Maigrets wrote:to be honest, even if you disagree with it smithing skill is now canon. if im a lvl 100 smithing thats the same as me being a super amazing no one can match my skill lvl 100 blade. if you have 100 smithing you are a master smith/armor/blade maker. i honestly think you will be shooting yourself in the foot if you limit what the player can do. please make multiple versions one of which being a smithable/temperable version so they will lvl with the rest of the world. There is no reason not to imho. I am also for the ability to re craft an old blade to worn, worn to new.
Just having 100 in a "skill" doesn't make you a master smith. It's just a number in a skill that's broken. As far as canon goes, crafting needs an extreme overhaul before it can be remotely called a good addition to the game and become "canon."
The whole crafting element in Skyrim is just an exploit and as such can cripple your character. That goes for smithing and enchanting. The whole craft a 100+ daggers or enchant a 100 silver rings with petty gems to reach the highest level is stupid to say the least. It's a cheat system to satisfy the casual gamer and has no place in real role playing. If one were actually role playing, how can anyone become a smith, within that role, with a couple of 100 clicks and no real skill elements, requirements or challenge. You shouldn't be able to buy any and all kinds of metals and leathers etc from the vendors except the lower types like iron and steel. Otherwise why even bother having mining axes and ore deposits when you can just spam the vendors.
It's like Bethesda saw requests for these things, copied ideas from other games but had no idea how to implement them. Other, and much older games do it properly with restrictions on when certain levels can be reached and other requisites, like special, hard to obtain materials etc.
I do agree that old blades can be improved by sharpening, (not made new though.) My father used to do it all the time with knives and wood cutting axes etc. He had all the same tools, a grindstone and a forge as he was also a farrier, so it's not unrealistic imo.
The difficulty with this forging vs not forging lies with the different stages of blades as Waalx made them and the different system that Skyrim has as compared to Oblivion where weapons and armour degraded and had to be repaired. Skyrim's system is much more limited in some areas and lacking for it.
Anyway, the higher damage would be my preference if you don't allow tempering, but to counteract getting high level weapons too early they would need to be leveled, and I personally hate level scaling. Or put them in high level dungeons to make it harder to get them. None of these things will matter to the people who will just console add them anyway so of course it's up to you.
Yeah its not a simple problem to solve, and honestly I fee like I'm wasting a little bit too much time on it. Since I went ahead and made them weaker, I'll go for the tempering setup, but I definitely wont go for any kind of reforging.
There was a game I played (that I love) had great roleplay elements related to smithing. There were various smiths in the world, and each one could upgrade your weapon at a basic level, even you could! Each upgrade used upgrade items that were hard to find (rare drops and not often sold). After you reached +5 for the weapon, you would have to "ascend" the weapon. Ascending could only be done by a blacksmith as it would change the nature of the blade. In order to ascend the blade though you would need to get a specific "flame" that the Blacksmith was skilled at using and give it to him/her. They however wouldn't use flames they had no idea how to use.
For example, you could give the magic flame to only the magic blacksmith, and with that magic flame he could turn your basic weapon into a magic blade. But, if you tried to give it to another smith they would say "Well I'd love to take it off your hands, but I'm no good with that kind of flame, ask someone else". It just instilled in me an appreciation for the crafting of an item, where each blade should be crafted by those who know "how" through their careful study of the craft.
Each one of Waalx's blades is crafted with a specific culture behind it you know? The Khajiit blades are made by Khajiit, each with varying influences from two separate Khajiit families. The Nord blades are made by nords, argonians by argonians...and so forth. If you can just jump in the forge and make it, it becomes like "who cares who made this"?
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Also, Maigrets I'm aware some people will just do whatever they want, but you can only try you know? That game I mentioned stayed true as an RPG from the beginning to the end in story, combat, design, everything. Because of that strong hinging on Roleplay and cohesion, people still respect the game highly and play it how it was meant to be played. There were a few exploits here and there, but people tend to avoid using them because of that respect for how great the game is. So essentially I'm hoping to do the same.
Waalx created some amazing work, worthy of a game on its own, so I figure if I treat it with as much care as which it was created, hopefully others will do the same
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As for my work...recently I was just trying to learn more about Skinning and I had to sate my curiousity to see what I could do on my own. I managed to get some cool helms working, but the skinning is not all that good since I'm new at this...but I understand a bit more about "how it works" now. Since my curiousity is sated, I'm going to focus on getting the Gladiator module working next
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