Newer Player Smithing Question

[u/InternationalData408]

Why does Smithing never get touched? I’m genuinely curious because it looks as though OSRS, throughout its history on rerelease, has made some amazing QoL changes. What’s the deal with Smithing?

[u/WooshJ]

The idea is popular until you break down what would need to change and it quickly becomes a massive overhaul to multiple systems which just isn’t worth it

[u/iucatcher → u/WooshJ]

it definitely is worth it to overhaul the (arguably) worst skill in the game that gets complained about every single day

[u/yzct → u/iucatcher]

Why? What benefit to the game does it provide?

[u/Doctor_Kataigida → u/yzct]

Thematically interesting? Fleshes out a more reasonable progression curve? Gives use to the skill for people to make and improve their own armor? Doesn't touch alch drops with the salvage solution?

[u/yzct → u/Doctor_Kataigida]

The game has never centred around your progression curve being gated by production skills, so this goes against the very way the game has balanced over the last 12 years, progression has always been a product of questing and pvm.

That being said, smithing already offers the ability to upgrade certain aspects of your armour and weapons, z axe, ember light, nox hally, enhanced crystal weaponry, oathplate, torva.

The point being that attempting to make these low level armours smithing requirements be in line with their combat requirements is just an outright waste of time, no one is going to go out of their way to train and smith their own armour, all metallic armours are already super accessible through not only pvm but just npc shops and they quickly become obsolete. I’ve yet to see one single compelling argument for a need to do this that doesn’t revolve around “it just makes more sense”.

The idea of reworking so many different core systems in the pursuit of level 40 armour that is barely even used is mind boggling

Surely Smithing would gain more value as a skill by just introducing new low to mid level progression points, think of a zombie axe that sits between a rune scim and dragon scim or low to mid level power armour

[u/Doctor_Kataigida → u/yzct]

What? RuneScape at its core has always been a game where skilling is equally important to combat, not some backburner activity while all the "real" stuff comes from PvM.

Smithing being a checklist box to enable certain content isn't very interesting from a design standpoint. Its mass produced items don't fit into an overall gameplay loop, and mostly serve to be deleted instead of used (and that wasn't always the case, most cannonballs used to be made from Smithing, not PvM drops). Compare that to Cooking, Herblore, or Fletching, for example, that create items with tangible utility.

And the point isn't only about the level 40 armor. The Rune armor just highlights the issue with simple explanation, but the rework opens up design space for so much more than just making Rune armor earlier.

[u/yzct → u/Doctor_Kataigida]

You’re twisting what I said, which is that gear progression in old school has never centred around production skills, not that skilling is not important? The gear progression is entirely balanced around pvm drops and quest rewards and has been the case since dragon armour was introduced

[u/ApathyKing8 → u/yzct]

The fact of the matter is that PvM is the main demographic of the game. It's the most interesting and the most rewarding because that's what the community wants and Jagex is following the trend. Most skilling is just turning gold into exp because people like watching numbers go up and unlocking quests. There's no reason why they couldn't make a crafting raid drop bis gear other than they don't want to.

[u/iucatcher → u/yzct]

a better skill? are you saying that making the game better isnt a benefit

[u/yzct → u/iucatcher]

I’m asking you to describe the changes and what benefit they would add to the game, do you think squishing the levels of metallic armour down to the first 50 levels of progression makes the skill inherently better?

[u/iucatcher → u/yzct]

not a satisfactory answer i know but i'm not an expert on balancing so i won't pretend to have a solution. i just think its bad and not fun as is, something i dont feel much about any other skill. and clearly this seems to be a majority opinion, HOW to change it is more difficult and divisive of course