115379-the-weapon-aesthetic

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Here ye, here ye!
O Dev's of Wildstar,
  
  ~Alas, the time has come to make available, Hammers, maces, spears and axes! (boomerangs and ball-chain-maces and bows...maybe?)
    I love the 'tech-blades'...please misunderstand me not!  There is much satisfaction when [slicing] and [dicing] mine enemies to morsels, but, verily, this is beginning to bore a bloodthirsty warrior--such as myself.
 
 
Why, with all the knowledge and S C I E N C E  you developers have in your pockets, I'm sure you could make a splendid assortment of destructive devices!
 
I can see it now!  ~The Progenitor's Plasma Pounder, or Super Nova on a Stick (morning star, obviously) or The Jab-at-it Jabbit Spear of Charisma +1.....(ok, sorry for the Charisma insert....I got carried away)
 
I do appreciate all of the careful details in keeping with the genre of this "futuristic" mmorpg.  I can imagine the difficulty in trying to 'balance' those medieval/industrial aesthetic style of a {pioneering warrior} with limitless scope of cutting edge technology........ha!, cutting edge.....
 
 
My post is becoming too wordy, therefore I submit this unto the Wildstar Community, in hopes to spark new and productive discussion.
 
 
 
 
 
Live long and progenerate,
 
Ebenezer the  	
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imagine owning a restaurant;
 
you had a specific crowd in mind, rented/built accordingly, got your relevant chefs, found your relevant suppliers, did your decorating, bought what you needed and so on..
restaurant opened, didn't do well, partly the type of food appealing to so few people, partly the quality of the food itself being a tad less good than advertised.
 
and here walks a customer in, suggesting a different wrapper colour for the take out boxes	
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			This has been explained extensively in beta, so the dev posts are lost in the ether, but the short answer is: not happening.Under the current system, new weapons would require new animations. Those new animations would take time, and a significant amount of back end tech to implement (they'd have to teach the game to tell when a Warrior was swinging a sword versus a polearm or mace). New weapons just wouldn't look and feel right without those animations.All told it would be an equivalent amount of animation work to adding a new Race/Class combo, or the animation aspect of an entirely new Class. Both of these things are far more desirable to both the devs and the players, and thus higher on the priority list (more character choices means more people leveling alts or new people starting because a new Class appeals to them).And lastly, while Warrior has a lot of potential for new weapon types, other classes are distinctly less flexible. What would you create for a spellslinger that fits with their lore and at the same time doesn't make them look like an Engineer? What would you give the Engineer that works with the big blasty effects their Skills have? You have to look at the Class system as a whole and figure out a way to make things nice for everyone, when it comes to adding things like this, because that's how a dev team has to look at it before they go ahead on it.	
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imagine owning a restaurant;
 
you had a specific crowd in mind, rented/built accordingly, got your relevant chefs, found your relevant suppliers, did your decorating, bought what you needed and so on..
restaurant opened, didn't do well, partly the type of food appealing to so few people, partly the quality of the food itself being a tad less good than advertised.
 
and here walks a customer in, suggesting a different wrapper colour for the take out boxes
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This has been explained extensively in beta, so the dev posts are lost in the ether, but the short answer is: not happening.
 
Under the current system, new weapons would require new animations. Those new animations would take time, and a significant amount of back end tech to implement (they'd have to teach the game to tell when a Warrior was swinging a sword versus a polearm or mace). New weapons just wouldn't look and feel right without those animations.
 
All told it would be an equivalent amount of animation work to adding a new Race/Class combo, or the animation aspect of an entirely new Class. Both of these things are far more desirable to both the devs and the players, and thus higher on the priority list (more character choices means more people leveling alts or new people starting because a new Class appeals to them).
 
And lastly, while Warrior has a lot of potential for new weapon types, other classes are distinctly less flexible. What would you create for a spellslinger that fits with their lore and at the same time doesn't make them look like an Engineer? What would you give the Engineer that works with the big blasty effects their Skills have? You have to look at the Class system as a whole and figure out a way to make things nice for everyone, when it comes to adding things like this, because that's how a dev team has to look at it before they go ahead on it.
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[...]
 What else can take the place of a pair of pistols that would make any sense and not require new animations?
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A couple suggestions might work, specifically making anything that isn't actually going to require new animations into a new weapon.  For instance, you can replace a sword with an axe without changing animations.
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The thing is, they said what they said to head that kind of idea off. Yes you "could" get a budget look by doing something like that, but it wouldn't be an ideal solution, and they made it pretty clear that if they were gonna do it they weren't going to cheap on it.
 
While in theory the animations could work, they wouldn't be correct, in the sense that when you fight with an axe you don't move or fight the same way you do with a sword.
 
I'm sure if it were a serious contender, Carbine would come to us and ask which do you want, more classes and combos, or new weapons on the same character choices you have now. That's an easy question for me to answer.
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While in theory the animations could work, they wouldn't be correct, in the sense that when you fight with an axe you don't move or fight the same way you do with a sword.
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Personally, I would rather have costume types for weapons. For example, I'm a Medic, so instead is regular resonators, I pull out 2 large fish or 2 long stem roses lol.
 
The possibilities are endless!	
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			It's the farthest thing from priority at the moment, but I would like to see more interesting armor/weapons as well. Everything is pretty bland. 2 years from now when WS has gone F2P with a cash shop, we'll probably start to see cool looking gear.	
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Drills, plasma cutters, hair dryers, various RC controllers, slightly larger pistols?
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			Don't think it's feasible. They barely have any variety with the current 1 weapon per class skin. I've seen the same models reused over and over again it's pretty depressing killing a 40man raid boss then getting a weapon drop only for it to have the exact same skin as the WotW skin	
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I would like them to add lore-friendly alternative models, if they ever do. I saw a lot of anachronic and completely bollocks skins in other games. *coughTERAcough*
It won't kill my immersion, but I will feel sad that there's someone out there fighting the Ikthians armed with a giant rolled newspaper or whatever.
 
The only two classes that can really get "new" models without requiring new animations are Espers and Warriors. The first because they never wield their weapon and, according to some "twitter lore", they are just "security blankets". They could easily add psyblade skins to be anything from slightly glowier shurikens to plushies. Or backpacks. Or scrolls. Or spellbooks. Pretty much anything would work and, since Espers are psionic, anything would be lore-friendly. Unless Pappy decides that Espers using psyblades is an absolute in the Wildstar universe.
In the same vein, Warriors can get away with maces, hammers and axes, since all of their current animations are pretty brutal and don't use their greatswords in any way that would immediately invalidate those weapons. There are already a large number of warrior NPCs wielding hammers and using the same animations as every Player Character in the game world. So there you go. A prescedent.
 
I can't think of how the other classes could get away with it, as it's been pointed out already.	
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This has been explained extensively in beta, so the dev posts are lost in the ether, but the short answer is: not happening.
 
Under the current system, new weapons would require new animations. Those new animations would take time, and a significant amount of back end tech to implement (they'd have to teach the game to tell when a Warrior was swinging a sword versus a polearm or mace). New weapons just wouldn't look and feel right without those animations.
 
All told it would be an equivalent amount of animation work to adding a new Race/Class combo, or the animation aspect of an entirely new Class. Both of these things are far more desirable to both the devs and the players, and thus higher on the priority list (more character choices means more people leveling alts or new people starting because a new Class appeals to them).
 
 
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			engineers could have shoulder rockets and slingers assault rifles.  Medics could pull out two massive hifi speakers, stalkers moon blades or tiger blades.  Warriors light saber rip offs and espers random objects from the immediate environment (there is only one ability animation that uses the equipped psyblade model, so it's just a "small" matter of writing the code to imbue objects with the "ghost" skin.... espers throwing a taxi anyone?	
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*These animations are already available:  The enemies in this game use the weapons I have suggested and have different animations written for their models, therefore the {amount} of {work} would be [minimal] AND if the priority is to add a new race/class combo, then new animations would have to be written anyways.
 
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As I explained in a reply to your reply that got eaten because you misbehaved, that's not true. Sure there are 3-4 animations out there for each of a couple other weapons, but that doesn't mean they have anything close to the 30 minimum needed for a Player Character.
 
If they're working on new combos, they're making the existing animations work correctly on new races. Not the same as new animations for new weapons.
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