I don't know a whole lot about Lusternia's design submission system yet, but I do know this: There exists a keen need for customers to be able to browse through designs themselves.

When I want to have something made, a dress for example, I contact a tailor and start discussing what I want. They listen to my preferences, then spend at least five minutes looking through lists of designs (I presume). They name a few items for me to see if any of them pique my interest. Of course, pasting the entire description of every item into the MUD would be pretty disruptive and spammy, so I end up having no idea what the items look like in detail, unless I ask the tailor for individual descriptions. (To be fair, 99.9% of worn clothing items aren't closely examined by other players anyway, but it matters to me personally.)

I'm not talking about Peon Gokblorp, Novice Tailor here, either. I'm talking about demigod trademasters who've been playing since 2006, and they too are reduced to the exact same procedure as described above.

Usually, the end result is that the tradesperson wastes their time, and I end up frustrated without the product I wanted. If I'm paying good sovereigns for an item that's going to last me 300 months, I'm not going to settle for something I don't really like.

It would be nice if there were a command that temporarily allows prospective customers "membership" of sorts to browse through cartel design lists, and another command to end that access... or, if that's mechanically impossible, to accomplish the same thing by some other method.

Hopefully, I've completely missed an obvious way to easily browse designs and this entire thread is in vain, but since 150-year-old veterans don't seem to know of such a method, I doubt it exists.

The easiest way, currently, is to set up a trigger system to let you browse cartel designs through tells, or publish a catalog that you will have to update as new designs are submitted.

Could also end up just joining a cartel temporarily, using the CARTEL CATALOGUE function to find what you want, then leaving. However, you're kinda boned if what you want is in an org cartel.

I've heard of catalogs, but they're thin on the ground (or so it seems). The trigger idea is great, but only if a tradesperson happens to have it set up.

All I can say is: I think both customers and tradespeople would benefit greatly if a means to let customers browse designs were implemented. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think this, and for all I know the game engine precludes it or there are other factors rendering it unfeasible, but it can't hurt to suggest formally.



Yes, and I suspect that many cartels won't be keen to invite and kick people on a regular basis, though that's just a guess.

Preeeeetty much. Maybe you'll luck out and find a cartel owner who OCDly logs their designs on a website or something.

Or maybe they'll implement a way for customers to browse designs sometime in the near future!







...?




Okay, probably not. But it could happen! That's why I posted the thread.

This is an excellent list of designs compiled by Kharaen and others. It's an astounding piece of work!

A bit out of date, true, but it'll cover most of the designs. Having a broad idea and or being able to say "Let me see XXXX" straight off really simplifies things ... just make sure you do check, because not all short names accurately reflect the longer descriptions ....

I would love to see this, especially since access to a cartel's catalog doesn't give you access to the public design lists. Sure, some of them aren't that great, but you know... I have access to 91 greatrobes designs right now, and combing through them to stock my shop is kind of a pain, let alone doing that for a customer who's going "Um, hm, I like blue, and...green, I suppose, and red is nice."

This comes up often and I always have to be the one to explain why it would have to be opt-in and would never be universally used as much as the customer would like. The problem is plagiarism. From the customer's viewpoint, seeing all details of all designs seems like a great idea, but from the point of view of the designer, who has invested millions of gold and countless hours of time and creativity, it's not viable without a better method of protecting against those designs being recycled with small changes in the wording as public designs.

Some people think this is implausible. Even though I don't publish my designs, I've lost several this way where I know unequivocally that it was done intentionally, with quite a few more where I can't be sure (but at least some of them must have been done this way). I feel sure that if I made my private designs more publicly visible I'd lose even more of them.

Instead, I simply offer the best customer service I can. I wrote (and sell) a script system which lets me present customers with lists of designs to their liking, and also helps me in making them. This way I can give you not just a list of 1000 designs to leaf through, but a targetted list with just the ones that suit you. Incidentally it also means that if you start asking for full descriptions of a suspiciously large number of designs and then don't buy any and then public designs start appearing two days later that look almost exactly the same, I know who's responsible. (Not that I can get anything done about it, but at least I know to add you to my blacklist.)

I'd be perfectly keen to see an opt-in version of this (my favorite approach is a bookbinder skill to make a book that shows the catalogue and automatically updates, since bookbinders need love), but until then, if you find a crafter who's got his act together, you can get as good or better service than a huge catalog. You just have to find the right crafter.

In agreement with pretty much all that's been said. I have a website of my own for these things, there's a few others too. Kharaen has compiled an in-game compendium with public artisan designs too at one point. She used to (does?) sell them at her shop, magic copies I presume, so customers would get updates in their volumes should she add any. This is one good way at least. I try to make/keep such books for my own cartels too (have a few I'll be adding to my shop too).

But... all this is so tiresome. And telling people at length of designs you have, matching and mixing your designs with their requests, is again such a chore. Especially if what they want to buy is a dress. A dress that will add up to maybe 500-700 coins, with like 200-300 sheer profit. Maybe a bit more. I don't care to do all this for potential customers, I don't have the time. :/

Bookbinder love aside, how about an artifact? Something to the effect of:

Craftmaster's Compendium

Limitations:
- can only invest trades you know or have in dormancy (obeying your skill rank in it unless it's a cartel)
- only the owner can use the invest command

COMPENDIUM - to view the syntax
COMPENDIUM INVEST JEWELRY ALL - invests all designs, public and otherwise
COMPENDIUM INVEST JEWELRY PUBLIC - invests all public designs
COMPENDIUM INVEST JEWELRY CARTELS - invests all designs of all cartels you are a member of, also org ones
COMPENDIUM INVEST JEWELRY STEELROSE - invests just the one cartel
COMPENDIUM INVEST JEWELRY STEELROSE BLACKPEARL - could accept unlimited listing, perhaps PUBLIC too for extreme flexibility

COMPENDIUM VIEW INDEX - shows what is currently invested, including types of items. For example:
---------------------------------------------------

J E W E L R Y

Showcasing for your viewing pleasure,

Designs from the Steel Rose, the Clockwork
Antiquities, and the Blackpearl Cartels

Now available,

Baubles, Bracelets, Rings, Trinkets
---------------------------------------------------

COMPENDIUM VIEW BAUBLES - shows as if you did JEWELRY BAUBLES, obeying your investments
COMPENDIUM VIEW BAUBLES 1234 - shows the specific design as if you did JEWELRY BAUBLES 1234

Now, to accomodate Lendren's valid worry of plagiarism, a fear of all designers, and worst of all, plagiarism of restricted designs; I think Trademasters of cartels (sides from org ones) should have the ability to restrict/unrestrict designs. Like so:

CARTEL STEELROSE RESTRICT/UNRESTRICT 1234
CARTEL STEELROSE RESTRICTED LIST
CARTEL STEELROSE RESTRICTED ON/OFF

Then you could easily turn it on/off, also for the purposes of investing them into the compendium should one wish to. Restricted designs would not be able to be crafted by anyone but the Trademaster and would either show on the cartel catalogue in red or not show at all to non-Trademasters (to avoid plagiarism entirely).

EDIT: Trademasters of cartels should have the option to opt in/out of their members being able to invest their designs into compendiums, forgot about that. CARTEL STEELROSE COMPENDIUM ON/OFF would cover this.

@Lendren:
I had vaguely considered that the confidentiality of designs might be a concern, but had dismissed it as a non-issue — I'm not naïve, but I had assumed that plagiarism would be a very rare occurrence. I'm sorry to hear that it occurs frequently enough to require active vigilance on your part to prevent. Personally, I wouldn't want to be caught dead plagiarizing something, but I suppose not everyone is so scrupulous. It's also a shame that there's no avenue for detecting and punishing plagiarists.

Also, I had intended from the get-go that any changes to design accessibility would be opt-in, though I didn't explicitly state it.

@Nariah:
Eactly! If the customer and tradesperson spend a total of three hours working together to find just the right set of designs, you (the tradesperson) make only a very modest profit at best (far less than you could have just bonking stuff on the head), and in that same period of time, the customer, too, could have earned a sizable amount of gold doing something else. Even as a very young player, I've already realized this.

Now it's a fact that crafting should be done mostly as a labor of love, and that we shouldn't always judge our activities by how much gold and experience we earn while doing them, but it serves to illustrate the overall point of the process being tiresome and having room for improvement. Even barring gold and experience, it's better to spend time creating new designs than on ferrying item descriptions to customers one by one, or on creating and updating a separate, OOC website listing your designs (that being said, I plan to check those out).

@Everyone in general:
One reason I try to avoid "seeking out the right tradesperson" is that I don't want to completely shun players who don't have five cartels, trans Tailoring (or whatever), and thousands of designs. It makes me feel guilty, like only doing business with trans Bookbinders who have Quills.

On the other hand, I'm not going to buy something if I don't want it anyway, or if it has a mediocre decay value. It's probably not a good idea for players to invest in a trade where the level of the skill (Inept to Trans) and quantity of private designs available make or break the end product, iunless they can afford to trans the skill right away and join a cartel or two.

Re: time spent on choosing designs vs making money in that time. Yeah, I don't want to sound like I'm so money obsessed that I won't do it just for this reason, but I know it's a concern for many. Something like this could, in theory, be quite an enjoyable RP session and I enjoy doing that with my proteges, friends, children etc, but then also Nariah is not labour class. It's utterly against everything she stands for to be sitting in a crafting room with 'some person', helping them choose the right shoes. So really, I'd rather just have a compendium like that, thrust it into a person's hand and tell them to contact one of my employees.

And this can be done through bookbinding! Fairly easily if you're the trademaster or you know the magical incantation to summon yourself a Kharaen.

Pfff, I did say such too!

There's no reason that "the right crafter" has to also be the one with a huge catalog. It's just about who does better customer service. Sometimes the big guy is better because he got big because he wanted to invest in it, so he'll also invest the time to do things like develop triggers. But sometimes the little guy is better because he needs to use great customer service as a means of getting customers without all those other things, while the big guy is often busy with other duties or activities. It's not hard to ask for traders and then ask, "I want a dress that's in a dark color and goes well with these shoes, what can you do for me?" and if he goes the extra mile to help -- either through scripting or just by knowing his own catalogue, and in either case, giving you helpful answers -- then you know to work with him. Big or small has nothing to do with it.

Actually it is even worse than that. I'm a forger that is a member of the Darkhammer Forging Cartel but I can't browse master weapon/armor designs until I learn the MasterWeapon and MasterArmor skills which are near transcendent.

I need to find a design that I like before I decide to attach a rune.

If you are in a cartel, you should be able to see all cartel-specific designs using CARTEL DARKHAMMER CATALOGUE, then CARTEL DARKHAMMER CATALOGUE .

Oh thanks. That makes things a little less stupid but I still like most of the ideas in this thread.

Inspired by this thread, I've added to Workbench Craft the ability to dump your catalog into a book in an easy, automated way. You can dump public, private, or both designs; in fact, you can dump any subset of designs you like (though I can't think of why you'd want to dump only designs that involve pearls, but if you want, you can).

Part of me wants to buy it just to see that code.