The Crafting Experience So Far

[HazelHomewrecker]

When Season 1 launched, there was a crafter hiccup concerning the markets and general playability, so now that it's been a month almost, I wanted to open a thread and discuss the current state of NPC markets, PC selling, and just the all-around feel for a crafter PC.

-> For the past several weeks, it has felt borderline impossible to sell to any NPC merchant in the Bazaar. There are a LOT more crafters than I originally thought/expected for launch, and some have died, some have stored, some have simply stopped playing altogether, so the competition has slimmed slightly, but the result is a handful of extremely active (now)skilled crafters completely dominating the NPC market area. I've logged in quite a few times recently to try and sell things, even after a weekly reset, and the markets are ALREADY flooded with 200 items a piece. It's kind of crazy.

-> PC to PC selling is fun, and in my personal experience, going great! If you know who to talk to, how to advertise, how to generally.. /do/ things, you're not going to have a problem finding someone who needs something. Problem is, everyone is still pretty broke, so 9/10 times you make half as much selling to a character than an NPC, if raw monetary gain is your goal (regardless of roleplay, but that's.. I'm not opening that can of worms, it's hostile). In that vein, crafters should be more empathetic toward struggling PCs who can't afford your 500 coin linen smock. Just because you can sell XYZ item to a market stall for 2000 coins, doesn't exactly mean that it's worth 2000 coins. Haggle is nasty.

-> The new and improved crafting system since the change to 'Analyze.' One of the best changes to come to the game since I started playing, only issue with it is that Fletchery crafts burn my eyes out. I would highly advise maybe going through the fletchery crafts staff-side and.. maybe trimming down the literal 500 different arrow types?

Anyone else playing a crafter with thoughts/ideas/notes/experiences to share on how their play is going?

[Big Red]

Thoughts:

• Analyze is great now. I see some people advising newbies to use the craft command on ingredients to find recipes... Get with the times! Analyze is the command to type.
• I think NPC shops buy too few low-quality goods and sell too many premium goods. I would like to see premium goods of all kinds rely more on the PC economy. NPCs buying more lower-tier goods would make starting as a PC much easier. There are simultaneously too many vendor-provided very good weapons floating around and too few vendors who will buy everyday sundries.
• The recent suggestion that tools should be more apparent was really good. A tool telling you what crafts it's for with the assess command would demystify things a lot. Tool confusion pops up a lot on the discord as a new player complaint.
• The lack of GMH crafting jobs turned out to be a bit of a myth. Salarr and Kurac are both hiring PCs whose main thing is crafting. I hope that no one who wants to merchant it up with those clans has given up on the basis of a false belief.
• I think there's room for some sort of automated crafting quest type system, where an NPC asks you to fill a contract for X of Y craft. This could be a way to deal with the shops-not-buying-cheap-stuff issue without recoding the shops.
• The people who seem to be making the most coin right now appear to be people who are importing materials from faraway or dangerous areas on behalf of the city crafters, and I think that is perfect and dope as hell. It is good that the present state of things is encouraging that.

[Dresan]

I've not played a crafter so I apologize in advance for the unsolicited response. However I want to share my week 1 experiences that may be relevant to the conversation as it pertains to crafters. My hope is that it is a bit useful.

My first character started in a location where a training dagger costs 700 coins. I thought that was the norm across the game, and I proceeded to make due with what my character could afford or acquire which was not much. Losing my starter weapon was heartbreaking.  My character used an average spear for most of their life, which they didn't buy but rather traded a crafter in exchange for some work. My character was hoping to save up for an above average one.  I didn't see a good weapon to much much longer and it seemed to disappear just as fast with an above average weapon in that location selling for almost 5k as well.

This made for a very interesting first experience where you valued what you could get, and finding a freaking good quality weapon would probably be grounds for celebrating. Working with crafters was important for not just survival but to actually be able to get stuff reasonably. Again, it wasn't that there was no stuff available, it was just working with crafters was a more ideal route than saving up thousands of coins for that above average weapon. Most of my character's stuff ended up being found or bought from crafters. I found it rather cool that the strongest out of the box warrior and assassin were probably the ones that could craft their own weapons.

Fast forward a week or so later, to find Allanak with the same dagger but only costing 70 coins, good quality weapons being the norm and very good being readily available as well.  It also seems the game may slowly be moving towards GMHs returning to their old roles of gear dispensers. This is mostly because outside of customs items, crafters hadn't been given easily identifiable items comparable to GHM stuff or to what you can find in Allanak stores. 

I am not saying that Allanak prices should be raised 10 times or that GMH should not hire crafters and sell goods, but in terms of quality, cost, utility and value buying from PC crafter should be the absolute ideal and preferred solution every single time. Shops shouldn't be selling high end stuff that is easily affordable by commoners, and GMHs should perhaps never go back to selling their own trademark stuff directly to common people again. Equally, I think the shop system needs to be tweaked so crafters maybe can survive comfortably, but still need to work with players to truly become successful.

I understand that the struggle is real for some players but the solution should be PC crafters, or use average stuff which should be the easily affordable and available norm. Players aren't entitled to the very best stuff. It really changes how the game plays when you stumble upon a random cave with an expensive item buried under a pile of bones or find someone who can make stuff you need. 

[Agent_137]

As a non crafter I'm enjoying having a crafter or two I know always online when I'm online and being able to easily trade materials and coin for goodies. I still obsessively check shops but haven't bought from them since like day 1 of my PC

[Riev]

I've logged in quite a few times recently to try and sell things, even after a weekly reset, and the markets are ALREADY flooded with 200 items a piece. It's kind of crazy.

Reminder. Weekly resets and crashes no longer clear out NPC inventories. They persist.


My experience is that things have calmed down a bit, but there IS that decision of "do I sell cheap to a PC for interaction, or to the NPCs because I can get that price". If the other PC were to go to the NPC, they're still likely paying as much as you're selling with your haggle, but that shouldn't be the point.

I still feel there are characters that engage in the mining job loop to earn their coins, and then would rather just go to an Emporium and buy their quality gear that way. Its valid, but if the difference in quality is significant and I can just go mine glass for a day, -I- feel its worth it to get the quality over the PC to PC trade.

Armor trade is an odd thing, because the prices are inflated, but there have been a lot of "just use this shit we got on the RPT until you can afford Salarr stuff". It can feel bad when people don't want even the basic armor, because why not just save up for a couple days. See previous point.

Can we get an "analyze <item> <-skill> where if you put -fletchery then it will show all crafts NOT in the fletchery category? That might help the eyebleed as well.

I always like being a crafter. The first few weeks were rough, because starting crafters is hard to break even. There are still a few things that are maxed out, and occasional NPCs that have run out of coin. I feel for the ones with Warehouses that need to make <x> amount of lose their lease, because it only takes one person to spam the markets and you're out of luck.

[Hulrouk]

As a GMH staff member, I would love to make the push towards a stronger pc-to-pc economy.  I actually find Dresan's example...really really ideal, where gear upgrades are valuable and treasured, and part of the journey, rather than a checkbox that needs to be done before your journey can begin.

I do not have any proposed solutions.  Just wanted to comment and let people know I was reading the feedback thread.

[dumbstruck]

As a GMH staff member, I would love to make the push towards a stronger pc-to-pc economy.  I actually find Dresan's example...really really ideal, where gear upgrades are valuable and treasured, and part of the journey, rather than a checkbox that needs to be done before your journey can begin.

I do not have any proposed solutions.  Just wanted to comment and let people know I was reading the feedback thread.

Okay. Former ST over a decade ago now, longtime Hostess player for Kurac. May I suggest that entertainers and Hostess/Hosts be empowered to sell certain goods. Like (outside of Allanak, spice, Inside Allanak Spice candies cakes and cookies), Kruth decks and custom Kruth decks (house variation but maybe a new design at some point in Collab w/house, idk, dice, smoking accessories, darts too maybe if their venue has a dartboard). You know, the general type of stuff you'd sell in a bar as an entertainer and likely trade in outside of performances or perhaps in tandem with them. IDK. Also food and drink. Rolling papers.

[helix]

The tl;dr of this post: Incentivize people to buy from crafters - any crafter - rather than just GMH crafters. Remove easy-access to high-end gear from NPC vendors.

Couple things: I so very rarely play crafters, because I have a different playstyle. My suggestions are based mostly on my experience playing Eve Online and interacting with the economic system there.

I would offer:

• Just reduce the price you're willing to pay for an item based on how many you have rather than having vendors say they have 'too many' of something. The law of supply and demand says that the price of a good is based on its supply.
• Remove the monopolies the merchant Houses have on the best goods.
• Remove the most high-end goods from NPC vendor inventories or limit their availability to one or two per RL week.
• Increase the quality of player-crafted gear by one step above merchant-purchased gear of a similar type.
• Remove the armor repair vendors.

My opinions on this subject could be considered radical but... Because GMH gear is simply better and also readily available, there's no real reason to use anything else. Yet there are something like 6 classes dedicated (more or less) to crafting things, not all players of whom will end up in a GMH house. I think Riev put it pretty well, so I'm just gonna quote him:

I still feel there are characters that engage in the mining job loop to earn their coins, and then would rather just go to an Emporium and buy their quality gear that way. Its valid, but if the difference in quality is significant and I can just go mine glass for a day, -I- feel its worth it to get the quality over the PC to PC trade.

I certainly feel exactly the same way, and I think this is the largest issue with Arm's crafting system. I can't remember the last time I bought something off a PC merchant that wasn't a flavor item (like a necklace or a ring or something). Making the above changes means:

• Characters will always be able to sell stuff. They won't always make a lot of money doing it, and they may be incentivized to sell to PC crafters directly, who benefit from a lower cost of goods.
• The monopolies the GMH houses have means that no one wants non-GMH gear - GMH gear is simply better. That gear is either Imm-loaded, in a merchant NPC's inventory, or crafted by maybe one or two people. That poses a real challenge to the six or so classes that are dedicated to crafting.
• Removing the high-end goods increases their scarcity, and also makes it to where the 'wait for it' player simply can't wait that long. It'd be better for them to interact with a player (or buy something that's player-made from a shop), get something that's good, then maybe wait for the high-end stuff to be refreshed in the inventory.
• Incentivize players to get player-created gear, rather than loaded or NPC merchant inventory, facilitating both an economy as well as PC-to-PC interactions.
• Removing the armor repair vendors puts a much-needed item sink into the game. Right now, armor can be repaired to pristine state with a low-cost, low wait-time method that has little to no downside. Removing that option means that armor wears out and must be replaced, or repaired by a PC.

I'll be the first person to say that my opinion is both radical and drastic, and also a metric ton of work for staff, LOL. But I do think that these changes would have, overall, a really positive experience on the average crafter's in-game experience, interactions, and sustainability. I do think that having weapons degrade over time would be beneficial as well, but... that's a whole new section of code, and that's probably a really big thing to do.

[Dresan]

I think some more effort needs to be made to ensure crafters are the ideal choice between NPC stores and GMHs. While some bigger projects like gear durability or a quality system for armor are needed, other small things can be done now to begin setting the right foundation.

1. Stores should only buy and sell cheaper items. Weapons should be above average only. Armor should be within a certain cost range for now without many frills. Cheap and easily affordable should be the themes for all stores.

2. Stores should continue to sell things players cannot make. However, over time PC crafting should be improved to cover these needs.

3. Within reason, certain products can still appear in shops from time to time and be sold with limits, randomness and higher cost. I like how some players have found camo boots in certain location but i go there and only find a skirt.

4. I like the idea of automated jobs. Like with tailors in redstorm, more of these should exist for different crafters types to live comfortable but not successfully. Jobs like jewlery maker and stone crafter could genrating more coins from these jobs than more in demand crafter roles like weapon makers .

5. GMHs should only be dealing with goods they own crafters can make and be helping them create custom stuff. The role is an employed crafter vs indie crafter, and employed crafter should probably be working on other things then just crafting. GMHs should no longer be selling its trademark goods directly to commoners. Fancy goods stores should increase prices to the four figure ranges.

5. In most circumstances, NPC gear should not be worth using or be cheap stuff at best to avoid farming tactics.

Ultimately shops should not be the source of income they are today, with automated jobs having more of a role. If there are no pc crafters, or you didn't choose a crafter subguild or you don't have large amounts of coin then you should settle for what you can find and afford.

[Kavrick]

It's not great that GMH vendors around the world will sell high quality gear at unlimited stock honestly. Not currently playing a crafter but I basically geared myself out with the best quality gear by week 2 of playing without ever buying a single piece of gear from a PC.

The salarri is trying, I do respect it, but he's only available if you're willing to stay up until something like 2am as a European. I don't think I've seen Kurac since I've started playing but that also might just be because of time zone stuff, a shame either way.

You can certainly make money as a crafter, things have calmed down after the initial rush on people selling to vendors. I do think the whole thing where vendors can target unlimitedly sold items for their random "passer by" selling stops happening so they empty their stocks quicker. I also just generally think a push for more PC to PC sales would be healthier for the game. I wish I could give details but there are honestly some ludicrous items you can buy straight from vendors currently in the game with unlimited stock.

[Usiku]

Not currently playing a crafter but I basically geared myself out with the best quality gear by week 2 of playing without ever buying a single piece of gear from a PC.

I'd be interested to know, privately, how you managed to make enough money to buy that much gear from the NPC vendors in that short of a time. They were designed so that the cost should be prohibitive of that behaviour and that interacting with PC merchants and vendors would be the only affordable option for most people, while wealthier PCs would be able to get something they REALLY wanted from an NPC if they were totally unable to find a PC and were able to pay a ridiculous mark up. If that is not the case then I can review the mark ups on the NPCs.

[Dresan]

One last important detail I wanted to add, after 50 to 100 IC years, the commonly used weapons and armorsets from kurac and salarr, like the camo gear and products or the ebon raptor sets, etc should have been transition to indie PC crafters all together.

These clans are playing with metal and amazing quality custom gear beyond what pc can make already for people that the regular commoner don't often interact with. They are fresh and innovative with a lot of staff support to enforce that. They can afford to lose some of the commonly desired gear to indie master level PC crafters at this point.

[dunecrawler]

For me to buy from PC crafters, it needs to be fairly easy to do so. I bought a whole bunch of items from one PC this season, but only because he was advertising and had things available.

But other than that? I don't know who you are. I haven't seen anyone trying to sell stuff. I remember a single posting on the IG boards from someone selling armor and weapons, but they can't be the only PC who has things to sell.

If I have the choice to spend RL days getting the name of a crafter, then chasing them down, then waiting until they actually make me a 'good' quality sword, I'll probably just go and buy that 'good' quality sword from an NPC instead. Even if I'm broke and have to spend all the coin I have.

'Very good' weapons still seem to be rare, so maybe that's another niche for crafters to fill?

[Dresan]

If I have the choice to spend RL days getting the name of a crafter, then chasing them down, then waiting until they actually make me a 'good' quality sword, I'll probably just go and buy that 'good' quality sword from an NPC instead. Even if I'm broke and have to spend all the coin I have.

Change this to above average and i would see no problem with this approach.

I dont think good or very good weapon and gear should be sold in shops. At the very least prices for good weapons should be what very good is today and very good weapons disappears all together from stores.

Average weapons and simple gear should be more the norm unless you play a crafter.

[rinthrat]

If I have the choice to spend RL days getting the name of a crafter, then chasing them down, then waiting until they actually make me a 'good' quality sword, I'll probably just go and buy that 'good' quality sword from an NPC instead. Even if I'm broke and have to spend all the coin I have.

Change this to above average and i would see no problem with this approach.

I dont think good or very good weapon and gear should be sold in shops. At the very least prices for good weapons should be what very good is today and very good weapons disappears all together from stores.

Average weapons and simple gear should be more the norm unless you play a crafter.

Most of these are in the shop because a PC sold them to the shop.

[Dresan]

Most of these are in the shop because a PC sold them to the shop.

Stores should not be buying or sell these good+ weapons or even gear valued after a certain price point. Its a two way deal, if people cannot buy from stores, crafter cannot sell. People need each other, or will need to make stuff themselves or settle for the average stuff they can find. Automated crafter jobs like the one in RedStorm for tailors should ensure crafters can live comfortably, but not successfully. We would move away from relying on shops for boon or bust profits, solving a few problems we see with shops today, while encouraging PC interaction. This would encourage a player economy, not a NPC shop based one. Players are not entitled to the best stuff in the game.

[Usiku]

We simply do not have enough players for a reliable, player driven economy. This would leave a lot of players entirely out in the cold.

[Tailong]

Most of these are in the shop because a PC sold them to the shop.

Stores should not be buying or sell these good+ weapons or even gear valued after a certain price point. Its a two way deal, if people cannot buy from stores, crafter cannot sell. People need each other, or will need to make stuff themselves or settle for the average stuff they can find. Automated crafter jobs like the one in RedStorm for tailors should ensure crafters can live comfortably, but not successfully. We would move away from relying on shops for boon or bust profits, solving a few problems we see with shops today, while encouraging PC interaction. This would encourage a player economy, not a NPC shop based one. Players are not entitled to the best stuff in the game.

There are players too that do not want to wait weeks, months for PC crafters to get the materials to make certain items. Some materials, it's not possible to get without considerable expense, bahamet, meks, some silt horrors, not to mention ankheg. There simply isn't a way to support this. I'll go to shops first personally, out of just sheer convenience. 

[Dresan]

We simply do not have enough players for a reliable, player driven economy. This would leave a lot of players entirely out in the cold.

I disagree.

It has nothing to do with the number of players. Even if we had only 10 to 20 players I would advocate the same thing, because with those numbers playing a crafter you'd be totally rich from selling to empty shops and never need to deal with people either.

Its ultimately about player choice. There is nothing wrong with using the average level stuff that would be sold in shops. If you feel you need the best weapons, play a weapon crafter, if you feel the need for the best gear, play armor crafter. Otherwise if you choose something like enforcer/bandit, raider/thief, raider/slipknife raider/magick subguild there should be some downside which might include harder to generate income and finding someone to sell you your own gear.

You are not withholding or preventing players from acquiring this stuff, or even making it hard, you are just making people choose between different RP experiences which is extremely important in a permadeath game. 

[Usiku]

I disagree. It would simply be a case of sheer luck combined with how close someone can play to peak as to whether or not certain items were ever available to them via PC. As a primarily off-peak player of 20 years, I am not going to dismiss that experience. No player should be relegated to worse gear than others because they simply do not have overlapping play times with whoever the crafters of good gear happen to be. The NPCs serve as the bridge between the play time demographics.

[Bogre]

We simply do not have enough players for a reliable, player driven economy. This would leave a lot of players entirely out in the cold.

ARPI did totally fine with a nearly complete player economy.

I think Arm would do fine with basic and sundry things available from shops, even slightly better than basic stuff, with PCs supplying the rest.

Most of these are in the shop because a PC sold them to the shop.

Stores should not be buying or sell these good+ weapons or even gear valued after a certain price point. Its a two way deal, if people cannot buy from stores, crafter cannot sell. People need each other, or will need to make stuff themselves or settle for the average stuff they can find. Automated crafter jobs like the one in RedStorm for tailors should ensure crafters can live comfortably, but not successfully. We would move away from relying on shops for boon or bust profits, solving a few problems we see with shops today, while encouraging PC interaction. This would encourage a player economy, not a NPC shop based one. Players are not entitled to the best stuff in the game.

There are players too that do not want to wait weeks, months for PC crafters to get the materials to make certain items. Some materials, it's not possible to get without considerable expense, bahamet, meks, some silt horrors, not to mention ankheg. There simply isn't a way to support this. I'll go to shops first personally, out of just sheer convenience.

This is kind of the issue? Instant gratification for mek/horror stuff when those things should be rare. And then it gives reasons for players to group up and do things together (like get rare mats) and work towards progress. When convenience means sidestepping PCs there is a problem.

Being able to just grind coins for whatever you want is not really a good long term game loop. There's a lot more in depth play required if you have to work with others to achieve your goals. Otherwise everyone's playing solo RPG to kit out their character.

[Usiku]

If there are specific items/ranges that might provide better RP opportunity (like hunts etc) if they are made less available, then this is something we can look at. But we also do not want to go back to a vending machine scenario for GMH players where they are catching a lot of pressure and unpleasantness because they can't keep up with IG demand. It's a hard balance, but we also want the GMH experience to be a positive one. Season Zero we could not fill GMH roles because most players willing to try those roles had had such an awful time they simply did not want to do it again, and those experiences were widely shared and agreed upon enough that most new players didn't want to give it a go either. We have tried very hard to radically change the GMH experience, so I don't just want to walk that back.

[Dresan]

I disagree. It would simply be a case of sheer luck combined with how close someone can play to peak as to whether or not certain items were ever available to them via PC. As a primarily off-peak player of 20 years, I am not going to dismiss that experience. No player should be relegated to worse gear than others because they simply do not have overlapping play times with whoever the crafters of good gear happen to be. The NPCs serve as the bridge between the play time demographics.

As someone who also hangs around offpeak for more years than I care to admit, again we'll just have to disagree here.

I don't believe you need the 'best' stuff to have fun, rather just any player interaction at those times is essential. Again, you can always choose to make your own custom stuff if you feel its that important to your enjoyment or really want to be that PK machine. Heck the above average stuff was what a lot of people used before quality was implemented and revealed.

There is also one more feature that this game has that allows players to have access to food, gear, coins, weapon, protection, training, and everything the game can offer on a silver platter. And that's clans.  Though off-peak and clans is probably another topic.

Anyways, while I disagree its ultimately not my call and I've shared my two sids.

[Roon]

Again, you can always choose to make your own custom stuff if you feel its that important to your enjoyment or really want to be that PK machine.

For the most part, players must choose between playing a character that can make great equipment or a character that benefits from great equipment. They're mostly mutually exclusive. There's a little bit of potential overlap in that you can choose something like the weaponcrafter subclass which lets you custom-craft very good weapons. That's about it, and then in terms of your own character's coded benefits, you effectively sacrifice your subclass in return for a very good weapon, which then takes three months of successive CC submissions to get to. And we now have a shop that sells comparable weapons in unlimited supply. By and large, I would say that the idea of custom-crafting equipment for yourself to use is not really valid or applicable to the realities of the game.

The apparent intention is for crafters, who generally don't need weapons and armor, to make those things for combat folks, who generally can't make the good stuff themselves. The problem is that the sheer chronological hurdle of custom-crafting high-quality weapons is so burdensome that it's unappealing to undertake for players who don't actually get anything out of it themselves except the money they might make selling them (and the best weapons are apparently one-off unique items, so how much are you really getting out of that four-month project for a single amazing weapon).

You spend your first CC ticket to make an above average weapon. Then you spend your next to progress to good. Then the third one for very good. That's three months just to make a weapon comparable to what can be bought from the fancy Salarr shop. If your class gets high mastery in the skill, you can spend a fourth CC making one single amazing weapon (not repeatedly craftable) of that kind. It's a hell of a lot of investment for something that your own character probably doesn't have any use for. If I was playing a full-fledged crafter, I would spend my CCs on more interesting things than that. I wouldn't cash in my CCs for the next 3-4 months to make weapons for other people. It's kind of a raw deal. Why would people do this?

[Tailong]

We simply do not have enough players for a reliable, player driven economy. This would leave a lot of players entirely out in the cold.

ARPI did totally fine with a nearly complete player economy.

I think Arm would do fine with basic and sundry things available from shops, even slightly better than basic stuff, with PCs supplying the rest.

Most of these are in the shop because a PC sold them to the shop.

Stores should not be buying or sell these good+ weapons or even gear valued after a certain price point. Its a two way deal, if people cannot buy from stores, crafter cannot sell. People need each other, or will need to make stuff themselves or settle for the average stuff they can find. Automated crafter jobs like the one in RedStorm for tailors should ensure crafters can live comfortably, but not successfully. We would move away from relying on shops for boon or bust profits, solving a few problems we see with shops today, while encouraging PC interaction. This would encourage a player economy, not a NPC shop based one. Players are not entitled to the best stuff in the game.

There are players too that do not want to wait weeks, months for PC crafters to get the materials to make certain items. Some materials, it's not possible to get without considerable expense, bahamet, meks, some silt horrors, not to mention ankheg. There simply isn't a way to support this. I'll go to shops first personally, out of just sheer convenience.

This is kind of the issue? Instant gratification for mek/horror stuff when those things should be rare. And then it gives reasons for players to group up and do things together (like get rare mats) and work towards progress. When convenience means sidestepping PCs there is a problem.

Being able to just grind coins for whatever you want is not really a good long term game loop. There's a lot more in depth play required if you have to work with others to achieve your goals. Otherwise everyone's playing solo RPG to kit out their character.

But you are right, I'd rather actually roleplay than worry about gear.  Hence my post. 

But I know of instances where PC master crafters had to put orders on hold for literally in game years because they can't get rarer materials.

I see exactly where Usiku is coming from, and agree 100% that turning over our economy to players just isn't worth it.