IDEAS FOR RYZOM

It always bugs me in crafting-heavy games when players need to rely on NPCs to provide materials instead of players crafting things for others. Ryzom is sufficiently complex enough that we shouldn't need NPC vendors of anything except basic mats for convenience purposes. Some of the biggest offenders are the basic tools: we all need them, we all buy them, and without them we can't dig or craft. We also have a woefully under-utilized tool-crafting action that so far is used only for crafting outpost tools.

Allow players to create basic tools. The only useful stats need to be lightness and durability, and they can pick up those stats from whatever mats are used to create them. Grade and quality level of the tools indicates the mats used, similar to other items, and they determine the thresholds for lightness and durability values, the same as now with weapons and weapon damages. The current durability and lightness of the tools should be consistent with what you'd get from a Choice Q150 item; lower grade and quality levels should have lower values, and higher grade and quality levels should have higher values.

Each civ would have a racial pattern for each of the tools, and they would each vary slightly, based on a variation of the civ faction picks (much less detailed, of course). The Outpost tool patterns would need to be updated to reflect required mats. They would have the same appearance and sparkles that they do now (picks should gain sparkles with this change), and like other outpost/generic patterns, would accept mats from any region. This would allow nationalism for even the crafting tools (Fyros or Tryker using a Matis pick? I don't think so!) =)

A new Crafting sub-tree could be added that branches out for each tool.

Add one more step to the crafting mission chain before the Amp-crafting mission: create your own tools. By that point, you've demonstrated the ability to gather materials using the provided pick, and you've demonstrated prowess at basic crafting using the provided armour crafting tool. To progress further, you need to know how to be self-sufficient and craft your own tools. The mission-giver provides you with a generic tool crafting tool.

Then remove NPC-supplied tools from the game, except perhaps for very poor quality picks and tool crafting tools that cannot be traded.

This would provide real items that players could grind on that would actually be useful for anyone and everyone. It also wouldn't matter THAT much the relative stats, since there is only Durability and Lightness to worry about. A Q250 Supreme Rubbarn tool would last longer and be lighter than a Q10 Basic Rubbarn tool, but they would both have the same exact Rubbarn special ability.

This also gives a (minor) benefit to those high quality level Op tool mats over lower quality level Op tool mats, and would open up various quality level Op tool mats to be used as rewards or gifts from events and actually be useful.

This could inspire special faction tools on the faction vendors as well, particularly Focus-boosted jewel crafting tools.

To still provide a reason to purchase faction picks other than the fancy versions, maybe not allow stat boosts to be added to the tools? Or increase the boosts available on the faction tools by 25-50%?

I like the idea!

+10

+1, I am for everything being player made except fame rewards (although...even this could be done by having civ/faction merchants offer fame for making fame rewards, made by an pattern earned with fame...then the merchant can sell the rewards to those "worthy")...no one makes it, none available to buy imo.

Not sure I agree with everything in that lengthy post, but giving the players the ability to craft the basic tools with the toolcrafting ability gets my +1

As for the toolcrafting tool? I'd say make that craftable via the same way as we currently make a campfire, so that it doesn't need any tools, just the mats.

+1 but same concerns as marelli has

Nothing against it in principle, in fact I'd expected it to be possible when I first bought the toolcrafting skill several years ago.

One caveat though: with limited development resources, how high a priority should this have given that the cost of craft tools is so low there's really no point in crafting your own unless they add some bonus to the basic tool (as do op tools, obviously).

So a crafted tool might need some bonus capabilities. Not big ones, like armillo or rubarn, but maybe a few percent boost in craft success rate? This would entice crafters to make their tools, thus making the whole thing worthwhile and not something that people may try once only to never use it again because it's just so much faster to buy the tools.

Yeah should be able to add HP and/or Focus bonus to tools like the Factions ones have. but not as much like with normal crafting.

That part wouldn't be too bad... Just make it so that toolcrafting ranks give something like 4 points of action credit per rank instead of the 10 other types do now. At Q250 that'd be 100 total. :D

And aye, I support this idea, if nothing else to get me off my butt and digging again. You can see special types of "parts" when looking at generic materials (tunneling, pestle, the like) which would seem to correspond to making normal tools as it is, and making picks that have more than 100 HP would be fun. :D

I mostly like this idea. At least as long as the NPC tools are no worse than they currently are; I'm not sure I'd always be able to find someone to make me a new pick. It would also fit with the RP (that no one does :P) for players to be able to do (almost) everything useful that NPCs can.