Artisan Archive

Before I get deep into what is going to be a VERY long post, I'll give the conclusion right up front: I think the skill point limit should be increased by 50 to 300. That's just one suggestion to help solve what I see as some critical problems in the game for those who pursue crafting as their primary skill. There may be other valid approaches, but this is the one conclusion I've been drawn to.

Now, what are the problems with the crafting professions (mostly branching from Artisan) and the economy of SWG that discourage players from crafting as their main focus? Yes, I'm assuming there are problems, based on experience and observation. If you disagree with that basic view, then this post is pretty much irrelevant to you. On the other hand, I think a number of people share my assessment of crafting.

I must also limit my analysis to crafting as a self-sufficient or primarily solo player, since that is my preferred style of play. I don't personally like (or have time) to play in groups more than once every couple of days. Perhaps an argument can be made that the advantages of grouping over soloing are the real issue, but I feel that is another discussion entirely.

First, let's go where the money is.

There are NO economic incentives to be a crafter rather than a combat professional.

While you can certainly make money without fighting, you have to harvest or purchase huge amounts of resources to advance in your craft and, eventually, run a successful business. To do this, you must be able to fight creatures and NPCs in the field, either to gather animal resources or to survive while tending to harvesting equipment. If you have only low-level combat skills, the harvesting process is slow at best. Until you have enough cash and power to maintain harvesters without having to run out to them (possibly on different planets) on a daily basis, you simply cannot afford to spend time doing anything other than grinding, running to harvesters, and running missions from terminals along the way to make cash. Most crafters get trapped in this loop for weeks or months before they can come up for a little air. Some professions have it harder than others, especially if you don't build high-price items you can make a lot of credits from -- though even with such products you need to gather even greater amounts of resources.

In the end, you either must give up on crafting or get through the initial grind-and-mine to the point where you have the finances and large harvesting equipment necessary to maintain a constant flow of resources.

If you buy resources instead of, or in addition to, harvesting them yourself, or rent lots from other players, you just need more cash, which is not easy to come by unless you spend time running missions.

You also have to find ways to sell what you make to bring in more credits so you can make more and better items. If you opt for more crafting or a few meager combat skills instead of merchant abilities, then you have to sell your products by word of mouth and direct orders or via the merchants (which is how it should be). Essentially, you're running a business, and you'll have to operate at a loss until you get over the hump and start reaping some rewards.

It's a given some will survive and become prosperous, and some will fail and leave the game or turn to other (mainly combat) professions. The question is, what will you do once your business is running smoothly? You can make more credits until your bank account is so full you just spend on consumables and trinkets, spending whatever time necessary to keep that income flowing. Once you've bought everything there is to buy, what's left? Or, you can slow down your crafting, lose some of those skills (keeping only what you need to keep some cash coming in), and learn some different professions. If you feel like grinding and crafting some more, you can take turns at all the building professions. In the end, you either become a static crafter/seller, or you start learning to fight bigger and badder things.

Why? Because the game is a combat game. Despite all the attempts to provide alternate mission types, theme parks, or whatever, if you can't fight, you can't take part in most of the "content" unless you're support staff to the fighters, essentially there to watch and serve, or be cannon fodder. How many people enjoy being the cannon fodder?

So, how can someone who really WANTS to be a crafter keep enjoying the game once they master one or two crafter professions (because there aren't enough skill points to master more than that)?

That's right: become a fighter.

To do this, you have to give up some of your crafting skill.

OK, now you're a hybrid crafter/fighter, but you find the best, biggest, most fun mobs and player opponents are LIGHTYEARS better at fighting than you are -- and they can rake in so much cash they don't need to waste time crafting, but instead just buy your products so they can "own" you with your own gun/armor/droid/pet/etc.

Now it's crunch time. You have to make a choice to either be a fighter, or be satisfied with the crafter's life of living the content through others or just being a homebody with loads of cash to use on souvenirs.

This is where the skill points really pigeon-hole players now. The game is very good at offering a lot of choices of professions and hybrid professions. It promises to offer even more in the future. However, unless you have the time and desire to change your professions often to experience many different aspects of the game, you are going to be stuck in one track or another. You can stop playing one server or character and try another, but that's really no different than surrendering your points and remaking your existing character, except you end up with several maxed-out characters you can jump into depending on how you feel like playing today. Well, as long as you remember to take care of maintenance first, that is.

Let's look at the hard numbers of the skill points and profession trees. Here are some combinations I've considered, based on how I might like to max out my skills. After each is a rundown of what I could do with 50 more skill points within the existing system.

Note I lean toward Bounty Hunter, Commando, or Creature Handler as combat skills, though my preference is for Rifleman. This is simply because the most effective combat skills are what they are, and it's easier to join 'em than to beat 'em. Also, I always keep some medic or scout skills, even when not required as prerequisites, because without them, you really expose yourself to weaknesses in battle or surviving in the field. You can free up more points if you ditch some of these self-sufficiency safety nets, but not a enough to make a huge difference.

----------------

Master Artisan: 77
Marksman: 43
- Rifle Specialist
- Ranged Weapon Support Specialist
Scout: 43
- Exploration IV
- Hunting IV
Medic: 17
- Diagnostics I

70 points left

Rifleman: 15
- Advanced Sniping Accuracy
Droid Engineer: 54
- Expert Droid Production
- Expert Droid Construction Techniques
- Expert Droid Refinement
- Expert Droid Blueprints

1 point left -- need 8 more pts. to Master Droid Engineer

(+50 -- Master DE, need 4 more pts. to master rifleman, or CH instead)

OR

Rifleman: 15
- Advanced Sniping Accuracy
Weaponsmith: 34
- Master Firearms Crafting
- Master Weapon Crafting Techniques
Armorsmith: 20
- Deflectors IV: Mk 3 Technology

1 point left -- no technique boxes on armorsmith

(+50 -- add armor Technique IV, master sniping and special rifle abilities, 18 pts. left for some CH, more rifle, or more crafting
OR drop rifleman and armorsmith, master marksman and scout, get some BH)

----------------

Artisan: 43
- Engineering IV: Complex Systems
- BUsiness IV: Business Diversity
Marksman: 43
- Rifle Specialist
- Ranged Weapon Support Specialist
Scout: 43
- Exploration IV
- Hunting IV
Medic: 17
- Diagnostics I

Master Droid Engineer: 63
Rifleman: 34
- Master Sniping Accuracy
- Master Rifle Special Abilities
Novice Merchant: 6

1 point left

(+50 -- master rifleman, learn architect w/Furniture IV; 2 pts. left)

----------------

Artisan: 29
- Engineering IV: Complex Systems
Master Marksman: 77
Master Scout: 77
Medic: 17
- Diagnostics I

Weaponsmith: 34
- Master Firearms Crafting
- Master Weapon Crafting Techniques
Bounty Hunter: 15
- Light Lightning Cannon Specialization II

1 point left

(+50 -- master artisan, add LLC III; 0 pts. left
OR add armorsmith deflectors and technique IV, business IV, LLC III; 0 pts. left
OR add business IV, novice merchant, novice architect w/furniture IV, novice CH/rifleman/pistoleer/carbineer; 5 pts. left for first aid I/II, 1 box CH/r/p/c, 1 box merchant, or more BH)

----------------

Master Marksman: 77
Master Scout: 77
Medic: 17
- Diagnostics I

Master Bounty Hunter: 63
Carbineer, Pistoleer, Rifleman, or Creature Handler: 15
- 2 boxes in a column

1 point left

(+50 -- master carbineer, pistoleer, rifleman, or CH, drop diagnostics and add First Aid I/II; 0 pts. left)

----------------

Master Marksman: 77
Brawler: 29
- Master Unarmed Specialization
Medic: 31
- First Aid IV: Quick Heal
- Diagnostics I
Scout: 43
- Exploration IV
- Hunting IV

Master Commando: 63
Novice Creature Handler: 6

1 point left

(+50 -- master scout and novice BH w/LLC2; 2 pts. left
OR master medic and 1 box in CH; 0 pts. left)

----------------

This tells me one thing: the current point limits for skills development is too restrictive -- not so much as to make it impossible to play, but certainly enough to push crafters or even entertainers into much higher levels of combat specialism than they might otherwise prefer. By adding 50 skill points, on the other hand, you don't end up with wildly more powerful professional killers, though maybe they learn a few more ways to kill. The hybrids, on the other hand, might just be able to partake of some of that "content" not otherwise available to them unless they play kid brother and tag along with the bigger kids at a safe distance.

Or, even better, those who really WANT to be crafters (or entertainers, politicians, etc.) can diversify a little more and have more variety (i.e., less boredom) in what they can make or do. They would still be very much dependent upon others for ingredients or supplies they can't make themselves, but just a little less so for the sake of enjoying the game more. This by no means kills the game design of cooperation and interactive role playing.

To go a little further, why not do this increase now, while people can experiment with them, rather than later, when elite-elite professions and expansions come along to further limit what players can experience without being glued to their chairs for 12 hours a day?

Rather than depending upon balance tweaks and nerfs, this puts some more choice (but not TOO much) into the players' hands to help them direct how the game should progress. If bounty hunters are the best way to go to take part in the combat content, then you can do that while still being something else -- just not so much of that something else. Or, you can be much better at what you prefer to do, becoming that much more valuable to your customers, audiences, or combat groups.

Think about it.

The point is not to block content from you. The point is to make a player driven economy. If everyone could make their own weapons (which they could with an extra 50 points, for example a Master Commando could be a Master Weaponsmith with 39 points to spare...hell, almost enough to make their own armor), than there is no economy at all, just a bunch of people ignoring each other. Basically it comes down to, if you wanted to be completely independent, you purchased the wrong game. There are plenty of games that are out there that completely revolve around combat that you can stick with, and not have to talk to anyone else. The cool thing about this game is the fact it is not one of those games.

Now, about the whole money matter, it's almost specifically explained what one of the appealling things about making a bunch of money right now is. The Space Expansion. When describing it on the web page, it says one of the reasons behind the staggered release was to allow players to establish themselves enough to afford ships. AND, another thing is when that comes out, one of the devs said that a system wouldgo into place that would seperate Space Expansion skills from regular base skills, meaning that you could indeed get another 50 skill points, but you could spend them on something different. In space, you could be a Top Ace fighter pilot, and on the ground, you could be the biggest wuss, or you could be a serious fighter on the ground and man a bulk freighter in space...It's all a matter of choices.

The point of these forums is to come up with ways to make the game better, and I feel that this does not do that, which is why I'm choosing to respond.

Why should anyone be forced to have friends who will protect them in the field, or essentially do content missions for them while they watch? There are people I sometimes group with, mainly from my PA. I enjoy going out with them to do some different things now and then, but if they're not around or not up to a trip, should I hire fighters to do the work for me? If yes, then fine, but the result is a system where fighters make much more money than those running a crafting business or other non-combat service. Last I looked, millionaires tend not to be soldiers on average.

Players should not be able to do everything. Ah, but 50 more points would not create a glut of jacks-of-all-trades. They would be able to become fairly self-sufficient (but not totally -- they can't make or killeverything), but the price would be less mastery and more diversification -- they would be OK solo, but they wouldn't be exception fighters OR exceptional crafters. As it is now, you can barely be a crafter and survive a few seconds on some planets. Should those players just not go anywhere interesting?

Just make it a combat game, then, with all purchasable items as loot or provided directly via the bazaar from an invisible server production plant.

In the city previews, a city planner profession is mentioned as an elite-elite profession branching from (I believe) master artisan. Would such a city planner even be able to fire a gun anymore? As more professions grow off of the already specialized branches, players will have to be so pinned into a given role that they COULD NOT play the game solo. Shouldn't players have the choice to be a little bit of a loner while still tied into the community? If skill points would just be added later, then the limit now only encourages people to get fed up and leave before any of the growth ever happens months or years down the line.

Perhaps there is indeed no problem with the system as it stands, but I don't feel that way. Maybe more points is the worst possible solution if there is a problem, but it's a starting point for discussion. Rather than offer only negatives, does anyone have alternatives that would work better?

Osmol, you make a very good point regarding future expansion systems.

On the other hand, I don't agree that the player-driven economy would be killed by 50 points of skills per player. As it is at the moment, an elite fighter -- one with modest basic crafting, medic, and scout skills -- can make money at a rate that is staggering. If players can make one more elite item or set of items and still be wussy fighters, they still have to compete for customers with everyone else equally. If they choose to make their own weapons fortheir elite fighting profession, then they still would need to find healers, spend time and/or money on resource gathering to make said weapons, etc.

Perhaps it would work better with some restrictions on cross-skill combinations, but I suspect that gets into the realm of being too complex and more apt to cause additional problems.

Another thought I'd had was to make your initial profession tree based on your choice at character creation much cheaper -- extremely cheap -- in skill points compared to other starting professions you might add. At present, I cannot simultaneously be a master artisan and master weaponsmith and still avoid being eaten by scyks, let alone run most of the theme park missions.

Is the solution really to just become a fighter?

No one is forced to have friends, but you are limited if you don't work with others in this game, it's true, but that's the point. Why even play a multiplayer game if you don't want to interact with anyone?

Fighters do not make more money than ALL crafters. Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths are currently the most wealthy characters in the game, followed by very good merchants who provide reselling services in high traffic areas, as it should be. Granted, some crafting professions are under paid, but this is being worked on. I have no idea where you got your information on that...

You can go to other hostile planets. My character is very weak and I've been all over the galaxy. It's much easier of course if you have a buddy or two with you to help protect you, which goes with the whole fun factor, but you make it sound like you die as soon as you land.

Artisan is not an Elite Profession, the City Planner is going to go above the Architect Tree. And no, a serious city planner would not be able to shoot a gun, they'd be building cities. If they took this role, it would be their choice, and therefore, if that pinned them into a role, than they chose to do so. Someone will, I guarantee you, be more than happy to be one and not fire another blaster while they play. And this still even leaves room for them to be a fighter pilot with the Space Expansion.

Play Planetside. It sounds like it is more what you are looking for. This game is toosocial for you from the sounds of things.

The problem here is, you think you have made this point that SWG is completely combat driven, and it isn't, you are asking for support about a point you haven't proven.

I did get a response out of a dev on this. I suggested that a test center incentive should be 50 bonus skill points. Vass responded and said it would unbalance the game too much.

But with the devs adding "many new professions" I don't know how long that will last.

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Mack_Dorgeans wrote:

At present, I cannot simultaneously be a master artisan and master weaponsmith and still avoid being eaten by scyks, let alone run most of the theme park missions.

Is the solution really to just become a fighter?

---

You CAN become a master art/master weaponsmith and still have skill points for fighting. But your problem is you want tobe a master weaponsmith/master artisan/novice medic/novice scout/rifleman. I guarantee if you surrender your extra novice skills, you will have no problem with MW/MA/combat skills. I don't know what a 'scyk' is but I'm a novice rifleman with no boxes yet and I am able to make my way around fairly easy as long as I pay attention to the reds on my radar. I even go hunting on Dathomir in a group from time to time. And I am about to hit master tailor! As the previous poster said, you need to be more social.

Mack_Dorgeans, I am an artisan, and I agree with you that I'm missing some of the fun which is combat. I also agree that most of the fun in this game is combat (I've played just a few hours of combat professions) HOWEVER, I think your solution is too much of a compromise.

Rather than accept that combat is where the fun is therefore add combat to the artisans, there should be more fun added to the artisans. Crafting just isn't cool enough by itself. Osmol is right that with the social aspect of this game I've been very content to plug away with my artisan character - I think the social aspect of this game could be fun enough to make being a newspaper boy fun.

The problem revolves around the fact that I feel at times like a **edit** for the combat professions.

Maybe there are too many artisans - if more artisans dropped out we could charge more, and that would be cool.

My VAGUE FINAL SOLUTION IS TO MAKE CRAFTING COOLER. It's fun to kill mutant rats, it's much briefer and not as muchfun to sell someone a powerup for their gun.

How can crafting be more fun?

I guess Im lucky Im master artisan master DE and have 5 boxes in the pistoleer tree as well as a couple other professions. I am trying to figure out away to dump my MA so I can get the other skills I want (master pistoleer) but so far I have needed it to much. What Im trying to say is I can go to a lot of places and do some combat stuff with a pet anda driod. Im not sure about PvP I have yet to try that.

Again, it really sounds like you chose to be a crafter when you wanted to be a fighter. If you want to run theme park missions, of course you are going to have to fight things, and being a crafter isn't going to cut it.

Some of the ideas about cross-class and initial profession costs are interesting, but, nearly impossible to implement now that it is after the fact.

Agian, the point of this game definately seems to focus on having you meet more people than less. True, if you went down the crafter path, you'd still need to find a medic, and vise-versa, but you'd need to interact with one less person. It just takes away from the community and hurts certain crafters.

I really think you should just become a fighter or try something like Planetside.

I flubbed the reference to the city planner. I did mean to say it would be above the Architect tree, which is my point: if elite-elite professions are at all costly, then you do have to give up on being able to fight if you want to go that route. So, is it a simple choice of going one way or another? If so, then the content in the game needs to change drastically -- if I go to do Jabba's Palace, I should not be asked to kill things to complete missions and get rewards, but rather asked to build things, maybe collect information, etc.

I myself currently have 2 boxes in the Rifleman sniping column, master artisan, novice weaponsmith with 1 box of firearms, scout with L4 exploration and hunting, novice medic with diagnostics 1, and I just picked up novice creature handler -- not because I want to play that profession, but because it seems you must have pets or droids do your fighting for you in this game if you aren't a hard-core combatant. That, I think, is a failure in the game design. My rifleman skills do allow me to go to other planets with groups and make money. Yesterday I made about 100,000 credits on Endor with a group -- but others did the harder work. The point is, I could have run some of those Endor missions solo for a much greater gain if I were not a crafter (and taken a lot less deaths, to boot). If I can make 100K in a day grouped, how much could I make solo with my crew of pets, droids, and commando or bounty hunter weapons? I'm guessing it's way more than the 10K to 15K I can make per day (before buying or maintaining anything) from being a master artisan. All the real monetary and mission content rewards are stacked in favor of combat classes.

Is that not the case? Please show me an artisan mission that makes me 25K in the same amount of time as an Endor destroy mission. I admit I'm not as well-traveled as others, and I have likely just not found the ways to do missions as a crafter. Still, that doesn't change the fact those "content" NPC missions require groups or good combat skills.

I'm not at all an antisocial gamer. I'm in a PA, and we go do some content or hunts, but sometimes I want to play on my own schedule. If I choose to be a solo player, though, why should I be penalized or forced to play a combat class to "see the world" as it were?

As I said, skill points are one idea -- maybe not the best, or the least damaging to the balance the developers are trying to strike, but it would be easy, and would not require a one-year wait for an expansion. I'm all for restrictions on how much a single player can do within the game, or I would have said "give me 100 points" or 200, or whatever. I looked at 50 as a suggestion simply because it still rides the line between being too accomplished a generalist and being too limited under the professions available and the content as it stands.

Maybe this game isn't combat-centric. I have yet to see proof of that. From what I can tell, if I don't know how to fight, I can't participate in any meaningful way to the GCW (other than by buying things the combatants on my side could use or defend, or turning in some disks I'd have to buy, since I couldn't kill the things that drop them), I can't complete series of missions at theme parks, can't fight off animals charging me in the wild (and unless I'm mistaken, leaving town on Lok IS instant death for non-fighters), etc.

Yes, I DO want to be a fighter, but not exclusively. I want a varied experience without having to have 2 or more characters spread around the servers, devoting 12 hours a day to playing. Maybe a college student can get away with that, but I can't -- and I pay the same fee each month.

In the final analysis, I don't really expect to be able to do everything I might want to do with my character, but right now the limits are more restrictive to non-combatants, unless you drag your friends and pets around. Change the way missions are offered to players based on what they can do, and maybe that would help (but of course there would be exploits). Maybe creatures and NPCs in the wild could be less likely to attack a passing dancer than a bounty hunter armed to the teeth.

So, what are the other alternatives? Is the system essentially fine (barring bugs)? Skill points may not be an ideal solution, but at least they elicit a response, I guess.

Thanks for the discussion. It's proving enlightening already.

Here's a good reason why 300 skill points is a bad idea.


Does anyone want to ever fight these people?

Master Bounty Hunter & Master Creature Handler
Master Commando & Master Smugger & Teras Kasi Master

Master Bounty Hunter & Commando 1/4/4/4
Master Commando & Master Creature Handler & Teras Kasi 4/1/0/0

I think the way that this game was designed was for players to choose a playing style, combat, crafting, entertaining, or whatever, and play the hell out of it. This does block certain content, maybe not justifiably so, but some would also argue, that if some days you feel like a figher and some days you don't, make a crafter on one server and a fighter on another, like you said. This of course, makes you split time between two characters in a sometimes tedious skill tree, but it still allows you to get a sense for both sides of the playing field. I also couldn't do this. (Maybe I would change my tune if I got my FCS...haha)

The first mission of the GCW I thought clearly pointed to a fighter oriented goal. Though, I will say my weak Mon Cal took down a plasma thief and found an Imperial Disk. I sold it, pretty sure I wasn't going to bother with finding the rest of them. But I think I saw a dev post that they are going to be different styles every time, though, who knows what that means.

I'd go into the whole pets thing...but...I've already started writinga different novel.

Some way of allowing theme park missions adapt to skills would definately be interesting, and if the rewards were given out to be unique to the class as well (schematics and such), that would also be a plus.

I understand where you are coming from a little bit more, but again, I just don't think this game was designed for it, which for some people, like myself, is great. But, no one has ever accused me of being normal