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Issues with Tattoos
I'm wondering if we can get a discussion going about the Tattoos tradeskill. I hope we can get a civil, decent discussion going with perhaps some admin feedback.
First off, I'm not looking to buff the skills themselves; instead, I'm trying to find ways to improve it and make people want to actually take the skill for other reasons besides the armour and dmp. Tattoos is likely my favorite tradeskill out of all of them, due to the sheer amount of possible designs one could come up with. Be that as it may, it's rarely taken, and for a number of reasons.
1: The sheer amount of time required to ink a tattoo is immensely high. I'm guessing the time required is linear and based on the ka weight of the tattoo, and a 100 weight tattoo take ten minutes. With an artifact needle, the same tattoo takes two minutes, an 80% reduction. Though I'm not trying to nerf the trade artifact, I feel that most tattooists who hawk their wares and actually work for others are -hampered- if they do not have an artifact needle (300 credits), and many customers will refuse to work with a tattooist who doesn't have one.
First off, I'm not looking to buff the skills themselves; instead, I'm trying to find ways to improve it and make people want to actually take the skill for other reasons besides the armour and dmp. Tattoos is likely my favorite tradeskill out of all of them, due to the sheer amount of possible designs one could come up with. Be that as it may, it's rarely taken, and for a number of reasons.
1: The sheer amount of time required to ink a tattoo is immensely high. I'm guessing the time required is linear and based on the ka weight of the tattoo, and a 100 weight tattoo take ten minutes. With an artifact needle, the same tattoo takes two minutes, an 80% reduction. Though I'm not trying to nerf the trade artifact, I feel that most tattooists who hawk their wares and actually work for others are -hampered- if they do not have an artifact needle (300 credits), and many customers will refuse to work with a tattooist who doesn't have one.
Solution A: Halve the time required to ink a tattoo without a needle. This still makes a tattoo needle desirable, but not required.
Solution B: Lower the price of a tattoo needle, perhaps to 200-225 credits.
2: The inability of tattooists to tattoo themselves. I've heard this time and time again, that a tattooist can't tattoo their backs irl, and that's why tattooists can't ink themselves. Seeing as anyone who can ink a tattoo in Lusternia is either an acrobat (contortion, anyone?) or a psymet (control over their own body), there's no reason why we can't rp this out.
Solution A: Allow tattooists to ink themselves. Simple as that.
Solution B: Allow tattooists to ink themselves but require an artifact needle. Not as fun an idea as A, but it would lend more need for a needle.
Solution C: Allow tattooists to ink themselves, but require twice the time to ink due to it being more difficult.
3: I may be wrong on this, but it requires 66% Virtuoso in Discernment to be able to tell what tattoos a person has, and even then, clothing covers them up. One would think a tattooist should be able to appraise a person's tattoos at a glance without such an investment in Discernment. Furthermore, I don't personally see any need for a person to know another person's tattoos unless they themselves are a tattooist.
Solution A: Remove Tattoos from Discernment, and move it to Tattoos (tradeskill).
Solution B: Allow tattooists to ink themselves but require an artifact needle. Not as fun an idea as A, but it would lend more need for a needle.
Solution C: Allow tattooists to ink themselves, but require twice the time to ink due to it being more difficult.
3: I may be wrong on this, but it requires 66% Virtuoso in Discernment to be able to tell what tattoos a person has, and even then, clothing covers them up. One would think a tattooist should be able to appraise a person's tattoos at a glance without such an investment in Discernment. Furthermore, I don't personally see any need for a person to know another person's tattoos unless they themselves are a tattooist.
Solution A: Remove Tattoos from Discernment, and move it to Tattoos (tradeskill).
Solution B: Keep Tattoos in Discernment, and add the same ability in Tattoos (tradeskill). If the tattooist has both, allow them to view all tattoos a person has, even through clothing.
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
3
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
I fully agree with point 2, though. It's a situation of mechanics trumps roleplay to me; there's no other tradeskill that you can't actually use it on yourself, but need to find someone else to do it for you. It just adds an extra inhibiting feature to the skillset which is unnecessary.
I don't have a huge problem with the first one either.
1A makes sense, as does 2 anything. Even 2A makes sense, just make it a high level skill (up near trans) and change the message to... going through katas in a cloud of inks that adhere to your body as you run through the mystical fighting stances, or something.
Roleplay being important is a very reasonable thing to prioritize for the admin. We also don't want to just make our tattoos a carbon copy of other IRE copies. But some of the mechanical restrictions simply make the trade plain unfun to work with. This isn't even on the level of herbs replanting tediousness/grind. The problems Shaddus outlined are some of the contributing factors that make the very thought of tattooing create a grimace. Most of us demigods are more than intimately acquainted with grinding. Tattoos isn't just grindy, it's griefy.
1) Tattoo inking time is a major pain in the butt, but only part of the problem. To complete a full set of 759 weight takes (on a rough estimate, number might be slightly off) an hour and a half of channeled time. However, this is not including tattoo choosing, power choosing, comms buying. The entire process to completely ink a set of tattoos on a client can take up to 3 hours on a optimistic estimate. Doing it in a single sitting is near to impossible for most people, and if you agree to try, it literally takes up the play time of an entire day. How many people have 5 hours to spend on Lusternia in a single day? How many have even 3? To choose to invest in a tattoo means you give up a day of playing (spread out over a few days, maybe). This is perfectly fine. For a tattoo artist, however, they are choosing to give up their playing time to help someone else get their tattoos. This is the number one reason that tattooists refuse to offer their services. What price in gold and credits is worth giving up hours of play time every day? I'm not here to hoard numbers in a text game that tells me I have a million gold. I'm here to play a game.
The primary problem comes from the huge amount of bodyparts. Fingers and toes and hands and wrists and everything just bloat up the time it takes to CHOOSE your tattoo and tattoo powers. This isn't the channel time. If you want to impose a hard limit of, say, an hour for un-artifacted full inking, sure, be my guest. I agree that for the benefits tattoos give, a substantial investment should be had. But when the time spent waiting for people to choose their tattoos is longer than the actual time spent tattooing, you know there's a design problem. This is why one of the things I argued for when the skillset was introduced was to merge some bodyparts together. I highly doubt it's possible now to justify outright deleting the designs so many people have spent the time and effort to write and use cartel slots to submit. We're stuck with the huge amount of bodyparts. The only thing we can do now is to reduce the channel time instead.
2) Tattoing yourself or not is a minor thing. It'll be nice to have as a perk for a tattooist, because as a tattooist, we know what we're asking of a guildmate when we ask them to tattoo us. We're literally asking them to give up their playtime for our benefit, while being fully aware of the implications that has for them. We're not newbies who are excited about tattoos who don't know how much the tattooist is sacrificing for our sake. We swallow our guilt to ask people who we consider friends, for whose enjoyment we are concerned of, to make a substantial investment for our sake. If the channel time is reduced, this guilt becomes lessened considerably, and as tattooists, we also know to get everything ready so our friends only need to enter commands for the channel time, so this actually isn't such a pressing problem to fix. Definitely will be nice to have, though.
3) Similarly, seeing tattoos is a minor thing. Quality of life mechanic to have, but to do up tattoos require the target to strip naked anyway. (And since some people get their kicks from doing it to someone in a text game... well, you could let them have their fun, I guess.)
I want to note that coming up with roleplay for mechanical changes is perfectly viable. Tattooing has a huge amount of potential to be tied in with the lore behind ka-energy. As monks, we are supposed to have an innate knowledge of this "ka-energy" that flows through our body, and we in fact use it actively in our martial arts, imbuing it into tattoos. It's perfectly logical that monk-tattooists can somehow "feel" the glow or "see" the tattoo through clothes. Might be more difficult to justify for non-monks, of course. This is an example of how even more interesting and rich roleplay can be used to explain mechanics that are ALSO fun for the players. Things that are fun don't have to be illogical or weak in roleplay reasoning. They can be both fun for the user, their client as well as adding more to the richness of the game's lore.
Please reconsider changing some of the tattoo mechanics as suggested.
REWORK TATTOO <tattoo #> ON <target> TO <power>.
This would consume the same amount of power, but perhaps only half the tints and take half as long as doing a completely new tattoo. Reworking a tattoo design you do not have access to would be impossible.
This would make changing up tattoos solely for powers (when you want to keep the same design) on guild changes much easier. The initial decision to get tattooed in the first place would be a major time investment still, it just wouldn't be such a pain to adjust powers when you are literally getting the same thing inked into your body otherwise.
Skillset: Tattoos Skill: None
Guild: Tahtetso Status: Draft
Problem: Far too many of those with the tattoos skillset refuse to use the skillset to help
players, especially newer players. It is too time consuming and too self-sacrificing to be a
tattooist. As a tattooist, you'd be better off hunting or influencing. As to novices, imagine
you're a new novice monk and you're told in the help files to use tattoo armour, so you ask,
but your guild mates tell you to buy robes because they're not going to take the time to give
you tattoos until you've proved you are going to stick around.
Solution #1: New skill: Preparation: Using magical ink, powerstones, and KA, prepare your skin
as armour. Each use gives 10/10 up to a max of 40/40. This would allow for some minimal
protection for newer novices, but would encourage them to eventually seek upgrading for normal
great robes protection. This would require and encourage them to take tattoos and so wouldn't
be a free pass. *** To clarify KA armour would still top out where it currently does.
Solution #2: New skill: Imbue: Keep tattoos permanent, but have their power run out (like a
battery), thus requiring recharging by a tattooist or preserved with a new artifact. Suggestion,
1 power and 1 sip magicink per 1 weight, needle reduces power cost and halves time. Time 2
minutes per 100 weight. The empowering should not be a short period of time, nor should tattoos
have to deplete before being recharged. Suggest 100 game months. Prefer INK IMBUE x <tattoo
number>.
Solution #3: Allow self-tattooing and reduce time: Allow reach able parts of the body to be
self-tattooed. Exempt back and waist (if waist goes around the back). Time is the killer. It is
too much, too long. Cut non-artifact tattooing by 60%. For the needle artifact, cut cost to
200-225, have it use less inks (half?), and if imbue or self-tattooing is accepted (keep credit
cost) and it becomes well worth it. If self-tattooing not allowed, consider allowing it with
use of an artifact needle. Being able to switch out your own tattoos makes it well worth it.
Additional idea to give value to needle: new verb, REWORK, keeps or replaces a tattoo design
while keeping or replacing the tattoo power (same com and power costs).
Solution 2 alone is just going to make things worse. If the admin approve this report and only implement solution 2, everyone's going to be worse off than they are now. I'd rather not see it at all.
For solution 3, the artifact should reduce the costs, if the reduced time is going to be standardized, and nothing else. All other suggestions to upgrade the artifact should be put into the skillset and available to everyone, including self-tattoo, rework etc. As a note, the needle already reduces the powerstones cost.
EDIT: I agree with Lerad on your third solution as well. We should stop fixing major problems with skillsets by introducing expensive artifacts required to achieve 'balance'.
I'd rather, like Lerad, not see it exist.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
I've decided at this point I'll be switching classes (this has nothing to do with tattooing, just tossing it out to avoid anyone thinking I'm trying to feather my own nest here).
As a general rule I don't do tattoos, largely because it is too time consuming. So much of this is from my own bias. I could be enticed to recharge someone's tattoos if it was only going to take 10 minutes. I could be enticed to give a novice 10-15 minutes of my presence. I will not spend 5+ hours a week doing tattoos.
EDIT: To recap... it takes too long to tattoo someone and the profits tend to be ridiculous, especially for a trade skill where you pretty much do work once/person, maybe twice. If the process was shortened and tattoos were to decay, perhaps it would be more lucrative, but eh... I doubt the process will be made faster considering the trade artifact reduces speed of tattoo work.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."