Curse

nino_fs · Jul 26, 2005, 03:18 AM // 03:18

There are two things that many players would like to see addressed.
1) lack of customization (I don't feel like me, when my clone is standing beside me)
2) The economy (Rich players getting richer, poor players staying poor and the inflation of gold)

I was thinking mostly about customization and realized that somethings may not be possible such as completely custom armor. Since walking into town would require that the player load around 100 custom armors(fine for high speed but what about 56k). But what about custom weapons and off hand items. The most that would ever have to be loaded is 16. So here is my idea:

Imagine you go to a new npc called the "weaponsmith" you talk to him and say I would like a custom weapon. Now you choose if you are making a sword, axe, hammer(I player warrior so that's why I list these 1st), bow, staff or wand. Once you have decided what you are making the real customization begins. I will focus on building a hammer but the same method applies to all.

You select the shaft you want. And there are many options for the shape, straight, spine, curved ect.

You then select the material it is made of, ethe(eternal like stuff), chaos, steel, bone, wood ect.

Finally you select what you want at the base of the hammer shaft ie. ball, spike, claw ect.

Now you have a shaft for your new hammer.

Stage 2: Building the hammer head.

this is broken into two pieces the part that holds the big hard smashing thing think of this a a sword hilt. And the piece that is the actual mallet. Upon entering this phase a grid appears in the window and you go about clicking on different points on the grid to draw the outline of your hammer "hilt". If you want a skull you would draw the side veiw of the skull using straight lines that go from one grid point to another. You once you are happy with the shape you have made (or you can choose a premade shape) you say you are done and a 3d version is made by duplicating your drawing and moving the duplicate farther into the screen. and putting a face between the 2 drawings and any lines that are completely contained in another set (like a circle within a circle) are raised up higher than the 1st set of lines. Now you have a suqarish thing that looks like your hammer from the side but from the front is just a box(like a wooden jigsaw puzzle). It looks good from the side but from the front it is pretty lame. You can then take any point you drew on when you were making your side view and pull it around just like on Mario 64 when you messed with mario's face. In this manner you could make nearly any shape you desire. Once you have your shape you choose what you want it to be made of.

The same process would be repeated to create the mallet and when you are done you will have a completely unique hammer or staff ect.

Now the problem with custom weapons is that 3d models would take abit to transfer from one comp to the next. But since all these models are created using the same basic method all that would be needed is a list of locations. For example it would say where point one is (it is at 1,2,6 these numbers say where it is on that grid I was talking about earlier). Then point 2 would be listed and then there would be some identifier that said it was switching to an upper level and the next point would be the first point on the upper level (remember the circle inside a circle I mentioned ealier). So now all that needs to be sent is 2 lists of points (mallet and "hilt") the type of shaft and the material each is made of.

Your computer would recieve this and reconstruct the model of the custom hammer on your end and when you leave the party the model is deleted from your RAM.

Now here comes the economy part. Ever notice all those junk items that monsters drop that are only good for selling or trading with collectors? Well those could be put to use. You just designed a fiery bone sword well the weaponsmith will give you a list of materials he needs (which will be stored in your quest log) like bone, made some skeleton arms, a fiery sword hilt, a glowing heart or scorched lodestone. It would be possible to make most any effect, fire like in the fire sword, frost like on the statue of grenth when there is favor or lightning that streaks over the weapon. Some effects might be unallowed like the chaos axe or the fellblade. And sure you could go out hunting or if you are rich (which you are cause this weaponsmith's time is worth alot of money) you can just buy it off some player who found the stuff as they were doing there quests. This would give money from the rich players to the poorer players. Actually making the weapons would be a gold sink but it is a onetime thing so maybe you make the weapons get a little blood stained and loose there shine after awhile (mentioned in another post just borrowing the idea) and if you want your nice unique weapon looking it's best well you better pay that weaponsmith to shine it up but again his time is worth money.

That is my idea of how to make each player abit unique.
Your thoughts?

EmperorTippy · Jul 26, 2005, 03:25 AM // 03:25

First are the weapons customized for your character upon creation?
If not someone who can do really good designs could make lots of money by making these custom weapons and selling them to others.

If they are customized well what if a person really sucks at designing the weapon and they don't like it.

nino_fs · Jul 26, 2005, 04:35 AM // 04:35

I would say that the weapons are automatically customized. And if someone really sucks at designing weapons then they would have to stick to the developer made ones. Also you would not pay till the weapon is actually made so you could design it and look at it and if you don't like it you would not loose any gold. This would just be a do it if you want thing like 15k armor or FoW armor. There stats would not be special or anything like that just look that way you want them to.

Angryhob0z · Jul 26, 2005, 07:30 AM // 07:30

i think this is a great idea! ive wanted some way to make my mesmer look like different, the armor i used throughout the whole game looks the exact same as the ascalon armor

DrSLUGFly · Jul 26, 2005, 01:21 PM // 13:21

This is a really cool idea. And I like the idea of weapons not being designed as customized so that it could indeed be a business. I'm 100% in favor of adding entrepreneurial opportunities to the game, it adds life and adds depth. What if someone really has no interest in designing a weapon but still wants one that looks cool? Or what if someone really likes the designing process? I personally don't want to continuously pay, design, salvage, pay design, salvage, etc. I also don't want to fill my stash with weapons that I don't use.

On that note, it would be cool if the weapon got a designated name. I could be playing with an alt one day, see someone advertising a max dmg bow, offer to buy it and then look in the window to see SLUGFly's Bow of Fortitude (name added only as maker + whatever name could be added for later upgrades). This could also help to create a reputation for cool or even "currently trendy" weapon/item designers. However for this to work there would have to be a significant variety of design options for each weapon.

Perhaps part of the cost should also be a "sample" of the weapon you want to make. IE. If I want to make a staff and provide the weaponsmith npc with an 11-19 staff and then proceed to design it, the result will be my design as an 11-19 staff. If I provide a max dmg staff, the result will be my design as a max dmg staff. This would mean that the benefit of making your own is purely aesthetic which, if I read your post right, is exactly the kind of customization we need.

nino_fs · Jul 26, 2005, 03:53 PM // 15:53

That is exactly what I was thinking. I just forgot to put it on the page. To get a MAX weapon you would have to supply a MAX weapon. To get +15% healthe >50% you need to supply one. Also I don't mind making the weapons sellable cause like he said some people might not want to design a weap but they might want something that looks cool. Or as the post up high said maybe they are not really good with the designing but still want a weapon. So if someone wants to pay a person to custom make their weapon let them. It's not possible to stop people from making money off a feature. If the weapon's were customized then a person could just sell leasons on how to make cool weapons. And yes this would be a way for someone to make lots of money but they would only get lots of money out of people who have lots. So you may make a few new millionares but you will decrease the wealth that some other people have. Since anyone can design a weapon a person with little money is not going to give 50k to someone to build their weapon they would just do it themselves.

I think the weapon should have a special name also. It can be whatever you choose removing any foul language and if anyone makes an offensive weapon and is reported ANET could check their account if the weapon is offensive just plain ban them for a small amount of time. If they don't learn their leason cancel their account.

nino_fs · Jul 27, 2005, 02:12 AM // 02:12

I was reading another thread about armor and liked what it talked about. To build armor you would scroll through some different styles for each part and different types of construction. Just like a player builds a guild cape. This could work for this weapon customization idea if Anet felt it would be too bandwidth intensive to have truely custom weapons. The weapons could be built up by scrolling through choices.

Many people complain about lack of customization or not liking the look of any items. this would completely solve the problem someone is unhappy with what there is out there tell them to design what they want.