I love CF and all it contains, but sometimes the endless slaughter gets to me.

what if we were to introduce a different way of making a living?

by researching in dwarven halls of knowledge, perhaps a caracter woud unravel the basics of mining, or while visiting another library gain insight into the art of smithing, or learning form an ranger deep in a forest how to make bows,

but not just pre-made items, but unique tingies, and ex, if you wanted to add fire-damage to a sword you woud have to find a smith that coud teach you the skill, or contact an mage capable of such feats. and dwarven smiths coud utilize runes in their smithing.

just an idea, what do you think?

esoel

I'd like to see a system whereby xp was traded for item creation, similar to the DnD 3E system. Introduce an xp decrease for heroes, this might provide somthign for heroed characters to do, go earn some xp to be able to fashion a sword, Essentialy the characters imparts a part of himself to his weapon. Not exactly a smithing class, but I think a feasible idea for skills in which a character can make something.

That is, instead of spending one practice, you do your quest and you get a development in your skill (not beyond 75%) like practice.

I think i've raised this years ago, similar to the 'make certain skills of a class only available by quest' which could probably cause more annoyance than anything.
(and now that i think of it has taken place with conjurers.. d'oh!)

I can't see this working. It seems like one of two things must be true, neither good. Either:

1) The "fruits" of the forging are only of limited value. If this is true then there's no impact on game-play, so why bother? I guess it adds some role-play pizazz, but nothing more.

2) The "fruits" are of *substantial* value, i.e. they affect game-play. If this is true then people will have forge-whores enhancing all their weapons. Adding "flaming bite" attacks, etc.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

I've seen this implemented on other games. My major concern is that it ends up boring. I've yet to see a system where crafting is not a de facto time-for-XP trade. You mash "forge sword" or whatever many times until you are out of ingredients (or cash, since you could always purchase ingredients). No risk to you, especially if you pick the most out of the way forge possible. Eminently bot-friendly as well, and I have this underlying theory that anything that is easily bot-friendly isn't a good test of a human player's skill.

Could item-based skills be part of an interesting character? I think so if it was done right. But I don't see it making for a good XP system. Making a sword once in a while? Fun. Making 100 swords to gain a level? Not fun.


valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Perhaps that is what woud happain,

a bit part of why i am posting this is, that im building my own forge IRL. and wanted to see how,,, if it woud work out here.

about the XP, i figgured it woudent give any xp to forge/craft blades, items. but be more like a skill, but not a skill that everyone gets,

has to be earned, by ex, researching somthing for a scolar,,or the like
and after that one might start practicing,, (finding an ex, smith to apprentice at) and perhaps it shoud not be an option to learn the skill by practicing at the guildmaster, but the caracter woud be forced to serve as a apprentice,, forgive me, i'm babbeling.

so, what i am saying, not everyone woud have the patience to do it, nor woud most folk want to do it. blades are after all quite accessible to most people, but a few folk, might see it worthwile. and start to create a wide variaty of items, perhaps class specific, perhaps in wootz steel, or foldwelded, perhaps even damascus.

well. thats my bit for today. anyone have any opinions, please add them.


esoel

omg. i feel for you man. i like metalurgy and all but,
when it comes to the constant pounding bit.... yikes.

(a buddy of mine has a forge i designed a couple of swords
i wanted made, would he do them? no, would he charge
me money for them no.. not even for materials. he dragged
my sorry a$$ out there and 'taught' me to work on em.
NEVER again.. hehe. thought my arms were falling off.)

Ingredients for items pop randomly, so that you have an element of "harvesting" from mobs. With a few rare ingredients, you've got players hunting for hours and hours.

Im not sure if i woud like the random pop-up,,

dwarves maby, but who else woud be carrying around lumps of metal,.

but what about caravans? randomly apparing along some road, or guards at the entrance to a mine that limit what you can take out and charge you for the materials collected.

and the ore merchant in hamshah,, (ore however one spells it) is doing nothing that i have seen just now, she coud be directing caravans, hiering guards, and perhaps a thif somwhere in town for a price reveal the time of departure, and route,

the options are endless,

but the question is: is it worth it?

esoel

>dwarves maby, but who else woud be carrying around lumps of
>metal,.

There's mines around, and metal on miners and lying on the floor, but most of it is largely decorative.

>the options are endless,
>
>but the question is: is it worth it?

I think it might be. Even if making armor and weapons is out, maybe people could make some interesting looking jewelry, or even minor items for hard to fill slots like tails, claws, talons, wings, arial faces, etc.

What about,

as you said small items, no weapons or armors,
perhaps when practiced for a while, if deemed worthy, a god or someone, coud give his/her blessing for the caracter to move up in the trade making more complicated items,

in the game i was asked to develop seige engiens,, so perhaps someday we coud wage fullscale wars on cities, destroying walls, pouring burning pitch on the attackers,


esoel

While I think it reasonable that if your skill increases you could make better items, there's a couple of things in the way of that. One, it would encourage people to spam their way to higher skills, which is something the Imms don't tend to like. Two, the more complicated things you gave for examples don't seem like something easily done on the coding end of things. Because of the troubles involved in implementing the ideas of mounts and ranged weapons, those and similar things aren't likely to ever get made, so I doubt siege weapons will either. At least, as actual coded objects. I suppose you could roleplay the presence of siege weapons all you like, but they (like mounts) aren't likely to really exist outside of room and mob descriptions.

Risk is trivial to add -- make the skills lag like crazy (maybe even randomly).

I'm not saying such classes wouldn't still be boring, however. Maybe that could be remedied with lots of "forge skill is ####ed", "crafting is overpowered" style posts.

>Risk is trivial to add -- make the skills lag like crazy
>(maybe even randomly).

one fun bit of fing woud be,, if attacked while forging

the smith woud be able to throw burning coals, or swing the whitehot metal rod at the attacker

but i think the lag idea woud be sortof a noose for the trade,

like smithing woud be a certain way to hang oneself

esoel

>My major concern
>is that it ends up boring. I've yet to see a system where
>crafting is not a de facto time-for-XP trade.

Seriously Valg - when is the last time you ranked a character?

There's always the risk of PK in ranking. It's not something you can or should bot if you're smart.

If that risk no longer seems to be present, maybe it's time for me to roll a character and ####ing school your sorry asses. :)

Wasn't that what you had Yanacek for?

Being Emperor once (Istendil) is two times too many for anyone. Too much time on politics and not enough on killing with an extra killing chaser.

Ring the bell, school's back in suckas! At least, that's what I would be saying were I not about to go on a vacation not involving mudding for a week, and still trapped in the 90s.

=P

j/k

And I'm ready for some schoolyard action.



All love intended.

if they want to bot. They may get slayed, pkd or whatever for it. Its dumb to NOT do something because it can be botable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

the mud could use some role models, nep

Rangers are boring as hell too and you can spam a lot of things in this game, but thats beside the point.

If you had people make who could be craftsmen, they would require material/skill to build things. To build up your skill you need something to practice on. So it would go like this. Lets say that Joe as decided to be a dwarf armorer.

Dwarf Armorer - specializes in axes, mace (better weapons if they build these). As far as armor goes, dwarven forged armor tends to be heavy and bulky. So Bob the warrior comes to Joe the armorer and say he needs 2 mithril axes.

1. Joe the dwarf needs 2 pieces of mithiril, 20 lbs each.
2. Joe goes to the mithril mine, wherever it is. There is a shop there that sells mithirl in quantites of 1lb, 5 lb, 10lb, 15lb, 20lb, 25lb, 30lbs. Maybe the mithril mine can charge different prices for different qualitites of mithril, which would make better weapons/armor. (10% mithirl, 25%, 50, 75, 100) Costs would rise drastically with each quality %.
3. Joe says to Bob, ok well 2 pieces of 20 lbs each would cost you 40k. 20k each piece. I will charge you 30k for the work.
4. Bob pays joe for the material, Joe goes and buys the mithirl and comes back and works it.
5. Bob pays Joe for the work and gets the axes.
6. Bob gets better at forging or whatever, maybe. Then gets 1000xp for making the axes.

For ranking the craftsmen can go out and kill stuff like other people do but they just have no specs/skills, or very limited ones. If nobody wants to take Joe out ranking maybe next time they need a bad ass weapon when they were full looted and are pennyless, Joe will give them the finger.

Craftsmen may not wear armor like all other chars, they have to wear the stuff they make or something like aprons, caps, gloves etc. No darkened platemails and wide coppers.

They are vulnerable to PK like everyone else but next time you need a 4/4 avg 25 mithril dagger, go kill a mob if you like to pk the dwarf craftsman. The craftsmen would also have a place of their own, like the Inn. Protected by bodyguards who are rank 45+. This would cost the craftsman a fee per tick. If they dont get clients or whatever, they will eventually lose their protection and shop. So they either build stuff for money or go out and gather copper to pay their rent/protection.

Imperials could place contracts with craftsmen for weapons/armor etc, so could the fortress and marans and whoever wants weapons when they die and dont want to go out and regear. It would be up to the craftsman to forge the stuff and see that he has a good rep or bad one. Bad rep could lead empire to pk you and take your money.

Dont forget valg that some people really like to build fortunes and run their own medieval shop etc. It may seem boring to you and me but some people like it. They may like sitting there and forging 100 swords. Some people like to play Non PK chars, for rp only or whatever. They may like slow, methodical strategy games. You could easily make this non-bottable.

You could easily make this non-bottable.

Who are you kidding?! ;) Virtually everything that doesn't involve interacting with other players is bottable. They are called automated quests because you can automate a solution to them ;)

Rom.

if i was some crazy whacky programmer dude i might be able to bot stuff. Then again, a lot of people here are...

" love CF and all it contains, but sometimes the endless slaughter gets to me.

by researching in dwarven halls of knowledge, perhaps a caracter woud unravel the basics of mining, or while visiting another library gain insight into the art of smithing, or learning form an ranger deep in a forest how to make bows,"

I think that as a blacksmith, your lack of fighting abilities wuold lead to you getting even more endlessly slaughtered.

>" love CF and all it contains, but sometimes the endless
>slaughter gets to me.
>
>by researching in dwarven halls of knowledge, perhaps a
>caracter woud unravel the basics of mining, or while visiting
>another library gain insight into the art of smithing, or
>learning form an ranger deep in a forest how to make bows,"
>
>I think that as a blacksmith, your lack of fighting abilities
>wuold lead to you getting even more endlessly slaughtered.

I'm guessing that he didn't mean less fighting, but more sideline activities. Also, quite a few blacksmiths are good at fighting, since they tend to be both strong and good with a hammer.

However, the suggestions don't sound too convincing. Mining? They do that on Ultima Online, and I never saw the point except to gather raw materials for making things. I don't think it would work very well on CF. As for smithing armor and weapons, that doesn't look very promising either. Especially since Invokers haven't been able to enchant weapons and armor for years now. I'd suspect that making weapons and armor risks enough unbalancing aspects that it's not worth the trouble to implement.

As for making other nifty little things, some Heralds can make clothing and other minor things. I think it would be nice if skills like those could be taught to others.

In order to hero you've had to either kill, or be part of a group killing roughly somewhere between 800 and 3,000 mobs depending on experience penalty and how much you average per kill while ranking. Certainly makes it hard to roleplay a devout pacifist.

That being said, I can't see any non-kill based way to level (except for the occasional quest) being any less boring, and likely more subject to abuse.

by this i in no way mean that one woud be able to play without killing a single being,. or that one shoud try to avoid to,

but tell me, (ok it is a game) but in the spirit of role playing, woud a warrior keep hitting the dusty roads, slaying dragons and enemys til the day he/she dies? and not once think of a bed at night, and perhaps someone to continue his "lifes work",,

and as a blacksmith,, it in no way means that you shoud not fight,, how else can you make a good sword if you do not know what a good sword shoud look like?

but as you said, it might be abused, might be to much trouble, in that area i have no clue what goes on, and,, i never played ultima, so i dont know about mining there,..

well, as i said, just an idea.

esoel

>'and as a blacksmith,, it in no way means that you shoud not fight,, how else can you make a good sword if you do not know what a good sword shoud look like?'

When it comes to that, lets make it so his skill in the weapon affects how well he can create that kind of weapon. Ofcourse, that would mean that the smith must know all kinds of weapons, or he would be limited to being able to create just a few kinds of weapons. Perhaps make it choosable upon creation of the character.

Make the item created character-only. That way the smith has to decide who is to be able to use the item he create. Make the items rot_death aswell. And ofcourse put a timer on it, 20-30 ticks or something, perhaps even more before he can create another item. Should make bots rather ineffective.
Make the ore expensive and only available through purchase.

Well, there are ways to solve those kind of problems if you really want to. But its all up to the Imps to decide if they think its worth the work or not.