Skald Haldi wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 10:46 am
Back on topic. The main complaint here seems to be the deeply nested recipes. Personally, I love those, because it breaks the recipe into stages. You can work on it in pieces, buy intermediate ingredients in shops, or farm out parts of it to multiple crafters.
What we need is MORE of these. Since these nested recipes are rare and strange, nobody is stocking the intermediate items. In contrast, you can find ingots, glass, glass bottles, and glass vials all over the place. That's because you need them for so many things. If the intermediate items for woodworking were more needed, they would be more common and everyone would stock them. Everyone would stop complaining and instead see the benefits.
Furthermore, recipes should be examined again for TOTAL craft point input. Some of these are just crazy because they don't consider all the intermediate craft points that went in. For instance, compare the Adamant/Mithril Shield to the Enchanted Shield? Adamant/Mithril is about 200. Enchanted is 500 plus? That is totally off the scale of reasonable.
I just want to address this, because it's actually a considered statement.
When you say "We need more of these", I think you have perhaps misunderstood the problem. The problem is not that you have to farm out production of components to other crafters. The problem is not nesting. The problem is not those things... All of those are reasonable things to have in principle - And they
already exist in things like alchemy (essence crafting in particular). Certain tailoring items (which require alchemists and smiths), certain productions within smithing... The need to engage with other player characters is
already contained, in reasonable measure, in the crafting world. While perhaps it could do with greater
variety, the
amount of interdependence between crafters is for the most part already pretty well measured.
The problem is
this specific item.
Now, just to point out, you've underestimated the total crafting point cost of this shield by around half. It's precisely 978 daily crafting points. NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT.
978,
978, 978, NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT
For an item which provides a lighter version of an addy tower shield. Requiring at least three people to construct... A dedicated carpenter, a dedicated herbalist, and a dedicated alchemist, needing a small splash of art and tailoring between them, and a list of ingredients which is more then double the value of the alternative gear.
What do you think is a reasonable price in gold for this amount of work in creating an item? Four hundred thousand? Half a million? Who do you think will
use one of these? Melee characters.
Melee characters who
already end up staring at around 1.4 million in gear to get fully geared - not considering any runes or 5%'s... Just in normal enchanted gear and addy cost. Melee characters who also have the greatest expenditure on consumables... heal kits, wands, potions, scrolls...
Then lets consider that this item is also probably more appealing to dex based characters, who have a harder time looting stuff (or carrying around the required components for making one of these shields, lol), due to their low carry capacity - and making considerably less money as a result.
The problem here is not a little craft nesting. The problem is the fact this is way out of proportion with the time people actually have to invest in the game, and has zero consideration for the means of the characters that will actually use the thing.
Putting hurdles between specific character archetypes and their endgame gear is bad. A wizard can literally churn out millions upon millions of GP while outfitted with a cheap rack of 1 con/1 int gear which they obtain at level 10 and then don't bother to upgrade until they're sitting on a mint... A melee character or an archer ends up with a lot of barriers between them and their required equipment, and that is poor balance.
The answer to this isn't in putting those same hurdles between every character and their gear, because that would just mean that you see greater disparity between new and old than already exists - Something that is bitterly complained about in some quarters anyway - and more people failing to have an enjoyable experience, due to a crushing lack of "unobtainium whatsitmcshieldos".