As the skill currently is I'm going to have to vote no.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to a new skill, but as it is the rewards are just too unbalanced for me to stomach. Artisan axes & pickaxes would devalue their current equivalents as all of them seem to have increased chance for gems & birdnests. This feature should be either limited to the best version that requires dragon equivalents of item to create or be removed entirely.
Other rewards I have problem with are new combination runes and mining necklaces. Former would either devalue current combination runes or be utterly useless whereas latter would likely deflate ore/bar prices even further with bonus ores. They are already cheap as dirt, we certainly don't need an update to deflate their price any further!
As they are totems seem like a mixed bag: they could potentially add variety to skilling if pitfalls of easy xp gains are avoided. Fish fillets are another idea that has potential, though you should lower the amount of HP they heal by 1 or 2 from equivalent item to avoid devaluing them. Chance to get boost would make up from the HP loss in certain situations without deflating current food items.
I definately like the idea about player-made temporary shortcuts & 2h-crossbow and I hope that latter at least could be polled separately in the case skill doesn't pass.
Other potential problems with Artisan as it is seems to be that it would once again boost either boost gathering skills at the expense of production skills or end up as buyable cape for those with enough money to pay for raw materials. For example, if players can just grind artisan with gathering task such as fishing/mining/wc, why should they even bother with production ones? Or if they can just do gathering tasks, wealthier among us can simply store loads of raw materials to banks and use them for fast xp.
This problem could be solved with artisan-specific materials for tasks that can't be traded, but that idea has it's own can of worms
10-Jul-2014 20:05:31
