Change artisans to money making guild.

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allanon
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Post by allanon »

For the record, I have to ask, why in the world do monsters carry plans as random drops in the first place? "General stuff", like torches, sleeping bags, vials, etc make sense, since you could actually use them for something. But plans drop from many npc's, not just "smith" or such mobs. I see no reason why an Orc Guard would carry around a smithing plan.

+another argument towards player-made plans. This way, that "ada plan" would not come from some random drop, it would be the result of a master smith's skill and devotion to the craft. Which is how it should be.

Additionally, Artisan "events" should award plans as prizes (where applicable).
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daerin
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Post by daerin »

There were coded to make eq, repair it, and as a side work - resize. Cant see any other purposes for artisans. I dont see how to change them so that they wont depend on plans, and with current tune - they cant make anything useful :( Getting bars takes some time, but its rather quick, forging takes 10 minutes, so once player gets plan - he can produce gear very quickly. Perhaps we could elongate the process, so making a high-end piece of eq would take like umm week? Couple weeks? Month?
Perhaps some cooldown for forging titanium, mithril and plans that dont burst? Some special ingridients, that drop rarely or only come from quest?

PS And removal of tin and coppersmithing code as pretty much useless :)
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yoz
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Post by yoz »

cooldown for titanium+ eq sounds pretty nice.
Titanium+ plans are already so rare and it breaks hearts to see them go *PUFF* after 1-2 crafts.


The main things in this artisan system that scares the shit out of me are: Resize costs/eqs breaking in player resizes (fu for that idea), and what will jewelcrafters become. Will everyone be running around with +3+3 earrings etc in future?
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

If you were to remove all the bugs that currently plague artisans + jewelers, you would discover that it's nothing more than an eq making system. And an out of tune one, at that.

I don't think Echcua had the experience required to even start coding smiths, since he's obviously crossed the threshold into putting ada/mithril/iceron and players together, and the random number generator.

Didn't some wizard say that smiths should never be allowed to make ice/mith/ada whatever? I believe it was Zaltaiz.

Why and how did these eventually get coded?

And it will be arcade icesus, when these trashy artisan things with abusive properties start to make the rounds, we haven't even gotten to really seeing what leatherworking can do, since people have trouble actually doing anything since they can't get skins from shops. Forget 3/3, Echcua probably made it so that someone with really high totals could get 4/4 with enough time investment.
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allanon
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Post by allanon »

Careful Dunn, sooner or later someone's going to argue that "if you hate it so much, why not try to make a better system yourself." Although that would probably be nice improvement anyways.

You can't put all the blame on Echcua. Other wizards helped out too, and of course it's not like his ideas went by unsupervised. Someone had to approve of them. Of course it's always useful to have a scapegoat...

Just to add to the topic, I'll state that you could reverse the situation. Make Artisans the eq-production of the game, and turn eq-mobs into cash mobs. Perhaps that sort of economy would be a better fit. (Or easier to code, but you didn't hear that from me.)
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solar
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Post by solar »

allanon wrote:Just to add to the topic, I'll state that you could reverse the situation. Make Artisans the eq-production of the game, and turn eq-mobs into cash mobs. Perhaps that sort of economy would be a better fit. (Or easier to code, but you didn't hear that from me.)
No way, that would be just so wrong :(

Several millions of money can always be soloed in one boot, but eqmaking is different. It's not that kind of mindless grinding, it's about working as a team, spending several hours of gametime killing badass bosses to get that 1-3 eq you want. Or just being a lucky bastard with healer bonuses and roll that 90+ in party dice after some random killing.

And what's heroic about lifting a hammer and battering some lifeless steel? :/
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yoz
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Post by yoz »

allanon wrote: You can't put all the blame on Echcua. Other wizards helped out too, and of course it's not like his ideas went by unsupervised. Someone had to approve of them. Of course it's always useful to have a scapegoat...
Bullshit, we can easily pull the blame on Echcua. Who did not think the situation through clearly enough and who didnt even bother to finish the guild so that it wouldn't RUIN icesus's almost nonexisting economy, or that it would even fit in.
In my opinion its a clear fact that ruining eq when resizing does NOT fit in, making better eq than what most eqmonsters drop does NOT fit in, having absolutely zero active artisans in a system like this does NOT fit in.
Who the hell wants to play an merchant that just most of the time spends money instead of gaining it. Moneymaking in this game is already so easy that its just not worth the effort.
(if you really want to, making ~10megs a day is not even hard, not to mention how useless money becomes after certain point)

The crude fact is: The artisan system does not work, no matter how you put it.

There is absolutely nothing good to say about the current situation.

Im not too fond of paying/gathering ~10m money for every reinc for just pure resizes, i got shitloads of other things to do than just make money. When stupid artisans are not reliable enough to even maintain the old quality of eq resized.

Wear and tear and felgands eqpurge are closer than we think. Only the rich will survive
allanon wrote: Just to add to the topic, I'll state that you could reverse the situation. Make Artisans the eq-production of the game, and turn eq-mobs into cash mobs. Perhaps that sort of economy would be a better fit. (Or easier to code, but you didn't hear that from me.)
That would take all the perks of making eq away. (yes, this might not be that serious suggestion, but ill comment to it anyways :D ). The main deal for doing eq atleast for me is the knowledge, nothing beats the feeling when some hard eqmonster drops an eq that fits your template well and is never seen before. Getting the eq after spending a lot of time and effort on slaying the monsters just feels too good. This system could not provide it.
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Post by seryn »

If those silly wizzish sorts wanted to fix smiths not to be out of balance while at the same time not sucking, the first thing they need to do is tone down the speed of item creation. Icesus usually has 1-2 dozen players unidle at any given time, so there is no sane reason for a smith to sit down and pop out a few hundred swords in one sitting. If crafting an item was a more complex process and took several hours or even a day or so of work it would make a lot more sense. Also, definately get rid of plans. Right now a smith with x skills and y masteries can expect to get an item that's around a certain quality, and for that the plans make sense in limiting supply. Unfortunately having plans doesn't make sense in any other way. Instead, the quality should be randomized, so that if an uber smith puts in the time to make 100 items, they might get 1 uber item, maybe a dozen decent items, and a huge scrap heap.

If this is balanced out with prices to reflect the reduced rate of production, and likely either increased bar usage or reduced miner/refiner output, then smithing could be a decent money-making opportunity, and smiths could make what they wanted to and had the masteries and skills for instead of what they are being blackmailed into making because some monster they could never kill dropped a plan and if they are lucky they might get a second item out of it. They would end up with a steady stream of utter crap that the store would pay them for, and the occasional nice item to abuse.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

allanon wrote:Just to add to the topic, I'll state that you could reverse the situation. Make Artisans the eq-production of the game, and turn eq-mobs into cash mobs. Perhaps that sort of economy would be a better fit. (Or easier to code, but you didn't hear that from me.)
I'll just pretend you didn't say that.

Seryn, those sound like good ideas, but i don't think you should be getting any items to abuse, since even one item is quite abuse to the whole game system when our eq is supposed to come from certain mobs. (It would eventually make that eq defunct.)

And plus, I would like to think that killing eq mobs for eq in parties is mud evolution (makes Icesus quite fresh and unique), de-evolving to some player made crap/junk while idling and spamming crafting is not exactly an improvement.

Yes, sure, they should be making whatever eq they wanted (and lots of junk to sell) but it should not be to a standard where they could actually make better eq than could be obtained from eq mobs, even the tita stuff. That's way out of line with the current game.

More junk to sell to stores (maybe specialized stores) means less looting newbies, and maybe more working newbies in a guild that actually does what is meant to do, not stepping on the toes of something being already done.. Which is eq running, it would completely solve the problem and open up a whole new horizon for the artisan guild.

What Yoz said is true! With the increased smithy cost (boy, Echcua covered all the bases), you are forced to use the smithy because (drum roll) Artisans ruin your gear!
Removing services from Vaerlon smithy was not necessary too. But, once again, it had to be done to try and bolster the artisan forces, which now currently, stand at 0 resizers. (What, you didn't think that 2 highbies would sit around and just resize your gear?)

As an afterthought, when Idles removed miners for making too much money (probably), I don't think a guild that makes ada/ice/mith abuse items is what he had in mind!
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Post by seryn »

I halfway agree with Mr. Dunny Bunny that artisans should not be making 'uber' items comparable to the best eq-mob loot. However, there is a difference between 'uber' and 'uber'. Right now there are some items that would fall under the 'uber' description which are trivial to get, like raptor armour, rings of the slayer, ruby-hilts, and plenty of other stuff. On the other hand, there is also a lot of eq-mob items that you simply can't get without being a highbie and getting a bunch of other highbies to kill the mob with you, and then only if the dice love you. I dont' see anything wrong with smiths making armour equivalent to raptor gear or the infamous fsfp, as long as they are not popping them out in the dozens and they are doing it based on having put work in and not that they happen to be friends with the guy who got that uber plan to drop.

One thing that we are missing in the midst of all this silly sensationalism is that going by the things already posted, smiths only really compete with a limited quantity of items, primarily def tanks' prot items. The +1 and +2 items that jewelers can make might make the supply of these items a bit better, but they don't compare to the non-hitslot eq-mob drops, and they also don't make a dent in hitslot gear for anyone but a dedicated def-tank. Is it really such a horrible thing that smiths can provide some uber gear for a small niche group of players? I didn't (and still don't) hear anyone calling for massive tunes and recoding for leatherworkers, who are the preferred source of uber stat items for certain guilds and slots. I think that if smith can be tuned to put out a reasonable quantity of items and make decent money from that, then it is a small issue if for a few def-tank slots they can occasionally make an item that challenges eq-mob drops.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

Primarily def tank items, hmm, probably the most important eqs for most of the mud (anyone who's not either a pure backrow caster or offie) including the newbie population.

I think raptor plate is quite good. I don't think smiths should ever be close to making prot gears to raptor armor. Their max should come right where the smithy max is, fine steel, full plate, with about the same maxes the smithy has for protection.

Then we wouldn't really have a problem. And a smith might actually not need to sit around all day and make friends with everyone just to get plans (since they can't possibly think of one on their own).

Yes, it is a horrible thing if this small niche of players start walking around in uber gear.

If you add in jewelers to further add +prot to this silly, uber niche gear... Uh, I'll get back to you on that.

While we're on the topic of jewellers, let them word with gold/silver/etc, if we're going to have a jeweller sub. Nobody needs to be enchanting _anything_ that's not leather.

Leather for a reason. It's light, it doesn't provide any protection, it's reasonable for non hit slots, once you lack better items, and for regen sets. (Using the old system as example). Also, there are few choices from the game to cover these things because leatherworking seems to have been meant as a side bar to this.

Also, their protection didn't even come close to offie gear.. So it is a mute point.

It worked well. It was fun. It provided highbies with a reasonable alternative to mindless exp running. Echcua ruined it.

Good items, not great, referring to the old system. Once again, there is not much hope of this new leatherworking being in any way balanced.

When was the last time you saw a good (and cheap) set of clothes, Seryn? Why not check Thakkrad's booth.. I hear he has a few. They are probably relics of the past.

Though not to worry, if this situation persists (there is a nice shift progressing into leatherworking now), we'll all be wearing +3 clothes in 3-4 months.
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allanon
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Post by allanon »

Gee. Is Yoz the only one that knows sarcasm? :(

Let's rework the concept of "Jewellers". Drop the whole deal of enchanting gemstones. Instead, their purpose should be simple: Increase the value of the item. Not by giving it magic properties, but by tacking on expensive jewels and gold trim. This way it would be purely about making money, since a jewel-studded cuirass would have no benefits to a non-jewel-studded one, except for price. (By price I mean shop price, players probably wouldn't pay much more.)
If there is insistance on having a chance for magic, then the solution is: Random +charisma bonuses. Except for air priests and maybe mages, Charisma is Crap. Army, Rangers, Earth Priest, Psionicist, Gaesati, Artisan, Templar, Shadowdancer - none of them gain any serious benefit from charisma. Hence why this would be good. The resulting boost in magical properties would increase the value (more money-making), but it would barely have an effect on the eq's usefulness unless it was like +3 or higher. But even then, charisma is not a highly sought after stat - there are already many mob-eq with +cha that are commonly used. Finally, if you argue that "green glow smith items would make great df", I'll counter that the time and expense required for the manufacture of these items would make it not worth the cost, at least for the jeweller.

The magical bonuses should come from Smithing the item, if at all. It seems like a lot of the hubbub against artisans is solely around the possibility of magical equipment being made. So, just remove the magic. Then it really does become a pure guild for profiteering.

& About clothes etc; it used to be pretty common sight to see +1 clothes on sales for cheap. Sometimes even +2. Back when you could leatherwork magical clothes from the "worthless" skins, that is. I still don't see a reason why we can no longer work with "worthless" skins. I think a lot of magical clothes came from leatherworkers who had ~40% or less of the skill, and who only got to work with crappy skins. No more with artisans. Now it actually takes some investment to be able to turn a profit in leatherworking. Especially with "merchant reputation" (if that's not gone already). I dread my next reinc, where I'll lose my levels in Merchants and my skill in leatherworking - I shouldn't have to spend five levels in Merchants and 1 level in Leatherworkers, to get the same skills now that I got for just one level and some exp back then.
Of course, I don't even leatherwork anymore. Because of "merchant reputation", I can't turn a profit. In fact I lose money by working with the skins instead of just selling them. Which is lame.
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osma
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Post by osma »

I have to make aggrement with allanon's last statement. If you are going to make leatherworking good enough to require levels rather then just training (which I dont know that it IS good enough to require that atm), then you should at least make SOME profit. Even peasnts would pay more for a ratty, badly made set of clothes then they would for unworked skin, since they have NO skill with leatherworking. Unless your skill is less then 10, and your craftsmanship is less then 20, you should make some profit, even if only 1%. and by 50/50, it should easily reach 25% profit or more.

Even with extreemly low skills, that is better then NO skills, and should give equal value with just selling skins. I have seen very few examples where a finished product, no matter how ugly, can be bought for less then the raw materials.
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Post by seryn »

That is a pretty good idea about jewelers, and I would toss in one other thing: customizing armours.

I know I would definately pay a bit of a premium for a piece of armour that was engraved with an eagle in platinum and had rubies set into it or something like that. It would be nice if jewellers could pick a material from column A, a design from column B, and 1-3 gemstones from column C (or some combination of those) and if your skills were enough put that design on the armour. This, as well as making rings/earrings and things like that, would much better fit the real-life image of jewelers and would help the 'pooping out 12412 identical supQ tita bplates' situation. :wink:

I think that all the talk about how leatherworker is useless and 'where are all the +2 clothes' is misplaced, since there are some exceedingly nice items being made with lworking, and it might need to be looked at sometime in the future or not, but in the thread about getting artisans to not suck that is one sub that is doing just fine.
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sraak
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anopther solution

Post by sraak »

complicated issue, complicated answers, some good, some good with good arguments...

here is one, if we go back to the brainstorming phase:

give monsters, NPC's the ability to drop smith&artisan&whatnot glowing EQ. something to boost their result, the EQ. skill+1-n, stat+1-n,even mastery+1-n... , whatnot+1-n EQ.

easy to code in OO language. easy to implement. but what would be the results of this?

(edit) why do monsters have to drop this&that? => help icesus is icesus.

if you have not get this, then consider these:
1) HSI gives coders a bit more freedom in everything.
2) HSI makes icesus different.

what on earth (air, water and fire) is wrong with making icesus different and a *bit* easier to code?

as long as the coders have engouh BG, inspiration&experince in muds&&&espesially icesus?

let them do their work. there are not enough of those, coders. forget why, forget everything, concentrate on easy solutions.

this might be one of those.
(/edit)
Last edited by sraak on Thu Sep 07, 2006 18:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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