Forging system needs to get more incentives for people to partake in it

Silvarien

Hi there,

I don't know how many Legendary smiths are around right now, I just know of Ellodin and myself. I don't charge people for forging beyond comms, and I forge for two Cities, but still I get very few requests.

The old system had a lot of problems, but there was healthy incentive to forge, whether to get non-decay fullplate and improve on it, or the standard quest to make a 244 speed rapier. The current system provides descriptors for attractiveness, but most experienced players at this point are sporting artefact weapons and shields of absorption, with mostly novices needing normal weapons. Most of the requests I do get are for armor, and if artefact armor ever comes out, there will be fairly little benefit to forging at all. The high end descriptors tend to be very expensive, such as the armor-only skull-festooned descriptor that requires 220 bone per size. And that expensive armor will decay, even the fullplate.

Even if one is smart about achieving Legendary smith, the costs are simply enormous. I am by no means any sort of game mechanics wizard, but if I, as a Legendary smith, am getting next to no work when I do commissions for two cities for just the cost of comms and no other fee, it's safe to say something needs to be done to strengthen the system. I know the Garden probably wants to err on the side of caution in introducing something big like this, but I think some strengthening is definitely needed, both for people to have incentive to shoot for Grandmaster and Legendary, and also for people to actually want to use forged goods. Just my two cents.

Trey

Honestly, the big draw for me with forging was the gamble aspect of it, along with the sense of accomplishment when I forged something ridiculous. I agree that it needed the change to standardized stats, but it sucked all the fun out of it for me. That and the fiasco with fullplate (mostly unrelated) killed a lot of my desire to do anything with it.

Silvarien

@Trey : I think what would help the most is this: add the trait to Grandmaster smith of increasing the decay time, and for the Legendary smith FURTHER to increase decay time. If the increase per rank was good enough, that would be healthy incentive for people to reach the rank. If the Legendary smith's forged goods add 1/3rd the item's normal decay time, with the cost of forging in general people will be seeking out the Legendary smiths as opposed to other smiths and there would be really good reason to become one.

And if not this particular thing, then something on that level.

Exelethril

What's the approximate cost of reaching Grandmaster?

Silvarien

@Exelethril : Czanthria did all the calculations for me. HELP FORGING has everything about the process. You need 60 points for Grandmaster and 200 go get Legendary. More expensive modifiers are worth more points, so if you sit down and do calculations there should be a "cheapest" way, but even that is realistically quite pricey.

Exelethril

Well, like.. a rough guesstimation in gold?

Silvarien

Honestly I don't know what the exact costs are, at this point. I heard lacquer prices went up.

Aereidhna

I didn't keep track, but I probably spent somewhere around 1.5 mil to get Virtuoso Blacksmith, maybe? Possibly more. The difficulty and cost of gaining experience goes up tremendously at Virtuoso, moreso than any of the previous ranks, at least from my perspective. I'm sure it's far steeper when you're working on Grandmaster and Legendary.

I usually forge for free or the cost of comms because I am still working on rank, and I'd be forging anyway, might as well go to some use instead of getting smelted down. I rarely get orders, usually just from friends or novices, I've gotten a few requests from rogues and Targossians for single items here and there and usually they will reimburse in gold or comms. I have no idea how well forged items sell in shops - I'm looking into getting a shop, but it seems like they aren't needed a lot so I don't know if an experienced shopkeeper could weigh in on whether their stock is actually selling. 

I love forging from an RP perspective and have a lot of fun with it, being the first female Virtuoso Blacksmith (to my knowledge) was an important accomplishment to my character ICly speaking. But in terms of making money or being in high demand, I definitely don't see it happening the way Achaea's economy and forging is set up right now, and I'm not certain what changes would be needed to make that happen. I didn't forge under the old system so I'm only familiar with this one. I do it more for fun than profit, but it would be neat if forging were in higher demand.

Katzchen

I think maybe you're missing the point that these ranks aren't designed to be obtained by everyone. If they gave them huge benefits, there'd just be more people trying to get there, making forging even more worthless. 

If you choose to buy your way to Legendary forger, go ahead, but don't complain you aren't making a profit - you're not doing it the way it's designed!

The real problem is because of the few people essentially forging for free for anyone because they just want Legendary, forging isn't profitable for almost anyone else who is just trying to use their trade skill.

Aereidhna

I'm not sure I follow the 'not doing it the way it's designed' part...no one would ever make it to Legendary if you only forged for demand, because there is very little demand and the amount of forging it takes to gain experience is a lot. "Buying" one's way to legendary also benefits the market because people aren't waiting two IC centuries for someone to get there just by demand to have access to weapons with more fancy descriptors. Grandmaster and legendary also seem rather designed to make people forge just to forge, since mastering descriptors requires making the same descriptors over and over and over and over and over and over and over again - good luck finding a bunch of customers who all want the same descriptors! And I'd gladly charge to forge if people would pay for it, but again, supply is much higher than demand presently, so I have yet to run into a lot of people willing to pay and the market is flooded with forgers who need experience. It's a buyers' market because of the way the skill is designed and because the prevalence of artefact weapons that are now ALL better than the new standardized stats means there isn't as much need for forging.

Katzchen

I don't see anything wrong with it taking IRL years of slowly forging steadily to get Legendary without buying it. It's right there in the title 'Legendary'. Yes, there's issues with the market, but a lot of them have been caused by people forging their way to Legendary on purpose, and flooding it on the way. Maybe it'll sort itself in time, maybe it won't. I don't really see much of a fix to it right now though. Allowing Legendary forgers to make items that last longer sounds appealing from a consumer perspective, but it would only devalue other forged goods even more.

Aereidhna

Also, I get that the ranks aren't meant to be obtained by everyone...that's why we only have three legendaries, not sure if anyone is at grandmaster since Laren got legendary, a couple of master blacksmiths, and I'm the only virtuoso that I know of presently. There are less than ten people at the higher (honors line) ranks altogether that I know of, less than five at grandmaster and legendary. 

I personally don't have huge issues with the way the system is now, it's just something you accept if you get into it, that you won't be making money off of it and it's more for fun than anything else, IMHO. Most customers don't seem to want the fancier descriptors (I've had a grand total of one specific order for a Virtuoso descriptor and I turned it down because of Cyrene's trade ban with Mhaldor), so even the incentive to get the higher ranks for descriptors isn't much there, those orders seem to be few and far between. The average customer is not going to be interested in paying for a riftful of ink for a colorful descriptor - if they have that kind of ink or gold to drop, they probably have an artefact weapon already. The main incentive to get higher ranks that I can see is for the honors line and for personal RP.

I would be interested to see if there are things that could be tweaked and I'm fascinated by what people have brought up so far. But I don't think present blacksmiths are doing it wrong, I think the way things are going is expected with the way the system is designed and Achaea's economy is designed.

Katzchen

It would be nice to see the costs on some of the more ludicrous items dropped a bit... or have those last longer. With how fast they currently decay they really aren't worth it.

Borran

I'm about to quit armour smithing and switch over to a lucrative skill. 

I know weapon/armour standardisation had to happen, but I'd like to see a some changes to the current system. Forging happens too quickly- I wish it was a little more time to complete a forged item. Like there were various stages of completing an item, and you had to wait for the next serenade to do the next stage. And please find other ways to cut back on the flooding armor/weapon market.

Instant gratification be damned.