UV meet MV

SO, everyone knows about UV's
those lovely little yellow squares that means your sword or shield is better than the rest. thus "Unique".
BUT THIS RANDOM NONSENSE IS GETTING ON MEH NERVES!
Why not work in a manner of DELIBERATELY giving an item a UV. maybe use crystals? (those things we're supposed to be dumping into the core)
personally it drives me up the wall when I;ve spent several thousand energy trying to get a simple medium or high uv on an item and some shmuck walks up, blasts out a maximum, and then smacks me in the face with how "AWESOME" he is.
There should be some means, through a sufficient amount of work and progression, this random may be overcome.
And thus I provide the Manufactured Variant. maybe not as shiney or as powerful, but if you do the right things, you can, without a doubt (OR SOME STUPID ROLL) manufacture a fairly reliable weapon.
(which I would like to, at some point, crush down into a trinket I can equip to my next weapon but that's another subject)
Although that does bring up an idea. What if Uv could be made into, idk, gems? a new market could emerge from combining those gems to make better gems and.....I think I've already seen this game mechanic.... Oh well! either way it would be nice!

lol, I know about the rerolls. I calculated it out and its actually much more economical to punch uvs.
but thats not the point. the point is futher weapon customization.
On a game where its all about the weapons I would have expected a more involved system.
maybe changing the material of the weapon to change its swing speed?
durability?
element?
length?
range?
charge type?
all these things could be mvs.
could you imagine giving a glacial a range boost? making into something out of Final fantasy?
or maybe further increase number of swords a faust produces?
and to smash hammer : not not guarantee medium or higher. guarantee from low to high.
and they do give a decent boost! especially the damage ones!. each point is 6% increase. so use a damage increase max and a damage vs max? thats 12 points and 12*6 is 72% increase in damage! add on critter susceptibilities

The game has relatively simple mechanics wich work great, your ideas make it too complex IMHO.

not really, but okay. if its too complicated for you to have the computer do one more thing (which just caters to whatever you're doing anyways)
I guess it shouldn't be added should it?
No, TheTric. it would be too difficult to code into the game. Let's take your idea of the UV Gem market, for example, and just for simplicity's sake, a UV Gem that adds abilities that are already available in game, but can be combined to make their bonuses stronger. For that to be added in, first, they'll have to add a new section to the Arsenal for the gems. Then, they'll have to add in an entire new item class, and code each individual gem. Then, they'll have to code the items to be able to add UV's to weapons. Then they'll have to code a way for you to combine them, which would probably mean a new NPC they'd have to code. Then they'd have to make sure they all work without any problems. That's a lot of programming and bug testing. Now let's look at your idea about having weapons with different materials, durability, element, etc... This would require an entire recode of the game's weapon system. That would also necessitate an overhaul of the crafting system, to handle the new weapons, and once more it would require bug testing, as such a massive update would almost certainly break something. I don't know if you have any programming experience, but to put it simply, one does not just bash at the keyboard for two days, and then have a new feature ready. There's a reason why games take many months to make, and there's a reason why Spiral Knights content updates don't happen every day.

I apologize if it came across in that manner.
and the honest truth is, if programmed correctly, most games should be easily modified.
And I do say this from experience.
there are actually some pre-exsisting systems the proposed gem system could work on. (most notably the nice and simple integer ranks)
I would most assuredly point out though that for the mv's (which was the original subject)
it would be as simple as crafting items in the first place. the only difference would be that if certain additional materials where present, the crafted item would be made with specific UV(s) instead of a roll.
I don't have the code infront of me though, nor do I know how to acquire it. although I am confident that I could most assuredly find a means of implementing a crafting system for uvs, with fairly limited modification to the overall game.
actually now that I think about it. a new "punch" could be added to that area. instead of selecting random uv tickets, particular tickets could be offered.
does that all seem so difficult?
Shouldn't this be in the Suggestions forum? Oh well.
I really, really like the idea of Manufactured Variants and customised weapons, but since they'll be easier to acquire than UVs, they'll have to be significantly less effective. Maybe to the point where the effort to get them is a waste.
UV combination, I'm a bit more iffy of. While I also really like that system, I'm not sure if it'll work with Spiral Knights. You'd need at least two UVs, right? Two UVs are already expensive, and then the added cost of combining them... I wonder if anyone will really go to the trouble of doing that, if it's just cheaper to have the two UVs on one weapon. And, if it actually is worth the cost, and the new UV is significantly stronger, then there are new game balancing issues aren't there?
Yeah, an NPC that provides specific UV selections would not be difficult to code, a large portion of the time spent would be bug testing. The problem is that it would devalue UV's in general, and possibly damage the market. A lot of players earn money by selling UV's. Those players would be pushed out of their in-game "job" so to speak, and wouldn't want to play any more. I doubt OOO would want to negatively affect their player base in such a way, since it's how they put food on their tables.
"maybe changing the material of the weapon to change its swing speed?
durability?
element?
length?
range?
charge type?
all these things could be mvs."
that should be in OP imo
it be worth the fun, especially with the few sk weaps, that are available, itd kinda multiply the weapons, one could choose from

What you're talking about/suggesting is called Pseduo-randomness. It a system where it is "random" but not really. It moniters how many times you lose and lsowly raises your percentage of winning. But such a thing can't really be implemented in spiral. how do you rank a low UV compared to a med UV? how would you even keep track of the failures and successes? it qould require a lot of time and a lot of changes for something like thsi to be put into the game. and honestly, i dont even see a problem with it the way it is now. UV's are meant to be random and are meant to be an endgame status on items. If it were that easy to get good UV's then tons of people would have it.
--Cobriliant

I see you're point Cobrilliant, and i'll even concede i think that would have been a better way to do it from the outset. However, at the current state of the games maturity that would really pull the rug out from under everyone who has really invested in getting their max UV's. Many people have shelled out real $$ to get an extra 3.5k, or 7.5k to bump their ce up enough to purchase a max this or that. When you allow people to do some other mechanic to manufacture a UV, you in essence sorta made that persons purchase a waste. Actually, MV's would cripple the current UV market which would be no fun :(
I agree that there should be some way of influencing UV creation. A choose-your-UV system would be against the random and luck spirit of UVs, but I do think you should be able to steer Punch in the direction you want to go. And it just so happens that this could be a good opportunity for a mat sink.
For example, let's say you have a DA and want to buy a 1UV Ticket. There is a good chance you'll end up with Low Beast... boo. But what if you also gave Punch 25 Reaper Ribs and that increased the chance of getting an Undead Damage UV instead. Instead of even distribution between the UV types it could be weighted toward a type depending on the mats and their star quality. A weighted distribution with diminishing returns would guarantee that it would be impossible submit enough mats to ensure a certain UV, but it would improve your chances greatly.
There are a ton of mats and they could influence UVs in different ways. Some can even be anti-materials... Spark of Life can reduce Undead chances and would be useful when adding a UV to a Gran Faust.
Finally we would have something to do with the 1000s of mats piling up, and it could help revitalize the high-star material market on the Auction House.

if they capped the UV you could get. For example by steering the uv in a direction, high or med become the highest available and made very high/max uv's unavailable. As to not deflate too much the value of existing elite gear.

"There should be some means, through a sufficient amount of work and progression"
This is already and play and has been used by all of us with good UV gear. Play, work, grind, earn crowns turn into CE and buy UVs. Scour the AH and the Bazaar. And yet, there is still the luck factor, so a virtually new player has the opportunity to get lucky and craft a UV.
So now they can either sell it (to one such as yourself who has WORKED to make and save up CE) and thus get a jump start on becoming a vet. or they can equip and proudly show off their new awesome weapon.
edit: and see, if you've spent thousands of ce on trying to make one, you could have definitely bought a med uv for that, and possibly a high to very high depending on which uv's u want on which gear.

is interesting. Of course, there'd have to be a way to isolate it. so you can't get a vh ctr brandish, make it into a vh ctr gem that works for all items.
Making the gem only fit into the weapon/armor it was made from might work. then perhaps weapons could be random as to how many gem slots it had (one of the Final fantasies did somehing like this!!) it'd be pretty cool. not necessarily better, as it'd fundamentally change the game. but still cool. always fun to brainstorm such ideas.
haha. then of course, we'd all be clamoring over those max gem slot weapons and armors. so we'd be kinda back to square one. and the gem slot rolling machine. ahahahahaahhaha.

If you read several post from this thread starter, you may find him a clever troll. He is trying to alternate the essentials of the game system and make it into a conventional MMORPG.

I'm surprised that gem idea hasn't died yet XD
the two thing I really want to say is : there was mention (in a nice perversion of quoting me) that the currency grind was a correct method.
Dude, go back to your depraved wow grinding.
grinding is grinding, is grinding. there should always be a alternative. one that requires the same amount of energy, but merely a different method to suit different styles of gameplay. an example would be, to save a commrad you can kill the enemy gaurds, or set up a cascade failure. both are difficult in different ways but are in magnitude the same.
the other thing : not so sure about the idea that uv probabilities are increased.
Infact I KNOW(within 95% XD) its wrong. otherwise I would have gotten a 3* max by now XD
you need to go back and study your principles of probability.
flip a coin 3 times. your probability of getting heads doesn't change. its still 50:50
You know how to "overcome the random"? Buy the UV item you want from someone at its current market value. Simple as that, and no need for this idea, which it seems would take a lot of time to implement.
I laughed at this though
Dude, go back to your depraved wow grinding.
This is coming from the guy who wants character levels in Spiral Knights.
u could reroll the UV with Punch.... o you mean guarantee a medium or higher uv? no that would make UVs trivial if it were that easy and it would devalue the stuff we got now. my suggestion to you is to stop caring for them, they do little for your equipment anyway