Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Compilation of Weaponsmith Issues (11/26/03)
Eola wrote:
Schematic loss? Would be stupid. Sorry I have to be blunt.
Given that a HUGE amount of the player base dabbles between classes and would never use Master level weapons, schematic loss would actually PUNISH Master Weaponsmiths for making master. Why do I say that? Because the only way schematic loss would protect Novices is if only Novices can make novice quality weapons, only experts could make experts, etc. Why? Because if you let any level produce stuff from a level below it? Then you will STILL have the people on the bottom rung getting outclassed in terms of final product
Well, your other option would be to let masters make all the weapons, but just make sure that any novice level stuff they make is no better than what a novice can make -- which basically means that experimentation and assembly become constants, rather than dependent upon your level in the tech tree.
But you can't have it be both ways. The Masters have GOT to let go of part of the market and let the novices compete or they'll end up screwing themselves over. I fully intend to sell master level stuff on the bazaar when I hit Master. I'll still do things from my shop, but the bazaar will be my vendor, basically. What are you guys going to do when I'm putting up master level weapons for 3000 credits a pop? Granted, I won't be doing it in the same volumes as you guys, but I WILL be cutting into your market. And that's exactly what will happen. As people recognize that they're basically forced to be masters to even participate in the market, they'll do the same thing. You'll end up having a lot of smaller operations who realize that selling in decent volumes on the bazaar is a good way to make money and that keeping your quantities low means lower overhead. And then the established masters will sit around and wonder what the hell happened to the business they used to get. Sure they'll keep their steady customers, but I doubt they'll be able to hang on to the transient business which likely makes up a substantial portion of their market.
Oh, by the way, I'm a smuggler too, so expect that my weapons will be put up on the bazaar in sliced condition. No worries on my end about having my vendor bought out by a smuggler (and I'll laugh at any smuggler who DOES buy all my stuff just to slice).
This is the danger of a two state profession. You end up with it being top-heavy and the existing masters get screwed either way. It just takes a little longer for it to happen this way. Put simply, if you want to maintain control over the amount of business you guys currently have, you have to be willing to give up SOME of it or risk losing MOST of it.
Regardless, even if there WAS schematic loss where novices sold to novices, experts to experts, etc., most people in the combat classes will spend the bulk of their play time as masters in at least ONE class (or elites in at least one). Sure, they'll dabble, but most folks will dabble as elites at least. If you set up the master box so that masters and specialists could make elite weapons as well asmasters only makingmaster weapons, you wouldn't really punish the masters. Why? Because it's just a matter of time before most folks end up in their end of the market anyway, and because that's where they'll spend their time once they're there.
Masters need to basically get over the notion that they should control EVERYTHING. They shouldn't. And if they do, they'll still end up losing most of it. Regardless, I hear about plenty of people who complain about burnout and being ticked off at customers who pester them. I imagine a fair portion of these people are NOT masters, so wouldn't you be helping yourself by cutting down on the number of jackasses who frequent your shop? You guys just have to learn to let go, and I promise you, I'll still be advocating that when I hit master myself.
GETTING to master isn't hard, either. It's a simple matter of grinding rifle barrels. Once you have the resources and trainers around, you can do it pretty **edit** quickly. Hell, in the town I'm planning on joining, they've already got a weaponsmith trainer. All I need to do is get some cash, get some steel, and get to work. It's simple, really. The only issue I'll face is the resource gate. But like I said, GETTING to master is not the hard part. Doesn't that bother you too? Doesn't it bug you that there's no real challenge in actually achieving what you've achieved, except in terms of maintaining things once you're there? To me, that kind of cheapens the master box.
Like I've said, weaponsmith is a binary profession at the moment. You're a novice or a master. Anyone else is just transitioning between the two states and working their way to master. If you could actually survive as a specialist, I'll bet a lot of people would, and there's nothing wrong with that. Right now, we punish dabblers too much, I think. Weaponsmith allows for NO dabbling, basically. That defies the entire design of the game. Most other professions let you dabble some. Sure you'll still be better at everything as a master, but you can still do a lot of what the profession does by dabbling. You basically can't really BE a weaponsmith until you hit Tech IV, and even then you're still grinding to getthose extra three assembly/experimentation points.
I just think that's wrong and something should be done about it.
Disagree on schematic loss and flat experimentation, in a huge way.
Flat experimentation will hurt the entire profession. It's not a matter of how hard it is to get to master weaponsmith, it's the matter of the skill points invested. That's something people seem to always fail to take into account. I don't care how you can grind with X steel and get master in Y days - the question is, will you remain commited skill points wise? And that is a big thing.
I've invested the full tree's worth into making weapons. Why on earth should someone who's invested a fifth of what I have be able tomake the same level laser rifles as me? They shouldn't. And it's garbage to say "Oh but masters get all the schematics". It's too niche. It will result in too much dabbling.
Look at CH - they had to spread the levels among the entire tree because too many people could dabble and unlock most of the profession's bonuses with minimal skill point investing. Having all experimentation flat - all 10 points at novice - is like giving CH's allcreature levels at Novice.
I'd like to see changes where there are varying degrees which allow for marketable products at multiple stages in the profession as well - but not to the detriment of the entire profession as a whole.
Perhaps this concept of "varying range" levels of weapons - will help redress this issue. Of course it's all speculation, but I was wondering if maybe it would be implemented similar to say, medicine use. Right now medics and doctors can make various stimpacks which require gradually increasing 'usage skill'. Perhaps a "Rifle Use", "Carbine Use" and "Pistol Use" skill will be implemented. So say, a master T-21 requires "80 Rifle use" where a novice requires "40 Rifle use" - and of course, like stims, the effectiveness isdifferent appropriately. Hopefully to go hand in hand would be stopping Masters from making Novice weapons (which in this case it is not quite like stimpacks) - but I like the idea that any combat mastered profession person requiring the very best rifle/carbine/pistol needs to see a master weaponsmith.
I'd like to see that totally replace the certification system as frankly, the thing is useless - and make the weaponuse skill very progressional - givingall weapons a window of usefulness. As already stated by someone here, no one hangs around in lower levels long enough to warrant the use of lower tier weapons. Also a rework of weapons to that it should be a total no brainer what the best weapon is to use (as a workhorse, obviously situational will change things). I think it's pretty silly that the "Rifleman certified rifle" - the T-21, the alleged Holy Grail - is given a real run for the money by the Laser Rifle - whose cert exists in Rifles 2 (if I recall) in Marskman!
Although now that I think of it using the T-21 as an example of novice vs master crafted was stupid of me seeing as it's master made. Oops!
I honestly don't know how it'll swing ... move the weapon schematics arounda little? I mean it does seem silly to have "Novice" and "Master" crafted T-21s when the schematic exists in Master!
Solo4114 wrote:
I'd also implement some kind of schematic loss at this point because I see no other way to allow novice crafters to enter the economy. And that's just lousy game design.
Schematic loss? Would be stupid. Sorry I have to be blunt.
Given that a HUGE amount of the player base dabbles between classes and would never use Master level weapons, schematic loss would actually PUNISH Master Weaponsmiths for making master. Why do I say that? Because the only way schematic loss would protect Novices is if only Novices can make novice quality weapons, only experts could make experts, etc. Why? Because if you let any level produce stuff from a level below it? Then you will STILL have the people on the bottom rung getting outclassed in terms of final product.
Mislabeled Object Creators. If your factory ison someone else's lots, that person will be labeled Object Creator for the items you produce within the factory, even if you created the schematic yourself. Additionally, when your weapons are sliced, the Object Creator is labeled again as the slicer.
Correction:
Im a smuggler on Chilastra, and the Object Creator never changes when I perform a slice. Please update your Issues list. Some weaponsmiths are now angry at slicers because this is misunderstood.
Rai
RaiCella wrote:
Correction:
Im a smuggler on Chilastra, and the Object Creator never changes when I perform a slice. Please update your Issues list. Some weaponsmiths are now angry at slicers because this is misunderstood.
Rai
I am a Master Smuggler and this exact scenario has repeatedly happened to my character, and I have Master Smugglers in my guild who can vouch for this exact same bug occuring after their slices.
I don't know why it doesn't work for you, but that doesn't keep it from being a bug that needs to be fixed.
Kershakk,
See, this is exactly the problem thatwe face. We have a double-edged sword here. On the one hand, weaponsmith is a two-state profession due to experimentation and schematic distribution. On the other, I do agree that we need to give the masters SOME benefits over everyone else. Schematic loss may not be the way, but experimentation/assembly being made constant HAS to be done or the masters are screwed in a big big way.
Much of what happens next will depend on how the combat changes and weapon changes shake out. If the devs DO incorporate a system where you have novice level DL44s, intermediate level DL44s (by that I mean everything between novice and specialist), Specialist level DL44s, Elite level DL44s and Master Elite DL44s, then we have no problem. You can simply distribute the schematics across the tree so that novices make novice versions, intermediates make intermediates, specialists make specialists, and masters make Elite and Elite Masters. As long as this happens in conjunction with the removal of assembly/experimentation differences across the levels, then we have no problem. Novices will have a market, and masters won't be stealing from them, schematic loss or not.
I guess the way I see it, you either have to incorporate schematic loss (so that novices are the only ones making lower level weaponry and masters make higher end weaponry), or you have to do away with experimentation/assembly. And let me explain why.
Right now, masters:
- Can make more weapon schematics than novices.
- Can make all the schematics that novices make in addition.
- Can make everything BETTER than novices.
The end result of this is that no one will buy from anyone but a master most of the time, since money is no object in this game. Last night I had a guy tip me 15000c FOR MY TIME while he searched for a weapon in his pack to slice. Why'd he do it? Because he had over 500K worth of credits and knew he could get more easily. When he finally found the thing, he still paid me my rate for the slice. This guy doesn't care how much things cost, he will only buy the best, and that means masters will get his business.
The same is true of most other players. They want master quality. For them, it's worth it to pay the extra 5-20K to buy a quality gun. They don't mind paying for master quality, as I'm sure you've probably guessed.What they WON'T do is buy from anyone BUT a master, because why should they? Thus, everyone except masters get screwed, and they all start grinding towards master -- they have to or else they can't enter the market.
What I'm advocating for is that at least ONE of the significant advantages that masters have over everyone else be removed. Either it should be that they can make more schematics (in the form of schematic loss) or that they can't make novice level weaponry any better than a novice can (in the form of assembly/experimentation leveling).
What's more, weaponsmithing is not like CH or Pistoleer or any of the other combat professions. This is one of the major design flaws in SOE's profession systems -- they based profession progression off of Pistoleers after Beta, because folks thought pistoleer "felt right". I think this was a huge mistake. If you're a pistoleer, yes, you CAN wield a pistol better than a novice and you should be able to -- you have more skill than them. But this should not translate over for weaponsmithing or other crafting, where you have better schematics available higher up the tree AND you have the ability to make novice stuff better than novices. That just creates exactly what we have now: a two state profession with everyone grinding to be a master, and with the profession becoming more and more top-heavy. This could prove FAR more damaging than simply making masters not have as much of an advantage.
The issue is not "But I invested more skill points! I DESERVE to be able to make everything and make it better than everyone else!" You already have the advantage: you can make more stuff than the novice. You can sell to a wider market. But currently, not only do you sell to a wider market, you deny the novice any chance to even ENTER the market. Dabblers are not an issue in weaponsmithing. No one CAN dabble and that's a problem. Dabbling is supposed to be one of the key design featuers of the game. You can dabble and customize your character as you see fit. Masters deserve to have some advantages, but they don't deserve to corner the market to the exclusion of everyone else.
So, I'd say we need either schematic loss (not high on my list) or experimentation/assembly being flat (which I strongly support). Think of it this way. A 10 year old kid can make a snap-tite model of an F-14 perfectly. If the kid makes 100 of these, some will be awesome, some will have bent landing gears, but on the whole, they'll be about as good as they can be. A master modeler, who normally does models of clipper ships, complete with little guys in the crows' nests and riggings, will make that same snap-tite F-14 model basically just as well as the kid. Why? Because the model isn't that complicated. There's only so much improvement you can put into the thing. Maybe the master modeler will apply the paintjob more evenly, maybe he'll put the decals on straigher, but in terms of the model itself, it is what it is and you can't make it any better. It's a snap-tite model, not rocket science.
The same is true of things like novice weapons. If a novice can handle a D18, then he should be able to experiment fully on it, and have the same CHANCE at producing a quality version as a master. Why? Because it's a D18! It's not rocket science, it's a snap-tite model! Now, if we're talking a scatter pistol, that's closer to the clipper ship. The novice could NOT handle something of that level of complexity. Which is why the schematic is higher in the tree -- it's far more complex than the lowly D18. Essentially, the master's skill is wasted on a D18, because it just doesn't require that much skill to make -- any extra skill is just gravy at that point and doesn't add anything to the weapon really.
I'm going to put a second post in here, because this one's getting long and the next post should really be taken in and of itself, but suffice to say that I think novices need some access to the market beyond repairing things and selling WUKs. Masters HAVE to let go of some of their power or risk losing it all.
Ok, so I posted this before, but I think it needs reiteration. This will depend on how the devs reorganize the distribution of weapons in the combat trees, and will also depend on how exactly they do this "master T21/novice T21" thing.
Right now, I'm working off the following theory.
Hypothesis:
The devs will change how weapons work in a dramatic way. Rather than have the Laser Rifle at a higher level than the Tusken Rifle, all weapons will become simply different tools for the same job. Laser Rifles will do energy, Tusken Rifles will (hopefully) do kinetic damage, etc. How they will be gated for the combat professions is based on the level of the weapons. Thus, you can have a Novice level Laser Rifle, and Intermediate level Rifle, a Specialist Rifle, an Elite (novice elite class) Rifle, and a Master Elite rifle. What particular frame you choose to use will be up to you.
Application to Weaponsmithing:
If this is the case, then some major changes are in order for us. This offers us the opportunity to finally have a multi-state profession as opposed to "you're either a master or you're not a weaponsmith" like we currently have. Masters can sell to masters, novices, to novices, intermediates to intermediates, etc. But how will this be done? How can we reorganize the weaponsmithing profession?
Replacement of the Crafting Techniques Tree with Weapon Components Tree:
Currently, in order to even really participate as a weaponsmith in the economy, you HAVE to fill out the techniques tree. Even then, your weapons will always be inferior to a masters, so you really have to fill out the whole profession in order to truly participate in the economy. Why? Because of assembly/experimentation being gated. This is a poor system and will be an unnecessary one, if we have different levels of weapons being made. Instead of gating the assembly/experimentation skills, I propose we gate the levels to which you can sell. Each level of components would basically allow you to make all the necessary components and optional pieces for the weapon frames, but make them for the appropriate level.
Thus, Components 1 would let you make Intermediate level components to go into your weapon frames. Components 2 would let you makeAdvanced components to go into your weapons. Components 3 would be for Specialist Components, and Components 4 would be for Novice Elite components. Only masters would have access to Components 5, which is Master Elite components. Note: Novice components would be given at Novice level. You would HAVE to have these components in order to make ANY weapon. These would be your power handlers, barrels, stocks, etc. Sure you can make a DH17 frame, but it's got no **edit** power handler, no barrel, and no optional scope without the right components.
Reorganization of the Weapon Frame trees:
The other trees would now be considered weapon frame trees. Different frames would be introduced at different levels. For example, for melee weapons, box 1 could be One Handed Swords and Weapons, Box 2 could be Two Handed Swords, box 3 could be Polearms, and Box 4 could be Exotic weapons. For the firearms tree, box 1 could be pistols, box 2 could be Rifles, box 3 could be carbines, and box 4 could be exotic weapons (IE: scatter pistols, commando weapons, whatever). As you progress up the trees, you obviously gain access to different frames. Note: so as to avoid people simply getting box 1 for pistols, you could organize these based on the types of weapon damage or general style of weapons. IE: Melee Weapons box 1 could be blunt weapons (staffs, gaffi sticks, whatever), box 2 could be short edged weapons (knives, swords, etc.), box 3 could be long edged weapons (pikes, etc.) and you get the picture. With firearms, box 1 could be common damage types (energy & heat), box 2 could be special damage types (stun, kinetic), box 3 could be exotic damage types (cold, acid), etc. This way, rather than stick all the pistols into one box, you'd get a nice spread of weapons, but wouldn't be able to make the more interesting weapons that do, say, blast damage. You would therefore not be able to sell to the more specialized market, but could sell to your garden variety shoppers.
Benefits of This System:
Basically, the key benefit of this system is that it permits dabbling and rewards mastery. Only want to make pistols? Ok, then all you need is the first box of the firearms tree. Oh, by the way, though, if you want to sell to anyone above a novice, better get working on the components tree, too. Rather than master one tree to sell to a particular portion of the market (IE: firearms only), you'd have to at least master two. You could still dabble, but you wouldn't have anywhere near the market share of a master. And THIS would be the key benefit of being a master: market share. Masters could make all the weapons that a novice can, to the same degree of quality, but could make additional types of weapons and additional weapon levels. So, whereas a novice can make the D18, metal staff, sword, DLT20 frames, etc. and their respective components (as well as repair kits, WUKs, etc.), they could only make those components for novice level weapons. So, if you made it past the novice box and filled the firearms tree out, you could make a cold damage dealing SG82. But it'd still have novice components, so only novices would want to buy it. By the same token, as a master, you could make that SG82, and make versions of it for intermediates, specialists, etc.
Most of the posts I've seen here by masters indicate that they don't care about money. They have all the money they need and more. What they care about is serving their customers and serving as many customers as possible. What this system does is permit novices to get their own customers, begin building a base, and work their way along. Dabblers who are comfortable selling to a limited customer base will be able to do so, and those with the patience and dedication to the craft who want to sell to the widest possible range of customers will become masters and be able to do so.
So there you have it. Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone? ...Bueller?
Logix,
I'm glad to see you're at least open to the idea of leveling the playing field. It gives me hope for the future of this profession as I grind my way up to master. I think that we CAN make the system work AND can make it do so without shooting novices in the foot or creating a "me too!" phenomenon with people hopping on the Weaponsmith bandwagon. Any creation of benefits for novices will draw people in, and that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as those people can't take over the market.
To me, the key benefit to keep in mind is market share. THAT should be the gated factor, and everything else should revolve around making that happen. Novices should have some share of the market, but very little. The further along you progress, the more of the market you get access to. Theoretically, the graphical representation of progressing up the tree and the corresponding benefits to market share should look like a funnel, with novice at the narrow end, and master at the wide end. Ultimately, it seems to me that we're all about selling weapons to people. Some people want to do that on a huge scale, others are comfortable on a smaller scale. But we need a system that allows both and we don't have that yet. That said, I think we CAN come up with systems that will let us do both.
Couple of points.
1) SWGCraft does not give representative data on resources? Show me a better , more comprehensive listing. I've followed and this site from its beggining and while it misses a few resources It covers 95%+ of all resources. The probability that those missed resources ALL happen to be these mythical high stat resources is beyond silliness.
2) Combat only occurs at 0m and 64m? I don't know what game you play.... Keeping a PC at 64m might just be possible (If they are realdumb) but this again is just petulant silliness.
Please make valid points to rebuf arguments not these unsubstantiated wild generalisations. I cannot see you being a popular correspondent unless you listen and respond with thought and consideration.
Why do you have be popular? Well you don't - its just that you will stink as a correspondent if you set yourself up as an opinionated know-it-all. You've lost all respect from me (like you care), continue belittling others in threads like this and talking down to them and I'm sure I won't be the last.
... waiting for next correspondent ...
Solo4114 wrote:
Well, your other option would be to let masters make all the weapons, but just make sure that any novice level stuff they make is no better than what a novice can make -- which basically means that experimentation and assembly become constants, rather than dependent upon your level in the tech tree.
Depending on how schematics are arranged, I don't have a problem with this in principle. In fact very early on in my WS days I actually advocated just such a system as they *seem* to be implementing (i.e. Novice/Expert/Master Weapons and Novice/Expert/Master crafters). Ideally, as a Master I'll be far too busy building Expert/Master weapons to waste factory time on Novice guns. But there's a proviso here sadly. No matter how you organize this system, someone is going to get seriously pronged, and most likely that's going to be the Novice level crafter.
Why? Because as a Master, there are too many dabblers who don't master professions for me to exclusively make Master level weapons. To be profitable, I'll have to compete for the 'Expert' level market as well. For your expert level crafter, this leaves them with a problem, they can't market 'Master' weapons, and Masters are infringing on their sales. Having been around slightly longer, and having better resources, they can probably make a 'Novice' weapon that's better than a 'Novice' 'smith can make, and there's a market to be had there, customers they can capture and take with them as they rise to Master. So 'Expert' 'smiths will compete at the 'Novice' level.
A strictly 'Novice' crafter will be stuck, when their customer advances to needing an 'Expert' weapon, they won't be able to make it and they'll have competition from the Expert level smiths that can bridge the customer into the next set of weapons. So the Novice smith will still be a smaller fish in a medium-sized pond and there will be bigger fish on the prowl.
Will the system make them more competitive? Probably. Will it make it possible for them to stay at that level and be succesful? Probably not. People refer people to the 'smiths they use, and noone will be using Novice 'smiths for very long. This system will make the 'Expert' WS much more profitable however.
But you can't have it be both ways. The Masters have GOT to let go of part of the market and let the novices compete or they'll end up screwing themselves over. I fully intend to sell master level stuff on the bazaar when I hit Master. I'll still do things from my shop, but the bazaar will be my vendor, basically. What are you guys going to do when I'm putting up master level weapons for 3000 credits a pop?
Honestly? I'll cheer you on, and recommend to those that don't like my prices to buy yours. But you can sell Flamethrowers on the Bazaar for 3K and I don't think it would dent my business noticeably, because of several inherent issues with the economy & market.
1: People don't expect Master Level weapons on the bazaar, so they don't look there for them.
2: People refer their friends to reliable weaponsmiths who they've worked with and who've done custom builds for them. (At this point, I get about 15-20 new customers every day that came strictly from referrals).
3: Your weapons will get bought off of the bazaar in approximately 5 minutes by resellers who will then sell the weapons on vendors or by shout at around 20-25K and make themselves a tidy quick profit.
4: At those prices your ability to use/buy older/rarer resources will be practically nil, and unfortunately you do need some older materials to make a place for yourself in this business.
Granted, I won't be doing it in the same volumes as you guys, but I WILL be cutting into your market. And that's exactly what will happen. As people recognize that they're basically forced to be masters to even participate in the market, they'll do the same thing. You'll end up having a lot of smaller operations who realize that selling in decent volumes on the bazaar is a good way to make money and that keeping your quantities low means lower overhead. And then the established masters will sit around and wonder what the hell happened to the business they used to get.
And yet, it won't happen. Even if you were to sit at the bazaar and offer weapons as fast as you could and as fast as they sold you're limited to 25 offers. I have over 300 weapons on my vendor, and though I sellbetween 30-70a day, I also stock around 70+ a day. Which means that people know they can go to my shop and find a weapon, even if I'm not online. It's also not a good way to make money. It's limited volume, you've got a hard cap on prices... and frankly if you do cut into my business a little it'll make it easier for me to stock multiple vendors on multiple planets.
Sure they'll keep their steady customers, but I doubt they'll be able to hang on to the transient business which likely makes up a substantial portion of their market.
Again, I disagree. Your 25 weapons will disappear off the bazaar 5 minutes after you log off. At 6:12am EST, if John Bounty Hunter wants an LLC and checks on the Global map, or checks that email he has about that Eola guy? He can go to my shop and pick up one.
Oh, by the way, I'm a smuggler too, so expect that my weapons will be put up on the bazaar in sliced condition. No worries on my end about having my vendor bought out by a smuggler (and I'll laugh at any smuggler who DOES buy all my stuff just to slice).
Heh. I've learned to live with the 'fear' of a smuggler buying out my stock to slice. I've also got standing agreements with 3-4 smugglers for free or fractional cost slices. I can stock 100+ pre-sliced weapons of a specific type and leave them up for 30 days to sell while I move on to the next batch. Given our ability to churn out scrap guns, and scrap wuks, and even scrap clamps and knives, there's no reason that any WS shouldn't have 3-4 friendly smugglers they can rely on.
This is the danger of a two state profession. You end up with it being top-heavy and the existing masters get screwed either way. It just takes a little longer for it to happen this way. Put simply, if you want to maintain control over the amount of business you guys currently have, you have to be willing to give up SOME of it or risk losing MOST of it.
I'm one of the biggest proponents of a balanced system you'll find, because quite frankly I just think it would be nice if there was any sort of benefit to me taking on apprentices. Right now they can't do a thing for me, and so it makes me helping them along the road strictly a charity thing. If they could in some way, shape or form carry their weight (beyond scut work)? I'd be thrilled.
But you're insane if you think that selling all your Master made weapons on the bazaar will make a dent in anything but your own profit margin. I was similarly insane too. I was selling Expert Crafted scouts on the Bazaar for 1250 a pop when I was grinding up. I'd sell 50 of them in 2 days, 500 of them in 10. The effect of this on the other weaponsmiths on Naboo was minimal. The bazaar is a TOTALLY different market system.
Masters need to basically get over the notion that they should control EVERYTHING. They shouldn't. And if they do, they'll still end up losing most of it.
Actually... I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask a question. Why should it be particularly easy for Novice Weaponsmiths to be competitive? Now understand... I think it should be, I think there should be a niche for them but I can'tlist a single objective reason that isn't hyperbole.
Doesn't that bother you too? Doesn't it bug you that there's no real challenge in actually achieving what you've achieved, except in terms of maintaining things once you're there? To me, that kind of cheapens the master box.
The mark of the craft isn't getting the box, the mark of the craft is actually being able to make the weapons, sell the weapons, create a product that stands up with/against the best on your server and keeping your customers happy and up to their hip waders in corpses.
Like I've said, weaponsmith is a binary profession at the moment. You're a novice or a master.
You've said this several times, and you're wrong. Flat out wrong. WS is at the very LEAST a Triple State profession.
State 1: You're a novice, you don't have the exp points, you might have the resources,, and you have a long road ahead.
State 2: You're a Master WS, you have the exp points, and you just found out just how far along the road you still have to go.
State 3: You're an Actual Master WS, you have the exp points, you've mined the new spawns of good resources, you've begged, bartered or stolen stocks of the older resources, you've figured out the best configurations of the guns you can make... and you've finally started to be a WS.
There are still niches in the middle, I know plenty of smart people that have made a profit in the in-betweens. Grenades, Mines, WUKs, Repair Kits. Guns who's AS/Dam is gated by resources so their low experimentation points only mean a less durable gun. It's a hard place to live, but there's room there.
I just think that's wrong and something should be done about it.
And I advocate something be done about it as well, as long as it doesn't completely discount the work that people HAVE done to get to Master WS, and as long as it results in a system that makes it tolerable for dabblers, rather than rewarding them for not going farther up the tree or punishing those who make Master.
Solo4114 wrote:
What I'm advocating for is that at least ONE of the significant advantages that masters have over everyone else be removed. Either it should be that they can make more schematics (in the form of schematic loss) or that they can't make novice level weaponry any better than a novice can (in the form of assembly/experimentation leveling).
BTW: There's something a lot simpler that you're completely missing the boat on. The simplest way to alow Novices to compete with Masters is to make the 'Novice Level' weapons capped on the number of experimentation points/lines that can be put into it.
So while your T21 can take the full 10 points along 4 different lines? The DLT20A has 1 line, that's only2 points long. So a Novice who's put in a little time can make a 'Perfect' DLT20A just like a Master can.
The more complex the design? The more experimentation types. So 'Expert' level weapons have two lines say ATTACK/RANGE and DURABILITY/EFFICIENCY, and each line can take a maximum of3 points, so that way an expert level with with7 points, and a Master Smith with 10 points can both make a 'Perfect' Expert level gun. Now at this level, resource quality should have more of an effect as well, so that if the best resources aren't used the 'Perfect' gun won't be reached.
But for Master level stuff? Doors open, it's the same as it is now. Which means at Master level resource quality, & experimentation, & the tides of the moon all have the same effects that they donow.
But the only way this can work and not be UTTERLY unbalanced in favor of the Intermediate/Novice level crafters is if themax damage on the novice version of the weapon is equalto the min damage on the intermediate version, andif the max damage of the intermediate is equal to themin damage on the master level version. Players have to have a clear and present reason to put awaychildish things when they become a man/woman.
