Not sure who is roaming the boards downvoting but it's getting a little irritating to me as well, you're not being nearly abrasive enough to warrant it. Back on topic...

• Grim Dawn. All your recipes for good quality gear are unlocked from the moment you get access to the blacksmith. The only recipes you find beyond that are for BIS/Set/Legendary gear and uncommon/rare/legendary components.
• The minute you get your relic BP drop for your build, there's a good chance that the relic will be the same relic you move into Elite with. The only difference being that you'll often break the slotted component in it to replace it with a higher level one. There are very few builds that cannot retain relevancy without upgrading your transcendant relic. In that vein, the same recipes you use to craft set pieces will spit out a set piece relevant to your level, so the same set you crafted at level 20 can be crafted again at 40, retaining the same bonuses but giving you the exact same gear so your items continue to be relevant. This is great for casual players who don't like switching up bonuses--I'm still using the Black Grimoire of Og'Napesh well into my 50's, and only awaiting the blueprint drop for the Legendary variant to change it to... the Black Grimoire of Og'Napesh: XTREEM EDITION.
• The same stuff you use to mod your gear to begin with are still used to craft the gear you make later, and can be used to craft the intermediate step materials, thus retain relevancy through the entire game, through Elite playthroughs and beyond.
• Every Champion/Elite mob has a very high chance to drop Epics, a good chance to drop Legendaries (post 50), a very high chance to rare materials, a good chance to drop blueprints, etc. A challenge dungeon run (average 20 minutes solo) will net you most of a complete set, enough crafting materials to last you for a very long while, and at least one Monster Infrequent (which are generally powerful enough to last you for ten to twenty hours, with careful component/mod management).

The timegated crafting itself is a F2P mechanic. While I don't argue that the material gathering itself is timegating, that should be THE timegating.

And, really... crafted Articer gear is just worse overall than drops. Between reported bugs where people are missing enchants, the fact that they often come out worse (overall) than Tarot run green drops, and my issues with the overlong timers... it just strikes me as more efficient to tune the system to make that feel more intentional and less like an accident.

Since the Tarot missions are, in essence, our "challenge dungeons", I have been making the suggestion that itemization is tweaked in the following manner:

1. Store gear is the bottom of the pile, does not do much to advance you.

2. Investigation/Mission gear is better than store gear, but is still slow for power advancement.

3. Crafted gear becomes weighted to be better than it is now but not the best. Average advancement, feels more relevant.

4. Challenge mission gear from Tarots becomes the "fast" progression, since there will always be a method that min-maxers blow through content and challenge dungeons are, traditionally, the way to channel said munchkins. With the way PL works now, you can't just drag a friend through and instantly boost them a power level, they'd still have to put in the time running the missions to get there.

In that way, there is still a reason to run tarot missions (if crafting becomes too good it removes relevancy), but also gives us a reason to spend those resources instead of ignoring them when we have purple crafting recipes. As it stands, I look at my artificer recipes and see them as the UI mocking me, because I know that the result will be garbage.

As to removing time/recipe restrictions, I really honestly have not seen that come up yet. Removing the crafting timer itself is not, in any way, a call to remove the timegating present in getting materials--if anything, I personally have repeatedly called to have materials become more rare to keep from munchkin craft-spam.... but by the same token, your standpoint continues to be "this one segment of players might abuse it, so it should remain in place".

If someone wants to spend thirty hours gathering up thousands of materials and then spam-crafts until their inventory is full of complete gearsets, they're going to find a way. That doesn't mean you should punish casual players with restrictive timegates that force them to spend weeks hoping for one crafted upgrade, which is largely where my argument has been based.

There are actual studies that show that the average gamer plays for about one hour a session, this isn't just "well in my own experience". That hour, then, needs to provide solid progression. That means not just character level, which largely means little, but power level as well. They need to feel like their time in-game is meaningful, or they will find another game. This doesn't mean that they need to catapult through content. But it does mean that they need to see a marked improvement from that hour. And the easiest way to do that is to fine-tune itemization in a way that allows crafting to become more relevant.

And honestly, until I see this fixed, I do not hold out hope for the modding/rune swapping--as the base system is currently highly flawed, there is a high chance that it will be as well. I take it into consideration, yes. I know it is a planned feature. But I've also learned that alpha builds without solid feedback with solid criticism turn out poorly, because the flaws in mechanics are magnified in the eyes of the broader market base the minute it becomes a full release. Again, see Deathwing for an example of mechanical polish issues becoming review-bombing.

Hats off to the down-voting kiddy-winkle. Keep up the good work.

As an exercise of interestest can you name me one of these "many games without a timer" which has ...

• All Recipes for good quality gear always unlocked.
• Recipes for BIS "quality" gear which last you a lifetime. 
• Materials that travel over from every level to the next.
• Mandatory high drop rates for BIS quality gear/materials.

Time gates themselves aren't a F2P mechanic really, you know this. They take many forms, not always a literal clock but the majority of games have one or more which prevents overuse of any given feature. Honestly I can't say i'm surprised that some people don't like having direct control over the time gate (such as reach level X for new recipes) But as it stands the only arguments here are to remove all time and recipe restrictions and rely purely on material limitation, which purely for the reasons I've already listed I still can't visualise as being practical.

I'm going to trim the rest back down a little as a large portion of what you are saying is repeating what's already been said and without being rude I have no idea what point you are trying to argue 1/2 the time. 

To clarify though is it your belief that tarrot gear > crafted? - Because that simply isn't the case from what I have seen. They have the same table of stats and the same potential unless they have changed without my knowing. Only what makes things very different with (purple) crafted recipes is that you guarantee yourself a few variables meaning per item the probability of quality is considerably higher. You can argue that 6 hours is too long and the quantity of the tarrot gear will end up outweighing the quality of the crafted due to sheer probability.. This is why i've said nearly 50 times in this thread that no one is arguing to maintain a 6 hour craft timer! xD

The format certainly does make it easier to keep track of points and respond to them coherently.

2. I don't care for the output, and I definitely find the one to six hour windows to be a stuffed-in free to play MMO mechanic--fix the former and the latter still exists, the only way it could be worse is if that timer only ticked over while you were in game. I can name a rather large number of games where you pay to reduce cost (usually time and materiel) as well, however almost none of them have timers on crafting--the few that do are in the Survival genre and the timers start small and after paying in become insignificant. To return to an oft-repeated statement, "This is not an MMO". So the root of the issue, beyond "garbage in garbage out", is the time, and how even after research it takes entirely too long to craft anything. As stated previously, if I were forced to be stuck with time I would vastly prefer 20 minutes max for artificer gear, with research dropping it to ten; and then 5 minutes max for green gear, research dropping it to 90 seconds. It's still a timegate, and it's still absurd in an ARPG, but that is the absolute limit of acceptable time spent crafting in a game that doesn't have a cash shop selling absurd boosters. I would much prefer to spend that fate and those thrones on research that felt more tangible, like opening up weapon varieties (instead of level-locking them), and having no crafting time but having to put in some effort to produce the high-value purps--find the blueprint, pay and wait for it to be researched/"sanctified"? Fine. Find the blueprint, wait for it to produce, and have it spit out gear worse than commons after six hours? Not so good.

3. I put in between four and eight hours a play session. I usually log off with around a thousand of each basic material and a dozen or so of the rares. I can convert them to optimizer mats... but that's wasted effort because as of now, the gear I craft without optimizers is effectively the same level of garbage output as the gear crafted without. Since I lose money on craft and sell (would make sense if it were instant, but is asinine with the timers this long), the output is reliably terrible so it's not worth craft and equip (which is the whole reason this system exists!), and I get less out than I put in (which makes sense for salvage so no issue there), just crafting for the sake of crafting is a waste of time and, again, feels like a shoehorned in feature (which I know is not what was intended, hence the raw tonnage of feedback). With play times that long, I see further into the curve for a casual player, and I see what grinders in other games see as well, and it helps formulate talking points. This being a rather stiff one and vital to address for the long-term health of the game.

4. With crafting being extraneous at the moment, the Uther's Tarot missions propel you far quicker through power levels and content than crafting would--and previously I pointed out that I think that should remain as-is. Crafted gear should be good, but not BIS (though the term BIS is problematic given that you can be viable with essentially anything). So, the crafted gear would provide an out for casual players who don't have the time or energy to spend several days racking up a thousand fate and then several hours grinding Tarot missions. While I find running with the crew I coop with a blast, not everyone can sit down and do the same thing for two or three days and feel like it's anything but a grindy timesink--and that leads to negative feedback. Crafting should be able to, more slowly of course, reliably raise your power level. That way it's useful to everyone in some way, casual players aren't forced into dealing with the gear-check mid-story by "well I have to grind Tarot with a group because it's the only way to advance and finish this stupid game", and the grindier players can continue to run Tarot missions to gear up faster because it's challenge content; and challenge content always rewards well to make up for being a challenge.

5. Yes, the potential for cheesing the leaderboard is an issue... just like it is in Grim Dawn, Diablo 3, and a dozen other ARPGs where you can more reliably farm epics/legendaries/set items--in fact, the first two hand that stuff out like candy to compensate. Now, you mention the crafting this way but you seem to forget that it's not just crafted gear that will be moddable. Those Tarot drops that I mentioned before? The "weight these to be better than crafted gear so the grind crowd feels rewarded just like the casual crowd"? Those will be moddable too. I'm willing to bet that the relics will as well, based on the research tooltips. So the crafted gear will never be BIS, and my suggestions will just reinforce that gap. If you want the leaderboard, you'll have to put in the effort--and like my commentary on challenge dungeons (never as a gear-check in story, perfectly ok as optional content), leaderboards fall under the "not vital to the core experience" blanket. Casual players won't bother. I probably won't bother, and I've been pretty obsessively grindy in Martyr.

I'll try and stick to the same format for the sake of consistency :D

2 - To me that is describing an issue with "balance" of the feature and quality of the product - Both of which can be changed but don't really require altering the process in order to achieve what you are asking for - It sounds like if what you were getting was better quality (which it will be) then this complaint no longer exists? - I could name 100 games where you pay to reduce the cost of crafting but you still have to pay for craft. That's essentially the same thing as what you are labelling as "double punishment", the only difference is you don't currently like what we are crafting at this point :D 

3 - I personally haven't found that i've been unable to offload materials. By the time I queue up 9 items to be crafted overnight with advanced materials or when I go to work - that's unloaded a "Metric fuck tonn" of materials.
4 - Not so sure that crafting centric games help casual. Sure they get gear more easily, but it also propels hardcore players far quicker through the content than the casual. Being able to craft entire gear sets of moderately powerful gear for eg when you hit a new level imho isn't something that's often used in games for good reason. Typically you get X recipes per X levels (a forced time gate), if anything to keep the focus away from crafting which could result in sling shotting players through content rather than helping people catch up. 

5 - I've not seen it yet either - But with material limitation in place - I would expect some day there will be a challenge or some feature that will require players to "gear up" - Lets say for a leaderboard place. With crafting gear being capable and even more probable of being BIS (because it'll be more customisable / adjustable than world drops) there will eventually come a day people will need to invest time into actively farming to achieve whatever task this is. Again, perhaps just my paranoia - Don't think its punishing the masses for the sake of the few - More just what can but doesn't always happen as a consequence of material limitation.

In order, keeping the dialog moving:

2. The thing with feeling punished is that first, I get that permanent buff.. but to do upgrades that cost a tangible time investment that I can (currently) put to better effect elsewhere (that single 100 fate upgrade and X hour upgrade time can be converted to a Tarot mission that will almost certainly get me a gaggle of good gear drops). And then to have to invest yet more time to get an effect just feels... grindy, sloggy, and punishing; generally if you invest, say, 24 hours and X resources in something the reward is significant; and currently it just doesn't feel that way.

4. I think that it would autobalance "better" in the eyes of a casual player if crafting was weighted more heavily than mission drops (Tarot notwithstanding, as that should be, as challenge content, a more substantial reward), give casual players a reason to spend a little longer in-game... since the average casual play session is roughly one hour, one could reasonably lower the material output from drops while potentially making salvage more relevant to run with the idea that an hour (two at most) should produce most of a gearset in terms of resources acquired. That way, their limited time can still feel rewarding, but then even with the removal of crafting timers it wouldn't allow for an unrelenting flood of equipment. On top of that, grind-players like myself will generally craft a single set appropriate to build and then go back to chasing down the dropped gear from Tarot without feeling like crafting is a total waste of our time and resources, as well. Yes, some players might spam-craft to min-max with that system after mat-grinding for a week... but players will always find a way to cheese the system, and with how things function currently that wouldn't impact the larger playerbase as a whole in terms of PvE. PvP content may be somewhat different, but with how PL works out I can't see PvP being as hideously difficult to balance as it is in purely level-based games--a PL1 with slightly better gear from optimized craft-spam will not significantly outdamage a PL1 that didn't craft-spam by dint of damages being largely kept within a similar bubble (the chainsword could use a bit of a buff but that's a rant for another time), unless they somehow twink with their skill points--but something tells me that level will also play a role in matching PvP content to avoid trolls at ECL 50 rolling in PL1 gear to moosh newbies effortlessly.

6. I haven't seen that yet, so far in my play experience we usually focus on 2+ CR higher than our power level just because it gives rather solid experience, and an increase in item rarity to boot; rather than spending that 100 fate and getting 5k XP just to spend one minute less on a mission. A good group that works well together is a force to be reckoned with in an ARPG, after all.

Largely, the idea that all players should be punished because a small fraction will cheese the system has always bothered me--this is why I take umbrage with many design decisions present in 3.5e D&D, 4e D&D, 5e D&D, etc. I rather like many of the design decisions in the FFG 40k RPG system which knew that some players would cheese, but didn't penalize all players of the system for the actions of a few uber-neckbeard optimizers. It's always a problem when a designer views the players as adversaries to outwit rather than explorers of a new world--as a designer, one's job is to present a world and everything in it in a way that draws players in, not alienates them. That lesson took quite a bit of time, and a few meetings that devolved into shouting matches, to sink in for me. As a result, when I see mechanics in any game type that seem to be targeting munchkins at the expense of the regular player, I get a little cranky.

To try and keep things tidy

1 - Agreed.

2 - Oddly I feel as if i'm being rewarded not punished. 100 fate for a permanent buff? - Sure. Let's say we did use a multi-item system that needed to use 5 items for an instant, researching that would lower it to 4. To me it seems like its a good deal at least :D 

3 - There was mention by you that there is nowhere to throw your excess crafting materials - advanced materials does this function. 

4 - Well if materials become the limiting factor then playtime = more materials. Just as a passing thought I think there is some benefit to letting people pay premiums for faster crafting times. Because then it almost auto balances a little bit of the lag that a casual players might experience. It's an odd idea I admit.
6 - Nice to see im not the only human alive that sees a benefit to the power level system - Perhaps this is born of paranoia but lets just say for eg a goup of players really really wanted to get some purple materials. Their best option would be to farm missions on the easiest setting, completing missions quicker and getting. Should that become a "trend" then it sort of divides players between those who want loot (easy missions) and those who want exp (hard missions) - Perhaps just my paranoia but i've seen in many games encourage players to do boring things (farming) because quick mats are born of easy content.

Good work soldier xD 

I don't much gel with farming either, largely--I have stories, both stuff I've played and mechanics I've written, of how that can go wrong fast. However, the farming aspect is the... most effective timegate to ensure that you aren't simply rolling in output at all times. It would need to be tuned so that it's not punishing; what I have in mind is something that would allow you to naturally craft a full gear set over a couple sessions, rather than stacking up three to five entire gearsets within a five minute period--and as it stands, with the drop rate as-is, without the timers I could probably craft at least five full sets of gear after every other Tarot run. The rest, in order...

1. I don't mind the idea of leaving Salvage as-is, since you get less for salvaging gear than you'll usually find in a mission anyway. Largely, it's the mission drops that are... somewhat prolific at the moment, as in two hours I can go from effectively nil to nearly a thousand of one of the T1 crafting mats. This actually may tie into the next point, since forge upgrades are a core component of the crafting system.

2. I also don't mind the concept of paying a premium--if it weren't for the fact that I already paid a premium for the research to increase the effectiveness of my forge. The idea of having to pay that premium twice galls me; in some games with the "both" setup, it feels like I'm being punished for my success and that's never a good thing.

3. Sinking or syncing? Not sure I follow this one at the moment, so I'll address it later after a clarification response.

4. I don't think players would necessarily be punished with my proposed measures, either. In general, I'm proposing that mission drops (at the very least, the investigation end mission) improve in rolls to make them a viable progression for extreme-casual players, crafted gear being a middle ground where you can over the course of a play session or two see a marked advancement, and then the grind-core of Tarot farming rewarding the grinders with a cut above crafted gear. In that way, everyone can progress, but neither the grindy audience nor the casual audience feel as though they're being penalized for succeeding or not grinding respectively.

5. This ties into the next, so I'll just wrap them together there.

6. Honestly, I just tend to enjoy running Tarot with the folks I mentioned in that thread because we have fun--we're not really farming, largely, we're purging heretics and tossing banter back and forth. The fact that at PLX or Y, I can take a PL1 character through something and see them getting gear upgrades is a good thing--many games are set up in a way to penalize higher power characters bringing lower power characters through content, and it tends to create a marked difference between the casual and grind audiences. With how PL and CR work in this, taking a PL1 character through content doesn't make them useless and gives both sides a tangible reward--making it viable and even recommended to group up with lowbies.

Well that's kind of the point, increasing the spending to a point that it could become instant, say 1-5x material quantity for a 20% reduction in time per extra material would have several advantages and avoid the pitfalls of and headaches of your proposed system.

(I mean that with the utmost respect - making materials rare when high drop rates are mandatory =  No choice but very low salvage rates ie. RNG salvaging aka make everyone annoyed salvaging)

1 - You can leave the salvage rates as something not totally frustrating to a player. 

2 - Players who want to gear quicker will be able to do so, but will be paying a premium to do so. 

3 - Sinking spare items is now even easier. (Although advanced materials provides a means to do this)  
4 - Players who put less time into the game wouldn't be penalised for not "farming" materials. 

5 - Crossing over to the other thread - Players can freely focus on community based content that they might enjoy, without being penalised. 

6 - Having less "farming" characters doing "farm runs" will only help the community as there will be more players available to progress. 

Just some ideas. As you might tell. Personally I don't think material and farm based systems offer much to a games longevity. But I do respect the fact some people enjoy it. Ergo - A system that might cater to both. Yes - Before you say it, the timers are too long. 

Honestly, the proposal I put forth is the most palatable I can come up with. Increasing mat-spending would need to reduce the timer substantially, and that still wouldn't fix some of the other issues that I also addressed in my wall-of-text-y post.

I will say this, getting a crafting system right in an RPG is very difficult, be it vidya or pen and paper. And getting it right while also making players want to use it is... a hurdle. I think I must have binned half a dozen variants before my test group actually liked using it, and in the end I had to strip out much of the stuff I thought was novel because it added too much drag to the system (such as the scaling time-to-craft).

In my experience as a designer rather than as a player, I find that crafting systems in general must provide a demonstrable improvement over found or bought gear (outside of special gear like rares/uniques/artifacts) in order for players to want to use it. Most systems must provide an easily perceived improvement, or they'll be ignored (at best) or received negatively; this ranges from combat mechanics all the way through to things like how experience is doled out (which some people in-game complain about currently, the lack of kill-XP is not novel but some players have been voicing displeasure, which underlines my point).

Heard an interesting proposition today which I thought might please both parties -

Increase the number of materials you commit to an item, to bring down the production timer. 

Thoughts? - Seems like a potential best of both worlds. Getting instant stuff can be expensive for people who don't want to farm it's there at a more leisurely pace. 

Therein lies the problem. Either we need to increase the grind needed to make gear, and make that gear a real, significant boost for the timegating used to bottleneck production... or we need to address the fact that, as you rightly say, there's enough grinding in the PL structure and remove the craft timers entirely and just deal with an increased amount of gear that can be produced.

Personally, I think that the "best" (so to speak) gear really should come from crafting and the Tarot. I don't mean BIS, of course, as they're trying to avoid having something where you can only be viable with one specific power sword. As we tear into this issue, I think the "best" solution I can come up with is as follows:

1. Drop the timers to 5 minutes for rares and 20 for artificers, with the ability to drop that with research to 1-2.5 and 10 respectively.

2. Ensure that the crafted gear's numbers will be weighted more than normal mission drops (which are currently viable, if slow, should have a bit of tweaking), which are weighted more than shop drops (which is as it should be IMO, shop gear is always a last-ditch thing). Then ensure that the artificer gear from Tarot missions is weighted better than the crafted gear; the crafted gear should feel useful by putting you to that hump, where then your gear collection from Tarot missions pushes you into the next PL. Repeat.

3. Drop the materials rate for common materials a bit, and increase the rare/optimizer rates slightly. I think currently since you can produce the optimizers, the matspam is for that, but as they never seem to actually work properly they're not worth producing (and in maybe a few hours of tarots I generally end up with enough optimizers refined to not need to do anything with them for three days of solid crafting!). Potentially, keep the optimizers a little more rare, and increase their effects a smidge (no more than 15%). Make them feel useful.

4. Ensure that this is all wrapped up and working before introducing the modification/rune system. It sounds counterintuitive, but it's entirely too easy to miss flaws when another system has been overlaid--I'd like to see the mod system complimenting the crafting, not acting as a band-aid for it. So, we need to see this system working for us rather than against us first, IMO.

This seems like it would work better and feel more rewarding than that first PL taking about a week and change of intensive play to clear, and then the repeated "well I can do tarot missions for about six hours and maybe get up to the edge of the next PL" would feel less... wasted, because as it stands the Tarot missions are essentially our challenge dungeons. We should be rewarded decently for our efforts, rather than clumps of rather poorly implemented purples that are largely (statwise) downgrades and often only a single rating point higher than normal mission drops.

Honestly the only thing I see the timegating doing effectively as-is, is hurting player to player trading, since you manufacture for a loss (sold gear is worth a fraction of what went into it solely through credits cost), and of course since there's no player trading there's no reason to hurt it. And until crafting is adjusted to feel like a real, intended, and well thought-out mechanic it'll continue to feel like an extraneous timesink, something to do while your Uther's Tarot group is AFK between runs.

Largely, we need a system that rewards us for putting in the time to make gear, without making it a flood of meaningless loot. The easiest timegate to keep it from being a flood is to simply adjust material income (and potentially have to research/increase rep with AdMech to unlock basic blueprints) while not relying on the crutch that is one to six hour crafting times on top of getting the mats.

Edit: in case it's not clear, I'm stating that the progression would then pan out to: normal missions/investigations (slower)->crafting (average)->tarot (faster), on top of the proposed fixes for the crafting system itself; tangible rewards for putting in the time to go beyond simply playing the game.

When A post has no heresy.

I suspect we may just have to disagree on this one. I just can't visualize any simple way of implementing a comparable crafting system to a game that has such vastly different progression mechanics and loot system. IM and GD are apples and oranges to me. That's not to say it's not possible. But the differences are pronounced.

Personally I don't see much value in shifting toward a grinding incentive for materials - there is already enough grinding already inherent to the power level structure of the game. Without having to spend additional hours just getting additional materials for an item which will be discarded within the next few hours. Almost the opposite of a traditional ARPG where a decent quality weapon will last you for several levels, this isn't the case within Martyr.

It might be incorrect of me but it seems a lot of demands for changes seem to be from treating the gearing process in a more end-game mindset where a character is chasing optimization as a priority. The very nature of the power level system is that Power level > gear quality, at least for single player content. To me the chase or goal should be for progress, dedicating too much time to farming and crafting intricate sets of gear which will have to be quickly discarded seems an odd point of focus.

Keep up the good work. 

I'm not advocating for them to drop a hotfix to remove it right now or anything. Actually, outside of a handful of game breaking issues, most of my feedback is intended to help balance the big update, rather than anything I expect right now.

The timer is a gate to progression, and while currently with the mass amounts of materiel recieved it keeps us from spamcrafting (though I sometimes do that in GD and eat up all my mats just to get a really good item) it does nothing for the crafting system itself overall. And that needs to change. In an hour, I can get more materials than I'd ever need to use currently. Meanwhile, in GD, in an hour I get far fewer crafting mats unless I specifically run the hardmode challenge content. Which is as it should be, IMO. An hour of play to craft a single, good piece of gear is about par for the course. Making that two hours artificially, or seven hours overall artificially, is just not... good.

I think the best rate I've found has been when I was really grinding in GD, where I found about 1 build-relevant Epic, enough mats to craft one transcendant (save the rare mat) relic, and enough rep to purchase one blueprint per hour. That's with a grind-build, so the rep and mats are far higher than a casual play build, so overall a relevant epic+mats+rep every four hours on average.

Well being honest - "if" the timer was removed today - The results would be really bad. Because without additional changes it literally would be "free stuff" - I think the lack of attention to stating a replacement for the timer is something to consider, perhaps not from yourself but from others it seems a bit more of a "remove this annoyance" campaign. 

Take for eg where you say that the timer does nothing... Well that's not really true. You can reliably (without having to farm) craft an item every X amount of time. An item of your choice at that. Yes you can make arguments about the quality of the item and the quantity of time but there is an inherent strength to the system, there is no grinding required. 

This is where I actually think there is a danger of introducing material based limitations, because its more a niche (in my view) audience who enjoy going out into the wild with a view to specifically "farm" to get better gear. Now you can make the argument that time vs reward is a fine thing for a game and I agree. But a steady trickle of items into a player vs "working" for them is something that has some merit. 

Again, not saying the timer is 100% required - But it does imho do something which could be seen in a positive light. *Again - presuming you are happy with the quality of the item AND the length of the timer*

Honestly per the access to recipes, yeah I'd probably prefer that.

And maybe, potentially, the mentioned exchanging of enchants and runes will solve some of my issues with the output...

But not the Free to Play MMO-esque crafting timers themselves. They add nothing to the game, and take long enough that you're guaranteed an improved piece of Artificer gear from the two to four tarot runs you'll do while it cooks. And that's if you're cooking an artificer quality item, not an rare quality item.

The shop, I don't mean cheesing the shop. I meant exiting a mission, getting my crafting result, and then accessing the shop normally, as intended by the devs, and finding a yellow piece of gear that is better than anything I've crafted. Not relogging. Not cheesing anything. Just opening it once right after crafting. And finding a common rarity item that is better than an artificer item that took me six bloody hours to craft.

And again, a lot of the intention won't matter for the casual player that isn't as invested as I am. They will leave, it is a demonstrable and repeatable effect of issues with core mechanics.

And I do not want to see that happen. Not if I can give input from the perspective (the rare perspective for a Founder's program) of a casual gamer. I adore the game, but I also take off the rose tinted goggles and see the flaws for what they are. The crafting timers, are one of those flaws. If that causes trouble in an MMO, what do you think will happen in a game that isn't an MMO, where the devs explicitly state that it isn't an MMO?

And as it stands, materials are too common, craft outputs are garbage, "optimizer" mats don't optimize a damn thing, and craft timers should not exist because this isn't an MMO, full stop.

Timesinks are the bane of the casual player. They'll already balk at needing to spend roughly six hours of play to get a single purple crafting component with which to build a purple item. Telling them that those six days (yeah, average casual play session is a single hour) are going to take another six days to get that blueprint (which frequently is a dupe or something you don't need) at best, and then have to wait overnight after that final play session when they finish just to craft it if they've got all the other parts... that's going to drive casual players away from the system. To make it hurt worse, that's not counting the optimizer mats which are required to even hope to make it an appropriate item.

And I have no doubts that the modification system will start off as just as much of an unholy slog before you, Moep, and I get our grindy little claws in it and rip it apart with critical feedback. And I'll probably make a lot of the same, casual player perspective comments about that too.

I don't mind when you or Moep respond, because you two tend to read my posts and respond decently. It's when someone shifts goalposts, ignores what was said to imply that it's just "e-z mode whining", that's when I get a little terse. And a lot abrasive. So by all means, continue. I'd be happy to go down this rabbit hole if it means refining my criticism.

The shop is getting drastically reduced so can we please stop bringing that into the argument :D we know it isn't functioning as intended as it's been stated.

May I ask though if your taking into consideration that gear enchants and runes will be exchangeable? Meaning the quality of randomised will far far exceed that of random world drops or shop drops (post update) - We can both agree currently it's not convenient but I just to make sure we are seeing things from the same point of view and not exchanging words without reason. 

Regarding your comments of other ARPG's though all I can say is that IM does have a truly fundamental difference. What is rare in those games is not rare in Martyr. Martyr in fact demands complete BIS quality gear to progress. Ergo the frequency of rarity is just far from comparable to a typical game. I grasp the concept that salvaging rages could be brought down but then you have the issue of salvaging being vastly unreliable and based more on RNG. Something that'll leave these forums lighting up like a christmas tree with complaints.

I guess you can raise the cost of crafting in terms of raw materials - But that still leaves the very real and easy possibility of always making a really good weapon instantly when you level up. There would never be a reason to use anything other than purple gear, which can't be said for most games where you have to "make do" for short periods.

What would your thoughts be on a delay mechanic on recipes. Per new sector X missions invested grants X access to recipes for that new power level? - It seems a bit of a compromise to me - perhaps the best of both worlds although there will always be someone unhappy. 

But they're not good quality gear. They're worse than the common rarity gear I can buy in the shop. Crafted gear, in everything else is always superior, not inferior.... and not that inferior.

The basic recipes in Grim Dawn are free, too. You still have to farm the materials, which largely come down to money (which is relatively abundant after a couple hours), and resources (which are relatively abundant after a couple hours). And yet, the results for even the lowest tier crafted gear in GD are always better than the shop items.

This is true in everything else, as well. The inclusion of crafting must produce, and reliably produce, gear that is an improvement over the stuff bought in the shop, or it's an extraneous feature that was included for the sake of being included.

For that matter, in these other games, you also get to keep that relic/purple crafting recipe for the lifetime of your account, and yet nobody posts to the GD forums about how bad it is that they don't have to refarm it.

And yes, salvage should probably be nerfed to coincide with the aforementioned suggested removal of craft timers and reduction in crafting material drop rates. I'm rolling in materials, but they're worthless because I can't even sell them; and they're worthless because they don't produce quality gear. Even my ARTIFICER GEAR OUTPUT is worse than common quality gear--not master crafted, not rare, common.

This is a major problem in a game where a rare takes a full hour to produce, and artificer gear takes between one and six hours to produce. These are inexcusable timegates that reduce the crafting system from a gimmick into a true "bad mechanic" currently.

Thing is materials have no choice but to drop frequently, we require purple gear to level up. What we can expect if anything is a dramatic increase in the quantity of purples post balance changes in September. Unless of course you want to make the salvage rate something like 10% or raise the cost of crafting noticeably.

Recipes they are currently free, all of them - for good quality gear. Good enough to make everything bar tarrot missions pointless. For the best quality armour they are also free once unlocked. You get a purple recipe - it's for life - not just for Christmas. So that rules them out as a limiting variable. 

But should we somehow make purple mats less available - the situation which Banit describes is still very easily attainable. Just the simple ability to always have a really really good weapon while playing a game is something that honestly needs to be avoided. Recipe / crafting limitation has to be present.

I guess an alternative would be to unlock different recipes the more you play in a sector each time, really it's the only way to make IM comparable to other ARPG's where time invested = opportunities to craft. I also wonder if your (personal) points are made with it in consideration that you can / will be able to swap enchants on items for others, will that influence your view on the matter?

Curious to hear your suggestions.

Back to that argument again? You're ignoring the largest portion of the debate to go "it must all be instant and limitless!" Or did you not bother to actually read the thread?

WHICH IS NOT WHAT HAS BEEN ARGUED AT ALL, PLEASE STOP. WRITTEN IN CAPS SO THAT LATER POSTERS WILL NOT REPEAT THE SAME ARGUMENT THAT HAS BEEN BEATEN INTO THE GROUND, EMPHASIZED AND ITALICIZED FOR GOOD MEASURE.

The blockade, as I previously argued, should be what it is in other games in the genre. The materials and blueprints themselves.

When I spend two to four hours to gather the special materials, including enough of the T2 to "optimize" (which currently does not work) my output.. the fact that I have to wait up to six additional hours for an item to craft is inexcusable. This is not an MMO.

I REPEAT, EVEN THE DEVS HAVE STATED THIS IS NOT AN MMO. THEREFORE, SHOEHORNING IN MMO TIMEGATES GOES AGAINST THE INTENT INHERENT IN THE REST OF THE SYSTEMS IN THE GAME; AND AS IT STANDS THE CRAFTING SYSTEM IS A USELESS TIMEGATE THAT DOES NOT FUNCTION TO ENHANCE THE PLAY EXPERIENCE.

So for the love of the Emperor, stop parsing what is plainly stated as "the timers need to go, but the materials drops need to be retuned a bit" as "I want to be able to roll in items with no effort at all".

Go play a sword and board crusader, solo, using the garbage output shields and armor. See what happens when a gear-intensive (compared to the other classes) build is hamstrung by not being able to stack the two required damage mitigation features that are needed. Do that, without twinking your gear, using just the crafted outputs. Do that and tell me the system that is currently in place is, in any way, not a timegate that hurts the play experience.

For that matter, even builds that aren't gear intensive are hurt by this. I put a build order in for my assassin for an Artificer armor. SIX HOURS LATER, NOT COUNTING THE FOUR FOR GATHERING THE MATERIALS AND GOD KNOWS HOW LONG FOR THE BLUEPRINT...I got an artificier armor that was worse than the Common gear I started with on that character.

What we've been arguing here, is not this bizarre "gimme free shit" that everyone parses it as. We're arguing that the system needs to be fixed, because as it currently stands it is not, in any way, functioning as a mechanic that adds anything to the system. It currently detracts from the game. And that's a bad thing.

We want it to stop detracting from the experience. We do not want free oodles of loots. We want a system that is well thought out and works to enhance the play experience.

Note that I spent something like twenty hours in Grim Dawn to farm a specific relic blueprint that I needed for one specific gear... and I didn't complain about it--because that made sense. Adding that timegate, to a timegate that serves no purpose given that bought gear and found gear is inherently better in every aspect (every aspect), would have caused a huge ruckus for them. And so, Grim Dawn has no timegate for the crafting itself.

If you had to spend 2-6 hours in an MMO, for that matter, to make a single item and have it turn out to be garbage--literal garbage, worse than starting gear--that would cause issues. In any other game this sort of thing has been argued down and out, save the Survival genre because timegates galore exist there.

Timegates currently exist, and materials drop (IMO) far too frequently. That will need to be tuned. But as they've stated previously, this isn't an MMO. This also isn't a Survival game.

And to be blunt and harsh... Having timegates for the sake of pleasing the hardcore audience WILL result in steam user review bombing. Casual players do not have the drive we Founders do. And of late, that results in review bombing, which kills sales. IF NEOCORE WANTS TO BE SUCCESSFUL, THEY MUST APPEAL TO THE BROADEST BASE OF PLAYERS, NOT SIMPLY THE HARDCORE GRIND CROWD. That's all there is to it, and that has been why we've been arguing against the crafting timers. Because a casual player won't go "oh well I'll just try again" when their six hour, "supposed to be awesome" gear turns out to be worse than the yellows they started in. They'll turn around, leave the game, and rant about how terrible the crafting system is.

AND WE DON'T WANT THEM TO LEAVE. WE WANT PLAYERS TO LOVE THIS GAME, AS MUCH AS WE WANT TO SEE IT SUCCEED.

Jeez.

So I hit power level 2 today - Gz me right? Managed to get a Purplez Boltgun recipe while levelling so I was pretty hyped about that. Ofc instantly went to the crafting desk and made myself 15 power level 2 boltguns. Naturally I had loads of materials because the game gives you a lot of purple items to level up because that's how levelling works. You know I didn't even bother farming them, just casually played the game. Just to make sure I even rerolled a few stats just to make sure I was guaranteed something really great. Swapped the enchant too because I waited a couple days to unlock that feature. What's totally awesome is that for the next few hours till I level again I won't have change or even bother looking for a new weapon! I just skip the loot screens tbh because I already have what I want - The really cool part, when I hit power level 3, I can do it all again! Then again at 4. Tbh there's no point doing anything else.

Taken from an inquisitorial log in 2018.

Surely this isn't rocket science guys - It doesn't have to be timers but something has to act as the blockade. Saying the timer is "pointless" it literally no different to saying "materials in D3 should have been limitless"

OldKronz weren't good, they were just utterly broken. The right builds kept you from having to think, you just slowly rolled over the board and won by virtue of being unstoppable. I don't actually think there was any balance testing done internally when the OldKronz codex was released, honestly--there's no way the rez-spam army build could have gotten past any testing phase without someone calling attention to the fact that it made a mockery of any other army out there.

And then once Ward took over, things just went... wonky. Between units being cannonballed into strength, monobuild holding sway, and goofy weird stuff like the Grey Knights becoming TEH UNSTAWPABBLE FARCE... I just couldn't even be bothered to really keep up on anything outside of the lore.

Seriously though, what the hell was his deal? Grey Knights... naturally immune to warptaint... killing a bunch of Sororitas in a weird Khornate ritual to paint their armor in blood to, what, become EXTRA immune? I'll be the first to admit that a GK army from the Daemonhunters codex was exceptionally cheesy for the points spent (so many weapon pieplates on assault rather than rapid fire weapons!) but somehow Ward managed to crank that to 11.

I know, I started in early 5th, late 4th, but I wanted to correct you on some points there. Plus, everything in 7th was turned way up. From what I've heard, only 2nd was a more unbalanced mess. On top of that, old crons weren't even that good. Durable yes, but nowhere near top tier.

Oh, my young warrior... I have tales of cheese to share, from an era before the NewKronz...

OldKronz were a rushed, unbalanced mess to the point where many refused to play them after sinking money into them. RezOrb Lords were the cheesiest, though there is something moderately entertaining about fielding only infantry, and using sheer attrition to make up for the fact that none of your units are actually suited for anything but shooting. Wearing out an entire full-strength squad of Khorne Marked lunatic assault marines with a mere eight Warriors takes a while, but was so broken... sooo broken.

The Space Corgis fell far from the heady days of 3rd, and we must speak no more of them lest their taint spread... though I would think that it would work better to be called "Fist of the Bork Star", but that's just me. :)

Fish of fury died at the start of 5th when they changed how that worked, pie plate removal overall is bad (esp for guard, a stock leman russ can expect to deal ~1.75 hits now). Top armies iirc were Daemons >= eldar >= SM (non gladius) > SM (gladius) > 'crons. Some of that depends on the mission type (i.e. gladius SM are bad in kill point missions, but fantastic in objective based games). Tau ranking as always been middle of the pack, but likie 'crons people hate to play against them because they're not interactive ('crons ignore damage, Tau just shoot and annoy people by attempting to wipe an army by turn 2 or 3 at the latest or losing for the most part)

You want real cheese? 7th ed eldar, early 7th ed 'crons, SM free transports, borkborkstar, and daemon summoning factory. Eldar had stupidly high damage and toughness combined with mobility, daemons just kept ramping up how many units they had, combined with the fact pink horrors were 90pt but split into an end result of 270points, all the while generating warpcharges for bigger summons like DPs, 'crons were more or less unkillable, and the SM gladius just swamped the board in obsec units preventing anyone but them from scoring objectives (as in, the type where you had to stand on them, not "slay the warlord!", etc). Borkborkstar was my fave tho, you got a buncha fenrisian wolves with a 4++ invul (before psychic buffs), rending, invisibility, hammerhand (+2S iirc, so S6 or 7), and then they hid a BUNCH of characters that had thunder hammers and the like to take down anything that MIGHT have slowed them down, like a knight, in addition to being close to 60-70 models moving 12" a turn plus some other various buffs so that they could get into CC turn 1 while covering the entire board basically. Ever see an entire army assaulted first turn while being covered with a 2++ save and invisibility? Yeah, crazy. (although, that's rolling really well esp on the charge)

Current meta (before the flyer FAQ kicks in for future tournies) is storm raven spam.

Oh, no doubt. Prior to Black Crusade, bolters and chainswords were the go-to for absurd crit-builds... I have a few stories on that in my collection. To be fair, while I dislike the removal of pieplates the fact that armor pen works somewhat more rationally is kinda nice--the majority of my commentary on crunch involve true Wardian Heresy era charlie foxtrots, like the Devilfish of Fury cheese that lasted well into... what, sixth edition?

Per the Deathwatch rules, I was more referring to the fact that the Rule of Three ammo setup meant you had perhaps a quarter of the ammunition of your bolter-bearing battlebrother (say that three times fast!).

When it comes down to it, a lot of my "it's still not an assault rifle type weapon" is just real world intrusion on otherwise enjoyable fluff. There's a reason nobody watches action movies with me anymore. :)

Though not all is wardian heresy given that second edition handled it in a similiar way. ;)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the FFG PnPs went through several edition. Black Crusade was a big cut that got solidified with Only War that revamped alot of the Rules and rebalanced them.

As for Deathwatch there were a few ways to add plasma to your standard loadout though if you intended to do so - same with power weapons etc.

The only thing that prevented you from doing so was pretty much XP and then Renown to actually get a rank to be trusted with such venerable technology.

That pretty much solidifies the rank of Bolters imho. They are nice yet still the stuff you hand out at everyone.

Plasma or Power Weapons are just the straight upgrades that is limited due to production and thus just given to people that have earned it. Pretty much how you get the promotion to specialist in the guard too.

As for the fluff plasma was always that efficient, in that regard the crunch just turned into better showing it. In the end you could rapid-fire small suns so that alone is quite the argument for how fancy those things are. If they could, the entire guard would replace its lasguns with plasma guns, there is no argument to be held about that. Sure, that would force them to hand out more ammo but the very fact that you wont need "50" lasgun shots to bring down that CSM but just one plasma gun shot would even it out anyway.^^

Ok, that does clear a fair amount of my confusion up. My little group refuses to use Wardian Heresy era rules (the 4e Charlie Foxtrot that was anti-air and flyers, for example), so we've largely stuck with 3e and kitbashed other things that were interesting without being unbalanced into it. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to do, too, given the digital tools at our disposal.

The one thing to note in the FFG PnPs is how limited your ammuntion pool is, there were a few things they got horribly wrong (maximum ranges being one, but "scopes ignore range penalties" was the biggest offender) and the heavy bolter's backpack feed inexplicably only containing about 200 rounds (for a Space Marine!) vs. the Black Crusade 100 round drums (for the same weapon), while you could carry as much ammunition for the bolter you were firing one-handed just based on the Three Reloads rule... and those rules precluded the use of plasma weapons as your go-to kit usually unless you were the group's specialist (looping back to the previous statements) because ammunition sourcing was a concern.

Armor was probably handled the best, as it's never made sense to me that platemail somehow makes you harder to hit rather than reducing incoming damage (see, almost all D20 titles, a good lump of indie titles, etc). Back before my tabletop company folded, we handled damage and armor that way ourselves because it's generally the simplest to work out mid-play (these things port over to digital content in a surprisingly straightforward manner); but I digress.

8th Edition uses the System from 2nd Edition where weapon have an AP Value that degrades armor saves instead of a threshold that completely ignores armor values but would have to deal with the full save of every tier that was higher than it like in the last editions.

Vehicles now also having Toughness Values with regular saves instead of Armor makes Plasma Weapons highly effective against them for their strength is among the highest for regular ranged weapons that can also be used by infantry. Some plasma weapons even rival melta weapons at optimal range in AV duty.

So from being the dedicated anti heavy infantry light vehicle weapon plasma was promoted to anti-everything and we do have entire squads that bring plasma now. Even some squads that bring different variations of plasma.

This take back to second edition also comes actually somewhat closer so how weapons worked in the FFG PnP the devs mentioned as one of their references where AP was deducted from Armor instead of certain armors being ignored by some weapons and some not.

Did their AP value get boosted a huge amount in the last couple editions? Last I checked, the plasma gun had an AP value that could knock out light vehicles, but not heavy tanks (and definitely not superheavies), so there may be another issue in terms of generational gap.

I would not compare it like a CAR-15 vs. a 416 (both fire the same piddly cartridge, the major difference being that the latter is open bolt and piston, vs. the CAR's running a closed bolt and direct gas impingement), I would... Compare it more like the difference between an M4 and a .50 Beowulf. The latter was designed to be an assault rifle with the capability to knock out light vehicles, but the ammunition load drops your magazine to fifteen shots (much like plasma gun vs. lasgun). Which may work better here than my previous post--the Beowulf would be the "better in every way" but real considerations involving logistics trains limit it to specialist roles even though ballistically speaking it's an absolute monster in the 500 meter engagement envelope most intermediate cartridge arms are currently designed around (though that range is expanding again, it's not relevant to the topic at hand).

Remember that GW "fixed" boltguns to a .75 caliber munition a few years back (down from 20mm-80mm depending on who was writing at the time), a munition which is clearly a straight-wall casing, so given the scale it's actually feasible now for them to run with 30 round magazines (though now they curve too much given that major curves in a magazine are there to handle necked cartridges) and 75 round drums (and explains why human-portable variants are still XBAWKS HUGE), so that issue is now less prevalent in fluff... though again, it's got a lot of "Brits trying to write firearms".

One of the primary issues is the issued-tech vs. extant tech--the "sci fi" caseless rifle has existed since the 80's in the form of the G11, but cost (and a few manufacturing/implementation issues) relegated it to the bin, like the Gyrojet (which inspired the bolter). SLAPs, frangibles, an infinite variety of munitions that can be fitted into a firearm to change its role, all largely unknown because the mass of entertainment only sees full metal jacket munitions, and uniformed services carry full metal jacket as a matter of course due to the accepted conventions of warfare.

There's a new SAW being run through its paces currently, using a partly polymer cased munition that drops the issue weight down by more than half... and there's a good chance that like several other revolutionary designs over the last thirty years, we'll continue to issue the same thing because of logistics, cost, and lowest-bidder-syndrome. That last one is why I laugh at any setting that claims to be able to "quickly" enforce a change in policy--the 1911 went out of active issue in the late 80's, and were still being issued in place of the "standard" M9 pistol up until 2001, when several branches decided "sod it, we're dropping the 9mm again" and started to re-issue the 1911; the new Standard Modular Pistol design that won the bid this year likely won't see widespread use for another decade at least. This is why Mass Effect 2 made me laugh and laugh, because they managed to implement, in the span of a couple years, a galaxy wide refit of every infantry weapon out there.

Edit: @Younad: yeah, we had an issue a few threads ago where we were both drawing from fluff sources that came into conflict, as GW has had.. issues... maintaining consistent fluff in places. Lots of issues. DAMN YOU, GOTO AND KIN!

"conflicting fluff" Hah I love it 

Fluff in regards of ammunition is a real pain in the ass. Some bolter drum magazines may not even hold enough rounds to get more than 15 shots out for the scale is out of whack anyway. As for many novels, those Astartes blow more shots into the air than they could physically carry with them in regards of practical ways to store em. Kinda the problem if everything shots super huge demi-rockets.  

As for the flasks, it is true that they are somewhat bigger yet that does not stop em to reintroduce entire squads that are EXCLUSIVELY armed with plasma weaponry now (And they scare the shit out of me in the current edition^^). So that seems to be no big problem.

Especially not for an inquisitor like us that already has an unlimited pool of ammo anyway. (We cant argue for plasma ammo and ignore that every autogun may fire several metric tons of lead per mission)

The thing about Plasma weaponry is that it actually fall in that category you mentioned when you spoke about ARs being replaced by some new technology. Plasma weapons ARE that technology in 40k.

While a Car-15 mod is still comparable to a H&K416 a lasgun or bolter is not to a plasma gun.

They are just THAT much better.

Think of some random M16 and then think of an assault rifle you can use to shot and destroy heavy tanks with a decent fire rate that makes it perfect to take out pretty much any kind of infantry including guys that literally wear tank armor.

Plasma guns are just THAT much ahead, so much that you can even accept their only slight drawback that is slugging around all that ammo. But at last for something we need a power armor, right?

I think this may be another case of conflicting fluff.

As, even the Black Library novels during the Great Crusade take care to point out that the hydrogen flasks are bulky and carry far fewer shots than an issue lasgun power pack or bolter magazine, and far fewer than the drum magazines that bolters and autoguns can mount.

That's why I use DMR this way in this context. Strictly speaking, a DMR can be derived from an assault rifle (modern US issue DMRs usually share the M16 family chassis, for example, though the M14 is making a comeback due to the superior ballistics) with a longer barrel and dedicated optics, and will have a lower rate of fire to conserve ammunition--in the case of the M14 DMR variants, you have a smaller pool of ammunition and while you can fire them as rapidly, it's better served to engage priority targets with them.

When it comes to ranged weaponry, however, it's usually not as cut and dried as "can do it all better"--as the M14, SCAR-H, H&K417, etc can all "do it better" than the M16 family (due to improvements in all fields of firearms tech, and a "bigger boolit" to boot), but they have situations where they're not ideal.

One would think, based on gaming, that it goes pistol->shotgun/SMG->assault rifle->sniper rifle, but in reality each fills a role and a niche that 40k fluff does not always appropriately represent. Realistically speaking, they're all sidegrades. Much like the weapons in Martyr are.

The only reason Plasma Weapons are rare is due to the logistics and it thus being relegated to be a specialist weapon.

Fact is, that is does everything better as a general purpose rifle than all the other guns.

A DMR would be limited to take over the job of an AR for does different things, a Plasma Gun just does the same as any other Bolter or Lasgun - just better.

They are THE allrounder that does anything better, it just happens to be rare.

Same with the difference between a regular sword, chain sword and the actual power weapons. They are simply an upgrade in pretty much all aspects.

I would say that, functionally rather than fluff, the plasma weapon's stats make it far less "assault rifle of the era" and far more specialist DMR--because even after Cawl made them better, they still issue boltguns and lasguns. Fluffwise, they have a limited ammunition pool--photonic hydrogen flasks are rather large comparitively--and thus the healthy rate of fire is still limited (remember my use of the term DMR, I'll come back to it later) and restricts it to using on specific value targets... thus falling under the realm of the Designated Marksman Rifle.

The assault rifle role has always been, and likely will continue to be until we replace them with the next tech tier, a select fire weapon with light, plentiful ammunition pools allowing for a high rate of sustained fire to aid in assaulting a fixed position (hence, the name "assault rifle"). The boltgun, autogun, lasgun, etc all fill that role far more appropriately.

In Martyr, the overheat mechanic was rebalanced for plasma weapons and they fall rather nicely into that DMR niche--it's a specialist weapon with a decent fire rate, it is ultimately tooled well against champion and elite enemies, while it does have some failings in terms of handling tarpits. Oh you can do it, you can kite them, etc... but try adequately blasting 40-60 nurglings with one in a single overheat, as opposed to blazing away with a bolter/autogun/grenade launcher. Tarpits that, unsurprisingly, are better handled by the aforementioned assault rifles (or area denial munitions).

So to call it OP in-game is somewhat disingenuous, and that was the point of my statement. Mechanically, the reason tabletop doesn't limit their ammunition is the same reason that no weapon outside of single-use weapons have a limitation. When you're running a 3,000 point game, trying to remember if Squad A had used one or two of their five total flasks would slow down play. Fluffwise, they do reiterate that the one failing (even after Cawl) is the fact that there's only so much compression ammunition flasks can undergo; leaving a requirement for weapons with larger ammunition pools that are, again, filled by jack of all trades assault rifles in the form of lasguns, bolters, etc.

Of note, the laslock would be the flintlock of the setting. Just sayin'. Though I would also point out that the gap between modern and black powder is actually substantially smaller than people think, as well...

Edit: Also I'd just like to point out at this point, this discussion is straying into my real world profession--and I get a little abrasive when people misuse certain terms (assault rifle, for one) that are misused in entertainment media; so bear with me and I'll try to avoid being too abrasive.

The problem is that certain weapons do not fall into a niche Brother.

While Meltas are short range assault guns that turn a tank inside out, a plasma is, from a fluff perspective, the ultimatly firearm you could hand out to a soldier.

Its range is quite good, its stopping power is good and its armor penetration is very good AND it has quite some rate of fire.

With the fluff and crunch updates those guns are not even unreliable anymore unless you overcharge them, at that point they get a "bit" dangerous yet improve their fire power even more.

Some weapons in WH40k are just simply meant to be an improvement on other weapons.

Hellguns and hot-shot lasguns simply are an improvement on the regular lasguns while plasma guns are an improvement on pretty much ANY hand-held weapon out there. Plasma Guns are like the 40k assault rifles while lasguns and bolters are arquebuses and flintlock rifles.

So as long as skills are bound to weapons and all of those being intended to be sidegrades I doubt any weapon will compare to what it is supposed to be.

I'd like to start by pointing out that, well... that's what plasma and melta weapons are intended to do in the tabletop crunch. And the RPGs... etc. Eternal Crusade, and many other digital representations, have taken to turning meltas into shotguns and plasma into grenade launchers when they're MEQ/Dread/anti-tank weapons (the last being the purview of the melta). I assume it's expediency, though in the case of EC it could just be that the devs have absolutely no idea what they're on about in regards to the mechanics... given that the Melta is basically just a shotcannon, I tend towards the latter.

So I don't see a plasma weapon doing its job (nuking elites) as being a problem, myself--not when the plasma is kind of bad at other roles--as it should be. Remember that in filling a niche, some weapons will do very well at one thing--the grenade launcher absolutely mulches tarpits, but is abhorrent at taking down champions, nevermind trying to take on an Elite with it. So with that in mind, I don't see any one weapon as OP so much as it just fills a role, and does so admirably.

I do agree that materials are currently quite prevalent--and given the rate compared to other (completed) games I think we can expect to see that ramped down quite a bit towards the next major update and release. With that in mind, I still stand by the idea of either removing craft timers entirely, or nuking base craft timers to nothing and leaving Artificer craft timers in the 30-60 minute range--especially considering the fact that so far, there's no way to modify crafted gear (or found gear) to enhance it and I (currently) have no information on how modification will work when implemented other than "we're gonna add a way to mod your gear!"

Back to Grim Dawn, not only do I have to farm components and blueprints to make an item, I also have to then farm them again to enhance it with the stats I need beyond random rolls. In such a system, craft timers would be more forgivable (if dropped below the current absurd values of 60 minutes for a basic "worse than mission" trash item, and up to six hours for a purple that I will have already sped past by the time it's done crafting) if I could socket in the stats I needed reliably, perhaps by sacrificing T2 crafting mats to do it or crafting an item with a set, say... "Sanctified Plating: +3-5% DR, +5-7% block chance". Then I know I'm getting stats I need, I can modify the garbage output that I get, and having to wait for an item won't feel like nearly as much of a waste.

I would like to point out that part of this is coming from having spent sixteen hours on shields and finally finding an upgrade from a random CR1 mission while waiting at the end of that; and having crafted an artificer armor for my assassin and finding a vast upgrade to it within the first 30 of 500-ish minutes of the craft timer.

The rest is just sticking to the fact that even the devs state "this is not an MMO", therefore the MMO and Free to Play staples of timegating crafting/gathering have no place here, at least inasmuch as I am concerned.

The thing I do not get is that people argue that handing good items out to "easily" will destroy the game and kill the motivation.

I have to disagree with that hardly.

It is true that a huge motivation in ARPGs is the aquisition of good items. Keep in mind that I am not talking about perfect but good items. I so far do not have anything I would consider perfect in this game, merely good - most decent at best.

So while people will invest time into getting good items, giving these items by means of crafting would not kill the game.

People stick around if a game is good in the first place.

Being able to take a shortcut it no detriment, but actually awarding the player for earning the materials etc. to take that shortcut in the first place. People SHOULD feel rewarded for what they do.

Take Blizzard for example. In WoW they had some of the most restrictive systems to get gear back then and people kinda licked that. Within recent expansions they managed to keep a healthy player base and turn the game more and more "casual" as others would say. Thing is: The playerbase is still there and people still seem to enjoy it given that getting high levels and good items is easier than ever.

The same went into the philosophy of D3. In D3 it is incredible easy to get good items. Spend one or two days with dedicated farming and you got all the sets for that class that you were farming or most pieces. Good items are plenty in that game and many would argue it is fun to play too.

So hiding good items behind some friggin long timers just to have a timer here, something that has NO relevancy to actually playing the game may not be a good solution here. People WANT good items. Why? Because people WANT to play the way they like.

So remember what I said about good items. Right. Those are NOT perfect items. People will grind hours on hours for perfect items but the entire thing will be more enjoyable if they get good items earlier. It should not feel like a pain to play a different build just because RNG gave you only decent items for that build.

Because what do we want?

Right.

Players that enjoy the time playing.

Not all is OP and agreed the term is widely overused these days, however I feel it is justified here, there is a chance at (within the current game balance) to easily craft OP items even if your build stats are indeed used it doesn't alter the outcome, for example I crafted a rare plasma with a range damage modifier (+%9) on top of a single shot modifier (+9%) and an aimed shot modifier (+%17) with this weapon and my build I was able to 3 shot dreadnoughts with aimed shot alone within a mere few seconds.

I would 100% agree on the zero timer IF it related to uncommon items hell even the mastercrafted (blues) but with the current balance it would make obtaining powerful rares too easy, If we had to grind for rare blueprints I could see more an issue.

I take into account that rares are more or less inline currently with Artificer with the latter mainly used to increase powerlevels, my above mentioned plasma gun out gunned all Artificer variants I obtained over the following weeks yet was made and made rather quickly.

So here is my current view and why it is so, obviously subject to change with balance and crafting changes moving forward.

The grind for mats currently is minimal, In a single 5- 10 minute mission I would obtain enough mats to craft 2-3 items hardly a grind currently perhaps pre patch but now even chests award multiple mats and salvaging yields a decent amount too.

Probably the credits starting off may be a grind to obtain but an investigation (without buying any support) on average yields 10k enough for 3 rare crafts.

The tech tree shows ways crafting times are to be reduced and there may be other mechanics to reduce it even further moving forward on top of that with the advanced crafting I still feel crafting will be viable even with the waiting times, which I do think will see a reduction in times for rares.

Artificer is a entirely different matter, currently like said above seems only to be beneficial for moving forward with power levels, Im, sure this will receive further balancing to make Artificer gear feel better than rares.

Regardless differences of opinion are useful gives varied views and the more the merrier imo as it gives devs more info and feedback.

As it should be.

And trading is a HUGE and MAJOR aspect of POE.

Devs say time after time this is no MMO. So keep the MMO mechanics out of this.

Every now and then, I pull my head out of my rear and make a good point, before I go back to being a whinging neckbeard. :)

On topic, I would also like to see Tarot missions continue to be relevant--perhaps move the artificer blueprint drops into them entirely, or have them increase the T2/rare T1 crafting mat drop chance (on top of modifiers), have their rolls weighted towards the higher end of the spectrum, etc.

I have no issue with hardmodes, challenge dungeons, or anything like that--my concerns all stem from when a small group of invested players (of which I am a part, I love running the challenge missions with groups) push to include them as part of the core experience.

I despised the base defense quests in Van Helsing, but I loved the challenge content. Why? One was optional and gave concrete rewards that were generally better, and the other was (to me) a slog. It's part of the reason why I tend to avoid games where they introduce the challenge content clumsily, in the form of a story gear-check, rather than presenting it as an entirely optional but enriching part of the experience. Going back to Grim Dawn--their challenge dungeons can be quite hard, even in a well assembled group--but I've made it a build challenge to take each of my characters as far into them as I can to get better at the game and to see where my builds fail.

The opposite experience, then, would have to be Nekro (a dead ARPG). There was no real experience or gear grinding available at all, but the third or fourth level ended up being a challenge level to introduce their challenge content--while leaving you pitifully undergeared and underbuilt on all classes. It was a grind, a slog, and after about ten hours of ramming my face against it with every build possible I dropped the game entirely and walked away. Apparently I wasn't the only one, as the dev house shut down a year or two ago without any of us noticing.

So, to that end... make crafting more viable than investigation/random at-CR drops, and make at-CR tarot missions more viable than crafting gear, but keep it set up in a way to allow the player some flexibility--maybe they don't have time to run endless Tarot missions (I'm guilty of stretches of up to four hours at a time just burning my Fate with a group, and up to 10 hours total including solo) so the crafted gear will still be relevant, the missions will still be relevant, and the Tarot will still be relevant--without keeping craft timers and queues as a barrier to entry. You'd still have to run Tarots to get your purps and purple mats, you'd still get something out of crafting, and you'd still have a reason to do Investigations and increase your system rep.

You make some very potent & valid points.

I still heartily disagree. The fact that you have to matgrind, you have to grind for cash, and you have to grind for blueprints... There's no breeze there.

Where my last post was more abrasive, I'll try a different tack here.

"It should be more beneficial to actually grind the game."

Neocore needs to appeal to the broadest possible audience. The vast majority of post release players won't be invested neckbeards. They'll be seeing a "different ARPG, cool let's try it". And casual players are almost always turned off by grind. Proposing more grinding, more stagnancy, will run counter to the ARPG formula.

While I hate crafting timers on top of inflated material costs, I'm perfectly capable of wasting six hours a night slaughtering the hordes of heretic filth for better gear. But... not everyone is (even in the alpha!)... and a lot of people simply won't be willing to.

You must be very careful when suggesting balancing early on, because if the barrier to entry is set to high, it will kill a game's market viability. There's a reason Dark Souls-style hardmode games are such a niche market--not all gamers enjoy hardmode permadeath input lag equals starting over from scratch.

The crafting system as it stands isnt balanced we all know this but to remove a timer on it altogether would remove the point of grinding for mission based loot in many instances and could all but remove the point of tarot missions altogether, It should be more beneficial to actually grind the game.

I understand why people want instantaneous crafting but unless the craftable gear is stat locked to below what is obtainable in the field it would reduce replayability imo.

We are all allowed to have opinions though it is what prompts discussion and will help the devs steer the game toward becoming the best it can be.

You say "OP gear", but given the array of weapons I've used across the game there really isn't anything "OP". It would certainly seem that way if it fits your playstyle, but nothing vastly outshines every other weapon in every other role.

The term "OP" gets bandied about entirely too often, and results in nerfs for things that were just fine before. Doubly important to mention, in that if, say, you've capped your AoE tree anything with area of effect damage will seem overpowered to you... because you took the time to buff it well above and beyond the actual weapon's stat value. So have a care using that term, lest we find ourselves facing down a thunder-nerfbat.

As to the crafting times, Airsick Hydra mentioned in another thread that the craft timers were fine but... this isn't a Free to Play MMO, nor is it a mobile game. Literally no other ARPG (save PoE, perhaps, I haven't touched that in a couple years) in production timegates you that hard if you have the resources to create an item. None of them. And there's a reason for that...

Because without feeling like they're progressing, players will leave the game. I came close several times on my Crusader, and I'm a huge 40k grognard. Now think, really think, about what happens when less invested players come in, find out that to craft a disposable piece of gear takes 1+ hour, and five or more for artificer gear that will likely be thrown in the trash by the time it finishes crafting! They're going to see the crafting system for what it currently is--a timegate that does nothing but waste the player's time for results that are far less useful than what they'd get in twenty minutes of Tarot runs.

Now, if I launch Grim Dawn (or any other ARPG with a crafting system), and I have a blueprint drop from a boss... I go, I gather the mats. I go, and I hit produce. It's done. It still took me several hours (to get the blueprint), and several more (to get the mats). But the developers don't go "well what should we do, it's INSTANT PRODUCTION" because it's not. People keep forgetting about the time investment to get materials and blueprints, and just keep vocally supporting huge time sinks that, let's face it, are timegating for the sake of timegating.

I have to farm the thrones. I have to farm the mats. I have to farm the blueprints. For the love of the Emperor, stop saying that your crafting is instant and has no time investment just because it lacks a huge obvious timer. It's disingenuous, and has huge logical gaps.

I wasn't asked to leave if you kindly take the time to read what was said. 

What baffles me is why i'm being treated with such contempt when all i've done is politely asked a couple of open and very simple questions regarding game design, while giving a few observations of my own? But it seems the quality of this thread has just descended into "taking sides" irregardless of the point being made. Instead of what it could be which is a productive discussion.

Can we just move on from this? Like adults and continue to discuss the game.