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Titanius

No more "X" when crafting

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Right off the bat I will say I know everyone is going to shoot this suggestion down, especially the veterans, as they are generally averse to change.  But here goes anyway...

 

When crafting, eliminate the fails (big red X).  Just use a steady formula which determines the amount of time required, and you get a success when the time expires... every time.

 

The formula would be something like: skill level x quality of material x item's default difficulty = time required.  So if you have a low skill, are using low quality materials, and are crafting something that is generally difficult to do, it might take, say, 3 minutes.  Crafting the same item with higher skills and higher quality materials might take only 30 seconds.  But whatever the amount of time it takes, you would be successful every time.  No more fails.

 

This way, if you know it is going to take your character 3 minutes 45 seconds to craft something, you can use your alt to get other work done and coordinate both your main and your alt so they craft different pieces of the project your building, like a cart.  All those "X" are quite the drag.

Edited by Titanius
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To me, it would be a lot like repairing.  When repairing, the length of time is dependent on the amount of damage and your repairing skill.  When the timer runs out, the job is done.  No fails, just different lengths of time.

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so this would either make things faster for high skilled players and much slower for low skill players, or will make things slower for everybody. somehow that doesn't sound great.

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Lol the recent obsession with prefacing all suggestions with "I know the veterans will shoot me down" as if it's something people do by force of habit rather than because the suggestions is bad.

-1 (because I actually think the suggestions is bad)

 

Edit: I won't spam up the thread with pointless nonsense, but posting "-1 with no actual reason given" isn't an obsession: It's a valid way of responding to a suggestion where there isn't much to say that hasn't already been said. Tpikol had already summarized why it is a bad idea, and not every suggestion needs to be debunked in detail since the intended audience will understand the reasoning without further explanation.

Edited by Aeris
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53 minutes ago, Tpikol said:

so this would either make things faster for high skilled players and much slower for low skill players, or will make things slower for everybody. somehow that doesn't sound great.

 

Theoretically, there could be no difference in time taken at all, just less frustration (especially for new players).

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30 minutes ago, Aeris said:

Lol the recent obsession with prefacing all suggestions with "I know the veterans will shoot me down" as if it's something people do by force of habit rather than because the suggestions is bad.

-1 (because I actually think the suggestions is bad)

 

As opposed to the obsession to post "-1" with no actual reason given? :P

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It's bad because it eliminates the explorative element of observing your character fail when coming closer to the soft cap. Are your tools sufficient? Is this beyond your skill? The game won't hold your hands at it, and it being enough of a button clicking simulator as it is, reasoning this change with "I can do something with my alt in the meantime" is a step in the wrong direction. And you can already do some hardcore multitasking, especially with higher mind logic.

 

"All those fails" the game is giving you are a pretty strong signal that you should reconsider your current endeavour. Unless you're enough of a masochist to grit through the odds. Either way, sounds like a change in your strategy is due, not in a fundamental aspect of a game that those grizzly old veterans have come to like.

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.let me be the fool that bothers to explain things further again.

 

2 hours ago, Roccandil said:

 

Theoretically, there could be no difference in time taken at all, just less frustration (especially for new players).

that's only true if you don't think about the consequences this would have in everything else. for example right now the hard caps for starting and continuing most items are very very low, because the chances of someone with 20 ship building having the patience to finish a knarr for example are very very low, and if you do it, its so hard that you deserve it. if this was implemented hard caps would need to be created and adjusted for almost everything (except for high end items added in the last few years,because those already have them).

 

¿how would improving items work if you can never fail?

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materials being damaged/losing weight is part of the reason for increasing skills/material ql, and with stamina being a multiplier on the timer up to 3x at 0% you'd get some really funky timers, it'd mess with skillgain hard as that functions off success chance. its one of those things that sounds good on paper but would require a complete overhaul of multiple game mechanics to work

 

but i'm just a veteran adverse to change who -1's every good idea so what would i know

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Keep the ideas coming lads, but drop that "veterans doesnt like anything" crap to yourselfs. You have to sell the idea to the public and actually have to think about the game mechanics in place and what that change would require for it to work. I know, learning the mechanics takes time and pretty sure none will ever master those, but the basics at least. If no understanding about coding, mechanics etc, i wouldn't be shouting  at the "veterans" at the start of your suggestion or at all. I would just post the idea as it is and hope for some explanation of why it wont work or isn't wanted. 

 

 

-1 to this idea, but keep them flowing :)

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You'd have new players complaining soon enough about why its taking 5 minutes to craft a single brick or plank

 

-1

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I am a noob with much less than 10 years playtime but still -1 the idea.

 

To be on the serious side alongside with the erasons already mentioned with very low chances if you are lucky you can get the item you try to craft in a few tries. Another thrill factor would be ironed out from the game with a consistent timer.

What also pops in my mind while I write this comment - imagine someone firing up 10+ fresh toons at the same time and start crafting items in parallel they have very little chance. Then shrugs and leaves the computer for 4-5 minutes...

Edited by Jaz

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18 hours ago, Tpikol said:

.let me be the fool that bothers to explain things further again.

 

that's only true if you don't think about the consequences this would have in everything else. for example right now the hard caps for starting and continuing most items are very very low, because the chances of someone with 20 ship building having the patience to finish a knarr for example are very very low, and if you do it, its so hard that you deserve it. if this was implemented hard caps would need to be created and adjusted for almost everything (except for high end items added in the last few years,because those already have them).

 

¿how would improving items work if you can never fail?

 

Wurm already fixes this for imping things like buildings or mine doors: skill + mat QL is evaluated to see if you can even try. No way a newbie should be able to create a knarr!

 

Instead, however, of the "soft" deception of making a player think they have a chance, and instead giving them a string of failures (which feels like a broken interface, and which also I know from experience can happen randomly regardless of your skill), I'd tell the newbie (via a lore-like message), "Skill or material QL too low; try getting your shipbuilding skill to X or tool/mat to QL Y".

 

I'd do the same for imping high QL items.

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47 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

 

Wurm already fixes this for imping things like buildings or mine doors: skill + mat QL is evaluated to see if you can even try. No way a newbie should be able to create a knarr!

 

Instead, however, of the "soft" deception of making a player think they have a chance, and instead giving them a string of failures (which feels like a broken interface, and which also I know from experience can happen randomly regardless of your skill), I'd tell the newbie (via a lore-like message), "Skill or material QL too low; try getting your shipbuilding skill to X or tool/mat to QL Y".

 

I'd do the same for imping high QL items.

if you dont even understand the diference between imping buildings and tools i dont know why i bother to respond but here i go.

 

ill tell you from my experience having over 90 or 95 skill in all gathering and most crafting skills,  strings of failures don't just happen at any skill level.

you don't seem to get that i used one of hundreds of things that would be affected by this, and i used the idea of low skilled players building a knarr because i did it myself so its not a "deception" to make them think they have a chance, they do have a chance,if they have more time than sense, like i did. thats why wurm was great.

 

now il listen to my own forum signature and go back to being gone from wurm. see you in a couple of years when i feel like checking the forums again,if you and wurm are still around by then.because the OP is right about one things, a lot of "veterans" dont like changes made in the past, thats why a lot of us are not around anymore.

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38 minutes ago, Tpikol said:

if you dont even understand the diference between imping buildings and tools i dont know why i bother to respond but here i go.

 

ill tell you from my experience having over 90 or 95 skill in all gathering and most crafting skills,  strings of failures don't just happen at any skill level.

you don't seem to get that i used one of hundreds of things that would be affected by this, and i used the idea of low skilled players building a knarr because i did it myself so its not a "deception" to make them think they have a chance, they do have a chance,if they have more time than sense, like i did. thats why wurm was great.

 

now il listen to my own forum signature and go back to being gone from wurm. see you in a couple of years when i feel like checking the forums again,if you and wurm are still around by then.because the OP is right about one things, a lot of "veterans" dont like changes made in the past, thats why a lot of us are not around anymore.

 

I'm effective 99 at most crafting skills, and still get strings of failures at sub-80 QL (with 90+ QL tools). With Epic speeds, it's a petty annoyance; it's not going to materially affect anything (unless I'm imping with moonmetal), it just adds frustration.

 

As to throwing time away doing things with very low chances of success, if you want to go to Las Vegas, I can't stop you, but as a developer, I'd be ashamed to exploit the gambling addiction inherent in some people.

 

Rather, for game development, I much prefer hard goals as capability gates. Take prospecting for instance: at 90 skill, you can see how many hits a vein has left. No RNG, no random failures. That goal kept me grinding, which more importantly, kept me -playing-. On the other hand, if at a much lower skill I could prospect a vein ten times, and see the exact number of hits in it once out of the ten, I'm much less likely to bother grinding the skill.

 

If all of Wurm capabilities were hard gated, I'd be utterly thrilled. :) Hard goals provide a clear incentive to keep playing: it's using the lure of the "carrot", not the frustration of the "stick". Any time a game developer relies on the stick when they could use the carrot instead, they've hurt their own game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Something that the OP is overlooking (since they have little experience in the game) is that the more of your queue that you use the longer it takes to create/attach an item. So with this suggestion of "success" you are just extending your creation/attachment timers to extremely long intervals. Although this may be beneficial for those "players" who would just start a creation/attach action and then divert their attention elsewhere for that extended period of time, for those who actually attend the game while they are playing it it is much better to just use a smaller portion of their queue with "failures" for a much shorter creation/attachment time.

 

Especially for newer players with low skill levels, they are much better off not using there queue at all and just once again pressing the create/continue button on the crafting window since each additional queue of their total of 3 will extend the next action exponentially longer. So the only advantage this suggestion would have to possibly eliminate some of the boredom and frustration of staying with and progressing in the game would be if the "player" pays no attention to the game for that period of time and is rather doing something else, whatever that might be. As my quotes around the word player would imply, it would be hard in my opinion to consider them playing the game under the circumstances of this suggestion.

 

Even for the more experienced players with higher skills and enchanted tools according to their needs/advantages, this suggestion would just have the same results only shortened somewhat. That being the case it would be little value to them either unless they are using this same "player" approach of absenteeism. My conclusion is that in either case it is not a positive suggestion since it only encourages less participation in the actual experience of progressing in the game. For all the frustrations of creation/attachment failures this is how the game is designed and when you finally achieve the end results it can be satisfying because of the perseverance this required.

 

We "veterans" of the game may be an odd bunch but over time we have learned to adapt ourselves to the game's general concepts and objectives to achieving them. Part of this is discovering if the game provides the individual enough enjoyment to continue playing it in spite of parts of it that we would rather have changed to function differently. This is fortunate because if all players had things changed to suit them the game would be a mix of implausible contradictions that would make it impossible to play. It really dosen't take long for the new player to find out if the game is enjoyable for them or not. Those who survive this period of time then have the long road of learning and finding enjoyment in their progression within it. If you are around here a year or two from now you may find more agreement in sensible suggestions that you make since then you should have more sound experiences within the game to base them upon. Then again some few may label you a "veteran" and you know how that goes.

 

Happy Trails

=Ayes=

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Difficult to create items should remain difficult to create, but there are definitely some situations where crafting failures do more harm than good.

 

If you can remember being a newbie with low skills and low quality tools, do you recall how annoying it is to keep failing at making things like kindling, bricks, planks, and nails? For things like this (bulk items that can't be improved), I think it would better to treat crafting "failure" the way some other things in the game treat "failure": You still get the product, but at 1.0QL and with whatever amount of damage applied depending on how badly you failed.

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19 hours ago, Ayes said:

Although this may be beneficial for those "players" who would just start a creation/attach action and then divert their attention elsewhere for that extended period of time, for those who actually attend the game while they are playing it it is much better to just use a smaller portion of their queue with "failures" for a much shorter creation/attachment time.

 

Are you trying to say that repeated failures are more fun than being able to fill your queue, give your wrist a rest, and go AFK for a bit, or even just think about what's next?

 

Wow! :)

 

If long timers are really such an issue, shorten them. Figure out what "short enough" actually means to keep players interested, and only allow players to do -those- actions (always successfully). If they try an action that will be too long, tell them to improve skill X to Y first, and make sure there's a path to do that from scratch/zero skill/zero help with short enough timers.

 

(And I note your snarky mention of "players" who aren't enthralled by mindlessly watching progress timers inch toward completion. Sigh. :( )

 

 

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-1

No. I'm not a veteran player by any stretch but I would absolutely hate long timers that guarantee success. For one, barely passing a threshold to create something and just giving it a long timer doesn't equate to trying and failing to attach a piece.  Given enough time with two boards doesn't make someone's bad attempt at making a shelf suddenly successful. It's a trial and error until they figure out how to do it right.  Sometimes in that failure you need a new board or five, and you bend all of the nails you tried using.

Second, long action timers are exactly why I hate certain skills, like meditation and the old fishing. AFK skilling is boring AF, and long timers make me want to just go AFK or play something else. 

Third, you take away the thrill of success at a low threshold. Maybe I shouldn't be able to build a larder with low skill, but when I do, I'm proud of that accomplishment. Now you're hoping to take that away because a red X hurts your feelings? No thanks.

Edited by Seriphina
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Sounds like a good idea but I think it would require a huge overhaul and mess a lot of things up on the way.

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