Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: State of the Profession 6/13
- Draft summarizing the role of the Weaponsmith
- Focuses on concerns regarding the state of Weapon Repair, Combat Balance, Looted Schematics, lack of End Game, role in the GCW and space constraints
- Ongoing Top 10 Questions
- Answers for question #3 are ready, just waiting on TH to make them public. Upcoming Question #4: "What do Developers feel about the current poor state of Weapon Repair and can anything light be shed on what Weaponsmiths can do to get the most successful repairs?"
- Top Issues
- I have no idea when they're planning to start the next round, but we've yet to hear anything about it. I assume they're putting that project on the backburner for awhile.
We're going to be pretty dry for awhile until they start asking for our input on the Combat Balance. Feel free to ask any questions you might have here.
Logix wrote:
Currently, this is what we've got going on:
We're going to be pretty dry for awhile until they start asking for our input on the Combat Balance. Feel free to ask any questions you might have here.
Is our input going to bebefore or after their design doc has been created?
Approximately when will this occur?
- unserialed loot drops. I understand schematics made with unserialed loot will no longer work as of pub9, can we get this confirmed? And perhaps a date when pub9 is coming out, is it the 22nd?
- experimenting is too simple. I can't think of a weapon type where you wouldn't want to max dmg/speed and it almost doesn't matter where you put excess points after maxing this. There are exceptions of course (low-ham VKs come to mind, and high accuracy hammers/pikes), but in general the few points of ham you can shave off or meagre accuracy bonus you can get with the 2-5 points leftover after maxing dmg are almost laughable. Perhaps this will be addressed in the combat balance (maybe doc buffs with get weakened making HAM costs relevant again)?
- referring to the above point, getting to +20 weapon experimentation is more a marketting ploy, or insurance while working with loot enhancers, rather than a a way to separate for the best from the rest. The 2 extra points you can chuck in condition or range/ham don't really do anything to distinguish a 12pt smith's products from that of a 10pt smith. Compare to armorsmith, or chef, or doc, or any profession where there is more than 1 relevant bar to experiment.
- little niggles:
- some visual display bugs. Try using a de-crated rifle barrel to hand-craft a T21 to see what I mean.
- acklay bones are still coming up with invalid stats. Notably some 136min/78max bones brought to me 2 days ago and some 156/83 bones yesterday...either could make a min>max stun baton.
- would be nice to finally get that adv stock experimentation working properly
- my personal opinion: factory wait times and resource requirements should go up. This is drawn mostlyfrom a comparison to armorsmith, who can spend a week with 10 factories running non-stop and still not have a full line of finishedcomposite suitsready for sale on their vendor. Basically I view it as being way to easy for the market to be flooded with affordable weapons, making it possible for very few weaponsmiths to serve the needs of majority of the server. Like armorsmith, it should be a struggle to keep up with demand if you're one of your server's largest distributors, but currently, it's quite feasible to pump out thousands of finished weapons per day.
Dodece wrote:
Weapon repair being broken dosent bother me. The only people that it bothers are people that sit at starports fixing weapons. Our job is to make new weapons not make old ones last forever. There is a reason this is not a big issue, because it aint. So some guy cant hold onto a legendary or krayt weapon for months on end and use it. Infact if you look at it in the right light its a good thing.
Lurax wrote:
our profession is in pretty darn good shape I'd say, very few bugs and illogicalities relative to other professions, and almost everything works as intended.
Nicey summed up.
I dont think we have much to say until we have more details on the combat reballance and the game is back on track again.
Weapon repair, who cares. If they degrade quicker then its more sales of new stock. Besides, weapon reapir isnt a weaponsmith issue as it was taken out of the weaponsmith tree in beta2 (thank god, oh how I rejoiced that day)
Bru
BruSwillis wrote:
Besides, weapon reapir isnt a weaponsmith issue as it was taken out of the weaponsmith tree in beta2 (thank god, oh how I rejoiced that day)
If you believe what is written in the patch notes, WS do get a bonus to the repair skill. So it is a skill which is highly related to weaponsmithing and is therefore a WS issue. Who else should raise the voice concerning the bugged repairs if not us, the repair monkeys? *g
I have a question for those of you who think this bug is good for business: How greedy can you be?
So we should start to sell highly breakable weapons for exorbitant prices which at this point don't last a week just to sell another one next week to make more money? What for? Do you define your "sucess" by your wealth? You shouldn't...
referring to the above point, getting to +20 weapon experimentation is more a marketting ploy, or insurance while working with loot enhancers, rather than a a way to separate for the best from the rest. The 2 extra points you can chuck in condition or range/ham don't really do anything to distinguish a 12pt smith's products from that of a 10pt smith. Compare to armorsmith, or chef, or doc, or any profession where there is more than 1 relevant bar to experiment
I must say I found the fact that I really don't need the extra points very comforting. I don't see the point in spending 40 million on +20 experimentation skill tapes and how this makes me a "good" WS. It should really just be the resources that distinguishes us, at least the good ones are cheaper to buy than the tapes...
charb wrote:
gee, none of those issues seem very weaponsmith related imho.
If their January proposal for the Combat Rebalance still stands, we have everything to do with it. Every question we've asked about experimentation, about damage types and AP, about unused weapons -- they all give us the same answer: "Wait until Combat Balance."
As to your latter suggestion, that is what I mean by End Game. After our businesses are well-established and we have nothing more to do than run the same tedious factory errands, we deserve something more. Weapon Specialization, epic quests and a GCW role (gun mounts, turrets) need to be that something to keep elder smiths from letting go.
The remaining primary balance concerns -- Weapon Repair, looted schematics and space constraints -- are possibly the most complained about issues on these boards. Most of us have absolutely no free space as we're innundated by hundreds of looted items and we're only told that it's going to get worse with more looted items being introduced in the future. Weapon Repair, regardless of how it may or may not benefit us, is something the player-base has grown accustomed to. We adapted to Weapon Repair being fairly reliable and so have our customers; such a drastic change without warning needs to be addressed and explained.
nojediiam wrote:
Is our input going to bebefore or after their design doc has been created?
Approximately when will this occur?
I have no idea. They do not give us dates for anything, unfortunately, as they often have to be changed last-minute.
Lurax wrote:
unserialed loot drops. I understand schematics made with unserialed loot will no longer work as of pub9, can we get this confirmed? And perhaps a date when pub9 is coming out, is it the 22nd?
Thunderheart told me that it would be Publish 9, but unfortunately, no date (as above).
Logix wrote:
We're going to be pretty dry for awhile until they start asking for our input on the Combat Balance. Feel free to ask any questions you might have here.
Lurax wrote:
Ackepawa lighten up lol.
our profession is in pretty darn good shape I'd say, very few bugs and illogicalities relative to other professions, and almost everything works as intended. Off the top of my head, here things that are issues for me, anyway.
Logix wrote:
nojediiam wrote:
Is our input going to bebefore or after their design doc has been created?
Approximately when will this occur?
I have no idea. They do not give us dates for anything, unfortunately, as they often have to be changed last-minute.
I understand about no dates. The most important part is whether or not our input comes post or pre design doc. There are so many things to consider:
Do old weapons get changed leaving us with mislabeled goods being a major one? (as in we label Weapon X 100-200, 2.5 spd now pops out of the crate with 50-150, 3.0 stats)
Do subcomponents get changed as well?
Does damage type or AP change?
...those are just to name a few.
Once things get past design doc, they tend to have to deal with designer ego on occasion.
I would prefer to be pre doc due to that and for the impression that our opinion matters for this revamp.