Crafting needs balancing.

[Asmoth]

Or the skill words need balancing:

I just did ten attempts at a very simple, entry level craft in X crafting guild which I am "Advanced" at, and only created 3 out of ten.

Seems like something needs rejiggered.

[Lizzie]

It's known as an RNG, aka Random Number Generator, aka dice-roll.

Each time you attempt to do something, it factors in a brand new dice roll. Your odds of success are based partly on your skill, partly on your stats, sometimes with environmental factors and tool-possession factors, and partly on the dice roll. If you're a master crafter, the odds of you rolling a lower number are lower than the odds of your rolling a higher number. But those odds are for EACH TIME you attempt something. It's very possible to get a low roll 7 times in a row, even if you're a master crafter. Not as likely as if you were a novice, but still possible.

Rather than make a claim that something needs fixing, maybe send a request to the request tool to ask if it's broken first. Because it could just be you, having a day of bad luck with dice rolls.

[Asmoth]

It's known as an RNG, aka Random Number Generator, aka dice-roll.

Each time you attempt to do something, it factors in a brand new dice roll. Your odds of success are based partly on your skill, partly on your stats, sometimes with environmental factors and tool-possession factors, and partly on the dice roll. If you're a master crafter, the odds of you rolling a lower number are lower than the odds of your rolling a higher number. But those odds are for EACH TIME you attempt something. It's very possible to get a low roll 7 times in a row, even if you're a master crafter. Not as likely as if you were a novice, but still possible.

Rather than make a claim that something needs fixing, maybe send a request to the request tool to ask if it's broken first. Because it could just be you, having a day of bad luck with dice rolls.

I suppose it is true it could just be me being unlucky.  I always assumed that it was something like novice have to roll 90-100 to win.

apprentice needs to roll 80
journeyman needs to roll 70 etc etc.

Just figured that could use some looking at.  And if the crafts all operate off the same chance of success or failure, that's an issue in my eyes too.

But that's just my opinion.

[hyzhenhok]

On a realism level, it makes very little sense and is pretty annoying that a master craftsman can fail at all on very easy tasks. That's why AFAIK it's pretty standard practice to RP as though something was wrong with the material when that happens even though what clearly happened is your character rolled poorly, because it's just stupid that my Master Lumberjack still only has 50% odds of getting more than one plank out of a log, etc.

You could argue the mechanic is a necessary tax on crafting, that is slows down how much crafters can produce, and they can already produce unrealistically quickly and become rich very easily. But I'd much rather leave that to player and staff RP policing, like we do for most things when it comes to the reality-warping powers of very highly skilled PCs.

Rather than make a claim that something needs fixing, maybe send a request to the request tool to ask if it's broken first. Because it could just be you, having a day of bad luck with dice rolls.

He's not saying the system isn't WAD. He's saying the design is crap. Which is, frankly, very hard to argue against.

[Majikal]

Repeating a craft over and over in a short amount of time yields poorer results.

Use tools when crafting.

Get gud.

[Asmoth]

I'm as good as possible on my class.

[AdamBlue]

Repeating a craft over and over in a short amount of time yields poorer results.

Use tools when crafting.

Get gud.

Wait, is that true? Why the actual hell would repeating a craft over and over yield poor results? It should yield BETTER results because you'd be more careful in your work. If this is the case, it's highly illogical.

[whitt]

Wait, is that true? Why the actual hell would repeating a craft over and over yield poor results? It should yield BETTER results because you'd be more careful in your work. If this is the case, it's highly illogical.

Probably?  To discourage spam-crafting.

Not sure if the initial comment is true, but by "over and over", I'm pretty sure Majikal meant immediately, one after the other, spamming out the same craft.  Not repeated attempts at a craft over the course of several days.

[Asmoth]

All I know for sure, is that I'm the highest level I can be due to subguild helpfiles.

And I can seem to create expensive, harder to create items, at better frequency than simple, hardly worth the effort to make items.

Just seems like something is off.  I'll shoot off a request with my "perceived" issue and see if staff can shed some light.  Maybe the math is off on item X than on item Y.

[Lizzie]

All I know for sure, is that I'm the highest level I can be due to subguild helpfiles.

And I can seem to create expensive, harder to create items, at better frequency than simple, hardly worth the effort to make items.

Just seems like something is off.  I'll shoot off a request with my "perceived" issue and see if staff can shed some light.  Maybe the math is off on item X than on item Y.

It could also be an item-specific issue - that the item's difficulty level is set incorrectly.

[Harmless]

I was thinking of proposing ideas for 'partial failures' in crafting. Have multiple outcomes when you fail a craft; instead of blowing up ALL the ingredients, maybe sometimes a low-grade fail leads to you just needing to start over.

Code Select Expand



craft bucket rope 1.blocky 2.blocky 3.blocky into a well

(on a complete fail, i.e. a beginner with low skill rolling poorly)

>You fuck up entirely in making a well, the blocks all shattered and the bucket cracked also.

(on a partial fail, i.e. a master who just missed the roll slightly)

> You don't quite assemble the parts right, but manage to salvage all of the components.



That's the idea

[Malken]

I'm as good as possible on my class.

Get gooder and wear a thimble on your head.

[BrokenRomance]

Repeating a craft over and over in a short amount of time yields poorer results.

Use tools when crafting.

Get gud.

Wait, is that true? Why the actual hell would repeating a craft over and over yield poor results? It should yield BETTER results because you'd be more careful in your work. If this is the case, it's highly illogical.

I know someone already answered this, but they gave an answer from an OOC perspective.

I think ICly your PC would get tired from making the same crap over and over, even it it's actual physical fatigue from over-working, or you're just so sick of seeing a piece of wood you have to shape into a wooden flask that you just screw up because you're tired of the crap.

[Majikal]

Wait, is that true? Why the actual hell would repeating a craft over and over yield poor results? It should yield BETTER results because you'd be more careful in your work. If this is the case, it's highly illogical.

Probably?  To discourage spam-crafting.

Not sure if the initial comment is true, but by "over and over", I'm pretty sure Majikal meant immediately, one after the other, spamming out the same craft.  Not repeated attempts at a craft over the course of several days.

Yesh.

[CodeMaster]

Asmoth, it's probably the vexing nature of the independent random numbers the game generates that's frustrating you.  Humans are notoriously bad at generating/identifying random sequences of numbers -- we tend to generate random sequences that look like this: "01010110", but here's a sequence where 0's and 1's are equally likely and 'independently' generated, which also came out of my machine on the very first run (i.e., not a contrivance): "00101000".

This'll lead to situations that are frustrating for a crafter, but such is the nature of the beast!

[Miradus]

Your high skill at a skill plus the relative ease of some of the basic items should completely offset the RNG.

"Get gud" is probably the worst possible answer. If I'm failing more than 25% of the time at making a plank as a master lumberjack/woodworker when using appropriate tools then it's a problem with game code, not the player.

[Giled]

Your high skill at a skill plus the relative ease of some of the basic items should completely offset the RNG.

"Get gud" is probably the worst possible answer. If I'm failing more than 25% of the time at making a plank as a master lumberjack/woodworker when using appropriate tools then it's a problem with game code, not the player.

That, or maybe your PC is distracted by something, and not able to work that day. It happens in RL too, some days you're just not on your game, master or not.

[Miradus]

Then messages should reflect that. With a "You set your materials down and take a deep breath" type message instead of critical fails and complete loss of materials.

I've been a craftsman for many a long year and I can tell you that when it stops being a hobby and starts being your life, you don't get to say "I don't really feel like it today". You do it. And you apply ALL of the skills you've learned along the way to make sure you have a good outcome even if you aren't on the top of your game.

That's the difference between an apprentice and a master. The skills involved to reliably churn out a good product. The skills to be able to hold a piece of material in your hand and determine what can successfully be done to it before you ever start. I can tell good steel from bad steel just by tapping it against my anvil and hearing it ring.

In many ways, I feel like staff are so overly concerned with someone gaining skills or spamming something that they forget that there is a game being played here. Sometimes I may want to get a skill increase, but 90% of the time when I'm crafting something it's because I want to sell it, hold it, or make it. I ENJOY the crafting. This is why I continue to craft things even after I hit master.

[Giled]

Why would you need a special failure message? RP it out that way, there's nothing stopping you from saying that now.

Just because you can't say "I don't feel like it today" doesn't mean that some days it just doesn't work. I'm not saying the code I write all day is equivalent to shaping steel, but I know some days I'm just on the ball and can churn out the code, and other days it's a frustrating endeavor to sort out where it went wrong. I don't get to stop, but I'm not as successful at it some days as opposed to others.

[Miradus]

Why would you need a special failure message? RP it out that way, there's nothing stopping you from saying that now.

Loss of materials.

I don't mind having to attempt to craft something a couple of times. It's realistic that, even for a master, sometimes things just take more time than other days.

But a lot of the items seem to be very binary in the results. You either succeed, or you lose valuable materials.

There should be at least three failure potentials with the loss of materials being a critical fail.

[nauta]

Why would you need a special failure message? RP it out that way, there's nothing stopping you from saying that now.

Loss of materials.

I don't mind having to attempt to craft something a couple of times. It's realistic that, even for a master, sometimes things just take more time than other days.

But a lot of the items seem to be very binary in the results. You either succeed, or you lose valuable materials.

There should be at least three failure potentials with the loss of materials being a critical fail.

My favorite is when you do bandage-making and drop it in the dust.

But in fact this is already present with some craft objects: if you fail you don't lose the materials, or at least not all of them.  In my opinion, and to introduce the least amount of code changes, I think you should just RP out the loss of material despite what the echo tells you, which sometimes can be silly.  Personally, I wouldn't mind if the echos became private suggestions, and you were forced to actually emote them out to the crowd, so something like:

Code Select Expand


craft widget into wadget
((Suggestion: em begins whittling down the widget into a wadget, wiggling it now and then.)) [<-- echoed only to you.))
[fail]
((Suggestion: em cracks the widget in half!)) [<-- echoed only to you.]

Or something like that.

However, I've found that with crafting things, it's not so much a general problem, but more specific recipes are a little off.  In those cases, I've had a lot of success just talking to my clan staff about them and getting them modified.

[Miradus]

The lack of realism in the process just frustrates me. And there doesn't seem to be much research put into some of the items and some make absolutely no sense at all in the utilization of materials.

Alabaster drinking mugs? Alabaster dissolves in liquid. Drink fast!

Soon I'll switch from a merchant and go back to a ranger and resort to my whole other list of weird complaints.

[Giled]

Why would you need a special failure message? RP it out that way, there's nothing stopping you from saying that now.

Loss of materials.

I don't mind having to attempt to craft something a couple of times. It's realistic that, even for a master, sometimes things just take more time than other days.

But a lot of the items seem to be very binary in the results. You either succeed, or you lose valuable materials.

There should be at least three failure potentials with the loss of materials being a critical fail.

I'm not sure how many times you can try carving a length of bone into a longsword and still fail with enough material left to still make a sword? I'll admit to be naive on the subject though.

[Miradus]

We're talking about different levels of failure.

carve bone into a bone longsword

Normal fail: "You can't see where to begin." with no loss of materials
Critical fail: "The bone splinters in your hand leaving you with only shards." with a loss of materials or maybe only a few small pieces now.

No fail: "You carve a magnificent bone longsword which will make you filthy rich."

[Beethoven]

Instead of RPing that I broke everything into tiny bits, sometimes I RP that I managed to make whatever it is, but it sucks and is malformed somehow, so I throw it away. But I suck HARD at crafting RP so I'm probably not the one to listen to here.

[manipura]

Instead of RPing that I broke everything into tiny bits, sometimes I RP that I managed to make whatever it is, but it sucks and is malformed somehow, so I throw it away. But I suck HARD at crafting RP so I'm probably not the one to listen to here.

I do a lot of crafting.  I do this sort of thing sometimes.  Instead of the piece of bone just erupting into some explosion of splinters, I RP something being wrong with the material and the finished product not being good enough, or too much of it breaking for me to be able to salvage the rest of it or the part of the material that shattered sent a crack through the rest of it making it a section of bone I really don't want to make a sword out of anymore.  That sort of thing.

Since it's a roleplaying game I think there can be a bit of freedom in interpreting -how- you play out failing your crafting attempt.  
'You shatter the bone' doesn't necessarily mean that the bone busts into a zillion pieces, but it implies you ruined enough of the material that nothing was salvaged.  And while it's likely realistic that those crafting fails would give me a bunch of bone shards instead of 100 percent wasted materials...no, the last thing I want is the game world littered with dozens of leftover crafting fails that aren't useful.  It already frustrates me when people leave shit around instead of either junking it or at least arranging it before they leave it laying around.

Edit: My dad is what you would call a craftsman.  He has been for a good number of years.  Despite his skill, sometimes things just don't work in his favor.  Sometimes he's having an off day, sometimes there's something wrong with the materials he's working with, whatever the case, just because his skill is masterful doesn't mean there aren't times when he doesn't absolutely fail at something.