Artisan Archive

Critical events when sampling have been increased in frequency. (Seems good, but read next)
There are now more types of critical events in sampling. (I assume most may be bad.)
There is now a 25 second delay between sample attempts. (15 was very long as is, why bump it up?!)
The action pool cost of sampling has been increased. (With my armor on, I could maybe take 3 or 4 samples. Now I can probabally take a good 1 with armor, but I need to verify it. yea, I should remember to take my armor off.)
Installations will now cease to work unless their maintenance is fully paid up. (WHAT THE HECK? Now we need to pay the crazy 1k every day to keep our harvesters working? Or do they mean somthing else?)

GWEK ANGRY. GWEK SMASH!

ironic if true because i said to my wife last night that I had been reading here that Artisans could sample ore faster than harvesters could do the job - which seemed backwards. This seemed to confirm what I had been feeling myself but hadnt' sat down and done math on it yet.

So then I said to my wife "I bet they will nerf my sampling rate soon, instead of bumping up harvester production"


suprise suprise!

Ill just use the 25 seccond chargeback delay, my bank action points will go back up with no critical errors!

This new patch is officially the worst thing ever to happen. Two weeks of work toward Architect shot to pieces. I did the math on how many credits it's going to cost me to get my mineral harvesters and wind generator back to "Full Maintenance." It's going to cost me an immediate 11k in credits. In order to keep up my harvesting, it'll cost be about 4-5k per day. This is AWFUL, considering I only have 14k (that took me nearly two weeks to acquire....how does anyone expect me to gain 4k a day?)

The reason why this patch doesn't work is because Artisans like myself, who are trying to get to Architect, can no longer just worry about gaining the appropriate experience. Now we have to worry about gaining credits. Meanwhile, Marksmen and Brawlers just have to kill things. I simply CANNOT go out on missions by myself or with a group and spend two hours a day earning my keep for my harvesters. I should ONLY have to worry about earning Crafting experience.

But, this is no longer possible. Even crafting items is going to take even longer. The additional 10 second delay makes it to where I will have to harvest for over an hour just to earn enough minerals to build a single installation. And it's not like I can simply go AFK like an Entertainer. I have to harvest different minerals, which means I have to actually monitor my samples.

This is a HORRIBLE decision. I predict Artisans quitting left and right until this is fixed. It completely nerfed an Artisan's progress. And let's face it, sitting and watching your character mine minerals isn't as exciting as chasing down Ragtag Kooks and blasting them.

I'm more concerned than angry. I knew that it would take a while to become an Architect. But now, it'll take me months and months. Sigh.....

They need to fix the problem (macro's) not the symptom (sampling). I don't want to be forced to use harvester's. I am not that hard core a gamer.

I've yet to play and test out the latest and greatest from today’s patch but if what people are saying holds water I personally will be a little unhappy (not unhappy so as to cancel my account but unhappy just the same) I currently have three harvesters, I don't get a chance to play everyday, nor do I get a chance to play for very long periods of time often, a long play session for me is about 1 - 2 hours. In an hour I could run to my harvesters and do a few in town delivery missions, maybe a couple out of town delivery missions. My harvesters are far apart and in VERY remote locations since these offered the best overall resource opportunities while I understand that sampling resources as it was before this patch meant you didn't necessarily need to have harvesters this one seems to go too far in the other direction. There is a point of balance but instead of striving for that we are just swinging a pendulum in the other direction. I also have a problem with equipment not functioning if it is not completely paid for. the example above about the car is perfect. it doesn't need to be 100% to work but it works alot better if it is. this patch is akin to taking your car to the mechanics every day and getting it repaired. will your car work better yes does anyone do it no.

This is so typicall of a company to do. They see a problem(macro sampling), and rather then fixing it, they just punish everyone and make all the newbie crafters screwed. What happened to being a casual gamer? I loved this game before they did this. Why! Why!

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Dhraven wrote:
This is so typicall of a company to do. They see a problem(macro sampling), and rather then fixing it, they just punish everyone and make all the newbie crafters screwed. What happened to being a casual gamer? I loved this game before they did this. Why! Why!

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How do you know that macro sampling is what the devs didn't like? Did they say something about this? Maybe they simply took taht idiot that asked them to "nerf smapling to improve the economy" seriously. I hope not, as that position was pretty well refuted.

If they wanted to nerf just macro sampling, I think they would have just nerfed macros in general like many of us asked them to during beta. There's nothing else you can do in-game reliably with long running macros other than grinding entertainer XP and sampling. Both of those bothered some testers, so we asked them to put in a timer limit on macros that would prevent a pause of more than 10 seconds. But they didn't seem interested.

Maybe they really just wanted to slow down the rate that beginners get resources at.

Because a few days ago a Dev (Holo) said they would be changing sampling soon to fix macro sampling. "It's not working as intended".

I agree they should attack Macros. Not sampling. I have very little time to play daily. Being able to log in for an hour and sample/craft then leave was perfect. Go after Macros. leave sampling alone.

The point of crafting isn't to make items and give them away, the point is to make items and SELL them. The costs in the system are a CRUCIAL part of a player run economy. So now it comes down to it... run with the economy or get trampled. Charge more, push your product, or hire someone who will.

Oh haha, well, there you go. Yeah, I agree this isn't the way to fix macro sampling. If they'd just implement a macro pause limit to prevent the long pauses required in macro sampling and entertainment AFK grinding, they'd kill two birds with one stone.

There's no reason a macro should ever need to wait for more than 10 seconds or so before executing the next action in what I'd call "legitimate macro use".

I'm sure you all care, but I guess if this is true, I'll be deleting my artisan character today. This is probably in line with what Sony wants, to limit the number of artisans around or something like that, so thats cool. I guess I'll be switching to a combat-oriented class to try it out in response. I'll probably get tired of the EQ-like combat level grind and wind up quitting SWG shortly thereafter.

This sucks, cause I had hopes of this game being playable by casual players such as myself. Kind of reminds me of when I was playin UO way back, and I built a char up to grandmaster swordsman, and I could solo dragons and all was cool, until they suddenly buffed up all creatures and I died multiple times to dragons and lost lots of stats.

In conclusion, sudden major changes to game mechanics suck.