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  1. #1

    Design suggestion: A cure for the crafting blues

    Defining the problem
    Crafting in The Division is limited at best and useless at worst. Most of the time it falls somewhere in between. This is my attempt to design crafting that not only is fun and rewarding, but also can be implemented with little effort from Massive and team. (It's very likely that someone else has already posted some, most or all of these suggestions but I didn't look for other suggestions on purpose as I like these types of design challenges.)

    The biggest issue is that crafting has a very limited impact on gameplay, both while leveling up and during the end game, unless you spend tons of time at the crafting table.

    Since you can only craft a limited number of types of items, that in turn all have random stats (be it within certain given constraints), it's neither fun nor easy to craft something that positively affects gameplay. Combine this with the fact that it's very hard to find any blueprints at all that you want to spend time on to begin with and crafting is never going to be fun.

    Crafting needs to involve effort in order to be rewarding but that effort can't be "lucking out" when checking the blueprints vendor, and then hoping for the best when crafting your item. The player needs to be more in control, or at least get the feeling that they are in control.

    So, how do we change crafting to make it have a bigger impact on gameplay without totally rewriting the game and how it works? I'll do my best to explain my take on this.

    Random is fine, but only when it doesn't really matter
    Let's address the main problem, the randomization of stats and talents when crafting. This is an enormous detriment not only to crafting but to the game as a whole. (As a quick aside, I don't really mind the RNG on found loot, as finding loot should be a crapshoot anyhow.)

    Ok, Captain Obvious, how do we fix this?

    The simple answer is to randomize where the impact isn't as huge; when looting crafting materials. Allow me to elaborate.

    Today we have four types of materials; electronics, fabric, tools, and weapon parts. This is not enough in order to create interesting crafting, so let's add some more "sub materials" (these are examples):

    Electronics PCB Wire Battery Breaker Microcontroller
    Fabric Cloth Kevlar Carbon fiber Microfiber mesh Canvas
    Tools Spring Cog Lever Buckle Plate
    Weapon parts Stock Trigger Bolt Slide stop Safety switch

    This means that when looting fabric, for example, you now get one specific type of fabric . What type of "sub material" you get is random, but it's not that critical if you don't get exactly what you want as you can farm more materials until you get what you need.

    In order to add another dimension needed for Gear Set items and specific talents, I say we add a new category of materials:

    Rare metals Gold Silver Platinum Iridium Osmium

    These are only dropped by named bosses. Important to understand is that a boss always drops a rare metal, though it's random what specific rare metal. This way you always get rewarded one way or another if you farm world bosses, or do missions, in order to get a specific rare metal.

    Fine, we now have a plethora of materials - what do we do with them?

    I'm glad you asked.

    Blueprints have to be predictable
    In the current version of the game you really don't know what you'll get when you craft an item. This is, in plain English, bullcrap.

    For weapons, not only can the actual damage per bullet vary, all the talents are also random. For gear, it can be even worse with armor, stat (or stats for the holster) and talent all being randomly selected.

    My suggestion is that a blueprint always produces a predictable item. It's just really hard to get them to do that.

    Let's begin with a weapon. A blueprint for, for example an MP5, can be used to create any combination of DMG and talents - it's what you use when crafting that dictates the outcome.

    As an example, a "base" MP5 might need four springs, one stock, three plates, one PCB, and one Kevlar. These are not meant to make sense, that would be impossible - what's important is that you need a specific amount of specific, different, materials. Crafting an MP5 using only these materials would be exactly as crafting today, everything is random.

    This way you can roll the dice and hope for the best if you only have enough materials for the base model.

    Now, let's say that you want as much DMG as possible, because why wouldn't you? Then you need to add twice the amount of "base" ingredients.

    As for talents, you can either rely on the luck of the draw, the way it works today (or as described above with the "base" model) or you can add rare metals in order to get what you want. There are thirty five talents and three slots per weapon (and not all talents are allowed on all weapons) so this requires a large number of combinations, but this is absolutely possible if we use all five rare metals.

    Purely as an example, let's say that you want Hurried, Swift, and Adept on your MP5. You would then use two Gold, one Platinum, and three Osmium to get this combination. Guaranteed.

    So, once you have acquired an MP5 blueprint, you "just" need the materials in order to craft any type of MP5.

    The exact same logic applies to gear and mods; a blueprint allows crafting of every combination of stats and talent, as long as you have the required material.

    The amount of a specific material will absolutely have to be adjusted and fine-tuned, perhaps you need fourteen springs, and not four, but you get the idea.

    Acquiring blueprints
    No matter what changes we make to crafting, if there is no way to reliably get blueprints, or at least have fun while trying to get the blueprints (running to the vendor after a refresh is very low on my "fun" scale) we're dead in the water. So let's try and fix that.

    One way could of course be to make them random drops, but that's neither very logical nor creative so I say we try and do better.

    My suggestion is to create a new type of encounter, similar to the High Value Targets, but for getting blueprints. All factions have a number of locations that serve as R&D labs or weapon workshops where blueprints can be found.

    Getting information about these encounters is done with Target Intel and can even be "sold" by the same vendors as for HVT.

    If you want to give the player more choice the vendors can even have information about what type of blueprint the different locations have; SMG, assault rifle, body armor, performance mod, etc. That way a player doesn't go off on too much of a wild goose chase.

    These encounters are mostly made up of engineers with some scouts and guards, perhaps the occasional special agent if the blueprint is really valuable (more on that later). There should also be an emphasis on turrets, explosives and other "environmental" obstacles, in order to drive home the "techy" nature of the encounter. The actual blueprints can be found in one of a number of archives or drawers at the location.

    There are a number of locations already available in the game to re-use for this, and it's vital that they are indoors. Partly to bring a more thematically correct approach to it, but mainly to provide some close quarters fighting that I feel that the game lack in many of the other encounters (outside of the Underground).

    As for the actual blueprints you can find, they "scale" very much like the HVT do; the more you are prepared to pay, the more valuable - and harder to get - is the blueprint. The most expensive are Gear Set blueprints, but these are heavily guarded - with multiple "layers". Guards at the front door, engineers in adjacent rooms, and finally one or more special agents in addition to guards and engineers in the actual R&D lab.

    If you fail to get a blueprint of this caliber it's removed from the list, and you'll have to wait for it to show up at a later time. Just like with a high risk HVT.

    In addition to this I also have to mention that the current blueprint management interface is really clunky. There has to be a better way of managing the blueprints, especially if you need to list complex material combinations.

    Grenades
    As of now we can craft weapons, gear set items and mods, but I want to be able to craft grenades as well. Why can I refill ammunition and perishables, but not grenades? At least allow me to craft them.

    It's entirely possible to make this as hard or as easy as needed by adjusting what materials that are needed, and the amount of them.

    Exotics and Classified Gear Sets?
    These should never be "craftable" in my opinion. Getting an exotic or Classified drop should be a big deal.

    What about recalibrating?
    Use the same mechanics, but on an existing weapon. If you want to change a specific talent, select the talent you wish to replace and provide the required materials to change it.

    How does the Optimization Station fit in?
    I see this as a way for those who doesn't want to farm materials to still get a really good item. From a thematic perspective, they simply pay someone else to optimize their gear instead of doing it themselves.

    Deconstructing items
    Deconstructing an item provides the type of materials needed to craft it, with a total of 1/5 of the number of materials required to craft it (you get 4 materials back if you needed 20 to craft the item).

    Adding a bit more theme
    One addition, that is purely thematic, is to use different locations in the base for crafting different items.

    Weapons should be crafted next to the weapon parts cache, gear items should be crafted at the existing crafting table, and mods should be crafted on the second floor, next to the electronics cache.

    In summary

    Adding many more types of different materials allows for more complex and predictable crafting, where a blueprint in combination with a specific set of materials always guarantee the same outcome.

    So, where's the challenge in this? In the farming of the materials.

    Yeah, I know, we all hate "grinding for mats", but compared to crafting the same item, over, and over, and over, and over, and… you get the idea, in the hopes of getting the exact combination you're looking for, I pick farming all day long, every day of the week.

    Applying randomization to the looting of materials instead of when crafting, and adding the drop of rare metals from bosses, requires a player to invest time and effort in order to get the item specifically desired. Players who are absolutely dead set on getting a specific item, with specific stats, will always spend the time and effort required to do so.

    My suggestions allows these players to do this in a much more controlled manner, as well as allowing casual players to gather materials and blueprints as they play the game, and then craft what they want when they have the resources to do so.

    And if a player doesn't want to grind for materials, they can grind for Division Tech instead and use the Optimization Station.

    Thanks for your time.
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  2. #2
    UbiInsulin's Avatar Community Manager
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    Nov 2015
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    Thanks very much Martin. This is a very interesting post, and I'll be sure to send it to the team as food for thought.
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  3. #3
    Originally Posted by UbiInsulin Go to original post
    Thanks very much Martin. This is a very interesting post, and I'll be sure to send it to the team as food for thought.
    Thanks, I appreciate it.
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  4. #4
    I think you should remove crafting from the game all together. It is boring and kinda pointless. The only reason I ever do it is for the weeklies and I really thinks it adds nothing to the game experience.
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  5. #5
    Originally Posted by POP_HankHeathen Go to original post
    I think you should remove crafting from the game all together. It is boring and kinda pointless. The only reason I ever do it is for the weeklies and I really thinks it adds nothing to the game experience.
    I totally agree, but I also do it in order to get good weapons, but that's still an extremely boring and frustrating activity. Those two reasons (boring and pointless) is exactly what I'm trying to address in my post above.

    With a bit of luck we might get crafting that's actually useful and rewarding.
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  6. #6
    Very interesting idea. I agree that this would help wash away a lot of the RNG that plagues the current system, and in a very effective way too.
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