Architect Archive

Big thanks to Zarcath for compiling these issues. Here are the designers’ responses to the top 5 issues (optional 6^th is the Correspondent’s pet issue). Our next publish focuses heavily on overall profession issues. We also should be hiring an assistant community manager soon to be in more frequent and direct contact with you.

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1) Power Core and Harvesting Mechanism –

a) Power Core - The correct resources and schematic are inserted into the factory, the factory starts making the module, but it either eats the resources or shuts down after producing one Power Core.

b) Harvesting Mechanisms - You are unable to download the schematic from your datapad to your crafting tool. It attempts to search for it but ultimately getting no results. In the end the result leaves your crafting tool bugged with the "Unable to start crafting session" message.

We’ll need to look into this, it sounds like a bug. Which schematics are you receiving the “Unable to start crafting session” from?

2) Maintenance Status - There have been varying reports of Harvesters using maintenance at a higher rate then what is displayed in the information window.

This is something we need to investigate. It might be something related to how time works in the game.

3) Reclaiming Maintenance and Power - Add the options to remove maintenance and power from all buildings that require upkeep. Many players will often find themselves moving harvesters or houses to more ideal locations, harvesters especially with the dynamic resources. This can result in lost power resources and credits due to resource shifts.

This is actually pretty involved. There are issues to where the money goes when you redeed the structure that we’ll have to solve. But we do like the idea, and will look into this. J

4) Permissions – Permissions don’t seem to be working properly. Players added to the administrator lists are not able to access hoppers, or drop and remove items inside houses.

This is fixed in the patch. J

5) Critical Failures – Critical Failures for Architects can be disastrous due to the amount of resources used in the creation of their items. This results in players feeling cheated and frustrated.

This should be better as of the last patch. There might be some more changes in the future depending on how things go. Let us know how you like the changes and we’ll move from there.

6) Architecture Decay – Addition of system for items created by architect to decay. This provides a lasting source of revenue for the architect.

I would like to see furniture decay based on the number of people that enter the building in which the furniture is placed.

If you want to get more fancy, replacing power modules, etc. from harvesters and buildings would be a realistic addition.

-Mohenjo

Q if you read this after posting this,

the power core in factories has been a bug since beta. we complained about it then and have still been complaining about it. It should not be a revelation that it may be a bug.

As for which schematic that doesnt load, well it was listed in the report. did somebody fail to read it?

As for our reps request, This also has been requested since beta. This is nothing new.

It appears as if we just got a quick glance over and a canned response.

The biggest issue as of the last patch facing everyone who uses them is Factories. All of them are broken now. They work ok right after servers come up from the daily patch, and some indeterminate amount of time later they stop working.

They begin working, they consume the resources to create 1 item, the factory immediately shuts down & nothing goes into the input hopper.

My business in Heavy Harvesters is at a complete standstill.

1. The bugged schematic that locks the tool up is the "Harvesting Mechanism" required for making medium and large flora harvesters. This is also a pretty large gate to the Chef, Doctor, and Combat Medic professions, as they need these medium and large harvesters, but none can be build as of right now.

2. It appears that part of the bug is that maintenance is charged even when the server is down... probably as a result of an error check to prevent exploits that might stop maintenance from being charged due to server time/game time not syncing up.

3. Changing the power input to an input hopper system seems like it would be the best way, though if that was done, it would likely be much more difficult for the game to calculate the time that the current power would last. Also... different power types have different stats... but if power is only used for harvesters and factories, why have stats if they don't do anything?

4. The permissions still aren't quite fixed. Although players can now place objects and move objects in the house they are an administrator in, the ability to *only* give someone vendor access has been removed.

5. There are numerous issues dealing with critical failures. It's not just the failure rate that's involved, but the fact that Architects are inherently at a much higher risk to even experience a critical failure at all. Master Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, and Tailors can mass produce all of their items in factories if they wish, and thus only experience critical failures on the manufacturing schematics. Architects however, with their much higher resource requirements, cannot, making them far more likely to lose days of resources to a single critical failure. It's not an issue of failure % balance... it's an issue of risk vs. reward balance.

6. Personally, I'd like to see the devs take their time with this issue. The market is such that we won't have to worry about market flooding for quite some time still. I'd much rather see decay go in as part of a system that gives more viability to the Droid Engineer profession, by allowing droids to help automate some of the more basic upkeep tasks.

Ya know, I love this game, but right now I'm totally frustrated.

1. Power core SOUNDS like a bug?? Of course it's a bug! It's been a bug since beta!!!

So has HARVESTING MECHANISM. The schematic has NEVER worked, ever. It didn't load in beta and it doesn't load now and I have /bugged it several times myself! With all your data and percentages and spreadsheets, hasn't it seemed just a teensy tiny bit unusual that there arenoand never have been any medium or large flora harvesters in any galaxy?

2. Sometimes harvesters eat too much maintenance, sometimes not enough. But power use appears to be consistant.

3. Gee, you fixed this for vendors. How much more involved could it be?

4. It took you so long to answer the first report that you had already fixed this issue. Grats.

5. Why do architects only have +55 assembly at master? You raised weaponsmiths and armorsmiths from +90 assembly to +100 in the last patchand a fail doesn't affect them nearly as much as us. The last patch did nothing to decrease our fail rate.

6. The architect community does not agree on this issue. This was the correspondents "pet peeve". Do not think that we are united on this issue.

1)a) and b) we will look inti this?? What has stopped you from doing that in the last 5 months?

It was reported in beta it was posted on every forum multiple times in beta including the focus threads. It has been wallpapered acroos the arch forum since there has been an arch capable of attempting to make one. This says one thing and only one thing.

You ignored your beta testers you ignore the players you listen only to the internal testers who dont have clue one what they are playing or what they are supposed to be actually doing. I could throw out thousands of alternates from every profession to prove the point but what is the point you wont care.

Want to prove me wrong? Email every beta tester that ever tried the architect profession in beta and ask them how often and what methods they reported it. Either that or run a keyword search in the /bug reports or on the beta forums. Problem is you cant prove me wrong all you can do is moderate and delete the post so no one knows.

Alot of people are becoming very disappointed in the understanding of the developers as to what is broken and what isnt.

I personally think that the Critical Failures while crafting at the high end needs revamped BADLY!

1. Think of Crafting as Bicycle riding.

2. When you first riding a Bike your chances of falling is about 99%.

3. As you gain expericene your falling (Critical Failures) rate decreases.

4. Therefore should not the critical failure rate also decrease as you gain experience in crafting? I say YES!

5. The Critical Failures have driven MANY Artisans and Architects away from crafting from what I have seen!

Myself being a Master Artisan and Novice Architech ( close to Master) have slowed WAY down on crafting as it is HARD to recover from a Critical Failure when you are talking Thousands of resources to recover these takes many days or even weeks after a resources Nerf (Opps shift). This Critical failures and losing resources to craft has cost be several customers.

If you feel as I do please respond, Wanabe Master Architect, Providing Critical Failures don't drive me away form profession!

Regarding the critical failures, I believe what they were referring to by stating that this should be better as of the latest patch is that the resources do not immediately disappear any more on a critical failure. (At least they didn't on my latest critical failure) ... That said, I wasn't able to pull any of those resources out of the slots in my crafting tool following the critical failure, it would just give me a message saying to drag into my inventory, but not actually do anything. So in the end I had no other choice but to cancel the session, and then lose the resources anyway.

??

IF things decayed that were craftable, I have to be honest. I would either:

1: Get another account and grind my own crafter to keep this stuff. BTW, I do have 2 accounts, but have been working heavily on my bio-eng/ch to grind my crafter.

2: Only worry about the esentials I need. Dont need a chair thats gonna decay. Only need space to store, and organize materials I need for my crafter.

Thank you Q for the much needed response ... many of us here in the architect profession were at the end of our rope, I myself was about to abandon the profession all together. Now at least I can see that we are not dead yet.

I really didn't want to get on the cart.