Tradeskill Only Weapons

[Nullifax]

I think this is something that is really needed in the game. Weapons that can only be created (from scratch) by using tradeskills would ONLY be a good thing. It would accomplish a large number of things:

1) HUGE money sink to help fix the economy; tradeskill items and tools cost a lot of money, if you added a few items that would be required for these weapons that cost a lot of money, then people would be forced to give money back to the shops in order ot make the wepons

2) It would be a way for people without unlimited time to camp mobs a way to get really cool items. Most people playing AO do not have the time to camp certain mobs for hours, sometimes days, or even weeks on end just so they can get some special loot. As it is currently, these mobs are currently camped by a select group of people who are hoarding these items and selling them either on eBay or selling them for disgusting amounts of credits in game. Tradeskill only weapons would be open for creation to anyone who has the tradeskills necessary.

3) finally really give people a reason to put IP into tradeskills. Currently most people put IP into tradeskills because they are required by some NON-tradeskill items. These include scope, trimmers, and even some armors and weapons. Have you ever seen someone shouting "building weapons for cash"? Know anyone with a high chemistry skill?

I think making weapons and other items is fun, but there really currently isn't any reason to do it. The only items that are actually worth it to make are Grid Armor nano crystals. Why? Because they are tradeskill only. You really need to add more of these things, Funcom, I think many people would agree, it would add a lot to the game.

[Nullifax]

just an added note: I would like to say you guys are on the right track with modified weapons like the chemical mausser. However, what I am talking about is weapons that are tradeskill only and must be made from scratch.

[Oljalyn]

Bringing back reverse engineering would be very sweet as well!

Why can I build a Mausser, but not a Nova Flow?

It would also be very nice to be able to build the new loot only nanocrystals, but it should be a lengthy process that does NOT require camping mob X to get a part.

[Nullifax]

Honestly, I think you guys have actually done the right thing with Grid Armor in terms of findability. Grid Armor is not dropped by just one mob, it can be dropped by many different types of mobs of around a certain level, it's just that it's EXTREMELY rare.

Grid Armor is an example of a rare item done RIGHT. Grid Armor is not hoarded by a small group of extreme powergamers like almost every other rare item in this game. For rare items which must be camped, 90% of the population has simply given up on and will never do after. 9.9% of the population tries very hard to get them but never succeed. 0.1% of the population knows the exact spawn times and has teams of people in extremely high levels (or in some cases exploiters) and are able to get the items whenever they want. Thus, this 0.1% of the population sits around with 10 or so of each of these UBER rare items. Things like Shades of Lucubration, The Expensive Kevlar Vest of Professor Jones, and The Blackshirt of Zuwadza are only owned by a select and small group of people, and these people usually have about 10-20 of each of these items.

I almost forgot, there is another small population of rare item owners. This population is the group of people who bought them for over $100 a piece on eBay from those 1337 people who have multiple copies of them. Also people who paid 100+ million creds for them too.

The items I just talked about just make most people angry when you mention them. A Grid Armor instruction disc however is something that just about anyone has a chance of finding. Not only that, the very fact that after you find it, you need to find someone with good tradeskills and the right tools makes it even better.

Here's an idea for you: some tradeskill only weapons and other items that give very good bonuses should require 1 or more extremely rare tradeskill items as ingredients. You said that team missions will have boss type mobs that will commonly drop rare items. Maybe you should have these boss mobs occasionally drop these tradeskill items for use in constructing these powerful weapons.

One last thing: please make recipes for every current weapon available. I'd love to be able to make a Krutt Walzing Queen or Vektor ND Dragon, but this currently can't be done as the recipes don't exist.

[_________________Zel]

I like tradeskills as well and wouldn't mind some new items to make. However, any tradeskill item has to have some advantage over a store bought or mob dropped item or it might as well not exist. There also must be an easy way to sell your product to other players. Because buying things from other players is a hassle.

You have to find someone capable and willing to make the item.
-A boring timesink you'd rather spend doing something fun.

You have to agree on a price.
-Some people enjoy haggling, they, however, are a brain damaged minority Also with the moronic random shop inventory, you're never using the same ql parts, so the cost of manufacture is never constant.

You have to wait around waiting for the item to be made.
-This can be a long wait. Given AO's retarded random shop inventory, there's no telling how long it will take to find the approriate level parts. You'd have to gather the parts yourself beforehand and bring them to the tradesguy. Meaning everyone would have to learn the tradeskill system. Not everyone wants to do this. And all the running around, investing money in parts that might not even get made into something, it's just something few people would do.

Even if the shop inventories were fixed so that you didn't have to run around for an hour to find what you wanted, buying from other players is still harder than just making due with whatever wepon you get off a mob, from a mission or happen to find in a shop.

Look at Daoc. All your components can easily be bought off a merchant. The armor made did have better protection than mob dropped stuff. But people still stuck with mob dropped because it was free and they acquired it during the normal course of their adventuring. The amount of extra protection just wasn't worth sitting around the city trying to find a guy to make you something, they wanted to be off having fun.

[Nullifax]

Yes, but DAoC sucks.

[Bauxite]

There are some tradeskill only weapons...at least they never show as rewards and haven't noticed them as loot.

They are all very crappy though, like 95% of weapons in this game. I never figured why weapons with 6 requirements are twice as slow and do half the damage, take twice the IP for attack rating (and tend to have lower AR due to skill colors/implant layout) and 2-4 times the IP for specials which take all year to recycle. No friggin wonder so many people use shotguns...esp with scopes/crit buffs.

Very few of the existing tradeskill weapon kits even work...the only one I know offhand that does is a QL181 superior fiddle rifle. Thanks to websites out there, you can look up the stats on them, which is why nobody cares much that you can't even make a ql200 michael patriot fire-dmg smg for example.

Face it folks...funcom is going to take forever to fix the existing content in this game, don't waste your time making a 'different' kind of char, make a cookie cutter like everyone else, level them up before you really DO have to kill 1200 yellows to level because even teams can't kill barely-reds! SAVE those IP reset points after the temporary 90 are gone, in case in a year they de-crapify most of the weapons in this game or (more likely) nerf every halfway decent one into the ground.

[Nullifax]

you just described DAoC. Only DAoC sucked right from the getgo.

[Kinkstaah]

I want to see customizable weapons ala implants. With range "clusters", special attack "clusters" max damage "clusters", min damage clusters, speed clusters, damage type "clusters"

it'd 0wnz0r.

[Graxxus]

The best (or at the very least one of the best) weapon line(s) a profession can use should be tradeskill and/or mission loot only. That way you would have the choice of either having a tradeskill class make the gun of your dreams to a specific Ql or try your luck with finding it in a mission. However, it is important to keep in mind that tradeskill weapons should be fairly easy to get the parts for and some weapon parts shouldn't be so freaking rare that it becomes impossible to attain the parts needed for your desired weapon type. I actually have a tradeskill trader that I don't use anymore because I designed him more for making weapons than I did for combat. Unfortunately I have only successfully made 4 guns with that character due to the fact that nearly all tradeskill recipes don't work. Generally the construction kits stop combining after step 2...even for the newly added tradeskill only weapons. Only some recipes for certain weapon ql's work. Gamebreaking IMHO for any characters that actually developed a character purely for making weapons.

[Nullifax]

How about weapons that add different effects besides just damage. Maybe a damage debuff weapon or something, or maybe a gun that has a chance of stunning. Make those all tradeskill only.

[Kuro]

My "dream" for tradeskill weapons. But it could never happen because it would require a major redesign.

1) The base kits remain the same, varying in QL between 1 and 200, which sets the final QL of the weapon created the the skill required to use it.
2) Each individual part installed into the weapon modifies the the weapon's capabilities in relation to that part, based on the required tradeskill of the maker. So a tradeskill craftsman with extremely high mech engineering installing a Shell magazine into a Shotgun construction kit would increase the maximum ammo capacity of the the chunkprojector he was making greatly. Conversely a brand new character with low mech eng installing a Shell Magazine into a shotgun would yield a chunkprojector with an ammo capacity of 1. Parts relating to damage would modify the min/max damage according to the player's skill. Parts relating to cooling would modify the weapon's attack/recharge times according to skill. And so on.
3) To keep players from twinking out their friends, like a lvl 200 Trader creating a ql 1 weapon for a buddy, lock the applicable tradeskill for a certain duration based on the skill of the maker. The higher the skill, the longer it is locked (to simulate a skilled craftsman concentrating on making it the best possible)
4) Make it possible to disassemble weapons yielding a random number of parts used to create that weapon.
5) Create working blueprints for all weapons in the game

This would create an incentive for all players in my eyes. The demand for tradeskill weapons of any kind would increase because a weapon created by a skilled craftsman would outperform a store bought weapons. Locking the player's skill would make it so higher level players wouldn't find it worth their time to create weapons for lower level players, especially poorer lower level players. And it would definately insert variety into the weapons people carried as the normally highest damage weapons like Vektors store bought could be outperformed by a Chunkprojector someone else had made.

[Graxxus]

Well if tradeskill item parts were only available in increments of 5-10 rather than any ql the Quality Assurance testing for the creation of tradeskill items would be much easier and not as daunting of a task. Also limiting tradeskill weapon creation to complete lines of tradeskill only weapons that perform as well or better than weapons that you can obtain through missions or from shops would be better as well. The majority of all tradeskill weapons should be in increments of 5 until you get to ql 50. After ql 50 tradeskill items should only be available in increments of 10. This will also make it much easier to find parts of the appropriate ql both in the shops and in missions.

In order for tradeskill weapons to be useful they must be more viable than the most commonly used weapons of that type. Otherwise the investment that the tradeskill character put into creating a weapon will not be worth it. Implants are useful because they give abilities and skills that the character using them won't be able to obtain normally. Tradeskill weapons must give you an edge too either in fashion(in a time where everyone of a certain class optimize their class as much as possible causing characters to look the same) or in power. Many people want their characters to look different than other players of the same class and breed...to break the cookie cutter mold if you will. Tradeskill weapons could be used to facilitate this. Damage type, crit value, gun speed, min-max damage, gun graphic, gun's firing graphic(tracer fire) all effect the feel of a gun...if the feel of the gun isn't just right then people just won't use it or buy it.

Take agents for example there are two new tradeskill only weapons available that use aimed shot. Unfortunately they were based on the fast firing weapon model and because of it their use is limited. Fast firing weapons currently don't penetrate armor class like slow firing weapons do because fast firing weapons generally have a high crit bonus but low min-max damage. If the crit bonus is high enough then the low min-max wouldn't be as much of a factor but as it is we're better off with slow firing weapons with small clips that hit above min damage most of the time rather than fast firing weapons that hit for min damge all the time except for crits. Thus the demand for guns like the fiddle rifle is extremely low....if it had a higher crit bonus or a higher min-max damage then it might be viable but as is there isn't a demand for it.

[cold]

Good tradeskill-only weapons would be sweet. But I don't agree on making things expensive. The economy on RK2 isn't hosed yet, you know.

[_____________Discont]

I wish they culd start to focos on tradeskils sun..

I did make a trader to be able to make weapons and stuff, but i did sun find out that .

1. Most resipces are broken
2. We cant make any good weepons(exsepct mauser)
3. Ppl dont want to buy weapons (bec of 2 i gess

So now i have been playing as a buffer (wrangler), and tank/damge dealer in grups for 127 lvls.. And i must admit its fun to be able to outdamage anything(all pets and most another players) but this isent what the trader shuld be about!

FC pleace let me make some cool stuff to help out my fellow clanners (and make me filty rich of corse ..

[Jujuwalker]

I made an alt a little while ago, an engineer. I wanted to see if grenade-pistols combo was viable..... and SMITHABLE. You read right: smithable.

I made all my grenade launchers from level 1 to 20, and it worked. arriving at level 20, i realised that there is no guides for making ql 20-40 nade launchers, but there are guides for making every single other quality for that weapon.

I kept chemical maxed (nade launchers use chem damage/TS item in the making), along with a lot of tradeskills, EXPRESSELY because my specialty was making weapons. and building them from scratch. It actually saved me money even at the low levels! it was actually profitable to make the damn guns! and the damage was interesting enough!

I had to drop the experiment because of the involved costs of buying a ql 20-40 nade launcher (expensive) and i don't have any UBER ALTS to dump money from to this guy. But i haven't deleted the little fellow.

You want me to continue the experiment? You want me to do it for you all? then help me: send tells to boombox on RK1, get him some credits for research purpuses , give him your old trimmers , supa low android nanos, whatever! But if you want me to continue the experiment, then help me!

The player of Boombox, the nade tootin engy