Item Quality - Original

[SekoETC]

Umm, maybe it wouldn't take so long to make. Maybe the person would do it in a hurry and that's why it would be so crappy. And you're sure not gonna talk about daily rates when you're selling second grade merchandise, either you tell them it's top quality or charge less.

[kabl00ey]

It is not supposed to be like real life! Holy crap everyone, walk outside! In any case, yes, I do save my money rather than buying sub-standard things. And no, none of my characters is in a sub-standard vehicle, in my opinion. However, you are looking at this wrong. In game, if it you knew it was going to be much, much, much harder for you to sell your product, because it was of shoddy quality, would you even make it? Hell no! Suddenly only the people who are expert at things would do it. You are not seeing the trade off.

"Do you have an axe I can buy?"

"Yes, but it is of poor quality, and it took me longer to make, so I have to charge more for a product of less value."

Who the hell is going to buy it?

If you're selling poorly-made axes for a living, then you're in the wrong business. If you're selling the single axe you've weilded for a few years, then you'll still make something back off it. You should be lucky items don't lose value over time - in real life your brand new Toyota would would lose about 30% of its market value the moment you drove it off the lot. The thing is, someone will still buy it - there will be a market for adequately-made items. If my only choice is an adequately-made sabre, or no sabre at all, I reckon I'll probably buy an adequately-made sabre.

Hey, tell you what. You go get a book out on consumer behaviour and economic psychology and we'll finish this conversation later.

[Okud]

"Do you have an axe I can buy?"

"Yes, but it is of shite quality, and it took me longer to make, so I have to charge more for a product of less value."

Who the hell is going to buy it?

My charrie just sold a wheelbarrow. Does this answer your question?

[saztronic]

And no, none of my characters is in a sub-standard vehicle, in my opinion.

Really? All of your chars are in rakers and jeeps, arguably the best boats and vehicles in the game, respectively? That's amazing, because both take large amounts of resources to make..... Most chars make longboats or sloops or bikes, for obvious in-game reasons I won't go into here for fear of depriving newbies the joys of finding out themselves.

All of your chars have crossbows and claymores, arguably the best bows and blades in the game?

If any of your chars lack the above items, and have other transports or weapons, then you do not, in fact, hold out for the best possible vehicle or weapons in each case. You already base your decisions on what your char can afford, what is appropriate to his situation, and what is feasible. Varying product quality would change none of this.

Umm, maybe it wouldn't take so long to make. Maybe the person would do it in a hurry and that's why it would be so crappy.

Yes, great idea! This would take some of the sting out of the change -- the double insult of making a shoddy item and yet having to take twice as long to make it. People who make something awkwardly just throw it together, while the experts take their time, pay attention to details, etc. Though this does make even worse the issue of how product quality is determined when people of differing skill levels work on it. You might have an awkward person work on a hammer just to speed it along, then have the expert step in at the last minute to seal the deal.

My charrie just sold a wheelbarrow. Does this answer your question?

Thank you, P.T. Barnum.

[formerly known as hf]

From duplicate suggestion:

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:48 am Post subject: Item quality
Right now, the benefit of being highly skilled at making things is that they are made faster. However, what if the items produced were of better quality? All it would mean is a single variable word added to the descriptions of items:

If the manufacturer was:

Akward: Poor
Novice: Cheap
Efficient: Average
Skilled: Quality
Expert: Elegant

Those are just suggestions, but you get the idea.

Here it would be in action for leather pants:

a set of [Poor/Cheap/Average/Quality/Elegant] form fitting pants made of cured leather cover the legs. They seem well stitched and durable;

This would add a whole new dimension to the game for merchants (I don't want to by that crap, go do something you're good at!). Also, depth could be added by setting the current decay rates as Average, and making cheap and poor items decay faster, and Quality and Elegant items decay slower.

[saztronic]

Probably the title of this topic should be changed to "Item Quality". It's simpler and describes what this is about more directly, so maybe more peole would look at it.

[saztronic]

And lo, as he said it should be, so was it done.

[Lumin]

You know, I really missed the days where -I- determined my characters' roles, instead of just having one randomly assigned to them by some program.

[Pie]

I LIKE IT!!! LET'S IMPLUMENT IT!!!! HURRY UP!!! COMON!!!!!

[Jaguar45]

I generally like the idea of weapon`s and tool`s quality. This would help simulate the real life economy. You don`t imagine yourself going to a restorant and asking if you can cook some meat for yourself and promise to give them some of it to them as payment for the use of the oven. Same goes with smithy`s. You think a master smith would ever even show you his tools and tricks? Guess again.

The biggest problem I see is that people cannot advance in their skills (at least not significantly, even over a large expanse of time), and that people are just spawned with skills ranging into the "master of the trade" level. What would better, is if all newspawns started with awkward or novice skills, and that their "aptituded" (what is currently skill levels) for each kind of activity determines how fast a person can train up their skill (a person with a very low aptitude would take 15 years to advance 1 category, while a person with a very high aptitude would only take 2 years. Some skiils might naturally advance faster then others, such as tailoring advancing faster then mining for example). In real life you can't just expect a certain percent of people to be a master blacksmith when they have had no experience before. If this could be integrated into the current skills system, it would would force people to have to train new recruits, and search for those that might eventually be masters in their trade. The only problem being that older characters would have a natural advantage over newer characters, which although is the way the world works in real life, may be undesirable for game balance. If this were the way things worked, I think it would be wonderful having skills play a bigger role in the quality and such of the project results.

I like Talapus`s overlooked answere to this. You can not be born expert in weaponcrafting (and this coming from somebody who has actually tried smithing). I think that what he suggested is a good idea, but it would mean that all current play would be disrupted a little too much. I can´t imagine how a woman in her fifthys could get all the experience she deserves converted into skills.

You know, I really missed the days where -I- determined my characters' roles, instead of just having one randomly assigned to them by some program.

This would also solve Lumin`s problem, as you would still play the most important part in what comes out of your character.

I guess this would be too large to introduce at this point, but I suggest that if the game was ever to start over (like it did with Cantr to Cantr II), this could be implemented.

[Thetaris]

You have one post but have a good knowledge of Cantr... Did you originally have a different account, Jaguar?

[Jaguar45]

No, I simply didn`t sign up for the forum untill I saw something really appealing like this *smiles and continues reading the notes as he has for a long time*

[Thetaris]

Hm. Anyway, this is a really good idea, and I stand by it. I was redirected to this post because I was reading a similar post...

[Sicofonte]

*bump*

[N-Aldwitch]

You have one post but have a good knowledge of Cantr... Did you originally have a different account, Jaguar?

Hehe I read that and I'm like, wow nice question doofus get back on topic, and then I'm like OH I wrote it. Woopsies!