It's ridiculous to have to wait months for Red Libra to come around. The market moves faster than that.
Why not create a repeatable quest that allows players to exchange weapon grades R - R99? Maybe revamp the Wish Potion quest, with some changes and a Kartia type mini-boss to fight at the end? The prize would be weapon exchange stones, which when combined with R gems (plus a number of Elcyum for Bloody and Dark weapons) allows players to exchange for the same grade weapon of their choice. If you want to maintain some type of balance of power and increase NCstore purchases, you can stipulate that the weapon SA is removed. Only in Red Libra would you be able to exchange and keep SA. That would force everyone to buy even more R gems to replace the SA.
It can't be too difficult to introduce something like this, can it?
There was a reason why some weapons were harder to overenchant and others more valuable then others. Red Libra pretty much just ignores that. It's one thing to have it as an event every so often, it's another to permanently implement it's mechanism into the game.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to have the flexibility to swap weapons all the time, but there are reasons why this isn't in game.
It's not like those difficult to enchant weapons -- by which you're probably referring to mage weapons -- sell like hot cakes once you get them up to high enchant levels. At least they don't on Chronos. During the last Red Libra I exchanged a bunch of +12 and higher fighter weapons to those harder to enchant mage weapons. Believe it or not, even though it's been months now since the last Libra and my prices run from cheap to reasonable market value, most of the now mage weapons didn't sell. That's not the case for the fighter weapons that I've enchanted to +12 or more since Libra. They continue to sell at a decent clip, because the demand is higher, since more people play fighter type classes now. I think adding a quest that allows people to exchange weapons extro-event might help move product. If the +++++ Retribs aren't selling, but the duals and bows are, then my revenue stream wouldn't take a hit. I'd just do the quest and turn it into whatever is selling now. Plus, it might even encourage more people to play mages and summoners, which are not popular because of all of the "balance" limitations imposed on them, including low mage weapon enchant rates.