Artisan Archive

Surveying is a dead tree in the artisan profession as far as I am concerned. It is necessary to find resources, but harvesters take care of the sampling. I have found that the sampling has been lacking ever since they killed the interface with those pop-ups.

I used to gather minerals, semi-afk while I watched a movie and crafted items. Now, the one tree that was interesting for me is a grind for my new artisan. Maybe it is because I like the faster approach of harvesting, maybe I feel that the samples seem smaller.

Obviously, we need to keep this tree because there are a lot of surveyors out there that do a bang-up job of finding hot mineral patches for advanced crafters, but **edit** is sampling boring...at least with the crafting grind, you can make items people want and find a niche in the market...but sampling? Who's going to buy the 54 units of steel I spent an hour sampling?

1) Likes:

I like the challenge.


2) Dislikes:

I dislike the tedious nature.


3) Improvements:

Mini-game type situation might be good, as was suggested.



Simple answers to simple questions... I love it!

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BiancaMinola wrote:

Let me answer my own questions. I'm actually a little suprised the responce is so positive.

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Surveying is okay as it is IMO, I never had that "waypoint not moving" everyone keeps telling about and I survey about fulltime. I mean, most of my time ingame is either running around surveying for good spots and selling whatever I mine in town by shouting. The surveying game is great.

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BiancaMinola wrote:

1. I like the fact that you can go out and get resources as needed, without the hassle of setting up a harvester,when you only need a few of a resource.

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Agree, but I regard surveying not as "harvesting", that's what those machines are for. Sampling (the other part of Surveying) is simply that: getting a small sample to see the quality of the resources. Also the fact that sampling allows you to tap that 90+% vein that always seem to spawn INSIDE towns is a nice perk.

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BiancaMinola wrote:

2. I do not like the 'gameplay' involved with sampling. It is boring andrequires little to no interactivity. When I am sampling - 9 times out of 10 I am watching TV, reading the message boards, reading a book, playing the guitar - anything but playing the game. Sampling always turns SWG into a background event for me, as opposed to being a game that I enjoy playing. Why does it get macroed? Because it is boring and repetitive - and it's rewarding.

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That's where we differ opinion. Sampling is only a small part of Surveying. As a matter of fact: the smallest part. Surveying is finding the best spots to place your machines, NOT "being a machine". You realy aren't doing yourself a favour if you use surveying to convert yourself in a droid.

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BiancaMinola wrote:

3. I do not want to see a rate nerf, I want to see an interactivity increase. The pop up boxes aren't doing it for me, they are more irritatating than interactive. Perhaps turning sampling into more of a mini-game that requires a little bit of thought. Maybe something along the lines of 'minesweeper'. I just do not at all like it the way it is.

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This is more your perception and use of something in a manner it's not supposed to be used. Sample is that: getting a sample, not, as you use it to get a big quantity of resources. Altho it can be used that way, it doesn't mean it should be used that way: Just because you can use a brick to hammer a nail intowood, doesn't mean you should use it to do so, or that bricks are preferable to hammers, or even that bricks should get some type of attachement so they can be held better when hammering nails into wood.

IMO the surveying tree is perfect as is.

Goff McMerrii
Miner

I think surveying and sampling is one part of the game that (aside from the datapad bug) works as it should. Please don't mess around with this.

Now what I wouldn't mind seeing though, is bringing back the Miner/Farmer classes. Give them access to special equipment and skills that give them an ability to pull in more resources. I'd be ok with allowing only miners/farmers to use heavy harvesters (but leave mediums and personals alone please). We're starting to see many players who do nothing but gather and sell resources - I think a lot of people would find these classes rewarding.

I just don't see how you are going to be able to make sampling "interesting". It is an inherently boring and repetive task. Any attempts to make it more "interactive" are just going to make it even more tedious and irritating. The only reason anyone hand samples is becuase they need a quantity of a given resource immediately or because they need to grind through surveying i-iv.

I think there is a big disconnect here.

Half of us think that sampling is to get a single sample of a resource for harvester placement purposes, half of us think that is is for mining up quantities of a resource as needed.

I am in the former camp. But my argument at that point is why do we have an entire skill tree instead of a single skill at this point, the entire tree for 2 range increases of a skill? The tree should be broadened, and perhaps some of the mining ideas can be incorporated into the survey branch - because frankly speaking, I do notforsee mining/farming professions coming onto the radar ANYTIME soon.

If you think it's for mining, and the process gets macroed because it's time consuming and boring - then we either need to remove the time or the boredom from the equasion. Why can't you have a once an hour skill that provides whatever the rate you would get from surveying - rather than sitting in one spot for an hour? Or the mini-game idea if it is going to make you sit there an hour.

The devs want the game to be fun - not just bearable.

Bianca Minola

I think we need 3 categories then:

1. sampling is used to find out the qualities of a resource

2. sampling is used to gather enough materials to create a personal extractor or a "quick" stimpack http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20030714

3. sampling is used to supplement a miner's harvesters, and hence suplement their income


#2 is a very large gray area, easily bleeding into #3 unless well controlled



I can think of a solution, but it wouldn't be perfect. I think trippling the sample size but quadrupling (or more) the delay inbetween samples would accomplish #2 but it would inhibit #3 (good) and inhibit #1 (bad).

So Vaedross, you are arguing that #3 shouldn't be allowed?

I'd be real nervous about anything that makes #1 take longer than it already does.

Bianca Minola

#3 is a slippery slope. I think that sampling as a source of income (#3) is tolerable only as a means to permit sampling to bootstrap your career or construct emergency items (#2).

It probably is possible to make more cash just by macro sampling than by legittimately mining with 2 heavy harvesters. You get less volume by sampling, but your proffit is higher and takes no investment.

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Vaedross wrote:
#3 is a slippery slope. I think that sampling as a source of income (#3) is tolerable only as a means to permit sampling to bootstrap your career or construct emergency items (#2).

It probably is possible to make more cash just by macro sampling than by legittimately mining with 2 heavy harvesters. You get less volume by sampling, but your proffit is higher and takes no investment.

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I still think hand sampling is a poor way to make money. It ties you to one spot, is boring and aside from bootstrapping or leveling survey IV I do not see the attraction. You could set up harvesters and engage in some other profitable activity that is a lot more fun to boot.

Should survey IV be a little more interesting in terms of what skills/abilities are granted? Sure, but I would not hold my breath that it will be better/faster sampling. In fact fiven the dev disposition on the issue I expect hand sampling to get worse if people still insist on using the process to replace an extractor.

What I like:

• We can sample nearly anywhere


• Sampling/Surveying is simple


• For the beginner, Sampling is an easy, cost effective way to get started making cash and items.

What I dislike:

• Sampling for extended periods of time is boring


• The only cost for sampling is time and a survey tool


• Not being able to sample the day a new resource shifts in (known problem)


• At the timewe receive an 'event,' we loseHAM w/o receiving any resources.

I'm not going to get into ideas for a mining profession. I would like to see it and there are plenty of good ideas out there to make it viable. I would like to see the Surveying tree have more meaning though.

Ideally, I would love to see a "sampling module" that is added to the survey tool. This module will get used up whenever we take a sampleafter 100? 500? uses. I suppose we can just add charges to the survey tool itself, but I didn't want to have the tool wear out when we just survey and not sample.

As a player climbs up the survey tree, she/he can make better survey tools/modules that have different effects on sampling resources.

I would like to see more events, but I am at a loss right now for what else we could add. How about a fairly rareevent that will give us a waypoint to a distant spot and allow us to dig up a gem or some other item? This itemcan be used as an enhancement (like Kryat tissues) for a weapon, armor,meds,etc.

Add Certs for Med Harvesters at Surveying 2 and Heavy Harvesters at Surveying 4. No Cert is required for a Personal Harvester. (This is more to add value to the Survey Tree, rather than make it more interesting.)

Being a crafter in SWG and also in UO for many years, I can tell you that Surveying (mining) is going to stay a 'boring' profession no matter what we add. I think adding charges to a tool for sampling will address the afk macroing and create a new market. If we can't have a full blown mining profession, we should at least allow the current survey tree become a mini profession.

Bubo Ubotin, Lowca
Master Weaponsmith
Master Artisan

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Dalnin wrote:
I suppose we can just add charges to the survey tool itself, but I didn't want to have the tool wear out when we just survey and not sample.

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I think that idea deserves some praise. It would be great to use a survey tool to sample, and either giving a survey tool "charges" that need something like "a droid battery" to replenish, or giving it a condition that wears out.

I favor the battery / charges approach because batteries are cheaper than tools and it is not possible to macro using a battery. You can't macro a repair tool either, but decay of 1 condition (out of 1000) for each unit sampled seems like a waste, and decaying much slower than that would let someone sample for hours without penalty.


This would absolutely demolish afk macro-sampling! (good!)

What we will probably see if this is implemented, is people macroing "use survey tool" (by putting it in a toolbar slot then calling /ui action on that slot) and then they will have to make HUGE and complex macros in order to macro-sample! This seems like the thing to do.

Echoing an earlier post I'd like to see a device (core sampler was the name used) that could be used to pull up info on a resource but would produce no usable sample. In a perfect world it would be craftable by Master Artisans and have a fixed number of uses (25 or so ?). Also a nice perk would be that as you climb the survey tree the device presents you with an estimate of the time the resource has until it goes away, the estimate would of course be more accurate at higher levels of survey.

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BiancaMinola wrote:

I believe that the general feeling of artisans is that surveying sucks.

I may be wrong, and I want to get your feelings on it.

1. What do you like about surveying?

2. What do youdislike about surveying?

3. What changes need to be made to make surveying more interesting, or why do you like it the way it is?

I'm not starting a discussion on AFK surveying here, but if you domacro survey feel free to throw in reasons why you do.

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I agree that the current system is "sub-optimal". ;-)

1. It's rather straightforward and provides the basis for the entire economy. Master Crafters can buy their resources as they can pass the costs on to customers. Novice Crafters can harvest their own resources so as to be able to pass on some savings to customers.
   
   
   
2. Too unpredictable. If I don't do a complete survey of every planet, every day, I have no way of knowing when something rotated in. And even then, I can only guess as to how long it'll be around. Also, there's no way of knowing if something rotated in/out minutes after I left a planet. (It's happened to me while hand sampling, and just after placing a harvester!)
   
   Too cumbersome if you're trying to harvest multiple resources at once. Generally, they're not going to be all in the same immediate area, and they might not even be on the same planet. (Talusian Water Vapor & Dantooine Berries for Advanced Liquid Suspensions leaps to mind as it's my roommates biggest gripe.) You have to check either your survey tools or your harvesters constantly to know when something has rotated out. Failure to be so married to the game results in wasted time, money, energy, and can potentialy bug your hopper.
   
   
   
3. Basically, three things.
   
   
   
   
   
   1. Better survey tools (able to detect max % on planet, able to give concentrations of all resources in a single spot like the harvester panel, survey trucks, etc.)
   
   
   2. Better information (when something rotated in, when it will rotate out)
   
   
   3. Better harvesters (send message when stopped & why, auto-switch to highest concentration after shift, able to interface with droid/house terminals for remote maintenance, etc.)
   
   
   
   
4. That's easy. It's "free" (only takes time, and time I wouldn't be playing anyway) and effective (my roommate calculates that he's as effective as TWO heavy harvesters, so even if he only macros for 11 hours while he's at work, he's basically an extra heavy harvester.)
   
   To "fix" it, there should be lower caps on what can be harvested. Yes, it'll be more painful for new Artisans, but it'd make the Survey branch more meaningful to climb. (Currently, it's a day of macro-mining.) Key survey missions off survey skill, and perhaps add additional lots for survey skill and it would become truely meaningful.

Just my 2 cents.