Making Traders More Fun!

[Skah]

I brushed the dust off my first ever Clok character today. A lot has changed for traders since I played him, and I'm not convinced all the changes made the game more fun to play.

I'm not going to play as a smith/miner with the current mechanics. I felt I should share my reasons why, and make some positive suggestions for possible changes. Please no-one interpret this as a rant! I enjoy Clok, and will continue to play my othe character.

1) Permits
I understand why personal workstalls for every trader were unrealistic and unbalanced. I don't even mind the stuff I lost when they were removed!

That being said, I find running out for permits to be annoying. Could there be a monthly or yearly fee instead, for Coalition traders?

2) Guild Tasks
These are new to me. I want a lot of the new abilities, so I took one and started working on it.

It took me two hours to smelt, cut, heat, forge, and vice the shortswords for a task. (Hace any smithing roundtimes changed? I could swear at 1500 smithing I used to be a lot faster).

I was paid 200 riln and 50 GP.

I could have sold the copper for the riln I got. The two permits I bought meant that I lost 100 riln performing this task (as well as 2 hours). If I had spent money on training I would have lost even more. Perhaps the riln recieved should be bumped up, or reflect the quality of the weapons turned in? (mine were exquisite)

As for the 50 GP, I need 4000 for my next ability. That's 80 50 GP tasks at 2 hours, or 160 hours total (Four work weeks) for my next ability. Maybe the points for tasks should be increased?

3) Mining
I didn't try mining out again, so some of this may incorrect, but I understand that:

• Player mines collapse more quickly, and require supports
• Picks require two hands and so lights need to be dropped
• Handcarts require two hands to pull
• There are no hireswords or lamp carriers
• There is no way to buy new mines or mine guards
• Many of the special events in mines (glittering caverns, crypts) have been disabled or made much less frequent
• armor strongly effects roundtimes
• pickaxes need to be regularly repaired

I actually agree with a lot of these changes individually, and may be misinformed about some of the others, but the net effect is a bit of a negative for me.

I understand this is an alpha, and guilds and professions are subject to change. That being said, I'm not convinced that permits, profession changes, and guild tasks have made being a trader more enjoyable, and I certainly have a lot more fun as other classes!

[Rias]

Don't know if the tasks are going to stay as they are, but just an FYI: You don't have to personally make the items you're asked to get. The idea behind this was that traders, back when I still considered them "traders" and not "laborers", would be resourceful and acquire the weapons (maybe purchase or trade for them?) for these tasks.

I can see how this rubs people the wrong way, considering how most people see "traders" as "laborers" and are focused on making items instead of purchasing/trading for them. Here's hoping the guild gets renamed soon!

[Vitello]

Corvus to Haiban, then out of Haiban to get goods, then back in again, then home. Giant 'bandits please kick me' sign.

Some items -must- be smithed by someone. This arguably encourages stockpiles that the game doesn't need right now.

I've been on hiatus from gp and ranks personally.

[xavier]

ok so this has probably already been addressed somewhere else, but I'd like to weigh in with some suggestions.
I agree with the special monthly/weekly/daily permits only being available to traders.
This would have a serious determination on how people would focus their attention on their traders i feel. I could be wrong.
guild tasks rewards.
foraging herbs is ridiculously easy. go sell x number of x herb to someone at the X market. no extra riln and the 40 gp you get now.
metal bars 100 riln is good, but up the gp reward to say 60 gp as with the markets clearing out everyday there isn't a whole lot of opportunity to purchase the bars just to sell them to another market so mining is almost always needed and that takes serious time on ocasion.
commodities sold to person at x market. These are almost never ever on another market because they don't have many uses so only get made to order. this now requires getting the metal either through mining or buying (see above) then using riln to get access to the workyard to smith these. i think 100 riln reward is fine cause it really shouldn't require more than two hours in a workyard to do this but could the gp be raised to an equivalent reward. I've not gotten an opportunity to do any of these tasks yet but so far everytime I've sold something to the market for a task it's been 40 gp. I would think 75 or 80 would be more tempting.
logging tasks. (haven't done any of these either but logs 50 gp plus riln, cants, 60 plus riln, flitches 75 gp plus riln.
weapons tasks are great exactly the way they are and they promote actual trading or at least discourage smithing to get them.
I really love the whole idea of being able to store wagons, thanks for this. I'm writing this post because I've finally made my first trader character and actually started serious work on him and having experienced just about every other guild in the game I'm not feeling the love. traders have so many abilities that require many other abilities that instead of being a labor intensive guild where you can specialize it's an encouragement for every trader to learn everything. This is good in some ways but not so good if you really want to promote traders of the western coalition to trade. Those abilities that require all the apprentice abilities are what i'm talking about. I get you have to know something about areas of expertise before you can do anything but I think it would also be better if those abilities were reduced in prerequisites to something like journeyman in two subjects.

I hope all this made sense. It's just really discouraging to look at the guildmaster and see almost 30 abilities some of which I am required to get abilities I have no desire to learn on my character at all.Comments and discussion encouraged please.

[merin]

Couple of my thoughts1

First, guild points. From what I have been able to gather -- correct me if I'm wrong -- guild points are accumulated by every other guild by doing something they specialize in during a risky situation. Elemancers casting their spells in combat, Eudemi killing infested, mercs and Dwadn hitting things.

For the traders, well artisons now, there are no ways to accumulate guildpoints except from tasks. While I consede that accumulating them for selling things at the market was a little unfair, I do think that there needs to be something done to alow them to have the same chance at advancement as the other guilds, and here are a couple of my ideas and reasons why:
1. Accumulating them for mining/logging/hunting.
There is a risk involved in all these activities. A gass explosion could one shot you, a cavein could cause bleeding that you couldn't make it back to get fixed. A tree could fall on you, one shotting you, or you could get mauled by a bear. This I believe would counteract the reward for risk thing.
2. WHile crafting.
I understand this isn't as solid of an idea, but, since it seems as if the artisons are crafters and specialize as such, why can't we get the guild abilities that other guilds get for combat for crafting? I understand with the faster crafts like woodworking or sawing planks that this might be too fast of an accumulation, however, what about for completion of an item? On a farther reflection, I guess brawling for the guilds that get that would really offset that due to multiple strikes, if GP accumulate per strike.
3. Up the taszk rewards. I'm never ever again going to go find 20 maple flitches for a task only for 40 gp. I'd rather wait the 3-15 minutes to get a weapons task for a tenth of the work and 10 more guildpoints. Make us actually have a desire to do them? I do like and see the tasks as something worth keeping, however, there's no reason to go and mine 20 pounds of steel only when I can remove the task and wait for 50 GP in 3 minutes via a weapons task.

Another side note, everyone seems to be learning crafting skills a lot lately so this suggestion is going to ruffle some feathers, but I believe that the artisons should be the only ones who can see better than well crafted items since, well, it is their specialty after all! I guess, however, that the abilities we have is supposed to help offset this but from my observation it doesn't, really. Everyone would rather make their own stuff rather than see the pros. Also, I love the name change. It's hard to trade with people who, whenever I ask for something, never respond.

[Elystole]

Another side note, everyone seems to be learning crafting skills a lot lately so this suggestion is going to ruffle some feathers, but I believe that the artisons should be the only ones who can see better than well crafted items since, well, it is their specialty after all! I guess, however, that the abilities we have is supposed to help offset this but from my observation it doesn't, really. Everyone would rather make their own stuff rather than see the pros.

Artisans get a few benefits over non-artisans including unique weapon types, gem cuts, and the like that non-artisans can't make as well as access to special materials like cobalt, bloodglass, or even sunsteel. I know there's been talk about further restricting things like bloodglass so that not only are artisans the only ones who can buy it but they are the only ones with the knowledge to refine it or work it in the first place. Rias has also mentioned adding new rare materials that they would further benefit from.

Non-artisans learn professions for a variety of reasons. One of them is that our "jobs" don't really pay the bills. Another is that the "pros" aren't around. I've had to learn how to repair my own equipment because our experienced artisans have vanished and turning your gear in to the NPCs is a virtual guarantee that is it degraded. There has been something of a surge in people practicing profession skills lately, but we went a while with virtually no activity on that front and I fully expect people to drop it as they get bored and for most, if not all, of the artisan alts to disappear like the others have. In which case we'd all be screwed again if we weren't practicing our skills.

[Rias]

One of my ideas that I'm sure a lot of people would thoroughly hate and rage over is to implement something similar to the musical instruments limitation to all skill categories. Have a baseline that everyone can do, and have certain guilds expand some. So say an average person could take up a single melee weapon skill (the "Melee" skill excluded from that, as it's a more generalized skill) and additional weapon skillgains would be lowered as a sort of spread-yourself-thin penalty. However, joining the Mecenaries would imply that you're focused mostly on weapons and combat, and therefore they could train, say, 3 different melee weapon skills without penalty. Similarly, most people could train up, say, 2 crafting skills and 2 more gathering-oriented skills without penalty. Artisans would have that expanded significantly.

I just pulled the numbers above from thin air, by the way. I'd also probably have different skills have different "weights" to how much they'd contribute to what you can learn before you take penalties. It gets more complicated the more I think about it, but anyway - yeah. Pondering out loud.

For what it's worth, Artisans will soon have exclusive access to an ability that will be required to forge bloodsand/bloodglass, making it exclusive to them. There are other ideas for similar trade secrets and such to make Artisans extra special and have an edge in the crafting game, while trying not to majorly screw everyone else over at the same time.

[Elystole]

One of my ideas that I'm sure a lot of people would thoroughly hate and rage over is to implement something similar to the musical instruments limitation to all skill categories. Have a baseline that everyone can do, and have certain guilds expand some. So say an average person could take up a single melee weapon skill (the "Melee" skill excluded from that, as it's a more generalized skill) and additional weapon skillgains would be lowered as a sort of spread-yourself-thin penalty. However, joining the Mecenaries would imply that you're focused mostly on weapons and combat, and therefore they could train, say, 3 different melee weapon skills without penalty. Similarly, most people could train up, say, 2 crafting skills and 2 more gathering-oriented skills without penalty. Artisans would have that expanded significantly.

I actually don't hate the idea, but I'm curious about how the penalty works. Is it that you have one or two primary skills and all of the additional skills are penalized? Are all of your skills, including your primary skills, penalized once you spread yourself thin? How do you determine what your primary skill is? Is it just what is highest or do you set it or something else? I'm not sure how it works now with music either.

I have a spattering of ranks in a few skills that I picked up while experimenting with things or trying to determine what my character's style is. How would those impact the system? Would we have the option of abandoning, clearing, or otherwise dropping skills that are messing us up that we don't want anyways?

[criticalfault]

I think thats really the kicker, if there is a smooth way of ridding yourself of unwanted ranks to avoid accidentally penalizing yourself, it should be fine. As well as keeping things open so if a new system comes out, people can abandon to do the new thing if its more desirable for them. I sure it could easily be worked out.

[Skah]

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of the idea. As much as I find the "gotta catch them all" mindset annoying at times, there are lots of interesting characters that use a wide range of skills that would feel limited by this. I'm also concerned about how this would be applied retroactively to existing skills.

I'd prefer the Artisans Guild (love the name change, by the way) get back some of their previous perks and facilities like coalition mine/farm/forest, workstalls (possibly toned down from before), hired guards, special workcarts, cheaper or longer term permits. Maybe even some new, stronger weapon and armor types that are trader only. Then there'd be real adavantages for artisans over other characters in their professions, and we wouldn't have skillgain penalties for everyone else.

[merin]

We do get different blade types than anyone else. it turns out we can make three different blades and six different hafted weapons if I remember right. I would like to see the artisan bennafits come back, too.

[Elystole]

We do get different blade types than anyone else. it turns out we can make three different blades and six different hafted weapons if I remember right. I would like to see the artisan bennafits come back, too.

You all should advertise what those are so that interested parties can buy them.

[merin]

We do get different blade types than anyone else. it turns out we can make three different blades and six different hafted weapons if I remember right. I would like to see the artisan bennafits come back, too.

You all should advertise what those are so that interested parties can buy them.

I personally planned on doing a lot of advertising about things like this once I can make anything worth a damn. Lol.