Would anyone be interested if I added a deed to make artifact weapons levelable?  I would probably make them available for the artifact credits, ed and auctions.  Anyone like this idea?
 

There are some artifact weapons that have always been almost good to almost great.  I think making them levelable would be cool.  I think there might be a balance issue due to some of weapons already being fairly powerful.
Yes that was my fear also, but list any that you feel would be overpowered more than what you can craft as a base levelable weapon?  We would have to limit it to the standard lists of artys like the doom artys, tokuno artys and paragon artys anyways

I love the idea.  Right now many of the artifact are essentially useless because a levalable can easily exceed them

If this gets implemented i think leveling an artifact should have 75 max levels or non repairable or something. basically i think crafted weps should have an advantage still. at least in the beginning..... make sure we keep the balance.
Yes we have tossed around many ideas to keep the balance and make the crafting the best.  We also thought to make the artys have no repair, cursed, limit levels, select list of items etc

I could see the limitations on levels but no no no on non-repairable.  Why go to all the trouble to level on something with a limited lifespan?

I looked over the Doom, Tokuno, and Paragon artys.  Tokuno has a couple majors that are borderline, Darkened sky and Sword of the Stampede.  Other then those borderline Tokuno looks pretty decent for this.


Paragon artys are trash (why we have a trash barrel for them ) and if some one can level one up and make it desirable then great.


Doom artys...  Breath of the Dead for sure if leveled up would generate a lot of drama from the PvP crowd.  The doom artys are basically trash with crafted/leveled weapons as competition but if placed on the levelable list might drowned out the other crafted options.


Custom weapons made levelable would wreck any kind of crafting or runic market (esp if the weapons I made ever get added).


If the weapons are made to be not repairable(no self repair) or cursed I can ensure I would never use one of those deeds.  There is too much effort that gets put into leveling a weapon for it to be stolen or wear out just as you get it the way you like it.  Limiting levels was some thing I thought of on the way to work today.  The problem with that is some of the artifacts will need more levels to be useful then others.  A cavorting club would need about 150 levels to be a great weapon while a breath of the dead only needs about 25-30.  I think making a select list of weapons that the deeds will go onto will be good.  It is some thing that can be controlled and more weapons can be added to the list later.  This also allows for custom weapons to be generated to be decent with the ability for players to make them levelable (power in the hands of the staff instead of waiting to see what exploits happen at the hands of the players).


Those are my thoughts Dante.

Personally I like the levelable weapon system and would rather not see any levelable artifacts in the game at all. Making crafted weapons and armor obsolete makes the game heavily biased toward more powerful groups and leaves newer players struggling to keep up, forced to join a guild, or simply unable to compete. Crafting had been a huge part of Ultima Online, and the introduction of artifacts nearly killed smithing altogether.
Levelable weapons changed that and made smithing a viable career again. Levelable armor would help a great deal in that respect, but artifacts make armorcrafting almost pointless as it is. Adding more artifacts just compounds this problem as I see it, and making them levelable would only serve to push the balance back toward combat and farming and leave crafters once again with a severely limited skillset option.
We should remember that this is a game and that crafting was originally a huge part of it. It should be a major part, but as it is, smithing is being pushed back into obscurity as it was on OSI. If you want to focus on combat, good for you, but if you want be a crafter then be prepared to have a role limited to making pretty stuff to complement the Godly crap you dredge up from a dungeon,. Or worse, the stuff you get from just walking around killing random mobs.
We have custom ores, custom logs, custom leather, and all of it will be utterly pointless if you add leveling to artifacts.

might want to re-read the thread Punnikin.

their intention is to keep crafted weapons at an advantage over levelable artifact. so this wont make blacksmith crafting pointless.

i would imagine that levelable artifacts would be intended for players that have not yet  or do not want to gather runics and ore. but at the cost of having an inferior weapon.

crafted weapons will still have more potential once one posses the skill to craft them so it wont be ruined.
 
as long as they carefully implement this content (which im sure they will) i think this would be a great addition.

Artifacts weren't supposed to replaced crafted gear in OSI days either, buy we saw what happened with that. The players wanted more and more with less effort, and it wasn't long before crafting nearly died there as well. I read the post, and I see the result of artifacts in the game as it stands. I would prefer to push for more of a balance.
Well we are past that point, most artys are worthless when you gear up and craft, so we have 2 choices, make the artys more functional or recycle them for credits

what if you guys create an "evolution deed" that will make the artifacts in question into an "evolution artifact". basically apply the deed and then as you use it it will gain additional stats automatically. this way the end stats can be left in the staffs hands to keep the weapons from becoming OP. possibly have a variety of end stats for a particular weapon to keep it interesting. make a quest chain to go along with evolving it to keep it on par with levelable weapons.

I have thought about this a bit and here is what I have come up with. 

There are already tons of shards that have overblown/exploding artifacts that tip the balance of the over all system to where crafted made weapons have no place on the shard.  I fear this will happen here as well if you start to head down this path, if you are open to the idea why not create a completely new system to handle "what to do with artifacts?"

1.  Allow artifacts to be broken down/smelted into a raw component.
2.  Not every artifact breaks down the same. 
3.  You can either at this point expand the socket system that already exists or add something beyond, allows you to apply 1 of these such components to a weapon, armor, jewelry type thing.


Maybe it is just me but slapping leveling on artifacts seems a bit.. bla especially when you look at how you have changed so many other things to make this shard unique.

Nice idea

Bill The  Cat

Good idea Kane. i especailly like point #3.

Maybe we could just expand upon the paragon artifact recycling that is already in place. We could get a standard artifact credit for any basic artifact, a legendary artifact credit for the good artifacts, and a mythic credit for the really powerful artifacts.
Then we could just expand on what is available to purchase with these credits. Also maybe have some unique items or augments that aren't available anywhere else.

Expansion of the artifact credit system has already been planned (giving different types of credits).  The issue at hand is with the vast amount of custom artifacts in Evolution this is going to be a slow process to make sure things are balanced out.  Also several custom mobs drop some of the different artifacts, like mobs in the rock dungeon drops serpent fangs, frostbringers, and blade of insanity.  As different barrels are added we need to ensure an exploitable drop is not still in place (nights kiss was removed from the rock dungeon loot table when the artifact credit was added).


The artifact credit was a rush add on Monday.  I literally coded and submitted it at about 5 PM, it was reviewed an hour or so later, and it was live on the server at 10 PM.  This did not give a lot of time for custom items to be added to the reward list as I am sure the items and prices are changing on the vendor stone possibly daily.  The upside is I coded the artifact barrel to have the turn in list changed, items added, or items deleted easily and the currency is a very simple item to code.  This means new barrels can be added at literally any time.  The rewards are what is going to take time to work through and balance out.


Dante is basically looking to add a unique item that could cause a power shift in weapons and he is looking for player base feed back.  I still think on a select list of weapons it could make some interesting weapon choices (for stuff that is otherwise unused) but as a blanket fan out would wreck game balance.


Personally I applaud the Evolution staff for polling the players for ideas on stuff like this.  Player feed back that gets turned into game fact is something that Evolution has that large production games do not have.  In my ~140 days since I started to play on Evolution I have seen several player suggestions become in game changes or additions.


I hope the artifact credit system gets expanded to include more barrels and more items.  I hope the rewards become something that add another level of customization to players gear.  The more customization players have the less likely players are to be cookie cutter copies of one another with the mentality of "you have this gear or you suck".

Expansion of the artifact credit system has already been planned (giving different types of credits).  The issue at hand is with the vast amount of custom artifacts in Evolution this is going to be a slow process to make sure things are balanced out.  Also several custom mobs drop some of the different artifacts, like mobs in the rock dungeon drops serpent fangs, frostbringers, and blade of insanity.  As different barrels are added we need to ensure an exploitable drop is not still in place (nights kiss was removed from the rock dungeon loot table when the artifact credit was added).


The artifact credit was a rush add on Monday.  I literally coded and submitted it at about 5 PM, it was reviewed an hour or so later, and it was live on the server at 10 PM.  This did not give a lot of time for custom items to be added to the reward list as I am sure the items and prices are changing on the vendor stone possibly daily.  The upside is I coded the artifact barrel to have the turn in list changed, items added, or items deleted easily and the currency is a very simple item to code.  This means new barrels can be added at literally any time.  The rewards are what is going to take time to work through and balance out.


Dante is basically looking to add a unique item that could cause a power shift in weapons and he is looking for player base feed back.  I still think on a select list of weapons it could make some interesting weapon choices (for stuff that is otherwise unused) but as a blanket fan out would wreck game balance.


Personally I applaud the Evolution staff for polling the players for ideas on stuff like this.  Player feed back that gets turned into game fact is something that Evolution has that large production games do not have.  In my ~140 days since I started to play on Evolution I have seen several player suggestions become in game changes or additions.


I hope the artifact credit system gets expanded to include more barrels and more items.  I hope the rewards become something that add another level of customization to players gear.  The more customization players have the less likely players are to be cookie cutter copies of one another with the mentality of "you have this gear or you suck".

Love the idea!

I really hope we stay away from levelable artifacts.  I personally see craftable weapons going to the way of the Do Do bird if that was to happen.  Love LOVE the idea of salvageable artys though.  Maybe a resource for some wicked awesome new craftables or something along those lines would be great.