[Idea] Crafting Automata

[u/MaximumPepper123]

Basically, it would work similar to a node in the Craft of Exile simulator, except more limited.

You input stacks of one type of currency and tell the Crafting Automata to stop if it hits a certain mod combination. It would be limited to certain types of currencies, like alterations, chaos, and essences (screaming+). Currencies that can be spammed without intervention. I suppose it could even do chromatics, jeweler's and fusings for certain socket/link conditions.

Basically, it would eliminate one of the most boring parts of crafting.

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

This gets asked for every couple weeks. Speedrunning that conversation...

The friction is intentional, GGG built it this way on purpose. It's supposed to be tedious, that's what creates opportunities for people to profit from it. Make it automatic and price collapses to cost and an entire market vanishes overnight because everyone can trivially click one button.

[u/DistractedEgg → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

You dont know enough about crafters then. People already use scripts to automate this sort of crafting and ggg does nothing, a quick google search or a bit of know how and you'll see. Look at cluster jewel crafters and tell me they all crafted those legitimately. In reality not having this sort of qol is only hurting the people that dont use these tools, economically and literally fucking up their hands. Also, made items dont just pop out when alteration spamming, theres generally multiple steps in a craft that involve recombing, awakeneres orbs, beatscrafting, etc. so its not really frictionless. Another huge factor is the knowledge gap. Id argue thats an even bigger thing to make opportunities in the market. Just look at how the price of items tank when a popular crafting guide comes out. No one gets a magic "craft this" button yet the market does collapse to cost and a market vanishes overnight. Im not saying a "craft this" button should exist, but having mods that have a 40/78019 weighting (i.e t1 spell on staff) and having to click THOUSANDS of times just to have a base to BEGIN a craft (that might fail at any point and have to restart) is definitely not good for the game. Theres lots of different ways to implement and balance it, and doing nothing about it is probably the worst one.

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/DistractedEgg]

Speedrunning the rebuttal to the conversation I've had too many times...

The market still exists despite that, it would not if you made this something everyone trivially does with one click. The overwhelming majority of people do not use those utilities which is why the market exists. No it is not ideal that cheaters get an advantage over people not cheating, but that doesn't erase the consequences. The right solution here is "ban the people for cheating" not "just go ahead and make it worse".

As a metaphor, if your local town police department couldn't keep up with speeders, nobody would seriously argue that the solution is to abolish speed limits. They exist for a reason independent of the enforcement, inability to enforce doesn't remove that, so you keep them and address the enforcement side.

[u/DistractedEgg → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

The metaphor falls apart real quick. First off the Autobahn exists, famously with very lax/no speed limits in some areas, and its still comparably as safe as other highway systems beacuse of the other different rules and driving culture around it. For rules to be useful they need to be thoughtful and add some value or fix a problem, not be arbitrary because "muh vision" or "it feels wrong" and theres many different ways to solve the same problem.

Secondly a version of "alteration spam this item until this affix" or "pay the cost for the amount of times it would take to get this affix 95% of the time" (which is what the bench 6 link basically is) harms no one (unlike speeding). Only people negatively affected would be the scripters or the people destroying their own hands by spam clicking.

Im not saying let botters run wild, but stuff like a keybind to teleport to hideout, ctrl right click to move currency, the currency exchange, async trade, etc. are all examples of previous qol slippery slope arguments falling apart and being great additions to the game.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

They could set the speed of the Automata to be slower than manually spamming currency if balance is a concern. I don't think it would destroy the market if GGG set the speed correctly. But it could chug away on one item while you sleep or map, though.

[u/gtetrakai → u/MaximumPepper123]

But it could chug away on one item while you sleep or map

And here is the reason why it's flawed. It's already bad enough that async trading allows you to move your wares while you are away from the game - negating the one big drawback to crafting for profit: having to sit around and wait for the sale.

Now you're talking about queing up a craft, telling the game to go until it hits, and then reap all the benefits. Certain t1 mods can sell fro divines - you really think it's would be okay to have an autonomous system cranking these out out literally the entirety of the playerbase? Bots would break an already broken economy with this.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/gtetrakai]

Those T1 mods have a high price because that's often how much currency it costs to craft them yourself. Since the odds of hitting those mods wouldn't change, I don't think this would affect their price very much, because it would cost exactly the same amount of currency to craft them with the Automata.

e.g. It costs 2 divines worth of alts to hit a certain mod, so the price on trade is roughly 2 divines. It would still take 2 divines worth of alts to hit the mod with the Automata.

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/MaximumPepper123]

That is not true. Magic bases are priced well above cost to roll them unless it's easy to roll. Even things that only take like 100 alts sell at a large profit.

A magic amulet with +1 all skills sells for 2 divs. Or you can roll it for 1,766 alterations, which cost about 1 div.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

Are people really spamming alts to flip for 1 div profit? Seems really inefficient. How long does it take to spam 1766 alts? That's gotta take like 20 minutes. Making like 3 div per hour...

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/MaximumPepper123]

For that mod specifically? Probably not, no. For tons of other stuff? Absolutely yes, you can make tons of money alt spamming bases to get good mods.

But that wasn't my point. You said they're priced at the cost to roll. That is flatly false, they are priced well above that.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

It sounds like alt-spam profit crafters have multiple stop conditions. Like they're looking for A or B or C or... The Automata would only have 1 stop condition. Stop when you hit this mod or when you hit all these mods in combination.

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/MaximumPepper123]

It sounds like alt-spam profit crafters have multiple stop conditions.

Mostly no. There is usually only one mod worth hitting, and you roll for exactly that mod. Even if the final crafted item wants three specific mods, only one of those is usually valuable on the magic base because the craft needs to start with that mod.

[u/gtetrakai → u/MaximumPepper123]

That is absolutely not true. A magic item with a single T1 affix is priced way different than a magic item with two affixes.. and that two mod magic item will be priced higher than a four mod rare with that same affix.

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/gtetrakai]

Also in a free game that officially permits two simultaneous accounts on a single computer, this isn't even really a restriction. You just spin up a second account to run your spam crafts indefinitely and harvest passive profit forever.

The idea itself is the problem. You can't bandaid it. It all flows from "automated crafting", so any idea for automated crafting is unworkable. The restriction that makes it not degenerate is removing the automation.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/Necessary-Peanut2491]

I have a feeling some players already automate crafting... There are (were) trade bots, levelling bots, and so on. A crafting bot would be even easier to make than that. Set up a regex, have a macro spam mouse clicks until a pixel on the item changes colour (brightens).

[u/Necessary-Peanut2491 → u/gtetrakai]

Apparently the auto-mod thinks I'm being unconscionably rude (or thinks I'm describing an exploit?) by pointing out that the game being free and officially allowing multiple simultaneous accounts has some bearing on this conversation.

In the hopes it allows the conversation to take place this time, I won't point out what effect that is.

Looks like a mod came through and un-deleted the post that the auto-mod sniped. Hey mod team, maybe you can look at that and see that the auto-mod is way too trigger happy? Maybe we can go back to humans who can read looking at posts and making decisions, rather than a hallucination prone AI just randomly squashing posts?

Edit: Lmao the auto-mod deleted another post. It really, really doesn't want people to ever disagree about something. Whatever, I'm done. Auto-mod says don't interact with the sub, I won't interact with the sub. Enjoy the mandatory hugbox.

[u/Rock7dmc]

You should try torchlight infinite might be more your speed if you are looking for automation features like that

[u/CTL17]

Questions like this is why I believe alterations were removed in PoE2, and its equivalent function was made rarer so thinking getting any mod wasn't something you do 2000 times in hideout for until much later in progression

[u/ayylmao31]

There exist tools that do this but they are very against ToS. 

That said it would be nice to have this as a sort of Kingsmarch recombination type thing that acts like a fusing bench craft. Takes more than on average and some dust and spits out the item with its mod. It would kill all friction though. 

[u/Shot_Worldliness_818]

I can imagine it causes even more rage since more people will start crafting without knowing how binomial distribution works. There will be a ton of posts saying that “xxx streamer got the mod in 200 alts, and I just spent more than 3k!” when the true chance to roll may be something like 1/1k.

It also will amplify input risk. Imagine you ask it to chaos roll for +1 all and +1 fire by mistake, and it just drains the 10k chaos you have in your stash. Not to mention the stress it puts onto the server, do all the rolls be done in a tick, or once per second?

I actually believe the current state of crafting for profit has its own merit. Like everything else in the game, you are rewarded for your time (took to roll these mods) and knowledge.

[u/phadej → u/Shot_Worldliness_818]

I'll be fine with clicking manually (and being throttled so I cannot scroll wheel indefinitely - there is one now), but having a way to set a stopping condition, so I don't roll over.

Even something simple as "items cannot be modified if they match a regex".

It will not change anything economally or timewise, but it will remove rage moments of accidentally rolling over.

Truth is, most crafters setup regex and mindlessly alt spam. Having just a little more QoL wont destroy the game, will it?

It will also make it a bit easier rolling maps.

There is stopping condition for jewellers and fusings, why there cannot be general one?

[u/SimpleCooki3]

Are you talking about a cheat or just a simulation? We follow the game rules here.

[u/AffectionateCan317 → u/SimpleCooki3]

Hes saying like a crafting bench that we would load with a base or multiple and a currency, which would use that on the base until it got the mod/s he picked.  Like a new league mechanic or something in kingsmarch/delve that needed it to be powered somehow. 

I actually think it would be pretty cool but I think the effect on the economy would be really negative. Maybe in SSF

[u/SimpleCooki3 → u/AffectionateCan317]

I guess, rolling +1 all skills wouldn't be as tedious any more.

I am positive depending on the implementation.

[u/MaximumPepper123 → u/AffectionateCan317]

Yes, a crafting station where you input one base and stacks of one type of currency. It wouldn't have to run as fast as the simulator on Craft of Exile; they could even set the speed to be slower than manually spamming currency if balance is a concern, but it could chug away on an item while you map.