This is in reference to: viewtopic.php?f=51&p=317830#p317830
Another suggestion has already propped up to attempt to address the incoming nerf to the pixie familiar, but I want to touch on the issue as a whole: open lock and its affect on the economy.
Locked treasure chests have been a staple and iconic portion of D&D. However, PnP has directly catered to that renown because parties would more than likely have a rogue or rogue-esque character within a permanent party. This however is not the case for a persistent, online world. Regardless, this is not a new subject matter and has been spoken on time and time again throughout the years on this subforum.
What's are the issues?
The issues are multifaceted but it's a domino effect, nonetheless.
I am bringing it up again as I personally feel it's a topic that hasn't been properly addressed still but now has been exacerbated further by the pixie change. Why? The usual dismissal of the open lock issue is that you just own a gear set with open/disable lock on it. The ones who griped about this were martials, so they tended to inherently have Strength or geared for Strength to increase their damage; aside from Hexblade and Spellsword, spellcasters don't have this luxury.
Currently, the most impressive and common use of open lock is runic chests. Admittedly, a lot of spellcasters can solo runic dungeons. Regardless of opinion, objectively this is a good in one case. Why? Despite the game's age we have an ever-growing playerbase and characters that are being cycled through. These characters rely on runic materials to gain the deliberately planned balancing in PvP. Runic materials are already random; limiting how commonly runic materials are found will inevitably lead to the hyperinflation we initially saw with runic materials when artefacts were cycled out in favor of runic materials. We still even face obscene inflation today, especially with the nerfs to gold earning (though, that's meant for an entirely different topic).
There are five classes that have access to Open Lock; three are locked behind applications. That leaves Rogue and Vigilante. Rogue is in and has been in an unattractive spot. Vigilante has been looking pretty good but that's a single class trying to serve the entire server.
How Open Lock should work
Open Lock should act similarly to skills like Sail and Climb; it's a nonessential but highly incentivized skill. Dungeons should have two means of "unlocking" chests: defeating enemies, accessing a key on the enemy that unlocks a room and all the chests inside are unlocked, or a room is hidden, can be located with Search or Spot and all the chests inside must be unlocked with Open Lock. I am of the opinion that Knock should be further nerfed or entirely removed to compensate this change.
This gives martials and spellcasters a means to earning gold without relying on a rogue-esque character, yet rogue-esque characters can still double-dip and be a true bonus to a party rather than a necessary evil.
Was the pixie nerf needed?
I could argue yes in the right situation. I think the current situation of the server has me obviously leaning towards no.
As pointed out in the suggestion aforementioned (which you can find here: viewtopic.php?f=15&p=317832&sid=af3d874 ... ac#p317832), familiars are bad. People see them and immediately treat them as wet sponges whether your familiar is a hell hound, yeth hound, or will-o'-wisp. There are objectively only three decent familiars: pixie, pseudodragon, and eyeball.
One of the reasons given for the pixie nerf was the hope to see other familiars used. I definitely would have agreed with this before the -familiar command came out and allowed pixies to be transformed into other creatures. However, it's a non-case now with the fantastic addition of -familiar.