Thursday, September 18, 2014

Diablo 3 - Improve gem crafting speed

Problem
Currently, it takes about 3 seconds to craft anything, from the point you click, to the point the crafted item appears in your bag. For gear, this is bearable, as I usually dont craft gear because they are not as good as those that drop in the game. And when I do craft gear, I do it piece by piece, as stop when I get good rolls. This is to prevent over crafting, and saves me some souls.

For gems, my main purpose of crafting them is to get the max level Flawless Royals for socketing gear, or to get Flawless Imperials for re-rolling items. To get Flawless Royals, one needs 81 Marquises, turn them into 27 Imperials (27 crafts), turn them into 9 Flawless Imperials (9 crafts), turn them into 3 Royals (3 crafts), turn them into 1 Flawless Royal (1 craft). This amounts to 40 crafts, or ~2 minutes of standing around for 1 gem. Most characters would need 5 gems, so that's ~10 minutes of waiting. This is unfun, but still okay, as you would only need to bear with it once for each character.

For re-rolling items, you need Flawless Imperials, and you can only get them by crafting. Re-rolling items is a game of chance, therefore you need many attempts. Obviously, it would be very painful to craft 1 gem, walk to Myriam, enchant and fail, return to Shen, craft another gem, repeat X times until you get the desired rolls. The less painful way would be to craft a batch of gems before going to Myriam. I usually craft a batch of 10 Flawless Imperials first. This requires 90 Marquises, turning them into 30 Imperials (30 crafts) and 10 Flawless Imperials (10 crafts). This is another 40 crafts, another 2 minutes of waiting for 10 attempts at a slot machine. I have played this slot machine for thousands of times, imagine how much time was spent standing around and waiting for the crafts to finish.

Suggestion

Make crafting faster by doing the following:

1) Reduce the crafting time

Make it 1 second, or even instantaneous. There's no need to worry about players accidentally crafting something they didn't want to. Players shouldn't need to be babysit like this. They will learn to craft properly.

2) Enable crafting by batch

Currently you craft gear/gems 1 by 1. You can choose to craft 10 at a go but the items come out 1 by 1. For gems at least, if I craft 10 at a go, then the gems should come out as a batch of 10 and take as long as if I craft only 1.

3) For gems, enable direct crafting of higher tier gems.

Currently, you need to do some math in your head to determine how many gems you need before you can craft your higher tier gems. For example, if i have 81 Marquises, the game will only tell me that I can craft 27 Imperials, where the truth is I can also craft 9 Flawless Imperials, 3 Royals, and 1 Flawless Royal. But the game makes me go through the different tiers.

It would be good if the game tells me that I have the option to craft 27 Imperials, 9 Flawless Imps, 3 Royals and 1 Flawless Royal, with my 81 Marquise. If I need the Flawless Royal, i will only need 1 craft attempt, and the game will deduct 81 Marquise from my stash. If I need the Flawless Imperials, I will only need 9 attempts (based on the current model), or if #2 was implemented, then 1 attempt as well.


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