144143-survtailoroutfitter-drop-rateexp-problems

== Content ==
			
I want to preface this by saying, i'm all for crafting being difficult.  I like the idea of having to work hard to create something unique and/or powerful that is comparable to the end-game earned gear.
 
That being said, this system is currently incredibly flawed and off-putting.  I don't know how architect, tech/relic, armor/weapon/mining things are, but I assume they're fine because they have easy access to their resources.  However, Tailoring/Surv/Outfitter is absolutely the worst grind I've ever seen.  I assume the other professions are fine because unlike survivalist, you can get multiple drops off a single node, sometimes multiple drops off a single tick.  It makes crafting a lot of things alot quicker and easier.  Hell, sometimes you might get lucky and find a moving relic or a rock-worm that puts you into a literal paradise of crafting mats and loot.  It's fun, it's exciting, and it's great knowing that you have alot of what you need to get your crafts to the next step and stage.
 
Leather/cloth farming is like being in a barren wasteland, looking for scraps in a game that restricts our fun.  We can gather wood no problem, but we are not in need of wood.  We need cloth, we need leather.  Drops that aren't 100% guaranteed off the respective 'nodes' that they are supposed to come from and no 'jackpot' that lets us swim in the material of our choice for a few minutes.  It's difficult with bounty boards that give us mediocre experience compared to the work and materials put in to make the gear.  It's difficult knowing that as an outfitter that just reached Journeyman that I need to create atleast 140 'training' pieces of gear to reach the next level.  This comes out to 580 pieces of reinforced leather, 140x basic power cores and 140x (If you're talented in material reduction, if not, 280x) composite cores.  Just gonna throw some current math here for the cost of all this.
 
140x Composite cores =  35g (70g if you don't have material cost reduction)
140x Power Cores =  2.75g (also, as a quick aside:  Why is the ilvl8 core cost almost 2x compared to the ilvl 48 core?)
580 Reinforced Leather = Current Commodity PricexLowest:  1.09gx580 = 6.32 PLATINUM.
 
So, to get to tier 4 outfitter without even farming any mats would cost me 7p.  Lets not even go into the amount of time spent crafting 140 pieces of armor in this system, it's slow and tedious.  If I was leveling this as I was leveling up, I Would have been beyond the level needed to wear my gear because of the sheer amount of mobs I would have to grind.  The drop rate for leather/cloth isn't even 100%.  It feels like its not even 50% but somewhere around the 25-30%.  If i'm even correct on the 25% drop rate of leather, it means I would have to kill ~2400 mobs to get the leather needed to finish.  THIS IS NOT OKAY.  This is korean mmo levels of grinding in a western mmo.
 
For the sheer amount we have to craft, this is unacceptable.  Worse yet, Salvaging doesn't give us anything at lower levels that helps us recoup some of the materials used.  I was getting t1 level mats for salvaging my tier 2 creations.  This too is unacceptable.
 
However, I do have a few suggestions that could potentially be easy fixes.  Some I know may not be the easiest things to implement and i'm sure there are more important things to worry about than crafting balance for a very specific set of crafting tree's, but I feel these need to be addressed.
 
--EASIEST SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM--
 
Up the drop rate of the most basic materials for leather/tailoring (NOT COOKING, COOKING IS FINE)
 
Green:  90-100% drop rate or keep same drop rates but have it variable between 2-5x materials dropped at a time.
Blue: is fine.
Purple: is fine (though abit higher would be nice, but isn't required because this is the 'best' gear for the level)
 
This would help alot of the issues that plagues tailoring/outfitting right now:  Lack of supply.  Every other material in the game has supplies of atleast 3k according to the commodities exchange while leather barely tops over 500.  This will help drive costs down, in addition to letting the people go 'oh, that's still alot of monsters to kill, but at least it's guaranteed drops so it won't take too much time'.
 
Either course or a combination of both would go a long way to alleviate this problem.  This issue I think would be the easiest because all it would require is going into a database and changing some values.  Yes, i'm aware that even with something this simple things could go wrong, but its better than the next suggestion.
 
--Create a skill that lets us make leather/cloth--
 
Hearkening back to WoW here.  You got cloth, you'd turn them into bolts.  You got leather, you'd stitch em to get the leather you needed.  You got the ore, you'd smelt into bars.
 
We don't have that step for the sake of efficiency and its less confusing.  However, something like that with our current setup would be ideal.  Here's how I would implement it
 
Create a new tier of material colored White and name the item suffix's 'Scraps',  This wouldn't apply to mining,  Wood nodes or relic nodes:  They already get guaranteed drops through their respective nodes and don't need further assistance.
 
Examples:  Split Leather Scraps, Thick Leather Scraps, Reinforced Leather Scraps, Silk Scraps, Canvas Scraps
 
These would drop off their respective nodes/monsters/etc.  and would let you take multiple scraps (2 minimum, 4-6 for the higher level ones) and let you create the material you are looking for that's colored 'green'
 
These white drops would be 100% drop rate and these recipes would be located in the appropriate crafting section to their level.  so t1 scraps would be crafted in t1 section, t2 in t2 and so on and so forth.
 
This would also help with the exp problem.  You could set the creation of leather at 1/2 or even 1/4 of the exp of 'training' level crafts.  So at t3, crafting a training gear gets me 40 experience points, you could have the leather creation give 20 exp, 10 or even 5 because this would be a 'how much leather do you have?  set a number and go to town'.
 
This wouldn't be ideal to implement however because you're creating a new item drops for multiple things in addition to creating a new skill/tab in the crafts.  I also don't know if the base line for armor/weapon/outfitter/tailor has it set for the circuit board crafting system to default and if its able to be changed to accommodate making mass quantities instead of doing each leather creation individually.
 
 
This is a very broken and very expensive system.  There are alot of folks out there that love to craft while leveling because its another game to them within the game.  I'm one of them, but when it got to the point where I was farming creatures lower than my level to catch up my crafting, I couldn't do it and just skipped it altogether.  This bummed me the hell out as I like making my gear as I level but this game definitely tries its hardest to make that not feasible for outfitters and tailors.  By the time anything is ever fixed or changed, I will have probably either quit or ride out the storm and reached max crafting because I almost see this as some sort of sick challenge to get to max level.
 
Please think about fixing this system.  Also, letting tailors know they need survivalist to get cloth would be good, there's almost no notification about it and it actually pissed a few people I know off about it.
 
Thanks for reading.  At the very least, I hope people realize that things in this party of the crafting world are not okay and something needs to change.	
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Somehow this is all true, but apparently viewed as ok, as I haven't heard of any intention to change it since launch.
You think they would have put bandages on a few more paper cuts before going F2P	
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			On question: Why do you say purples are dropping properly? That seems to be everyone's complaints, as you need them to get talents, which are essential. Did I misunderstand anything?	
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			Purple mats should be rare as they help you create purple gear.  The current drop rate is fine for that material (bones, rare cloth, crystals, etc.).  While I would LIKE to be swimming in bones, it's something that feels worth the price you pay on the commodoties exchange, partly because you don't need alot of them to craft a specific piece of gear.  A Set however, does take time/money, and that's totally legit.	
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Drop rates on cloth and leathers are not bad...The drop rate 100+ leathers or cloth an hour, just farm the correct mobs with survivalist. 
 
Bones are a little slow to drop, but if you salvage the gear that the mobs your farm drop, you'll get bones from the salvage. 	
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{| class="blockquote"
Drop rates on cloth and leathers are not bad...The drop rate 100+ leathers or cloth an hour, just farm the correct mobs with survivalist. 
 
Bones are a little slow to drop, but if you salvage the gear that the mobs your farm drop, you'll get bones from the salvage. 
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Drop rates on cloth and leathers are not bad...The drop rate 100+ leathers or cloth an hour, just farm the correct mobs with survivalist. 
 
Bones are a little slow to drop, but if you salvage the gear that the mobs your farm drop, you'll get bones from the salvage. 
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Of course on the flipside having specific drops be so rare, also means their price is hugely inflated.
 
I for one will not be seen complaining when I'm selling certain types of survivalist resources for 5-15g a piece! - It's bringing in money hand over fist (And also keep competition scarce in the cooking market). Increasing the drop-rate without a corresponding increase in consumption will result in a weaker market over time if that exceeds productivity.
 
Can you imagine armoursmiths complaining they make too much money because there isn't enough competition? ;) - That's what we have right now in the survalist market, capitalise on the situation while it lasts! (Because it won't last, the drop rate is too low to sustain the other crafts and will be buffed and when it's buffed, those sweet sweet profits will evaporate)
			
				
	Edited October 19, 2015 by RyuujinZER0	
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{| class="blockquote"
Purple mats should be rare as they help you create purple gear.  The current drop rate is fine for that material (bones, rare cloth, crystals, etc.).  While I would LIKE to be swimming in bones, it's something that feels worth the price you pay on the commodoties exchange, partly because you don't need alot of them to craft a specific piece of gear.  A Set however, does take time/money, and that's totally legit.
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{| class="blockquote"
Of course on the flipside having specific drops be so rare, also means their price is hugely inflated.
 
I for one will not be seen complaining when I'm selling certain types of survivalist resources for 5-15g a piece! - It's bringing in money hand over fist (And also keep competition scarce in the cooking market). Increasing the drop-rate without a corresponding increase in consumption will result in a weaker market over time if that exceeds productivity.
 
Can you imagine armoursmiths complaining they make too much money because there isn't enough competition? ;) - That's what we have right now in the survalist market, capitalise on the situation while it lasts! (Because it won't last, the drop rate is too low to sustain the other crafts and will be buffed and when it's buffed, those sweet sweet profits will evaporate)
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			But that is NOT my question. Why do you ignore half of what I said?	
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But that is NOT my question. Why do you ignore half of what I said?
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			the crafting bags for challenges are actually not bad for mats either, you get mats @lvl for zone you're in and while it is rng what resources you get i do find purple mats ie cloth bone DO drop from them	
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			i rlly need to type here some things.The OP is totally right, getting surv mats (leather and bones) has just no sense. Im lvling with a friend of mine and he is weaponsmith + miner, and he (without spending a single copper) is a bit above in crafting items from his level. Im outfitter + surv and im above 10 levels above from the items i can craft cause of the lack of leather and bones, and i wont spend 2314957234095234 billions in leather and bones. Carbine, u should fix this by directly making green drop 100% from animals, (whats the sense in being a leatherworker if u can even harsvest a good leather from an animal?). My friend is getting the next lvl "purple crafting mat" (minning thing) and i dont even gettin my currently lvl purple crafting mat (tempered bone) or reinforced leather either (surprisingly i have some hardened pelts).This game is rlly great in so many aspects, but this branch of crafting is rlly out of place. Apologize me for my english and have a good day.
			
				
	Edited October 20, 2015 by Areshased	
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the crafting bags for challenges are actually not bad for mats either, you get mats @lvl for zone you're in and while it is rng what resources you get i do find purple mats ie cloth bone DO drop from them
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Talents are NOT required to level up, therefore they're fine.  Talents just make your crafting more specialized to you
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A ) The middle part was context. You know, what allows you to properly answer a question?
 
B ) What kind of a ridiculous logic is that? If you just want to level up, you can do it easily and *cupcake*the mats because you can do it with nothing buy common materials without doing a single quest. Of course, you, as a crafter, MUST have the talents. MUST. It is not an optional thing, it is mandatory, in fact, getting the full talents is the first priority any crafter should go for! Leveling is something that happens naturally, getting the talents is not. Which of the two do you think you should focus on first and foremost?
 
Also, I disagree that challenges are inefficient. All my tests show it is faster to get the epic materials from the challenge bags than it is to get them from mobs.
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I chose tailoring (and survivalist) with my spellslinger. My friend chose armorer (and miner) with his warrior.
 
He leveled his craft as we were leveling our characters. I got stuck on level 2-3 tailor.
 
I'm level 50 now, and I don't have any idea on where should I go to get cloth. I tried killing level 30 humanoids and after killing a whole camp I only got 1 cloth drop (all while seeing plenty of tree, plant, ore, relic nodes around the minimap). I wish my spellslinger could point her guns on her head and press the trigger, because that's what tailoring is making me want to do to myself...
 
Please, I need a natural way of getting cloth that doesn't make me want to shoot myself with 2 spellguns. I want cloth nodes. I want laundry lines scattered around the world that I can steal. Something direct and understandable, not challenge bags. I could make cloth with plants before the free to play update... it was a bit clunky, but at least I had a natural way of getting materials.
 
Maybe I should just dump tailoring, since I chose it mainly for bags and now it seems you can't make bags...	
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I did a bit of farming in Wilderrun for T3 leather and decided part way to start recording my kills just to get a general idea on the droprate of leather, pelts, and bones.
I don't know if Wildstar has any hidden diminishing returns systems against farming (like GW2), I doubt that they do. In addition, as far as I know every animal has the same drop rate for Survivalist stuff.
 
I killed 100 Grizzlepaw Feralstakers (Level 36-37 Superior rank) and got:
 
-30 Reinforced Leather (magically, the 30th leather dropped on the 100th kill)
-7 Hardened Pelts
-2 Tempered Bones
 
Meaning, for all the effort in killing those 100, I could craft EITHER:
 
-7 Training Tier items
-3 Prototype Tier items
-1 Capstone Tier items
 
 
Now let me say that I'm actually fine with Survivalist having generally less resource income compared to Miner / Relic Hunter, primarily because our "nodes" (animals) are being harvested during general gameplay and that they are generally in greater abundance than other resource nodes. Another way to put it is that you don't have to go out of your way to get your resources while questing. However, when it comes to actually farming mats, there should be nowhere near the current amount of disparity. How much time does it take to kill 100 level 35~ mobs at 50? I wish I kept track of that as well. Let's be very generous and say that it takes maybe 2-3 seconds to kill and around 7-8 seconds of downtime (travelling between spawns, mostly). Around 10 seconds per "node" or 1000 seconds (16.6 minutes) for 100 kills. Out of curiosity, I set a timer for 16 minutes and went through Wilderrun harvesting tree nodes, so right off the bat we're excluding random harvesting events (rock mites, eldan drones, wurm tunnels, etc.).
 
At a leisurely pace (I even stopped for a discovery, a missed lore journal, and got stuck somewhere for a few minutes) I gathered 219 pieces of wood. 219 mats vs 30 mats for 16 minutes of effort. If I could make armor out of wood, that would be 54 Training Tier items. 54 crafts vs 7 crafts. Granted you could say that tree nodes are a bit more abundant or easier to find than relic nodes or ore nodes, but I'd say 16 minutes of effort would net you at least 150 ore/omniplasm as well as many more blue and purple mats.
 
When I say I'm fine with Survivalist having less resource outcome, I do not mean over 5x less.
 
So, some ideas:
 
 
-First and foremost, absolutely make animals be able to drop more than 1 piece of leather on death.
-Increase the drop rates, obviously. When an animal is killed, the expectation should be to get at least 1 piece of leather most of the time, not to get nothing most of the time.
-Have harvest boosters also affect cloth/leather drops (They don't as far as I'm aware).
-Possibly increase the drop rate for Survivalists killing animals below their current tier. E.g. A level 50, tier 5 survivalist should gather leather, pelts and bones off of mobs in Whitevale much faster than a level 25, tier 2 survivalist.
-Similar to how Challenge gear bags only drop loot for your class, have Challenge crafting bags only drop mats for your current professions
-Add gathering tools that allow for more leather or cloth (possibly meats as well) to drop on death. They could either passively increase drop rates while equipped or perhaps be used on some kind of carcass resource node left behind post death.-Bring back survivalist salvage items.
-Have the housing Thicket drop at least 5 leather per use as well as a guaranteed pelt or bone, because come on.
			
				
	Edited October 24, 2015 by Kromulous	
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I agree with your post in general, but a few suggestions simply aren't a g ood idea... 
{| class="blockquote"
Possibly increase the drop rate for Survivalists killing animals below their current tier. E.g. A level 50, tier 5 survivalist should gather leather, pelts and bones off of mobs in Whitevale much faster than a level 25, tier 2 survivalist
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I did a bit of farming in Wilderrun for T3 leather and decided part way to start recording my kills just to get a general idea on the droprate of leather, pelts, and bones.
I don't know if Wildstar has any hidden diminishing returns systems against farming (like GW2), I doubt that they do. In addition, as far as I know every animal has the same drop rate for Survivalist stuff.
 
I killed 100 Grizzlepaw Feralstakers (Level 36-37 Superior rank) and got:
 
-30 Reinforced Leather (magically, the 30th leather dropped on the 100th kill)
-7 Hardened Pelts
-2 Tempered Bones
 
Meaning, for all the effort in killing those 100, I could craft EITHER:
 
-7 Training Tier items
-3 Prototype Tier items
-1 Capstone Tier items
 
 
Now let me say that I'm actually fine with Survivalist having generally less resource income compared to Miner / Relic Hunter, primarily because our "nodes" (animals) are being harvested during general gameplay and that they are generally in greater abundance than other resource nodes. Another way to put it is that you don't have to go out of your way to get your resources while questing. However, when it comes to actually farming mats, there should be nowhere near the current amount of disparity. How much time does it take to kill 100 level 35~ mobs at 50? I wish I kept track of that as well. Let's be very generous and say that it takes maybe 2-3 seconds to kill and around 7-8 seconds of downtime (travelling between spawns, mostly). Around 10 seconds per "node" or 1000 seconds (16.6 minutes) for 100 kills. Out of curiosity, I set a timer for 16 minutes and went through Wilderrun harvesting tree nodes, so right off the bat we're excluding random harvesting events (rock mites, eldan drones, wurm tunnels, etc.).
 
At a leisurely pace (I even stopped for a discovery, a missed lore journal, and got stuck somewhere for a few minutes) I gathered 219 pieces of wood. 219 mats vs 30 mats for 16 minutes of effort. If I could make armor out of wood, that would be 54 Training Tier items. 54 crafts vs 7 crafts. Granted you could say that tree nodes are a bit more abundant or easier to find than relic nodes or ore nodes, but I'd say 16 minutes of effort would net you at least 150 ore/omniplasm as well as many more blue and purple mats.
 
When I say I'm fine with Survivalist having less resource outcome, I do not mean over 5x less.
 
So, some ideas:
 
 
-First and foremost, absolutely make animals be able to drop more than 1 piece of leather on death.
-Increase the drop rates, obviously. When an animal is killed, the expectation should be to get at least 1 piece of leather most of the time, not to get nothing most of the time.
-Have harvest boosters also affect cloth/leather drops (They don't as far as I'm aware).
-Possibly increase the drop rate for Survivalists killing animals below their current tier. E.g. A level 50, tier 5 survivalist should gather leather, pelts and bones off of mobs in Whitevale much faster than a level 25, tier 2 survivalist.
-Similar to how Challenge gear bags only drop loot for your class, have Challenge crafting bags only drop mats for your current professions
-Add gathering tools that allow for more leather or cloth (possibly meats as well) to drop on death. They could either passively increase drop rates while equipped or perhaps be used on some kind of carcass resource node left behind post death.
-Bring back survivalist salvage items.
-Have the housing Thicket drop at least 5 leather per use as well as a guaranteed pelt or bone, because come on.
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			The REAL problem with the purple drop rates being so low even for a survivalist farming cloth is the fact that you need them for DAILIES.  In other words, in order to progress in crafting AT ALL.  And it's not just a few you need either.	
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			Today I went around tring to farm cloth in Northern wastes.  I filled up my challenge bar and not a single one of those chests dropped even one piece of Glamer Cloth, nor did a single piece drop of of a mob.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Today I went around tring to farm cloth in Northern wastes.  I filled up my challenge bar and not a single one of those chests dropped even one piece of Glamer Cloth, nor did a single piece drop of of a mob.
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			are you subbed? just gonna ask that cause if you are'nt subbed drops are gimped for f2p, it's right there on the subscriber benefits page...	
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are you subbed? just gonna ask that cause if you are'nt subbed drops are gimped for f2p, it's right there on the subscriber benefits page...
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			I'm subbed.  I was killing moodies.  Also remember im talking about glamer cloth which is the purple drop not the weave which is a blue drop. I get it, Carbine wanted A) A money sink and B) A time sink in terms of farming mats....but they made a huge error here.  They made schematics that are used in DAILIES that require these purple drops.For the purposes of filling out the tech tree and/or making nice gear for yourself that's fine, it's well worth the effort.  But for a what are supposed to be daily completed quests?!?  Come on Carbine, get real.
			
				
	Edited October 26, 2015 by Kajidourden	
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			was just checking. gonna play my tailor a little more. 1 tip i do have is to have a tech cause their dailies are so stupidly easy and available in EVERY zone i use mine to farm tokens and then buy cloth bags open em then xfer the the cloth. architects if you have the alt army to supply them can do this too since they also get daily's in every zone.	
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