When I was taking shower this morning, this thought came to me. Usually you can only buy a crude-looking long sword +10 or a broadsword +12, but what if you can choose what your weapons look like and has a variable bonus damage? I mean, I can have a longsword +10, but I can also have a longsword +20. They can pick what their weapons look like, what materials they are made of, and pay a blacksmith to make it for them. For example, a custom sword. They pick the hilt, what it looks like, the color, etc. Then they pick the shape of the blade, curved, straight, short, long, thick, wavy, or other fancy shapes. Then they can specify the materials: steel, bronze, titanium, etc. In addition, they may want to add more metals/ingredients such as the rare metal they found in their adventure. These rare metals can provide some positive/negative bonuses. Some add magical elements to the weapons. So they can basically mix-match the ingredients and see what they turn to. Some materials are counter-productive against other materials and can cause some serious negative effects on the sword if mixed together. The more complicated it is, the more expensive and longer it takes to make it. They can make their own spear, axes, or maces too. But they can''t make their own kind of weapons. Do you think it would be a good idea?

I think that having weapons being created within the game world is a better idea than finding magically awesome weapons from ages past. I''d like to see a character commission a fine weapon, and then have that weapon circulate around the world after the character dies or sells it or gives it away or something. You could spend months trying to track down the sword your previous character used, and then even more time trying to get it.

This of course will require master smiths. Maybe characters could become smiths, and maybe weapon-making could be a collaborative process. A level 8 blacksmith would get together with a level 8 wizard and a powerful warrior, and they would make a sword. First, they''d spend an inordinate amount of money on a big chunk of Mythril stock, and some dragonskin for the grip and scabbard. Then the smith would forge the blade while the wizard cast various augmenting spells on it and transferred some of the warrior''s skill and strength into the magical aura of the blade. The hilt would then be constructed, with different precious stones infused with magical properties being set into it, and some more of the warrior''s strength would be channelled into the pommel, which would contain a fragment of fingernail from the high priest of the kingdom.

What you wind up with is an item the cost a king''s ransom to build, permanently lowered the warrior''s stats, and pretty much makes whomever uses it invincible. It would require some unique items, some incredibly rare items, and an investment of time and money to gather them that could not be easily made. In an MMO world it might take years for a weapon of this magnitude to arise. In the meantime, that smith could manufacture commoner weapons to hone his skills, make a name for himself, and earn a living wage.

quote:Original post by BlueNexus
I think this is a concept that isn't too far away. Star Wars Galaxies has a lesser version of what alnite described. Players make the weapons, they can even name them. The quality of the weapon is based on the skill of the smith and quality of the raw materials.

I don't know about Star Wars Galaxies, but Asheron's Call 2 did it too. You can make weapons, but the ingredients are determined. You need X amount of this material and Y amount of that material to make this weapon. Then the game throws a dice and if you successfully created the weapon, it will have a random damage and effects depending on how good you are.

However, this is not very customizable. I am envisioning players can define the shape and look of their weapons. However, it's still based on some sort of available templates. Think about Transport Tycoon or Uncharted Waters with their random face generator. You will notice that they define a set of shapes for each part of the face, and throw them in together to make a new random face.

For example, there are 10 kinds of eyebrows, 10 kinds of nose, 10 kinds of hair styles, etc. Then the program randomly picks one shape from each part, and creates a new face.

The same analogy for this idea. A sword has a hilt and a blade. So we provide a set of shapes for the hilt as well as the blade, and let the players to pick one for the hilt and one for the blade. The program then creates the weapon that they like. However, looks alone may not be suffice to be called a custom weapon. Then the idea of specifying what the blade is made of came to me. Steel is more sturdy and long lasting, so basically, it has more "damage potential" than let's say, bronze.

@TechnoGoth:
I wouldn't like to go into that further by adding size for each class etc, that seems way too complicated. I remember playing Might and Magic 7, I found this uber Elven Chainmail and just realized that nobody in my party is an elf. Now I think that allowing players to convert this armor back to metal and reconstruct a new armor isn't such a good idea either.

Allowing players to have metals in his inventory is a bloat already. Materials such as metals or rare items don't do anything, they only take up inventory space. In Might and Magic 7 and 8, these metals could take up 1/2 of one of my characters' inventory screen. And they only come from one dungeon. Although the size is only 1x1, but they are a lot of them. Now consider allowing players to convert armors/weapons to metals or whatever materials they are made of and allowing them to keep these metals so that later on they can construct a new weapon/armor. They could convert 100 useless armors and weapons they found to metals, thinking that they can construct a new super thick armor, and imagine how full the inventory screen could be.

So I restrict it to only rare items such as dragonskins as mentioned by Iron Chef, or maybe dragonskulls or Shadow Hound's fangs or [insert an item name] can be possessed by players. Leave the metals to the blacksmiths.

Something like this interface when players visit a weaponsmith

+---------------+|  Buy Weapon   |+---------------++---------------+|  Sell Weapon  |+---------------++---------------+| Custom Weapon |+---------------+  

When the player choose Custom Weapon, a new dialog appear

Work In Progress:+-----------------------------------------------------------+| Weapon          | Material | Status      | Days remaining |+-----------------------------------------------------------+| My UberSword    | Steel    | In Progress | 20 days        ||                 |          |             |                ||                 |          |             |                |+-----------------------------------------------------------++-----------------------+| Add new Custom Weapon |+-----------------------+  

When the player select "My UberSword" it will give a full decription of the weapon such as the pictures, custom materials added by the player, the price, etc etc.

When the player presses "Add new Custom Weapon" a new dialog pop up

Pick hilt:        [hilt option]Pick blade:       [blade option]Metal:            [Steel/Bronze/Mithril/etc option]Custom Materials: [a list of custom materials added by the players] [add button] [remove button][Create button] [Cancel button]  

Something like that.

I think of this idea in single-player worlds, but Iron Chef brought it to the MMO world, assuming there is a blacksmith class.

[edited by - alnite on March 31, 2004 2:59:00 AM]

An MMORPG called "Ragnarok Online" features a character class called "Merchant". After you work your character enough, you can upgrade to the "Blacksmith" class. With a blacksmith, you can forge your own equipment through the stuff enemies drop. However, you can''t really change your weapons as such; just the abilities they have. For instance, you can make a fire-based sword.

It''s a nice start, I guess.