Are there plans to make Fletching less painful?

This is mainly a question for the developers, but I'd also like to hear others' opinions on this.

Is there any plan to make Fletching significantly less painful and time-consuming? At this point, it's way too much, especially with the other, related crafting skills. Archery is the only combat style that requires such an intensive, secondary time investment. It's just not fun. It's work. In an ideal setting, you could buy player-crafted arrows if you didn't want to make them yourself. Unfortunately, there's not enough player crafters and enough of an economy to make that reliable. Maybe make it so you can buy adequate arrows of all rank from an NPC, and just have them be inferior in quality to player-made arrows?

I always play archers in MMOs when I can, but at this point, the grind is just preventing me from playing Gorgon at all.

Thanks!

I don't want to make changes to fletching that would make it pointless. If I did, I would also need to make archery less versatile and impactful, because the skill's balance takes the difficulty of fletching (and to a lesser extent, having to carry all that ammo) into account. The down side of ammunition is why the skill can be simultaneously super versatile and super damaging.

I wouldn't make fletching pointless anyway, because who wins with that? "I'm a fletcher. I make arrows that add +1 damage and nobody cares." If fletching isn't relevant then I don't want it in the game. We'd just do "imagination arrows" like every other MMO, and I'd rebalance accordingly. But before we throw the entire design out, why not help me make it work as intended? Why not order some arrows from people? There's a work order board. Why don't archers use it to order tons of arrows?

And the weird answer seems to be, in part, because of the sort of person attracted to archery. Because moreso than other skills, archers tend to REFUSE to buy arrows. Sure, there aren't a ton of vendors, but there are more than zero, and if there was a market there would be more sellers. But archers can make them cheaper themselves, and don't want to pay. So... there's no market. How do I fix this? I don't know, but I can tell that "make fletching pointless so there's no need for a market" is not a very good fix.

But the answer is also definitely NOT "make them so trivial to make that every man, woman, and child is selling arrows." Because, again, you wouldn't buy arrows. You'd just make them yourself because they're trivial. The skill would be pointless.

It's a hard problem, so if you have ideas on how to fix it, without just killing the problem entirely by nullifying its importance, then I'm all ears!

I think the best solution is to do what many other games do: Make the vendor-bought arrows viable to use, but the player crafted arrows significantly better. That way, people who care enough about the damage difference will be happy to either make their own arrows or buy them from other players. At the same time, those who don't want to do fletching won't be stuck if there's no availability on the market. Give the archer players the choice.

Maybe do a survey in-game (if that's possible) to see how many players avoid archery because of the need to do fletching. Maybe it's not nearly as many as I guess. It just seems like such a burden compared to almost all other combat styles. I've talked to a number of fletchers in-game, and every one of them told me they find it to be a serious grind. Some didn't mind it, but I didn't talk to one who said it was fun or enjoyable. I know Gorgon is a heavily grind-based game, but the need to do fletching just seems disproportionate.

I can honestly say I never really touched archery. I might someday and I honestly see it as one of the stronger skills but I never put in the time to organize one my inventories to dedicate it to fletching. I think the last tweak to archery was about a year and a half ago and things are okay for the skill. The mental+council cost of fletching is rewarded in archery being as strong as it is.
The vendor idea for arrows would likely sell arrows at like 30x the cost, and that would just change the complains. I also believe a vendor makes the skill useless even at an inflated price.
Another possibility is to put supplies for fletching on the loot table for more humanoid-NPCs. So, while going through a dungeon more NPCs who don’t use archery might still do fletching as a hobby and they’d drop arrow heads, shafts, etc. What would this change: Non archers would likely drop them or sell them to the vendors more, archers would lose more slots during dungeons, some players might keep them or put up work orders for the individual pieces to complete the NPC work orders. I think overall more arrows would enter the world economy.
After re-reading what I wrote, fletching components are really difficult to sell to NPCs. I believe changing that would have a positive effect as well as the loot-table idea.

yesterday someone advertised their shop and said they had 'high tiered arrows' for sale, so maybe they have what you need. I checked the shopping golem and 3 or 4 players are selling astonishing and amazing arrows

Another answer could be that you "market" archery as an advanced skill, akin to battle chemistry. I did archery as my third combination, including fletching, and it's suuuuuper easy at that point. It's really just "collect 1000 feathers and some councils". I don't mean to diminish the difficulties OP is having, as I assume he's doing archery as a first skill.

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Originally Posted by Citan

Why not order some arrows from people? There's a work order board. Why don't archers use it to order tons of arrows?

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Because archery is an easily accessible skill, even for newbies just starting out, and they definitely will not have the councils needed to convince players to spend time making arrows for them. They'll need to farm all these materials from scratch by themselves. If archery was locked behind some difficult boss like necro or quest like ice magic, I'd at least consider the possibility for players using the work order board to request for arrows.

Welp, this thread died with a whimper.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Glowyrm

Welp, this thread died with a whimper.

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Well, a lot of the points brought up sort of negate the original post. You can buy low level arrows. People do craft and sell arrows. There is an economy and lots of crafters.