Architect Archive
Thread: Some things I think would go a long way to improving Architects and NOT nerf anything or add decay
With time everyone on the server will have all they need and only a few sales will be possible at any given time by a very few Architects and the rest will starve, quit(this the devs better take note) or change to a different more viable profession. It is a weakness built into our profession one that actually is easily remedied And should have been in game from the start some of these suggested in beta. Rather than adding decay which even I find distastefull try this.
Experimentation -Make it matter.
Increased durability - Lowers maintenence cost or lower damage if not keep in repair.
Increased Storage - Change to increased output, the higher your experimenting here the more it mines.
At present increased storage is pointless (why people experiment it up is a mystery) they already store 100,000 units is more really needed?
Increased efficiency - Takes less power to run based on the % experimented into it
Raise experimentation to 100 at master like all other crafters (except droid I think, raise them too) so that more experimentation is possible. What I get now 55 is a joke best I can hope for is 62% with all great successes and a amazing done that twice.
Furniture Variaty - Needs a serious upgrade, by the hundreds, anything in game should be buildable by a master Architect from the variaty of plants to the blue couches you see in the starports.
Furniture Customization - Need to be able to change colors so all furniture matches or mixes to the desire of the customer.
Factional structures - should be craftable by all Architects and destroyable use faction pts to place structure rather than or have the choice to buy from Architect for less than the Faction vendor.
Maintenence kits - rather than just dropping cash into the building/structure to maintain it. This could also be optional.
Expansion kits - Ever see the spawn homes with the stone courtyard and gate with plants and harvesters in it? We should be able to make those.
More variaty in the types of homes we build for each planet.
House customization - Ability to customize the interior and exterior colors and perhaps floorplans by picking from a number of them at the final combine or begining of the parts assembly into the final combine.
Another thing that could be added is powerups for installations. Just like they have for weapons. Items that when installed (using instalation kit maybe) increase things like durability efficiency (power) and amount of ore mined (KG/Hr adjustment) These could be time based or good untill harvester is re-deeded.
Some of these things would be items like,
Titanium drill bits (minin efficiency)
Superconductor upgrades (power efficiency)
Frictionless fluids (increaded durability of internal parts and less maintenence required as a result)
There are probably more things like this that can be come up with that help us without outraging the people who don't want decay I am not asking for it and in reality I DO NOT WANT IT! I don't ever want to have to build my house or harvesters again.
All great ideas just like alot I see on here.. Problem is that if it requires alot of programming, like adding things, it will never happen. If it increases thedatabase size it will never happen. We have to work with what we have.
Experimentation is broken.. how many time have you tried to experiment something and the efficiency crit fails to zero etc. That item you just make is now useless and you might as well of crit failed all together. Hope it wasnt a PA hall. High maint on a PA hall.. ouch..
Yes add all the furniture styles! that cant be to hard can it? That wont increase the database size.. there is a limit on how much you can put in a house no matter what style it is..
I'm don't think making experimentation work is a good idea. Picture this, you gather your 27k resources for a heavy harvester, all with high UT or whatever, make the item, then crit fail the experiment. Who would buy it? Other crafts have a lot more leeway resource wise than us. A weaponsmith trying to make the best scout blaster has no problem making several and failing experimentation a few times before coming up with a schematic.
That's another issue with experimentation. By our very nature, we do not make schematics for the finished goods in most cases. Other crafters do. Coming up with the resources to make a factoryrun of heavy harvesters or medium houses worthwhile would be a PA wide effort. If resource shifts were on a monthly basis this might be possible, but coming up with a new schematic using new materials every week would be impossible for almost every architect out there.
The third issue I havewith experimentation is that it would destroy any market for novice architects. Architect is the only craft profession that is possible to master without ever grinding. Novices in any other craft have nothing that is sellable on a consistent basis, especially the crafts where experimentation makes or breaks the final product, such as weapon or armorsmith.
I agree with theadded furniture idea though 
there are a lot of pluses and minuses to the experimentation thing. Both sides have good points. Looking at it from a novice perspective its great to be able to actually sell the things you make as you climb. From a master side, there's really nothing that I can do to separate my product from anyone elses.
With crit fails already being complained about, adding experimentation crit fails would make it even worse.
I almost think that allowing the experimentation on components mean something in the final product would be ok. While its not a lot of fun to have to build 3 or 4 or more generator turbines to get one that has a higher effectiveness rating, I can certainly replace the materials that go into it a lot easier than the ones that go into the final product.
I don't know, tough issue from either side of the fence.
Thats a good question. Experimentation should be removed from the crafting process if its not going to mean anything.. its like saying .. ya its broke and unfixable but we are going to leave it in to remind you how thrown together the final phase of development has been.. hehe
Tempest wrote:
Yesyou guy's points on crit failing experimentation are good ones. The question then is why do we even have it when it is going to be more detrimental than helpful far to often to be worth it?
By detrimental I assume you mean to the pocketbook. Well the real solution to that would be raising your prices to cover crit fails. If you made more *cough* profit on your (very few) sales as an architect, those crit fails wouldnt hurt so much would they?
But there is a problem underlying in that it is too late to raise the price on anything. The market for architects items is destroyed. We will forever be the poorest profession in the game becuz of the initial economic windfall in the first week of PA grinding. I believe the DEV's expected architects to be the most profitable profession. But in their shortsightedness(which they have admitted btw) have caused a backwars economy in their less than thought out design. All other things in the game I do not have a problem with. It has been said time and again that arch's have nothing anyone in SWG "really" needs with 1 exception and that is factories for crafting high lvl items.
I ve said it b4, Ill say it again, Architect Mastery is too easy to obtain to make our products vaulable. Hopefully city planner will not be easy and they will have designed that profession to thwart lowball grinders. but I doubt it.
There a number things they can do to help starving architects, but the only way to bring our economic issues back to what they were intended would be to restart SWG with a newly reconstructed architect profession, and that... my friends... isnt gonna happen.
So we must make do with what we got. We can all band together and raise prices, and boycott the buyers until theyagree to our new pricing, or we can just stay the same and keep selling ourselves out of business. Raised pricing this late in the game will only hurt newbies unfortunately, and make older players hate you for raised prices when 1 decides they need a different house, and find out it now costs twice what they used to(all of whom are richer than you).
Im comforted to see an architect that does not care for decay as i do not.
I own a guild hall for a house that has quite a bit of furniture in it. placing it and getting it aligned right as a pain (that luckily i had ALOT of help with, thank you merenia).... i would NOT do it again. I would sell my guild hall off or just fill the thing with my harvested Hides, Meats and Bones.
Your ideas are fantastic and i hope they are made into the game.
If you read the posts on the devtracker, Holo has mentioned twice in his discussions about tailor decay that the dev team wants furniture decay.
I think this is a huge mistake. Some people put a lot of time into decorating (that aquarium that the devs ALSO professed to love is a great example). If I went to that amount of effort and it decayed I know I would be very upset.
How about letting rebels be able to damage or even destroy imp houses (should be hard to destory) and vice versa with imp damageing rebels houses!
For instance two pa's should be able to declare war on each other and then they could raid each others cities. Such PA wars should give bonus FPS for the PA members participating in raids and defence.
Such wars would alsp add alot to the PVP in my opnion.
If on top of this the architect could build turrets and force fields for buildings we would be in business.
Doth wrote:
Whatif every time a structure needs to be repaired it simply increases the maintenance rate for that structure. So if the structure drops to 75% for lack of maint. the maint rate increases by 2.5% or .25% or somthing along that line. This wouldn't cause structures to decay, but it would eventually cause a structure to be replaced for one that costs less to maintian. It would take a while for the effects to be noticeable, but it would slowly degenerate the effectivenessthat structure.
Any attempt to add decay or increase maintenence on housing or furniture or harvesters is going to be met with hostility on the part of the general public. If those advocating these things ever succeed in convincing the devs to put it in the backlash will put most if not all architects out of buisness. People will be pissed at us and blame us for it and refuse to buy homes and or expect a severe drop in what we charge in retribution. The solution is not decay but more items and items that DO decay and are wanted on a regular basis like factional installations.