Tools And Transparency

[Kavrick]

So this is something I've thought since I first started playing armageddon, and even after giving it a chance and over the year + that I've been playing, and I have not found a single consistent rule for how this works. What I'm talking about is...

Tool skill bonuses!
Hammering, smoothing, polishing, honing, I'm very well aware that these things in 'assess' explain what they help with... But it's vague and sometimes doesn't even help the related skill that it is required in. If a craft needs smoothing, that doesn't mean holding something like a rasp will boost the skill, it just means it'll allow you to do the craft in the first place. There's also some words that I've never seen in the requirement of a craft, hammering is a very good example of this. Playing multiple artisans/dune traders, I've never seen a single craft which requires 'hammering'. What tools boost what skills follows no consistent rule (this is probably caused by years and years of custom crafted tools all approved by different staff members without any design documentation for it. This is not me giving staff shit, it's completely understandable after 30 years, this is just my guess on why it's like this.)

So, in my experience/observation, this has resulted in most crafters using the same handful of tools they know boost skills. Pans/roasting spits for cooking, leatherworking knives, hide scrapers, things like that. The issue is that the only way to tell what tools boost what skills is to test every single tool against a craft which you happen to have on the cusp of going from something like easy to effortless, because sometimes the boost it gives you won't be enough to change that.

I am BEGGING staff to get rid of this obscurity. I WANT to use all different sorts of tools and gear, it's an incentive to get things from crafters, create goals and generally just interact with more things in the game. The obscurity here, as far as I can tell, serves nobody. So for this, I have two different suggestions.

1. If you have the associated skill, make what skill the tool boosts come up with assess. If your profession is related, it would make sense that you would know what tools help you with your job, it shouldn't be a guess.
2. Make it so when you are holding/wearing the item, the skill is highlighted/has some sort of *~'^ next to it to show that it's boosted, this would be nice in the case of things like climbing/riding tools.

I know some might say that this would encourage powergaming, but I honestly just think it'll encourage players to test out new items that they might have previously ignored and generally be more adventurous. Secondly, people who powergame already know what tools boost what skills, because there is a method to test, but it's extremely tedious and generally beginner/casual unfriendly. This is a change I want for accessibility reasons, and not only that, but this will mean that players can more consistently bugtest tools that might be incorrectly set, because there's no way to bugtest it currently without being on staff.

I hope my point is reasonable, I really don't want to campaign to make the game 'easier' or anything like that, I just want more mechanics to be accessible/consistent, I don't think 'guessing games' are a particularly engaging form of difficutly.

[Dresan]

I cannot agree more and would love to see the obscurity removed from all items.

Also, it feels like some tools/weapons stack if you wield and hold them at same time and others don't. However, it seems a bit inconsistant and it makes it hard to tell which tool-gear helps and when.

The knowledge could be added as  part of a skill like value. Or maybe like with sunslits you get a messge that one or two skills feel easier to do/use. To be honest even just a simple clear concise ooc message or command would be greatly welcomed.


This has been an ask for years(or decades now) and the only thing that sometimes changes is staff use descs to make it blantantly clear what an item or two do which makes it both jarring to read and adds futher confusion to existing items which are not as obvious.

[Athapaxis]

This is a cool idea - I like it.

Also I love how most of the ideas being put out these days are coming in a spirit of "lets make things even cooler!"

Such great energy in this game right now.

[MarshallDFX]

I agree, and I'd love a newbies guide to crafting including tools etc. 

I get there is a FOIC element here which is fair... Sometimes it's good roleplay, but sometimes it feels like I'm interrupting roleplay to ask code questions.

[Agent_137]

Monkeys paw fix: removed all skill bonuses from tools. Assess and skills list now accurately show what skills the tool benefits!

J/k I like the ideas.

More transparency would be good here.  I've considered normalizing all tools, but the quest for and treasuring of really good tools is interesting and IC.  That'd be hard to play if there was no actual coded bonus for the best stuff.

Another option would be overhaul / automation into skill bonus categories like average, good, gmh-level-amazing that could be assessed or just be obvious.