Small Ideas - AIN'T NO COMBAT THREAD

Moirean

Kinda yes, kinda no. Forging is a straight up tradeskill (versus crafting skill). Other trade skills let you do stuff right out the gate - for example a newb enchanter can go off and make fist sigils and cold resistance rings and the decay time on these might be a bit shorter, but the items are a yes/no type, so they work no matter the level of person who crafted it, whereas with forging you don't want crap stats, so anyone not trans with racial and hammer is basically just wasting time and comms forging something. Regarding customization, talents are a one-off pay and be able to (no skill level), while other crafting skills do make you learn to a certain rank to be able to customize....but these are miniskills, so the lesson investment is a lot less and everyone pretty much just transes these with ease.

Toz

Can't customize stuff you didn't make. So you still gotta trans+end game+ hammer to make cool, useful gear.

Moirean

Yeah, but you could still make designs to serve as templates for like your guild or city.

Lin

Tradeskills allow you to customize designs at 0% Expert. In this example, if Forging were to work similarly to other tradeskills, the Customize ability would just be an ingrained part of forging functionality, and Expert would allow you to create designs.

Ezalor

Reduce price of hammer .

Draiman

I wouldn't mind picking up forging but dear god that is one helluva investment to make.

Alexina

I just think the hammer of forging is a bad idea in the first place.

Essentially, anyone without a hammer will be producing a lot of sub-standard weapons and armours over their career as a forger, which impact their profit negatively since people with the hammer will be producing high quality goods pretty much on every try. On the other hand, the person with the hammer made a huge credit investment just from buying it, an investment that they never will be able to realistically recover.

With old forging, there was always the chance of a hammer producing that particularly awesome weapon (240+ speed rapier) or fullplate (100/100). This is no longer the case.

EDIT:
Potential solutions in no particular order:

• Allow the hammer some new functionality that the community might be interested in (such as naming weapons/shields or augmenting weapons/armour sort of like the enchantment skillset does at the moment)
• Reduce the cost of the artifact to a more reasonable price. I would suggest something in the 150-200 credits area.
• Simply delete the hammer and give people who already purchased it a refund.
  

Areka

Every try is a stretch. The RNG can still be a huge biyotch, and even with my hammer, I'll get huge strings where I get nothing above _2_2 for armour and 177 for extreme weapons, let alone dealing with split grades, which are more fickle. 

On average, I get 2 good quality pieces for every 10 forgings (good quality being _3_3 for armour and shields, 178 for extremes, and 139/129 for splits) (and that's what I end up pricing sales around, each thing needs to cover 5 forgings minimum. Sometimes restocking I'm still taking a loss). 

I have no input on the moment otherwise, for yay hammer or boo hammer. I like that it counts as both apprenticing avenues. It is a bit frustrating that it is more of a necessity in comparison to the other current tradeskills, 

Toz

If you don't have a hammer, you're worthless as a forger. It makes a massive, massive difference - stuff's expensive to make, esp. when you don't turn profits always on what you make. So you realistically can't afford to be a forger without a hammer if you want to make a profit, but when you make 3750000 gold off of forging to equal out the cost of the hammer, you let me know.

Moirean

Lin said:

Tradeskills allow you to customize designs at 0% Expert. In this example, if Forging were to work similarly to other tradeskills, the Customize ability would just be an ingrained part of forging functionality, and Expert would allow you to create designs.

CRAFTING skills do. Forging - while letting you make custom designs - is not a crafting skill. Crafting skills cost 200 credits total (permit and miniskills) and include permanent design slots (does forging? If not, it should). Forging is a full-fledged skill that costs 3x the number of lessons. The setup is definitely the same, but the investment and output is not, especially with how the process of forging works, so I don't think comparing them 1:1 is the best idea. If that is what you are doing. I'm kinda tired and am failing at reading comprehension.

In any case, a new player who wants to try out forging - and forgers are one of those cool archetypes that appeal to people from merchant/crafting and/or RP angle - really...can't. It's a waste of (a lot of) lessons, unless they also get endgame and buy a hammer. Someone who wants to try out tailoring can spend 200 credits and be good to go. Giving people the ability to at least play around creativity from the get-go by making customizing a baseline ability would mitigate that investment somewhat by letting them at least make RP weapons. Ie at inept you could customize club designs - as is, every single lesson before where customization currently sits basically gives them nothing at all, since those weapons they "can" forge are worth less than the comms they are made from.

Or change how forging stats are determined and/or delete the hammer, but that's a lot more work. Hence the customization option!

Ezalor

Well, there's also the argument that Forging actually provides mechanical benefit, unlike the other tradeskills (an argument could be made for vials/bandages/stuff like that I suppose but Forging does so on a much larger scale and as the main purpose of the skillset), so it makes sense that it would be more costly than the others.

750 for the artifact is pretty ridiculous though IMO.

Moirean

Ok, you guys seem confused on this point.

Tradeskills: Enchantments, venoms, reanimation, concoctions, forging. - These skills cost a full investment of lessons.

Craft skills: Tailoring, jewelcrafting, cooking, jewelcrafting, furniture, brewing - These cost 100 credits + the cost of a miniskills trans.

Forging is a mercantile skill, not a craft skill. It has had components of a craft skill added to it.

Ezalor

Ah, I see what you mean actually. Didn't realize you were arguing for earlier customization rather than the functionality of Forging.

Toz

design 2026 permanence on

You don't have enough permanence slots to make that design permanent.

You don't get any permanence slots by transing forging, despite the cost being 3x higher. Which is also kind of (super) lame.

Oleis

Sounds like we need to make some changes. I'll make sure we have a discussion about that in the next couple months. Worst case is a liaison report in the next round.

Areka

Belatedly @Toz - yeah, I probably have the biggest corner on the forging market atm and in 20+ IG years, have seen about 1.8-2mil in true profit, which doesn't cover the hammer let alone the Delos shop's auction price. 

Saybre

Please allow Militia promotions to work past private. Since the old war system is long dead, and I'm trying to promote Army promotions/involvement, being able to actually promote would be..REALLY nice.

Toz

I don't charge for forging stuff - my hammer was from a giftbag anyway >_> Just charge for the comms and whatever they feel like paying/donating (@Rowena being my favorite person to forge for, ever *cough*)

No point in trying to sell it competitively, really. Easiest to just not forge, esp. since there's no financial motivation. I won't make a profit and I actually stand to lose gold if I try and mess up/can't move stuff - so, yeah. A few tweaks to viability'd be awesome.

Ishin

I don't usually charge either, @Toz, unless someone insists on paying me. Generally I just tell them to get enough comms to make 10 of whatever, and I make the 10, give them the best, smelt the rest and keep the comms. If I don't smelt them, I donate them to the guild shop.

Jensen

only way I ever made money forging was through mass armor and shield forges.  I'd put them all up in my shop even the bad ones and set prices lower than any other shop.  I'd also keep stocked rarer armor sets.  Always turned a profit but never a large one and it was fairly easy.

Areka

Money's through the Delos shop. If people ask me to make something for them, I just have them buy the comms and if the design requires an additional ingredient, to go find it because I'm lazy. 

Fullplate's the real bi--- to stock. 

Jensen

what I did was -horrible- if you're trying to RP as the greatest smith in the realms, my guess is that's something you really shoot for @areka

Areka

Yep. Areka IS a forge, and it's an integral part of her RP. It's part of why stocking the Armoury's such a pain sometimes xD. Lowest quality is still good quality (no extreme temps below 177, armour not below _3/_3 unless it's a _2/_4, etc). 

Moirean

Can admin illusions please be made a different color? People keep doing illusions at big RP events and it's making it seem like our characters are feeling/thinking certain stuff - at an event, most of us just assume the Gods are influencing that, so we roll with it...but when it's a player putting that stuff there, it leads to kinda embarrassing/dumb situations.

Alexina

I saw a few lines with the **Illusion** tag after it.

I sort of think the most interesting use of illusions is that it makes other people think players weren't involved in the situation. I sometimes randomly make illusions about pretty mundane stuff (can be anything from the mourning tone of a bell to hushed whispers further down the city streets), but that wouldn't be possible at all if Godlines were a different colour.

Also, I thought Divine can already make messages in different colours if they want to? Am I mistaken about this?

Moirean

I agree that changing it would have this frustrating effect, but we've seen multiple events now where players seem insistent on chiming in with their own illusions and it really messes with people on the player level, since you think "Oh, hey, I'm being talked to by an ancient Ankyrean" or "The Demon Blade is telling me to attack everyone" so you go along with it, only to basically just be having your character go nuts for no reason since it was another player doing that stuff, not the event. 

Basically, people suspend their disbelief in events and other people are taking advantage of that and if people are going to keep doing that, then something should be changed.

Daskalos

But isn't that illusions? I mean, you have to make the choice to have your character to go nuts. An illusion is just that -- an illusion. I take everything I see with a grain of salt (hello, @Severn). A syssin doing illusions to manipulate someone else just... seems to fit right in with their roleplay.

Toz

There's a difference between, say, an admin illusion saying 'Your feet start to drag you forward across the floor against your will, towards the edge of the cliff' and some random guy illusioning it. Unless there's not, in which case I'm going to start illusioning 'You lose and die' every time I pvp.

Daskalos

Is it? Again, it's an illusion. I'm thinking back to combat illusions, people used to illusion 'You have been  slain'. People illusions affliction messages 'Your limbs lock up!'. You had to learn to ignore or not ignore.

Alexina

If you can effortlessly distinguish between player illusions, God illusions, game echoes, etcetera, then there is no point in having player illusions because they will always be recognized as such and thus be conveniently ignored. If this really is an issue, the better solution would be to delete illusions from player skillsets/artifacts.