You know things are sour when “we could add it to the forge” becomes a way to siderail feature requests.
Especially when there’s already a suitable system in game to add consumable/cost balanced one-off actions that basically gets ignored.
I still think it needs a rebalance, and some things could be expanded into other, more reliable areas of the game. When it’s presented as the only avenue for adding minor changes to the game - it does quickly become game-wrecking. Sure, sure, IMO.
I guess I would consider adding an augment mount to tools and sharing with weapon augments. At the same time they can consider more expansion to the totem augment system with new augments both for adding new minor things like a one time change to a storage container’s capacity.
Or similar minor features involving things like changing the properties of an item, or as a method to enact an upgrade. Which could be crafted, tradable, or sometimes cubit-able. So to speak.
Not really a new discussion but hey, the crafting and forging sections of the forum seem to have … not really ever existed
I dont think it would destroy the market, but it would change and then have to rebalance itself.
Anyone currently selling tools that that spent a crazy number of mats to create would have to drop their prices even lower than they already are and at the current rate there are already not very profitable.
I disagree you would still have to gather and make or buy the ingredients. I could technically craft anything since I hoard everything, but I want it now… so I just go buy it.
If you remove the RNG I would still have to wait awhile for the item to craft. Either way, there would be a market just a much smaller one with much less profit.
There is a whole list of items I detailed along with others that they could probably focus on.
This goes back to something I said early on when I started playing. Boundless has a little bit of an identity crisis.
Is it a creative sandbox or an MMO, or an MMORPG Sandbox or any combination of these. The players we have vary too if you listen to their suggestions. Some want more PVE content and more MMORPG related content and changes and others want it be more like other creative builders where there is no economy, no crafting times and nothing like an RNG system that caters to the economy.
It sadly is a pretty major issue. I mean to me, much like you @SWProzee1 as much as I don’t want it to happen removing the economy or at least the buying and selling of items by players would allow for all the creative based changes a lot of people have suggested.
No RNG, No timers, no economy would totally work just fine.
Maybe just add a different way to achieve the results players want…
Add an item that when applied to a forged tool, will enhance it’s stats.
Or add an item that can copy a forged tool.
Or possibly forge ingredients that have less RNG when used (ie: Special Super + Gum)
The economy will change anyway as more players arrive and as the game is updated with new items.
Remove the RNG, remove the crafting times for the ingredients used to forge, lower the amount of required items to craft the ingredients and have the item craft instantly and as @Trundamere mentions be repairable. System fixed.
I can see room for more specialized gums (for individual boons) that are more expensive to craft on top of the general gums we have now. That way you could start off with higher RNG to save some $$ but then double down with the more expensive gums later to lessen the odds of that last boon ruining the whole thing.
On a similar note, simply having more slots to bring a wider variety of times when forging would be a big help as well. Also being able to load more than 100 of each item would help since running out of items can be a problem when forging 9 items at once. On the flip side, those limitations do make for a delicate balancing act and adds to the puzzle of forging … which is good in a since, but seems to corner me into strategies that have little to no wiggle room.
The augment system could use some TLC… I think it would be cool to bring them to tools and either move some of the boons to augments or have them shared between them… forge a hammer with + damage & speed but use an augment to add AoE… or forge for AoE & speed but use a +damage augment much the same way we can use augments on slingbows to compensate for their weaknesses or double down for max damage/range/speed etc.
Moving or copying an existing forge boon with an augment could be very expensive, it would still see use. At least, in terms of (again *existing) boons and so basically adding an additional sort of forge slot to it.
There also the case of stuff like auto-door, just to use an example that exists. Luckily it went in about the time that the adjacent effect was removed (I think?) so the RNG on a spanner isn’t that bad. Plenty of unused gums. Still I think it’s one of the ones that removes durability, thus rebalancing the actual item itself against the resulting effect, as well.
The effect is also a one-time change. So it seems like there’s every step taken to assure that the end result is of an identical value in terms of usage and thus, economically. Except that it still takes a couple passes through the RNG to get it in the first place.
I’d wager there are enough numbers (they may or may not have been tracking though, really) for someone to calculate say, a 5 - 7% increase over the rough average cost of forging such an item, right now - and let it be an augment.
End of the day I don’t honestly care if I’m pointing a wrench, a totem, or a slingbow at the door.
I like this as a relatively minor adjustment to the system, though I think the additional cost of those gums should be relatively minor, since one of the goals (IMO) is to reduce reliance on brute forcing RNG. I would also like to see the influence of the gums tweaked. It should be reasonable to get to a state where you never see stuff that has nothing to do with the gums you applied.
Something I have recently learned in a PM is that there are people who sell forged goods at normal market prices with no care about the market price of the goods they are putting in, so who is to say what the cost to forge really is.
I think I read once some suggestion which was about possibility equip smart stack of tools. It would allow to create own AOE patterns by setting tools on smart stack. Then “equip smart stack” or assemble it together as AOE tool.
Like below hammer placed on smart stack would allow use smart stacked tool(s) as X pattern.
I don’t know how many people will remember this, but gem tools back when I played during EA had native AoE shapes depending on the gem they were made from, before the forge was a thing.
To be honest, it was a real surprise for me to find that this native aspect of gem tools had been dropped by the time I’d started playing again (only after release), and if it wasn’t for Aenea and Fidach, I wouldn’t have gotten into forging at all until much much later on. I don’t think I’d like the forge removed, but I think there must be more than a few ways it could be changed to make it better.
Still, I think those native AoE capabilities on the old gem tools were a good thing and this aspect could have been moved into some kind of augments without making it solely about the forge, but I’m sure that as @Nightstar says, much more could have been done with augments to supplement what the forge accomplishes, especially if the augments were longer-lasting/semi-permanent in some way, or even combinable. @Jiivita already made some good points about how augments could be expanded, anyway.
It just irritates me when you add say longevity gum and it pops say busy Bee. Totally opposite of the gum. That is where i think it needs tweaks, Just my opinion as i get wore out on forging due to that. The chances of getting the boon you want might be a little to low perhaps?
what I would like to see forging turned into. not an easy change. the new way would require more exploration, more money, different levels of materials used to build the forge or alter or work shop or caldron different set ups for different play types magic, teck, witchcraft, so on
if the set up your using isnt strong enough or you dont place all the items listed the stability drops creating a greater risk for it to fail causing defects quirks loss of item or worse explode damaging everything around it size of explosion can be great if you try a high level upgrade on a low level set up.
recipes can be bought and sold
tools can upgraded but not everything will be the same
truly diversify the market giving reasons to use low level gear and high level gear
… which is good in a since, but seems to corner me into strategies that have little to no wiggle room.
