Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the day
I would simply like to see a way for artisans to create their own designs (whether it's a full on design tool or simply combining existing found objects) so that the community becomes responsible for the diversity that SHOULD be Star Wars.
Also, it'd be neat to see a true 'Artist' line emerge (I'd like to make sculptures, paintings, etc.)
-n
Get rid of the Artisan Profession
There really is no need for a generic Artisan Profession other than being a stepping stone to other professions. Creating more starting professions based on the current elite crafting professions will allow for a better horizontal economyinstead of our narrow vertical one we are living in. Other changes need to be made in association with this solution but can be determined at a later date.
Other changes would include: Schematic Revocation, No Usage XP, More things to craft (with more professions), Greater Decay, Resource Utility for all Items, More Customization of Items
I think that a thoughtful effort should be made to make the professions inter-dependent on each other, and more specifically, make items (weapons, tools, armor, food, etc.) _necessary_ for certain other professions to have. I am at Engineering level II, working on III, so I have a ways to go, but I try to sell everything I make. The way I do this is by trial and error: I make something, try to sell it, see if it sells, if so, I increase the price the next time, see if it sells again, etc. If something doesn't sell (usually at a low price even), I realize that there is no demand for that and don't make it anymore.
I first crafted weapons (CDEF's naturally), put them up on the bazaar, and *surprise*, not one sold. Newbie marksmen/scouts/etc. should not be able to buy high powered weapons, and instead I think should have to, at first, use weak CDEF weapons. This provides demand for newbie artisans and gives incentive to make these weapons. So high level fighters can use high level weapons, and low level players low level ones. This stratifies the economy to some degree, though to keep master artisans from taking over the low level economy you would have to make good incentives for them to make high level weapons primarily.
Now I have an idea of what sells and what does not in my corner of the universe, and it is a small subset of the total number of objects I can make. Will anyone by a 6-sided chance cube from me? I doubt it, so I will not make one. My goal is to gain experience by crafting, experience from people using my crafts, and money from selling crafts.
I know I'm rambling, but what I am getting to is that each item the game designers come up with must be thought through and made necessary, otherwise no one will need it, so no one will buy it, so no one will make it, and it just becomes kruft.
I'm enjoying the game immensely so far, and it has only been 5 days since I bought it!
Cyprian Carthage (Coronet City, Corellia, Naritus)
#1 Change harvester exp from structure to GC.
This will allow the grinders to get through a class that they do not want to play, and to the class they do, without flooding the market with junk.
Bianca Minola
Dexnil wrote:
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.
#2 is fixed. Turn off your filter and double click the travel pack. You can use the resources right there.
Kressilac
Couple of comments on ideas that have been posted to date:
1) I'm not in favor of unique schematics coming into thegame via NPC drops. The more I think about it the more I believe it's a feature that takes away from crafting. Unique schematics should be a by product of good crafting and experimentation. Right now, they only come from "grinding" up the tree. They don't come from focusing on quality. I'm not sure how to program it into the game, but maybe accumulated experimentationusage should be rewarded with a uniqueschematic, or unique crafting tool. Right now many of the crafting nerfs discourage experimentation and encourage grinding.
2) I know a lot of people get frustrated with the grind. I for when get tired of it as well. But, having played many MMORG's I don't want to see exp come any faster. The dev's have to take care in getting everyone to master "whatever" too quickly. The results would be a flood of high endproducts and a collapse of the economy. I am only one little branch up the weaponsmith tree and not a master smith trying to protect my market share.
3) As for interdependence of professions, this has a good and bad side. I am also cross trained as a novice armorsmith. I basically can't do anything in armorsmithing because of the dependence on "identical synthetic cloth from a factory crate". I simply can't get my hands on it on my server. I'm also not up for training myself as a master Tailor, then doing the factory thing. Right now, as a casual player, it's a lot of my spare time to maintain three harvestors, let alone a factory. Thank goodness I cross trained in weaponsmithing or I would have given up. There is too much interdependency at an early stage in armorsmithing.
Interdependance is good for the economy. More interdependance is needed not less. If you can't find synth cloth on your planet see if you can find someone who is going off planet to look for it there. If you are on Starsider send me an email and I'll hook you up. I think the challenge is to find ways to find the people you need to make the parts you need. It isn't realistic that you can make all the parts for everything you make and it leaves other professions out in the cold if you could. Learn to make business deals to further your career and the careers of others and along the way make some new friends.
Permethrin wrote:
Couple of comments on ideas that have been posted to date:
1) I'm not in favor of unique schematics coming into thegame via NPC drops. The more I think about it the more I believe it's a feature that takes away from crafting.
The idea here was mainly to promot the economy and to bring non crafters and crafters together more. By placeing schematics in the game via missions,quests or mob you are giveing crafters another outlet to use their talents. People who get theses schematics must come to a crafter to have them assembled.
I do like your idea also though of special schematics being a reward for hard work with crafting and experimentation. It would encoruage crafters to also slow down and experinment some. Ive been going at my own pace and ive been really enjoying it!
Another idea I think is intersting is a consigment system similar to the one in DAoC that allowed an NPC to hand out assisgments for crafted items to be made and delivered. Planetwide and off planet consignments would add another things for crafters to while furthing their craft.
I agree with that... Making players more dependable on consumable or perishable items is a good way ofdoing that. Maybe some 'energy cells'for weapons or more dependency on food?
I think bazaars on the same planet should be merged in a way. Items are plenty and cheaper in big cities, butI can sell them for better prices in smaller cities. If I could market my items to a bigger city from the small city I'm living, I'd get more order volume. And crafters in big cities could sell forbetter prices to buyers in smaller cities. Pretty much being able to retrieve items from other cities will make the way markets work much better. Maybe the seller or buyer can payfor transportation of those items, like a small % of the item price.
Ackelo Kelomack
I'm not against interdependence per se, I just think it was implemented poorly on the armorsmith tree. You get to novice armorsmith, and it's just soooooo difficult to get off the ground. The need to have factory crated synthetic cloth shouldn't have been a part of most of the entry level, novice armorsmitharmor at the "get-go". Add to that the low impact of low level armors andthe bugs in the personal shield generators. Wow, that's a tough road! Too tough a road in fact for the person who struggled through some of the challenges of the master artisan tree.
I'm a pretty dedicated gamer andI nearly gave up when I finally got novice armorsmith. It was very disappointing. I cross trained to weaponsmithing and haven't done much of anything in the armorsmithing tree until I can figure out how to get crated synthetic cloth.
With respect to NPC drops of unique schematics, the recent crafting nerfs (decrease powerup exp, increase frequency of crit failures, decrease incidence of higher successes, problems with what a "success" means) are all things that have forced me into more grinding. Now that I have made it to novice weaponsmith and making Firearms1 weapons, "on average" experimentation is a break even proposition. If I get a D-18 with max damage 60 or over, I don't experiment on it. Chances are, I will take the stats backward. Those types of game nerfs aren't encouraging experimentation, they are discouraging it. Taking unique schematics and letting them drop on NPC's is just one more thing to discourage that as well. Many artisan's are cross trained in marksman and/or scout. Rather than take the time to experiment, they will be searching the countyside for that uniqe schematic. The time they have to craft will become more precious and will therefore include more grinding. In their rush to stabilize the economy and slow the number of master "whatevers" the developers don't realize the impact of these game tweeks. Add to this the need to run missions, find power and assess resource rotations.... Wow. The casual gamer in the crafting line will become a thing of the past. My dailyresource management has gone up dramatically from artisan to novice smith!
I DEFINITELYlike the idea of consigment missions. Have an NPC mission where you have to goand make X # of pistols. When you return you get a reward. Make the reward equal to the approximate cost plus a little profit. I think this would really help the artisan tree. I definitely feel for those that got started a little late in the game and are artisans.I've been making and selling CDEF's but they sales are getting fewer and fewer, even when Iam making them with maxed out stats. The game has fed ex missions, kill mission, survey mission, why not crafting missions. Great idea Jasarina.
How is this for a fix they could try... Has anyone had anything besides weapons/armor wear out on them? I feel bad for all the tailors out there. There is ZERO decay on anything they produce. If they would increase the decay rate (or add it since I don't see it working now at all), it would help out in a number of areas:
It all comes down to how long an item lasts. I used the same CDEF rifle for almost a month before spotting a crafted item that was better. Had to repair it once and I think it was my overshot use to blame there, but it was still the same rifle. Here is what I see happening now. Once there are enough master weaponsmiths out there I buy the best rifle I can find. I won't have to replace it for 2-3 months of constant gameplay? So no more market for weapons.
The only people that seem to buy clothes are the dancers, and they are broke. (A whole different topic here) Clothing doesn't wear out and just gets resold or maybe even destroyed when the person doesn't like it anymore.
I figure the other elite trees are similar, but haven't really experimented there yet. As long as you have new players coming in you will have a market for items, but it is going to dry up. Personally I love crafting, but just can't see sticking with it.