Looooong post, sorry... but it's a quiet day at work.
I was thinking about a couple things I'd add to the wishlist as far as crafting goes. But then I figured that I'm only a mid-level crafter (120 light/heavy armour, 140 2H swords, pikes, axes and amps) so before I got slapped down by high level crafters, I thought I'd post them here and you can chip in and tell me what you guys think.
1) More Packer Space
While I can admit that the 500,000 bulk was a tad excessive (especially given the 64 slots we got to fill it) I would love to see packer bulk rates go up a bit. 5,000 would be amazing for me. We now have 100 slots which can each hold 49.5 bulk for a stack of 99 mats. Do I need 100 stacks of mats? Sure!
Will I ever get 100 stacks of mats? Nope! Maybe pay more for a packer. I'd pay 1 mill daps for a 5000 bulk packer. Heck, I'd pay 500,000 daps for a 2000 bulk packer. We're talking the difference between a minature horse and a clydesdale here.Upside is it allows more flexibility in crafting. No more sacrificing good mats to make room for better mats. It would allow me as a crafter to keep bulk supplies on hand for things like weapons or heavy armour which I almost never do on the fly anymore. Hey, I might even get back into heavy armour craft. It would also mean maybe no more vendors as storage. While perhaps that guy really was truly attempting to sell basic anete fiber at 20K a piece, methinks he was simply using the vendor as a place to store items.
Downside, for non-crafters, mat hoarding may take place. Less of a reason to sell them off and therefore less supply for crafters. Also, possible downside is that the richer crafters may simply buy out the marketplace for grind mats. Again, lower availability of mats on an already limited market.
2) Examine failure stats
Since beta, I have maintained that the failure stats for crafters are fubared. As examples: In beta, using my jewelcraft 50 skill to create q50 earring in runs of 15, I averaged 2-3 successes per 15. That's using mats at my skill level to create an item at my skill level.
I recently created a run of 10 full suits of q120 light armour using q120 mats (basic-choice) with skills at 105-111 in my various light branches. So, a maximum of 15 skill levels between my desired work and my actual stats. I found the success rates to fluctuate wildly. Boots, my success rate was on the scale of 60% (I'm counting a full 'failure, no items used just a fail message' in there). For gloves and sleeves, it dropped to 40%. For vests and skirts, closer to 90%.
Some of that can be accounted for by the difference in skill levels. To contrast, I made a run of 20 q110 daggers using a L61 skill. My success rates for q110 daggers L61 skill was exactly the same as q110 gloves with a L106 skill. For the run of 20 of each that I did to compare, the success rate was 20% for both (attempted the craft 20 times, finally tally includes failures that produced no items). I'll also note, that I've done runs of 20 that had 18/20 successes. Success seems to be more random than any true statistic.
That would not fly for any other profession. At L87 PR forage (before the recent 'improvements') I could pull L100 mats without any quality drops. So my ability to pull items with a 13 level difference was 100% (not including other factors like explosions and the like that I will address later). If you want to stick to aboveground comparisons, I can pull q70 mats in Fyros with my q58 skill without spoiling the quality 100% of the time. If you pull a level too high, you can spoil the quality of the mats. However you *can* undo that, if you manage to forage long enough. You cannot undo or mitigate a quality failure in craft.
Compare to melee. At L140, I stand a reasonable chance of being able to kill something 20 levels higher than me. Like crafting, melee is a success/not success. You either kill your enemy or they kill you. Imagine a melee with only a 40-60% chance of killing something (anything) 10 levels higher than them. We heard the outcry with the gingo attacks in Matis.
And on a related note:
3) Give stanzas to improve crafting successes.
Every other class has stanzas to improve basic success rates. Fighters get improved accuracy, greater damage and taunts that go up in level. Mages get concentration and credits to improve range on spell. Harvesters get careplans, explosion reduction and area/material specialisations. Crafters get... nothing.
How about a 'steady hands' stanza to improve crafting percentages from a pathetic base 80% for quality=skill level to 90%. HP/STA credits to give greater successes. Something you buy every twenty-five levels to improve your accuracy.
Good side: Well, allows for a greater percentage of successes.
Bad side: I already have the next 1000 skill points 'spent' in my mind, I hate to use up those, but it would be a worthwhile cause. Also there may be coding problems with people using the 'credits' to add increased stat bonuses like HP or STA onto the items.
4) Reduce the Amount of XP needed to level.
Before the skill trees split, it would take five or six full suits of light armour to level one level in light. I know there are crafters who burn their way through one branch and then suck up the fails on the other to try to get as high as possible as fast as possible. There's nothing wrong with that. I've tried to keep my skills somewhat level, so it goes slower. I also try to make full sets, instead of the runs of 20 or 30 or the same piece (with the exception of testing fail rates,
).Now, it takes 15-20 combines per level in five branches. Obviously, the big stuff like vests/skirts gives more XP and I'm factoring in the many reduced quality stuff that also has reduced XP. That's 15-20 full suits for one level (in each of five branches). I would drop that to the equivant of 2/3 of current XP.
Goodside? Well, fairly obvious.
Bad side? Maybe too late to do this. At this point, do you recalculate XP or just screw over everyone with the fortitude to make it to L200 already? If the game were still in beta, I might have suggested looking at changing the skill tree splits at 100 to upper body (sleeves, gloves, vests) and lower body (boots, pants, caster's pants) and then split into the five types at L150 or even L175. But we're not in beta, and it's probably too late now.
5) More armour customisation
This is rather trivial when compared to the others, but maybe allow for secondary colours in armour. I personally dislike the gaudy gold trim on higher level armours. I would like an option to replace that with a secondary. For example, if the majority of my mats are black, and the minority are red, create black armour with red trim. I think it would give crafters some other ways to make unique and interesting goods. Ditto for weaponcraft. Bring colours into the weapons. Create a blue sword with black hilt. That would be cool.
6) Repairing Things
Face it, we can't keep up with demand right now. Why not let us repair something? A completely repaired suit can also be resold on the vendors to younger players when it is no long useful to its original owners. Put repair as a trainable tree, that you have to level. I wouldn't even mind if it took a mat or two to add on to the repair. Prevents widescape overuse, but allows for options.
Alternately, create a pawnshop for those less-than perfect items. They can sell at vendor price, no markup. There will be no profit in it, but it will put more items out there for the general population.
In conclusion (finally), Nevrax, you seriously want to make crafting something many people do. Crafters are the *only* source for any reasonable armour, weapons, and everything. Vendors give no HP bonuses and the stats on the weapons are junk.
When you make the arming and armouring of all of Atys the sole responsibility of the crafters, it really needs to be something that people want to do, and that many people actively *like* doing. I'm familiar with almost all the names on the boards for the vendored armour. Losing Fuzz is a big blow to us as he made darn good stuff at a reasonable price. Many armourers keep their patterns and their goods strictly in guild and I get three or four tells a day when I log in of people requesting high level stuff that are told off by high level crafters. They don't have the time or materials to 'waste' on non-guilded people.
The only q200 amp I have ever seen on the vendors was a vendor amp with an added crystallised spell that sold for 1 mill daps. Many of the L200 mages I know can't get amps, and amp craft is one of the easiest branches to level. Hell, I can make a 99/99 amp if I have the materials, but I'm only L140. I have people on waiting lists for when I get to L200. I can't help these folks. And right now, nobody can help these folks... and there's many, many more coming up and many, many more training.
So that's me... how do you guys feel about it?
Tin.
I will let you in on a little secret... I am doing this for my newborn daughter... no one else... I like that game, but I do not have the time anymore. My first priority is to my daughter. End of story.
