Crafting Difficulty Descriptors

[Pariah]

Now I may just be having horrible rolls of the dice here, but I've had some things in game that describe as EASY for me, where I fail them five times in a row.

Do you think this is something I should possibly request up about and have someone peek the code, or just that I have absolute shit luck making these things?

[mansa]

If you were to have a range of "success percentage", like if you were to roll a d20 (standard d&d dice rules, 5% increments)..

What would you expect to roll in order to succeed on an 'Easy' ?

Would you say you are successful if you roll higher than a 6?   Higher than a 10?

[Pariah]

If you were to have a range of "success percentage", like if you were to roll a d20 (standard d&d dice rules, 5% increments)..

What would you expect to roll in order to succeed on an 'Easy' ?

Would you say you are successful if you roll higher than a 6?   Higher than a 10?

I dunno.  But I would assume that something easy would be weighted heavily in the success side.  Maybe 90% success?

[triste]

The moons aren't favorin' ye, lad.

[Brokkr]

If you take the relevant number of crafting "words" and divide by 100, that would be the logical thing to do.

Seeing as how "easy" isn't the easiest category...yeah, nowhere near 90%

[Pariah]

If you take the relevant number of crafting "words" and divide by 100, that would be the logical thing to do.

Seeing as how "easy" isn't the easiest category...yeah, nowhere near 90%

Ahh thanks, no idea how the skill system really works.  Thanks for the insight.

[Fernandezj]

Well, effortless is the easiest and still fails reliably with mastery in the skill and tools.
Its just never-ending frustration.

[mansa]

Well, effortless is the easiest and still fails reliably with mastery in the skill and tools.
Its just never-ending frustration.

What percentage of success do you think "effortless", with tools, should give you?
85%?  90%?  95%?
aka you FAIL if you roll a 3, 2, or 1?

[Pariah]

Well, effortless is the easiest and still fails reliably with mastery in the skill and tools.
Its just never-ending frustration.

What percentage of success do you think "effortless", with tools, should give you?
85%?  90%?  95%?
aka you FAIL if you roll a 3, 2, or 1?

I wouldn't know really, mechanics aren't really talked about much by design.  But I would say that maybe the word effortless should be removed, because if something is effortless, you would probably never fail at it.

[Fernandezj]

Well, effortless is the easiest and still fails reliably with mastery in the skill and tools.
Its just never-ending frustration.

What percentage of success do you think "effortless", with tools, should give you?
85%?  90%?  95%?
aka you FAIL if you roll a 3, 2, or 1?

Failing on effortless to me would be equivalent of rolling a natural 1 or 20.

With this being a 5% chance each, so I'd assume either 95% chance of success, or 90% chance of success.

[mansa]

Well, effortless is the easiest and still fails reliably with mastery in the skill and tools.
Its just never-ending frustration.

What percentage of success do you think "effortless", with tools, should give you?
85%?  90%?  95%?
aka you FAIL if you roll a 3, 2, or 1?

I wouldn't know really, mechanics aren't really talked about much by design.  But I would say that maybe the word effortless should be removed, because if something is effortless, you would probably never fail at it.

There's always a chance to roll a fail.  That's built into Dungeons & Dragons.

[Rashad]

There are things that will increase your chance of failure with crafting, but it won't change the difficulty that is displayed. Crafting with your weapons out is one of them - make sure you either have empty hands or are holding a tool that helps with the craft.

[hyzhenhok]

There's always a chance to roll a fail.  That's built into Dungeons & Dragons.

No. Dungeons & Dragons has the concept of "taking 10." There are some things that you should literally never fail unless there's some kind of external time pressure or threat.

Also I don't think other skill systems in Arm have the same "there's always a chance to fail" thing going. The game would be radically different if skills like ride or climb or direction sense had a base 5% chance to fail that could never be removed.

[SpyGuy]

Easier crafting recipes often (not always) have conditions where instead of making two of something you just end up with one on a fail.  Or they return some of the inputs and in at least one case I know of you don't lose the inputs at all.

I sometimes roleplay failure in a craft as failure in the materials not necessarily the crafter.  That piece of wood had a knot in it.  The fabric was found to be damaged on inspection.  That got too hide was just too damaged from old scars or hunters beating on it. Etc etc.  Zalanthan materials are not factory made uniform items. 

Zalanthan processes for crafting are also very primitive.  Even the GMH are still using processes that are unlikely to succeed every time.

I say this as someone who has a love/hate relationship with the crafting system.  Even modern factories don't have a 0% defect rate.  Having some failure built into crafting is believable and doesn't affect playability (though it can be annoying).

If I were to offer a fix it would be to change 'effortless' to 'easy' and add another descriptor somewhere else.   Because 'effortless' sounds like it should almost never fail when in reality it might fail 10% of the time.

[Hauwke]

There's always a chance to roll a fail.  That's built into Dungeons & Dragons.

No. Dungeons & Dragons has the concept of "taking 10." There are some things that you should literally never fail unless there's some kind of external time pressure or threat.

Also I don't think other skill systems in Arm have the same "there's always a chance to fail" thing going. The game would be radically different if skills like ride or climb or direction sense had a base 5% chance to fail that could never be removed.

Pointing out that climb does, it's a crit fail that causes you to fall on your head.

[hyzhenhok]

There's always a chance to roll a fail.  That's built into Dungeons & Dragons.

No. Dungeons & Dragons has the concept of "taking 10." There are some things that you should literally never fail unless there's some kind of external time pressure or threat.

Also I don't think other skill systems in Arm have the same "there's always a chance to fail" thing going. The game would be radically different if skills like ride or climb or direction sense had a base 5% chance to fail that could never be removed.

Pointing out that climb does, it's a crit fail that causes you to fall on your head.

Either I have been extremely lucky on multiple characters with master climb to have never failed routine easy climb checks, or it is simply not true that there is always a chance to fall. For some of the more difficult checks sure, but not the easy stuff.

[Hauwke]

The chance is really quite low, but it causes you to take a lot of stun damage and usually cause you to fall unconcious. Coupled with falling from a great height its a death sentance.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Once in a blue moon, there's these moments in life where we just ... fuck up. Drop our drink. Lose our keys. Think we're on the bottom step instead of the next-to-bottom step. Go forward instead of reverse while backing out of a parking spot.

Sometimes, we just roll a natural 1 in life.

Should we in the game? I don't know. It doesn't bother me, but I do understand it's just a game. The point is, sometimes effortless doesn't mean we can't fail.

[Riev]

The chance is really quite low, but it causes you to take a lot of stun damage and usually cause you to fall unconcious. Coupled with falling from a great height its a death sentance.

I think this situation occurs when your Climb Check is SO FAR BELOW what is needed to succeed, that you get a "critical fail". Its not so much that you rolled a 1, its that 1 + shittyClimbSkill is more than 10 points away from the check you needed.

As you get up into master, even rolling a one lets you succeed the check, so its not seen.

[hyzhenhok]

Once in a blue moon, there's these moments in life where we just ... fuck up. Drop our drink. Lose our keys. Think we're on the bottom step instead of the next-to-bottom step. Go forward instead of reverse while backing out of a parking spot.

Sometimes, we just roll a natural 1 in life.

Should we in the game? I don't know. It doesn't bother me, but I do understand it's just a game. The point is, sometimes effortless doesn't mean we can't fail.

It's OK if there's always a chance to fail, but the odds need to be calibrated correctly. Sure, yeah, there's always a chance you'll trip and fall when you try to go down a staircase.  But how many trips down a staircase by a healthy, fit, alert person result in a tumble down out of all trips taken? 1 in 1000? 10,000? 100,000? At some point the chance of failure is so low that it's not worth simulating, hence taking 10 in DnD (or the DM just doesn't ask for a skill check!).

Consider frying an egg. How many eggs out of each dozen that you buy do you lose to "failure" trying to fry them? If you've learned how to scramble eggs (apprentice cooking?), how often do you burn them? 1 in 20 times? 1 in 50? Ever? "Effortless" difficulty is like an experienced cook making scrambled eggs. "There's always a chance to fail" is not a good reason for high failure rates in effortless crafts.

Part of the issue is crafting is binary -- either you succeed and get the item, or fail and destroy one or more of the ingredients.  Realistically, there should be partial failures and partial successes where you still get the item and it's just imperfect. Maybe the ongoing crafting revamp will address this, but just adjusting failure odds across the board by making skill level have a greater effect at reducing the odds (including to almost 0 in the correct circumstances) seems like the easier fix.

[Pariah]

I think the issue with adding partial failure and successes or subpar options is that it increases the crafting database of shit you have to actually code into being an item.

Then compound that by say it's a weapon and the successful weapon is is a plus two slashing damage weapon, then the imperfect one is a zero add or subtract weapon.  So now you're having to design a good, a halfway good and a failure process into crafting.  Which would at the minimum double the amount of craftables due to how it works now, success with an item spawned or failure without.

I do wish there was less failures that use the whole item.  Like failures to carve a pole doesn't lose the whole pole for one failure.

But I think the main problem would be the manpower, builder/staff level to make the new shit to institute a partial success system.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Weeellll ...

... in theory no new items are needed. Flags could be applied to the item. Those flags could be like, used, destroyed, xcetera. And then the code could check for those flags, and adjust the craft according to it. Now to be fair, crafting would have to be rewritten to check for flags on the items that are being used to create a new item, and then use logic to decide how those affect the new item.

Now I say all of this as though it's nothing, but it would definitely be easier in overall time to rewrite crafting, then to build all of the new items required and keep track of them all. The problem is that we have far more Builders than we do coders, and it would be a taxing proposition for either group.

If we were focused heavily on bringing in new players and building the population of the game player base I would absolutely advocate for rewriting the crafting system. Since I don't think we're heavily invested in increasing the playerbase, the crafting system we have now is good enough.

[X-D]

I am with the ones who think, at the very least the term "effortless" should be changed. Taking the eggs example, I first learned to cook scrambled eggs when I was 4 years old, By the time I was 5 I no longer failed in that, I am 52 now.....I have 6 children, I assure you, I have made more then 10k batches of scrambled eggs since age 5 without a single fail, And I do not think I will in the next forty years either.

Now, that is at the very least.

I am actually for NO FAIL on Novice crafts and the like if you have advanced or master. Let us take another example. Paper planes. Once you learned how to make one, How many times have you failed to do so? Even more, How many times did you not only fail, but ripped the paper to shreds in the attempt? Never...Yeah, Never, Nobody over the age of 5 who knows how to make a paper plane has ever ripped the paper to shreds in the attempt. Not in all of human history and I am sure that is BILLIONS of paper planes.

[Brokkr]

Take away the frying pan.  And the heat source in an area specifically designed for cooking.

If you want to make the really easy recipes (scrambled eggs) into things that fail much less or not at all, it may be that you need the right tool and the right area (for room bonus).  Depending on the recipe and your skill it may be possible to get there.

On the other hand, if you want to fail more often in RL, take away those things that enable you to do it consistently?  I can say from personal experience that cooking eggs on the top of a branding iron pit is surprisingly difficult (at least if you correctly like your yolks runny.

[X-D]

That is totally silly Brokkr.

I mean really DUMB.


Hey, I have eggs...and a fire, but I have no grease or a pan or anything to scramble the eggs with...Oh hey, I will just dump them on this rock and hope.

Come on now man. Give the players and the PCs a bit of respect, Hell, we cannot start a PC at age 2. Stop treating them as if they were.

You already have code where if you do not have this certain tool you totally cannot attempt the craft. What is so bad about saying Oh hey, you have these tools and it is a novice craft and you have master skill...you can ALWAYS make scrambled eggs?

If you are worried about somebody breaking the game with novice crafts make sure those crafts have very little value...Oh wait...they already do. And with shopkeepers only taking 5 of anything AND not going to zero on a reboot...this would not be anything game breaking and already handled by current code.

If you don't have a pan....No really man...Easily the dumbest thing I have ever seen a staffer post...and in the last 29 years...I have seen some dumb shit.

As it sits, you ALWAYS have a chance to fail ANY and all skills no matter if you have 100% on all stats and 100% on all skills and all the right tools and in the right room. And since that is impossible unless maybe you are an imm then you ALWAYS have a chance to fail, Shit, if there was the skill to fall down you could manage to fail that somehow.


What I am saying is, If you have the descriptor "effortless" Then it indeed should be, If the craft does not REQUIRE a tool, and is EFFORTLESS then it should be 100%. YOU, STAFF, have the ability to require tool, room etc. Hey, that skill says requires fire then Hey, you cannot make it without a fire and there is nothing stopping you from requiring the frying pan too.
BUT, if you do and it says effortless then it should be 100%.