#3 - March 24, 2023, 10:02 p.m.
Thank you so much for the feedback! We are aware of the issue where you cannot easily differentiate orders that provide reagents from ones that cannot and are working on a fix to get the same sortable column into the public orders tab as exists in the guild / personal order tabs, where it tells you if all/some/none of the reagents are provided. This should allow you to easily sort and avoid orders that don’t provide all reagents if you so wish.
As far as orders that don’t include reagents and have a poor tip, while it is possible that some players are intentionally trying to deceive crafters into making recipes at a loss, in most cases it is likely a matter of customers learning the changes to the system and experimenting with what orders will get filled. We anticipate that with time, players will learn what orders they can get filled and which ones will not.
It is important to make sure crafters have all the information they need to avoid accidentally crafting something at a loss if they did not intend it. We do predict that in some instances crafters will intentionally choose to do this in cases where they can earn skill from doing so. That said, we will be carefully watching how this change works out. We are also looking into improving the clarity of the order interface to make sure it is as clear as possible which reagents are being provided by the customer and which by the crafter. Meanwhile, you will always get a confirmation dialogue if you are about to spend some of your own reagents on an order to make sure you are aware of what you are doing.
Finally, philosophically we made this change for a few reasons.
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We would like to open the system up as much as possible to player choice and allow the market to help determine what orders are fulfilled and which ones are not.
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The primary purpose of the public order system is to have a low barrier to entry for players to get their items crafted. Removing the need to buy your own reagents helps with that, although it does leave the onus on the customer to provide a reasonable commission. This is something we will also be keeping an eye on.
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We would like to see more public orders to allow more crafters to have a chance to fill them. Lowering the barrier to post orders should help with this. As players learn the system, we are also hoping the ratio of orders that include an ample tip to be worth filling also increases. Finally, we have been looking at adding new recipes that provide opportunities to use the crafting order system, for instance the Curios released in the latest patch.
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To this point, filling public orders has required very little consideration, particularly if there aren’t many, because it was guaranteed profit as all reagents were provided by the customer (this section was slightly clarified through an edit). With the introduction of variations in reagents, the choice of whether to fill an order or not will hopefully become more interesting, where crafters are weighing costs of reagents and skill gains against potential profits or losses from filling the order.
Finally, while this thread has not mentioned the prospect of allowing public orders to specify quality, I have seen other posts that have. I want to re-emphasize that the reason we are not doing this is were we to, nearly all orders would move to be public, and most if not all would be set to require maximum quality. This would remove the opportunity for lowers skill crafters to fulfill public orders, as well as undermine the crafter gameplay and interaction that comes from building a business and getting customers to send you orders.
Thanks and as mentioned above, we will continue to watch how the crafting order system unfolds and iterate. Your feedback is always appreciated!
-Drough
