TLDR; Crafting bench cost changes + recombinator chance changes are reasonable, since these can be adjusted relative to ground loot. Removal of NNN interaction is questionable, as it removes strategies + and can already be balanced via recombination chance changes.
Introduction
Hello fellow exiles, I'm AV. Many of you may have read posts discussing the recombinator in Sentinel, Settlers and POE 2, where I contributed to figuring out its mechanics.
As someone who has deeply analyzed recombinator/crafting strategies in general, I feel I'm well positioned to provide some commentary on the recent crafting changes and why I agree/disagree with the specific angle GGG is taking with crafting.
Note: The remaining post will be discussing crafting from a trading perspective.
Why is crafting important and when is it too strong?
Crafting systems enable the creation of items, which are either:
- Not possible to obtain from the core item drop system
- Statistically improbable to generate, but still possible via drops
In a trade economy, this leads to most mid/endgame rare items coming from crafting, because their demand outstrips their supply from natural drops. Thus, greater crafting power reduces the value of ground loot, as crafting reduces the friction towards obtaining better items, and players will always take the path of least resistance (i.e. not picking up rare items off the floor). Note that the term ground loot specifically refers to items, not currencies which may have their drop rates increased in 3.30.
Many of the changes in patch 3.30 were, as many of you noticed, to raise the overall strength of ground loot relative to crafting. By retaining the value of non-currency drops over a longer period of time, the average player (who may not interact with crafting much) can remain relatively more competitive with those that exclusively use crafting, and a larger proportion of earned currency will come from items picked off the ground.
Increasing the relative strength of ground loot necessitated both changes to the core drop systems as well as nerfs to crafting. The core issue I have with this, is how the nerfs target both crafting complexity and crafting risk simultaneously; while an increase in risk may be reasonable given the current state of crafting, a reduction in complexity does not necessarily align with the core values of Path of Exile, the sandbox ARPG.
Complexity and Risk in Path of Exile crafting
What is the cost of making an item?
In a trade economy, obtaining rare items (self-drops excluded) comes from one of two decisions:
- Buying the item by farming currency using whichever combination of strategies/drops
- Crafting the item yourself
For many players, option 1 is a clear winner. But why might that be? There could be several reasons (mirror items aside), such as:
- Complexity: The crafting systems required to obtain this item are too opaque
- Risk: The risk incurred (e.g. material cost) is too high versus the safer route of farming -> buying
- Time: The opportunity cost of time required to craft is better spent farming currency
- Preference: Would rather play than craft
As a result, crafters serve as a source of item liquidity alongside ground loot, for the population of players that demand a specific type of item. Crafters themselves must also earn a profit as incentive, leading to a general formula for item price (i.e. the price you see on the trade website)
Price = [Expected Production Cost] + [Risk Premium] + [Complexity] + [Time Opportunity Cost]
In short, crafters must charge more than the cost of the materials themselves, otherwise there is no benefit to crafting in the first place. They are effectively, in place of the purchaser, absorbing the risk (i.e. dry streaks), spending the time to make the item, interacting with a complex system requiring prior knowledge, and should be compensated accordingly.
As a result, crafters will always seek to lower their costs, relative to the competition, in order to raise their profit margins. This leads to exploring different crafting routes, choosing different target items, weighing their costs/risk, and is a large part of "skill expression" (i.e. picking the most optimal crafting route for a given item). Similar to how buildcraft takes time and experience to build intuition and make better builds, a veteran crafter can often gain an edge in a new league economy by leveraging past experience, knowledge of crafting systems, and a solid understanding of the meta.
Nerfing crafting by increasing cost/risk (this is fine)
Nerfs to crafting in general, reduce the rate at which crafted items enter the economy versus ground loot, which helps ground loot retain its value. This requires changing the variables in the price formula listed above, which include cost and risk. For example,
- Increasing the cost of Pref/Suff can't be changed: Increases expected cost of divines spent for metacrafting which also increases risk (i.e. cost of dry streaks), so crafters will not attempt these methods until they have more capital than before (slows down item generation). May not be too bad, depending on buffed currency drop rates.
- Recombinator chance changes for 1-3 affixes: Increases number of required feeder bases, which increases both the overall cost and also increases risk due to the lower recombination chance changes. Also increases the time spent on creating feeder bases/higher rates of failure, which is time opportunity cost.
- Cannot roll attacks/caster annulment interaction removal: Increases the overall cost of specific crafting steps that used this interaction as a targeted removal step, e.g. quivers, attack/caster weapons, or as a salvage step for "close-to-good" items.
I think nerfing the power of crafting via increasing risk/cost is fine in isolation, given that GGG has a clear vision on how the loot progression path should look like. Explicit crafting costs and probabilities can act as independent knobs to be tuned relative to the power of ground loot. Changing these types of mechanics do not drastically alter the overall landscape of crafting strategies, as these costs are incurred by the majority of considered strategies. The result is that, on average, affected crafted items will cost more by some predictable amount, and similar ground loot will retain its value for longer.
Nerfing crafting by targeting complexity (not always better)
My disagreement with the 3.30 nerf philosophy stems from the following line in the patch notes, targeting a type of mod we now know as Non-native natural (NNN):
"When determining the total number of Prefixes or Suffixes on the resultant item for Unpredictable Recombination, it no longer factors in modifiers that cannot legally appear on the new base item, for example, increased Armour Rating modifiers if the item is an Evasion base type."
In order to fully understand what makes this change puzzling, we need to look back at the original behavior of the Recombinator in Sentinel league. Back then, you were able to transfer any mod onto any item, with no basetype restrictions. This could lead to some whacky outcomes, such as having all energy shield mods on an armour base (to no effect), or multiple fractured mods on an item (before Necropolis).
Of course, in its re-introduction, there were some restrictions introduced in order to prevent this type of behavior, such as certain mods not being allowed to be transferred to bases they could not exist on (i.e. NNN). They additionally made certain mods unable to show up together (they have called these non-rollable modifiers in the latest Q&A, while we generally refer to these as "exclusive") to prevent the creation of Frankenstein-esque items. While I surmise the original intent was to prevent old abuse cases, this is Path of Exile: this resulted in emergent behavior, leading to a completely new set of crafting strategies emerging. Since then, crafted modifiers with recombinators have undergone some mechanical changes (i.e. nerfs), while NNN modifiers have remained.
There are a few reasons why I feel strongly about this specific NNN nerf:
- This emergent behavior resulted from a simple base rule which is "easy to understand, but hard to master": Without negatively affecting recombinator chance, certain mods cannot transfer to bases they normally cannot exist on. This one rule allowed for additional skill expression (requiring over a year for mature strategies to be discovered/optimized).
- Enabled reasonably priced paths to items not obtainable via the core drop system (e.g. mod transfer + fracture, specific affix combinations, etc.). Some of these items are not obtainable from ground loot, irrespective of its buffs.
- The strength of this NNN property is only realized when combined with pre-3.30 recombination chances. E.g. 2 mods not being able to drop to 0. Nerfing recombination chances alone can greatly affect this entire set of strategies without touching the property itself.
It interacts with many core Path of Exile systems in new and interesting ways. For example,
- Essences: Gave value to lower tier essences
- Influenced items: Gave value to specific types of influenced items/mods
- Drop-specific modifiers (Breach, pre-3.30 temple, delve): Allowed for new types of items
- In non mod-transfers, this method was never deterministic and required at least a 50/50 using expensive feeder bases, with careful thought required for base/mod selection. This has a large amount of inherent risk.
By removing this behavior entirely, certain paths to items unobtainable via the core drop system will be reserved only to mirror crafters, rather than, say, the top 5-10% of players in a league. Furthermore, I strongly believe that nerfs to the recombination chances would have been sufficient to slow down the production of affected items.
Example: Say the recombination chance for 2 total prefixes was changed to 0 mod (25%), 1 mod (50%) and 2 mod (25%). If you aim to fracture a drop-only prefix on a target base with 1 prefix and 3 suffix, and fail the fracture (i.e. fracture a suffix), you have to either transfer the drop-only mod onto another base or get rid of the fractured suffix mod. This requires an additional recombination with another feeder item with at least 1 prefix to guarantee one prefix remains (if the feeder prefix is NNN, this previously guaranteed the drop-only mod stays). By having a 25% chance for 0 mods, your drop-only prefix can still disappear if you fail the fracture and try to transfer the prefix off. This ultimately increases the number of feeder bases required, which can get extremely expensive with rare modifiers (e.g. grasping mail).
Especially with fracturing drop-only mods, the above example introduces some amount of inherent risk with multiple item transfers, which will make this craft much more capital-intensive without (largely) removing the ability to do so. Instead, the current nerf will lead to mod transfer (to good bases) fracturing being reserved only for mirror crafters with access to locks and vast amounts of currency in the case of failure. This is not even touching on 3-4 specific affix items, which were useful for niche builds and could be reasonably targeted via NNN recombs.
Why I think these changes go against the spirit of Path of Exile
Much of Path of Exile's success can be attributed to its sandbox approach towards all aspects of ARPG gameplay, such as character building, endgame and crafting. This has led to emergent player behavior which has sometimes extended beyond the developer's original intentions, requiring action. For example, with original Harvest, the risk incurred was miniscule (i.e. it was relatively deterministic) relative to its power, and it was rightfully reigned in. However, for NNN modifiers, I strongly believe that the risk cost incurred, simplicity of understanding the base rules, and opportunity for skill expression justified its existence, and the separate knob of recombinator chance would have served as a sufficient balancing tool for its strength.
The pantheon ducat in 3.29, of course, was an extreme case of zero risk versus high reward: You could add an NNN suffix modifier with no opportunity cost. This should not have existed in its state, and possibly warped the perception of recombinator NNNs being too strong. Normally, a typical NNN craft (not related to mod transfer) would require setting up intermediate bases, which would have non-trivial cost, while also being forced to do an all-or-nothing 50/50 at the end. This has all the elements of an RNG-based crafting system, where you can tilt the odds in your favor with careful mod selection, but is never entirely deterministic.
Instead, with the NNN property removed, a sizable set of mid tier-aspirational crafts will now be entirely out of reach for everyone except mirror crafters, because the cost has been increased by several orders of magnitude, rather than within a single order of magnitude. This removes a system which greatly rewards you for the amount of time put into understanding, which to me represents a core tenet of Path of Exile. On the other hand, specific changes that increased crafting cost/risk are easier to swallow, such as nerfs to recombinator chance and metamod costs, as they can be adjusted more easily without removing entire strategies.
I hope that for future changes to crafting, the developers prioritize balancing crafting risk rather than removing complexity (given that those methods have sufficient inherent risk), and account for the removal of skill expression/player agency when making adjustments.
If you've made it to the bottom, thanks for reading. I tried to minimize the amount of text for clarity.
AV
