Mundane Subclass Feedback

[Heade]

If you customcraft something, and you're in a clan, it's probably safe to assume that other clan members would have been taught the recipe.

If you're unclanned, you can go out of your way to introduce the recipe to the general populace of the game, and get it into the ecosystem.  If you do this, I don't think there would be a problem with you coming along a year later and making your item on another PC.

But if you don't do this, there's no way that your PC would know about this particular item - afterall, all the other hundreds of PCs don't - so why would your PC suddenly know this?  It makes zero sense.

It -does- make sense. Two people invented the light bulb and tried to patent it at almost the exact same time. The idea that, in all the known world, no one would ever come up with the same design is quite silly. Sure, other PCs might not, but they represent only a tiny fraction of the population of the world. So, to say that some other vNPC could never discover it, in my opinion, is far more odd than to assume they could not. And besides, it enriches the game world. So there is no negative effect, and only positive. I really don't see what the issue is, here. So, fine, I RP discovering it IG instead of writing it into my background, being taught by someone else who discovers it? The end result is the same. What's the difference, really? People use OOC knowledge to create and RP characters with more depth and world-knowledge than they were able to when they were a noob. This is an unalterable fact, and won't change by trying to die on the hill that is crafting recipes. They're one of the most insignificant uses of OOC knowledge that occurs in the game.

What is needed, is some kind of "for the lifetime of this pc" protection

This wouldn't work. It would have the opposite effect, in fact. A sort of "highlander effect", where, for every custom crafter killed, more recipes would become available to the remaining crafters, encouraging OOCly to kill the very crafters who should ICly be useful and desireable to keep alive for those very same craft knowledges.

I'd rather make recipes much easier to get, than have to police it.

There is nothing to police. It's absurd to even try to police item recipes vs. IC knowledge when so much other OOC knowledge has such a huge impact on people's play, and isn't even blinked at. Seriously, think about it. Every noob in the game ends up dying to a scrab or something, until they OOCly understand the game better, then suddenly, their PCs stop dying to stupid shit. What you're suggesting is that, on every subsequent character, such IG knowledge should strictly be forbidden and not be allowed to exist, which would cause the game to be an endless churn of dead noobs to scrabs. No one is doing that. No one is calling to police that. And that has far more impact on the game than someone being able to recreate recipes that they themselves submitted, enriching and adding content to the game, on subsequent characters. It is a net positive for people to reintroduce their own custom crafts back into the economy on subsequent characters, and continues to add unique flair and flavor to the game world. There is literally no drawback to it, yet you're acting like it should be policed more than the OOC knowledge of how magick works. That's absolutely ridiculous.

[Vex]

This wouldn't work. It would have the opposite effect, in fact. A sort of "highlander effect", where, for every custom crafter killed, more recipes would become available to the remaining crafters, encouraging OOCly to kill the very crafters who should ICly be useful and desireable to keep alive for those very same craft knowledges.

You might be having an issue, with paranoia...

By virtue of the fact you can custom craft, it behooves me to let you continue living, to continue with the production of custom crafts, so when you do die, on your own, to various circumstances, there is that much more for me to pillage from, your still-cooling legacy.

The PK thread, especially, made me realize how petrified and paranoid people are, about everyone being out to kill them, for the most trivial of things. It does happen, yes, and I've even done some myself. It isn't so common, or so casual, that you really need to worry about a dozen elves, leaping from your closet, because you made a fancy waterskin that THEY ABSOLUTE MY MUST BOOTLEG IMMEDIATELY!

I feel like I play, an entirely different game, than some of you, sometimes.

[Heade]

There have been IG plots that have revolved around PC businesses, where items or recipes were attempted to be stolen. If, by killing a PC, their recipes are added to a database that other crafter PCs can access, that will happen. Whether manufactured through other IC reasons or not. The problem with such a skill or database access is that it crosses IC/OOC boundaries, where many people would say the item recipes and database itself is OOC, but if you give a skill that gives access to it, it suddenly becomes IC in a way. And if you add player protection of their recipes to that mix, that heavily blurs the line on whether or not killing them to have their item recipes added to that database would be an IC thing to do, or not, because despite it seeming very metagamey, it certainly affects your ability to obtain those recipes IC, and so, would be justified to some, IC, as being a legitimate reason to PK someone.

The new arm meme would be, I killed him for his: boots, noob coins, and/or crafting recipes.

[Bogre]

But if you don't do this, there's no way that your PC would know about this particular item - afterall, all the other hundreds of PCs don't - so why would your PC suddenly know this?  It makes zero sense.

I have to mention. When I played my last merchant, I did a "LOT" of recipie hunting. A process that required me to have 5 pieces of every weirdo object that is commonly, or uncommonly used for crafting. And I have found some surprisingly awesome items that were definitely someone elses MCs. Yet were so rare, everyone assumed I was the one to MC them.

My point is that if a PC discovered an obscure recipie, it is theoretically possible. It gets a little finicky when it was you yourself that MCed it a rl year ago.

I like that there are elusive things to be discoverable with PCs like this. You would lose that with releasing the recipe database, because suddenly everyone would know how to make the mekillot bone glass triplespear that some hermit PC MC'd years ago in Cenyr, and everyone would clamor for it. It makes a lot more sense if someone discovers it de novo through experimentation.

[Heade]

But if you don't do this, there's no way that your PC would know about this particular item - afterall, all the other hundreds of PCs don't - so why would your PC suddenly know this?  It makes zero sense.

I have to mention. When I played my last merchant, I did a "LOT" of recipie hunting. A process that required me to have 5 pieces of every weirdo object that is commonly, or uncommonly used for crafting. And I have found some surprisingly awesome items that were definitely someone elses MCs. Yet were so rare, everyone assumed I was the one to MC them.

My point is that if a PC discovered an obscure recipie, it is theoretically possible. It gets a little finicky when it was you yourself that MCed it a rl year ago.

I like that there are elusive things to be discoverable with PCs like this. You would lose that with releasing the recipe database, because suddenly everyone would know how to make the mekillot bone glass triplespear that some hermit PC MC'd years ago in Cenyr, and everyone would clamor for it. It makes a lot more sense if someone discovers it de novo through experimentation.

Agreed. It also gives players who have contributed a lot to the game over the years some measure of acknowledgement to their contribution, by letting them OOCly have the knowledge of these various recipes that they may periodically reintroduce into the gameworld through subsequent PCs. I think it keeps the game fresh and varied when it comes to IG items that ebb and flow into and out of the game over time.

[seidhr]

It -does- make sense. Two people invented the light bulb and tried to patent it at almost the exact same time. The idea that, in all the known world, no one would ever come up with the same design is quite silly. Sure, other PCs might not, but they represent only a tiny fraction of the population of the world. So, to say that some other vNPC could never discover it, in my opinion, is far more odd than to assume they could not. And besides, it enriches the game world. So there is no negative effect, and only positive. I really don't see what the issue is, here. So, fine, I RP discovering it IG instead of writing it into my background, being taught by someone else who discovers it? The end result is the same. What's the difference, really? People use OOC knowledge to create and RP characters with more depth and world-knowledge than they were able to when they were a noob. This is an unalterable fact, and won't change by trying to die on the hill that is crafting recipes. They're one of the most insignificant uses of OOC knowledge that occurs in the game.

You're comparing apples and oranges.  We aren't inventing technologies here, we're making bone swords and canvas backpacks using various window dressings.

[Heade]

It -does- make sense. Two people invented the light bulb and tried to patent it at almost the exact same time. The idea that, in all the known world, no one would ever come up with the same design is quite silly. Sure, other PCs might not, but they represent only a tiny fraction of the population of the world. So, to say that some other vNPC could never discover it, in my opinion, is far more odd than to assume they could not. And besides, it enriches the game world. So there is no negative effect, and only positive. I really don't see what the issue is, here. So, fine, I RP discovering it IG instead of writing it into my background, being taught by someone else who discovers it? The end result is the same. What's the difference, really? People use OOC knowledge to create and RP characters with more depth and world-knowledge than they were able to when they were a noob. This is an unalterable fact, and won't change by trying to die on the hill that is crafting recipes. They're one of the most insignificant uses of OOC knowledge that occurs in the game.

You're comparing apples and oranges.  We aren't inventing technologies here, we're making bone swords and canvas backpacks using various window dressings.

Which makes it even MORE likely that someone else in the millions of people in the world would also make a similar bone sword or backpack, not less. The less complex something is, the more likely the idea is to be duplicated completely at random by someone.

So, my example stands. If two people can end up designing something as technologically complex as a lightbulb at the same time, in separate parts of the world, surely two people in separate parts of the world can end up designing the same helmet, or process for hardening wood. There are tons of RL examples of this. Animal glue, for instance, was something used in vastly different parts of the world, quite simply, because it worked.

Through trial an error, people(including PCs, NPCs, and vNPCs) are sure to find those things that work, over time. This is, currently, represented through players obtaining OOC knowledge of recipes and using those recipes on various PCs that they portray. It's happening. And there isn't anything wrong with it. There is only a positive that occurs in game out of it. You can't stop it without making the entire crafting system dull, uninspired, and uninteresting by just releasing the entire database to players, so I don't see what the problem is, honestly. It's something beyond staff control that impacts the game in a positive, GOOD way. So why not leave it alone?

[Dar]

Heade. All of these facts and matters aside. Do you think there should be mechanisms in place that would prevent a player from custom crafting a bunch of awesome sauce MCs and profiting from his ingenuity/rarity/novelty, but eventually dying. Then a year later, creating another PC who isnt even capable of MCing, but gaining a sudden access to the ingenuity/rarity/novelty of a long past PC. With recipies so complicated, that nobody else in the entire Known ever learned how to make them except this newly created PC?

Do you find that situation acceptable?

[Nao]

I would still like to see a (pawn?) shop in game that sells only random, craftable items in some limited fashion. Crafters could buy the items and analyze them. This would

• re-introduce forgotten items into the game
• give crafters an IC way to discover recipes
• assuming there is a huge number of items in the database, preserve some of the secrecy of recipes. Only the PC who buys the item gets to know the recipe and they decide if they want to pass it on to anyone else.
• come at a cost. The crafter needs to spend money on the item, and risk that it's a waste of money since it's made out of items he can't obtain, or aren't worth the effort.

Each heavy crater could be sent 5x random crafting recipes from the DB, with their character approval e-mail. I know that I, at least, keep a .txt file, with all the recipes I discover, and I'm positive others do, as well. It'll help to keep recipes from being completely lost, over time, with constantly new recipes being release, or "re-discovered", for as long as there are people playing heavy craft pcs.

I also like this idea. It could be turned into a monthly thing instead, so nobody suicides a bunch of mercantile characters just to collect recipes 

[Narf]

I would still like to see a (pawn?) shop in game that sells only random, craftable items in some limited fashion. Crafters could buy the items and analyze them. This would

This is my favorite solution to the problem.

It's also just a solid idea entirely outside the realm of fixing a problem.

Shops get pretty dull after you've been to them a few dozen times with the same PC. I bet a shop like this would be the most frequented place in the known after taverns.

[only_plays_tribals]

I would still like to see a (pawn?) shop in game that sells only random, craftable items in some limited fashion. Crafters could buy the items and analyze them. This would

This is my favorite solution to the problem.

It's also just a solid idea entirely outside the realm of fixing a problem.

Shops get pretty dull after you've been to them a few dozen times with the same PC. I bet a shop like this would be the most frequented place in the known after taverns.

Yeah I love the idea too.

Like two random items generated in a stall on reset.

Could even be existing stalls in every region. The ones that sell assorted things.

They remain until someone buys them and change on reset.

[Heade]

Heade. All of these facts and matters aside. Do you think there should be mechanisms in place that would prevent a player from custom crafting a bunch of awesome sauce MCs and profiting from his ingenuity/rarity/novelty, but eventually dying. Then a year later, creating another PC who isnt even capable of MCing, but gaining a sudden access to the ingenuity/rarity/novelty of a long past PC. With recipies so complicated, that nobody else in the entire Known ever learned how to make them except this newly created PC?

Do you find that situation acceptable?

Well, first off, this is making a lot of assumptions. The primary one being that just because few or no other PCs have made the item, that none of the millions of inhabitants of the world have. The PC population is, at best, 40-50 PCs logged on. This doesn't even represent a fraction of the population of the world. So, I think it's safe to assume that somewhere, SOMEONE may know these recipes, even if no PCs do. And so, no, I don't think it's a problem that those someone's might be the mentor of the future PC of the player who submitted the MC to begin with. I think that is an inherent benefit to being a long-time member of the community that has contributed a lot of item recipes to the world.

There are plenty of other benefits that come with being a long-time member of the community, between Karma, and simple knowledge of the game world that allows you to play longer-lived PCs. I don't see any reason why this would need to be any different, especially considering that these items being reintroduced to the economy by the players who originally created them does nothing but add spice and variety to the game world.

Does that give a player who has played many crafters a game knowledge advantage over someone who has not? Sure. But that's no different than any other class. That same game knowledge advantage exists across the spectrum of character classes and roles.

This "prior experience" advantage of playing custom crafters also extends to every other player who plays one, so it's not any sort of unfair advantage. It rewards players who have spent a lot of time playing crafters and submitting custom content into the game world. ALL of the players who do that. Not just one, or a select few. And the reward isn't dependent on the subjective and sometimes inconsistent judging of a third party, as karma is. It's automatic so long as the person puts the effort in to create these recipes and subsequently make characters that could ICly discover and utilize them. In that way, it is one of the most fair, unbiased, and objectively positive elements of the game that can serve to carve a unique niche for a character in the game world.

EDIT: I mean, seriously, for anyone who doesn't believe that being a long-time, experienced player has any bearing on IG success, just look at the requirements for forming a player clan. It takes something like a quarter of a million sid, and 2 RL years to reach the level of minor merchant house, assuming perfectly efficient timing in meeting all IC requirements, which is a pipe dream with players that have inconsistent playtimes but are important to your advancement, there. No new player is going to meet those requirements. It's extremely difficult for older, knowledgeable, and established players to do so, to the point of almost never successfully happening. The entire system of armageddon, from karma, to secret undocumented magic mechanics, to player clans is designed to reward long-time players who keep coming back to the game over multiple PCs.

[Dar]

Well. Then aside all the talk of vnpcs, and whatever else. I will have to simply disagree. I personally, do not believe that a newly created character should so immensely benefit from major work of another character that the same player ran. Be that custom crafts that no other player knows, buried items of previous PC that a new PC could find, and so on.

[Heade]

Well. Then aside all the talk of vnpcs, and whatever else. I will have to simply disagree. I personally, do not believe that a newly created character should so immensely benefit from major work of another character that the same player ran. Be that custom crafts that no other player knows, buried items of previous PC that a new PC could find, and so on.

I think there is a big difference between being able to create an item recipe, which has been referenced by staff as being rather low-tech and simple to begin with, and going back to basically loot the body/stash of your previous, dead PC.

And you can't push the talk of the vNPC world aside. When there are ten thousand times as many vNPCs as active PCs, that isn't just some insignificant little thing that can simply be ignored in a discussion concerning the validity of RP.

[Synthesis]

Well. Then aside all the talk of vnpcs, and whatever else. I will have to simply disagree. I personally, do not believe that a newly created character should so immensely benefit from major work of another character that the same player ran. Be that custom crafts that no other player knows, buried items of previous PC that a new PC could find, and so on.

Who caaaares who is crafting what?

I fucking love seeing people craft my old mastercrafts.  I LOVE IT.  I show everyone I can every time I have the appropriate skill, because people are running around with -my- shit, and that's fucking cool as fuck.

What kind of jealous asshole is seriously sitting there stewing because some SCRUB IS CRAFTING MY SPEAR REEEEEE?

[Dar]

Well. Then aside all the talk of vnpcs, and whatever else. I will have to simply disagree. I personally, do not believe that a newly created character should so immensely benefit from major work of another character that the same player ran. Be that custom crafts that no other player knows, buried items of previous PC that a new PC could find, and so on.

Who caaaares who is crafting what?

I fucking love seeing people craft my old mastercrafts.  I LOVE IT.  I show everyone I can every time I have the appropriate skill, because people are running around with -my- shit, and that's fucking cool as fuck.

What kind of jealous asshole is seriously sitting there stewing because some SCRUB IS CRAFTING MY SPEAR REEEEEE?

That's the topic of the conversation though. It's not about a PC crafting recipies he once MCed that are well known and crafted by many. It's about the recipies that are unknown and only the newly made PC of that same player gets to 'learn' them, using a vnpc coveat.

If you're unclanned, you can go out of your way to introduce the recipe to the general populace of the game, and get it into the ecosystem.  If you do this, I don't think there would be a problem with you coming along a year later and making your item on another PC.

But if you don't do this, there's no way that your PC would know about this particular item - afterall, all the other hundreds of PCs don't - so why would your PC suddenly know this?  It makes zero sense.

[Heade]

It's not about a PC crafting recipies he once MCed that are well known and crafted by many. It's about the recipies that are unknown and only the newly made PC of that same player gets to 'learn' them, using a vnpc coveat.

Yup, basically. Unknown to other PCs doesn't equal unknown in all the world, when PCs are outnumbered by vNPCs 10,000:1.

If a PC discovers one of my recipes IG, and that player subsequently uses the recipe on multiple future PCs, more power to them. It's the beauty of the current crafting system, and part of the advantage being a long-time player confers, along with so many others that people don't seem to be arguing against.

[seidhr]

If you want to craft your own MCs on future PCs, the right thing to do would be to mass produce enough of them that they get out into the game's ecosystem and in sufficient numbers that your future PC has a chance of finding one and 'analyze'-ing it.  I'm finished talking about that.

The random items in a shop thing is a neat idea, but in practice a lot harder to implement because there's all kinds of items in the database that have no business being in the game (or readily available) and some of them are supposed to be unique, some of them are old and poorly written, some of them are exceptionally rare for some reason, some of them are magick, some of them are retconned, some are metal, and so on.

In a perfect world we'd have a really robust object database that has enough flags that we could query against it and get an acceptable list of items to pull from, but unfortunately we don't.  It would end up being that we had to create a list of objects manually and maintain that in the shop itself.

[Heade]

If you want to craft your own MCs on future PCs, the right thing to do would be to mass produce enough of them that they get out into the game's ecosystem and in sufficient numbers that your future PC has a chance of finding one and 'analyze'-ing it.  I'm finished talking about that.

What if, through play, I discover someone else's MC recipes? How is that different from discovering my own? I don't agree, and people are using recipe knowledge across multiple characters constantly, MC or otherwise, whether anyone likes it or not. It is entirely too subjective to say what MC would be hard to figure out and which ones are appropriate for ANY PC to use. It's something every crafter does. No one completely "rediscovers" the crafting mechanics on every subsequent character. If you want to lose players, start punishing people for using similar item recipes across multiple characters.

[Miradus]

No one thinks twice about rangers who know where the water is, or where to forage for the best tubers.

I don't know that I find knowing which recipes are the best to skill up on is any more meta than mastercrafting something with 5 obscure ingredients that don't show up at all in the description.

A lot of shit is in the game which never should have been. How was I supposed to guess this granite Warhammer needed a feather and blue dye? I wasn't. Someone did it so they could maintain a stranglehold on that MC item forever, in perpetuity, across all their characters.

That horse is loose, 10 miles down the road, and in the neighbor's garden and we're discussing how to lock the barn door.

[Dar]

Blue feather is nothing. Its more fun to mastercraft an item and then use that item as a components for other mastercrafts .


A method one can regenerate karma faster!!!
They login onto another builderesque account with limited access to item database. Their job is to inspect the item, flag it appropriately and send it to the next filtration system. Until finally a staffer checks through coded stats stuff.

Every 1000 items catalogued=one karma regenned.

[Heade]

Blue feather is nothing. Its more fun to mastercraft an item and then use that item as a component for other mastercrafts .

Yeah, this is how the pros protect their recipes. Code-proof that shit.

"Analyze my final product all you want, broski."

A few seconds pass.

"What is a bobberdoodle, and where do I get one?"

"That's the real question, isn't it?"

[Dresan]

After seeing slipknife, cutpurse and rogue... not sure if it would be too OP if grebber branched  skinning (even at journeyman level) from advanced forage.

I think it lost the ability to forage for food? It also has hunt, but no ability to skin what it finds, the need to grind forage to get skinning would keep hunter with the additional starting option of archery rather attractive, unlike thief vs cut-purse.   

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I would still like to see a (pawn?) shop in game that sells only random, craftable items in some limited fashion. Crafters could buy the items and analyze them. This would

• re-introduce forgotten items into the game
• give crafters an IC way to discover recipes
• assuming there is a huge number of items in the database, preserve some of the secrecy of recipes. Only the PC who buys the item gets to know the recipe and they decide if they want to pass it on to anyone else.
• come at a cost. The crafter needs to spend money on the item, and risk that it's a waste of money since it's made out of items he can't obtain, or aren't worth the effort.

I like this a lot.

[only_plays_tribals]

I swear I will volunteer to mindlessly sit and excel sheet the item database if we can somehow implement this pawn shop idea. I think many players would. Recruit us, split the work. It's such a great solution.