Fail -000- Weaps

[Jihnna]

You do know that the final result is not nodrop, right ? So you can just get a highlevel tradeskilling friend upgrade them for you...

[Baby]

If these are going to be good weapons for froobs to level with, what about easing up on the tradeskill requirements to make them? Not *everything* should require twinking to do. Expecting low level froobs to put together weapon smithing implants sounds pretty lame when they just want to equip the next weapon and keep leveling.

Also, there's the matter of getting the parts. While they commonly drop, lowbie froobs in need of weapons will have trouble killing things by themselves of the appropriate level to drop an appropriate QL part, Andre Bottle charges a lot for his stuff (in terms of lowbie froob credits), they don't sell for billions of credits on the market so people just won't bother putting them up for sale because of the stupid limits to how much can be listed (and to an AO player, two or three mouse clicks must net a few million credits or it isn't worth it). This leaves only Engineer Heath Bridges who can help players who don't have the credits to pay other players to do the work, but he requires level 60 to even talk to you (IIRC; let me know if I'm mis-remembering.)

If you want this to be good for froobs, and you want froobs to bother to stick around long enough to subscribe (or even just view ads if they ever come back):
- I suggest making the parts' QL requirement be 50% (reduced from 90% according to AOU) of weapon QL. Level 15 twinking on QL50 weapon needs to kill level 25ish mobs to get an appropriate QL drop. That's more than adequately challenging.
- I suggest reducing the weapon smithing requirement to 2x (reduced from 5x according to AOU) weapon QL. Again, level 15 building a QL50 weapon needs 100 weapon smithing. If this *really is* for froobs, org city benefits and expansion-only items should not be considered as part of the process of reaching the weapon smithing requirement. This would still require some moderate implanting.
- I suggest removing any present level requirement to get quests from Engineer Heath Bridges.

The modifications to the weapons so far seem like a good start, though. QL200 requirements are halved. I dig it. Also, it provides some easy-to-click-in alternate weapons for expansion players who need to kill mobs that are resistant to certain damage types without having to twink something else on just to kill some dyna. Though, 50% reduction in min damage is a bit steep; how would you feel about a 25% reduction instead?

You're missing a couple things here.
The end result weapon isn't NODROP anymore, so any high TSer can build it for you. Also, even if that was still the case, only the last step made the weapon NODROP, and never required any skill iirc.
But that's unimportant now anyways, because now you can buy the weapons up to QL 125 (iirc) in the weapon terminals. You only need the xxx Adjustment Kit to finish the weapon, but the lower you are the less you actually need to do it. I recently started a froob Agent and went with an unfinished Black Blaster (or so) for a couple levels. Worked fine. You change weapon too soon again to put any effort in getting a Kit.

[vitriolic-v]

Good to know they're no longer nodrop. That helps. Still, this idea that "you can get someone else to do it all for you for free" is not so great. It's bad to be so reliant when population is relatively low, when there are people who can only play non-prime hours, when there are people new to the game who don't have credits for tipping or buying the weapon in the first place or buying the upgrades from Andre Bottle or aren't level 60 and can't pull Engineer Heath Bridges missions.

Still. Progress is progress, some is better than none, and if the guns are viable for more people now, it's appreciated.

[Gimpynoob]

How about new players who are not froob? Are those weapons useful in SL? Cos those min damages...

And the prices? I saw the prices on carb armor and it is ridiculous. A ql 7 piece is 10k creds while the usual junk is 200 creds. If the weapon prices are similar then they are useless for what is intended. By the time a person on his/her first toon makes enough creds to buy 1 of the 40ish things needed it will already be useless.

These fixes are starting to look a lot like the previous fixes made by previous GDs. A random bone thrown at the players enraged by unpopular changes. The core policy is kept unchanged. One of the most expensive MMOs with one of the most expensive PAY2PLAY shops in existence.

[vitriolic-v]

I was running some numbers, as much as I was capable of, anyway, and the C0C weapons aren't better than the Neutrino Flash, according to max damage, until QL89. Doesn't catch up on minimum damage until QL148. Even so, skill requirements catch up with the Flash at QL60. They have a 1.8 attack and 1.8 recharge, so it looks like, DPS-wise, you can only use those QLs to very loosely determine equivalence if you have 330 (if that Unity of the Rose calculator is still accurate) ranged init. These are, pretty much, still worthless, if they're meant to provide options to froobs. Inb4 bad definitions of "options;" being asked to choose between something inferior in seemingly every way and something else superior in seemingly every way presents no real option.

They might be really good for froob level 1 twinks, though!

Maybe somebody else would care to run the numbers more thoroughly or add in things like Gamma Ejectors (at a glance, comparing single weapons, C0C surpasses this slightly earlier, but maybe that dual-wield goes a long way), Customized IMI Desert Reet 1000s (at a glance, it will take even longer for C0C's to surpass these, and that's just a single-weapon comparison), etc.

[vitriolic-v]

Speaking of inits, though, what happened to diverse attack/recharge times? Why do the C0C weapons have identical attack and recharge instead of one being higher than the other, as is the case for some old weapons that were meant to be better for kiting than standing and shooting (they had poor regular damage but fast burst recharges, for example)? Why do the skill-req-to-cap numbers for specials have to be so ridiculously high if these are froob weapons? What's up with inits in general in this entire game? It's like if it's not 1/1 then it is not worth using and completely messed up in every way. Can we have some dev words on this? Inits seem to be this concept abandoned by the devs for the longest time and never addressed when making new gear. It's part of why froobs are useless.

[Kuegen]

I was running some numbers, as much as I was capable of, anyway, and the C0C weapons aren't better than the Neutrino Flash, according to max damage, until QL89. Doesn't catch up on minimum damage until QL148. Even so, skill requirements catch up with the Flash at QL60. They have a 1.8 attack and 1.8 recharge, so it looks like, DPS-wise, you can only use those QLs to very loosely determine equivalence if you have 330 (if that Unity of the Rose calculator is still accurate) ranged init. These are, pretty much, still worthless, if they're meant to provide options to froobs. Inb4 bad definitions of "options;" being asked to choose between something inferior in seemingly every way and something else superior in seemingly every way presents no real option.

They might be really good for froob level 1 twinks, though!

Maybe somebody else would care to run the numbers more thoroughly or add in things like Gamma Ejectors (at a glance, comparing single weapons, C0C surpasses this slightly earlier, but maybe that dual-wield goes a long way), Customized IMI Desert Reet 1000s (at a glance, it will take even longer for C0C's to surpass these, and that's just a single-weapon comparison), etc.

Some of these weapons aren't even as good as their non-upgraded counterparts (Home defender, executioner). I would like to see these weapons be close to as strong as unique weapons (say 80%-90%) for the same requirements, and then scale appropriately. If all these weapons are scaled off of a few unique and popular weapons (Battlerod, neutrino, CDR, CoH weapons) then not only do we have more viable options in between uniques, we also have more viable options for other weapon choices (1hb, RE, etc).

After that each weapon could be further tweaked. Pistols might have to do less damage, energy weapons a little more. Then we can upgrade some of the unique weapons that are a little sub-par (1hb skulls, smugglers den weapons, some tara loot).

[vitriolic-v]

Absolutely. Integrate and make content worth doing.

[Higain]

If these are going to be good weapons for froobs (...)

1) Place all Q1-125 -000- upgrade kit types in basic through superior store bookshop terminals - and drop the ridiculous purchase price.

2) Repurpose Turbo Ratcatcher NPC for use as an introduction to -000- weapons crafting.

[Dollcet]

Does not matter as max QL in game is 200 sadly.

Bit of a Necro but with 18.7 these Weapons became shopbuyable up to QL 300 , just check Fair Trade in Borealis and the Shop in ICC.

[Literary]

Is the final upgrade kit easier to get now?

[Ophiuchus]

Are any of these yet worth hunting down and using compared to the older more traditional weapon options, for each account type? (Froob, SL only, Full)

[Pomidor]

And goal was achived - I used few of them while leveling my 2 toons, and they bring not only usefulness to a character, but also variety - like... there are now 20 2he or 1hb weapons to chose from.

Once thing could be viewed, Michi, - Melee energy - there is only 1 choice over there. Not big deal, but still could be more to chose from

[Pomidor]

Is the final upgrade kit easier to get now?

You can buy it in shop. Costs around 3 mils. Which is great, actually

[metaluv]

You can buy it in shop. Costs around 3 mils. Which is great, actually

what shop would that be?

[Pomidor]

ICC FT or Borealis FT.

[metaluv]

ICC FT or Borealis FT.

yes, found them, tradeskill section, don't know why I didn't look there.

[Ikarus]

The variety is nice. Stat wise they're all very similar, but that's okay. I think they're a bit too conservative on their max damage values - or their requirements are too high.