Suggestions/Feedback on Alchemy/Herbalism

[Green Monster]

Great addition to the server, thank you to all who did this.

Here's some suggestions, though, that I hope you will consider.


1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.
[edit] OR make all herbs have 0 value to npcs so that people will either sell them to PCs or drop them on the ground where they found them. This actually makes IC sense: willow bark is an analgesic but good luck selling any to Walgreens.

2: Make the die roll to harvest the plants more open to more classes.
Even with the cool class skill feat backgrounds, not everyone can get survival skill. There might be other things more vital to the character's survival that they need to get instead (*cough* acrobatics ). I'd suggest making the dice roll to successfully harvest a plant be a roll of the highest of four skills, Lore: Nature, Search, Spot, and Survival. Whichever one of those skills the character has the highest score in, that's what they roll.

3: Bags.
I KNOW that having weight reduction bags has been on the to-do list and I'm not sure why we don't have them, my 2 low-str dex builds need them badly, but SOME kind of on-character bag would be especially useful now as it would give the opportunity for characters who aren't alchemists to sell plants to those who are without filling up their inventories and dropping all their stuff when they log in at the nexus.

Thanks for reading!

[Hullack]

My suggestion would be to remove trivially available materials from crafting requirements -- such as water and potion bottles, and just assume that these are so readily available as to not require inventory juggling. I'm still figuring out the system IG, but it seems odd that you can only get one bottle of water every 10 minutes out of a fountain. Buying a potion bottle from a vendor standing next to the crafting bench just seems a little pointless instead of adding 6g to the crafting cost or just hand-waving it entirely.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.

Penalizing players who do it for the right intention isn't the right direction.

[Green Monster]

1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.

Penalizing players who do it for the right intention isn't the right direction.

First of all, adding that 20 xp from harvesting them to item creation instead isn't penalizing players who are crafting.

Still, optionally, how about removing all monetary value from all harvested plants? Right now, because you get free, easy xp AND some of the plants can be sold (and it's hard, especially right now, to remember which ones can and cannot) players are incentivized to pick all the plants they see, go to a merchant, sell the ones that they can, and throw away the rest. If all the plants are monetarily worthless, THEN players will be incentivized to pick the plants they see and drop them immediately where they found them so that people trying out the craft can pick them up.

[Green Monster]

My suggestion would be to remove trivially available materials from crafting requirements -- such as water and potion bottles, and just assume that these are so readily available as to not require inventory juggling. I'm still figuring out the system IG, but it seems odd that you can only get one bottle of water every 10 minutes out of a fountain. Buying a potion bottle from a vendor standing next to the crafting bench just seems a little pointless instead of adding 6g to the crafting cost or just hand-waving it entirely.

100% agreed. Crafting should require some work on the player's part but dealing with OOC limitations like the timer on the fountains isn't work. It's just annoying. Gathering the ingredients is work enough, trivial stuff like bottles and water, etc, should be "assumed" in the same way that material components for spells are.

[gedweyignasia]

1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.

Definitely agree with this. There's a very natural incentive to click on something if it gives you 20xp to click on it. If a side-effect is getting unwanted trash that you can't sell in your inventory, you might just throw that stuff away. This isn't to say you can't have proper RP around harvesting and crafting, but the current design incentivizes clicking for XP. Slowing it down so it takes 5 rounds to harvest a plant might help to alleviate that, or we can award XP for crafting, not harvesting.

3: Bags.
I KNOW that having weight reduction bags has been on the to-do list and I'm not sure why we don't have them, my 2 low-str dex builds need them badly, but SOME kind of on-character bag would be especially useful now as it would give the opportunity for characters who aren't alchemists to sell plants to those who are without filling up their inventories and dropping all their stuff when they log in at the nexus.

Agree on this. Getting some bags for herbs or gems in quickly would be very convenient. Our variety of herbs alone causes inventory space to fill up quickly.

[Green Monster]

1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.

Definitely agree with this. There's a very natural incentive to click on something if it gives you 20xp to click on it. If a side-effect is getting unwanted trash that you can't sell in your inventory, you might just throw that stuff away. This isn't to say you can't have proper RP around harvesting and crafting, but the current design incentivizes clicking for XP. Slowing it down so it takes 5 rounds to harvest a plant might help to alleviate that, or we can award XP for crafting, not harvesting.

3: Bags.
I KNOW that having weight reduction bags has been on the to-do list and I'm not sure why we don't have them, my 2 low-str dex builds need them badly, but SOME kind of on-character bag would be especially useful now as it would give the opportunity for characters who aren't alchemists to sell plants to those who are without filling up their inventories and dropping all their stuff when they log in at the nexus.

Agree on this. Getting some bags for herbs or gems in quickly would be very convenient. Our variety of herbs alone causes inventory space to fill up quickly.

I think the ideal situation would be:

1: We have some kind of bag, even if it can ONLY store ingredients (like the NWN1 scroll case, but for plants).

2: Harvesting plants still gives xp BUT none of the plants can sell for anything to NPC stores.

3: Harvesting has a little timer, just like the one for picking a lock or disabling a trap. Maybe not quite as long. Half that length of time, perhaps?

4: Harvesting plants is a roll of Lore: Nature, Search, Spot, or Survival, whichever is highest for that character, so that more characters can do it.

5: Incedential items like water and bottles are just assumed to be in the crafter's possession.

IF ALL of those conditions are true, then people would be incentivized to pick up plants BUT instead of throwing them away or selling them to a merchant, they would benefit more from selling to a crafter PC, so long as the bags exist to keep their inventories from being full of just plants. This would promote RP and inter-player commerce, and create a niche "job" for not-very-mechanically strong characters to be harvesters for both xp and gold. Without bags, then ppl will continue to throw stuff away to keep from filling up their inventories, though. Bags are essential.

[Ashenie]

Hello there,

I will raise the suggestions internally and come back with more feedback.

Just a few elements :

There are already talks around various aspects of the suggestions raised here. We might release them publicly once they are ready : some need feedback, other need developing, other need time. But we're trying!

Timer "on fountains" are part of the script; it's not something I can modulate externally. The current number of water per day is already high and should allow to brew most recipes that need it per day. So it's not really a limitation factor, currently, in theory, for crafting.

Some of the suggestions raised mean changing the script, or the core system. While it is not impossible, it requires more work, and consensus, and more consideration to the various consequences of such changes, such as player having to remake their characters for example.
The current system works like it used to work, it just has more ressources, and more brews.

I hope these informations help,

Cheers,

Ashenie

[Aspect of Sorrow]

1: Remove the xp reward for picking plants, put xp rewards for crafting with the plants only.
I admit I've been guilty in the recent past of having a character who doesn't have the skill points to spare to use alchemy just grabbing up plants I happen to find for that little xp boost, especially my 2 higher level characters. Now that I've built a character to explore alchemy, I find it very irksome when other people grab up all the plants in an area for the xp and then throw them away.

Penalizing players who do it for the right intention isn't the right direction.

First of all, adding that 20 xp from harvesting them to item creation instead isn't penalizing players who are crafting.

There are players who are hired by crafters and NPCs to fetch those ingredients.

[ValerieJean]

Not everyone who harvests also crafts, as AoS stated some make money off of it or give it to those who can. I do not see a reason to remove the XP personally. I find anotehr avenue to do so to be really good for the server myself.

[Green Monster]

So make ALL ingredients have a store value of 0. As long as there are any that can be sold to npcs, people are incentivized to just grab everything in sight, take it to Blunt, and throw out what won't sell. Saying "some people behave responbly" doesn't change the fact that most people don't. As long as thee easiest and most rewarding path is to do just harvest, sell, throw away, that's what most people will do. If everything is worthless to npcs, then at least the harvest hoggers will be incentivized to drop them where they find them.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

So make ALL ingredients have a store value of 0. As long as there are any that can be sold to npcs, people are incentivized to just grab everything in sight, take it to Blunt, and throw out what won't sell. Saying "some people behave responbly" doesn't change the fact that most people don't. As long as thee easiest and most rewarding path is to do just harvest, sell, throw away, that's what most people will do. If everything is worthless to npcs, then at least the harvest hoggers will be incentivized to drop them where they find them.

You can also just subtract the xp earned on the onunacquire event when fired for the item with the tag when they drop it (determined by a check for the object's existence). There's ways to discourage the issue without devaluing gameplay options.

[Green Monster]

Selling crafting resources to npcs and throwing crafting resources away are gameplay options that need to be devalued.

[Hullack]

Is there any way to make it like the chest script, where each person gets a turn at the node rather than putting it on cooldown for everyone globally? That would seem to solve the original complaint.

[gedweyignasia]

Is there any way to make it like the chest script, where each person gets a turn at the node rather than putting it on cooldown for everyone globally? That would seem to solve the original complaint.

Yes, this is also feasible.