Forgery, the Guild

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Postmaster
Wizard
Posts: 971
Joined: 03 Mar 2010 22:37

Forgery, the Guild

Post by Postmaster » 13 Nov 2018 03:11

Originally posted by Zhabou

Code: Select all

Greetings,

The Smiths guild should die, and it should be replaced with Forgery, the guild.
I posted an event on the AOE Bulletin sharing my thoughts on how such a
transition would work, but I wanted to post here as well in case any of my
fellow denizens wanted to comment.
Why the Smith's Guild must die:
*	Experience/danger/coin/value from the activity are woefully low.
*	It's far better to kill goons than forge/repair weapons and armours
(hereafter 'items' for brevity) for title/necklace changes
*	Forging 3000 items takes about 3 days of nothing but forging. That's a month
of forging if you spend 2 hours per day (follow the rules).
*	Master level items are not that good.
*	It's boring. To become a master armourer requires 50 DAYS of constant,
monotonous game-play (or 2 hours of coding and then waiting for almost 2 months
while hoping to not get caught).
*	Learning to forge weapons as well basically doubles that - more than 3 MONTHS
which can be coded (with water, food, sales, ingredients) in 3 hours.
*	It's solitary - there's no way for people to work together, nor share
information, nor any reason for a smith to do anything beyond sell an item due
to their poor quality.
*	GA entry requirement means the possibility of a bellows operator to help
matters for only 1 to 3 mortal levels.
*	This guild is designed for botting.

Proposal:

Allow smiths to build almost any weapon or armour in the game. Players can and
should purchase the first 20 levels of guild skills, but the rest are earned.
Get rid of the GA entry requirement in favor of certain stats being required
for certain tiers (and for specific items).

How it works:

smdismantle <item> Changes an item into 'A sad pile of parts' on the ground
which decays as fast as an orc's eyeball and gives a roll based on guild skill,
etc... successful roll notates Smith's codex with recipe. Items needing repair
give lower chance of successful roll.
After a Smith knows the recipe, they must attempt to forge the item 5 to 50
times (depending on the difference between their forging level and the item's
forging level) to 'master' an item. Forging mastered items yields items in the
top half of the existing distribution while unmastered items either fail or
succeed with items in the bottom half of the distribution.
By estimation, a Smith who has successfully smdismantled and forged to mastery
50% of the Tier n items, 80% of the Tier n-1 and 100% of the Tier n-{3,2,1}
items below that can hope to fodismantle Tier n+1 items in 2 to 5 tries.
If the Smith's queue (items with recipes, but not mastery) is full, a message
is given to the Smith that they will forget a recipe if they dismantle this
item and asking for confirmation.
If the item is more difficult than their current level, a notice saying that
the item is well beyond their abilities is given, asking for confirmation. If
the player confirms, the item is destroyed.

smcodex <tier #> - The top mastered items (lighter but still effective for
small players, very effective for large players) of each type in each tier
1-100?

smremembered - a collection of 10 mastered items that are the player's choice.
101-110?

smqueue <all or #> - displays un-mastered items with found recipes 1-20

smremember <item> - put mastered item in the 'remembered' part of the codex

smforget <#> remove an item by number from the 'remembered' or 'queue' parts of
the codex

smforget <item> remove an item by name from the 'remembered' or 'queue' parts
of the codex

smrecipe <#> read recipe for a given item number in the codex

smrecipe <item> read recipe for a given item in the codex (for mastered items
which are not in the codex)

smmend <item> and smrepair <item> may only work on items which the Forger has
mastered.

sminspect gets a new line saying whether the item appears in the Forger's queue
or has been mastered.

Existing smith's skills can stay the same or leave - as designed, there's a big
quest here instead of any valuable skills for gameplay.

(tier 1): poor quality items: Buy ingredients at the guild, <forge item>
(tier 2): average quality items: Some searching for ingredients may be
required. 1-2 instructions to forge item. May require a minimum stat
(tier 3): high quality non-magical items: Search for some ingredients.
Intricate steps, and possible guess and check recipe to forge Requires minimum
stats
(tier 4): average quality magical items and amazing non-magical items: Requires
assistance of another player with possibly magical skill. Searching for
ingredients may be required, 2-4 instructions to complete. Magician requires
high minimum stats
(tier 5): high quality magical items: May require many magicians. Searching for
multiple ingredients required. A special forge may be required. Intricate build
instructions. May require team to protect smith while they forge in hostile
territory. Requires many players with a variety high level skills and stats

Why it doesn't provide combat advantage:

Forging (tier 1-3) items would take a comparable amount of time with simply
finding said item. As items become rarer and more valuable, the 'quest'
associated with the item similarly grows. It may take longer to forge the first
many upper tier items than to simply find them, BUT, that's the main way to
improve guild standing:
Items would need to be dismantled many times by a competent Forger for a
recipe, so they would remain rare. Forgeries can require once per Armageddon
ingredients.
Once in a lifetime items require the soul of the Smith to forge (not a life, a
soul - Smith starts at novice with no skills except their Smith's journal - the
really nice sword can go to one of the helpers).

Why it doesn't antiquate mariners/herbalists/alchemists:

Building some items requires the assistance of the other craftspeople: poison
weapons need herbalists and alchemists present, required items may be in the
blood sea, etc... magical items require a magician with some level of skill at
<magic skill> who is not holding the forging tools.
Many herbs (and other items) are currently useless unless a player is into
collecting.
A guild being more fun is a good thing. Rather than say that Smiths have a more
fun/interesting/whatever guild, build this one better and then build the others
to be more fun as well.

Why not explicitly paying for higher level skills is a good thing:

The mechanics of this change don't effect the bottom line anyway. Smiths still
give money (half the price they'd earn per item sold) in exchange for skills,
they just do it at the rate they actually learn skills. I'd actually advocate
for the same skill growth structure for appraising, repairing, mending and
sharpening items - a Smith should become sup guru at all their skills if they
have forged and maintained 99% of the items in the game. Besides, each skill
level costs many times other guilds' skill levels.

**This change could also provide an incentive (beyond the item) for other
guilds' members to participate - gaining a level of appraise is worth helping a
Smith forge a single item multiple times.


Thank you for reading, and if you like the idea, please let people know by
commenting.
Thanks,

Zhabou

User avatar
gorboth
Site Admin
Posts: 2352
Joined: 03 Mar 2010 20:51
Location: Some old coffin

Re: Forgery, the Guild

Post by gorboth » 17 Nov 2018 00:21

This is a truly good idea, Zhabou. Thanks for your detailed and carefully thought-out suggestion.

I would not implement things exactly as you have spelled out here, but in reading it, I did feel seeds being planted for aspects of a Smith build that I would like to see developed to replace the existing option we have in Genesis. Some of your ideas, indeed, may see themselves in the game some day in the future.

Good work!
G.
Mmmmmm ... pie ...

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