I love love love that in TSW - only maintaining one character, with one name, that can change into whatever they need at the time. Even if they have to go back to the battlebarge to "re-outfit".

Sounds like a good way to segment the community. I'd much rather for posts on the forums to be judged by their content and not what shiny badges or titles are attached to their account.

This is my Bolter. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Bonus: Imperial Guardsmen's Rifle Creed!
This is my lasgun. There are many like it, but this one is by far the worst.

On-Topic: Really liking what I've read thus far. Very interested to see what kind of ammunition requisitions I can use with different weapons. I remember that the PnP rpgs went more in depth with this as well with refined promethium and what not. Has anyone asked about bayonet attachments for weapons? I'd like to see my guy toting a drum fed heavy bolter or autocannon with a chainblade attachment on it, because IV Legion.

Is this PvE gear you are talking about? That concerns me, I really hate these complete bs stats that are only created to separate pvp and pve. If I have a rare weapon it should always be better than a common one wherever I use it. I dont wanna farm one gear set just to realize it's worthless in another part of the game.

Power Mauls?

I love playing games, specially mmo's, or anything warhammer/fantasy rts related for that matter. From reading the posts about how to handle the economy, it's sounds very intriguing. Reminds me of RFo from way back.

I read the posts about the faction economy and their usual habit of snowballing in favor of the controlling race, something I doubt will ever be truly solved, I love the way it sounds very similar to how the faction economy in GW2 WvWvW. It really does make for far more excitement and tactical thinking.

On the personal side for Exp/Rp (or whatever each faction uses for currency), I was once brainstorming ideas with other guild friends about how to make a system which has plenty of viability without people controlling the AH's with a vast wealth influence that others could never come close to, couple that with modular design weapons and armors while at the same time attempting to thwart gold farmers. The only conclusion we could come up with was an automated npc trading hub, a system which was quick and easy to use which meant you could spend more time getting back out and into the action and wasn't controlled by a few wealthy individuals with insane sums of money.

I know people will criticize this, but I just wanted to put this out there since it might give some inspiration on alternative economy balancing.

This is on personal economy (player personal gear) and not faction economy (vehicles/defenses and such for squads/strike forces). We completely agree with the Exp unlocking of items, base armor sets, base weapons and so on for use. This was essentially the same thing the guild discussion thought upon. We then thought that customization in a modular form would be far more interesting than items with fixed attributes/stats on them. This would allow for a lot of custom personalization that a lot of people would love in order be unique, this was also related to in a post I read in the thread. Base items would have empty module slots which could be filled (armor slots would change appearances while weapon module slots would be things like scopes/scanners/ammo type/better cooling modules/faster reload modules/etc). This was pretty much the same idea on customization as with our guild discussion. These customizations could be made through specific npc's (armorer npc, weapon npc). This would work well with your idea of creating sets which could be changed on the fly (well maybe not armor for obvious reasons).

With this in mind, we then thought about how we could manage such an economy that would remain predominantly fair while circumventing gold (RP) farming. Yep, we had exactly the same idea for Requisition Points as primary currency. As I said earlier in the post, our best solution was an automated npc trading hub (this being whoever handles the armor/weapons per faction).
The idea was basically an automated AH, this would use a base static price per item (worked out based on base item + modules on the item) which is self regulating depending on rarity and stock available (price % increase or decrease against it's base static price). You would use this system to basically trade in old gear/modules which would automatically get added to the available stock pile already on the system while getting some RP back in return. Buying items from the hub would require the RP. This in the most part would prevent price fixing and essentially eliminate gold farming/buying without overly restricting trade.
On another note, in regards to personal gear trading between characters on the same account, a locker system could be used (typically a personal bank) for trading items between same faction characters (a bolter could be traded marine to marine, but not marine to ork).


Now I got that off my chest, I shall prepare myself for bombardment of incoming criticism.
That aside, I love what I've been reading about the game so far and the ideas being implemented. If ever you need any support dealing with GW, perhaps breaking some WAAAGGGHH banners over some heads, I only live 30min from GW HQ in Nottingham!