William Antrim
Well-known member
- Location
- UK
This will be a long post. Apologies.
Ive seen a lot of different versions of crafting in GTA over the time i have spent here and some have been brilliant and others not so much. I think the solution lies in taking the best bits out if each iteration and using them.
Currently there is a bottleneck in the process where only certain people have access to elements in order to craft certain weapons. This relies on those people being in the city to distribute the items and creates a "haves and have nots" element to the game. It is a bit harsh on those who have not yet built relationships with those people. I don't want to dwell on this too much for fear of sounding bitter or whiney.
The server has a functioning economy built on crafting of items but there are currently very few ways for items to flow out of the economy. This raises inflation on said items and increases rarity. If a few subtle changes were made to the flow of items into and out of the economy this would have many benefits to the server.
There are up to 235 man hours per hour of labour being generated in the city, some of this time can be spent doing "legal" work (mining and smelting) and "illegal" work (weapon crafting) and it can be up to the individual players which part they want to engage in to help the economy. The changes below will allow ALL players to become involved in the processes and thus create opportunities for companies to form and get involved in these processes. All players have 2 resources at their disposal - Time and Money. It is up to each individually which currency they use to purchase what they want out of the game. The RP flows with both.
I want to propose a number of small changes to each element.
1. Weapon crafting should be skill based - level 1 armourers (weapon makers) would be able to make simple weapons - blades, bats etc. Possibly remove them from sale in store and make them 100% available through RP (people pass on knowledge to others on how and where to make them). Possibly add the ability to craft these items back to houses.
2. Higher level crafting (guns, gun parts) are locked behind higher level skills - like with steel smelting only the most proficient players can make the best guns. This keeps the guns as rare as possible whilst also providing a means for ALL players to be able to put the effort in to achieve the goal. These have to be crafted in the world, there needs to be a risk to making these things and the police need to be able to intercept this work.
3. The black market dealer makes their return - HOWEVER - he/she is there to BUY guns from players, not SELL them. This creates another way for weapons to flow out of the city. There should be a strict cool down on how many guns they can buy per player per day potentially but this keeps demand for guns/weapon parts etc high in the city because everyone has the opportunity to craft guns/gun parts and sell them to each other. We don't want players selling 10 guns a day and becoming millionaires in an hour. Other regulations could potentially be put into place - such as it takes a few minutes to sell the gun and complete the process. Sometimes maybe the police can be alerted etc.
To go one step further with this, the dealer could also be used as a method to give players other items through their crafting, if players collect enough resources to manufacture a specific item then the dealer could take said item (a token of some sort) and provide them with almost anything they could want? A car, a gun, a plane or a boat? Anything in the game that can be bought from a shop could be purchasable from this guy/girl. This would create huge opportunities for gangs/companies/organisations to really spend their time making lots of new toys of all shapes and sizes. If vehicle dealerships could buy stock from players to restock showrooms with cars all made from player-mined steel how cool would that be? It would solve the problems of not enough legal work to do in a heartbeat. Companies could form and RP could flow.
4. Failure rates on crafting should come in to play. A lower skilled crafter would use more resources to build a weapon. If the process fails some of the parts could be destroyed in the process. Adding a loss of materials instantly takes up some of the 235 man hours listed above. This would mean that instead of costing say 90 steel to make a gun, it might cost one unlucky crafter 180. It is not RNGesus but it does add an artificial risk to the process without having the adverse bottle neck that is in place currently. It just means this particular gun may be made with a lower profit margin (or loss) because it took additional resources to make. This further ensures the demand for material (iron and steel) becomes ever more important as the crafters will buy and sell materials as and when they need them. Everyone will be levelling up their weapon crafting and many well internalise the entire process (like we have seen with other elements) however there will always be non-gang affiliated people who will join up with others to buy and sell their parts for a profit.
The smartest people will work out the unit cost of each item vs the time to procure it and then work out how much profit they can get from the black market dealer and the prices will regulate themselves based off of that. I know people in this community who will already be working that out just reading this post.
Possible downsides?
The biggest one is the amount of crafting materials floating about will potentially lead to a monumental influx of weapons into the city as people go to work grinding in the mine to level up their crafting skills. However giving people the ability to sell the weapons to an NPC should alleviate some of this.
Having artificial restriction in place already (inv size, item weight etc) all means that crafting is a laborious process as it is. This means that weapons are already very valuable (and rightly so) but bottlenecking the process puts the onus of responsibility onto a select few people who may not actually want to do it day in and day out. Opening the flood gates to allow ALL parties to be able to earn the same privilege (weapon crafting) will naturally allow those dedicated to the profession to rise to the top of the skill pile. It will also allow others to engage at earlier parts of the process and buy and sell items all along the production process at a profit. This opens RP for all. Individuals can still craft weapon parts and sell them to each other.
Ultimately having a rewarding way to remove these items from the economy (rather than through death or confiscation by police) will ensure that the construction cycle continues and it will be to the benefit of the whole community rather than just individual people/groups.
Building a time sink into the process (an additional one over and above what exists) is the fairest way I can see to remove the bottle neck that we have currently whilst maintaining parity and fairness across the board for all players. If you put in the effort you get the reward regardless of who you are.
If people abuse the system and act like dickheads with guns in the wild west then we should use the court system to punish them with jail time not limit the crafting system for those who want to RP as the Lord of War. I think the changes above would benefit the whole city whilst not punishing anyone.
Absolutely keen to hear/read any thoughts/criticisms
Ive seen a lot of different versions of crafting in GTA over the time i have spent here and some have been brilliant and others not so much. I think the solution lies in taking the best bits out if each iteration and using them.
Currently there is a bottleneck in the process where only certain people have access to elements in order to craft certain weapons. This relies on those people being in the city to distribute the items and creates a "haves and have nots" element to the game. It is a bit harsh on those who have not yet built relationships with those people. I don't want to dwell on this too much for fear of sounding bitter or whiney.
The server has a functioning economy built on crafting of items but there are currently very few ways for items to flow out of the economy. This raises inflation on said items and increases rarity. If a few subtle changes were made to the flow of items into and out of the economy this would have many benefits to the server.
There are up to 235 man hours per hour of labour being generated in the city, some of this time can be spent doing "legal" work (mining and smelting) and "illegal" work (weapon crafting) and it can be up to the individual players which part they want to engage in to help the economy. The changes below will allow ALL players to become involved in the processes and thus create opportunities for companies to form and get involved in these processes. All players have 2 resources at their disposal - Time and Money. It is up to each individually which currency they use to purchase what they want out of the game. The RP flows with both.
I want to propose a number of small changes to each element.
1. Weapon crafting should be skill based - level 1 armourers (weapon makers) would be able to make simple weapons - blades, bats etc. Possibly remove them from sale in store and make them 100% available through RP (people pass on knowledge to others on how and where to make them). Possibly add the ability to craft these items back to houses.
2. Higher level crafting (guns, gun parts) are locked behind higher level skills - like with steel smelting only the most proficient players can make the best guns. This keeps the guns as rare as possible whilst also providing a means for ALL players to be able to put the effort in to achieve the goal. These have to be crafted in the world, there needs to be a risk to making these things and the police need to be able to intercept this work.
3. The black market dealer makes their return - HOWEVER - he/she is there to BUY guns from players, not SELL them. This creates another way for weapons to flow out of the city. There should be a strict cool down on how many guns they can buy per player per day potentially but this keeps demand for guns/weapon parts etc high in the city because everyone has the opportunity to craft guns/gun parts and sell them to each other. We don't want players selling 10 guns a day and becoming millionaires in an hour. Other regulations could potentially be put into place - such as it takes a few minutes to sell the gun and complete the process. Sometimes maybe the police can be alerted etc.
To go one step further with this, the dealer could also be used as a method to give players other items through their crafting, if players collect enough resources to manufacture a specific item then the dealer could take said item (a token of some sort) and provide them with almost anything they could want? A car, a gun, a plane or a boat? Anything in the game that can be bought from a shop could be purchasable from this guy/girl. This would create huge opportunities for gangs/companies/organisations to really spend their time making lots of new toys of all shapes and sizes. If vehicle dealerships could buy stock from players to restock showrooms with cars all made from player-mined steel how cool would that be? It would solve the problems of not enough legal work to do in a heartbeat. Companies could form and RP could flow.
4. Failure rates on crafting should come in to play. A lower skilled crafter would use more resources to build a weapon. If the process fails some of the parts could be destroyed in the process. Adding a loss of materials instantly takes up some of the 235 man hours listed above. This would mean that instead of costing say 90 steel to make a gun, it might cost one unlucky crafter 180. It is not RNGesus but it does add an artificial risk to the process without having the adverse bottle neck that is in place currently. It just means this particular gun may be made with a lower profit margin (or loss) because it took additional resources to make. This further ensures the demand for material (iron and steel) becomes ever more important as the crafters will buy and sell materials as and when they need them. Everyone will be levelling up their weapon crafting and many well internalise the entire process (like we have seen with other elements) however there will always be non-gang affiliated people who will join up with others to buy and sell their parts for a profit.
The smartest people will work out the unit cost of each item vs the time to procure it and then work out how much profit they can get from the black market dealer and the prices will regulate themselves based off of that. I know people in this community who will already be working that out just reading this post.
Possible downsides?
The biggest one is the amount of crafting materials floating about will potentially lead to a monumental influx of weapons into the city as people go to work grinding in the mine to level up their crafting skills. However giving people the ability to sell the weapons to an NPC should alleviate some of this.
Having artificial restriction in place already (inv size, item weight etc) all means that crafting is a laborious process as it is. This means that weapons are already very valuable (and rightly so) but bottlenecking the process puts the onus of responsibility onto a select few people who may not actually want to do it day in and day out. Opening the flood gates to allow ALL parties to be able to earn the same privilege (weapon crafting) will naturally allow those dedicated to the profession to rise to the top of the skill pile. It will also allow others to engage at earlier parts of the process and buy and sell items all along the production process at a profit. This opens RP for all. Individuals can still craft weapon parts and sell them to each other.
Ultimately having a rewarding way to remove these items from the economy (rather than through death or confiscation by police) will ensure that the construction cycle continues and it will be to the benefit of the whole community rather than just individual people/groups.
Building a time sink into the process (an additional one over and above what exists) is the fairest way I can see to remove the bottle neck that we have currently whilst maintaining parity and fairness across the board for all players. If you put in the effort you get the reward regardless of who you are.
If people abuse the system and act like dickheads with guns in the wild west then we should use the court system to punish them with jail time not limit the crafting system for those who want to RP as the Lord of War. I think the changes above would benefit the whole city whilst not punishing anyone.
Absolutely keen to hear/read any thoughts/criticisms
