Masterpieces

[IdiotNoob]

This is just a bored idea.

With the advent of rods, rings, etc of every type and flavor - the craftsmen have little to work or aspire beyond to.  Don't get me wrong - it's fun and it's another medium for advancement, fun, and generally a character building aspect.  This is a proposal that could take many different shapes and angles, so when you read it, think rather of what you could do with the basis rather then my literal late night write up.

Masterpeices could represent a craftsman's lifelong goal - an item that they would only be able to make once, in any trade (so 1 masterpiece total - ever), and obviously would not sell it or give it away as it's the culmination of their lifelong work.  It would take an extreme amount of work, accumulation of resources and experience to make.  By this I mean that the master armor crafter might have to acquire lvl 20+ in smelting, enchanting, gemcrafting, armor crafting, and baking in order to make the gems, metals, magic grains to feed the fire, and the armor to actually craft such an exquisite peice.  And they'd need hordes of gems, metals of every type, and basically exotic things as resources.  And the maximum success would be very low percentages, less then 20% regardless of experience or buffs.  It would be the work of your own hands, luck, and the gods.  It would be a long lasting adventure to make your masterpeice.

Now the masterpeices could be pre-generated for balancing purposes or a template script of some sort that would allow for customization.  It would be really neat though if the crafter could name his masterpeice.  The idea would be to make a script that would provide for a low maintainance system for the staff while creating a customizable masterpice that one could start rp'ing and working towards early and would take a long time regardless of how much you played or how tough you were.  It would take luck, time, and some serious determination to put it together.  This would also deter the common tendency for a staff member to have to put in extra work for a high level/ long-lasting player for a personalized equipment CDQ, which I think is a bit silly except in a few rare instances.  It would provide a standardized balance for a master craftsman and would take a lot of work.

I mean, it'd be neat if you could design a masterpeice for your character and submit it, but it really doesn't work as too few are served, it generally is unbalanced, and this system would provide an unbiased baseline for overall balancing purposes.

But, it'd take a lot of up-front work for ye old scripter.

The idea is to make something special a crafter can work towards - and something that would never be distributed to the public or suffering widespread item inflation.

Again, take it with a grain and put a twist on it.  Anyhow, just an idea.

[Trace Nightwind]

Love this idea!  It would make crafting that much better.  Exciting!!!  Lets brainstorm more. -Trace

[Zhofe]

I think it would be nice to have one sort of "Master Item" for each craft that could only be created at the highest level in that craft and that no matter your stats it would still be incredibly hard to make it.

I think if there is going to be a personal masterpiece for a character though that it should be done through a CDQ

[Trace Nightwind]

hmmm that makes sense

[IdiotNoob]

A lot of folks are against making a CDQ based around an item though.  I personally frown upon it.  That and I think it's hard to service everyone through CDQs.  It would be one heck of a crafting options page to standardize it but it doesn't seem all that unlikely.  

Take a set of armor for example.  You are a master tanner, and have a bunch of other mastery crafts, but you want to make your masterpeice leather armor.  You get an options page that comes up with a dev-chosen set of possible stat combinations based on a point system.  In this case they choose +2 ac 5/ pierce 5/ slash and +5 h/ms/ tumble to reach the total point possibility of 20 max for their masterpiece.  Then they have about 1000 hours of trying to actually make it.  Then they have a type in section to name their masterpeice.  Likewise, the furniture crafter builds his throne.  He chooses +10 regeneration and +10 INT while sitting in it to reach the 20 point max for his masterpeice.  it would obviously require a TON of thought, I'd be happy to construct a baseline options page for the dev's to look at for balancing purposes.  In fact, I'd be happy to put together the entire thing - just I don't know jack about scripting so what you'd get would unfortunately be limited to MS Word and prolly a balancing excel spreadsheet on how the combo's and point system work.

Anyhow - keep at it guys, ideas are neat to play with when you're not a dev with 500 things to make before even looking at this doozy.

[Trace Nightwind]

Okay...this is really exciting to me.  What do you think you crazy Gms out there.  Is it doable someday?  I think it would basically make crafting a much bigger part of Layo because people woul long for those unatainable items.  It would take em forever but create a ton of fun Rping in the process.  -Trace

[IdiotNoob]

Apparently not.  Though if it were on the flame forum, I'm sure it would go somewhere.  Probably the trashcan.

No biggie.  I'm sure they have bigger and better things cooking.

[IDii]

Maybe in the future. Currently I don't think we have the resources to do this if we decide to so. Have other things to work on.

And I'm personally against craftable superitems as long as our adventuring loot system is as it is. Go ask people about their equipment and ask them how much of it consists of crafted stuff and how much they've found off monsters. I'm sure very high amount of equipment there is from crafting... and I see that as bit of a problem. It'll probably be different with east up and people killing high and unique drop stuff and then trading those down to other people but now and even then super items that are craftable would just put the balance way off.

Now don't get me wrong... I have nothing against people getting rewards from their hard working at crafting. But I think those rewards are already there and we're adding a lot more with those high level special recipes. Probably should have more of them coming soon but I'm not exactly sure about that.

[IdiotNoob]

I guess the real point of this is to limit the distribution of high level items other then that you put a ton of work into.  As far as balancing - it works on any level you establish, they aren't super items if you build the table as such.  That said, maybe another day you'll take a look - I know you guys are overworked and underpaid .

I'm going to submit an idea table nevertheless at some point for a better picture at what I was proposing.  Thanks for reading over it though IDii.

[dfiremann]

I also am a big fan of masterwork items.  Taking considerable amounts of materials to even attempt it, having a low success rate, and a natural affinity for your own crafted item I do not think would flood the market with super items.  There seems to be a real Ford/Chevy argument on too many items versus not enough on Layo.  And I would have to say ALL of my enhanced items came from crafters I had to negotiate with, I have yet to find an actual enhanced item anywhere yet on a monster.  Nor have I seen one chest- but then again, by comparison, I do not have as much time.

[Jeff_K]

This reminds me of what Bruenor says in "The Crystal Shard" about Aegis-fang. About how it will be the one item he makes that is so great, all the other ones will seem meaningless. If this was implemented, you could probably do something with that, like make it harder to make better items after that. Of course, the only way I see that working is to lower the skill levels, which doesn't make much sense...

[Zhofe]

Which is precisly why this should be done through a CDQ. That way, it isn't a crafting nightmare for the GMs.

You would still have to go out and gather resources, and you would still have to spend alot of time and money on it, and since only one of such item would ever be created there is no chance of flooding the market.

Even in the case that every character creates one super item (which is unlikely because I think the GMs are smart enough to let only higher level characters and players that have been here a while do something like this) That would still only be one unique item per character. No one is going to get completly outfitted with uber-gear, and I think in reality, only a very few will try and persue this, and probably only be successful in or near epic levels. It would actually give you something to brag about. It would be much easier to implement it in this way, and give it a custom name, description, and thus an identity. It would be YOUR item, and no one elses.

But, just my opinion.