Life is Feudal Official Forum

[GetTrippy]

Is there any plan to change how the blueprints work, because lets get real here if I was to learn a blueprint on how to make a piece of armor I wouldn't forget how to make it right after I made my first piece. Its already hard enough going around just to get the special iron for it. So why not just let us remember the basic blueprints like plate armor but just make it really rare to learn any of the royal armors?

[Sharana]

Is there any plan to change how the blueprints work, because lets get real here if I was to learn a blueprint on how to make a piece of armor I wouldn't forget how to make it right after I made my first piece. Its already hard enough going around just to get the special iron for it. So why not just let us remember the basic blueprints like plate armor but just make it really rare to learn any of the royal armors?

Warning, this post ended up as huge wall of text even when I aimed for something much shorter


The basic problem faced gameplay wise was that everyone and their mother was running in tier 3, it was just normal. The devs don't want that for the MMO - plain and simple. So they came with the blueprint system, which overdid it yes, but fundamentally is kind of spot on - it does address what they wanted to change. Their vision is simple:
- tier 1 (as called Novice armor) is supposed to be easy, cheap, "training one" - entry level armor that you provide your new recruits before you can entrust them tier 2 armor.
- tier 2 (as called Regular armor) is let's say standard issue armor for your warriors.
- tier 3 (as called Veteran armor) is supposed to be expensive and superior armor reserved only for the "veterans" aka the best warriors in the group (the elite which is small fraction of the guild) and the combat officers.
- tier 4 (as called Royal armor) is supposed to be ridiculously rare and expensive, acquired and used only by few very influential (let's say really "rich" for the virtual world purpose) individuals like let's say leaders of big guilds, heads of alliances and stuff like that.

The theory is nice and logical, the blueprint system can achieve the aimed design. It's only matter of balance. The current balance fails to achieve 75% of the goals (3 out of the 4 points). The only stuff it achieved is make the tier 2 standard issue armor which is the easiest point of course.
- tier 1 goal is not achieved for 2 very simple reasons - the armor is not cheaper, the linen cloth requirement (which is the limiting factor in mass production of armors) is the same, but that's not even the main reason. You get no tier 3 blueprints by making tier 1 armor, so why would you ever spent the limited amount of linen cloth that you have on tier 1 armor? Instead everyone just mass produces tier 2 armor and puts the lower quality one aside (used worse q linen and metal) to serve the tier 1 purpose while still having the benefit of new blueprints due to the mass production.
- tier 2 goal is met, tier 2 is indeed the standard issue armor that is mass used by everyone.
- tier 3 goal is also not achieved, because they are just too rare (the blueprints, not the regional resources needed for them). Right now they fill the role of royal armor - they are just that rare and valuable ( OK, not really valuable, just very rare) and can only act as show off armor. Seen such armor only on remarkable PvPers (their level on themself) or high ranking officers/leaders, but in both cases only for non-battle situations and for pure show off. It's definitely not the "veterans" BATTLE armor (which they will pick in battle instead of it being way too rare to risk in battle).
- tier 4 goal is even way more off, up to ridiculous levels. So tier 3 fills the role of the royal one, while it is nowhere to be found/seen in the current balance, so everyone pretends it's not existing

For me the problem is the current chance to get the blueprint, not fundamentally the blueprints system. Yes it's "unrealistic" to "forget" the recipes, but gameplay always comes first - stuff like "realistically" and "historically accurate" are secondary.
In the current state of LiF the armor piece itself can not be made that valuable to prevent the mass production of tier 3 armor and it's mass use (the design goal). During testruns 1 and 2 of the MMO wave 1 (so 4 weeks combined) just 2 (two) miners in my guild provided me with 150 (hundred fifty) INGOTS of regional iron. That's on top of the fact they were mining more silver/gold to secure enough high quality jewelry and silver/gold/copper for the vostakus steel tools, so regional iron was not their focus. And still that's absolutely mass producing level and if there was no limitation in blueprints my guild would be running in tier 3 armors, which wouldn't be "working as intended". You won't say that regional stuff isn't rare enough, are you? So that means that the "expensive" armor piece is dead end, you just can not make it as expensive (=human hours required to get the final product, that's the only currency) as let's say a massive building like keep. It will make no sense.

I know that everyone wants the best, but that's not the goal in LiF, no matter how much you "grind" (for let's say gold coins), you most likely won't afford a royal armor. Both tier 3 and tier 4 are let's call them "show off" armors. If you meet someone wearing one there are very high chances that it's either elite warrior or player that excelled in organisational/leadership "skill" and is some guild's officer - in both cases not the regular "peasant" (Life is Feudal xD). In theory everyone can grind enough gold coins through basics material collection tasks and buy such armor from a blacksmith, but is it worth it? You can't wear it if you can't afford to lose it (and when you don't have spare one waiting for you yes you can't afford to lose it). And if you wear it nevertheless is it worth it to grind for weeks in order to lose it in the 1st battle? So it's not impossible for everyone to get one, but it's not viable by design - the guys that are supposed to wear it will just get another one from the guild's armory, while a player who isn't supposed to wear one by design will not

Anyway, this wall of text is way longer already, then I wanted to type 15 minutes ago when I started
But as I explained the current state of the "balance" I should add what I proposed for improvement. The 1st time I complained back in December during the 1st testrun of wave 1 the devs examined the database and agreed that the 1% chance to get a blueprint was way too low and too few blueprints existed in the MMO. My view on "significant increase" was to make it 10%, but it seemed to extreme to them back then, so their "significant increase" ended up being 5%.
Everyone playing knows that's still far off from the target goal explained in the design. Having tier 3 armor doesn't mean using it if it's so rare. After 2 months of MMO (8 weeks total uptime so far) my guild has 5 and half tier 3 sets (metal armors only, the leader/padded ones I didn't count as it's not me making them). But I didn't even bother to craft them all as it's pointless anyway if you wouldn't fight with them. My group is one of the biggest and most active on the MMO (one of the reasons to get so many blueprints), the ratio of farmers to armor smiths is like 10:1 yet the end result after 8 weeks is not even enough to give 1 set to the best PvPers without the officers (out of let's say... 50+ players total). And having 1 set is totally worthless, you will just not fight in it if you have no spare armor. If the devs think that the "elite" group of each guild should be 5% (percent I don't agree with, I would say 10%) then that means the chance should be at least x2 in order for the selected few selected for tier 3 to have enough armors to cover the possible losses or they just won't fight in them to begin with.

In my experience each warrior needs at least 3 armor sets stored for him in order to fight optimally and not consider the armor too valuable to lose and play over defensively or even go in the fight naked (only tabard and boots) as it happens in the beginning when the armory is stretched very thin - players just aren't ready to lose something they know they are short of. I personally would like to see something like 15% chance for the blueprints, that will mean you can actually provide tier 3 for selected few to fight in. Let's take as example a big guild of 100 players. Their "operational" armors (the amount they will try not to drop under, so ofc they will stockpile during peace time) will be something like 300 that should be available in the armory all the time with wartime reserves stocked in other places for wartime use. 15% blueprint chance will mean there are about 35 tier 3 sets (because it's random luck based chance that varies a lot, you can get only 1 full set in 100 armors and you get lots of double, triple and so on parts). So having like 35 tier 3 armors for your 100 man guild doesn't mean that 35% of your guys can wear tier 3 as the game designers seem to think. Instead it means that 5-10 (%)players will use them in battle as they won't have the psychological barrier of "oh shit, I have only 1 rare armor, I'm not using it lol, no chance" and will use it in combat and you will see such players on the battlefield. Of course it still costs regional iron and leather that you need trading to get your hands on, so they will still be used for more important battles instead of just wearing them as a daily dress and just traveling around the map with them. Those 35 tier 3 armors will also mean that the 100 man guild will be able to support like 3 royal armors, which in my eyes isn't too much.

Yes the argument can be made that those armors are not "destroyed" on death, they are looted instead, but I still don't see that as "over flooding" the situation. It will take year before smaller groups can afford to use them reliably in battle as well. 1 year is a lot, active players will demand new content by that time in order to be interested in the MMO and new blueprints to keep them grinding are not out of the question for me which is logical
Also if 15% is too much they can always nerf it instead of increasing the chance with tiny bits all the time that are just never enough. Also the wipe after CBT is not so far away, even 20% chance won't be a mistake as we will at least observe the effects and provide feedback (and statistic in the devs DB) in order to get the ratio "right" for OBT instead of going with unresolved problem forward and playing with values during the no-wipe OBT. And while I think they will not go for 15% I really hope they will at least consider 10%

[Alakar]

I agree with you Sharana, it is a little too rare at the moment to be viable. I would rather see a either a system where the previous tier of armor goes into making the new one, and/or where the chance for blueprints could be split by tier (say 10/15% for Tier 3 Recipe and 5% for Tier 4 ).

[Sharana]

I agree with you Sharana, it is a little too rare at the moment to be viable. I would rather see a either a system where the previous tier of armor goes into making the new one, and/or where the chance for blueprints could be split by tier (say 10/15% for Tier 3 Recipe and 5% for Tier 4 ).

Chance based (irrelevant from the tier) will actually fix the tier 1 case if it is cheaper. I'm not sure how realistic is the possible of spamming tier 1 armors in order to gain blueprints given the fact that no one is going to wear them in battle and that would be completely wasted materials if you focus your mass production efforts on it for the purpose of blueprints only. Maybe lower chance to get tier 3 (like 5) and no royal at all from tier 1 armors

"Upgrading" the armor is good in theory, but I think that without the chance based blueprints the big guilds can afford the grind to have most of their players in tier 3 which is back to the old system where as said everyone and their mother was running in tier 3, mainly plate

[Nothing_Personal]

I don't mind the blueprints being one offs, however they need to pick one way to limit the production of the tier3/+ armors.

Option A ) Blueprints and normal materials.
Option B ) Make regional items part of the recipe and do away with blueprints.


It's not like the regional items serve any significance at all, you get the same armor piece regardless of what region the ingredient came from.


If you really want to make regional resources then prevent certain crops/trees from growing outside of their designated biome. Haven't seen any redwood trees in Texas lately, maybe they just need a forester to come down with some sprouts and some luck jewelry and get to work.

[Gruber]

In open Beta we will see how rare t3 will be when mass production realy goes to its limits. With that poor durability loss, even on player death, you will see much more t3 than in closed beta.

Blueprints, Resources, luck, that all will not prevent mass production and guilds flooting the world with t3. It goes the same way as it goes with horses, after a few weeks/month everyone got one.

Grinding, even when people have to grind a lot (blueprints) does not prevent mass production. The only and simple thing that prevent mass production is time.

- heating up ores to smelt could take 1 houre, with the same coal requirement.
- crops growth could take 7 days
- breeding time from 60 to 300 or even 600
- and so on....

Every peasant can easily optain a weapon/armor and a horse + two more in backpack.

[Kenneday]

I must say it's a pretty retarded system for the base game, it might make sense for the mmo but goodbye annnnnyyyyy chance of getting royal armor everrrrrr, I mean wow instead of making it more expensive just make it almost impossible to even craft.

[Asimov]

I have to say i dont see the problem with the system as it is right now.
As Sharana say they did make a few sets of tier 3 in the 4 weeks time in the mmo. I think we can make a few to, just non of us have done it.
But do we all think the mmo is a 3 month long game and if not all players have tier 3 in that time we have failed ?
When wave 2 opens we have "forever" to make tier 3 and i am sure we will have the time to make a LOT of tier 3 armour. The later we come in to the game the bigger chance there is players will make blueprints. More luck, higher skills and the fact you have to keep on making armours since you die more later in the game. Ofc if your guild take part in PvP. If your guild dont take part in PvP, well no reason for your players to have tier 3 armour if any armour at all.

I think it is perfect that guilds who works hardest get more tier 3 armour so not any stupid blacksmith can run in hammer 2 times with his noob hammer and here you go tier 3 for the whole guild...

About the tier 4 armour. Well since they now are the better armour lets make it super rare. And if it is as Sharana say just for guild leaders, well then any guild just have to make 1 or 2 in the "forever" time the mmo takes, so dont worry over time we all get to play kings

Tier 1 is a different thing. I like the idea of blueprints and like to see them use it for more stuff like horses etc. So if they made tier 1 armour cheap (no flax involved) and then get blueprints for tier 2 armour i think that would be better. Then we would all run around in "peasant" armour for a long time and then maybe after 4-6 weeks we would run around in tier 2 armour. Again it is a long game so time is a factor

[GetTrippy]

So make it really hard to get in the MMO not the main game? not everyone wants to slave over the MMO for months.

[Asimov]

So make it really hard to get in the MMO not the main game? not everyone wants to slave over the MMO for months.

Again I agree. And some admins on yo servers have already changed it in the database, so it can be done. Those admins just have to share the knowledge.

[Cosimo]

The change is done not in the DB but in the skill_types.xml under Life is Feudal Your Own Dedicated Server\data

find <regional type="blueprint" probability="0.05" /> and put it to something higher

[Hallegra]

I would say one of the misconceptions the devteam seems to have with the t3 and t4 armours is that they're inherently better. When you wear heavier armour, you are sacrificing mobility for damage reduction. The T1,T2,T3,T4 armours are balanced against eachother based on mobility vs damage reduction.

With the increased rarity and cost of T3 and T4 armour, I predict that almost nobody will end up using T3 and T4 as they're more expensive and don't offer anything beyond what a T1 and T2 offers.

If you wear T1, you still get 5 "points" for combat, its just 4 of those go into mobility and 1 into damage reduction.
T2 means 3 points into mobility, 2 into reduction
T3 means 2 mobility, 3 damage reduction
T4 means 1 mobility, 4 damage reduction
Naked means 5 mobility, 0 damage reduction.

My point is that all the armours are balanced against eachother and people tend to choose specific armours, at least within an armour type, based on their own personal preference of whether they prefer mobility vs protection.Someone wearing novice plate may get 20% damage reduction vs a fullplate's 60% (these numbers are arbitrary), but they can move faster and farther for the same stamina cost. By making the T3 and T4 armour more expensive and much more difficult to get and much more debilitating if lost, nobody is going to use them because they don't provide a straight increase to your combat effectiveness despite the cost.

This argument doesn't factor in the fact that, with 100q royal plate you'll reduce an oncoming lance by half the damage at most... With the presence of extremely powerful piercing weapons such as the lance and boar spear higher tier armour is made even more redundant

[Dragmar]

I would say one of the misconceptions the devteam seems to have with the t3 and t4 armours is that they're inherently better. When you wear heavier armour, you are sacrificing mobility for damage reduction. The T1,T2,T3,T4 armours are balanced against eachother based on mobility vs damage reduction.

With the increased rarity and cost of T3 and T4 armour, I predict that almost nobody will end up using T3 and T4 as they're more expensive and don't offer anything beyond what a T1 and T2 offers.

If you wear T1, you still get 5 "points" for combat, its just 4 of those go into mobility and 1 into damage reduction.
T2 means 3 points into mobility, 2 into reduction
T3 means 2 mobility, 3 damage reduction
T4 means 1 mobility, 4 damage reduction
Naked means 5 mobility, 0 damage reduction.

My point is that all the armours are balanced against eachother and people tend to choose specific armours, at least within an armour type, based on their own personal preference of whether they prefer mobility vs protection.Someone wearing novice plate may get 20% damage reduction vs a fullplate's 60% (these numbers are arbitrary), but they can move faster and farther for the same stamina cost. By making the T3 and T4 armour more expensive and much more difficult to get and much more debilitating if lost, nobody is going to use them because they don't provide a straight increase to your combat effectiveness despite the cost.

This argument doesn't factor in the fact that, with 100q royal plate you'll reduce an oncoming lance by half the damage at most... With the presence of extremely powerful piercing weapons such as the lance and boar spear higher tier armour is made even more redundant

I would totaly agree with you if we where stil looking at it as just dmg reduction vs mobilty. But since the bonuses to X and Y for each armor was added aswell I do stil think some armor types might stil benefit from having T3/T4.

Not saying all of them will, melee for sure will value mobility. But say a "glasscannon" archer when defending behind walls might very much like the added extra bonus a T3 set of leather gives compared to a T2.

[Hallegra]

I would totaly agree with you if we where stil looking at it as just dmg reduction vs mobilty. But since the bonuses to X and Y for each armor was added aswell I do stil think some armor types might stil benefit from having T3/T4.

Not saying all of them will, melee for sure will value mobility. But say a "glasscannon" archer when defending behind walls might very much like the added extra bonus a T3 set of leather gives compared to a T2.

I agree, but that's more slanted towards the idea that a defender on a wall, if slain, will get their equipment recovered and, seeing as you're on a wall, mobility isn't nearly as important as increased defensiveness because the enemy can't reach you. Also, higher tier leather will increase your ranged effectiveness anyways. So, allow me to rephrase that apart from leather I stand by my earlier statement

[Ricardoferreira1991]

I have a couple of questions about this crafting system.

1) The only way to obtain regional resources (ore for example) is through mining? (and trading of course). What about smelting? if you make a tool with regional iron, and then you recycle it, does it convert back to regional ore or back to regular ore? I'm asking because I want to know if you can refine the regional ore, which leads me to my second question.

2) The quality of the regional ore is:
a) random?
b) or the same as the ore you are mining at that moment? I mean, if you are mining a 90q regular ore, you get a 90q regional ore?

3) To obtain the regional resources for mining, is level 90 mining required? I mean, the regional resource is a rare mineral ingredient? or is that another completely different 1% thing?

I agree that the t1 armors should be cheaper to make, I also noticed this while playing YO, there was no reason to make the t1 armor other than grinding.. By making the t1 cheaper, at least new players will use it, and they will switch to the t2 when they get the flax for it, and the t2 will be the most common type of armor. The t3 system seems(as I wasn't part of the CBT) overkill, 1% to get a recipe you can only use once before forgetting it and that's also random (meaning you won't get a recipe for the greaves by forging greaves) and on top of that you need regional resources. I mean wow.
Sharana is right, it should be 10% to get the recipe for t3 from t2, and a lower change to get it from t1, 5% in the current state, but if they remove the flax requirement for the t1 to make it worth crafting it, then the t1 crafting to get the t3 recipe is a bad idea because everyone would just spam the t1 armor the get the recipes since its a lot cheaper.
If the t3 armor is that much hard to craft compared to the t2, and you can lose it the first time you die, I think the armor should get a buff, to give a greater advantage on combat. I'm a medieval history fan, and watching anyone on full plate armor die from slashing damage from a sword is funny. They used to fight plate armor by doing a lot of grapples and trying to pierce the armor through the eye slots or the joints of the armor, or they just relied on blunt damage from war picks, maces, or polearms, etc. Watching two guys on full plate slash each other to death is kind of dumb. Even if it is what they do in some modern tournaments lol, it's not how it used to be back then.
Also, the t4 armor, the royal armor, which very few individuals used to own, like Kings and some dukes, was considerable superior to the regular full plate armor. Even if it wasn't superior on the defensive capabilities(which it was), it was superior on the mobility part. There is a documentary on youtube called Metalworks The Knight's Tale by Dr. Tobias Capwell, where he examines some of the royal armor from King Henry VIII and one can see the extra mile the armorsmiths went to get that mobility. That could be a historically accurate idea, give the t4 armor the same mobility as a t2 armor, but with the defensive stats it has now (which are only slightly better than the t3)
There are many ways to balance the blueprints system. Instead of using the blueprint once it could be used twice or three times for example, allowing you to use it once and then trade it with another armorsmith for another blueprint piece.
It could be that you could only get a helm recipe by crafting helms, which would reduce the amount of mass production you would need to make (and it would make a lot more sense too, since if you only make helms how come you suddenly know how to make a better breastplate?)

[Balgias]

I see ZERO justification for how rare and difficult it is to get blueprints, and furthermore the fact that blueprints are " forgotten " is beyond immersion breaking.

[Ricardoferreira1991]

The blueprint is not that hard to get anymore, the percentage was increased from 1% to 5%, although 10% would be better, but since the durability of items decay really fast, you will be making a lot of weapons and armor for your guild and you'll get the blueprints eventually.

In my previous post I said the tier 1 armor should be cheaper, I didn't notice it was already cheaper, it doesn't require flax anymore, so, yea, my bad.

About the blueprints being used after one time, I don't like that either. It's too much. Somebody else said that you need at least 3 sets of an armor to actually think its safe to use in combat even if you die and lose it, so how about the blueprint gets 3 uses before it is "forgotten"? that way either 3 people could get the armor, or just 1 person could get 3 armors, so he would have a backup and have less fear of losing it. Just for the tier 3 armor though. The royal armor should be 1 diagram, since it should be a rare set, as it is now.

[Ajslim801]

first of all the differences in effectivness it currently makes T3 and T4 worthless. You get minimal stat increases for both. How they need to make the system work is the Armor is limited to a certain number per tier of guild. Infinite T1 and T2. Then T3 can only have 5 at T3 monument 10 at T4 and 15 at T5.

T4 should be based on the king and his guard as the armor suggests. 1 set at T3(for the king). 5 sets at T4 and 10 sets at T5.

Still make it rare to earn blue prints but make the blueprint permanent. But change the system. T1 is the only thing given to the player when armorsmith reaches 60. Crafting T1 yields T2 blueprints. Crafting T2 yields T3 BP. And crafting T3 yields royal BP.

This solves the problem of rarety. It also makes the armorsmithing system feel rewarding. This also solves the problem of it being so rare you never see them on the field of battle. When taken on the field of battle from a enemy it becomes a trophy for the victorius guild and when displayed shows the place time and date of the battle possibly with killing blow player against whoever wore it. You could also even penalize guild of T3,4,5 not fielding thier elite armors and when a set is looted by the enemy you lose 1/10 T5 for 1 month or until some other requirement is achieved.

They should also either make these armors extremely light or provide a better stat bonus or even have specialty functions like the wearer can syphon his life to the king which would represent the guards taking damage for thier king on the battlefield. The T3 armor should provide a 5% increase in Stam and damage to solders within a 5 meter ring around them cause the veterans being in the frey with the common troops gives them courage and hope.....or something along these lines.

Pretty much the rarety and cost and trouble of making such armors will like everyone says make them to appear not to exist because they literally will never see the battlefield. The devs have a oppurtunity to make such interesting and fulfilling gameplay here while not going overboard to fantasy and staying true to a simulator.

[Jonesr]

Lets get real for a minute. This will be one more thing that helps kill the game. A year from now every vet will have the high level shit and it will be just one more turn off for any new player to try to get into the game. Once the pop starts to dwindle and new players stop coming we have a DarkFall all over again.

If they do not fix the servers soon though It wont matter in the least.