What Happened To Forging?

2

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  • TectonTecton The Garden of the Gods
    Some more stats, as I only listed mean averages:

    2007: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/191
    2008: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/191
    2009: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/187
    2010: Median - 74/164/191 Mode - 74/166/187
    2011: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/191
    2012: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/191
    2013: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/162/191
    2014: Median - 74/162/191 Mode - 74/166/191

  • Unfortunately those you listed wouldn't sell. They're not really viable for a knight to use.


  • TectonTecton The Garden of the Gods
    They're also the average :smiley: 

  • Are you trying to get us to use Scimitars :smile:  Please say yes....


  • edited May 2014


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  • That is some serious determination to overcome the odds.  Amazing seeing it quantified (although we can't know how many of those uber rapiers had usable stats overall).  I hope the new system takes this sheer determination and its effects into account.  I'm really hoping for something *much* more stable, and would be overjoyed if it weren't chance based at all.     

  • I would love to see the RNG removed entirely from forging. Reduce the weapon duration to 30 months, give every weapon type a 'base' set of stats, then give them all 30 points that can be distributed during creation to different stats. Hammer of Forging could increase forging speed as normal and give a small amount (2-3) of additional stats.

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    Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

  • ValdusValdus Australia
    edited May 2014
    Part of the fun of weapons is that there is a chance you will get that really powerful weapon. I cant help but think that if you take that away things will get boring fast. I know i wouldnt enjoy forging anymore.

    I hate what Aetolia did. Prety much whst you said and then added weapon runes that increased stats as artifacts.

    I like Lusternias method. You get 100% of the steel back when you reforge but you have a random chance to get max stats when refining for a certaon stat. So people are effectively paying for your labor instead of huge material costs.

    Viva la Bluef.
  • Getting rid of the clunky random stats mechanic opens up so many options to make forging something that's actually interesting throughout the entire process, not just those few seconds before you hit WLIST and see that you've forged another crap item once again.

  • I'm glad that Paper Cutter I/II/III all made it onto an official spreadsheet, to be remembered forever. RIP

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  • confirmed: it's all been downhill since 2009

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  • I think I made that 118 damage...

  • ValdusValdus Australia
    > @Jarrod said:
    > I think, for the sake of the game, it's perfectly acceptable to make forging like every other trade skill. Outlier weapons from current forging create imbalances on their own. They force changes to account for the existence of these outlier weapons. Suddenly classes can't compete without outlier weapons, and they're no longer a cool rare thing you're looking for, they're something required to even compete at a decent level as a member of your class. (There are a high number of people constantly looking for high-speed rapiers so they can get involved in Knight combat, as an example, 235+)
    Part of the reason there are a lot of people looking for rapiers is because there are very few dedicated forgers out there. Removing the steel cost ala Lusternia would do a lot to bring people onto forging imo. I would forge 24/7.

    There is also spmething to be said for fun things. If you remove the powerful things (fast rapiers for example) it does a lot to remove interest in the class. Who as a knight interested in knight mcombat does not dream about super fast swords ripping up the enemy? And how many of them would stay knight if thar option was removed?

    Viva la Bluef.
  • Valdus said:
    > @Jarrod said:
    > I think, for the sake of the game, it's perfectly acceptable to make forging like every other trade skill. Outlier weapons from current forging create imbalances on their own. They force changes to account for the existence of these outlier weapons. Suddenly classes can't compete without outlier weapons, and they're no longer a cool rare thing you're looking for, they're something required to even compete at a decent level as a member of your class. (There are a high number of people constantly looking for high-speed rapiers so they can get involved in Knight combat, as an example, 235+)
    Part of the reason there are a lot of people looking for rapiers is because there are very few dedicated forgers out there. Removing the steel cost ala Lusternia would do a lot to bring people onto forging imo. I would forge 24/7.

    There is also spmething to be said for fun things. If you remove the powerful things (fast rapiers for example) it does a lot to remove interest in the class. Who as a knight interested in knight mcombat does not dream about super fast swords ripping up the enemy? And how many of them would stay knight if thar option was removed?

    I think you're mistaking 'interest in rapiers' for 'interest in the class'. If rapiers were made reasonable, Knights were buffed to remove the reliance on high speed rapiers, and other weapon types were suddenly viable for different styles of fighting? I imagine interest in Knight classes would be higher than in the past 5 years.

    image
    Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

  • edited May 2014

    The knight who has to forge the fucking thing themselves. That absolutely drains -all- interest in any sort of knight combat, unless you're Trey or Peak.


    Also what Jarrod said.

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  • ValdusValdus Australia
    > @Nellaundra said:
    > The knight who has to forge the fucking thing themselves. That absolutely drains -all- interest in any sort of knight combat, unless you're Trey or Peak.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > Also what Jarrod said.
    I will forge it for you. :)

    Viva la Bluef.
  • TharvisTharvis The Land of Beer and Chocolate!
    Jarrod said:

    I think, for the sake of the game, it's perfectly acceptable to make forging like every other trade skill. Outlier weapons from current forging create imbalances on their own. They force changes to account for the existence of these outlier weapons. Suddenly classes can't compete without outlier weapons, and they're no longer a cool rare thing you're looking for, they're something required to even compete at a decent level as a member of your class. (There are a high number of people constantly looking for high-speed rapiers so they can get involved in Knight combat, as an example, 235+)

    this, so much this. As it stands, forging is the one and only trade skill (other than enchantment's Augment) that has so much RNG involved that it's more like gambling than anything else, with the outliers making everything that is not an outlier considered sub-par and unusable in true combat

    Aurora says, "Tharvis, why are you always breaking things?!"
    Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
    Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."

  • Literally the only reason people trans forging is fullplate. If they put anything in it beyond 'rapiers' they either want fullplate or are just OCD about having all of their skills say 'transcendent'.

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  • Tecton said:

    This is every rapier forged from September 2007 - now (all 454975 of them).

    Tell you what, @Tecton ol' buddy. Give my rapiers the stat maxes from 2009 or 2010 and we can call it a day. <3

  • > @Valdus said:
    > Part of the fun of weapons is that there is a chance you will get that really powerful weapon. I cant help but think that if you take that away things will get boring fast. I know i wouldnt enjoy forging anymore.
    >
    > I hate what Aetolia did. Prety much whst you said and then added weapon runes that increased stats as artifacts.
    >
    > I like Lusternias method. You get 100% of the steel back when you reforge but you have a random chance to get max stats when refining for a certaon stat. So people are effectively paying for your labor instead of huge material costs.

    That's not how it works in Lusternia.

    Each weapon type has min and max cap on its stats, as well as a cap on total stats (each stat is weighed a little differently). After a weapon is forged, it has random stats. You can then, for 1 steel per time, temper the weapon's stats to be exactly what you want them to be. The Artie hammer removes the steel cost of tempering and makes it faster.

    It'd be cool to do that here, but at the same time, weapons work way differently there.
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  • ValdusValdus Australia
    Kuy said:
    > @Valdus said:
    > Part of the fun of weapons is that there is a chance you will get that really powerful weapon. I cant help but think that if you take that away things will get boring fast. I know i wouldnt enjoy forging anymore.
    >
    > I hate what Aetolia did. Prety much whst you said and then added weapon runes that increased stats as artifacts.
    >
    > I like Lusternias method. You get 100% of the steel back when you reforge but you have a random chance to get max stats when refining for a certaon stat. So people are effectively paying for your labor instead of huge material costs.

    That's not how it works in Lusternia.

    Each weapon type has min and max cap on its stats, as well as a cap on total stats (each stat is weighed a little differently). After a weapon is forged, it has random stats. You can then, for 1 steel per time, temper the weapon's stats to be exactly what you want them to be. The Artie hammer removes the steel cost of tempering and makes it faster.

    It'd be cool to do that here, but at the same time, weapons work way differently there.

    Thanks for correcting me. It's been a looooong time since I forged there trying to make a nice Klangaxe.


    Viva la Bluef.
  • Even a couple years ago, probably around 2012, people were still incredibly resistant to the idea of stabilizing forging by removing, or even reducing chance, although probably somewhat less hostile than they would have been before that. We seem to have really come a long way in terms of people accepting the idea of removing chance in forging.This makes me hopeful that admin will feel more comfortable implementing a much more stable weaponry stats system, or maybe even one that removes chance altogether. 

  • I actually really like the idea of legendary weapons that have been crafted by players.

    Granted, they could be skewed a bit less, or maybe there is a very rare chance a sword comes out named. Who knows, but as it stands, having players able to make magnificent things is really a lot of the fun in the forging craft.

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  • A benefit of the change to forging would be that it's perfectly legitimate to make a forged weapon non-decay (and customized) if the restriction got changed, because you can't preserve an outlier, you just preserve your specific stat distribution. That's infintely more interesting in terms of making 'legendary weapons' than having rng names come out, to me.

    image
    Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

  • I absolutely agree. I had some ideas about what non-probability-based forging might look like, although I'm obviously not a combatant, and the player base seems to be less and less hostile to the idea of letting go of "outliers" which is a great word for them. The overall thread has an interesting discussion as well:  http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/38439/#Comment_38439


    Jules said:

    I *really* like some of what I'm seeing here, and surprised to see things that would have been shot down out of the gate in years past being seriously discussed by some of the top combatants in the game.

    I would love it if forging weren't probability based, making it so that anyone willing to spend the cash could easily get fine forged weapons.  Then there are artefacts.  I'm glad I got good gouge, and held off on purchasing Soulpiercers for now - both because the whole system might change, and because even level 3s can't quite compete with forged.  Most other artefacts give you something you wouldn't otherwise have access to at all, and that's probably why it's so difficult to make artefact weapons worth their big pricetag, but not obscene.  Artefact weapons don't decay, but if they aren't "great" to begin with, that's not a selling point.  The level 1s and 2s are particularly "meh" in comparison to what you can buy forged.  No one (especially admin) probably thought that people would "tink tink" away as much as they do, literally beating the odds of the forging system through sheer persistence.  Over time, it's created much higher expectations for weapon stats. 

    I do think that you could make some of the big changes being discussed and make forging *more* profitable.  The real change would be players' access to weapons of similar (even identical) quality, given their willingness to pay, and forgers no longer needing to spend so many hours at the forge.   

    The game economy runs partly on players who make at least part of their game income by providing services.  Say you could forge for at least 3 tiers of weapon quality (who knows, maybe there'd be more).  Only trans forgers with a hammer could make the best ones.  The stats would either be set to a certain standard stat for that weapon once you started forging, or you might have the chance to move stats around a bit if that's a suggestion that pans out (total of all stats would remain the same, of course).  Removing all probability means that if you want to maintain the current gold sink, you do have to account for that.  So you'd use an obscene amount of comms to produce each weapon, with the amount increasing in relation to the level of quality you were forging for.  "Okay" weapons and all levels of shortswords should be fairly cheap to produce (but still a lot more than forging a single weapon costs now), and would all be of far better quality than is normally available to newbies at the moment.  It would also hopefully mean that all classes would be more likely to have access to high quality armours and weapons, because forgers' efforts wouldn't be so focused on producing that next set of Trey rapiers.    

    I'm a little concerned about creating extreme "runs" on comms, due to using a high number of them to forge a single weapon.  Overall, the goal is to use the same amount of comms that forging does now, but forging as it is now tends to shape behavior so that comms depletion is relatively steady.  Both introducing a new commodity (like some sort of "template" for swords with different degrees of quality which would be used instead of crazy amounts of steel and leather) or just drastically increasing the amount of comms available change the market fundamentally, though.  Maybe make the comms markets recover back to base price and full stocking much more quickly after a buyout?  That's the best I can think of. 

    Oh, and also maybe make swords not last as long (in the interest of creating more work for those who do forge)?  Maybe cut the decay time in half, maybe even a lot more.  It would also allow you to lower the cost in terms of commodities per weapon, so that the sticker price of each weapon wasn't so staggering, and since you would always be able to procure more weapons that were the same in every way, it wouldn't be such a pain when they do decay.  In a house like mine (Wardens), I imagine plenty of forgers like me would be willing to make any weapon for housemates at cost (they'd still be expensive due to comms), but I hope that there wouldn't be so much "free labor" that we'd kill those who are trying to make a living.  Removing probability seems like it has to impact the way the market works though.  I think it would be dishonest to not say that, as much as I'd like it to happen.  It means you can go to a forger who isn't the sort who's willing to spend hundreds of hours at the forge, and he can forge you exactly what you ordered.  For a certain kind of player, that does hurt.  But I do think people would be much more likely to deal directly with forgers - sort of like it is with herbs and such now.  Plenty of shopkeepers stock herbs and concocts, but there are also plenty of people who make their living providing them directly.  The overall goals would be to keep the cost of weapons upkeep reasonable for people and to maintain the current economy in terms of the game's gold sink, city coffers - and maybe even improve it a little for forgers who work for a living.


  • In my time in Lusternia, I loved how different the forging was done there.

    If I recall correctly, anyone could get a good weapon forged. They start at some base stats and then you spend more comms to up particular stats to what you want.

    Also, making your own weapon designs would be amazing. I always loved my giant gilded broadswords.

    I'd think about playing my Runewarden again if that came in.
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