Weaponsmith Archive

It's not just that the schematics are too few and not very useful on the whole. It's also the nature of the crafting progression. The profession is currently designed to punish non-masters by allowing masters to create the same goods as everyone else, but at much higher quality. Logically, this makes sense. But in terms of making the game fun for the most number of people, it doesn't. The powergamers powergame with WS because they HAVE to. Think about it. If you could make plenty of money as a lower level crafter, why would you grind up to master? Hell, if I could just do firearms, that's what I'd do.

The solution, I think, is relatively simple, which naturally means it'd be wildly unpopular:

1.) Get rid of the tech tree, assembly points, and higher experimentation points for progression. Instead, tier the system based on the weapons you can make and let the randomness of resources and experimentation be controlling. Just because we can spend 10 points on experimenting doesn't mean that all our guns will be identical. They'll share a similar range, yes, but they won't be identical.

2.) Instead of QUALITY of weapons being determined by level, let it be COMPLEXITY of weapons. As you increase in levels, you can make more complex items using the same skills you had at the lower level. The D18 is a relatively simple gun. The DX2 is highly complex and refined. Thus, it requires greater skill to make the DX2 than the D18. that's why it's at the top of the tree. However, the techniques you use are the same throughout. Thus, experimentation/assembly would not factor into the creation of weapons.

3.) Add in schematic loss. If you choose to make more complex weapons, you do so while giving up the lower level weapons that you used to be able to make. That's your choice. You could opt to make nothing but D18s if you want, or you could make DL44s, DLT20as, and Scouts. Or you could do higher level weapons. It's your choice, but you can survive at each level. Why? Because the guy above you isn't in competition with you. Alternatively, since we're doing away with experimentation/assembly, you don't have to include schematic loss. This is just an option to create more interdependency in the profession, which would in turn create a more apprentice-focused profession, rather than the "I'll do it all myself" approach we have now.

What would the end results of these changes be? Well, masters would only be in competition with lower level crafters in terms of the range of services they could provide. Both could craft guns at the same quality level, it's just that masters can make more money by crafting more complex guns. So, it's not like masters are being punished by doing this. They still have the unique master-weapon market all to themselves. They're just not running everyone ELSE out of business.

Also, by removing the experimentation/assembly bonuses as you increase (IE: keep them constant once you hit novice weaponsmith), we'll be basing quality of weapons more on the ingredients used, rather than how much grinding you did. To me, that's progress and it doesnt' hurt anyone either. Those who are industrious and still seek to find the newest and best resources dilligently will win out. Those who just want to craft casually can also do so, but they'll never out-sell the guys who get the best resources. That's par for the course, and we're still rewarding people who work hard. We're just not punishing everyone else the way the system does now.

Finally, the schematic loss could create more interdependency, which I think would be more fun, personally. I'd love to take on an apprentice or apprentice myself to someone else. It'd make the game a bit more interactive instead of just "Run out to your harvester, get your cash, pick up your resources, do another survey mission, go home, craft, put your crap up on the vendor, rinse, repeat."

So, I don't see any of the changes I'm suggesting as actually HURTING the profession, they just open it up more to other folks who don't want to hit master.

i kinda know what you are talking about... i've been in game since the first week (i'm still working towards my first skill mind you) and even when i put a crud load of Weapon Upgrade Kits for 100 each on the bazzar... i come back from the cantina to check the compitition... and the ones listed for 500 a piece because of the better stats... were all gone!

i mean, grinding for me is really slow now... i can't get any macro to work, and now i'm not getting any usage xp... so ... i've just been stockpillin metals, furrs, and anything that requires me using my blaster

Hows this

I dont agree with removing ones "memory" of how to make lower end weapons once, one becomes a master. Why would that happen in the first place, and dont say some jedi mind trick!

What could be done, is have a seperate line(s) of skill tree's that only 1 path can be chosen from. Each line can exemplify an attribute of the weapon at hand. Master Weaponsmith A raised his skills in the damage tree, Master Weaponsmith B reduced his Ham costs dramatically and so forth, with the set lines, only Masters can get, and only can achieve one line. What would be even better is lets say Master Weaponsmith A creates a schematic, and hands it to Master Weapon B, who then tweeks his own work into the schematic to achieve a weapon that is moderatly more damage, but has moderatly better ham ratio's. Thus enabling both smiths to benefit from each other's work. The weapon wont do as much damage as a pure damage schematic that MWS A creates, nor the very Low ham cost that MWS B makes as well, but sort of a mix of both worlds, at a slightly lesser rate than can be achieved individually.

what ya think?

An interesting theory, but I think that it'd be even more unpopular than the one I posed. People would definitely see that as a nerf.

Come to think of it, with the one I proposed, you don't even actually NEED the schematic loss. That'd just be something that could be done to foster interdependency (though, arguably, based on the architect profession's experience, you don't even need the loss to do interdependency). If experimentation and assembly were uniform for all levels of the profession, and the only real difference was the TYPES of weapons (IE: the complexity of the weapons) that you could make, there'd be no real competition between masters and novices. A master wouldn't be able to make a Scout any better than a novice could. It'd all depend on materials that you used and the luck of the draw for experimentation. The key difference would be that masters could make more TYPES of weapons (which they already can), rather than more types at better quality.

See, the current system is like a double-whammy for the novice. We already know masters get the most number of schematics. That's fair to me. Their guns are more complex and would presumably require more training to create. BUT, they can ALSO make EVERY gun better than anyone else. So, while a master and a novice can both make D18s, the master can make a far superior D18. Where's the double-whammy come in? Right here.

Customers have no reason whatsoever to patronize a novice. Masters can make everything they want. Masters can make it BETTER than a novice. So, not only do the masters corner the market on weapon TYPES, but they also corner it on weapon QUALITY, and thus, we have the current situation with everyone grinding to master and no one below expert being able to survive economically.

To me, the masters who say "Suck it up" are being shortsighted and somewhat greedy. You can already make DX2s, T21s, commando weaponry, etc. Why do you need to make the low end guns better than a novice? Hell, you guys probably don't even sell that many of them in the first place.

Making experimentation and assembly uniform at all levels wouldn't even be a nerf. No one LOSES anything, except the masters who want to have total domination of the market. Rather than dragging the top down, this would be pulling the bottom up. And it wouldn't even really take that much business away from masters. It'd just make the quality of weapons better overall. But as things stand, SOE's system (I believe, unintentionally) punishes novices from two sides: not only is your selection of weapons limited, but what you CAN make is crap by comparison. How is someone to survive by selling their wares in that situation? Simple. They don't.

So, we grind up to master, and start cutting our prices lower than the competition. As more people hit master and want to establish themselves, you'll see prices continue to drop. Some folks will go out of business, other's won't. But in the end, you'll have a real stagnation of the profession itself.

I say ditch the Tech tree, and replace it with a new type of weapon (heavy weapons, maybe?), make some of the schematics more useful (striker pistols, tangle pistols, DH17 pistols, Jawa Ion Rifles, etc., etc., etc.) for consumers, and maybe give us some new schematics. Leave experimentation and assembly at 100 when you hit novice, but gate the complexity of the goods you can make. You'll still be rewarding people to make master (they can make more types of weapons than everyone else), but you won't be punishing the novices by driving business exclusively to the masters.

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Nador wrote:

solo,

if you look at the weapons that sell the best then you can answer half your questions

best sellers in each line aren't master level weapons, they are first and second tier weapons most of the time. Why is this? because the upper tier weapons use crappy resources. Masters sell more scouts, fwg5's, laser carbines, laser rifles, dh17 carbines, scatter pistols than anything else. Thats where the market is, thats why masters make them, and that is also why you won't see a master agree that novices should be able to make them the same as a master. The onlytwo of those thataren't available by the second box in gunsmithing is the fwg5.

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All the more reason to take a good hard look at the profession. Making ALL the weapons viable choices is necessary, and seems to be something that has yet to be done. Anyone here ever sell more than, oh, two striker pistols? How about tangle pistols? Jawa ion rifles anyone? There's a lot of chaff in the WS tree right now that could stand to be made more useful.

At the same time, making it so that masters can make better versions of the lower end weapons than everyone else only hurts anyone who isn't a master. That's flawed design if you ask me, or maybe it just didn't account for powergamers who ground up to the top. I get the sense that a LOT of this game didn't take into account how many powergamers there'd be and what kind of effect they'd have on the game as a whole.

Regardless, I still think that if you do away with assembly and experimentation gating and simply give everyone a level playing field on THOSE POINTS ONLY, you'll solve a number of problems. Masters won't be pushed out of business, and novices can actually enter the market finally.

As for the specific resources, I think that's a problem with the resource spawning system they have. For the first time in probably about 2 months, we FINALLY have Plumbum iron on Kettemoor. It's got good overall quality (in the 700s, which, given our resources of late, is good quality), but low stats on almost everything else. The resource spawner seems designed to hamstring WS's a fair amount, by spawning crappy high-end resources. I'd ask the devs to look at this too, so that masters don't end up being punished de facto. Higher end weaponry should be on roughly the same quality level as the lower end weaponry, at least in terms of resources. I do sympathize that, the way things have been going on Kettemoor at least, higher end resources are rare, and when they do spawn, are crap. Hell, even a good portion of the lower end resources are lousy of late. Since the last spawn of Siskref (stockpiked about 15K of that), we haven't had much by way of good steel.

But as far as the masters vs. everyone else debate goes, I think it'd be a good thing to give ALL WS's a chance to participate in the economy, at least in terms of quality of the goods they produce. Otherwise, you guys at the top should expect trouble. For those masters who scoff at these requests, just wait. Sooner or later, we'll all end up as masters too. And we'll all end up in price wars as well. And that's not good for ANYONE.

It's like the old adage of having to spend money to make money. Only here, you have to give up control of the market to maintain control of your END of the market. But yes, there are many things that need to be done with respect to fixing this problem, and the experimentation/assembly aspect is only one portion of the problem (albeit a BIG one). I think it may be time for me to post a comprehensive post about how I'd like to see the profession changed...

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Solo4114 wrote:

All the more reason to take a good hard look at the profession. Making ALL the weapons viable choices is necessary, and seems to be something that has yet to be done. Anyone here ever sell more than, oh, two striker pistols? How about tangle pistols? Jawa ion rifles anyone? There's a lot of chaff in the WS tree right now that could stand to be made more useful.

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If you're NOT selling those weapons.. you're not doing a very good job of educating your customers.. I've sold over 100 strikers and Tangles in the last week... Reason being.. i explained to people that Tangle Pistols are the only pistols that cause stun dmg.. your FWG5 may do 120 more dmg than the tangle.. but when fighting creatures with 100% heat resistance.. and 0% stun resistance.. your tangle will kill them much faster!

The truly elite combat players just need to be shown the benefits of the various weapons to test them.. and once they test them.. and learn a little bit more about the various uses for them.. they'll use a greater variety of weapons..

Please dont blame your follow players. This is purely a creation of the devteam. Right now, THE only market for non-junk weapons is from a master WS. This is a design issue. Your follow players are simply using their abilities as best they can.

Plus there have been enough other bugs out there so people did not have to grind or used other bugs to get 100s or 1000s of tissues,etc.....

/bugslap3 devteam

Welcome to public beta4 (the pay before you play beta)

EO

It dont matter if its a D18 or flamethrower or a rifle.. PEOPLE want the best that money can buy..Why would u nerf master weaponsmiths into forgetting schematics so the populace can use beat weapons? THAT WOULD anger the general population even if it made expert smiths happy....

IM a master weaponsmith on starsider..

SOME THOUGHTS::

First the most annoying thing is lack of vehicles or mounts WERE ARE THEY IT TAKES FOREVER TO WALK TO HARVERSTERS,FACTORIES ETC..

I average about 70k aweek 60k goes back into resources paying my vendor fees and such...10k profit and all the effort to hear some guy tell me that joe smoe down the road makes .3 faster then u do i want it cheaper....LOLS

Sure there is money and some people are insane enough to pay high prices i charge middle of the road for my goods and the reason i wont sell really really cheap is because of the effort and work that goes into making customers happy..

AS FAR as making it easy for novices or experts NO NO NO NO NO OR ILL QUIT...everyone who is a master had to grind there way to the top or wheel and deal with people either way if u want to make good weapons then u have to struggle through it like the rest of us...

I havent been playing since release i just got into a good guild and got funded by them...

anyhow my thought is this MASTER OR NOTHING

I'm telling you, man, that's a VERY shortsighted view. Sooner or later, we'll all make master. It's not HARD to do, it's just time and money consuming. It's not much fun either. But we'll get there. And when we do, we're going to undercut your prices and force you to sell for lower. Then how will you pay for your harvesters and such?

There are other things that can be done besides forgetting schematics. You can simply make it so that, yeah, a master weaponsmith can build the weapon, but he can't make it any better than the lower level smith. That alone would REALLY help in terms of making non-masters economically viable. Incidentally, that would NOT be a nerf for masters. It would be pulling the profession up by its bootstraps, as it were. You're not punishing the top end, you're helping the bottom end (and, by extension, the top end as well, in fact).

A D18 isn't terribly complicated to make. There is(or should be) a maximum level of quality that you can get out of such a low-end gun. That maximum level should be POTENTIALLY (IE: assembly plus experimentation) reachable by lower level crafters. Accordingly, the master should not be able to improve upon what is essentially a very basic design. Take something like your basic slingshot. There really isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do to a slingshot (we're just talking the Y shaped ones here, not the "wrist rocket" types -- that'd be a different schematic) to improve its effectiveness. Maybe you make yours out of better quality materials so they don't break down as easily. Maybe you experiment with the angle of the Y shape, or the length of the rubberband. But fundamentally, a slingshot is a slingshot is a slingshot. And you don't have tobe a master weaponsmith to make one of decent quality.

THAT's what I'm advocating for. Treat lower complexity weapons properly. Make it so that, if I'm making a DL44, even if I've just hit Firearms 1, I can make it as well as a master (provided, of course, we both score the same on our experimentation results, and we both use identical tools and resources). All things being equal, your low level guns should be good regardless of who crafts them.

Now, I realize that this will remove a great deal of business from the upper end crafters if it is the ONLY change that comes about, and I don't want to gimp them necessarily. Towards that end, I suggest we get more schematics (or at least more useful versions of the existingschematics) of varying types that we can sell to different levels of players. IE: a player who's just hit marksman 3 should have the option to buy a number of different weapons, all of which are useful. The current situation doesn't allow for that, as most of the weapons are either gimped by lousy quality resources (IE: T21s, E-11s, Power5s, etc.), or are just weaker schematics (tangle pistol, striker pistol, etc.). Providing players with a wide assortment of damage-type guns at EACH level of crafting and combat will make for a more robust economy, will allow masters to sell to masters and everyone else, while at the same time allowing lower end crafters to sell to lower end players. That, I think, was the original design, but the implementation fell short. I think my proposal will help bring it back into proper shape.