An open letter. - Vanguard Crafters ************* (Silius)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravynia http://www.vanguardcrafters.com/foru...s/viewpost.gif
Hello.

First of all, I am a loyal gamer. I have played most of the MMORPGs out there, and have been doing so since the beta of Ultima Online.

I am also a professional software designer and developer, not currently in the gaming industry, although in the Commodore 64 days, you may have heard of me *grin*.

I am telling you this because I want you to realize I have been around, and I would like to offer some advice, for you to take or leave, from a mostly happy customer.

I just got a letter from an in-game friend in my mailbox explaining that he was taking the break from Vanguard and is going to try out a new game. It is the third such letter I have had to endure in the last two weeks. All three of the letters came from 35+ crafters, two of which I knew from other games previously. (Crafters seem to congregate togther, no matter what the game).

Anyway, it has prompted me to write this letter to you about some things I see in the crafting aspect of the game that can be improved.

1) First of all, I do not like the penalty imposed for failing a build because of a crash. I understand why it is there, to keep people from disconnecting when a craft is going bad. However, for me to have to risk an entire caravel because of the fear that someone will try to exploit the system by returning all of the crafting items (and resetting the WO to the pre-crash number) it is putting an undue hardship and stress into the game that is mostly unnecessary.

I actually could live with the WOs not being reset. It doesn't happen *that* often. But, after losing an entire Mast assembly at a no-fail assembly station, I am skiddish about crafting expensive items. The loot box at the end to me seems unnecessary. Why not put things directly in our packs when finished? Some have said "what if our packs are full--I wouldn't like this change). My reply to that is "If your pack was full before you started crafting- it is *your* fault you lost the item. If I crashed, then it is the game's fault."

There is a difference between "hardcore" and "frustration". Hardcore puts the burden on the player to do things right. Frustration sets in when the game fails to perform as it should, and punishes the player for things totally outside of their control.

Perhaps a two-minute imposed crafting "time-out" after relogging if there was a crash during a build and all of the items were returned. Maybe a 10 minute one. I would prefer that to losing a valuable item because of something outside of my control.

2) Switching the position of the icons during crafting. I understand this is done to thwart automatic macroers. Would it be too difficult to put different icons for each item? I get frustrated having to constantly hit the alt key to see the tool-tip text to see if I am actually making 1,3, or 5 items. A few icons added to the game, with numbers attached for the first stage would be a great frustration relief for me, and allow you to continue to move your icons around at will. Heck, do it even more often if it makes you happy.

3) The roaming Taskmasters. I am not sure if this was an additional anti-macro devise, or if you thought we just needed to take more time between batches of WOs. What it lead to is a great deal of frustration for me, as the taskmaster I like to use most is sometimes standing directly inside of a forge and not visible, or graphically stuck in a door (the Deebs). If it was simply to make us take more time, then fine... you can just move them further away. Although I admit it is sometimes funny trying to watch crafters try to chase taskmasters through the fences of Southwatch, I am sure they are not as amused that they can't walk through and hop things as easily as an NPC.

Also, some crafters like to really take their time in choosing their work orders. There have been several rounds of adjusting the taskmaster time before they start walking off. I don't quite understand why you would put something in the game like roving taskmasters to take more time between work orders, then force a rush to speed things up between work orders. It is frustrating to me.

4) Choosing an item to craft. I can't understand why scrolling through a long list of items to craft is helping me become a better crafter. Perhaps a "most recently crafted" section would be helpful right below the Work Orders section. If you think that will make things too easy, well, look at number 5. Punish me by making crafting more difficult or takes longer, not because the interface to do it is clumsy.

5) Pre-checking to see if I have all of the items on the table before I start to craft is a bit of hand-holding I could do without if some of the other frustrating time-wasters were addressed. If your goal is to make crafting more difficult and take longer, this will do it. It certainly meets the definition of "hard core".

I think you get the gist of what I am trying to say. I enjoy the hardcore nature of crafting in Vanguard. I even relish it. But punish me for my actions or inactions, and relieve the frustration brought about by interface quirks and things beyond my control.

Thank you for reading. I am a fan.

Ravynia

Thank you for the letter I appreciate you taking the time to write it. Let me say that your assumptions as to why most things exist are completely off base. In the case of crafting we did the best we could with the coding time we had considering that other spheres needed attention. So most things are the way they are simply for that reason. There is no malice or desire to make things difficult by forcing frustration in the ways you describe.

1. This is an unfortunate side affect. We have gone over several ways around this but they all ended up being exploitable. Disconnection when in the middle of something is a fact of life when playing a game like this. We do not compensate loss because you lost connection. Would I like to see a solution implemented to help with this that is not exploitable, sure I would, but crafting does not have the resources needed right now to explore a feature addition to the system to counter the chance of losing items from connection.

2. Switching positions is a bug plain and simple it has been fixed several times but somehow finds a new way to pop up. There is no other reasoning behind it.

3. Roaming taskmasters was done in beta to help counter botting. I cannot say whether it will change anytime soon. I can say that having them stand inside of forges and such is not desired.

4. This is another one of those limited resource situations. Trust me if there is anyone who understands how annoying the recipe selection is I am that person. Any modifications to the crafting UI are not something on the list as we have other areas of our game that are much more important.

5. I don't understand what the problem is here, but the goal you list here is certainly off the mark.

My goal is not to punish you with interface, but much like you the issues within our interface are things outside of my control.


Silius


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