Thinking I may do a few of these - "what if" posts. Ideas that might change the game for the better, or might not, sort of blue skies thinking (although still constrained by being Neocron as we know it, and at least reasonable practical), throw them out there and see what people think, and if there's something good to be gotten from it
So, the basic idea for this post is pretty simple: For all the weapons streams, there are "normal" and epic weapons up until tl90, then after that there are rare and WoC weapons. What this basically means is that for most capped characters, rare weapons are a straight up necessity. A spy isn't getting anywhere bringing a TL79 street rifle to a fight, PvE or PvP.
But why should it be that way? Why on earth do Tangent and Tsunami not make and sell high-end weaponry? How about if we had non-rare weapons going all the way up to TL115 (and beyond?).
Rares would still be better thanks to their +10% damage bonus and superior stats (and slot chance), but non-rares would be an option. It would make the swirly a bit more of a statement, and perhaps make more options (eg, if there was a pulselaser rifle at ~TL100, that would lead to different setups than what the dissy asked for. Same with say, a TL112 plasma cannon.
More technically challenging, but even better to my mind would be if rares lost their straight up damage bonus, but gained a thematic "special" effect. Eg Slasher does a (small amount) of bonus piercing damage; Beam of Hell a small fire stack, etc. And even better still if rares were made well, a lot rarer (very hard to do retroactively) - they'd only offer a small advantage, but pulling out a swirly would be one hell of a statement.
So yeah, thoughts?