Trades, gains, and bringing them to life

[Athon]

I'm not looking for one or the other. My argument is that being able to craft mundane items quicker wouldn't ruin the game (it used to be like this and the only issue was that it would make shopkeepers go broke. This could easily be fixed by reducing the value of these crafted mundane items. Also, the shopkeeping has been vastly improved).

But I think the most important thing is that the valueable armour have its place in the game. My master armoursmith can make masterwork everything except for full-plate. But I never make masterwork because it takes a long time, it costs me 10-20 platinum per piece in addition to crafting fees (not to mention time and ingot cost), and there is practically no market for it. It's taken me four years to get to this point. Masterwork becomes EXTREMELY important because magical effects can only be applied to masterwork items. But until then, the only benefit is that the armour check penalty is reduced by 1, which is rarely a benefit in FK.

How is this any worse than going and buying a full suit of chainmail from a vendor for 20 platinum?

[Athon]

I'm pretty reasonable though when it comes to 'negotiating' a balance. I'm all for finding balance. If you look in my initial post, I find that adding value to the higher-end crafts was what I deemed most important and I still feel that way. If they added enchanting, made masterwork armour/weapons useful, I'd be content without the rest of my suggestions.

[Selveem]

How much challenge, and RP, do you want to negotiate with? Because if I can make a suit of plate mail in a half hour, I tell you, that will devalue the whole thing for me, both challenge and RP wise.

There's a problem with this, though: it's never, ever been possible to just make a full suit of plate mail in half an hour. I don't know if you've actually played an armorsmith before for an extended amount of time, but I can assure you it's a very frustrating process to get all of the ores, then try to smelt them all at the same quality (personal pet peeve), and then ruin them in crafting attempts. The most important thing to remember is that this journey, as a player, is an extremely LONG one. Now, more than ever, but even in the past it was ridiculously long. Get your mining up. Get your smelting up. Get your crafting up. You can't really just do one or the other (I tried, thanks to many donations to my character from people interested in purchasing full plate he made in the future).

For any who think the crafting system is so much better than it used to be, I challenge you this: show me that there are as many devoted crafters today as there were pre-change. Even pre-change, there were few, but they were trying. Now, the usage appears to be nearly non-existent judging by what I've seen.

I don't think what I've suggested is unfair or unreasonable at all. You would still have to take the time to mine, smelt, and attempt to craft. You still run the risk of losing your materials or running out of coin. You still have to accept the downtime of not playing your crafter during the time you're attempting a craft. You still only make one piece at a time. You still will rarely make a profit on all of your work (especially considering all those hours you could have been farming gold, instead).

While Athon may feel that making these armors more valuable and useful (by adding enchanting, for example) would be incentive enough, I disagree. He's at a point (and he f-ing earned it) where he doesn't have to grind as much. If I had to start all over on another character, for example, I'd rather just not play the character ever again. I feel bad for new players, especially, who might be interested in attempting to skill this trade up on their own. They'll die of old age, first.

So, my concern is not just for me, but the MUD as a whole.

[Tamryn]

I don't craft anything, so my opinion might not mean much, but if a skill requires that I spend an extended period of time not playing a character, I'm not going to put any effort into learning or using it. I appreciate you can't ICly spend time talking to people, killing monsters, etc. while crafting a piece of armour at the same time, but surely there has to be a better compromise than that.

[Tyeslan]

You know, I tried it for a little while to craft weapons. The whole log in, and out, and if I forgot to log out at the forge I was at, along with having to log back in and pay to continue it, was a little tedious for me. On top of having it take two RL weeks to complete arrowheads, or a simple dagger, I really just don't see that it functions well for the game at this point, and that the time I have to put in logged out, when I could put that in logged in and RPing weighs greatly for me.

I have to agree with Tamryn here, despite the effort put in to making this more functional, to me it has lost any value that it could have had when you were crafting a piece, and putting some RP behind it. I don't find walking out of a forge, and telling someone that I am working on such and such an item, and have been for some time, but I need this, or that, or it just simply slow a very fun RP, when you could put far more behind it, along with only ever having one gain to the skill in over three months of using it. I just plain gave up on it. Good to those who continue on, but I don't think the trades are nearly up to par with how they could be.

[Gwain]

I agree with that too. When woodworking was changed into this new system, I lost the joy of whittling, not only the rp element of sitting with a piece of wood and carving it while rping and making crude wooden weapons or items, but the ability to make worthwhile items in a setting. The new system is very unfriendly to rp.

[Theolund]

Mining in itself isn't really rp friendly with the old system. It's one of those ones that would fit well with the craft system being offline in a mining area and you get X amount of chances while off line would fit well. Because to get anywhere with ores it takes forever, but the actual crafting of items is pretty much locked out of rp unless some of the elements could be online and you (finish) the item offline putting on the finishing touches and such.

[Trillarel]

Well, I thought crafting would match the RP concept I had for several chars, but now as I read through this topic - frankly, I don't have so much time to devote to FK.

[Theolund]

Don't be discouraged. We are trying to see a change for the good, but you can still rp being a crafter. You just won't haev many things you've actually created.

[Theolund]

I'm curious to hear what the higher ups say on the subject of trades and so forth. Their thoughts and idea's or just the reality of where we stand on the whole subject. I know it'd take some hard coding work and probably builder work. So share your thoughts if you would please! I'm sure many of us are hoping to hear some good news!

thanks for all the hard work! And thanks for everyone for posting your thoughts and such!

[Theolund]

After using the weapon smithing trade I have a bit more insight and first hand knowledge to bring to the table. Perhaps if the crafting process took into account coins and metal pieces in your inventory so the process doesn't come to a halt while logged out that would maybe fix the time it takes to finish a project which is causing it to take so long to increase in the trade itself. I don't think it'd fix all the issues that many of us wish to see looked at but it'd be a positive step I think. (thoughts and opinions people?)

[Harroghty]

Mask has implemented some of these suggestions into the trade process.

[Selveem]

Glad to see some of these changes brought in.
Thanks, Marty.