Well, Quality Level (QL) definitely is NOT telling you everything. This is even obvious and possible to prove in the Newbie Lands, just by experimenting in crafting.
One of the really TERRIBLE things about crafting and item info in this game is that armor right-click info does NOT tell you everything about an item. As a poster stated earlier, it does not tell you it's dodge/parry bonuses.
I'll give you the experienced noobie take, since it's the best I can do and disagrees slightly perhaps with what is said before (which suggests that no one truly knows this system inside out).
When you craft armor you can influence many attributes of the armor. Examples are : it's weight or bulk, it's max blunt protection, max pierce protection, max slash protection, it's dodge/parry bonus, and various other factors. This is influenced by what COMBINATION of materials you use in the crafting of the item. Understand that it is the COMBINATION and not the individual items that create the bonuses, at least by experience in noobland that is a key point.
By COMBINATION of mats, I mean that there are what seem to be resonating or perfect combos. Think of it like cooking. It's not enough to baste it well, that just might make it oily or tasting like gravy, no you also have to cook it slow. Or think of it like cinnamon-raisin bread, cinnamon bread is one thing, raisins stuck in the bread another, but put the combo in with the right amount of sugar and the cinnamon no longer tastes bitter and the raisins seem part of the bread.
For example, items can have special additions to their intended crafted name. Say you browse over a Fyros Hyben Light Gloves of Max Protection (made-up name but close to a real one). Hyben refers to its light/medium/heavy aspect AND to its fashion level (seems that as you raise craft you can make new light armors with cooler looks etc for example).
For Hyben Light Gloves there is at least one special combination of mats that will create Max Protection , which seems to pan out as maximum protection in blunt, slash, and pierce, but it's not that clear. IT seems that you get the special name that is most representative of your armor if it exceeds a certain threshold of value.
Again, the problem is that the created armor's right click info is NOT complete. It doesn't state your dodge/parry bonuses for example (you may or may not be able to dig that out of your player info via total malus etc, but good luck).
In Noobland, we found mostly that an armor's percentage protection was based chiefly on what type of armor it is. It's max blunt, pierce, slash armor was based on the mats used to create it while in that type of armor. As someone posted earlier, some guys tested it and found that percentage protection is not worth diddly squat if you max in that type of attack is 0. But my guess is that was only testing in LIGHT armor.
I'll explain. Take your original newbie Refugee armor. It has armor protection of say 5 percent. This is supposed to mean you MAY absorb up to 5 percent of the damage thrown at you, any type. But you soon see that it never absorbs anything, it's basically worse than paper thin, it's non-existent armor.
The reason is, and so far this fits the theory in the posts above, that the max blunt, max slash, max pierce values are ZERO. That means that the MAXIMUM that can be absorbed per hit on your person is ZERO, which is the MAXIMUM. The percentage absorb protection is just the range from ZERO to X percent. So as posted in this thread, you need to have both high enough to hit you max in that type of attack (max blunt etc) to always gain the best from your armor.
But now we come to some potential disagreement with the comments in the post. This has to do with Medium and Heavy Armor. This was not TESTED per se by me, it seemed to fit my own experience, but it was pointed out to me by a couple of crafters and more veteran players while they were leveling new characters in Noobland, and it SEEMED to be true. So I'll mention it.
If you walk around in Heavy Armor, for example, even if its armor absorb percentage is ZERO (which all NPC made armor in Noobland is -- and which is the same value as on your starting Refugee light armor), you WILL still find yourself absorbing some damage. Now, I can't confirm this exactly, it's worth a test for later, but I wasn't intending to continue this month in game except that I didn't cancel out in time, so maybe I'll test it soon.
The theory goes that each type of armor has a built-in base absorption. So even if the max blunt, max slash, max pierce are zero that only means ZERO absorption of damage on LIGHT ARMOR. On medium armor it means:
built-in base armor absorb percentage (20 % lets say) +{ max (blunt, pierce, or slash) OR max armor absorb percentage stated whicher is less} = total damage absorbed.
Please note the braces and parentheses. Now I can't vouch per se that the above is accurate. But it's something to consider. The idea would explain why medium armor or heavy armor with ZERO max blunt, etc max values still absorb some damage. Otherwise it's all as stated in the posts above.
Again I want to reiterate that it seems that certain combinations of ingredients resonate or heighten the effects of other materials , but I'm not expert crafter nor do I intend to be.
One of the problems with checking this out on the fly is that the sliders change, but the sliders don't clearly state whether or not they are percentage sliders of a maximum effect or if they are numeric representations. If the longest full bar represents a changing value (whatever the biggest bonus is at the moment) then the others are relative to that and so comparing sliders on the fly is sort of useless. For practical reasons I assumed that they are numeric. So that if a full bar during the mixing and matching of a my 70th piece of Hoben gloves is 10 bonus, then when I just change the mats in that exact piece, the full bar always represents 10, but that's a PURE assumption. I"m not so anal as to write down everything, not going to happen here, I'd go insane and make crafting then a real grind to myself, even as I learn more of the process.
What I can tell you is that changing one mat doesn't just seem to take away the removed mat's bonuses and substitute the new mat's bonuses in. It seems that a combination like Goari Tail and Gingo Bone might be resonating, and enhance each other in a special manner versus what they might to additively if we take their individual bonuses alone.
Anyway, bit too long a post again.
Summary is this. I have made in the NoobLands armor that is lower QL but with better mats and have achieved better armor in terms of Max blunt, max slash, max pierce for example. So that at least at the lower QLs mats used is more important that QL of the mat.
The QL of the item is LIMITED by the lowest QL used in crafting. One mat can lower the QL of the whole item. The QL does seem to limit the potential contributions of each mat, but if the higher QL item has el trashio attributes, it can be exceeded by a lower QL item with high quality mats. I like to use what's in my pack, so I've slapped QL 22 items in QL 11 final crafted items, and yes it makes the item a lot better TO A LIMIT.
Medium and Heavy armor probably have certain base minimum absorb levels besides the 20 or 50 absorb range listed. Mats add to this. Light has no min absorb just by being armor, it's like clothes. But this is debatable and you'd have to test it.
Right click info DOES NOT SHOW ALL ATTRIBUTES of the armor and needs to be fixed. The result is that customers just buy based on what they know and what they see.
Items default in merchant lists based on QL of crafted item within an armor class (light, medium, heavy, and most merchants just offer one class). The result is that you'll always think of buying based on just the QL ... if you do that you'll often pay for a lousy item at QL 22 that is no better than a QL 20 that has better mat combos, it's even possible on rare occasions when an item is constructed by lower level crafters that a QL 11 or QL 15 may exceed the bonused of a QL 22 etc in at least certain areas. Buyer beware!
Also note that unless you change the sort on the list at the lower right in the merchant list, you will not see all the armor listed, you just see the first 50 or whatever. If you want to see a better selection of gloves, pick gloves only. This is not well explained in the manual or help about the limits to what is chosen to be displayed for you on the merchant list. ALWAYS select a specific item type to see more to choose from. In fact, it not being told to players bites big-time. You can't help but wonder even when you pick a filter for gloves if you are just seeing the 50 it selects and wondering how it selects what it did for the filter and THAT Nevrax is the REAL problem.
Overall, crafting is very interesting in Ryzom but as usual the theories show that there is a bit of a lack of full information. Your best guide to armor info in game is to open up a right click info on an item in inventory then hit the little Question Mark icon in the upper right to get contextual help on the Item Info window. It will state in Nevrax phrasing what each potential attribute means, from Max Blunt value to Total Malus, but in the end ... it's still a little unclear since they don't say if the Max is max BONUS on top of a base value or max without adding to a base, and on and on. Still it's better than nothing by far.
This is the MMORPG curse. It's something that WoW seems to understand should be rid as quickly as possible. Players love to maximize their character and fiddle with their armor etc. So why not aid them to at least know exactly when they've got something uber or not? People answer, well it pays to discover. Yet soon the same people are saying, where's the guide or creating them. The real fun is in the playing of the game, discovering new items, and understanding well how the game basically works.
I guarantee that many players for a long time and perhaps always just think QL is king OR that armor absorb percentage is king. They are wrong, since it seems that Max Blunt, Max Slash, Max Pierce are more king since they can be zero if you just use NPC mats, although there may be some base value inherent in the armors before the mat bonuses. In the end you need enough armor absorb to reach your Max to be happy and enough Max to reach your armor absorb to likewise be at optimum.
Armor mats effect bulk/weight, parry/dodge, malus, many other things.
Bullets have range, speed, accuracy, durability, etc. At low levels durability or hit points doesn't seem to have any point, in either bullets or armor. Things last a long time. That bullets have durability (HP) seems ridiculous. Unless of course HP means something else when Ryzom calculates a bullet attack (and how would we know anyway). For what it is worth, again, the right click info does not tell you enough about Ranged Weapons or bullets to let you know what attributes they have.
Basically until right click info is made more complete to show what we see in crafting, you will never as a buyer know truly what you are buying and so you'll default often to buying QL or the suffix to the name of the item (of Max Protection, of Max Slash protection etc). That's wrong and it's misleading. I've made Max Protections that protect from Slash better than Max Slash ones. I've even made Max Blunt ones that protect from slash better than Max Slash's though that is rare. The crafters are being shafted, so are the buyers by this lack of information.
Hopefully some of our more able crafters will push for right click info on crafted items to be more complete and informative, only because key info is missing to make informed purchases. If any of you are in the ATS testing server program and have clout there, please take up the cause.
Meanwhile I'm back to downloading AO for free. Best wishes all.
By the way most MMOs have these issues, I'm not saying that Ryzom is bad. It's good enough to make me wish these inadequacies were corrected.
hubba1 wrote:One of the really TERRIBLE things about crafting and item info in this game is that armor right-click info does NOT tell you everything about an item. As a poster stated earlier, it does not tell you it's dodge/parry bonuses.
They tell you the dodge/parry modifiers, I've made junk HA that had -2 dodge and -1 parry ^^;
When you craft armor you can influence many attributes of the armor. Examples are : it's weight or bulk
You can affect the weight of items, you can not affect their bulk. And there is a difference. Bulk is limited to 300. Weight (at least with a 155 str) is limited around 450ish. A number of things that have bulk have no weight (crafting tools, mats). And in all honesty, you won't run into a weight issue unless you take up ranged and try carrying lots of ammo.
For Hyben Light Gloves there is at least one special combination of mats that will create Max Protection , which seems to pan out as maximum protection in blunt, slash, and pierce, but it's not that clear. IT seems that you get the special name that is most representative of your armor if it exceeds a certain threshold of value.
The 'special name' (aka max protection/dodge mod/parry mod/etc) is determined by which bar was the most full at creation (if you have 100/100 on pierce protection, and 99/100 on dodge mod on a peice of armor, it'll say its max pierce prot even if the dodge mod kicks arse).
we found mostly that an armor's percentage protection was based chiefly on what type of armor it is. It's max blunt, pierce, slash armor was based on the mats used to create it while in that type of armor.
Armor %prot is a combination of mats and armor type. Each type of armor has an approximate range that it can have (HA is 46-54% i think) which is affected by mats. the resists (slash/pierce/blunt) are influenced moreso by mat type/grade with quality being the 'upper limit' for stats (max resist possible on q150 HA is 360, much higher than max resist for q50).
Generally there are 5 things I would keep an eye on if I was buying heavy/medium armor off from a vendor (I tend to harvest the mats I want used and then either craft it myself or find a crafter), 1)quality, the higher the quality, the higher the resists can/will be for the armor (and higher damage for weapons, and higher level spells that amps will work for). 2)Grade (basic/fine/choice/excellent/supreme in worst-best order) higher the grade, in general the higher the median stats. 3)resists (slash/smash/pierce), the less damage taken, the better. 4)max %prot, not a huge impact on the lighter types of armor, but getting hit for 188(400) is kinda nice if you can get the right kinda HA for it 5)dodge/parry mod...lots of debate on this. In general, I tend to parry more often than dodge (i've tested both out) even when wearing supreme dodge LA (using supreme shu fiber/moon resin/gulatch oil/visc sap) and weilding a 89/100 dodge mod at creation pike against most monsters. Even when I have a pick in my hands, with dodge armor on, I would parry more than I would dodge in general. (this may be because my close combat is near in level to my pike...).
The above is just my opinion on HA/MA, for LA, really, dodge or parry mod...beyond that, doesn't really matter Since you'll be getting hit harder than what your armor can probably absorb anyways.
Poker of things, caster of sparklies, maker of stuff, digger of dirt, wanderer of paths....
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5)dodge/parry mod...lots of debate on this. In general, I tend to parry more often than dodge (i've tested both out) even when wearing supreme dodge LA (using supreme shu fiber/moon resin/gulatch oil/visc sap) and weilding a 89/100 dodge mod at creation pike against most monsters. Even when I have a pick in my hands, with dodge armor on, I would parry more than I would dodge in general. (this may be because my close combat is near in level to my pike...).
Since you'll be getting hit harder than what your armor can probably absorb anyways.
