Regarding Item (Arrow) Quality

[najdorf]

I have this suggestion. And recommendation for staff if you are also considering this for armor and weapons too.

1) Revert to old where arrow quality is hidden.
2) Shuffle arrow quality again.

I first was very excited about this, but then I realized ambiguity on items is one of the greatest elements making this game great. Eventually, a sizeable player population will only go for best items, and everyone will ask for great quality items in their MCs. And all those beautiful items once was loved and thought to be good will be never used again. This will impact clans too, as they will know their traditional items are inferior. (if they are)

[mansa]

How many options are there in terms of Quality?

3?  (Bad, Average, Good)
5?  (Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Advanced, Master)
9?  (Poor, Below Average, Average, Above Average, Good, Very Good, Extremely Good, Exceptional, Absolutely Incredible)



My suggestion is to have very few options in terms of Quality.  I like explicitly knowing some of these details.

[Night Queen]

I think having it FOIC is good and that shouldn't be public, having it where you can only RP the knowledge with characters who would realistically know (even if you can play another character later, it's like docs knowledge where if you abuse it on other characters by saying HEY WE SHOULD USE THESE ARROWS it'd get you into trouble) - if you think about it a nice way of levelling things more between players and staff characters (or ex-staff since the game can't afford to reshuffle everything just for a few people, it's just not practical)... From that perspective it seems kind of ethical, really? Like that change they did to remove effects that can't be figured out by players on their own (because obviously if some crafting recipe is ridiculously unlikely for anyone to find on their own, or even see example of it from shops or clan orders, it becomes a form of insider knowledge abuse) But... If we do go this way, then why not other weapons too?

[Riev]

I think having it FOIC is good and that shouldn't be public, having it where you can only RP the knowledge with characters who would realistically know (even if you can play another character later, it's like docs knowledge where if you abuse it on other characters by saying HEY WE SHOULD USE THESE ARROWS it'd get you into trouble) - if you think about it a nice way of levelling things more between players and staff characters (or ex-staff since the game can't afford to reshuffle everything just for a few people, it's just not practical)... From that perspective it seems kind of ethical, really? Like that change they did to remove effects that can't be figured out by players on their own (because obviously if some crafting recipe is ridiculously unlikely for anyone to find on their own, or even see example of it from shops or clan orders, it becomes a form of insider knowledge abuse) But... If we do go this way, then why not other weapons too?

There is a difference between knowing WHAT QUALITIES exist, and WHAT QUALITY THIS ARROW HAS SPECIFICALLY.
If you were responding to Mansa, he was only asking what levels of quality exist, not which items have what quality, or even how much better one quality is over another.

We don't do it with weapons because weapon damage is not (currently?) affected by "item quality" in the same way arrows now are.

[Night Queen]

Yeah that should be FOIC too! Part of the fun is finding this stuff out (having a way to actually find out is a big change itself)! None of it really matters most of the time, it's just fun stuff

[Fawcett]

I like it the way it is.

Only thing I would change is to give some tribes higher quality to their special arrows.

[Halaster]

Start a poll, I'd be curious to see what people think:  do you want it totally mysterious and obfuscated like it was, or do you like knowing the quality and thus knowing if an arrow is going to be better?

[mansa]

Start a poll, I'd be curious to see what people think:  do you want it totally mysterious and obfuscated like it was, or do you like knowing the quality and thus knowing if an arrow is going to be better?

For me, it depends on the total number of "quality" segments.  I prefer 3 segements.

[Night Queen]

30 segments - 10 for each point, shaft, feathers

Posts are better than polls because there's no link to active character accounts on the forum (yet, we could have polls if it was all linked up!)

[Riev]

Start a poll, I'd be curious to see what people think:  do you want it totally mysterious and obfuscated like it was, or do you like knowing the quality and thus knowing if an arrow is going to be better?

I mean my answer is that I'd rather wait until I have a character that has the skill to decide what quality something is. I could only HOPE that something that has 39/60 quality looks like it has the "30" range of quality OR the "40" range of quality depending on your skill. THAT kind of obfuscation I'm okay with.

I wouldn't want to have the obfuscation be "You don't even get to know what the descriptors are you pleb". I'd rather the code be unable to tell me directly if its "good" or "very good" quality, than not even know it goes poor, below average, above average, good, very good, excellent, exceptional, GODLIKE

[Brytta Léofa]

I want to see the quality. I am never gonna do trial and error to figure out which of ten arrow types is the best.

Two general benefits to showing it:
- It puts vets and noobs, and cheaters and rule-followers, on the same footing. No sekret lists of best arrows (or misinformation) circulating.
- It lets players help staff find values that are out of kilter.

[cnemus]

I have always felt that information should be available IC to those that should reasonably have that knowledge. It makes sense to me that someone who makes weapons professionally, or who uses them effectively, would be able to tell the difference between how they function.

I think skill should matter. My personal feeling is that journeyman fletchers or advanced archers should be able to see quality [or damage].

I also think that other weapons should be considered for this kind of assessment, but I realize that is a separate topic.

Also, this:

- It puts vets and noobs, and cheaters and rule-followers, on the same footing. No sekret lists of best arrows (or misinformation) circulating.

[LindseyBalboa]

I have this suggestion. And recommendation for staff if you are also considering this for armor and weapons too.

1) Revert to old where arrow quality is hidden.
2) Shuffle arrow quality again.

I first was very excited about this, but then I realized ambiguity on items is one of the greatest elements making this game great. Eventually, a sizeable player population will only go for best items, and everyone will ask for great quality items in their MCs. And all those beautiful items once was loved and thought to be good will be never used again. This will impact clans too, as they will know their traditional items are inferior. (if they are)

why wouldn't people want mc quality arrows? why wouldn't they gravitate towards having high quality arrows if they could afford them? fletchery is an obnoxiously time consuming craft, so if someone wants to spend rl hours banging out good arrows, then go for it.

as for not using lower quality arrows, people still need to hunt, train, practice, etc.

leave as-is.

[Brokkr]

Your assumptions around how I set quality may not be how I actually set quality.  While description was factored in, things like availability and who makes it are also factored in.  Why quality is determinable is due to this potential disconnect.

[Athapaxis]

30 segments - 10 for each point, shaft, feathers

Posts are better than polls because there's no link to active character accounts on the forum (yet, we could have polls if it was all linked up!)

Heavy Combat Arrow, Heavy Merchant Arrow, City Stealth Arrow...

[Night Queen]

The point is you can find out those things IC, with the skill, you can't with any of those things because of the way it is tiered under the same names.

[Brokkr]

30 segments - 10 for each point, shaft, feathers

Posts are better than polls because there's no link to active character accounts on the forum (yet, we could have polls if it was all linked up!)

Heavy Combat Arrow, Heavy Merchant Arrow, City Stealth Arrow...

Pretty sure not at all what Mansa meant by segment.  3 segments.  Bad/Average/Good.  Mostly because almost all crafted arrows would come out as average, which makes the extra information nearly not worth having.  The point is to know who makes the better arrows and gravitate towards those arrows if you need quality arrows.

There are reasons that doesn't really work.  Not all the segments are equal in terms of quality levels lumped together.  Like Bad arrows all are one quality assess level, but then it is more discrete by quality level in the sweet spot of where most crafted arrows are, and then at the super high end where there are no arrow objs that currently qualify they are again lumped together.

[mansa]

Thinking about this more...

Part of the historical game design decisions in ArmageddonMUD is to /not/ tell the players if the sword you are using is a 'good' sword.  The game does /not/ tell you that the curved sword of bone is a 1d8+3, and an obsidian longsword is 1d10+3.  What the game gives you is the description of the sword using written words, and may give you a hint of the quality of craftsmanship with the right word.


A change has been made with arrows, primarily because archery as a damage dealing skill would deal the same damage amount if you were using a barbed, iron-head arrow or if you were using a blunted soft wood arrow.  Now, damage being dealt is different depending on some parameters of the arrow, and that parameter is called 'quality'.

Typically, we the players do not have any indicator whether an object is good or not, besides the writing on the objects.  This has changed.  We now know if an arrow is a 'good' arrow that will deal more damage than another arrow that is a 'bad' arrow.


najdorf does not like this change, because ...

..Eventually, a sizeable player population will only go for best items, and everyone will ask for great quality items in their MCs. And all those beautiful items once was loved and thought to be good will be never used again. This will impact clans too, as they will know their traditional items are inferior. (if they are)

I do like the change.  I like the game explicitly telling me if something is good or not.   I hope this change eventually extends to other weapons.

However,

I agree that players might focus only on the best items in order to get a coded advantage above other players.  You can help eliminate this by making the 'range' of this Quality attribute wide, and have a small handful of delineation words or segments. 

I am probably just repeating myself, but I wanted to use different words to get my opinion across.

[Brokkr]

If we based the arrow damage just on the description....you still wouldn't get to see the quality.

However, just because some Indie MC'd a badass looking arrow that can be mass produced, doesn't mean it is going to be the best quality.  So it sort of broke that relationship.

[Halaster]

Someone who can make arrows or is decent at using them is going to be able to tell the general quality of the arrow.  How balanced it is, how straight it is, the pokey-in-the-other-guy-ness it has.  What we're not telling you is how -much- of an impact quality has nor giving you the range of what means what.  The difference between the best and worst quality arrows may only be like 10% damage.  So there's still some mystery to it.  The quality is really going to come into play when you compare two arrows to another.

It's a new way of doing something that we're trying out.  I'm optimistic this will be a change for the better in the long run.

[Trawl]

Will this change be coming to Sling ammo as well?

[najdorf]

Are there any plans to include misvaluation into the assessment? Not indirectly as Halaster suggested, but an actual one like value command.

[Lotion]

Are there any plans to include misvaluation into the assessment? Not indirectly as Halaster suggested, but an actual one like value command.

this is not a meaningful detriment similar to value. the information gained from the assessment is of permanent ooc relevance which means once you know it you know it forever as a player across all characters. when you want to make a decision about arrows you should already know. if you need to know right now which of two random unknown arrows you have is better and don't have time to check each multiple times but still have time to check each once then misevaluation would matter there but i argue in that situation you are better off just shooting the arrows

[Halaster]

Will this change be coming to Sling ammo as well?

Yeah, should already be there for sling ammo.