Designs and Expectations

Seir · May 2013

So I'm becoming increasingly interested in crafting again lately, especially with the release of helms. I've definitely decided that I will probably pursue the avenue of acquiring a shop and was curious: Do people like their designs simplistic, as I've been prone to do in the past, or they do they prefer grandiose designs with slightly more description in them?

Personally, I feel that something that is simple yet evocative enough does it in more cases than not. Less chance of errors in the design as well. Opinions, thoughts?

Teani · May 2013

I prefer things simple and relatively short so people actually read it without getting bored half-way through. However, I know others who prefer the long, detailed things as well.

Phoenecia · May 2013

This is just personal preference, but items with really short or vague descriptions bug the crap out of me. Examined descs that consist of nothing but short sentences also bug me because in my head, it sounds like someone's just reading off of a list in a dull monotone voice rather than there being a nice flow to the writing. However, avoiding the dreaded 'purple prose' is also key. It's alright to describe something as 'stunning' or 'beautiful', but in my opinion, it's best to keep those to a minimum, and only use them when you really want to emphasize something important. Keep the words you use simple, too; don't use words that look like you cracked open a thesaurus and used it because you thought the word looked/sounded cool.

Those are really my main rules of thumb when I design stuff: describe what you want to in as many words as you need to, make the writing have a good flow to it and not sound like a list, use simple words and keep the flowery descriptions to a minimum.

That being said, a lot of the stuff I design ends up having pretty lengthy descriptions largely because I like being very specific about how something looks. Things like how long the sleeves are, what the collar looks like, is it baggy or close-fitting, is the material cotton or silk - things like that. I have very clear and vivid images about the stuff I design, and I try as much as possible to write things in a way that might allow people to get a fairly clear image as well, if they care to look.

EDIT: In regards to crafting/shopkeeping, I've found that your worth and success depends on a lot of things. Good writing, creativity, and variety. You could write well, but if all you ever sell are recolors of the same things, people might not exactly be flocking to buy stuff from you. Having variety helps show off just what you're capable of, but also gives people more things to choose from.

Angwe · May 2013

I hate long item descriptions.

Lin · May 2013

Description length and clarity are not at all related. It's in the clarity of the language used that sets a good item description from a bad one. I have seen a three-line armband present a crystal-clear image that a 25-line monster dress only obfuscates.

Tolemy · May 2013

I'm all in favor of the clear and concise model. Heck, I feel like a really clear, solid, appearance line can do more than any block of text. There are some people who treat those appearance lines like the workhorses of their outfit (Edhain comes to mind), and they make it work so well that the longer descriptions end up feeling like icing.

Areka · May 2013

My preferences vary. Designs aren't a chance to cram in every adjective I know, and sometimes less description is better than more. I also don't think there's a set rule, sometimes you need more or less to effectively convey a design. Most importantly: I prefer designs to be somewhat realistic. I want to believe in it as a breathable part of the world and physics and interactions, not something copied and pasted in.

Appearances: I try to keep these somewhat shorter, especially reinforced now with attire - the should evoke some sense of what the item is about, without competing with the dropped or examined.

Dropped: Not as important, I half-ass these more than I'd like.

Examined: A work in progress I try to be more concise with - effectively using adjectives and terms. Emphasis should be on things of import, rather than trying to describe every turn of embroidery, which ends up muddying and drowning the rest of a design. Things like armour can be more difficult, where there are just more pieces to try to fit in and give some reference to without it being an items list.

Overall: Being a materials girl, I get frustrated when people do not use construction terms correctly, or materials in ways that they simply aren't useful for (or designs that really aren't practical. The armour with metal bras/cups makes me cringe, that stuff would snap your sternum like no business when used..but at the same time this is a fantasy game and everyone wants to look like an anime character. OR when people use obsidian for shoe buckles or small things like that, where pressure or a strike would have it falling apart into a bunch of black glass needles. Etc. Grump grump grump.

Also keeping in mind the economics of the game is important to me. Gold and silver are cheap and common, they aren't 'precious metals' as they are OOCly. Good steel is more expensive than they are. Dragon skin isn't rare and a mark of expense, Yudhi's there and able to be killed (to me at least, I admit that!).

Edit: A final thing, is I'd -love- to see more items made from the viewpoints of the characters crafting them. People shouldn't be absolute masters and brilliant artists in every craft they touch. Everything being made masterfully just gets so boring, and it disassociates the crafts from RP. It's part of why I try to emphasize in a lot of my other crafts that they're efficient, but not elegant or artistic, the seams are well done but can't expect much more opulence, outside of forging which is Areka's entire being. There it's a different matter.

Eleanor · May 2013

mark down another for 'simple is best'. My reaction to a sixteen-line ballgown is 'hurgh, skim for what colour this monster is then tl;dr the rest', not 'man that is a beautiful and stunning piece of work'.

Tok · May 2013

OK! Another question on the subject of crafting, how do people feel about the following:

A hardcoded limit for certain fields, such as rejecting any short_desc from being written that is over 40 characters and over 7 words.
3p drinking lines? What if we were to add more ways to drink (such as slamming down a shot) that slightly changed the 'drink' string, then gave you the ability to drink <blah> [<emote>] like our system with giving/dropping? Should we get rid of them? (I know some drinks have people 'gasping' with joy when they drink)
Tags? If you -could- DESIGN <#> ADD|REMOVE <tag> so you could order and list your designs based on attributes, how many tags would you want per design, and what things would you want to be able to do with these tags?

Thanks!

Aldric · May 2013

Tok said:

OK! Another question on the subject of crafting, how do people feel about the following:
A hardcoded limit for certain fields, such as rejecting any short_desc from being written that is over 40 characters and over 7 words.
3p drinking lines? What if we were to add more ways to drink (such as slamming down a shot) that slightly changed the 'drink' string, then gave you the ability to drink <blah> [<emote>] like our system with giving/dropping? Should we get rid of them? (I know some drinks have people 'gasping' with joy when they drink)
Tags? If you -could- DESIGN <#> ADD|REMOVE <tag> so you could order and list your designs based on attributes, how many tags would you want per design, and what things would you want to be able to do with these tags?
Thanks!

- Hard-coded limit: Having this auto reject on that alone would be wonderful. I've personally had designs rejected before as a result of simply forgetting about that limit in the first place, this seems like a change that would help the process.

- 3p drinking lines: I've never personally liked these. You can have a character that's RP'd as somebody that's never had a drink in their life react the exact same way as somebody like Areka who has it established in her RP that she can drink most people under the table. This usually results in retconning the message itself when people emote their own personal reactions to drinks.

- Tags: I'm pretty sure @Erzsebet is squeeing so hard right now at the concept of this alone. I imagine the more tags the merrier with this.

Phendegwen · May 2013

Chiming in here to second a hard limit on design fields with a character cap. Even though I've been here for ages, it's one I'll often forget about. It's got me many a time this week, having gotten way too enthusiastic about fumology and the incense 'smell' line. A coded cap would be extremely helpful.

I've never been keen on 3p drinking lines either- all too often, they appear to afflict a reaction one way or another upon a character. I've always kept mine as vague as possible due to this, but, getting rid of them entirely sounds like a potentially welcome change.

Moirean · May 2013

Am I the only one imagining Tok as some wonderful, uber-version of the clockwork crafting gnome?

Swastan · May 2013

I prefer utilitarian for the types of characters that I usually play, but there's nothing wrong with some fancy-schamcny shit too. And while sometimes a short desc will do, sometimes you have to get into the nitty-gritty to really convey what you want. In my opinion, just find a decent mix of utilitarian and fancy-pants and you'll work out fine.

Also, inb4skyrimhelm

Lin · May 2013

Adding a tag thing would be awesome, then I'd feel less guilty that I still haven't finished a certain Lua project for someone. >.>

Alexina · May 2013

Tok said:

OK! Another question on the subject of crafting, how do people feel about the following:
A hardcoded limit for certain fields, such as rejecting any short_desc from being written that is over 40 characters and over 7 words.
3p drinking lines? What if we were to add more ways to drink (such as slamming down a shot) that slightly changed the 'drink' string, then gave you the ability to drink <blah> [<emote>] like our system with giving/dropping? Should we get rid of them? (I know some drinks have people 'gasping' with joy when they drink)
Tags? If you -could- DESIGN <#> ADD|REMOVE <tag> so you could order and list your designs based on attributes, how many tags would you want per design, and what things would you want to be able to do with these tags?
Thanks!

1. I've always wondered why this was never implemented. In Achaea, you can't put an appearance line with more than fifty characters, if you try you simply get an error message that tells you to stop that and make it shorter.

2. This sounds amazing as usual, but my biggest concern with brewing is that it's so different from the other crafts. I'd love if all brewing designs showed up when I did 'design list' and that all the other syntaxes were made to correspond with normal crafting.

3. Infinity tags. Just making up an example but I wouldn't mind having 'a silken amethyst-hued vest' tagged as #CHEST, #CASUAL, #PURPLE, #DELOSSHOP, and #OUTFITFOUR. Tags would just be so nice to have, even if you end up not using them very much. Could do 'design list syssin' and find my bow, whip, dirk, armour, hooded cloak, and shadowy robes or such. Amazing.

Aldric · May 2013

Crafting: The new, somewhat less annoying, somewhat more imaginative Instagram.

Erzsebet · May 2013

I...am generally one of the bigger offenders as far as long, somewhat wordy descriptions go. It's not even that I specifically like a lot of description, it's that I like cthings with a lot of detail--which in turn require more description. I do agree that it's a matter of preference and a matter of finding out exactly how many words you need to explain what you mean and using only that without sounding like you regurgitated a thesaurus up on the design in question.

A hardcoded limit on 7/40 would be helpful to those who forget--and stop craftwars with people who put it back in the queue after rejection with a 'consider giving me the benefit of the doubt' type comment.

Booze 3p: Yes. All of the yes.

Taaaaaags! Excuse me while I flail and spaz and squee all over the place.

Moirean · May 2013

Issue with 40 characters is you might have 7 words that go over that. Can it check for either/or?

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