Feedback on Runic Materials

[Farlius]

At the moment I have noticed an increasing abundance in unwanted and disregarded runic materials sitting in stores for extended periods of time.
To address this I would suggest two new options of crafting for each runic material as per its crafting field:

Minor coalescence (Craft DC 70-75)
Requires:
4 Lesser Runic Materials

Produces:
1 Greater Runic Material


Major coalescence (Craft DC 80-85)
Requires:
4 Greater Runic Material

Produces:
1 Masterwork Runic Material

Disclaimer: Since people keep bringing it up, these DC values are NOT FINAL and are just an EXAMPLE to represent the DIFFICULTY. I would hope and expect these to be more carefully considered outside limiting mastery rolls if actually taken seriously.

I believe the use of 4 would prevent a yoyo situation, atleast requiring consideration, as we currently can break down the higher tiers to lower tiers in a set of 3 output.

The DC's are recommended as such due to the craft gift and base 60 resulting in 70, and commoners being able to exceed 70.
While 80 may seem extreme, it is worth noting god saves on crafting exist, and would more pointedly be used to prevent craft dumps being as so effective.
Which leads to the amount of points it would take to craft these, personally I would set them to roughly 500, and 1000 respectively to keep their value, and represent the extreme time it would take for such an advanced process.

Edit:
As an addition, I believe this would allow people not grinding consistently or are having extended periods of bad luck to gradually acquire what they are seeking, without being limited and/or punished by their playtime or aforementioned luck.

[-XXX-]

Wrong subforum - this one's for feedback. Suggestions belong to the suggestion box.

That being said, here's some feedback: your idea would make commoner membership mandatory for any faction that wants to gear
up with the best items available, all while putting factions without commoner members at a serious disadvantage.
Furthermore it'd standardize keen masterly damask weapons. I don't think that either is a desired outcome.

[Lexx]

Honestly I'd rather see alternate uses for runic materials in recipes barring rune processing. Converting them to masters will just as said already. Normalize things like melees needing master blade runes even more.

[Wrips]

I think the ability to convert runic materials would be great. I don't know why giving the players another option other than finding a 1/400 chance runic material, or having a solid ooc or very dedicated IC group to circle grind RDI/Ilithids/Old Udos/Mourn to throw adamantine at the basin, is considered a bad thing.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

I don't like the idea, it would make it impossible to find lesser or greater runes, because people would hoard materials for masterwork runes. Sometimes I only need a lesser rune, I want to be able to buy those still.

[Morgy]

I like them being ultra rare.. Makes you light up when you find one!

And as the last post says, it would make folks just hoard the lesser runes too much.

Not a fan.

[Farlius]

Firstly, people already hard 5% masterly damask or seek the runes. With the advent of many more +4 weapons that are pre runed I would also say these are no longer the be all end all.

Secondly, you can convert higher tiers to lower tiers so this question of inability to find a lower tier material is nonsensical.
Downgrade a higher tier into 3 and sell off the 2 unwanted, or keep them and reforge the top tier with another 2. The idea is to drive demand.

Thirdly, these materials are meant to be rare.

I do agree on the notion of more uses for the material.

This is infact feedback because if you were looking around at stores you would have noticed an extreme over abundance of the lesser and greater materials. While that in and of itself doesn't make this an issue it does make clear that supply is too high against a low demand. The feedback here would enable a choice and drive demand instead of supply.

How often people open a chest and find a lesser material and sigh should not need be countered by "but they'll hoard them!". So what? They already do, in stores, where they're rarely purchased.

The dc and craft points would ideally retain the rarity. I also addressed how this is not going to make commoners mandatory because god saves exist.
How dare we make a slow and frankly obscene tedium have an advantage in one of the few things they can do.
I for one think allowing non commoners to make it but enabling commoners is better than simply complaining that they exist and are desired.

[Diegovog]

I only sigh when it's blueleaf, regardless of grade.

[Might-N-Magic]

There's really no shortage of high tier rune mats available for sale other than maybe zard, but even that shows up eventually.
All this would do is make high tiers no longer valuable as everyone and their dog just tosses 3 greaters in their Horadric cubes and presses "combine."

[Farlius]

There's really no shortage of high tier rune mats available for sale other than maybe zard, but even that shows up eventually.
All this would do is make high tiers no longer valuable as everyone and their dog just tosses 3 greaters in their Horadric cubes and presses "combine."

I put forward the premise of 4 greaters as currently you can break down a masterwork into 3 greaters.
Furthermore, the fact there is "no shortage" as you put it does not discount the fact for each 1 of these masterworks there's likely a hundred of the greater or lesser tiers just floating around.

This is a game, first and foremost, and I frankly don't understand why people are willing to grind the same content over and over on a minute chance they get what they need.
Good game design does not neccesitate hundreds of attempts if unlucky to acquire an item, nor should it require paying multiple millions of gold.
Doing a task repeatedly should be rewarded when it comes to something that mechanically can often be achieved with a hard 5%.

For example:
2 skills, 2 stats and then runing a Uni save is both a hard 5 and runeable.

It is also possible to do obscene things such as 4 skills, 2 stats and a Uni with a hard 5, this is not runeable.

Making runes more available does not change what obscene depth of gear is available, it instead makes it more accessible to people not willing to effectively roll a dice on a basin and still be better off with some investment.

Levelling the playing field just makes it more fair, not less fun.

[AstralUniverse]

DC 70-75

No such DCs please. Ever. In general. Not for as long as commoner is called Commoner and themed as common. This would make them legendary master crafters with no replacement who outshine loremasters, wizards etc. And it would look very silly in game.

And to also add some more stuff. Some of it just echos of the above.

We have no shortage or excess in lesser runes. Their generally-agreed-on prices in shops are decided by how long they sit in them over time. This means that potential excess lesser runes will simply drop in demand and in value and become more accessible to lower lvl characters who want to make stuff like cheap 3-stat gear early on for leveling. I know I do it on almost every character and finding samples of djinn or low tier thurglass for 10k in shops really helps the early leveling on my really m.a.d characters.

[Farlius]

DC 70-75

No such DCs please. Ever. In general. Not for as long as commoner is called Commoner and themed as common. This would make them legendary master crafters with no replacement who outshine loremasters, wizards etc. And it would look very silly in game.

And to also add some more stuff. Some of it just echos of the above.

We have no shortage or excess in lesser runes. Their generally-agreed-on prices in shops are decided by how long they sit in them over time. This means that potential excess lesser runes will simply drop in demand and in value and become more accessible to lower lvl characters who want to make stuff like cheap 3-stat gear early on for leveling. I know I do it on almost every character and finding samples of djinn or low tier thurglass for 10k in shops really helps the early leveling on my really m.a.d characters.

You can already achieve DC 70-75 without commoners and just a craft gift.
There is a combination of both DC and point investment that should represent not only the time it takes but the difficulty.

These numbers are specifically a theoretical idea, and not a final value. I wish to add.

What exactly would you call a commoner that takes 20 points over the highest DC already if not a legendary master crafter being able to make 1 point equal 2 on every single roll for progress?
Where is it that any non-commoner can invest more than 70 points into a craft that makes anyone justify their response of "but commoners shouldn't be able to be better than loremasters, wizards!"?
This argument is false by the inherent fact commoners mechanically can already exceed those classes and crafting is a distinct seperate system from classes and race outside specific recipes.

Being able to do something does not inherently make you a master, being able to do it fast or at high quality, does.
This is why the point requirement should be high and costly to represent TIME investment, because this is not creating something new, let us not forget. It is putting something back TOGETHER. Purifying, distilling, returning to an original more powerful form.

Also, i'm going to be honest, I do 2 stat gear and then wait till I can find an enchanter to further improve my gear.
I am sure alot of people do the same and would infact suggest you are an outlier due to the quantity of runic materials that simply sit around on bulk.
I admit, there are limited uses for these, but they are quickly outshone by finding an enchanter/dweomercrafter of any note outside of very specific niche cases.

[AstralUniverse]

Craft gift brings you to 70 if you max all your ranks in one trade on a gift of crafting character. This means that items with this high DC will be mostly made by commoners with 200ish points per day (or is it a lot more?) because no one in their right mind will dump 70 points into one trade. This makes commoners the only ones who can realistically finish such items in a reasonable amount of time and to me this qualifies as "necessity" even tho it *technically* isnt. I just dont like the direction of items above 60 DC in general, in the current system and with commoners existing they way they are now.

As for *your* preferred gear and preferred use of runes. It is you and there are plenty other options other people take. Being able to do the reverse of splitting high tier ingredients into smaller ones has been suggested before. It's not healthy for the runic components market and economy as explained above by several people already.

[Farlius]

Craft gift brings you to 70 if you max all your ranks in one trade on a gift of crafting character. This means that items with this high DC will be mostly made by commoners with 200ish points per day (or is it a lot more?) because no one in their right mind will dump 70 points into one trade. This makes commoners the only ones who can realistically finish such items in a reasonable amount of time and to me this qualifies as "necessity" even tho it *technically* isnt. I just dont like the direction of items above 60 DC in general, in the current system and with commoners existing they way they are now.

They get roughly 120 Trade skill points without trade gift, 130 with.
The server has been leaning towards mastery rolls more heavily by providiving these high end DC's.
I personally don't like them if they are combined with weirdly nested trash recipes with multiple points of failure, nor do I often go deep enough to make use of them.
However, what one person does and does not do is not deterministic. I know smithing for example takes such a heavy investment that many people just go all the way to get mastery rolls since it is both costly and time consuming.
Again, these are just theoretical numbers, I expect the feedback and my presented argument to be weighed into consideration by those more clued in to where they want any crafting system to go moving forward.

As for *your* preferred gear and preferred use of runes. It is you and there are plenty other options other people take. Being able to do the reverse of splitting high tier ingredients into smaller ones has been suggested before. It's not healthy for the runic components market and economy as explained above by several people already.

The reverse already exists, you can already break runes down, this isn't something new and has existed for a long time.

An example of one of many under Materials in Alchemy:


No one has actually explained how this is unhealthy, aside from some mediocre anecdotal evidence that is easily refuted, when compared to the current state we are in.
As I have done and will continue to do with such cases, I have provided the counter.

Edit: Not sure why the text has gone weird in size here.

[AstralUniverse]

The server has been leaning towards mastery rolls more heavily by providing these high end DC's.

Where? The highest DC in the game is what.. 56? you get that without gift of crafting and you can still toss 1 into art and wood for qol and helping others with the glass. mastery rolls were added to add /some/ scaling beyond the highest DC recipe. It adds speed and lowers the chance to roll 1. I really wouldnt call that 'leaning towards mastery rolls' mentality on the dev team's side. It is proportionally rewarding and simply gives you more options. Options are good. Decisions are good.

I know smithing for example takes such a heavy investment that many people just go all the way to get mastery rolls since it is both costly and time consuming.

Or ya know.. they can go 51 smith and 19 herbalism to nail the Heal potions too, along with the high end weapons. There are plenty of options. Just one example out of an ocean of them.

The reverse already exists, you can already break runes down, this isn't something new and has existed for a long time.
No one has actually explained how this is unhealthy, aside from some mediocre anecdotal evidence that is easily refuted, when compared to the current state we are in.
As I have done and will continue to do with such cases, I have provided the counter.

What I meant is that you can split big into smaller ones but you *intentionally* (and it has been proposed before on the forums) cannot do the reverse, which is combining smaller ones into big ones. Because it would mean lesser runes would be really hard to find and masterwork runes would be cheaper. This does nothing except narrowing the dynamics of runes values and demands into "give me masterwork or nothing" and lower level character wont ever see lesser runes in shops ever again. If the Devs wants to make masterwork runes cheaper, they would simply increase their drop %.

[Farlius]

The server has been leaning towards mastery rolls more heavily by providing these high end DC's.

Where? The highest DC in the game is what.. 56? you get that without gift of crafting and you can still toss 1 into art and wood for qol and helping others with the glass. mastery rolls were added to add /some/ scaling beyond the highest DC recipe. It adds speed and lowers the chance to roll 1. I really wouldnt call that 'leaning towards mastery rolls' mentality on the dev team's side. It is proportionally rewarding and simply gives you more options. Options are good. Decisions are good.

I know smithing for example takes such a heavy investment that many people just go all the way to get mastery rolls since it is both costly and time consuming.

Or ya know.. they can go 51 smith and 19 herbalism to nail the Heal potions too, along with the high end weapons. There are plenty of options. Just one example out of an ocean of them.

The reverse already exists, you can already break runes down, this isn't something new and has existed for a long time.
No one has actually explained how this is unhealthy, aside from some mediocre anecdotal evidence that is easily refuted, when compared to the current state we are in.
As I have done and will continue to do with such cases, I have provided the counter.

What I meant is that you can split big into smaller ones but you *intentionally* (and it has been proposed before on the forums) cannot do the reverse, which is combining smaller ones into big ones. Because it would mean lesser runes would be really hard to find and masterwork runes would be cheaper. This does nothing except narrowing the dynamics of runes values and demands into "give me masterwork or nothing" and lower level character wont ever see lesser runes in shops ever again. If the Devs wants to make masterwork runes cheaper, they would simply increase their drop %.

I actually agree on your first point, and as I said, I personally am not a fan of the DC's being obscene. Again, as I said, these were just theoretical to point towards the difficulty of any such process and should not be a sticking point outside of recognising this.

Edit: Forgot to mention, 56+20 = 76, 75 for perfect mastery rolls. Some explanation behind why I chose those numbers would probably help, I felt it would be a good idea to avoid mastery points being possible just to help add weight to the process.

Your second point is also fair, and you yourself have said choices are good. You personally don't need to go all the way to do this, someone else could, as is the way with current crafting of runic materials.

The third one will need someone to come reiterate that, because I cannot see why being able to do an up and down movement is a bad thing if the down grade is significantly easier.
I also understand that the materials may become scarce but let's not forget their demand will also go up as a result and thus, they will return to being sold.

If we're going to talk about market place theoreticals then high demand means the lowest tier will be made available. They are more common, and consequently they will be sold more commonly and bought more often with this change.
Those seeking multiple will not pay extortionate value to achieve the next tier, this then sets the lowest and upper price.
Repeat for the mid tier and you have a stable market, not too different from where it currently is except the materials are actually more widely desired and functionally useful past a certain point.
This does and should not decrease value, as, AGAIN, the points or DC should reflect complexity and difficulty.

This dynamic you speak of however is already at that stage for a majority of people I know. If an item requires a greater, use a greater, then go for a hard 5 and masterwork eventually.
And this is all under a system that currently punishes people for not having good RNG or 15 hours a day to routinely run dungeons.

[Skibbles]

This seems pretty great. Half the time I just vendor lesser runic materials because it would require far more time to sell via RP or afking at a temp shop than it's worth.

Even with a temp shop it can take hours/days to move at just a few thousand gold, or they don't at all. I usually have better things to do - or at least I like to pretend I do.

[Xerah]

This is really not something we’re looking to change.

[Archnon]

I don't like the idea of combining runes. However, I do think there is some consideration of the nature and distribution of runes. It seems, in the past year the t1 runes have become super common place. Further not all runes are created equal. Woven runes and blade runes have a ton of low level applications. At this point you might as well collect carpentry rune materials and use them as cat litter.

I would rather see a very expensive way to move runes across types. It should involve the native craft converting it into a rune template and the new craft converting it into a rune in the desired vein. It should require a high end herbalism competent (acid solvent to dissolve the old material) and a high end alchemy item to set the new rune. In this way you can take all the carpentry runes and convert them to something useful with significant RP and trade.

[Skald Haldi]

There are three different discussions in this thread:

1) Proposed recipe to combine more common rune materials into the rare ones.
Yes. Please. Grinding for super rares is dumb. Isn't this an RP server?
Perhaps a better suggestion is to remove runic materials entirely.

2) Higher-end DCs.
Right now, every recipe in the game is too easy. You can easily achieve 1/400 failure mastery rolls on almost anything.
Should it go all the way to 80-85? That is questionable, b/c I believe all recipes should be possible for non-commoners without depending on a GodSave to preserve your expensive materials. The is an inherent problem with the +10 trade points gift. It's going to take some unraveling to solve this for everybody.

3) Commoners.
Give us poor commoners a break. I know you don't like us, but seriously?
"Wizards can cast spells - that's not fair - let's not let them cast spells anymore"
"You need a rogue to disarm DC 35 traps - that's not fair - no more traps!"

[Farlius]

This is really not something we’re looking to change.

And so I have to ask, why?
What exactly is it that the team says is both proportional and fair about the current system, and frankly, the abundance of low tier materials but lack of uses outside specific niche outliers?

I would be really interested to understand a stance that allows breaking down materials but not recombining.

Some good points here too, horizontal movement between types would be a good compromise, one type with effort can become another would solve much of the issue at all tiers and allow unwanted to be made wanted.

Making lesser runes have more uses outside purely runic enchanting.

And lastly that this is an rp server, not some korean-mmo.

[Xerah]

Because you don't need masterwork runes to play the game. My characters are never designed around 100% needing them. They are something to do if you want to; different game styles for different people. This has nothing to do with it being a RP server and it is a weird comment to suggest otherwise.

The lesser materials are more common so people use them, rather than sit on tons of them, but people can't price them at a level where others would use them.

[Farlius]

Because you don't need masterwork runes to play the game. My characters are never designed around 100% needing them. They are something to do if you want to; different game styles for different people. This has nothing to do with it being a RP server and it is a weird comment to suggest otherwise.

The lesser materials are more common so people use them, rather than sit on tons of them, but people can't price them at a level where others would use them.

I didn't say you need masterwork, I very specifically have outlined that either lateral or horizontal movement would be healthy, but it seems that has been skirted over.

In addition, it has everything to do with it being an RP server and not a korean mmo because the very fact you acknowledge people have them but can't sell them means there is an issue with supply vs demand.
This points to low desire, which points to low usage, which feeds back in everything I have stated prior.
If an item so over abundant that a majority of stores have atleast some runic materials, how can you specifically say this is not being treated as a 2004 MMO dungeon grind because people find it rewarding to have these things?
A runic item is not above par, I have shown this in a previous post, it is simply a sure fire way to get something that a hard 5 could achieve.


Again, at no stage have I decried greaters as entirely useless, my target has primarily been at the lessers.

[Xerah]

No, it points to a cost issue.

No one wants to spend 100k rune for an item that has to be replaced by an even more expensive end game item. It's not supply/demand at all since you left out the cost side of things. The problem is that shop owners won't price their things at a level that will sell; since there is no real incentive to sell it at a competitive cost (negligible cost of running a shop), all it does is just sit there until someone wants to pay for it. This is not a traditional cost/supply/demand economic model here.

There are plenty of things you can do with lesser runes. There are a number of items with one property that can be enchanted then lesser runed. Great use of it. You can also get easy tri-stat items.

I don't know why you keep going back to this 2004 mmo thing. You said it twice now. It doesn't help your discussion points at all and actually does the opposite since it seems like you're discussing in bad faith which makes me not even feel great about responding, so I am just going to disengage at this point.

[Farlius]

No, it points to a cost issue.

No one wants to spend 100k rune for an item that has to be replaced by an even more expensive end game item. It's not supply/demand at all since you left out the cost side of things. The problem is that shop owners won't price their things at a level that will sell; since there is no real incentive to sell it at a competitive cost (negligible cost of running a shop), all it does is just sit there until someone wants to pay for it. This is not a traditional cost/supply/demand economic model here.

There are plenty of things you can do with lesser runes. There are a number of items with one property that can be enchanted then lesser runed. Great use of it. You can also get easy tri-stat items.

I don't know why you keep going back to this 2004 mmo thing. You said it twice now. It doesn't help your discussion points at all and actually does the opposite since it seems like you're discussing in bad faith which makes me not even feel great about responding, so I am just going to disengage at this point.

Except you're ignoring that if you allow movement upwards, supply goes up and meets the demand, demand drops, price goes down.
You can say this isn't standard supply/demand and economic models but it is.

I would also say that those "great examples" you're giving are better if you enchant, hard five and then use a greater. This points back to dweomercraft as again being superior to these lessers.

I go back to the 2004 MMO thing because I know what it was like to spend hundreds of hours grinding for a 1% item, you can't ignore that existed, and still exists. It just so happens to be something done quietly on Arelith as well, whether consistently or sporadically.

I will await the teams opinion since you have disengaged in this dialogue.