Vudon and I were brainstorming (yes, uh oh). It makes logical sense for the weapons repair station to be Smith only, and give them CXP for doing repairs. If the Smith is the one to build the weapon, it stands to reason that the Smith should be the only one to repair them.
That may not be the case when bow recipes and parts become readily available if the bow uses the repair table as well. If it doesn’t use the table, there’s nothing else other than melee weapons that will need to use it.
The downside of that is the number of working smiths, and the potential burnout and overwhelm if everyone needs weapons repaired, and the smith is the only one who can do it.
The weapon table will allow building of bows and such in future.
The issue I see is, since weapons are no transfer, how does the smith fix the weapon?
I haven’t tried this yet, but if someone else places their weapon on the repair bench, can another person do the actual repairing?
It’s the same with sharpening your weapons. Only you can sharpen your own blade. We don’t plan on making weapons transferrable (as you know, this would open the doors to L$ sales on SL marketplace, which we are avoiding).
If we did anything, I doubt it would be the restriction of the table to a profession, but the possibility for the smith to earn CXP for fixing peoples weapons (if it works).
Yes, if someone places a weapon on the repair table, someone else can do the mini-game to repair it. They tested that earlier today, just to see if it was even worth thinking about. As you noted, the same is not true of the sharpening station, of course.
And no, I don’t think making weapons transferable would be good at all, either. In the crate and within the SLC system, sure. Once they’re “built” in-world, no.
It would make sense for the smith to earn a little CXP for it, so that would be a welcome addition, even if the station isn’t restricted.