CANCELED: Forging Changes

[anon67769248]

@deenw

Is there going to be a market for wood/copper forged tools? If not, then low level forgers are still wasting materials. If so, then it’s a good change.

There has always been one. Even if it were my family alone, they’re cheap tools kids can run through on low tier worlds. 40 tools a week is about what they go through on average.

[nevir]

@Jirodyne

It feels like every other nerf you’ve devs ever made, that you looked at a piece of paper, it says Wooden Tools aren’t being made or used. So you force it to have a purpose.

Wooden tools have had high flexibility since the very beginning of forging.

They’re a good place to learn about forging, and play around with combinations.

---

That said, people’s natural tendency will be to forge their best tools. The system (and tutorial, probably) need to fight that somehow

[peregrine]

This will make high-tier forging an unweildy, RNG-fillded mess. There aren’t enough ingredient slots to get the boons you want and have items to counteract quirks and defects. What will happen is that now instead of everyone using draining compound, everyone will use Pure Boon compound because quirks and defects are just too punishing. Deconstruction Resin change is irrelevant because there’s no way forgers can spare an ingredient slot for a reset button. You aren’t addressing the real problem: quirks and defects are unbalanced and people will do whatever it takes to avoid having to deal with them. This is the second forging nerf in a row targeting the compounds that don’t grand quirk/defect points, but you have done nothing to help players deal with quirks and defects or to lessen their effects. Time to forge as much as I can and start hoarding spitter eyes.

Please remember that a nerf to forging is a nerf to the entire economy of the game. It means all high-end mined resources get more rare and more expensive.

EDIT: felt this post was too negative and not constructive enough. So here’s a suggestion: Try giving players 16 slots instead of 8 in the forge. Make it so vigour compound only gives back vigour for buffs, leave Draining Compound unchanged. I bet you would see playing with defects and quirks.

[Simoyd]

@LovinDaTacos

Right now typically if you have a defect on a high end AoE tool you might as well just toss it into a pit of lava for the chances of unloading it with even the smallest issues.

Exactly. People don’t want the defects/quirks. it’s not like “haha, I got a defect lol!” it’s like “there’s a defect on this, it’s garbage now…”

[Honourless]

Just spent the last hour buying up reasonably priced clean hammers&shovels. Just incase

[nevir]

I’d like to surface some ideas from the balance thread a while ago:

@nevir

I think forging quirks might also be something worth taking a look at.

Today, all quirks are negative effects (just generally milder and weirder than defects). This means that players are actively optimizing to avoid both quirks and defects—encouraging us to skip over tiers & progression.

Suggestion: make some quirks desirable (but maybe situationally) Examples:

• Bomb cube: bombs now explode in a cube, reduces radius by N%
• Power hungry: increases damage by N%, but each attack/swing deals M% damage to the player
• Power of the sun: increases damage by N% during the day, reduces damage by N% at night
• Bonus damage while jumping
• Etc

@Arkhainn

Another possible quirk: A hammer randomly ‘eats’ some stone instead of dropping it, but fills the hunger bar (but still uses energy as normal) a little bit when that happens. At the highest level for the quirk, it would eat all the stone and always fill the hunger bar instead of draining it.

That way people that dislike having infinite XP via stone crafting would have something to be happy about, and it would provide an alternative for carrying a million prime steaks in exchange for the loss of the potential stone crafting xp.

[Mittins]

I remember watching Jivita for the first time and seeing a wooden axe with full AOE and thought it was the best thing ever! Then I played and realized there was no reason to use stone or wood forged tools because iron was so much better and available. It would be nice to have that usefulness of wood or stone Like my first experience with forged tools.

[Simoyd]

@peregrine

This will make high-tier forging an unweildy, RNG-fillded mess. There aren’t enough ingredient slots to get the boons you want and have items to counteract quirks and defects. What will happen is that now instead of everyone using draining compound, everyone will use Pure Boon compound because quirks and defects are just too punishing. Deconstruction Resin change is irrelevant because there’s no way forgers can spare an ingredient slot for a reset button. You aren’t addressing the real problem: quirks and defects are unbalanced and people will do whatever it takes to avoid having to deal with them. This is the second forging nerf in a row
targeting the compounds that don’t grand quirk/defect points, but you have done nothing to help players deal with quirks and defects or to lessen their effects.

All of this! People will do anything to 100% avoid defects and quirks. Plz we need more slots to actually use the ingredients you’re giving us!

[rossstephens]

So the main constructive feedback so far I will have a look into:

• More Slots on the deck: Will have a look into it, but yes it makes sense to take advantage of deconstruction resin

• Quirks are too punishing: I will check these out, some might become defects, and maybe coming up with more fun ones

Not a whole lot of time before the next update but i will see what i can do.

[Jirodyne]

Forging was never meant to be easy. It was meant to be an end game thing. Not even ‘An’ end game thing, it was meant to be THE end game thing.

Not something you fiddled with at level 1 or 2, But something you mess with when you have hundreds of Gem Tools, able to farm Gems easily, and now need something stronger and better. So you go to Forging to get the best tools.

It’s why in all my weeks of complaining about grinding and how hard the game was, I never once complained or touched Forging, cause it was always meant to be the hardest end game thing to do.

Because literally, if they take that away, if you can start forging tools right from the very beginning at lvl 1 with Wooden tools. What is there to do at end game? You have nothing else now. Gem Farming becomes the end game now.

Instead of progressing, the game is regressing.

Instead of Conquaring the Gem Wall, and now getting into Forging to make even more powerful tools. You’ve always been able to Forge powerful tools, and the Gem Wall is just a stepping stone that your forged tools now overcome easily.

Then there’s nothing to do. You’ve already been forging since lvl 1, and now you have all the gems you need easily with your 3x3 Hammer you forged. So what else is there to do?

[Psyborg]

Wooden tools have never had any use, really. It’s just for tutorial purposes.

Stone tools last for a while. They are cheap and… very weak. Doubt anyone would forge them…

Now copper / iron tier is the true low level tools tier and should be treated as an entry level.

[rossstephens]

Dont worry, we are not intending this to become a feature you play with at level 6. It still has the same crafting requirements to even start forging. The implication here is that if you have no skills invested in a dedicated forging character, you could craft a stone hammer that can outclass your iron hammer you might be using when first getting into mining on higher tier worlds.

[Venom]

I’d suggest definitely making ravenous a defect, or changed to at least activating the boons at maybe half energy. It made my tool pretty much useless and i ended up just using it as a regular tool

[dbobick]

I am in the camp that believes reactive lamella should be looked at in the compound base recipe, and also some quirks should be considered being changed to defects.

[Brynjar]

@rossstephens

you could craft a stone hammer that can outclass your iron hammer you might be using when first getting into mining on higher tier worlds.

What would be the likely material cost of improving this stone hammer via forging? Why spend the time/skill points to forge this when I could probably put the stat point into tool mastery instead? I’d probably get more usable play time out of just using my mass crafted iron hammers.

[Trundamere]

@rossstephens

Draining Boon Compound was clearly unbalanced

@rossstephens

Draining Boon Compound 2 now adds 400 Quirk Points, Vigour Drain now only lasts 3 turns instead of 5.

While I do agree that the Draining compound + Vigor catalyst may have been a bit overpowered, I feel this nerf is taking it a bit to far and pushing the item into uselessness for high end forging.

I feel you only need to do one or the other not both. Either have it add 400 quirk points OR reduce the drain from 5 to 3.

The 400 Quirk points is enough to make most forgers not want to use the item at all, because Quirks and defects are quite bad.

The Debuff being changed from 5 rounds to 3 rounds alone should be enough to break the synergy between both items. However if this nerf and only this nerf alone was done, then the amount of vigor drained per round would need to go up a little bit.

Just one of the two nerfs alone I feel is enough. To make this item not be a consideration anymore for how it was being used. This feels more like a gutting then a nerf.

[Fallon]

@james

We’ve definitely learned that we need to bring everyone with us when working on the balance. No one likes surprise updates that change the balance without warning. We’re trying to share more details on the forum and requesting feedback before we commit changes to the releases. The simple idea is that if the majority of the community agrees that a particular area is under or overpowered, then they’ll be onboard when the changes land. We also need to be careful about making changes that could dramatically change the balance of the game. A safer strategy is to make a collection of small steps rather than dramatic changes - focusing on evolution, not revolution.

I agree that Draining 2 meta is overpowered with respect to the developers’ intent for the forge system overall. However, I think “Vigour Drain down to 3 rounds” is what I would consider a “small change,” while “Add 400 Defect points” in tandem is a “dramatic change.” I think that we should be tapering/tuning the top tier end moderately, rather than abruptly changing it at this point.

Overall, I think we’re still headed in a good direction. It’s tough to consider the factors when changing an aspect like this one. Part of my hesitancy rests with the fact that we don’t have a schedule for T7 and 8 planets or the arrival of the next tiers of tools. Arguably, we were never supposed to be ravaging T6 planets as well as we are with simple gems. /shrug

Thank you @rossstephens for this detailed update and opportunity to discuss.

[Peyago]

How high can the efficiency go on Gem tools now? I’m trying to see if pure boon 3 is even going to be able to semi-replace our current drain meta. If it does not, I need to spend every waking moment for the next few days making hammers.

[MoriOni]

Ditto @Peyago. Doing this as soon as i get off work. All mass crafts of forge ingrediants about to be dumped tonight.

[FlashKiller69]

—>Draining Boon Death Nerfing:

Seriously dont change Draining Boon Compound was hiped to get into Forging, and its the only think keeping me real playing because everythink keeping many people playing is mining for forging, gathering for forging and forging for End Game tools there is not much other End Game content in the game, like the World bosses promised for exemple. So when you change Draining Boon Compound whats the matter? make it harder to forge Good tools wow… only think happens is Expensiv Tools already costing 20.000c+ getting Ridiculous OP Expensive and costing for Sure 80.000-100.000c just to have a tool without defects and quirks which makes a tool pretty much useless as well as adding a even bigger Grinding Wall than already Exist and keep many player away by just increasing the prices for good tools which new player never cant efford 100k for an hammer when the draining boon gets death nerfed. Thats just messing up High end Crafting. Appreciate the other changes though pretty good for beginner forging but dont Nerf High End Crafting that much just because its a way to forge somethink beatiful you devs think its to perfect and need to have defects cause everytink need to have it good and bad parts right…

Why cant just let the good think happen and forging High End as easy and Noob friendly