I am too stupid to read, give me an abridged version:
Alchemist, Squire, and Pardoners are bad because everyone just undercuts each other and nobody profits. This happens because it’s impossible to make your services better than other people’s services. Everything should scale with stats and/or Levels or Stats, so that people will be forced to level their characters if they want to make cash.
Version for people who aren’t lazy to read:
Introduction
Squire, Alchemist, and Pardoner. Those 3 market-focused classes have their stalls set up everywhere in the towns, and even on Field Maps. It’s a really convenient system, but it’s also extremely flawed.
What’s the major flaw in the current service-selling system? It’s the fact that it’s impossible to make your products better than the other seller’s products. And because of this, the only way to make your products sell is to be cheaper, which leads to one person undercutting another and, after enough time, people are selling potions/repairs/refines/roasts for 10 silver profit or less, which means everyone wasted their time making those characters in the first place.
The solution: Level and Stat Scaling. If you are able to make your items better than the other sellers, you can sell them at a premium price, and people WILL buy them.
Let’s take a look at how to improve each class:
Squire
Some of Squire’s skills scale with INT, but not in the correct ways to make them attractive. Because Swordsmen lack any sort of non-STR scaling, and because INT scaling is actually really interesting for a Swordsman, this idea should be worked on and improved. DEX scaling should also be a thing.
-Repair
Currently only a function of the skill level and attribute. Every Job Level of Squire should increase durability by one. That means a Squire3 could repair SkillLevel+45 durability over the max(up to 60), while a Squire1 only SkillLevel+15(up to 20). Squire1s will still be able to charge slightly more than NPC price, while Squire2s and 3s can charge a premium for repairs. Granted that a Squire3 wishes to dump 1/3 of all his skill points into Repair.
Result: Any Squire can choose to spec into an ubber-repair shop, regardless of whether he chose to be a Town Merchant or a Combat Squire. However, this comes at the cost of dumping valuable points into a service that, ultimately, doesn’t bring THAT much benefit.
-Weapon Maintenance
Currently, the skill scales amazingly with skill levels, and scales on the number of max hits with INT. The main issue is that, even at level 1, the base amount of hits you can perform before the enhancement expires is so high that it’s impossible to hit that cap before the 1h max duration ends. On top of that, each point of INT only increases that limit by ONE. That’s 1 stat point wasted into a stat that does nothing, just to get 1 extra use that you’ll never need. Base number of max hits is 2750 at Lv1 and 6250 at Lv15.
Obviously, every refine of the same level/attribute is the exact same, so no Squire is better than the other, except for SkillLevels. So how do we properly fix this?
Duration: Scale with Job Level. The base value of 1 hour, plus an extra minute for every Squire Job Level. That’s up to 1h15m for a Squire1, and 1h45m for a Squire3.
Max Hits: Scale very well with INT, and reduce the base amount each level gives. The logic here is that, if you buy the service from a Squire if no INT investment, the enhancement will end way, way before the max duration is up. However, a Combat Squire(with only combat stats, like DEX/STR/CON) doesn’t have to worry about this, because his party can take a 15 second break every 30 minutes to re-apply the buff. Merchant Squires will need INT, while Combat Squire do not.
Damage Bonus: Scale 1 extra damage with DEX. This opens up all sort of possibilities. A Combat Squire can Spec heavily into DEX, giving his party short-duration, but easily re-appliable buff that increases damage significantly. That enables Squires to be more than just tanky taunt-bots, making them very desireable in any party. For Merchant Squires, they need to balance INT and DEX, giving them the option to sell High Int Low Dex(long duration, less damage) or High Dex Low Int(high damage, less duration).
-Armor Maintenance
What an awful skill. Only 1 defense per skill level? You get more def from refining a Lv1 equipment than this. And just like Weapon Repair, it has INT scaling on max-hits, while having a stupidly high base amount.
Max Duration: Scale with Job Level. Same logic as Weapon Maintenance.
Max Hits: Scale with INT. Same logic as Weapon Maintenance.
Bonus DEF: This part of the skill needs to be reworked entirely. The DEF bonus must be a multiplier of the StarCount of the item, for one. Then you need to have a stat(Either DEX or CON) scale with the def bonus. Because you can enhance several pieces of armor at once, increasing the scaling on this skill too high will mean players become able to reach stupidly high levels of DEF, so it needs to be done in moderation. Furthermore, it needs to work for Bracelets/Necklaces, increasing Magic DEF instead.
Obviously, for all Squire Shops, the window should inform the buyer exactly the Max Duration, the Max Hit Count, and the Magnitude of everything before buying. Else you have no idea which Squire is actually better.
-Penalty Reduction
What’s the point of this skill? With a Squire around, you don’t need to worry about durability loss, high level people don’t walk around with Gems in their inventory, and the Silver Loss only happens on a handful of maps. And even then, those reductions are absolutely insignificant. What’s a -10% reduction on durability reductions compared to the 5 Rank7 skill points you need to invest on this skill?
This is easily the worst buff in the entire game. Might as well just remove it and give Squire3 something else entirely.
Pardoner
Selling scrolls and opening up spell shops. Other than having max level skills and using monster gems, you can’t really make your buffs significantly better than other Spell Shops and/or Scrolls.
The Solution: Scaling Durations, Magnitudes, and Max Counts with stats wouldn’t be good for Pardoners. The number of available skills to scroll/sell isn’t so large, and they already give very large benefits. And unlike Squires, Pardoners actually have skills to use in combat. To improve the value of your shop’s skills, durations and max-hit counts should scale with Pardoner Base and Job Levels. This will incentive people to take extra levels of Pardoner, as well as actually levelling their Pardoners.
Alchemist
Any Alchemist will tell you how Alchemists are simply not worth making. There’s a huge crowd of them making potions and selling services, all of which get cheaper and cheaper every single day. Once again, this is all due to one reason: You can’t make your potions/services better than the other guy’s potions/services.
-Tincturing
Every Lv5 potion is the same, and every Lv10 potion is the same. While crafting, nothing else other than Skill Level, matters. Easy solution: Base Level and Stat Scaling. Job Level scaling is not necessary, for every Alchemist is expected to max this skill always, meaning it’s already built-in on the SkilLevel scaling.
INT should increase the Base Healing power of the potion. CON increases the Healing Over Time power of potions. Base Level should increase both.
The results from this would be quite interesting: A High INT Alchemist is able to craft potions with a highly explosive healing power, while a High CON Alchemist is able to make potions with less instant-healpower, but which recover more HP over time. And better yet, Base Levels would increase the power of potions overall. Alchemists would stop being money-making alts, because unless you’re actually high level, the potions won’t sell well.
Other stats to scale with different potions work, too.
DEX scaling on Movement Speed Potions and Critical Potions, enabling Alchemists to craft very strong Crit Enhancing and Movement Speed increasing pots.
STR Scaling on Attack Potions, giving a huge boost to physical atk.
SPR Scaling on SP potions, increasing the explosive healing power of SP potions.
Recovery potions will still be the bread-and-butter, but investing on non-combat stats will enable Alchemists to craft boosters that can be sold for very high prices. Imagine being the only Alchemist on the server that is able to craft Movement Speed +10 potions or +300 p.atk potions. You could charge 50k~100k for them, and people would gladly buy them.
There are limitless possibilities for each of the crafting classes, those are just some ideas. Everything on this game feels so deeply inspired, but the implementation is so very bad. Instead of undercutting each other to the point where nobody makes a profit, you could make your shop and items competitive by spec’ing specifically for a particular craft, or by levelling. Worse yet are “money making alts” that sit in town and do nothing forever, because base/job levels simply do not scale with anything for crafting.
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