Architect Archive
Thread: Honest Opinion on that craft system..
Bandola wrote:
Sneezy wrote:
Being able to make perfect items is very enjoyable.
Hmm, I'm not so sure, the pursuit of excellence is one thing, but once it is achieved what remains ?
The next thing.
For me personally it was an incredable boon. To those Archy's that were able to make the 14's (I have no skill tapes, just live in an experiment city) it is incredible sense of satisfaction. Since I joined in Oct, I have noticed that people make names for themselves on "unique" events like this or the incredible spawn of 2 days...etc. It reflects somewhat real life in that "right place - right time" can happen. Face it, until a newarchy can stockpile some duralloy steel and good ore, he can't compete in the market at present. This 1 day event will be a minor hiccup in the overall economy.
As to whether the change should be brought back, I think that the other professions should dictate in that it is a no-lose situation for Archys. Experimentation for Architects is currently of very limited usefulness. My final combines on heavy harvesters regularly result in BER11s and 12s, usually I'm at a 13 with 4-6 points left. Mr ore mining units usually start at 4, and every once in a while at 5. So getting up to 6 there isn't too hard either. Other crafters are far more impacted by these changes. I don't think that they will in this form.
Oh and congrats Zalle (mumbles something about not being the only one on Wanderhome) 
Second bug was that two people in the same city, both human, with the same resources and tools/stations, both master artisans/master architects, working in their own houses and also in other locations, no battle fatigue/wounds, would get different results on final numbers. What I mean is that all things being equal were getting different numbers consistently, I mean one would consistently get the same value on xyz component while the other would consistently get a different value. One would get higher on some things and lower on others--every time. What the heck? The system has some hidden attributes that affect the crafting system--how wrong is that?
Padre
Personally, the whole thing was really good to me. As a Architect, Doctor, BE, and Tailor are in the family we got to experience all sides of this issue save the AS/WS. Should have heard our BE screaming a few times though. Pretty funny.
For architect, and the normal artisan/architect combination, the patch was amazing. It gave insight to how I think things should work. My biggest problem with that patch is that it again shows that architect experimentation in the areas THAT WE HAVE REPEATEDLY OVER AND OVER told the developers that we want continues to not work and is not on any radar screen for the near future, apparently.
Of course, then the whiners got it reset based on FEAR. Simple fear, not facts of any kind. TC is and remains a joke for crafters. The game on TC is not even close to what I deal with. The only way a change of this magnitude could be tested in the economy is to put it live for a week. But yet again, people want a level-field that is levelled by the devs, not by their own work and ingenuity.
Oh, and we got cowards for CSRs that will not get rid of the Bat Borgle looters.
Let me honestly say that I ALMOST went out and bought a 3rd party program to macro because I was so tired of these little 12 year olds leaving their alt chars that daddy pays for online 23/7 and then reselling the loot for tens of millions. I was gonna set the toon down, that no one knows about BTW, and then hand out tapes all day long. But I just couldnt bring myself to do it. I was tempted though.
They continue to ignore our pleas for resource stacking and continue to ignore our pleas for a simple, concise and honest answer to the stations mystery.
I really feel that stations are just like the jedi. AMAZINGLY ENOUGH people start making jedi all over different servers within minutes of each other. Stations dont mean a single darn thing and instead of being honest with us they continue this aire of mysetry which completely detracts from almost every serious crafters experience that I know.
My biggest problem with the system is that it is very unbalanced. You can make a 45 rated station (perferct) with substandard (not perfect) resources. You can make BER 14 harvesters. You can not make as good armor or food, weapons are more powerful damage wise, but less so in ham and durability. It is the crafting system on crack. It over powers half the items and nerfs the other half. To me it just doesn't make much sense in the current context of this game. If this system was the original one, then it very well could make perfect sense.
Also what this system does is simply exaggerate an already in game system. Simply put, the final product's quality is directly relational to the resource quality used. The old system takes this into concideration and caps the end product. Resources matter, your experimental abilities matter. If you are using 900+ resources you still need all 10 points to max out. If you are working with garbage the best you can make is garbage and your skills only need to be at the level of garbage to make garbage. Simply put, the old system got it right.
This new system exaggerates everything and lessens the need for quality on resources. Before you needed 1000 oq/con resources to do a 45 station, now you just need 950. I have lesser resources yet make the same product someone with better resources can make. More so if I had skill tapes. If I go out of my way to get the best resources I should make the better product, period. This system also hurts people new or new to the profession. In the old system you pretty much needed to be a master to make something worth selling. With the new system you very much do need to have master. It makes grinding even more so imporant, not less. The grind is something we should get away from, not embrace. Now if you put skill tapes into the equation, not only does one need to be a master, but they must also process millions in skill tapes to make something markable. This isn't so true with architect, but it is so with chef, armorsmith, weaponsmith, mediceand BE.
This takes me to my last point. BE. The new system completely destroyes BE animal crafting. There are 5 lines, all must be worked on to make a pet, and no skill tapes to even make this work. The new system may be a boost for architect, but it hurts other professions and kills BE pets.
So in a nut shell after working with the new system for many hours, NO. It has some interesting aspects, but it goes too far in what it tries to do and damages too many things without any clear benefit.
BTW this is why server copy, not character copy, is so important for testing. All my skills are worthless without all my resources and tools and crafting stations, vendors, ect..
How about if everybody is so scared of non-masters making items as good as masters, we simply redistribute the skill advances in experimentation! Make it so lvl4 of each tree gives +20 to structure experimentation, and then master give the last +20 to give the master 10 points and non-masters considerably less experimentation points. or maybe even +5 structure experimentation to all boxes and then the final +20 at master. Or something along those lines. The basic problem isn't people making all the same items, its the economy being locked down by a few uber crafters. The way to solve that is make it so people aren't so stupid. Do you think these uber crafters get to where they are because they don't know what they are doing? To me this sounded like a bogus excuse for this sytem.
The underlining problem is there is not enough variety in crafted items in this game and they want to take the exisiting schematics and shake it up a little. This will not fix the problem, they need to add new schematics which offer varied types of styles. Styles that the devs are obviously looking for and the reason they tried to implement this system.
I have been thinking along similar lines, at the moment as you go up starting from novice then up construction you get +20,+10,+20,+20,+20,+10. That really seems quite skewed and the benefit at master is minimal. Under the current system it is relatively easy to make harvs without being master, we all experience that if we use decent materials we have at least 1 and often 2 exp pointsthat we have left over, either to put into hopper or just leave. I would have thought it much better to set this escalation to something like +10,+10,+10,+10,+20,+40. This would mean that to make the best you really would need to be master. I have deliberately made the step to master so big to compensate for SEAs and Research Centers. Of course, this only works for 1 line exp crafters like us, but as long as hopper size is meaningless to all it has to be this big a jump. An alternative would be to make exp on hopper size of some value in which case the numbers we have would be more sensible, lets imagine if hopper size started as low as say 30k for meds and 40k for heavies and each exp point used gave a 50% increase, then we would have something to think about as we experimented, not too many would be interested in a harvester with 1 days storage capacity, and it would also offer us an alternative to BER10/13 and everybody can make them, giving us another selling point to differentiate between one BER 13 and the next.
PhilDawg wrote:
Here's a thought, and this might be revolutionary but I'll give it a whirl:
How about if everybody is so scared of non-masters making items as good as masters, we simply redistribute the skill advances in experimentation! Make it so lvl4 of each tree gives +20 to structure experimentation, and then master give the last +20 to give the master 10 points and non-masters considerably less experimentation points. or maybe even +5 structure experimentation to all boxes and then the final +20 at master. Or something along those lines.
Well.. as for those that search for a purpose to the change... And this is my personal observation.... I think the goal is to remove "cookie cutter" crafting.. Pretty much their is no varaity .. IN any craft.. each item has one bar that everyone focuses on.. thus creating a monopoly for those that have the best resources.. To break the monopolies you must create variety .. so the small guys can create a different.. but equally valuable product.. That I believe was the goal..
But there is a problem with that.. take weapons.. there are two major componants.. speed and damage... problem.. both are tied into same exp bar.. so no way to have variety ...
So with this new system the goal was as it appears to have the resources dictate the variety .. was it successful? on some servers..
I am sorry but If you had the resources with important stats above 950.. no matter the craft this new system had better results.. I know of composite that had 72-74% base effectiveness.. to my knowledge that is way better than anything that has been crafted ... I know of weapons that were .2 seconds faster and 10% more damage... The problem was that most servers did not have a supply of resources that had these attributes so as a result results droped.. (is that a bad thing.. Not necessarily .. only problem is that you go on knowing that their used to be better...)
Many of us have discussed this very issue.... about variety .. I am sure that most of us avid Gamers.. can aggree that out of all the crafting systems in each game there is none really as complex as what we have here.. the let down is that the finished goods are a let down when u work through the complexity and still get the same result as every other person using different resources..
So .. then the question is .. if not this then what ?
Archimast wrote:Neilla:
... business at the scale needed to succeed. I had fun with the one-day patch because it presented a tremendous challenge in logistics, planning, and business plus - and this is rare - a degree of skill in actually making the schematic.
I will disagree with your assessment of the challenge it presented. As you didnt know there will be a one day period of superior results in crafting you got to scratch the planning part. What you present as planning skills involved in the one-day patch were actually some planning skill for the pre-patch anticipation bad results after-patch and luck that there was a one day-patch with superior results for architects or taped crafters.As for the logistigs involved it comes down to have enough space and resources to make shematics for generator turbines to be able to make use shematics for large runs. I think any serious architect has already large baches of quality steel, ore, lube and gas for the quality subcomponents and final combine.Having the materials for enough GT's from a shematic wether as a preparation to the anticipated patch or as your usual manufacturing practice is not much of a logistics challenges for a big architect (unless you bought the resources the day of the patch which still is not a big problem given the cash and time is available as well as good resource sellers in the server)There was almost no skill involved in making the ber5/ber7 subcomponents neither the ber14's finals given you had enough time and materials to spend. To what it comes down at the end is luck and time.
I can tell you, I did some serious scrambling, partly because my target was 750-1000 units (due to an metal gaffe, I'll only hit 750). It was challenging and fun. For amuesment sake I'll describe what was involved:
* HQ steel wasn't a big problem. The stuff for final combine (975 grade) is currently active, but I only had 300k of it and I projected a shortfall of 300k or so. I called in various miner friends to set down on it and moved some harvesters around. If I'm a little short I may need to buy some. Also, I had 800k of 950-grade stuff, perfect for 100% harvesting components.
* HQ Ore wasn't a problem at all. I've got 500k of stuff that averages out to 980 or so.
* Lube Oil was a major problem. I only had 300k sitting around. Fortunately, a vendor in town had 500k of the same oil, so I was saved.
* I bought 80k inert gas for use in the ore units.
* Turbines were a big issue. I had 600 turbines left on my current schematic, plus 130k of reactive gas. That reactive gas was enough to get me 650 turbines, for a total of 1250 turbines (650 units). I decided I needed two new schematics, not one.
* I set down 5 heavy gas on a recent reactive gas then picked up 4000 units later that evening. I should get all I need by the time it cycles, so I'll have 2250 turbines (plenty to reach 1000).
* Carbonate for turbines wasn't a problem. I didn't have anything in stock for new schematics, but fortunately I had mines already down on a carbonate, and I'll get all I need by the time it goes out of game.
* Aluminum and copper for turbines were an issue. I didn't have much in stock (I was 4 weeks away from needing more turbines at my normal production rate). I asked around, and a friend of mine had 1.1 million aluminum in stock. I found a vendor with 500k of a single copper. Steel and chem for the turbines were easy, but I still had to make sure I had them available.
* I had one SSSM schematic with about 600 left on it. Not nearly enough, so I decided to make 4 new schematics. So I needed 200k junk-steel and 320k of junk-metal for storage modules. After some running around, I also found those materials.
* I made schematics for 2 new turbines, 4 new structure modules, 1 each ore, heavy harvesting, and turbo pump.
* I manufactured samples of each.
* I made 1 schematic for heavy chem, 1 for heavy water, 2 for heavy flora, and 4 for heavy mineral.
On this last step, I goofed: by accident, I only made one schematic (heavy ore) for one of the new generators (I splite 3-1 on the schematics instead of the intended 2-2). That meant that I could only get 166 units out of that turbine and, in essence, cost me 250 units of production. Darn.
Maybe that doesn't strike you as a logistics and planning challenge, but getting all that figured out and done in 7 hours was plenty of challenge for me. I was lucky in that I had the core HQ stuff either in stock or being harvested, but it still took a lot of work to figure out how much of what I needed and find it.
Without a doubt, the opportunity to try to do something that almost no one else did on my server, and succeed at it, was a huge thrill for me personally. I managed to make the holy grail; the glory item; the pinnacle of perfection; the BER 14 heavy harv. To that end, the 1 day experiment was a smashing success for me. I can honestly say, that trying, and eventually succeeding in that endeavor was the most exciting and rewarding experience I've ever had crafting. And by a huge margin...like 10 times more rewarding!
One of the biggest things I like was the lack of critical fails. I made 6 heavy harvs by hand, and 1 OMU. For the most part, I experimented 1 pt at a time. All told, I did close to 60 experimentation events (maybe a couple more, maybe a couple less). Out of all of those events, I crit failed only 1 time. 60:1. If the odds were 5%, I should have failed 3 times. I know this is a small sample size, but it just felt like I was a "Master" for the very first time.
The argument from many is that the gap between the haves vs. the have-nots will widen with this change. I don't know. I suspect the prices charged by the haves would sky rocket, and the prices from the have-nots would plummet. Is that truly bad? Tough to say. All I know, is I had a lot of fun on Tuesday.
I agree 100% with Bandola on the fact that we need more experimentation lines and more reason to dump stuff into them. Totally gimping the hoppers and offering high return experimentation on them sounds like a great idea in the long run as it would really give more meaning to harvestors currently than besides their BER, which in the current system I can achieve around 70-75% experimentation with good materials and 98% mining units. With weapons splitting up their lines into individual lines sounds great to. I would be infavor personally of higher damage capabilities, higher speed, and lower top decay so that in esscence you have to make choices, high fast damage but with only maybe a nites worth of use, or what we currently are working wiht now and a month or so usage. Anyways you see where I am going with this.