Artisan Archive

This is a croospost from the main SWG forum:

Over the course of the past 4 days, resources have been changing faster than I change my underwear - EVERY SINGLE DAY - sometimes more than once in a day. This means several things to an Artisan:

• Being an Artisan and a casual gamer simply is not possible. If you cannot depend (at least to a degree of certainty) on a given harvester being functional for more than a 24 hour period - then what is the point in giving them ability to hold 25.000 or more resources? You have to CONSTANTLY check your harvesters, to see if they are still running, and if resources have changed (not density, but the resources themselves). You are FORCED to play the game every day... what happens when I have to go on vacation for a week, or if I have to travel for a few days?
  
• The cost induced by these changes are enormous. Often a harvester is deployed in an area for a single resource. 24 hours later, everything has changed, and whatever amount of credits you placed into the maintenance pool is lost - so is any amount of energy that you have put into the harvester. Over the past 4 days I have been spending more resources on making new deeds for new harvesters and windmills, than I have at crafting. Yes you can reclaim the deed, by having more than 1500 credits in the maintenence pool. But 1500 credits is WAY more than the value of the resources required to build a harvester in the first place. In other words - it becomes useless. Who would pay 1500 credits to get some 230 resources of varying types (none of which are rare - just changed around ALL the time). The cost of running Harvesters and Windmill's is already insane as it is: 700 credits a day for a harvester, and 1400 for a windmill.
  
• New resources are being introduced on a DAILY basis - and old ones removed. The entire Chemical tree on Naboo has now been replaced. Every time it has the consequence that every effort you made to locate a good density of a given resource is destroyed. It adds a randomness to the game, that NO OTHER PLAYER class has to endure - that alone is simply unfair!
  
• Some resources cant even be sampled??!! I have been spending LOADS of credits to travel to various systems to find Polymers. Supposedly they were to be found on one system, but upon arrival, things had seamingly changed around again - and Polymers were gone. I am left with a feeling of being a hunter, looking for a specific prey - Devs - dont make this game into another EverCamp - PLEASE!! Polymers havent existed for days at all in the entire galaxy - and now they have been introduced (in the daily lottery of resouce changes), they cant be sampled at all. I have spent a LOT of time working to become a Master Artisan - and once I made it - ALL of the new design schematics made avaliable are completely useless - because they require Polymers - a resource that CAN NOT be sampled - even if standing in a spot with 98% density.
  
• This is a GAME BREAKER! Not being able to work towards a specific goal in terms of resource planning is completely and utter failure to live up to the promises given in the manual as to the whole POINT of using Harvesters.

I have absolutely NO problem with resources changing, or being slowly depleeted over time. That makes a LOT of sense. It ALSO makes sense that resources vary in quality from system to system, thus inducing trade and traffic between systems. But it makes NO sense making the changes at the pace is is being done right now. It's as if the whole resource change AI was on steroids! Make a couple of resources (or even classes of resources) change every week or once every two weeks... just not every frikkin day - PLEASE!

I refuse to believe that the current changing of resources can be by design - it MUST be a bug. And as far as I can se - there are three ways to handle this problem:

1. Fix it - you dont even have to say you have fixed it - admit that it was buggy or anything - just fix it - we will find out in less than a day that it has been fixed.
   
2. Tell us it is by design - in which case i certainly will have to reconsider if I even want to play a game that makes such a heavy demand on my time.
   
3. Do nothing - in wich case it would only be natural for everyone affected by this problem, to start reconsidering if this is really worth paying a monthly $15 subscription.

Obviously - as much as I am miffed right now, I am also aware that things take time. If this IS a broken mechanic (and I sure hope it is just that), it is rarely something that is fixed in a few hours. It takes carefull testing to see if the changes made, dont introduce new bugs, etc. But it CERTAINLY would be nice to hear SOME form of confirmation that either this IS a bug - or that it IS by design.

You summed it all.

Devs stop that, this is not beta, and we are not betatesters, test your resource AI internally this breaks game for many people. Not even funny people are already mad.

...I haven't logged in since the maintenance period this morning... please tell me that you're joking about them changing again.

I totally agree with you Brell-Rune. I have posted on a couple of other threads pretty much what you are saying here. The resource change should be much more gradual instead of this every day thing. People are getting frustrated and the Devs need to do something now! At least let the community know what is going on with this issue. What should be done is completely stop the resource change until it be changed to not be so drastic.

This game is in it's initial release and people are getting their first impressions on this game. First impressions are very big. They can make or break a company. Please Devs some sort of response would be appreciated.

Ditto!

I have 4 people that want me to build them factories in Eclipse but I can't because there's no Carbonate Ore on Corellia, Talus, or Tatooine. I certainly don't want to waste 8000 credits on a round trip to Endor to discover it doesn't have them either. Carbonate Ore didn't peter or fade out, it went "Poof!" in just the few hours I slept.

I had Harvesters on Steel, Lowgrade Ore, Copper, Aluminum, and Chemicals. In that "Poof!" I mentioned the Steel, Aluminum, and Chemical harvesters all became worthless. If the resources had slowly dwindled I would have seen it and not paid several days maintenance in advance

I'll sign on to this. It's incredible what my crafters have to go through, and its playing havoc with pricing.

My thoughts are this. Yesterday I spent about 10K trying to keep my harvesters when I took down three of them because of resource depletion and they were up for about a day. Unfortunately, I have to make a decision to abandon them, not use them as often, or simply survey. I seem to be working for my harvesters right now and not them working for me. I have 1 wind generator, 1 mineral, 2 floral, and 1 chemical. Should not be this difficult to manage 5 of them. I basically am running destroy missions for cash and trying to craft in between but can't sell much on the bazaar right now. I will try again tonight, but it ain't gonna be pretty when last night when Chilastra went down I was in the process of running to upkeep my harvesters again. Now, I will have to pay even more cash to upkeep. My question, is how can a wind resource run out? This happened to me and it seems ludicrous. I say that the power status should be clearer like the maintenance fees status so we know how long we have power for or we can upkeep them on similar clocks. The ultimate plan would be for the resources to be depleted within a weeks time. Limit the number of harvesters in a rich area or something and have the resources gradually deplete. As it stands I am currently broke. With only five harvesters it shouldn't be this difficult.

I think it would be reasonable if when the AI decided a resource should be depleted it dropped perhaps 15% a day, until it was gone. This would have an immediate effect on the availability, but not the severity of it simply disappearing.

Also, once you get the second tier harvesters, it becomes far preferable to ante up to redeed the things. Coming up with 1k ore, 800 some odd steel, 650 aluminum, 250 copper, 200 reactive gas.... At least for me (Weaponsmith with Advanced Firearms and Advanced technique) the 3000 credits per Mining Installation is a far better deal then having an architect rebuild the things.

At the same time, losing up to 3000 credits per harvester potentially every day or so is just a bit too much. If I come home and find my steel depleted, I'm down roughly 12,000 credits, as I need to move four mining installations. I could make that back relatively easily, except that decent iron on Bloodfin disappeared entirely Thursday night, and decent steel disappeared the next day. I can make back the money relatively easily.. But it's difficult if I can't log in for a period of time.

Right now I've given up on really making high quality weapons for sale, and am hoping that my cash reserve will carry me through the third tiers of both Tech and Firearms... But a few resource depletions and I'll be in a bad spot.