Suggestion for improving crafting

[Iridni Ren]

[deleted]

[Arawn]

That's all IC information irrelevant to the discussion. Keep things on track, please.

[RedwizardD]

2.) The materials for herbalism and alchemy are **much** lighter than other crafts. The heaviest item you will need for herbalism is tree sap, and that's only 0.5 lbs. Everything else is so light that you can carry hundreds upon hundreds of herbs on any character you want and not worry about encumberance. While later alchemy supplies can become heavier, the beginner stuff is incredibly light - mandibles are 0.3 lbs and ectoplasm is weightless.

Lug around several pounds of golem hearts around on (what is likely) a wizard for weeks because you can't find a third to craft with. Then we can talk about how light alchemy ingredients are.

It is not as bad consistently as working with ores (dear lord, those poor smiths). But Alchemy ingredients can easily range from 0.1LB to 10Lbs per item. Not counting the weight of bags to store them if you have a lot (or possible weight reductions if you can afford magic bags).


That said:

Crafting across all disciplines is very expensive, painfully grindy, time consuming, and requires significant from support from others to produce anything marketable to the player base at large.

While this can make this more realistic in terms of achieving master craftsmanship. It does place a somewhere excessive hurdle for entry level would-be artisans. It might be worthwhile to consider reducing the material costs and experience requirements necessary for the most complicated and interwoven disciplines (Smithing/Gilding/Carpentry) to make them less painful to get started on. It might also be worth while if crafted gear could be sold to merchants for at least the value of the patterns required to make them. If produced material values are added (perhaps only as a minor boost to value) it would give those crafts a minor degree of income, to further offset initial setup and time costs. The vendor-trashed guff could then be turned around by the npc and sold at a more standard market value for the armor's type, to reinforce the value of the item and the benefit of trading with the craftsman directly.

Edit:
I want to add. Since there may be complaints about people using this to earn gold. Crafters are spending actually days/weeks/months to learn these crafts, which takes these characters out of (most) rp situations for extended periods and often puts them deeply in debt if they have no benefactor (i.e. When not farming leather/ores/wood for their practice, they have to spend it grinding for money that rarely will turn a meaningful profit for the character in the long run). These people sound an awful lot like they've worked for any scant coin it might earn them from pawning their wares to an npc.

[Iridni Ren]

I do think the whole weight differences among the crafts is a non-issue. Mines tend to be close to smiths and smelters, so the weight isn't carried for a long time. Admittedly, the good produced is quite heavy, but entry-level goods the crafter will chuck right away, and my impression is the good stuff is made on commission. When Borvald made Iridni's armor, she went with him throughout the process.

Herbalism (and presumably alchemy) is batch brewed. You have a lot of components at once and then a lot of product. Suspi probably has 40 lbs of potions on her at the moment, and, as her potions are mostly for personal use, will have that much from now on.

I know nothing about gilding or how adamantine work is actually practiced, so those are likely exceptions to my "ore is close to the forge" belief. But adamantine is supposed to be exceptionally difficult!

[RedwizardD]

I know nothing about gilding or how adamantine work is actually practiced, so those are likely exceptions to my "ore is close to the forge" belief. But adamantine is supposed to be exceptionally difficult!

The silver mine is an actual nightmare. As I recall. Helped a crafter fight off shadow cats while we kept getting turned into badgers and pixies or would randomly explode.

And I think there's a gold mine in the depths of perfidius?

So weight does have a degree of influence, depending on what you're after, since it can limit what can be collected safely.

[Nemesis 24]

There is another much safer place to get silver, I'll just say that.

[Blight]

My two nickels, as we don't do pennies here:

The reason why the player economy is struggling to make crafting relevant is because there are only two tiers of goods, valuable and worthless. A crafter has to go through hundreds of useless crafted items that are not worth paying for before being able to make something sellable.

What needs to change is that higher tier crafting items need to become not only more expensive to make but also make the resources more rare. But THAT will only have the colored effect if the lower tiered crafting goods become more viable and valuable.

If you want a non broken economy, copper gear has to be worth putting on to make people want to pay for it.

Low level gear simply needs to be rebalanced. I think in fear of upsetting the balance we erred in not making crafted items more valuable.

[peps]

My two nickels, as we don't do pennies here:

The reason why the player economy is struggling to make crafting relevant is because there are only two tiers of goods, valuable and worthless. A crafter has to go through hundreds of useless crafted items that are not worth paying for before being able to make something sellable.

What needs to change is that higher tier crafting items need to become not only more expensive to make but also make the resources more rare. But THAT will only have the colored effect if the lower tiered crafting goods become more viable and valuable.

If you want a non broken economy, copper gear has to be worth putting on to make people want to pay for it.

Low level gear simply needs to be rebalanced. I think in fear of upsetting the balance we erred in not making crafted items more valuable.

I've got to second this. While I know most people like to shy away from comparing our server to others, frankly Arelith has paved a path for what is a decent crafting system. Mind you, I'm not suggesting we put forth some wild crafted items like they have, but in a similar fashion we must 1) See to upping the usefulness of crafted weapons (e.g. silver giving enhancement rather than attack bonus) and armor (e.g. damage reduction?), and 2) Allowing items to gradually wear down, like people have mentioned.

[APorg]

The issue is that some crafted items already price at levels comparable to the highest drops in dungeons (8000gp); I think it was Nemesis who pointed out that a silver-gilded steel greatsword would be worth 10K in the loot system. There's very little margin, so suggesting expanding the craft system upwards is essentially asking the whole server philosophy to be re-thought from the ground up. I'd rather see creativity put to use expanding what's still extant rather than retreading old ground.

Also: the answer to a craft being grindy is to add more grind? Really?

[Ehver]

I think we have already heard a great solution to this problem, perceived or otherwise, which seems to have been mostly ignored.

Crafting Guilds.

Turn the grind into RP. Help your fellow grinders and be helped in return. Perhaps crafting shouldn't be seen so much as a solo-effort, but a community one. This is an RP server after all.

[Tycat]

I think we have already heard a great solution to this problem, perceived or otherwise, which seems to have been mostly ignored.

Crafting Guilds.

Turn the grind into RP. Help your fellow grinders and be helped in return. Perhaps crafting shouldn't be seen so much as a solo-effort, but a community one. This is an RP server after all.

+1, not that i didn't recommend this a few posts ago or anything.

[APorg]

Craft guilds come and die frequently. Heck, my very first character on PotM tried to start up a herbalism guild, 7 or 8 years ago. There also was a brief lived alchemy guild, which also ended up dying. It's not an original suggestion. If it hasn't worked for the past decade, why do you think invoking the phrase is some kind of magic solution nobody's been creative or determined enough to succeed at?

The problem is that the real advantage of a working guild is logistical, but logistics requires PCs being on to handle them. And mostly this is quite dull and repetitive RP. Sure, starting a crafting guild sounds fun for maybe two weeks but after the third it's gonna be hard to be enthusiastic about running over the same material for the Nth time.

This is why when we tend to think of great crafters and traders, we see individuals more than organisations. Individuals can take long breaks and then come back; but if that happens, their guild dies.

[Ehver]

Craft guilds come and die frequently. Heck, my very first character on PotM tried to start up a herbalism guild, 7 or 8 years ago. There also was a brief lived alchemy guild, which also ended up dying. It's not an original suggestion. If it hasn't worked for the past decade, why do you think invoking the phrase is some kind of magic solution nobody's been creative or determined enough to succeed at?

Well, pardon me. I was speaking out of personal experience - and in my personal experience, I have not seen a single crafting guild in the six years I've been on this server. Not to say that there haven't been any, but hey, I'm not omniscient.

EDIT: Apologies for the flippant tone. Totally uncalled for. ><

[haifisch021]

Typically in crafting I try to seek out a master-apprentice sort of relationship for RP. I don't know anything about crafting guilds, but I think there could be potential there for political play and a lot of fun, given enough time.

And by that I mean a **lot** of time. I think I'll toy around with the thought for a bit

[Norture]

Cool flippant tone bro. Appro gave a solid explanation as to why it hasn't worked in the past. I'll vouch for everything he said-- It's extremely unfun being the person having to manage it. You are constantly being harassed by tells and hounding players for orders, it's actually more fun to grind every single craft than deal with it. This is why I ground every single craft, to escape management hell. And even then, doing nothing but crafter RP is horrible. The idea for a crafter's guild has actually come up in the last year, I straight up told the Vardo captain if they made me do it I'd quit the faction, I am not doing that again. And even if you say "Oh no it's not that at all, it'll be for trading resources!", a player once demanded I drop everything I'm doing to meet with him or else the whole contract is off. I was encumbered with ore and had to go meet with this idiot who would not leave me alone in tells.

If you want to do a guild feel free, but you've been warned.

[Ehver]

Cool flippant tone bro.

You're right. My apologies. ><

[APorg]

Fundamentally the problem is one of unreliability of performing a transaction.

If Norture's PC wants to hire mine to go mine some copper ore for him, how reliable that transaction is likely to get through depends on how reliable we players are individually. If one of us doesn't log on for a few days, or I get hit by a bus, or if Norture quits PotM forever, or whatever, the transaction will fail.

The idea of a PC guild is simply to add more middle parties to the equation, with the implied justification that extra management leads to higher reliability. i.e. Bob the Guilder steps into the above transaction and says, "give me your ore and I'll pass it onto Norture's PC because me, or someone in my Guild, will be online at the same hours as Norture".

Now I'm not saying there's no RP in being a gothic horror accountant and warehouse manager, but I'm willing to bet that for most of us, this is the sort of real life pen-pushing we're trying to get escapism from.

It'd be nice if there was some sort of server-side system were I could go to the warehouse with an ox load of copper ore and say, "This is for Mr. Zacharry Sorrill's account"; and later Zacharry could log on and collect the copper ore. I think that would do a lot to make transactions far more reliable. But that implies server-side storage that I think the Dev team are extremely leery of implementing. A man can dream, though, no?

[Iridni Ren]

Actually, the first suggestion of forming a guild came from Mab, but I suspect he would be glad for people to agree with his suggestion, rather than worry about whose it was 

Guilds, however, work when there are barriers to entry. Those in the guild have knowledge/skills that they refuse to pass on unless someone joins the guild. Or they go around hurting those who don't belong to the guild, which, admittedly, could generate some RP!

In theory, a solid guild maintaining a grip on competition and thus supply could drive up prices for high-end items. Norture and Aprog have given reasons to question this theory in practice.

Even if it did work, however, and I agree it's likely not to, a guild doesn't address the problem of crafting being so grindy that few who have experienced it once are going to want to start over. It won't raise the price of practice items, which is where the real grind and money waste for newbies is and what most players actually complaining are saying is the problem.

The proof is Mab/Borval says that nothing is wrong with crafting as it is, but those who don't like prices can form guilds. He also says template prices are going to be lower. The second helps established crafters as much as newbies--and guilds much more the former.

If you want to fix the problem, it would be better to listen to suggestions from those who actually think there is a problem.

None of this is to knock Mab. What I'm saying is a good solution is generally more likely to come from someone trying to fix something than someone who doesn't think it's broken

[Arawn]

It'd be nice if there was some sort of server-side system were I could go to the warehouse with an ox load of copper ore and say, "This is for Mr. Zacharry Sorrill's account"; and later Zacharry could log on and collect the copper ore. I think that would do a lot to make transactions far more reliable. But that implies server-side storage that I think the Dev team are extremely leery of implementing. A man can dream, though, no?

It's simply not feasible under NWN's architecture without lagging the entire server (and potentially causing script exceptions and crashes).

[Norture]

I missed the price lowering point. I'm actually against that-- XP is based off template value. If you can afford a template, you can level significantly faster with higher priced templates. As a result this makes crafting a horrific grind at low levels, but smooth sailing at higher levels. Woodworking especially, it's atrocious until you can make composite bows. I'd rather have expensive templates available as an option for people with money who want to make the craft go by faster.

[peps]

It'd be nice if there was some sort of server-side system were I could go to the warehouse with an ox load of copper ore and say, "This is for Mr. Zacharry Sorrill's account"; and later Zacharry could log on and collect the copper ore. I think that would do a lot to make transactions far more reliable. But that implies server-side storage that I think the Dev team are extremely leery of implementing. A man can dream, though, no?

It's simply not feasible under NWN's architecture without lagging the entire server (and potentially causing script exceptions and crashes).

Have no script knowledge, but what of despawning the ore item itself when you store it, then spawning new ore when whoever it's assigned to come picks it up? Despite it being "new" ore, the whole process is net neutral. Or is that what you had in mind?

[Arawn]

That's exactly how it works.

[MAB77]

I missed the price lowering point. I'm actually against that-- XP is based off template value. If you can afford a template, you can level significantly faster with higher priced templates. As a result this makes crafting a horrific grind at low levels, but smooth sailing at higher levels. Woodworking especially, it's atrocious until you can make composite bows. I'd rather have expensive templates available as an option for people with money who want to make the craft go by faster.

To be more precise. It is not so much out of consideration for the crafting system that plate template prices will be lowered, that is a side effect of the fact we are adjusting the base price of armors in general. This ought to mean more heavy armors dropping in loot. Nothing prevents us from adjusting the price manually to keep it at the current level if we so chose . However, I have seen people master smithing in less than 2 days thanks to plates XP crafting boosts. So I am in favor of dropping the plate's price.

[peps]

The issue is that some crafted items already price at levels comparable to the highest drops in dungeons (8000gp); I think it was Nemesis who pointed out that a silver-gilded steel greatsword would be worth 10K in the loot system. There's very little margin, so suggesting expanding the craft system upwards is essentially asking the whole server philosophy to be re-thought from the ground up. I'd rather see creativity put to use expanding what's still extant rather than retreading old ground.

Also: the answer to a craft being grindy is to add more grind? Really?

I agree in completely axing any concept of being able to sell crafted items to NPC's and expecting a decent profit margin. It is, as Arawn said, undermines the player-driven economy.

On the note of the grind, I must go back to Arelith's crafting system; they match character level with crafting level. In short, earn a character level, earn a crafting level/("point" for them). I feel we should follow that same path to some degree. Maybe allowing our roleplay XP to pool into a crafting point distribution system where we can allocate the points to crafts from there, or simply follow the Arelith system at its bare bones. For every character level earned we will offer the ability to assign a single point to any craft; this will allow higher levels, the ones who are the ones collecting almost all the materials related to crafting (aside from herbalism), to enjoy their character development and enjoy a craft down the road, but still give those who want to sink countless hours into the craft the true advantage right off the bat.

[Iridni Ren]

I have seen people master smithing in less than 2 days thanks to plates XP crafting boosts. So I am in favor of dropping the plate's price.

In other words, the intent of this change is to make it...more grindy?

I think this proves my previous point.

A guild works only when there are barriers to entry. The main barrier to entry for crafting is its grindy nature. So based on your suggested fixes, it's clear your interest is actually in keeping it as grindy as possible