Brickmaking

[Lead_poisoning]

Currently, a player must click four times to make a single brick: one right click each for the hammer, chisel, and stone, and then a left click on the 'Craft' button.

If you remember that you need 80 bricks for a single wall section, this means that crafting enough bricks for a single wall section requires 320 clicks. This strikes me as 1) unnecessarily tedious, and 2) likely to inflict carpal tunnel syndrome on masons.

The simplest fix I can think of is to make the recipe call for 10 units of stone and produce 10 bricks, reducing the 320 clicks for one wall section to a much more reasonable 32.

Ideally, you wouldn't need to click the tools again between each crafting, but that's a wider issue than what I'm trying to address here.

[trenixdecease]

I disagree, you're making it way too easy. You should be forced to make every individual brick, however there should be some changes made.

I've created my own opinion about the crafting system, not only just bricks... http://www.xsyon.com/forum/showthrea...5361#post35361

[Xx1327]

take out all the clicks needed for making multiple bricks and just make it to where you need all the resources for said amount of bricks and you click craft and theres a timer for each brick. problem solved

[Xx1327]

take out all the clicks needed for making multiple bricks and just make it to where you need all the resources for said amount of bricks and you click craft and theres a timer for each brick. problem solved

umm

[trenixdecease]

umm

You needed to elaborate.

[mrcalhou]

You needed to elaborate.

Here you go:

Crafting in MMOs: How Repetitive Movement Increases A Person's Risk of Developing Carpal Tunnel and Methods That Game Developers Can Implement To Curb These Risks.

By Mrcalhou

In today's ever evolving world of electronic entertainment, there is one thing that has stood the test of time: boring and repetitive harvesting and crafting. The great majority of MMO's adhere to the simple mechanic of running up to a harvesting node or crafting station, clicking, waiting, then clicking and waiting ad nauseam until either the node is exhausted or the player has run out of crafting components. While this method of gameplay is relatively accessible for players of all skill levels, the repetitive nature of this style of gameplay may also lead to physical health problems later in life. What are these health problems and is there anything that can be done to lower the chance of player's having to experience these problems later in life? The major health risk that repetitive clicking can cause to individuals is the development of carpal tunnel; however, there are many different methods that game developers can implement that will reduce the need for multiple, repetitive clicks such as implementing an auto-repeat feature.

Before tackling what developers can do to change crafting, it would be prudent to discuss why they should consider such options. The first point is that repetitive crafting and harvesting is considered a boring activity to the great majority of players (Citation, 102). Crafting and harvesting in MMOs have remained relatively unchanged for nearly 15 years. With the introduction of new hardware and software capabilities during this time period, many players have expected that mechanics that were kept basic because of technological limitations would have evolved to take on a form that would reflect the advances in technology. For many games this still has not happened. The other issue with repetitive clicking is that studies have shown that amongst office workers, the rates of incidence of carpal tunnel are much greater than those of the general population. This information can be extrapolated to people that play computer games since the same physical movements are involved with both activities.

The most basic way that game developers can take to reduce these issues is to implement an auto-repeat function. While the actual activity of crafting would remain simplistic, the player would then be able to do other things during their time that could either be more entertaining or more productive. This would also help reduce the risk of players developing carpal tunnel, because the number of actions to produce any amount of item would be dramatically reduced.

The repetitive nature of clicking and harvesting, virtually unchanged for nearly two decades, should therefore be given attention by develepors so that they can take the necessary actions of redoing to the system to make it less boring and less physically harmful to the player.


This is AT LEAST a B paper >.<

[mrcalhou]

I disagree, you're making it way too easy.

Tedious is not the same as hard. If you want it to be harder then they should make it so that you actually have to do something during the crafting process. If all you are doing is clicking to set it up, that's not difficult at all. It's just repetitive, tedious, and requires no "skill" what-so-ever.

[trenixdecease]

Tedious is not the same as hard. If you want it to be harder then they should make it so that you actually have to do something during the crafting process. If all you are doing is clicking to set it up, that's not difficult at all. It's just repetitive, tedious, and requires no "skill" what-so-ever.

I'm not asking for it to be hard by leaving the unnecessary clicks. If you read my suggestion you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. With the original poster's suggestion there are two problems. First one being, creating multiple bricks at one time will make individual bricks less valuable. This will also make creating bricks easier as in quicker, which is why its value will go down. Second, if you increase the timer for ten bricks being created at one time, now we will be just wasting unnecessary time, especially if you only require two more bricks rather than ten. Why should someone make ten bricks when he only needs two more? The problem is not the amount of bricks we are allowed to create, but instead the reselecting of tools, the re-adding of materials, and the ability to repeat the crafting process.

[Lead_poisoning]

I'm not asking for it to be hard by leaving the unnecessary clicks. If you read my suggestion you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. With the original poster's suggestion there are two problems. First one being, creating multiple bricks at one time will make individual bricks less valuable. This will also make creating bricks easier as in quicker, which is why its value will go down. Second, if you increase the timer for ten bricks being created at one time, now we will be just wasting unnecessary time, especially if you only require two more bricks rather than ten. Why should someone make ten bricks when he only needs two more? The problem is not the amount of bricks we are allowed to create, but instead the reselecting of tools, the re-adding of materials, and the ability to repeat the crafting process.

1) I'm not sure what you mean by "less valuable." Bricks are virtually untradeable due to their extreme weight and the massive quantities needed. Also, you already said we would increase the timer for crafting 10 bricks instead of one, so it would only be quicker by the amount of time you spend clicking your tools and stone for each crafting, which isn't much. It would also consume the same amount of materials. The actual change in end-product value would be minimal, even assuming that for some reason you're attempting to trade bricks over a distance.

2) All the recipes I've seen use a number of bricks that is evenly divisible by 10. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some that are divisible by 5 as well, but who's building just one of that construction? If you build two, it's divisible by 10. So there's no situation where you would need 2 more bricks unless you had some leftover from one-by-one crafting. And if you had leftover bricks already, what's the big deal about having leftover bricks again?

This is unrelated to anything above, but how many bricks have you personally made in-game? I made around 2,000 over the last weekend, and it was miserable.

[trenixdecease]

1) I'm not sure what you mean by "less valuable." Bricks are virtually untradeable due to their extreme weight and the massive quantities needed. Also, you already said we would increase the timer for crafting 10 bricks instead of one, so it would only be quicker by the amount of time you spend clicking your tools and stone for each crafting, which isn't much. It would also consume the same amount of materials. The actual change in end-product value would be minimal, even assuming that for some reason you're attempting to trade bricks over a distance.

Bricks overtime will be traded at far distances, it's just a matter of time before we find out when. Check out my ideal system in my response above, it's affective and used by many MMORPGS.

2) All the recipes I've seen use a number of bricks that is evenly divisible by 10. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some that are divisible by 5 as well, but who's building just one of that construction? If you build two, it's divisible by 10. So there's no situation where you would need 2 more bricks unless you had some leftover from one-by-one crafting. And if you had leftover bricks already, what's the big deal about having leftover bricks again?

All recipes that "you've seen" require a divisible of 10. For all you know, there are other recipes out there, in addition, I wonder how they will improve masonry. If paving gets implemented for masonry, maybe we will only require two bricks per each path. This game is all about discovering the unknown, you can't assume that you know the unknown because then you will then cause a deflation. This game is also in beta, you can't assume that there wont any recipes that don't require a divisible of 10 bricks in the future.

This is unrelated to anything above, but how many bricks have you personally made in-game? I made around 2,000 over the last weekend, and it was miserable.

In any sense, I don't want to attack you personally. However, I'm fond of your tribe. They took it up to themselves to build brick walls all around the whole area. That is your problem, because brick walls are difficult to make and I can almost guarantee that was by design. With my own experience, I didn't like the idea of being forced to do the same job that you did. Maybe it's not exactly the crafting system, but rather your tribe. If you were miserable doing something that you've obviously did not like, then why be forced to do it especially when most of the people didn't do it?