Flecthing revamp

Daffie said:
I would like to point out that I was eluding to this on the top of page 2 of this thread :p
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it was hard to say before the changes actually went in. we were kind of led to believe that tons of items would have bane. since we already have all the on-tier loot, we figured we would have all of the on-tier banes. which didn't turn out to the case. most of my guildmates will have to farm low tier mobs that we haven't farmed in literal years to get the banes they want. that's what makes rangers the lucky ones now
 
cian2 said:
most of my guildmates will have to farm low tier mobs that we haven't farmed in literal years to get the banes they want.
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It seems to me that the basic problem is that all bane effects are too powerful in relation to base damage. If the DPS increase of a single piece of +1 bane gear (or arrow) were simply reduced, then bane enhancements on gear could be distributed much more liberally without risk of completely unbalancing the game, or making players feel forced to gather/keep bane gear from multiple different tiers.

(4) If you have an idea for a full paradigm shift of the tradeskill to eschew the bane/elemental damage concept, then you need to provide more than the idea. An e-mail saying "you should make fletching make arrows that are 1 damage and have the main use be for some kind of proc aug" isn't helpful. That's only part of an idea.
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It would help if you clarified what issues you would like to see addressed with the current system. The way these threads usually go is people complain about various things, and you don't acknowledge the validity of the complaints. People probably get the impression that you'd reject brainstorming out of hand, so why waste the effort?
 
eqjenius said:
(4) If you have an idea for a full paradigm shift of the tradeskill to eschew the bane/elemental damage concept, then you need to provide more than the idea. An e-mail saying "you should make fletching make arrows that are 1 damage and have the main use be for some kind of proc aug" isn't helpful. That's only part of an idea.
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It would help if you clarified what issues you would like to see addressed with the current system. The way these threads usually go is people complain about various things, and you don't acknowledge the validity of the complaints. People probably get the impression that you'd reject brainstorming out of hand, so why waste the effort?
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I actually like the current system. However, I recognize that some people hate it outright on a number of different levels that range from "combining large bundles in a quiver is a pain" to "tradeskills should make nothing more than toys and gameplay-irrelevant items" and much more. I'm not opposed to scrapping every major recipe of the Fletching tradeskill and starting with a different idea altogether, but since I like the current system, it's going to need a lot more than a jumping-off point of an idea. Redesigning the tradeskill from the ground up takes a lot of time and the consideration of many things and took me months the first time.
 
Tarutao said:
I actually like the current system. However, I recognize that some people hate it outright on a number of different levels that range from "combining large bundles in a quiver is a pain" to "tradeskills should make nothing more than toys and gameplay-irrelevant items" and much more. I'm not opposed to scrapping every major recipe of the Fletching tradeskill and starting with a different idea altogether, but since I like the current system, it's going to need a lot more than a jumping-off point of an idea. Redesigning the tradeskill from the ground up takes a lot of time and the consideration of many things and took me months the first time.
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May I ask what you like about the current Fletching system?
 
I thought Tao's first fletching revamp had a lot of merit, particularly since it seemed to have been a complete system designed with little outside feedback (I don't mean that as a criticism, more of an observation of the effort and thought put into it).

The revamp included a number of improvements which I thought were incredible, particularly the ability to carry up to 50 stacks of arrows (per quiver!). Essentially, an unlimited supply compared to what rangers had before. The old system limited players to 20(ish?) stacks of arrows, which had to be fletched during the raid (if you did not fletch mid-raid, you could only carry about 10 stacks of arrows).

The introduction of bane damage was also a very cool idea, and an opinion couldn't be formed about this change until rangers had personally fired/fletched many quivers full of arrows.

One nice thing about ammunition supply via tradeskill is that it allows other people to supply ammunition to the ranger in exchange for platinum. If quivers were no drop and a ranger was forced to create all of his own arrows, the incentive to play a ranger would probably drop significantly. I've always had plenty of in-game cash ever since the fletching revamp, so I've always had the option of buying my ammunition from other players. Not all rangers have this option, so I could imagine that the current fletching system is even more burdensome for those players.

Zaela's implementation of autofire was a godsend for rangers. A side effect of autofire is that rangers fire more arrows than we used to. The more arrows a ranger fires, the faster he/she burns through quivers. The faster rangers go through quivers, the more labor a ranger has to expend in order to play the game.

Between the implementation of high capacity quivers and autofire, rangers go through a lot more arrows than we ever used to. Any increase in our haste or bow delay also increases the number of arrows we go through - which means more fletching. Generally, the more often rangers have to fletch or purchase quivers, the more bothersome the system seems. (Using up quivers faster also means carrying more quivers, which is also bothersome).

Tao's most recent revamp seems to exacerbate a number of the mechanical issues with his first fletching revamp, which have all been detailed in this thread.

It seems to me that at this point, endless quiver would be a good solution, along with a revamp of the tradeskill (the proc idea sounds neat, I'd be interested in hearing more about it).

It would be nice if rangers could actually come up with something that we all could agree upon. :p
 
I would love to put time into working with Tao to fix what I feel are problems with Fletching. I must first know what he likes about the curreny system so I know if there is even a possibly my work would server as some purpose.

Perhaps he likes Fletching because it is the only trade skill that some people are truly forced to use, other then augs. He might like this because he likes trade skills, maybe even wants more trade skills to be forced on more players. If this is the case then clearly any input I have will be overlooked and be a waste of my time.
 
To start, while he loves tradeskills, he's never felt that other people should have to do them. However, even back as far as 2004, the idea seems to have been to balance rangers with the concept that they could increase their DPS a bit for special situations by spending the money and/or time to fletch specific, more expensive arrows. However, Fletching was an unbelievably broken mess, which got mostly ignored due to the availability of Nightmare Arrows which far outdid any fletched arrows.

Now here's my conjecture from having living with him for so long:

With Tarutao around to put in the huge amount of work needed to make Fletching fit "The Vision", I'd guess that the staff took the opportunity to explain what they wanted for it and Rangers so that Taru could make the numbers fit. I can't even fathom him caring what the numbers actually were as opposed to making sure they matched up with what was wanted. However, I also can't imagine him expecting Rangers to have to constantly use the best arrows possible to be compettive DPS. I'd think using just the highest basic arrow would be more than adequate for most purposes, and those arrows should be much cheaper and readily available. It seems that's part of the the direction in which Fletching has gone, too.

</conjecture>

That should give you a jumping off point. I like a lot of the ideas being floated up in this thread. If you guys can pow-wow and put together a well-fleshed out idea and presentation of what you'd like, that'd easily be the best way to get stuff looked at and discussed seriously. Just having some ideas of augs is like putting the first 30 minutes of work into a project and saying "I did my part, now you do the rest of the 100 hours of effort, and it better be the thing I imagined in my head". Hell, I'd be with you in working on this in a brainstorming thread meant to build a revamp of Fletching and Ranger Archery. Between all the people here having heads visibly outside of their rectums, I'd expect such a thing to work beautifully. I might just even start that thread later today if no one else does, I like the possiblity so much.
 
Animand said:
I also can't imagine him expecting Rangers to have to constantly use the best arrows possible to be compettive DPS. I'd think using just the highest basic arrow would be more than adequate for most purposes, and those arrows should be much cheaper and readily available.
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This.

As far as pow-wow'ing, a thread that's long and jumbled isn't the best idea. Perhaps, we could post a link to a google.doc where we can all hash-it-out/brainstorm.
 
Another possibility for consideration is to make fletching create standard 1 damage arrows, and have powerful bane damage arrows be cool quest-able or droppable things that you could pick up once in a while.

For instance, if you kill Empress Pernelia, she has a 1 in 3 chance of dropping a quiver of dragon bane arrows.
If you kill Saitha, she has a 1 in 3 chance of dropping a quiver of powerful humanoid bane arrows.
If you kill an everchill orc, it has a 1 in 6000 chance of dropping a quiver of humanoid bane arrows.
(This is similar to the way "Just One" arrows drop, except that it would give you a bane quiver with a number of charges instead of something completely useless).
 
Whopperfoo said:
This.

As far as pow-wow'ing, a thread that's long and jumbled isn't the best idea. Perhaps, we could post a link to a google.doc where we can all hash-it-out/brainstorm.
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Or someone could start a thread and edit the first post to include the most popular ideas as they're developed.
 
Also, if the fletching of quivers remains at the end of this discussion, the fletching of less powerful quivers should not require as much effort to create as powerful quivers.

1 damage quivers should be purchasable from the vendor.
2 damage arrows should take 1 minute to fletch.
3 damage arrows should take 2 minutes to fletch (and/or have a more complicated recipe.
etc. etc.

This way there would be a real market for arrows that aren't the most powerful available, and would give fletchers and rangers more options for purchase and for gameplay.

Again I don't mean to explicitly endorse the tradeskilled ammunition system, but this would be a nice change if it's to remain.
 
eqjenius said:
(the proc idea sounds neat, I'd be interested in hearing more about it)
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There is no more. There is no idea. There is nothing. This is like the topic idea of a 50 page research paper. There is no paper written. This is not an actual thing or the beginning of a thing until someone else takes the initiative to write the full paper (TONS of work) and then proceed to accept harsh criticism about their first draft (like this thread and the others like it that tell me I'm killing the game).

That said, if anyone individually, as a group, as some kind of crowdsourced community project that springs naturally from the playerbase itself, or otherwise were to do the massive amount of planning, design, and first round balancing to turn that topic idea into an actual idea, then I'm still on board for a full on re-revamp. Some 400 word "proposal" isn't going to cut it, though.
 
Tarutao said:
There is no more. There is no idea. There is nothing. This is like the topic idea of a 50 page research paper. There is no paper written. This is not an actual thing or the beginning of a thing until someone else takes the initiative to write the full paper (TONS of work) and then proceed to accept harsh criticism about their first draft (like this thread and the others like it that tell me I'm killing the game).

That said, if anyone individually, as a group, as some kind of crowdsourced community project that springs naturally from the playerbase itself, or otherwise were to do the massive amount of planning, design, and first round balancing to turn that topic idea into an actual idea, then I'm still on board for a full on re-revamp. Some 400 word "proposal" isn't going to cut it, though.
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You want someone to make a "50 page research paper" on a trade skill yet you will not even tell people why you like the way Fletching currently is.

Not sure how you can NOT see this being a large problem. Why would someone invest "100 hours of effort" when you don't even want to take 5 minuts to tell us how you feel.

Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that knowing why YOU like Fletching, the way it is in game now, is a rather important first step that needs to be taken. You currently have so much power over the Fletching tradeskill. That also means you hold the balance power of a whole class in your hand. I am not sure how you, or any other developer doesn't see this as a problem. HOWEVER one thing is clear, you are going to have to like the new system if there is even going to be a small chance for Fletching to change. Knowing what you like about the current system will help the new system also be liked by you.
 
Kedrin said:
You want someone to make a "50 page research paper" on a trade skill
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Actually, I don't. I'm just saying that unless you're willing to put in a lot of work on this, I'm not willing to rewrite the whole tradeskill for you to insult again and again.

Kedrin said:
tell us how you feel
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This is nothing more than a trap whose response will be "you don't understand the game and this is why the game is dying" regardless of what I say. I will not walk into this trap.
 
You wanna rethink this silly non sequitur? Fletching was broken, so Tarutao put in hundreds of hours of work to fix it. After the bane changes, people are complaining again and want something completely different. Should he just dedicate another hundred hours to make something and implement it by himself to just then get it ripped to shreds and complained about? Maybe instead of "maybe make it aug based" and "bring back endless quiver" and "fletching sucks", you could actually flesh out a real idea so that there Taru or a dev could have at least a modicum of confidence that he's not wasting another few months of their time, for free, only to get bitched out again.

Your posts are horribly wrong and offensive. Please actually take the time to think this through, instead of just giving a knee-jerk, entitled reaction.
 
Animand said:
Your posts are horribly wrong and offensive. Please actually take the time to think this through, instead of just giving a knee-jerk, entitled reaction.
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Please quote me being "horribly wrong and offensive" I would really like to see what I have said that was so horribly wrong.

Was it the time I said...

Kedrin said:
I am sorry if you were personally hurt by me calling you selfish. I do think you are a good guy and I would never wish to intentionally hurt your feelings.
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and made the longest post in this thread yet that is simply explaining way I say what I said and telling him I never meant any of it to be a personal attack?

I also sent Tarutao a message on IRC telling him he is a cool dude and I never wanted to hurt his feelings in any way.
 
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I like the current fletching change. However, I would like to see endless quiver changed to consume an arrow after X amount of time rather than shots, and bow speed changed up a bit to be more flexible
 
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