V
Valdamar
Guest
Been thinking about tradeskills a lot over the past week. Ok I've only been playing DAoC for 3 weeks but with over 400 a/c skill and reading message boards I can see a lot of issues that others complain about. I've had the following ideas, and had tons of time to type them up on my laptop while waiting for the green crafting bar to crawl along 
Tell me what you think.
EXISTING TRADESKILL SYSTEM
- Create times are too slow. Shouldn't you get faster as you increase skill? I suggest fixed creation times for ALL tradeskills, at all levels, based on the creation con e.g. Grey 3secs, Green 5secs, Blue 10secs, Yellow 15 secs, Orange 30secs, Red 60secs.
- Skill-ups are too random. I suggest guaranteed skill ups (for material skills too!) on orange/red, with higher chances on other cons. I also think you should be able to get skill ups on failures (learning from your mistakes).
- Material skills lagging behind is a major pain - perhaps have automatic skill-ups for material skills that lag 25 behind a primary tradeskill that is using them.
- As others have suggested, tradeskill components for 500+ skill should be available on the same merchant in a portal/frontier/relic keep, right next to a Vault-Keeper and a Forge/Lathe/Stretcher
DEDICATED TRADESKILL CLASS
Create a new "crafter" class in each realm, open to all races: Artisan (Hib), Craftsman (Mid), Tradesman (Alb). All crafters:-
- are not restricted to one primary tradeskill; can join all NPC guilds & raise all tradeskills as high as they want
- can get multiple consignments from any tradeskill master, but only 1 hour to complete them
- get consignments up to 1000 skill (consignments after 650 may be to NPCs in other towns)
- get an arrow display pointing towards next consignment NPC in their town/city
- can get consignments for multiple items (e.g. Guard Smith needs 10 bronze scimitars for his squad)
- can only wear leather/cloth and may carry a stave (unspecced) with caster HP
- make no xp from monster kills or quests, but get xp from skill-ups in tradeskills (20% of a bubble for every point gained in any tradeskill, ie 2500 total from all tradeskills for L50)
- do not lose xp when they die (still lose CON)
- can gain RPs for making legendary items (see later), for operating siege engines and being grouped with other RvR-ers
- crafters can access all the generic RAs (eg stat/resist increases) and also a few crafter specific ones (eg +5% chance of masterpiece, 90% salvage, siege engines never decay etc.)
- have 4 speclines and 1x points per level. Speclines are:
….. Traveller (speed buffs, pack-horse pet which grants you a STR buff as it carries your items, reduced horse-travel prices, limited stealth)
….. Merchant (passive - lower NPC merchant prices & higher consignment profits)
….. Artist (buffs/abilities that can increase Con/Dur/Qua over 100%, give more items from /salvage, speed up creation times, lower % Dur lost when repairing)
….. Engineer (siegecraft abilities e.g. more damage, more accuracy, build faster, decay slower, fire faster, use less wood, salvage parts)
- crafters have access to a central message board in every city/PKeep where player-adventurers can place "orders" to be filled by player-crafters (and post their thanks afterwards)
- player-crafters stay online as an NPC if the player logs out in a "market" area of a city/Pkeep. To enter this mode they use "/traderquit xx" where xx is the percentage mark-up (on creation cost) that items in the top 3 pockets of their inventory can be sold for (while offline). Other players clicking the offline trader will get a vendor display with these items at the marked-up cost. Identical items in the players vault will replace items sold, automatically.
- player-crafters in offline mode could also hold items made for other players’ "orders" for collection at the other player’s convenience
- crafters have a special "notebook" interface to keep track of player "orders" and NPC "consignments"
- make it impossible for players of "existing" classes to create higher than 99% quality so only dedicated crafters can create 100% qua "masterpieces" with 25% chance on grey cons, 20% on green etc. down to 5% orange and no chance on a red. Also make 99% the minimum qua for grey cons, 98% for greens etc. down to 94% for red.
- items made by dedicated crafters are 20% lighter than the same item made by other classes
- crafters can see the "creation cost" of an item in the additional information window
- crafters get advanced recipes for items that only they can create
- crafters can get RPs for making "legendary" weapons/armour past 1000 skill - these 100% qua items with stats would employ multiple tradeskills, some questing and also rare dropped items (which other players would have to supply from DF mobs, epic zones, enemy keep guards etc.)
- add items to the game with tradeskill bonuses that are only available from adventuring, so adventuring players have something they can trade/sell to crafters
CONVERSION
Allow existing players of other classes a one-time conversion into the Trader class for their realm - they keep all speclines, abilities, spells, styles, skills, equipment and tradeskills earned so far, but gain nothing further from their parent class. For BGs, combat etc. they count as their original class level until their "crafter" level surpasses it (after conversion their level will be total tradeskills divided by 50, cos each bub xp in trader class is 5 skill points).
The conversion option could be a quest given by their original tradeskill master, or a slash command with a confirmation box (e.g. /becometrader). This would be a nice option for characters you want to "retire" without deleting them, but still retain as useful OR level 50 characters who wouldn’t improve anyway except by RPs (as an L50 conversion you’d have a crafter who could still fight and defend themselves when operating siege engines in frontier, and could farm some of their own "legendary" components).
So what do you think? Would this make tradeskilling more fun/viable for the people who want to do it exclusively, while making casual tradeskilling less hassle?
Tell me what you think.EXISTING TRADESKILL SYSTEM
- Create times are too slow. Shouldn't you get faster as you increase skill? I suggest fixed creation times for ALL tradeskills, at all levels, based on the creation con e.g. Grey 3secs, Green 5secs, Blue 10secs, Yellow 15 secs, Orange 30secs, Red 60secs.
- Skill-ups are too random. I suggest guaranteed skill ups (for material skills too!) on orange/red, with higher chances on other cons. I also think you should be able to get skill ups on failures (learning from your mistakes).
- Material skills lagging behind is a major pain - perhaps have automatic skill-ups for material skills that lag 25 behind a primary tradeskill that is using them.
- As others have suggested, tradeskill components for 500+ skill should be available on the same merchant in a portal/frontier/relic keep, right next to a Vault-Keeper and a Forge/Lathe/Stretcher
DEDICATED TRADESKILL CLASS
Create a new "crafter" class in each realm, open to all races: Artisan (Hib), Craftsman (Mid), Tradesman (Alb). All crafters:-
- are not restricted to one primary tradeskill; can join all NPC guilds & raise all tradeskills as high as they want
- can get multiple consignments from any tradeskill master, but only 1 hour to complete them
- get consignments up to 1000 skill (consignments after 650 may be to NPCs in other towns)
- get an arrow display pointing towards next consignment NPC in their town/city
- can get consignments for multiple items (e.g. Guard Smith needs 10 bronze scimitars for his squad)
- can only wear leather/cloth and may carry a stave (unspecced) with caster HP
- make no xp from monster kills or quests, but get xp from skill-ups in tradeskills (20% of a bubble for every point gained in any tradeskill, ie 2500 total from all tradeskills for L50)
- do not lose xp when they die (still lose CON)
- can gain RPs for making legendary items (see later), for operating siege engines and being grouped with other RvR-ers
- crafters can access all the generic RAs (eg stat/resist increases) and also a few crafter specific ones (eg +5% chance of masterpiece, 90% salvage, siege engines never decay etc.)
- have 4 speclines and 1x points per level. Speclines are:
….. Traveller (speed buffs, pack-horse pet which grants you a STR buff as it carries your items, reduced horse-travel prices, limited stealth)
….. Merchant (passive - lower NPC merchant prices & higher consignment profits)
….. Artist (buffs/abilities that can increase Con/Dur/Qua over 100%, give more items from /salvage, speed up creation times, lower % Dur lost when repairing)
….. Engineer (siegecraft abilities e.g. more damage, more accuracy, build faster, decay slower, fire faster, use less wood, salvage parts)
- crafters have access to a central message board in every city/PKeep where player-adventurers can place "orders" to be filled by player-crafters (and post their thanks afterwards)
- player-crafters stay online as an NPC if the player logs out in a "market" area of a city/Pkeep. To enter this mode they use "/traderquit xx" where xx is the percentage mark-up (on creation cost) that items in the top 3 pockets of their inventory can be sold for (while offline). Other players clicking the offline trader will get a vendor display with these items at the marked-up cost. Identical items in the players vault will replace items sold, automatically.
- player-crafters in offline mode could also hold items made for other players’ "orders" for collection at the other player’s convenience
- crafters have a special "notebook" interface to keep track of player "orders" and NPC "consignments"
- make it impossible for players of "existing" classes to create higher than 99% quality so only dedicated crafters can create 100% qua "masterpieces" with 25% chance on grey cons, 20% on green etc. down to 5% orange and no chance on a red. Also make 99% the minimum qua for grey cons, 98% for greens etc. down to 94% for red.
- items made by dedicated crafters are 20% lighter than the same item made by other classes
- crafters can see the "creation cost" of an item in the additional information window
- crafters get advanced recipes for items that only they can create
- crafters can get RPs for making "legendary" weapons/armour past 1000 skill - these 100% qua items with stats would employ multiple tradeskills, some questing and also rare dropped items (which other players would have to supply from DF mobs, epic zones, enemy keep guards etc.)
- add items to the game with tradeskill bonuses that are only available from adventuring, so adventuring players have something they can trade/sell to crafters
CONVERSION
Allow existing players of other classes a one-time conversion into the Trader class for their realm - they keep all speclines, abilities, spells, styles, skills, equipment and tradeskills earned so far, but gain nothing further from their parent class. For BGs, combat etc. they count as their original class level until their "crafter" level surpasses it (after conversion their level will be total tradeskills divided by 50, cos each bub xp in trader class is 5 skill points).
The conversion option could be a quest given by their original tradeskill master, or a slash command with a confirmation box (e.g. /becometrader). This would be a nice option for characters you want to "retire" without deleting them, but still retain as useful OR level 50 characters who wouldn’t improve anyway except by RPs (as an L50 conversion you’d have a crafter who could still fight and defend themselves when operating siege engines in frontier, and could farm some of their own "legendary" components).
So what do you think? Would this make tradeskilling more fun/viable for the people who want to do it exclusively, while making casual tradeskilling less hassle?