Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Issues with and suggestions for WS
So, after reading a number of threads and thinking about some of this stuff, I decided to post a thread on what I think are some of the KEY issues with weaponsmithing, and ways in which they can be resolved. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it will be long.
1.) Resource Quality:
Dammit...stupid lithium boards...sorry about the double post, folks. Anyway, here goes on the overall issues.
1.) Resource Quality:
So far, resources seem to be either low quality, overly scarce, or both. On Kettemoor, we JUST had our first spawn of Plumbum iron in at least a month, if not more. The OQ is good (700s -- not terrific, but ok), but pretty much everything else is low level. This seems to happen a fair amount. And not just with the upper level resources, but with all resources. Since the last Siskref spawn on Kettemoor, we haven't had much by way of decent quality steel.
Solution/Suggestion:
Not sure what to say here. Certain resources just take FOREVER to spawn. Others spawn consistently, but at low quality. And still others spawn rarely and then still have lousy stats. Maybe the program that determines spawns and calculations needs looking at. This one would be more for the devs to sort out, since we really lack the info necessary to offer constructive suggestions.
2.) The Crafting Gap:
As it stands, masters own the marketplace. End of story. If you're not a master, you're working to become a master. Why? Because it's the only way you can sell in any kind of real volume. Eventually, with everyone grinding to make master, we'll have a glut of masters who will be forced to cut prices and everyone loses out.
But, as it stands, masters get a double bonus, in that they can craft EVERYTHING better than non-masters. Non-masters have to grind the techniques tree before they can expect to sell even lowly weapons at anything above 700 credits or so (at least that's how it seems on my server). Thus, non-masters are effectively excluded from the marketplace.
Solution/Suggestions:
Get rid of the techniques tree in favor of a new weapons tree (maybe heavy weapons). Make all crafting abilities uniform when you hit novice. Experimentation would be constant, rather than controlled by your experience level. Assembly would also be constant. What would be gated is simply the weapons you can make. The rest would be up to the roll of the dice in the experimentation phase and the quality of your resources. Masters will still be able to hold on to a significant portion of the market, in that they'll be able to make master level weapons of greater complexity than your basic DL44s, D18s, scout blasters, etc. However, this will only REALLY work if you address the previous issue (make sure that masters CAN craft upper level weapons by spawning upper level resources of decent quality), and if you address the following issue.
3.) Useless/Underutilized Weapons:
I play as a smuggler character. As such, I've become intimately familiar with the pistol tree. In my climb up the ladder, I've used the following weapons: CDEF, D18, DL44, Scout, FWG5, and DX2. Currently, I use a DX2, Scout, and FWG5, and occasionally a DL44 that I had made custom for me. However, in terms of what pistols are available, I know that there are also: Power5, Striker pistol, Tangle pistol, SR2 Combat pistol, DH17 pistol, and the TRULY useless Republic Blaster. Ask me if I've ever even held one of the other guns in my hand. I haven't, largely because they're lousy by comparison with the "big three" (Scout, FWG5, DX2). Even the DL44 is a stretch, and I use it mainly because, to me, it's THE smuggler weapon, and it sounds and looks so cool (especially with a type 2 scope).
Now, that's basically 4 useful pistols (past novice, anyway) out of 11 that are useful. That's not even a 50% utility rating there. The stats on most of the other weapons are usually pretty weak, and the only reason to have them is to take on creatures that have resists on everything but, say, stun or kinetic. Where I do most of my killing, that's pretty rare. Most of the time, the only resists I see are energy, and occasionally heat. No one's EVER resisted acid, so with basically three guns, I'm covered.
And that's only the pistol tree. We're not even addressing the utility of melee weapons, explosives, rifles, carbines, etc.
Solutions/Suggestions:
This problem has a few aspects that must be dealt with simultaneously to improve things. On the one hand, the stat ranges for these various weapons seem fairly low. These could stand to be raised. In addition, the distinguishing features of most of these guns are negligible. The D18, Scout blaster, DL44, and Power5 (I think) all do energy damage. I don't believe any of them have armor penetration, and they basically only differ in terms of damage. However, a scout is far and away superior to any of the others in terms of raw DPS, usually due to its speed. What could be done to change this would be to make the different pistols more different. Give them different damage types, change their damage ranges vs. speed, alter their armor penetration, etc. The final aspect actually deals with the targets you use these weapons on. Like I said, I've found that I really only need three damage types to handle most creatures, at least on the starter planets. Varying the resists of targets more might make people want to invest in kinetic damage weapons, stun damage weapons, medium armor piercing weapons, etc. You have to create a need for these things before people will bother to buy the different weapons.
4.) UXP:
Part of the reason why people develop macros to grind PRBs is because UXP doesn't seem to work. I got some UXP once when I crafted a D18 for a guy, gave it to him, and then told him to go shoot a chuba standing next to me. That seems to be what's required in order to get UXP, because I've sold a few other guns and never saw my XP change as a result of any use that the buyers might've gotten out of them.
Solution/suggestion:
Not sure what the problem is, but granting more UXP would make getting from one stage of smithing to another a lot more interesting, and would make me more inclined to actually make guns and try to sell them. The way I see it, the hierarchy should be that Crafting XP+ UXP > practicing XP. As it stands, it's the other way around. I lose XP by actually making a weapon, especially when it isn't going to sell anyway.
That's it for now. If folks throw out other issues, I'll probably be inclined to come up with solutions/suggestions for those as well. Feel free to add your own stuff also.
Good post (well, on the second attempt) 
1) As long as the server doesn't havebroken spawns, and resources get shuffled every week,I don't think the resource problem is that bad, over the long term.
2) I agree the master > everyone else gap is a problem. Personally, I don't think that everyone should be exactly equal, but that the gap between novice and master be made much smaller (like a novice starts with 4 points of experimentation, and the master bonus over tech4 is only 1-2 points, not 3).
I think making some heavy weapons craftable at lower level would be a good idea, mainly to increase availability for commandos. My own hunch would be to just include these in the existing munitions line.
3) Yep, a lot of weapons are worthless. As a pistoleer though, just go to dathomir, and you'll see how some of the more obscure ones can be more useful. I'm even considering breaking down and carrying an SR combat
Find a way to get us involved in the GCW!!
I want to make imperial weapons and have quests for new schematics(as the armorsmiths now have for RIS armor)!
I want to be able to /ban the entire rebel faction from my shop rather than keep slowly adding rebel names to the ban list.
I'll be taking a break from regular weaponsmithing to make a S-word load of mines...hopefully minefields work now.
Hoping that weaponsmiths get to craft vehicle and eventually starship weapons as well. I'd be more than happy to give up making fwg's every few days to make some heavy artillery.
Also one last suggestion...looted blaster power handler enhancements that don't add damage or speed but instead change the damage type of the weapon. I suspect these could be more common and would add a lot more variety to weaponsmithing.
I like that last idea re: the changing damage types with different ehancements. That could make life interesting.
Anyway, as for the master vs. the galaxy issue, I'm sticking with my thoughts that we should all be equal in terms of the QUALITY of the weapons that we put out, but not in terms of the COMPLEXITY of the weapons we create.
I mean, fundamentally, the way I see it is that as a novice, you've trained yourself to make the simplest weapons, but you can make them quite well. Butif you were to try to make something more complex, well, forget about it. This would be reflected in the fact that different schematics would become available as you progressed. What's required by the schematics currently reflects the growing level of complexity as you go up the tree.
When you're making DL44s, all you need are general resource types. Scouts are a little more complex, but only in that they need aluminum specifically. But when you get to E-11s, T21s, etc., where you need multiple, identical power handlers, specific resource types like neutronium steel, plumbum iron, etc., that reflects the fact that these weapons are considerably more complex than your starter weapons. Consequently, you'd need to be a fairly sophisticated and experienced smith to craft them.
I don't really see it as a problem that novices could make SOME of the same goods as masters just as well as a master could. To me, it makes sense, whereas the current system works to punish novices. The only thing that I'd caution is that the masters need to actually be ABLE to make these weapons, so the resources have to be there and have to be decent quality as well. We can't hamstring the guys at the top to remedy the current hamstringing of the guys at the bottom. That just turns the situation on its head and creates new problems.
If masters were able to craft their more complex weapons well, then people might rely on them more. Masters would already have the edge over novices in terms of their ability to diversify their product. If I'm a novice, all I'm making are D18s and some swords. If I'm a master, I'm making those, plus everything in between. So, as a novice combat player, I'll go to who has better selection, but also who has better prices. Anyway, I think it can balance out reasonably well if assembly/experimentation are equal. Besides, you can still have differentiation in the actual materials that you collect, and masters still have more things that they can sell. so it's not like you'd be nerfing the masters. You'd just be helping the novices.
Solo, I understand what you are saying about the huge gap between Master and Novice, but I don't honestly agree that a novice should be able to make weapons of the same quality as a master.
Perhaps if you agree with the statement that the DL44, for example is so simple even a child could make it. This hints at the fact that a master couldn't make it any better than the novice simply because it can't be made any better. I'm not sure that I agree with what I just wrote but I can kind of see the argument behind the statement.
Orthaanc Isengard / Master Weaponsmith / Ahazi
Orthaanc wrote:
Solo, I understand what you are saying about the huge gap between Master and Novice, but I don't honestly agree that a novice should be able to make weapons of the same quality as a master.
Perhaps if you agree with the statement that the DL44, for example is so simple even a child could make it. This hints at the fact that a master couldn't make it any better than the novice simply because it can't be made any better. I'm not sure that I agree with what I just wrote but I can kind of see the argument behind the statement.
Orthaanc Isengard / Master Weaponsmith / Ahazi
Well, that really is what I'm saying. I think, in a large part, that the reason you and others may disagree is because you've sort of "imprinted" on the current system which tells us that, while a novice can make the item, the master can make it better. That's how things are currently, but I disagree with that being the way they OUGHT to be.
To my way of thinking, if you've made it to novice level as a weaponsmith, you've done enough crafting that you can handle the construction of weapons. How well you do will depend on the roll of the dice when it comes to assembly/experimentation and the resources you use, but if I've gotten to the point where I can craft the weapon, I should be able to craft a decent quality version. A master should be able to do a version of the same quality, primarily because the weapon IS simple. Not so simple that a child can make it (these aren't CDEFs we're talking about here), though. Remember, we all had to grind up through engineering and then from engineer to novice WS. That's experience right there, and to me, that experience should be made more valuable than it currently is (which is to say, that the experience right now is valued at basically nil).
As you progress, the quality of your weapons would remain dependent upon resource quality and your luck in the actual crafting process, but your potential would always be constant. The key difference would be the complexity of the weapons. Now, what this may require is a rejuggling of WHERE the weapons fall on the tree, but at the moment, they're roughly on par with the progression that the combat classes make. So, if you're a weaponsmith at Firearms 1, you'll be making weapons that marksmen at intermediate and advanced can use. That balances out mostly. These are relatively simple weapons to use (as evidenced by their placement in the marksman tree), and are relatively simple to craft (as evidenced by placement in the WS tree). As you increase the complexity of the weapon usage-wise, you increase in complexity of crafting. So, the complexity tracks across two professions pretty much identically.
Also, if you look at the components and resource requirements involved, the higher you go on the WS tree, the more named resources and identical components (IE: power handlers) you need to make a weapon. Again, this speaks to complexity, not to quality.
The theory that I'm operating under is that, asa novice, you can CURRENTLY do only a lousy job of making simple weapons, whereas the master can make those same weapons nearly perfectly.
The way it OUGHT to be is that as a novice, you can do a quality job of making SIMPLE weapons, but are unable to even attempt to make more complex weapons, whereas the master can make the entire range of weapons. My position re: masters is basically that their skill lies in the complexity of the weapons they can make, not in the quality that they can coax out of the simple weapons. The simple weapons are simple. Even a novice can make them, and thus, even a novice should be able to make a good quality version of it. They should not be able to be improved upon any further than what the novice can do. That's not to say we should nerf the weapons to what novices can make currently, though. I'd just like to see novices given full experimentation/assembly for what they CAN make, which, when yout hink about it, isn't anywhere near as much as what masters can make.
I see the current system as top-heavy and punishing to novices,and I see my proposed system as balanced across the span of the profession, from novice up to master. That's why I adhere to the position I do.
I would like to hear counter arguments as to why, logically, it should be left alone, though.
Nicolasa wrote:
I agree with Solo. And yes, I'm a Master Weaponsmith. I HAD to grind to make weaponsmithing fun now. I HATED it. I totally wanted to make guns, and sell them on the bazaar. Try to start a shop, etc. Couldn't sell a thing til I hit Expert Weaponsmith. And that didn't help me much. I had to use 900+ quality materials to be able to sell anything. And then I was only sorta catching up to a point where people would even look at my stuff. I see this as a huge problem that needs to be addressed. I think if a Novice is given 5 experimentation points and you get one more for each box of the techniques line, that would be a much better distribution.
With that change in place, Masters still could make better weapons. . . but by the time you hit Techniques II you could be competitive in the market. You'd just need high quality materials. So it would be harder, but not impossible like it is right now.
See, even that, I don't think, would be going far enough. Personally, I view the entire Tech tree as misguided, especially in its current form. As it stands, right now, for a novice to sell the weapons at firearms 1 for anything over, say, 700 per weapon (and even 700 is pushing it...), they have to develop themselves in the tech tree. And then, even if you grind up the entire tree, a master can still make everything you make at a considerably higher level. Given that they're also gathering the same resources as you, you'll never beat them. Ever. A master will ALWAYS outcraft a non-master, unless that master is supremely lazy or just doesn't care that much about the quality of their materials.
So, in essence, at the moment, it's as if we have an extra four boxes of "Novice" that we have to grind through before we can make decent quality equipment. That entire line is basically just a money sink, and a big one at that. either you're buying resources on the bazaar, or you're harvesting them yourself. Either way, you're paying money to get steel so you can grind PRBs and make it to Tech IV, at which point maybe you start to break even selling DL44s and DH17s to the new players out there.
That just strikes me as a flawed system and one that actively denies a significant portion of the profession any ability to participate in the economy in any meaningful fashion. Unless and until masters and novices are on a level playing field in terms of QUALITY of their goods, people won't bother to buy from non-masters. Consequently, people will still grind up to master, and the situation won't change very much. Think about it. Players are picky, and will go to great lengths even to get 5 damage points higher on a particular weapon. Given the choice of a DXR6 that does 78-220 or 83-225, which one do you think players will shell out the cash for? And that's just competition between masters that we could chalk up to experimentation or bad luck on the initial assembly rolls, or lower quality materials.
Now ask yourself why someone would buy, say, an FWG5 from an Expert that does 45-178 damage, when they can spend more money but get an FWG5 that does 62-192 damage from a master? And THAT's just competition between Experts and Masters. NOW try to imagine a choice between a DL44 made by someone with FA1 and nothing in the Tech tree for 40-81 damage, vs. a master who can make it for 74-192 damage! When money is plentiful as it is in this game, people have no incentive to cut their expenses -- they'll just shell out the cash and buy the Mercedes, rather than the Saturn.
That's why, as long as a master can do it better, they'll always get the business. You can talk all you want about customer service, but it'll only take you so far if your goods are lower quality than what's out there. Unless you sharply discount your weapons (IE: sell on the bazaar), you won't make that much money, and even selling on the bazaar, you won't sell in any significant quantities.
I agree with Solo. And yes, I'm a Master Weaponsmith. I HAD to grind to make weaponsmithing fun now. I HATED it. I totally wanted to make guns, and sell them on the bazaar. Try to start a shop, etc. Couldn't sell a thing til I hit Expert Weaponsmith. And that didn't help me much. I had to use 900+ quality materials to be able to sell anything. And then I was only sorta catching up to a point where people would even look at my stuff. I see this as a huge problem that needs to be addressed. I think if a Novice is given 5 experimentation points and you get one more for each box of the techniques line, that would be a much better distribution.
With that change in place, Masters still could make better weapons. . . but by the time you hit Techniques II you could be competitive in the market. You'd just need high quality materials. So it would be harder, but not impossible like it is right now.
All of these ideas are good ones and have been suggested many times before. The issue here isn't that we need to be searching for ways to fix things - its just that the devs need to actually do the work to implement the changes we have formally proposed to them through the correspondent system. I am still disappointed that only a small part of just one of our top 5 issues was addressed in the "big" patch, and that they mostly just ignored us. This was especially disappointing when you note that they put effort and development time into changes to weaponsmithing that nobody asked for and that is currently little used (weapon repairing for instance).
So I personally feel like there isn't much point to discussing how to fix or improve weaponsmithing until the devs address the suggestions that have already been discussed and proposed by this community. OTOH I suppose rehashing all of this stuff might be as good as any thing else at passing the time