[Feedback] SALVAGING
Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2015 9:09 pm
Dear Game Developers who work for the love of the game without compensation.
As a self-proclaimed active member of this community and one who shares your fondness for the game, I am forced to provide you some constructive feedback on the subject of Salvaging in the game as of 9-20-2015. I am going to use terms like "seems" and "feels" because I can only relay how, as a player, the craft feels and seems to be working. What you do or don't do with this info is up to you. I appreciate that you read this, and listened to my experiences.
The Good:
1. The skill is easy to obtain from the crafting trainers
2. It is free to learn Salvaging
3.Players can burn through the Craft Vendor things (forget the name) at level 1 Salvaging to get up to about 18-25 Salvaging for very little in-game currency.
The not so good:
1. Critical failures seem to occur at a rate not comparable to the "Success Rate" percentage listed on the items. That is, a 54% Success rate item is just about a crap shoot, and I understand how a RNG works, but it feels to me like it fails 80% of the time. It seems that way and that makes me feel sad. Why? see 2 below...
2. Salvaging is an All or Nothing proposition. There's no "OK" item that happens like in Talisman Making with the "Special Moments" and "Critical Successes" you get while making Talismans. No. With Salvaging, it's Win or lose.. and it feels a lot like more Lose than Win.
3. We don't have the items we need to level our Salvaging available to us in the numbers with which we actually need them. Drop Rates for Salvageable gear at levels 10-15 feel abysmal. It seems as if I farm lower level mobs for an hour to obtain 0-1 level 10-15 Salvageable item. I have farmed level 13 Gors near Ostland RVR camp for about 3 hours and obtained 3 items to salvage. Of those 3 items, I had one successful salvage. Those items were 54% Success Rate items for my Salvaging level. Do the math. Was I unlucky on the RNG? Clearly. Should there be this much frustration in leveling a crafting skill in an online game before max level? Hell no.
4. Auction Hall prices are through the roof for Salvageable items at levels 7-18. On average, one Salvageable item at level 10 (when I last looked closely) cost 2.4 Gold. Sure there were some for 1g, 1.2g, 1.5g etc. and some for 99g (get real) but if you throw out the two high and the two low, the items averaged about 2.4 G per item. Do the math.. At 35 Salvaging, I would need 35 more points to get to 70 Salvaging to have a shot at salvaging level 19-23 items (where we are now playing). At a guesstimate Critical Fail Rate of 66% (as evidenced by the 3 items I got after hours of farming) I would actually need 58 items (35*1.66) to hit 70 Salvaging. At 2.4g each item, that's 139.2 gold or approximately 58 hours of mindlessly farming Gors.
How I propose you "Fix" Salvaging:
1. Increase the percent chance for Green Salvageable item drops from Mobs in game. More items means failing hurts less, AH prices come down a bit, and more players will be less frustrated by Salvaging.
2. Vendor Gear that is Salvageable. Make the Renown gear that you can buy for silver, including rings, Salvageable. I only have 2 main characters, and yet I have a Bank Vault full of old renown gear that I can do nothing with except destroy. Making this change would eliminate the need to increase world drop rates, or at least could supplement a slight increase in world drop rates - or any combination thereof.
3. Slide the Scale: I'm not looking for pure ezmode here, but the success rate should feel more like a common thing and not the other way around. I guess if 1 or 2 above is implemented, the success rates could stay the same. The players would still need some coin to level up their Salvaging, but 13.4 G (at an avg vendor price of 23 silver per item) is one hell of a lot more manageable than 132 G
Salvaging, in the current state of the game, just isn't fun. It's work. And after you spend all that time farming items, you fail more than you succeed. Even then, it's not a guarantee that the fragment you get will make the Talisman you need. With so many things that can go wrong in the process, why beat up the players on something so basic?
Make Salvaging fun. ALlow us the access to the mats we need to Salvage enough to make the critical failures sting less.
Help eliminate the AH gougers, and/or simply make BOP renown Equipment salvageable.
my 2ยข
As a self-proclaimed active member of this community and one who shares your fondness for the game, I am forced to provide you some constructive feedback on the subject of Salvaging in the game as of 9-20-2015. I am going to use terms like "seems" and "feels" because I can only relay how, as a player, the craft feels and seems to be working. What you do or don't do with this info is up to you. I appreciate that you read this, and listened to my experiences.
The Good:
1. The skill is easy to obtain from the crafting trainers
2. It is free to learn Salvaging
3.Players can burn through the Craft Vendor things (forget the name) at level 1 Salvaging to get up to about 18-25 Salvaging for very little in-game currency.
The not so good:
1. Critical failures seem to occur at a rate not comparable to the "Success Rate" percentage listed on the items. That is, a 54% Success rate item is just about a crap shoot, and I understand how a RNG works, but it feels to me like it fails 80% of the time. It seems that way and that makes me feel sad. Why? see 2 below...
2. Salvaging is an All or Nothing proposition. There's no "OK" item that happens like in Talisman Making with the "Special Moments" and "Critical Successes" you get while making Talismans. No. With Salvaging, it's Win or lose.. and it feels a lot like more Lose than Win.
3. We don't have the items we need to level our Salvaging available to us in the numbers with which we actually need them. Drop Rates for Salvageable gear at levels 10-15 feel abysmal. It seems as if I farm lower level mobs for an hour to obtain 0-1 level 10-15 Salvageable item. I have farmed level 13 Gors near Ostland RVR camp for about 3 hours and obtained 3 items to salvage. Of those 3 items, I had one successful salvage. Those items were 54% Success Rate items for my Salvaging level. Do the math. Was I unlucky on the RNG? Clearly. Should there be this much frustration in leveling a crafting skill in an online game before max level? Hell no.
4. Auction Hall prices are through the roof for Salvageable items at levels 7-18. On average, one Salvageable item at level 10 (when I last looked closely) cost 2.4 Gold. Sure there were some for 1g, 1.2g, 1.5g etc. and some for 99g (get real) but if you throw out the two high and the two low, the items averaged about 2.4 G per item. Do the math.. At 35 Salvaging, I would need 35 more points to get to 70 Salvaging to have a shot at salvaging level 19-23 items (where we are now playing). At a guesstimate Critical Fail Rate of 66% (as evidenced by the 3 items I got after hours of farming) I would actually need 58 items (35*1.66) to hit 70 Salvaging. At 2.4g each item, that's 139.2 gold or approximately 58 hours of mindlessly farming Gors.
How I propose you "Fix" Salvaging:
1. Increase the percent chance for Green Salvageable item drops from Mobs in game. More items means failing hurts less, AH prices come down a bit, and more players will be less frustrated by Salvaging.
2. Vendor Gear that is Salvageable. Make the Renown gear that you can buy for silver, including rings, Salvageable. I only have 2 main characters, and yet I have a Bank Vault full of old renown gear that I can do nothing with except destroy. Making this change would eliminate the need to increase world drop rates, or at least could supplement a slight increase in world drop rates - or any combination thereof.
3. Slide the Scale: I'm not looking for pure ezmode here, but the success rate should feel more like a common thing and not the other way around. I guess if 1 or 2 above is implemented, the success rates could stay the same. The players would still need some coin to level up their Salvaging, but 13.4 G (at an avg vendor price of 23 silver per item) is one hell of a lot more manageable than 132 G
Salvaging, in the current state of the game, just isn't fun. It's work. And after you spend all that time farming items, you fail more than you succeed. Even then, it's not a guarantee that the fragment you get will make the Talisman you need. With so many things that can go wrong in the process, why beat up the players on something so basic?
Make Salvaging fun. ALlow us the access to the mats we need to Salvage enough to make the critical failures sting less.
Help eliminate the AH gougers, and/or simply make BOP renown Equipment salvageable.
my 2ยข