Mundane Subclass Feedback

[solera]

I haven't read this thread in detail, but I think Outdoorsman should get climb, like the lower cost Grebber does.
(Though not up for discussion  ) I'd add my vote  to  Artisan get custom crafting. Surely all Salaari/ Kadian maker hopefuls should be of some long term use?

Do Spec apps continue to cover gaps in the wishlist?

[Cind]

Back when full merchants could custom craft, a crafter in your House who could do so was worth their weight in gold, and I'm assuming that now since only custom crafter subguilds can do so(?), that's the only thing a House is really looking for? Every noble is on the list at Kadius to have some weird little trinket made, and occasionally they are displeased with it and send it back to be remade. There's always a list, always a string of things that are needed to be made. I'm sure the same thing happens at Salaar, maybe a little less often.

Maybe if a crafter becomes a full paid crafter at their House, they can apply for the ability to custom craft? That would fix it, actually, I think. But someone would have to write the code for it.

[solera]

The only code involved in this "skill" is the request tool allowing you to proceed automatically, I'd say.
Choosing a class/subclass always locks you in, or out, from some paths, but I feel this was a step too far.
I have liked the freedom of starting a crafter whose day job started as other  honest/dishonest work of some sort. I would never have chosen one of the appropriate subguilds for my grebber of a few years ago that ended up as an unplanned Kadian.
Actually, I wouldn't have been able to even craft the simple tool that was one of her reasons for being, without sacrificing her grebbing abilities. (Ironically, that was taken away from her down the track when Scav was removed.)

[Cind]

I remembered that your pc could forage for food when we were both in Kadius, and the whole northern band was out in Old Tuluk for some reason, I think just for fun.

It would be nice to be able to automatically change your subguild, or apply to have it changed in a way that would be easy and automatic for staff. Being able to do it once, I mean. Starting out as a tailor in Storm, joining the Byn, and then losing your sewing skills to fully become a warrior, just as one example. Oocly a lot of people end up with subguilds they can't use because they went down an unplanned path.

[Heade]

I don't think that it should only be members of GMH houses that can custom craft. This is one of the last bastions of real competition that independent crafters have with GMHs, and making this change would be super-unrealistic. The one significant thing that an independent person can do to compete with corporations in a corporate world is to innovate, and come up with new inventions or product ideas.

I think it would be far better to just allow the 3 heavy mercantile classes to mastercraft as part of their core class setup: Fence, Dune Trader, and Artisan = Automatic Custom Crafting.

Then leave the 0-cost custom crafter subguild available in case someone with a different class wants to moonlight as a custom crafter.

[crymerci]

I think it would be far better to just allow the 3 heavy mercantile classes to mastercraft as part of their core class setup: Fence, Dune Trader, and Artisan = Automatic Custom Crafting.

Then leave the 0-cost custom crafter subguild available in case someone with a different class wants to moonlight as a custom crafter.

Uh, if 1/3 of the classes can master craft then it wouldn't be special at all and the GMHs would quickly become a joke.

Would also risk burning out staff members who have to create and load the objects. Idk if this is still an issue or not, but I do know that there were no custom crafts for a couple of years, and that was one of the reasons given.

I could see giving it to Artisan on crafts they have at advanced or better.  Or anyone else who chooses the Custom sub.

[Brokkr]

The change hasn't rolled out yet.

[Nao]

Heavy mercantile classes are 1/5 of all classes, not 1/3. It used to be 1/6 under the old system, so this is not a huge change.

I don't really think this is relevant, though, since not all classes were or will be equally popular. Under the old system, players chose ranger a lot more often than they chose pickpocket, and I assume the distribution will stay somewhat uneven under the new system, too.  So 1/6 of all classes could translate to 1/3 of all player characters or 1/10, or anything in between, depending on how attractive they are. If you gave custom crafting to artisans only, that would not necessarily make it more special. I assume you would just end up with artisan being vastly more popular than fence or dune trader.

From what has been stated on discord, the issue were overly complex custom crafts that didn't fit the theme and required a lot of back and forth discussion to "fix" more so than the number of custom crafting submissions. I don't think the current changes are going to help with that, but I am repeating myself and I just hope staff is keeping an eye on which subclasses players choose for the mercantile classes.

[Heade]

Uh, if 1/3 of the classes can master craft then it wouldn't be special at all and the GMHs would quickly become a joke.

Would also risk burning out staff members who have to create and load the objects. Idk if this is still an issue or not, but I do know that there were no custom crafts for a couple of years, and that was one of the reasons given.

I could see giving it to Artisan on crafts they have at advanced or better.  Or anyone else who chooses the Custom sub.

As Nao said, it's 1/5 of the classes, not 1/3. And popularity should be taken into account. The merchant class was essentially split up into 3 flavored classes: Fence, Dune Trader, and Artisan. I wouldn't have a problem if they wanted to make it how it was before, where those in these classes could submit 1 custom craft a month, but only in an area they have mastered. That would cut down on spam custom crafts by people with no time invested in their characters.

And beyond that, the current system just doesn't make sense from an IC perspective.

Amos Crafter(Heavy mercantile/Anything other than Crafter subguild), who has dedicated his life almost exclusively to crafting can't master craft a boot. But Jono Warrior(Warrior/Master Jeweler), who has spent his life becoming the greatest warrior in the known, ALSO makes mastercraft jewelry in his spare time. It's a joke.

The mastercrafting ESGs are probably the biggest factor in increased staff workload on custom crafting. I'd rather see them lose custom crafting than for the core, heavy mercantile classes, for whom custom crafting is their bread and butter, to have to essentially have no subguild in order to do. It's not fair, it doesn't make sense, and it's just silly.

I expect if staff took a close look at the numbers of people playing the various heavy mercantile classes, and how many of them end up choosing the 0-cost custom crafter perk(and thus get no real subguild), they'll probably find that this does little to reduce their workload. As someone who has thoroughly enjoyed playing crafters in the past, under the current system I feel like I'd be more likely to shoot for a light-combat guild with a mastercrafting ESG. You get the best of both worlds, and a character that has a vast array of skills. I suspect that we'll see more people who previously enjoyed the merchant class going a similar direction, and so it won't really be fewer custom crafting submissions. It'll just be more infiltrators/miscreants/enforcers/scouts/stalkers/fighters with a mastercraft ESG of some sort joining GMH's as a "Crafter".

As it stands right now, the heavy mercantile classes with the "custom crafter" sub are also probably the easiest combination in the game to guild-sniff. It's just a bad situation, overall, for the future of true merchant-style characters, in my opinion.

[Heade]

To be honest, I think a web app could be developed rather easily to eliminate the problem of staff workload on custom crafts. The web app could introduce more consistency in item performance based on materials used, type of item, difficulty, and intended item quality. Such a web app would eliminate the need for internal staff discussions regarding item stats by making it uniform based on those factors. Then the only thing that would be necessary is checking descriptions to ensure they fit in the world and don't contain misspellings, which wouldn't require a whole lot of back and forth between staff and players. Under such a system, custom crafts could probably move to a much less time-intensive thing towards a very casual thing, similar to character approvals, that could be done very quickly.

Reducing the time it takes to process mastercrafts like this, and thus potentially allowing more than 1 a month for certain class combinations, would encourage people to use those mastercrafts to make more simple items, reducing the bloat of super high-quality gear from the crafting system, as well.

[Cind]

+1

Before extended subguilds, your chances of getting a custom craft made were pretty good as long as the item fit the game world. After they were implemented for a while, you had to prove that the game world needed your idea to improve play for people, or else be someone paying Kadius to make you a thingamabob. I thought this was odd, and was a measure of OOC inequality between unclanned and clanned players (although to be honest, many of the people paying for these House customcraft slots weren't clanned either.)

I say make the web app, see how it goes, and if further changes are needed, simply make it so that Fence, Dune Trader and Artisan are the only ones who can custom craft--- leave the extended subguilds out of it. Giving ESGs custom crafting made the workload really heavy, it appeared to me as. Or, make it so that nonmerchant types only had custom crafting for things like armor, weapons, and stonecrafts---- stuff they'd be more likely to see every day, to have a job working with, rather than allowing Dorkadork the dwarven runner who can hit like a mek the ability to custom craft a silk pair of really tight-fitting jeans, or a length of glittering gold feather lining for a cape.

[daughterofauset]

If I had to speculate, I would guess that the reason they are making you choose a master crafting or custom crafter subguild is to keep any magickers from having custom crafting, since they only have magick subguilds now.

[Heade]

If I had to speculate, I would guess that the reason they are making you choose a master crafting or custom crafter subguild is to keep any magickers from having custom crafting, since they only have magick subguilds now.

Why would it matter if Magickers had custom crafting? I guess I'm failing to see the logic behind your speculation.

[daughterofauset]

Because with the setup restricted to subguilds only allowing magick and subguilds only allowing master crafting or custom crafting, the two are impossible to have on the same character. You can have combat, sneaky, or crafting types which can sub combat sneaky or crafting sub's to supplement their skills, only magickers cannot have another sub which would then allow them to custom make items.

[sleepyhead]

Because with the setup restricted to subguilds only allowing magick and subguilds only allowing master crafting or custom crafting, the two are impossible to have on the same character. You can have combat, sneaky, or crafting types which can sub combat sneaky or crafting sub's to supplement their skills, only magickers cannot have another sub which would then allow them to custom make items.

While all this is true, I think what Heade is saying is that they are not sure why magickers being able to custom craft would be an important thing to guard against. I have to agree that this would be a strange design choice to build the system around. I suspect that it ended up this way more incidentally, but that it's being kept because it fits in with the "sorry, but you can't have it all" philosophy behind these changes. I don't agree with it, but that's my guess as to the motivation.

As for myself, I think it's a net loss when magickers aren't able to custom craft. Gemmed magickers in particular will have trouble finding mundanes who are willing to work with them and custom craft items. It would be nice to at least let them have the possibility to have a custom crafting mercantile sort or two among them, even if it isn't a very popular choice. In addition, tribal magickers might want to CC ritual props, etc. I know not very many people were doing this, but I don't see why the potential should be taken away.

I've already beaten this horse to death and back, though.

[Heade]

Because with the setup restricted to subguilds only allowing magick and subguilds only allowing master crafting or custom crafting, the two are impossible to have on the same character. You can have combat, sneaky, or crafting types which can sub combat sneaky or crafting sub's to supplement their skills, only magickers cannot have another sub which would then allow them to custom make items.

While all this is true, I think what Heade is saying is that they are not sure why magickers being able to custom craft would be an important thing to guard against. I have to agree that this would be a strange design choice to build the system around. I suspect that it ended up this way more incidentally

Nailed it. My thoughts exactly.

[Cind]

I noticed, after looking at the docs for Fence, Dune Trader and Artisan, that they all get journeyman forage at the highest cap, and (I might be wrong, there might have been a normal subclass with advanced forage but I don't have time to check) the only subclass that gets master forage is Grebber at one karma point.

I understand that staff are working on new subclasses that will match the new classes, but I wanted to point out that there's hardly any subclass options now for upping your forage caps.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I noticed, after looking at the docs for Fence, Dune Trader and Artisan, that they all get journeyman forage at the highest cap, and (I might be wrong, there might have been a normal subclass with advanced forage but I don't have time to check) the only subclass that gets master forage is Grebber at one karma point.

I understand that staff are working on new subclasses that will match the new classes, but I wanted to point out that there's hardly any subclass options now for upping your forage caps.

Isn't Grebber going to be advanced forage under the new changes too?

[Vex]

I don't believe that increasing the disparity, between no karma players, and high karma players, will help to with player retention.

I do like the new class system, but, if the chart is an indication, the direction of the new subs, is only to consolidate maximum coded power, in the hands of the high karma players. I don't see, how this will benefit the game, tbh.

[solera]

I noticed, after looking at the docs for Fence, Dune Trader and Artisan, that they all get journeyman forage at the highest cap, and (I might be wrong, there might have been a normal subclass with advanced forage but I don't have time to check) the only subclass that gets master forage is Grebber at one karma point.

I understand that staff are working on new subclasses that will match the new classes, but I wanted to point out that there's hardly any subclass options now for upping your forage caps.

Isn't Grebber going to be advanced forage under the new changes too?

*splutters*

On reflection, is Laborer the only class that gets Master forage? Don't seem right.

[Heade]

I don't believe that increasing the disparity, between no karma players, and high karma players, will help to with player retention.

I do like the new class system, but, if the chart is an indication, the direction of the new subs, is only to consolidate maximum coded power, in the hands of the high karma players. I don't see, how this will benefit the game, tbh.

I agree with this sentiment, to a degree. And that's why I've been pushing for all of the ESGs to be reduced to 1 karma options. Currently, post-compression, many ESGs are costing the equivalent of what used to be 4-5 karma. I think that's silly.

#1Karma4ESGs

[MeTekillot]

I'm of the opinion of replacing normal shitty subguilds with their extended cousins and making extended subs for those subs without equivalent extended subs, making them not cost karma, and keeping karma for race and magick options, like it used to be. Why do the lofty heights of advanced backstab require karma 

[Vex]

On reflection, is Laborer the only class that gets Master forage? Don't seem right.

Miscreant and Stalker both get master forage, in their respective arenas.

I'm of the opinion of replacing normal shitty subguilds with their extended cousins and making extended subs for those subs without equivalent extended subs, making them not cost karma, and keeping karma for race and magick options, like it used to be. Why do the lofty heights of advanced backstab require karma 

It is, imo, a bit redundant, to have so many subs that overlap... with one simply being, a grade more powerful than the last. It reminds me of the ever popular, "pay2win" micros on most online games. You can have the free purple pet with no benefits, or you can pay for premium account for the green pet with +stats, or pay for platinum account for the red pet, and get +++stats.

If you have the money, you can have a way easier time with your grind, have more power in pvp, and have more content options earlier. The people, who can't pay, can still play... but they're there, really, so the paying players, have people to kick around and feel superior to.

That is how it looks to me, except, instead of money, you have to hang out in discord and schmooze.

I would rather, just pay the money...

[MeTekillot]

I mean I have two karma and I have never schmoozed that I know of. Do I need to schmooze for three?

[Vex]

I mean I have two karma and I have never schmoozed that I know of. Do I need to schmooze for three?

Yes, this is my understanding of it.

GDB schmooze, will only take you so far...