Nooo, I want my perm splendours. D=

Wtf? As soon as tattoos give anything more substantial aside than just a 5% recharge/elemental wave avoidance or 10 DMP, then we can talk about giving them a chance to fade or whatever. Things are fine right now.

The difference between tattoos here and tattoos in other IRE's is that the tattoos over there actually give very important combat buffs and not minor ones (for nonmonks).

While we're at it:



Oh my desc, can you just change it so it goes: Tattooed on his/her (bodypart) is (tattoo). "Illustration of" seems unnecessary/weird.

I'm loling that you think it's not worth anything. The buffs are important. They should fade so tatooists can get some profit, or is gold a problem?

Hehe, even relatively minor enchantments have decay times if you don't rune them! Perhaps an artifact that delays or makes tattoos permanent.

Otherwise, I'd say make it a loooooong time to fade (and they wouldn't go away, just start losing effect), some mechanic that makes more used ones last different times would be cool, but unnecessary and annoying to code (I bet). If only the effect waned, the skill would keep the idea that the tattoos are more or less permanent, without making perma-robes or perma-enchant-type things.

Didn't say it wasn't worth anything, did I, I just said it certainly isn't as important as a boar, moon, shield, ox, megalith, tree, etc., tattoo from other IRE games, buddy.

I simply disagree that the benefits aren't worth having them fade with any form of regularity. Maybe if they took a really long time to fade.

P.S. In comparison with enchants, brooches take forever to decay, have a ton of charges, and have historically given much more important buffs (compared to tattoos), so if tattoos did the same, go for it.

=( hands off my perm splendours!

Pay the credits for the sketch rune to make them permanent or something! Add a new syntax: BREAK RUNE

This seems like a really cool skill, but it's not something you can sell in stores, and with trade bans and such coming and going, you can't just count all of the tattooing cartels as viable options. It basically forces people to spend 14 slots in one or more cartels getting custom designs each and every time they want to tweak their tattoos. That will be by far the most annoying, time consuming, and tedious trade skill in the game.

You can't offer a "maybe tattoo cartels will get more submissions at a time" as a solution, either. If we have enough people working the submission queues for that to happen, why hasn't it happened for other trades already?

The easiest way for this to work is, as people have said, to just make it so that you can design a tattoo with a certain weight, and then you can place that tattoo on any body part with enough room left to hold it, and then can imbue it with whatever power you want. You get the designs you want, monks get more business because you'd need them if you wanted to tweak powers. And you -could- tweak powers without going through almost a score of new submissions.

I...don't feel like chipping into this whole overhaul declaims people have been tossing up even if I do think it'd be easier if you can decide the power after inking a design rather than how it is now. Then I wouldn't have to submit the same apple tattoo I'm using for magic DMP for cold DMP.

Anyways, just to reiterate some of my simpler desires:

-SKINDESIGNS to find all designs with a given power instead of having to comb through each limb finding them would be nice.
-Blacktint and silvertint being added to Arts so that I can use those instead of encountering this no coal/faeleaf block in designing.
-Simplifying this line: "Tattooed on his chest is the illustration of a tattoo of the Hound of Darkness." to "Illustrated on his chest is a tattoo of the Hound of Darkness." That would get rid of the awkward repetition of the phrase.

Yay cosmetic and convenience changes.

Thematically speaking, I see no reason why tattoo weight would have to be linked to the quantity skin that the tattoo takes up. It seems just as pluasable* to me to say that weight is a limit on the amount of ka in your body that can be aligned to create magical effects using tattoos. A weight 1 tattoo that takes up half the back would simply be one that is mainly decorative with a very tiny interaction with the body's ka. Likewise, you could have a small, intricate tattoo with magical runes and so forth that interacts with the bodily ka very strongly due to potent magical runes or the precise positioning or any of a dozen other reasons.

The idea of having a variable weight only seems unusual if you're dead set on the idea that the size of a given tattoo has to be direction proportional to the effect it has on the body.

Variable body parts is almost certainly a bad idea, but I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that at this point**. Just seperating weight and effect from design and bodypart would decrease the number of tattoo designs needed for people to be satisfied with their options from nearly 500 to around 70 or so.

*Or perhaps even more so, given that tattoo weight is not dependant on size. Larger people have more skin, but they have to use the same proportion of skin to get the same effect, even if the tattoo would realistically take up vastly more area in absolute terms.
**Do feel free to correct me if you are suggesting it at this point.

I've already expressed my opinion on this, I think by removing weight from the design you would be unnecessarily restricting the design of tattoos.



That's cool! Sets are awesome, I think.



Then swap it with something the same size.



Then have another one commissioned. Boy, these tattooists are going to get rich off doing these tattoo designs.



If only 3 tattoos could be approved per IG year, maybe I'd agree with you. Elsewise I kind of just dismiss your whole argument because I simply can't find myself agreeing with you. If you want something other than what you have, go get it. I really don't understand your argument on this - if you have +5 DMP on your arms vs cutting and you would rather have a divine influencing buff, you swap it out. Most tattoo powers, off-hand that I can think of, scale to or require 100 weight - so if you don't want a given benefit anymore, you can swap it out for something else. The ones that outright require 100, well, save your big spots for those.

I really just don't see this critical flaw you seem to think exists.




Um, well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that, no, we're not taking the tradeskill back out until you've had a crack at telling us how it should be.

Unless I misread your statement, and you mean 'this ongoing discussion' by 'this', then have at it I suppose.



Like I said - then get Design A redesigned with something more appropriate to what you want! Obviously if you want the weight changed, you need to have the design changed anyways - since it's nonsense to have a 'half of your back' tattoo that is also weight 1. Frankly, any argument that includes 'a tattoo of Maeve that covers half of someone's back' at the weight of 1 (or anything less than 100) is an empty argument to me. Sorry, you won't sway me with those sort of statements and illogical arguments - though, it's Est's call, not mine, so take it as you will.

I don't really understand any argument that involves them 'fading' or 'wearing off' in favour of 'returning customers'. Either: Everyone will be changing tattoos (yay tattooist customers!) or no one will be (thus the perceived need for a mechanic to force returning customers) - I still don't believe the trade is going to be so unprofitable, nor there will be so few opportunities to ply the craft, that it would be a 'poor income' method. By virtue of the length of time it can take, and the pretty big cost to get a whole body set, it will take quite some time and several trips to do the 'full set'. Per person, at that. I don't think we really need a mechanic that forces that.

---



I agree with you on weight, to an extent. Something has to judge the size of a given tattoo, or we have to limit it to one per body part. We could, of course, shift weight to a 'ka' measure then add a fourth field for size, but I think most people would end up pulling out their hair at this point...

Personally, if it were up to me (it's not, it's to the Charites, god help them), I would stick to the general rule of big tattoo = big weight, but big weight does not necessarily demand big size. It'll even be my suggestion to them, at that.

The other thing I noticed about the re-inking process that may have been implied earlier but that I didn't see explicitly mentioned was the issue of what happens to your set-in-stone, permanent, pre-designed tattoo set if one of the skills gets envoyed and nerfed or buffed or something.

Without a slightly flexible way to fiddle with powers, that's going to mean reshuffling your entire weight and power distribution setup (if I'm interpreting this right) to incorporate those changes, and probably not just for you, for everybody that previously used/didn't use the changed power.

Seems like the problem with making things truly permanent is the fact that the effects of skills get tweaked a fair amount.

I still have no clue why someone would design a system that ties everything together like this. Making almost any of the variables separate and not hard coded into each design would make the whole thing tremendously more flexible. I honestly don't know how someone can think needing to tie up 3-5 entire cartels per person every time something changes is a fine idea. Would you be ok with tying Enchantment and Jewelry intimately together, too? Or forcing people to specify proofs when they designs robes or suits? Or how about making you design a new book for everything that is published? None of those are as tedious and time consuming as Tattoos seems to be.

Eventru has already explained this. If something tweaks the balance of the buffs, and forces you to redesign the whole set... all the better! At worst case, up to 14 new designs, from scratch, worth of business for the lucky tattooist. You can even run 5 different cartels to be able to put in up to 15 private designs into the queue at one shot. Can you say kachink? Clearly, the best thing you can do as a tattooist is to keep pestering your liaisons to make strategic and minor changes to the skillset everytime you need business.

Tattoos are permanent until removed, not permanent forever. They can INK LIFT FROM to untattoo you.

Weight should be based on the potential of the tattoo, yeah. Both size and the design could be taken into account.

Whoa, eventru, it looked like you went and called all the flaws we agree on perks...


Er, sets are limiting creativity. It's either get this set that works together (hoping it works in a way I want) or design a huge amount of tattoos to form my own set. No thanks.

Swapping things of same size doesn't make sense, you probably won't find something of the EXACT SIZE, with the exact power you need, and it might actually not be possible to do that, depending on what power you need to imbue (one of the flat weight ones).

"Then have another one commissioned. Boy, these tattooists are going to get rich off doing these tattoo designs."

Lol. People design their own stuff if they want unique, true fact. Also a true fact: not much money to be made in design commisions. I've NEVER seen anyone charge more then the cost of submitting. (Edit: This is actually true about anything at all trade related that isn't sellable in a store. If you are giving it direct, you can't charge over the cost to produce, or you get 0 buisness. It's tip based, more below)

You talk about swapping, but said that tattoos are intended to be permanent. Instead of having to swap entire tattoos (and hit the problems mentioned above with weights and swapping), why not have a way to move the powers around using a weight POOl, instead of individual weights and separate powers?


You also don't seem to understand the mechanics of how a trade skill actually works in lusternia, at least not a crafter type one. You need repeat customers to make any cash, and the occasional swap out is like someone wanting new perma-furniture for their stasis-ed manse. It's not really dependable and not anything to make cash off of. There is also little incentive for people to do anything except tip, and people usually tip a fixed amount. I will supply the comms, I will design the tattoos, I will decide what to pay, if anything.

I tip 500 gold per complete service rendered, 1000 gold per long requirement ones (like cubes, which take a long time). This means I will tip this person 1000 for a set of tattoos. If I have to reset one of them completely, I might tip them another 500, but this would not be dependable, it would be if I decide my setup was bad. If you have a repeat system, every x amount of time, I'd be obligated to visit a tattoo artist, and forced by social pressure to tip again and again. Business is born! You cannot depend on revenue from designing things, or really charge solid prices in an industry where all raw materials will be provided (all of them).

Right, although then we're back to the whole having-to-redesign thing. I agree, there's going to be a lot of unnecessary bulk in the design lists. Seems like a lot of tattoos that are going to end up outdated and unused. With all of the other designs, while there are some designs that show up more than others, all of the designs have the same inherent value, they all will function the same in terms of mechanics. That doesn't look like the case with tattoos, without a way of keeping old designs current.

If custom designs are such a huge untapped market, why not make it so you can only wear clothing designed for people with your size stat? Imagine the immense profit tailors could make if you needed new clothes every time you changed size, or if you saw something you liked but it didn't come in your size!

Alright, well, to each their own, I fear!

Unfortunately some people are growing hostile and aggressive, which is the point when I back out of a thread.

Feel free to continue suggesting opinions/suggestions/etc, though!

My standard advice always applies, though - radical suggestions like 'completely redesign it' or 'take it out until we tell you what we want and you do it our way' tend to have the likelihood of making it past muster as an ice cube in the Sahara at noon. Surgical suggestions tend to be the best.

Okay, I'll stop with the pseudo sarcasm. In all honesty, there's only ever going to be 1 "set" for tattoos, for combatants. They will find out which combination min-maxes the best, and go for that, and that's all any combatant will ever ask for. You only ever need 1 or 2 public designs for each bodypart for that set, because combatants also don't care about what they wear. You can argue that some do, but when push comes to shove, and the choice between wearing something ugly and giving up on a slight edge in combat, you can be sure there will be many combatants that will choose to look ugly. I mean, who actually takes the time to look at what you wear, anyway? All the customisation is just for your own private pleasure anyway.

The non-combatants will just settle for whatever tattoo they like. With the pervasiveness of clothes, you won't be able to see the majority of other people's tattoos, anyway, so non-combatants won't even bother with the back or chest or whatever unless they have a specific RP for it (like Eventru's tree), in which case they won't care what power goes on it, and won't change it even if the power becomes useless. There's really no point in decking yourself out with proper powers if you're not a combatant. Maybe one or two at the visible areas, like the face or something, and that's it for non-combatants.

The rare few who have the time and inclination will take the time and effort to design their own set of personal, shiny, nice tattoos. If something changes the balance of the buffs and they want to change up the weights, they'll take the same amount of time and effort to do it again, no problem. These are people who have the time and inclination, afterall. And admit it, there's not going to be many changes of this nature that will require a complete reshuffle on a regular basis. At the worst, you swap out a 100-weight tattoo for another 100 weight tattoo. That's about it. If you were myopic enough to split the combat-important buffs into the fingers and heads and whatever, that's just too bad for you.

As for those who actually want this trade skill to be lucrative, or at least on par with tailoring or something, it's probably just too bad. Tattoos will never replace clothing, only for monks, perhaps, unless splendour armour + tattoo buffs turn out to be better than tattoo armour + tailoring proofs, then in which case not even for monks. I guess you could get some valuable RP out of hanging around the City tattoo-parlour and smoking a pipe while you wait for customers, or something.

tl;dr - For combatants, they'll get whatever works, and to hell with the designs. For non-combatants, they won't care what power they get as long as they get the one or two designs they want. No one cares about making the system less tedious because there is no need to.