Standardized weapons/armour - nondecay and resetting now?

Sena

Shirszae said:

55/55 right now means your armour cuts 55% of damage from both blunt and sharp damage.

Not really. It's a very rough estimate, a little closer (compared to the old stats) to what the actual percentage might be, but still an almost meaningless number rather than corresponding to the actual reduction you get. It's also less precise than the old stats, so it's actually harder now to figure out how much protection your armour will provide.

Trey

@Tecton, @Sarapis, just flagging you both directly for consideration of the following post. Originally would've left it at the rant, but it looks like I wasn't the only one affected by the changes who cared, so -

Idea #1 - Simplest one: Anyone who was trans forging with a suit of fullplate in inventory at the time of your post, allow them a one-time offer through emailing customisations to pay for non-decay or non-decay with resetting on a single suit of fullplate. That way you're making people who wanted it happy while not having to hand out free shit, and for us it means paying for a customisation won't be wasted in 60 days.

Idea #2 - If you don't have a problem with free shit, but to avoid needless clutter, do non-decay and customisation for free on a single suit of fullplate for anyone who met the above criteria and was -ranked- at the time of your post.

Idea #3 - modified version of @Aepas's idea to account for armor as well.
100cr - Sigil of the Armourer - Note: This item must be ordered via artefacts@achaea.com, and an item type and description must be specified at the time of purchase. Item type and description may be changed in the same manner for 50cr. When ATTACHed to an item of the chosen type, the item takes on the description stored in the sigil, and the sigil rests invisibly on the item. The item will decay as normal and will not reset. When the item decays, the sigil resets into its owners inventory, and may be placed on a new item.

Sarapis

We don't plan on making any changes here, sorry.

Kazu

Just for reference, my empowered fullplate showed 97/97 before the switch to the % numbers. So the new fullplate looks to be around 90/90 in the old terms.

Sena

Kazu said:

Just for reference, my empowered fullplate showed 97/97 before the switch to the % numbers. So the new fullplate looks to be around 90/90 in the old terms.

There's a full list (until they're changed or artefact armour is added) of armour stats here.

Jules

I'm a bit miffed that the answer was no in this case, even though I'm not really affected.  I definitely think people had a right to ask and get a straight, public answer on this one (and that did happen).  Oh well.  I'm still mostly a pretty happy customer - but I do feel that a group of customers wasn't treated right here.   

Aepas

Oh well, I'm going to go customize my -arty- sword.

You peasants.

Tael

It amazes me that so many people in this thread are saying "if you can buy artefacts anyway to get around having to buy forged stuff, why not allow nondecay?".

You're talking about something that costs 50-100 credits versus something that costs several times that. The cheapest armour from that Imerian page is 4 or 8 times the cost of nondecay or nondecay+reseting. The fieldplate costs 9 to 18 times as much.

There are obviously a lot more people who would non-decay their armour than would shell out for artefacts for the more-expensive price.

And the silliest thing is that these very threads demonstrate that. Do you really think that everyone here who's requesting the ability to non-decay their armour is going to buy artefact armour to get the non-decay (and let's also consider that, were that the case, IRE would be losing money by allowing people to non-decay something rather than shelling out for the artefact armour)? Including the people specifically complaining about how expensive artefact armour is likely to be?

Artefact armour not having to be replaced is going to cut down somewhat on the demand for forging. It isn't going to cut down on it nearly as much as being able to non-decay armour for 50 credits would.

The reason you can non-decay other tradeskill products has already been discussed: clothes can be non-decayed because people still have reasons to use other clothes. Having one set of non-decay clothes doesn't necessarily mean you never need to buy clothes again for any occasion. Having a set of non-decay armour or a non-decay weapon largely just means you're never going to contribute to the forging economy/gold-sink ever again. On top of that, it's generally understood that tailouring and the "creative" tradeskills aren't really there for making gold anyway, quite unlike how forging is set up.

If anything, I could see an artefact weapon or armour "attachment" functioning like a blademaster band that turns the sword you're using into an artefact (with artefact stats and at an artefact weapon price), so people with artefacts could still make use of the descriptor system and there'd be more demand for the really high-tier descriptors just so you can "band" them. On the other hand, I can understand why IRE would be hesitant since I'm sure plenty of people buy credits to change weapons out when switching classes - and I think there's something to be said for maintaining an economic disincentive to switching classes too. Rather than Aepas's customisation band, this does precisely the opposite - it makes artefact appearance also depend on forging, so there's still incentive to buy expensive weapons. I doubt anyone is going to be buying the skull armour much since it's so expensive, but it would be really neat if people with artefact "attachments" had an incentive to buy that really expensive stuff, even if they didn't buy it often since the attachment makes it non-decay.

And as for customisation - there's also a fairly good reason weapons can't be customised without shelling out for artefacts: weapons are much more visible than normal items. You see the things people are wielding pretty much all the time, without even actively looking. Customising a vial that someone will see only when you sip from that specific vial or an even more innocuous item doesn't have the same impact at all. And a cheap band that can be used to customise a weapon doesn't help the forging economy much at all - there's no reason to ever buy more than the cheapest, most basic version of the weapon you plan to band.

Austere

What I don't understand is why is this thread still open. Denied multiple times, even if I don't agree with the reasoning [was there one beyond no? ], seems to me like people are just wasting their time on this. Just tell us no and close these things so they don't clutter up my recent discussions. Release artie armor already so I have an excuse to blow money I don't have.

Sarapis

Yeah, probably nothing more of value to say on the matter really.