Recipes: We've been doing this all wrong.

@DarkStarr

I don't know what the recipes are, so it's kind of hard to test them. I goto SOTA wiki and they're sometimes wrong (understandably). But then I don't know if it's a bug or if it's a change or if the wiki is completely wrong.

Please just give us all the recipes that you have. If they don't work right we can report them as bugs. Later you can add an extra ingredient or something. But for now, if I take the time to gather all the resources, refine them, and produce them, I should at least know if what I'm trying to do is working correctly or if it needs to be reported as a bug.

I've felt like this for awhile now, but reliable information is becoming harder to find.

Also, I kind of feel like the main take away from all these releases is that the crafting system is somehow prone to the same types of bugs. Is it a manual entry problem? Is it a problem with change control? It seems like there should be one master sheet of recipes that is controlled very tightly, and that the whole crafting system should be using the same coding objects that at this point shouldn't be changing very often.

I don't know. (Read: Seriously, I have no idea.) But there's go to be a better way to do this.

 

I think you should have to buy a recipe in order to make it....it seems a cop out to have a website of wonders so to speak. You should play the game entirely within the game itself.

 

I'm fine with that. I wish they would do that.

Many recipes are not for sale however, they're to be discovered. Which is kind of a problem for testing, imo.

 

Sort of, but if the crafting system works do you really need to have players test every recipe? I mean, they could internally test it and it would have the same effect.

 

release all recipes and lower the price of them for pre-alpha

 

They're internally testing it now and it's broken when it goes live. I've been trying to do more crafting lately and I just can't seem to figure out when things are broken and when they're not. I think we've come a long away from where we were six months ago, but it's pretty frustrating when we hit a road block and don't know if something is broken or it's user error (which I'm really good at) or they just changed something.

I know it would be a lot of work for them to produce something fancy, but I think a spread sheet would do. Either that, or improve internal testing of recipes to the point where we have a goal of "zero errors".

 

The wiki has a "Last Seen" in the corner of every recipe. We update them as we verify them, but it is a big task. I got through all of the skills for R21, and recipes are next, but we're going to need a ton of materials to do it. I know several names are off (like "of power" instead of " iron", etc), but haven't had time to dive into it. If you see a recipe that you can personally verify, you can send corrections to me, of update the wiki directly.

 

If I were you guys (and it's something I should be volunteering to help with really!), I wouldn't rush into testing recipes right now....next release will be making too many changes from the sounds of things.

This is actually a great idea...for now when we are testing. It really would be far faster and easier for all of us to test things than add extra work for the dev guys. Right now I use the wiki far more than I ever would if the game was live, because there doesn't seem to be much point to searching out and learning recipes that might change anyway . Still, giving us the final recipe list would take some of the fun out of it for me later , the cost of getting to help debug?

 

This is in no way a problem with Sota Wiki. Really I think the devs should just give you guys the spread sheet and let you update your sight so people can test more effectively.

 

I'm in no rush to spoil surprises for people. I just think that whatever the system is that we're using should be easier to avoid bugs by now. Maybe I'm wrong and don't understand this (like most) aspects of development. It just seems to me that we would have some kind of database that would be populated with "need X,Y, and Z to make ABC Sword". So either we can't seem to update the database correctly, or we don't have a system that was built to allow for easy changes without frustrating errors.

Is it a bad change management process by design or is it being executed poorly? Or a combination?

Bottom line, I think after 2 years we should have a system that is pretty tight. So if the community has to test it and report it, then unfortunately I think we need to know what we're supposed to be testing and reporting so it gets fixed each release.

 

I have an issue with the devs giving out the recipies without having to have the ingame recipe...what happens is it basically comes down to people just following a wiki (with all the recipies) to advance in crafting...it makes it very mechanical and boring. Not to mention it gives a very serious leg up to those testing the game so that when it goes live you are going to see some here use that info to ensure that they have crafted the majority of the good items in game.

 

One of the pledge rewards is that we get all the starting recipes.

So you're going to have to get over that.

 

At the same time, once the system is in place and working...we don't need to test every recipe to make sure it is in the game....it should be as simple as a spreadsheet of required materials that changes for each item. You don't need a player to test those.

 

Every single recipe...ahh the joys of playing the game outside the game...Baron, do you plan on playing for anything? Hell it seems that everything can be bought for real world cash here.

 

Rune, do you ever wonder why you care so much about what other players do when all you claim to care about is single player? It's an odd juxtaposition.

 

I always understood that to mean the beginner type recipes only....not ALL recipes.

 

That's the point, we shouldn't need players to test it. But apparently we do, because there are bugs. For example: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/cant-craft-taming-collar.36777/

 

Right, starting. That could mean anything. I assume it's a healthy amount of recipes though.

 

All I care about is single player? Really...guess I own a lot for no reason

What you just did there was try and tell me what I think and somehow discredit what I have to say. I plan on playing online btw. Not always by myself.

It's good etiquette to not tell others what they do or claim to care about.

 

I guess I was wrong then. I wasn't trying to "do anything" though. And yeah, you did kind of say that prior to my post, Rune.

I doubt I'm the only person here that would consider you to be one of the people that primarily cares about single player. Glad to hear I'm wrong though, the more the merrier.