General Tradeskills Suggestions

Ah...Finally someplace to campaign for something I want to do more of :D

Tradeskills in MMORPGs have huge potential. They give people something to do as a break from all the killing. They help keep the economy healthy. They even help players to secure slots in teams guilds. But AO's tradeskills are under developed to fill any of these roles. So here are a few suggestions I think would help tradeskills immensely:

• Less tradeskill weapons or more variety in their appearance.
  
  Weapons will always be prone to choices based on damage output. With so many non-tradeskill weapons having high demand, there's little reason to want a tradeskill weapon. Not with the current implementation. If 10 new tradeskill shotguns are added to the game, chances are high that only 1 or 2 would actually have any demand. If that many. So new tradeskill weapons would have to be signifcantly better than non-tradeskill weapons (which would invalidate most the existing tradeskill weapons if the processes work), have comparable performance and 'style points' to increase demand, or for the moment adding new tradeskill weapons should be abandoned until the old ones are fixed and balanced against non-tradeskill ones.
  
• More tradeskill 'everyday' items.
  
  Weapons and armor are great but there are many items people would want if they were craftable. Almost anything that could be placed in a HUDx/Utilx slot. NCU memory, NCU belts, Scopes, ect. Anything that people regularly upgrade in QL as they progress through levels would have a natural Demand if someone could make those items.
  
• The ability to extract more 'base' components from raw materials.
  
  Right now if you kill an animal mob, you have a chance of getting animal parts. If you kill a robot mob, you have a chance of getting robot junk. Both of these items can have other useful items extracted from them (blood plasma and nano sensors). But that's where it stops and it shouldn't. Why not be able to extract chemicals from animal parts to be used in another process? Robot junk could have many other potential components extracted from it besides nano sensors. Why not smelt it down for plasteel or other metals? It was a robot so it had ncu memory. Why not be able to extract the components for making NCU items from it? I can understand why after BBQing a mob with nukes and shooting it full of holes, it might not have armor that's usuable. But it could still drop something from which raw materials could be extracted. That's why salvage yards buy cars that don't run anymore. There's still value in the raw materials that can be pulled out of the car, down to the point of melting it down for the base metal. Different tools used on the same item could yeild different components. With more base components, you open up more possible final products. That equals variety, which people want.
  
• More social items or the ability to alter some existing ones.
  
  People will kill over that coffee maker when it starts working properly. But I'm a Texan. I wouldn't mind putting together a working Still or Home Brewery for some booze in my apartment ;) And I'm pretty certain every Yalmaha owner would worship the ability to change its color. I know, the more 'new' looks added mean more load time. But would creating 7 new yalmaha objects (for the 7 basic colors) and 7 single charge objects that did nothing more than switched the current yalmaha object for one of the same QL but different color impact things that much? Make the objects tradeskill (need mob parts for color, nano bots to change the yalm's surface hue, a delivery system, ect) and you can control how often people switch them around. Even make some colors rare.
  
• More modifications to existing items.
  
  My trader on RK1 has all three Improve Weapon MRRs. But the number of items and types I can improve are severely limiting. Tradeskills aren't just about creating a new item from scratch. It's also about modifying existing items. The ability to tune existing items up a bit. Even if it destroys the item eventually, like hacking tank armor.
  
• More 'different options' armours.
  
  The armour tradeskill has great potential. Armor that people can get in specific QLs will have huge demand. But right now, the way things are headed, there will have to be several different armour types to satisfy every player. Why not a couple different base types, with different options like the sealed weapon receptacles?. Let people make the base armor type using raw materials as it stands. But then once they get to that base object, it can be modified by adding different parts to it. If tradeskill armor is to go anywhere, there will have to be many different types to satisfy the need for the different attribute requirement combos. Only a few people will want Bronto Hide armor because it requires Sta/Int to wear. So allow it to be modified to different base statsby adding a few more components.

Tradeskills have demand not only for the items that are generated from them. But also because they offer people a break from constant killing while making them feel productive. It doesn't have to yield an alternative to killing in order to level. But every MMORPG needs things for people to do besides killing and still feel like they accomplished something with their time. And they help keep the economy healthy.