Content Creation: Items

Development of standard ALFA palettes (ABR)

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Ronan
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Content Creation: Items

Post by Ronan »

Items server teams (or anyone) can and should currently be building and contributing:
  • Wonderous items (cloak of elvenkind, piwafwis, etc)
  • Non-usables, ie items which should be recognized across all of ALFA, but don't do anything except interact with scripts or cost gold (gems, animal hides, eyes of newts, etc)
  • Anything which takes scripting. See the thread on how to script for items in ALFA2 here (the needed include files will be included with the ACR hak, bug me in chat if you need in sooner):
    http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=33246
  • Global faction stuff, for factions based in your server (TSM Zhents should dress like DD Zhents, harper pins, etc)
Stuff that should NOT be contributed:
  • "Generic" Armor
  • "Generic" Weapons
  • Consumables (potions, scrolls, wands, we've generated these with a plugin)
  • Anything which costs less than 1gp, the currency item properties must wait for a future patch which allows custom item properties.
Most of these will be made and priced correctly using a plugin, with the finishing touches done by hand. Given the huge number of these items which will be made, it makes sense to do it this way.

ftp://alfatech:moonblade@ftp.alandfaraw ... ABR/Items/
(please create a directory with a descriptive name for your submissions, and submit them as individual UTI files)

Item tagging procedures are here:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/docs/Technical/A2BMItems
(note that some item classification standards are missing, so we'll have to get those up before people can submit some items, but you can still create them, and yell at us here on what you need classifications for)

As always, post on this thread so that others can see what your working on and don't duplicate your work. Thanks!
Last edited by Ronan on Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:17 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Ronan
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Post by Ronan »

Bah, just realized we didn't have classification standards for items. *prods Rusty*
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Rusty
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Post by Rusty »

Ow. Yeah, yeah.
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Post by Ronan »

AcadiusLost has tooled up wonderous items A-P for us. So no one else do these.
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ç i p h é r
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Has anyone reviewed those wondrous items, Ronan or Rusty? AL, are you by chance working on the rest?

ThinkTank has completed about 50 Gear items. Sheyjin put together another 74 including a few creature items for the creatures he compiled. Both of these need to be reviewed against standards yet.

Thanks everyone for contributing. :)
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

I can probably get to the rest of them in the next week or two, if not, I'll notify so someone else can pick up my slack. (these are workable 3.5 DMG wonderous items only at this point: if anyone wants to do ones from other sourcebooks, they should be nonoverlapping).
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Thanks AL. I've got my fingers crossed. :)
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Post by Ronan »

I may soon post a new ACR hak, which would include a modification which reduces all item properties to 0 value. The problem is lowering item value... Putting a negative value in "additional cost" doesn't seem to work, nor does the item property with a negative value like we used in NWN1. I've already re-priced AL's first batch of gear using this hak, but it would be easier if he just made it using it, if we are indeed going to use something like this.

We need a way to lower item value lower than the base item cost, and I just don't know how :( So I'm not sure what to do at this point.
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ç i p h é r
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Am I right in assuming that this only affects mundane items?
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Updates anyone? ... Bueller? ... Bueller?
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Post by ç i p h é r »

We still need ALFA-tized equipment (armor, shields, and weapons). Has anyone started working on this? Is anyone willing to work on this?
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

As it turns out, there were only a handful of workable DMG3.5 wonderous items left. Uploading the erf now.

Note that prices may not be correct on these, tried to correct to DMG where I could, but sounded like negative "extra cost" wasn't working as of before at least. Also, the robes may need appearance model adjustment, depending.
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Daeftan
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Post by Daeftan »

A thought about pricing... maybe I don't understand the problem: is the issue about PC's selling items to vendors for mad cash?

If so, it's not elegant but can't this be handled on the vendor side? Just slam dunk the vendor buy percentages or their max gold purchase limits.

Or is the issue that we are really trying to mark up costs exactly to 3.5 core materials in hopes that will stabilize the economy? (3.0 costs certainly didn't).
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

It's a combination of things, actually: yes, we do want to adopt 3.5E pricing, ALFA already did this to a large extent with NWN1.

Additionally, we've made a pretty detailed pricing scheme for custom items, from masterwork up through nearly all conceivable item properties, based on their relative power and utility, which we'd like to preserve if possible.

Most often, the toolset underprices these, but for those times when it overprices them, we need a way to balance back down again. (negative number in the "added cost" doesn't seem to do it).

It's not just a matter of PCs selling the gear: that can be handled (though only broadly, not specifically) by buyback rates. We use the total gold and equipment value as an indirect metric of PC power, in order to try to keep a hold on balance issues, our Standards documents explain this better than I can. Basically, we link a broad range of acceptable wealth (items & gold) to PC level, and use the PC's position on that range to advise DMs on future rewards, to avoid crazily out-of-whack PCs who make DMing complicated (and to allow DMs confidence in awarding items to PCs that are routinely passed over).

As such, having accurate pricing becomes essential for game balance. Hope this is helpful? Thanks for stepping up to help with the basemod, as well, much appreciated.
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Post by ballonger »

Are you doing items from Magic of Faerûn as well? More so than the ones from the DMG they have great flavour.
On the other hand you have different fingers.
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