forging Quenching and tempering are overly gamified

[MKMoose]

Motivation

Being even roughly familiar with heat treatment methods, I’ve been quite disappointed with how the current implementation of quenching and tempering seems to be shaping up. I can agree with simplifying mechanics for the sake of fun gameplay, but to me this feels arbitrarily gamified, not simplified, and not even in a fun way.

 

TLDR

• Make it both more fun and more realistic.
• Quenching should only be done once, except as a way of retrying.
• Tempering should always be done after quenching, and should only be done after quenching.
• Normalization may be added as well (done before quenching or on its own when quenching isn't necessary).
• Miscellaneous improvements.

 

Problems

1. It's just tedious. Risks are completely insignificant at first, but after a couple iterations the player is basically asked how much they are willing to slog through for diminishing returns. Getting a high-power weapon, even without going into impractical extremes, easily requires quenching 10+ times in total and making at least one or two extra tool heads. It's described as a risk-reward tool improvement system, but in practice it easily becomes a matter of min-maxing against tolerance for tedium and randomness. An important element of risk-reward mechanics like this is that failure has to take away some options, so that a lost opportunity doesn't appear until at some later point. But in the current implementation it often ends up no longer having a significant risk-reward element, and instead it's random-cost.
2. There is practically no skill expression.
3. Choosing whether to temper or not mostly boils down to hyperoptimization.
4. Uncontrolled randomness is fundamentally unfitting for a delicate heat treatment process and tool improvement, especially combined with incremental gains rewarded for repetition. Whatever you do, you can go further, at the risk of having to do it all over again. If the workpiece shatters, it's just bad luck, and you couldn't do anything about it. I don't personally find fun in it, and I think that it just doesn't work well at all.
5. Quenching for durability makes no sense, because durability buffs and shatter chance go against each other - if the shatter chance is higher than the relative durability increase, then quenching again is fundamentally an expected loss, and that threshold currently ends up being crossed very quickly (especially if you also consider time, effort, fuel and clay costs, not just raw metal). Consequently, increasing power is the only real use of quenching besides a nearly free but small improvement to durability when power isn’t desired.
6. Repeatedly quenched weapons are now by all reasonable metrics outright overpowered, and up to a certain point the added time and resource expenditure isn’t even so high as to be impractical. This also creates a massive jump over bronze and other early-game options - it's fairly easy despite the shatter chance (though quite tedious) to get an iron spear or falx with some 40-50% higher damage than a bronze equivalent. Whether that's intentional or not, it is a drastic change relative to the 1.21 balance.
7. Last but not least, the current implementation is highly unrealistic. It's kind of inspired by reality, but it has several problems, most notably that heating up the metal sufficiently doesn't just destroy the effects of prior quenching and tempering as it should realistically. While I can understand a lot of simplifications for the sake of realism, in this case making the mechanic more realistic would arguably make it much simpler as well.

Note: the numbers in different lists don't correspond to each other, they're just numbered for convenience.

 

Goals

1. Reduce the needless repetition. Even putting realism aside, it’s just tedious. Where’s the fun in maximizing a single stat against your tolerance for resource loss and tedium? This could be pretty much entirely addressed with the next point, and it's probably the most important goal here.
2. Reverse all or most previously applied effects after heating above the lower critical temperature (~727C), as would happen realistically. This effect (austenitization) is why as a general rule quenching is only done once (except as a way of retrying after failed or unsatisfactory quenching). This also means that tempering is only done after quenching, because otherwise its effects (which are minimal on unquenched metal anyways) just get destroyed when heated up again.
3. Make the effects of heat treatment less one-dimensional. The easiest way to amend this would be to just make tempering more realistic by giving it an increase to durability at the cost of power, and make quenching apply a reduction to durability, to create a push-pull dynamic of sorts. At the same time, throw the idea of quenching for durability out the window - quenching an item covered in clay is usually done while only covering part of it, especially the spine of blades, to harden the exposed edge while protecting the spine from becoming brittle, which has almost identical effect on the edge but reduces risk of cracking during quenching as well as preserves durability and flexibility of the spine.
4. Make tempering actually useful after quenching (presumably through the durability increase), and ideally penalize leaving a quenched tool untempered. Quenched but untempered metal is brittle, and that's where shattering actually happens most easily. This could be implemented by adding a shatter chance during usage or just a durability penalty after quenching, which would be removed or heavily reduced with tempering. Repeated tempering does retain some benefits as long as the workpiece isn’t heated too high, but the effects still diminish quickly to the point of being mostly pointless after two or three repetitions.
5. Make the risk of shattering during quenching more dependent on player skill, knowledge and preparation, and ideally extend that to the beneficial effects of quenching as well. Historically, it was critical to know how to quench to achieve optimal grain structure and maximum hardness while minimizing risk of cracking or warping (not outright shattering, though still in many cases rendering the workpiece largely unusable). This may include variable effects depending on closeness to "ideal" quenching, serving as a way to add space for skill expression and mastery of the exact parameters required to achieve the maximum benefits, as well as a level of uncertainty beyond pure randomness. Whatever is easy enough to implement and fits the game, as long as there are ways to control the effects in some capacity, ideally in a dynamic and engaging way and not just through increased complexity of the initial setup. Most significant factors include:
   1. Normalization before quenching to reduce risk of cracking - bringing the workpiece up to ~750 C or higher and then cooling in still air, often repeated a couple times (this can also be used to improve toughness and skip quenching for tools that don't need hardness).
   2. Optimal temperature before quenching to achieve fine grain structure and limit risks of cracking, which can vary depending on various factors but should roughly be ~780-810 C (quenching at higher temperatures can sometimes provide better hardness, but also causes structural problems and promotes cracking).
   3. Appropriate soak time between heating up the workpiece and transferring to a quenching medium to ensure even temperature distribution.
   4. And a couple of probably less important things.
6. Add a penalty to overheating the workpiece. Overheating promotes warping and increases risk of cracking, so heating unnecessarily high (~850 C and higher) should increase risks during quenching.

 

Main suggestion

While realism is not my main goal here, I think that staying close to reality could benefit a mechanic like this. The process that I'm aiming for would be very simple at a basic level, while retaining ample space for skill expression and risk-reward mechanics:

• for tools which benefit from damage or mining speed => normalize to reduce risk of quenching (optionally repeated for diminishing returns), then quench for a power buff at the cost of durability (retry if unsatisfactory), then temper (once or more) to mitigate the lost durability and balance out the desired proportion of durability to power,
• for tools which primarily benefit from durability => normalize to increase durability (optionally repeated for diminishing returns).

 

Detailed mechanics

A more specific description of the suggested heat treatment mechanics:

1. Quenching - occurs when cooling quickly (in quenching medium) down from ~770 C or higher - greatly reduces durability but significantly increases power. Has a chance to shatter the workpiece (destroy it), and/or optionally a chance to warp or crack the workpiece (would apply some debuffs and require requenching or welding respectively to fix). May apply a chance to shatter or crack during usage to require at least one tempering. Effects and risks should vary depending on a couple factors, potentially including workpiece material, quenching speed (mostly dependent on quenching medium), soak time (time between reaching quenching temperature and transfer to quenching medium) and exact temperature at the start of quenching. Covering the workpiece in clay would greatly reduce quenching risks and durability reduction, but also apply a slightly lower power increase.
2. Normalization - occurs when cooling slowly (in air) after heating to ~750-780 C - increases durability and reduces quenching risks after each repetition. Optionally, it could also apply a slight power debuff, to create a tradeoff between lower risk but slightly lower power ceiling. Only doing normalization is sufficient for tools which don't benefit from mining speed or damage bonuses (which roughly corresponds to tools which sustain repeated impact so shouldn't be quenched to avoid brittleness, like hammer or chisel, though modeling it more precisely isn't possible without some heavy changes to tools). Effects could vary depending on the exact maximum temperature reached. Note: normalization is a relatively modern term, and in the past it used to be referred to in a bunch of different ways like softening, thermal cycling, air-cooling, annealing - I'm not sure which term would be suitable for VS.
3. Tempering - occurs when cooling slowly (in air) after heating to ~150-650 C (~300-650 C would be suitable for gameplay purposes) - removes or heavily reduces durability debuffs and optionally slightly increases durability on top, as well as reduces power. If quenching applies a chance to shatter or crack during usage, then tempering removes it. Effects may vary depending on the exact peak temperature that was reached.
4. Austenitization - occurs when reaching ~720-750 C (when the metal exceeds the lower critical temperature, often cited as 723 C or 727 C, but it's not completely consistent) - removes the power buff, greatly reduces any effects on durability. Should likely occur over time or in multiple stages to make it less sudden, but ideally shouldn't overlap with the normalization range for simplicity's sake.
5. Overheating - occurs when reaching ~850 C - removes all existing effects, both buffs and debuffs, resets quenching risks, and likely disables any treatment effects until cooled again. May apply additional penalties, since going above ~900 C is realistically very risky, though wasted prior effort could be considered enough of a penalty already, so it might be best to just let the player try again without additional problems. Should ideally be applied over time or in multiple stages at different temperature thresholds, so that the effects are not too sudden.

Note on stacking: stackable effects should arguably follow a quickly diminishing geometric sequence or geometric series, to ensure that the effectiveness decreases quickly to disincentivize excessive repetition. This also doesn't require tracking the number of times that a workpiece has been treated. In some cases, adding an additional constant component would allow to further tailor the exact behavior (for example, making normalization affect shatter chance using a formula like  after = 0.3 * before + 0.1  would mean that subsequent iterations make the shatter chance quickly drop with each iteration, but not all the way down to zero and instead to 0.1, so that some level of risk is always retained).

Note on temperature thresholds: if temperatures are only decided by strict minimum and maximum thresholds, then the process becomes less reliant on skill and more on timing, and loses almost all uncertainty in favor of robotic precision. Adding some level of uncertainty, randomness, temperature averaging or whatnot would incentivize the player to aim closer to the center of temperature bands, and require more careful judgement instead of simply waiting until the temperature crosses a specific threshold.

 

Possible additional features

1. Judging temperature by color. A really cool change which I would love to see would be to remove the exact temperature readouts in the tooltips and require the player to judge the temperature of the workpiece by color as it has been done historically and still is done often, though that would likely be optional and probably easily circumvented with commands. It would be one of the more interesting ways to introduce more proper skill expression and mastery to heat treatment in place of robotic precision and plain mathematical comparisons, which would also make a skilled blacksmith an highly valuable member of any multiplayer server that decides to play this way.
2. Case-hardening. If we were to aim for realism, it would be necessary to require case-hardening before quenching iron. Quenching is generally ineffective for wrought iron due to insufficient carbon content. Case-hardening would be done by placing the workpiece in a clay box packed with a carbon source, and heating up that box for an extended time to high temperatures.
3. Variable tempering effects based on temperature. At low temperatures (generally below ~400 C) the reduction to hardness is not as great but the metal remains fairly brittle, and that transitions quite smoothly through the temperature range up to ~650 C where the metal becomes significantly softened, which could add additional depth to the tempering after quenching.
4. Work hardening and annealing for bronze. I don't think it's significant enough for ferrous alloys, even though it does have significant realistic purposes, but it may be a much more interesting addition to bronze. It would be a simpler early-game heat treatment process to ease players into forging more gradually.

Edited March 4 by MKMoose

[Jacsmac]

Realistic heat-treating sounds fun. I'm currently taking material science classes in college, and being able to apply my new knowledge of things like austenitization in a video game of all things would be very engaging!

From a gameplay standpoint, leaning more towards realism (without being too esoteric) makes processes like this feel more intuitive; being able to rely on real-world experiences really builds that sweet sense of immersion.

I haven't played the new preview release yet, but the way you describe the tediousness of the current heat-treating system makes it sound somewhat like Minecraft's tedious enchantment system, which is not uncontrollably random itself but still rather arbitrary and hyper-optimization prone just the same.

 

P.S. Your 'Steel Worker' rank is rather fitting for this post.

[NastyFlytrap]

I agree with this. The way quenching and tempering is implemented is anti-fun. I dont like it and it needs to go.

 

I'm all for quenching and tampering but not like this and you lay out some good ways to do it.

[williams_482]

This is an extremely good suggestion. 

I think the recommended process works fine with workpiece temperatures visible, and I'd even argue that it should display a "live" shatter chance for quenching based on current temp. Hiding information just to make knowing something a relevant player skill doesn't usually sit well with me, and I also worry about the effects on folks with various types of visual impairments. 

I'll also argue that completely resetting the work piece is a wholly adequate punishment for overheating. Overheating is likely to be a really easy mistake to make because all it takes is wandering off at a bad time. Players would be annoyed enough at loosing all heat treating progress after being distracted from the forge by a rogue drifter, a forgotten lunch, or a temporal storm. Losing the work piece itself is excessive. 

[DeadlyEssence01]

This seems like it'd be a really nice implementation for smithing. Maybe when I'm more familiar with the code base, I could turn this into a mod.

[Dilan Rona]

It's a new mechanic. Just introduced as well. How about its left as is till we understand it better. And then the team can work on making it better later on.

Even if it's gamefied as you stated, at least we have that mechanic now.

[Heegrim]

Maybe there should be a Blacksmith class that can see the exact temperatures of the workpiece and other classes just see a qualitative description like "Cold" "Warm" "Hot" "Red Hot" "White Hot".

I am all for moving away from needing to look at the description box to get information on everything (while still having the option there for accessibility of course). I hope they add more diegetic crafting recipes like scraping hides on the ground too.

[NastyFlytrap]

3 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

It's a new mechanic. Just introduced as well. How about its left as is till we understand it better. And then the team can work on making it better later on.

Even if it's gamefied as you stated, at least we have that mechanic now.

Yes and now is the perfect time to work on it some more before they move on to other things and it stays like this for three years until it gets reworked.

 

2 hours ago, Heegrim said:

Maybe there should be a Blacksmith class that can see the exact temperatures of the workpiece and other classes just see a qualitative description like "Cold" "Warm" "Hot" "Red Hot" "White Hot".

I am all for moving away from needing to look at the description box to get information on everything (while still having the option there for accessibility of course). I hope they add more diegetic crafting recipes like scraping hides on the ground too.

Meh. Never cared for the class system and taking that ability away from the player now would just be rude. That being said, i am all for more diegetic methods and systems.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

good suggestion, but I think it's a bit overly complicated it would be great for a forging mod for enthusiasts. I don't think I would enjoy this as a part of the base game, but I could be wrong.