Artisan Archive
Thread: We are being discriminated against
Guruweaver
Sun Jan 23, 2005 7:26 am
#14
JeCy wrote:Im missing the point to this post sorry..But are you saying you cant do theme parks with out fighting??orWith out being a combat class aka no combat skills, you cant do theme parksthose are 2 totally different things, soo when ya clear it up from me ill respond : )
I'm thinking it was the latter, but I'll let the original poster clarify, as they were her words.
For what it's worth, I agree. This game is rigged from start to finish to be driven and about combat. Name for me new, immersive content that doesn't require combat?
No?
I can't think of any either.
*gets on soapbox*
New loot drops that require crafters to make do not qualify, to me, as new content. A new dungeon, a new 'corvette', a new theme park, that's new content. The crafter made loot drops just turn us into l33t lewt dispensers. Battle, get schematic, insert schematic and credits in crafter, pull lever, ding! LEWT! Bah.
In fact, these loot ideas, after a fashion, can be seen as harmful to crafters. It just ends up making the combat folks grumpy and the crafters grumpy.
Combat folks are grumpy because, in their minds, they did all the hard work in getting the loot, having to find a crafter to 'make' the prize out of what they looted is just an irritating impediment to their chosen play style.
Crafters, like me, are grumpy because it trivializes our work and profession. Combat folks aren't willing to pay much for the service, plus I get nothing out of the deal. That is, when I make the item and give it to the combat guy, what do I have? Nothing but some credits. Now, if I got to make a few more items beyond the one I give to the combat person, then I have something. If it added a permemant schematic to my datapad, then I'd have something.
On the correspondent's forum, I regularly rant about the short shrift that non-combat players get in this game. Possibly the best example of this is the Force Sensitive Village. Although the Village offers non-combat quests for FS skills, you still have to fight to finish the old man quests. It isn't possible for a purely non-combat character to complete any content in this game, at all, without fighting.
It's a sore point with me as the game promises a lot for those of us that don't enjoy killing things to have something fun to do, between medical, crafting, and entertaining we should have a lot to do, but we don't. We are just support roles for the combat folks, and in many cases, resented ones as well.
*gets off soapbox*
My opinion, not the opinion of SOE, SWG, DEVS, Leaders of any arbitrary nation, etc.
Guru
Beery
Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:52 pm
#15
"Im missing the point to this post sorry..
But are you saying you cant do theme parks with out fighting??
or
With out being a combat class aka no combat skills, you cant do theme parks"
I'm saying neither (although it is generally true that many theme parks can't be done without something getting killed).
What I'm saying isthat it would be a nice idea if we could approach theme parks in a number of different ways. Why should a chef need to kill Valarians just so that he can cook for Jabba? Apparently, as the game currently standsJabba doesn't like food unless it's cooked by a chef who's also a crack shot. Does that make sense to anyone? If I'm a chef, wouldn't it make sense that Jabba would want to hire a chef based on his cooking skills, and not based on his skill with a gun? All I'm saying is that non-combat folks would be hired by Jabba based on their professional skills, so theme parks like Jabba's should have a number of different quests tied to one's primary skill. You should still be able to kill stuff in order to get in, but why have it so restrictive? Why not grant access in a number of different ways - all challenging, but requiring different skill sets and giving different rewards? I think it's short-sighted to only allow accessvia combat.
Beery
Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:56 pm
#16
Guruweaver wrote:
"It isn't possible for a purely non-combat character to complete any content in this game, at all, without fighting. "
I agree with what you said in general, but what you say here is not completely true. I'm on mission 10 of Jabba's theme park and (sincemy character is a pacifist)I haven't killed a single creature or person to do it. It's possible, but it's very hard. I did it before as a pistoleer, but doing it without killing (and without paying anyone to kill - and without getting a droid or creature to do it) is extremely hard.
Dpjarrett
Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:57 pm
#17
Beery wrote:
I agree with what you said in general, but what you say here is not completely true. I'm on mission 10 of Jabba's theme park and (sincemy character is a pacifist)I haven't killed a single creature or person to do it. It's possible, but it's very hard. I did it before as a pistoleer, but doing it without killing (and without paying anyone to kill - and without getting a droid or creature to do it) is extremely hard.
I'm curious, how is that possible? Isn't one of the first ten missions to kill a Tusken captain? I've done Jabba's multiple times and I know that mission is somewhere early on. I know you don't have to kill all of the Tuskens at the waypoint to succeed, but the mission doesn't complete until at least the captain has died.
Marjaliisa
Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:27 am
#18
I don't know - I think we should give SOE a little break here; this is the only MMORPG where there are any real opportunities to pursue a non-combat profession at all (other than UO, maybe, can't really remember much about that game).
In every other game I've played, crafting has been more like a hobby for the combatants. For example, in AC, the only way you could pump Alchemy, Fletching and Cooking was to kill stuff and apply the exp to these skills, which were inevitably put on mules as a result.
And I don't think there is any equivalent to the Entertainer classes in any game.
I think they've done a pretty good job in this regard, even though there are not many quests available for non-combatants. (I don't care much for quests, though, which may color my opinions somewhat.)
Travin64068
Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:34 am
#19
Even the Stim-A+ quest (a Medic Quest) is combat driven. The Devs think that if they give us something to kill we'll be happy, but this is NOT the case. I've been asking for Medic Missions for over 17 months, every other starting profession has it's missions. This would be a step in the right direction for Medic content in the game.
I believe that some things should stay combat driven, but there should be quests for the non-combatants like healing a close friend of Jabba from a rare disease. Healing an injured rebel or imperial for part of the themeparks.
- Travin
Gooney
Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:03 am
#20
Beery,
I understand where your coming from but in truth your simply being as blind as the combat types in this. I mean blind in the sense of limiting yourself to a singular type of in-game existance.
SWG is a skill based game, most, nearly all of the content is easily achievable by having 1 combat profession heck you dont even have to master one to do any of the theme parks, but you do have to have atleast novice in some elite skill. With one combat profession you can do all of the content in this game.
I am a Master Tailor, Master Artisan and TKM. With this combo I can do pretty much every play type I want, PvP, PvE, RP, craft, etc.
This game is about balance, about making choices. If you as a player decide that you want no-combat at all then thats exactly what you will get NO-COMBAT.
Lets notignore the fact that in Star Wars violence and combat of some sort is done by every single main character except C3PO. Everybody has "some" combat skills of some sort. In the game it translates into professions.
Its wonderful that you can choose a completely combat free existance and have a fairly full-filling experiance with it, this is the only game that I know of where thats even possible. That being said people in that position are few and far between, certainly not a large enough proportion to start making a bunch of specifically non-combat content.
So your not being discriminated against, thats the wrong type of vocabulary for this situation, you are simply being ignored. And in the "Big Picture" view of things this is somewhat justified. The option is there for you if you so choose to participate in the content currently available if you dont fine, but dont be surprised if you dont see tons of support for it.
-Gooney
Message Edited by Gooney on 01-24-2005 03:37 PM
JeCy
Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:15 am
#21
Oky, I was about to get up of guru's Soap box if this was about theme parks not being able to be done with ZERO combat skills.. I ahvent had a combat skill in over a year and ive done theme parks, cleared out mauler spawns, Killed reclusive gurk kings and skined um for there hide. the list goes on.. Im a pure crafter, Master artisan/DE/armorer with the rest in merchant. I play the game unbuffed, well no doc/dancer buffs. I do use food and my life saver spice : ) Its all about the equipment..
Now on to your different ways of doing things.. Id have to totally agree. Quests like jabba for example. The one where you need to get the meat beast for the pudding. Perhaps you could purchase the meat from a trader in mos esiley, Or higher a ranger to do it for you. Perhaps there is a way to seek out a chef some where that could make something to use as a subsitute.
But to be honest with you.. The quests in this game are soo awefull its pathetic. There is not one interesting quest in the game.. Well bestine has the mayor race atleast its not fed ex. I have seen more interesting questing in shooters. SOE should really go out and go play the bauldurs gate serries, or even games like Dues X, or Plane scape torment.. These are quests. Something you ahve to think about and come up with ways of completing it. This get missions run to waypoint Kill/Get/lead is a total friggin joke. The content we make up is what makes the game fun. The interaction and the fact that im a member of miners anyonomous.. I just cant stop moving harvesters ! !
This game has come a long way, but the quest system is in more dire need, than GWC or combat. I dont know what some of these devs are on but i want some..Soo far IMO the worst content added to the game is so called explorer badged. What a joke give me a X+Y and i ride there Woot im an explorer. the funny thing is i just started doing badges for get glowy for FS crafting. I had all of 8 before i started. Ive been playing since launch. and 5 are profs. The funny part is i found 90% of the stuff you get explore badges before POI were introduced. I know this is off the subject, but really my point to all of this is..
Make your own content.. This game is more about the world than the quests
Je'Cy
Anthemion
Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:37 pm
#22
As I remember things, when I first installed the game at release the little fly by screens implied that crafting and combat (also solo and group play btw.) would be placed on equal footing. It also seems necessary when you have the goal of a player economy where the players produce nearly all items. I think the devs have failed to make a product that was in line with the intent of the game. Notice nearly all dev time so far has been devoted to not crafting projects. (loot schematics don't count) ;P
/rant off
The devs may still give us some love. I'm still waiting and paying SOE...
/rant off
The devs may still give us some love. I'm still waiting and paying SOE...
Giamai
Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:04 pm
#23
Dpjarrett wrote:
Beery wrote:
I agree with what you said in general, but what you say here is not completely true. I'm on mission 10 of Jabba's theme park and (sincemy character is a pacifist)I haven't killed a single creature or person to do it. It's possible, but it's very hard. I did it before as a pistoleer, but doing it without killing (and without paying anyone to kill - and without getting a droid or creature to do it) is extremely hard.
I'm curious, how is that possible? Isn't one of the first ten missions to kill a Tusken captain? I've done Jabba's multiple times and I know that mission is somewhere early on. I know you don't have to kill all of the Tuskens at the waypoint to succeed, but the mission doesn't complete until at least the captain has died.
yeah this is completely off topic but i'm curious too...
my ws is fs and in the village but i did this by exchanging bodyguard duties with my friend the wannabe armorsmith, my tkm doing the killing for him, his swordsman killing for my ws...
but truthfully, about half the missions on jabbas and both the rebel/imperial themeparks are delivery/escort so thats doable (if you don't get aggroed by anything along the way) but another bunch of the missions require you to retrieve something by looting it off the corpse.
the only thing i can think of is pulling the bad guy to an aggro spawn...a conveniently located crackdown team takes out the tusken captain for you maybe?
Chaosium_451
Tue Jan 25, 2005 5:05 pm
#24
I'm not sure how much of a problem i see this as being. I did the entire Hero quest on Live with a completely non-combat toon. All it takes is a willing friend (or Guildie) to escort you around.I've seen offers on this board from combat types offering escorted Corvette runs and other things.
Now, I do agree that there is room for improvement - there should be content accessible to the pure crafter. There is a definite lack there.
On the other hand, I found going through the Squill cave with only a CDEF rifle to be pretty stimulating. 
Tinkergirl
Wed Jan 26, 2005 2:52 pm
#25
To Beery -
Please calm down. Your posts, from your second one in this thread onwards, are very defensive. I can see you're annoyed, and thought that people were attacking you and/or your ideas, but getting angry with posters won't help much.
I agree with you that the main theme park content out there is to a certain extent, combat-gated. I can imagine several reasons for this; lack of crafting quest experience, lack of time (in the rush to get these out on time), concerns about balance (crafting isn't in itself a hard task, though neither is special-spamming), and sheer volume of work (all combat chars can fight, but all crafters craft differently, then there's entertainers and medics and scouts and...).
No, I'm not making excuses for SOE here, just thinking about why things might be the way they currently are.
I also agree that giving players a choice of how to approach a theme park would be appreciated. All content is good, after all (though not all content is great).
I have three points to make though -
1 - Group. This can be a social game, and grouping with others would enable crafters to get into these places. Even using your skills (by making cash to hire others to do it for you) is possible, in a round-about way. I know this isn't what you want, but it's a way of doing it.
2 - Imagine all the work! Sure, maybe Artisans want a crafting route - why can't Medics get a route. How about Dancers? Musicians? Ok, how is an Image Designer going to get on Jabba's good side? Politicians? Bio-Engineers, they'd be tricky, right? Dont want to 'discriminate' against them. Or Rangers, maybe Jabba wants to camp out?
Ok, maybe a bit too far there, but as you can see there are so many play styles that creating theme park access methods for all of them would be a massive undertaking. Combat, however, can be undertaken by about half of the game professions, and a great many people pick up combat as an addition to their non-com profession. The biggest bang for the content implementation buck.
3 - Ok, three's a bigger one, I admit.
Until crafting and/or non-combat 'missions' are made more interesting and exciting, then doing any of these theme parks will be barely more engaging than watching paint dry. Sure, combatants complain that all they do is bike to point A, kill mob B, return and repeat, but combat has the potential to be exciting.
If the way of getting into Jabba's was to create increasingly stronger drinks for Jabba's Gammoreans, (with the current crafting mission styles) then what's to stop someone just making all 8 drinks (or whatever) there on the spot and completeing it in two minutes? Dull, dull, dull. Not to mention, the combat types will complain that the crafting entry is much easier than their entry. (Chances are, no matter what entry route you made, would be accused of being 'easy'.)
On the other hand, I really do wish that there was more scripted crafting content in the game. Look at my sig - I've made suggestions for Story Arcs that had crafting-only entry to it. It would involve new kinds of quests (and there aren't that many ideas for exciting crafting quests) and new coding, and lots and lots of time and testing.
So, I suppose to end (cause I've typed more than enough) I'll say -
Yes, I want scripted, in-game, crafting quests.
...But I can see why there aren't any YET.
Please calm down. Your posts, from your second one in this thread onwards, are very defensive. I can see you're annoyed, and thought that people were attacking you and/or your ideas, but getting angry with posters won't help much.
I agree with you that the main theme park content out there is to a certain extent, combat-gated. I can imagine several reasons for this; lack of crafting quest experience, lack of time (in the rush to get these out on time), concerns about balance (crafting isn't in itself a hard task, though neither is special-spamming), and sheer volume of work (all combat chars can fight, but all crafters craft differently, then there's entertainers and medics and scouts and...).
No, I'm not making excuses for SOE here, just thinking about why things might be the way they currently are.
I also agree that giving players a choice of how to approach a theme park would be appreciated. All content is good, after all (though not all content is great).
I have three points to make though -
1 - Group. This can be a social game, and grouping with others would enable crafters to get into these places. Even using your skills (by making cash to hire others to do it for you) is possible, in a round-about way. I know this isn't what you want, but it's a way of doing it.
2 - Imagine all the work! Sure, maybe Artisans want a crafting route - why can't Medics get a route. How about Dancers? Musicians? Ok, how is an Image Designer going to get on Jabba's good side? Politicians? Bio-Engineers, they'd be tricky, right? Dont want to 'discriminate' against them. Or Rangers, maybe Jabba wants to camp out?
Ok, maybe a bit too far there, but as you can see there are so many play styles that creating theme park access methods for all of them would be a massive undertaking. Combat, however, can be undertaken by about half of the game professions, and a great many people pick up combat as an addition to their non-com profession. The biggest bang for the content implementation buck.
3 - Ok, three's a bigger one, I admit.
Until crafting and/or non-combat 'missions' are made more interesting and exciting, then doing any of these theme parks will be barely more engaging than watching paint dry. Sure, combatants complain that all they do is bike to point A, kill mob B, return and repeat, but combat has the potential to be exciting.
If the way of getting into Jabba's was to create increasingly stronger drinks for Jabba's Gammoreans, (with the current crafting mission styles) then what's to stop someone just making all 8 drinks (or whatever) there on the spot and completeing it in two minutes? Dull, dull, dull. Not to mention, the combat types will complain that the crafting entry is much easier than their entry. (Chances are, no matter what entry route you made, would be accused of being 'easy'.)
On the other hand, I really do wish that there was more scripted crafting content in the game. Look at my sig - I've made suggestions for Story Arcs that had crafting-only entry to it. It would involve new kinds of quests (and there aren't that many ideas for exciting crafting quests) and new coding, and lots and lots of time and testing.
So, I suppose to end (cause I've typed more than enough) I'll say -
Yes, I want scripted, in-game, crafting quests.
...But I can see why there aren't any YET.
Beery
Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:18 am
#26
"To Beery -
Please calm down. Your posts, from your second one in this thread onwards, are very defensive. I can see you're annoyed, and thought that people were attacking you and/or your ideas, but getting angry with posters won't help much."
Please calm down. Your posts, from your second one in this thread onwards, are very defensive. I can see you're annoyed, and thought that people were attacking you and/or your ideas, but getting angry with posters won't help much."
What makes you think I'm angry or defensive? I react poorly to ad hominem attacks because such things aren't true argument. They are abuse. Anything else I post is discussion - arguing back and forth to define one's position andreach a goal. If you think discussion is defensive or angry, then that's hardly my problem. Believe me when I assure you that I am calm, and I've been calm all the way through this discussion. Do you see any abuse or name-calling that would indicate a lack of calmness on my part? I doubt it. The fact that I poke fun at some things I find amusing should not make you think I'm angry. That's just my sense of humour.
As for grouping, why should I? This is not merely a social game, and players should be able to play solo.
As for all the work involved, oh dear! Whatever shall we do? I mean, ask the developers to work for their paycheck? Whatever was I thinking.
I'm sorry, but saying it's all too much work is tantamount to saying why should the developers bother at all. Sure it's work - that's why the developers get paid. It's certainly no reason not to do it. If it was, then why should the developers make any new content at all? They could just sit back collecting our money and using your excuse that any extra content is too much work.
Message Edited by Beery on 01-31-2005 10:23 AM