Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Weaponsmith Issues Designer responses
Solarum wrote:
As to the novice weaponsmith who keeps complaining about not being able to compete with a master weaponsmith. how stupid are you, shut up. When i was a novice, i spent my time giving things away and making friends and looking through the bazaar for a gap in the market. Think about the wordNOVICE it means you dont know what you're doing.
The majority of us novice WS, don't expect to be able to compete with the masters. That is a ridiculous thought and I think you missed the major complaint entirely.
Our major problem is, we have nothing to worth wile to offer till we master the tech tree and made progress up either Melee or Firearms. Every single weapon a Novice WS can make a novice combat profession can use immediatly, with in 1000 xp (aka 1 hour or less of newbie area), can use the 1st tier weapons. and it only gets worse. The Marksman profession is able to use 90% of everything we can make as a Master. So, there is a demand for weapons that can not be made until you hit Master WS, leaving those of us who have are not there yet with little to nothing to offer.
It is not about being able to compete, it is about being able to make something that someone wants. Please don't pull up the WUK argument, that is a bad example. Most smugglers will not buy them unless they are in crates, which basically kills the entire reason for making them. Weapon Repair Kits, even worse idea. Now you are killing business for everyone. And that leaves us with what? D18? a Scout? yes Scouts are in high demand, but only since the majority of the top level guns are bugged. And with that being the case, all of the masters make scouts. So, we as novice, have a subpar scout to offer.
I totally agree with Jester20.
Selling a gun was a pain until I reached master, even the bazaar was flooded by HQ guns @ less than 2k.
Selling componant is not an option, because a master class weapon need master class componants to compete ( ask a novice to do 9/18 -0.45 regular power handler from a factory crates ... haha
.
Now, as a master, I'm anywayreduced to do less than 10 guns and some melee Weapons because of crappy ressource (For jeebus sake, get rid of the plumbum !, that's more than enough to fill my vendors ( wich will get hit by the nerf batsoon ).
Talking about the vendor issue, I feel that my local bazaar isgoing to be flooded like no tomorrow by Master-made weapons @ 3k ... bye-bye player economy.
When you look at your factory when it is running, if you click on options, as stop factory is the only thing under options at that time, it will open your output hopper and you can simply count the number of items already created and subtract that from total items to be made to see how many you have left.
PadawanChong wrote:
One thing I'd like is the ability to know approximately how many more units need to be made in a factory run. That would help a little bit. Either that, or an estimated time of running...
Amen!
I just made Novice Weaponsmith myself and fail to see how a majority of this list applies to me as a Weaponsmith in general.
These are Master Weaponsmith issues, not Weaponsmith issues.
My concerns with the profession are simply that I see no real way to 'make a living' at it until I get halfway through the skill tree.
I am not a power grinder and I made it to Novice Weaponsmith bymaking a zillion powerups, stimpacks and custom suits of bone armor and enjoyed building up a clientele. I enjoyed talking to customers and filling orders and experimenting to get the best results.
Since hitting Novice Weaponsmith, all of the customer interaction and fun experimenting seems to beover for a long time.
It seems that for the next few weeks my 'game experience' will be to sit in a corner and grind, grind, grind literally THOUSANDS of items that I can never hope to sell before I can make anything decent.
Novice Architects may have to sell harvester deeds at a loss and Novice Armorsmiths might be forced to sell Mabari super cheap, but at least they can still interact and try to build a clientele and sell *something* to get their name out there (and offset the cost of materials) until they hit Master.
I do not expect to be able to compete with an established Master Weaponsmith, I just want to have a little "fun" while I "play". Is that so much to ask for?
I'll worry about mybuggy factories later (much, much, much later at this rate).
In the meantime I would love to see something done to help the Weaponsmith profession in general, not just Master Weaponsmiths in particular.
Without 3-4 boxes in experimenting, you are churning out total junk that nobody buys unless every master on the server has gone hiding.
So, unless they completely redesign the weaponsmith tree and basically give you full experiment points even at novice (and then you get to do 'better' weapons as you level up as schems open up), novices will still never sell anything."
Right, and this is the problem.
A question (I'm almost to Novice Weaponsmith here, which is why this is half-question, half-suggestion)
Does Artisan Experimentation have any use (even if you can only use 10% or 25% of your artisan experimentation skill, etc) when you hit weaponsmith? And if it doesn't, what is the purpose of filling out any of the Artisan tree besides Engineering? (Or Domestic Arts, etc) I mean, you can easily buy the stuff a MA can make with little cost to yourself, and throw them into the weapons, if need be. A great benefit to the NW, imho, would be if they could use even a small portion of their experimentation points from Artisan. (If that means they only get 1 or 2 points out of it, that still bumps them to 2-3 points, which makes them able to churn out something USEFUL to people. Not necessarily anything as good as what a MW can make, but at the same time they can sell it for SOMETHING. And since most Novice Weaponsmiths aren't mass producing, they can sell them dirt cheap and still get a profit, right?)
As for redesigning the whole weaponsmith tree, that's somewhat ludicrous, however it would be NICE if a Novice Weaponsmith can at least make anything that's worthwhile to sell on the Bazaar. Even if it's just new powerups or somesuch that add a little bit, it's something. No one's going to buy a D18 pistol or any of that crap. I don't care how low-level the person is. They're going to stick with their CDEF they got free until they can use a Scout Blaster or an FWG5. Give us something USEFUL to do. Powerups are useful. Erm, they CAN be useful, if most of them weren't broken.
Me.
Hi All,
I've been reading the issues that are on this board and believe that some of them can be addressed if we just change the way we play the game!
The main one I want to address is the plightof the Novice weaponsmith.
I agree with the people on this board that have said "You're a Novice! You shouldn't be able to make anything decent!". Rightly so. Lets face it....in real life....that is the case too. But...in real life we get over this problem by interaction with each other. So heres what I propose.
Higher end Weaponsmiths - Take on several Novices as "apprentices". Teach them any skills they wish to learn for free (It would help if they were taught Weapon crafting techniques first!) Pay them a wage. When they get good enough, let them make lower-end weapons for you to sell via a vendor/bazaar.
Novice Weaponsmiths - You are a Novice! The road to becoming decent at your trade is a long one. Yet, it need not be boring. True...you can sit there for hours on end grinding if you are that impatient. But join up with a Higher end Weaponsmith. You will get free tuition (trainers are not cheap!). You will get a source of income. You can carry out duties for your mentor like gathering good resources for your mentors business. Maybe posting your mentors lower-end weapons for sale on the bazaar (giving the proceeds back to your mentor of course!). Even crafting lower-end weapons for sale, when your mentor is too busy making higher end weapons.
The result?
Higher end weaponsmiths have somebody to do the "dogs-body" work for them like resource location and harvester maintainance. While they can focus on making decent weapons and having time to explore the game a bit. Novices have a use.....they can also devote some time to grinding (Unfortunately, you have to do that a bit!) as well as getting the chance to make new contacts - perhaps with resource vendors for their future careers - as well as exploring the rest of the game. The big plus - this requires no Developer interaction whatsoever! They can then spend their valuable time on addressing the real issues like making the experimentation and resource stats work better!
Once the Novice has Master crafting techniques and Firearms/Melee 1, I see no reason why they can't "make it" in SWG.
One more thing (sorry!) - I think the higher end weaponsmiths have a responsibility to avoid selling higher end weapons on the bazaar for 3000 creds or less. This practice ruins the market for everybody, more importantly the up and coming weaponsmiths who have just started their own businesses.
Sorry about the length of that rant!
But if we work together, we can make this game more enjoyable for everybody.
Joon Greel
Master Artisan/ Expert Weaponsmith - Tempest
I like your ideas Joon. This makes me think about taking on an apprentice myself. But what would you guys consider a fair wage per week? 3-5k?
biwan:
Add here for some more issues that got listed seperately.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=weaponsmith&message.id=10694
Have they put the resources needed for T-21's on the Intrepid server. I keep hearing from weaponsmiths that they have not put all needed resources on to the server yet. Is this true?
Wages....a good question. I have given this some thought and really it has to be purely down to an agreement between the two players. I think a weekly wage would be inappropriate, as you cannot guarentee the apprentice would be online all week. I currently am not paying my apprentice, although I am giving him free access to my medium harvesters for grinding purposes (I am paying the harvester maintainance, apprentice is supplying the power). My apprentice earns money by taking a couple of survey missions each time he goes out to the harvesters. I am just happy to get an extra 10 plots of building space, as I am utilisingthe space of my apprentice now too
I have been doing this now for a week...and both myself and my apprentice are happy with things.
In answer to Kelec's post :-
You have a valid point, however, the way I see it......it is inevitable that the number of weaponsmiths will increase, even disuading as best you can will not stop a significant number from reaching master. As the number of weaponsmiths increase though.....so do the numbers of people requiring weapons. I don't know whats its like on your server, but just having "Expert Weaponsmith" over my head means that I am inundated with /tells for weapons. You can't serve everybody. Quite honestly, I would welcome more weaponsmiths, to take the burden off of me! After spending a few weeks as a high end weaponsmith....money will become irrelevant anyway, especially with utilisation of the apprentices bazaar slots too. So, at that point, its time to hang up your crafting tool and explore the game
Maybe as a condition of the apprenticeship, you could say to your apprentice that you take 5% of his sales in the future, if you are that worried about competition.
Joon Greel
Master Artisan/Expert Weaponsmith/Gunsmith - Tempest