actually achieved, you got some more CL's which is important.

For farming Gold you got nothing, this is devastating very off-putting waste of time if your craft attempts will keep failing, and they will. So even if crafting itself is very painful experience it easier to swallow on the trials then farming story mode imo- and very minor changes would probably fix it.

I hadn't realised how little I gain from failed crafting attempts quite so starkly.

What if we could keep something: What if crafting mastery level was not capped. All that crafting would eventually lead to better % chance of gaining a level when crafting, so that slowly we would move towards getting L75 items after enough attempts.

[Triggus]

I can only agree with all above. These are actually a good suggestions that wouldn't ruin game balance making it more playable and enjoyable experience.

Even in current model a little change I've already suggested would make game much more viable- simply increasing sell value of unique, set legendaries to the point it would aid crafting costs should players decide to sell this loot.

There is distinctive difference between farming mats in trials and farming gold in story mode. Both mats and gold is being constantly wasted in the crafting lottery thats granted. Yet for running TL100 in XP gear (however its boring), if all the mats gathered will disappear on failed attempts to craft decent gear - you will not have the feeling that time spend in trials was total waste of time as one of the golas was actually achieved, you got some more CL's which is important.

For farming Gold you got nothing, this is devastating very off-putting waste of time if your craft attempts will keep failing, and they will. So even if crafting itself is very painful experience it easier to swallow on the trials then farming story mode imo- and very minor changes would probably fix it.

For the long term the need to rethink the whole model. Currently the end game is split in 3 different activities Trial farming, Gold farming, Push. Every one done with different specialised characters and extremely time consuming. We end up playing our best characters in best gear maybe one 1% of play time!

Yet it seems incoming patches are rather newbies focused it might be indication devs are currently leaning for the model with high playerbase turnover, attracting new players knowing they will not stay for long. I might be wrong but I have feeling that actually seasoned, veteran players are the best source of revenue as pursuing end game goals and LB competition make people more likely to spend hard earned $ in game.

[Chosen]

That is an idea for another topic though...

I actually think it fits well with your suggestion, it's part of it.
We should be able to farm lvl70+ items in a range of trials that represents the actual power of your toon.
TL100 unlocks lvl70+ items; lvl71 & lvl72 items drop regularly and you still get the current miniscule chance to drop a lvl75 item.
TL120 does the same as above but for lvl73 & lvl74 items and finally
TL130 unlocks a reasonable chance for lvl75s.

AND

In order for the above to work, we should be able to target craft a Lvl75 item for an amount of gold+mats that you suggested, in an effort to craft those last 1 or 2 pieces that don't seem to drop in our TL120+ farming.


Since crafting gives you exactly the stats you want, you should be able to target craft the level that you want (original post's suggestion) for a very high amount of resources, but you should be able to regularly drop higher level gear with the appropriate degree of RNG from monster killing.

Gambling can be ok if it involves grinding on your toon's limits to drop e.g. a lvl74 Tesla pistol with armor and damage reflect once every 2 hours of gameplay. I will happily go back to the grind the next day, to drop a better one and keep doing that until I drop a really good one. Or farm for a month and use up all my savings to craft one.