Tattoo power ideas

Daraius

This is mainly for fun, but I was wondering if anybody had neat ideas for tattoo powers? I'd be especially interested in things that can fill smaller weight slots like 25 and 10, but don't necessarily have to hit 100 weight to have an effect. Here are a few I thought could add some variety to the options.

- Karma Buff: boost to all karma generation, and/or reduction of karma loss

- Experience Buff: boost to experience and essence gain (optionally: from denizen kills only, not applicable to aetherhunting or influencing)

- Damage Shift Buff: slight increase in damage shift damage and/or slight increase in the length of time you can maintain your damage shift

- Luck Buff: increase in critical hit percentage, stacks with Lucky Strike runes.

- Slowed Metabolism: reduces the rate at which you get hungry and tired

- Weather Resistance: reduces effects of non-Shamanized weather (hot, cold, windy) on movement speed

- Fleet Feet: move faster without triggering 'hasty' messages (like Harmony Ooshphet or Beastmastery Trotting) (bonus: must be inked on the ankles, feet, and toes!)

I noticed on the wiki there's something called "Organization Tattoo" with no information provided. Was this something that was left on the cutting room floor? These are inspired by that concept.

- Civil Servant's Brand: increases power generation from org power quests

- Nexus Tattoo: allows teleportation to Prime Nexus from anywhere, but with a power cost that increases with your distance from Prime

I dunno if any of these are gamebreaking, but I'd be interested to see any other ideas kicking around out there!

Enyalida

Yes, organizational tattoos were left out of the final implementation of tattoos. As presented, they were really inflexible and contributed conceptually to a lot of the really heavy problems tattoos had on original release.

Saran

I'm just wondering, looking across the tattoos I still have, it doesn't seem like anything less than 100 weight is having an effect on damage buff/absorb.

It'd be really convenient (perhaps too convenient) if the max was based on the weighting. I.e

20 weight = 1/1

40 weight = 1/2

60 weight = 1/3

80 weight = 1/4

100 weight = 1/5

Or like... 50 weight equals 1/3, mostly because looking at my buffs I don't really... need more than 1/1. 

Right now, I guess I just don't feel like the scaling mechanic is there with these tattoos and well... I don't use the utility that this would bring because I need to invest so much because there are so many that require 100 weight.

Enyalida

Wait, are the smaller tattoos not adding together? That is, two 50 weight tattoos working the same as a 100 weight tattoo for dmp?

Saran

They're adding up fine from the looks of it.

I have two cutting buffs at 50 each and that's registering for a 1/5 damage buff

But I have like... excorable and divinus absorb at 50 and 55 (both got hit by the weight changes) with no actual benefit.

So either its bugged or the overhaul has changed things so that these powers only have an effect at max weight now.

Daraius

From the AB:

100 points of tattoo weight will confer 1/5 resistance/buff to that damage

type. This tattoo will give NO benefit at less than 100 weight.

Saran

Thx, I only have access to the wiki and the weeky which are both out of date for this.

It's kinda a frustrating change, the scaling is like... a pretty core part of tattoos (with exceptions... which are now the majority of powers) but flat powers work against that

Enyalida

Almost all powers that used to scale now do not, or do so in a way that runs counter to how they did before. For instance, barkskin is now a static defense instead of being based on skill rank and ecology charms no longer scale up in strength based on commodities input.

EDIT: It might be worth a report next month to give lower weight tattoos some benefit, as you described.

Enyalida

Daraius said:

I noticed on the wiki there's something called "Organization Tattoo" with no information provided. Was this something that was left on the cutting room floor? These are inspired by that concept.

- Civil Servant's Brand: increases power generation from org power quests

- Nexus Tattoo: allows teleportation to Prime Nexus from anywhere, but with a power cost that increases with your distance from Prime

I dunno if any of these are gamebreaking, but I'd be interested to see any other ideas kicking around out there!

So right. The original plan for organizational tattoos was that they would be purchasable by guilds or nations, presumably through their patron. Then, the leaders of that org (CL, GM, GA, GC etc.) could tattoo that particular tattoo on their members, even if the leader was not a tattooist. However, these special tattoos would have locked weight and power. In other words, if the Hartstone's "Mark of Buck" tattoo was a 100 weight cutting buff back tattoo when designed, that's what it'd always be. The concern was that this would make the org tattoos scarcely used, as they'd require their recipients to shuffle around their existing designs, might be redundant, or would otherwise take up limited skin space. 

There were several suggestions to do things like make them not take up weight but not use any of the normal tattoo powers. I think it would be cool to have minor tattoo/mark based perks purchaseable, like perhaps areas gated off to those lacking a particular mark, or slight in-territory bonuses as you describe here. Perhaps if we get enough steam @Estarra and co might reconsider tossing them. After all, tattoos came out over four years ago!

Daraius

Holy smokes, I am so late to this party. )

I'm kinda glad org tattoos aren't a thing if that's the way they were to be implemented. It doesn't even make sense from a lore perspective that non-monks would be able to ink tats on their citymates.

The whole tattoo scene is fresh and new to me, and I like the RP avenues it opens up. My only gripe really is that the powers are a little bland. It seems like the perfect place to add in unique utility effects and unusual bonuses, hence this topic. Here's a few more:

Dextrous Digits: chance to use fewer commodities when crafting (bonus: must be inked on hands, wrists, and fingers!)

Regeneration: small buff to mana, ego, or health regen

Something Something Sipping: small boost to potion balance (like Harmony Lumphet) or small boost to effectiveness of potions (must be inked on face and neck!)

I kind of like the idea of monks being able to distill some of the powers of Harmony, Psychometabolsim, etc into tattoos, but naturally, tattoo monks should get slightly better boosts from these than the common rabble.

Edenwe

Saran said:

They're adding up fine from the looks of it.

I have two cutting buffs at 50 each and that's registering for a 1/5 damage buff

But I have like... excorable and divinus absorb at 50 and 55 (both got hit by the weight changes) with no actual benefit.

So either its bugged or the overhaul has changed things so that these powers only have an effect at max weight now.

Overhaul now requires you to have buff/dmp tattoos to be at max weight for the effect to work.

Enyalida

The problem is that while they may be bland, the defense/buff powers  provide a bigger mechanical bonus than any other effect, causing most people to use up most of their weight there, with only a little bit of room for utility powers or bonuses. For instance, I only have 225 weight of powers in non-buff/def powers, that with only fire absorption in. I put those weight points into the power and interferance effects. This may become less overriding with the changes to buff levels and the removal of racial vulnerabilities, but it's something to be aware of. 

EDIT: I think that org "tattoos" that didn't work within the weight/power system, but that merely used the TATTOO viewing syntaxes and structure as a framework would be a very cool idea. How each guild flavored adding these marks could be up to them, but having that coding backbone already in place makes such additions far more feasible. 

Lerad

DMP being turned into the 10-tier system made less than 100 weight scaling not a very feasible thing (at least, from my perspective). The reasoning I had was that while amking it scale based on the second value (1/1, 1/2, 1/3) is not too bad an idea, it would in turn raise questions about what it would do for the monk doubled effect for resistances. Given that old tattoos gave 10 dmp at 100 weight, translating that to 1/5 at 100 weight makes sense, and I didn't suggest a scaling effect so as to keep the report simple and easy to implement. In return for making all (previously) dmp based tattoos only have an effect at 100 weight, I asked for the maximum weight to be increased to 800 instead.

Quite a few other tattoo powers do still scale, though. Elemental tattoos do, IIRC, and so do divine and interference. I can't remember off-hand if influencing ones do as well. 

Extra new tattoo powers are definitely cool, however. When I have a report I don't know what to do with, don't mind if I take some of the ideas here. Alternatively, you can always poke one of the envoys who don't have a report up and ask them to consider suggesting a few of these. Even better if the admin can do it without needing an envoy report. Tradeskill upgrades of this level don't have too big an impact on combat balance (especially when it comes pre-balanced in a weight system with opportunity costs) so any of these can be added into the game directly without too much impact, I feel.

Saran

At the moment isn't it... Elemental, Absorb, Buff, Power, and Enchanted with all flat-weight then Illusion perception, Divine, Charisma, and Interference still scale. With everything except elemental going up to 100 (elemental is flat 50 if it hasn't changed)

Lerad

Ah, right, influence scales, but elemental doesn't. I forgot which was the one that doesn't in my previous post, apparently.

Saran

I'm mostly just working on outdated sites so it might have changed.

But yeah, I guess I just feel like 100 weight is high for the common stuff that you really want multiple of if more powers are going to be added. (300 of my stuff would generally be tied up in buffs if I didn't have a wonderwand for example)

That said, having a look over bodyscan and the like... it doesn't seem like anything there is much below */4 or */5, which makes scaling less useful a restriction sadly. It would have pretty much no effect on me for example as I could just grab 1/1 tats.