I’ve been thinking about recent discussions on rare items (and moving away from colour rarity) and I had an idea about using Tool & Weapon skins as rare items, which I fleshed out a little with the help of my guildmates.
Essentially these would be recipes that are exactly the same cost requirements as their counterparts and have exactly the same stats… so for a “Dragon Gold Heavy Hammer” or “Blazing Gold Heavy Hammer”, the recipe and stats would be exactly the same as “Gold Heavy Hammer”… just the look is cosmetically different.
These unique recipes could be introduced during seasonal events, as part of a “feat” or “objective”, or as a random semi-unique find on an exo world… Maybe these could be from a very rare creature drop, a buried treasure chest or as a meteorite reward… or something new or interesting way entirely.
These recipes should also be tradeable, so those that are not interested in crafting or for those that have multiples of the same recipe, they can sell them on to others (yay the economy!). Any crafted item produced after learning these unique recipes can also be sold, forged etc. as normal.
This will allow cosmetically unique items to be introduced into the game over time during seasonal or other events or as new feats/objectives. They are not game breaking as they’re not a progressive item, nor do they limit player creativity in any way, but just something that is unique which can be collected and coveted.
Maybe make a new machine to house all of the skins called the Ancient Oortian Cache that can give out skins based on the completion of trials or prophecies (Quests). That way the skins don’t take up more room in the existing recipe lists and have it double as a long term challenge board.
If we want to keep the skins separate, the recipe could be for a transmutation machine, and the recipe could just take the tool itself and change the skin.
If you want to make these even more rare, the rare drops could be the skins themselves, and the recipe in the transmuter would consume the skin item and the tool.
The strange part of this idea is that the recipe will be rare whereas the cosmetic will end up being common (since the special items can be traded). So when you see someone’s character they can’t show off that they’re a recipe holder cosmetically, and when you see someone holding a dragon gold heavy hammer it mostly likely meant they paid a 100-1000c premium for a cosmetic hammer.
I think having additional skins will be very welcome but I think if there’s any weight for considering cosmetic rarity, that is, showing off that you have personally done something rare, then I think I prefer an account or character-based cosmetic override. For example, you earn a Dragon Diamond Hammer override, and now any diamond hammer you hold in the future will look like that.
The other nice thing about overrides is that you don’t have to worry that your cosmetic has to be bought again when it runs out of durability.
I’ve been trying to look at the idea from multiple angles and admittedly, I do have an ulterior motive with the suggestion.
My ultimate aim is to eliminate colour rarity, which is the current “rare to have, I have it, you don’t” item.
To do that, we need build up replacement items for that rarity.
Now an argument that has been given against the removal of colour rarity, is that it would damage the economy (that’s a different debate), thus I suggested these items are tradeable. What a player does with their rare item, I feel, should be up to them - the same as any other item in the game - including Wayfarer’s Totems and Gold Fists. Once a recipe is learned, it should of course be locked to the character (not account), but any items produced should be tradeable if the player chooses.
There’s also the case of how rare these recipes are… should it be a 1-in-100 player chance of obtaining the recipe or a 1-in-1000 player chance… or somewhere in between? Too less and you stand the chance of a player taking a rare cosmetic with them if they stop playing, and too many and it runs the risk of being common. It’s just a case of balancing.
Maybe these items also need a separate mention on the stats popup to say who crafted it, alongside the player that forged it? (as long as the bug with that information gets fixed and those details stop disappearing!).
Soooo, basically like the transmogrification system we have in World of Warcraft, then : https://youtu.be/aXP9pBetXmA?t=25
A machine that acts both as a collection of appearances, and you use said machine to apply the appearances to your tools and weapons?
Similar, but I also want it to act as a board to track the progress to unlock more. Then maybe pay an oort shard or something to switch the appearance of an item to one of the skins.
Its always nice to have multiple exclusive skins or transmogs for an item that isn’t a paid item. It gives people something to work towards, especially if they make some of them extremely difficult to accomplish. I’d equate it to having special mounts in wow more than the transmogs themselves. You can purchase some cool ones, but seeing someone riding around with certain ones shows they either got really lucky or spent a lot of time getting it.
If they put in a system that allowed unlocks like this, even on an account/character only basis, it would open it up for more exclusive unlocks that aren’t locked to the exchange. For example, special head styles, body paints and clothes could also be added later on.
That’s pretty much what I meant when I say skins, so not just a texture change (as there’s really only one way to show gold on the current gold hammer), but an actual model update as well which actually shows, for example, a stylised dragon embellishment surrounding the head of the hammer.
I haven’t started messing with models yet, but i did start on some of the tools designs already. Gonna have a full overhaul of the whole game by the time im done lol
I have yet to see a color rarity proponent say they’d object to a new alternative rarity system - trophies etc. I think eventually we can make it happen.
Something I hadn’t considered previously… I wonder if this could be somewhat alleviated with the as-yet-unreleased component machine parts they had been working on.
If a component machine specifically deals with slingbows for example, the recipe list should already be pretty short so it would much easier to find the variations of each slingbow skin that you had acquired.