My only thought on forging is that if commodities were cheaper, a smith could afford to forge and stock them, making it a trade they could profit from. The time to create a really good weapon doesn't matter so much.

Is it similarly unrealistic and unfair of the administration to require players to sit on their bum for hours and days of mindless bashing in order to get to Demigod? They're not quite the same thing, I'll admit, but do you see my point?

No one is forcing forgers to sit there and forge! No one is forcing forgers to even take forging in the first place!

I don't understand why the difficulties of forging can't have a simple in game market remedy. If it's too tedious and lengthy to forge for the price you're charging, increase your prices until it becomes worthwhile. If that prices the best swords out of the reach of poorer warriors, then they'll just have to settle for less good weapons until they can afford better. Instead of always forging for the best, group your output into tiers of decency and price accordingly. If there is a high level of investment required to enter the forging market (in terms of cost of comms, et cetera), perhaps orgs should consider providing loans to enable forgers to get established.

Is this unfair on poorer warriors? To some extent, yes. But what about the consequences of the alternative?

Lower forging times raise the chances of creating an excellent weapon in a given unit of time. This:
- Immediately lowers the price of all weapons already owned by players which might potentially be put up for sale in the future;
- Reduces the rarity of the best weapons, destroying their 'special' factor; and
- Makes forging less of a challenge, and therefore less satisfying.

Do the forgers of Lusternia really want to be seeing any old grunt wielding weapons that are equivalent to the blades that they spent months perfecting?

How do we feel about the consequences of facilitating forging with regard the roleplay aspect of forging? Sure, we all know it's luck OOCly, but ICly forging is a craft of supreme skill and patience and a testament to your character's abilities. Isn't it?

A view on forging AFK

This is a matter best left to common sense.

Leaving aside the substance of the rules, consider instead in what circumstances they are going to be enforced.

It should be evident that if you're on prime and clearly visible on your org channels, but you're not responding to anyone who might try to contact you, and you're monopolising a forge while queues of newbies wait about wondering why you won't let them have a turn, you're going to get a slap on the wrist and rightly so.

However, if you're forging in your manse, no one knows you're there, no one is trying to contact you and you're not inconveniencing anyone, why should we assume that what you're doing is automated? Surely we have better things to do than run around manses trying to catch people out.

Which is why my forge is always available to people I have given perms to use it. So, sit in my manse and forge away if you have perms, just don't go bringing divine into it all the time, to check on you. Cuz I am sure one day I will be doing something stupid in there (like cooking meth) and a divine will just bebop in to see whats going on, and POOF! I will mess up the batch, exploding it, myself and the divine. And then we will be short just one more divine!!!!

Ildaudid! Think of the children in the next manse over! The fumes from your meth lab are poisoning them! Think of the children!



What Fain said there about pricing things appropriately and having different tiers of goods makes sense to me. Not that I'm a forger (Why aren't they called smiths or something? Saying someone's a forger just makes me think of bad checks! ) or anything.

Yeah, and no one's forcing us to play this game. And if you pay $168.99 for a piece of text, you should be able to sit your arse in it all day. It's yours, and you're not preventing people who have a right to use it, use it. People who bash to demigod made the time for it (hence them being demigods), but for a tradeskill like forging, not everyone who takes it will be able to make the time for it. This "no one's forcing you to take this skill" is inconsiderate, it's like me telling a customer after they've complained about the quality of an item, "Sorry, but no one forced you to buy it. Don't complain."

If you had bought an item of substandard quality under the impression you were getting a decent one, you would no doubt be within your rights to return it and have a refund.

However there is nothing substandard about your credits, and what you choose to do with them is not something the administration takes responsibility for.

A better analogy would be going to the bureau de change after a holiday abroad and complaining that you didn't get full utility out of the money you changed with them.

"No one is forcing you to..." is possibly one of the most immature and lamest explanations for a fault that I've ever read. I'll just point you to Reiha's post, because your explanation isn't really sufficient. Maybe you can come up with a good one next time, champ. Anyway, moving on...

As it is, forging weapons that people are looking for (to most forgers) is not an accomplishment, not a special thing, but something along the lines of "It's about damn time". Forging is not a challenge, to be frank, it's a pain in the ass. If you expect people to actually sit there the whole ridiculous amount of hours it usually takes to get a quality weapon that warrior combat is balanced upon, then you're out of your mind. It sounds to me like you've never had a character that took forging as their trade skill (or never tried to get good weapons with one). If forgers are not allowed to forge while AFK and this policy is enforced, then the influence of weapon stats would need to be drastically reduced, the time it takes to forge a weapon would need to be reduced, and/or the ridiculous stats that you can sometimes get while forging specific weapons (e.g. 90 damage flail) would need to be eliminated. And no, the consequences that you listed for this aren't that bad - I explained the "feelings" part of it, and every other trade skill is an easy and fairly cheap job, no? A price decrease might be a good thing. I don't know how many newbie warriors I've seen that complained about the cost of commodities to forge a decent pair of weapons, yet alone the cost that each individual forger adds on.

As for your "market remedy": Forging and selling sub-standard weapons would mean that whoever gets those weapons, even though they still have to pay a lot for their offense, which most other classes do not have to do, would be at a major and pretty unfair disadvantage. Increasing the price of good weapons along with that would make warriors, already by far the most expensive class and arguably requiring artifacts just to be competitive, even more straining on the pocket book. This wouldn't be the death of forging as we know it, this would be the death of the warrior class.

And as for manse forging, yes, some of you have gone around pinching and disconnecting people who forge in their manses. I agree that forging in a public forge for hours and hours of time AFK is a bad thing (though that should reflect more on the forging system and not on the player), but why would forging in one's manse even be against the rules in the first place? Oh noes, that forger is using up one player's worth of bandwidth?

Fain is 100% right. It's actually relatively simple economic theory.

1. You choose to go for the best stats, when in reality you (or anyone else) could settle for lesser stats.
2. You choose what prices you want to charge. If you only charge 5k for 10 hours of forging, it is your own fault. Charge what the weapon is worth; the worst case is that the customer goes to a different forger, and you get several hours of your life back.
3. You choose to take forging and keep, even knowing exactly what it is like.

'Fixing' forging causes new problems. Very good weapons/armor become commonplace, which means in turn that they become cheaper. The market becomes even more saturated, and forgers make even less money than they do now. What people seem to be suggesting is not that it should be easier or quicker to make weapons - it already doesn't take too long. The suggestion is that it should be easier and quicker to make the very good weapons that people demand. I disagree. Charge more money for your time and people will learn to live with less-than-amazing weapons and armor, which gives you more time without having a negative impact on the economics of it.

Right. Because warrior combat being balanced around top-end weapons makes that so very viable.

Maybe warriors should be balanced around mid-range weapons, so that high-end forged weapons sans artifact runes are instant-wins. Then this theory would be valid.

Alright, fine, then don't come crying when some novice expects to buy top of the line greatrobes from you for 50g. In fact, I think I'm going to go out and tell all the novices to become tailors and enchanters and that it is their god-given duty to do it all for free.

Very good weapons and armour are ALREADY COMMONPLACE. Because nobody will buy anything else. Forgers DO NOT MAKE ANY MONEY as it is now because there are undercutters who define it as their "duty" to afkforge for weeks on end. We've already tried market solutions and price fixing. IT DOES NOT WORK. Let me also point out the most consistent argument in favor of change: Warrior combat is BALANCED around the TOP 5% of ALL weapons. Let me repeat that. TOP. FIVE. PERCENT. is considered BALANCED. There is NO ECONOMIC THEORY INVOLVED.

So go ahead and tell all the warriors out there that they must now be severely underpowered because nobody wants to make the weapons for them that will put them on par with the other classes. So much for "balance".

Forging weapons gives NO sense of accomplishment, is NOT special and IS a royal pain in the posterior.

That wouldn't seem to me to be a good analogy at all; a bureau de change buys and sells cash based on international exchange rates, with adjustments made so that the bureau will make a profit. However, a bureau de change is not responsible for the international trade value of the money they are buying and selling. If you go on vacation for a month and when you come back to exchange your money the exchange rate has tanked so that your money is "worth less", the bureau is not technically at fault; they didn't make up the international exchange rate from thin air.

Iron Realms Entertainment and Lusternia LLC are responsible for keeping their game operational and they are in control of the coding of Lusternia. They do not have a guideline like the international trade value; instead customers rely on the IRE and Lusternia to keep up their end of the bargain. Admittedly, IRE's terms of service basically blows massive holes in the idea of responsibility on its end; IRE is apparently not required to do anything at all for the customer, however of course if they did not, IRE would soon have fewer credit-buying customers, and probably fewer customers in general.

That said, it wouldn't seem to be the greatest idea in the world to say, "well we're not responsible, tough cookies if this skillset clearly needs work, just price fix" to one's customers.

But hey, I lived through concoction price list days, "forging sucks, let's do pricelists!" days, and a myriad of other methods that players really shouldn't have been in control of because They. Failed. Miserably.

Warrior combat is balanced around top-tier weapons. Every other kind of combat is balanced around the highest extreme as well. Every class is balanced so that an omnitrans demigod does not have an instant-win. There is nothing that makes weapons or armor so much different. Geb with average weapons can still beat most other warriors with artied-out high-end weapons. They do make a difference, but they are not the drastic difference you are implying.



If someone asks me to make greatrobes for 50 gold, I will refuse. Why? Because they're worth more. If other people decide to sell for 50 gold, fine. I would rather save my gold and time. That is the way economics work! If you are willing to spend all the time, effort, and money and get 50 gold in return, go ahead and do it. If you're not, don't. Opportunity cost isn't a difficult concept really. Forgers and buyers agree on the prices they offer; the admin do not dictate what weapons or armor should cost. You do.

USING CAPS TO MAKE A POINT DOES NOT MAKE YOU MORE RIGHT. Let's stick to civilized conversation. Nobody will buy anything else because they can get the amazing weapons and armor for very low prices. What do you suppose would happen if you started charging by the hour instead of by statistics? Is there anything stopping you from doing that? I already mentioned the balanced issue above - it is not a convincing case.



Why are you so dramatic? Posts about a skill in a game should not be so emotional - ranting and screaming is never productive. If we're going to keep talking about it, people have to calm down and get control of themselves to speak civilly and calmly - one thread has already gone off the deep end with emotional fits, the point of this one is to replace it with logical discussion.


@Aoife
You're right, that analogy wasn't very good, but the point is still good. Let's say that I go into business building computers. I buy the different components from various places, then I assemble the computers and sell the finished product. All of a sudden, everyone wants a top-of-the-line computer, nobody wants to buy older, cheaper computers anymore. Given the following options, which do I choose:
1. Search for a government grant which will make computer building easier
2. Complain to the people who sell me the components and force them to give them to me cheaper
3. Raise my prices

Any person who has done something similar (I did do this exact thing, in fact) will tell you that 3 is the best option. Will some people choose not to buy? Yes. Will they find someone cheaper? Probably. Do I care? No. I am getting paid what my time is worth.

I know that one! Pick me, pick me!

If it took you (the forger) longer than a couple of hours to make the desired item, due to high standards, the code, or just bad luck, then the customer wouldn't pay you and would find someone else that happened to be luckier to make it.

Also, hammers of forging: should be self-explanatory.

Warrior combat is balanced around top-tier weapons and transcended skills.

Guardian combat is balanced around transcended skills.

Druid combat is balanced around transcended skills.

Bard combat is balanced around transcended skills and a bonded instrument.

Monk combat is balanced around transcended skills (monk weapons don't really have much deviation).

And yes, there is an extremely significant impact given by just a few extra points to statistics. See: Nightkiss/Drawdown giving +10 points to each being such a draw for warriors. Look at the artifacts, +10 to each for example. Warrior combat is very dependant upon having the highest-quality weapons you can get, and trying to max it out as much as possible. There is no similar equivalent for hexes, for moonburst, for cudgel, for minorsixth, for PPK, for symbols, or pretty much any other "main component" to a class' fighting style. These abilities are granted simply by learning the skillset.

You don't get a pair of high-quality weapons by transcending Blademaster.

Umm, I charge by the hour, and the odds of getting those stats.

If after a few days, I don't get what I expected, I tell them, here you can have your money back, or I can keep forging but it will cost you extra. 8/10 times, they ask me to keep forging.

Just charge way more for your good weapons and armour, why's that so hard? If someone else sells them cheaper, fine but eventually someone will come along who will pay what you're asking because that other person isn't available or all their cheap goods are sold out. Maybe you won't sell as often, but you'll make more profit.

This reminds me of Gabranth telling me he was surprised at how much gold the food I'd stocked had earned and I replied that it was cause I charge as much as people are willing to pay. Iif they hadn't been willing to pay it, it wouldn't have sold. But it did, so I got a lot of profit on my items even after he took out the store's fee.

If you sell your stuff cheaply, people will expect cheap prices. So don't. In a pinch, they'll be willing to shell out more. They might not be happy bout it, but if they need it badly enough, they will.

edit:
And yes, I know cooking isn't the same as forging. But pricing is pricing, I think.

I think part of the biggest problem is that the "cheap weapons" still cost 20K in materials alone.

Warriors should not be balanced around statistical outliers. All classes may be balanced around the expected extreme, but warriors are the only one which basically relies on procuring a weapon that takes so many reforgings that, assuming a normal distribution, may be excluded from the data entirely on the grounds that it is an outlier.

Assuming the balance paradigm (par-a-DIG-em, yo! Ok, I just wanted to type that. I know it's a silly word. I don't care. It's fun to say.) is in fact based on the extremes for all classes, then we should alter forging so that those extreme weapons can be obtained easily within 2 standard deviations or less.

Basically, if you're balancing around the extreme, we should also balance around effort to reach said extreme, OR in the alternative, make the payout respect the effort. Right now, warriors have the proverbial ":censor: end of the stick" on both counts. That's what people are argung against.

Of course, another alternative is to make EVERY other class have their performance based in equal measure to warriors on one or two pieces of equipment, and impose a similar time/crafting mechanic on them. So, like, make monks damage nearly wholly reliant on their kata weapons, and then set up kata weapons like master weapons are now- reduce monk abilities dramatically, and make them "balanced" only when kata weapons that sit on a statistical outlier are obtained. Repeat for every other class... which would get tricky with mages, but it's not like I'm seriously suggesting this anyway. Because it would suck.

Ultimately, either balance warriors around something easier to obtain than statistical outlier weapons and let the people with those weapons reap the benefit of their time and effort, OR make the weapons they are balanced around obtainable within a far less amount of time. Not "work longer than everyone else by far just to break even". That is not ok.


...at least, that's how I would argue it if I wasn't just satisfied that the hilt on Akui's katana matches the scabbard. I'd need a pile of sharks to reforge her sword, but it looks so cool!

Again, you can't balance around the "mean" you have to balance against the extremes. The extremes -will- exist. If those extremes are too strong, then everything goes out of whack.


The best thing to do probably, is to have diminishing returns on the extremes, so that a 300 damage weapon, is only slightly better than a 200 damage weapon, but a 200 damage weapon is 5X as good as a 100 damage weapon. (for a random silly exampled.) But either way, you are going to have your breaking points, and your plataues, and it will be less than 5% of made weapons that people will want.

edit: If you reduced the amount of metal needed to make the wapons, then I think that would fix many problems, without actually hurting anybody. (people in the past or people now, because the price of commodities is rarely the determining factor in the price of forged weapons.)

Charging by the hour would imply that they pay you after for how long it took to forge the item, or as each hour goes by (though the latter is less feasible). WTF are you talking about?



I don't think you understand how long forging, especially forging of good weapons, takes. "Charging way more" is just not a solution, even considering all the pros and cons that entails, unless you are incredibly lucky and have a hammer of forging.

Besides, would you want to pay several hundred thousand gold to be able to PvP? Well, you don't really PvP, but still - think about it. Top end weapons already cost 10-20 credits, and you want people to pay more than that?