Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the day
I'm fine with the amount of XP needed to level, it keeps everyone from making weaponsmith. I just hit my 21k last night, and I felt like I actually accomplished something.
One big change I would like to see would have to be matching up what the artisan class can make with what the other classes can use. As a novice weaponsmith (an elite profession) I am crafting stuff that is sought out by novice marksmen, which seems a bit odd to me. Either give the weaponsmith better weapons at novice, or raise up the requirements in the combat classes.
Also, item customizing would be nice. Change of color, change the look of parts, optional parts changing the look of the weapon. It would give some nice options to what we're making, and maybe even set us apart from the hundreds of other artisans struggling against each other.
One little change, but a fairly important one:
Let us see what our end result will be when we craft a powerup. Right now, it's a crap shoot, pretty much ingredient independent. Randomness in something like that is a little far fetched.
At this point I think my number one change would be shift a bit more of the experience to Usage XP. During beta a much higher amount of XP came from use, which helps reduce grinding. But the problem was that there wasn't anything an artisan could make that enough people wanted to buy to result in a good amount of XP. So instead they changed it so most of the XP is from crafting, and the UXP is a small bonus. I'd make it a slightly larger bonus to really encourage people to try and sell their stuff.
But for this to work, there has to be some items that people will want to buy, and will give a much hogher amount of XP (for more resources) but won't result in having 1000 of them on the bazaar at any one time where people are just giving the stuff away for the UXP, thereby ruining the market.
Hmm.. that is a sticky problem. This brings it back to what I see as the main problem with this player run economy: Some players craft for money and some craft for XP. The ones crafting for XP generally undercut the prices of the ones crafting for money, which distorts the market. In real life capitalism, money is always the primary reason for selling stuff. In SWG, a lot of people would rather have the XP.
RedOneRLTK wrote:
Another thing comes to mind, it would be nice if under the status display it told how long the power would last, (like it does with the maint. fee).
FYI - It does show you. But the display method is weird. The number after the amount of power is in hours, such as (:36) means 36 hours of power are left.
The weirdness is that once you hit 60, the numbers change to this format: (1:02) where the 1 represents 60 hours, and the 2 represents 2 more hours!
Great thread guys. I have two suggestions:
1) Allow us to retrieve unused power and/or maintenence funds when we redeed a harvester.
2) I would like to make better use of travel packs for sorting my items, including my resources. I would like to be ableput all of my resources into one travel packto clean up my inventory. However, when I craft, resources that are in travel packs do not appear in my list of available ingredients. When listing available resources they should look through all of the containers in our inventory for resources in addition to what is in the top-level of our inventory.
Dexnil wrote:
When listing available resources they should look through all of the containers in our inventory for resources in addition to what is in the top-level of our inventory.
This is a great idea, but there's one problem for me at least. When I'm crafting, and I have a bunch of little stacks of stuff I'm not planning on using, I actually stick them in a "junk" bag to keep the crafting window from getting cluttered. If there were a way to designate a pack as "to be searched" that would be awesome. I actually have 3 backpacks for organizing. Maybe if it searched the one you're wearing, but not the ones you aren't, or vice versa. Could get confusing I suppose. Unfortunately the crafting window seems to just be an actual inventory window with a filter, so if you drag something from a bag into the crafting input window, it moves it to your inventory.
Jasarina wrote:
Good Morning,
I was thinking last night if I could change any 1 thing about Artisan what would it be. SO I thought I'd put it up for discussion and see what it would be for everyone else.
If you could change 1 and only 1 thing having to do with Artisan what would you change and why? Please try and be brief as it makes it easier for everyone to read and respond to.
Mine would be:
Adding more items to craft that are a must have by players. I want there to be a real needed market for Artisans and not just power ups that are optional items that combat classes can use but can live without.
I think the most important need for artisans is to be able to enjoy the process of crafting and selling items to player.. not just to treat artisan as a grinding speed bump on the way to more advanced disciplines. The tool that should be most useful to an artisan to aid in this process in the Bazaar.
I think there ARE good items artisans can sell.. they just need a way to make them available more reliably to potential customers. I disagree strongly that power-ups are all we have. I have sold tools, clothes, and food. I have never sold a power up. I think power ups are a bit of a red herring.
There was a comprehensive bazaar improvement thread, lots of good ideas were floated:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=4135
I think improving the bazaar is step 1 to improving artisans. I have managed to sell many of the items we can make, but I have has been a difficult process. Improving the bazaar would allow new artisans to enter the market more easily, and for all artisans to enjoy the process of selling their wares more enjoyable.
Once we create a good environment for the artisan, we can go back and visit the product list.
Regards,
Artuk
I agree with Jasarina's orignal suggestion. There should be exclusive items available only to Artisans that anyone/everyone can use. These should not be watered-down versions of things in other Elite Professions, nor should they be components for something an Elite Profession can craft (like the Control Units, and the rest of component items in the Master Artisan group).
I think a great idea for Artisan-craftable items would be Power-Up-type items that increase SKILLS and can be placed into clothing with sockets, that would last for a limited time. (In other words, the same things that are dropped by mobs right now...except Artisan-made, and short-lived).
I think this would give a BIGGER market potential to Tailors (who don't really make much money at the moment), plus give Artisans a huge money-making potential.
Even if the items were say +1 to Melee Toughness, or +1 to Weapon Experimentation, a player could go out and buy clothes with tons of sockets, put these Power Ups into those sockets, and do whatever it is they wanted to do.
I could very easily see myself having a set of socket clothing that I use for Artisan Skill-Ups...I buy 10 +1 Weapon Experimentation items, pop them on, craft myself a nice weapon, run it through my Factory, sell a few, or give some to my friends, etc. etc.
The possibilities for something like this would be literally endless. I would force these skill-up items to require certain rare resources, though, per skill trying to raise. So a Weapon Experimentation +1 power up would use Doonium Iron, for example, while a Melee Toughness +1 power up would require Codoan Copper. (This would also give a market to resource-gatherers who consider certain resources "junk" because there's no use for them)
Anyway...lots of ideas...I think they're viable and nice...not too overpowering...whew...I need a pizza.
Robo, there is no difference between Type 1 Solid Petrochem and Type 4. The difference lies in the stats of the individual resources (for example Frantastical Iron which is a type of Doonium Iron, may have 500 Overall Quality, while Jumanji Iron, a type of Ditanium Iron, may have 900 Qverall Quality...yet, Skeezits Iron, another type of Ditanium Iron, may have 200 Overall Quality).
The different types of resources are there to cause headaches for Weaponsmiths who need Doonium Iron for one weapon, Ditanium Steel for another, Link-Steel Aluminum for yet another one, etc. etc. etc.
My one thing is similar to yours, Jasarina:
Better market for lower end items. As it is, I have a difficult time selling any of my items, even though many of them are at the best of their type because of the market that was flooded with much better items from the elite classes who put them at rediculously low prices because of the sheer volume of items they are making.
One of the most useful first things a starting Artisan can make is survey tools and crafting tools yet neither of these decay through use.
I think there should be a usage based decay on these, something like 100 uses.
I cannot for the life of me fathom why with all this talk about decay before and during beta that so few things actually do decay.
If tools decayed it would create a market for new Artisans to live off.
Thanks for the info, I guess this is a bug then, someone forgot to put the conversion code in.
Philomorph wrote:
FYI - It does show you. But the display method is weird. The number after the amount of power is in hours, such as (:36) means 36 hours of power are left.
The weirdness is that once you hit 60, the numbers change to this format: (1:02) where the 1 represents 60 hours, and the 2 represents 2 more hours!