Tool Crafting - level selection

[Lonestarcanuck]

Please allow us to make the level of tool we want up to our max. for example if I can make T5 auger and it needs 15 tool parts but I have 10 let me make a T3 auger.

[Maharin]

It's been asked many times and not likely to happen as a prompt.  Not sure how they will handle it eventually but it is very annoying being able to make something, improve your skill, and then no longer be able to make anything at all with the same components.

[Callum123456789]

4 hours ago, Lonestarcanuck said:

Please allow us to make the level of tool we want up to our max. for example if I can make T5 auger and it needs 15 tool parts but I have 10 let me make a T3 auger.

+1 for this because it definitely needs to be a thing

[ElDudorino]

Yeah this is an absolutely terrible mechanic. Having to hold off on leveling up so that you don't become worse at crafting makes no sense and detracts from the game.

 

I modded the game so that leveling doesn't increase item cost but in theory you could also mod it so each item has multiple craftable versions at different part requirements and maximum quality levels.

[Crater Creator]

On 5/29/2022 at 8:42 AM, Lonestarcanuck said:

Please allow us to make the level of tool we want up to our max. for example if I can make T5 auger and it needs 15 tool parts but I have 10 let me make a T3 auger.

I completely agree, and this is the perfect way to implement it. The game simply makes the highest quality item possible with the number of parts you have in your backpack at the time (assuming you have the skill to craft that level). At most, it would be nice to colorize the parts in the crafting UI to highlight that you could craft higher quality with more parts, but otherwise no UI work is necessary.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Crater Creator
grammar (see edit history)

[Maharin]

31 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

I completely agree, and this is the perfect way to implement it. The game simply makes the highest quality item possible with the number of parts you have in your backpack at the time (assuming you have the skill to craft that level). At most, it would be nice to colorize the parts in the crafting UI to highlight that you could craft higher quality with more parts, but otherwise no UI work necessary.

 

I see two problems with this, but would still rather have this method than the current way it is done.

 

1. Parts get used up with no way to retrieve any of them (scrapping an item made with parts should return more parts, imo)
2. If there is no confirmation or UI feedback before the attempt is made then people will most certainly cry foul about this implementation, too.

In short, TFP needs to build a UI that can handle building lower tier tools.  It can be done simply enough using the trader quest rewards selection UI as a template.  Make the XML friendly to pulling out a list of all tiers/variations for a given craftable item and you're done (if it isn't already easily possible).

 

Yes, I'm over simplifying but I don't think I'm far off.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Maharin (see edit history)

[ElDudorino]

Why use the trader quest rewards selection UI?  Just add a second combo box to the crafting UI.  We have one for selecting quantity and should have one for selecting quality.  The value in the combo box would get capped to whatever your perk level allows in the xml (using the existing code that currently dictates the selected level) and would be used to determine the quality, adjusting the parts needed as required and the final product created.  This is how any other game would have done it and it's how 7DTD should do it.  That they don't have this kind of boggles my mind.

[Maharin]

12 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

Why use the trader quest rewards selection UI?  Just add a second combo box to the crafting UI.  We have one for selecting quantity and should have one for selecting quality.  The value in the combo box would get capped to whatever your perk level allows in the xml (using the existing code that currently dictates the selected level) and would be used to determine the quality, adjusting the parts needed as required and the final product created.  This is how any other game would have done it and it's how 7DTD should do it.  That they don't have this kind of boggles my mind.

 

I was just saying that the trader quest UI could be easily morphed into what would be needed for recipe selection.  It checks all the boxes for what is needed, so to speak.

[Crater Creator]

1 hour ago, Maharin said:

 

I see two problems with this, but would still rather have this method than the current way it is done.

 

1. Parts get used up with no way to retrieve any of them (scrapping an item made with parts should return more parts, imo)
2. If there is no confirmation or UI feedback before the attempt is made then people will most certainly cry foul about this implementation, too.

In short, TFP needs to build a UI that can handle building lower tier tools.  It can be done simply enough using the trader quest rewards selection UI as a template.  Make the XML friendly to pulling out a list of all tiers/variations for a given craftable item and you're done (if it isn't already easily possible).

 

Yes, I'm over simplifying but I don't think I'm far off.

 

The first problem I don't think is unique to my solution. In the current game, you could just as easily craft a low-quality weapon, then upgrade the skill, and then lament that you used up your parts with no way to retrieve them beyond scrapping the item you made. I'm just putting the choice in the player's hands of what quality to build instead of forcing max quality on them. Just to spell out the idea more, if for some reason you wanted an item at lower quality than you had the parts for, you could put away some parts and leave the rest you want to use in your backpack. But I'm sure the most common use case would be players that want to craft the best quality they can with the parts they have.

 

With that said, I would welcome higher quality items scrapping for more parts. And/or, there could be a skill that improves your ability to recover parts from scrapping. Heck, even with the system we have now, I wouldn't be as scared to craft a low-quality item, if I knew that I'd consistently only be down 25% of the parts when scrapping and rebuilding it to a higher quality.

 

On the second problem, yes, it should be clear when you could make a higher quality if you had more parts. That's why I propose colorizing the parts seen in the crafting recipe window, with the appropriate journal entries updated to document this. I admit colorized text isn't perfect since some people are colorblind, but I'm thinking in terms of a minimalist solution that requires the least UI work: less work than repurposing the trader reward UI or adding a new widget for quality selection and re-arranging the crafting window.

[Thunderbolt-GER]

I would also like to select the level when crafting something.

Just my 2 cents

 

[eXSe]

Or... just have the number of parts needed fixed and only increase the number of things you are able to craft (steel, springs, forged iron...) for every next level.

[Jugginator]

I hear and feel you. Bringing it up to the team.

[Maharin]

15 hours ago, eXSe said:

Or... just have the number of parts needed fixed and only increase the number of things you are able to craft (steel, springs, forged iron...) for every next level.

 

Or even just having the parts fixed by recipe and having the skill level affect the quality instead of quantity.  Pretty much any other scenario is better than what we have now.

[Treb]

1 hour ago, Jugginator said:

I hear and feel you. Bringing it up to the team.

 

But I've been told in other threads that the team doesn't care about what players have to say! 😋

 

More seriously, thanks!

[Maharin]

1 minute ago, Treb said:

 

But I've been told in other threads that the team doesn't care about what players have to say! 😋

 

More seriously, thanks!

 

They care... but it's more like a "I care that there is a mosquito buzzing around my head" sort of thing.

[Jugginator]

35 minutes ago, Treb said:

 

But I've been told in other threads that the team doesn't care about what players have to say! 😋

 

More seriously, thanks!

 

Nah, most of the team does lurk around and read what players talk about when time allows: p

[Maharin]

31 minutes ago, Jugginator said:

 

Nah, most of the team does lurk around and read what players talk about when time allows: p

 

So you're saying that most of the team are non-sexual voyeurs.

[Lenny Lettuce Lips]

I like this. 100% on board. 

 

I think someone mentioned being able to build up to the highest you can afford without having to ad additional UI fluff and I like that more. It' simple if I have the ability to build a tier 5 but the parts for a tier 2, showing me a tier 2 as the upcoming result would send the message. I do wonder if this could be confusing to newer players if implemented in that fashion however... Maybe a prompt? like "You can afford to build tier X, would you like to proceed?"

[Crater Creator]

1 hour ago, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

I like this. 100% on board. 

 

I think someone mentioned being able to build up to the highest you can afford without having to ad additional UI fluff and I like that more. It' simple if I have the ability to build a tier 5 but the parts for a tier 2, showing me a tier 2 as the upcoming result would send the message. I do wonder if this could be confusing to newer players if implemented in that fashion however... Maybe a prompt? like "You can afford to build tier X, would you like to proceed?"

 

You don't want it to be confusing, but you don't want to have to make an entirely new kind of UI thing either. And the game doesn't have prompts like you're describing, that I can recall. That's why I suggest e.g. colorizing the number of parts. But it could also be one of those notices on the bottom of the screen, or an informational buff, unless that's too hard to see under the crafting menu.

 

I'm not too worried, because at least the way I play, I wouldn't go to craft something without grabbing as full a stack of each ingredient as I have in storage. I'd have to go out of my way to grab 10 pistol parts when I have 30 - it wouldn't happen by accident.

[Kalen]

I wish crafting recipes could specify the quality level as output.   So you can create a recipe that specifically builds a QL4 pick, for example.   Then you could specify what QL you wanted by picking the correct crafting recipe.   It would add a LOT of recipes, to be sure, but would nicely solve the problem, IMO.   It would also open up some neat modding options.

[theFlu]

I'd say the default recipe should be "max quality" and whatever "failure mode" is involved when you don't have sufficient parts for the max. Nudging the quality down in the rare case I'd be crafting lower tiers is a whole lot less annoying than accidentally crafting a tier 4 once.. one takes a couple seconds of "why isn't this working", while the other you'll be farming for hours to compensate.

[ElDudorino]

4 hours ago, Kalen said:

I wish crafting recipes could specify the quality level as output.   So you can create a recipe that specifically builds a QL4 pick, for example.   Then you could specify what QL you wanted by picking the correct crafting recipe.   It would add a LOT of recipes, to be sure, but would nicely solve the problem, IMO.   It would also open up some neat modding options.

 

You can do this!  All you have to do is make copies of the recipe in recipes.xml and make some sort of tweak to each copy because every recipe has to be distinct.  That's easy enough, as you can just hard-code in the increased costs per quality level, and that'll make each level a distinct recipe.  As an example, in the screenshot below I made three versions of the Stone Spear recipe, all at different tiers.  One requires the normal ingredients and goes up to Q2, one requires no fibers but more wood and goes to Q3, and one requires the normal ingredients but can only be made in the workbench and goes to Q4.  As a nice little time-saver you can actually move the passive_effect determining crafting tier from progression.xml directly into recipes.xml so each recipe has different rules for what tier they'll craft at.

 

But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?  That recipe list will be crowded as hell, and just awful to navigate.

 

I've proposed this solution before: You can have one basic version of an item and one leveled version of an item.  Have the basic one either stop at quality 1 or maybe go up to like Q3 but always cost the base amount, and then have the leveled version unlock at skill level 3 and it will let you craft quality levels 4-5 (or 4-6 if you're into that) and will require an amount that scales by level- or an amount of your choosing.

 

Whichever way you choose to do it, it's not actually that hard to create the mod for it.  But my preferred method is to just mod out the increasing cost per level because I think it's silly that I'd need more materials at higher level.  Realistically you should require FEWER materials at higher level.  Plus, in the existing system I basically never craft because I'll always find something better before I have enough materials to craft a high tier.  That, to me, validates the notion that the parts multiplier at higher levels is a bad idea.

Edited June 2, 2022 by ElDudorino
Typo! (see edit history)

[Kalen]

12 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

As an example, in the screenshot below I made three versions of the Stone Spear recipe, all at different tiers

 

Huh, how did you force it to a specific quality?   I could never figure out how to do that?

 

13 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?

 

Yeah, thats the part I'm not sure of.... I'd be interested to try it and see how it plays.  Definitely a valid concern.

[Maharin]

1 hour ago, ElDudorino said:

But here's the thing... do you really want to see 5-6 recipes for every item?  That recipe list will be crowded as hell, and just awful to navigate.

 

They could put all the recipes in for normal, selectable use but then add a filter option for "highest quality I can make" (checked by default).  That way you could still make lower qualities but by default you'd be making the best one you can make based on skill and component availability.

[ElDudorino]

3 hours ago, Kalen said:

 

Huh, how did you force it to a specific quality?   I could never figure out how to do that?

 

You can comment out the line in progression.xml under the relevant perk (e.g. perkJavelinMaster) that controls quality and then paste it into your recipe in recipes.xml. By default it uses a level range but you can set it to be a specific level.

 

Except, it turns out I'm a numbskull and the quality level wasn't changing as my perk level changed with my implementation. So I could make recipes that craft different levels but they'd all be unlocked at the same time and you'd get early access to crafting higher quality. I was trying to find a one or two-line solution that locks higher levels behind progression but had to leave to deal with an emergency.

 

I know it can still be done if I make duplicate item entries in items.xml and make each item unlockable by the perk at different levels (tested leveled unlocks successfully) but that would be a super-tedious solution so I'm trying to figure out just how a recipe can reference a skill level when setting crafting level.

 

Still! Possible! But more annoying than I'd initially thought.