Worth of Craft system and command lags

[Selveem]

I don't understand the staff's obsession with encouraging tedium. Adding unnecessary delays and lag isn't fun, despite obvious beliefs to the contrary.

It doesn't bring new players to the game. It doesn't keep players who already play the game. The only thing you can rely on it doing is dissuading even more people from utilizing something they SHOULD utilize.

In D&D, unless you had a really crappy DM he wouldn't make you RP the full hour of scribing out a silly scroll you'll use once or sell. It's something that is glossed over and understood: "this is just something that's required. You're spending a day doing it and it does affect the plot line for your character if he misses something I'd had planned for that day, but otherwise we're gonna skip it." It shouldn't be awarded any special annoyance in FK.

This goes to crafting, scribing, brewing or any other such suggestions to these affects.

What does it actually bring TO the game that makes the effort worth adding lag (whether immediate or an offline delay)? I can tell you what few people even bothered with the crafting system before the change don't bother with that anymore. It's too time consuming, your character is out of commission, and since you have to log off anyways you might as well go do something else.

[Brar]

The only thing I have to say is the same I said before : assumption are dangerous. A fact is : galdim have supplied more ingot than ever since the new craft system. Because it is not taking from your play time and is a bonus for while your offline.

Second thing. Plear refrain from speaking "for the masses" and let others speak for themselves.

Brar

[Bellayana]

Personally I think the crafting system is good, and player crafted items are "special". Look at the armor that is crafted by a dwarf. Granted I think every character should be able to set a logo though even at earlier levels in the trade. I am not sure if this is the case or not, but logo should be allowed earlier in the stages of a crafter's career. Allowing this would also let people see the progression of the crafter's skills. I think the crafting system is a great thing and gives a unique aspect to the game and to characters.

I will ask the players and the staff, is it possible that the logo command be open to crafters at the early stages?

[Zorinar]

I personally think the crafting system here is completely broken and needs to be completely re-thought. Not code wise, but game wise.

First, lets talk about availability:
How many crafting teachers do we have in the game? Is crafting readily available to everyone? Wizards should start at level one with scribe according to D&D, for example. Scribe is hard to get, Zorinar has been waiting for ages to get it. Lets talk about weapon and armor crafting. Zorinar has asked Gilain repeated for lessons but Gilain has told me that the staff put a hold on teaching crafting until otherwise noted. And, Gilain is only one person, who else can teach those skills? I don't even know but probably not many. That leads me to the question, is crafting a good-old-boy privilege or a feature of the game? Honestly, I can't tell.

Next, lets talk about the process:
Weapon and Armour crafting are not all that common, but there are people around that can do it. The thing is, I hardly ever see people taking advantage of it. I have talked to people about it, wondering why it's not used so much. I get the same answer from everyone, "The process is too long, too tedious, too expensive ... too ...(whatever)..." As I'm told, being a crafter is like a full time job. Being that this is a game I guess I don't see the fun-factor of having to be at a full time job when I am here either. As for Scribing, there are some that can do it. Do you see them with a bunch of scrolls? Not really. I asked around and got a bunch of answers but the prevalent answer was that the cost of scribing is not worth the benefits of its use. Alchemy has its own pains but they have been thoroughly discussed in other posts.

Lets talk about producing top quality goods with crafting:
AKA "Grinding". Basically, I get the impression that a GM crafter is the only one that can make all the best stuff, and that one needs to be GM to make the top quality weapons or armor. I can't speak from personal experience here but I have been told this by everyone I have talked to so I will go with it that the goal is to GM crafting in order to make the decent stuff. As I am told, this grinding process is extremely, ridiculously time consuming. People just don't want to take the time to do it... and should they have to?. That has been the number one complaint I have heard, the time it takes (like... actual years...) and frankly, I wouldn't want to play this game just so I can log in, start a crafting project, log out and wait a week or so for the offline crafting to take place and come back to check once in a while. I just don't see it as being enjoyable, but that is me.

Crafting is broken. Why is it broken? Because it appears to the "masses" that I have spoken with, that it is so ridiculously tedious that it is not worth doing. But yet it is here, it is coded and in game.. .yet it is not overly used. That means it's broken. It is not appealing to people, it is not increasing the fun factor and it is not adding new elements to the game as a whole. Even if one or two people do not mind it as it is, the system is meant for the game as a whole and needs to serve the population as a whole.

How do you fix it? Don't know. I would start by opening up the availability of the crafting arts to the entire population first. Second, I would re-analyze why it is set up to be so tedious. Is it because we don't want everyone and their brother to be able to craft masterwork full plate titanium armors? Why not add a specialty factor to it then? Everyone can choose something specific that they can make at masterwork quality, be it a certain weapon type or armor type.

[Harroghty]

I will only say, as a member of the staff, that the adversarial tone of your post, Selveem, is not productive. The staff reads every suggestion with interest and were you able to see our forums you would know that many of your suggestions provoke discussions there. So, if any player sees something that does not please them then understand that the best way to change things is to not only highlight things that they believe to be a problem, but to suggest solutions. These suggestions will be then discussed by the staff and, you will notice, in many cases implemented.

So, with that being said, what are some ideas to improve the crafting system? The new method seems to me to involve less grinding than the last one (where players would sit in private somewhere and crank out hundreds of bows or tin daggers in order to improve).

[Selveem]

Harroghty, I'm sorry you're put off by it, but my tone serves its purpose: I'm annoyed, frustrated, and even a bit disgusted at the thought that I spent a little over a year and a half crafting (775 hours of almost pure crafting) to get to a master at mining, grandmaster at smelting, and expert at armorsmithing just to have the whole system made even more difficult and impossible to GM.

Brar, I appreciate you giving back to the MUD in such a way, however your post makes me feel I have even more of ammo here: you've been donating more ingot than ever since the change. What about masterwork suits of full plate armor? How about top tier weapons (AKA: GM'd weaponsmithing)? Please don't correct me for 'speaking for the masses.' I'm not speaking for, I'm speaking of conversations with people who actually crafted.

Due to the amount of offline delay in your crafting, the improvement rate needs a good hard looking at. I've been crafting less since the change (because as Zorinar said others have said, it is expensive, tedious, and too long), but I've still crafted a decent number of items - first were shields like I crafted before, but it was hinted at that I might need to craft the best things I can to improve. I've done that, too. Still no increases.

So, how to make it better:

Increase skill gain speed.
Remove associated cost: it represents buying raw materials which you are required to have on FK.
Allow for online build mode.
Move all things built one tier down. For instance, allow the building of full plate at Master instead of GM. Allow GMs to choose whether they want to build a Masterwork arms or armor. If they choose to build masterwork, _then_ impose a cost of 60 plat for a weapon or 30 plat for an armor.
Decrease amount of failure. Crafting is not THAT hard. If you fail the check by 4 or less, you make no progress. If you 5 or more, you just need to provide 1/2 the required materials again because you ruined them.

[Athon]

I'm gonna quote myself from the previous craft thread:

I can't give exact numbers, but it's been 100 days since the new system came out (July 23rd) and I haven't seen an increase. You can call me a twink all you want, but I've been diligent in starting new crafts (within a half day or so) when one finishes.

Let's assume I got a skillup today. That means I still have 3 skillups left before I hit GM. Even if the time frame between skillups did not increase, that's 300 days until I hit GM. If we factor in an exponential increase in time between skillups, it's probably closer to 400 or 500 days to go from expert 2 to GM.

In the previous system, it took far more input time (mining, smelting, and construct armour 100s of times). It would take hours of tedious grinding, but I was able to get skillups in the expert ranges within a month of grinding. We're now looking at 3 times or more longer in this current system.

The system, while nicer in that you don't have you continuously spam to level up, is horrendously slow. When I finally hit master, which took more than 100 days of constant smithing, I was demoralized to keep at it and stopped.

[Bellayana]

Just a question, when I started Valence I was on a quest to learn lapidary and the quest got bugged and it wasn't working for a while. What crafts are actually working? I see herbalism/staff,wand making/leatherworking/weaponsmithing/armorsmithing/lapidary. With all these crafting, how many are actually in the game? For the newer players to the game it would be good to know what is really available to them and what isn't. Does it really take years to increase a crafting to GM?

Selveem if you spent over 700 hours on making your crafting a GM how exactly do you think the crafting should work? I feel like people logging out to have to craft takes away from a character's availability to the rest of the world when that character would be available.

[Xryon]

I haven't used the new crafting system, so I can only weigh in slightly on this..

Personally, and maybe I'm the only one, I did not mind the tedium of the old system. I liked being online, able to talk and what not while I crafted things. I think Selveem is on the right track with his suggestion; a hybrid of the old system and the new may be in order.

How about we reinstate the ability to craft online, keeping skill-up rates as they currently stand, and also keep the offline method with an increased rate of progress attached? To me, if you are crafting while offline you are 100% focused on what you are doing. It stands to reason youd learn more like this than you would while talking to others. Perhaps a rate of 1.00 for online, 1.75(arbitrarily applied number) for offline would ease things a bit?

[Selveem]

Perhaps a rate of 1.00 for online, 1.75(arbitrarily applied number) for offline would ease things a bit?

Even when it was all done solely online, it was a bear. But, at least, it was a manageable bear. I don't really see the true value of crafting while offline. Especially with regards to skill progression. If we level skills while offline, shouldn't I be able to designate my training time while offline for training power word kill prayer? I don't see why crafting should get special treatment in comparison to every other skill, but at least having both available would appease both people who can't play much as well as those that would like to.

Selveem if you spent over 700 hours on making your crafting a GM how exactly do you think the crafting should work?

Ideally, I'd love it to work the same way it does in D&D, with the following exceptions:

• You can mine/smelt your own materials instead of paying. If you don't want to, you can pay material cost (especially for materials such as cold iron, mithral, adamantite, Elven singing steel, etc.).
• Decreased amount of time to craft while online and attentively practicing crafting.
• Removal of "grades" of ores (this just makes attempting to craft exceptionally frustrating when trying to match enough ingots). There should be standard grade and masterwork grade if it is absolutely necessary.

[Brar]

I may have another suggestion.

Let skill levels only change success rate and not teh type of armours/weapons you make make.

Meaning you can launch any type of weapon or armour, even masterwork.

But success rate is dependant on your skill level, meaning at GM it would take 1 week but will take 3 months at inept due to the high failure.

What do you think of this idea?

Considering the availability, I think a lot of the problem regarding this is the scholar feats.
It hinders a lot of older characters from teaching as they won't ever be able to get them now due to the lack of available feat points...

Brar

[Selveem]

Re: Brar:

That would be an improvement, sure, but I'm speaking as to how I envision it would ideally work.

The whole ore/ingot system is still very annoying, especially because:

You spend hours to obtain the best quality ore even at Master skill in mining.
Then hours upon hours to obtain 7 of the highest quality ingots.
And, in the end, you can still end up making a crappy quality armor.

It doesn't work opposite where you can take crap metal and make good armor (as it shouldn't), but it makes for a rather depressing experience for me.

That's why I'm speaking as to how I envision it would work, ideally.

[Eltsac]

I may have another suggestion.

Let skill levels only change success rate and not teh type of armours/weapons you make make.

Meaning you can launch any type of weapon or armour, even masterwork.

But success rate is dependant on your skill level, meaning at GM it would take 1 week but will take 3 months at inept due to the high failure.

What do you think of this idea?

Brar

I really like that idea

El

[Gwain]

In the case of brewing (The only craft I am familiar with) I would suggest:
When you brew and are successful, you still can't do anything for almost 30-60 seconds afterward, any commands like examine result in the message "You can't do that you are still brewing" I would suggest rewarding a successful brew with an immediate chance to brew again.

[Adabelle]

I agree with allowing both on-line and off-line crafting.

I agree that off-line crafting should go faster then on line crafting because it has your whole attention. You aren't sitting around talking while you do it.

I agree that crafts should be easier to learn. Right now it does seem a bit old boy. You have to know and be friends with certain 'privileged' players.

I agree the ingot quality thing is very annoying because you need all the same quality. I have found this supper duper frustrating.

Allow mining and smelting craft to be done off line like the others. (Again let players have both options.) The mining off line option would allow you to come back to several ingots, not just one. And smelting would smelt all the ingots in your inventory. (Or at least as many as it can get through in your time off line.

I agree with removing the limitation on skill level and what kind of items you can make.

I would like to see lower skill level people able to make better quality stuff, even master-worked but I would like higher skilled people to be able to add more detail. Example: An intricately etched helm, A long sword with gold inlay.

[Keller]

I'd like to add my thoughts to this discussion, despite my relative inexperience, and lack of direct knowledge of the subject, what I'm hearing in this topic has given me enough of an understanding of the current situation that I feel like I can at least sound off on the suggestions provided.

Firstly I agree that crafting should be available both on and offline. I think that it should be a faster and more successful for an online player but slower and more likely to increase skill levels while offline. My reasoning is that when a player is online, they should be more capable of accepting contracts for equipment and providing it in a timely manner. If the process is less tedious to do in and of itself then our crafters would be more likely to accommodate the other players, making the entire process more common. Meanwhile it would still take time to (grand)master the skill, because the best skill gains would be made during the slower offline process, separating the dedicated crafters from the convenience crafters, if such a category exists.

I think it's ridiculous that a player should have to invest the level of time and effort into the crafting system that Selveem points out. I don't know how long the average life of a character is around here, nor do I know how long the typical player sticks around, but spending over a year and a half working towards three crafting skills and not even having them all at grandmaster.. it's daunting. I wouldn't want to bother with a system where I won't even be able to pursue useful equipment for over a year.

Anyway, and secondly, I also agree that there should be an option to either pay for materials -or- provide them yourself. It seems unjust to me that you'd have to go to the trouble of finding all the raw materials and still need to pay for them again when you use them! In this subject I also agree that the variety of the quality of ingredients should be toned down, two seems enough to me. Perhaps you'd be able to purchase or readily find common ingredients, but the masterwork ingredients would not be purchasable and would be more rare.

Thirdly, I also agree that players should be able to decide whether they are going to construct normal equipment, or take the time and expense to develop masterwork equipment. Effectively, if all of the suggestions I agree with and have provided are accepted, there'd be three levels of quality in the end of the crafting scheme- normal equipment with common materials, normal equipment with masterwork materials, and masterwork equipment with masterwork materials.

This is about as much as I can currently offer, and I hope I'm not woefully mistaken in my assessment of the situation.

[Selveem]

Hey brotha, good to hear from you again. I have a question, though. Can you explain this part?

Effectively, if all of the suggestions I agree with and have provided are accepted, there'd be three levels of quality in the end of the crafting scheme- normal equipment with common materials, normal equipment with masterwork materials, and masterwork equipment with masterwork materials.

You mean:
1: Normal (non-Masterwork) armor of common materials (such as steel, iron, etc.).
2: Masterwork armor of common materials (such as steel, iron, etc.).
3: Masterwork armor of uncommon materials (adamantine, mithral, elven singing steel, cold iron).

Am I right? If so, that's pretty acceptable (or, rather, I could get behind this suggestion wholeheartedly). But, can't have non-masterwork armor with uncommon materials, so all mined and smelted adamantine, mithral, elven singing steel, or cold iron should be masterwork quality.

[Keller]

You mean:
1: Normal (non-Masterwork) armor of common materials (such as steel, iron, etc.).
2: Masterwork armor of common materials (such as steel, iron, etc.).
3: Masterwork armor of uncommon materials (adamantine, mithral, elven singing steel, cold iron).

Am I right? If so, that's pretty acceptable. But, can't have non-masterwork armor with uncommon materials, so all mined and smelted adamantine, mithral, elven singing steel, or cold iron should be masterwork quality.

Aye, my wording wasn't very clear there because I was using terms I'm not familiar with, but you have the right meaning.