As someone who has been playing the Preludes program for Soulframe since Preludes 7. One thing that has started to increasingly become a problem for me moving into it Preludes 10, is the crafting system. This is a system that borrows so much from Warframe that it is nearly indistinguishable. So much so that while the community in the official Preludes Discord is asking for improvements, I want to instead ask for it to change altogether.
While this is a big ask as Digital Extremes moves forward with more cinematic content, potentially endgame content and the addition of the Runes and Motes buildcrafting system in further Preludes updates. The crafting system in this game, I feel needs to change sooner rather than later. Especially if they keep trying to get new players into the game. Because the crafting system has layers of RNG that will scare too many people away, and this game does not deserve that.
A Messy Fragmented System
The way Soulframe works its crafting system is weirdly intricate. For starters, there are dozens of weapons and armor in the game. Each weapon and armor piece needs multiple fragments to craft. After you acquire all of the fragments, you then need to spend resources and Dracs, the normal currency for the game then wait a certain amount of time to collect your piece.
While this sounds normal to Warframe players, this is a very messy system for a few reasons. Outside of The Mendicant King and the Crypt of the Circade for the Kings armor and the normal secondary weapons. You do not have single dedicated drop locations for every weapon and armor piece. They will drop by chance in certain dungeons, enemy chests and Banneret pouches. Effectively making a system that is reliant on multiple layers of RNG on top of the random drops for resources which also become hard to farm due to how rare certain ones are without having dedicated sources for them.
Due to the randomness of this system, I have not had the pleasure of using either of the two available sword and shield weapons. But I feel like at this point I can make enough Vasps, Rivts and Sollos‘ to arm an Ode barricade. With all of this being said, the problems with crafting in Soulframe are as follows:
- A very randomized fragment dropping system for most weapons/armor.
- Hefty resource costs with an equally randomized resource pool.
So, what can be done about it without losing the core idea of this system?
Soulframe Crafting Suggestions
The wait time for weapons and pacts is fine by all accounts. Nothing has made me wait longer than a day, so as long as that does not change, the only ways I can see this system changing fundamentally while still keeping its core idea intact are as follows:
- Allowing missing fragments for certain weapons and armors to be built using spare resources the whole weapon needs.
- Allowing spare fragments to be broken down into resource caches that hold common, uncommon and rare resources.
Dracs and Joinery’s can remain the same for every recipe. But as far as it goes, having a way to do away with excess fragments and allowing players to just craft fragments they are missing will go a long way. Obviously, Digital Extremes can still make dedicated sources for every weapon and armor to drop from as well. But making big fundamental changes like this can easily be applied to content in Soulframe in the future.
While the game is still in its early stages. It is important to make core systems change or improve as fast as possible. This is due to the fact that when Digital Extremes opens the game up to all players on pc. They will be flooded with similar feedback from a much wider audience. This can cause immense backlash for a game that needs to make a good first impression on a wider scale. It is not too late, and as someone who has been playing more of Preludes 10 over the days. The feeling of walking up to a chest or completing a sparrows tale becomes muted when I get the 50th fragment of a weapon I already have and not the 3rd or 4th for one I want to use.
