Why don't we call crafting "gambling"?

The issues right now, atleast as I see it, are related to the most recent changes to crafting. Removing some of the Harvest crafting options, changes to crafting bench currency costs, removal of Divine Orb vendor recipe, stealth nerfs to loot and the introduction of loot goblins basically turned everything upside down.

I was perfectly fine with the crafting system prior to 3.19, thought Harvest was finally in a good spot where it wasn't too overpowered while still giving players solid options to craft (or gamble) their own endgame gear while reducing the RNG factor by a fair amount with certain crafts.

But now? Crafting is basically down to having gear with a desired fractured mod, farming or buying a ton of essences and start clicking. If you're lucky enough, there's a prefix/suffix left for you to either finish the item off with a bench craft or yolo slam an Exalted Orb, and in some cases block prefix/suffix to use T4 Aisling/Veiled Chaos Orbs and pray to RNGesus to hit a desired affix. That's just...boring, and often even results in nothing but the deletion of your currency without getting anything useful out of it.

The remaining Harvest crafts have become even weaker as there's more mods available, and with the changes to crafting bench costs and removal of Divine Orb vendor recipe, blocking prefix/suffix (for example) feels terribly expensive, turning this crafting method into a nightmare for most people.

Getting endgame gear is much harder now especially for casuals, let alone new players, and all because of the increased difficulty caused by Archnemesis monsters and recent crafting changes. Being able to buy gear on trade doesn't really change that as it requires currency a casual or new player won't have much of.

The league mechanic itself is also adding to this problem as it's so terribly unrewarding, and higher difficulty tiles probably way too difficult for many players. I'm personally playing a Lightning Strike Champion with currently 22 million DPS, and I'm still running into situations where I can just shake my head in disbelief on how tanky or dangerous simple rares are due to some Archnemesis combinations. I don't even want to know what this must be like playing a non-meta build in the current state the game is in, while also being a new player or casual. And that's after a bunch of nerfs. Crazy.

What I personally find so frustrating is how GGG acts like they can't do anything about it halfway through the league (as per their own statement). The easy solution in my opinion would be to simply revert bench craft changes, bring back Divine Orb vendor recipe aswell as the removed Harvest crafts. Once that's done, rework AN and (hopefully) remove the loot goblins, distributing loot more evenly between all the possible AN mod combinations, maybe giving certain harder mod combinations better rewards or something.

Man, that became a wall of text...

Best regards,

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SloppyJoker wrote:

What I personally find so frustrating is how GGG acts like they can't do anything about it halfway through the league (as per their own statement).

imho, ggg saying that they're fine with people leaving midleague for other games if they come back is not entirely true.
every developer sees it as a failure if his customers leave cause your content isn't fascinating folks for more than 3 weeks.

i could elaborate about their mistake to change the game to make it right for everyone and "nobody really" but it's obvious to me that they're trying to slow down progression to make people play longer.

it's a more painful process than getting people used to more loot obviously but showering folks in amazing items resulted in endgame items being available for tip money.

if they followed my advice of implementing a feedback loop of binding item droprates to the availability of those items on the market for a certain price threshold, drops would be even less i guess (still need to refine this idea).

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Imaginaerum wrote:

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JoeUtopia wrote:

What’s really funny is that this type of “gambling” would never be legally sanctioned in the US because the failure rate is way too high. Casino control commissions (in US) would require better player odds.

ok, counter point
this is a video game

So is video poker, the latter still falls under more stringent regulation than this

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Gordyne wrote:

Idk how some people still don't realize this...

True crafting cannot exist on a game that is about finding items randomly

If items aren't rare they lose 80% of their appeal.

What? Do you want to spend 5 divines and craft an item with 6 T1 affixes on it?

The only way to have crafting would be to:

A) Crafted items are way inferior to good rolled items you find. Useful for fixing holes in your build temporarily.

or

B) Crafted items are powerful but each affix crafted costs A LOT(35 divines for a T1 affix)

Median XL: You can craft your own uniques with 100% success as long as you disenchant enough other uniques. Even finding those other uniques isn't random since there are certain challenges in game that have a 100% chance of dropping a unique, it's just grindy.

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

Median XL: You can craft your own uniques with 100% success as long as you disenchant enough other uniques. Even finding those other uniques isn't random since there are certain challenges in game that have a 100% chance of dropping a unique, it's just grindy.

Is that what you want in PoE? I'd quit in a heart beat. =9[.]9=

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Raycheetah wrote:

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

Median XL: You can craft your own uniques with 100% success as long as you disenchant enough other uniques. Even finding those other uniques isn't random since there are certain challenges in game that have a 100% chance of dropping a unique, it's just grindy.

Is that what you want in PoE? I'd quit in a heart beat. =9[.]9=

I mean if you want a gambling simulator that bad, there are better ones out there. I like actual progression and feelings of accomplishment over grinding to roll the dice in my games, though

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

Median XL: You can craft your own uniques with 100% success as long as you disenchant enough other uniques. Even finding those other uniques isn't random since there are certain challenges in game that have a 100% chance of dropping a unique, it's just grindy.

Is that what you want in PoE? I'd quit in a heart beat. =9[.]9=

I mean if you want a gambling simulator that bad, there are better ones out there. I like actual progression and feelings of accomplishment over grinding to roll the dice in my games, though

Then you might as well play other games like MMOs because every arpg I know has RNG as one of it's core pillars of design.

Even Grim Dawn which is very generous with its loot doesn't have linear gear progression.

D2 is far worse with RNG in this regard. Try farming a high rune there.

It's all about buildcrafting and the rush of finding those rare/good items that makes this genre... well this genre.

If you don't like it that's ok, but you'd have to be naive to believe they are going to change that someday.

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

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Djinnkitty83 wrote:

Median XL: You can craft your own uniques with 100% success as long as you disenchant enough other uniques. Even finding those other uniques isn't random since there are certain challenges in game that have a 100% chance of dropping a unique, it's just grindy.

Is that what you want in PoE? I'd quit in a heart beat. =9[.]9=

I mean if you want a gambling simulator that bad, there are better ones out there. I like actual progression and feelings of accomplishment over grinding to roll the dice in my games, though

"Gambling simulator" is just the current buzzword for those who feel cheated that they can't get exactly the gear they want, on demand. For my part, I enjoy PoE, and find the crafting system to be innovative and flexible. Your milage clearly varies, and that's fine, but you'd best not expect ever to be satisfied if the core itemization mechanic in the game doesn't suit you. ='[.]'=

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Gordyne wrote:

It's all about buildcrafting and the rush of finding those rare/good items that makes this genre... well this genre.

The main problem is that PoE's item system is so horribly designed that once you've played a few leagues there's no rush because your expectations are set where the games at, never finding anything.

A good crafting system can support an item system like PoE's but it needs to be less random in order to turn almost there items into items you would want to put on. Alas sockets and resistances basically make finding items bad and randomized reroll crafting doesn't let you fix things.

The gambling crafting system is bad because you're just always better off spending those resources trading.

You can't call it gambling because the game would be taken down