Architect Archive

Thread: Dev Response on FS Crafting XP Issue

lisasdarren
Wed Sep 08, 2004 3:58 am
#14






Moepple wrote:

At the beginning of SWG, crafters got 100% of the exp per item when using the factory, they changed that to 10% very fast, a few weeks after launch. Today you dont get anything when using a factory, but not using it makes no sense, except for grinding.


When did you stop getting XP from factories? And who gets the XP the factory owner or the schematic maker? Reason i ask is that my Combat Character has several K of structure crafting XP, yet he has never been an architect, and was only briefly an artisan. He owns the factories i use, but i have only been crafting since June.



No matter how your style of playing is, there is no way to get "cheap" exp for crafters. You have to pay for everything you do instead of getting money.


There is a "cheap" way to get XP... hand make all your final combines, then sell them, for a good profit... You just can't grind for profit, but i am sure the Devs are doing their best to figure out ways to make grinding less worthwhile.. I hand craft nearly everything i make (except furniture these days) i am getting plenty of structure crafting XP, though not enough to rapidly progress up the tree... i agree the ratio is screwed.


Personally i thinkthe ratio needs to relate to material requirements not time, they are a perfectly valid gate for crafters, so an architect can gain the XP with less time, but they need to use the same resources which cost credits and time is still needed to mine the resources or aquire the credits to buy the resources.








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Iannyen
Wed Sep 08, 2004 5:24 am
#15

With so many useful items that sell to make that can be skilled up on, I have no issues with statues being tuned down.


Of course, they sell well enough for me at 15k per that I may be biased, and would love to see the material requirement lowered....



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Domandred
Wed Sep 08, 2004 6:22 am
#16

Don't nerf the statue exp. Statues actually have less exp per resource then structure modules, its just that you get so much exp for one single combine. Tune down the amount of resources they use and therefor the exp overall exp, but NOT the resource to exp ratio...OR make it so they use the same amount of resources, just different ones instead of 2 big piles of crap and don't touch the exp...


For instance instead of 2000 low grade ore and 1000 gems use500 low grade ore, 500 non-ferrous, 500 ferrous, 500 steel (pick a metal type), 500 crystaline gemstone, 500 amorphus gemstone. Still same overall amount and still same exp, but a little bit harder to just get piles of the exact same stuff and click twice. Throw in a specialize resource at random for flavor. Like Rainbow Gemstone Crystaline in place of the 500 gemstone.


If you nerf the Gungan heads the wrong way people will just move to the structure modules which only use 2piles resources, but gives more exp per resource, you just need to do 10 combines instead of just 1 for the same exp.




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Sevardos
Wed Sep 08, 2004 7:30 am
#17

The only way I can see the Dev's considering this is if they nerfed Architect experience across the board... period. I.E; Architect no longer becomes the crafter grind profession as it's often used.


If they were to change experience gained; say based onthe skill-box level, so that it's balanced fairly across ALL the crafting professions, then I'd see them making a change.


This was brought up during the testing phases so you can't say the Dev's didn't talk about it. I recall reading a few pages of it from the Testing forum. The fact is however, that no matter what an Architect crafts, it will generate more exp than any other craft because of the sheer number of resources required. The Devs don't want people grind out Jedi in a week and I agree with that stance.


In my opinion, the problem is this assasine desire to "grind" and complaints about how boring or difficult the "grind" is. Here's a thought - instead of grinding, play and enjoy the game as you would normally - the experience will come.


Why anyone would pay $$$ every month so that they can mind-numbingly grind every night is beyond me.


Balance the experience gained across all crafting professions and we'll have a chance at a lower ratio.


My 2 credits.





Sevardos

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Palimor
Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:17 am
#18






Bandola wrote:



Ahhh, theres the rub :


So rather than nerf anything (statues) all they need to do is give a reasonable level of xp for factory produced goods, seems an easy solution to me I should be a dev, I could fix that in the blink of an eye



Here is your answer! Never cry nerf when there is an alternate solution.




-----------------
Palimor
-----------------

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RotorofCorRng
Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:43 am
#19






Dvnce wrote:





Pawlin wrote:

If they instead nerfed statue XP then we'd be more in line with the rest of the crafters and maybe they do a FS XP ratio of like 1:10 or something.





Since you brought it up how would everyone feel about this...? ( not the grinders but the real "I play architect cuz I enjoy playing architect" types..)







Nerf the statues, not the walls.



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Cafa
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:15 am
#20

Again we have ONE issue, statue XP, that skews the entire profession's playability within a REASONABLE level in the FS schema. Statue XP has been an issue since player cities came aboard and the ridiculous change has made our profession too accessible to nominal grinders.


Now, those of us that actually PLAY the profession, and have done so for a year plus, are getting penalized, again, for a decision of the player cities devs to provide a GRIND ME button for our profession.


My question is simply one of fairness.


Count up all the schematics I have run this past year and give me 10% of the XP. I guarantee you statues are very minimal in that equation. By my count on bricks and walls alone I go over the FS requirements.


Since we know that won't happen, please tell the devs to stop using our profession as a grind monkey, Dvnce.


Fivo Asia





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Sevardos
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:34 am
#21

It's not just statues. It's all Architect products.


We use the greatest number of resources for all our products - far far far far far more than other crafts. That's the issue.


Nerfing statues will not do a thing in my opinion. They need to balance the experience gain for ALL crafting professions for us to have a chance.





Sevardos

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Numen
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:51 am
#22






Sevardos wrote:



In my opinion, the problem is this assasine desire to "grind" and complaints about how boring or difficult the "grind" is. Here's a thought - instead of grinding, play and enjoy the game as you would normally - the experience will come.






Do you realize how long it would take to get enough exp through normal gameplay with a crafter to get a Jedi? Architect is slightly different as I believe I actually did cap out at 900k exp through normal play. This wasn't over a week though. This was a month or 2 at best. As a chef I think I have about 180k exp and that is from 6? months of crafting. Everything is done in factories.


At that rate it would take me about 120ish years to complete one tree. I'm not exactly a small time crafter. I know other people have bigger operations than me as well, but there would be no way I could even get 1 skill box let along 1 whole tree.



I think the problem lies within the ways people can gain exp from crafting and combat. Combat is limited by time. It takes a certain amount of time to find a creature and kill it. Some can do this faster than others, but the whole process takes a good deal of effort. For crafting, all you need to do is setup a macro and basically do mouse clicks. While it might be mind numbing it is doable. The current exp requirements need to take grinding into account. If people can grind something in 5 hours, they will. Just because it will only take a month or 2 of normal play, people won't do that. Thats where the issue comes in to me. You can't balance it for normal play with just exp because grinding exp is 50-100time faster if not more.



Normal play vs grinding in combat isn't all that different. It might be double but that even depends on what you consider normal play.


Normal play vs grinding in crafting is completely different. Normal play in crafting doesn't gain much exp at all. The crafting aspect is very small to the other aspects a crafter goes though. The majority of time is collecting resoures, stocking vendors, loading and unloading factories. A very small portion of a crafters effort is in the actual time to create the item. That is why, judging how much a crafter does by exp is not accurate at all.





Amandil Morier - Tempest - Master Chef
Dvnce
Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:29 am
#23






Sevardos wrote:

It's not just statues. It's all Architect products.


We use the greatest number of resources for all our products - far far far far far more than other crafts. That's the issue.


Nerfing statues will not do a thing in my opinion. They need to balance the experience gain for ALL crafting professions for us to have a chance.








actually .. pre statues .. architect was actually not the fastest Crafting profession to master.. so we were pretty much inline with all the others..




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Pawlin
Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:46 am
#24




Statues are 5 times as bad as any of our other schematics. Thats the problem: 5 times as bad ends up giving us a FS XP ratio 5 times as high as we might have otherwise.


Right now I assume the devs are saying to themselves "well architects can get 5k xp in just 2 clicks using statues so we need to make it so they require a gazillion xp to get to jedi case then it will take them as long as other crafters". But instead they could just nerf the statues and we'd only get 1k xp in 2 clicks and while thats still more than other professions, its not 8-10 times more, is only 2-3 times more.


Vehicles are pretty nerfed as far as XP per resource used (1:5 xp/res) and I believe that was intentional on the part of the DEVs, so I don't see why statues shouldn't give a similarly low amount of XP per resource used.



Plus I agree with Fivo entirely. Statues have made mastering architect a joke and it has hurt our profession in the long run.






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Elyssa
Wed Sep 08, 2004 11:19 am
#25

Plus, you can make a small fortune selling the vehicles to make up for the lesser xp gain.

I just don't have much demand for statues.



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Sevardos
Wed Sep 08, 2004 11:34 am
#26






Numen wrote:





Sevardos wrote:



In my opinion, the problem is this assasine desire to "grind" and complaints about how boring or difficult the "grind" is. Here's a thought - instead of grinding, play and enjoy the game as you would normally - the experience will come.






Do you realize how long it would take to get enough exp through normal gameplay with a crafter to get a Jedi? Architect is slightly different as I believe I actually did cap out at 900k exp through normal play. This wasn't over a week though. This was a month or 2 at best. As a chef I think I have about 180k exp and that is from 6? months of crafting. Everything is done in factories.


At that rate it would take me about 120ish years to complete one tree. I'm not exactly a small time crafter. I know other people have bigger operations than me as well, but there would be no way I could even get 1 skill box let along 1 whole tree.



I think the problem lies within the ways people can gain exp from crafting and combat. Combat is limited by time. It takes a certain amount of time to find a creature and kill it. Some can do this faster than others, but the whole process takes a good deal of effort. For crafting, all you need to do is setup a macro and basically do mouse clicks. While it might be mind numbing it is doable. The current exp requirements need to take grinding into account. If people can grind something in 5 hours, they will. Just because it will only take a month or 2 of normal play, people won't do that. Thats where the issue comes in to me. You can't balance it for normal play with just exp because grinding exp is 50-100time faster if not more.



Normal play vs grinding in combat isn't all that different. It might be double but that even depends on what you consider normal play.


Normal play vs grinding in crafting is completely different. Normal play in crafting doesn't gain much exp at all. The crafting aspect is very small to the other aspects a crafter goes though. The majority of time is collecting resoures, stocking vendors, loading and unloading factories. A very small portion of a crafters effort is in the actual time to create the item. That is why, judging how much a crafter does by exp is not accurate at all.








I don't disagree with your point however, I still don't see the issue. It may require tweaking and the Devs might drop it down a few notches, but the point of Jedi is to be a journey and not something that happens even in a couple of months of sheer grinding.


I don't believe the purpose of the last 2 publishes was to make it so everyone and their alt would be sabre-wielding Jedi. Getting Jedi was something you'd get over time and is somehting you strived for while you PLAYED the game. The purpose was to give everyone the opportunity to follow the path of Jedi if they so choose - without making it a disruptive force of regular gameplay. I firmly believe they accomplished that although I would have left it as more quest and time based andless of the obvious whack-a-moleor create-a-macro-that-makes-15M-widgets type of gameplay.


I played DAOC for 2 years prior to SWG and was in beta for it as well. The leveling cap was lvl 50 and everyone complained about how hard and long it was to 'grind' to that level so that they can RVR (realm-vs-realm battles). There were those who got there in record time, and those that took a year to achieve that level (I was one of them) - but the perspectives were different. I was paying money to play a game and hitting lvl 50 was only ONE aspect of the game that I was striving for.


Anyway, I'm not saying that one way is wrong or right, I just never understood this desire to destroy your gameplay because you need to get to the end-game in the shortest amount of time. This is the case in all MMPRPG type games and complaints about 'the grind' can be seen in every one of those games forums. The Jedi thing is just anotherexample of that. Take a little tour through the different profession boards - combat to crafter - and you'll see exactly what I mean. There are several complaints on 'the grind' from all of them because many want to be able to do it in record time.


For the record, I don't have a Jedi. I hope to have one of mytoons glowing soon ... but I'm not in a hurry and plan on enjoying the journey.







Sevardos

The ))SUN(( Centre
636 -3836 Corellia (just outside Coronet) - Bria
Buff Packs * All Meds * Harvesters * Factories * Designer Furniture * Tools
*** ALPHA TESTER: Combat Balance ***
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