GOAL
Eliminate RNG from forging process. You get EXACTLY what you invest in.
Make forging accessible to everyone, eliminating need for skill point investment. (Free up a skill page!)
Scaling costs appropriately with player level and equipment.
Maximize existing assets, minimize need for new assets.
Simplified process that is easy to understand.
Make existing quirks and defects a valuable and cost effective method to save more expensive resources and amplify effectiveness of buffs.
Preserve flexibility mechanic, making high-forged items made from inferior materials (stone, iron, etc) a viable and affordable alternative to expensive high end materials.
Include several “professions” in the process so that anyone can profit off of centraforging.
SYSTEM
Simply add the reagents you want to use to the centraforge, select the quantity you want to use in your craft, get exact expected results.
This system introduces variants of the existing trophies cover all buffs. Intermediate raw items like fungus and salts are used when crafting flux items and impurity items, covering existing quirks and defects.
For example, a “glossy” RR feather will craft into a speed buff 100% of the time, and grants a set amount of speed when forged onto an item.
I think the best way to explain this is with an example.
If I wanted to make a CHEAP forged hammer with speed, I could…
Forge with 1 speed feather, get speed 1 hammer.
-OR-
Forge with 1 speed feather, 1 flux item (x), get speed 2, quirk (x) 1
-OR-
Forge 1 speed feather, 1 impurity item (y), get speed 2, defect (y)1
-OR- 1 speed feather, 1 flux (x), 1 impurity (y), get speed 3, quirk (x) 1, defect (y) 1
NOTICE that the speed is improved by the addition of flux or defects, without investing in additional costly speed feathers.
You could balance perfect builds by making the buff items require exponentially more to reach the next tier, so
1 speed feather = speed 1
3 speed feather = speed 2
8 speed feather = speed 3
Etc
The scaling of buff items needed to reach the next tier would be affected by the base items flexibility. A gem tool would require a greater investment of buff items to reach each rank increase, with the inclusion of flux and impurity reducing those costs and raising the buff level with an appropriate chosen offset attribute. A simple copper item would require dramatically fewer ingredients to achieve similar results, and receives even greater benefits from the inclusion of quirks and defects.
As for the trophies themselves, a rebalance would be required. Every mob should drop a minimum of one trophy, with mob level and luck attributes increasing the drop rates appropriately. Since trophies come in a variety of types (glossy, exotic, etc) mob drops could have a correlation to a mobs own exotic attributes. A “fast” road runner may for example have a higher bias to drop “fast” glossy feathers as well as a chance to drop any other feather. A higher TIER RR drops more feathers than a lower one, and LUCK attribute improves the chance of bonus feathers. My ideal drop rate is a minimum of 1 trophy for a t1 mob, 5 for a t7 mob, and scaling rates for every tier in-between.
This effectively front loads the RNG of making specific forged items to the material gathering stage of crafting, not the final roll. You can expect a revitalized hunting market as players will have a large variety of trophies to sell, each with a single desired buff attributed to them. Additionally, this gives the devs a degree of tuning knobs that they can use to adjust the drop rates and relative values of specific trophies, thereby further balancing the cost and prevalence of specific buffs without having to adjust the cost to craft an item directly. If they decide speed hammers are too effective, they can dial back the drop rate of speed feathers, thereby raising the cost to offset its value.
Other Professions
Now hol’ up, I said one of my goals was to include multiple professions, but I’ve only talked about hunters so far! Well, the other professions come in to play with the other required reagents, flux and impurities.
Flux will be mostly derived from miners, and includes their less used byproducts like salts. Ancient essence from fossils should be a required ingredient for buffs along side trophies.
Impurities can be crafted primarily from organic goods and fresh vital essence. This should cover farmers, lumber jacks, and gatherers
Craftsman of course benefit from making the base items to be centraforged.
I’m interested in community feedback for this idea. Do you think you would prefer this system over the existing centraforge RNG? What do experienced forgers think? Does this idea adequately address its stated goals?
Lastly…
As a last but necessary note, I know the devs already have lots of other stuff in the works, and this idea represents extra dev time work, etc… I’m not calling for immediate implementation, just providing an idea for future improvements. Balancing numbers are arbitrary examples.
