Artisan Archive
Thread: A Casual Gamer Tries to be an Artisan
Except for my kids' Nintendo I don't play video games at all. But I have really enjoyed my Galaxies experience so far. I have only played for a total of about 6 hours so I am still a true newbie. I think the interface is well suited to folks like myself who don't usually play games. I can see I have a lot to learn. Iam still relying on doing missions for money. I haven't advanced enough to buy a harverster or to craft anything beyond the beginner stuff. I am hoping to eventually build my own store. The cool thing is it really is like 'real' life in the sense that you don't just hop on and become a master of everything instantly. It takes time and money --and luck to be successful.
Take care,
Emdap Relhu Corellia, Tarquinas
Casual gamer here as well.I Spend time to survey for the best resources andexperiment on all items. Don't think because it's a CDEF it won't sell. Remember as you go up you get more points to experiment so even a lowly CDEF becomes a fairly powerful weapon IF you can find the right buyer that looks at the stats and IF you only sellthe best ones. My minimum quality CDEF is now at 23-50 damage and I don't even put all the points in damage. I believe in overall good quality.
Sounds like Holo's been talking about dropping maintenance rates by 25-50%.
Now my harvesters/generators aren't selling. Gonna have to sell the farm.
For the past week I've been more than a casual gamer. I've been off from work and have spent many, many hours on line with this game...and I'm extremely frustrated with it!
The game looks, feels and sounds great! I had great visions of being a weaponsmith, selling my wares and buying a house/shop to sell them in. But those visions have been dashed.
It's almost impossible to make money anymore, besides spending hour upon hour doing delivery missions. Premium Sales don't work, Mineral/Chemical/Gas Extractors cost too much, and Surveying takes too long and can be done by anyone. Sure it's easy for those that quickly "advanced" from the get go (beta-testers I assume) because the make the desireable goods. The worst part is they sell them for dirt cheap and force new Artisan's to sell their wares for even less! The economy is in shambles. The rich get richer and the poor...well they move on to other trades or quit all together. I'm about to do the later.
I feel for the "casual gamer" because they don't stand a chance as an Artisan. It isn't equitably balanced enough. Just like the government, SOE needs to step in and fix the economic model to allow casual gamers a fighting chance. Even casual gamers like to be role-players, but it isn't easy role-playing when you have to spend most of you time running delivery missions in between spending hours surveying/sampling, and crafting the same item over and over again; just to destroy it or put it up for sale in the flawed bazaar where it will never get sold because everyone else is flooding the bazaar with underpriced items, burying your items in a unsearchable sea of crud. (Whew)
There is no way possible for me to make money being an Artisan until I am able to Craft the desirable Items. I'm a delivery boy "Engineer". "Master Artisan" is a wasted title to attain. You can't possibly make a living in the game with it.
Marksman is the only path a casual gamer can take...right now.
Since the commercial viability of the crafting professions is vanishingly small, you should only play a crafter if you enjoy the process itself. I found Artisan was a good "support" profession -- go out hunting, grouping, shootin' stuff up, and make yourself powerups, traps, campsites, weapons, snacks, clothing, armor, and so on. Your GCXP will rise slowly but surely, and when you qualify for the next tier skill you will be surprised by it.
The advanced crafting professions seem to be purely for the powergamers.
Queeble of Valcyn
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JediFodder wrote:
Just like the government, SOE needs to step in and fix the economic model to allow casual gamers a fighting chance.
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What, you want welfare or something? Maybe "resource stamps" instead of food stamps?
First off, realize that no one in any game has been able to compete with a power gamer except for another power gamer. They exist, and that's just a fact of life. Sort of how some people are wealthier, smarter, stronger, faster, sexier, or all around better than you. Come to grips with your place in the food chain and make the most of it.
I am in no way a power gamer, but I don't really seem to have as much trouble as some of you are having in making money, crafting items, and generally having fun in the game.
It's really so extrodinarily simple, I was suprised it took me a day to figure it out. Yeah, I spent the first day I played broke, wandering around, and wondering how the hell people were running around with big guns and bone armor by the end of the first day of release. Then I started watching what these guys were doing. And I learned.
I went right out and spent 200 of my 250 starting credits to buy novice marksman and novice medic. I then went out and did a few missions in a small team. Volia! I then had a couple thousand credits. Okay, there's my money problem solved. I then read a bit on the forums to see how people were working their skills. Next thing I knew, I was buying Engineering I. Survey was never a problem since we all need materials to work with. As soon as it was bone armor time, I bought Novice Scout and started collecting my own bone and hides while I was doing missions.
I now regularly sell as much bone armor as I can make. I can crank out a full set of 20% or better bone armor in maybe 30 mins max, then sell it for whatever I want to sell it for, because I got all the materials to make it myself. Not only that, but the xp for crafting a full set of bone is like 3k. Gathering enough materials to make the set of bone armor takes maybe an hour. Max two hours if you dink around a lot. So right there, I've invested max 3 hours play time, garnered at least 3k xp in crafting, plus whatever for combat skills. Top that off with whatever I decide to sell the armor for combined with the 3k in cash from the missions and I'm doing quite alright.
Cash from missions, cash from crafted items, xps from both. Can't beat it. I've just recently made Novice Armorsmith and should be a Novice Weaponsmith before too long. By the time I start needing any special materials for the higher end item crafting, there'll probably be some sort of market out there for them. I've already started communicating with Tailors on my server in order to obtain synthetic cloth and fiberplast panels in quantity, as I've no real desire to move that end of the craft tree.
Am I going to be able to compete with a power gamer? No, probably not. Just because I dont spend as much time in the game as they do. But I'll catch up eventually.
Frankly, if anyone is having trouble it's simply because they've chosen to limit themselves. If you want to only be a crafter, that's fine. Just realize that you're not self sufficent and have freely chosen not to be. You'll never be able to undercut the prices that a more rounded crafter will be able to deliver. I can garuntee that I'll be able to sell anything I make for less than everyone else for two very simple reasons.
1. I don't *need* the money
2. I don't care if I ever sell anything ever.
I try to play SWG as often as I can, which tends to be a copule of times a week for a few hours. On average, I've been playing about ten or twelvehours a week, and that has meant some later-than-should-be nights and sleepy days at work.My hours will likely drop.
I haven't had time to use my jack-of-all-trades character at all. I've been focusing more on my Artisan-only character, Nautilo, who resides on Corellia on Corbantis. As a casual gamer, quite a few of the posts I've seen on the boards don't seem to apply to me or my situation. Just thought I'd share what I've learned so far.
First and foremost, it's a fun game. I enjoy just walking around. Surveying is fun. Sampling seems to take forever, but it's kind of fun to get a mini-macro started and then go off and do chores while Nautilo works away in the wilds. It gives a Star-Warsy feel to what I'm doing.
I've been trying to maintain a harvester, but have found it difficult at best. I have two friends who are spending as much time on their Artisan characters as I am. It takes all three of us to keep the harvester running. On the plus side, the harvester pulls enough metal to sate all of us. We're thinking of putting up another one to get other resources, but aren't sure if we can afford it.
We're definitely limited by money. Nautilo has had some luck selling harvesters and generators, but not so much with weapons, powerups, and the other types of items that he needs to work his way up to Droid Engineer. So if he wants to make enough money to maintain his structures, he has to use resources and time building harvesters and generators. That means less time and resources for DE xp. Time is what I don't have.
Selling weapons and powerups has been difficult. I hear of inflated prices on some planets/servers, but on Corellia I find it difficult to sell a successfully experimented Carbine for more than 60 credits. I just had ten reasonably-priced items come back from auction unsold after 7 days. Early crafting is not lucrative. I feel like Nautilo is being pushed toward the architect profession. If I wree a high school guidance counselor, that's where I'd tell him to go, even though that's not what he wants to do.
Anyway, I applaud the decrease in harvester fees. I haven't been able to get online since they were implemented, but I hope they improve the amount of time I can spend crafting.
Visigoth_X made an excellent suggestion in a previousthread regarding harvester maintenance. He suggested that harvesters could be repaired with resources rather than money. It takes less time to harvest a few resources than to make thousands of credits. Plus, it does seem to make more sense that somebody who built a structure would fix it themselves with materials rather than dumping money down a hole (to where - aharvester repairperson?). This would also allow an individual to remain in the wild near their harvester longer.
For the most part, crafting is interesting. Nautilo is a pacifist, so it's disheartening for him to have to build weapons and powerups in order to advance and make an income. But he does it anyway. Roleplaying a pacifist turns out to be very difficult in SWG, even for an artisan.
The worst part of advancing would have to be the lack of variety in useful craftable items. There seem to be two things that sell fairly well (even though the prices are low) in the DE tree: weapons and powerups. Since everybody is making these, prices are low. It also gets boring crafting the same items over and over again. More items means more variety in personal crafting fun and market fluctuations. Perhaps some one-time-use items like speed bursts would make things more interesting and (maybe?) help the economy.
Finally, playing Nautilo has really given me ideas about how to play other types of characters. Really, the ideal SWG character starts as a novice in all six professions. They overlap so well. I hope to see more headway made into making the game more fun to offset the crippling nature of the single-profession roleplaying character. I think the best way to do this is to offer more complexity and fun in each of the individual professions. SWG has gone a long way toward making this happen, but some more work needs to be fun. Regardless, I look forward to playing for a long time, experimenting with all the different professions.Right after I make somedroids!
Nautilo Paelei - Corellia, Corbantis
Why do we end up making countless items that are worthless, and so we destroy them? I have been doing this while trying to get experience for several skills. It just kind of stinks there are not more things for us to make, would be more interesting if we didn't just destroy everything. Even Bone Armor is getting cheap to the point it is not worth the resources!
My suggestion to artisans who are struggling to get to a productive part of the "food chain" is to concentrate your efforts on getting to engineering IV. I am a casual gamer and once I got there, I was able to make and sell enough wares to be self sufficient. I can support one extractor, which as a casual gamer is all I need now. Don't worry about the business part of the tree until after you get to engineering IV. I made the mistake of trying to keep the tree evenly filled as I worked to master artisan.
At Eng IV, I have enough experimentation points to make useful items that are well above the average stats on the bazaar.
"That's because you are not an Artisan. You don't enjoy making things to sell! You do it for exp. Eventually though you will have to surrender some skills and choose your ultimate path I guess."
Thanks for providing us with the definitive artisan. Apparently no one but you and those that play exactally like you are "artisans" and the rest of us are something else.
Despite your rather narrow view of what an Artisan is, I do enjoy crafting things. The whole big thing that you missed is that I don't *have* to sell any thing. I'm quite content in providing good quality equipment for my friends, giving stuff away to new players, and undercutting people like you.
I'm not going to have to give up any skills. I probably won't max out artisan, since I won't develop business at all. But I'll be a master weaponsmith and a master armorsmith while still retaining what little combat and medical skills I've developed. I'll still be viable in a combat team, and more than viable as a crafter.
Behold, the combat engineer.
But hey, don't let me stop you from limiting yourself. You want to go on about how I'm not a "true" artisan, fine. Whatever you need to do. Just remember that the Artisan is a *basic* profession. You will always get the beat down from someone that has advanced to the higer professions.
Hopefully some other people will read this, try rounding out the skill sets a little bit, and no longer struggle for credits. And most importantly, have fun.
Artisan/Scout/Marksman is one of the best combinations out there. Oh, I also thought of skipping the Domestic tree in Artisan until I noticed you get Artisan assembly and experimentation points for those. This is VERY important. With Eng IV and Domestic IV you can experiment to much higher levels. This means that even your lowly CDEF can now become a fairly powerful weapon with the right material.
Some ideas for a dedicated Artisan.
1. Take the time to find the best material for a weapon. (For me that 5 hours of surveying to get stats of all new minerals and chemicals and creating a formula for finding the best combination of resources)
2. You treat each item as a work of art and only destroy something if you had failures during experimentation. (I carry a backpack full of mediocre blasters and scopes that I use myself. I sell the best stuff and just use theremainder myself. The added advantage is I can use overcharge shot all the time.)
3.Always experiment.
4.Look at the market. I came across a city with only two low quality daggers on the bazaar and sold three high quality ones in a couple of hours.
5. Get out in the field! Use scout the get your own bone and hide.
Last night I sat down and sampled some Carbeosnefi on a 60% spot for almost two hours. Aah sweet, put my camp up and just relaxed. When I got up I had 280 units of carbeosnefi and 600 scouting experience from just sitting in my own camp. And you say being an Artisan is tough ?
Like others have said here stop worrying about how other people play and how you should compete. Take a deep breath and enjoy life!