Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: My latest post to the devs...
I will try to organize this as well as I can. The weaponsmith community is probably one of the best communities in the game for one simple reason: our profession has never been able to be described by the word "broken". That is, until the CU came along. Now, this is not a rant about the CU, I was just pointing out the crafting bugs that were brought on with the CU and the patches that came after the CU. All of that to say we are a spoiled community. Aside from too many weapons that don't need to be crafted, or some components we can make that don't go into any weapons, we have pretty much always been functional. However, our profession is slipping into mediocrity now, and only a redesign of the profession is going to save it.
Weapon Caps
They just have to go, or be increased to something that cannot be reached. The current system of caps is creating too many weapons that are double or triple capped and ruining return business for weaponsmiths as ADKs are then placed on these weapons and the player never needs to buy another weapon. Since it would be unfair to ask every player in the game to return their ADK, one of the solutions is to remove the caps on weapons, or bump them higher to a point they cannot be hit.
Ranged Enhancers
That being said, there needs to be a balance pass on enhancers. These need hard caps in which the loot cannot exceed, thus effectively putting a cap on weapons based on the loot available. This allows a player to get a full benefit from the stat range being enhanced, while allowing more customization to occur within the professions on what stats they want maxed. Right now only two stats matter, and minimum damage has too little of an impact on total damage dealt. It is an impact only felt when you are facing something that has an incredibly high defense stat, the likes of which you likely are never to see unless you are in PvP against a jedi using Force Aura for the +500 defense or a master BH using Duelist Stance II for the 250 defense bonus. Placing the cap on the enhancers instead of the weapons gives you your caps, but allows the feeling of ingenuity and style to remain with the customers and the weaponsmiths.
Melee Enhancers
Quite simply, we need some. The best enhancers I have seen are old bones from the old combat system. These simply aren't going to cut it. Number 1, they are too limited. Once they are gone the best enhancers become geo cores because they also have a SAC reducer that the bones don't receive. 72/91dmg bones just aren't worth the extra 12 SAC that's going to end up on your weapon. Number 2, even some of these 200dmg bones left from the old system will never reach the higher levels of the weapon's damage range, except in the case of Fencer items which it will cap. This also limits the ability for aanything other than a Swordsman hybrid to stand toe to toe with the new weapons created from the the power cells that have caused an explotion in damage and SAC capped weapons for the ranged profession. If you don't have a CU converted Power Hammer that extends beyond 1300 dmg, then you just aren't going to last long against this new super loot. Melee needs some lovin', and Weaponsmiths need some enhancers to make the weapons.
Reward Weapons Vs. Reward Schematics
There are a good number of rewards now for the combat player. This is a good thing as it forces the WS to be creative on their base weapons to compete with them. However, there is much more variety in the reward loot than from your local gunsmith. We need three or four more rifles and carbines, and I'd say another pistol or two to get some variety going for non-combat class specific weaponry. Right now we have two rifles, one carbine, and two pistols that have no requirement other than a CL54 rating. This really limits us in our selling ability.
This Looks Familiar
Too many weapons require the same number of resources even at different combat levels. A CL54 gun should always require more to craft it than a CL30. I am speaking, of course, about the Advanced Laser Rifle versus the Rocket Launcher. Heck, the Rocket Launcher versus ANY other weapon in the game. This needs a balance pass. The Rocket Launcher either needs a reduction in resource requirements, or an increase in CL. While you're at it, change up the resource requirement to use more resources in the CL54 version of the smaller weapons:
Laser Vs. Adv Laser
E11 Vs. E11 MKII
Flame Thrower Vs. Plasma
LLC Vs. Heavy LC
...and so on and so fourth. Also, too many schematics have the exact same resource type and amount of requirements as other weapons. This also needs to be addressed.
Cu5+0m1z@s|-|un
Weapons are wholly uncustomizable at this point. Everything starts out at +1 accuracy. Every pistol starts off at 88-90 SAC, every rifle at 86-88, and every carbine at 82-84. While components have tons of room for customization, even more so if you'd get rid of the caps, weapons themselves have zero. There needs to be more variability:
This gun has higher damage capabilities, but has a negative effect on your accuracy.
This gun has a lower SAC, but less damage ability.
This gun fires at a high rate of speed, but has a higher SAC.
This allows for us and our customers to sit down and play with the stats a little more. With loot capped on its enhancing abilities, we don't have to worry about "will this number freeze on assembly". You can now make a damage gun, or an accurate gun, or a low SAC gun to pair with your general, all-around ability gun. This is good for players and for crafters, and I think the reasons are pretty obvious.
Old Bugs that won't DIE!
Ranged Weapon XP/Melee Weapon XP. This is still a sore spot for many crafters. They spent time and money on resources to grind out their force sensitive boxes only to get experience that cannot ever be used for anything. This really has gone on too long and needs to be addressed. The players deserve to use the experience they gained, and they deserve to get all of it. Either add these types of experimentation to the menu for what can be converted (for a certain period of time, no need to do it as a perma fix), or allow them to meet with CSRs in the village and convert the XP over to weapons crafting XP as needed while they do their covnersions. You could also remove the XP cap for a certain time period on the profession and just do an auto conversion that would give them all of their range and melee XP as weapons crafting XP. I want to say the cap is 120k right now, which would cause many of them to lose about half of what they should be able to convert. This just needs to get done. No excuses, no reasoning of why it may or may not be bad. Had this bug not occured, they would have had this XP, and they deserve it...
- Change elemental damage so that it is effected by the damage mods on the special used, i.e., if a combat player uses a special that has a 1.2 damage mod, both the base damage and the elemental damage are multiplied by 1.2.
- Increase the experimentation range for elemental damage on all weapons that have it.
- Add an enhancement slot in the final assembly for weapons with elemental damage, and add in a new type of looted enhancer for this slot that boosts elemental damage.
- Give certain MOBs weaknesses to specific elemental damage types, i.e., make Krayts weak to cold, make the Acklay weak to acid, make Kimogilas weak to electricity, etc.
- Give certain MOBs attacks that have a significant amount of elemental damage. (I know this is armor related, and not weapon related, but it would still be necessary toget the elemental damage system fully fleshed out.)
- Make sure that no proffession has all ten types of base/elemental damage combinations available as level 54 weapons, i.e., each proffession might have 3 combinations available in level 54 weapons, 3 avaiable in level 50 weapons, and 4 avaiable in level 40 weapons. That would leave plenty of room for the introduction of new, sought after weapons in the future, while at the same time adding more diversity amounst the different combat professions. It would also give weaponsmiths a market for lower level weapons.
The way I see this playing out in actual combat might be like this... Let's say you're out hunting Krayts, and Krayts are weak to cold. Now you could just keep using your best level 54 energy or kinetic weapon, and you'll do fine, however if you want that little bit of an extra edge, you could switch to a weapon that has cold elemental. If you're one of the proffession who has cold damage on a level 54 weapon, then you'll be able to gain a noticable edge fairly easily, however, even if your only weapon with cold damage is level 40, you'd still be able to gain a slight edge as long as the weapon was well built. Ideally, this would create a situation were players who don't want to have to collect 10 different weapons can still compete, however players with an achiever mindset who want to get the best possible edge possible will still have something to strive for.
This is abit more of a commando specific problem but commando weapons AOE STILL only does 1 point of energy damage + Elemental. Not sure how much this is being worked on though. I know one dev was at least taking a poke at it though so maybe something is allready in the works there. But secondly. ALL the commando weapons seem to be energy damage type. Not single one with perhaps the Rocket Launcher as an exception (And it's a horribly low level weapon anyway making it useless at master level) has kinetic as a damage type. And there's only 3 viable master level weapons to speak of. Proton Rifles (Non craftable), Plasma Flamethrowers (Short range, only weapon I know of that cant take a PUP), And Proton Grenades (People are still arguing over the usefulness of grenades in general even with the timer fix as they tend to do negilgible damage adn the dots on them are for the most part, total crap)
As for the third weapon, well the heavy lightning beam cannon can hit an ok damage level, 45m range etc. So it's not too bad but still. Every toher profession has at least one CL54 weapon that does energy and one that does Kinetic. All the CL54+guns in commando do energy.
Riflemen don't have a level 54 Kinetic weapon. Best kinetic rifle they have is the level 50 LD-1.
Kesslan wrote:
As for the third weapon, well the heavy lightning beam cannon can hit an ok damage level, 45m range etc. So it's not too bad but still. Every toher profession has at least one CL54 weapon that does energy and one that does Kinetic. All the CL54+guns in commando do energy.
JarekTalram wrote:
The only thing I would add is the missing link. A novice Swordsman Weapon. Right now you go from 2Handed Sword to PH at master Swords (that's discounting the Scythe as I don't know where it falls and haven't been asked to make one yet.)
Okay I guess there are some 2H weapons but other than the vibro axe they are all looted or looted schematics.
JarekTalram wrote:
The only thing I would add is the missing link. A novice Swordsman Weapon. Right now you go from 2Handed Sword to PH at master Swords (that's discounting the Scythe as I don't know where it falls and haven't been asked to make one yet.)
Scythe = CL50
Executioner's Hack = CL40
Vibro Axe = CL30
Message Edited by Mor-Dan on 08-12-2005 04:48 PM
Mor-Dan wrote:
JarekTalram wrote:
The only thing I would add is the missing link. A novice Swordsman Weapon. Right now you go from 2Handed Sword to PH at master Swords (that's discounting the Scythe as I don't know where it falls and haven't been asked to make one yet.)
Scythe = CL50
Executioner's Hack = CL40
Vibro Axe = CL30Message Edited by Mor-Dan on 08-12-2005 04:48 PM
Yeah but the scythe and the hack require looted schematics and components. Some of the components I have but I haven't seen a scythe schematic in over a year. Not to mention I have never been asked to make either. And why did they move the cleaver to level 10 from novice Swordsman?
Imaridril wrote:
Another thing that really needs to happen is that the devs need to redo the numbers in the elemental damage system. Techically, using the elemental damage system, there are ten different possible combinations of damage that a weapon could have, i.e., pure energy, pure kinetic, and energy or kinetic paired with one of the four elemental types. The problem right now, though, is that elemental damage is so low that its never mathematical usefull to use anything besides your best energy or kinetic weapon. Here's the steps I would take to fix the elemental damage system...
- Change elemental damage so that it is effected by the damage mods on the special used, i.e., if a combat player uses a special that has a 1.2 damage mod, both the base damage and the elemental damage are multiplied by 1.2.
- Increase the experimentation range for elemental damage on all weapons that have it.
- Add an enhancement slot in the final assembly for weapons with elemental damage, and add in a new type of looted enhancer for this slot that boosts elemental damage.
- Give certain MOBs weaknesses to specific elemental damage types, i.e., make Krayts weak to cold, make the Acklay weak to acid, make Kimogilas weak to electricity, etc.
- Give certain MOBs attacks that have a significant amount of elemental damage. (I know this is armor related, and not weapon related, but it would still be necessary toget the elemental damage system fully fleshed out.)
- Make sure that no proffession has all ten types of base/elemental damage combinations available as level 54 weapons, i.e., each proffession might have 3 combinations available in level 54 weapons, 3 avaiable in level 50 weapons, and 4 avaiable in level 40 weapons. That would leave plenty of room for the introduction of new, sought after weapons in the future, while at the same time adding more diversity amounst the different combat professions. It would also give weaponsmiths a market for lower level weapons.
The way I see this playing out in actual combat might be like this... Let's say you're out hunting Krayts, and Krayts are weak to cold. Now you could just keep using your best level 54 energy or kinetic weapon, and you'll do fine, however if you want that little bit of an extra edge, you could switch to a weapon that has cold elemental. If you're one of the proffession who has cold damage on a level 54 weapon, then you'll be able to gain a noticable edge fairly easily, however, even if your only weapon with cold damage is level 40, you'd still be able to gain a slight edge as long as the weapon was well built. Ideally, this would create a situation were players who don't want to have to collect 10 different weapons can still compete, however players with an achiever mindset who want to get the best possible edge possible will still have something to strive for.
This is my top 1 atm
Making the Elemental damage system more complex and thus forcing people to carry around 3-5 weapons to counter the ADK as that will otherwise be the downfall of out profession