[Artisan] The lack of identity and problems with the class

[Ryogure]

Hi, I'm Ryogure you may have seen me around discord and trying to help other fellow artisans. After helping other Artisans grow and being a regular high-end crafter for a lot of players I came around to a very sad conclusion: there is little to no point to Artisans as the class exists right now. So this will be an in-depth post with suggestions, analysis and problems the class faces.

First I will state that I'm a lvl 250 Artisan, with thousands of CON and a very high SEN. I played the class in past official versions and I dedicate 90% of my playtime to my main currently so this comes from experience. I have already been through all stages potential Artisans will have to face. So this is a list of big picture and detailed issues Artisans currently have.

 

Issue: materials, recipes, rates, class identity and demand.

Analysis by level gaps

Lvl 1-100

The first and most notorious issue an Artisan or dealer-to-be Artisan face is drops. With the current quest design, leveling speed curve and items given by quests to players based on the class they choose to play rarely any profitable or interesting item comes from crafting on the first 100 levels. It all boils down to making Fairy Wings, Little Angel, Little Devil, Angel, Devil and Worm Dragon Wings. With only the Angel/Devil wings family having a good drop rate and fair recipe for beginners. Is impossible for a dealer to craft Worm Dragon Wings because it is impossible for one to find a party farming them in Gorge of Silence as most people won't want to face this rare monster at that level or they will move from krawfis directly into Luna repeats.

Lvl 100-160

Similar to the first part of the experience, just job changed Artisans won't have access to the materials they need. Luna has so much repetition that it boils down to people building from drops and ignoring Artisans completely with maybe the exception of Shaman Ghost Wings (With a miserable rate of success but I will talk about crafting rates later on in another paragraph) and Ferrell Bag. This will be worse once players reach Eldeon:  they will learn about what I call "Valor Culture". Players will be focused on repeating pollen and other similar turn-ins. Artisan players have also little to no choice of going valor themselves as the materials to make a set are extremly difficult to get and Armor Endowment and Reinforcement won't beat the stats of a valor item and the very low repair cost valor items have. It all boils down to selling just one thing: Hardened weapons. That requires the Artisan to either buy the base weapon or crafting it themselves and breaking weapons to gamble the chance of Hardening the weapon.

160-180

People will be grinding in Ruins without any desire except of maybe upgrading their weapon or valor sets further which Artisans do not have any role in.

180-250

At the leveling point of Orlo players will have an influx of zuly coming from quests but they will use it to acquire an unique type weapon which will be their final weapon. Making Advanced Weapon Craft and their sub-skills, useless. Artisans will also be invited to groups only if they are seen with a launcher and their first class aoes maxed. Some groups may be nice and may just want your buffs but is not the norm. 

250

Congrats, you made it to the end of leveling an Artisan. But what now? Well, your armor and weapon crafts will be even more useless as people will be running dungeons, getting exalteds, uniques and valor. Here comes the biggest problematic: Artisans, even with a full dps build, exalted set and upgraded launcher won't be as good as their other 2nd job option, the bourgs and they shouldn't be. Artisan is a crafting class and not a DPS class and there are no ways to earn valor at 250 outside of dungeons from where you may just end being kicked from just because they don't want an Artisan, they want Mages, Clerics, Knights and Champions.

By this level you will have to work hard and spend hundreds of millions to pump your CON: Exalted items, Legendary Mana Fusion items, Max Stat items, Blank Scrolls, Hands of the Crafter (Unique skill), Accesory Crafting (Unique skill), off-hand and a sapphire for your hammer because mostlikely you are not capable of getting a decent % on a [5] let's not even mention a [7]. But this doesn't mean you wil hit 100% nor does it mean you will be able to get what you spent building all that CON in return. Best in Slot is even worse: you need level 240 jewelry with CON as the main stat (Which at the moment of writing this people sell them for 120mills a piece which means a BiS base jewelry set will cost you 360 millions), drills and more gems.

At this point you sinked hundreds of millions to build just the following items on demand:
-Arua/Hebarn/Oro jewelry sets, and is almost impossible to 100% them.
-Meister/Racing/Sporty frames, Rapid Wheels, Steel Backseat and Dural Engine. Meister, like the jewelry set, is close to impossible to 100% and all the core materials are Valor locked.
-Eudy Wings (You can farm the materials for these... on grey monsters) with a 100% and Wings of the Risen Phoenix which is even worse because these needs very rare and very expensive Dungeon locked items.
-Gems - Depending on your CON you will be able to reach [5] without too many risks but from [7] and onwards, is gambling, and is gambling 2 very expensive jewels (Along 10 pieces of Prismatic Dust at 1.5m a piece currently on the market) you are going to spend the millions of market value of gems and millions of prismatic dust in a gamble. And you will have to keep gambling and losing millions to reach that [10] Sapphire that might enhace your crafts by 1~2%.
-Castle Gear, everyones favorite showing-off item. Locked under PVP and PVP Only, Artisan is not a PVP Class.
-Pots for dungeons: they are cheap to make in a batch, people will buy them, but with so many in the market right now the profit margin is very small.

To sum it up: with half the amount of zuly you can build any other of the 7 classes to their max potential and reach an almost BiS with even [13] jewels. Artisan is just a class to create luxury for other classes who are almost fully built. You are not a DPS, you don't excel at dungeons, you are no good at PVP and clearly you are not a crafter when you don't use 99% of the recipes.

How we could solve this?

-Rework most loot tables into materials and not upgrade items and coins.
-Rework armor craft and weapon craft to create desireable items at any level.
-Make accesory Crafting and Face Item Craft base kit.
-Create a passive that enables Artisans to bypass the drop decrease that lower color monsters have with a rule that does not ignore this for Bronze/Silver star monsters and kings and unique drops. Received feedback: this may create issues between Artisan or low levels, a very good solution to this has been commented below and I agree with it.
-Keep valor and Honor materials as an option, but return all the exclusive items and recipes to loot tables.
-Create level 250 8 hours before a repeat valor quests that work like the oasis quests in high quantities so Artisans can do them or players who want to request our services can get their materials. The Faction Npcs are right there in Orlo!
-Rework the formula of craft chance %, do not make it easy to reach 100% on the most desired items but do not make them impossible to 100% them.
-Create a Jewelry set oriented to crafting at level 250 to remove the inflation of the lvl 240 CON uniques and give a chance to artisans of building it themselves by hard work not zuly.
-Add desireable items (By looks or stats) at all the dead points I mentioned so we can afford at least bullets, this can clash with IM, I know, but at least a few nice looking items besides the ones sold in NPCs would be nice.
-Add drop rate bonus if an Artisan joins a dungeon for the first time since the daily reset that goes away when the final boss is killed. Then make it reset at the same time as dailies, this will prevent Artis from being kicked, at least once a day.
-Add Mount Craft - Self explanatory, enable Artisans to build mounts, even if the recipe is absolutely crazy.
-Enable Sapphires to be in any slot as an Artisan or create a gem called Soul of the Artisan or something that works like Saph but only works when equipped on an Artisan. 
-Do not lock Forest Ash or Prismatic Dust to dungeons. Make them a drop as well. Or a weekly quest or daily, it will also lower their market price making it easier for Artisan to craft gems and Risen Phoenix Wings, deflating the price of these materials and crafted items as a good side effect.
-Enhace exp given per craft based on item level and the character level. I don't mean this as an avoid the whole game by just crafting, but it would be nice for new artis to get a nice chunk of exp for their hard work.
-Remove MP and HP regen items from mobs from counting in the order-looting, it already takes 10 turns for Artisans to get maybe one material, chemical or item to just end up with +1000HP.
-Give Artisan a PAT ASPD and Damage passives so it's viable to fight with a car or CG. Also introduce better Car weapons to PAT Crafting. This will make Artisan end game work cohesively with the class identity. 
-Add a transmutation craft: allow lower tier materials to be transformed into a higher material of the same family. Example: 3 pieces of white fur can be transformed directly into the next fur.

Just to tell you how bad it is, with thousands of CON, Royal Crown, a Dealer recipe, a 30 charm to equip item only, I hit 87% after hundreds of millions invested. That's how bad it is for Artisans, we don't craft, we gamble. And we should be able to provide ourselves with items to be real crafters, if we depend on charging people for crafts that may fail, we are just a slot machine to other players and those of us at the top of the pyramid will be the ones being called to craft all the time, I want more Artisans to be Artisans, but I also want the experience to be fun and meaningful, we are already cut short from PVM and PVP.

Thanks for reading.

Edited February 19, 2023 by Ryogure

[mindtheblob]

Thank you for a well organized post!

My own experiences differ a little and I don't think a 100% on high end gear/gem craft should necessarily be achievable at all. But for the main part I feel you illustrate the main issues very well.

I will just add a few more suggestions I've been thinking about:

- Color-code material drops based on whether they are non-NPC purchasable crafting materials or junk (e.g. green for craft material). This would tell players that maybe it might be worthwhile vending them in a store.
- Significantly increase the drop rate of "animal" materials (dragon scale, broken horn, frozen scale etc.). For example, I have spent roughly 3 hours with different characters in the 90 range trying to get a dragon scale drop in Gorge and have nothing to show for it. It's just abysmally scarce.
- Significantly decrease the insane clutter of NPC purchasable materials, non-craftable materials, and the like.
- Introduce non-NPC wood, leather, cloth, and stone materials at a sooner level (e.g. forest of wisdom by latest) to match the crafting requirements of lower level items like magic tools, shields and backshields.
- Introduce Lesian and Misian sooner.
- Introduce more storage inventory space. An artisan does not have the inventory slots for all non-NPC usable materials and 3-4 sets of gear (Con, Sen, PvE, PvP). My gameplay currently is 20-30% Inventory Management Online.

The only point I strongly disagree with is this:

32 minutes ago, Ryogure said:

-Create a passive that enables Artisans to bypass the drop decrease that lower color monsters have with a rule that does not ignore this for Bronze/Silver star monsters and kings and unique drops. 

This is mainly because the current game mechanic of allowing grey mobs to drop items is already incredibly toxic and demotivating for low level players who have to compete with 2000 movement speed players for kills, especially with the new game rule of allowing damage to get a drop. Having gun artisans pew pew mobs from a distance of 30m in a matter of seconds would be absolute chaos. Just two artisans could ruin the whole leveling experience for 20 players for mobs like Clowns in FoW or Doonga's in Kenji. For the long term health of the game this whole feature of mob drops from low level monsters should be dismantled. It is also incredibly susceptible to cheating with scripts. Should people want to farm specific drops, and should the developers wish to encourage this, it would be better to decrease the price of the no-exp item, for example.

As for my own experience I leveled my artisan in pace with the largest cohort of the early access players and for every phase of the game there were profitable markets to play. I thoroughly enjoyed the Zant business of fairy wings and backpacks and magic tools, the early Junon business of wings, the weapon business and armour business for those who got rich in Kenji Beach, the mask of lies and magic tools from Luna drops etc. Admittedly this required a fair amount of Buy vending and scouring the market for good deals with my brother, as well as knowing what npc items to disassemble and when. But for our experience of Rose Online playing the market game has always been an important part of the enjoyment, and I would not expect to be able to farm all my crafts.

Despite never making it to Orlo before the chewed bone adjustment I came out with a decent enough roll to stake future endeavors and ultimately fund my gear.

As an old iRose and early evoRose player I by grumpy nature detest this filthy valor system and was very worried there would be no place in the late game for a sen artisan. But at least for now with a lot of loose (and dirty  ) zulie around even the high level sen artisan business of crafting max stats, no matter how absolutely tedious it is, has been profitable, though this might change should the influx of zulie start to dwindle compared to the zulie sinks of refining and disassembly.

Also, it has just been immeasurably awesome to be able to reset skills and stats. With party benefiting buffs, and the ability to respec between PvE and crafting, leveling up an artisan was so so so much more fun than it used to be.

[Heatfist]

1 hour ago, Ryogure said:

Remove MP and HP regen items from mobs from counting in the order-looting, it already takes 10 turns for Artisans to get maybe one material, chemical or item to just end up with +1000HP.

These are life saviors at times though! 
 

Great post! 

It would be neat if Artisans could craft some BiS end game gear and weapons for classes that are on par with valor/honor and require various drops and quantity to craft. A craft which makes them proud of crafting and the player that uses flex worthy.

A cosmetic dye service for Artisans would be a nice skill book alternative instead of the face/accessory craft books. Allowing the Artisan to change the colour of gear, weapons, offhands, and back items.

They truly need more love

As for combat they should be able to have advanced combat stats within PAT vehicles. 
Which would allow for cart weapons and CG to be viable for farming and PvP for Artisans. 

[Ryogure]

1 hour ago, mindtheblob said:

The only point I strongly disagree with is this:

This is mainly because the current game mechanic of allowing grey mobs to drop items is already incredibly toxic and demotivating for low level players who have to compete with 2000 movement speed players for kills, especially with the new game rule of allowing damage to get a drop. Having gun artisans pew pew mobs from a distance of 30m in a matter of seconds would be absolute chaos. Just two artisans could ruin the whole leveling experience for 20 players for mobs like Clowns in FoW or Doonga's in Kenji. For the long term health of the game this whole feature of mob drops from low level monsters should be dismantled. It is also incredibly susceptible to cheating with scripts. Should people want to farm specific drops, and should the developers wish to encourage this, it would be better to decrease the price of the no-exp item, for example.

Thank you for reading and liking my post! I do agree with your comment a lot and sadly is already happening: if you go to Goblin B3, Breezy Hills, Anima Lake and other insta-spawn mobs with good drop rate you will either see level 250 aoeing or directly, bots to exploit the Dirty Spiritual Stone and chemicals Market. So I can agree it may be an issue and mix your solution with the solution of loot tables I proposed.

I also was lucky to rush along the first EA wave but playing on alts now, seeing dead towns, seeing the drops they get and analyzing what new Artisans tells me, the class was only good if your rushed on EA and are now, as I mentioned, at the top of the pyramid.

Things not being 100% would be ok if the material rate was high and not valor-only or locked behind dirties RNG. Because nowadays if you fail a gem cutting you lost easily 30m. If you failed a Meister, you lost all that valor and that 17-18m that frame sells for now. And CG which is intended to be the Luxury big deal for Artisan by lore being PVP-locked is hilarious and chaotic. That's why if we have to gamble with a not 100% it shouldn't lead to the potential desire of starting a whole new character. It also makes you feel bad when you fail a friend a millions of zuly items because you can't force much more con in and you are stuck at like 97.1% and you need to pump 360 millions to almost delete that margin of error. I think that's my point with 100%: impossible to 100% items that are in the dozens of millions are frustration inducing and fear of failing your friends, your clan mates or your regular clients. And is also harsh if you farmed it yourself as an Artisan which is tedious and slow due to the class limitations to end failing. People also moving on from gear to gear so fast makes your easy to make recipes useless. Artisans after the EA rush was just reduced to the items I mentioned and as you mentioned MS for SEN Artis. And building your character, being way more expensive than I would say all the other classes (Maybe not raider now that there is a crazy amount of people rerolling raiders and FV and Wired sky-rocketed) should have a reward, because you are playing a fully handicapped class.

I really like your idea of introducing materials way early on. Also things like insect drops dissapear once you are past mid-Junon and reapear 70 levels later in Eldeon, it makes no sense, let me craft that lvl 40 mask.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Ryogure

[DoubleRose]

Instead of just having reinforcing and endowment, artisans should be able to fortify blue armor. A piece of fortified blue armor would have its defense increased by 10% and its stat by 50%. For example, a dark raptor chest would go from 466 defense and +5% attack speed to 513 defense and +7.5% attack speed. Maybe there could also be a small set bonus too for wearing a fortified set. Don't know the best place to source the material, but it should be from drops.

High level blue gear is difficult to get and then it is outclassed. Why not make it better and make artisans stronger in the process. The success rate for making it should be at or near 100%. Success rates in general are too low. I don't think everything should be guaranteed, but some things should be higher.

[Zeror]

I like this one:
- Add a transmutation craft

But not as an artisan skill. Would be more fun if this one goes to mages instead. It's nice if artisan can craft anything, but that gives them a big advantage as well. It hink some lesser crafting abilities can work for other classes as well.

[KUUMA]

It would also be cool if Artisans can dictate the item's durability. If they craft something they should be able to choose their desired durability for the item, but then you have to decrease its chance of success as well and this is where the CON comes in, it should reduce that penalty. This is at least better than RNG durability of your crafted item.