Architect Archive

This is how I see it and how I think the Devs see it:

They didn't give a second thought to house decay over time because they either hope there will always be a continuing growing playerbase, but the fault is servers become limited. The player base grows slower and slower and eventually will flatline on a server. Or they hope that people won't all realize how easy it is to collect money and not everyone and their mother will own a house after a week of play time.

So how can an architects market stay strong and not bottom out since their products don't permantly decay while others do?

My dreamsolution I would like to see but would take alot of work is the following. Architects in real life are givent he ability to create a building from scratch of their own imagination. Within this game that is not possible, but it should be. They should allow it to be one way or another. When you place a building you can see a wire-mesh design at first, indicating that its a standard 3d model that its skinned just after you place it. What if they give the players this tool? The ability to custom design houses for players. Houses can be between big to large, or maybe even make it without a limit. But there lies the ability to calculate the extra resources needed depending on the overall size of the design you created.

Once again that is my dream solution. In actuallity I can't think of any other solution. Decay just brings it inline like everything else, but is taken hostilly because of the number of resources and the size of the items we make.

bump... cause it seems it should be

CI agree that item decay would suck since they take so much resources. But if they fix critical failures it would be balanced by all the resources you need to fix houses. I need for a consumer to come to the architects to get something for the house to keep it running is a must. I don't know if item decay is the answer, but I would rather have item decay now and just balnce it.

If I buy a house for 150,000, that's roughly 100 missions, with 10 a day, would take me a week and a half to earn a large house. Now after spending barely any time on earning just about the most expensive item in the game, should I be able to keep that item forever? I think that repairing a house every week is moronic, but I think onlying repairing it once a year is also moronic, there needs to be a balnce of this systemsomewhere in between, but before that happens the system needs to be put in place.

Crazy red so the correspondent will make sue to read this. Please next time u send in the list let us list all of our problems like 20 of them, and have us vote on the boards what ones we wish to send in. Otherwise people will start fighting with you when the fight should be with the devs to getting things fixed. Thx for all your hard work, but this system I think everyone would agree with and would help out our architect comunity.

I think we should all stop complaining about the factory "fix" and get on with our lives. We above all other professions are hurt the least by this anyway. How many other professions can craft an item from start to finish and get 10's of thousands of xp off of it.

Personally, if your an architect and your complaining about the factory "fix" then all you wanted to do is factory power level yourself.

Next, critical failures. Stop complaining. Its part of the game.Sure give us a salvage option, but give the same option to all the professions as well. What most of you suggest is absurd. You want an architect to have no chance of failure due to high resource cost. Well I ask you, should a Master Weaponsmith have a chance of failure simply because he doesnt take as big ofa risk in a single combine? If you answer yes to that question, then you remind of old EQ people trying to argue the..."My class is better than yours, and if you beat me in a duel im gonna rant and rave on the boards till the devs cave in and make me better!"

Granted, other professions currently get more assembly points than architects. I agree that this should be corrected to bring the architect profession in line with them. We have many issues which need to be looked at such as experimentation, functionality, and decay. But the critical failures and factory issue is game wide.All crafters were affected by the decrease in factory xp, our profession is not hurt any more, probably less, than other professions. As well, all professions experience critical failures. Learn to adjust for it, its part of the game and its not gonna go away just because immaturity rings loud on the boards.

Fing Mandragoran

Tera Kasi / Architect / Scout

My biggests beefs atm beyond the cosmetic lackings of most houses (ie ugly)

Structure Factory, needs to be One lot. It doesn't do anything more than the other factory's just takes up more ground. Which in itself should be punishment enough, making it harder to build next to your house/shop.

Permissions, since I need all my lots for harvesters and the factory. A friend built our house which we planned to share as our home and shops. He is a Bio Eng. I cannot pick up, place or use a Vendor in the house I have Admin rights to. It's a Crippling bug to me.

And I can put up with a lot, I played a Rogue as my main character in EQ, that class was broken for nearly a year after EQ's release.

I think the 5 topics you brought up were some of the major one's we have( the admin one bothers me the most IMO). I do think that we left one out that should of been in the top 5...we need more lots...i though thr prior idea of diff types of lots was a good one..each player can have one house, factory abd 10 addional harvestor lots was a very fair system.

Two points you brought up though i think need a bit more work...critical failures...i think we should not lost prior finish components but only lose raw material only...i dont mind if like like 1000+ raw ore on a final combine as much as long as i dont lose 9-10 wall segments...too bigto even try to salvage.

Second point was decay...i think the system of weapons is a nice example of decay. The easier the colpexity the more decays and the more coplex the long it takes to day like a sysytem of 1000 max and then a architect can use a SRK to reapair it but lose 50 point and something silimar out of max so after a whilke it the durabily go too lose the item breaks.

Just wanted to offer some thoughs on your post. you did well though on your first post..hope to see more of them soon.

Roate A'fey (homebuilder)

Gothar

Wow. I mean, Wow! That is a great write up.

Its a very good report. I know it must have been hard not to focus on the furniture issues that must annoy you daily. THe fact that you put aside your personal benefit for the good of the board speaks volumes about how seriously you are taking this job. Keep up the great work!!

Hmm, I dont like the Item decay much, but its not terrible. As, for the crit failure, I have been near master architect and a armor smith. Every day as I level my armor smith I WISH I could rick those 40k resource failures to be able to have items that get more then 80 exp a combine. Also there are many ways to lessen if not prevent failing on big structures, like creating mods untill you fail create 1 more mod(cause i have failed twice in a row many times) then do your big combine. As for failing on a house compared to piece of armor, well it depends on the armor some pieces i dont care abut but if I am using super good hides and super good resources its almost as bad as a house. Also armor smiths have to experiment I some times make 5-6 of a item using some of my best resources before i get one that is experimented well enuf to put my name on and sell... The biggest problem is the lack of future for architects i do not like decay rate will help with that at all, and the moving thing will just tick people off(because you have to move your harvesters every week). I think the way to do it is make harvesters have a over all decay rate like a harvester will last 15 days for small harvester 30 days for medium and 45 or 60 days for heavy this time would only be counteded when placed on ground and transfers over when redeeded and visable on deed(to prevent frauds). I do not think this should apply to houses, people find a good spot for their house and they dont want to have to buy new ons every 30 days... maybe if it was like 2 months on a small 4 on a medium 6 on a large or something along those lines. I think the best way tho to fix architect is put speeder and stuff in game, let architects make them(with the help of droid enginers) and put decay rates on them.

Great report, I hope they listen.

Excellent Report and you addressed some real issues. I'm personally glad you represented the critical failures and you gave a solution to it to replace the construction tree with a salvage option. This would go a long way to helping us out with devistating losses. A damned good start.

Nice report. You clearly put a lot of thought and work into it. You covered my two favorite issues of buildinging permissions and reclaiming power and maintenance fees. Cool!

-msgnomer

"They didn't give a second thought to house decay over time because they either hope there will always be a continuing growing playerbase, but the fault is servers become limited. The player base grows slower and slower and eventually will flatline on a server."

So basically what you are saying is that in your experience that games dont lose players and new players dont join so the game becomes stagnant?

What planet you been living on?

Yes the number of players will flatline, then fall, then grow, then flatline.

Its a constant life cycle, and you have to also notice that some of those players will be architects leaving as well right? Or architects untraining their professions when they see the market has gone stale and picking upother skillsinstead. After all it only took me approximately 3 weeks to hit Master Architect. I can do it again if need be, should the market come alive again.

There are more issues with the architect tree than they have time to deal with and decay is not something i want to see implemented right now. It's hard enough with the server problems and rollbacks to keep my harvesters running all the time. I cant even begin to explain how many times I have logged into the game to find my harvesters not running because the devs in their infinite wisdom rolled the servers back to just before I put power or credits into them.

What needs addressed are the bugs associated with factories, the lack of choice in furniture, the difficulty placing that furniture (I've lost a couple pieces in the wall before learning of a couple helpful commands), removing power and credits from all installations/houses, admin rights fixed (dropping/moving/picking up items), PA hall chats restricted to members only, housing straightened out (generic housing is crap compared to naboo andwe all know about the corellian houses) I mean give a large generic house a freakin outside view for chrisake for all the credits/resources being spent to make them!!! and how about giving a PA hallthe ability to have a mission terminal or cloning station so we dont have to run all the way back to/from town!! I understand not allowing them in any structure but a PA hall is the center of the guild and needs to have something more than crafting stations etc to get people to keep coming back.

PA halls need to have a higher limit on dropping items too, since some peoplewant to have a lot of furniture and maybe a good place to trade resources as well if possible, right now we have to have a separate house with a vendor in it to trade resources.

Would be nice to have a sort of safe zone around a PA hall (similar to around a city) so that you are not getting constant high level spawns right outside the front door

How about messages when your harvesters shutdown with the reason included whether it be power, credits or resource turnover. Similar to the email you get from your factory when the current schematic is finished or you run out of resources.