Letherworking & Tailoring, progression and reward

[Murk]

Hello Folks,

The problem I have while developing these skills is that the things you make with the low or medium level recipes no-one seems to want, so: the only thing to do is to sell them to a shopkeeper.

I realize you can fill work orders, but I've personally not found these that exciting myself, firstly you have to find the right board at the right time. Secondly, I think these are skills you basically have to use on your own and they have limited social aspect. Many of the fun thins are the player interaction things.

This is a bit of shame, and it is not at all as exciting a progressing other skills, combat skills are of course more fun and varied, so too is alchemy - in theory, I do find it a bit long winded, but all the items you make at any level with alchemy have a direct use at least, not quite so with Leather-working and Tailoring.

I am not offering a specific suggestion here, only to say that it would be quite good if the materials produced at lower level were useful to someone. Perhaps there could be a tie in with the new players that may arrive at release time: In that they will need clothes, but at the moment everyone is better off looting their own, simply because people level quite quickly and want to try out new mods etc.

Work order aside: With work orders, if you are at higher level in other skills (generally), then the lower level ones are not rewarding in any direct way, and I suspect quite a few people start work orders later after trying the main day to day skills. This seems to apply to all skill lines, if you start them later when your other skills are higher, those "other" skills you did not start at the beginning seem a bit of a drag. Contrast this to starting a new combat skill, this is fun again because you get to go round all the old dungeons and group up with all the people again and that makes it more fun.

Cheers.

[Tagamogi]

Not sure if we are thinking about this the same way, but here's what I came up with:

In order for gear-making skills to create useful items, the items need to have mods. So, a would-be gear crafter needs to obtain gems from either other players or by doing the surveying themselves. Because of the gem prerequisite, it makes sense that skills like leatherworking and tailoring are not available in the immediate starter zones which means that by the time you pick them up, you will already have outgrown your initial crafting efforts as far as gear for yourself is concerned. If you want to sell your low-level crafted gear to low-level players, you'd need to both accurately predict the mods they want and they need to be able to pay for the gear.

My only idea at this time is to possibly have some kind of barter NPC: Give the NPC 3 plain rough cloth cowls, and they will give you a randomly enchanted rough cloth cowl with mods for your current skills... This could possibly set up a market where crafters can try to sell gear to lower level players and lower level players could barter the bought gear for better gear. I'm not sure if that's necessarily workable, but I'm fishing here. The problem is that things need to be relatively cheap so that new players would be willing to spend councils on them, but we don't want to devalue the market for dropped gear or higher level items by having the crafted gear be disproportionately easy to get. And I don't know if going through an NPC to barter would negate the social aspects you were looking for?

( I personally am still blissfully happy with work orders, but well, we've talked about that before. Increasing player interaction for crafting is definitely an interesting problem.

FWIW, I think I prefer leatherworking and tailoring to alchemy. I like being able to create NPC favor items on-demand with the right gems - alchemy can do that too, but doesn't feel as cost-effective to me. Of course, this is again NPC interaction, and not player interaction.)

[Murk]

Not sure if we are thinking about this the same way, but here's what I came up with:
My only idea at this time is to possibly have some kind of barter NPC: Give the NPC 3 plain rough cloth cowls, and they will give you a randomly enchanted rough cloth cowl with mods for your current skills...
...

( I personally am still blissfully happy with work orders, but well, we've talked about that before. Increasing player interaction for crafting is definitely an interesting problem.

....

There exist NPC's already that do something like this: in that you can barter for items. I don't suppose they have skills mods on them, I can't remember. I didn't use this very much myself either, as there was a lot of things to learn at low level, and I did not have the focus to be able to collect the barter items as well as discover all the other skills and so on.

I expect the answer for the moment is work orders and I will try a bit harder with this and see. People say you can make money from the higher level ones. This is OK, but the problem of lower level crafting still seems to remain. When the crafting cap goes above 70, I have a feeling that the problem will be the same in that not many people will want crafted clothes of level less than, say, level 100, because presumably they will be able to find loot items more easily, but I may be wrong.

I thought of perhaps going to the new player island and selling clothes, for say 10 dirt or some such, but I don't think this would work very well for a variety of reasons; or around Eltibule, X cotton for some tailored clothes- thereby enabling the tailoring skill to level, while benefiting the purchaser of the clothes. In theory there would be some mutual bargain to be had here.

Perhaps I should get tailing XP when people wear the clothes I have crafted, for I can tell you they are indeed fine wears and the miss-stiches in them are simply there to provide better ventilation in desert environments. send a tell in game, any colour you want. Available in: mud brown.

[Tagamogi]

There exist NPC's already that do something like this: in that you can barter for items. I don't suppose they have skills mods on them, I can't remember. I didn't use this very much myself either, as there was a lot of things to learn at low level, and I did not have the focus to be able to collect the barter items as well as discover all the other skills and so on.

I believe the items you get for bartering with brain bug lobes and such have skill mods on them. I think I may not have bartered for any gear myself either for similar reasons - I was busy with other stuff, collecting items took too long and I wasn't sure if my reward would have mods on it.



I expect the answer for the moment is work orders and I will try a bit harder with this and see. People say you can make money from the higher level ones.

Imo, all levels, but the couple councils from the lower levels may not be all that exciting. Keep in mind that your industry bonus helps considerably, too.



This is OK, but the problem of lower level crafting still seems to remain. When the crafting cap goes above 70, I have a feeling that the problem will be the same in that not many people will want crafted clothes of level less than, say, level 100, because presumably they will be able to find loot items more easily, but I may be wrong.

That seems likely, yes. I think the lowest crafting levels, say 1-30, do have a special problem since the people who could reasonably wear the gear are busy with other stuff and usually broke. (Well, ok, who isn't broke? ;) ) Once you get 40+, I think people slow down a bit more and may be more willing to buy gear. I may be wrong, though.

Either way, you are never going to have a huge market, even at 100. If it takes you 30 combines to go from one level to the next (just making up the number here), you'd need to sell a complete set of gear for all 5 equipment slots to 6 different players in order to get those 30 combines from the player market only. And you will be competing with other crafters trying to do the same.



I thought of perhaps going to the new player island and selling clothes, for say 10 dirt or some such, but I don't think this would work very well for a variety of reasons; or around Eltibule, X cotton for some tailored clothes- thereby enabling the tailoring skill to level, while benefiting the purchaser of the clothes. In theory there would be some mutual bargain to be had here.

That sounds like a possibility - it's just going to require an effort...



Perhaps I should get tailing XP when people wear the clothes I have crafted, for I can tell you they are indeed fine wears and the miss-stiches in them are simply there to provide better ventilation in desert environments. send a tell in game, any colour you want. Available in: mud brown.
Lol. :D Any color you want, as long as it's brown? And convenient for any climate, as long as it's warm, of course...

[Yaffy]

If you want to sell your low-level crafted gear to low-level players, you'd need to both accurately predict the mods they want and they need to be able to pay for the gear.


This is definitely something that makes selling gear to other players in general a lot harder. It's easy to craft yourself gear, and lower level recipes can be great for alts/friends or if you want to level a new skill, but selling to a random player is hard when you can't predict what kind of mods they want. Low level crafted gear does have a market, it's just awkward to find a buyer and not rewarding for the effort.

It wouldn't make it easier at higher levels, but I think lower level crafted armors could be a lot more helpful if they were more generic with what they did. For example instead of relying on having helpful mods, low level armor could just have bonuses good for any character, like much more armor than normal gear around that level, or small bonuses to damage in general (Ex. +1 direct damage). That would make it a lot easier to create beginner gear since it would be helpful no matter what skills you're using. I know there are a lot of players who have difficulty jumping from level 15-20 gear to level 30 gear so having rough/crude leather armor be a stepping stone simply by having good generic stats would be a great reason for players to pick up leather working at that point (Since that's around the level they would be when they meet Kleave) or for other people to create the gear for them and sell it.