The question gets asked often enough: Why arent RTC weapons just skins? I think its time we consolidate all of this into one petition with some metrics that speak for themselves via this poll. Right now RTC weapons come "Pre-modded" as the devs like to say. They dont explicitly say what mods they have on the and some of the mods like AG come with effects not able to be placed on their normal variants via mods. Others just come with a barrel mod and a grip and thats it, for 10000 RTC. Frankly unacceptable and a real shame because those items would sell far more if the item had longevity, because it will get replaced in favor of the standard weapon as soon as I unlock mods and have control over the mods I put into it.
My own hope was partially pre-modded. Something like having a couple slots occupied but allow some customization. Or yes, let them be swapped out. As it stands now, once you play a few games and unlock stuff there's no reason to keep using your RTC weapons. Take my Litany of Wrath, it has the same stats as a vanilla Power Maul but I can't mod it. So it's not only not better than a vanilla weapon, it's worse because it's unmoddable.
I'd actually prefa' it bein' a mod itself, where weapons 'ave a skin mod slot (no LP costs) and ye can equip diffarant skins fer yer weapons That way dem skins can be applied ta' yer weapon whetha' it be a shoota er a dead shiny shoota'
The current RTC weapon model is unethical. Ya I completely agree, RTC weapons really need to be skins. It bothers me that they cost 10+ bucks and they are only good for the first rank or so and then easily replaced, and you only hurt yourself by using them after. So far by the sounds of it the Devs are not interested in changing this based on what they say in twitch, but I really think this is something that needs to keep the pressure up because people are willing to spend money, but only if they are able to use what they bought in the game after the start. Isn't the point of buying cosmetics so you can outfit your character the way you want but with the look you want? Currently it is buy a weapon and get screwed over, and your spending a lot of bucks for those short term cosmetics. RTC is only good right now for non-weapon cosmetics.
Its a bad business model and once people realize that weapon purchases are short term commitments, and visual armor customization you can use forever, they will have to change it. Unfortunately things always get hairy when you make changes to something people have already bought.
I chose the second option, but I'd like to alter it slightly. @FleshAlgorythm made this suggestion earlier and I think it's the best idea so far. RTS/RELIC weapons should be MASTER CRAFTED weapons that can be modded like any other and have the unique skins. This way we avoid Pay to Win as a factor and weapons like "Abaddons Grace" which have unique status affect ailments and such could be moved to the 30k relic boxes.
I've damn near had a stroke over this. Several times. I've made threads that get no traction, ranted to my poor guild mates multiple times both in voice and text (nearly screaming at them in rage and frustration), post questions to twitch, email devs. It never gets anywhere.
This would also work, and might be the best solution for long term progression and RTC sales. Eventually many, if not all, weapons will have some kind of unique RTC variant Im sure, and allowing weapons to grow with the character via skins would be a good long term solution. I guess my thought process when I made the thread was what could they do within the bounds of what already exists in the UI. I think a lot of the reason they havent changed their direction with RTC weapons is a stat that Miguel listed off way back in the day when they were figuring out how to generate cash for the game long term. He said that statistically items sold that were purely cosmetic made up a minority of sales in most MMOs if there were items for sale that also had stats. That items with stats tended to sell better because it gave you a gameplay advantage, or feels like it does. So maybe the company just wont move off of that analysis.
