Storage and manufacturing

[Lachesis]

Edit:Title should be

 

Manufacturing at storage

How to get rid of it

 

Hi there,

 

I hope this does not turn into a flame war, because seemingly players like doing alchemy/potion/manufacturing at storage a lot. However, I got the impression that there is a wish to encourage players making only what they need at the very moment. So if we did this, there would be hardly any use for storage. The only things that would make sense to store then are expensive, rare, rarely used items and coins. So why allow flowers, minerals, ore, essences*, metals, potions to be stored? Disallowing this would both achieve the desired goal instantly and breed several distinct merchant professions.

 

Two issues of course with this. First one is simple: some quests would have to be adjusted. Second is severe: what to do with all the things that are already in storage? Solution is, again, simple. (You would'nt have expected that would you?). One could allow a reasonable, small amount (like 20 or 50) of these kinds of items to be stored. So quests could stay as they are. If a player has exceeded this limit already when it turns into effect he just cannot store more items of that kind until he withdraws enough of them so that stock falls below the limit. Know what? Provided that the feature gets implemented, this behavior would be even very easy to implement along.

 

With regards

Lachesis

 

*) except enriched essences

Edited February 13, 2005 by Lachesis

[desil]

If it was to be like this where you only make what you need at the moment how would you selll these things... Everyone likes to buy the fe and such in large quantities...

~Desil

[Enlia]

The problem I can see with this is that it again seems to penalise those undertaking the crafting/manufacturing professions, which by their nature require a lot of trial and error in making items, particularly given the failure rates.

 

Taking manufacturing as an example, to make an iron sword takes 10 iron bars, 1 steel bar, 2 fire essences and a hammer in storage.

To make an iron bar takes 7 iron, 3 coal & 2 fire essences. Each iron is 4 emu weight, a coal is 2 emu & the fire essences 1, total 39 emu for each bar, plus the food that will be consumed by making the bars & then the sword. So, unless you have a personal carry load of over 390 emu, you're looking at making the bars in situ at an iron ore point (same with the steel bar) so you're looking at bag manufacturing most likely, which also seems to be somewhat of a contentious issue. Even once you've made the bars, there's still the failure chance on making the sword, so time to start over....

 

For crafting, all the medallions & rings require either gold or silver bars as a base item - each of those needs a lot of ore, coal & fire essences again.

 

To reply to Desil's point - when you're looking at needing a minimum of 13 fire essences to make a gold ring which nets you 10xp for crafting levels (assuming you're making your own gold bars), you need a lot of fire essences to get anywhere in the crafting levels.

 

To me, as an aspiring crafter/manufacturer this would put me off the game because of the additional hassle involved to work on the levels I want to improve.

 

As suggested in the ore spawns thread, I think it would be more useful to have specified areas for making the different item types where you could draw the required materials from your storage for a gc fee.

 

Apologies for the lengthy reply, this is a subject that is of great interest to me.

[behindthemask08]

I think a fee would destroy the storage system worse than not being able to store large amounts of ore. If anything we should be earning interest on the money we have on the bank. If you required a fee, people with no money couldn't use storage and what if you put 2 gc in storage, nothing would go in b/c the fee would have to be at least 2 gc (it would also work that way with withdrawal). So if anything leave it as it is rather than change it for the worse.

[Ghrae]

Do me a favor... Try to level 30 manufacturing, level 40 potion or level 35 crafting doing it your way.

 

I think you'll see that getting rid of creating items at storage is much harder than you think.

 

I know you have the best interests of the game in mind, but I think you'll find such suggestions to be nearly impossible for people to advance beyond the early levels.

Edited February 13, 2005 by Kit

[The_Piper]

As suggested in the ore spawns thread, I think it would be more useful to have specified areas for making the different item types where you could draw the required materials from your storage for a gc fee.

Hmm, the idea of a fee for every deposit or withdraw of items is not the naughtiest one.

 

Lets say, its 5-10 gc for every time you contact a storage npc. that would be a constant drain of money to the game. Or, maybe only 1 gold coin. Thats only 2 liliacs or veggies to harvest and sell.

 

And 1-5-10 gc for every time you click on a storage npc is not too much that even a noob can pay it.

 

Why should this service of storing items be free?

 

Tankel takes money, Harvy takes money, but only the storages are free of charge.

 

And thinking about limiting again the storable items is from my point of view a bad idea. Its bad enough that you cant store food or drinks. Ok, one can argue, veggies in storage will rott and stink, but you can store raw meat. This limitation should not be rised, it should be completely removed.

 

Just make a small fee and players can decide if they wanna store/withdraw items and pay for it every time they click on the npc or they are making items not near storage, but maybe in caves or places where the ressources are.

 

Just my 2 cents,

 

Piper

[Lachesis]

The problem I can see with this is that it again seems to penalise those undertaking the crafting/manufacturing professions, which by their nature require a lot of trial and error in making items, particularly given the failure rates.

No it doesn't. It would make alchemy an affordable profession. Don't make everything you need yourself, buy the iron bars.

Fees would not help with the problem but rather help those that are already rich. Forget about them.

 

With regards

Lachesis

[Enlia]

No it doesn't. It would make alchemy an affordable profession. Don't make everything you need yourself, buy the iron bars.

Fees would not help with the problem but rather help those that are already rich. Forget about them.

 

Alchemy is already an affordable profession - fighters pay good money for health essences. It's the manufacturing/crafting professions that this will impact badly.

 

As an aspiring manufacturer/crafter I am still going to need a large number of metal bars, at the moment, the only way for me to afford these is to make them myself, particularly in the quantities needed to raise my levels.

I could sell the items I make to fund the next set of items, but who is going to buy iron swords? Particularly when I've had to pay for the 10 bars of iron/1 bar of steel to fund a single iron sword, I would be making a massive loss on each item. They can be obtained easily enough by fighting goblins for a short while.

I would have similar problems with crafting.

 

I do see this option as penalising those who want to take up manufacturing and/or crafting, particularly as a large number of the lower level items that can be made are obtained all too easily by fighting monsters for a short while. Without the ability to mass-produce items, it will be even more difficult to level these 2 professions - there's a reason why the top skills in these professions is lower than nearly all other skills in the game (summoning being the exception).

 

There is a problem with the amount of manufacturers round raven, but we need to look for a solution that doesn't penalise these professions - they're already difficult enough to improve compared to some of the other skills.

[Malaclypse]

No it doesn't. It would make alchemy an affordable profession. Don't make everything you need yourself, buy the iron bars.

Imho, alchemy is currently the only affoardable non-fighting profession. Both manu and crafting already drop a big amount of money from you, even if you make the alchemy items yourself. If you add the costs for alchemy items to this, would make those two professions not worth of being done.

 

If a crafter would have to buy silber and gold bars, fire and water essences they won't earn any money for selling their rings and medallions. The same holds true for manufacturers and their items.

 

Take for example the Ring of Valley of the Dwarves:

• * 2 silver bars (~40gc ea): 80gc
  * 4 fire essences (~4gc ea): 16gc
  * 2 water essence (~4gc ea): 8gc
  * 3 gem sander (10gc ea): 30gc
  

I think the prizes are quite reasonable. With this assumptions it would cost 134gc to make this ring, assuming you do not fail with making the silver ring, polishing the diamond and crafting the final VotD ring. But currently most people want to pay 100gc max for a votd ring, the tendency is even more to 50-80gc.

[Lachesis]

Don't be scared, guys. Do you really think that if nobody sells VOTD rings at 80gc or less, nobody is going to buy them? Calm down, no need to fear . All prices are going to raise significantly because of this, but on the other hand they will be much more stable, because trades will consist of much smaller amounts. Currently, prices are that low that you can't afford buying the items for producing. But if storage limits were into effect, of cause you would be able to do this, it's a simple corollary of economic laws.

 

Of cause, you have a problem with items that have a substantially low demand. But that is not a problem that is caused by storage limits, they only reveal it. Currently, nearly all easy-to-make items have a very low demand, which makes it hard for beginners to gain some experience. This problem should definitely be solved seperately. An approach might be assigning every item to a NPC merchant, and adjusting prices so that they buy a manufactured item at a little higher price than the total price at that they buy the ingredients, and the same for selling. Note that NPC prices are prime prices, limiting the current prices in both directions, exactly in the same manner as prime rates limit interest rates in real world of finance. So, if their prices do not allow specialising on one single production step, it won't be possible. Therefore their prices will need to be adjusted. Of cause, there will still be a significant margin between purchasing and disposition prices, so that you won't be able to buy items from NPC, use them in manufacturing and sell the manufactured item back to them without disprofit, thus players will still be encouraged wo trade with each other and to work hard for money.

 

Combined with storage limits, they will be even much more encouraged to do so than today. This will be giving money a higher value once more, balancing and stabilizing prices at their new, higher level. So don't be scared about economical desasters, please focuse on the desired goal: wiping out storage and mass production. Remember, EL is a mediaval fantasy

 

Sincerely yours

Lachesis

[Ghrae]

There is a significant detail that you forgot.

 

If they eliminate the ability to mass produce as you suggest, then it will significantly harder for people to level. Especially noobs.

 

Let's take an item like a Dissengage Ring. The list of ingredients is not that large. However, to successfully make the ring, you really need to be Crafting Level 30 or above (for a decent rate of success). To get there is not easy and requires a lot of xp.

 

If we were to change as you proposed, then those people who are already in the 30s & 40s of crafting will be able to make the rings easily. Everyone else who enters the game will have to work even harder to get to those same levels since they would be limited by your proposed storage suggestion.

 

And what if those players who can make Dissengage Rings left the game or were forced to start over? Then no one would be able to make them without a huge fail rate (if at all). The price goes up drastically, but wouldn't that effect the fighters? How are they going to afford prices if suddently a Diss Ring is worth 5-6 times the value?

[Lachesis]

You usually need to produce about an order of magnitude around 200 successfull executions to gain the experience to produce the next level item. Along that way you will get at least 1-2 pickpoints if you are a beginner that you can use to increase your might. So, you don't have to mass produce several thousands, do you? Maybe experience gain will need to be adjusted a little to even out advantages of experienced professionals. Storage limits are a very serious change to the game, compared to that even these number changes turn out to be minor adjustments.

 

You are all criticizing on side effects, but no one has ever commented on the main goal. So may I assume that you are comfortable with it? I would really like this to be explicitly stated. Let's go on on the details after having clarified this

 

With regards

Lachesis

[Chryzopraz]

You usually need to produce about an order of magnitude around 200 successfull executions to gain the experience to produce the next level item. Along that way you will get at least 1-2 pickpoints if you are a beginner that you can use to increase your might. So, you don't have to mass produce several thousands, do you?

At the begining it is easy to gain levels. But after level 20 it becomes harder and harder.

 

Let's assume you make items at the highest recommended level which is below your current level.

It will be painful because you'll loose about 50% of items, but that gives us some comparison. Then in crafting we have:

 

Recommended level, no of items at previous level to gain the level, exp points total

gold rings: 0, 0, 0

silver rings: 3, 28, 280

silver medallion: 5, 18, 550

gold medallion: 7, 20, 1050

polished ruby: 9, 29, 2065

polished emerald: 12, 71, 4095

polished sapphire: 14, 83, 8245

polished diamond: 16, 95, 13945

ring of IP: 17, 64, 18105

ring of VOTD: 18, 77, 23495

ring of Naralik: 19, 94, 30545

ring of WSC: 20, 115, 39745

ring of Portland: 21, 97, 47699

ring of DP: 22, 112, 57219

Sun med: 23, 127, 68649

Moon med: 24, 145, 82424

Stars med: 25, 164, 98824

Dis ring: 27: 414, 142294

 

In the table above the second number is the number of items at previous level you must make to have recommended level for that item.

So you see it starts at about 20 items, then jumps to about 70-80, then over 100 and over 400 items to get to level 27. But to be able to produce disengage rings without high loss rate you must gain higher levels.

Unfortunately, to get there, you must produce thousands of items!

You need 103500 more exp points to get to level 30. This calculates to 900 dis rings!

And then to get to high level, like 40, where you have low failure rate, you must make 6143 more dis rings!

And then more and more... You MUST mass produce to get higher levels. Don't tell me you want to make things even harder for more experienced players...

 

Regards

 

Chryzopraz

 

Edit: trying to make it more understandable

Edited February 15, 2005 by Chryzopraz

[Ghrae]

Lachesis, I do like the fact that you are thinking of ways to improve the economy. However, Chryzopraz's chart shows some of the complications in doing it your way.

 

The problem is, you can not patch one part of the game play without affecting other parts of how the game is played. And that is the tricky part. I mean we can all suggest that to make anything you need a "Widget" that is only sold at stores for 100gc each and that would help the economy. But even simple fixes like that would have huge impacts on game play.

 

Try to consider ALL sides of such suggestions. But I think you have the right idea in mind. Just a matter of coming up with a universal solution.

[Enlia]

Don't be scared, guys. Do you really think that if nobody sells VOTD rings at 80gc or less, nobody is going to buy them? Calm down, no need to fear . All prices are going to raise significantly because of this, but on the other hand they will be much more stable, because trades will consist of much smaller amounts. Currently, prices are that low that you can't afford buying the items for producing. But if storage limits were into effect, of cause you would be able to do this, it's a simple corollary of economic laws.

 

You're missing a factor - monster drops. Effectively they create new items without any impact on storage or manufacture. Why should fighters bother buying rings at higher prices from manufacturers when they can obtain most items by fighting monsters for long enough (and at the same time raise their att/def levels)?

 

So don't be scared about economical desasters, please focuse on the desired goal: wiping out storage and mass production. Remember, EL is a mediaval fantasy

 

Indeed, EL is a medieval fantasy, however, even master swordsmiths or goldsmiths in medieval times would have had to undertaken a lot of practice and failures to reach their status as masters of their craft. Also, in order to practice their craft they would have had all the necessary raw materials to hand in their workshop/smithy.

 

It's not the selling aspect that worries me about this idea, it's the effect it will have on anyone trying to be a manufacturer or crafter. Implementing the no manufacturing at storage and a limit on what can be stored has massive impact on these skills, and will turn the game into a far more combat-only option, as that will be the only way to effectively and speedily up OA levels. Crafting/Manufacturing will become even more hassle than it's worth to improve at the moment.

[Ghrae]

Oh, and by the way, there was some level of mass production in medieval times. You noticed it mostly when countries were at war. Blacksmiths would spend all day making sword after sword after sword for the armies.

 

That would be on par with a guild bringing their manufacturer the raw supplies while he did nothing but hammer away all day.

 

I know this isn't exactly what you were referring to, but it should be mentioned that it did exist.

[Derin]

Edit:Title should be

 

Manufacturing at storage

How to get rid of it

 

Hi there,

 

I hope this does not turn into a flame war, because seemingly players like doing alchemy/potion/manufacturing at storage a lot. However, I got the impression that there is a wish to encourage players making only what they need at the very moment.

Are you suggesting this beacuse you don't want to make things at a storage or is it because you don't understand the concept?

 

Certain items will always be in high demand, like potions, essences and different kind of magic jewelry. Some of these items require huge amounts of base materials, which are often gathered in different locations.

 

In order for the not-so-strong character to be able to make even a reasonable amount of these items. S/he needs to store some of the materials gathered, not only because of the sheer weight involved, but also because of the dangers while harvesting.

 

In order to be able to make what you need at the very moment, you need to practice a lot, so you don't fail at that 'very moment'. In order to practice you need to make quite a few of the items in a given skill (as Chryzopraz pointed out).

 

So suggesting a thing like this is not helping the struggling manufacturer/alchemist/potionmaker/crafter etc at all.

 

All-in-all you need the storages to help you make things, suggesting otherwise is just showin ingorance towards the professions involved.

[Ghrae]

In an effort to try and see if your idea can be workable...

 

If they put a limit to storage items (something I'm against), then they should also lower the fail rate and increase the xp earned per item.

 

This way craft/pot/alch/manu (did I miss anything) would be able to level and keep the excess product off the market (thus raising prices).

 

The down side to this? Raw materials are still to easy to obtain and this could make it too easy to level. (Just one more example of how difficult it is to balance all the pieces - maybe you can tweak this idea though).

[Lachesis]

Ok, several different things to talk about:

 

1) Experience gain You did not put the benefit of your rationality into account. But anyway, the point stays the same. I guess you think about it differently, but this is what I think about it: You should not be able to become a really good crafter in just a week. In addition, you don't need to be perfect, you can put your loss in your calculations. I did that when making potions and it worked out fine (I sold with 1/3 loss in calculation, actual loss was about 1/4). Prime prices could take loss into account as well.

 

2) Mass production in war You would still be able to do this, as you do not need to store the items, they are just brought to you as you need them. I am not used to war context, so if I am still missing the point please bring it up again. Also note that bags are not affected by the storage limit in the current look of the solution.

 

3) Fighting advantage This is a seperate problem as well, and it is already current. Maybe tweaking the numbers might help. More special approaches like artificier cloak (please see the corresponding thread) might help as well. Looking at the numbers, it is odd to me why fighting should be advantageous. The drops are usually not worth the risk. But practical experience shows me that you get far too much experience from a single fight (you can get 2000 exp from fighting a wolf using fleeing). Maybe this is the cause for disequilibrium, too many pickpoints for fighters.

 

4) Monster drops This problem might already be reduced by a solution to point 3. I don't see any solution but tweak the numbers, e.g. fighting stats, drop rates or item/monster assigments. This needs careful handling though, since it has further side effects. If someone has a better idea, dont hesitate to mention it

 

5) Basic goal To me it still seems as if everybody likes the main goal if the noise that it causes can be reduced o a minimum. Please dont expect me to be able to spot every side effect detail. I need your ideas!

 

6) Derin's point (edit) You have not yet got the point of this approach. You would not be gathering the ingredients yourself. So you would not need to store them. Thats one main point of it, making not gathering the ingredients yourself affordable.* Simple first level items such as essences are already easier to make at ore/crystal spawns. Since these are already best for beginners by now, things won't change.

 

With regards

Lachesis

 

*) This has several advantages: more interaction of players (trades) are encouraged. And the economy becomes richer because more and better specialising is possible. I explained the details in an earlier post.

Edited February 15, 2005 by Lachesis

[Derin]

6) Derin's point (edit) You have not yet got the point of this approach. You would not be gathering the ingredients yourself. So you would not need to store them. Thats one main point of it, making not gathering the ingredients yourself affordable.* Simple first level items such as essences are already easier to make at ore/crystal spawns. Since these are already best for beginners by now, things won't change.

I see that you assume that everybody has friends and belong to a guild or group.

 

And i still don't see why you think it's such a bad idea to store materials needed and then make whatever you want to make at your own pace.

 

If you want to play it like that, just don't store anything, gather your friends and make your potions or whatever wherever.

 

Just don't imply that this is the way everybody want to do this.

[Malaclypse]

it's a simple corollary of economic laws.

What I have found in my time working since 1985, when I started my job training, is that economic laws or the economic as it is used in capitalism/market economics has greatly failed. It only works for about 5% of the worlds population. The other 95% are merely not more than slaves, imho. They go working all the day, for the good of some other people, not for their own good, getting only a little fee, while the other 5% got all the income, and get more and more and more and more....

 

For this reason I don't count on economic laws. Of course, this is just my personal experience and maybe there's noone on this forum sharing this opinion, but instead of trying to adapt real world economics in a game, I find it more suitable to construct and/or try out alternative approaches to economy, and see how and if they can work. At the end, in-game economics will never be like real life economics, no matter how well they are designed.

 

Sorry for being a bit off-topic, but I still haven't managed to not get angry when I have the feeling someone wants to tell me how well economics works and how good it actually is.

[behindthemask08]

The real reason basic economic laws don't apply in this game is that there is no room for creativity. There can be no entrepenuers because with the same number of skills, everyone has the same stuff to do, you cannot create higher quality stuff, cannot produce a new item/invention, so there is nothing unique, nothing special that can get you ahead of the game(no pun intended).

[Lachesis]

And i still don't see why you think it's such a bad idea to store materials needed and then make whatever you want to make at your own pace.

 

(...) Just don't imply that this is the way everybody want to do this.

I don't. Please read the explanation of my motivation in the first post.

 

With regards

Lachesis

[Lachesis]

Please stay on topic, if this thread digresses into a philosophical-economical discussion the original goal will be lost. I also assure that the most basic economical law: that prices are governed by supply and demand applies to EL even much better than to real world economics. Everbody that has been watching market channel for a longer period will certainly agree. Of course, other aspects have some influence, too, but the economical dynamics as observable in the game are sufficient to support my prognosis.

 

Still not convinced? Let's take up the VOTD ring example again. As soon as it is not profitable anymore selling at 80gc, nobody is going to sell them at that price. But dont you think players will still need them? So they will have to take the pill and pay higher prices. After all, they get higher rewards for their products as well, so the pill won't even be that bitter. If you don't want to call these conclusions economic laws, maybe call it simple logic or whatever. However, you will probably see that they're true.

 

Btw: I did not assume that everybody is in a guild or has a friend. But I believe that "war" is not a correct term for a fight whereas one party only consists of one single person Anyway, personally I like everything in game that encourages players to interact.

 

With Regards

Lachesis

[Derin]

And i still don't see why you think it's such a bad idea to store materials needed and then make whatever you want to make at your own pace.

 

(...) Just don't imply that this is the way everybody want to do this.

I don't. Please read the explanation of my motivation in the first post.

 

With regards

Lachesis

Of course you don't, you:

got the impression that there is a wish to encourage players making only what they need at the very moment.

 

So play it like that if you want, there is no need for you to store anything. It's your game. Just don't get the 'impression' that others would like to play it the same way as you do.

Edited February 16, 2005 by Derin