How to implement Item Reforging

Kaoswalker

With the sweeping changes to item traits coming with the next expansion, I (along with many others, if the forum posts in the PTS section are anything to go by) feel that the option to reforge item traits in order to keep our hard forged gear relevant is simply a must. But how to implement such a feature in a fair and balanced way? Look no further, I've done all the thinking for you.

1) on the clothing, blacksmithing, and woodworking station interface you add an icon of a circle pointing back to itself (maintains current visual style) between decontruction and improvement.

2) clicking this icon bring up a menu identical to the deconstruction page (simple and lets you reuse existing framework)

3) select the CRAFTED ITEM ONLY (keeps things balanced by giving you only the option to reforge something you could actually forge yourself)

4) this bring up a menu identical to the craft item menu. with the item you are reforging at the top. a flat crafting material cost under. the style material under that (more on that later). and finally the trait material at the bottom.

5) you select the style and trait you wish. depending on if you are changing one or the other (or both) the material cost updates itself. I think that 25% of the items initial materials cost (per change) would be a fair price. ie: reforging my v16 (cp160) yellow daedric rubedite nirnhoned swords to sharpened would cost me: 1 fire opal + 28 rubedite. if i wanted to change it to xivkin to use a new motif i just found then: 1 charcoal of remorse + 28 rubedite. And if i wanted to change both? 1 fire opal + 1 charcoal + 56 rubedite!

6) hit 'R' (PC) and boom, you've reforged your item.

Reforging would keep item quality and enchantment intact. This means the countless hours harvesting materials along with the cost of yellow tempers aren't wasted. Of course knowledge of the trait and having the associated materials and crafting level would be necessary.

Finally, why do I think that changing style should be an option? Well my dear Zeni, you've gone and introduced all these wonderful crafting style, and yet the cost of crafting end game gear is significant enough that the majority of players would not bother recrafting everything just for a new look (this is why costumes are so popular). Other then the achievement for collecting all the style pages for a trait there is almost no incentive. This would completely revitalise the economy for style motifs and style items! It might cut slightly into costume sales, however this would be offset by an increase in crown store motifs sales (especially for harder to acquire sets).

Implementation of such a simple feature has huge value to player at very little development cost and no risk to damaging game balance or economy. Furthermore this would allow you to explore wilder more dramatic changes to traits without running the risk of alienating players by rendering their gear useless.

So, a bit long, but what do people think? Would this work? Would you be interested?

QuebraRegra

YES!

Been dying for some form of "reforging" for a looong time now....

I NEVER like the disposable gear paradigm with this game. Finally get a really rare/nice piece of gear you like, only to have to trash it when you level up. Crafting does not address dropped sets.

Almost every MMO I can think of had a mechanism by which gear could be "leveled"... Usually quite expensive, which tends to boost cash shop purchases for whatever resources/currency is required.

I like all of the OP ideas as well.

Necrelios

YES!

I would also like to take any cool looking weapon I might find out in my adventures to a set crafting table and recraft it so it inherits the bonus set traits while keeping the cool looking appearance of the original weapon. Take the unique weapons you get from completing the main harborage story, for instance.

Now that you can get max level versions of those special keepsakes with the Dark Brotherhood DLC, it would be really awesome to have a unique looking Sword Saint's Blade or Prophets Staff with a custom set bonus.

Just look at this beauty and imagine if it had Hunding's Rage or one of the new item sets:

NewBlacksmurf

Other?

I'd like it but I think it's pretty simple.
Add item that allows this to happen using the menu on each item.
Think of enchant glyph interaction.
It just requires a trait be in your inventory and be done.

Yes to swapping tho

Kaoswalker

YES!

Necrelios wrote: »

I would also like to take any cool looking weapon I might find out in my adventures to a set crafting table and recraft it so it inherits the bonus set traits while keeping the cool looking appearance of the original weapon. Take the unique weapons you get from completing the main harborage story, for instance.

Now that you can get max level versions of those special keepsakes with the Dark Brotherhood DLC, it would be really awesome to have a unique looking Sword Saint's Blade or Prophets Staff with a custom set bonus.

you're basically describing item transmogrification from Diablo 3 :P

krseb17_ESO

I like it!

But I think 25% resources are a bit cheap consider the money you will save on tempers, it can be >100% resource cost or add a single temper of the quality you want or similar, and it would still be a great feature.

Mojmir

UO had this and it was set up with a weight system,every trait had a weight and a cap.meh it was ok

joker0137

YES!

I don't think it matter if it took twice as many steps to do, we want to reforge!!

Kaoswalker

YES!

krseb17_ESO wrote: »

I like it!

But I think 25% resources are a bit cheap consider the money you will save on tempers, it can be >100% resource cost or add a single temper of the quality you want or similar, and it would still be a great feature.

Ya, fair point. I guess my thought process was to keep the cost low enough to encourage experimentation. The cost hurdle should be the initial crafting of the item, not so much it's modification.

Khaldar

YES!

Yes. But make it cost 3-5 trait resources per reforge. Put trait resource chip in Crown Store so ZO$ can be happy too.

TheShadowScout

YES!

Yes, but... also for dropped set items! Either that, or give us a way to actually forge dropped sets ourselves... because I really love some of those sets for the flavor, and would like to have more options for looks (and the occasional trait redoing)

Heck, I'd even throw in level/VR/CP upgrades... as long as it takes -more- resources as forging a new piece, it should not be too much of an issue, balance-wise...

It could even be done with a destruction chance, migrated by using more resources, like temper improvements. Sure, people swim in style materials for the common styles... but some of the rare styles are harder to come by, and thus haing to use up three or four per piece just to make sure it does not get destroyed by a bad die roll would be making things more interesting...

Kaoswalker

YES!

@TheShadowScout hey man, I actually worked out a (in my opinion) fairly balanced method of rerolling dropped set traits based on my reforging concept. Was going to make a separate post if this one proved successful.

Here goes:

Rerolling a dropped set item trait would cost 50% of the resource for crafting a same level piece of gear, PLUS one of EACH trait material (yes, even nircrux). You then hit craft. This results in an 80% chance of a random new trait OTHER than the original trait (equal 10% of remaining traits) and a 20% chance of destroying the item. You could add extra trait mats to increase the chance of specific traits by 0.15% per extra mat. This would also INCREASE the chance of deconstruction by an equal amount (ie: 1 of each trait material and 200 of one kind would grant a 40/10/50 chance of either the new desired trait / a random undesired trait / destroying the item. Or you could go 1 of each and 100 of two for a 25/25/50 split, the 50 being the destroyed item chance).

Morimizo

YES!

This is a great idea to combine changing the trait with the changing of style;

I particularly despise the female version of the beautiful Trinimac robe, and am forced to wear non-dyeable costumes to curtail my disgust (well, not THAT strong a feeling, but it looks awful). This fixes that, as well as allowing me to change from Reinforced to Nirnhoned (since there will be about a 10% change to Phys and Spl resist).

@ZOS, this is even more important than a re-spec after trashing/nerfing favorite skills!

code65536

Other?

I have a somewhat different reforging system in mind.

1. There should be no option to change the level, weight, type, or weight of the item.
2. Your crafting level must be high enough to craft an item of that level.
3. If changing the trait, you need a trait stone and must know the trait.
4. If changing the style, you need a style stone and must know the trait.
5. Any item, whether dropped or crafted, can be reforged to change the style or trait.
6. Each reforging requires a rare consumable item.
   • Proposal 1: You have a chance of finding a "Shard of Reconstitution" in equipment writ reward bags. Collect 10 of them to form a "Gem of Reconstitution". The gem is consumed during the reforging.
   • Proposal 2: You have a chance of finding a "Stone of Reconstitution" in equipment writ reward bags. You can choose how many stones you use in the reforging process. Each stone increases the chance of success--failure will result in the loss of the item. The crafting passives that affect item improvement will similarly decrease the number of stones needed to guarantee 100% success.
   
   This allows us to change styles as our tastes change or as a way to avoid the ugliness of certain dropped sets (ugh, Winterborn) and offers a sort of escape for the oftentimes brutal RNG trait system. But at the same time, it should not be trivial to reforge the item, hence the requirement of a rare consumable item.

Kaoswalker

YES!

@code65536 oh, I really like your 6th point about a consumable, though maybe only needed to change trait, since style is purely esthetics? The other points are already include (or implied) in my original concept

Jakhajay

YES!

Yes! But I vehemently disagree with point 3. Mostly because some dropped sets not only have useless traits, but are fugly as! We need to be able to change their appearance!

idk

NO!

Saying the means to reforge gear to keep out hard forged gear relevant is "simply a must"' is rather melodramatic.

If you crafted or forged it to begin with its easy, sooo very easy to craft a new piece. And cheap.

Additionally, it's not reasonable to think the devs could design a system to handle this that wouldn't create more problems that it fixed in time to be tested before db launch

Basically, not only is this not a must it's not reasonable to expect it to happen.

My advice to you is get over it and move on (and start saving up matts to craft any new gear you may want.

SublimeSparo

YES!

Maybe add 1 gold upgrade mat to process for gold items, 1 purp for purp items etc to make it a little more costly