Treat Crafting Recipes like Magick Spells

[Doppelganger]

As someone who has extensively (and almost exclusively) played crafters and magickers, this is by -far- not the case. Every single one of my PCs--even the ones that were "loners" by nature--had near-constant interaction with their peers. I make a decent living with my current PC by selling things I craft, and I guarantee you I don't spend more than an hour of the eight I spend a day logged in crafting--and the only reason I spend THAT long is because I have an entire clan to supply, and numerous people working to acquire the goods necessary to do so.

You know, I enjoy to relax in my own idontgiveafuckness too much to bother with anyone's personal style of playing. I don't keep track on who plays whom on purpose, but from somewhere I recall that you are cool guy. Maybe I mistake you for 5DMW and it's him who is cool, or maybe you both are cool guys, it does not matter. I thought it's important to tell you that I have nothing against you personally, okay? And even if I had something against you, I would not waste my breath on you. And even if you find Sanvean cheating, don't call me up to discuss it, I am not interested.

Are there gickers who play the way I like them? Absolutely. There were times when I could firmly say that out of top-five favorite characters I had a pleasure interacting with, three were magickers. And, whatever shape and form they are now, I would like to play along again. And I am sure that no matter what happens in future, I would enjoy playing along with most long-lived marchants I have seen. Because good style never fades, and those who play them now, when power of wealth is limited, will still play them for pure enjoyment even if money will rule the world.

The point isn't that all magickers suck or all merchants will suck in future. The point is that your magickers, as you desribe them, don't make my life now, but others do. Average modern magicker for me is the guy who has spent a week or two spamming spells and now crawls out of his hole, stands posted at the bend of North road and waits to interact with me with most destructive/paralizing spell he has available. I am not saying it's unfair, I even at some point believed that it was intended. And if you will use the same logic as in your last post and tell me that he has spell set aimed on killing me, so he should have no other purpose but killing me, I would also shrug and leave it uncommented. And the problem is not about some particular player, because if you take him out, his twin will take his place. Problem is that system spawns them too rapidly for me to enjoy the game.

And it's my personal opinion, and it's not ultimate thruth, but this opinion is shared by some others. And for them and them alone, I say that situation with crafters is very simlar to situation with magickers. And while both ideas of expanding spell trees and making economy more economical are excellent, but their practical realisation may have the same side-effects.

These lenghty explanations are result of my failure to take your arguments seriously. I thought maybe you felt personally offended, because I could not believe that you are really talking business.

I say that crafters hoard wealth more rapidly when they abstain from danger and interaction and you say that warriors are quite the same and bring excellent examples of warriors gaining their keep by danger and interaction. Okay, so what are we arguing over?

I have comissioned assasination of a fellow merchant, though it was not business, but mixt of personal and political issues, I have been on both ends of PC-to-PC sales many times. But I prefer to keep my dream and desires separate from realty, so I have to say that while bloody vendettas and PC sales happen, they are exception, not a rule.

Points stated, or so I believe.

[Cenghiz]

don't the helpfiles provide a few recipes?

Yes, but for some crafts, those recipes are useless. The example currently in my mind's clubmaking.

After a merchant branches it, he asks branches collected and tries to craft the first recipe.. in vain. No branch gets crafted into a club at all. Then he asks for stones collected and tries to craft them in hammerheads.... in vain. Nothing with the 'stone' in its sdesc gets crafted into a hammerhead.
Since he can't craft the hammerheads, he can't use the third recipe at all.

So our poor merchant can say 'I can make clubs' but really he can't. With about five merchants, I couldn't find a single clubmaking recipe requiring very low skill.

Possibly it's because I hate trying everything in weird combinations and possibly something really weird gives me clubs or hammerheads and I didn't experiment it. So what? I don't want to. My character should have known at least one recipe, shouldn't he? Why am I forced to play a puzzle game just to be able to do something, which I have information about IC?

That's why I'm all for having the recipes known OOC. I'm not speaking about simple recipes. I know it will never be accepted but I want to know every damn single recipe in the game except component_crafting recipes and clan-specific recipes.

I don't want my merchant characters punished because I'm too stupid to solve the puzzle named crafting code and find out recipes.

[Synthesis]

With my first merchant, I compiled a list of over 700 craftable item recipes, in 11 days' playing time, and I wasn't even in a merchant House.

It's not that hard, for reals.  I don't understand what all the crying is about.  If you want an example of a -truly- difficult crafting system, go play Accursed Lands for a little while.  I guarantee you'll come back to Arm and want to give Sanvean a big hug for making crafting so easy.

[Cenghiz]

Good for you. You proved yourself to be adept in puzzles.

Problem is, I'm not. I hate puzzles. That's all.

[Only He Stands There]

I really have to agree with Cenghiz, here.

I've got hundreds of crafting recipes under my belt, as well--but the problem is it shouldn't be a guessing game as it is, because this purely works off of player knowledge, player memory, and player ability to puzzle out what he can make out of what, unless you're analyzing finished products... when it SHOULD be the CHARACTER's knowledge, ability to puzzle out, and memory.

[Synthesis]

Somehow, I doubt the "It's too tough for me to figure out!" line of argument is going to pan out for you.

And character knowledge vs. player knowledge? Come on now, that's a last-ditch attempt at securing some semblance of a defensible position.

The only gripes I have about the system are: 1) too many uncraftable items or "clan-only" items and 2) code doesn't adequately support crafting objects from reasonable substitute starting materials.

[Cenghiz]

Synthesis, shut up if you're not going to say anything useful or productive. If you want, criticize, but do it by offering us a counter-idea, not by saying "I can do that. So there's no need to change."

What I want to say is, it's stupid to experiment with five planks, five short poles, five long poles, etc etc to see what you can make of wood. You would already roughly know what a table consists of. You would guess what to use to craft the result. But as you possibly know, desks are not crafted with the most logical materials. I wasted a good deal of time using similar, more logical materials and always thought I didn't have enough skill with my first merchant. It was frustrating when I found out the recipe, by trying out random stuff.

I repeat, if you can, all right. You already proved you're very clever in puzzle-solving. Yey for you! Cheers for you! Now if you allow us, let us stupid people discuss what changes we want in the system.

[Angela Christine]

Not just us stupid people, but the poor newbies.  Won't someone think of the newbies?  Newbies don't know that it is a very bad idea to blow all your starting money the first day.  Newbies don't know where all the good foraging spots are, or how to find them without getting killed.  Newbies don't know that buying all your raw materials from shops is a quick road to poverty.

I like my idea because it has 3 important features:

1.  It helps newbies get started.

2.  It will slowly get unused recipes into circulation.

3.  It preserves the the puzzle solving aspect and sense of discovery.  Some people DO like that, and it shouldn't be taken away from them.

Alternate Idea:

Publish all non-proprietary recipes with more than 2 ingredients on the website.  I believe the multicomponent recipes are the most frustrating to try to find, and the most likely to go unused.  That still leaves the experimental method for finding 1 and 2 ingredient items, which aren't too frustrating to discover.  That would be even easier for newbies, get most recipes immediately into circulation

The only gripes I have about the system are: 1) too many uncraftable items or "clan-only" items

Some of the clan-only items make sense to me.  Not that it would be impossible for someone outside that clan to figure out how it is made, but that it would be a bad idea.  Recipes that "belong" to the great merchant houses have the Zalanthan version of copyright on them: "if you make knockoffs of this item we will hunt you down and kill you and all you love."  The RIAA would love Zalanthas.  If you are trying to sell your fake Salarr merchandise to a Salarr shop, bad things should happen.



Other clan items, particularly for tribal clans, may represent virtual equipment or ingredients that aren't readily available or even known outside that clan.  We all know that the crafting recipes are not complete: you can't really make bread products using nothing but flour, all you can make using only flour is burned flour.  Many recipes do include virtual ingredients, things that are evident from the finished product but that were not included in the ingredients.  Some clan recipes may assume that everyone inside the clan has access to the proprietary materials and equipment, and no one outside does.


Or it could just be a way to give the clans some hard coded advantages to represent their centuries of expertise.   :wink:

[Shiroi Tsuki]

Recipes that "belong" to the great merchant houses have the Zalanthan version of copyright on them: "if you make knockoffs of this item we will hunt you down and kill you and all you love."  The RIAA would love Zalanthas.  If you are trying to sell your fake Salarr merchandise to a Salarr shop, bad things should happen.

The reason I like the idea of people being able to craft anything, and crafting being non-proprietary, is so that for instance Bob Salarr can say to Bob Indie Merchant 'I see you're trying to sell Uber!Armor!Of!Doom.  Well, we are the only people going to sell U!A!O!D , and if you try and sell U!A!O!D we're going to yell at you and/or kill you.'  I mean, I personally think that competition is great for interactions.

But from what I've read about crafting/shops/competition in the new game, I get the feeling that there aren't going to be 'clan-specific' recipies per se, and that -everything- will be craftable.

Furthermore, on this bent...

If you've never made a table before, you can take four two by fours, a piece of plywood, and some wood glue, and make a crappy table.  But if you want to make a good table, you're going to need to look at another table (read: analyze) to figure out how it was put together.  However, if you're good enough, you just can picture in your head how a table goes, and whip one up.  My father's made some pretty amazing pieces of wood furniture just from his imagination, but he's been working with wood for over forty years, so that's to be expected.  My grandfather is the same way with stained glass.  It's just crazy what an experienced crafter can do straight from imagination.

For that reason, I might suggest having crappy recipies available to starting crafters, and then having those higher-end recipies or whatever was suggested be auto-mailed (from a random list of items that are 'better items') to Bob Crafter's account at certain skill levels.  Heck, you could add a level of randomness to it even, maybe a small percent change of getting a recipie every couple of skill increases.

That kind of makes it though so that you know where your skill levels are getting at, and might encourage grinding though (which... you can already tell, just from how often you fail at certain things, with crafters).  Alternatively, I'd say maybe a random recipie every IC month and/or year or so...

Anyway, just a thought.  That'd prevent some of the problems mentioned previously, about Joe Player getting his crafter killed ten times and getting a bunch of recipies just for dying, it'd make crappy recipies available to Noobie!Crafters, and give crafters some sort of believable increase in knowledge level without having to spend ten hours alone in a room with some boards, all at the same time.

Edit: It doesn't fix the problem of knowledge carrying over between characters OOCly, but it already does that for crafters anyway.  Without Mindwipe Technology, that's not something that is fixable.

[Synthesis]

Since apparently a couple of you got butt-hurt by my brief reply, I suppose I'll have to elaborate.

So far, the two major arguments in favor of this idea are: 1) it makes things easier for newbies and 2) it could possibly recirculate "lost" knowledge back into the realm of PC crafting.

First of all, making things easier for newbies hasn't been the rationale behind -any- major game change I can recall.  In fact, it seems to me that "being tough for newbies" has always been a bit of a point of pride for the game, whether the difficulty is in finding the right things to hunt, or the best things to craft, or discovering which PCs you shouldn't piss off.

Second, this won't really make things easier for newbies, because the "randomness" factor combined with the spotty availability of resources, combined with necessary skill levels, combined with the lack of demand (PC and NPC) for most craftable items reduces the probability of a newbie receiving a useful recipe via e-mail to practically nil.

Third, as I alluded to with my 700 recipes in 11 days story:  -finding- recipes isn't the major problem for a newbie.  Finding a reliable source of supplies and finding -profitable- recipes are, however, major problems.  Both of these problems are best handled in character.

Moving along to the next major argument (recirculation of "lost" knowledge).  This is basically a red herring of an argument.  None of you know whether or not -any- crafting recipe has in fact been lost to PC knowledge--you're simply throwing it out there as a theoretical possibility, with no factual support, in order to reinforce your position.  Furthermore, even if numerous crafting recipes have been lost to PC knowledge, this doesn't necessarily translate into a detriment to the game:  Tuluk is scooting along just fine without anyone knowing whether or not there exists "a ruby-encrusted, shell-inlaid ivory knitting needle."

I believe that, in fact, all of this begins with a third argument, which nobody wants to emphasize because it basically amounts to whining: 3) "I don't like trying different combinations of items to see what I can craft, and I don't like buying items just to analyze them."

The problem is that the given proposal doesn't solve this problem.  As stated above, the likelihood of anyone receiving a useful recipe is slim.  Beyond that, you -still- have to fish for crafting recipes.  This amounts to squirting a few drops of water into a grease fire.


So, let's recap:  1) Saving the newbies is not a game priority; 2) Newbie crafters have much bigger problems than finding recipes, and these problems are resolvable in character; 3) The probability of 10, or even 20 random recipes being useful is slim to none; 4)  Unknown or "lost" crafting recipes do not cause a tangible detriment to the game; 5) The given proposal won't make it any easier for you to be a crafter; 6) Stop whining.

There, I think that just about covers it.

[Malken]

So, let's recap:  1) Saving the newbies is not a game priority; 2) Newbie crafters have much bigger problems than finding recipes, and these problems are resolvable in character; 3) The probability of 10, or even 20 random recipes being useful is slim to none; 4)  Unknown or "lost" crafting recipes do not cause a tangible detriment to the game; 5) The given proposal won't make it any easier for you to be a crafter; 6) Stop whining.

1) Saving the newbies IS a game priority.

- Obsidian mining.

- Herb selling.

- Cures easily available in shops.

- A patron system that allows newbies to make 'mistake' and still survive them without their PC being killed for not knowing the culture well enough.

Etc.. All of this has been created in the last few months only.

2) Newbie crafters have many problems, one of them is coming up with the amount of money required for them to 'purchase' items just for the sake of 'analyzing' them afterward.

Allowing them to gain a few more recipes without having to purchase an item first, and then if they are extremely lucky, realize that the item is craftable and not just give you the cursed blank prompt after you spent 300+ coins on an item, would be of a great help to them.

3) 10 random recipes that is useless is better than none or the same two that are given in the help file. Hey, even just changing the helpfiles once in a few months to add different recipes as an example would be better than nothing.

4) It is not a detriment to the game but it certainly adds diversity to it. How is that a bad thing? Are we going to pull out the, "It adds too much work for the admins." excuse again?

5) Yes it will.

6) You should listen to Cenghiz instead of saying things like, "In fact, it seems to me that "being tough for newbies" has always been a bit of a point of pride for the game."

[Synthesis]

Obsidian mining and herb selling have been around for years.  They're hardly recent additions.  I somehow doubt the "patronage" system was designed specifically to benefit newbies, and it remains to be seen whether this was a good idea at all (given the purported lack of population around Tuluk these days, I'm going to hazard a guess it wasn't an overwhelming success).

As for the others, did you even read the rest of my post, or did your ADD compel you to just skip to the summary?  I gave quite good reasons as to why the idea, as proposed by AC, would have minimal impact on the problems it is designed to solve.  However, for the sake of demonstrating how to properly respond to a reasoned argument, I'll provide you the following:

2) This proposal doesn't address, in the least, the problem of starting coins vs. starting materials vs. analyze because any randomly-generated list of recipes is going to be composed, overwhelmingly, of useless, uncraftable, or cost-prohibitive items.

3) The helpfiles are intended to give an example of how the system works, not specifically to give you recipes that will be useful and profitable.  The vast majority of crafting recipes are both simple and intuitive, based on one or two items that can be easily inferred from the materials that would reasonably be expected to be involved in the item's construction.  I have a hard time understanding why a useless recipe would be better than none at all, as well.  If it's useless...then it is worthless, which means its value is...drumroll...zero--the same as not having a recipe to begin with.

4) Assuming that there are in fact craftable items that have been "lost to player knowledge," it seems a rather awkward solution to hope the random recipe distributor gets them out there.  IF there are such orphaned recipes, I'll wager that they are few and far between, and going back to the problem with probabilities...it's unlikely, statistically speaking, that these things will get out, unless these recipes are intentionally given a higher probability of being distributed.  The problem with this then, is that creating a merchant (maybe even a subclass crafter) becomes a lottery to see who receives the "cool" item that nobody's ever seen before.  And what exactly is the rationale behind a 'rinther subclass armorcrafter who mysteriously knows how to craft a silt-horror chainmail bra and panty set?

5) Saying "nuh-uh" hasn't qualified as a counterargument since you were around 4-6 years old, so unless you've got some reasons you'd like to elaborate on here, I can't really say any more than I already have.

[spawnloser]

5) And making claims like, "It will not make things any easier," and saying that is fact instead of opinion is a good tactic in an argument.  You can not prove your claim.  We can't disprove it.  It is a claim, a belief or expectation, but it is not fact.  It is irrelevant.

[Fathi]

2) code doesn't adequately support crafting objects from reasonable substitute starting materials.

Since anyone hasn't commented on this, I'll bite.

I agree. There are too many similar craft components out there and too little crossover between what you can use, and that's one of the things that makes figuring out recipes so frustrating.

Let's say your crafting box contains the following:

Code Select Expand

a jagged shard of obsidian
a small chunk of obsidian
a shard of sharp-edged obsidian
a broken obsidian shard

There's a chance that if you have all of those items and are crying to craft a weapon, only one will work. If you've been able to get your hands on, say, a 'simple obsidian knife' and analyze it, you'd know that it's made from one of those on the list.

But... why wouldn't you be able to fashion some form of rudimentary shiv out of any of those? Sure, it might be crappier if you're using a piece of a broken obsidian sword as opposed to a freshly-mined chunk, just based on the amount of available material, but making a sharp shard of rock slightly sharper and then making it safe to hold isn't something that should completely disallow the use of substitute materials.

If you're not trying to craft something detailed and specific, I see no reason why you shouldn't have a lot more leeway with materials.

I've always found it odd that apparently only one or two animals on all of Zalanthas have meat that can be made into sandwiches.

[Synthesis]

Spawnloser:  except that I gave -reasons- why I expect it won't make things any easier.  Would you like me to recap them for you, or can you find it in yourself to go back and read the post more carefully?

Just in case you don't, here they are:

1) The "recipe-finding" problem is a minor one for crafters.
2) The proposed solution addresses the recipe-finding problem only indirectly, and via a mechanism with a high degree of improbability.
3) The vast majority of the "recipe-finding" problem persists, even after the proposed solution addresses it.

So, I'll amend my statement to the following:  The proposed solution will most likely not make it any easier to be a crafter, unless you get lucky enough to a) receive a recipe that you didn't already know and b) have the required skill to craft that recipe and c) have the required skill level to craft that recipe and d) have access to the required materials to craft that recipe and e) the crafted good can be sold to PCs or NPCs for a reasonable profit, or has some functionality that will make things otherwise "easier."

Does that cover all the bases well enough for you?

Edited to add:  Inductive Reasoning

[Tisiphone]

Synthesis?

I just wanted to say, thank you. You brought up some interesting points, and several things I'd never thought of before. Even the things I had thought of, you managed to bring a different viewpoint to.

I still disagree, but I thought you should know that someone cares.

[spawnloser]

Synthesis, the problem is that other people are drawing different conclusions based on the same things.  For this, opinion and conjecture is part of your argument and thus not a piece of fact.  It is simply opinion.  At the point where opinion is what is actually being argued, yes I did/no I didn't arguments are just as valid.

[Heade]

I know how many of you hate when someone ressurects a topic this old, but I was considering posting on this issue and thought I'd look for topics on it first. After reading through this whole topic, it appears as if there are proponents and opponents on each side of the argument. But I was surprised to find that no one thought of a very simple fix to this issue that might be accepted by both sides:

What about making the analyze skill more useful, by allowing it to work on items you see in shops without buying the item first.

I mean, it doesn't hurt realism, and it helps playability. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, this would add to realism. If I personally go to wal-mart and look at the furnature department, I can look at their merchandise closely and know what size pieces of wood I need, how many screws I need, what color stain to use, etc in order to duplicate their table. And I can do this all without buying their table.

Anyhow, comments?

[musashi]

I like the idea.

[Doppelganger]

I know how many of you hate when someone ressurects a topic this old, but I was considering posting on this issue and thought I'd look for topics on it first.
...
But I was surprised to find that no one thought of a very simple fix to this issue that might be accepted by both sides:

What about making the analyze skill more useful, by allowing it to work on items you see in shops without buying the item first.

Kudos for at least trying to do search before posting your "new" idea. However, here is what you missed

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,24296.0.html

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,19755.0.html

and a throng of other craft-related threads where said idea is mentioned along the way.

In the second thread AC provides some summary of realism-related arguments against your idea.

Also, I suspect that they don't let you to amass hundreds of recipies by a quick tour through marketplace using the same reasoning as to why they don't reveal spell and skill trees and other aspects of game mechanics or why they don't provide detailed maps of scrub plains to newbie hunters.
I suspect that they want you to discover that part of the game in a more compicated way than simply spamming 'analyze' or reading all recipies on Armageddon website. IMO, that's why your idea has not been implemented yet, but I can be wrong.

[musashi]

Also, I suspect that they don't let you to amass hundreds of recipies by a quick tour through marketplace using the same reasoning as to why they don't reveal spell and skill trees and other aspects of game mechanics or why they don't provide detailed maps of scrub plains to newbie hunters.
I suspect that they want you to discover that part of the game in a more compicated way than simply spamming 'analyze' or reading all recipies on Armageddon website. IMO, that's why your idea has not been implemented yet, but I can be wrong.

I believe that the walk through the marketplace situation would not occur, since analyze is based off of one's skill with the craft they have. So a newbie woodworker would not be able to analyze how all wooden objects are made, he would only be able to see the mechanics behind simple ones, until he got better.

[Heade]

Also, I suspect that they don't let you to amass hundreds of recipies by a quick tour through marketplace using the same reasoning as to why they don't reveal spell and skill trees and other aspects of game mechanics or why they don't provide detailed maps of scrub plains to newbie hunters.
I suspect that they want you to discover that part of the game in a more compicated way than simply spamming 'analyze' or reading all recipies on Armageddon website. IMO, that's why your idea has not been implemented yet, but I can be wrong.

I believe that the walk through the marketplace situation would not occur, since analyze is based off of one's skill with the craft they have. So a newbie woodworker would not be able to analyze how all wooden objects are made, he would only be able to see the mechanics behind simple ones, until he got better.

Right, and there's lots of items that aren't sold in shops without a PC selling them there anyhow, so there'd still be a good deal of PC discovery with recipes that aren't common.

[Doppelganger]

I stand corrected. Fishing tour would yield hundreds of recipies after you max one of your merchantly starting skills, branching few others.
Seriously, I didn't even consider brand new merchant as a topic of discussion, because these are beyond help, with or without recipies.

You can't immediately use all branched skills with a new character, yet skill trees are hidden anyway. Brand new hunter may not be able to clean and skin all planes of existence yet, but maps are not given.

You see, it all starts with a goal. You want to make a toothpick like this one I have here.
You do some murdering, stealing and whoring. Finally, you save enough money to buy a sample.
You toy with at and think your ass off, trying to figure how it was made. You fail.
You hone your skills and eventually you are struck with realisation that the pick is made of dragon's tooth.
You send explorers, magickers, halflings, black robes and undead mek to go get you some. A solo survivor, whom you should poison later, brings you a whole jaw in moderate condition.
You deftly monopolize the toothpick market and soon another Great Merchant House is born. House Musashi.
A sense of accomplishment along with my congratulations.

Now, let's imagine that you have no idea what is it you want, what your goals are, so you need that list of recipies to chose your fate from.
You end up making standart issue toothpicks made of baobab until the end of your days, because it's simple, safe and enough for a living.

By the way, I no longer try to guess why the idea is not implemented yet.
Your pessimism spreads like plague, so I agree that staff simply does not know how to make it work, otherwise they would be happy to.

[Kryos]

The issues of merchants and finding how to craft items seems to have become a simple discussion of bartle types.  As currently coded, merchants very heavily favor 'explorers.'  Especially those explorers with a 'socializer' in high secondary or perhaps primary motivation.

People post liking and not liking have to explore for things.  This isn't surprising.  If you don't want to "explore" stay away from merchanting and magery, and in the literal sense of it rangers.  The major disadvantage of a system with concrete, hidden patterns, however is that ooc knowledge will end up ruling the day.  Long term Arm players will always make superior merchants and mages, due to their ooc collaboration with other players and information points harvested from previous characters. 

Then again, as I read it, the documentation on merchants, and astonishingly enough, spell casters all speak of experience in Zalanthas proving very valuable.

[Heade]

I've been gone for a long time, and recently returned to check things out. Has anything like this been implemented yet?