Architect Archive

You sure you read the same patch notes as I did about the new droids.

Interplanetary survey driods - excellent. I have one so far, and love it. I'm sure I'll be stockin up on these things soon.

Harvester Maintenence Droids - I cannot count on all my fingers and toes the nights I have stayed up til 1AM or 2AM dealing mainlywith paying structure maintenece. It's such a pain to have to walk from structure to structure, find out how much maint it still has left, look at my cash, dole out maint accordingly. Now, there are no worries. I just pull out that droid, assign what I want to pay to each structure, and I'm done. It's so simple, and I get a great view of all my harvesters' maint from one window.

Ad Barker - This keeps some ofthe ANNOYING /yell spam out of starports now as these droids will only say something if you walk close to them. Which is very nice. They are great!!

And this is just a small sample of the new droids/modules that are available now. I stood in line for 4 straight hours one night and shelled out probably 4 times the cost of these droids on day one to make sure I got one of each. They are WELL worth the money.

Anian

Message Edited by Anian on 05-02-2004 11:59 AM

I share your sentiments. A number of items Architectscraft are mainlyfor new city construction -ONLY. There are somestructures I've never sold and I doubt I will and thatthereare NOT in much demand (PA, City Halls, Garages, Shuttleports, Theatres, Medical Centers - just to name a few). If I was going to start a city, I'd certainly have an Architect on my team - which also means no salesto other architects. It seems, most ofthe Architectitems fall into 3 categories: furniture, harvesters and city items.

The downside is many of the things Architects craft are "one-of's"aimed to the new player market.Once aplayerhas purchasedONE house,ONE speeder and aFEW furniture items, that's it - and we wait for another new player. The bread and butter (I think) is/was harvesters and I think that may be slowing down as is the holo grinding. Even harvestersare one-of's. Afterthe purchase, you never have to purchase any more as they last forever.It's also probably difficult to put imposedecay onitems. Even I don't own any furniture myself (mainly due to my lack of space) but I certainly wouldn't replace an end table, bed, couch (whatever)if it "poffed" and decayed away on me. I can do without them but I can't do without my house, speeder and harverter.

I think, Architects should get a TON of different schematics all the time. Even have RANDOM limited edition schematics to always supply new and different items into the game. Look at what the Corvette quest is doing with the Av-21 schematic and the Av21-powerplant or the speeder. Astronomical prices......What did Architects get ? Candles ? Vehicle Customization Tool ?

There should be some items that you can't sell/uncrateif you crafted/crated them as an Architect and later dropped the profession.

I've alsobeen finding a number of players not even wanting to pay the going prices. I was asked to sellGuild Hallsand even Heavy BER13 harvesters for 100k.Sorry, not from me. Most Architects are Architectsbecause they enjoy crafting and the profession and not for getting rich.

Message Edited by Anian on 05-03-2004 06:29 AM

We've had:

Addition of experimentation to harvesters which caused renewed demand.

Player city introduction along with dozens of new schematics.

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giney wrote:

First thing is that i think chefs are really will off....

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Yes. They are well of right now. A few months ago before they were revamped they really weren't well off at all.

My point is that they got a big revamp because they needed it. SOE has to put the DEV "love" where it is needed most at any given time so we won't get as much love as those professions that are really hurtingand really need it most. For publish 8 it was the DE's turn to get all the love. And back when Chefs got their revamp they were the ones to get all the attention.

Message Edited by Pawlin on 05-03-2004 03:10 PM

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Anian wrote:

Addition of experimentation to harvesters which caused renewed demand.
- OK, this is something that I did not cover in my first thread, but I have thought it over. The addition of experimentation of any kind to harvesters was to fix a problem...not to increase our demand or give us something new. It was set in place to fix our entirely borked experimentation system...to make our experimentation system the way it should have been at launch. This is why I don't feel that they really gave us anything here. And, honestly, this issue took away two full months of architectual crafting time for me as the couple of months where we only had 5 experimentation points was a time when the devs had not assured us that these new changes were staying live. No one knew for sure what was planned until the changes went live. To sum up, this "addition" of experimentation points was not an addition at all. It was "fixing" the profession to make it the way it should have been at launch.

You could also say it was a complete revamp that our products more useful to whole the community. And chefs could say that all SOE did was fix their completely screwed up profession. If you're going tto discount SOE actually fixing things as not counting then I give up.

Player city introduction along with dozens of new schematics.
- You are right, and I covered this in the first thread. So where is the demand. I know of a few architects that actually made a few creds off selling city structures, but only a few. The rest of the cities have their own architects dedicated to watching the city grow at the expense of their own resources. Yes, we did get new schematics. But, how is any architect supposed to use these? Even if I didn't make a single cent from these structures, could I actually ever make use of one? Could your average player ever make use of one? Therefore, in the end, would it be worthwhile for architects outside of cities to make a city structures to sell to cities? Some, yes...but for the most part, absolutely not. Even if you don't care about making money (just wanna break even), creating one of these structures is very impractical.

I read in another thread in this forum where someone said they sold their first city hall for 5 Mil.

I sold 2 hospitals the other day. Interestingly they were sold to another architect who was moving his shop at the time.

I did in fact make all the buildings for my own city which I think many architects do as well. But I don't make everything for free... I think If somoene is really concerned with making money then they wouldn't be complaining about making things for free. (not meant as an accusation)

So player cities aren't the holy grail of ongoing architect demand and won't make an entire business for most, if not all architects. Ok. But it is still a new thing we got. It is yet another schematic that we have which we have potential to make credits off of.

Addition of candles and lamps with decay.

- Furniture with decay is a nice thing. I will give you that. And, i can't say that this is not an addition. But, to me this feels just like giving the weaponsmiths a new kind of powerup to use. It's not that terribly big of an improvement over what was already there...just something different.

You say it is a "nice thing" and "just something different". But its not good enough? THis really sounds like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Granted its not like a complete revamp or an entirely new tree worth of schematics but you can't expect huge piles of love every update.

We are getting some DEV love. Not a huge amount. But as I said I don't think we're particularly broken so what do you expect? And I will point out again that SOE knew at one point that there were a TON of architects (2nd most mastered profession). So they had an incentive not to lavish us with love.

Oh, BTW yes we did also got the Bestine museum paintings. I know that architects are definitely making credits off of those things. I am.

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Message Edited by Pawlin on 05-03-2004 03:23 PM

You are right, we are getting some new stuff from the devs, and that I cannot deny. But, I think my point is being missed here. You don't see people posting on the arch boards, galaxy boards, or galaxy trade boards about how to get the new architect items. Simply put, these new items we got just aren't vastly popular.

Yet, I can check the WS boards every other day and find something aboutone of the new lootable weapon schematics. I do understand that WSing is a bit of an extreme example. But, I hope it does relay my point.

And about making money. Again, I try to stress that I'm not all about making money. I know that you were not making any kind of accusations at all, but I would like to explain myself in a bit more detail. I cofounded a city on my server on Rori. Unfortunately, she no longer stands, but that's not my point. Point is this. I was the architect of that city, and I gave the following structures freely to the city (not a single credit was given to me for any of these structures).

Town Hall
Hospital
Theater
Cantina
Guild Hall (used for a mall)
Medium Naboo House (used for a mall)
Countless statues, street lamps, furniture, and fountains used to decorate the city, themall, and myGuild's hall
15 to 20 small naboo houses
Medium Garden (tho I found out later it was bugged)

And, at that time, I had fewer credits than I do now. So, I do honestly hope you can see that it's not money I'm after. But, I would prefer to have some purpose in making the new structures. I can make a BER 13KG/h Heavy Mineral Harvester, and eventually, it will probably sell. I could make a Cantina, Theater, Hospital, Shuttleport, or Town Hall, and there is a very high probability that it would never sell. It's not that I want money, but if it's not built specifically for my city, I would greatly prefer to at least be able to break even and sell it to recoup my costs (resources, factories, and overall time).

I honestly hope that no one things I'm trying to be rude to any one person or I'm trying to lash out. So far, this is a very civilized discussion over the architect profession. And, I really do appreciate you all keeping it civilized!

Thanks

Anian

Message Edited by Anian on 05-03-2004 03:42 PM

So the city structures are what they are. They have a very limited market. But they do serve a purpose and they are something architects make. Taking your example above you built a couple dozen items there for your city. If you did it for free then that is your choice, but it did at least serve a purpose... or otherwise you wouldn't have done it. Yesthe city structure marketwas mostly a one time only kind of thing when the initial batch of cities were built. Yes there is not much of a market for them nowadays but there is still some market out there however small. I personally have had more than one person ask me to build them a city hall. I don't build them however.

I don't think we've been neglected. We've gotten a few things over the months. I don't think we're really an unhealthy profession to begin with. They aren't lavishing us with attention but we aregetting some new stuff now and then.

You originally asked:

"Is there any kind of plan in the near future to improve architects at all?"

We havne't heard for sure what SOE plans are and we probably won't until it is approaching the patch in question. But from Dvnce's posts around here I gather that some things are at least being discussed or at least Dvnce might be pitching to the DEVs:

Furniture colors.

New structure type: All terrain harvester