Artisan Archive

Sorry for the sensationalist title...

From the start of the discussion of what SWG would be back in the days of the old dev boards, one of the goals oft stated by the devs was to encourage the interdependency of players. I for one thought that was great as many other MMORPGs did so rarely or in a rather contrived manner.

But now we have a situation where the devs may be discouraging this same player interdependency. Specifically I am speaking of Player Generated Missions. For those not in the know, player generated missions were to be exactly as they sounded. Missions created by players that other players would take.

For example, as a burgeoning young medic I may want to acquire a supply of organics for my stimpack crafting. But how could I go about doing this? Well right now you could find an artisan who will go out and mine it for you on the spot, but this has limited effectiveness as you can only contact artisan who are online and near you and who don't have plans for the near-term future. A bit limited if you ask me.

Or you could try your luck finding them for sale on the bazaar, but in practice i find that not many artisans put organics up for sale as they are not obvious sellers (like guns or armor).

So where does this leave our intrepid medic? Pretty much nowhere, can't make meds, can't advance. So he is forced not to advance, or acquire survey skills and harvest the organicshimself. And this is not the only situation, by far, that could be greatly improved by the presence of player generated missions.

Player generated missions would create a central communication avenue for players to communicate their economic demand and would notify players of how best to fulfill various economic demands in the world and earn those much coveted credits that are rather rare these days. We currently are stuck with a sort of guess the demand situation with the bazaars and merchants. We need 'Want Ads'

I know that player generated missions were postponed from release, but in all the posts from the old dev board we were told that the player generated missions would be added after launch.

But now they are nowhere to be seen in the 'In Development' section or mentioned on these boards.

In the thread:

forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=11161

Holocron replied:

As far as where SWG is going...

• More robust loot system, inc stuff you can sell to the junk dealers
  
• More named mobs
  
• More dungeons
  
• More robust missions
  
• More dynamic POIs
  
• Player cities, vehicles, mounts, space eventually(you know about those already)

There is no mention of player generated missions. What happened to them? Where have they gone?

I believe that something like player generated missions are desperately needed to help create an efficient and self-sustaining economy. Thisfeature isprobably more crucial to the overall health of SWG than any other upcoming feature. Yes player generated missions were exploitable in the old design (for thoses that remember to original posts), but we do not need every feature (e.g. player bounties). If indeed player generated mission are no longer a possibility please consider a 'Want Ads' system instead.

If at minimum we could make a post to the bazaar stating who we are, what we want, and how much we are willing to pay, that would suffice. These 'want ads' could be limited to say 3 days duration, cost a 100 credits each and be limited to 5 'ads' per character and categorized by the existing bazaar category system. The rest of the transaction could then be handled through the in-game e-mail system.

Any thoughts?