Crafting in this game is designed to be realistic????????????

[mkarr]

I have spent 300+hours trying to raise my swordmaking level to the point that I can make enough tria to pay for training. With the last update superheating and dunking blades no longer has any effect on the quality of the blade (so not true to life) which effectively puts me back to square one. It just cost me almost 10000 tria to pay for level 50 blacksmith. With the recent update I am gonna have to work 5-6 hours a day,every day, just to pay for training to get to the next level. I know you're gonna say this is true to life and that this should be an accepted fact if I want to play the game, but do you really believe people are gonna want to invest 800+ hours in this game just to master a crafting skill?? And how is this true to life? Doctor's may have to spend this much time in advancing their skill but when was the last time you seen a doctor in line at the soup kitchen??

[Maisent]

actually PS time is faster, i believe. So you would be working about 18 hours or soemthing a day IG  .
But yeah blAcksmithing is just BS.

[Shatterkiss]

They made two changes that I've noticed so far:

1)  Heating and quenching no longer changes quality.  I can't even estimate how much extra time this will cost players who are trying to get high quality components.  As I mentioned on the bug tracker I spend 4.5-5 hours yesterday trying to get 300q steel cheekplates.  Even with a armor making skill of 69 and a blacksmithing skill of 100, I only managed to get 9 after all that time.  Prior to that update, I could have turned all of the ingots I was working on into 300q cheekplates in no more than 30 minutes.  As a conservative estimate, I'd say that getting 300q parts will now take at least 20 times longer. 

2) Hammeringi heated spangen no longer grants practice points in armor making.  This has the effect of literally doubling the amount of time it takes to raise armor making, as the next fastest activity takes precisely twice as long.  Given that smithing skills already take longer than any other skill in the game to raise, is doubling the amount of time it takes to raise one really a good idea? 

These two changes have managed to drive me away from smithing altogether.  Why mess with smithing this badly?  Metallurgy is and probably always will be the greatest moneymaker in the game, so it can't be to make it harder to make money in smithing. I really wonder if any of the people who make these decisions actually play the game as regular players, because I can't see any player thinking either of these changes are a good idea. Especially now, when the number of players online sometimes drops to under 15 on the RP server.  The game has lost enough players already without making popular skills intolerable.

[Maisent]

They made two changes that I've noticed so far:

1)  Heating and quenching no longer changes quality.  I can't even estimate how much extra time this will cost players who are trying to get high quality components.  As I mentioned on the bug tracker I spend 4.5-5 hours yesterday trying to get 300q steel cheekplates.  Even with a armor making skill of 69 and a blacksmithing skill of 100, I only managed to get 9 after all that time.  Prior to that update, I could have turned all of the ingots I was working on into 300q cheekplates in no more than 30 minutes.  As a conservative estimate, I'd say that getting 300q parts will now take at least 20 times longer. 

2) Hammeringi heated spangen no longer grants practice points in armor making.  This has the effect of literally doubling the amount of time it takes to raise armor making, as the next fastest activity takes precisely twice as long.  Given that smithing skills already take longer than any other skill in the game to raise, is doubling the amount of time it takes to raise one really a good idea? 

These two changes have managed to drive me away from smithing altogether.  Why mess with smithing this badly?  Metallurgy is and probably always will be the greatest moneymaker in the game, so it can't be to make it harder to make money in smithing. I really wonder if any of the people who make these decisions actually play the game as regular players, because I can't see any player thinking either of these changes are a good idea. Especially now, when the number of players online sometimes drops to under 15 on the RP server.  The game has lost enough players already without making popular skills intolerable.

Uhm, there is armor making?

[Shatterkiss]

Making helms falls under the armor making skill.

[Sillamon]

The idea behind training obstacles like this is:  "If it was easy to train then everyone would master it, thus everyone would be a master in everything."

Rather than putting some limits on what or how many things you can or cannot master, the planeshift way to deal with this problem is to make it so painfully boring to master a skill that no sane person would ever do it.  This however, does not work because it just pisses people off. They either don't realize this or don't care. I suspect the latter. Don't bother filling out a bug report or venting it here. The ps team has made up their minds about how things are to be done. Players need not comment.

Will crafters leave the game? Of course, but they are just players. New players will flock in and fill the voids left behind.  There was a time when over a hundred players online was not unusual, prior to my time that number was around 250 from what I hear. Whats it down to now? 15 to 30 players or so?  I guess the voids are still being filled in.

Enjoy !  \o/

[novacadian]

An effort has been made, by me, to check out different times of play on PS. My experience indicates that the most active times are during reasonable playing times in the North American time zones. Very early morning in that time zone has the low numbers indicated by the earlier poster; yet prime time in NA can have numbers approaching 100; particularly on weekends.

My character has never held a pick axe in her hand. My decision came early on to specialize in one thing and not become an expert in everything. This was for two reasons. One was that there was a feeling of long term play here. If one is thinking of playing a character for a number of years, than what is the rush?

The other thing was that the interaction with other characters for those skills; which my character did not have; made the game more enjoyable from a role playing perspective. It made more sense to me to have a good cook prepare fish that my character got from cutthroats; splitting the cooked fish with the cook; rather than being a cook and cutthroat eliminator myself.

My choice would be to make things harder to achieve while adding more realism in the process. If the heating and cooling aspects have been removed like mentioned above then that would be seen by me as removing some of that realism; yet to make the process a more long term goal would be seen as a plus.

Just my 2 tria's worth...

- Nova

[Geoni]

Everybody seems to still think realism matters in this game. Yes, it does to some extent but the game can't really match out physical world, I mean, you're in a friggin stalagmite. I do think that when it comes to how long it takes to train those things, it should take less of a players time, because honestly, players aren't paying for something that isn't entertaining and wastes their time of wasting time, which is something to consider if this game is going to be made pay to play. Also, if they're going to drive this to the failboat of mechanics that don't support RP, then things like crafting should be made to attract the mind of a child and not have them repeat the same pattern over and over again until they get bored and quit.

Anyways, to answer your question: No, I hope it isn't designed to be realistic.

[Shatterkiss]

The problem is that they don't seem to care if they drive people away from the game.  I've retired from smithing over this, and after a dev basically said "live with it" on my bug post regarding this, I think I'm done with the game completely.  When the player base is decreasing, only an idiot would knowingly drive more people from the game.

[Geoni]

^-----pay attention devs.

[novacadian]

To be fair, Shatterkiss, this is a developmental software. It has aspects which are open source; yet it is not an Open Source Project in the traditional sense of the word. It is not so easy to branch off on an alternate version due to many aspects of the graphics not being Open Source as well as things like the combat system handled through copyright holding Database functions. Easily is the operative word. Particularly with those that do not have a strong desire to use game mechanics. This development team is offering a world to call their own. One good programmer and graphic artist should do the job. Perhaps that is a slight understatement; yet you get my point.

If they offer that, free to the world, then why should they not be allowed to develop a piece of software that they wish in whatever direction they wish to take it? My feeling is not that development happens nilly-willy; but instead is a well thought through and stuck to developmental plan.

We, as players, at any time along that development can moan and groan about it. We are seeing that at the moment with those that oppose any mechanics let alone those that exist being made more time intensive.

Perhaps by making it time intensive; after a wipe; the grinding in all skills and stats will become less important to game play and become only something one does on the road to RP. Perhaps character skills and stat development will happen at that natural, and gradual, game rate which is pleasing to those which now bemoan many of the game mechanic developments. Maybe the dev team has a better idea where game play is heading than we the players.

Not that it will be the same group of players that there are here today; nor in the past. Yet there may well be a style of game play that naturally attracts those players more interested in role playing their characters and letting development in skills and stats be RP driven rather than player obsession. Perhaps that is a method to their madness?

Whatever the reason, we are at best test players at the moment. Expect nothing but the privilege to play.

- Nova

[Shatterkiss]

At the rate the game is going, they're going to run out of test players.  They absolutely have the right to make the game however they want, but if players don't like the game they'll go elsewhere.  The fact that they don't seem to care if that happens makes me think the project is destined to fail.

[novacadian]

One thing there is no shortage of on the internet is players. My guess is that there are more than enough guinea pigs, at the moment, for the limited staff to monitor. Policing game play is likely a draining on the time resources of the developmental team. A project like this can be re-branded and re-released, once out of Beta, and attract in a fresh slate of players. Let's have fun at this stage and not put too much importance on ourselves. Instead be grateful for the entertainment it supplies. If it does not then there are lots of games out there.

- Nova

[LigH]

No matter how realistic and balanced a game may be ... after all, it is a game. And games are supposed to make fun. If not, they are not played.

[Shatterkiss]

No matter how realistic and balanced a game may be ... after all, it is a game. And games are supposed to make fun. If not, they are not played.

Good luck convincing the devs of that.  They know they're driving people away yet they refuse to even consider undoing their changes when that happens.