Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Compilation of Weaponsmith Issues (11/26/03)
Logix wrote:
You know, Solo, I still remember your first post here.
You were asking if it were to be viable to be a successful Weaponsmith without Mastering the profession, as I believe you wanted to be a casual smith while retaining many other skills on the side. I said no. You debated and debated with me about it and absolutely refused to believe Novice Weaponsmith was *that* difficult.
And here we are today, with you being our community's most prolific supporter of the enhancement of Novice Weaponsmith. :>
But, this is my counter-argument to your suggestion:
If you rebalance all weapons to go in line with your ideas, you will either end up with one of two solutions: a.) Weapons are all identical or b.) There are still weapons more favorable than others.
Solution A obviously, has its obvious disadvantages. We want our weapons to be diverse and ideally, we'd want our schematic placements to be in line with certification placements.
Solution B also has its disadvantages. It will put Novice Weaponsmiths back into the same position. They will sell few guns, while other players seek out more highly prized, favorable guns crafted by Masters. I have been a Weaponsmith for a very long time and I still sell around 1mil worth of stock daily. I have a very strong, large customer-base, many of whom I have had since Launch. That said, I still hardly sell these freakin' Scout Blasters.
You give Novices the ability to sell Master-level quality Scout Blasters and it will do nothing for the profession. If I can't sell Scouts quickly, a Novice with virtually no customer base, no word of mouth, no advertising, no reputation, is not going to be able to sell a Scout Blaster. It's an alright gun, but it's a starter gun. That's just too tiny of a customer-base to draw out of, amongst the heavy Master Weaponsmith population already out. I honestly feel that a Novice Weaponsmith would make more money selling crates of WUKs than he could selling Master-level Scouts.
As it stands, most new Masters cannot make a dime. They face the same problems stated above (without lack of experimentation, of course): No customer-base, no word of mouth, no reputation. And most of the time, no resources, either.
Only thing that'll fix this is a heavy cert rebalance and a bunch of new elite profession weaponry. But then, it's only a matter of time before the market becomes flooded again, so it's just a temporary solution. The Novice problem is universal and even many Masters share their woes. I didn't add anymore commentary to it than that because I didn't have to, it's common knowledge that it's just .. broken.
I'm all ears for a working, less-than-flawed solution to suggest, but I just don't think this one would do much for the profession on its own.
Yeah, that's true, and as I found out, you guys were right. Novices get screwed six ways til Sunday. Even after you get past the novice stage and into the intermediate phases, there's just no way to make a living. It's a binary profession, really: there's novices and masters. From what you're saying, the market is flooded with masters, so even if you ARE a master, it ain't gonna help much because people will buy from the guy who made master in the first few weeks. The only way to get business from someone like that is to cut your prices drastically and hope that word spreads of the quality of your goods.
Personally, I want to make master at this point, just because I want access to all the schematics. I want to see what I can do with 'em. But I don't intend to have weaponsmith be my primary business at this point. It'll be my legitimate business front. My real bread and butter (if they ever freaking FIX IT) will be smuggling. As a novice weaponsmith, at this point, I can be self-sufficient in that regard. As a master smith, I'll be able to craft my own guns, too.
But, the state of affairs you warned me about when I first came here strikes me as an inherent problem in pretty much all of crafting. And I'm unwilling to accept that there's simply no way to fix it. There's GOT to be something that can be done to make novices and intermediates more viable in the economy. Otherwise, weaponsmithing will continue to be a grind-happy profession with no real middle game to it, and that's a shame to me.
I still think that removing the qualitydifference between master-crafted D18s and novice-crafted D18s is a good first step, but you're right. There'd have to be some pretty serious cert reworking, as well as some major fixes to the existing weapons. To my way of thinking, as you rise in the trees for the various combat professions, the weapons should become more useful and more powerful. That's not the case right now. People still rely on scout blasters because other guns are crap. The Power5, the Tangle pistol, the SR-2, the Striker pistol, all of these COULD be decent weapons, and SHOULD be decent weapons, but they aren't. Hopefully the devs will begin to address that. That's why I say that things like UXP, fixing the certs and fixing the weapons themselves have to come first.
The only other thing I can come up with to make novices and intermediates more useful is bringing back schematic loss and people would throw the mother of all hissy fits if that happened because they'd be >SHOCK! HORROR!< forced to actually interact with other players.
Let me mull it over and I'll see what else I can come up with though. I'm grinding my way up, but I'm not willing to give up on the novices yet.
As a slicer anda Weaponsmith I like to see at least one new field that indicates whether an attempt at slicing the weapon has occured (and/or was successful). Adding a field for the name of the slicer would be nice also. However, if a buyer can at least see that a slice was attempted they can make a more informed decision on a purchase (especially if the slice failed). If this was already posted "ditto" to whoever posted it earlier, I dont have time to read the complete thread at the moment.
I honestly haven't been on top of all of the experimentationissues, so please correct me where I am wrong. Wasn't the resource problem (ie. Plumbum, Desh, etc) getting a fix on TC a short while ago? The only fix these resources need is to use the cap for the stat of each particular resource, rather than using the overallcap for any given stat, which is 1000. If the cap on Conductivity for Plumbum iron is 200 (for example), and we used one with a Con of 100, then we could experiment up to 50%, instead of the around 10% we get now. This could balance out the guns that suck due to overall cap being used.
I don't have too much of a problem with the 'moderate' successes. I know it sucks at times, but being a Master does not mean you are perfect. Masters make mistakes too. I remember reading a post once that indicated that experimenting may be tied to Malleability. If it is, that could explain alot. If it's not, then perhaps it should be? I don't think Master should be able to make perfect weapons on each try.
I definitely want to see colored text put back! It takes skill to place a premium auction, so let the reward for that be a 6k cap on auctions.Increasing the 3k limit isthe only way to make premium auctions worth while imho.
I would also like to see more customization for guns. Why can't we 'paint' them? More options is a good thing.
1. Chem Dispersion Mechanism: Can we get the experimentation fixed on the chemical dispersion mechanisms? Both the regular and advanced ones have been broken since day 1.
2. Weapon Graphics: Fix the graphics for scopes and stocks. They used to work for hand crafted prototypes. But not on factory runs. Now after the patch, they are not showing up at all.
3. Harvester Animation: Not specifically a weaponsmith issue. But I find annoying that everytime I even look at my harvesters, they all look as though they are not working. I am forced to check them even though I know the resource should still be there, and power and maintance should be paid up.
Logix wrote:
I'm all ears for a working, less-than-flawed solution to suggest, but I just don't think this one would do much for the profession on its own.
The solution is simple, but nobody is going to like it ... tofind the solution, you need to define what makes 1 smith different from another.
Resources
That is what makes smith1 different from smith2 ... finding those truly *uber* resources ... once those resources are found, smith1 and smith2 are the same.
So ... what about novice smiths?
They really can not compete with master smiths until they too are masters ... due to exp ... and we don't want to mess with exp.
Answer? Give the full 10 expermintation points at novice level.
This means that a novice smith has 2 handicaps ... well 3 actuall.
1) Limited Schem's
2) Limited Resources
3) Limited Customer Base.
The reality is that you could give full xp at the novice level and novice's still would not be able to make the same guns as any seasoned weaponsmith. The downside? A new smith with access to the hordes of a resource magnet would instantly have the resources needed to make *top tier* guns.
But that still leaves them with problems #1 and #3
So ... I think in the case of weaponsmith, exp points could all be given at novice and things would work out well ... although you would want to spread the schems out a bit to fill up that 4th tree.
Maybe put all the *advanced* components into the tech tree :-)
Weapon Icons are mostly broken, many of them will not update to show the presence of a scope. This was fixed in the past (for some) and then rebroken again with a later patch...
Example: Laser Rifle shows scope perpindicular to the rifle barrel when it shows it at all
FWG5: does not show the scope on the pistol even when added
Stocks suffer a similar problem - look athe character and see the stock, look at the weapon and it may or may not be present.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
Answer? Give the full 10 expermintation points at novice level.
That was the exact same thing Solo said and I rebutted.
The idea was to rebalance schematics properly and remove the Techniques tree/requirement. Problem is, there will always be a high-end gun better than the rest, and if schematics are balanced properly, that gun will belong as a Master Weaponsmith schematic.
Thus, the change would do nothing. Players would continue to seek out Master Weaponsmiths for the best guns, Novices would continue to grind in order to be able to make those high-end Master-level schematics. As it stands, any Master Weaponsmith entering the market right now will not be able to have a thriving business unless he has stockpiled resources for monthsprior and slashes his prices down to 1000cr/weapon to start up a customer-base. So, obviously, as I said, just because a Novice can make a Scout Blaster as good as a Master doesn't mean he's going to get one sold.
Giving Novices 10 experimentation points and then requiring them only to skill up two trees to make the best guns is not going to happen. That completely trivializes the profession. There has to be a reason that everyone still wants to grind up to Master Weaponsmith. Otherwise, you'll end up completely destroying the market for everyone, by trivializing Novice and opening the floodgates for another Weaponsmith bandwagon. Players will perceive Weaponsmith as "easy", they will skill-up only two trees, and they will slash high-end guns down to 1000cr prices. Same thing happened to the Architect profession.
Short-term, I think Novices should be granted more items that most Masters wouldn't bother with. Craftable weapon dyes, high-end powerups. Ideally, once you have a thriving business as a Master Weaponsmith, you won't have time to keep all these powerups and trinkets stocked. But otherwise, fixes should not be sacrificing Master Weaponsmith for the benefit of Novices.
Factories:
We needto see the type of resource listed, along with the name of the resource, in the ingredient list!
ie. Polysteel Copper, sometimeslonghardtoremembername: 16 units
I would like to be able to choose the "creator" of a factory made item from the admin list and have that person receive the e-mails when the factory runs out of ingredients, etc.
It would be nice to have a small, persistant window that shows the factory status of any/all factories you have admin access to. Perhaps a drop down type menu similiar to the Experience Monitor?
Logix wrote:
Lurax wrote:
...anyway I was saying how I've had a few requests from pistoleer to use adv pistol barrels so they can sacrifice speed for a bit more damage, and a few sparse requests for adv rifle barrels to get higher range mods at the cost of speed. Plus it give the devs the option of removing/raising these caps at a later date if weapon creation becomes stagnant, which it will, if harvesting power remains as high as it is.
This is my account for how Advanced barrels work on my server, re-posting from another thread:
Using advanced barrels,a 96-154 2.3 DX2 would be 102-160 2.5.
The former has a DPS of 54.3. The latter has a DPS of 52.4. Unfortunately, even with Master Pistoleer, you would not evenhit the speed cap with BS2, Stopping Shot or Fan Shot with a 2.5 speed gun. You need at least a 2.2 speed weapon to hit the speed cap at Master Pistoleer, for instance.
Seeing as how there are so few Master Pistoleers anyway, it's a completely moot point to serve Pistoleer weaponry biased for speed bonuses, as it's a very, very small customer-base. So, for Pistoleers, there is no bonus to using the latter gun, thus, I don't sell those versions. No point in crafting a gun that uses much more time and resources if it's not going to be as good as the original.
It is my assumption that the same goes for most of the servers, because most of us have ABPBs that suck, as a result of the Rhodium. So, if your DX2s and/or barrels are in lieu with this, you probably aren't gaining anything using advanced barrels.
Better late than never...
Just thought I'd point out that there are more pistols out there than the DX2 for master pistoleers to choose from, which means adv pistol barrels are NOT useless. I think adv rifle barrels are a little buggy though, seems strange to me that pistol barrels have a bigger damage increase and smaller speed decrease when moving from non-adv to adv. But then again, there are master rifleman out there with speed bonuses that let them fire headshot3 at the breakpoint regardless of weapon speed. So neither of them are completely useless as it stands, just very situational.
I'm okay with that.
Lurax wrote:
Just thought I'd point out that there are more pistols out there than the DX2 for master pistoleers to choose from, which means adv pistol barrels are NOT useless.
Republic Blasters fall under the same deal, advanced barrels are worthless.
Scouts are the only exception, but any Pistoleer hitting the speed cap with a Scout is far too advanced to be using a Scout and thus, most don't. So, what else is there?
Wow getting attacked by the correspondant 
Why is it unforseeable that a pistoleer might request a scout? Especiallyif said pistoleer had 1 really good krayt tissue, but only one such tissue (it takes 3 to make a republic and 5 for a DX2)?
Also, I'm curious why the projectile feed was removed from scatter pistols, but it still requires projectile barrels.
Lurax wrote:
Wow getting attacked by the correspondant
Why is it unforseeable that a pistoleer might request a scout? Especiallyif said pistoleer had 1 really good krayt tissue, but only one such tissue (it takes 3 to make a republic and 5 for a DX2)?
Also, I'm curious why the projectile feed was removed from scatter pistols, but it still requires projectile barrels.
Uh, there were no attacks made, unless you consider stating the obvious an attack.
A Pistoleer won't request a Scout becausethey has two guns better than a Scout. On the offchance that he had only one good Krayt Tissue and he was forcedto put it in a Scout, then yes, that would be one situation in which an advanced barrel would be worth using. Still not a viable conclusion, however, that's grasping at straws.