I would, for one!

It reads as if it were a step down from guild honour but more customisable and that is all.

So a guild tattoo is precisely the same as a non-guild tattoo. It has the same possibilities for powers, the same limitations, and uses up the same space. But it has these big disadvantages: 1) It costs the guild a metric ton to get, on top of all the costs tattoos already have. 2) You don't get to know what it will be while you're planning your tattoos, so if you want to leave something open for it, you have to do so by not getting tattoos... pretty much at all, since there's no flexibility about fitting in on not one but three separate axes. 3) It will fade completely when you leave a guild. Yeah, that's a really compelling sell. I can see people just lining up for those. Except, of course, I'm wrong about this again because you're still not actually telling us. (Like for instance what is the upside to these org tattoos? There is supposed to be one, isn't there?)

Okay you guys win. I'll remove org tats from designs.

That doesn't seem like winning to me. I just think you need to tweak the design so that there's some point to them. We can come up with a lot of solutions if you let us. Even without understanding much about tattoos we have tried blindly to do so here, and could do a ton more if we knew what we were talking about. Binning the whole thing isn't what anyone wants.

I am not interested in redesigning at this time. We can look at org tats at a later date if there is any interest, though of course people are welcome to offer suggestions whenever they want.

Meh, org tats were one of my favorite parts of the system. If people think a guild tattoo is going to screw up their personal designs then they can just I dunno... not get them?

Me too!


Aw, just as I was getting all excited... Please reconsider? Pretty please?

The issue with that mindset is that it means that guild tattoos may not be worth the investment. It's not just design, it's also the balance of the powers.
As an example if the Serenguard wanted to give facial damage buff tats then they'd need to spend something like 1 mil to get duplicates for cutting and blunt which would amount to a .5% increase.

Given the way the orgtat ability and the news looked, i was not actually expecting them to be using the already available powers. That just compounded the relatively minor issue of needing to leave space for them.

I am disappointed that some solution it not going to be looked into, but if that means that we can get truly impressive org tattoos at some point then unfortunately it's probably for the best, because well... tinkering.

As side-note, there is quite literally nothing preventing you from creating a set of Serenguard specific tattoos in a cartel and giving them to people as rewards. I'd be more likely to use them too if the power+design divorce goes through, because then they're just blank slates that I could imbue rather than something I have to work around. At the same time, it's still a different matter for monks using tattoo armour, they have to have full weight to receive the full benefit of their armour and I kinda expect the majority are unlikely to wait around until they earn a tattoo through their guild before they start going for whatever benefits them the most.

I really feel like we're arguing in circles, so I think I'll be bowing out of the thread, particularly given the tenor of some poster(s) (again).

I'll leave it with this note - were I advising a monk guild and they asked my opinion, I'd tell them it's fairly simple - once you get a solid set of public designs for all the body parts (I'd aim for something basic like DMP or blunt damage buffing), give them to your novices. When they earn a guild tattoo (presuming they want it), you remove one and replace it with the guild one.

I don't understand the hubbub regarding org tattoos - I really feel like it's a 'damned if we do, damned if we don't' situation. We could give them special powers, but no one will be happy and will want what someone else has. We give them regular powers, they want special ones.

Or they don't want any, they don't want tattoos associated with any body part and no weight, which really, at that point, just write it into your description - it seems like an infinite waste of resources to re-code an existing system for something with no benefit nor purpose and adds only a fleetingly superficial benefit that will be unused, abused and ignored less than a month down the road. If they're cheap, guilds will be changing them as soon as they get a new GM or GA, often like they do with advancement systems. If they're expensive, well, it's a roleplay benefit only, so it's not worthwhile. And of course I find any argument for no weight tattoo solely for a 'RP benefit' to be a strange one, it's like shooting yourself in the foot for the adrenaline rush to run a mile - suddenly these tattoos will be inked over body parts that have no room for them, from a mechanical perspective, and it seems like the entire argument is an awkward, self-destructive one - insofar that they will be now inking over other tattoos and no one will care (if guilds buy them at all).

Like I said. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Oh well.

I don't feel like getting into a big argument about this. But suffice to say, I actually like the way org-tats are as is (I'm assuming its basically done like a regular tattoo with the same access to weights, powers, etc). And I frankly don't see them being redesigned to be "better" or much different.

As a note on "weightless tattoos" there's nothing keeping a guild from giving RP-only tattoos via emotes and using descriptions to put them in.

I liked the old system, but would rather have tattoos be able to go anywhere, and instead of unlocking new body parts as you leveled up in Tattoos, you would increase your max weight. This divorcing of powers from tattoo designs is kind of meh for me, but you can't please everybody!

Yay, power divorced from tattoo. Hopefully, this will be good. Now, if I can find where that design just...disappeared to, hehe.

Yay, power and design divorcing! Designing, designing.

Thanks, Estarra, for divorcing the powers!

Agreed. That alone has made the prospect of getting tattoos (in the future when the rush has died down) a lot more alluring. Thanks!

May I make a minor suggestion?

Instead of fixing one tattoo to a specific location on the body, would it be possible to instead make it a list of possible locations? So the same design could, for example, go on chest, gut or head. You have something similar to this already no? With scabbards?

Just wanted to say, it was probably a prudent move not going through with org tattoos. I mean, there's already potential for problems with the basic stuff- tattoos, as a trade skill, is extremely significant combat wise already. (Or at least looks strongly to be.) Throw in already delicate game mechanics (knight damage/wounding- too much, people scream. Too little, knights are sub-par even with a huge investment) and there's probably already a headache storm brewing in the future.


Org tattoos would just be worse, being org restricted. What if you gave, say, Glom yet-more-bleeding. And then turned around and gave, lets say Hallifax- a movement hasting effect. Or to reverse the current alliance climate so as to remain politic, lets say you gave Mag something that blocked sipping for a few seconds on a pulse, and gave Gaudiguch drunken resistance. It would be drama all over the place, let alone hard to balance.

In short, tattoos as they stand are a big mass of variables and combinations of variables poised on the potential to cause horriffic unforseen and unintended consequences.

In such a case, org tattoos was just giving Newman the keys to the dinosaur island power grid.

All org tattoos were going to have is standard tattoo powers - they'd just be special, little things to guilds/order that only their members could have, and no one else. It also would've allowed new cities to have at least /some/ tattoos they could ink themselves, albeit probably only one or two per guild. The powers themselves would be the same as any other tattoo. Basically it was a frilly roleplay thing.

(NEWMAN!!)

Oh, ok. Carry on then! I leave my misguided post out of internets pride for the jurassic park reference.