Was It Wise To Make Lairshaping So Complicated?

[Tantalyr]

I have to ask the Gods of Istaria this: Do you really think that making Lairshaping so much of a miserable grind such a "Good Thing"?

Why, oh Gods of Istaria, do you think that building a "home" should be such a complicated and grinding such an affair?

First off, you made lair planning such a complicated affair that it gives even the most inveterate architcect a blinding migraine, with the irregular shapes and reversing connection points.

Then you made positively sure that only the most anal-retentive players could gain Lairshaping levels by (a) prohibiting experience for making your newly-made "intermediate" construction units (like cast stones), and (b) devoting only 20% to actually making the lair construction units while devoting 80% to actually applying them.

I'm beginning to think that your inspiration for this awful system was the Marquis de Sade;

[Goriax]

I think there's several things at work:

1. Some people LIKE planning lairs. I know I do. Being able to walk through them is kind of cool. The challange of planning in 3-D is interesting. I figure it'll take me days to decide on something. I will refuse to be rushed.

2. With only one school (2 if you count DCRA) bipeds would whine and complain unless there was something which was painfully obvious to be more difficult then what the bipeds do. Yes I know that the second and later biped schools aren't remotely as longas the first, but that won't stop them. I think TG wanted something so obvious even a biped could figure it out eventually. Many will whine anyway (they've already started)but it would be worse if they didn't do something.

3. We need something long and involved to keep us busy for a year before there's anything else to keep the high level dragons occupied and give them a reason to log on.

4. I think the extra complication tends to reduce the boredom. Having to figure out how to handle the logistics in a way is a good thing. I'm most bored when it's cut and dried and there's really nothing to have to figure out. I wouldn't be surprised that, if they ever redo biped schools, they'd be looking to add complication with them too.

5. I for one am in no hurry to level. I'm doing the laircrafting for the lair, not vice versa. Once the lair is done I'll have no more interest in laircrafting unless there's something else I can do with it, which is doubtful. So if it takes longer to level that's ok with me. In any event, until we start applying we don't know how slow the leveling will be, since they've said time and again that making building materials is definately the slow boring way to go about it.

[Pharcellus]

I'd like planning lairs, if the planner actually let me plan them, as opposed to planning them like I was building them. I want to be able to place the components wherever I want in the lair volume, and THEN link them up or move them around. It is counter-intuitive to plan something a room at a time.

Personally, I am beyond the point of caring less about what bipeds whine and complain about. We've been WITHOUT homes for TWO YEARS. Anyone who complains about "Dragons got it easy! WAH!" isn't worth my time. I still want commensurate, comparable reward for effort as well, but another dull, boring grind isn't what I had in mind. From what I have seen so far, it isn't enough of an enticement to keep me logging in.

Unnecessary complication and tedium tends to increase frustration and ennui for me. I like challenges and puzzles, but this doesn't even rate a meager challenge to figure out. It's just tedious.

[Tantalyr]

Goriax, there is a line to be drawn between a challenge and a tedious grind, and in my judgment the lairshaping system has substantially crossed that line.

Let's take lair planning first. What purpose is served by the prohibition against "building" (on the planning interface) more than one chamber/corridor at a time, and then only one which is connected to another chamber/corridor already under construction? If you have already planned chambers/corridors that all connect in the planning interface, why shouldn't we be able to click the "Build" button once to put all of them under construction? The system as is simply makes you click "Build" multiple times instead of just once. Clicking a button multiple times isn't a challenge--it's tedious.

That, in turn, leads to what, in my view, is another needless complexity of the system--the inability to plan, much less build upon, any chamber/corridor that isn't connected to another planned chamber/corridor. For example, I would dearly love to be able to start planning at the lowest level of my lair and build up, not down. Why? Because higher tiered halls and lairs, and some machine chambers, take up multiple levels so you have to plan and build around them on each level. As the system stands, you can't plan anything on any lower level of your lair unless you first plan out slopes/spirals leading down to that level, and then the chamber/corridor must connect to that slope/spiral. But if you do that, you may (and likely will) find that your slopes/spirals don't work well on higher levels of your lair (usually due to inability to connect corridors or chambers to them). And when that happens, you just have to tear up your lair plan and start anew. Is that a "challenge" or simply a migraine-inducer?

Now let's take a look at the "challenge" of actually building on your lair. First off, unlike structures on biped plots, you can't contribute construction units to just any old chamber/corridor you want. Instead, you can only contribute units to chambers/corridors connected to an already constructed chamber/corridor. So, if say you've got a disk full of imbued platinum bars (a Tarbash marble disk will hold 100) to finish off that Tier IV chamber that needs 40 of them, you'd better have a place to stash the remaining bars unless that chamber is directly connected to another Tier IV/V chamber. In other words dragon fans, you'd better build or have available a LOT of silos to hold construction units you can't apply yet.

And oh the joy of actually making the construction units! Yuppers, it is indeed more of a "challenge" than the system faced by the poor deprived biped mason who simply quarries stone slabs, processes them into bricks, and makes blocks/keystones all at one resource field and one processing shop. No, dragon builders have the euphoric task of making maelstones and flowstones. Let's take a "Polished Maelstone" as an example. First you have to make the intermediate unit called the "Platinum Lodestone." That requires you to fill up with platinum bars and then combine them with obsidian slabs at a smelter. Now you can drag a disk out to the platinum field west of Dralk if you don't mind fending off the platinum golems whilst you're trying to mine the nodes, but it's a looooooong walk from there to the nearest smelter. Or you can portal out to Mithril Canyon where there are plenty of smelters within easy walking distance and tons of platinum. Just drop your Tarbash marble disk by one of the player smithies and fly back and forth from the platinum nodes with ore until your disk is full of bars. But you're still going to have to drag that disk to Last Stand (the nearest portal out) and get back to Dralk--because that's where the obsidian is (you don't really want to portal to the Valley of Repose for that, do you?).

So you drag your Tarbash disk full of platinum bars and park it in the crafting cave next to the obsidian field. Now you're happy as a clam because you're filling your inventory with obsidian slabs and scooting to the crafting cave making Platinum Lodestones. Uh oh! Your Tarbash disk only holds one item, and it still has platinum bars in it, but now your inventory is full of Platinum Lodestones! You do have an empty silo handy to hold those don't you? You can't apply them to your lair since they are not "end" construction units. So off you port to wherever that empty silo might be. Just rinse and repeat until you have a ton of stored Platinum Lodestones.

But now you have to combine those lodestones with bright essence orbs to make Polished Maelstones. So it's off to Feladan with your disk to annoy those pesky bright wisps. Just park your disk at the Feladan channeler and fly back and forth to and from the wisps til your disk is full of bright orbs. Is that silo where you stored your Platinum Lodestones anywhere near a stoneworking shop? I sure hope so because you're going to need a stoneworking pedestal to combine the bright essence orbs with the Platinum Lodestones to make Polished Maelstones. Otherwise, you're going to need to drag your disk full of bright essence orbs to a "convenient" stoneworking pedestal, park it, and portal back and forth to that silo with a few hundred lodestones at a time, then portal to your lair with 15 to 20 maelstones to apply. Rinse, rinse, repeat, repeat.

Use a Deluxe Marble disk for the extra stack capacity you say? Sure! Great idea! The only problem is that you cannot portal with it, so you'd better like walking a LOT if you use one.

Yup, making maelstones is a "challenge" alright. One that my dragon would rather do without . . . .

[Death-knell]

I have to agree with Tantalyr, they have really overcomplicated this system. The first thing they need to do is figure out a new storage system. The system of disks and silos are great for the one dimensional biped construction, but it is woefully incomplete and does not meet the need of the new lairshaping skill. But I think this all comes from them throwing something together and not paying attention to the logistics involved.

[Goriax]

Goriax, there is a line to be drawn between a challenge and a tedious grind, and in my judgment the lairshaping system has substantially crossed that line.

As you imply that's a judgement call and I don't agree with you.

Let's take lair planning first. What purpose is served by the prohibition against "building" (on the planning interface) more than one chamber/corridor at a time, and then only one which is connected to another chamber/corridor already under construction? If you have already planned chambers/corridors that all connect in the planning interface, why shouldn't we be able to click the "Build" button once to put all of them under construction? The system as is simply makes you click "Build" multiple times instead of just once. Clicking a button multiple times isn't a challenge--it's tedious.

That, in turn, leads to what, in my view, is another needless complexity of the system--the inability to plan, much less build upon, any chamber/corridor that isn't connected to another planned chamber/corridor.

The interface does tend to be a bit clunky at times, but that's more a programming issue. I don't think they were trying to make it hard for you to use. Quite the opposite. I think they WERE trying to make sure no one ever ends up with lair areas which cannot be reached. Perhaps they went a bit overboard, but it's hard to fault the intent. Thus rooms always have to be connected at all times. After all, if at any point they allow an unconnected room, there's no guarentee you'll ever come back and connect it. This means that at some point they would have to validatean entire lair design all at once, which could get very complicated. I suppose they could just validate stuff as you hit the build button but if they did they'd still have to force you to build from the entrance down and that was another of your complaints. Besides, people would be mighty pissed to spend 4 hours on a design, start hitting the build button, and discover they can't build the bottom 4 levels. Best let them know while still in the planning phase.

I can't get too excited about having to hit the build muiltiple times. You're not going to be doing it all that often. In fact, I plan to plan my entire lair but only build the first very small part. I wouldn't use a build all button even if I had one.

By forcing you to always have rooms connected it makes their algorithm more straight forward (i.e., quicker and easier to program which means fewer bugs and lairs are ready sooner then otherwise). In addition to just making the checking more complicated, there's also the error reporting. If the only place there can be a problem is the last room you messed with error reporting becomes fairly straightforward. You know where to start looking for the problem. If it has to check an entire lair all at once and if it finds something wrong, you probably wouldn't be satisfied with it saying there's something wrong somewhere. It would have to give you more details, i.e. more programming i.e. more bugs and we wait longer for lairs to be ready. In this case it could get very complicated andand the error reporting itself could have bugs i.e. it could say the problem was in one place when it would be easier to correct it someplace entirely different.

Furthermore, they'd have to be extremely careful when checking the entire lair to avoid infinite loops no matter how messed up the lair was. Which to you would appear as a lockup. They'd never be able to test their algorithm against all possible lair designs -- there's just too many ways to hook things up. This was obviously the safe course.

Perhaps someday there will be a version 2 lair planner which would give more flexibility. But I don't think it was made deliberately hard to use. In any event, if I work top down I don't find it all that hard. Sure there's things I'd like to do but can't, but I can work around them. Inconveniences like this are why some people never buy version 1 of anything. Everyone who wants to plan a lair this year will just have to use the lair planner. It's what they could produce with the time and resources available. I personally think it's not all that hard to use and at times it's pretty cool.

Instead, you can only contribute units to chambers/corridors connected to an already constructed chamber/corridor.

It would take an aweful lot of suspension of disbelief to allow anything else. I just can't see them allowing us to contribute to something when we can't even reach it. Such are the joys of building underground.

So, if say you've got a disk full of imbued platinum bars (a Tarbash marble disk will hold 100) to finish off that Tier IV chamber that needs 40 of them, you'd better have a place to stash the remaining bars unless that chamber is directly connected to another Tier IV/V chamber. In other words dragon fans, you'd better build or have available a LOT of silos to hold construction units you can't apply yet.

The very first thing I plan to build is a 3- or 4- way intersection followed by several tier 1 silos. This will give me at least 2 things I can contribute to and probably more plus silos to put the excess in. I'll probably build 3 or 4 tier 1 silos and most likely that will be fine.

If you made 100 bars and you knew you only needed 40 you already messed up. Dragons will have to keep track of how many of each component are needed and don't produce more then they store. If you know you only need 40 imdued bars I'd suggest only making 40 or know ahead of time where you're going to store the excess. This by the way is an example of a situation where you may not want to use a Tarbash. You sure don't need the capacity. You can't do the biped thing of just loading up the biggest disk you can get. You have to think.

So you drag your Tarbash disk full of platinum bars and park it in the crafting cave next to the obsidian field. Now you're happy as a clam because you're filling your inventory with obsidian slabs and scooting to the crafting cave making Platinum Lodestones. Uh oh! Your Tarbash disk only holds one item, and it still has platinum bars in it, but now your inventory is full of Platinum Lodestones!

Dragons will not want to JUST have a Tarbash. In some places a Tarbash works fine, in other places some other type of cargo disk works fine even if you can't port with them. Dragons need to think things through a lot more then bipeds which stands to reason. You can't expect too much from bipeds. :)

Use a Deluxe Marble disk for the extra stack capacity you say? Sure! Great idea! The only problem is that you cannot portal with it, so you'd better like walking a LOT if you use one.

If, the final product doesn't fit into your inventory then make more trips. Or walk. Or figure a way to use your Tarbaash. Your choice. I tend to make multiple trips. Another place where you have to think things through.

In exchange for only having one school (2 if you cound DCRA) dragons have to deal with far more complication. They're going to have to think things through far more then bipeds. For me anyway this has the added benefit of making the crafting process more interesting although obviously at least one person doesn't agree.

But ifyou really hate lairs that much don't do them. Such is life. You can't please everyone.

Personally, I think they're pretty cool.


Also this comment:

Personally, I am beyond the point of caring less about what bipeds whine and complain about. We've been WITHOUT homes for TWO YEARS. Anyone who complains about "Dragons got it easy! WAH!" isn't worth my time.

I kind of agree with you although some of the whining bipeds really ticked me off when the AROP went live and I'm still pissed at some of them. Itend to agree thatit's about time we got lairs and if bipeds don't like it too bad. But even if WE didn't care about biped whining it's obvious TG does. A lot. Dragons have also gotten a few things by whining lately by the way. With three times as many biped mains as dragon mains they'll probably be trying even harder to avoid biped whining even if it's unjustified. Fact is, I think TG has been caving into whiners too much lately but that's for another thread.

Bottom line: they're going to try to avoid rampant biped whining if they can. If, in their minds they can't then theywon't -- witness the PB changes -- but they'll try to avoid it.

[Tantalyr]

Goriax, a serious problem inherent--though not explicitly stated in my prior post--in the demands of the lairshaping system is the substantial amount of portaling dragons will have to do to make lair construction units, much less apply them to their lairs. Though it's gotten better, the portal lag monster is still a serious issue with many players, including me. Once I've portaled 10 to 12 times (sometimes even less), I'm down to 5 or 6 fps and must relog to clear it. That portal lag monster contributes even more pain to an already overly-complicated system.

I suppose my fundamental point is this: lairshaping, like every other system in any MMORPG, should be FUN, not a painful grind. I've had fun before, and this isn't it.

[Goriax]

I expect to be doing a lot of relogging, although I've discovered that often if I plan things right I can reduce that to some extent.

I think lair shaping will be fun. It sure looks a more fun then any other crafting I've seen.

[Shargrym]

I must agree with Goriax, I look forward to lairshaping as the challenge that it is.

Figuring out the best way to get the most out of your crafting, both in the travel and in collecting/refining of resources, is one of the few accomplishments that any crafter (naka or dragon) has to look forward to. For example, in the above discussion about crafting maelstones, why not fill the disk with lodestone rather than trying to tote it around with its individual components? Both platinum and obsidian are available around Dralk, so no real portalling would be involved. You could then drag the disk to a stoneworking pedestal near the essence and a shaper( I believe both are available in Feladan) and be crafting maelstones with each load of orbs.

What to do with the maelstones would be a matter of testing what works best...do I recall to the lair/closest recall point with each new batch of maelstone, apply and then return to make more? Or do I drop them in the vault until it is full and then recall to apply a larger batch? These are just some examples... All of this is something any crafter must consider and be willing to put the time and effort into in order to get that end product, which for us is, finally, a place to call home. Our lair.

Shargrym Stormscale
Order Shard

[Theolaerynn]

I really like the way Lair planning works too, when I checked them out. Sure, there are some clunky things with it, but over all I am pretty thrilled with it. Being able to walk through it is a huge benefit, and allowed me to catch some bad assumptions I had made.

The manufacturing of pieces is tedious at best, though, and something I dislike quite a lot. It isn't about how fast leveling is for me, it is about how long it will take me to build even the simplest rooms. I do wish it wasn't the grind that it is.

At the end of the day, though, it is all about the finished product. When I walked through my future Lair I was in awe of the things I coud do and the extent to which I could express myself. I doubt my Lair would be the ideal one for most other Dragons, but that in and of itself is the point, right? I can build mine the way I want, and you can build yours the way you want, and we are both happy. These are not cookie-cutter homes we are talking about. These are Lairs befitting Dragons!

[Death-knell]

Shar, that is not an issue with the naka. Most of their crafting classes are one or 2 resources at best. Our easiest is 2. And the construction classes can all be accompished with a tarbash!

[Rover]

This sounds like a job for a flying multistack cargo disk...

[Shargrym]

Shar, that is not an issue with the naka. Most of their crafting classes are one or 2 resources at best. Our easiest is 2. And the construction classes can all be accompished with a tarbash!

True..but when you look at the range of what we can craft with lairshaping, it would take a naka several crafting classes to produce a similar range(gatherer, miner, mason, fitter, enchanter to name a few) We do it in one... In the example I made above, I was considering only a tarbash's.

There are ways, we just have to find them. As well, finding the ways makes things more interesting to me, and less of a grind..almost like putting together a puzzle of sorts. Ours has never been an easy path, but it is my belief that this makes our accomplishments mean that much more.

Shargrym Stormscale
Order Shard

[imported_Frith-Rae]

OK what I see several of you saying over and over again is "its a puzzle to be figured - and therein lies the fun"..

Ok I can agree with that. The Lairplanning puzzle can be "fun" and neat to spend days, or even weeks, figuring out that "perfect" lair before you finalize it (if you ever do - chuckle). And ok, I'll take the "figuring out the most efficient way to craft" as a puzzle to be mastered, as you say Shargrym, part of your fun.

But then after all that is done, the only thing left to do is grind. And I'm with Tant, Grind NEEDLESSLY. NEEDLESS complication behind what it takes to go into a single piece of construction.

Because once the lair is planned, that puzzle is done. Once you've figured out the best way to get to the resources you need, you'll never have to figure that puzzle again either.

And what we're left with is MONTHS (for some of us years) of the mindnumbing, boring, dead, grinding. The puzzle part might take 25% of your lair building time, the other 75% is the grinding.

And there's where I fall with Tant and others - its just too much grind.

But yea, they do have to give dragonssomething to do for a year or two until they get Ancient Advancement in. Otherwise we'd...well..have nothing to do.

Enjoy the puzzle all you want - but the puzzles don't last very long.

[Chioxin]

I'm with Frith and Tant.... No REAL problems with the plot design part though I do agree with Tant a lot and feel his ideas would have been what I would have done, but I can deal with what we have.

Honestly, it feels like that horrible Vex Thal key in EQ1 where it can take you anywhere from a week to a month just to obtain the ******** thing. Many deaths, no personal gain as a character.... just a silly grind.

I REITERATE!

10 hours of work!
200 units to apply [read as 100 when done applying]
17 - 18.75 in levels of XP

LAME! =( wasted time... booo This was Teir one stuff btw!

[Theolaerynn]

Honestly, it feels like that horrible Vex Thal key in EQ1

*shiver* Not many outside of the higher end EQ folks will probably relate to that statement, but it is definitely a brutal comparison.

Having watched my small Horizons guild building up our Guild plots, though, it isn't outside the realm of what Bi-Peds must go through. It is a little bit different type of time sync, but in the end the amount of time seems comparable. They have a bazillion simple resources, we have a few complex ones. In the end I think even the number of ports is close to the same, just done at different points in the process.

Not that I like it, mind you. It just seems comparable, such that if AE feels it is fun for Bi-Peds then I can see them thinking it is fun for us. I dunno, maybe for some folks it is.

In the end I guess those of us that don't want to wait forever can place money on our structures and advertise it in the hopes other Laircrafters want the money bad enough.

For myself, I am patient and broke, so I expect most if not all of the work will be done by me over a very long period of time [:P]

[Dragoniade]

What I find went too far is that TG are still giving LESS to dragon than to biped.
Yet again.
They triple, quadruple the number of ressource required to build a single unit, the DOUBLE the same amount required to build a single item.

Second, while the 3D is great, it seem it that TG 'forgot' it was 3D when making some of the room. Take silos for insteance.

The rule was simple for bipeds: 2 type of foot prints (excluding the old silo). Odd Tier and even tier, increasing as you go up in tier. So a biped could 'upgrade' his silo anytime. Decon and build another, higher one. He would get the same footprint, but with a bigger capacity.

But not with dragons. Dragon had to be penalized for being dragons. As tier goes up, the capacity goes up, but so do the size of the room. So a dragon building a Tier 1 lair, cannot upgrade it to a TIer 4-5 later on. And according to the size difference reported by some people in blight, it's not worth to build Tier 5 silos, because for the same volume, it's more efficient to build more TIer 1.

Nice way to nerf a building before it even is release. Why make it different, and even crappier, for dragons?

[Chioxin]

Then I guess in my opinion Theo... I'd prefer TONS of items to make, that only use one resource type like bipeds. Or if you ABSOLUTELY MUST... half the items, all items taking 2 types of resources to build. What they have going on now is just a head ache moving around wise. No matter how you cut it for me =( Though I do understand your view.

[dorrin]

Because once the lair is planned, that puzzle is done. Once you've figured out the best way to get to the resources you need, you'll never have to figure that puzzle again either.

And what we're left with is MONTHS (for some of us years) of the mindnumbing, boring, dead, grinding. The puzzle part might take 25% of your lair building time, the other 75% is the grinding.

welcome to construction.. it's no different for bipeds.
heck, siechter hasn't even done much actual construction and i've gathered that from the little i've done. you have to enjoy building for the sake of creating something, or yes.. you won't find it fun.

[Chioxin]

Maybe, but I've done biped crafting too for constructing my Mia's Edge lot. Personally I liked the biped crafting and how it all worked. Again, matter of opinion I guess. Frith is right though, the way it is set up now is much more tedious than before because of all the portaling and transportation you must do for very little product. I wouldn't say "mind numbing" but DEFINENTLY more tedious than I was expecting and wanting to put time into. Unless they make Tarbash Cargo Disk that carry the max load the "one unit" one does but for 3 or so units...