Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: A Weaponsmith laments.....
Edit: Originally posted in Jan 2004.....
Once upon a time I thought that holding on to resources and having the ability to accurately identify the best resources for a schematic would be enough to differentiate between WS's. Every day another new & better resource spawns, and with all the harvesting capability that we have now, everyone is using the same resources to make the same level of component, to combines into identical weapons..?? Where is the sense in that..?? But having said that, even these new & better spawns that increase the initial combine by 1 or 2 %, make very little difference in the individual components or in the final weapon...
I see very little individuality left for the WS making weapons right now. Resources I was saving for later in the game are being supassed to the point where everyone now has the very best resources, that even if they are beaten it will only be by fractions of a %. And everyone and their dog now has multiple harvesters with BER's of 13+ so that we have these new resources in such quanities, that nothing I ever make from now on will be better than anyone elses...
I guess what I am saying is that 'Uber' resources should be 'Uber' rare..., and should also take some skill to extract. I see the loss of a specific mining profession as the over-riding flaw in SWG from a crafting perspective. When an average weapon takes less than 500 resources to make, and a WS can freely harvest 50k a day of any resource with no skill involved, Weaponsmithing has become all about resource mining...
And of course, once the best resources are out there there will never be any chance of improvements, kinda capping all further advances....
I have to say that I am losing some level of interest in WS'ing right now, especially after taking a well-earned break for the holidays which has left me unable to compete. So much for casual gamers.....
Message Edited by Spiglord on 01-14-2005 07:38 AM
Yeah, its always grated on me that I can barely utilise 20% of the weapons I can make but yet any master commando, bounty hunter, pikeman or whatever can drop 10 heavy harvesters and cut the bottom out of the resource market. We have a resource glut on the servers, with probably 75% or more of it being hoarded in an attempt to capitalize on future shortages. All crafters are defined by their resources; it is all that separates us. When anyone can come into 20K units of (insert uber resource) overnight and sell it for peanuts at the nearest SP, where does that leave the dedicated folks who harvest there own..?
Usage of anything above BER 2 harvesters, orfarmsand BER 5 on generators needs to beskill dependant asdo lot numbers. It says so much that a Mas Arch can craft a large house but can never live in it costhey need the 6 lots for harvesters...
wow. anyone else remember all the posts about some resources NEVER spawning?
I'm not sure there'd be much interest in mining as a profession instead of a skill tree.
Spiglord, I completely agree with everything you said! We're on the same server so I know exactly what brought this on too. We've had a series of back to back great spawns over the last couple of weeks that has destroyed the value of many of my "rare" resources. I spent considerable time and money acquiring these resources, most of which spawned before I became a weaponsmith, but much of that is for naught with these new spawns. We're fast approaching the time where resources can't get much better and like you said, everyone and their brother is a hardcore miner with a fleet of BER13 harvs.
Bring rarity back, give us something to strive for. Resource rarity is one of the things that SOE got right, right out of the box. Sure, it's frustrating when you need something critical and it hasn't spawned but that's part of the fun. I'll never forget how happy I was when Irolunn spawned for the first time in many months (two months after I hit MWS). Iwas literally jumping for joy....it was that good.
Thosedays seem to be over, sadly.
)They don't want crafter monopolies based on how long you've been a weaponsmith.
That said, I agree with you, there needs to be something added to make master-made weapons differ from eachother. Getting the "perfect" weapon at this point is too easy in terms of the probabilities once people have 11-12 experimentation points. Dunno what it should be, they could expand on the amazing successes to let them take a weapon over 100% (or over the max for the materials), they could add a skill-based part of it (I'm giggling as I think of a WS interface that works like and old football videogame kicking interface
), they could even allow hand sampling to occationally pull up "purer" samples of material with stats over 1000, but there need to be something. It just shouldn't be ancient unavailable resources that have been hoarded.
Once you find the best resource, yes ppl will glut.. but you're wrong to think that glut will last forever. It simply won't.. someone will use it for grinding material, others will use it for good components, some will just forget about it..
Time erases all things. I'm sorry you're not having fun as a WS.. there are 26+ professions out their to go taste, walk another path a while and reinvigorate yourself.
-S-
The problem is, they have NEVER EVER spawned on our server. We are the only server left that has no T-21 rifles because of it. I see people talking about prenerf and postnerf T-21's and go on and on about it, but on Tarq we would be happy to have ANY T-21's.
What they really need to do is to fix the way spawns work so that no resource can ever go 60 or 90 days without spawning. The game is over 6 months old now and we have yet to see this resource spawn anywhere.
BTW, we also have the issue of a really nice steel and a really nice copper spawning recently, leaving our old resources relegated to meaninglessness. I have to tell you, you really should have expected this. Life as a weaponsmith means forever searching for and harvesting resources, while realizing that all of your efforts will eventually be in vain. There will almost always be another resource on the horizon that is better, so the best thing to do right now is just get as much as you can of it and be prepared. When the new one comes, be thankful that your old one lasted this long, and give it away to your architect buddy.
I would really have to argue that this problem really isn't as harmful as the problem of some resources not spawning at all.
I can understand your stand point, but this is why we need to have more customization abilities, to be able to choose damage over speed, perhapsactually be able to change HAM cost on a weapon without making the weapon useless and other features along those lines. this at least allows more customization options for weapons which may create a broader selection of weapons compared to damage/speed which is the high seller obviously
however, it sounds likeyour trying to say:
"I don't want these newbie weapons smiths making the same quality weapons i can and ruining my big money cash market i worked so hard to create"
everyone else has this problem, I don't sell weapons, money is evil
I have just retired from Weaponsmithing and I agree completely that there is very little differance these days between weaponsmiths weapons. I was shocked and disapointed when they reduced the amount of specific resources needed for differant weapons.Instead of needing Doonium Iron for a weapon, you just need iron.
By having every weapon need at least 1 specific type, preferably more, of resource it would reduce the amount of weapons each weaponsmith could build.
I also thought they should have split up weaponsmithing into 2 professions, one for ranged weapons and another for melee/Heavy/munitions. You can debate over the split, but that would lead to more specialization. Of course additional weapons would make everyone happy as well.
Corwyn Stark
former Master Weaponsmith
While I agree that there should be some more customization options to help differentiate master weapons from other master weapons, the problem about rare resources and newb weaponsmiths getting them quickly is very close to real life. Because I have several nice harvesters I can probably grab some high-quality uber resources when they spawn... but that's only going to allow me to make a few high-quality weapons, with all the named resources that are necessary for the wide variety we have. Now, we do have the problem on Valcyn about ultra rare resources right now (Ostrine Carbonite Ore), making it difficult for new master weaponsmiths to reach the quality of established master weaponsmiths with a stockpile of Ostrine. However, just like in real life, if I'm a wealthy individual, I can buy my way to the top by spending enourmous amounts of money on uber resources.
The good thing is that my limited experience as a master weaponsmith (about 2 weeks) has shown me that most players aren't concerned about 10-20 extra damage on a weapon... they are looking for someone with great customer service, convenient location, etc. So there's always ways to compete...
Corwyn- wrote:
I have just retired from Weaponsmithing and I agree completely that there is very little differance these days between weaponsmiths weapons. I was shocked and disapointed when they reduced the amount of specific resources needed for differant weapons.Instead of needing Doonium Iron for a weapon, you just need iron.
The only weapons that were changed were the heavy weapons (FT, LLC, expendables) and they were changed for the simple reason that most servers weren't able to make them because the resources had never spawned, and commando/BH were completely unable to gain any experience.
Spiglord wrote:
But having said that, even these new & better spawns that increase the initial combine by 1 or 2 %, make very little difference in the individual components or in the final weapon...
But ya know, not even a superdupperlooper amazing does anything to the final weapon.I believe they are dumbing down the game, and taking all strategic crafting out to simplify their own support efforts. It's hard to find good CSRs and forum Correspondents.
It becomes even more obvious the deeper intoit ya go. The sooner you surrender weaponsmithing the better you'll be. Just use looted weapons, they are making them stronger. I anticipate a complete wipe of all crafting in SWG, in the coming patches. I expect to read in the MOTD,
"we've rebuilt the weapon system,youwillno longer be ableto wield a prepatch weapon, delete them from your inventory, immediately or face being banned."
Look at what they did with vehicles, a simple restrung bioengineered dewback, nothing more, nothing less. Could they do that right? They published it broken... Do you really want them tinkering with Weaponcrafting, I don't, not unless they hire better programmers and fire their current ones.
Now with the hotfix to vehicles the garages are obsoleted. They can't fix one thing w/o breaking or ruining the market in another. I wish they would publish their patch dates more professionally, so I could prepare for the mind **edit**.
Oar