+1 to Fehz, if you make forging optional you have to make normal heating a lot longer to balance it. Add-on idea, though: What if we could use Heat crystals at any time, not only when the weapon is leveled, to accelerate the heating process?

The genius of this suggestion, especially if a value greater than 2.5 is chosen as the multiplier, is that it doesn't make the game go by incredibly quickly. In fact, it hardly changes anything. Think about your battle sprite- did you use heat only on that?

This suggestion is about image- when world of warcraft players were given a sleep system, they hated it because it held them back. So the developers changed it to "extra loot" when your character is fully rested rather than "less loot" when your character is sleep deprived and players loved the optimization aspect of it.

^As I told someone else, the issue with upgrading fire crystals is that I should have to actually do appropriate content to get the fire crystals. Imagine I come to T3, and I already have a full set of 5* gear- all by farming the lower leveled fire crystals... I got through the mission system by getting carried; I asked for "help" and I got it. That isn't how I'd like to see the game played... rather, I'd like to be challenged fairly and rewarded appropriately.

This sounds amazing. I like the idea of it being optional, however if it were to revert I'd want to see it take a pretty good amount of time before it levels up, as opposed to the old system. I hate the new heating system-- first we had so many Radiants that we complained when we got more of them, now we have so many Shinings that all we do is rant about how there's no Radiants left. This would put an end to all of it, as well as still make the Forge system very useful since it could potentially be a huge shortcut to leveling up. I can clearly remember it taking forever to heat 5* gear, so adding this would be absolutely amazing.

+Infinity.

So, to summarize..

The suggested heating system would be reverted to the old one, rebalanced to require more heat than before. This would bring back the more constant method of progression at last.

Increasing the heating curve high enough to simply start warranting the use of Heat Amplifiers. This would finally avert their obsolete functionality.

Due to old heating system being adopted, levels won't be locked once fully heated. That would essentially mean that forging wouldn't require this condition to upgrade weapons and armors, allowing to do so at any time.

However, that also means that a reasonably rich or wealthy player could simply upgrade a piece of equipment to Lv. 10 in one sitting, which poses a problem. To this end, I suggest that OOO changes the Forge into an NPC service feature, similar to Bechamel, Punch and Vise, and slightly increase the cost or simply adds a condition for forging to replace the full-heat requirement.

The bonuses for forging may or may not be changed. The heat bonus and the level skips would be a lot more beneficial this time around.

All in all, I fully intend this idea to make it to the game.

You know, I've been thinking of this too for awhile, and been complaining about it till one of my guildmates pointed me to this post. I've read through all these comments, and honestly? it improved my idea too on this subject. Of course, now I'm seeing quite a few things you guys are saying to 'balance' the idea, and what I don't get is why didn't you guys think to the Battle Sprite lvling system?

Now before you guys think I'm thinking using the crystals for both lvling and boosting, hear me out, cause here's what I'm thinking:

1. Much like the old system, you CAN lvl your gear without crystals, though it would probably take quite a bit longer than without.
2. The crystals would be removed from the supply depot, and you would have to find the materials spread around the Clockworks to make said crystals, or the crystals itself with like a 5% drop rate from normal missions, 10% from Advanced, and 15% from elete for ALL TEIRS, it would just be diffrent crystals at diffrent depth ranges, like 0-1 at Teir 1, 2-3 at Teir 2, and 4-5 for teir three. While the Crafting would be much like making food for your Sprite, like for example you need 5 "Flame dust" to make a dim fire crystal while 25 for a Radiant.
3. You also, in one setting, can only use five "boosting" crystals, while for forging you can choose to either lvl it for free or use crystals to add bonuses, like low dmg vs constructs or a 25% heat boost, and a slightly higher chance for a forge box the more crystals you put in, the highest being 30% with 10 of the needed crystal. Oh and yes, the "boosts" would come back over time or as you explore the clockworks.
4. You can break down Fire Crystals into said "Flame dust" to repurpose some of your weaker, unneeded crystals to make stronger variants, though you lose 2/5 of the Dusts during the process, for example, a Dim crystal would produce 3 flame dust and a radiant would make about 20 flame dust (though I wouldn't see WHY you would destroy a radiant.)

Now, I would be more than happy to have a little feedback on this, and perhaps improve on the idea if you want. Basically I'm thinking of a way to make the Forge a bit more Play to win rather than Pay to win.