Architect Archive

may sound ridiculous, but why not moving statues to master and nerf the exp a bit?

I never liked what they did to us with the city-structures, and I hated the architect-grinding with statues.

Read ya.

Yup, statue XP should be nerfed, just like they did with vehicles. Cause you're now forcing Architects to grind statues if they want to get anywhere with FS within a reasonable amount of time. With a statue XP nerf and a ratio of about 1:10, non-grinding Archis can have a shot at FS too by just crafting things for customers.

I think they should instead simply raise/put back factory xp. I rarely craft anything by hand except schematics. If it means having to stand by the factory all day, that is better than standing in a warehouse grinding stuff. At least with factory xp it will be permit me to advance playing the profession as intended instead of grinding out xp. Personally I would rather just play normally instaead of grinding out the xp.

It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.

After think about this for a while.. I'm wondering if they set the trade in so high to avoid the possiblity of a mass amount of crafters leaving their crafting professionsonce they finish the FS Crafting tree. Crafters becoming jedi would take them out of the enconomy, and that would be a bad thing in this gaming system. Though if this is the case it has backfired, and I know a few established crafters who have left crafting to pursue becoming a jedi through combat/weapon experienceroutes because it is far more attainable.

My big problem at the moment is...

240,000 Structure Crafting Exp = 6857 Force Sensative Crafting (186 trips to Aurillia for one branch). The second time I flew to trade in experience; I was unbuffed and got incapped/db'd on the way in by flying past a raiding party.. you can't fly throught the mist while under attack. So they expect us to buff up everytime we go to trade in experience, 186 times per branch?

Other profession have it a lot easier.. Armorsmiths turn in for 25,000 when capped on exp, and I think tailor is about the same. That is a lot less trips to the village, and a lot less pain.

someone did the math on another forum site. 68 million units of ore needed to grind enough statues to fill all 16 boxes. In one week, with 26 ber-13 heavies and 2 ber10 medium mineral harvesters I mined a little over 3 million units of copper on 70-90% vein. So, unless you're rich and can buy (and on kauri no matter how rich you are you'd never FIND that much ore on vendors) you would spend 22 weeks mining ore...IF you could find spots that high every week (which I've never done for ore, highest I've personally seen is 49% or so). I think that getting force experimentation for my architect character just isn't worth it. I'll open up a jedi slot with my Master TK 'toon.

DAREV SOOL - Corsec Squadron Master Pilot
Some of the best currently crafted Crafting Stations across two Galaxies
Kauri vendors located in Andromeda, Corellia, waypoint 2686 -6479
+44.866 Quality Stations made by Darev
Bria Vendors located in BCR Mining Outpost, Naboo, waypoint 579 4265
+44.947 Quality Stations made by Hoppr
It's like a boat with holes...It's sinking and all they're doing is painting the hull.

Until either the ratio's or the given XP is fixed, I'm not even going to try this anymore. To my knowledge, the best thing to grind is a Wind Power Generator. This takes about 6 million resources per crafting branch, which will cost you 40 hours of grinding time (/thanks Pawlin for this tip!). But for what? For more amazing successes and less criticals? You don't even get more experimentation points. So, what advantage does Crafting Mastery actually have for an Architect? I already have almost no failures, since I make 95% of my items in my factories, and should I get an amazing succes during the creating of a schematic, I can onlyexpand the hopper size of a harvester.

If I want to unlock my second character slot, I'll try my hand at some combat and Merchant XP.

Rotor - Will cease to exist May 3rd.

::looks around carefully::

Once upon a time, my character Kyphi started out as my holo-grinder. First profession, Master Marksman. No problem. Second profession, Droid Engineer. I decided that I really didn't need to unlock then that badly.

Ten months later, give or take, my character had only changed to add Politician into her Master Artisan/Master Architect/Master Merchant. Ten months, the same character, no deviations (still lots of fun because we are a roleplay guild).

Enter Publish 10.

While my focus was entirely on the Merchant changes for the first week, I soon decided that since my entire guild wanted to do Jedi/FS, as leader, I would have to intimately come to know each and every aspect of it to better be able to help them. I did testing on TC2 first, so I knew what to expect when the Publish went live.

Mind filled with new knowledge for my guild, even some bug testing done for the game, I happily went back to playing Kyphi, and used my alt character to achieve FS instead.That alt character, when I play her, never leaves Dath expect to come home to pick things up/drop things off, or hit Coronet for a buff. I can see progress with the alt, BE/CH/TKA when I trade in XP for FS XP, even if slow. She also makes more money with less effort than I ever have with my main crafter character (solo or non-solo ER groups anyone?).

So then, I decided that it wouldn't do for the Mistress of the Estate to be the only non-FS character (or maybe it would). But according to the forums, I had a free unlock because at some point I did do one holo-profession, and everyone was coming to me (who has never failed them with not knowing anything about what they are doing and how to help - okay, almost never) regarding training, unlocking, etc etc, what if you had grinded out. Since my combat alt never ground out anything for holo-professions, I didn't know what to expect with the unlock situation.

So, I check Kyphi's badges, and determined which ones she would need to get visited by the old man. I solo'd the Warren with my non-combat, Master Artisan/Master Architect/Master Merchant/Politician, non-grouped with anyone. I even helped the combat alts figure out what they needed to do to do it which I found extremely amusing. Two content badges down, three to go, all the travel location badges done (there is life outside my Estate - who would have thought? I rarely leave it as Kyphi expect to do business). When Kyphi first started on this server, she killed Nym pirates for XP and credits to support her upcoming business ventures, so doing Nym's themepark was out of the question. That left the Imperial Themepark, a Corvette run, and Jabba's. For the Imperial Themepark, I had two escorts helping me, and was very slow going and I felt extremely bad about taking up their time to occasionally kill a few mobs for me. But, at the end of it, another badge done. I also learned that some of the mobs were not as tough as I remembered them to be before (either that or my experience in the game and knowledge overcame other difficulties).

Next was the Corvette run. We've done this as a guild before, with me being the navigator/intelligence person (gee, I wonder why that could be). First run through with my crafter alt, we failed the Destroy mission (but close enough that our guy in the bridge had his hand on the terminal to set it we were that close when time ran out). Second time, I threw caution to the wind, and did almost all of the tasks that had to be done myself. We did it with lots of time to spare, and a couple of people got their badges that didn't have them before. Including Kyphi. Yeah!

That left Jabba's Palace. I really was loathed to ask another guild member to accompany me on this, since it would just be a boring afternoon/evening for them. I had six volunteers that afternoon making sure that I would be okay, so it wasn't for lack of anyone willing to go and devote their time to it, or even taking turns. I just didn't feel right in asking them to take that much time out of their own normal game play to help me. So, I snuck into a few of the houses, borrowed some armour pieces from a few of the 'slaves,' bought a combat droid off my own vendor (ran by my hubby's alt), went to Coronet to get buffed, and with a lunch sack filled with buff foods, headed to Jabba's. Five hours, one death, a few incaps, a quick trip back to Coronet for another buff, and this crafting only character solo'd Jabba's. Quick check on the FS status, and bingo, glowy.

Wait! So far nothing has to do with Architects yet, you say? Sorry, I like telling a good (my opinion, not necessarily yours) story, it will come in due time. There has to be build up for this, trust me.

During my 24 hour wait for the old man visit, I finished up a few decorating projects, some factory runs, business deal, normal routine really. At 26 hours, I took a trip to the Smuggler's outpost on Endor, got incap'ped by some smuggler's a few times until a helpful TKA Master killed them for me. With a sigh thinking that it was too early still, I went to get my ticket to head back home, thanked the TKA, tipped him for his time ... and the old guy appeared.

Right, so now I've been told it's another 24 hour wait, and business as usual until then. So that's what I did the next day. And at well under 24 hours, more like 18 hours, as I was coming out of one of the crafting workshops with an armload full of product to put up on the vendors, bingo, jumped by Sith, in my own city, and not a single one of my bodyguards around. Doh! Quick run inside the building, peace out, call droid, step back out and make quick work of them. Loot disk, get waypoint. Know this is a bit harder, so go fetch my armour, recharge my droid, repair him, and begin to head that way only to come across the waypoint and see someone running off screen who already killed everyone. Fume for awhile, log out and in, kill two kreetle lairs in a fit of anger (well, okay, so the droid did it). Get killed by some Valarians, cloned, and got jumped by Sith again on my way back from the cloning center to my place. Loot the right disk, and head off to Dathomir.

One unlock, means talk to Paemos first. So I did, saw an option I never had with my TC2 character or my combat alt, and through the powers of my brilliant mind, deduce that it's the option to train in my one free unlock. I choose - crafting mastery, experimentation, since I could unlock assembly during Phase I. Yeah! Got the branch unlocked, ran over to Noldan, trained up the branch, and basked in 10 months worth of work come to this. I was pleased. Next, I wanted to unlock the assembly branch, so I did the crafter's quest. That was actually really really fun. Really really really fun. Quick planet hop to gather strange resources needs, figure out what I need to do, quick stop over at my Estate with the things I need to do to craft the parts I needed to take back to Dathomir...

And promptly go sidetracked finishing up building my new terrarium in my business house as part of an ongoing inside guild joke about the origins and distant relations to lizards and transdoshans, and twi'leks and octopi (don't ask... it's another story entirely).

That done, I remember that I was in the middle of doing the FS quests, and decide to finish it up. Back to Dathomir, figure out the puzzles, and bam. Unlocked Crafting Mastery, Assembly. Now the fun part, to convert XP over.

Artisan, neat! Merchant, nice! Oh look, I still had tailoring and droid engineer xp, transferred it over. Hum, some music, dancing, combat, pistols, scouting, trapping and survival xp from way back when, transferred over just for the fun of it.

For nine months I've been maxed on Architect XP. 250k (roughly), transferred over, equaled 6k FS xp. That was a very bitter disappointment. I felt extremely cheated by that conversation ratio. When all was said and done, I looked at all the XP I had transferred, my two main professions being merchant and architect, looked at how much more I needed for even one box...

Well, let's just say I might make the trip back to Dath to convert the merchant XP over, and any crafting XP I might have acquired by then, once a month, if that, if only to unlock the other branches against the day that I might sometime have that much XP transferred over. Will I be grinding it out? Hell no, my ore goes into houses, not statues unless I'm mentoring an apprentice architect. This system is still favoring the grinder, not those of us that play the professions. Well, I could go back to making walls by hand instead of in a factory. ::enter insane laughter here:: No, I was just kidding myself. Never again, ever again, will I do walls by hand from start to finish to make a City Hall, no matter how much money or fs xp you give me.

My take on the whole matter?

They want to gate in some way, how much fs xp you can get at a time. They have done this by xp ratios, which still inadvertantly favors a grinder mentality over anything else. You have the time, money and resources to grind? No problem. You take the time to actually play this game? Forget it, not worth it. They want to gate how fast someone can progress? Make it timed. Set all the ratios to 3 to 1, or whatever, and set a time on how much and how often someone can get fs xp. They time my vendors, they time the weekly city elections, there are timers for all sorts of things, so it should be easy to do. This would even up the path to progression for grinder, causal player, and those that play their professions (or whichever combination thereof you consider yourself). Get rid of max XP caps at Master, lay down a line of how fast they want people to progress fs at it's fastest, and set timers.

If the grinder wants to speed his way through it, blowing red lights, not worry about cops in his hurry to get to the finish, fine. I'll take my time, obey the traffic laws, roll my eyes at the speed demons wizzing by me at 80+, laugh when they get pulled over, and still make it to my destination perhaps a few minutes behind you. If the doors don't open til 9:00 am, even if you get there at 7:00am, your still not getting in.

Moral of the story? Was I suppose to have one? How about, the architect ratios punish those of us that have been true to the profession, while rewarding the grinders that destroyed it in the first place. Or, the shiney newness of getting something new for my crafting professions has worn off and it's not even been 24 hours since I've had it? Perhaps the fact that I think I'm going to remain content with this, and forget about ever going up any of the other branches because it's just not worth it in my eyes thus far? Well, okay, I /did/ see more amazing successes without food buffs than I ever have before while working, and strangely, nothing less (it's only been 24 hours though). But this is something I would expect to happen with a Master crafter anyway (and we don't get). It was worth the trouble just to do the crafting quests though, as I said before, it was really neat, and a welcomed change of pace from normal crafting. It won't be worth my time to master the assembly branch, and I don't plan on it. Do the village stuff for fun, as something new and shiny to play with, ignore the rest of it. If your on Bria, I'll even help you do the Warren and Jabba's, or the Imperial Destroy mission if your Imperial too. Just us crafter's noone else. We'll go unbuffed and unarmored on the 'Vette, get laughed at by the vetren combat types, but we'll do it (just be sure to leave /everything/ at home expect a nice suit of throwaway clothes).

The ever long-winded and often pointless,

Mistress Kyphi Makarha

here coming my thoughts on this matter and yes it IS a very big bad issue and needs asap clearance.

first off all, its rediculous and its totally out of fairness and so called balance blah blah.

i would even go more far and say, every crafter is kicked in the b... compared to a fighter class, but of cource architect hmm worst.

declaimer:

an advanced fighter master can get in about 2 hrs (some even less) 900k weapon exp + about 90k combat exp, which leads toa neat about 60k FS exp in 2 hrs and 1 travel.

now lets look at architect. 240k max exp and u get what for it? about 6800 FS exp and need 1 travel.

hmm, well if wqe think about it , its obviously alone from this amx exp and travel aspect out of line.

result: fighter gets about 10 times faster fs exp.

now lets face facts to.

sure this silly convert rate from architects coming from all the power grinder aka gungan heads (was anyways huge mistake from dev team to plop them into low lvl skill box and reward with this insane exp).

solution:

reduce exp on gungan heads ALOT, they did it with swoops already (8k resource/swoop=about 1500exp general craft exp only),

so why not with silly gungan heads?

but, i wish to go even further, our exp cap is so low compared to a fighter that we need like 4 or 5 times more travel to danthomir to convert exp.

well for myself i an not going to grind my resources just away, but i produce my wares for shop now more again like a newbie per hand (also kinda silly system we got our evolution backwards)) normally a master has it nicer, but now we got to go back to stoneage, throw away factories and craft as master per hand just to get at all exp for fs convert.

another big rant goes here, we need 6 branches for a initiate trial start. now lets face it what a pure crafter like me has.

i can get craft exp and merchant exp. thats it. ok, fine i can convert exp to 2 different masteries which are crafting and enhanced senses.

hmm, anyone wondered yet why i cant unlock senses? oops you need masteer medic to fulfil the quest. eeeek now we are somehow kicked. same goes for dancers and such, they can convert the exp to senses but can NOT unlock cause yu need master medic. rofl, good job devs

dont get me wrong i like the new jedi unlock system actually alot, but in balance sense there are alot wrong decissions sadly.

so what can we do in short form?

my suggestion:

expand exp cap on all crafters, aprocimate to fighters (aka 900k wepaon + 90k combat = 60k fs exp in one travel)

reduce in architect the silly insane exp on gungan heads (same as they did with swoops)

and make it possible to unlock enhanced senses for the classes which can actually convert the exp to it.

PS: i know they did this architect convert malus causae of powergrinders, BUT did they not thoght about it, that cause of the phase change timer of the village anyways al got a limit they need? i mean you can convert whatever you wish, but you will never get before village phase change a new branch unlock. so i dont see even a poiint to make it for crafters this insanely hard.

regards

Veers - Master Architect / Master Artisan / Master Droid Eng. / Merchant from Dantooine (SWG Beta Tester)
Customer: what i can do with a droid? DE: hmm i dunno, but they are cute ask a Dev

Not only that, but a fighter doesn't really have to pay for it. Sure, there is the cost of the buff, degredation of the weapons and armor and some healing costs. But they can always take missions to make up for those costs.

Crafters, on the other hand, have to pay for their resources (either through buying or mining). Sure we can do crafting mission or survey missions, but I'm not even going to calculate how much of those we need to do

So the only way to actually get some money out of it, is crafting everything we can sell by hand, which not only would take ages, but isn't very much fun either.

Rotor - Will cease to exist May 3rd.