[DarkProdigyX]

I also posted this over at VGcrafters, but i wanted some more feedback, so here goes.

Something I think should seriously be looked into, yet I know not where to post it to get some dev feedback. Maybe someone will read this and pass it on, maybe not.

BoE is a good thing in my opinion, not just for crafting drops, but for adventuring drops.

Here's the kicker though, why not make binding in VG work differently than other games? Soulbound should NOT mean that the item is no trade, no sell, etc., it should simply mean that the item can only be used by one person. This makes sense for many things, a piece of armor shouldnt fit both a halfling and a lesser giant. A Kojani human will want his sword balanced differently than a Raki.

Soulbinding should add a -FLAG- to the item, something like "Required User - Playername". The flag should be in a special color so it is easy for anyone to see that the item is currently in a bound state.

This way, when I bind my protectors breastplate to me, I can still trade it back to the crafter to upgrade it for me later. Also, if I get "super-leet soulbound quest weapon", I can toss it to my smith buddy to decon later. The item will have to be dealt with or removed from the economy in some way at some point, but it can no longer be used by someone else.

Adventuring soulbound items could still be deconned, but not worn by others. Likewise, I think we should gain the ability to "rework" crafted items. During the rework process, depending on the quality, one of a few things could happen.

Grade D - Item lost.
Grade C - Decon, receive 25% of the common materials put into the item crafting (in the form of chunks per ore, logs per timber, etc. no rares)
Grade B - Decon, receive 50% of the common materials put into the item, and 25% of the rares.
Grade A - Soulbound flag removed from item.

The "Rework" process should be tiered by material, not level. For example, tin weapon rework, or dry wood focus rework. It should also be fraught by complications, far more than any other craft in game. It should be tough to un-bind an item in your current tier. You may even opt to shoot for a grade b decon so you dont plain lose the item.

What this does, is allow the economy to move items faster, because you can no longer easily work a hand-me-down system. It also puts adventuring drops and crafting drops on the same level as far as soulbinding goes, but still allows adventurers to sell their "worn" gear to those who can properly dispose of it, -crafters-.

Any criticisms and/or discussions are welcome. I think this idea has a lot of merit and would go far in giving the VG economy not only a much-needed boost, but some of it's own style and flair to set it apart from all those other games.

[Mustang68]

Originally Posted by DarkProdigyX

I also posted this over at VGcrafters, but i wanted some more feedback, so here goes.

Something I think should seriously be looked into, yet I know not where to post it to get some dev feedback. Maybe someone will read this and pass it on, maybe not.

BoE is a good thing in my opinion, not just for crafting drops, but for adventuring drops.

Here's the kicker though, why not make binding in VG work differently than other games? Soulbound should NOT mean that the item is no trade, no sell, etc., it should simply mean that the item can only be used by one person. This makes sense for many things, a piece of armor shouldnt fit both a halfling and a lesser giant. A Kojani human will want his sword balanced differently than a Raki.

Soulbinding should add a -FLAG- to the item, something like "Required User - Playername". The flag should be in a special color so it is easy for anyone to see that the item is currently in a bound state.

This way, when I bind my protectors breastplate to me, I can still trade it back to the crafter to upgrade it for me later. Also, if I get "super-leet soulbound quest weapon", I can toss it to my smith buddy to decon later. The item will have to be dealt with or removed from the economy in some way at some point, but it can no longer be used by someone else.

Adventuring soulbound items could still be deconned, but not worn by others. Likewise, I think we should gain the ability to "rework" crafted items. During the rework process, depending on the quality, one of a few things could happen.

Grade D - Item lost.
Grade C - Decon, receive 25% of the common materials put into the item crafting (in the form of chunks per ore, logs per timber, etc. no rares)
Grade B - Decon, receive 50% of the common materials put into the item, and 25% of the rares.
Grade A - Soulbound flag removed from item.

The "Rework" process should be tiered by material, not level. For example, tin weapon rework, or dry wood focus rework. It should also be fraught by complications, far more than any other craft in game. It should be tough to un-bind an item in your current tier. You may even opt to shoot for a grade b decon so you dont plain lose the item.

What this does, is allow the economy to move items faster, because you can no longer easily work a hand-me-down system. It also puts adventuring drops and crafting drops on the same level as far as soulbinding goes, but still allows adventurers to sell their "worn" gear to those who can properly dispose of it, -crafters-.

Any criticisms and/or discussions are welcome. I think this idea has a lot of merit and would go far in giving the VG economy not only a much-needed boost, but some of it's own style and flair to set it apart from all those other games.

I have long thought this would be a good way to move towards the "next generation" of crafting in these kinds of games. It also makes it more realistic, as a crafter can "tailor" armor and "balance" weapons to fit another player, and the crafter can still get some coin for this process, or deconstruct them for a chance at some crafting resources.

[PerritoBites]

sounds good.

[zenharmony]

I really like this post. I would still like to see *some* additional minor tier-based benefit to soul binding though, maybe via:

New ability: Fuse Soul

Description: Infuses a soulbound item with a portion of your soul. Spend 5% of item's level in xp to infuse it with your additional power.

Example on a chest armor piece:
For level 1-10 item: +10 hp and mp
For level 11-20 item: +25 hp and mp
For level 21-30 item: +50 hp and mp
For level 31-40 item: +75 hp and mp
For level 41-50 item: +100 hp and mp
For level 51+ item: +125 hp and mp

Larger pieces give bigger bonuses... For a belt, the above progression might be +1, +5, +10, +15, +20, +25.

I think this would give some more "play" to soulbound items.

[Safire]

good ideas, worthy of consideration. But I think all this only for crafted gear.

[Patmage]

Not a bad idea, but BoE is not the next step forward.

For me personally I don't think the next generation of MMOs has arrived until games start to dynamically manage the outflow of currency and items in a game. Someday I hope to see games where vendor prices and repair costs fluctuate just as cash inflows do. Virtual lotteries where the portion taken out of circulation dynamically changes. Services such as EQ1’s tribute system that take items out of circulation for a meaningful reason. There are endless ways to remove items and currency from the game other then BoE. The only thing needed is a system in place to keep things balanced.

I do like the whole rework idea, but it just seems that BoE was a bandage to fix a problem. MMOs have been around long enough that they should be able to find a better solution by now.

[Deicide]

I like the idea of fitting a particular piece of armor to someone.

That said, as a pure adventurer, the BoE change has got me shafted seriously. I've made "unreasonable" purchases on many occasions, figuring some equally unreasonable person would buy it back later...

For instance, when the patch came I was using T3 focus items "of Sorcery". These go for 3-3.5g on my server... I had to soulbound them cause I use a macro to switch from one to the other depending on what I'm casting. 5 min later, I had a guildie link me a T4 version of the same exact focus I had been told by 10 different crafters was impossible to make. Apparently, it was patched in at the same time. So I lost 6g worth of gear because of this patch. Really sucks.

One way to offset this for adventurers, all while making crafters happy, would be to allow items to be decon'ed from the trade window. This way crafters could charge a small cost for doing it and adventurers would get at least part of their investment back.

I really don't like the idea of an item worth 3g having to go to a vendor for 1.44s.... Crafters win, but adventurers loose big time. Not fair IMHO.

[Poldano]

These sound good, and also sound similar to some ideas I was playing around with.

The OP has a well thought out plan for putting loot and crafted stuff on a more comparable basis, and for eliminating some of the less palatable inflexibility from soulbinding. There might be some technical difficulties with keeping the owner-identification flag with the item for soulbinding, but I'm not in a position to know that. Another way around it is to allow the owner of a soulbound item to "unbind" the item, rendering it flagged as useless except for deconstruction (or reconstruction). This would also be a way to make the many useless soulbound quest items more useful and lucrative than the vendor trash they are.

Zenharmony proposes something very similar to something I've been thinking about. I did not think of the notion of an owner voluntarily fusing a portion of soul. What I was thinking of was soulbound items acquiring "experience" according to the experience their owners had with the item equipped. Experience acquired in such a way could eventually make the item legendary, and would make the item more likely to yield more valuable residuals upon deconstruction. To mitigate farming of soulbound items expressly for the purpose of deconstruction (or reconstruction), grinding use would be fairly worthless for such item experience, while quest boss-mob use would be very worthwhile. Another such mitigation would be to prevent unbinding until there was some minimum level difference between the item and the owner.

[DarkProdigyX]

Thanks for the feedback guys. And to Safire, even if adventuring items don't become BoE (which I believe they will sooner or later, irregardless of what we want), I would like to see this "Flag" on Equip principle take place instead of "Bind" on Equip. Soulbinding should take a new meaning altogether across the board, for the simple purpose of deconstruction. This allows adventurers even to soulbind their rare equipment knowing that they will have a shot at still making money later on in the game with it.

That soulbound equipment, even if auto-bound from a quest, could still be traded off to a crafter for deconstruction, even if nobody could use it. This does something very important that even as a crafter, I think needs to happen. Adventurers need more way to make coin, even if that means questing for rare loot they cant use, just to sell it for decon mats.

Bottom line, I think this helps everyone. More things to decon for crafters, the ability to cope with soulbinding crafting gear via reworking, and adding coin to the adventuring sphere via selling bound gear to crafters.

Oh and I like hearing hte other suggestions too, lots of great ideas thus far, this is a good discussion.

Another point I wanted to clarify, was that the only items eligible for reworking would be the bound/flagged crafted items. Adventuring bound items could be deconstructed, resulting in new items created from the rare materials/powders. I don't intend you to be able to quest a tough rare bow on one char, and rework it for another character, the quest item was not crafter-made, and as such it is unfamiliar to normal carpenters. It could however, desipte its soulbound quest status, be sold to a crafter who can take it to it's roots and deconstruct it for rare wood, using that to make another bow/staff/whatever.