Change artisans to money making guild.

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dunn
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Change artisans to money making guild.

Post by dunn »

This is a post about my concerns regarding this guild, and the reasons why better uses for artisans might be instated in the game than are currently.

Right now, they are strongly running for uber-eq making guild.
And that shouldn't happen on Icesus because we have certain structure for making eq already, which is based on player ran and killing said eq mobs..

Not spamming 3 months on smithing masteries and then popping out eq after eq of things that are ungettable even from even the most high end mobs. And then (when it works), slap on a +mod protection glow to make that the best def item for certain slot in game.

It's a good thing that plans are limited for uses now, but it's not a good thing on the other hand, because that limits the econonmy of said plan, leaving it in the hands of a) the smith and b) the person who gave said plan to smith. Where exactly is the player economy there? If you're lucky, a third person might be drawn into the lottery, but it is not something that flows naturally through the game (as a real economy should).

That is also telling of the flaws of the guild concept as it stands now. First of all, the idea of plans itself is stupid, and limits the usefullness of the guild itself and the whole idea of making an actual economy based on player made gear. Which should never be to the uber class as it is now, but should have always been aimed at making it around the old smithy ordering standards. (Which were indeed expensive).

Quite the amount of money could be make by taking over smithing services by players, but when oh when did the wizards decide they should take over the actual eq making procedures as well?

As an example, the great fine steel full plate mask. Every def uses it. I have one, I sold one (spare) to a friend, who would use one. Any respectable def is expected to have one. This was pretty much a freebie thrown into the game at a level where probably only a crimson death helmet could match (and a good version at that). And seeing a crimson death helmet on a def back then was quite an achievement. Now we are slapping them with jewels, and turning them into the best head slots for defs ever. Am I the only person seeing a problem with the eq generated by this guild?

Since when were they supposed to start making eq that outclassed, outshined and generally outperforms equipment gotten by killing an actual eq monster with a well experienced party?

Not to mention, the junk sounding names, that you cannot tell one from another copy of it except by looking at the quality on ID (maybe). They are so generic it doesn't even matter.

On to the reasons why wizards actually take time out of their idle lives to make eq for us and put it on eq mobs selected by certain criteria, which is balanced accordingly. It has a nice description, and a reasonably sounding name, that you are proud to own. Not to mention several versions that you can upgrade through. Not to mention it's cool, and everyone knows how it got into the game and why said person wears it. Achievement. Specials, etc. All the goodies that come with investing time into actually playing the game.

It is also the reason we exp our chars, to get to a point where we can kill said eq mobs, get said eq and exp better. That is our exp - eq economy. It should not be thrown out of order by an artisan guild making trashy things with abusive properties.

On to the next problem of the guild, and the retarded point it has gotten to now, you have to invest in a guild called artisans to actually make anything. I think 1% of people or the top bracket, make any money whatsoever. (Because of reasons outlined at the top). And it is so buckled down in layers and layers of things designed to make it impossible for you to get the things you need yourself, is ridiculous. Shops not selling things to artisan players, like skins, etc.

Now on to the solution.

Destructure and remove this main guild status. It is pointless. Make the subs open and skill intensive for everyone (like a real sub, so people can specialize). Remove the restrictions on buying and selling.

Re-open leathercrafters for highbies.

Orient the gear you can make to the old smithy standards and give them a more *utalitarian* nature (such as equipment maintenance), since our eq making needs are already covered by our eq running facet of the game, wouldn't wizards agree?

And then most important of all, do away with plans, destroy them. BURN THEM. It was a very poor concept to begin with.. As an artisan, a skilled craftsman, you can't think of making anything yourself, and have no means of thinking of it yourself? (ie. a brain?)

Here I am, sitting, waiting for an idea to drop down from the sky since I cannot possibly think of one myself unless it is written down and handed to me, while I have all this skill at my hands. It is so idiotic, I cannot even begin to mock this properly.

Make the guild MAKE MONEY, not COST MONEY. This should be the whole point of an artisan guild, craftsmen that make money based on creating and selling their goods, no? Also offering services that are beneficial to the whole game (player community) as a whole.

I think we sadly lost track of what this guild was meant to do. And wasn't meant to do.
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solarin
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Post by solarin »

Good points Dunn. =D>
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Post by kraven »

"cast create mithril coin at purse"
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Post by solar »

Yay!

Good luck convincing them further, though :/

And to throw in an extra idea to magical eq crafting:

Code the said eq and then show it to a wizard, the wizard takes a good look at it and either accepts it or not. If the eq is a good one, making it will be harder, so you won't be getting it unless you unidle at a forge for some 15132512653265235 hours and spend XXX in raw materials.

Good sides of this idea: You can write the descs yourself, so no General weapon X crap. Since the 'coding stage' is made by the said artisan, the wizards won't have to lift a finger unless the eq is ready to be inspected. By making players learn how to code lpc objects, they'll have preliminary training to becoming wizards themselves!

Bad sides of this idea: Someone will have to come up with a good system to determine the costs and time needed for crafting these magical items, and how the skills and masteries affect them. Some wizards are lazy and most want nothing to do with this kind of eq inspecting.
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allanon
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Post by allanon »

Good points. I've been waiting for a post like this...

Artisans should be able to craft without plans. But, I think it would be good to keep plans around, in their destructable form. But, make one major change - artisans can draw their own plans. This would allow a more skilled artisan to draw plans for a less skilled one to use. In this way plans become "extra", because you don't need them, but they can be helpful. It's sort of like geologist maps - if someone can give you the location of a vein, you don't need the map to find it. But it might be helpful. If this was implemented, it would increase artisan's productivity since they wouldn't have to buy plans from players. It would also help reduce some of the tediousness of gaining masteries, and speed up the process of becoming a money-making artisan.

Plus it is just ridiculous that artisans can't draw their own plans, or make copies of them. Maybe we are all illiterate, but anyone can draw...besides, a "draw plans" skill would be good. It would let skilled artisans make even more money, by selling their excellent plans to less skilled artisans. Etc...

Oh yeah, and while we're ranting about atrisans. Artisans should be able to procure materials by salvaging other pieces of equipment. For example they could take an iron cuirass, stick it in the forge, and eventually melt it down to some molten iron, which is them formed into bars and ready to work with. Naturally these bars would be of inferior quality to ones produced by the actual miners/refiners, but at least it would give some easier way to get materials, and - I really like this - it would give some use to "trash loot". Instead of selling bucketloads of shantytown junk to shops for 5k profit, you could turn it into useful materials.
This would also help prevent shops from getting "full inventory", which is oh so annoying.
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osma
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Post by osma »

Hear, hear! Artisans (beta version) has done it's job as a prototype. It is time to repair and update the flaws inherent in any new idea.

My contribution is that plans are basicly blueprints.

First, i can make a house without a blueprint. No one will want to live there, but i understand the basics. With a blueprint however, i can make a much better house. A master carpenter dosen't NEED blueprint to make a good house, but he uses one anyhow because it helps him make the best house he can.

Use blueprints as such. A new smith that tries to make a pair of tin boots will make a crappy job that might not even hold together, but with a plan he has a much better chance of makeing a wearable boot. Master smiths can use said plans to make their best effort, useing them as a REFRENCE tool, not as a how to for idiots.

Furthermore, people have to learn to read blueprints, so smiths should have to do so as well. Treat it as the bowery skill. with low %, they can sometimes make a plan (usualy fails) and it isnt effective, while at higher skill% they can make plans easily and it is quite usefull in helping them make things. (also either as a seprate skill, or in combonation, make higher % give you more profenciy at reading the plan, making the plan more effective.)

As a limiter, you would probably need to have studied a plan first in order to know how to make one, but once learned, you can make one forever, plan or not. This would both limit people from making fine steel masks at level 2 (besides obvious lack of skills) and it would boost player-driven economy since older smiths would be selling plans to newer ones.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

As an afterthought, even the crafted things (most anyway, except leather) in WoW suck, and those people pay money.

Yeah, have an aspect to the guild/sub solely about making designs and putting them on paper. An artisan should be able to make them.. Drafting related skills. Who knows, maybe we could even make Echcua slave on Solar's idea.
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Post by hors »

yes yes, i am tired keeping saying it - there must be no thing like artisans at all. every fighting guild must have a proffesion to help making money. ot keep artisan subguilds as open for everyone
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Post by apog »

As someone who knows first hand (not second or third hand like some of the other posters here), I can say that Jeweler's is a waste of time. It will be a first, but I agree with what Mila has posted on the artisans channel. For those who don't have access to the Artisans channel, or if you are reading this after Mila's text has already scrolled past the history, I will paraphrase for him and add my own insights.

1.) Even with Master level jeweler's secrets, 100% skills, and high stats some gems are unenchantable.

2.) The probability of enchanting +2's is of medium probability, and the chance of enchanting +3's is very low. The probability of enchanting 2 gems is extremely low.

3.) Add up the chances of failure for mining ore, refining (20-40% losses are normal), smithing failures (lowered quality or wasted materials), and the limited number of items from plans. Now take that chance and assume you're going to try for a +2 item to a single stat. From my estimates, the chances of that for a moderately rare gem are about 60% of the time it's +1, 35% it is a failture and about 5% of the time it's a +2 and that is being generous. That also assumes you've picked the correct gem and can cut it to the correct specifications. If you can't do that then failure is almost 100%. Also, failure consists of several things including destroying the item (two types of messages), permanently damaging the item so it has less quality, and just failing (the least likely). As you can plainly see it's not as easy as "just slapping on a +mod protection".

On a personal note, I have a single artisan made tita full plate breastplate. Now it took a lot of time from several people to make that breastplate. Does anyone think I'm going to enchant that with some gem knowing that 40% of the time I'm going to fail with the very real possibility of completely losing the item?

Let's also talk about how Def's are the *only* ones really benefitting from Artisan's eq. How many 2wis2spr items have you seen from Artisans, or 2int2spr, or 2str2con or 2str2dex or god forbid a 2int2spr2wis bracers or anything more useful than even the crapiest eq mob equipment? It's just not currently possible to do anything like that.

As an accomplished jeweler, though not quite as good as Mila, you can bet the first thing that I would do if jeweling was as easy as Dunn makes it out to be is to make a full set of +wis+dex eq. However, anyone who has seen my eq set recently can quite easily see that this is not the case.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

That is not the point of whether or not it is easy, difficult or just shitty (or retarded) or a combination of the above. The point is you shouldn't make these eqs in a guild, because eq should be covered by eq mobs.

And if you think it's ok for ada breastplates to be in game because of smiths, because it's "just for defs" then you're out of your mind. Or even the fs stuff currently, they are too good.

And yeah, just for defs, that covers quite a wide bracket, and is probably the most important eq out there.

The whole point of this guild is out of context with the game currently. That's why artisans are having to jump through hoops to make anything, because the things you're trying to make are so out of tune with the rest of the game. Checks have been put in place to try to stop that, when in fact, the root of the problem is what you are trying to make.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

forgot to add..

alias DATE I"M WHINING BECAUSE DUNN IS ASKING FOR MY BELOVED BOTTING GUILD TO BE CHANGED
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Post by daerin »

Now thats outrageous :)
I ve spent at least 7 months in Artisans, with little to none idling, got few nice items, one plain amazing item to be honest :)
that took quite a bit of time and cooperation. pretty sure that eq train that lasted this long would pop a rack of awesome gear, lot better than anything doable in artisans. Dunn, to make a nice gear - you need plan first of all, and easy to control artisan production, just cut the plan drop, to state where it is now. No awesome plans popped for months, even if you bot - yo wont make anything awesome. And even plan spawns - you get 1-2 item from top plans. I reinced cause getting mastery in master smithing didnt seem attractive, i d rather get some exp and wait for plans, than sit there and wait another half a year for some fsteel fplate at least. Its quite late and i might not get the point of post, but thats my point of view.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

The point of the post is that we can actually do much better with an artisan guild than to have 2 people who can manage this torture ruin it for 90% of others who cannot because the guild concept does not fit into Icesus.

Why should this guild be even able to produce such high end gear? Because of that, 90% of people who try to make it as an artisan, can't. There are much better ways to utilize artisans than to gimp them because there is a possiblity, however slim, that they'll turn out that you would never see from an eq mob.

If we toned it down and expanded it, removed the checks, removed the plans, allow players to become miners or refiners, or whatever and not waste exp doing so, we would stand for much better quality and game than we have currently.

Plus, it does not make sense, Daerin. We already have a means of getting eq. Just because you spent months without idling does not entitle one to supreme pieces of gear that would take even those people leading eq, years to come by (if ever). And this plan tune is recent too, which makes it all that harder for new smiths or miners to do anything worthwhile because they too would have to sit around and wait for a plan, just because someone added in the abuse possibilities of making outrageous gear.
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dunn
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Post by dunn »

Where are the general utalitarian purposes that should come from having smiths, jewelers, carpenters, you name it in game? There are none.

Even a decent container. Zip. Zero.

Because everyone is sitting around, waiting for that marvelous ada plan to drop from the sky.

And that shouldn't be the point of an artisan guild.
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Post by osma »

To the open subguilds for all, if that is not reasonable, how about this. Allow access or at least less restricted access for subguilds that make SENCE with your main guild.

For example, army and templars should definitly be able to make equipment and wepons (smithing) or at least be able to fix/resize them. Rangers and shifters should have access to leathercrafters (at full levels) so that they can do something with all those skins they get. Mages with there smart little brains should take to alchemy like a fish to water, and earth preist seem custom designed by their description (didnt it say something about farming, dealing with soil and earth) for mining.
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