Tailor subclass, Is it a waste of time?

[sarahjc]

SO I was having a discussion this morning about the Tailor sub-guild and a few good points were brought up. I have player a tailor before and I must say, if I wasn't clanned it would be impossible for me to play this sub-guild. And even being clanned I would either have to work for a house that -made- clothing or had a very generous leader. Why?

- You cannot craft raw material into fabrics
- You must always purchase supplies at market cost unless you have the haggle skill.
- Fabric cost (give or take a few items) when you are just starting out is more expensive that what you will get for most crafted items when sold, unless you sell to PC's all the time. Even still you may not make enough to get more fabric and will most likely ruin your supply.
- Dying is incredibly difficult and it destroys all your material. So unless you really like white, you will be spending a lot more to buy colored fabric or even more to learn how to dye something. In my entire time being a tailor, I was never able to dye something. I had good wisdom and lived a -long- time. I never got good at the dye skill. Ever..

Also another peeve I have about it is that, not only is it a non-cost effective sub class skill set, but you -can't- Tailor anything.. Why not just call it cloth working?? You aren't a Tailor, you can't take up hem's or fit pants with without a wish up to an Imm.

So ideas to help solve this weak subset problem..

- Craftable Fabric
There are raw materials in the world that can be made into fabrics, create a textile skill that allows people to take the materials found and craft them into well, Material.. Every other craftable has this. Why not clothing, outside animal skin.

- Lower Cost of pre-made Fabric
If you are not going to make fabrics craftable, at least make them cheaper, with all the ruin that goes into making something. It just seems unfair to charge an arm and a leg for a length of silk or linen.

- Add a few more Skills to the set
Adding an actual tailor skill and fabric crafting skill to the set would making it a lot easier for PC's to make a profit as well as making the skill more main stream with other skills, such as Armor crafting.


Anyway, as a past "tailor" these are my grips. I had a very cool Imm and a generous clan leader at the time I played a tailor, but if I didn't I can only imagine that my PC's life would have sucked.  I think this has the ability to be a very cool skill set, and there are lots of craftable clothing items that are really nice. However, It is just too damn hard to be a tailor..

[ashyom]

I'm on a posting roll today.
I'm in process of working on fixing the crafted clothes' costs.  They, I agree, are a bit out of whack.  Prior to my coming on board, we didn't have a guideline to determine value of clothes, so staff were just guessing on how much clothes should cost, basically.  The guideline to setting value on clothes was one of the first things I set up, but we've neglected to tackle crafted clothes.  I had to temporarily table this to work on higher-priority projects.

Also, re the raw - fabric.  I *cough* will say this currently being worked on.  But don't expect to see anything for a few weeks - bugs have to be tested before players can try and crash the mud with it.

Resizing clothes have always been problematic for a few reasons, most of which I forget.  I'll speak to one of the coders and see if he can't devise a workaround.

I need help with making more clothworking craftables for a certain project.  If you'd like to help out, contact me, and I'll get back to you by Sunday or Monday.

In the meanwhile...Suffer, or get creative and figure out ways to make money off clothworking - it has been done in the past.
Ashyom

[spawnloser]

Sarahjc, it has been done...and scarily well, I may add.  You're almost there, from what I can tell.  The only hint I will give you is to focus.  Don't get distracted from what you're working on.

As to making some craftables, Ashyom, I'm down.

[sarahjc]

I know it can be.. I have.. in fact I can boast that I was a fairly successful tailor, for while anyway.. But not without some serious funding to get me started, some Imm help and a lot of bullshit on my part..

I thank Ashyom for taking a look into it, and it looks like there are some really good changes happening to make things more realistic and playable for people who want the skill.

I currently don't play a tailor, but  I definitely will again.. Especially with what is coming down the pipeline..

The pink rhino flaunts her newly crafted neon green shift with pok-a-dot trim.

Yay!

[Anonymous]

Considering the moolah that a tailor can whip out, I think it's just about right.

[spawnloser]

sarahjc, I did it without seomeone else funding me.  That's what I'm saying.  I did it straight out of the gate with no help.  It can be done.

[sarahjc]

Hats off to you Spawn Loser..   I would have a hard time if I was anything else but a ranger to support myself.. And a super-hunting ranger at that.

But when I played one, I chose a Merchant skill set. I think it would have been -extremely difficult- for me to make it alone. Where as with other craftables, that is not true.. You can pay hunters for material, hunt and forage yourself, and material is not so expensive.

Yes, Anything can be done, but I would say that being an independant tailor is one of the hardest, and a bit harder than it should be.

But that is just IMHO..

[Quirk]

Considering the moolah that a tailor can whip out, I think it's just about right.

No, not at all.

A reasonably balanced economic system would allow a modest profit to be made on common cloths and items, enough to cover a decently skilled tailor's expenses on fabric and failures and provide enough for food and water besides. It would probably not allow truly obscene profits to be made on high-cost fabrics.

What we have currently is a fairly buggy situation, as ashyom has been good enough to acknowledge, where a few items produced off a limited range of fabrics give extremely high returns, but the majority of clothing items would appear to be uneconomic to produce - the cost of the cloth exceeds even the sort of prices PC buyers are likely to be willing to pay, as many PCs are likely to log into the game, buy their initial sandcloth or linen gear, and then buy no new clothing until they can afford silks. Expecting people to stumble around like this until they hit on the rare crafts that provide unhealthy profits and then rake in the sid with both hands seems pretty mad to me.

I will say however that the range of cloth in Red Storm seems currently viable, so if you have the itch to play a tailor and are wondering how you can survive, heading to Storm might well be an idea.

Quirk

[Gilvar]

Tailoring is a luxury/leisure craft. There is no money in clothing (and jewelry) unless your in Kadius who has the contacts to sell pricey items. Yes, there are lower-class tailors but they will struggle to survive just as everyone else, praying someone's pants rip so they need a new pair, etc.

But the fact of the matter is that a good majority of all independant tailors/jewelrymakers make their living selling groups of 5 items to the Kadian shops, and that's the only way they make money alot of time. Yes its a great way to make money if you can get it in before the shopkeepers run out of coin, but it shows that the only people able to market clothing successfully are the established merchants.

Edit- Bolded a section of Bestatte's sanity.

[Bestatte]

Tailoring is a luxury/leisure craft. There is no money in clothing (and jewelry) unless your in Kadius who has the contacts to sell pricey items. Yes, there are lower-class tailors but they will struggle to survive just as everyone else, praying someone's pants rip so they need a new pair, etc.

But the fact of the matter is that a good majority of all independant tailors/jewelrymakers make their living selling groups of 5 items to the Kadian shops, and that's the only way they make money alot of time. Yes its a great way to make money if you can get it in before the shopkeepers run out of coin, but it shows that the only people able to market clothing successfully are the established merchants.

I can't even begin to tell you how incorrect that is Gilvar. As a player of a semi-independent (not clanned in any city) jeweler PC I can tell you most assuredly that jewelery-making is a VERY profitable craft. You don't have to buy the raw goods, you can forage for them and not pay a single sid.  You can -easily- earn over 100 sids per RL day, without twinking, and that's 100% profit that goes into your pocket or bank account. Other than the tools you need to start off with, there is absolutely no cost involved in jewelery-making, and your profit pays for the tools within your first couple of days playing.

The stuff I make can be sold to the NPC, but there are also PCs who are more than happy to dish out 20, 40, 100, even 200 sids for a single item without batting an eye over it. If I wanted to concentrate and be a "full time" jeweler I probably would have well over 10,000 sids in the bank right now, with my 18-day character.

This is not an option for a clothworker. They will be out of sids before ever making anything a PC will buy, or before they have a chance to ruin enough fabric to make a profit on that one successful item that they can then use to buy more fabric to ruin.

[sarahjc]

I totally agree with Bestatte, it is a crafting skill, how can you say that it should not be exploted? It is not because a good majority of all independent tailors/jewelrymakers make their living selling groups of 5 items to the Kadian shops that there aren't a lot of independent Tailors. It is because the skill set is not designed as well as that of armor crafters and weapons crafters. There aren't a lot of PC tailors because it is very hard to play one.

If that was the case, explain all the other independent merchants in the Tribal markets, Ten'Surak, the Bazar, commoners warrens and quarter, the redsun commons, there are more of them then there are Kadian shops no? It is the way the tailor skill set is as it stands that is the problem, not that the majority of tailors sell to or work for Kaduis. That is like saying that the Majority of weapons crafters sell to or work for Salarr.

As an example when I played a tailor, the tribals paid better.. So who you think I sold to?

Considering the moolah that a tailor can whip out, I think it's just about right.

I have to agree with that statement.

Its insanely easy to make incredible amounts of profit with a tailor in my experience. Especially now that all the materials are available in Tuluk that didn't used to be. I think the solution might be a more balanced economic system. *HINT* ->see my idea in code discussion. The tailor subclass is partly what inspired the idea.

[sarahjc]

From what I can tell playing on a while ago, the cost of supplies far outweighs what you make in profits as a tailor. If you were to do this without some suplimental income, you would quicky become a failure.

Crafting clothing is not like other crafting... There are -very- few raw materials that you can use by themselves to make things. Most require fabric, and fabric is expensive and you cannot craft it.  That combined with the basic costs for survival, a strict tailor that hunts and scavanges only for supplies will be either dead or looking for another income source very quickly.

The same cannot be said for other crafts. Even cooks, which isn't it's own skill set.. have an easier time.

From what I can tell playing on a while ago, the cost of supplies far outweighs what you make in profits as a tailor. If you were to do this without some suplimental income, you would quicky become a failure.

I knew a tailor that could bring in 5000 coins -profit- in a RL week without even hardly trying.

[Vettrock]

The problem is If your gonna basicaly use the tailor guild as your income source, its pretty tough to get good enough to make all the sid without exceeding your newbie cash.

So if you have some other form of income, in time you can make a killing eventually, but getting to that point is tough with just your newbie cash, if you plan on buying food and any equipment.

[sarahjc]

Maybe after a while,  but with just being a tailor that seems very, very hard to me.. I am not saying that it could not happen though.

But when I had a tailor merchant, I had good wisdom as well and still I burned though my Newbie cash before I even had the chance to get a job with a house. Once I did get a job, I would also burn through my pay, outside what the house supplied me with. And since I did not have any other good skills besides teaching one language, life was tough. I had no fighting skills so could not supplement myself with outside hunting income either, the only thing I could do was scavenge, and that really didn't pay for my costs.

Its sort of hard when the supplies you are using are anywhere from 40 to 200 sid a pop and when you are good at one sort, it does not mean that you will be good with another. Once you are good at tailoring, there is money to be made -no-doubt-. It's just start up that is ridiculously hard..

Can it be done, anything can be done. Is it remotely as easy as anything else.. IMHO No..

[Anonymous]

Maybe after a while,  but with just being a tailor that seems very, very hard to me.. I am not saying that it could not happen though.

Every tailor subclass PC I 've ever played or ran into made a lot of coins with or without help from a clan.  If things are going to be done to fix the pricing on the lower end items some of the higher end items need to be adjusted as well because, like Dead Newbie, I've seen the 5k a RL month from a PC doing it all on their own before.

It should be very hard to get to a place where you are making that much money.

[spawnloser]

5k is not as high as some have made.

[Anarchy]

I played a tailor with my first PC, i found it pretty hard to get started, i blew about 3000 sid, but i was lucky enough to have the support of several rather friendly PCs who helped her habit, by the time she was good enough she made back what she lost with 2 items. *shrug* I dont really have any concern with how it works currently, but i do wish there were more craftables.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I don't think that a sub-guild needs to be self-sufficient.  You can't live off of the acrobat subguild, but it's still not a bad choice.

But I won't argue, since I know nothing about this.

[da mitey warrior]

If independent tailoring is to become profitable it also has to have some kind of risk.  Woodcrafters, lumberjacks, stoneworkers armorcrafters, weaponcrafters and fletchers all have to go out and risk their butts to get raw materials or be savy enough to get others to get materials for them.  If clothworking is reballanced to make it more profitable it should only be done in such a way that it doesn't become an easy way to make piles of sid without risk.

I don't know how cloth-making would work.  My understanding of how it works is limited, but doesn't it require huge complicated looms to make cloth?  I'm sure they exist in Zalanthas, they've been around for thousands of years on Earth, but your average independent crafter isn't going to carry around a table-sized loom in their backpack.

[Angela Christine]

I too have run afoul of cloth, more with bandage making than clothworking.  The most frustrating thing I found is that there are some cloaks that cost less than a bolt of cloth, and surely a cloak ought to be recraftable into a pair of gloves or a bandage, it can't be all that much smaller than a bolt of cloth.  But I've resigned myself to the fact that the crafting code doesn't work like that.

I agree with Mitey that the cheap materials the other crafts have access to are obtained at great personal risk.  I suppose flax and cotton could become findable or foragable, so that clothworkers could find raw materials, weave it into cloth, and then work the cloth the in the same way that leatherworkers have to "find" a hide, tan into leather, and then shape the leather into a useful item.


Other stratgies for independant Tailor wannabes:

1)  Shop around.  I've seen bolts of cloth for 40 sid, 35 sid, and even less than 35 sid!  Mostly the places that sell cheap cloth won't pay much for finished products, so you may have to buy one place and sell somewhere else to make a higher profit.  More risk -> More profit.


2)  Barter early, barter often, barter is your friend.  Knock a few coins off the price of the cloth, and then get a few extra for your product.  It can't hurt.


AC

[Quirk]

Every tailor subclass PC I 've ever played or ran into made a lot of coins with or without help from a clan.  If things are going to be done to fix the pricing on the lower end items some of the higher end items need to be adjusted as well because, like Dead Newbie, I've seen the 5k a RL month from a PC doing it all on their own before.

I would be entirely in favour of this. Making higher end items harder to craft or less profitable to sell while readjusting the medium-end items to turn a small but consistent profit (sufficient to pay for a sensible number of failed craftings) for a reasonably skilled tailor would balance the skill just fine, IMO.

Quirk

[Gar]

Once upon a time I had a physician sublcass PC.  He wanted to learn to make bandages and things.  I figured to sell them and develop better ones.  Well, it was very, very difficult and expensive too.  I ruined more raw material than you can imagine.  Fortunately, I had other skills that allowed me to make money.  All my extra money was always spent on raw materials.  Eventually I got decent enough so that my raw material cost (including spoilage) was about equal to what I could make selling.  As the story goes, my PC died, but he was getting ready to turn the corner towards making a profit.

I look at that learning curve like going to school.  You have to pay to learn.  If you invest enough time and money one day you'll be good enough to make it.  Doing it alone won't work unless you have some outside funding.  Mine was independent but a house or whatever would work too.  I think a PC that is independent and only a tailor would be very very difficult.  In RL you'd have to serve as an apprentice for several years.

[Tlaloc]

I too have run afoul of cloth, more with bandage making than clothworking. The most frustrating thing I found is that there are some cloaks that cost less than a bolt of cloth, and surely a cloak ought to be recraftable into a pair of gloves or a bandage, it can't be all that much smaller than a bolt of cloth. But I've resigned myself to the fact that the crafting code doesn't work like that.

The crafting code isn't limited to raw materials. In fact, any object could concievably be crafted into any other object (assuming its logical). Maybe you feel that a certain type of gloves and bandages should be craftable out of a cloak, or a pair of pants. Maybe an obsidian longsword could be cut down to an obsidian halfsword, or an obsidian shortsword. In any case, if you see something you think is missing from the crafting code, submit the recepies and objects (or a better idea might be to try to use already existing objects) to the mud.

Remember to format it all correctly, as per the submissions page.