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Farmerbob

QOL suggestion - replace hands with water as a pottery tool

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One of the most common complaints one sees from new players learning the game is when they first discover pottery.  Figuring out how to use one's hands as tools and then apply it to making pottery items is painful and annoying for new players.

 

Here's my suggestion:  Alter pottery mechanics so that using hands as a tool is changed to using water as a tool.

 

That's it.  Simple fix.  I suspect it will even be a moderately simple code fix.  An odd outlier crafting function is suddenly replaced with a tool and function that matches the rest of the game.  It even preserves the existence of a pottery improving tool that isn't able to be enhanced by enchantments.  Enchanting water was made useless years ago.

 

It is a given in every single other trade skill that you are using your hands as a tool.  It should be a given in pottery as well.  Using water as part of unfired pottery creation and improvement makes sense, and would be a QOL improvement, IMHO, especially for new players learning the game.

 

I cannot offhand remember any other crafts that require the use of hands as a tool, but if there are any, please revisit them as well.

 

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I can understand your desire to improve the game mechanics for new players, however, pottery is surely one of the skills where the use of hands as a tool is absolutely needed in real life to mould and shape and not just to hold an implement. I feel that this should be understood and expected as such by most people?

 

I think it is important not to change things unless there is a glaring reason to do so and I am afraid I do not see one here..

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or ... to let warm up my suggestion from a few years back... let us use a glove for pottery which then could be enchanted. That way it would not be auto-100ql like water.

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Yes, the suggestion of gloves was already around. Pottery has the problem anyway that there are no buffs (potions etc.), that all pottery stuff imps horribly badly and slowly so that it is a non ending source of frustration. Maybe one could introduce "potter's gloves" using e.g. cloth gloves, fat, and wax, which would be bit like rubber gloves, and could be imped and enchanted. They might then be an addition, not a prerequisite when using hand so that one could still create a bowl and a jar in the wild when needed.

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26 minutes ago, Spolmit said:

I can understand your desire to improve the game mechanics for new players, however, pottery is surely one of the skills where the use of hands as a tool is absolutely needed in real life to mould and shape and not just to hold an implement. I feel that this should be understood and expected as such by most people?

 

I think it is important not to change things unless there is a glaring reason to do so and I am afraid I do not see one here..

 

As a person who has worked with my hands in various professions from carpenter to steel mill maintenance mechanic for about half of my adult life, I can tell you that most trades require extensive use of hands as positioning, shaping, and organizational tools.  Pottery is nothing special.

 

From what I have seen, only the most rough and crude pottery is done with dry hands.  Most shaping or creation is done with wet hands, or with tools.  Hence, my suggestion of water.

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1 hour ago, Farmerbob said:

From what I have seen, only the most rough and crude pottery is done with dry hands.  Most shaping or creation is done with wet hands, or with tools.  Hence, my suggestion of water.

Water is already in the process, for watering, so are tools, shaper and spatula. Having water twice would be wierd.

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The biggest problem with pottery is that with the exception of smelting pots (and that's rare) there is not much use for high quality pottery.

 

/avoids ranting after grinding to 96

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2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Water is already in the process, for watering, so are tools, shaper and spatula. Having water twice would be wierd.

 

Then simply remove hands for either imping or creation, and use water as a creation tool, instead of hands.  Or replace hands with clay, to make it more like almost every single other craft out there.  As far as I know, of the major creation classes, only pottery doesn't use it's own resource in improvement.

 

Pottery is simply weird and different.  I won't go as far as saying broken, but I'm thinking it.

 

Stonecutting uses one tool (chisel) and rock.

 

Pottery could do just fine using water, clay, shaper, and spatula.  Hands can be simply an invisible part of the process like for every other skill.

Edited by Farmerbob
Clarity

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2 hours ago, ChampagneDragon said:

The biggest problem with pottery is that with the exception of smelting pots (and that's rare) there is not much use for high quality pottery.

 

/avoids ranting after grinding to 96

 

Compasses ?  Not a great deal of a market for them, but if you want a good one, you need a good pottery jar to base it on.

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8 hours ago, Farmerbob said:

Compasses ?

 

I still haven't worked out why a pottery jar plus an iron needle and olive oil make a brass compass  😜

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13 hours ago, Farmerbob said:

Figuring out how to use one's hands as tools and then apply it to making pottery items is painful and annoying for new players.

 

I have found a lot of things painful and annoying as a new player, use of the hand as a tool simply wasn't one of those things.  Once green highlighty glow is associated with activation and double clicking is also associated with activation, well, those two dots are about the only ones to join.  

 

My issue with using water would be a question around how much is used. But then, that is sometimes a bit of an issue with processes in Wurm, using ridiculous amounts of materials.

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6 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

 

I have found a lot of things painful and annoying as a new player, use of the hand as a tool simply wasn't one of those things.  Once green highlighty glow is associated with activation and double clicking is also associated with activation, well, those two dots are about the only ones to join.  

 

My issue with using water would be a question around how much is used. But then, that is sometimes a bit of an issue with processes in Wurm, using ridiculous amounts of materials.

 

Water is one of the few resources in the game which are almost limitless and normally very easy to acquire.  Most people build deeds on water, and those that do not are generally pretty smart about getting a well built, ASAP.  Using an amount of water based on the mass of the created or imped object would work fine.  That's how Smithing uses water already.  The amount of water used is based on the weight of the smithed item.

 

Hell, using clay to imp clay only makes sense.  When forming clay objects, you are constantly taking bits and pieces away, and adding different bits.  What I find funny is using wood to imp wood, or metal to imp metal.  Where, exactly, are you putting that half pound of wood that you are adding to that mast, or yoke?  Where is that quarter pound of iron going when you imp a longsword?  For a boat or wagon, or furniture, using raw materials makes sense, you are replacing pieces, but for one-piece items?  LOL.

 

But the object here is not to make fun of Wurm mechanics, as amusing as that can be.

 

The object here is to ask for a QOL improvement to pottery, to bring it inline with how other create/improve crafts work.  Obviously, every craft requires background use of hands as a tool, but only pottery requires us to select hands as a primary tool.

 

It's just one more weird quirk that is a stumbling block on the learning curve for the game.

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On 2/21/2020 at 12:04 AM, Farmerbob said:

Obviously, every craft requires background use of hands as a tool, but only pottery requires us to select hands as a primary tool.

 

This is because in pottery the hand IS the primary tool.  Pottery is fundamentally different to the other crafts.  In all the others the hand is necessarily employing a tools, but in fundamental pottery the hand is used directly on the material.

 

On 2/21/2020 at 12:04 AM, Farmerbob said:

It's just one more weird quirk that is a stumbling block on the learning curve for the game.

 

As a newbie still well and truly on the learning curve, I disagree.  This made simple sense to me.  

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As already said, water is part of the clay/pottery improvement toolset. It would be illogical to create a clay item by water instead of by hand.

 

I am all for improvement of the pottery skill, but not in the proposed way. As proposed several times, gloves (maybe waxed, oiled or so) could serve as tool to ease creation or imping by being enchantable. It should not compromise the possibility to just make some pottery stuff by hand in the wild, e.g. after having created a crude shovel to dig the clay etc.

 

That said, I want to emphasize that I welcome every improvement of the pottery skill. That one is arguably the worst of all skills I have trained up (and I am over level 89 now), the most tedious and frustrating which is why most players do not bother to grind it as there are only 2 items where higher ql makes any sense, namely jar (compass), and smelting pot.

 

Clay items tend to decay absurdely fast, even on deed. Moreover, imping progress is painfully slow, damage by failures and ql loss by repair absurdely high, all ways worse than the not even beloved blacksmithing items needle and horseshoe. Leaving a pottery project unattended for a day means losing the work of 2 days as one is re-imping in circles (always losing ql in repair).

 

Compared with pottery, weapon smithing is a pleasant and relaxing skill though skill gain in pottery is fairly decent.

 

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3 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Compared with pottery, weapon smithing is a pleasant and relaxing skill though skill gain in pottery is fairly decent.

 

😜 I am currently grinding my pottery skill simply repairing and imping the same smelting pot back up to low-middling QL every couple of days.  I expect sooner or later I will miss a day and it will have turned to dust.

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On ‎2‎/‎23‎/‎2020 at 3:21 PM, Ekcin said:

As already said, water is part of the clay/pottery improvement toolset. It would be illogical to create a clay item by water instead of by hand.

 

 

You always use your hands with every craft.  Try holding tools without hands.  Furthermore, almost every potter in real life uses water whenever they shape clay with their hands.  They will keep a bowl of water near the work area, and dip their hands in it to keep their hands wet.

 

That said, again, this isn't about hyper-realism here (though in this case it would make sense) - it is about bringing pottery in-line with other improvement crafts.

 

No other craft requires direct use of the hands as a creation and imping tool.  Over the many years I have played the game, I have heard countless new players asking in chat how to make pottery items because the mechanics are different from everything else in the game.

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I've stayed out of this for a while now but I can't contain myself any longer. Both clay and water are already imping items for doing pottery so I don't see it making any sense to say we should add them. If anything this post should be entitled "remove the use of the hand as a tool".  Regarding your assertion that other crafts use hands just as much I don't think I can agree. Yes most everything you do requires you to have a hand, either to grasp an object or a tool. However very few of them actually use your hand as a tool. Kneading bread, and doing the initial shaping of pottery are among the few that come to mind. I don't use my hand to pick away bits of wood or stone, nor to chop up a tomato. It is certainly involved, as it is with eating, riding a horse, or unloading a bsb for that matter, but it is not a primary element in these actions.

 

The idea that the hand shouldn't be required because it follows a different paradigm from all other crafting is somewhat valid. Heuristically it makes sense though so its not really a bad design, just doesn't fit with the rest very well. I don't know that I can recall anyone who felt it was confusing that a hand was used in all my years, only that they had no idea how to actually activated their hand in the first place.

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On ‎2‎/‎24‎/‎2020 at 9:30 PM, CreZ said:

...only that they had no idea how to actually activated their hand in the first place.

 

This is the main point.  Eliminating the game mechanic that is confusing because it is confusing.

 

Replace it with water?  Fine.

Replace it with clay?  Fine.

Replace it with a special glove?  Fine. 

 

As long as it brings pottery inline with other improvement crafts, that's really all that is important.

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1 hour ago, Farmerbob said:

This is the main point.  Eliminating the game mechanic that is confusing because it is confusing.

Survival in the wild is confusing. Having to rummage on rock for stone shards and iron rock or forage on grass for branches and iron rock is confusing. Creating crude tools is confusing. Wurm is confusing. 

 

Only because you started over with a comfortable set of pre-crafted tools and gear there is no point to destroy the survival part. Hunter-gatherers only have their hands and a few crude tools to start their initial clay bowl and harden it to pottery in a campfire. It would be shameful to remove that.

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On ‎2‎/‎27‎/‎2020 at 5:43 AM, Ekcin said:

Survival in the wild is confusing. Having to rummage on rock for stone shards and iron rock or forage on grass for branches and iron rock is confusing. Creating crude tools is confusing. Wurm is confusing. 

 

Only because you started over with a comfortable set of pre-crafted tools and gear there is no point to destroy the survival part. Hunter-gatherers only have their hands and a few crude tools to start their initial clay bowl and harden it to pottery in a campfire. It would be shameful to remove that.

 

Then use clay on clay to create the basic object, and remove hands for an imping tool, leaving water, spatula, and shaper.

 

I played before crude tools ever existed.  They do, however, make sense.  You forage for parts, and put the parts together to make crude tools.  Just like you do for normal tools.

 

Using hands as a direct tool for ONLY one craft makes no sense.  This is a new player 'Quality of Life' issue.  It always has been.  Since I started playing, I can't count the number of times I have seen new players asking "How do I make a bowl" or "Where is the hand tool?" in chat.

 

When a significant number of new players in a crafting game can't grok how to make basic items, you know there's a problem.

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Those little imping icons to the right of the items being imped should serve more than to tell us what tools to use for the next imp - they should provide a way of accessing them.  I have long thought that we should be able to click on these imping icons to activate the best tool for the job in our inventory, including the hand. 

 

Use a tool-belt much?  We should be able to add our hand icon to the tool-belt so we can select it with a key-press in the same way as a tool.

 

Finally, (and I am not the first to mention it), I think one psychological problem with the use of the hand tool, is not the hand but the QL.  Why do we have 90+ql tools but our hands remain 50ql?  Surely with practice in pottery or the use of salve/balm our hands should increase QL so that they can add something positive to the end result.

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1 hour ago, Muse said:

Use a tool-belt much?  We should be able to add our hand icon to the tool-belt so we can select it with a key-press in the same way as a tool.

 

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4 hours ago, Farmerbob said:

When a significant number of new players in a crafting game can't grok how to make basic items, you know there's a problem.

 

I for one (one new player, that is) have yet to come across any significant issue with this in fora or chat windows.  Where is this significant number of new players who can't do this?

 

For my first couple of months I had not made any attempt at all at pottery due to not having access to clay. Once clay was available to me I got some and from there to my first fired potter jar was maybe five minutes.  Then I realized that it makes sense that a fired jar can't be improved and on the next one spent a while improving it before firing.  Activating my right hand was a lot more intuitive than working out what tool to use on what wooden item to make a clay shaper and a spatula.  

 

 

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19 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

 

I for one (one new player, that is) have yet to come across any significant issue with this in fora or chat windows.  Where is this significant number of new players who can't do this?

 

For my first couple of months I had not made any attempt at all at pottery due to not having access to clay. Once clay was available to me I got some and from there to my first fired potter jar was maybe five minutes.  Then I realized that it makes sense that a fired jar can't be improved and on the next one spent a while improving it before firing.  Activating my right hand was a lot more intuitive than working out what tool to use on what wooden item to make a clay shaper and a spatula.  

 

 

 

Do you continuously monitor the new player help chat channel?  I played for years prior to that channel being implemented, and general chat used to be full of new folks trying to figure out odd Wogic like activating hands to use as tools.

 

These days, I suspect that most players more than a few days into the game no longer see the new player help channel.  I believe you are no longer automatically logged into it after 24 hours of in-game play, or some such?  I think it is also possible to configure the client to automatically log you into the channel on login, if you want, but you have to set that manually after the first time it auto-switches the option?

 

In any case, if you are not seeing new players asking about activating hands, then either there is a new pottery tutorial that makes it clear, or you are no longer seeing new player chat help channel.

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52 minutes ago, Farmerbob said:

In any case, if you are not seeing new players asking about activating hands, then either there is a new pottery tutorial that makes it clear, or you are no longer seeing new player chat help channel.

 

There is a clear 3rd possibility you are not even considering there.  

 

I see CA Help, that is the only help channel I have ever seen, and while I don't pore over it continuously I do dip in quite frequently, partly because I could learn something new.  Hand activation hasn't popped up yet that I have seen in the last few months.

 

You are convinced that this is a major point of confusion for people.  Fine;  instead of simply insisting it so, demonstrate it so.

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