Additional item crafting info

Since there has been no word in a few days about the durability discussion, I thought I would throw some data out there that I have accumulated:

I have:
2 rare armor fragments
2 rare standard
1 rare artifact
4 uncommon armor
2 uncommon standard
assorted common fragments for all types
2 red weapons (nearly broken, both common)
2 armor (both uncommon) mothballed for later
1 weapon uncommon, also mothballed

Now, by no means am I an experienced player. My resource buildings are at level 8 each, I dont have archers or heavy inf yet, and no units or heroes are past 3 stars. That being said, I have played around with the crafting system, and it is for all intents and purposes a waste of coding.

There is no way for a person to use even half of their fragments. A person simply cannot afford it. I am gold strapped as is and I have 4 or 5 pieces I can make plus two that need repaired. I have fought completely naked for 2 days, even after getting all those fragments to drop..

Durability needs a major overhaul. I will give an example as to why:

I have the ability to make a rare armor piece. for my light infantry. I have 2 shards, and have the gold to buy a 3rd if I didnt want to risk it. The cost for that piece will be around 1300 gold, and take an hour to make.

That doesnt seem so bad, but 1300 gold? Assuming I get this from my resource buildings, it will take 6 hours. Plus an hour to craft, is 7 hours of my time/resources for a rare item which will have around 28 durability.

If I manage to not get stomped in battle, I can run a new battle every 15 minutes, or 4 per hour. That means the armor will be worn out in the time it takes to make it. roughly 7 hours. This is entirely unacceptable in its own right, and ridiculous beyond anything Ive ever seen in a game to date.

Now, if that item was an incredible boost, it would be one thing. But almost certainly I will get 7 armor and maybe a loot drop boost or something on the armor. My orcs have 36 armor right now, so that is a 20% boost, that costs as much in time and resources as the use I get out of it. Once the repair loop starts, it just gets worse and worse, throwing more time and even more gold into an already arguably worthless item

This is a best case scenario. Hero items and artifact take even more fragments, time, and gold. I am also being kind and ignoring the fact that there are 3 crafting houses that all need to be upgraded for some unknown reason that all do the same thing besides the time reduction, which is absolutely laughable. This add literally thousands upon thousands of thrown away resources upgrading these buildings for a whopping few percent time reduction on crafting items that are nearly worthless to begin with. 15 minute reduction on a 4 hour item for only 15k in upgrading costs?? TELL ME MORE.

This stinks of more than a resource sponge. The risk versus reward is so out of whack on this whole crafting system that I have a rough time believing it was intended to be anything but a poorly implemented joke.

If you want to have the same effect, scrap the whole system. Charge people 10k of each resource to build a level 1 potion house, sell 5 flavors of potion (1 for each battle stat) that give a boost for a few hours for 2k gold apiece.

Nobody would bother buying those potions either, but at least the simplicity would allow people to understand the system better and warn them away from it earlier.

You have a good, solid game here. Resources, racial benefits, questing system, and an unmatched tactical battle system does wonders for this game, but the crafting (maybe 25% of the game, and all the 'rare drop' part) is the absolute worst I have ever seen. Please, please fix this. I want this game to thrive as much as you guys do.

While there are a few valid points in your post there are some other obvious issues with what you've stated. As you yourself have said you "by no means are an experienced player" so to assume the entire system is damaged beyond repair with your limited experience is rather presumptuous.

It is entirely possible in the long run to use all of a players fragments should they choose to do so, quite honestly i rarely have uncommon weapon or armor fragments because i often use anywhere from 10-20 of them daily crafting new weapons and armor to compensate for the single repair slot.

To base your calculations for crafting cost off what your buildings generate alone is stupid as there are numerous other sources of revenue for resources. You state you can do roughly 4 battles an hour, at my point even with a poor to mediocre performance i can easily do to twice that in an hour and generate roughly 1000 gold in profit for each of those battles. I am more than capable of funding crafting and repair costs the biggest issue is the back log of broken weapons that need to be repaired as mentioned earlier due to the limitations of a single repair slot.

As for the upgrading of crafting buildings the largest reason most people would see for this is access to be able to research the new units, for the later units it is also necessary to have some specific type of research done or to have a specific level on these buildings to be able to craft the item if you choose to do so. While the decrease in craft time alone is not worth the upgrading of these buildings i'm unaware of anyone who feels that the decreased craft time was their purpose in doing the upgrades.

While many players and the developers are aware of the issues that surround crafting, durability and repair it is still far from a broken system. What i would recommend is if you feel it is really such a waste put your fragments up on the market and use them as an additional source of gold revenue and acquire any equipment you choose to use through PvP or pay the mark up cost for items you might find in the market instead of suggesting it be scrapped entirely.

I agree there is a lot of busy work involved in the crafting system and numbers need adjustment. The core system itself is okay.

Common (White/Grey) Gear:
I think that it should stupidly cheap (time & resource wise) to keep all our troops fully geared in common gear even at very low levels of resource income. It should be balanced so that there is really *no* reason to have naked units. Right now, this isnt really true for new players.

Uncommon (Green) Gear:
I think a mix of uncommon gear and rare gear should be the baseline to balance what is moderately easy to maintain. People who play casually maybe 1hr a day should be able to maintain green gear on their troops without much hassle.

Rare & Epic (Light and Dark Orange) Gear:
Maintaining rare/epic gear should be balanced for people who have a combination of above average troops/research/skill if they want to earn surplus resources. Very casual players might be able to maintain this gear, but it will likely cost most of their resource income.

I havent used or seen Godlikes, so I dont have a good sense of how much power they give. I would think they should be used sparingly though.

Very good posts from all of you.

In general, I have to admit that Yanvicious nailed it.

Let me add my 2 cents to the discussion:

1) New players are not supposed to have rare/epic/godlike gear on day 1. Even common items should probably be attained slowly and definitely after 2-3 days. However, it is possible to start equipping your units from even day 1 if your management skills are good. Avg common items cost is around 300 gold and although they are ...well...common, even a slight increase of +5 to a stat plays a SIGNIFICANT role in battle.

2) The upgrades of Armorsmith, Weaponsmith and Runesmith unlock the crafting of specific items. You cannot start crafting armor for Heavy Infantry with "Basic Weaponsmithing" for example. Techs such as the latter also provide a time reduction as an added bonus.

3) We have already said that more repair slots will be added and if everything goes well, they should be implemented today. The basic idea is to have 6 repair slots and 4 more which can be unlocked with gems. A clever General shouldn't have a problem keeping his items repaired.

4) Durability loss will change. Currently, depending on the rarity of the item, the max durability can decrease 10%-35% of max durability upon a repair, which as result can lead to durability losses of 2-14. We will change that so as durability loss will be minimal 1-2 per repair. Also, a Reforge option will be implemented so your "favorite" item will never become useless. Reforging will be added in a coming update.

5) We will also add a "Break Item" option which will either provide some gold back or/and some fragments. This will be added in a coming update.

All in all, personally, I don't believe the crafting system is problematic. Granted, it is not for everyone, and frankly it wasn't meant to be for everyone, especially for the beginners. We want items to really mean something and not be something common. However, we do not make it impossible for players to craft items, which would be illogical. Even beginners can start crafting items, but they need to manage their resources, their operations and definitely their activities efficiently to be able to cope with the relevant costs.

RuneSlayer wrote:

3) We have already said that more repair slots will be added and if everything goes well, they should be implemented today. The basic idea is to have 6 repair slots and 4 more which can be unlocked with gems. A clever General shouldn't have a problem keeping his items repaired.

4) Durability loss will change. Currently, depending on the rarity of the item, the max durability can decrease 10%-35% of max durability upon a repair, which as result can lead to durability losses of 2-14. We will change that so as durability loss will be minimal 1-2 per repair. Also, a Reforge option will be implemented so your "favorite" item will never become useless. Reforging will be added in a coming update.

Those numbers definitely look better. Looking forward to trying them out.

RuneSlayer wrote:

5) We will also add a "Break Item" option which will either provide some gold back or/and some fragments. This will be added in a coming update.

One other thing I would suggest along the same lines - Allow fragments to be combined / broken to create fragments of the next higher / lower tier. This will help keep all tiers of the economy relevant.

Yanvicious wrote:

To base your calculations for crafting cost off what your buildings generate alone is stupid as there are numerous other sources of revenue for resources. You state you can do roughly 4 battles an hour, at my point even with a poor to mediocre performance i can easily do to twice that in an hour and generate roughly 1000 gold in profit for each of those battles. I am more than capable of funding crafting and repair costs the biggest issue is the back log of broken weapons that need to be repaired as mentioned earlier due to the limitations of a single repair slot.

As for the upgrading of crafting buildings the largest reason most people would see for this is access to be able to research the new units, for the later units it is also necessary to have some specific type of research done or to have a specific level on these buildings to be able to craft the item if you choose to do so. While the decrease in craft time alone is not worth the upgrading of these buildings i'm unaware of anyone who feels that the decreased craft time was their purpose in doing the upgrades.

While many players and the developers are aware of the issues that surround crafting, durability and repair it is still far from a broken system. What i would recommend is if you feel it is really such a waste put your fragments up on the market and use them as an additional source of gold revenue and acquire any equipment you choose to use through PvP or pay the mark up cost for items you might find in the market instead of suggesting it be scrapped entirely.

While I dont disagree that I can make more money than 1300 in 7 hours if I am battling, if you are looking at resources invested and time together, the money I make in battles adds to the forging time if you want to look at it that way. After healing, I can make 100 gold average per co-op battle, or 400 an hour. That would cut the total time investment to 4 or 5 hours with the forging time added in.

Considering any equpment I used in that time is half broken at this point, you see why this is a loss in the long run If I have 4 pieces equipped, using the above as a guide, I will lose 2 pieces of equipment every 8 hours or so, even if I get the fragments I need to drop, just from the gold invested, I will lose out unless I have only 1 or 2 common pieces of equipment equipped. The rest will rot away in inventory, or I will slowly slide backwards.

Honestly, I think it is a little ridiculous. If real blacksmiths took 4-7 hours to make a piece of gear that lasted only 7 hours, there wouldnt be blacksmiths. It would be a colossal waste of time, even if the sword the blacksmith made didnt help an unarmed guy by only 20%. What we have here is a system designed to spur us into buying resource boosts, nothing more, and to get it the devs sacrificed the coolest part of any game like this, rare loot drops.

And as far as the buildings go, what I meant is that all the buildings can have any item forged by opening them, if the research is done. You already have a research tree limiting what units can be built, why add a second roadblock that eats resources for no other reason than to have it? Make the research cost more if you want to limit it by resource progression. But again, I digress, this isnt really a biggie other than streamlining your game.

I guess I just wont be happy with the feel of this crafting system. Although the proposed changes help, they do absolutely nothing to soften the blow of item durability and permanent item loss. Reforging, while a step in the right direction, doesnt help soften the burden if we can assume it will eat rare shards to keep a rare. Using them on an entirely new piece might get you a better item, and If I need rare fragments to keep my rare sword working I might as well just be getting a new rare sword.

As long as your system requires players to spend that much time and energy making temporary boosts, it will be ignored by most of your population. Since there is no non-temporary loot system to offset it, you will lose many players (myself included) with this decision.

Kudos on the rest of your game, Runeslayer. I really mean that. Innovation is nice to see for games like this.

Ugbash, I love reading constructive comments.

My comments:

Quote :

While I dont disagree that I can make more money than 1300 in 7 hours if I am battling, if you are looking at resources invested and time together, the money I make in battles adds to the forging time if you want to look at it that way. After healing, I can make 100 gold average per co-op battle, or 400 an hour. That would cut the total time investment to 4 or 5 hours with the forging time added in.

I have to disagree here. An army with 1 Heavy unit, 3 Lights and 2 Ranged units can make around 900 gold in a CO-OP with a profit of 400-500 gold after healing. On Hard difficulty the same and on Nightmare the rewards are even higher. The more units you bring in a battle, the more rewards you will get. Also, the higher the unit quality the higher the rewards again, therefore in only 2 battles it is possible to earn around 1000 gold net.

Quote :

Considering any equpment I used in that time is half broken at this point, you see why this is a loss in the long run If I have 4 pieces equipped, using the above as a guide, I will lose 2 pieces of equipment every 8 hours or so, even if I get the fragments I need to drop, just from the gold invested, I will lose out unless I have only 1 or 2 common pieces of equipment equipped. The rest will rot away in inventory, or I will slowly slide backwards. Honestly, I think it is a little ridiculous. If real blacksmiths took 4-7 hours to make a piece of gear that lasted only 7 hours, there wouldnt be blacksmiths. It would be a colossal waste of time, even if the sword the blacksmith made didnt help an unarmed guy by only 20%.

Considering my above comment, you can understand that in 2 battles you will lose just 2 durability on all your items and therefore the profit/repairing ratio is much much different than what you are assuming.

Quote :

What we have here is a system designed to spur us into buying resource boosts, nothing more, and to get it the devs sacrificed the coolest part of any game like this, rare loot drops.

Allow me to wholeheartly disagree with what you are saying. If not anything else, we have proven that our monetization system is not forcing players into anything, compared to what exists in the industry. It is really a matter of how fast you want to "do" things in the game and nothing else.

Quote :

I guess I just wont be happy with the feel of this crafting system. Although the proposed changes help, they do absolutely nothing to soften the blow of item durability and permanent item loss. Reforging, while a step in the right direction, doesnt help soften the burden if we can assume it will eat rare shards to keep a rare. Using them on an entirely new piece might get you a better item, and If I need rare fragments to keep my rare sword working I might as well just be getting a new rare sword.

The basic idea behind forging is not to actually re-make" the item by using the same number of fragments of the same rarity as the item would need to craft it...That would be probably ...absurd. The idea is to use 1 fragment of the item's rarity plus gold (probably 65%-80% of crafting value) to re-forge the item to full durability, e.g. 40/40. With the updated loss durability due to repair to 5%, from 10%-35% for all rarities, that means that your item's longevity has been increased SIGNIFICANTLY and even if the item reaches 0/0 you will have the option to reforge it and get it back to its full durability as if it was brand new. Isn't that win win situation..?

Quote :

As long as your system requires players to spend that much time and energy making temporary boosts, it will be ignored by most of your population. Since there is no non-temporary loot system to offset it, you will lose many players (myself included) with this decision.

The game actually doesn't require anything. It really depends on the player and how competitive he is. We have casual players who just log in to collect their resources and do some battles and then we have the competitive players who want to be among the BEST and will do more battles, log in more times during the day, take advantage of all the features of the game to help them in their progression (Trading in the Auction House for example...) and in general do everything MORE... It would be unwise and plain wrong to reward casual players and competitive players equally through game mechanics that is. However, we do listen and we make changes, as you may have noticed, and we will continue doing so. We believe the new changes in the crafting system will help significantly and we want to believe that you will agree too...

Quote :

Kudos on the rest of your game, Runeslayer. I really mean that. Innovation is nice to see for games like this.

I've said it way too many times and it could easily be misinterpreted as PR, but the truth is that what we do, we do it for you. We are driven by your enthusiasm and love towards the game. That is exactly why we want to be close to Battle Conquest's community and together "forge" a game that we are ALL going to enjoy...

I can only promise you one thing...You haven't seen anything yet.

Quick suggestion - Can you put the Max durability of an item in the tooltip? Something like:

1/34 (36)

So we know when/if it is worth reforging?

Still about crafting, I noticed what looks to me as an anomaly: the commercial price of the piece in regard to crafting price.
Let's take for example the crafting of a hero armor:


Here I choose to built the armor only with uncommon fragments.
1. Each fragment costs 40 golds which is 200 golds of material
2. The crafting price is 1450 golds
>> All together it costs me 1650 golds to craft a hero armor.

How is it that the commercial "value" of this armor is fixed to 1522 golds, which is less than 1650? I would have expected that the value of a finished item would be at least equal to its crafting price, and if not higher.
And it's exactly the same whatever is crafted (wheter it's armors, weapons, banners or artifacts)

I know that on the market items are sold very often at much higher prices than the price fixed by the game, but it still looks to me as an abnormality.

Ugbash wrote:

As long as your system requires players to spend that much time and energy making temporary boosts, it will be ignored by most of your population. Since there is no non-temporary loot system to offset it, you will lose many players (myself included) with this decision.

Kudos on the rest of your game, Runeslayer. I really mean that. Innovation is nice to see for games like this.

I'm free-to-play, AND only active a few hours a day, and I've managed to keep a mix of common, uncommon, and rare items in good repair for 9 different divisions, and I tend to make myself a few thousand gold per session of play now only a little more than a week into the game, so I think I'm capable of saying that it's quite possible to keep Crafted items maintained with F2P no-boost income.

Just wanted to point out Ug brought this issue up almost 3 weeks ago. There have been many changes in the costs of crafting and the way it works making it much easier now than it was then for players, especially newer players, to use and maintain equipment.

Sir Jakh wrote:

Still about crafting, I noticed what looks to me as an anomaly: the commercial price of the piece in regard to crafting price.
Let's take for example the crafting of a hero armor:

Here I choose to built the armor only with uncommon fragments.
1. Each fragment costs 40 golds which is 200 golds of material
2. The crafting price is 1450 golds
>> All together it costs me 1650 golds to craft a hero armor.

How is it that the commercial "value" of this armor is fixed to 1522 golds, which is less than 1650? I would have expected that the value of a finished item would be at least equal to its crafting price, and if not higher.
And it's exactly the same whatever is crafted (wheter it's armors, weapons, banners or artifacts)

I know that on the market items are sold very often at much higher prices than the price fixed by the game, but it still looks to me as an abnormality.

Correct logic, wrong assumption.

The total amount of gold you need to spend to craft that item is 1450 gold and NOT 1650. The fragment "cost" is included in the price, you are not supposed to pay extra.

Hegorn wrote:

Quick suggestion - Can you put the Max durability of an item in the tooltip? Something like:

1/34 (36)

So we know when/if it is worth reforging?

Is it really necessary when reforging will replenish the item fully?

RuneSlayer wrote:

Is it really necessary when reforging will replenish the item fully?

Well, I'm not comfortable with any "hidden" information in a strategic game, even if it's only temporary. Having a small number beetween parenthesis (something like 6/12 (18) ) that always display the max durability of the items can help with micro management of the item pool.

RuneSlayer wrote:

Hegorn wrote:

Quick suggestion - Can you put the Max durability of an item in the tooltip? Something like:

1/34 (36)

So we know when/if it is worth reforging?

Is it really necessary when reforging will replenish the item fully?

Well, I prefer the "repair pool" idea that I mentioned in another thread so that repairs do not get increasingly frequent as the max dura drops.

Either way durability reductions are handled - the main reason I wanted that info is for auctions. Potential buyers should be able to use the max reforged stats as part of their decision for purchasing any items.

I dont think its a huge priority, but any sales on an AH should be completely transparent.

My bad, I don't read the thread carefully.