Player Crafted Loot in Loot Table Incentive Concern

Hi All,

Not trying to be a downer, but what's the incentive for crafters to sell goods to NPC merchants?

From the R53 release notes:

Loot Improvements: We made massive improvements to loot. Player crafted gear sold to merchants will now appear in supply bundles, decorations have been added in multiple places including toadstools on mushroom enemies (how ironic is that?), worn armor can now be found on humanoids, lot deeds and homes now appear in rare supply bundles, and drop rates have been increased for all items in Offline Mode!​

To test the value, I've grabbed a bunch of gear from my "New Player Gear" vendor and took it all to Theo at Owl's Head (on QA server, and Theo provides maximum value for gear):



What strikes me as obvious is that all of these items are way undervalued if I decided to sell them to Theo. At least, there is no way a Copper Dagger +8, Exceptional Epic Leather Boots, or slightly used Exceptional Epic Leather Chest Armor of Thaumaturgy are selling even close to the value it took to craft them. Heck, the gem alone for the Chest piece is over 200gp, but when affixed to the armor it loses about 85% of its value?

If you did find something good from loot crafted by a player, you know someone somewhere did something extremely unprofitable. This makes me believe that crafters won't flock to this system.

Suggestions:

First, other MMOs (remaining nameless) have quests to make sets of gear a player can turn in to get other types of rare goodies (recipes, artifacts, special ingredients, etc.) If items in the loot table appeared from gear crafted by people turning in these "crafting quests" items would at least guarantee some quality and standards.

Second, you can always adjust the numbers for player crafted gear to a more reasonable amount.

Sincerely,

Engineer

 

Wow those prices are .... insulting to any crafter
I was looking forward to putting stuff in the loot table, but I guess nothing is going to change....

 

I agree - you probably get more gold value back in metal scrap compared to selling to a vendor.

 

Its a step; now that things can be added to the loot tables, they can revisit what NPCs will pay for them. You still won't be making money when you sell to an NPC, but I'd expect value adjustments to be coming over the next few releases.

 

I think the idea of merchants asking for random specific gear as like commissions and such would be a cool idea. Could even turn it into a whole questline where you need to get a Crafters licence, by passing crafting tests. Reach certain requirments and upgrade your licence and be able to take on more commissions per day.

 

It's not necessarily only new gear that you can sell to an NPC. Consider old gear that you've worn out and nobody wants. You don't want it taking up space.. you can't sell it players and if you're not a crafter or can't be bothered to scrap it.. off load it on to an NPC. Let the poor person who finds it in their loot deal with it.

It's.. interesting.. but the online game is intentionally designed to not allow you to turn a profit selling crafted gear to NPCs.. NPCs are after all, unlimited gold faucets. If selling crafted stuff to NPCs were viable, all serious crafters would be filthy rich in no time. Ah but then the influx of fresh gear in the loot tables would mean more people finding brand new gear and not having to buy it. I'd be interested to see where the balance of selling to NPCs vs players would settle. Not that I think that kind of experiment would be healthy for the game but still..

hmmmm

 

I wasn't saying I need to make a profit, I expect decent losses, but each enchant or masterwork costs approx. 1000 gold, paying 70 or 80 is an insult at the very least.

 

Well.. as someone who doesn't plan to sell to players and who doesn't buy from players.. I would consider selling off my 'failures' (ie non-exceptional) to NPCs So each masterwork or enchant only costs me the price of the coal and molds to make the ingots. It all depends on how you view your 'costs' I suppose.

 

They are right to be cautious with prices. They are essentially inserting a new gold generation source in the total economy compared to the current state. Even if it is not individually profitable for people selling to NPCs, it could potentially increase the total gold generated in the world leading to inflation. They should keep close tabs on this activity and take it slow. Hopefully, some median point will be reached that incentivises crafters without adding too much total gold to the economy.

 

At this stage, their main focus would probably be just making sure that the stuff work properly from end to end without not causing some weird bugs/side effects that would crash the economy or the server first.

Incentive to crafters might be something that comes later, so it's a good thing that we start some conversation now. At that point, it would just be the matter finding the sweet coefficient that everyone can meet half way.

 

I'd like to think that those prices are only place holders and that it will be more enticing as time goes on. @Chris Can you weigh in and give us a little insight into how this will end up working?

 

I wouldn't think of this as insulting, so much as a first step in a larger plan. Right now, make sure the tech technically works. Next step is to make it socially work (make you have at least a desire to use it sometimes). Until it reaches that point, don't be insulted, just don't use it. Think of it as a work in progress.

 

It’s just a cool perk and not an economy feature.

Top end crafter/grinder tosses in hundreds or thousands of worthless practice items into the pool. Same person then goes and grinds supply bundles at end game areas to make a profit off stuff they originally couldn’t give away.

I doubt you will ever see an accurate value on these items.

 

I really like this idea. One piece to adding the crafting failures to loot is imo truly missing and will cause chaos and confusion. It just does not make sense making the failures both sellable to player vendors and going into the loot table. Please @DarkStarr consider another step to player failure being added to the loot table, make it a fun experience instead of a ho-hum experience. It is meant to be special and it does not add that by not making better details to how it is done. Please, please, please.