Damaging and repairing - Abuse?

[Rakthar]

I've discussed with some others and there has been mixed reactions towards practicing weapon/armoursmithing with the mechanic that allows one to damage an item and repair it with an ingot, thus yielding skill advance, how do you guys feel about it?

[Rakthar]

I'm really in favor of it because it allows you to train the skill, *and* RP with your PC, instead of having to leave him at the forge for IRL weeks/months to get a smithing skill to a certain level, thus killing his interaction with current events/other PCs

[Alinor]

I think to clarify a little more here, it should be said that currently repairing of crafted weapons/armor can give skill gains. The question is if that's considered abuse of the code or not.

[Grenwyn]

I’d get together for a smithing practice party.

Concerning abuse: In my electronics classes in college, we always practiced soldering by removing components from old circuit boards and re-soldering them. I think it’s plausible to damage and repair weapons deliberately for practice.

[Areia]

Not that my opinion is ultimately worth a copper nib, but.

I feel like once you start getting into the expert region, using this method ad nausium is alright... because honestly, it costs about as many ingots as if you had crafted and a lot... looooooot of patience. Also by that point, if you're trying to become a master smith in less than two years, you're going to be spending essentially zero time online with that PC (I'd know, it sucks). And ya, repairing is a part of smithing in any event, so I can see how partaking in it would make you better to some degree.

Using it to small degrees when you're still early in your smithing career is alright, for the sake of RP, again because not being able to RP your main reeeaaally sucks. It doesn't really make sense that the PC would have to suddenly poof just to smith, anyway.

But if someone uses it starting at inept to get to GM within a week (yes, I've seen that done), and most especially if the someone is using someone else's endless supply of crap ingots to do it, that sort of... grinds my gears, a lot. Repairing is definitely part of smithing, but no engineer of anything will ever become GM crafter by mindlessly repairing that same dagger ten thousand times. Besides that it very much cheapens all the effort put in by those who choose (or have no choice but) to do it the old fashioned way. When that latter person finally after over a year sees that GM message, and then turns around to find two or three other PCs are suddenly also GM and have been for the past several months--old news--it's a big let-down.

I used this to get Areia from expert to master in one of her trades, but before that she did everything by actually crafting. That feels like a fair middle ground to me, unless of course someone big and immy comes after me to say I should be put to the stake... in which case... my bad!

[Alinor]

I was going to write up a more in-depth post with my opinions on the subject but Areia pretty much summed it up for me.

I used repairing for a portion of Alinor’s training in weaponsmithing but I also did a lot of it the offline way with actually crafting daggers or whatever. I’m hoping to do something similar with armorsmithing.

What it comes down to for me is that I want to be able to actually play my character. If I was mining or smelting or repairing weapons to train, I could drop what I was doing to RP or to go do a corpse retrieval or whatever. I’ve had some fun interactions mining alongside other characters when you can RP while training too. If I’m forced to have my character offline for months on end because I want to train a skill that has been a major IC goal since I created him, that’s just not fun.

[Duranamir]

I want to seperate this into two things, in my opinion reparing things is a valid and RP friendly way of using the trade skills, especially if they are for example other peoples gear.

Intentionally damaging something so that you have something to repair is however not something i like the feel off, it seems more like gaming the system.

Duranamir

[Alinor]

From an RP view I saw the damaging and repairing of a weapon something along these lines:

You forge a weapon, quench it to harden the metal, and unless it's a masterwork then there's probably some type of flaw in it somewhere. So you throw it back in the fire (thus damaging it) and get the metal nice and hot again. Maybe you have to hammer out a warp, or maybe the metal just didn't harden well the first time. Then you quench it again.

My knowledge of smithing in real life isn't much. I've watched Forged in Fire and read a little online. But even on those, I've seen them do the same type of thing. Sure, you couldn't do that 50 times to the same weapon in real life because the metal eventually gets too brittle or whatever it is that happens. Also, different metals are going to be treated differently than iron/steel. Still, it's a legitimate thing and if viewed and RPed that way then it allows people to actually play their character and not be stuck offline.

[Rakthar]

Maybe balance the xp gained by repairing to avoid the huge discrepancy between a year and a week? But still, do we want to spend double the time one spends on becoming a paladin on GM'ing a skill? I'd be more in favor of having the necessary time spent to something around 4-6 months in full time offline smithing, and a bit more time/a bit more resources on damaging and repairing, or even, have it not be the *only* thing one does to go from inept to GM, so having some sort of construction requirement to go from a skill tier to another?

[Duranamir]

The time it takes to create a weapon or armour is supposed to reflect all that forging/reforging you see on the tv i.e. the whole process from bits of metal to beutiful but deadly work of art.

In no way in real life can i imagine someone taking a perfectly good item and intentionally breaking it just to be able to make a now sub-standard item, and can not imagine them actually learning terribly much by doing so.

As far as how long it takes to be a grand master, we should be talking about a long time, we are not talking a 'forged in fire' contestant a GM smith is one of the judges. And as such expecting every PC who dabbles in smithwork to be a GM in these skills and to aquire a masters stamp for no real effort is i think not something we should aim for.

Anyone can smith, just not everyone should expect to be a GM smith.

I still stick with my original opinion, repairing good
intentionally damaging something to grind the skill bad

Duranamir

[Alinor]

If that's the official staff decision then I guess it is what it is. I will say I'm disappointed and discouraged by it though because this has been a major OOC and IC goal for Alinor. I don't expect to be able to just instantly GM a skill and I don't mind putting work and (many) hours in as I've already done with other things on my character. As I've said earlier though, I also really don't like being forced to NOT play my character in order to learn something. It really seems to defeat the purpose of an RP-centered game.

Games are supposed to be played and enjoyed. Being forced to not play isn't fun.

[Benorf]

When I play D&D with my friends, I regularly say to them, "This is a game. We make it as close to real life as possible, but it is still a world filled with magic. Some things don't work exactly according to the physics or reality of the real world, it is a game with rules to allow it to function as smoothly as possible."

I think this should apply here. This is a video game, you should be able to play your character, and while realistically you can't repair a single dagger until you're a grandmaster, you also can't fight a 5 foot rat a few dozen times until suddenly getting stabbed by a goblin doesn't hurt you as much. I don't think you should focus solely on damaging and repairing to get all your skills, but if you want to play your character now and then, you should absolutely be allowed to.

[Areia]

And as such expecting every PC who dabbles in smithwork to be a GM in these skills and to aquire a masters stamp for no real effort is i think not something we should aim for.

Anyone can smith, just not everyone should expect to be a GM smith.

Agreed 100%.

Games are supposed to be played and enjoyed. Being forced to not play isn't fun.

Agreed 100%.

It's another of those things that we just have to work with what we have. To answer your query, Rakthar, changing such things would be great. There are more than a few things about the crafting system as a whole that I think those of us who like crafting would love to see changed, the offline crafting thing being among the biggest ones. The problem is that the crafting system is defined by the hard code, and the hard code is not often touched. Most every change the game sees is done all by area builders, and things like this can't be tinkered with through that means.

[Rakthar]

If there is general agreement that "no play no good" and that "You should put in the time", there should be, if not coded, a middle ground, where you shouldn't damage-repair all the time, but also shouldn't be forced to forfeit your PC for long periods of time to manage a skill advance, so i would really appreciate a staff standing ground so that we can all do what feels best without breaking da rules.

[Harroghty]

There was once a strong argument between Mask and Garl about what language practice should look like. Garl pointed out that sitting in a room and spamming 'hello' in Elven would not make one proficient any more than would sitting in a room and saying 'hallo' over and over again create fluency. The core of Mask's argument was that we should fix the system if there was a big capability to exploit. Thus a PC can no longer sit in a room and make a thousand copper daggers (the old method of making it to GM in smithing).

So the official answer from the staff is this: you are not abusing anything if you're repairing things and improving your skills. (If anything, as has been said here, you are helping the community by providing a service.) If you are, however, sitting in a room by yourself and repetitively damaging and repairing like an automaton for hours on end, then that is bad form and you may be told to go do something else.