I don't think I'd pay anything more than 250.

For me to switch to knight, it'd be 250 + 3x250 (skills) + 2x600 (wounders). 2200 credits. That said, I don't have to buy wounders or maintain monk skills, but still.

I'm quite happy being a monk, and that's 1975 credits + pliers I don't have to scrounge for.


I think you'd see a great deal of sales if it were 250 or less, because, as I said, the people that have just a few runes will also switch.

What's ridiculous is that knights even need to spend so many credits in the first place to be competitive.

It's been shown that you don't need them to be competitive. Plus the whole 90% of combat is group combat anyways.

That being beside the point, the reason other classes are less costly to switch is because we don't have nearly as many artifacts available to buff ourselves with. What was the last rune artifact given to casters? Extend bard song rune? Cool. Before that, we had the increase the level of your fae by one rune, which did nothing but make die to a non critical bash attack slower. Introduce some guardian/wiccan/bard/druid/mage artifacts and you'll see all of them saying how they need all of these artifacts to become competitive as well

Krellan,

You have to temper down to 463 to attach runes so unless you want to lose your weapon on a lich/vitae/smob/other disarm situaiton you need it runed. Unruned can go much higher such as 480 which is effectively stat runes with risk of losing+ decay. Given the trivial damage outputs the extra bump from elementals/wound/stat combined effect is necessary for highly skilled combat 1v1 and even can help in groups considerably, but in most situations not a real outcome changing function. Please do not, however, suggest vague statements which misrepresent the whole which is not true as written. Since you bring it up, champion artifacts are exactly as you describe by comparison as helm damage only adds a small tidbit of health damage but the rest (especially guardian/wiccans) are quite a boon in all combat situations. If this was 5-6 years ago before the demigod swarm with huge health/mana pools and much less available blessings/boost/beasts I would absolutely agree as proven by a few skilled knights, but things have changed.

/semi off-topic

To address Estarra's original post-

Relevant background- I've been a pureblade since I've started playing, save for a few months as a pyromancer. During this time, I've had the following:
+Katana- every rune you can put on it, with elementals rotating around at times.
+Claymore- Put elementals and 10+ stats on it, back when the prevelent theory was "get a wounder for 1v1, and a damage weapon for group work". Long since traded in the runes when it became hopelessly outdated.

Of other things I have that would be effected- lots of jewelry, and potentially, my old pyromancer's staff, which I keep, because I'm a hopeless, beyond reformable packrat.

How the pliers would benefit me?

-The single, biggest factor is the knight weapons. I am stuck with pureblade, and even though I like it, if I ever want to switch weapon specs, in order to retain equivalent effectiveness, it actually would cost me more pain to switch specs and runes than it would to switch archetypes entirely! I know this because I've actually done the latter, but I've never hopped weapon specs. This is why the pliers are a "big deal" to me.

-On a second note, it would give me a nice bit of utility regarding arti runes on my jewelery. I have several pieces that make no RP sense for me to have. I have other pieces that are runed purely by dint of being what I had on me, and enchanted, at the time. I also have more runed rings than I can actually wear. Oops. Fortunately, the extra is an acquisitio enchant with a demesne rune on it, which as a rituals knight, I simply don't need to wear. The pliers would let me customize my appearance without a disgusting amount of cost (for something that, lets face it, mostly only I will see/care about), as well as correct my little "oh snap, I don't actually have eleven fingers" oopsy daisy.


The negative to this artifact is, it is pure utility, and if you're happy where you are weapon/rune arrangement wise, it is utterly inert. On the other hand, it's value scales with amount of artifact runes that you own, naturally. If you own two or three, it's probably useless. When you have a lot, you sit there at the auction list and drool.

THAT SAID, it is something I would certainly be willing to pay for. As someone who buys her credits, and has bought a bunch of them, I honestly would look at it like this:

500 credits- this feels low to me. But with my situation, I'd put a higher value on it personally anyway.

1000 credits- This is the price of the cameo, one of my most beloved artifacts. Cameos allow you to change race. The pliers would let you shift around weapons and such. The similarities are there. This puts it in the "that's a top shelf artifact" category, without thrusting it in to the "ugh, wouldn't that be nice" category. It's also, however, less than the cost to do a full rune swap right now.

1500 credits- This seems a little bit pricey for what it is actually getting the typical person, but I'd still pay it.

2000 credits- ...I'd still pay this too. But again, the value of this artifact scales with the amount of runes you have, and I have a bunch. And I'm a knight.

Above that? If it were auction limited, I'd probably go for it. From a rational perspective, it might not be worth it. Fortunately, we have an easy cost comparison- we'd rapidly start approaching the cost of the artifact exceeding what it would cost to trade in, and rebuy a full set of runes.

Costs at the moment:

2 X (+15 stat runes) : 1200
2 X (max wounding runes) : 1200 (knights only)
2 X (elemental runes) : 500
2 X (bleeding runes) : 250

Total: 3150 credits.

Redeem value: 2(3150)/3 = 2100
Cost for full swap to new weapons: 1050


Given the costs involved and the additional utility the pliers would give me, 2000 seems too high, and 1000 too low. 1200-1500 feels right for the value given to a high end case. However to a lower end case that's just going to not be an economical solution.

As for whatever the auction produces? It's the dream toy of a lot of knights, who often out of necessity (yes Krellan, necessity. Knights seem to have been balanced around the high end people with all the toys. When wiccans have to dump 3k credits on to their athame to break even with other archetypes, then we can talk ) are already credit-dumpers. I'd worry about inflation of pricing on these things. In fact, since I will NOT be around for the closing day of the auction? (Due to going to the job that lets me buy credits ) My choice is either lose, or try and over pay so much that nobody will snipe me in the last hour- which will be really hard to gauge. I'm not ashamed to admit, I was already semi-composing in my head a pleading letter to let me buy the damn things at the highest sold price after I lost the auction due to not being able to even be there.

EDIT! ALSO ALSO ALSO:

The pliers as an auction artie may well throw off the true value of a lot of the other stuff. A lot of people are probably counting on tying up their credits on this elephant in the corner, and so thus will not really be bidding on the other items. There are certainly other things I would really want from this auction- the extra demiweight for a big one- but feeling compelled to commit to the pliers is a disincentive for me to get involved with other arties that would be useful, or even just plain fun.


EDIT 2:

Please remember this is a personal analysis for credit number crunching, what it would probably be worth to me. Obviously, ANY other archetype would have far less value for the thing, and the value would scale up and down by some factor by how many more/less runes the individual has than I do. Since I have a lot, the value I put on it is probably much over the mark of what the value would rationally be for the typical consumer.

I wish i had the chance to put 3k in artifacts on my athame. That's more my concern at least.

I won't lie. I've considered the pliers and if warrior was my main class, would reluctantly but definitely would pay 5k easy for those to guarantee that I got those pliers even knowing that they may become mainstream. And I buy no credits

Realistically I expect the pliers to become mainstream and be 2k minimum

I'd pay about 200-300 for them, as a non-melee. As a knight, I coulde see valuing it between 1 or 2 thousand. It almost feels like it really should be two artifacts, one an upgrade of the other, if you ever want non-knights to buy it.

As a non melee I'd still pay 2k for it and then I'd be able to go knight sometime down the road.

Then you're not valuing it's worth as a caster, but as a knight.

even as a caster it'd be useful to move my stuff around in the meantime. I'd pay that for it even if warrior wasn't happening for 2 years or more

I'd be cool with them just becoming regular artifacts right away.

Also, if you need something to put up in those auctions to replace the pliers, might I suggest dingbats?

Yes, please make them standard artifacts instead. I am likely to buy them at 500 credits, and I might eventually go for them at 1000, but definitely no more.

I'm with Ixion. These should cost next to nothing, considering how much we already spend.

And, Krellan, that 3150 credits worth of runes is still less effective overall than your level three magic rune. When you have to deal with rebounding and hitting yourself, then we'll talk.

I personally think it'd be a great change if the price was decided also factoring in non-knights, that is, for use of jewellery runes as well. It never really made sense that you're pretty much stuck with a piece of jewellery that you runed if you ever org-hoppped/your RP changed significantly.

I support them being taken off the auctions and made into regular standard artifacts. I feel that judging the value/worth from auctions is a little unreliable as artifacts that are for auction will naturally go for higher if they might never be released again and hence become limited edition items.

One more vote for it as a standard artifact rather than auction.

While I understand the arguments for making the pliers 'cheap' or inexpensive, that is not the model we had when we created artifact runes. They were meant to be permanent and, thus, an item that allows you to move runes around, in my opinion, should be expensive. I'm not really willing to change my thinking on this. Is it 'unfair' for knights? Maybe but then again all artifacts are optional (arguments otherwise haven't swayed my position on that) and, in any event, all guilds are unique and different which is a strength but there will always be discrepancies.

My price point is 1500 credits. If 3 people message me in-game that they will buy the Pliers at that price, I will stop the plier auctions and make them standard artifacts.

I can't go online, but I'll say it here. I would buy it at 1500cr, providing I could sit down and earn that many in a reasonable amount of time!

Sometimes I forget just how massively expensive credits are here (taking into account you need a lot of them to do anything useful/compete on a level playing field). Sadly the trend's been set since day 1 so there's probably no hope of changing it. Anyways... good luck warriors!

I will do so. Message sent. 1500 falls right within my personal value estimations even!

While I see why people feel they should be cheap, at 1500, they're worth it if you have stuff to move around anyway. There's a lot of utility there! More people send messages!

I'll stick to my plan of not buying credits and encouraging others to do so then. Simply because arguments have failed to sway doesn't mean they're invalid or false. I know you're the producer or whatever, but it doesn't set well with me that you're unwilling to listen or work with players. Once more, there's a huge disconnect between players and the admin, and it's thinking like this that facilitates it.

-You don't have to maintain the model. You're choosing to do so.
-In your opinion they should be expensive, but that's not an argument, just a use of your position. I can just as easily say that if they were meant to be permanent, why do people have to pay 1000+ credits to keep them between a spec change?
-Stating artifacts are optional doesn't change the fact that the game is "balanced" around them, nor that if there are any hopes of being effective, you'll need them for certain classes. Notice I'm not saying that they aren't optional. I'm saying that the option is to be viable or not viable.
-Stating that guilds are unique has no bearing on the discussion, and admitting that there will always be discrepancies doesn't mean you shouldn't strive to fix them or should be complacent.