I’m really enjoying the expansion. Really, really. One of the big new things, though, are all the crazy-good monster infrequents. Here’s the thing: killing the same monster endlessly to roll for affixes is a fun-sucking chore.
Getting even one desirable affix can be a bit of a chore. Getting two… good luck. Getting an ideal MI is basically like finding a unicorn. Grinding is a given, but getting the gear you want shouldn’t feel impossible.
I recommend something akin to the Diablo 3 enchanter that allows you to pick an affix and reroll it. I drew a mockup.
I would make it more expensive than the D3 system which was always fairly cheap. It ought to use scrap, aether shards, etc. – nothing that requires targeted grinding. This is an important stipulation. We don’t want to substitute grinding a mob for grinding some resource which would be even less fun. That isn’t to say players can’t target the resource, but the process I envision goes like this:
Grind until you get a MI with a relevant affix.
Invest a substantial portion of your crafting materials accumulated up to this point in rerolling one affix on your MI.
To repeat, engage in a lot of normal gameplay to recover enough scraps/crystals/etc.
With sufficient cost, this could make good gear feel accessible without making it feel cheap. Having a good MI would feel like an accomplishment, not a guilty reminder of either how lucky you got or how much time you wasted.
Some quality-of-life enhancements to go along with this:
Optional auto-pickup of crafting materials and components.
More accessible disassembly for people who want to focus on crafting. Remove the dynamite requirement, make one stick go further, or make it more common. My leaning is toward the second of these. Does it really take a whole pack of dynamite to disassemble a chestpiece?
A possible “crafting tab” that stores all components and materials across all characters (good god are these handy in POE).
This would go a long way. I hope the devs at Crate will give this some consideration.
EDIT:
The motivation here is that to get ideal rolls on a MI can take literally a day of grinding, which is unacceptable. That was the documented result of someone attempting to get a good pair of pants from the Bysemiel boss in Broken Hills. I don’t want good gear falling from the sky, but I don’t want the equivalent of a Mirror of Kalandra to exist in this game (super-ultra-uber-rare item in Path of Exile). The only recourse for someone like me without the patience of an immortal is to use cheat programs, which ruin the fun of the game. There needs to be a sensible middle ground.
I didn’t say they should be common. The price should be steep enough that you can’t just click your way to great gear in five minutes like in D3. There is a degree of rarity that is acceptable and a degree that is outrageous, and right now we are on the wrong side of that. I’d post a link, but apparently I haven’t posted enough with this account. There is a trending post in the Reddit GD sub describing how it took a full day of grinding for a pair of pants. That’s simply ridiculous. With as many good MIs as there are in the game now, there’s no way in hell I’m going to grind a full day for each of them. There’s no way I’m going to grind a full day for even one of them. I’ll grind a few hours, sure, but I have limits.
Care to explain why it is a terrible idea? Is it just because the OP mentioned Diablo 3?
List of other game that craft rares:
Torchlight series - enchant and socketing with gambling.
POE - Currency usage and crafting merchants.
Diablo 2 - see torchlight.
Roshpit champions - a mod in dota 2 that has smith to allow you reroll with special currencies.
So why are you so afraid of this? It might actually make iron worth while.
One day is acceptable IF the gameplay itself is fun. Crafting could make this feasible if you set the costs high enough. That is, it will take you a day of gameplay to pick up the materials necessary to have a strong chance of success in crafting your item. The difference is that instead of playing the same content over and over, you could spend a day running, say, BoC or SoT, picking up scrap and such as you go. That is loads more fun than killing the same boss on repeat for a day.
I think he ment killing the same mob for an entire day, i think that’d drive anyone nuts.
Same as people rush to Akamos for his ring and soulrend at least 50 times to get one drop and that might not even be a good roll. Apparently some fixes on this is coming next patch.
I think crafting mat in general are more widely available and not just limited to one mob? When you farm MIs you literally just farm that one boss/mob, while say you farm ugdenbloom you just run through gloomwald - ugdenbog a couple of times, thats alot more variety.
That wasn’t the implication. The idea, as stated in the OP, is that the items necessary would come from normal content, namely scrap and iron. There may be ways of increasing your scrap/iron intake, but the idea is to decouple loot-grinding from fighting in one specific area, which grows boring. Crafting in this system is kind of like a passive reward for playing the game.
EDIT: also what Seph said. Even if you do end up targeting a resource like Ugdenbloom, the content is still more varied than it is at present.
I like this idea a lot. Before AoM I too spent like 6 hours trying to get good Solael pants and they were the most annoying hours I have spent in the game, period. Ended up with maybe two acceptable ones. Great.
On the other hand I doubt Crate cares beyond saying “make a mod for it”. They wouldn’t be wrong either, I guess.
Crafting there requires a ton of gold, which you have to farm anyway. No different from farming MI rolls.
The former is circumvented by having not-auction house (aka player interaction). The latter was added because the former was an absolute waste of currency.
Even worse than TL, you could make money off gambling. Sitting in gambling window is the most triveting gameplay I witnessed in an ARPG.
Did you play the game? In-between crafting BoMs, Conduits and magical boots there is a lot of iron to blow through.
Two people have mentioned this. I would be glad to attempt it, but in about 15-30 minutes of digging, I didn’t see anyone creating a new menu altogether in any mods. I’m not sure it’s possible except as a third party program, which would be really weird.
Not an expert, but according to Crate the modding tools are what Crate used to create the game, so if they can create a menu using these tools (and a hell of a lot of script) then I don’t see why it cannot be made.
The graphics for all the menus are just std graphics…so…“in theory” it’s possible.
I agree with what op said that it would be nice to actually be able to find those rares. Forcing players to farm a single enemy for almost non existing chance to get the item you want with just right affixes is plain stupid. I guess most people trade them but i don’t trade as that would kill the fun for me. It’s single player game (mostly) after all, and you shouldn’t design sp games so that you must spend thousands of hours farming.
But on the other hand i really wouldn’t like to see something like d3 enchanter in GD. It’s just a big no.
Personally I fail to see the “plain stupid” part of this, the nature or argp’s has always been the re-playability and the hunt for better gear…the want for easy gratification of the “just right affixes” is the problem in my view.
If people are that desperate for a specific roll on a specific item and don’t want to wait for a mod, then just do what people have been doing for years…backup your save, craft, if not “perfect”, load the backup and retry, repeat until you get your perfect item.
I don’t see that Crate need to provide this short cut to basically buying the perfect items.
That’s even more stupid. It’s exactly same as if i just created the thing with editor of some sort. Just might take slightly more time. I like to play my games without cheats.
