Re: "Ultimate weapons"

namelessperson

So, I was thinking about how many players complain of a lack of endgame content. If any of you have played other MMOs (or really, I guess there are a good amount of single player RPGs with this concept too), you might have encountered a type of "ultimate weapon" for your character. A weapon that, when properly enhanced, would be the most powerful weapon of its type in the game. I was brainstorming with a couple friends of mine I play with on this game who also play Final Fantasy XIV with me, and, for those who also play that game, there exist in it what are known as "Relic Weapons", aka ultimate weapons. People who played that game, however, also know how much of a painstaking, wallet-emptying, often-times wretched process upgrading those weapons was however. So what I'm about to propose here is a process for us to obtain such weapons, without as much muss and fuss, but still with enough work to be considered legitimate endgame content, and to make you feel accomplished when you do obtain said weapon. Me and my friends brainstormed for quite awhile, and here's what we came up with:

The weapons themselves would simply be called Epic weapons. You would have to be VR16 in order to accept the quest to work on one. If this idea were to be implemented, the quest giving NPC would probably be some sort of Daedric being in a pocket plane of Oblivion, similar to Maelstrom arena (or perhaps just use Maelstrom arena and the NPCs there), where there'd be a special workshop. You'd have to start by improving a VR14 or higher weapon of the type you indicate to gold. This would be the "vessel" for the daedric essence to be projected into your Epic weapon to transform it. As far as appearance/design, they would be based on the classic Daedric artifacts, whenever applicable. I.e. Mehrunes razor for the daggers, Skull of Corruption for inferno staff, Sanguine's Rose for the healing staff, etc...
I'll now walk you through the whole process, using the Skull of Corruption as an example.

Bob plays as a sorcerer, and his favorite weapons are inferno staves. When he reaches VR16, he goes up to (insert Daedric NPC questgiver here) and, after some dialogue in which he indicates that he finds the thought of wielding the Skull of Corruption as his own to be appealing, accepts the quest to create the Skull of Corruption. Bob uses the convenient crafting stations situated there with the NPC to create a simple VR 14 nightwood inferno staff, and improves it to gold quality (he had saved up a lot of rosin, don't ask).
Well, now he takes the gold staff to the NPC, but the NPC says that, in order to infuse the essence of Vaermina (the daedra who technically owns the Skull of Corruption) into the vessel, he must go and collect 5 (maybe more?) potent nirncrux, as well as fill a Colossal Black Soul Gem. (yes, this is an opportunity for black soul gems to make an appearance!) The soul gem can only be filled with the soul of a specific (random) vet dungeon boss. After farming around Craglorn (or maybe doing some writs), and after managing to successfully complete the vet dungeon, Bob now has the items he needs, and brings them to the NPC.
The daedric essence is infused into the vessel, and, voilá! The quest reward is the Skull of Corruption in all it's glory. Or is it?

Upon closer inspection, Bob notices the weapon is only of white quality! Also, the NPC has an additional quest marker above their head. Apparently, the weapon can be improved from white to green to blue to purple to gold, with the associated materials, like any other weapon, but there's a twist, as there always is with all things Daedric!
There is a special crafting station there, where your Epic weapon can be improved with the usual amount of improvement materials, as well as an amount of filled black soul gems (obtained from vet dungeon bosses, although empty ones can be looted from both vet and normal) that increases the higher up you go in improvement. So maybe from white to green you need 5, but then 10, 20, and finally 40 to go from purple to gold. The weapon, in this case the Skull of Corruption, will also undergo changes in appearance as you upgrade it. For example, upgrading from white to green makes the eyes of the devilish skull that the staff would be adorned with glow an ominous red when unsheathed. Upgrade from green to blue and the eyes still glow, and the Skull is wreathed in flames as if enchanted with fire, except the flames stay instead of fading away like usual. In the purple stage, the flames are a demonic red (or maybe even blue?). Finally, when the weapon is improved to gold, when you take the staff out, it's eyes are glowing red, and the staff is wreathed in awesome purple hellfire; the inferno staff of all inferno staffs!

These sorts of aesthetical changes would of course be different according to which weapon you decided to specialize in, and serve as further incentive to obtain and upgrade the weapons. Tell me you don't want an inferno staff that's wreathed in violet hellfire every time you take it out! The bragging rights alone are incentive enough!

I didnt want this to seem biased, so other weapon ideas include, but are of course not limited to:

Mehrunes Razor (daggers) Umbra (1h sword) Dawnbreaker/Ebony blade (greatsword) Rueful Axe (2h axe) Volendrung (2h mace)
Spellbreaker/Auriel's Shield(?) (shield) Auriel's Bow/Nightingale Bow (bow) Sanguine's Rose (healing staff) Wabajack (ice/lightning staff) Staff of Magnus (ice/lightning staff) Skull of Corruption (inferno staff) Mace of Molag Bal (Mace) and finally Hircine's Hunting Axe (1h axe, because I could literally not think of anything and made that up just now!)
Please give some CONSTRUCTIVE feedback!!

Katahdin

TLDR

We already have the ultimate weapons. They are called Viceous Death and Proximity Detonation.

DRXHarbinger

You missed spellbreaker and chillrend. The 2 best ones.

Valrien

I've always liked the idea of having weapons like this.

namelessperson

@DRXHarbinger

namelessperson wrote: »

Spellbreaker/Auriel's Shield(?) (shield)

wasn't sure which people would like more, or maybe both could be used

namelessperson

I personally would LOVE to see the Umbra sword implemented in this way. That sword was awesome in Oblivion! Or else a pair of Mehrune's Razors to replace my current daggers

EsoRecon

I do not like this idea because I have a bad experience from something like this in another mmo

namelessperson

@EsoRecon As did I, the previous MMO I cited was FFXIV haha... however, the whole point of this process I've detailed in this post is to NOT be like the horrible, unnecesarily drawn-out processes in other games it's meant to take time and effort, and to give a sense of accomplishment when completed, but not so much as to make you frustrated and hate the game like other games' processes would

Kahl_dur

You and your friends obviously put a lot of thought into this and I like the idea. It would definitely make for interesting endgame content for crafters. Lets just say if the devs announced something like this in a future update, I'd be psyched. Would they ever do something like this? Who knows? They surprised us with Psijic Ambrosia crafting at one point, and it was a lot of fun trying to complete the recipe.

waterfairy

What is this thread in reply to, has this been mentioned before?

namelessperson

@Kahl_dur I'm glad you think so

@Vigarr It's not in reply to anything, so far as I know. I came up with this mostly off the top of my head.

Ahzek

While the idea is kinda neat, and having an actual reward to reliably work towards is something the game is missing at the moment, i find a few flaws with your proposed way of aqcuiring these weapons.

1st. Its all PvE. For some PvP players that can be an incredible tedious task to do simply because they dont enjoy what they have to do to acquire the weapon.

2nd. Vet dungeons are easy for many (I dare say most) players, and especially anything not IC related can be run without a tank and with the proper people i have heard the IC ones ro be done that way as well.
The only challenging end game content we have at the moment for PvE is vMoL, and while getting actual rewards for tackling the challenges in that one would be nice, I dont think BiS weapons for everyone are the way to go there.
In fact I think them to be perfectly placed in vMA, where any sole individual, that simply has a few hours patience and a decent build can farm the place rather quickly. Ofc the RNG here is annoying, but something like a token system would help that a lot.

namelessperson

@Ahzek

Ahzek wrote: »

1st. Its all PvE. For some PvP players that can be an incredible tedious task to do simply because they dont enjoy what they have to do to acquire the weapon.

2nd. Vet dungeons are easy for many (I dare say most) players, and especially anything not IC related can be run without a tank and with the proper people i have heard the IC ones ro be done that way as well.
The only challenging end game content we have at the moment for PvE is vMoL, and while getting actual rewards for tackling the challenges in that one would be nice, I dont think BiS weapons for everyone are the way to go there.
In fact I think them to be perfectly placed in vMA, where any sole individual, that simply has a few hours patience and a decent build can farm the place rather quickly. Ofc the RNG here is annoying, but something like a token system would help that a lot.

1. Yes, but that's the point! For people like me who don't do PvP, it's some endgame content that they can work on and be proud of. Because right now when I mention that I don't do PvP, many people reply along the lines of "wtf why not?! It's like the only thing to do besides the story!". This is content designed for people who actually enjoy the PvE content the game has, and gives them more incentive to do it. If you prefer PvP, or even do specifically that and nothing else, and don't bother much with PvE stuff, well, you can continue doing your thing in Cyrodiil/IC. The whole idea behind this is to add end-game content besides Craglorn, Undaunted pledges, and PvP (and maybe DLC if you didnt already do it). Because those are basically all the game has right now.

2. Again, that's kind of the point. Vet dungeons are challenging, but not tear-inducingly so, and so grinding them for the items I described above would be a moderately difficult (but not too difficult, which is what we're trying to avoid) task. Also, running dungeons with friends is always fun, and now you can do it for something besides gold keys. Basically, the whole point of this system is to give more reasons to run dungeons and use the group finder.

namelessperson

The underlying principle behind this weapon process is: How badly do you want it? How far are you willing to go? Are you willing to do everything it tells you to do in order to be the most powerful you can be? I mean, you can abandon the upgrading process at say, blue or purple and still walk away with a pretty powerful VR16 (or whatever they replace VR with I guess) weapon. Or you can go all the way and get yourself the ultimate weapon. It's ultimately your call.

idk

To many words to read in the OP. Some ideas can be explained in a more direct manner vs a path through Pluto just to go from main to NY.

We have master weapons. We have great set bonuses. We have much to choose from without needing cartoon weapons.

swirve

As long as you can obtain an ultimate weapon through skill and not just how much time you have. I.e coils equivalent to your relic farm.

Grinders get lots of advantages already

namelessperson

@swirve Right! I was thinking of including trials in the post. Also, another option could be Maelstrom Arena to get the things you need to upgrade it. I daresay that at least takes some skill! Dragonstar arena also takes skill as far as I understand.

namelessperson

bump

Lambtron

Yup, I dig the idea. I know it's caused controversy (especially recently), but you have something akin to that in Guild Wars 2 with the Legendary Weapons. Let the grind begin!

Pomaikai

Every Epic/Ultimate weapon should require a full on guild raid at the end, and groups/large groups prior to that. Your acquiring these weapons enhance your guild and their prospects of finishing large scale group content, so it should be a guildwide effort that in the end results in a player getting one.

If these weapons are truly meant to be the best of the best, game changing weapons that you describe, and are in most other games, then the level of difficulty in acquiring them should be commensurate with their power.

No ESO easy mode for Epics!

Xundiin

NO!!! I will not ever play Trials of Atlantis again. just no, hell no, you got be f'n kidding me no.

namelessperson

@Pomaikai That's a pretty interesting idea

namelessperson

@Xundiin What?? Lol

Pomaikai

namelessperson wrote: »

@Pomaikai That's a pretty interesting idea

EverQuest did it 15 years ago.

Xundiin

Trials of Atlantis was an xpac of DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot). It introduced artifacts, which sounded cool at first..... till you actually did. It took months of farming and a ton of luck to make the artifact (weapons and armors could be artifacts). After you crafted it took even longer to level them up, and the more you had the stronger your character was. I'm sorry, but I had a friend that had 14 artifacts for his little ranger... that ranger could solo whole groups of 8 in pvp because the artifacts made players way to powerful.

I know you are not saying the same system, but I'd like to enjoy the game not get a nervous tick every time I log in because of bad memories and I'm now on the verge of having to do that crap again to stay competitive.

So no, I will not play Trials of Atlantis again.

namelessperson

@Xundiin Ah, I see now. Well, the point of my proposed system is to be just similar enough, and yet better than the systems in other MMOs. This system would be farming-intensive, yes, but not so much that you just end up being frustrated. I didn't play the game you described, but, the relic process in Final Fantasy XIV was extremely frustrating and downright depressing at times, what with all the ridiculous fetching and farming and praying to RNGeesus, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of in-game money I was forced to spend because that's how the questline went... This process I would hope would take a couple weeks, MAYBE a month to complete on average. The only RNG would basically be the Nirncrux and black soul gems dropping. If I could have my way, they'd probably drop in groups of 1-3, and have a drop rate of AT LEAST 20%. They'd be guaranteed to be filled upon killing the dungeon bosses. Also, most people would likely only need/want to complete two weapons, since most people cycle between two weapon types. Also, I'm guessing ZOS would adjust the rest of the game's content: mob/boss stats, damage, etc, to adapt to this addition, so as to decrease the likelihood of one person just being able to solo a trial or something ridiculous like that. Although I doubt the weapons would be so powerful as to warrant that anyway, lol.

srfrogg23

I don't think it would be a terrible idea. There are other MMOs that could be played and all the content could be enjoyed without every player having such weapons, but those weapons became legendary solely because making and upgrading them was such a massive undertaking.

It is like that next level for collectors and PvE fans.

Thunderfury, blessed blade of the windseeker.

TheShadowScout

I am a little of two minds about this idea...
...for one I agree that it would be neat to have some special weapons that take quite a bit of effort to get.
...for another I have to say, I would hate the "best in the game" idea, since it can get a bit too elitist-enabling - it works in single player games, but could be quite vexing for many others in an MMO if one player had too much of an advantage through super-weapons, especially if the good players get that extra boost, and the casual players get annoyed by not being able to ever manage; that however can be migrated by keeping the power level reasonable, or providing multiple ways to get there.
...and for a third, well, deadric artifacts are -unique- and thus should not be character gear in am MMO... I mean, really, what when two players with their "skull of corruption" meet, and start arguing whose is the real one...

Now, I do like the basic idea of questing for weapon. I would love it if the weapon was BoP, but the black soul gems you need for the quest would be tradeable - veteran dungeon crawlers get another source of income, dungeon nocies a chance to maybe get there as well by burning lots of gold... or at the very least have some way that people without a decent guild to back them through all the veteran dungeons can get there as well, if taking way more time and effort...

For the weapons itself, they should be not the daedric artifacts, but something a bit different, some weapon derived from those - the difference should be very clear. And they should not be too much of an advantage over normal stuff...
Personally, I would like to see those legandary weapons to be made with an "built-in" extra unique second enchantment depending on their "derivation type", but the rest being just like any other weapon... maaaybe a tiny little bit better stats, but not too much compared to other gear. Bonus points if they could be made in any form or set flavor - by taking a set weapon to the quest, and "imbueing" it with the daedric energies, as to preserve peoples favorite gear setup...

It could be based on deadric flavor... for example, imbue a weapon with Mephalas favor, and you might get non-resistable extra damage, imbue it with Mehunes Dagons favor, and you could have extra flame damage, imbue it with Meridias favor, and you get damage against Undead, etc. To imbue, you would need a black soul gem filled with the daedric power you want to imbue your weapon with - different bosses give different flavors, and the end result might be a "Black Soul Gem (filled, Nocturne)" item.

For the quest you would need one weapon of any level, one flavor-filled black soul gem, some other ingredients (like the mentioned nirncrux, but possibly other stuff as well... how about one of -every- style material?), and the final result would be one max level weapon of the same kind as the one provided (so if you provide a V2 Staff of the Sun for example, you'd end up with a V16 -or whatever comes after V rank removal- level staff of the sun with the daedric imbuement), but with the weapon visuals shifted to a new "unique-ish" look.

Of course, there could be the same mechanic for upgrading it, as mentioned. However, there also needs to be one more mechanic... one for raising its "level" if they expand the gear cap, as they most assuredly will eventually. I mean, after all the trouble people had to get their super-special weapon, they would not want it rendered obsolete the next gear cap raise comes around, yes? So... another quest to re-imbue the thing to the new max gear, perhaps?

namelessperson

@TheShadowScout I actually really like your idea too for the most part, and I see ways in which the two processes could maybe be combined. However, I still really like the daedric artifact idea :P
Because even if we use your appearance idea, think about it: someone could still imbue their weapon with the same "flavor" as you, and so the same situation happens haha. Plus to be quite honest I really want to wield Umbra! And Mehrunes Razor lol. Also, I wouldn't mind seeing someone with the same weapon, especially if it was a friend, because it'd be epic to see that they'd gotten it as far-upgraded as me!

Anyway, thanks for the feedback

TheShadowScout

namelessperson wrote: »

I actually really like your idea too for the most part, and I see ways in which the two processes could maybe be combined. However, I still really like the daedric artifact idea :P
Because even if we use your appearance idea, think about it: someone could still imbue their weapon with the same "flavor" as you, and so the same situation happens haha.

Not really. The unique artifacts are -one of a kind-, imbued weapons can be as many as people get through the imbuement process. It's a lore thing...

namelessperson wrote: »

Plus to be quite honest I really want to wield Umbra! And Mehrunes Razor lol. Also, I wouldn't mind seeing someone with the same weapon, especially if it was a friend, because it'd be epic to see that they'd gotten it as far-upgraded as me!

And that's the point, you cannot be allowed to wield these outside of a quest (like the Wabbajack in the mages guild line). On the other hand... while you cannot have Mehunes Razor for lore reasons, you could have any of thousands of "Mehunes Swords", that are forged in the likeness and flavor of the infamous artifact... that way, the lorelovers will be happy, you will still have an special legendary weapon...

namelessperson

@TheShadowScout

TheShadowScout wrote: »

And that's the point, you cannot be allowed to wield these outside of a quest (like the Wabbajack in the mages guild line). On the other hand... while you cannot have Mehunes Razor for lore reasons...

But have you played Oblivion or Skyrim or any other TES game? Over the course of the series, through the completion of certain quests, we (the players of the game) have always been able to wield the daedric artifacts as weapons... Do you see how this is a major fanservice now? They've always been in the games before, and so why should ESO be any different, even if it is an MMO?