Architect Archive

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Georb79 wrote:

6. Is being added publish 7

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Cool.

Looks like I'm batting 0 for 1 so far. I'm glad.

hehe from reading the reply so some of the other professions 10 questions it sounds aboutcorrect for the answers for us.

Message Edited by Dvnce on 04-20-2004 09:36 AM

Anyone wanna bet that these are the answers we're likely to get?...

1) Can you please verify and explain the Function of Higher effectiveness ratings on Crafting tools and Crafting Stations?

It is the intention of SOE that certain game mechanisms are not to be explained in full detail. Certain aspects of game mechanics should have some uncertainty to them. Suffice it to say that higher quality crafting stations and tools are integral to the full crafting experience.

2) Are Solar and Fusion working as intended by not having ability to experiment on effectiveness on final assembly?

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This is an issue that we will need to examine further.

3) When will we get new Furniture and Color Palets for all Furniture (or at least most)?

New types of furniture and color choices for furniture are something that we do plan but this is not something that is likely to be done in the immediate future.

4) What is Architect's future in the GCW?

In addition to the combat role that every player has the opportunity to partake in we plan for all crafting professions to eventually have unique ways to contribute to the GCW. Look for new developments along these lines in the coming months.

5) Is there going to be More Housing styles and why do Generic and Corelian Houses(some) share floorplans?

More housing plans are in the works. The Generic and Corellian house styles share the same floorplans due to Corellia's wide spread influence on the galaxy.

6) Whenwill we get to move items Up/Down?

Certain difficulties with algorithms for manipulating objects in the z-axis have kept this command out of the game. It is something we are looking at for possible future implementation.

7) When will storage type Furniture(chests, armoires)ever get to be used for storage(like backpacks are currently being used for)?

This is an interesting request and we will investigate the feasibility of implementation.

8) When will we ever be able to drop furniture outside ?(like crafting stations in Player Cities and patio furniture on balconies)

This is an interesting request and we will investigate the feasibility of implementation.

9) Why cant ALLfactory created items be crateable and stack in higher amounts( like structure modules @100)?

This is an interesting request and we will investigate the feasibility of implementation.

10) Can we Please get harvester animation and Status Display bugs(i know that display bug fix is on test center but heardthat the bug has shifted in a way ..I am testing it now..)Fixed?

The status display bug is fixed in TC. We will need to further examine the "harvester animation" bug.

This is just a parody/joke.

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This is just a parody/joke.

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Dvnce wrote:

1) Can you please verify and explain the Function of Higher effectiveness ratings on Crafting tools and Crafting Stations?

2) Are Solar and Fusion working as intended by not having ability to experiment on effectiveness on final assembly?

3) When will we get new Furniture and Color Palets for all Furniture (or at least most)?

4) What is Architect's future in the GCW?

5) Is there going to be More Housing styles and why do Generic and Corelian Houses(some) share floorplans?

6) Whenwill we get to move items Up/Down?

7) When will storage type Furniture(chests, armoires)ever get to be used for storage(like backpacks are currently being used for)?

8) When will we ever be able to drop furniture outside ?(like crafting stations in Player Cities and patio furniture on balconies)

9) Why cant ALLfactory created items be crateable and stack in higher amounts( like structure modules @100)?

10) Can we Please get harvester animation and Status Display bugs(i know that display bug fix is on test center but heardthat the bug has shifted in a way ..I am testing it now..)Fixed?

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6. Is being added publish 7

10. Animation is being left out fora reason it uses too much server power, so I think they added a math code that proccess the information once someone gets within range. I personally would like the stat bug fixed but if it comes down to a nicer running server then me just shutting power on and off I will pick the smoother server operation.

Just me BTW TH said 6. today.

Georb

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Georb79 wrote:

10. Animation is being left out fora reason it uses too much server power, so I think they added a math code that proccess the information once someone gets within range. I personally would like the stat bug fixed but if it comes down to a nicer running server then me just shutting power on and off I will pick the smoother server operation.

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CptCox wrote:

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Georb79 wrote:

10. Animation is being left out fora reason it uses too much server power, ...

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Uh, wouldnt all animations be Client Side? ...

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I think so. Back when the animation was working there would sometimes be a slight delay between when you first approached a harvester and when the animation started. I believe this was the client side setting up the animation. I'd be extremely surprised if they set things up so that animations were running all the time even when there is nobody to see them.

Our new correspondent has been admirably busy since his appointment! I'm extremely gratified to see that after the slightly rocky beginning, Dvnce is straight up with the issues and working hard to sort through things and get the ball rolling. I know I'm not the only harried architect out here who is truly grateful.

In reading this excellent list of questions, I got a little bit crabby...not because the list of questions was in any way inadequate, but because there has literally been ZERO movement of any kind in the architect profession as far as addressing any issues at all, minor or major. This list brought some other points to my mind that I'd also really love to know the answers to. Most of them are related to the questions that Dvnce posted here.

Keep in mind that while I'm in earnest with these questions, and I'd really, really like to know the answers to these questions and many, many more, with this post I'm also being sarcastic, and typing with a grin on my face. Please dont read this as being nasty. I'm from New York. Read it with that accent, and like I'm being a wiseass, not as if I'm being nasty.

So with that disclaimer in mind and with tongue firmly in cheek, let the tribunal begin:

-- Why is factory efficiency experimentation in the game but totally nonfunctional? I mean, is it *really* necessary to take almost 18 hours to run 1000 bricks, and then have to wait an *additional* eight hours to run 100 walls? Come on now. I have about 30 orders pending (no joke), and I've spent the last four days running bricks and walls...and I STILL dont have enough to fill my orders because I've got to wait 95 years for the factories I've got going. Is this really, really necessary? I dont expect instant karma here, but give us a break, guys...25 hours for 100 walls? Fuggedaboutit.

Factories take too dang long to manufacture items. When will factory efficiency experimentation mean something? You know it's a bad sign when you have three or four structure factories (I have three and desperately need two more) running literally day and night and you still can't keep up.

-- Also relating to factories, why is architect the red-headed stepchild of the crafting classes?

Okay, okay, I know that all crafting professions are the red headed stepchild of the crafting professions. But this is my profession...go post your list on your own forum!

Anyway, we require more storage space and more resources than any other profession by far, yet our factories take up two lots while all others only take up one. What's the deal here? And who do we have to sleep with to get some fair play? Reduce structure factory lots to one!

-- Although this isn't strictly related only to architects, I'd also love to know the answer to why crafting professions and combat professions get the same number of lots. I currently have four storage houses (I just took two down to move them, I usually have six, which is already ridiculous to begin with...can I PLEASE HAVE A WAREHOUSE!?) and six factories. Combat professions need...a house. Yet they get 10 lots, we get 10 lots...why? Why only 10 lots for crafting professions that are already largely crippled by the terrible lack of space? Why 10 lots for combat professions, who have utterly no use for 10 lots?

I'd love to see lots increase or decrease according to profession. I have no problem at all with everyone starting out equally. That's as it should be. But if I'm a master TKA, I simply do NOT need as many lots as a master architect. The further up the profession trees one goes in any given profession, adjustments should be made that reflect the necessities of that professoin. Such as, master architects should have at least 20 lots to use, since we require the most space and have the most lot-hogging structures. Combat professions should also be adjusted accordingly.

-- Why, when architects and their customers have been begging and pleading for months and months for the ability to have colour pallettes for furniture and interior design (changing the unbelievably ugly wall colours of the buildings, especially the truly hideous orange Naboo house interiors), is a vehicle customization kit being entered into the game while the devs are telling us that architect colours are a "low priority item?" This, to me, is completely unfair.

People are screaming for colour customization options in their structures (houses, PA Halls, and city buildings) and furniture...so the devs go right past us and choose to make vehicles coloured instead. Why? I don't understand this...especially since vehicles are *still* bugged. I'd much rather wait a couple months for the colour options and see the vehicle bugs addressed first.

And I'm truly worried about the person (people) who designed the furniture and chose the colours in the first place: it's clear to me that this/these individual(s) needs intense therapy. These are the ugliest design styles and colours that you could possibly pick, unless you're completely twisted. I mean, all we have now are various shades of puke, poop, and beige. What gives here?

And my best friend and roommate, who is a tailor and has no business here but she won't take no for an answer, would love to know why the hell leather can only be similarly various shades of beige, poop, and puke as well. As I sit here staring at the various articles of brightly dyed leather I own, I can't help but wonder who decided that leather in the game had to be the most hideous colours in the rainbow.

An example scenario:

Can I get a nice black pair of boots, please? Oh, sorry. I forgot. All we have is this lovely shade of dark poop brown. Unless you want a couch. Sorry, can't give you a colour option there, but we do have this lovely turd yellow...no? How about smack you in the eye orange? No? Tough customer...okay, okay, you're sure to love this bright red couch. Great colour, to be honest...

...especially in your puke orange Naboo house with the dried baby vomit-coloured rug. Dont be too concerned, though, 'cause even if you manage to be able to see anything in the house through the dark, the smoke from the torches will effectively blind you. We here at the architect's guild have it all worked out for ya. We aim to please!

In the top three questions I am asked every single day by my customers, "why can't I have different colours for my house/furniture" is the top third question. The first one is "do you make BER 13 harvesters." The second is "when will they be ready for pickup." Hehe.

And while I'm at it...those "pieces of art?" Heh. I can think of a word to replace "art." Four letters (five in Britain). Begins with "S." My advice: hit a museum. Whoever put those three pieces of "art" in the game desperately needs a refresher course on what, exactly, "art" actually is. That spiky one looks like it was found on the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre but wasn't cool enough to kill anyone with so they threw it away.

-- Can I have some colourful, pretty rugs? Can I have a variety of paintings, statues that actually FIT IN THE HOUSE(the ones in the game now are almost all disgusting), and other neat home items? Can I get a couple of pretty fountains that are also small enough to place in a house without taking up the entire building? Can I have a wide variety of plants? Can I plant a garden arount my home without being forced to live in a city? Can I have patio and balcony furniture? Can I have things that are unique, beautiful, and fun to own that add style and individuality to the game, without having to be a master combat profession to acquire them? Can't I just make this stuff and spread happiness, joy, and beauty to the world around me?

Please?

Pretty please?

-- Although the up/down command is being added (thank the maker!), I cannot help but wonder who in the nine hells thought it was a good idea to go through all the trouble of designing such hideously ugly furniture and then make no way to put anything on top of anything else. I mean...they obviously designed stuff that was meant to be placed on tables. Who was snoozing at the switch here when it came to making sure there was actually a way to put a desk lamp on a desk?

I think that the QA guy was in the bathroom or snarfing a burger or something when this one came up for review. Why have a painting in the game when you can only lean it against the wall in the majority of houses? I'm convinced that the people who picked the pallettes and designed the buildings, furniture and other home decor in this game are colour blind bachelors whose moms or wives shop for their clothes and tell them what to wear. Please get these ladies into the office. WE NEED HELP!

-- Along these lines, I'm intensely curious to find out, like many others, why no lamps actually provide light. The torch does, of course, but...there are a *lot* of lamps in this game! Who missed the boat here? Why design so many light sources without actually enabling them to provide illumination? And while we're at it, can we PLEASE get the light adjusted inside the houses so that you are neither blinded by the glare (ex: generic) or left squinting in the dark? (ex: Naboo)

-- Added to the question of whether or not chests, cabinets, armoires, etc., will ever have any storage capacity (again, whose brilliant idea was it to create these totally useless items), my main concern is not whether or not we'll ever get to use them...but if we do get to use them as actual storage, they will be worse than useless if items stored within these pieces of furniture count against the item count of the building they're in. We are already desperately in need of space, especially as architects.

I find it patently absurd to begin with that I have to have six or seven houses, and use five additional factories (and I'm not exaggerating here in the slightest) just to have enough storage to keep myself going. If the items I can store in a cabinet, for example, count against the item limit in the house itself, then the cabinet is totally useless, whether or not it can store anything. Storage cabinets need to be independent storage items, and the things inside them must NOT count against the item storage limit of the building they're in.

To put it simply: we need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space. We need more space.

As I have posted in a couple of other threads, I find it truly fascinating that in a game that has so many unique and unstackable items, so many trillions of different variations on the exact same type of resources, that we have a database that cannot handle the items that the devs themselves have put in the game. Was there any effective communication at all going on between the developers and the database people?

I for one believe that this could have been easily avoided if the dev team and the database designers had actually been able to communicate in the same language. However, in today's global market, it can be tough without a babel fish, or at the very least, one of those handy little pocket-sized dual-language dictionaries. At least I know what to send the guys in San Diego for the holidays next year!

-- Again, this addresses the severe shortage of space and the incredible number of non-stacking or insufficiently stacked items: If I make a run of 1000 somethings in a factory, what possible reason could there be that these items come out in crates of 100? 15? 10? ONE? Why not a crate of...1000? Woohoo! How's that for a novel concept? Do OMUs *really* need to be churned out one by one by one? Why, then, do oh, say, heavy harvester units come in crates of 10?

-- Crafting failures. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a *game,* no? Explain to me again how getting five or six or seven...or eight...assembly (not an issue for us anymore, praise Jebus) or experimentation (my hated nemesis) failures is FUN? I dont know about my fellow crafters or the folks on the dev team, but I for one find absolutely no enjoyment in crafting harvester after harvester after harvester only to have the experimentation fail again and again and again. Some folks might enjoy blinding rage, and consider that fun. However, I prefer to get my blinding rage by reading about what that moron in the White House is currently doing to sink the world further into chaos, war, bloodshed, poverty, and inequality. I'd rather not get it while I'm playing a game. You know what I mean?

Crafting failures are useless. TH has responded to the question as to why they're even included in the game (put forth by someone other than myself). His answer was that critical fails are in the game because "they're in every game."

Um...if someone to told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? Didn't you HATE it when your mother would tell you that? So did I.

'Nuff said. I would like to see CFs wiped out of this game. They add nothing beneficial, unless the dev team takes enjoyment in the rage and frustration of their player base. While I'm sure that it is amusing at times, I'm personally of the belief that the dev team truly wishes to make the players happy. CFs are nothing but game stopping and anger inducing obstructions to having fun. As such, they have no place in this game. Immersion is one thing. But there's something wrong somewhere when I find myself logging out of the game and going to work just to relax.

While I do not believe that CFs would be removed from this game, they seriously need to be tweaked so that being a master crafter actually *means* something. Master crafters should have a fail rate (in both assembly and experimentation) of well under 1%. Make this incremental with advancement through the profession tree, by not only lowering the CF rate but granting a 10% bonus with each "level" gained in the tree, so that at master, not only is there an extremely low critical fail rate that occurs naturally in the math, but on top of that the master crafter has a 50% sort of "save" on the CFs that *do* occur...a 50% chance of saving against a CF if one occurs.

If any master anything failed as much as master crafters fail in this game, we'd all be in some pretty deep poodoo. Can you imagine a master surgeon having the same fail rate in surgery as a crafter does in crafting a harvester, for example? If you're gonna go for immersion, and claim that you want realistic results, don't throw these kinds of things into the game and then defend them by saying "all games have it." It's not true anyway.

Well, I could go on and amuse you all for hours in this vein, but I have to log in now and find some way to talk my factories into working faster by injecting them with pure liquid nitrogen.

Thanks for your hard work, Dvnce. I really am looking forward to seeing some beneficial changes. Someday, you know, this is going to be a FABULOUS game. It's well on its way already, especially with folks as dedicated to sorting things out as Dvnce is proving to be. I'm glad that we have a correspondent who appears to be in earnest about making the architect profession even better than it already is. I got master architect months ago, and I've got no plans to change. I love it here. I'm very excited about receiving some of the dev team's attention and seeing some profession fixes at last. Sometimes it's hard to be patient, but with a game this huge, things just can't help but take a lot of time to work out. We'll get there, though. We'll get there.

May the Force be with you.

Perilous -

I so agree. Though I'm not an architect.... I'm a tailor. My fiance is an armorsmith. We feel your pain.

Time to make the armor! Let's get the metals and the... oh wait, house #1 had overflow issues, so now hides are in house #2, and then we'll make the psg's - oh whoops they're in house #3. Well let me get my synth.. bah house #4. We have SEVEN houses between us (needed a 3rd account for the lots) and only one house has any personal non-crafting property in it. I hate when I have to sit down and think long and hard "now I know I had some spice, which house OUT OF SEVEN did I put it in?"

Would it kill anyone to make large houses hold 75 items per lot, or 450 items? Because right now, crafter types avoid them like the plague and use the smaller houses which leads to a game of musical houses and "which type of house will allow me to put all my storage backpacks immediately next to the door, so I can run in and out." Use the basement? Eh, we don't need no stinkin basement! Not when you have 2 houses to hit in order to make one lousy item.