Item Customization

[Dorn]

One thing I've always thought is a little weird, is we have these very talented crafter PCs who do all sorts from woodworking to jewelry yet if we as PCs want an item customized a little more to our taste we have to approach a NPC Merchant to do so.

I was wondering and pondering today, whether there was something that could be done to remove the NPC part out of the equation and just leave a PC customize an item while still going through the GMs and requiring a crafter.

The basic premise would be, PC wants to have their sword worked on and fancified. PC takes their sword to PC Smiths until they hunt one down who works Blades and will do it for them. Between the two of them, they hammer out what the description will be, price for the PC Smith to do the work, etc, etc... and then the PC Smith takes the sword from the original PC, tells them it may take a while, and goes off to write to either a specific member of staff who does this stuff, or the general email with the item, the PC working on it, and their skill in the appropriate ones, and of course the item description.

At this point, it gets looked over, decided if it can be done or not, and if not, gets sent back with a "No" and a why, so the two PCs can maybe RP over some more about it and perhaps try again. If a yes, it gets changed but instead of having a NPC do the work, in theory, it was the PC.

I can see the GMs immediately going "way too much work along with everything else!" (Or maybe not) which I can understand.

If it was done, I'd suggest very very strict limits on just how often it can be done per account (So no having 3 crafters and swapping between them to send in 3 requests).

First of, I'd definitely say no matter how many crafting skills your character has. One per month at the most lenient. Less maybe?

Second, you could do things such as limiting the amount per craft skill. A PC has 300 in blades. That allows them to over a period of time, only ever work say... 2 swords, total. If they want to do another sword, they'll have to work forging: blades up another 150.

Could even limit it on a number of RPAs, with enough of them allowing them to try and make a custom item (The mud I got the idea from does this, but their RPAs give both a XP bonus and RP points. The points are then able to be spent on little customizing things once enough is accumulated.)

What I think are some good things that come out of this would be, perhaps we'd see a little more customized work without you guys having to throw in a several hour Merchant session. Less rush/push to get items done quick, and people would just have to accept if they're getting it customized it may take a while as it is being "worked" on. On the other hand, it also means for these type of crafting customization, no need to run these Merchants. Instead, do the more whacky/unusual stuff that PCs can work/train in right now.

I also think it would be a boon to crafters themselves. Some people will naturally be better at working/designing than others, and while you might go to crafter A to make the best sword you can, you also might then contract crafter B to do some embellish work on it. Of course, on the other hand you're not going to be pulling riln out of the game for this sort of stuff unless you put a transaction cost for the work (for some reason? Maybe special materials needed for that sort of stuff).

It also gives some roleplay to crafting, instead of just hammering away in one spot constantly.

I dunno. What do you al lthink?

[Fayne]

Personally, I'd like to try to take the GMs out of it entirely. Adding more work just reduces the time they can work on other things, or even enjoy playing the game themselves.

I think I'd like to see a couple of players (maybe not even crafters) who are entrusted to make reasonable descriptions who can write them up and make the modifications. It'd basically be what the GMs do now, except instead it's a trusted player doing it. They'd be sorta like mentors, and maybe even have access to ine of the OOC areas so they can do the work and have a discussion with the person who is supposed to be doing the work.

The reason I suggest this is because CLOK is unique in that we don't have to have creative crafters. Some of our Artisans admit they can't write a description for crap, amd some people who never craft a single thing are awesom at descriptions.

If you *really* wanna make sure no one makes something with an inappropriate description, make it so that the description has to be approved by two of these trusted individuals instead of just one.

[ydia]

I agree players should be able to do it.

[Jirato]

Personally, I'd like to try to take the GMs out of it entirely. Adding more work just reduces the time they can work on other things, or even enjoy playing the game themselves.

I think I'd like to see a couple of players (maybe not even crafters) who are entrusted to make reasonable descriptions who can write them up and make the modifications. It'd basically be what the GMs do now, except instead it's a trusted player doing it. They'd be sorta like mentors, and maybe even have access to ine of the OOC areas so they can do the work and have a discussion with the person who is supposed to be doing the work.

Never going to happen.

[Dorn]

I agree players should be able to do it.

This was already said in another thread it wasn't going to happen, this idea was a look at a possible work around without that happening but still focusing more on the players than on anything else.

[ydia]

Personally, I'd like to try to take the GMs out of it entirely. Adding more work just reduces the time they can work on other things, or even enjoy playing the game themselves.

I think I'd like to see a couple of players (maybe not even crafters) who are entrusted to make reasonable descriptions who can write them up and make the modifications. It'd basically be what the GMs do now, except instead it's a trusted player doing it. They'd be sorta like mentors, and maybe even have access to ine of the OOC areas so they can do the work and have a discussion with the person who is supposed to be doing the work.

Never going to happen.

And why not? are you saying you don't trust players at all? Sometimes I feel like everything tossed out there is rejected, instead of trying to meet in the middle or something.

[Fayne]

I knew it was never going to happen, just throwing my preferences out there.

[Dorn]

And why not? are you saying you don't trust players at all? Sometimes I feel like everything tossed out there is rejected, instead of trying to meet in the middle or something.

That's grossly unfair. A lot of stuff gets tweaked, changed, adjusted, or even added because of players, their opinions and ideas.

Just because the GMs have some things they will not budge on (For example, the Never Page), is no indication of how they handle everything.

[Jirato]

Everything we release in CLOK has a great deal of quality control work before going public. Even as GMs ourselves, we do not typically release items, areas, or permanent critters without having at least one other GM go over the work.

[Jirato]

I'd also like to point out that if a player really wants to make items and rooms, they can always ask to become a builder. But yes, I know that's not really anything to do with what Dorn was suggesting.

[Rias]

I always liked the idea of masterwork crafts (at least - possibly other possibilities, like the suggested one-a-month thing as long as it's at least, say, above-average quality, or who knows what other conditions) being able to be put into a custom description queue. The GMs look at the request and can approve, deny, or possibly offer a compromise description that the crafter can accept or deny.

I also imagine that queue filling up quickly and being a bother to GMs who are busy with other stuff, while the players complain that they've had a request in for several days/weeks now and the lazy-bum GMs need to get their acts and priorities together.

But in an ideal situation in an ideal world, I think something like that would be a neato system.

And yeah, as Jirato said, we try to QC each other as GMs, even - giving players the ability to just describe stuff willy-nilly on their own, that ... I would worry. A lot. Maybe that makes me a bad person.

[Fayne]

Maybe we need a QC representative. lol

[Jirato]

Maybe we need a QC representative. lol

Psst. That's what the DEV is. ;-)

Though I still try to get Rias, Uyoku, or Noctere to look over any permanent additions I add.

[Fayne]

So the QC guy has QC guys and gals? :O It's an infinite loop!

[preiman]

who does QC for the QC of the QC guys QC

[Fayne]

In all seriousness though, couldn't we have custom dezcriptions with an auto-filter for certain no-no words? Words like awesome, amazing, best, masterful, master, stuff like that? Those are all words that are obviously not gonna fly.

[Jirato]

I always liked the idea of masterwork crafts (at least - possibly other possibilities, like the suggested one-a-month thing as long as it's at least, say, above-average quality, or who knows what other conditions) being able to be put into a custom description queue. The GMs look at the request and can approve, deny, or possibly offer a compromise description that the crafter can accept or deny.

I could see us eventually adding something like this. Similar to how we already have the approval queue thingy for craft marks. It'd require a lot more code work than the craft mark system though, and it'd be pretty low on the priority list with all the other projects we have ongoing and unstarted.

As for people complaining about the length of time it takes to get something QCed, they could always cancel their request. Though this wouldn't allow them to resubmit another request in the same time period.

As for the queue filling up, nothing will ever compare to our bug queue, we can handle it!

[Kunren]

Rather than "unique" descriptions, why not post several long descriptions for all the current types of weapons and their metals on the forums? Made by players, approved by GMs, automatically becomes the long description for that style of sword of that metal. Would perhaps lessen the need for unique descriptions because looking at it won't simply say "a shiny bronze shortsword" (short description wouldn't be changed of course, only long)

[preiman]

Perhaps a happy middle is a few more descriptor options for when you finish crafting something, the ability to set jewels, use purchasable fabric or leather to wrap hilts and hafts, and paint or otherwise color the product?

[preiman]

also maybe the ability to do metal inlay, with a few stock designs for that as well.

so without any GM intervention you could still have a ruby pommeled long sword, with a leather wrapped hilt and rune carved silver inlay along the blade.

[Dorn]

I always liked the idea of masterwork crafts (at least - possibly other possibilities, like the suggested one-a-month thing as long as it's at least, say, above-average quality, or who knows what other conditions) being able to be put into a custom description queue. The GMs look at the request and can approve, deny, or possibly offer a compromise description that the crafter can accept or deny.

I could see us eventually adding something like this. Similar to how we already have the approval queue thingy for craft marks. It'd require a lot more code work than the craft mark system though, and it'd be pretty low on the priority list with all the other projects we have ongoing and unstarted.

As for people complaining about the length of time it takes to get something QCed, they could always cancel their request. Though this wouldn't allow them to resubmit another request in the same time period.

As for the queue filling up, nothing will ever compare to our bug queue, we can handle it!

While not actually doing items, would it possibly help if say the builders overlooked the items on the list first to look to see if they're properly formatted/spelling/basics before going "Fine" and bumping it on to the list for the GMs to actually look at?

I kind of feel like to ensure to try and cut down on a lot of back and forth over an item, like "I want this" "You can't have that" you'd definitely need a nice set of guidelines for PCs to use and perhaps go as far as say "If we say no, that's your one use for the month" or whatever criteria as well. After all, if it was put it definitely wouldn't want it to be something that ended up taking up a ton of staff time.

Might also be handy, if done, to have a separate board somewhere, or just a thread, where people could put the design they're planning and have players themselves go over it for another layer of double-checking everything before it even finally got sent to staff.