Armorsmith Archive

If anyone has a link to the discussion where people cried about the possibility of being able to improve your goods in some way other than just waiting for the latest best-ever spawn, please post it.

That was a major screwup, and I'm saddened to have not noticed it at the time in order to participate.

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Sevarhin wrote:
Crafting is a competitive trade [snip]
Admittedly, there's a very good point to be made simply by looking at the current FS implementation: had the 14 point smith been left in, then someone who happened to have opened a holocron anytime previous to pub 9.2(?) and completed that profession would now instantly have the ability to make markedly better goods, for a level of effort far, far lower than anyone who wanted to achieve that now. That's a problem. But it's an implementation problem... dumbing down the crafting system to minimize the effects of implementation mistakes isn't a good final solution. We don't go through life with padding taped to corners of furniture - that's just for while we're learning to walk.

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Yes, crafting is a competative trade. There have been far too many rewards for AFKers across the board with the only reward to ATK crafters being the ability to build a market. If the 14-point crafter had remained, the ATKers, the pre-9 unlockes would have been rewarded with the market as well as the rest. There were those who were getting on the forums and bragging about giving a 12-pt suit and very good resources to an unlock just to corner the entire market.

There is even one on Kette (who wasn't, at that time, crowing on the boards) who I had spoken with directly who said this was his primary goal. He had an unlock (I'm not sure if it was a purchased or handed-down character or one he ground himself) and was at the time a marginal master (since then he has become better but bills himself as better than he is). He did buy a sizable amount of resources from departing masters and some fine stuff has spawned in recent months on Kette. He also has a 12pt suit. IF the changes had come about, he would have been able to point and click to get the master armorsmith (which I think he did) and hand him the 12-pt clothes to be an instant, no "risk" 14-pt AS. It's not that he is better about AS than any of the rest of us on Kette, but he would have had the experimentation points to, for example, have a higher base on a stun suit, merely because of the 2 extra points. He would have gained a major advantage for months... for nothng.

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Ainwyn wrote:

[snip...] It's not that he is better about AS than any of the rest of us on Kette, but he would have had the experimentation points to, for example, have a higher base on a stun suit, merely because of the 2 extra points. He would have gained a major advantage for months... for nothng.

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Yep, that would have been totally unfair. It was the free pass that was the problem, not the points. The wrong thing was sacrificed, and we end up with a system that dilutes the high end, rather than extending it.

Now, it's been said that adding the ability to gain 2 extra points in any manner would have made things more difficult for new crafters to get traction. True, adding difficulty for newcomers is an immediately obvious effect of lengthening any such system, but I just think that being overly concerned about that is looking at the situation in too narrow a time-frame, without paying enough attention to the fact that this is a seriously long-term system.

Sacrifices made in the interest of maintaining the status-quo, to prevent new players from facing a more daunting task of starting, fail to look at what happens after another year, when everybody has long-since hit the plateau and has no place else to go. Far-away goals with meaningful rewards provide that extension of life in the craft.

Message Edited by Sevarhin on 09-05-2004 04:09 PM

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kneelocked wrote:

I personally would like to see a experiment point bonus attached to the FS crafting line.

BUT

I would also like the cap kept at +12.

Reason:

If your a newer Armorsmith, or a solo armorsmith, you have little chance to aquire the +3 or better skill tapes. When they do make it to the trade forum, someone will come along and offer 20 million for it. I think if they added it to the FS line, this would help 'normalize' the prices of the tapes, as well as armor as a whole.

My two credits,

Kino

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too late

if they change it now, after some of used our free unlocks on it, all hell could break loose, I got one free unlock and wouldnt take it if they had it under that system

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Sevarhin wrote:

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Ainwyn wrote:

Now, it's been said that adding the ability to gain 2 extra points in any manner would have made things more difficult for new crafters to get traction. True, adding difficulty for newcomers is an immediately obvious effect of lengthening any such system, but I just think that being overly concerned about that is looking at the situation in too narrow a time-frame, without paying enough attention to the fact that this is a seriously long-term system.

Sacrifices made in the interest of maintaining the status-quo, to prevent new players from facing a more daunting task of starting, fail to look at what happens after another year, when everybody has long-since hit the plateau and has no place else to go. Far-away goals with meaningful rewards provide that extension of life in the craft.

Message Edited by Sevarhin on 09-05-2004 04:09 PM

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Sev, with all due respect (and I mean that), I still don't think you ahve any ground to stand on when it comes to commenting on new player entry into the armorsmithing trade. You were never a true newb armor crafter. Again, I don't begrudge you for that, but I think because you used your postion as the top architect on the server at the time to transfer directly into being one of the better armorsmiths that you don't have a true appreciation (at least one gained from actually living it) for what a new armorsmith faces as they try to break into the craft.

The barriers to entry as a top-level crafter are already high. There was a time when making any composite or Ubese was a sure way to make money. Even on the smaller servers like Shadowfire, those days are behind us. There were just too many problems with the general idea of a 14 point armorsmith, as well as it's implementation (primarily "holocredit" in a system gated by phases) to stand behind whet was presented to us in the very easrly test center releases of Force sensitiviy (when the description for Force experimentation stated that it "directly affected the number of experimentation points avaailable during crafting of any object").

The artist formerly known as Ittov

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DirthNader wrote:
Sev, with all due respect (and I mean that), I still don't think you ahve any ground to stand on when it comes to commenting on new player entry into the armorsmithing trade. You were never a true newb armor crafter.

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I respectfully disagree; I got my crafting and merchant start on our server like many others - by hand sampling, making my own personal harvs, etc, and I started almost a month behind the market - I think I have a very good understanding of what it takes to break into and then get ahead in crafting in general (I've done it in three professions now), and can easily apply that knowledge to understanding starting from scratch in AS. It's not like I don't know what goes into it... after all, I did have to accumulate *everything* (spending my entire Architect fortune to do so), and have been mining it myself ever since (and paying rangers, etc... luckily I already had a stack of Imec due to the master furniture Wooly requirement - our city hall has some VERY expensive seats ). Heck, there wasn't even quality-based competition in Architecture - nobody bothered with quality until I chose to educate the buyers and use quality as a selling point.

Just as important - since this gets to the heart of my argument about the danger of weakening competition - I am more than qualified in commenting on the high-end crafting game. Consider that it was about two weeks after giving up Architect and mastering AS that I had exceeded what anyone else was doing with kinetic composite resists, using the same material as the smiths who had been using that material since it spawned. I held that lead non-stop up until stopping crafting in March, and picked up where I left off after returning from my absence last month (or thereabout).

Why? Because, as my customers know, I'm obsessed with perfection to an unhealthy degree. It's probably clinical. It's no coincidence that it was several months after I retired architect before my best harvs finally were equaled by Zelotes. I'm not posting this to brag - I'm just replying to your comment (and apparent implication) that I have no business in this discussion

Now, if you want to discuss the actual argument at hand... can we please continue?

A Weaponsmith friend (in RL, he sits about 4 feet from me when we play) of mine just hit 4400 FS Crafting Mastery last night and for fun he made a Black Sun Executioners hack with no Pyollian/Bespin sitting in the Theed starport using his droid (so no crafting city either). He hit 5 amazing successes out of the 10 points. (He is a 10 point Weaponsmith with the Weaponsmith Toolkit, no other skill mods) I don't know if that was just luck, but I would say that is pretty good results, throw in the foods and city bonuses you'd be pretty well set. I will post more after today, he should be making a few more enhanced weapons this afternoon.

Crafting is a competitive trade - which I'm sure we all agree is a good thing - and I think that that is something to keep in mind when talking about this: does a suggestion provide more tools for people to compete with, or fewer? That, to me, is the critical question. And in a nutshell, a bonus to experimentation success reduces competitive differentiation, while awarding additional points increase it. Let me explain what I mean by that.

To focus just on experimentation, crafting currently is a measure of allocating a small-ish number of points, and leveraging the experiment results within that system to produce the best quality goods you can. There's a surprising amount of variance in goods simply due to the experimentation system, things like:

- how much dedication and patience does the crafter have?
- how much knowledge does he/she have around experiment point selection and resulting variance due to that selection?
- how much knowledge does he have about the part (do better results come from single or multi-point amazings for a given attribute, etc)

Adding experimentation bonus dramatically reduces the importance of patience and perseverence. This means a compression of the quality curve - successful participation in the system means being able to more easily make the best quality goods, regardless of how picky, patient, or determined they are.

That reduces motivation, and that's the wrong direction to be taking.

Looking at it from the perspective of increasing points, the quality curve is increased: the variance from patience and dedication increases by stringing out or expanding the effect of the results those choices (the same choices applied to a greater number of points).

That increases motivation and reward, and that's a healthier long-term direction to be taking.

Looking at adding points, It seems to me that much of the argument against 14 point crafting was usually not directly against the points, but rather against the (at the time undisclosed) systems that were sure to surround them. Which is an understandable concern, but it really clouds the issues. Taken in isolation, increasing quality variance for people to compete within is a good thing, and the current experiment bonus does just the opposite. The trick is to get something "good" implemented without sacrificing aspects of the community through unfortunate implementation decisions.

Admittedly, there's a very good point to be made simply by looking at the current FS implementation: had the 14 point smith been left in, then someone who happened to have opened a holocron anytime previous to pub 9.2(?) and completed that profession would now instantly have the ability to make markedly better goods, for a level of effort far, far lower than anyone who wanted to achieve that now. That's a problem. But it's an implementation problem... dumbing down the crafting system to minimize the effects of implementation mistakes isn't a good final solution. We don't go through life with padding taped to corners of furniture - that's just for while we're learning to walk.

The devs have stated something about changing the way experimentation points add up, or was it just attachment bonuses? Either way, I suspect they're trying to make it so that non-master armorsmiths are viable.

They wanted (and had originally planned) to make it a stacking 2-point increase, but there was enough controversy about it (complaints and arguing back and forth by the community at large) that they toned it down into a city-spec-like (but stronger it seems) success increase for experiments before public testing began.

Sev, your skipping over of the true "newb" period of armorsmithing is part of the arguement at hand. You made two important comments in your last post.

The first was that you cut your teeth in a profession that isn't quality-dependent. That's a huge, huge difference than the guys (like me) who cut their teeth in armorsmithing. Having the quality of your work evauluated by the consumer when you've barely got any credits to your name and you aren't working with the best resources is tough. Your success in the architect field and the millions of credits you aquired there let you skip right over that part of armorsmithing.

This is reinforced by the second part of your last post - that two weeks from dropping archiect you were putting out the best kinetic composite on the server. Again, it was your success in another field with drastically different requirements for success at all levels that gave you that ability. While many of us have memories of being a master with a few credits to our name, trying to make the best armor we could without the best resources, your concept of being a newbie 'smith is trying to find someone that will sell you the server's best resources for millions upon millions of credits. That's not being a newb, that's part of the life of an established master.

I'm a perfectionist as well. Believe me, I didn't rise to where I am on my server because I can play 24/7. I got there because I have, and have always had, extremely high standards for what I put my name on. I'm not saying we need to "defend" the newbie armorcrafter who wantes to churn out crap and gets pissed when it doesn't sell. I'm not saying I wouldn't love a couple of extra points, and some real character advancement that didn't involve killing tens of thousands of rancors with a lightsaber. I'm saying that under the original proposal of Force experiemtnation that the cost to everyone but the ultra-high end of the profession would have been devestating. That's why I was against the changes.