Crafting Issues with Quality

[valentineaaron]

Okay I've heard several complaints from other smiths in the game and didn't think anything of it until my skill has improved.  Now it's becoming obvious to me as well that the entire equations and rules you use to judge what an items quality is need to change.  It is ridiculous that there is so much wild swings to the quality of an item you make.  You can have an axe blade start out as 200q, go down to 80q, then back up to 160, then when sharpened it goes up to 280, and after you combine them together and rivet it drops to 120q.  I'm sorry but that is just ridiculous.  I can understand quality having some chance involved with it but what needs to stop is the wide crazy swings.  Something shouldn't vary depending on the steps so much, it doesn't make sense. 

I think a better solution would be to have an average quality that your skills could reach.  Maybe an item comes in on the lower end of that average or on the higher end.  And if you keep working on it you can raise the quality.  Even better you can add a risk in there of a smith working an item to much and having the metal begin losing quality or just turn to junk.  That chance would keep someone from working on an item to much because the longer they work on it the higher the chances become of it going bad. 

I don't mind even having the odds of getting higher quality go down if your skills are lower level so that you have to train more to get to the higher quality items.  My issue is I find it just crazy that I can sit for hours making one item and have the quality bounce around so much.  After hours of working on items I've had the average quality stay the same as when I just go through once to make the same items.  That doesn't encourage work and effort not to mention being just plain silly.  I can understand chance involved in the process but not to the degree it is. 

[valentineaaron]

Oh actually there is another big issue right now.  Prices are really screwed up badly.  I know people wanted to lower the prices for weapons so that new players could buy weapons easier but they forgot to lower the prices for the materials which has made an odd thing begin to happen now.  You can now sell steel stock for a higher price then the weapons you make from them.  Someone needs to change this right away since it makes no logical sense that materials are worth more then the items  you make from them.

Also I have an issue with pricing in the game anyway.  I am at a loss to figure out how npcs can buy stock of 300q for the same price they buy 300q weapons made from those materials.  While players can charge more for higher quality items the issue comes in when you think about the work required to make the items.  No one in their right mind is going to spend the time to make the weapons or other items when they can make just as much money selling 300q to npcs who will always buy it no matter how much is sold.  This problem is one of the biggest reasons why the economy among players has never taken off.  There is no point in bothering selling items to other players when you can make money faster selling stock to npcs.  Just dropping stock prices in half would probably solve a good portion of the economic issues in the game and force players to think more about selling to each other for profit rather then mindlessly selling to npcs

[Aramara Meibi]

yes the wild swings during the crafting process are nonsensical, but If you take the qualities of all your end result products, I think you'll find they hover close to your average, especially as you gain levels not only in that specific crafting skill, but in the blacksmithing skill as well.

[valentineaaron]

Actually they don't.  Right now my items range from 130 to 260 in what I've made out of 15 shields.  There is no consistency there at all.  To make matters worse before the final result they actually were close to each other in quality.  An shield kit of 220q that goes down to 130 while one of 190q that then goes up to 200 isn't consistency in the least.

[Aramara Meibi]

I haven't played my shieldcrafting character in a while, but I found as her BS skill improved, the range of her final product quality began to even out and become more and more consistent. There are other, much more skilled characters than mine, maybe those players can confirm or debunk my theory. Gil?

[Bonifarzia]

It is ridiculous that there is so much wild swings to the quality of an item you make.

I never had the patience to play a smith character, but some friends do. Quite a while ago, that motivated some reasoning about the mechanics, inspired from what friends told me and what was found on SVN at that time. The resulting idea was a similar one as yours, as it involved averages rather than the strong summands, scaling factors and random percentages observed. One problem is the design of reversible or cyclic process chains. You could prevent abuse by inserting a penalty factor somewhere in the chain, but that does not look very intuitive. A mechanism that averages out random fluctuations without introducing a drift in the expectation value of the quality would be much more elegant - and relatively simple. Also, the skills with respect to a given processes ranges can then act on the resulting average quality rather than the jumps and quirks at each step.

[bilbous]

I think the real problem is that only the last step makes any difference. It would be nice if a q300 stock generally made a better blade than a q50 stock but it doesn't appear to.

Perhaps crafted item quality should be split into aesthetic quality and utility and different merchant. An ornamental item can have far more value on its artistic merits than a functional one and an item that is both functional and artistic can be even more valuable.

[Gilrond]

I think that even high skill in blacksmith doesn't prevent wild fluctuation in quality at present. Hangatyr once confirmed, that he didn't see consistent improvement with armor making for example (for helms), and the random factor was just too wild. Devs need to provide more clear input on how crafting rules work, since they are not very simple, and quality functions there aren't linear. Many factors there are confusing at the moment. For example effects of the master crafted hammer, irrelevance of some steps to the final quality and so on.

[valentineaaron]

I agree Gilrond, part of the problem is they don't provide information about what equations and info they use to make up the smithing skill.  The biggest issue I have is the wild fluctuations.  If someone like Hangatyr who has over 150 in smithing can have wild swings of 300q to 80q in just one action then something is wrong in the system that needs to be fixed.  I don't mind it being difficult to get good quality.  The issue is the fact that it is so inconsistent right now because of the wild swings in quality no matter what your skill is.

[weltall]

need? there is a duty on it? we aren't paid so you cannot expect the same level of readiness of full time devs,  it's opensource so read: http://planeshift.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/planeshift/trunk/src/server/workmanager.cpp?revision=7998&view=markup&pathrev=8001 @ applyskills.
and there are way higher level crafters than hangatyr who see the fluctuations less. if the crafter is above the training limit for an item  (will start to happen already before being near it) the resulting quality will be way less affected by the randomization, because the item quality will go above 300 by multiplication of quality for each step, then the area the randomizer will work on will be partially over the ceil of 300 and won't do any effect. eventually it will be entirely ineffective by being entirely over the ceil.

hangatyr doesn't have the skill you think why don't you ask him what he does actually have, instead of doing assumption based on his not really true description, if compared to others.

[Bonifarzia]

Heheh, exactly what I referred to. Good that I am not to blame about pointing to spoilers...
Still, I think the design is not optimal, especially the part you mention where the logistic random variable needs to be pushed beyond its interval of definition. And the word "multiplication" might induce some more confusion. But now I should be quiet about this because I really lack the experience having played as a crafter

[valentineaaron]

So how much does the seperate skill blacksmith and the crafting skill you use do? What I mean is if you have 150 in blacksmithing and say 70 in sword does the 70 in sword hurt you and lower your chances significantly?

You are right about it being free and therefore you don't get paid for it.  I apologize Weltall for sounding rude, it's just the current system is a little annoying because of such huge random fluctuations.  I do feel better however knowing that the higher the skill the lower those will go

[valentineaaron]

I'm not much of a code person.  Does it say anywhere in the code where the skill level needs to be to make 300q items? And does that mean that more then likely if you had 200 in all crafting skills you would make 300q most of the time for all items you craft?

[weltall]

currently any skill level can theoretically reach 300q the point  is another not having the skill to the upper bounduary means you get a default loss of quality which is static in addition there is a randomization after this is done. all processes double the current quality before applying the losses stated above

[valentineaaron]

Wow that went right over my head.  You mean that the quality your skill makes gets doubled when you are making an item, then you subtract the static number for your skill being lower then the maximum, and then add in a random amount that gets added in as well?