Architect Archive
Thread: Why do so many quit Architech?
Dayln,
I agree abouty Urban Planners.. they can't possibly be intending this profession to support more than a tiny number of players.
This is one to get into only for the love of building.
i think that all of the elite-elite professions that come out will be aimed purely at increasing character diversity.. rather the same way that Dayln's idea (posted elsewhere) of reducing the character skill point total would.
You wont have part-time Urban planners if they have to give up everything else to get it, and you wont have 1000's of UPs because there simply wont be enough demand for the structures to allow you to skill up.
The dedicated few will do it and stick with it.. and we will see a wave of people try it and then start complaining that it isnt viable that will drown out any complaining we have seen befor.
I am of the opinion that harvesters and factories should have been on a separate line from Architect.
Diversity is always best. I was kidding about lowering the skill cap, but more classes without raising the skill cap is always good.
But Urban planner will help architects in one simple way.
Many in the combat classes will want to be militia, and to do that they have to own a house in a player city.
Oh it isnt my dream, it is just the only thing that will really help architects.
I am still going back and forth on urban planner for myself, I ahve not decided, but I hav no illusions aobut it being a money maker for me, I know it wont.
But I love the idea of being an Urban Planner for my PA and the city we plan to start.
Earlier today I talked to someone who had surrendered his entire architech skill branch. Whaaaa? With urban planner comming up you think there'd at least be something to look forward to. But no, I don't hear of any master A's saving up structure xp or resources for when urban planner comes out. And then I check swgarchitech.com and find that the guy is selling his account.
Is there really Nothing to look forward to at master? I havn't heard of a single person who's had fun upon reaching their goal.
Haven't yet reached master but I've already had lots of fun and I'm not even planning to keep the class long-term. Here's where I came from, and why architect;
I bought SWG and started playing on the Sunday after release, and decided right off the bat that I wanted to be a Jedi. My first thought was to play the closest possible class to that, which (in my opinion) was the two-handed swordsman, so I started out as a brawler.
Some time later, about two weeks (real life time) before being qualified to use it, I saw, fell in love with, and purchased my first "two-handed curved sword." This thing, which looks suspiciously like a katana, pretty much blew my mind and after a couple weeks of dealing back and forth with the weaponsmith in question to make it just a LITTLE bit better, a LITTLE bit faster, and (most importantly) having my own custom name on it ("Windswift," and later "Whispering Death" with the second one), I decided I could do it just a little bit better myself.
So... fast forward another month and a half, leveling (slowly) through the architect profession to get enough harvesters to fund the power leveling through weaponsmith and as of last night, right at around 9:30pm, I made my very first two-handed curved sword. Amazingly enough, it didn't completely suck, though it's definitely not as good as the two swords I purchased way back when - (after all, I'm not a master weaponsmith yet).
Still... I didn'tstop at0/0/3/0 like a lot of other wannabe weaponsmiths/armorsmiths/droid engineers/etc. Instead, I'm at 2/4/4/4 and likely to hit master architect tonight. If not tonight, then definitely tomorrow. At some point in time, I'll drop architect simply so I can take droid engineer to build that ONE component (the droid storage compartment) at the highest possible quality level for the crafting stations so I can make my sword a LITTLE bit better, at which point I'll drop DE also. In the meantime, I really have had a pretty decent amount of fun playing this profession.
No, I don't really sell much of anything to anyone, and don't make money off of anything other than mining, and I'll also say that it is occasionally a touch frustrating to send tells to people I know are master architects, asking for training (and knowing, even saying, that I am NOT any kind of competition for them), and getting nothing but silence in return, but overall, it's been a really fun profession.
And painful to level? Not for me. While I haven't yet sold a single thing I would say that, comparatively speaking, there would seem to be a great deal less "grinding" to this profession, and a great deal more "building." Of all the things I've built as a soon-to-be master architect, I've used a pretty large chunk of it - 14 heavy harvesters (lost two due to mistakes after they were already built), a fair number of medium harvesters (20+?), and countless personal harvesters, not to mention a house and two factories. My friends and I can actually USE the stuff I built to "grind" to master, which stands in sharp contrast to the thousands of projectile pistol and rifle barrels I'm grinding to level to master weaponsmith and the countless sets of mabari armor (? - I think; he might be grinding with something else) he's making. NONE of that stuff is usable at all, and indeed, one could make a very strong argument that the weapons and armors we make are worthless until we hit master.
One other thing... beforeanyone throwsout the idea of leveling in architect as being "painful," consider the difficulties that weaponsmiths and armorsmiths face (I can't talk about anyone else, since I don't have the experience). Just from a weaponsmith's standpoint, if I just grind and do nothing else, my best grinding item is a projectile rifle barrel, with 46 units of steel. 94 XP. Ours, as architects? Crafting stations, at 450 steel, 945XP. Experience required to master weaponsmith? 996,000 XP. Master architect? 1,408,000 XP. A bit less than 150% of the XP requirement, but10 times faster to level.
Assuming NO failures whatsoever, the master weaponsmith will have had to grind 10,596 projectile rifle barrels. The master armorsmith (assuming mabari armor as the grinding item) needs to grind around 3,381 Mabari chest plate; however, these things have eight separateparts and twocomponentsto them, whereas both the crafting stations and the PRB's have two - or one, if you use just steel. The master architect, on the other hand, breezes through the professionwith only1,490 crafting stations; doable in a single day with enough materials.
Just to putall this into perspective, if Architects, Armorsmiths, and Weaponsmith all leveled with the same item requiring the same amount of material, the architect would grind with a relatively simple item requiring two similar parts, to around 500,000 XP. The Armorsmith would grind with an extremely complex item, requiring eight separate parts and two separate components, and would have to reach 1,134,564 XP (more than twice as much). The Weapons would also grind as quickly as the Architect, with a simple item requiring two similar parts, but would need an ungodly 3,555,705 XP - SEVEN TIMES as much XP as the architect. Likewise, the architect would have something to show for it afterwards - a fairly substantial mining operation. The armorsmith and weaponsmith would have NOTHING. Kinda like the college students who went to Harvard for four years, and then followed up with medical school, as opposed to the carpenter who started working the day he graduated high school.
So, although folks may disagree with me, I'd say that overall, the profession appears (at least on its face)to be extremely easy to master, with continuing rewards throughout (self-contained, not necessarily from your fellow players), but no real "payoff" at the end. Between the two, I guess I'd prefer to play the weaponsmith, but the architect has been a heck of a lot of fun during the time I'm going to keep the skills.
Oh I agree,
I would wager that Architect is the second easiest of the elite professions to make master in.
I bet everyone here knows which is the easiest, we are talking just about no work whatsoever.
MAINLY I quit because its BORING
For more than a month, I dragged resources from my inventory to a crafting window for hours on end. Even macroing doesnt relieve this monumental snore.
I was good a architect too. Sold all my products on vendors including Guild Halls at a fair price. Had plenty of repeat customers, first buying smalls, then mediums, then heavies. Enjoyed a great reputation. Had plenty of resource sellers Offering needed resources to my vendors for resale (I publically announced and paid 3cpu for low grade ore). Paid 9k for wall mods to newbie arch's skilling up. Made millions.
Other reasons
* Crafters elbow in real life!
* Sick of looking at inventory and crafting screens for hours on end
* Nothing to spend money on except more resources
* etc.................
I decided to go the architect route on tempest - The crafting and building portion is so much like a real job - I have decided to stop.
Add to that I just wanted to make furniture - but I was inudated with requests for torches - Which I come to find out is on furniture 1 - but - hey you need to be a Master Artisian to make the GP control unit so the darn thing will light.
So Now I have to waste all these other skill points on skill boxes I do not even want just to make a level 1 torch. Who ever designed the skill sets were brain dead.
Then I get complainers about why I have to charge 1000 credits for an ottoman - well I told them cause you are charging me 4-5 cpu for hide that's why. Then a barage of thief and pirate and I'll never buy your stuff till you lower the costs.
Who needs that. I have nothing but loads of respect for all youArchitects especially Masters who have stuck it out and will continue to do so.
For me I am gonna kill things and wait for something else to happen in SWG that will make it fun again.
Thats a very interesting thought about the malitia.
I hadn't considered that angle, but I do believe you could be right.
Thinking about the PA I am in, most of the combat oriented characters at the moment don't own a home. The ability to take part in town malitia (and whatever else requires you to be a resident) could well be the item to push them into buying a house... good catch Dayln.
Let me see.... thats about 60-70% of my guild... and I consider LOL to be a very non-combat oriented guild.
Keep up the good work that man 
It will help, but it wont be a fix all.
There will again come a time when most combat classes that want to be a part of a city have a house. But it also means that a larger percentage of new players will want housing and it will also mean upgrades as Combat classes see their places as trophies.
The space expansion should help a lot, I see a lot more classes coming out with that, further diluting the architect class, fewer architects will always help like nothing else will.
So you don't see the completre illogic in this I suppose? If your selling below cost just how long do you think you will survive or have fun. Good one Daylin with your agreement just showed once again how ignorant you are.
DoranGrace wrote:
.All the while, our resources are dry and our harvestors are going up in flames. So it's not like we're doing it on purpose, but new Architects really HAVE NO CHOICE but to sell them below cost if necessary. But anyways, I'm having a blast so far as an Architect and hopefully that new expansion is coming soon.
I for one, plan on sticking with architect for quite some time. Yes I will be an urban planner also, mainly for my pa, however if someone else needs to purchase the buildings for their city, no problem.
I also think they will probably add more furniture and maybe planst to the urban planner profession as a little more *bait* to get into the profession.
I am thoroughly enjoying the architect profession. I don't rely on building sales to make my creds, but I still sell a good bit. My primary source of income is master arch furniture. i have been making a healthy profit on that.
I also seem to have a decent reputation on the server because I am forever getting people coming to me asking me to make them stuff. Of course, like many of you, I get the ocasional ill-informed person that cries about my prices, so I just explain to them how many resources are required and tell him/her to look on the bazaar and see how much the resources would cost him/her individually. They usually don't complain after that.
Another thing I am doing to increase my profit margin, and I think many others are probably doing this as well *cough* Dalyn *cough*, just go up the merchant tree in Efficiency. At Efficiency IV you get a break on the maintenance (power costs remain the same) I pay a little more for my heavy harvesters than what I WAS paying for mediums. Yes, I spent valuable skill points, however it is saving me a ton of money. A heavy has a maint rate of 50 I think, with E4 it lowers it to 34 or something like that.
Are we a forgotten profession as far as balancing goes? I would say yes, heck, when was the last time we had any info from the devs regarding this profession? Are we bugged? Of course we are, however I feel that even with the problems we are experiencing we can still have fun with the profession. Sooner or later the devs will fix the problems, whether we agree or dissagree with the changes is yet to be seen of course *wink*.
*Note* I mentioned Dalyn as he has the reputation for selling cheap and still making a profit, I suspect E4 is probably helping him a lot with that....if he has it.
E4 makes no difference if you're using more than your 10 lots =) most architects that sell super cheap, are using multiple accounts, or renting/borrowing lots from their PA/other players....
The maint diff between E4 and not having E4 is what, 800cr or so per day per harv? So if you have 10 harvs (no factory or house - but what Arch doesn't have those), you save 8k per day, and nothing on any additional lots, all at the cost of 14 skill points (if you already have merchant), or 20+ skill points if you don't have merchant....Seems a heck of a lot easier to do a mission or two in 15 mins than waste skill points that way...