Runes and Pliers

Versalean

Infini-Last Pliers: 75 credits

   - A one-time-use version of the Pliers of Clangorum.

   - See also: Pliers of Clangorum.

Pliers of Clangorum: 1500 credits

   - These pliers are the ultimate artifact insofar that they

     can be used on other artifacts. They allow the owner to freely

     remove artifact runes (including weapon runes) from their own

     items so they can be moved onto others.

   - Syntax: DETACH RUNE <number> from <object>

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Dear Godmin,

Okay, so my understanding is that the prices of these artefacts are a relic of the previous combat system (of which I know absolutely nothing). Everybody I've talked to agrees that the cost of pliers is completely out of whack with what they do in the present systems. Now, instead of paying 75 credits a pop, or 1500 credits(! - that's 50% more than the changeling cameo and the divine spark) for infinite usage, I could just trade in the Runes, rebuy them, and put them on a new item.

Issue is that I can only think of two groups of people that are going to need to do that: 1) n00bs who accidentally put the Runes in a sub-optimal (hold that thought) configuration*; 2) People who want to change their jewelry/clothing getup for almost purely RP reasons. For reasons I've noted in the footnote, I'm not particularly concerned about group 1. But charging group 2 such a price for RPness seems out of whack with the general model of IRE (where combat drives credit sales - I'm not advocating that model, just observing it) and (much more importantly) just horrendously expensive in real terms.

My proposed solutions:

a) Substantially cut the price of pliers. I'm talking a 2/3 reduction in cost, and honestly even then I would say that the Pliers of Clangorum would be bordering on too much at 500cr. 

b) Change the rune system. MKOs was a little better: Removing a rune from an item destroyed the item (rather than trading in the rune as is the case here).

Much love,
Versadude

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*Give credit where it's due: having been that noob myself, I wrote an ISSUE explaining that I'd misunderstood the Rune system, and my credits were immediately refunded. So I'm totally not implying that the Godmin are not trying to trick noobs into wasting credits.

Kagato

The pliers have use beyond just weapons.  I know people who have purchased a single Great Rune of Unlocked Potential (cost 300 credits) and use/d the pliers to transfer it across several cubes or kegs to temporarily expand the cube/keg to hold more liquid or charges, since when you remove the rune it does not expel/destroy what it is already holding.  I forget how much liquid a keg with a L3 rune holds, but a cube holds a whopping 6000 charges.

Each time you trade in one of the abovementioned runes, you would lose 100 credits (200 credit trade-in), making the infini-last pliers a better deal by 25 credits, or the clangorum pliers pay themselves off after 15 uses.

Enya

That's probably not intended behavior, tbh. Also, it's still wayyyyyyyy too much to pay for such a niche benefit 

Versalean

Kagato said:

The pliers have use beyond just weapons.  I know people who have purchased a single Great Rune of Unlocked Potential (cost 300 credits) and use/d the pliers to transfer it across several cubes or kegs to temporarily expand the cube/keg to hold more liquid or charges, since when you remove the rune it does not expel/destroy what it is already holding.  I forget how much liquid a keg with a L3 rune holds, but a cube holds a whopping 6000 charges.

Each time you trade in one of the abovementioned runes, you would lose 100 credits (200 credit trade-in), making the infini-last pliers a better deal by 25 credits, or the clangorum pliers pay themselves off after 15 uses.

Unless and until I hear the godmin say definitely, I'd say that's 10/10 bug abuse.

Moi

Kagato said:

The pliers have use beyond just weapons.  I know people who have purchased a single Great Rune of Unlocked Potential (cost 300 credits) and use/d the pliers to transfer it across several cubes or kegs to temporarily expand the cube/keg to hold more liquid or charges, since when you remove the rune it does not expel/destroy what it is already holding.  I forget how much liquid a keg with a L3 rune holds, but a cube holds a whopping 6000 charges.

Each time you trade in one of the abovementioned runes, you would lose 100 credits (200 credit trade-in), making the infini-last pliers a better deal by 25 credits, or the clangorum pliers pay themselves off after 15 uses.

What possible benefit are they deriving from spending even 75 credits to add 5000 charges to an energy cube? Is it for a shop? Even if you generously assume 15 gold of pure profit per charge sold, and that this happened back when credits cost 5000 gold each, you're losing something like 60 credits of value every time you do that. At modern credit prices and more plausible profits-per-charge, you're looking at a net loss of around 95% per cube. If the objective is to just have a bunch of charges on hand for personal use, you could buy a hundred fully charged cubes for the price of even a single step of that transaction.

Enya

Yep! The same goes for any trade artifact that doesn't produce special products (or even the ones that do, probably).

Xenthos

Versalean said:

Kagato said:

The pliers have use beyond just weapons.  I know people who have purchased a single Great Rune of Unlocked Potential (cost 300 credits) and use/d the pliers to transfer it across several cubes or kegs to temporarily expand the cube/keg to hold more liquid or charges, since when you remove the rune it does not expel/destroy what it is already holding.  I forget how much liquid a keg with a L3 rune holds, but a cube holds a whopping 6000 charges.

Each time you trade in one of the abovementioned runes, you would lose 100 credits (200 credit trade-in), making the infini-last pliers a better deal by 25 credits, or the clangorum pliers pay themselves off after 15 uses.

Unless and until I hear the godmin say definitely, I'd say that's 10/10 bug abuse.

Admin have actually in the past said that it is bug abuse to do so, it's why I don't use my pliers to move my rune around my various cubes.

I just enchant my runed cube and then transfer the charges to other cubes (same behaviour as if I was selling the charges to myself in a shop), which means my shop cubes don't get the 6k charge cap but also that I'm not abusing unintended behaviour.

Technically when you remove the rune the things should lose their bonus charges and go down to their new cap, but I think it wasn't implemented because that's a -lot- of charges to destroy.

Kagato

Point taken.  Would explain why I have not seen it in a long time.  What Xenthos described is also pretty much what I do - I have a single cube with an L1 rune on it that I fill to 2000 charges, then recharge a couple of 1000 charge cubes off that, before refilling the runed cube again.

Moi said:

What possible benefit are they deriving from spending even 75 credits to add 5000 charges to an energy cube? Is it for a shop? Even if you generously assume 15 gold of pure profit per charge sold, and that this happened back when credits cost 5000 gold each, you're losing something like 60 credits of value every time you do that. At modern credit prices and more plausible profits-per-charge, you're looking at a net loss of around 95% per cube. If the objective is to just have a bunch of charges on hand for personal use, you could buy a hundred fully charged cubes for the price of even a single step of that transaction.

Personally I got the L1 rune on my cube more for convenience than anything else since it makes a cube non-decay while the rune is attached. Back when I got it, Jewellers were a rarity in Celest, so if your cube happened to go poof at an inopportune time, you either had to hope you caught one awake or potentially be at a disadvantage if a revolt or wildnodes occurred.

Moi

That's pretty much the whole point of the rune for me too, you want it so that your cube is non-decay. The extra charges are a nice bonus.

Vivet

I'd rather see the single use cost go down, instead of see an artifact I've held for a long time simply get devalued just because.

That said, a tweak to the system itself wouldn't be out of place either.

Enya

I think it's something like the Gaudy Glamrock: It was always overpriced, but it served to patch an otherwise old and clunky system. Both have stuck around so long because fixing said systems isn't the easiest and there have been bigger fish to fry. With the advent of the ASHOP and normalization of weapons IMO it makes a lot of sense to have the weapon runes (and other runes) be powers you have and invest into items via a customization command, rather than physical runes. 

Xenthos

How many (active) players even have pliers these days?  The things are expensive enough that if the price is modified or the system is changed they would have a refund applied, which is the reason that I think it hasn't really been reviewed.  But I'm unsure how much would actually end up having to be refunded as far as players-who-are-active-and-would-actually-spend-the-refund goes.

Versalean

Vivet said:

I'd rather see the single use cost go down, instead of see an artifact I've held for a long time simply get devalued just because.

That said, a tweak to the system itself wouldn't be out of place either.

Not entirely sure what you mean by this? If you're concerned that you paid 1500 for the pliers and don't want the cost to drop, the artefact's trade-in value is based on the price you paid, not the current cost. You wouldn't 'lose' a dime. As for 'just because', that simply isn't fair. The systems surrounding the artefact (i.e., weaponry) have changed, so it isn't remotely unreasonable to review what the thing is worth in the present system. Apologies if I'm completely misunderstood your post!

Kagato

What Versalean said.  I purchased a pantograph during the promotion where it started out at 40% discount and each purchase reduced the discount by something like 4%, it still remembers my purchase as being that value, rather than the full value.  I'd be willing to guess it would work the other way around too (it would remember you paid 1500 credits and would give you 1000 credits if you traded it in)

If they lowered the value of the artifact and the purchase value was less than what you'd get as a trade-in, then I could understand giving a partial refund (complete refund would, IMO, have to be subject to how long one has had the artifact for - I'd be a bit less than happy if someone had the artifact for something like 5 or 6 years, getting plenty of use out of it, then gets a full refund due to the mechanics of it changing)

Ayisdra

Versalean said:

Vivet said:

I'd rather see the single use cost go down, instead of see an artifact I've held for a long time simply get devalued just because.

That said, a tweak to the system itself wouldn't be out of place either.

Not entirely sure what you mean by this? If you're concerned that you paid 1500 for the pliers and don't want the cost to drop, the artefact's trade-in value is based on the price you paid, not the current cost.

This is not true. There are some artifacts that have different values, but generally (and in the past) any drop in value changes the tradein value as well.

Vivet

Versalean said:

Vivet said:

I'd rather see the single use cost go down, instead of see an artifact I've held for a long time simply get devalued just because.

That said, a tweak to the system itself wouldn't be out of place either.

Not entirely sure what you mean by this? If you're concerned that you paid 1500 for the pliers and don't want the cost to drop, the artefact's trade-in value is based on the price you paid, not the current cost. You wouldn't 'lose' a dime. As for 'just because', that simply isn't fair. The systems surrounding the artefact (i.e., weaponry) have changed, so it isn't remotely unreasonable to review what the thing is worth in the present system. Apologies if I'm completely misunderstood your post!

No, it very much will change the value of the artifact I currently hold unless other measures are taken. Example: forging mallet was entirely retired in favour of the Hammer of Clangorum, effectively replacing it while allowing the old to remain and retain its set tradein value indefinitely.

If the Pliers of Clangorum drops to 500 without someone being able to trade in, they lose out on a huge chunk of value - more than they'd get for trading in at that exact instant in time and re-purchasing it after.

These sorts of things need to be accounted for, which you are under the false impression that they might without some sort of intervention or someone speaking up (ie, me, here and now).

I don't disagree that changing the current rune system would be fine, but simply changing the value of the current pliers would be a huge slap in the face to all present owners in the manner you have outlined.

Versalean

Ayisdra said:

Versalean said:

Vivet said:

I'd rather see the single use cost go down, instead of see an artifact I've held for a long time simply get devalued just because.

That said, a tweak to the system itself wouldn't be out of place either.

Not entirely sure what you mean by this? If you're concerned that you paid 1500 for the pliers and don't want the cost to drop, the artefact's trade-in value is based on the price you paid, not the current cost.

This is not true. There are some artifacts that have different values, but generally (and in the past) any drop in value changes the tradein value as well.

Yep, I just checked and what you've said marries up with what's in the helpfile. Apologies! Either here previously or in MKO that it was the other way. My bad.

Ianir

Back in Nov/Dec 2016, we added a system that records the value of the artifact when it was purchased. If you have checked your RETIRE VALUE or the tradein value of an artifact, its value gets locked in if it was purchased before this system was added. If we ever change a value of an artifact, we will lock in its old value for people who have purchased it previously (unless we are changing it from N/A because we forgot to add a tradein value.)

Versalean

No longer relevant in light of what Ianir wrote.

Kagato

Admittedly this is derailing a bit, but it fits in with the perspective of the current conversation.  Achaea recently announced a complete reworking of some of their artifacts, including the ever-popular gem of cloaking. 

Long story short, here is a rundown of what the gem now does:

Gem of Cloaking remains activatable with TULAHUAR, but this gives: 
- Activation removes owner from Who lists.
- 10 minutes concealment and an hour on cooldown.
- This is a per person cooldown and does not stack.
- Gem ownership will always remove the owner's location from Thirdeye.
- The gem functions innately and always when on Treacherous Planes.

They also overhauled one of their BIG (2000cr) artifacts, completely changing what it does, full details can be found here: https://www.achaea.com/news/?game=Achaea&section=Announce&number=4869

Versalean

@Kagato - I'd say that post is 100% on-topic and in fact very relevant to this thread. That said, I would point out that the relevance really isn't clear from what you've written, so anyone who's struggling to join the dots should go ahead and read the linked Announce post.

Versalean

Just want to say this: As an awesome communemate pointed out to me, the changes to Clothing (i.e., HIDE/UNHIDE) actually, for me personally, removes 99% of the issue here. However, I'd argue that it makes the remaining 1% even less defensible. The change makes the pliers even less valuable than before, but also completely eradicates my problem, so mad kudos to the Godmin

/thread