Artisan Archive
Thread: Test Center experience disappointing -- to say the least
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ConaryMor
Sun Mar 14, 2004 10:03 pm
#3
((Bognor Regis glances guiltily over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching, then pins a note to the board...))
I have a brawler and artisan on test center that I have been playing a lot lately -- mostly because as a Master Ranger/CH, Bognor is useless unless he can get a group. And I don't generally do pickup groups.
So my TC artisan made Novice Weaponsmith yesterday, and was going to makea sword for my brawler. After over 100 tries with top quality ingredients (including the core) the best one was still not as effective damage-wise as an artisan dagger. And the HAM costs were much worse. This means a novice weaponsmith is essentially useless and has to grind up quite a ways before they can make anything of value.
This, to me, is another example of SOE pandering to the grinders. I started following this game in late 2002 and had high hopes that it would not be just another grinding game with phat lewt and spawn camps, but that it would actually be fun to play all the way up. Something like UO was in the early days. But beginning with open beta they've been removing more and more of the things that make the game appealing to casual gamers or roleplayers (I fall into the latter category, not the former) and making it more of an achiever's game with the introduction of more phat lewt and boss mobs and "content" and now the crafting revamp.
Maybe it was inevitable -- I don't know. Maybe the achievers far outnumber folks like me and it is not worth it to SOE to keep my business. But I do know that I am currently paying for 3 accounts and I am rapidly coming to the point where that will end.
You can look at my 1000+ posts and see that I have been supportive of SOE and their grand experiment (dynamic spawn, player economy, etc) all along. So I am not normally one who complains. But the weaponsmith experience has been quite troubling for me.
Bog
BoberFett
Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:37 pm
#4
It is a bit disappointing. I ended up buying some of the resources needed to grind weaponsmith by building heavy warheads. At least it was a fairly painless grind.
You'll always hear the master saying "Of course we build a better weapon, we're masters. You shouldn't be able to compete with us." to which I won't argue. The problem is that the only way to become a master and have the ability to create something worthwhile is to build thousands of unsaleable parts. There's little to no market in this game for less than perfect items.
I'd far prefer a system where building a blaster took me an hour, but at the end I had a useful item that somebody would want to buy. Make me build 20 blasters at an hour a piece in order to get a single skill box. At least that blaster might be worth something. As it is, there's no reason to do anything but grind to master as fast as possible.
fsuchan
Mon Mar 15, 2004 7:44 am
#5
Have you played a weaponsmith before? I'm trying to remember back to my 0-0-0-0 WS days, but I remember even with the old system all my weapons being useless at that level.
sciguyCO
Mon Mar 15, 2004 12:27 pm
#6
One common feature of pretty much all the elite crafting professions is that until you get some points into the experimentation tree, your artisan items will be better due to the Artisan experimentation points you have for those. A starting armorsmith's mabari will be worse than his/her bone (disregarding the different resists), a starting chef's foods will be worse than what he/she can make from Domestic Arts, a starting weaponsmith's metal staff will be worse than a reinforced combat staff. The only professions who don't run into this are ones who don't worry about experimentation: tailors, architects (for non-harvester items), and some DE items.
A more fair comparison might be to see whatthat dagger looks like before experimenting vs. a sword where you lucked into getting a great success on assembly.
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