Good choice in stats - however - I own a pair of hammers exactly like that and they sit in my manses weapons rack, I find my hunting hammers much more useful for combat with the way stats are at the moment. Just forge a set of 280's and use those for PK and Hunting. Less stress for all concerned, that said, fix forging.

Whilst waiting for a good change to forging, why not simply speed up forging some - make it so that current forging works like owning a mallet and give people with mallets twice the speed they currently have?

Because that solution still doesn't fix the fundamental problem of forging being a crapshoot with a 0.0000000000000000000001% chance of success.

I sent an e-mail discussing this to some People. While it had some questionable solutions and some even further questionable assumptions, I believe I did convey my opinion kindly, and the above quotation is pretty much a portion of it. It's not fun to forge for 80 to 90+ hours and achieve nothing - it's not fun to have any control over your tradeskill, or how long it will take to actually begin playing the game you spent some money on.

Do you really think that these issues haven't been brought up before?

I'd say 'squeaky wheel', but the way I've heard this topic discussed, it's like people say 'yeah we whined about it like a year ago, things aren't happening'. I figure it's just a case of more important things being brought up. I often wonder if an envoy report would do the trick, but lawl, envoy reports are used on more important things. With only a slot a month, I can't blame them.

Forging affects two classes directly to a pretty large degree and all other classes indirectly to a lesser degree. Pretty important, imo. Forging isn't something that needs to/can have a slot used on it (I'm sure someone would have done it already if it was possible).

I'm certain that most of these issues are already known, and have been discussed. That doesn't mean it's any less important to keep letting the administration know that we think something needs to be done, because they're not doing anything about it that we are aware of. There are a ton of things that need to be worked on, and everyone thinks that their issues are the most important. I acknowledge this, but I still want forging to take priority for a bit so we can get some kind of fix.

For all of the minor balance issues, bugs, combat glitches, "overpowered" guilds and so forth, I think that forging is more important for the following reason: no other issue at the moment (that I'm aware of) causes players to waste 20, 40, 80, 100... hours doing absolutely nothing but watching a custom programed automated system scroll the screen. It's a waste of my time and Lusternia's bandwidth, all for a system designed to be a utility to every org.

To the administration: don't take my complaining as insult. I'm a programmer, I'm familiar with how hard it is to maintain a large project with millions of lines of code, and I think that you do a great job in general.

Not to sound like a whiner, but we shouldn't let this thread die if we're going to be trying to bring attention to the problems of the skillset. While we've already listed it, could you perhaps list a small summary of the issues I/you/we all have with forging? Maybe update your first post with it, and with any other suggestions on fixes? It would be an easier reference for any Admin passing by.

I'll tell you the problem with forging: I've invested over 40 hours into a single nekai and have yet to see perfect speed. 40 hours. On a weapon that is designed to be a set. Which means that I'm going to have to do it all again when I finally DO hit perfect speed. Bah, I'm sick of it. Yes, I'm bitter at the moment, because I have a lot of things I'd rather be doing but I've already committed myself to these for a Nekotai.

I'll make a less hateful amendment to my first post in a while.

I understand the problem all too well. Wanna see something about as bad?



ALL OF THAT IS FORGING. WHY, GOD? WHY? Not to mention the other 3 or 4 days I put in to Forging BEFORE the time rollover. I have not gotten a single good hammer yet.

I have to wonder... can forging be envoyed? I don't honestly understand the envoy process...

I don't know why I'm the only person who seems to think this way, but... I understand that forging for good stats shouldn't take as long as it does. No where near. But perfection? Perfection should be almost impossible to attain. It should be that weapon that, by chance, comes out just the way you wanted it. You shouldn't be able to forge for a couple of days and have a perfect weapon, or else everyone would have one. In fact, for a perfect weapon, I don't think any amount of skill or time should determine if you get it.

Agreed. By settling for -5 in a particular stat, you go from 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% to 0.0000000000000000000001%. That's a pretty big jump, and -5 doesn't make that much of a difference (275 vs 280 speed isn't noticeable to me, at least).

That being said, there is something awesome about getting a "perfect" weapon that just feels amazingly awesome. I should shut up because I have two perfect flails and two perfect morningstars and two almost-perfect hammers. No, we are not going to discuss how long it took me to make those damn things and how many four-leafed clover sacrifices to the Luck Gods were made.

Well, yeah. I'm sure it will feel amazing when I get a world shattering critical hit as well (still waiting on that). I don't expect to get one every 4 or 5 days for sure. Perfection does feel good, but perfection should, I agree, be very rare.

Well perfection should be hard to obtain but only Forgers and Tailors have to actually try for it, no other trade skills have to rework anything else for hours on end. Even Tailor don't spend nearly as much time because let's face it they don't have to work out a suit of plate, a helm, and or 2 or more weapons. Usually, I understand 2 handers only need one, but in all likeliness they have a hunting set and a fighting set. So that said why do only two trade skills have to work for it if it's so hard to obtain?

My understanding is that monthly, envoys get the ability to submit one report on a skill in a skillset. You could very easily just send in a report on the 'FORGE' command and attempt to address the ridiculous amount of time it takes.




Forging for good stats is what I'm doing: according to every person I've asked, the stat ranges I am looking for, or even -5 or so off (which is what my system is now set to look for.. in fact, it is set to look for -10 off but that is the very minimum I will take) is what Bonecrushers want for hammers to get in to higher tier combat. The entry requirements for higher tier combat should not include 'go afk for days or weeks of time that could instead be used playing the game' - that is just an absurd requirement, and that is what the two of us are complaining about.

In the end, I am a firm supporter of mechanics overriding roleplay or in character justification. In this case, I'm going to say that perfection should not be easy: but that is not what I'm complaining about. There is no difficulty, easy or hard, in going AFK or going to work or going to bed and leaving a forgebot on to do your dirty work. The bottom line is that it isn't fair. I could be playing the game during this time instead of pouring time in to the sink for statted hammers that will allow me to get in to the tier of combat I am shooting for. The bottom line is that it is literally a random number generator governing my success or failure with a trade skill I spent the same 300 credits on that you did to transcend something else.

I do not like that. I do not enjoy feeling helpless and at the mercy of the roll of the dice (which is why I am an abusive charop player in DnD, to eliminate failure via the most simple RNG in gaming) - I do not like the fact that I have literally no control over something I paid for. I just have to let it run and exhaust time and every other combination in existence until I get what I want.

Sure, I could settle for sub-par hammers - and I technically am by reducing my minimum stat ranges from x/200/230 to about x/190/220. I could settle for much, MUCH less than what I am even currently shooting for MODIFIED - but in the end, settling in that nature would make it unnecessarily difficult for me to get in to the level of combat I want. When the entry requirement for upper tier combat for Warriors (and in a slightly less noticeable, much more vicarious level, Monk) is to pour hours, days, weeks, perhaps months in to going AFK, there is something very, very wrong.

i disagree. I think that I should be able to get a perfect stat. I think that all of my other stats should suffer for it. I think that if I have perfect speed that my damage should be crap and my precision should only be so-so, but I think that a forger who has spent years of his life standing at a forge crafting the same items over and over again should know how to make a weapon as fast as it can possibly be. Or as damaging, etc.

Edit: Read above as follows: a perfect weapon would be MAX/MAX/MAX, which -is- impossible. A weapon that has reached the pinnacle of its category should be both possible and (at least to a transed forger) not insanely complicated to get, however by investing your time into perfecting that aspect of the weapon, you must sacrifice focus in other areas.

Finally. One more to go, now. Meh.

Modified the original post to include suggestions on syntax for power based forging.

I've mentioned ideas like this before and been shot down but I'll bring it up again because I still like it better than the other proposals. You forge something and get a flat set of numbers that are always the same. (Or, there's a small amount of variation, with a constant total for the three values, but it's very close to a baseline.) Then you invest additional commodities to increase the values from there towards some maximum.

For example, scimitars are wounding weapons, so every scimitar comes out of the forege with damage 110, precision 200, speed 140 (around the middle fo the current range). You can increase the damage to a maximum of 130 by adding steel (3 points per bar), or increase precision to a maximum of 235 by adding platinum (3 points per bar), or increase speed to a maximum of 195 by adding silver (3 points per bar), but you can't increase any of them to a grand total of all three that's higher than 500.

Net result, you can have as good a weapon as you're willing to pay for, without the process punishing the forger. My only concern is the impact on the commodity market, but that's adjustable (the admins can simply increase production of those commodities slightly, or make the commodity quests a little more effective, or provide another source).

Better, but requiring more changes: every weapon's commodities costs are reduced by 25%, then all weapons come out of the forge with the lowest values. That way, forgers can make bad weapons cheap (e.g., for novices), and good weapons still cost the same. The process of adjusting the comms on all existing designs would be tricky, though, and the regular/masterweapon divide we already have can accomplish this.