Weaponsmith Archive

Please letme know if youagree or disagree, I want to get a feel for what other people think about this issue.

Summary: Weaponsmiths need bigger items to grind, to reduce the minimum number of crafting sessions required to advance. I propose that resource gathering (which can involve other players, trading, harvesting, selling)should be the bottleneck. It is more fun and more multiplayer than crafting sessions.

Thebottleneck is how many crafting sessions it takes you to advance.

With a few harvesters on high % spots of even the crappiest quality resources, and running a few easy artisan crafting missions for cash, money and grind-worthy resources are notthe bottleneck.

I'm a beginner weaponsmith. I just made Firearms 1, so now I can get twice as many XP by doing the projectile rifle barrels* (97 vs 55 for a proj pistol barrel), but it's frustrating that while I have plenty of resources and multiple tools, I can't craft items that use more resources at a time. I have to go through the motions of crafting many more times thanan architect (for example), and going through the motions with no danger, no excitement,no challenge, is NOT a fun thing to do in a video game.

There's a disparity between how many crafting sessions it takes each advanced artisan profession to move up in their profession.

I know that realistically they're making "bigger" items like houses and walls, but Novice Architects get to craft Wall Modules that use 200 low grade ore and 50 metal; 250 resources per crafting session!. The 50 metal alone is nearly double the resources used for a projectile pistol barrel. You get 525 practice architect XP for making a Wall Module, using two common resources. Architects do need more XP to advance, and thus more resources, but it's still greatly in their favor in terms of crafting sessions required / level gained. Armorsmiths are in a similar boat as weaponsmiths, with a 20 metal / 10 chemical Armor Upgrade Kit to grind at novice, but they require 20% less XP to advance than a weaponsmith. Weaponsmiths need 35% less XP than architects to advance, yet for each crafting session weaponsmiths earn just 10% of what a architect can.

Here's a breakdown of advancement for Architect and Weaponsmith. (Armorsmith is a little better off than weaponsmith, but not by much.) Also, there may be better grinding options up the line for Architect, butI'm not sure.Still that would only widen the gap.

Architect
Novice: 33000 (artisan XP) (12000 more than weaponsmith, grind about 24 more crafting stations)
1st tier: 55000 = 105 structural panels at 525 arch XP each
2nd tier: 77000 = 147 sp's
3rd tier: 99000 = 189 sp's
4th tier: 121000= 230 sp's
Total crafting sesions to go up one skill line grinding sp's: 671 (+24 artisan grinds to get novice)

Weaponsmith
Novice: 21000 (artisan XP)
1st tier: 35000 = 674 projectile pistol barrels at 55 weap XP each
2nd tier: 49000 = 505 projectile rifle barrels at 97 weap XP each
3rd tier: 63000 = 649 prb's
4th tier: 77000 = 793 prb's
Total crafting sesions to go up one skill line grinding ppb's and prb's: 2,621

Notice that you have to do more crafting sessions to get to a Tier 1 boxin Weaponsmith than you do to get through an entire single line (tiers 1,2,3,4) of Architect.

Conclusion: Can we please have a schematic at novice or tier one that uses more resources per crafting session?

*You could choose to make Blaster Rifle barrels, for a little over 100 weaponsmith XP each, but it takes 5 double-clicks instead of 2 for a Projectile Rifle Barrel and would slow you down a bit. It's probably an equal trade-off between time-to-click/craft and XP earned, so to save your clicking finger from repetitive stress injuries, go for the Projectile Rifle barrel.

Okay please don't be a coward and one-star me. Post a reply if you disagree.

Thanks, that'll be good once I get to Advance Munitions! Although, it takes some very specific and hard to get resources...maybe I'll start collecting now:

10x Hydron-3 Inert Gas
80x Skevon Reactive Gas
40x Thoranium Steel
10x Polymer
50x Radioactive
160x Metal
20x Metal

as far as I remember a blaster rifle barrel gives 120xp in practice mode, all u need is metal and gems of any kind

I think we should have a button that lets you master any prof in 10 minutes.

We already have one, the heavy warhead. 800 xp each practice craft.

I did the projectile rifle barrel the whole way up as soon as I learned of it's good resource:xp ratio. Yeah, it's definatelya pain the wrist but when I finally achieved master I could sit back and look at my tile for hours knowing I worked long and hard to get to that point.

I'm not against any of your suggestions I just know that if it becomes less time consuming to become a master I won't get the ego boost I get right now

The devs have stated that they have no problem with the 'grind' of crafting professions so I don't see much changing in that respect. It's a tough profession to master, like all crafting professions. At the same time, I never liked the fact that you're either a Master Weaponsmith or you're nothing at all. It's a real blow to the gut when people in your own guild don't want your weapons because you have yet to master the profession.

I think that would be the only type of change I would truly agree with. One that made a 'gunsmith' actually make decent guns, albeit not the best weapons, but something that is sellable.

wat does the heavey warhead take in resources?

Ganner-Rhysode

I used medium warheads, 178 each practice, took around 14 or so hours from novice to master. I would of used the heavies, but resources didn't spawn .

From SWGCraft.com, aHeavy Warhead Mechanism requires:

160 units of Metal
40 units of Thoranium Steel
20 units of Metal
80 units of Skevon Reactive Gas
50 units of Radioactive
10 units of Polymer
10 units of Hydron-3 Inert Gas

I can't imagine why you'd want to grind these to get to Master WS when all you need is steel for Projectile Rifle Barrels. You double click the same resource icon twice, inputing 46 units of steel, and you get ~ 94XP. The warhead would have you clicking, rolling, and scrolling to input what--370 resource units? Do the math: you get more than 2XP per unit for PRB's and less than 2XP per unit for HWM's. And the HWM will take a LONG time to create, per crafter.

B2

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Batikki wrote:

From SWGCraft.com, aHeavy Warhead Mechanism requires:

160 units of Metal
40 units of Thoranium Steel
20 units of Metal
80 units of Skevon Reactive Gas
50 units of Radioactive
10 units of Polymer
10 units of Hydron-3 Inert Gas

I can't imagine why you'd want to grind these to get to Master WS when all you need is steel for Projectile Rifle Barrels. You double click the same resource icon twice, inputing 46 units of steel, and you get ~ 94XP. The warhead would have you clicking, rolling, and scrolling to input what--370 resource units? Do the math: you get more than 2XP per unit for PRB's and less than 2XP per unit for HWM's. And the HWM will take a LONG time to create, per crafter.

B2

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If you put in your main inventoryonly the 5 resources you need (or 6, if you want another metal so as not to waste the Thoranium steel), it really wouldn't be so bad. Add 1 second to your crafting macro, and (in windows)map a mouse button to double-click. That way, you'll get 800xp/6 clicks/1 crafting session, vs 94xp/2clicks/1crafting session. You'll savetime, and get 2 times the XP permouse click, and 8 times the XP per crafting session,than you would with a projectile rifle barrel. Plus, it'd be more of a challenge and would provide more interactionand actual to gather the specific resources. I think I'll work up the munitions line instead of the firearms line :-). I'm not against advancement taking time; although I'm just a medium-casual (3-5 hours 3-4 nights a week) gamer, I wouldn't mind takingeven a littlemore time to advance, if only that time were something more enjoyable than clicking resources. I mean, you can't even have a chat conversation while craft-grinding, because you've gotta keep clicking resources.

What are some other suggestions for making WS advancement more enjoyable but NOT necassarily shorter? Time flies when you're having fun, so how can WS advancement be made more fun?

I really don't think this is the right direction for a solution.

What needs to happen isa collection of changes targetted to get the crafting experience back to what it was supposed to be:

1. Give beginning and mid-level crafters a chance in the economy - they need to be able to make quality items that can be sold. Right now a weaponsmith suffers such experimentation penalties at the lower levels that anything they make is just a waste of resources. So the only option is to grind grind grind. You really can't make worthwhile weapons until you are at tier 4 on crafting.




• My suggestion here is to minimize the experimentation bonuses that you get at higher levels. The addition schematics are incentive/reward enough alone.


• Additionally, we need to address the "you must be a master" problem. I'd be fine if master didn't really give you any additional schematics and only very minimal experimentation bonuses. Let the "Master" title be more of a badge of achievementthan anything else. If we did this, people would be more proud of their "Expert Gunsmith" or "Explosives Manufacturer" titles and would encourage specialization. It's silly that I have to be a master at making hand grenades before I can be a true master at making blades.


2. Fix usage XP - this was fantastic idea. I don't udnerstand why it was allowed to fall by the wayside. In my entire ride up to Master WS, I never received any noticeable XP from other players using my products, even though I starting selling lots of munitions as soon I hit crafting 4.




• First make sure usage XP works period - I suspect it doesn't


• Next make sure the amount of usage xp you get is in balance with the changes to the XP requirement tables prior to release. I believe they significantly increased the requirements for advancement but didn't adjust usage xp at all.


• Finally, make sure it works whether you are online or not or whether or not the user is near you.


3. Fix the bazaar




• Remove the 3k cap or increase it


• Fix the woefully broken paging and browsing interface

The system is really backwards right now. The whole dynamic of being a crafter (weaponsmith at least) is set up to reward the grinder and punish the roleplayer or person who wants to advance "naturally" (that is by crafting and selling rather than grinding). Imagine being a novice weaponsmith who has saved up and buys a factory to begin their career - they'd never get any XP(or very very little)if they used their factory for everything.

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SWGMerchant wrote:

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The system is really backwards right now. The whole dynamic of being a crafter (weaponsmith at least) is set up to reward the grinder and punish the roleplayer or person who wants to advance "naturally" (that is by crafting and selling rather than grinding).

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I totally agree. With other professions, there's no real competition between high level and low level characters.

Combat: Low's fight low creatures, high's fight high levels; noconflict. (PvP aside, this is a solo/teamwork profession)

Medical: There's always people to heal in big cities, plus high leveldoctors usually dodifferent activities than lows, likeaccompanying hunting parties and making buffs.

Entertainer: These guys always stick togetherin agroup incantinas, so there's no real competition,other thantips. And most people tip by how well the entertainer interacted with them, not how fast they healed them. (Again, usually a teamwork profession, no need to compete).

So weaponsmiths and other experimenting crafters need to compete, naturally, since it's a market economy. It seems like for other professions, like doctors and fighters, their goals are different at master than they are at novice (hunt bigger mobs for fighters, or buff/help big-mob hunting parties for doctors).

In a well designed game, to keep being fun over a long time there must be some new goalto pursueonce you reach the top of your class.

What kind of goal shift does weaponsmith have? Is it effective? What does a masterweaponsmith do differently than a novice, other than do the things novice does, only better (more damage, newer guns)?