Clarification needed : forging and forging items (in General)

Is forging a per character thing or a per account thing ?

Because every time I saw the arguments, I saw it mentioned that it's a per account thing, only highest MPR character (i.e. BA purchase cost) mattering to forge power... but now at least two admins say it's a character thing.

And if it's indeed a per character thing, why can't we have forging items (which, say, can't be taken off for and only usable after 24 hours of equipping) ?
AFAIK, that was the only reasonable argument against forging items existing at all until now.

I have tested this myself several times. It is a per character thing. The RPM increase is based on the character that you are using to do the forging whether or not it is the highest MPR character that you have. The highest MPR character that you have will be the most efficient at forging though.

So what about the last part, why not have forging items then ?
All you'd need would be a "will not give bonus to forging until 24h of equipping" and "can't unequip 24h after having forged" restriction to make it reasonable.

From the official FAQ:
The same idea exists for items, they are per minion, and only affect the minion they are on (other than junction for obvious reasons).

A forging tattoo. It only grows when you forge and it is of course limited by your MTL. Using it when forging gives a bonus of some sort to forging. growth rate could be like 10 or 20% of your NW increase.

That would make more sense, yes, a forging tattoo :)

Heck, it would probably be a huge improvement to forging for other reasons too - since it could be one of the few things that could enable you to bring your tattoo closer to MTL without resorting to a N*B run.
Give the forger your regular tattoo and a base forger tattoo, have him reink to a forging tattoo, also have him work on some of your items, then after all of it, revert the tattoo to original type - get much more than your money's worth :)

Hmm, hope that wouldn't be too overpowered - maybe remove ability to reink it ? Or have the forger tattoo be a supporter item ?
Any of those things could work.

^
Interesting. If a high level tattoo user runs an NCB, a forger can cover the tattoo leveling for the NCBer while the NCBer runs the NCB. Thus, the big tattoo is still being leveled by the forger while the player can run his NCB with no/little loss to level!

Forging tattoo would be so sweet! Just be sure it's non-inkable though. That would ruin the whole concept. Heck, make it the new supporter item... we've been on this current one so long I can't remember what it is. Or have we stopped introducing new supporter items what with the Special Items Store?

The big thing of it being a tattoo would be that it is a character based item rather than a minion based one.

Then why don't you believe us? Forging efficiency is determined by MPR. so a small character cannot forge as fast as a big character.

When you have 1 huge character and 1 small character, when forging with the small character it generates much less progress than with your huge character.

Nemeritz:
"A forging tattoo. It only grows when you forge and it is of course limited by your MTL. Using it when forging gives a bonus of some sort to forging. growth rate could be like 10 or 20% of your NW increase."

I suggested something "almost similiar" (in another thread), except it had been way less overpowered than 10-20% (20% is insane imo) , at least for the first years of forging ;). But the general idea was to get a character bound bonus to forging based on how much NW you've allready forged into armor/weapons/specific weapons/armors etc etc.
With a wide suggestion of how detailed the bonus could be. I think it would make forging way more exciting and fresh :)

Sorry for wall of text but its good stuff and you should all read it.

Fighting with over 50% challenge bonus gives you approximately 15% more money than forging at 75% NW difference --no training by the character and a constant average of 50% Challenge bonus, and the forging money earned was independent of actual completion of + or x, rather dependant on the percentage of total NW forged in 1000 BA (tested by myself a long time ago-- don't have the data anymore) per 1000 BA. (The forging was on an item with ~1.00 effeciency---guess what, most items have less). The study that I did was in an economic clan (so devoid of any clan bonus, I'm not even sure if the clan bonus gives $ bonus or just exp having not been in one for 3 years or so).

A 20% bonus to forging would not be 'imba' because this only offsets the money difference by 5%. Since forging does not net any exp gain, your BA is half as useful as fighting characters. While it is true that you can forge your own stuff thus meaning that your BA spent goes directly into YOUR NW (rather than ~75% back) This still does not offset the economic benefits of fighting (especially with higher challenge bonuses) Assuming the challenge bonus to rewards formula is linear, (if it wasnt then fighting would net SIGNIFICANTLY more money than forging/BA as bonus increases) then fighting is clearly better than forging.

Now if forging was never meant to be preformed long term, then why include it in the first place? Most of the NW differences that are worth forging for or getting a forger for is high enough that it would take at least 1 week for the highest rated forger to finish (I'm talking NW differences greater than 2.5M)
Now lets say something significant like 20M nw increase, then you are talking significantly more time. Not to mention that if you are forging your own stuff, lets say for a NCB like I am, then you cannot do your NCB and are in a state of 'pause.'

In my own humble opinion, forgers should be paid at some percentage+15%-20%, thus covering forging fees, which are normally not covered by consumers of the forging business (thus meaning that forgers actual profit is somewhere around 60% NW difference after forging fees.

Now the forging tattoo: it would have to scale to the character otherwise it would be totally pointless as a tattoo-why not make it a pair of boots then or 'forging gloves.' Instead, you should get a bonus similar to (tattoo level)/(max tattoo level) X some fixed percentage (I would say 30%). This way it scales for huge MPR characters whose tattoos are way below MTL, which is awesome for the forging market because it means at lower MPRs you can be more competitive (inversely it affects the character market because now top mpr sellouts will go for less (less demand) because forgers will have less need for them).

ALSO this has the implication that BA spent in the forge will produce exp--which I believe should not be given to the character and its minions.

This would call for a new brand of exp to be created--tattoo exp. For fighting it would just be the exp gained from battle, but for forging it should be accumulated after you finish a cycle and equal to the exp you would gain from fighting, adjusted for challenge bonus in a way similar to this: Constant (0-100) +Forging Efficiency Function, where the forging efficiency function would be defined as forging efficiency (FE) approaches .5 or 50%, the forging efficiency function would approach (100-Constant) and as the FE approaches 1.5 (I dont think off the top of my head there are any efficiencies higher than 1.5 excluding the X on a weapon) the forging efficiency function would approach (Constant-other thing which im too tired to figure out right now as its 2 AM). This would have to be adjusted for weapon X, so I would recommend having the cycle for X weapons to be adjusted for a set amount of BA which is greater than 1 actual cycle (like if it takes 10 BA for a 1M mpr forger to increase the X by 5, then the cycle used in forging efficiency would be like 30 BA), making it easier to get the forging efficiency formula.

So that would be a rough estimate of forging challenge bonus (people would love to forge hods then! winkwink) which is probably clownshoes wrong because I'm so tired right now (maybe i will look back and adjust it and do the math when I'm less tired, or you guys can for me).

The tattoo would also allow forgers to be more competitive if they ever chose to fight, because they could just reink the tat (which is a reason they should be inkable) instead of having to buy one. The tattoo is currently the other HUGE difference between forging and fighting. You could fight an NCB and at the end of it you have this HUGE tat which you can sell for obscene amount of USD/CBD while those forgers are sitting there like 'Damn wish I had one of those!"

Anyway there are really good ideas and analysis there I promise (maybe tomorrow I can make it sound better and make more sense, but I'm gonna post it now)