Individual differences in crafted items

I would love to see different qualities in player-created items, depending on the expertise of the crafter.  It would be nice if these differences were apparent in both functionality and when you assess the item. Standard descriptors could be used, such as:

This item was roughly crafted, and is barely functional...
This item was crafted by the hands of a master...
etc.

Not only would this make trades more interesting, but it would also provide a nice incentive for crafters to improve their skill. The best crafters would become known by reputation. I think it would be a lot of fun.

[JollyGreenGiant]

To tack on an extra idea, make it so that if you have a high crafting skill, failure might result in an item of inferior quality, rather than nothing at all.

[UnderSeven]

I like this idea too, having item quality flags on ALL objects, not just player made ones would give us a greater variety and people might appreciate repair and people who can assess that sort of thing more.

[Miee (not logged in)]

I fourth this idea, but I don't think it'd work on all craftable items.  More specifically, cooking items and brewing items.

Other than that, I like the idea a lot.  Ooh!  Maybe like, if you have a poorly made dagger, it has a higher chance of breaking.  Unless that's already in, of course.

I could still see it working on cooked/brewed items. We already have something like it in fact. When you burn a slab of scrab meat, it produces a different item. Burning something could consume some of the food in the process, thus making it less filling.

Even without functional differences though, it would be nice to see qualitative differences in how food tastes.

X is overcooked, but you could probably choke it down...
X is done to perfection, making your mouth water with anticipation...

[UnderSeven]

One problem I see with this is, too many perfect items. Like say the time taken between doing a ragged item and a perfect one is considered practice time and you work till you get to perfection then all anyone see's is the perfect ones anyway.  I think the curve would have to be VERY sharp in order to make it so the difference between good and very good is a few ic years of serious commitement.

[Miee (not logged in)]

Ah, good point.  I was thinking on things such as travel cakes, cakes, bakery items, ginka cream filled whatever, deflated angel food cakes, wilted vegetables, half raw meat, and so on.

I wholly forgot about the burned hunks of meat.  Thank you.

(After I posted, it occured to me that brewed vials could have a seperation thing going on, (i.e. leave a thing of OJ in your locker for a while.) but that might require a whole new desc.  I wouldn't mind putting in the effort to have writer's block while trying to write the failed items for submission, but I don't know how much effort this requires on the Imms' part and if it'd even be worth it.  Nice, but is it worth it?)

I agree that it should take substantial time to move from one level of quality to the next. And even at the level of master, there should still be the chance of producing items that are less than perfect.

[Cenghiz]

Say; something like...

Terrible dagger ....(3 IC days of experience).........3 'sids
Awful dagger .......(7 IC days of experience)..........6 'sids
Moderate dagger ..(20 IC days of experience)........9 'sids
Good dagger ........(70 IC days of experience)........12 'sids
Very good dagger..(250 IC days of experience)......15 'sids
Excellent dagger....(800 IC days of experience).......18 'sids

Would be real fine for me. So everybody would know that my white bearded human's daggers are far better than that child's are.

[UnderSeven]

It still runs into the problem of all the houses and people just turning out the best possible daggers by more or less advancing till they get to the top tier.  

The teirs need to start to get more vague higher up so a really good and an excellent dagger are harder to tell the difference from each other (dagger used just for example) to an untrained eye, and the difference in getting from one skill to the other has to increase, as cenghiz said, with the possibility of producing a slightly lower.  Might be nice if there was a critical failure chance AND a critical success so a perfect weapon could come out (something that can't be aquired without a really lucky success)

[Agent_137]

you could also have the item vary even if the skill level takes the same. Because as a professional scarab head roaster, you could still either:
A. Fuck up (critical failure)
B. Somehow end up with something better than you've done before (crit success)
C. Be in a hurry and not put as much effort into it as usual (lower quality)


This would add a whole new depth to the craft field. My old mud's craft system had this set up. Trouble was they also has a skill for percieving the quality, and it took awhile to get good at it, which was a PAIN IN THE ASS. Merchant's shouldn't be the only ones to tell the worth of a dagger. Or a shirt. Goddamnit, i don't care if i'm a half-elf thief. But I wear and see shirts everday, i can tell how well it's crafted.

[Vettrock]

Has anyone out there really had a character with 800 days playing time?  I've heard of 50 and 100....but 800?

[Carnage]

Has anyone out there really had a character with 800 days playing time?  I've heard of 50 and 100....but 800?

Excellent dagger....(800 IC days of experience).......18 'sids

[Vettrock]

OK I see your just taking about IC time passing, but skills are much more dependant on actual play time than total length of time that passes in the game.  If I only log in once a week for a hour or two, I can have a character that lives a very long time, but has very few skills.

[UnderSeven]

Well he could of said 800 skill increases or something, the point was though I think to show that the skill would advance at a curve so the better you got the more it took to get even better.  I actually think arm skills already do that, but for something like this I'd almost hope it did it more so than other game skills.

[Bestatte]

It would also require a ton of new items - I thought at first maybe just "assess -v" could show the quality. Now I think that wouldn't do much good. If I have a flawlessly carved jewel-hilted dagger, the main desc is gonna look a lot different from a piss-poor one. The lousy one is gonna have cracked gems, and a not-too-straight or sharp edge on the blade, and maybe the hand-grip strip of leather won't be very evenly wound around the handle.

The flawless one is gonna look flawless, period. Different qualities would show different flaws until you get to flawless - otherwise there's really little point in adding all those quality grades.

I'm all for the idea - I'm just not sure how efficient such a huge project would be. It would help the game certainly, but not having it won't hurt the game, and things work fairly well as is. There is always room for improvement, but is this much improvement worth the effort involved? I'm not so sure. But I -do- like the idea.

While it would be nice to have the level of detail you suggest, I agree it's probably not realistic. Which is why I would prefer a basic system of gradations, at least in the beginning, which are universally applicable. Over time, perhaps more specific descriptions could be added to make it even richer.

[Angela Christine]

Or we could just use the system we have now.  At beginner levels you can make a few basic items.  At expert levels you can make many items, and some of those items are very valuable.  Highly skilled crafters make fancy things that others can not make.


AC

I think that is a good first step, but ultimately it would be much more interesting to see gradations in the items themselves. A master weaponsmith should be able to create a finer bone longsword than someone just learning the art. It adds a depth to the crafting experience and the economy in general that would be an improvement over what we have today.

[spawnloser]

Me, I'm with AC on this one.  We don't need to do a major overhaul of the item code to incorporate this or rebuild every item into its individual levels of excellence as individual forms.  This would take a LOT of work either way.

[Meatwad]

It would take a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it.  Armor, for instance, when crafted well, would protect you better, be worth more, and weigh less than a poorly crafted one.  Weapons same deal, more damage, less weight, worth more.  Now we just need to make cannons out of bone and animal guts, and we're set!

[Angela Christine]

You can do this now, really.  http://www.zalanthas.org/ArmDocs/Community/format.html#crafting

All you have to do is write up a set of similar items that all use the same ingredients, but that are progressively prettier, more effective and/or more valuable.

Suppose that you want to use the knifemaking skill and a hunk of bone to make a bone dagger:

Difficulty: easy
Sdesc: a crude bone dagger
On failure: nothing

Difficulty: moderate
Sdesc: a bone dagger
On failure: nothing

Difficulty: hard
Sdesc: a fine bone dagger
On failure: a crude bone dagger

Difficulty: very hard
Sdesc: an elegant bone dagger
On failure: a crude bone dagger

That is how it could work using the present system, no re-coding required.  A newbie knifemaker will only have the option to make a crude bone dagger, while an expert knifemaker would see all 4 possibilities when he used "craft bone".

Under the proposed system you only see one option "a bone dagger" and your skill would determine automagically whether you make a crude bone dagger, a bone dagger, a fine bone dagger or an elegant bone dagger.  The problem with that is that it takes away your choice to make a crappy item.  Under this system an expert knifemaker couldn't make a crude bone dagger even if he really, really wanted to, because the code decides that he is good enough to make elegant bone daggers.  Why would an expert want to make an amaturish item?  I don't know, but it could happen and he should have that option.


AC

That's an interesting point, Angela. The only concern I have with that is the enormous amount of work involved. I would rather see, for starters, a system that uses a more generic set of gradations across the board. That would be much easier to implement, and would have an immediate impact on all trade skills. Still, good insight.

[UnderSeven]

I would personally rather see items that look virtually identical with slight differences only a trained eye could pick out.  I also would hate to see the game flooded with top tier crafted items.

[spawnloser]

The problem, Xerin, is that it will take a revamp of the item code, as far as I understand.  That is a LOT more work and would not be anywhere near immediate.

Not being a coder, it's hard for me to say. But I would guess on the coder side there would be a bigger initial investment for a global system, but much less work long term. With Angela's idea, there would be a constant flow of minutia having to be managed and much more work on the submission side.

If we did go Angela's route, I think it would be important to:

1) Get signoff by the imms for the basic idea

2) Establish general guidelines for the creation of the items. For example, how many gradations for each item, how steep to make the general learning curve, and how much difference in quality between gradations.

3) Assign volunteers to different crafts in an organized way so we don't duplicate efforts