Tips to increase interest in Tradeskills<<--Funcom please read!

[_________________Zax]

Hi Im Zax An advisor in the clan Lords of Tor. Ive been playing the game now for almost 2 months and I really enjoy all its intrical chalenges! I design 3d games and through my experience have gained some insight and ideas on how to improve the enjoyment of doing tradeskills in AO. I think the tradeskills would be really cool to get into and some of them really have potential. Ive mastered making implants and that was fun! Lots to learn but thats what keeps me interested so I enjoy that. And the jewelry making and other trades seem to have some great potential. However there are a few things I would like to suggest to funcom that maybe they could look into changing. I am a game designer myself and Ive noticed a few things that actually discourage people from doing the tradeskills in the game thus severly limiting their choices and over all reducing the "Fun" of the game. Funcom if your listening please understand Im not critisizing ...only suggesting possible ways to improve this already awsome game:

First maybe you could make tradeskill tools and items a little less expensive. Making money from stuff you make is great but if you dont have the money to buy such expensive tools then you can never start...this is very discouraging for those interested in tradeskills. You dont make that much for missions (for another post maybe but that could be another thing to change) so trying to purchase the tradeskill items and tools with what you make on missions is almost impossible. A little price break for us poor folk :P

Also I once played a game a while back where the player could have specific places to go and achieve the materials needed for the tradeskills. You could have a mine that one could enter and mine for minerals needed for the construction of an item. You would gain in "Mining Level" for doing so as well (and maybe even in xp also) thus increasing mining level would increase access into deeper parts of the mine to mine for even more precious metals. The more more precious the metal or ore the harder it is to mine but the greater the reward and the larger tradeskill items would require the more precious metals. For instance mining for ore in a mine to get the ore needed to make a certain item. This way if the player cant afford to "Buy" the item needed for the tradeskill project he could "Earn" it by minning for it. Lets face it not even I want things to be "handed" to me I do like to work for em A good Idea would be to have mining tunnels for things such as the ever elusive carbon rich rock that I still have yet to see even one. Which if it is one of the key ingredients in making nano crystals dont you think we could be able to find more of them. Hey Im not asking for them to be dropped in our laps but like I said maybe a mine where wed have to go to mine them. Maybe I dont feel like killing mobs today but instead feel like mining some carbon rich rock so I can build my crystals...get the hint

Also some of the recipies are much too complex for some people to enjoy making them. Maybe making a few of them simpler would be a good idea. And again a little less expensive. I mean its really not worth it for a player to spend 200000 credits to buy parts for an item that sells in the shop for 100000 credits. (which I have seen) But I bet a player would spend 4 hours making an item if it only cost him 2000 credits to make and sold for 200000 in a shop, even if he had to go spend an additional 2-3 hours mining some ore for the metal he needed to make one of the parts. The hard work of tradeskills would be then FUN to acheive and worth the effort to the player attracting more to this aspect of the game. And also a rifle found in a mission or bought in the stroe should NOT hold the same value as the same weapon made from the tradeskill artist. The tradeskill made weapon should hold MORE cash value. This would increase the desire to learn a tradeskill.

This brings up another valid point...maybe we could have special dealers or shops that would buy tradeskill made items for a FAIR price. You buy an item for 100K and sell it for 10 credits?!? Doesnt seem quite fair. Worse yet spend hours making a rifle and sink 10 or 20K in crdits in the construction only to find no one wants to buy it on the shopping channel and the shop only gives 100 credits for it !?! This has happened to me and im sure others and definately discourages people from wanting to persue that tradeskill. Maybe having these special dealers or shops that would buy tradeskill items at a good price would encourage more people to persue tradeskills as it would be worth my while to spend 2-3 hours and 10K in crdits to turn and sell to the dealer for 100 or 200K.

So to sumerize:

Less expensive tradeskill tools and ingredients
Opertunity to MINE needed ingredients (giving an alternative to buying them)
Less complex tradeskill recipies
Easier to find ingredients
Greater cash value for tradeskill made items
Special dealers or shops that pay a FAIR value for tradeskill made items.


Again my intent here is not to critisize but to add constuctive ideas to the mix. Something for the masters to contemplate while we continue to enjoy this huge and fascinating game! The object of any online game creator is to get the player to stay longer and enjoy themsleves more (thus encouraging them to ...stay longer) Utilizing some or all of the suggestions above for tradeskills may do just that. I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on what ive discussed here and also love to hear from Funcom on some of these issues. But please no mudslinging at me or Funcom this post was merely made to spawn ideas to better the gameplay for all. Most dont realize how complex game creation is (especially on the scale they have created here) Ive had the rare opertuninty to be involved in my own game creations and I can tell you from my own experiences that what theyve accomplished here is no small task!! But these are just my ideas to improve gameplay and better the enjoyment of tradeskills...whats yours?

This post was also put in another section of the forum but I thought it would be best served by posting it here

[Megabio]

Might be good if we could build weapons people use.
~Chris

[________senatorjesse]

I think that all weapons that are "illegal" should be tradeskill only. The stigma rifle is illegal, and so is anything in a weapons receptacle now. So perhaps missions for those items should now be replaced with missions for the manuals on how to create them.

Of course, to prevent people from using the manuals without finding them (i.e. web recipe lists), you could make the manual a "tool" that you need to use on the construction kit. That way, the manual would be re-useable but you would need to find one in order to use it for creating the weapon.

[__________Lucid Flow]

Trade skills need to be available to all classes, for an item they NEED and it costs cheaper to make the items then it does to buy them from a store. Also, there should be awesome Trade Skill Only weapons such as the Mausser Chemical Streamer.

I wouldn't be opposed to the fact that color of Trade skills determines the difficulty in learning the skills from them, therefor removing the IP requirments and making Trade Skills a sort of thing like "the more you do of it, the higher the skill level goes."

The reason I say that is because the choice between dumping hundreds of thousands of IP into Trade Skills vs ANYTHING else is an easy choice.

[______________Babadi]

Simply put, we need to be able to create unique items. How great would it be to make a standard pistol, and then throw in your own modifiers?

Say have 4 slots for such modifiers.

You could put in damage bonuses, crit bonuses, ac bonuses, nano bonuses. The possibilities would be endless.

This would make tradeskills not only worth while, but very much pursued.

You should also be able to put your name on any item you create, to leave your mark.

If this was the case, I'd be starting an engie in no time.

[Kinkstaah]

This needs to be bumped.
Such a good idea.

FC would be worried about levelling from it, I would prefer a totally different "XP" and "Levelling" system for tradeskills.


sdl;sa;ldsa;ld;sla
*bump*

[_____________Alexion]

Actually FC is starting to implement something of this nature. Why working on an alt I found a robot instruction disk (improve thrusting weapons) ql 20 which i was able to turn into a MRR (improve thrusting weapons) saying that it could improve certain thrusting weapons. I read thrusting to mean piercing and bought a few low ql piercing weapons, but it didn't do anything to any of them. So the implementation is half done, but their starting the process.

Oh for the slow ones in the crowd, if you can increase the damage output/stats of a weapon everyone will be looking for people to do it, and for high ql upgrades probably paying a good amount of cash.

[__________WGMelchior]

There is a 'manual' in the stores that lists which weapons you can transform with it.

And you can in no way affect the end result.

[xyberviri]

{bump}

My guild invests into trade skills this would be great if they were working correctly, as it stands you CAN't make smg's which has been bust since beta, FC needs to fix what is broken now and stop with the adding of new stuff until the ame is in a "working 90%" as plan'd

Edit:

Why i dont understand that you can make weapons, you can make implants, but you cant customize weapons like you can implants, which sucks, hell they could do the implant thing on weapons like give a "partially built" weapon 3 slots and do Faded,bright, shinning for the weapon mods like: incress range,incress rof, incress dmg, all having there own penaties and advantages.