100786-itemization-and-stats-in-wildstar-whats-being-done-about-it-page-4

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Because having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Veteran-tier drops is not as bad as having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Raid-tier drops.
 
You should never have crafted blues, go into Genetic Archives, and then salvage or vendor a drop because your crafted blue is better. But, in order for crafting to be relevant and powerful, that should sometimes happen in Veterans.
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{| class="blockquote"
Because having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Veteran-tier drops is not as bad as having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Raid-tier drops.
 
You should never have crafted blues, go into Genetic Archives, and then salvage or vendor a drop because your crafted blue is better. But, in order for crafting to be relevant and powerful, that should sometimes happen in Veterans.
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{| class="blockquote"
Because having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Veteran-tier drops is not as bad as having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Raid-tier drops.
 
You should never have crafted blues, go into Genetic Archives, and then salvage or vendor a drop because your crafted blue is better. But, in order for crafting to be relevant and powerful, that should sometimes happen in Veterans.
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No. With the amount of time you guys REQUIRE us to invest in crafting, it should ALWAYS happen in Veterans.  How many days vs how many runs?  Someone forgot to compare time sinks when they added research.
 
You dropped the ball, hard.  Admit it and correct it properly.  No more band-aid fixes.
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You cannot explain how it "calls for the rng" either or you would have done so (this is J-Tal's job and I'm still waiting for that). You are working on the model that the rune system  even like they want it to be is even a good idea in the first place (verdict now is no and maybe yes in the future).
 
"Good enough"? you're gonna have to explain what that is I guess.
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Because running dungeons for days on end for an item is not a time sink? Fixing the loot system and item system is not killing crafting. It is making all of it progressive and work together.
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I just bought 8 plat worth of Grovetender's mittens from Drusera faction Beloved. They cost about 18g each.
 
 
All of the runes were crap. over 90% of them rolled only 2 runeslots.
 
"Players will WANT to buy the item over and over and over again" -Jtal
 
Yeah I really enjoyed this. :|
 
 
edit: guess I'll have to settle for a 2 slot air:life because the four items that rolled 3 slots had logic or earth (not good for healer). None rolled 4 of the potential 2-4 rune slots.
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You understand that 20 plat on a ~20g item means he acquired the item 100 times. 100 times and he settled with pretty bad slots (but 4x).
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You understand that rune counts are going to be fixed, eliminating a major part of the bad luck RNG he was facing.  And that rune slot options are being expanded, so that he wouldn't immediately throw out anything with Earth.  And that stats are being rebalanced, so that Assault Power, Support Power, and other secondary stats aren't the run away favorites.  And that rune sets are being improved, so you actually have a choice between an AP/SP/main stat rune or a set rune.
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I just hope this happens sooner rather than later.
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Not sure how else to say it - it's rng because their design calls for rng. That's all you need to know - it's how the product was designed.
 
Have you ever been on a product team before? Decisions are made, designs are created, and specifications are written.
 
Then, through real-world usage -- in the form of data, or othewrwise -- you can iterate on those designs. You can start identifying trends and patterns and use that as one source to inform how to improve or change your product.
 
It's pretty hard to release a perfect product right out of the gate without real-world data.
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No. With the amount of time you guys REQUIRE us to invest in crafting, it should ALWAYS happen in Veterans.  How many days vs how many runs?  Someone forgot to compare time sinks when they added research.
 
You dropped the ball, hard.  Admit it and correct it properly.  No more band-aid fixes.
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That's how I feel about all of this. The fixes sound like the right idea, but until they happen we've got to deal with the system as it is.
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I just hope this happens sooner rather than later.
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The language in the OP makes it very clear that this isn't some fear-weather change to be expected within the next month.
 
This is a radical re-design of a huge part of itemization. I wouldn't expect this change until November. And I definitely won't be staying around that long anyways.
 
This game had its chance.
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{| class="blockquote"
Because having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Veteran-tier drops is not as bad as having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Raid-tier drops.
 
You should never have crafted blues, go into Genetic Archives, and then salvage or vendor a drop because your crafted blue is better. But, in order for crafting to be relevant and powerful, that should sometimes happen in Veterans.
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{| class="blockquote"
Because having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Veteran-tier drops is not as bad as having Veteran-tier crafted items be potentially better than Raid-tier drops.
 
You should never have crafted blues, go into Genetic Archives, and then salvage or vendor a drop because your crafted blue is better. But, in order for crafting to be relevant and powerful, that should sometimes happen in Veterans.
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In addition to looking at Runes, we are also fixing up some of the raid loot tables and items. We will be looking at raid itemization in the next couple of weeks and focusing on two main issues (that are not Rune related):
 
1) Some raid drops are really weird, bad or poorly optimized stat distributions and combinations. Nobody wants Deflect Critical on Light Armor. So we'll be cleaning up a lot of these oddly stated items.
2) Some boss tables are not as clean as they could be, considering the large number of available drops. A good example of this is that Ohmna has something like 56 potential drops (some of them really valuable and powerful weapons) but they're all rolled together. We would like to break this out a little more such that every Ohmna kill guarantees at least 1 weapon drop and 1 Class Set drop. Small changes like that make progression feel much smoother and much more rewarding.
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I would like to emphasize that those numbers for Rune Counts were an example. There seems to be a lot of focus on exactly how those specific numbers will play out. But it's very likely those are not exactly what we will be going with.
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https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/85171-top-known-issues-open/?p=1063328
 
Proof that the changes listed int this topic are planned for Drop 3, or is the linked issue about specific item fixes?	
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You understand that rune counts are going to be fixed, eliminating a major part of the bad luck RNG he was facing.  And that rune slot options are being expanded, so that he wouldn't immediately throw out anything with Earth.  And that stats are being rebalanced, so that Assault Power, Support Power, and other secondary stats aren't the run away favorites.  And that rune sets are being improved, so you actually have a choice between an AP/SP/main stat rune or a set rune.
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They just said they're fixing rune counts and making AP less OP. Nowhere did they mention they're adjusting rune set bonuses, so the fact that I can't get Firestarter/Spellweaver on my esper in anything but fire slots means the change is worthless to me.
 
Getting that 12/12 bonus is even more important than the stats you can slot in the runes, and the fact remains that earth runes have set bonuses completely irrelevant to magic DPS. Spellweaver is on Fire, Water, and Life. For Water and Life to even be worth it (that means getting ginesse and crit hit close in benefit to AP), you'd have to nerf AP by a good amount, and I doubt AP won't still be optimal over the other stats.
 
So as an Esper having more runeslots means nothing if those runeslots are not fire/fusion.
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https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/85171-top-known-issues-open/?p=1063328
 
Proof that the changes listed int this topic are planned for Drop 3, or is the linked issue about specific item fixes?
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They just said they're fixing rune counts and making AP less OP. Nowhere did they mention they're adjusting rune set bonuses, so the fact that I can't get Firestarter/Spellweaver on my esper in anything but fire slots means the change is worthless to me.
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I would like to emphasize that those numbers for Rune Counts were an example. There seems to be a lot of focus on exactly how those specific numbers will play out. But it's very likely those are not exactly what we will be going with.
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There is significant value in gathering feedback as early in the process as possible.
 
Many times we will be tossing around multiple ideas or solutions and inevitably the question with arise about how the players will react to certain decisions. I think the easiest way to find that out ... is to just ask. There are pitfalls, obviously, to doing so. But I can honestly say that the feedback in this thread has definitely influenced the direction of things to come.	
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Will you be addressing the massive difference in power between AP, crit hit, crit severity and strikethrough?
 
That's the core issue here that is breaking everything else. Some rune slots unviable? Because  they can't roll ap or ap stat. Some gear sucks? Because they have too much budget in secondary stats. Crafting over-powered? Because it can make pure ap gear and roll rune slots over and over.
 
I personally am not satisfied at all with the current plans as it's fixing symptoms and not the central illness in itemization. It will keep itemization extremely boring with "always aim for AP" as the only consideration. Yeah, runes will be somewhat less frustrating, and raid gear might finally be viable, but there will still be a huge pile of gear that sucks  because it has too much of its budget in secondary dps stats.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Will you be addressing the massive difference in power between AP, crit hit, crit severity and strikethrough?
 
That's the core issue here that is breaking everything else. Some rune slots unviable? Because  they can't roll ap or ap stat. Some gear sucks? Because they have too much budget in secondary stats. Crafting over-powered? Because it can make pure ap gear and roll rune slots over and over.
 
I personally am not satisfied at all with the current plans as it's fixing symptoms and not the central illness in itemization. It will keep itemization extremely boring with "always aim for AP" as the only consideration. Yeah, runes will be somewhat less frustrating, and raid gear might finally be viable, but there will still be a huge pile of gear that sucks  because it has too much of its budget in secondary dps stats.
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Stat weights are under review as well. This has been stated already. 
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There is significant value in gathering feedback as early in the process as possible.
 
Many times we will be tossing around multiple ideas or solutions and inevitably the question with arise about how the players will react to certain decisions. I think the easiest way to find that out ... is to just ask. There are pitfalls, obviously, to doing so. But I can honestly say that the feedback in this thread has definitely influenced the direction of things to come.
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You got a source for that? I've read all of j-tal's posts and the closest I've seen is that they're addressing the brutality(or other ap stat)/ap discrepancy and the grit/health discrepancies. I've seen no mention of balancing the primary and secondary stats.
 
I have a sneaking suspicion they never intended for the secondary stats to be as powerful(hence calling them secondary), but if that is the case it would be nice to see confirmation, and to know what their plans for them are.
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J-Tal, can we get any specific feedback on how you're looking at tank itemization? Right now tanks need a large pool of stats(armor, health, deflect crit, strikethrough, support power, etc), whereas dps can focus on almost a singular build path. Because of this, especially the lack of strikethrough, dps is massively outscaling tank classes with the improvement of gear. We cannot afford to gear solely for support power and strikethrough because we have to be able to survive, and there is a massive gap between the strikethrough provided on tanking gear and that which seems to naturally flow into the hands of dps classes. As such the lower threat classes(Warriors and Stalkers to a lesser extent), are facing major threat issues when it comes to scaling up through GA and datascape. Is there any way you could across the board increase the item budget on tank items and just add some strikethrough, or is there some other solution you can come up with? Right now the problems with my class(warrior) are only exacerbated by the problems with itemization. 
 
Also, looking at rune options for tanks the strikethrough runes once again come up short, and there is very little in the way of threat generation set bonuses. While we're at it, warrior class runes are essentially a non-entity at the moment, as no one has any reason to use them. 
 
Lastly, two minor personal requests. First, I have a pair of Osun Battlestrife Ruinboots that I would love to play around with, but keeping the special up for any length of time is extremely difficult without the dasher enchantment....which also comes from boots. Any chance you could expand the duration of this effect a little so it's actually possible to try and use them? Secondly, I will be murdered by a guildmate if I don't request this: Why don't spellslingers have access to cowboy hats? This seems to be a pressing issue to many of the slingers in my guild, I would go so far as to say their number one issue. They have the pistols. They have the duster. Where is the cowboy hat? 
 
Thanks for your time J-Tal, and I thoroughly appreciate how open you've been through this and I look forward to seeing the changes you make. 	
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			Sorry Jeff but your Posts dont promise a satisfying solution tbh. You talk about mitigating /rng, imo /rng must be removed completely when it Comes to DPS/HPS, etc. If you really must, keep it for minmaxing stats but its Impact on dps values should not be higher than 5% in the end. One Thing that bothers me is the announcement of new epic crafting recipes to be added in a future patch. I am afraid that the Problem will only be moved from blue crafted gear to epic gear that will be even more expensive but never the less as /rng as items that are currently found. There is enough /rng inflicted with drop luck. I like the idea of making rune Colors relevant for set boni (as Long as the Impact of rng elements isnt high). My most appreciated solution would be to completely remove rune crafting for it absolutely doesn't match the game's current stat System (Separation of Primary and secondary stats is simply not useful if there is no diminishing Returns in the game, you even mitigate the Milestone System [which is fun imo!] by adding secondary stat runes to the game that are far superior!). The whole development of this debate painfully reminds me of one specific Action RPG that featured much rng and that was really considered to be fun by it's devs... Please don't let this happen to this game, find a solution that actually works and that ties Player DPS and other "E-Peen-Stuff" to Player skill instead of /rng. Nevertheless thx for sharing your thoughts with your customers ;)	
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			People claim amp and ability point expanders drop from pvp bags but after grinding for months I have never seen a single one...so it ain't much better in pvp land. At the very least, be thankful they haven't quite thrown PvE under a bus like they just did to PvP...twice now.	
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Sorry Jeff but your Posts dont promise a satisfying solution tbh. You talk about mitigating /rng, imo /rng must be removed completely when it Comes to DPS/HPS, etc. If you really must, keep it for minmaxing stats but its Impact on dps values should not be higher than 5% in the end. One Thing that bothers me is the announcement of new epic crafting recipes to be added in a future patch. I am afraid that the Problem will only be moved from blue crafted gear to epic gear that will be even more expensive but never the less as /rng as items that are currently found. There is enough /rng inflicted with drop luck. I like the idea of making rune Colors relevant for set boni (as Long as the Impact of rng elements isnt high). My most appreciated solution would be to completely remove rune crafting for it absolutely doesn't match the game's current stat System (Separation of Primary and secondary stats is simply not useful if there is no diminishing Returns in the game, you even mitigate the Milestone System [which is fun imo!] by adding secondary stat runes to the game that are far superior!). The whole development of this debate painfully reminds me of one specific Action RPG that featured much rng and that was really considered to be fun by it's devs... Please don't let this happen to this game, find a solution that actually works and that ties Player DPS and other "E-Peen-Stuff" to Player skill instead of /rng. Nevertheless thx for sharing your thoughts with your customers ;)
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RNG is part of the itemization and progression design, I don't see any way to remove it. Or any reason. Just stop expecting to have such specific control over your itemization and instead min/max within what you have. Which by the way you might want to look at your 5% assumption.
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RNG is part of the itemization and progression design, I don't see any way to remove it. Or any reason. Just stop expecting to have such specific control over your itemization and instead min/max within what you have. Which by the way you might want to look at your 5% assumption.
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@Lethality:
 
An rng based margin of ~+100% dps between good and bad sockets is simply ridiculous, Let's see what ideas Jeff has, but he should not be waiting for too Long and probably give more updates or an ETA. ppl on my Server get quite impatient and nervous with current raids not providing a single update but just costing platinum that could be spent for crafting and thus preparing much better for DS. And the recent nerf of PvP gear is a slap in the face, leaving those ones who already got it with a VERY huge advantage. You should have given omni slots to current raiding gear instead...
 
Please, do something Jeff and do it SOON!	
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@Lethality:
 
An rng based margin of ~+100% dps between good and bad sockets is simply ridiculous,
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			Either they give us a special crafting station or giving us a crafting skill that will allow us to change our slot types. Some slot types are wasted on certain classes.	
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The right amount of RNG = generates complexity to the game and items. It's part of life and games. 
The amount of RNGception in WS, considering the relative difficulty of the game in all aspects = one of the worst game designs I can possible imagine. It's an unintended consequence of the whole picture together (all RNGs and difficulty), plus a bad understanding of how human psychology, reward and motivation actually works in a rational and scientific way. 	
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All they need to do is make strikethrough/critical hit/sev scale in a similar way to ap so that they become valid choices.
 
Removing the rng in the count, keeping the random colours and making all primary/secondary stats viable(with breakpoints like strikethrough cap) makes itemization interesting and varied. The problem now isn't the fact that the runeslot types are random. It's that there's a huge discrepancy. If the dps boost from getting say crit hit/sev was sometimes better, than ap it would be a good slot. Most MMO's with good itemization have carefully balanced attack power against critical hit so that depending on your build one or the other is more valuable.
 
They don't need to fix the random rune types(only their number). They need to fix secondary stat scaling to be competitive to primary stat. This also instantly fixes crafted gear being overly powerful. The stat weights right now are pitifully bad.	
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I do wish more devs posted in the forum more often, they're always entertaining.
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@Lethality: Didn't do exact math on this, i have to admit. I just looked into a warrior spreadsheet and calculated my current stat weights => AP being 4x more valuable as crit and 2,5x more valuable as brutallity.
 
@juhanic: Just imagine u got enough rune sockets to bring one stat to it's diminishing Returns soft cap. now you are reliant of finding good rune Colors again. your idea would just move the Problem and mitigate it as Jeff stated and this is exactly the solution i am afraid of for it doesn't solve the Problem in the end cuz rng simply stays ingame.
 
@valnak: I am afraid this game already failed... carbine can whitewash the Population Counts as often and as passionate as they want. of course my sample is quite small compared to all Servers but most of the ppl i know already quit (quited?) the game for it's hard and unrewarding rng. Most known guilds on progenitor who recruited at headstart simply perished over the time and now even the best raiding guilds are having recruitment Problems. I hardly doubt that there will be one single guild that will be able to raid datascape without merging with another raid. and i doubt that there will be more than 1-2 guilds in Germany that will successfully clear DS. I've accompanied dieing MMOs too often to ignore this bad Feeling I have, watching the hopeful constructive or flamy Posts in the forums, ppl coming along with good ideas just to watch the devs not doing anything senseful in the end (though they emphazise Player Feedback). it's a sad Story and a specific mmo-addon coming out in the next few months will give this game it's death strike.	
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There is significant value in gathering feedback as early in the process as possible.
 
Many times we will be tossing around multiple ideas or solutions and inevitably the question with arise about how the players will react to certain decisions. I think the easiest way to find that out ... is to just ask. There are pitfalls, obviously, to doing so. But I can honestly say that the feedback in this thread has definitely influenced the direction of things to come.
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Do you mind if I ask how you are doing that math? How did you validate it?
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In addition to looking at Runes, we are also fixing up some of the raid loot tables and items. We will be looking at raid itemization in the next couple of weeks and focusing on two main issues (that are not Rune related):
 
1) Some raid drops are really weird, bad or poorly optimized stat distributions and combinations. Nobody wants Deflect Critical on Light Armor. So we'll be cleaning up a lot of these oddly stated items.
2) Some boss tables are not as clean as they could be, considering the large number of available drops. A good example of this is that Ohmna has something like 56 potential drops (some of them really valuable and powerful weapons) but they're all rolled together. We would like to break this out a little more such that every Ohmna kill guarantees at least 1 weapon drop and 1 Class Set drop. Small changes like that make progression feel much smoother and much more rewarding.
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Hey J-tal I know you're busy and all, but I thought maybe you may consider this idea for handling Rune slots in the future:
 
I having a way to "reforge" rune slots would be nice...
 
Perhaps even just having a way to "force" a talisman in a slot at the cost of its effectiveness?
Like if I wanted to put a +physical resist into a life rune slot that would give me +222 if it were an actual physical resist slot it'd give me +180 instead or whatever lower slot would be. This lets people rune how they feel best sutis them and while it's not the ABSOLUTE best, still allows them to get close.
 
I can't recall actual percentages of each slot, but to further explain and using random simply numbers.
 
In this scenario we're using a 1 slot weapon.
Let's say that 1st slot is 100% , 2nd slot is 75%(again I don't remember actual percentages ofhand)
 
My weapon has a logic slot but I want a +health rune put on it, which would come normally from earth and life runes.
 
I make the+health anyway and plop it in the logic slot. Normally I would get +400 health, BUT because it's not a matching slot a penalty is put in and instead of getting 100%, I get 75% of the benefit from that rune, resulting in +300 health...	
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Ohhh I like the disposable vendor runeset idea.
Gotta disagree with Seraph there. I'm one of the no doubt many people who saw rune prices during leveling, saw the potential benefits, and decided to wait until level cap to bother. Cheap weak versions sounds like an excellent idea. :)
 
Another option might be to rebalance the materials required for crafting? You know: Make level cap rune sets use only high level rune materials but much more of them (e.g. Eldan fragments are almost worthless right now because the market is flooded, while normal fragments still sell for several gold despite the well known vendor-salvage-"trick".
Obviously this would disrupt the rune economy and allow some people to amass vast amounts of platinum, but that's usually what happens with item rebalancing from my experience.
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			2.5 months on and we still have no idea WHEN these theoretical AP/SP changes will come.	
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2.5 months on and we still have no idea WHEN these theoretical AP/SP changes will come.
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			The AP/SP is not in the November patch?	
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Its almost certainly in Drop 3 - its just not in the partial patch notes they've re-released. Possibly because the best-geared DPS players are going to pitch a huge hissy fit when it becomes clear that Drop 3 is really saying "Yes, the players beat us at our own game because they understood the implications of mono-stat game design better than we did and now we have to reset the whole system." Reset meaning that the current model of STACK ALL THE AP!!!!!! cannot be allowed to remain the blatantly optimal strategy.
 
There will be nerfs. Sweeping ones. There MUST BE. But they're in no rush to announce that.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Its almost certainly in Drop 3 - its just not in the partial patch notes they've re-released. Possibly because the best-geared DPS players are going to pitch a huge hissy fit when it becomes clear that Drop 3 is really saying "Yes, the players beat us at our own game because they understood the implications of mono-stat game design better than we did and now we have to reset the whole system." Reset meaning that the current model of STACK ALL THE AP!!!!!! cannot be allowed to remain the blatantly optimal strategy.
 
There will be nerfs. Sweeping ones. There MUST BE. But they're in no rush to announce that.
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