An essay about balancing and crafting part 2

I wrote this before the reveal of the changes that will come with the third edict season, so some things might feel out of place

Crafting

In my last post i talked about balancing and in this post i’ll focus in crafting

Everyone agrees that crafting is bad in POE 2, but what makes it bad?

First of all, i dont think the drop rate of itens is bad to day, ii wouldn’t complaim about bad drops if i could pick then and craft then into something actually usefull, só the problem doesn’t lie on drop rates but actually lack of craft options, crafting in POE 2 is completely rng, and the way it work is basically shove exalts in the item and pray, to make it worse we drop way too few currencies to actually use then for crafting, which brings me to another thing i think it makes crafting bad, an economy based on currency itens instead of gold, because why am i going to use exalts and other currencies to gamble on an iten instead of using them to buy one, when you make an economy built around these itens they lose their original purpose...Crafting, its better to hoarde then instead of using it. To make things short i say the biggest problems of crafting are:

- Crafting is completely rng
- To few currencies to actually gamble on crafting
- An economy that does not encourage crafting because craft itens are better used in other ways

A solution to this would be the introductiion of craft itens that are not for trading, a good example of this are essesces, however they also suffer from some of the same problems, not too may of then to actually encouraging using, and lack of good results when used. In my opinion, essences need to be reworked, Make then into something that you can chose the affix instead of a randon one, limit the use of one essence per item for the fisrt tier of essence and 3 essencecs for the greater ones, make something that can actually give us the results we need. This is also the same for omens (too few of then and the other same problems)

We need a carfting system like the one in Last Epoch, you can chose the affixes to a good extent, which helps in the early game, and early stages of endgame, but to craft better itens you need mechanics thtat rely on luck, not o metion the game floods you with craft currencies so you dont feel that bad wasting then, it encourages crafting while giving good results, the complete oposite of POE 2

There is alson a need to talk about the vendors npcs, during the campaign its even harder to drop good itens, and its undestandable that in early lvls the drops are lower, however we are at a point where there is barely anything good to go by during the campaign, the vendors help with tis but here is their problem, they sell to few rare itens (sometimes even none) and they only change their stock once you lvl up. We need then to offer more rare itens (at least double the amount) and change their stock more often (like every hour or every half an hour). The campaign is already frustrating enough, most of the time you take forever to kill things, you fell weak all the time, and you cant tank anything (you cant tank the endgame either, i cant understand a game where you can max your defenses and still fell like a glass canon).
For the gambling vendor (like Alva) the prices are always too high to actually use then enough

So, for the devs, here is your homework:

- Make the crafting system with less rng
- Actually develop a crafting system
- Give us more currencies or craft itens (like essences) to actually engage in crafting without losing then all (entering the endgame with 20 exalts and expecting us to use then is madness)
- Make vendors sell more rare itens and resuply their stock faster
- Make intens on gamble vendor cheaper (way cheaper, 30k for one item in the endgame just to see a blue one is cruelty)
- At least think about switching the economy to gold (dont tell me it doesnt work, literally every other game does that and it works)

Dont be afraid of giving us a lot, its better to have a lot of options than none at all, flood us with currencies, let us try our luck, let us choose what we want Crafting has always been a core part of RPGs and the game will never be complete without it.

Also an ingame action house, i dont undestard why are you guys so resistent to this ideia but its about time