I IDEA'd this, but I'd like to know what others think of it.

Because of the insane amounts of time required to forge anything, I find myself constantly burning through blessings I worked to obtain, without ever really getting to use them.

I'd like to be able to turn the effects of, and karma drain of, a blessing on and off depending on if I want to use it or not.

The obvious problem that I see is that you'd essentially be allowed to get every blessing and turn them on or off as you see fit in combat. I realize that kills the point of having to spend 50 karma to get the blessing in the first place. Maybe fix this by only allowing someone to have three blessings at a time, period?

Ideas, please.

I like the idea of being able to turn them on and off, but they'd all have to be on or off at the same time. You could turn it off while forging, but once it's back on, it's still a massive drain to have all the blessings at once, versus having one or two.

How about rather having KARMA BLESSINGS ON/OFF, so you have all your blessings either on or off at the same time?

Anyway, I think it might still be way too easy to have all the blessings you want (or all three if that were the maximum). Wouldn't it ruin the esteem market too? It's so cheap already as it is.

(edit: ninja'd)

Pretty sure this will never happen. Having the ability to turn them on for bashing and off while you're afk is just too easy.

It's amazing how screwed up forging really is, that it breaks other systems (like karma drain). Especially if we can't even get work arounds. It'd be nice to see what the admins think about it.

Also, I'd be in favor of simply turning all the blessings on or off.

This is even less likely to happen then forging getting fixed.

(Would be nice though)

I'd use karma blessings more, simply 'cause I'd turn them off when I was writing something or doing things around Glom. Thus, I would always get the full use out of them and never watch my karma tick away-- only turn them on for hunting and/or fighting!

Which is why it will never happen.

Yup

How about this instead?

KARMA SUSPEND: Puts your karma blessings into dormancy for a period of 12 hours. This cannot be reversed.

That way people couldn't casually turn blessings on and off as they need them, they could only pause them for a long time for big things like forging, guild events, etc.

Even then you could use it to maintain more blessings then you could otherwise.

Too exploitable.
I could get every blessing, turn them all off, fill up on karma. get a bunch of esteem and just maintain them forever.

Would karma still lower when turned off? I can see that being abused. Hunting for max karma while it's off then turning on with the karma blessings at full karma when you should have low karma and a possible chance that they will become removed after so much karma is lost.

How about this:

if you have karma blessings turned off, you can not gain karma. Period. No new blessings, no karma from questing or offering, nothing. It'd be all or nothing.

I dunno, you could always just get blessings when you're actually going to use them. I know I don't bother getting them if I know I won't feel like getting the most out of them when I do.

You could still store up esteem. But I still don't see the objection. Right now you could stock up esteem, get all nine blessings, do stuff, and then burn them, but at a huge cost of esteem. With the suspend option, you could do the same thing, all that would change is the order of the steps. You couldn't suspend knowing that in 12 hours and 1 minute you're going to want all the blessings... in fact, suspending would be taking the big risk that some time during the next 12 hours you're going to need those blessings and be unable to get to them.

I like this idea, but I think it will have to cost karma to 'pause' your karma blessings - otherwise as Kelysa said people would just do it round and round.

There's no need for this change. If it's the drain you're worried about, just KARMA BURN (removes a blessing early). Yeah, you have to go spend 50 karma to get it back but.... That's the penalty you pay for burning early.

The whole point was that it's absurd to have to burn 100% karma just to forge a weapon, and thus a solution was suggested. Saying, "Oh, just go burn and spend 100% essence to get them back, that'll solve your problem of having to burn through 100% essence" isn't really a practical solution.

Is your biggest gripe with forging really the karma? Not the risk of shrubbing for being AFK when someone in the Havens is feeling PMS-y or the risk of RL insanity from not going AFK for a week straight?

Since it seems obvious that forging is not going to get fixed, I'm trying to suggest things to make it -less- infuriating.