Artisan Archive

First and foremost, I'm not an artisan. Just to let you know.

What I feel people are missing here is that the nerf was intended to add some realism to the economy and make all-in-one crafters much more difficult.

What we have now is a new subprofession in the artisan field: the miner. The guy who runs harvesters and samples whenever he's on. Does nothing else. With his resources, he sells it to artisans, who make stuff and sell it.That money they make goes back into more resources and personal expenses.

As was previously said, no more free gear.

So moving up artisan has become very slow now. Which sucks. I admit it. I was thinking of dabbling in it, but I might not now. But as far as involving more specialization in the economy, I'm all for it. Think about this.

I actually agree with the fact that this change is ultimately good for the game... What I think is really irritating people is that this "change" wasn't implemented prior to the game being released. Let's face it - the l33t players that powered gamed to their levels now have been handsomely rewarded.

I'll most likely give up on surveying because I really don't want to run around watching my harvesting machines. That upsets me because I was almost at the "Surveyor" level. My goal was to casually make things like speeder bikes etc. I'm really not looking forward to the "market adjustment" of materials and their now expensive costs, but am confident that it will balance out over time through supply and demand.

Anyways, I really think MINING should have been in the game to begin with as an offshoot to Surveying and Merchant. That would've made everyone happy and not left with such a bitter taste in their mouths.

Several hours per night (meaning 2-3) actually is casual as the devs have defined it, and in my definition as well. Hardcore are the people that log in for six hours a night (and yes, you can do that and still hold a job/not be in school... although family makes it tougher ;-P). Really hardcore are the people who are on every waking hour of the day. Note that this is all relative, of course two to three hours sounds like a lot outside of the MMORPG world, but it's casual if you look at any of the other games on the market.

If you want to be a good artisan, master an elite profession, and not be bored to tears every time you log on, two or three hours in a play session is pretty much required (notice: for artisan, not for other professions). You can miss days as I often do, but with upkeep, it's tough to go for more than two when you're starting off (unless you don't use harvesters, but then your one hour play session is completely borked anyway).

When you think about it, I get home from work around the average time, 5:30. That leaves about seven or eight hours until I go to sleep for the night, which means roughly 1/4 of my weekday night is spent on SWG, as opposed to TV or some other leisure activity. I realize not everyone is fortunate to have that amount of leisure time, but unfortunately, to have a working artisan profession without hard limits, you can't have a "very" casual player able to skill up in it with rapid success. Otherwise, everyone would be a master artisan and items would have no meaning.

I agree with this patch being a good thing, save for the fact it wasn't in the original release. Maintenance and power were originally implemented as costs, and players found a way around them.

People were not meant to be self sufficient in resource gathering, and playing a miner/resource harvestor is a P&L sub-game on its own for those economist types out there who want more satisfaction from SWG than hack and slash.

For one, I was happy to arrive at my three harvesters and see my unitsbeing the only ones mining away in the forest of harvesters everyone had plopped down on a high-yield steel vein. Everyone else's were stopped dead cold.

Yeah, forget even doing anything in the artisan field if you are the casual gamer that many people are. Why did they nerf sampling when it would have been better to boost harvesting? Not to mention all of this but resources won't quit shifting and out of the few samples you get per minute, half of them are fails. How are you supposed to build and use harvesters if you cant sample the resources to build them?

oh come on guys quit your belly aching. you know that it was way too easy to advance in surveying and get ore, i think the time/action increase is actually a good thing

i do however agree on the harvester thing.. only funtion at 100%??! **edit** is that, i really hope SOE decides to change that, my 2ndary characters shootin for droid engenier and my mains a paladin t ype character (need minerals and chemicals for my medical packs) this makes harvesters far too much of a chore to use well.

I love this new patch. Sure the sampling thing kind of blows but the harvester change makes up for it so much better. Letting your harvesters burn should never have been an actual option. 100% for them shutting off is a bit harsh, a little bit of leniency like having them shut down at 80% would of probably been better but I'm just happy. I've always paid maintenance and power in my harvesters so seeing the rows and rows of burning harvesters fill me with a sense ofhappiness now.

How aboutinstead of sitting here on the msg board all day complaining about this, why dont you just go and play the game?

Here's my average day in SWG, Starsider, Naboo, Theed.

1. Log in (when I can ) - check my email - see that I've made a few sales (usually 2-3) - anywhere from 500 - 2250 cr in profit from the Bazaar

2. Run to my Wind Generator. Get my power, add ~750-1000cr maint.

3. Run to my mineral harvester. Get my ~1.5 - 2k of copper/steel, add half the power from the generator, add ~750-1000cr maint.

4. Run to my chemical extractor. Get my 1-1.5k of fibreplast/polymer, add the rest of the power, add ~750-1000cr maint.

5. Run back to town. Craft some nice clothes (or jewellery now), put them on the Bazaar.

6. Optional Step Powercraft and destroy 3/4s of my fibreplast. Note: I've only done this twice. Once, after not being able to log into SS for a day, and once when I accidentally got rid of my novice tailor skill when I meant to drop a different one.

7. Head to the cantina and play some music. I'm almost up to Novice Musician.

8. Sell clothes to people, or run some deliveries if business is slow. ~3k in creds. (Note: with my Novice Tailor flag on, I regularly get tells from people looking to buy stuff that I have to turn away 'cos I don't have the ability to make what they want. This tells me that there's definitely demand going unmet.)

9. Muck around. Run destroy missions. Go hunting (need those hides). I'm almost up to my third Unarmed Brawler box.

10. Go to bed. (Eventually)

So: what do we see here?

1. I'm making enough money to continue advancing (even though I had to pay for Novice Tailor twice. ARGH.)

2. I'm not doing anything remarkable. No exploits, no massive bugs (though these new harvesting conditions may slow me down a bit. We'll see...)

3. I'm making good progress playing maybe 5 hours a night (more on weekends)

4. I play too much

Regardless, if you cut out a few hours of messing around at the cantina and going on various adventures for no good reason, I could likely complete all of this maintenence in ~2 hours. The major boon to my day is the nigh daily influx of cash from the Bazaar from my "WuWear'. Like harvesters, the Bazaar (and maybe a vendor later) are very important to me because they make money for me while I'm offline. I'm not doing anything special with my clothes. I make the same stuff everyone else can. Sell them at a reasonable price, don't start calling them "Uber Girdles of Jedi Strength" when they're just belts, and I do fine.

Amazing isn't it? Actually crafting stuff and selling it to people so you have an influx of cash helps you advance! What a supreme leap in logic!

Yesterday, I logged in and did the same thing. Paid a little extra in upkeep to repair, so I ran a couple extra missions. Didn't like it, but, to be honest, I charge people too little on clothes, so I do a little extra. A cool 3000 cr (two deliveries there and back) takes me less than half an hour, often with a break to shop my wares around in the destination city.

Anyone who is complaining that they can't just craft and no longer ignore money is missing the entire point of a dynamic economy. Minerals are basically free if you sample for them. All you put in is time. You get XP and credits (if you sell your wares) out of them. That's gain from just time. With harvesters, you save time sampling, but at a premium; you have to pay to maintain them. It's not unreasonable.

The only problem I see here is that the maint. fees may be too great, but there's a post devoted to this. The Devs have asked us for our input on these fees, so we can't complain they're not taking us into account.

Oh and "ubernerfed"? Do you people ever think about how you actually sound when you type crap like that? Shall I get ultinerfed next? Stupid l33tsp34k.

The thing that bothers me most about this is the fact that the hard core players (6+hours every day) and mass-coordinated guilds got to the elite in the first three days and now rest on their laurals and rake in the cash, while those of us that can't play every day and even then only a couple hours are completely screwed.

This is the same crap SOE pulled in EQ. Add an expansion (or release the game; power gamers race to highest level so they get some sort of bragging rights;then destroy the levelling curve for everyone left behind.

This is just another example of SOE tuning the game to keep the elite interested, and the casual players ground into the dirt.

I like the patch too. With harvesters, this game is very casual friendly.

This game is only unfriendly to casual grinders.

Bianca Minola

Fact 1. Theres WAY to many Artisans.
Fact 2. People just getting in to the artisan spec dont know any different so to them this is fine.
Fact 3. The economy is being ruined by people getting WAY to far ahead WAY to soon

The patch was a good thing for the future and a bad thing for people that started getting high up in artisan early. Im sure they (SOE) wont mind if a large group of the artisans drop the skills and do something else. Theres just to many out there.

Deal with it... the rest of us are. I been artisan since day one and I'm not crying about it, but i still get owned by PA crafters and dont sell much of my stuff. Im still staying with artisan for the fun of it. Im not competeing with other people really, and as far as making money, my artisan has given up totally on making money off his wares and began to depend more on missions. Adapt or quip the profession, whining here wont do anything.

Funny thing is Blanca is right. This is good for casual players, bad for casual grinders, and doesn't matter for more hardcore people. I don't see what peoplea re bitching about, just find a partner and you can do it.

I started this character this past Weds. I chatted around with people as I worked. Made a good friend with another artisan.. We worked together.. I hit Architect Thurdsay and I'm now most-likely the lead Architect on Valcyn(formed an alliance with a wealthy armoursmith). I've done at most 5 hours of grinding on this character. I've logged a lot of hours, sure, but that's a lot of wadnering around exploring(long time starwars geek), and sampling while afk. End result? Installations 1, I'll be Installations 2 sometime tonight. Oh and I hit that Master Artisan thing.

Harvesters are easy to make and easy to pay for. Spend half an hour running delivery missions, voila. You've paid for a days worth of maintenance on a couple of harvesters. It's all about making wise use of time when you want to progress.

I can't stress this enough people. FIND A PARTNER. Work out a deal where you grind one person to Novice (x) and then do the other. It's so much faster.

And for those of you who are upset about having to pay backmaintenance.. "Hmm yeah I'll just toss 1 unit of power in, pay no maintenance, and reap the benefits. Meanwhile I'll afk macro for hundreds upon hundreds of resources which is faster then any harvester." No sympathy from me. Get out there and play the game instead of just mindlessly grinding.