Let's talk about recipes
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Recipes have been an hot topic ever since their introduction, and they still are.
The community discussion mostly focuses on 4 perceived issues with them. In order of importance they are:
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Excessively restrictive toward new players, especially for weapons. New players are stuck with primitive weapons for a very long time and this gets frustrating. This issue is even more perceived at the launch of the game when everyone is keeping recipes for himself/his guild and the few recipes being sold have huge prices. Armor sets are less of an issue, you can already craft the tier 1 version. It is fine to gatekeep the tier 2 version.
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The recipes once used have no more purpose to exist for that player. With the passing of the days, the recipes go from extremely expensive to trash loot, simply because they saturate the market and no one requires them any more. There will be new players which need them, but the current drop rate of recipes in the game will more than overcompensate this recurring need.
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A system based on crafting the same item multiple times to improve its quality is bad for the economy (flood of unwanted items) and not exactly fun or in line with the rest of the flow of the game. The durability gain is also not considered enough of a reward by many players, but at the same time this game can't exactly put vertical bonuses wherever it likes. Also, the fact that you de facto need maximum proficiency in primitive items before crafting the good ones to avoid "wasting xp" is kind of a noob trap.
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It doesn't really make sense for a bear to keep accurate notes on how to build a bow.
Obviously the most critical issue is the first one. The first days of the game will have a large impact on the final success of it, so something that negatively impacts those very few hours has the highest importance. Fractured has an incredibly good crafting system, and many come try the game for it. Having these random piece of papers as showstoppers can leave a bitter taste.
Now, I would like to invite anyone to speak their mind about this topic. Provide feedback and potential changes that you would like.
Just as reminder though, consider that the more complex is the change you propose, the less likely it is to being taken in consideration by the devs.
I will start by presenting what I consider could be a potentially good solution to these issues.
It is a change with 3 possible levels of effort from the dev team.
Low effort solution: Remove the need for recipes on weapons, leave it only for tier 2 armor sets. This solves problem 1 but makes problem 2 more marked since the recipes will become even less useful in the long run. Still, it would save a lot of frustration to new players with very few changes.
Medium effort solution: Apply the previous change, and then remove the generical recipe drop that is currently present. In its place, increase the recipe drop from chests by a wide amount. This way we solve issue number 4 and at the same time we give a clear value to the treasure chests.
High effort: Apply the low effort solution and then use for recipes the same system that is currently in place for orbs. Weapons are unlocked by default (like plate mails and leather armor), while armor sets require to be unlocked. After the unlock, you can use recipes to increase the quality of that craft, identically to how you currently increase your level in a spell school with orbs. Crafting the item again and again will not provide "xp" to it. The higher the quality, the higher the number of recipes you need to use to increase it. This change has several advantages. If the increase in quality is put on a dropped item, its value will be determined by the market, so they will be priced according to the perceived gain of the increased durability instead of it being tied to a certain amount of resources and gold. Also, a single player will be able to benefit from many more copies of the same recipe, and so the influx of new players will be more likely to prevent the saturation of the market. In short, it will resolve issues 2 and 3. Recipes will gain long term value, without proving to be a showstopper in the first days of the game. Primitive items will keep the same current system, no one has issues with them.
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Get a group of four (preferably Tank, 2 DPS and a rogue, and you can take anything that can drop recipes early. Anything cr4 and 5 for sure. Someone got a shortbow, probably one of the most sought after, from a termite drone on terra. Or one of the termites anyway.
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I see problem with High effort solution. It would mean that big guilds with dedicated crafter would absolutely dominate the market and no one else would be effectively able to sell their crafted items.
Low effort solution would make problems with recipes even worse.
Medium effort solution - I like the idea to include chests more in orb/recipe drops but not the rest.Where I see potential is make system where you would unlock/improve crafting by repetitious consumptions of recipes, but it can't just mean that one person or group will have so much superior product that everyone else will have problem to sell anything. There already was problem for some people with selling stuff crafted without maxed proficiency.
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The current system though already favors big groups which can centralize the crafting on a single person to quickly reach a higher mastery.
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I think one way to solve this issue is to introduce more levels of items (which a bit contradicts with their horizontal view, but one can never achieve full horizontal progression anyways). Just like t2 armors, we need t2 weapons and after introducing them, we can remove the recipe requirement from current t1 weapons (2h axe, sword, etc.) For the general problem with recipes(problem 2), we might use a system where one improves their crafting profiency by comsuming recipes. Those are my two cents.
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Why were recipes introduced? Was tying higher-level recipes to city research not working?
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Crafting hundreds of the previous tier item to prevent "exp waste" creates unnecessary grind.
Grinding to improve your craftsmanship on items is fine; no tradesman has ever created a masterpiece on their first attempt. Solve the issue of "item overflow" with NPCs (god forbid we add those) who buy your stuff for a base price and sell various goods, therefore setting market minimums/maximums. The current system only works with a very large and active player base, or with horribly slow progression and crafting times; take away exp from crafting and I can assure you that many players will lose purpose.
Why not introduce "legendary weapons" whose recipes only drop from legends, or certain dungeon type events? Instead of recipes for everything else, force players to max out the knowledge of certain mobs to learn the recipe. Dedicated crafter now has incentive to move from their crafting hole to explore the rest of the game.
Also introduce more crafting stations in starter towns, until players are comfortable migrating elsewhere/have a better understanding of how things work. Down side to this is that smelting, tanning, other processing times, etc. would have to be nearly instant to accommodate this, like Rune Scape, making the ore regeneration time the gating process.
No matter what they do, issues will arise... Also, nothing is truly set in stone, so why not find the best possible solution for as many people as possible and make this game successful.
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Albion solved item overflow by allowing you to dismantle full-durability items to gain more crafting exp.
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@Roccandil That would also be a valid solution, but having multiple ways to solve that overflow would be ideal. Keep in mind that it isn't just crafted items, but materials which may need to get culled eventually, thus having both systems in play would be amazing!
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@GorTavaro said in Let's talk about recipes:
I see problem with High effort solution. It would mean that big guilds with dedicated crafter would absolutely dominate the market and no one else would be effectively able to sell their crafted items.
Low effort solution would make problems with recipes even worse.
Medium effort solution - I like the idea to include chests more in orb/recipe drops but not the rest.
Where I see potential is make system where you would unlock/improve crafting by repetitious consumptions of recipes, but it can't just mean that one person or group will have so much superior product that everyone else will have problem to sell anything. There already was problem for some people with selling stuff crafted without maxed proficiency.People just copy the crafting logic of games that work, for example runescape and albion.
Simple!
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reading this, it seems like you guys just want another slot machine. this is exactly the reason I play Fractured. I have my flashy lights and fancy spell effects and loot cha-chings elsewhere. This game is never gonna be an Albion or a New World, and that is just fine with this player.
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Hello guys,
The idea of recipes was nice and interesting, but I dont think it really works for the long run for the same reason you guys have pointed out here: too rare at the beggining, huge prices early on, after a week or two they are being spam posted to the markets, losing their value, etc etc.
The main concern I have is that, not only it would create a dominance on who will have access to what in game, specially early on, but also mid to late game, specially because the materials also require some special reagents now, some for the materials and some for the pieces (craftables) themselves.
For example, if you wanna go from a Leather (regular set) to a Rogue set, you need all the recipes for all the pieces, not a single recipe to unlock the full set, no no no.. you need 1 recipe for the body, 1 recipe for the boots, 1 recipe for the gloves, 1 recipe for the helmet....
On top of that you would also need the rogue stones, which.... only drop from CR5+, which are really hard to kill with primitive weapons early on.. and so, requires a group effort, which is fine, but then.... those people who have the recipes early on will make sure to "defend" those places, specially on PVP areas, making it even harder for the new players to progress.
The nature of players would always be try to get strong and try to remain that way the longest possible, even when it means to make sure that other people would not be able to have access to these stuff, which means, recipes would not work at the very end due to the rarity and also for the reagents and special materials they take in order to be able to craft a single piece.
On top of that, the durability is too low to even bother right now. You can go farm for 2hrs and almost break a 200-300 durability piece easily if you're melee, why would you bother taking all the effort or grinding a lot of gold and mats, just to trash that piece in 2hrs ?
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I like the way it works now and all the solutions have their own issues. If anything, I'd say somewhat increase the chance to obtain a recipe from a chest in addition to some rare comps.
Point #1: Newbies stuck with primitive for long time.
This is not true, but guess that depends on how you define long time. At full release with a reasonable population, both the end products and recipe's will appear on the marketplace.
Point #2: Recipe once learned has no further purpose.
So what? There's lots of drops that have no purpose to some players, depending on what their needs are. They sell that stuff or simply toss it.
Point #3: Need to craft same item to open other items and/or improve the durability.
Again, so what? I don't see the issue with this at all.
Point #4: Doesn't make sense to find a certain recipe on a certain mob.
Again, so what? And how do you know that Bear or Drone, or whatever, didn't find it on its last victim?
Just my opinion of course, but I think this is noise over nothing that important.
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SunFlower I think you're missing the big picture as spoletta tried to explain and point out. But... its ok... we can agree to disagree.
We're all following the game for years now and the devs are changing stuff around to see what sticks, we're just pointing out, on a personal level, what actually worked or not, or what we've all have seen on other games that didnt work or was improved over the years.
We're all trying to be helpful here... please refrain to post the "so what"... it does not help
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@Junkie said in Let's talk about recipes:
reading this, it seems like you guys just want another slot machine. this is exactly the reason I play Fractured. I have my flashy lights and fancy spell effects and loot cha-chings elsewhere. This game is never gonna be an Albion or a New World, and that is just fine with this player.
I am personally expecing something more like the good/old days of UO from back in the early 2000's, Lootwise of corse.
The dev team is trying really hard to find out what would stick and would work atm, and its a hard thing to accomplish.
My suggestion would be post your opinions here w/o trying to judge other peoples opinions and let the devs to decide what would be best to their game
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@sephgamestv The "So what?" wasn't derogatory. I don't know why you'd take it that way. The "So What"? is merely an informal way of saying that I don't see the issue as being an issue.
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@sephgamestv said in Let's talk about recipes:
On top of that, the durability is too low to even bother right now. You can go farm for 2hrs and almost break a 200-300 durability piece easily if you're melee, why would you bother taking all the effort or grinding a lot of gold and mats, just to trash that piece in 2hrs ?
Yes, it seems much more efficient to equip in primitive gear, and stop there. Because the game is so horizontally-oriented, how much more powerful does higher-level gear really make you?
At this point, I suspect swarms of players in primitive gear can dominate everything.
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Newbies are only stuck with primitive gear until they join a guild and start helping with things like gathering hides for tanning, or metals. If they wanna go it alone, thats on them. They can farm for hours to get enough gold to get the gear they want
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I'm new to fractured, only been playing for the past few days, so this is just an observation from a newbie which may be accurate or not so much. One of the appealing aspects of fractured online was the 'you can lead a peaceful life as a crafter or farmer.' Then I found out some materials can only be found on open pvp worlds and one cant access those worlds markets unless on those worlds. So either you are forced to venture into a pvp arena which always descends into a gankfest in sandbox games, or you have to wait to pay inflated prices on terra posted by players who travel between worlds. That opens up a legitimate trading element for organized groups but once again penalizes smaller less combative groups and individuals. Being able to access other worlds markets from your own would satisfy the promise of a peaceful existence.
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Syndesia isn't really a pvp world. There's a few reds going around, but the penalties are harsh enough to discourage many from trying.
