Best Of

Can I just say that I really dislike how some people seem to consider reports as another battlefield? This is not about winning or losing or about what happened 50 years ago. Please keep your comments civil  and your commentary focused on the present and ideally, maybe do some testing  before commenting. And no, I haven't put out a single report, I've just been reading what people commented.

Khnemu said:

Razzafrazzin' Ladantine status razzafrazzin Sea of Despair razzafrazzin rabble rabble. You kill ONE sea wolf in the Inner Sea and suddenly you can't path in or out of a third of the Basin by area and can't get amnesty because His Imperial Corpsiness is undead.

I don't know what other characters you've played or how familiar you are with the whole crapshoot that is the Inner Sea/SOD and the quests contained therein, but the whole thing needs to be nuked and drained into the Undervault.

I very much like the idea of adding special org/guild based commodities that, like essence, allow special effects for crafting. I've always felt like some of Lusternian fashion and ddesigning is... samey, with mostly the same overwrought types of flowy silk robes (or grimdark black leather with gears on) etc. Of course, that's a generalization, there are lots of designs out there and people doing cool cultural takes. Adding in special org-related cultural products would be neat.

I'd have whatever the material is be refined from regular comms via a little quest, with a baseline supply available to members of that guild, but others in the org able to purchase it. Also, I think it should probably be a no-rift, always-decay type material, except when held by the guild in some way. In the most obvious implementation, there would be a "vendor" NPC who you recieve it from, and if they're holding it, it can stockpile to a limited degree and to whom you can return unused supplies. But this could also say... be a natural feature, a mystical hollow that transforms specific corpses combined with... egg comms to make the guildcomm, or something. 

Off the top of my head, three for Serenwilde could be...




This would encourage Serenwilders to craft things made from hides, stone/wood, and living plant material, and especially members of those guilds! Folks could also incorporate those features into "modern" Lusternian clothing. like a tweed vest with horn buttons... or a cupcake with a blooming flower on it. I was mostly thinking of tailoring in this rough example, but with some refinement they should work with all or most of the creative trades. 

The other piece of crafting in particular is the cartel system, which... I don't like at all really. I've almost entirely avoided interacting with it, because I find it really restrictive and frustrating, while at the same time promoting samey designs as you either have people IN the cartel or out with no other mechanics to manage designs, and the cost/effort of starting a cartel means a lot of folks not seriously IN to crafting just join existing cartels. I would prefer a far more personalized system overall, and think that it would also give more opportunities for cool player interaction for those who want to pursue it, and more autonomy for people who just want to take up a trade and make a few personal patterns, without those two groups having to compete for design space.

 Really, once you pick a creative trade and put in  some investment, you should be able to make a majority of the types of pattern, and should be able to write at least a pattern for yourself. It's so odd for a new cook to be able to make any kind of muffin or soup, but be utterly unable to bake a single cake! Cooking is the least offensive, as most of the skills are "skill level" in the sense of "dishes" then "delicacies", then "gourmet", but there are still pattern limitations within those skills and other crafting trades are nuts. The crafting skills should have the combat abilities stripped out entirely, be changed to miniskills or talents, and not prevent taking up an "economic" trade, and add a patterns/slots mechanic. Pretty much, give them the Aetolia treatment, where mercantile and crafting skills are separate and follow different mechanics. 

I'd then have cartels be "Pattern Libraries", where just like the existing book libraries, you can publish patterns, check them out, or store your extras. They'd also give you the ability to submit more designs, perhaps with some kind of credibility-type mechanic with other members of the cartel to help refine designs before they're submitted all the way - in other words, you could bump a design up the reviewer queue by getting it checked by other players who give it a thumbs up to promote it... but who lose crafting credibility if that design then gets rejecting. Orgs and guilds would be given one of these by default with a ministry or rank priv gating inclusion, outside of the clan system. 

So... you pick up tailoring with your daily credits, BAM you can design one pattern and keep up to three patterns indefinitely plus you can make all basic attire (socks, shoes, underwear, shirts, pants, etc.). You can "check out" patterns from a cartel and hold them like a library book or copy them to one of your slots for more designs, and can use public designs.  Spend some lessons in the skill, pick up things like mending, thermal, batting, use of special guild commodities, longer base decay times, more design slots/pattern slots, a fancier tier of clothing (splendors, suits, wedding attire?). Perhaps at some level you can pick a "specialization", like better quality items, or more base slots, or some kind of cartel-user upgrade? At Trans PLUS a certain amount of positive crafting credibility from good designs PLUS a bunch of good promotions of other people's designs  I'd also open up a low tier of mortal reviewing in that trade, as a further first filter to alleviate the pressure to review designs, hopefully clearing things up for a lot more submissions. 

A bunch of this would be a lot of coding work, but some of it could be stepped into gradually. When talking about "The Economy", it's projects like this that are worth that big effort, as they have real dividends in terms of engagement and enjoyment with the game world. A lot of the recurring discussion about "fixing" the economy seems to fixate on the economy existing as a self-contained good and valuable in terms of its ability to coerce players to engage with it. There is design value in adding friction to a game, placing goalposts that can't be immediately reached, that require engagement and investment in the game, and provide a satisfying payoff when achieved. However, it's important to remember that the climb doesn't CREATE the payoff, it's just a part of it - there's no point in adding a bunch of makework for its own benefit. The competitive market is not a universal constant, I promise! You don't need a win condition for it to be a good thing! Working on crafting seems like a great place to focus first, as it's a way for players to generate content for the game, making the game interesting for everyone and engages those players with the game more deeply. 



If I were plotting a general course towards this kind of system:

1. Start with backstopping commodities and consumables. Do as suggested and provide a constant source of necessities like clothing, curatives, weapons. I'd run this through each org, so that there's a "Serenwilde Communal Supplies" that dispenses tunics and potions. It'd be neat to allow for orgs to change these around as long as there's an item filling each slot, with a generic one supplied if the nicer stuff has run out. In other words, if I design and make 50 tunics they'd be dispensed to anyone who asks, and once they run out there's a generic "Serenwilde outfit" that everyone gets at baseline. This way, if other things FUBAR the gold economy, you can always get basic enchants and so on, play can continue. 

2. Create some guidelines for how guild-comms work, in terms of how they're generated in general, and what sorts of effects are possible. Then, work with Orgs/Guilds through the patron system to develop the unique commodities. I don't think this will require much beyond other patron request type things, and can be ongoing based on interest.  

3. First round cartel changes, I like being able to flag patterns as having requirements to make, could work great alongside the guild-comms.  Part of the goal would be to increase personal/local involvement in cartels, and not just want to join the biggest ones or buy a totally personal 1-2 person cartel to submit personal designs. Part would be to assess what works and what doesn't for cartels. Of course, you'd need to make it such that no one loses access to their own designs with whatever changes happen, might be good to do a big push towards marking the designer of unmarked designs. 

3. Start trimming the cruft from craft skillsets, pare them down to just crafting and offload necessities onto common skills or arrange to remove them. Many can be deleted outright, and most of this operation shouldn't require creating new code, though untangling old code might be a nightmare. Start with the most popular crafts like Tailoring, Cooking, Artisan. Brewmeister is an odd duck and will need special treatment, probably. Decide on moving to miniskill/talent model.

4. Start refining labor skills, the ones that input time and/or raw resources and output other resources. Herbs, alchemy, enchanting.  I suggest doing some creative reorganizing of the skills in environment, arts, herbs, enchanting, poisons and other to cobble together a new pool of skillsets from extant skills. I'd throw in two other wrinkles: commodity refinement as a set of skills distributed across the mercantile abilities (or as its own skillset), and mercantile proficiency - like aethercraft proficiency, with bashing for gold/resources as one of the potential proficiencies. The first will even the field between commodities like herbs and cloth and give players ways to be more self-sufficient in generating the commodities they're chiefly concerned with without adding back in comm mines, the second makes it possible to have bashing for gold not be the forever most-efficient method of getting gold. Some folks will specialize in the getting of gold and be best at that (as always), but there would be benefits to focusing on other things. Also, you can have more mercantile skills, but it benefits you to make a friend who has the second skill rather than just do both by yourself. 

5. Change craft skills to a separate model from labor skills, as described above. More independence, less pressure to either invest HARD or not at all, better ability to trade patterns instead of just products, less feast-or-famine in terms of variety.

6. Shift Cartels to library model as described above. More dynamic, more interactive. 

7. Work on fixing the value of labor skills in terms of trading/market. With the pressure to make back a big lesson investment and compete on a market with crafting trades removed, it'll be easier to see if there's value in making it work for labor skills, which already function totally differently. This basically would start a new roadmap though, but because of step 1 I think it can wait, and when complete I don't know that a working gold market will really have as much design value as a thriving craft system. 

Thank you to whomever introduced that lovely little quest featuring Hugo Girard! The reward you get for helping that silly bard is a song especially for you and... it is 10/10 worth it. Was glad @Nymaane was with Gurashi so they weren't alone when they first heard the call! And to @Sutekh, @Celaphaeia and @Tridemon for joining as well.

yes to selling designs instead of items. That is Imperian's model, and they also have the NPC caravans, too.

Isser said:

I've been doing the waystation quest for curios (and DC). I love the fact that the waystation masters remember how many each ingredient you turn over several RL days in, without the whole thing resetting

Waystation chain isn't perfect - a lot of the things in the quest chain interfere with quest completions elsewhere, so you can be competing with other people doing those quests at prime times, but if you play during down times and refine your timing you can swing through it pretty quickly. It's also nice to leave just one kitchen unfinished and then complete it on a fresh day for a strong daily credits boost right at the start of your play time for that day.