Yesterday I talked about randomness and luck as it relates to DarkFall’s combat, and how I believe the game benefits from having such events kept to a minimum. Today I want to address the other side of the coin; the randomness in DarkFall’s crafting and how it affects the overall economy.
Unlike in WoW or many other MMOs, each item you make in DarkFall will have slightly different damage and durability stats. For example, a rank 40 axe can have its damage range go anywhere from .52 (mob drop) to .57 (max). That .05 damage difference is the average difference between weapon ranks; or in other words, a top-damage rank 30 is just as good as a mob drop rank 40. Durability is also a little random, but a few points difference in durability is not nearly as big a factor as damage. The main differences in durability come from the Trueforge skills, and secondly your wisdom stat.
This randomness goes a long way to determining an items value, and presents some interesting choices. For instance, say you craft a few rank 60 weapons, and out of the batch you get one top-end piece. If you can afford it, you can opt to sell the lower damage weapons for a reduced cost and keep the higher end ones for personal use. Or, if the somewhat minor difference is not something you value highly, you can instead sell the top-end item for a nice premium and still use the other weapons you crafted. Factor in enchantment ‘crits’, and you can really build some very expensive stuff.
And the difference between the system in DarkFall and say the crit system in LotRO is of course the full loot and durability aspects. In LotRO the crit version of an item becomes the ‘best in slot’ item (assuming there is not a better PvE-based item to get), and the non-crit version is vendor junk for most players. In DarkFall, due to the fact that someone is likely to loot you, or even if you are really good, eventually due to durability even the best items are lost and need to be replaced. It’s because of this that non-crit items still retain much of their value, and why mid-level crafted items like rank 40s and scale/plate armor are still in demand. If DarkFall had rules similar to most themeparks, the only items worth crafting/selling would be Dragon Armor with Q5 enchants and Q5 keened R80s. That sounds silly if you actually play DarkFall, but it’s the reality in so many other MMOs.
And aside from the final stats on a crafted weapon, there are also other things to consider when determining an items final value. For instance, even the best crafters don’t have a 100% chance to create anything. Even a simple task like smelting ore into ingots has at least a 1% chance to fail, and smelting rare ore can be as high as 20% depending on your skill and stats. Now failing to smelt a regular iron ingot is not that big a deal. Sure you lose some ore, but at an average price of about 8 gold per ore, ‘wasting’ one or two is not very noticeable. If you fail to smelt a theyril ingot, where one piece of ore goes for around 4000 gold, well, that stings. And then of course you can fail actually making an item that requires a theyril ingot and lose it that way, which is a quick 8000 gold hit. Factor all of this in, and it’s not hard to see why some of the top-end gear goes for the prices it goes for.
The final piece of this somewhat complex puzzle is that the truly expensive gear; stuff that goes for 10k+, is really only marginally better than gear that costs you a few thousand instead. Take for example the difference between a Q5 (max) keen enchantment versus a Q3 (mid level) enchantment. The Q5 on average adds .11 damage to a weapon, while a Q3 adds .07 damage. The average difference is .04, which might only translate to 1-2 hit points of additional damage per swing. The average cost difference is literally thousands, and we are talking just one enchant on one non-permanent item. Multiply this across half a dozen items, and you just turned an ‘average’ 3-5k ready bag into a crazy 100k+ bag, both of which can easily be lost if you happen to get into a bad combat situation or simply get outplayed (or best of all, crash or disconnect and die).
It’s all of these dynamics working together (randomness in crafting, item power/cost scaling, full loot and durability) that keep the DarkFall economy going, and allow for mid-level players to still compete in certain situations (not 1v1s) against top-end players. The best player in DarkFall might die once for every ten deaths you die, but when that single death costs him 100k and your average death costs you 2k, things balance themselves out, especially if you loot that 100k bag and end up selling it to fund your level of gear. This is also why important sieges are such events, because almost everyone pulls out their top-end stuff, and the winners can walk away with a fortune in gear.
(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)
Hardcore Casual 
The average difference is .04, which might only translate to 1-2 hit points of additional damage per swing.
One of the things I like about DF is that someone could say, “Screw it. I’m a good player, it’s not worth it for .04” and it wouldn’t make a difference in the outcome.
In games that are finely tuned encounters, that .04 is important because the dev is designing for it.
But in a game where you can’t hit someone just because they are good at not being hit — well, that .04 isn’t quite as important.
True.
And like almost anything in DF, looking at just one factor is usually not enough. The .04 might not be much, but combined with a similar difference across 4-5 enchants, and 3-4 skills (75 mastery vs 90 lets say), and the end result is one guy hitting for 30 with 350hp and the other hitting for 25 with 320hp. Enough to turn a bad player into a beast? No, but enough to determine the winner between two near-equals.
Shortly before my newb protection was about to wear off, I decided to roll a new character to change my name.
My first character died A LOT to goblins. The shamans, in particular, were unkind to me.
My second go around as a fresh character, I not only didn’t die — I was easily killing everything. Shamans, Fighters, Scouts.. no problem.
In fact, I wasn’t having much of a harder time with them than I was when I had quit the first character. To the point where I pretty much got the Goblin title quest mostly naked.
Same race, level 0 ranked skills, no gear or money. The only difference was my own personal ability.
Definitely echo these sentiments. It’s funny watching (for example) the Val Roth character development videos vs. actual new players killing goblins.
Goblins are not really that hard at the start. Most people are just used to stupid mobs in other mmorpgs.
Not to spam your blog, but I’m really surprised you didn’t hit on the biggest dice roll in the economy: chaos chest drops. Everything really expensive drops from something completely random — to me, this is incredibly frustrating.
Yea initially all deeds coming from chests was silly and too random, but today more placed housed get sold than once gotten from using a deed, and the price for things like vendors and safes is finally coming down. But yea, opening some random box to find a 200k+ item inside is a little crazy, considering farming 200k solo is a serious, serious undertaking.
OMG. You mean the Chaos Chest drop stuff other than a measly 65g?
LOL. That’s good to know. I’ve probably looted 10 or 12 of those things and I think the most I ever got was 100g.
Eh don’t get me started, been opening them since they were added and I’ve only once gotten 10k from one, 60-120g from all the rest.
I would literally ride around in the Alfar lands and find 5+ a session and I never got anything over 120 or so gold. I blame you though lol, tellin me houses drop and shit, pfft!
SWG crafting ftw!
Sounds a lot like DAOC crafted items and spellcrafting enchants. 100% quality items were expensive as all get out even though output difference between that and 99% or 98% minimal. The real question is are you stuck staring at a progression bar that gets incrementally slower the higher level the item being crafted? I love that Darkfall borrowed DAOCs crafting, but I hope they added something fun to the process, like EQ2’s crafting.
The bar is the same speed regardless of item power, but different items have different crafting times. And I never understood the want to make the actual crafting process a mini-game. If I want mini-games, I’ll play my iPhone. I like the actual game of gathering resources, selling the product, determining item value, etc.
So you like being able to hit craft 50 of these and then walk away? Hmmm.
I liked Vanguard’s crafting a bit but I really liked SWG’s crafting before the facelift. Nothing in any game can beat SWG’s resources imo.
I love when someone hits craft 50 and I kill them while they try, yea.
I see what you did thar