Architect Archive
Thread: Top Issues
I'm still up in the air about decay. It could be a good idea, although I wouldn't enjoy it. It could also back-fire and people will just say "Forget it, I just won't harvest anything." You could also run into problems where you're stuck:
- You have no money to buy resources, and all your harvesters decayed. You can't harvest enough materials to make new harvesters, and you can't run missions because you had to give up all your skill points to remain a decent architect.
We definitely need experimentation, period. There is no way currently for us to distinguish our products from another architect. This alone might help the whole situation:
/shout "Selling large harvesters for 250k each!"
soandso tells you, "**edit**, you are wayyyyyyyy overpriced. My friend will sell for 100k each!!!1"
/tell soandso "yeah but your friend's harvester collects at 7 kg/hour. Mine collect at 15 kg per hour because I took the time to collect some rare materials and make the best sub-parts."
soandso tells you, "Ok I'll take 10 and send all my friends your way"
The structure and assembly points definitely need to be fixed. That's a slap in the face when the patch message said "We raised all those professions structure and assembly points that did not total 100." So what does that mean, that we're not a "profession" ?
Alot of folks sell furniture and love decorating. I think fixing all the bugged furniture (those you can't sit on, those that are duplicates, etc) , adding the moveup and down command, plus adding more furniture should be a high priority.
1) I would say experimentation and structure assembly needs to be fixed. By fixed I mean everything can be experimented on. I agree with the idea that experimentation on the final combine of a large structure is risky, but at the same time, that risk also adds more value to the successful creation/experimentation on the structure itself. the crit failures, although horrible to experience on that level, also provide a money sink for the economy that no other profession can provide to the same extent (Causing some inflation to balance the economy from the duping) due to the large quantity of resources needed. At first I was going to say structure decay, but with the european launch, there will be a new market for structures that should be able to tide us over until they can put some kind of maintenance or decay (As long asthe launch goes smoothly).
2) Long term I think it should be the decay on structures. This is one of the more complex issues I think. Whether to add decay or to eliminate redeeding, either way provides future market. The question then becomes which is more appropriate. On one hand decay would provide a steady market, players may complain enough that SOE might eventually add a repair device or simply link it to maintenance to repair as it is now with harvesters. On the other hand, eliminating redeeding is an unsure fix as I think most players enjoy their freedom to choose where they locate their home and simply select a more suitable spot before building. The sever undercutting by selling a used home in some locations would probably be offset by the overpricing in other areas though. Both have their flaws and could be balanced, but that would take more coding and waiting for the devs to do it (If things did go that route). I think if we can **edit** this in the bud right now we'll avoid future headaches and make acrhitect a long lasting profession.
One Idea I had was rather than decay or redeeding, perhaps a linearlyincreasing rate of maintenance. One where eventually, buying a new home would be better than paying the maintenance. Also able to be experimented on for efficiency (eg slower rate of increase) and shows in the deed's "examine" window. I'm pretty certain this could be coded pretty easily (Like the way vendors' maintenanceincreases when you have more items on them...same principle) The only downfall I can think of right off the top of my head would be the furniture being moved to the new home (Could be solved by redeeding at the terminal) or left alone might lead to people wanting to remodel (More furniture market). Anyways just an idea. I'm sure it has more pros and cons than these. 
At any rate decay of some kind is my pick for long term.
3) Only things I can put my finger on atmthat aren't already mentioned are:
-being able to see status (maintenance paid, power reserves, any rates that were experimented on at creation etc...)of a structure or installation in the "examine" window of a deed along with a visual of the item itself (external view for houses), insteadof a 3d Picture frame.
- being able to remove maintenance payments and power from structures/harvesters (removing Cr/power from harvesters under the minimum maint would make buying the cheap ones all over the place more attractive as long as the minimum maint amount required for redeeding is not removed/lowered. Would increase the market for harvesters..well personal ones at least...good for new and old architects alike)
-static 2d images of floorplans to show customers trying to decide which house they want (Maybe in the holocron under architect?)
-Build zone map of some kind (Perhaps a new tab on the planetary map that is zoomable also? May also show current structures as a dot s like in the friday feature when zoomed in close enough but that might be pushing things due to server boundaries and difficulties of coding)
-mail stating that a resource has been exhausted, power reserves almost depleted, etc. (Although this falls into general crafting and should probably not be one of our top priorities)
-Paint- At least interiors and furniture. Who wants the samegray house everyone else has? 
What about fixing making walls in factories, I'd sure like not to have to make anymore **edit** walls by hand.
My order for what you have would be
Structure Experimentation is useless
Construction Tree useless
Structure decay ( Both decay and no-redeeding as presented before )
Participating in the GCW ( faction buildings )
Structure Experimentation at +55 (we want it upped to +100)
Artisan Assembly at +55 (we want it upped to +100)
Furniture (some furniture such as tables are identicle, we also want customizeable colours and some extra stuff)
A "/movefurniture up&down" command
I would add,
More furnature and plants are avaliave ( we can see them in town ) let usbuild them.
I also want to say that you are doing a very good job here, Im impressed.
Most urgent to me is dealing with the crit fail system.That means the following:
1) Most urgent...get our structure assembly stat in line with other crafters. It should be +100.
2) Find some way to balance crit failures so that architects aren't so severely punished as compared to the other professions. I failed two heavy mineral harvesters this week. No other class loses 55,000 resources in two crafting sessions. The best solution I've seen to that is that we shouldn't lose subcomponents when we crit fail, just the raw resources.
3) This isn't architect specific, but get the crafting designer to explain all the factors affecting critical failure rates. This would be perfect for an advanced guide (much like the experimentation guide they did way back near launch).
Other than that, my biggest peeve with the architect profession is the inconsistencies with factories. This includes:
1) Walls are a huge pain to do in a factory because you need to unload structure segments from the crates to run walls through the factory (unless you use the 10 crates of "structure segements" trick). Double-clicking 90 times to unpack the crates, then dragging 90 segments into the factory to make a total of 9 walls is extremely frustrating.
2) All of our items should come out in crates when made with a factory. Currently ore mining units and trees come out as individual items instead of in crates despite the fact that similar components do come out in crates.
Experimentation and decay are two huge issues that I would like to see addressed very slowly. Rushing in a decay system without thinking it through would be a very bad thing, in my opinion.
1. Boredom
2. Lack of product differentiation (no experimentation, resource quality isn't used).
3. Critical Failures.
4. No recurring revenue.
Issue #1 and #2 are related - architecture get to be boring because there is not the least concept of making a better PA hall, a better harvester, etc. Other professions stay interesting because there is always a struggle to produce a better weapon or a better piece of armor.
Issue #2 also means that a master architect has no advantage over a relative noob. My harvesters are not one iota better than a rookie's.
Issue #3 is simply infuriating; it adds aggravation to the game without giving anything in return.
Issue #4 is, in the long term, the thing that will kill architecture. The player base is of limited size. Houses, medium and heavy harvesters are never destroyed and are being constantly created. Eventually, nobody will need any more and we're out of work.
This is a real pain because feeding modules into a crafting tool one at a time takes forever. Try to imagine building a PA hall, where you ultimiately have to uncrate 150 structure modules then load them, one at a time, into either your factory or your wall schematic.
I thought this was how all factories worked... I have a food/chem factory making stims, and I had to load all the stupid bio effect ctrls/chem release mechs/liquid supsensions all by hand, wouldn't work with factory crate.
Crafting Stations -They should use architect experiamentation points instead of artisan. (Make Construction worth something and a quick fix coding wise)
Up Assembly and Experiamentation to +100 (before racial modifiers)