Artisan Archive
Thread: Crafting Missions: Great Idea, Bad Implementation
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steveiulaw
Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:45 am
#1
The idea of the new crafting quests is great. It should give the novice in any given crafting field an option of how to advance. He can grind his way through to master in a couple days, then go to the forums and ask everyone what his profession is all about. In a world of establish masters, with no expermintation points, this is the road most, if not all, will take. But these crafting quests could provide an option. Do the quests, learn your profession, and all the while you are gaining xp. Unfortunately, as these missions currently stand, they will be forgotten content within a week. I recently picked up Novice Droid Engineer. Now, I despise grinding, so I looked forward to giving these missions a go. I got my first mission. May 5 whatever. I make 5 whatever, I give them to the contractor. Some measily amount of credits not even worth remembering is my reward. What about xp? 15. Yeah, 15. I need like 44k for the first box of DE, and they give me 15 whole xp. I tried a few more. The rewards slowly increased until I got all the way up to 20xp. This simply baffles the mind. For these missions to ever be used, they have to at least compete with the xp you would get from grinding. No, they don't have to give me as much as I would get grinding, but 15 xp? I would have gotten more xp if I practiced making the 5 items rather than actually making them, not to mention the time involved with just the mission. I just don't know who comes up with this stuff. Combat characters can make a million creds in 3 hours of normal hunting, and we get this? They hunt for 3 hours and have lots of xp to show for it. If I ran these missions for 3 hours...well...i don't even want to think about it. These should be interesting quests, that help you learn the profession, that give you a nice xp boost upon completion of the mission (not faster than grinding, but something), and they should be a viable alternative for those of us who hate the grind. Sadly, these missions are none of these.
Elyssa
Wed Jul 28, 2004 11:00 am
#2
If the payout on these missions is less than 2cpu for the materials used, they're worthless.
I can easily get 3cpu for almost anything on the open market.
Why would I waste my time and materials with this?
It kinda reminds me of the junk dealers. It's easier to just destroy the scud loot you get than to bother tracking down a junk dealer to be given 5cr for it.
Even for a new character, you can make more from a deliver mission than from turning in anything you might find. You can probably even get 30cr for that CDEF pistol on gBay which would still be a 5cr profit over the junk dealer.
It sort of offends me that they put stuff like this in the game and then point to it as a "feature" that's cool.
Squidbush
Wed Jul 28, 2004 4:52 pm
#3
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
I'm not even sure that I'd give these things credit for being a "good idea", because it's not even clear to me what they were trying to accomplish.
a) fun? no, clearly not. You are crafting items that you already craft anyway, the only difference is that you now don't get the satisfaction of selling them to somebody who will use them.
b) challenging? nope. Not in the least. Like I said, you're crafting the same stuff you already craft anyway, nothing new here.
c) rewarding? This seems to be the one that everyone is harping on, but clearly not rewarding. In terms of monetary reward you'd be better off selling the raw materials, or better yet crafting items and actually selling them. In terms of experience gained, you'd be better off doing anything else other than this.
So I'm really baffled as to what they were even trying to accomplish with these stupid things. Why bother with them when they could have channeled that development effort into a hundred other useful avenues besides this.
They are just copying the crafter consignment NPCs from Dark Age of Camelot. The big difference is DAoC had a fixed economy for materials so the consignments were actually WORTH doing. a new crafter could both afford to actually craft items that most people didn't want, but were forced to because that's all they could do and make a little extra money doing it.
The problem with the SWG way is there is no fixed prices for resources and their payouts areembarrasingly small. If they were to find a way to offer materials to players sold by the contractor NPCs, then they could make it worthwhile for new crafters to use them.
As it is now, even a new player could see thedisparity between purchasing materials (or even harvesting them themselves) and the resultant payout for these quests.
I agree.. these quests will be quickly forgotten except as another useless waste of dev time that could have been better spent fixing the REAL problems.
Guruweaver
Wed Jul 28, 2004 7:13 pm
#4
I've kicked off a thread with the devs about this.
I'd like to see it changed somewhat. I'd like to see a chance of getting loot or some cool item as payment.
Don't know. Hopefully something will come of it.
I remain Guru and I'm worth more than these missions give me...
I'd like to see it changed somewhat. I'd like to see a chance of getting loot or some cool item as payment.
Don't know. Hopefully something will come of it.
I remain Guru and I'm worth more than these missions give me...
ArthurDentOnBria
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:25 am
#5
I'm not even sure that I'd give these things credit for being a "good idea", because it's not even clear to me what they were trying to accomplish.
a) fun? no, clearly not. You are crafting items that you already craft anyway, the only difference is that you now don't get the satisfaction of selling them to somebody who will use them.
b) challenging? nope. Not in the least. Like I said, you're crafting the same stuff you already craft anyway, nothing new here.
c) rewarding? This seems to be the one that everyone is harping on, but clearly not rewarding. In terms of monetary reward you'd be better off selling the raw materials, or better yet crafting items and actually selling them. In terms of experience gained, you'd be better off doing anything else other than this.
So I'm really baffled as to what they were even trying to accomplish with these stupid things. Why bother with them when they could have channeled that development effort into a hundred other useful avenues besides this.
Vupos
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:27 am
#6
I posted this in the InLive forum
Funny when I heard about the crafting missions being added for newer non-masters my first response was, "How are they going to handle payouts." Think about it its hard to do considering that the economy is completely out of the devs hands. They can just give you the cost of production with a static number since that number is variable; it changes depending on the current spawns and prices of resources.
The devs don't want to create a situation were the monetary gain from these missions is better then the current market for those items. An overly high price could very easily be turning into a money-farming situation. This reminds me of the extremely low payout for Jedi missions on the BH terminals. Granted, being a master armor smith, I do think that the current payout is also to low, sure they aren't for me as a master but I know from grinding that that isn't enough to solicit people to do them routinely.
The only thing I could think of to give an accurate payout would to make the payout variable. Maybe take the average of bazaar prices for the same objects and subtract a small amount from it so that missions pay a little less then the bazaar. The payout would be a little less then selling to the bazaar but the crafter missions would give you the added bonus of extra exp.
The only thing I could think of to give an accurate payout would to make the payout variable. Maybe take the average of bazaar prices for the same objects and subtract a small amount from it so that missions pay a little less then the bazaar. The payout would be a little less then selling to the bazaar but the crafter missions would give you the added bonus of extra exp.
These missions should be about the bonus exp not the money (though money should cover expenses). There should be little incentive for the master to use these missions, because he has no need of more EXP, but the missions should pay enough to make it worth his while to do them during slow periods. See how easily it becomes very hard to nail down a set payout?
Siaro
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:31 am
#7
Trying to create a market for non-master crafters is a worthy endeavor so in that sense this is a good idea. The incredibly low pay for the finished products will make this crafting quests something not worth pursuing though. It would be easy to fix by increasing pay to something worthwhile, comparable to other types of missions and commesurate with the materials used.
ArthurDentOnBria
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:58 am
#8
Siaro wrote:
Trying to create a market for non-master crafters is a worthy endeavor so in that sense this is a good idea.
I disagree. Perhaps 9 months ago this was a problem, but not now. People have become so good at grinding that the road to master is an extremely short one for most people (we're talking days). Also, with most masters hunkered down in a player city or a big sprawling independent shop, the bazaar right now offers a really big, and mostly unfulfilled market for low-end goods of all sorts. I actually have a combat-character take up artisan just because you could make so much money just as a novice artisan (and now novice tailor) on the bazaar that it helps fund all the other combat stuff. So I'd argue that there really is no such problem that needs fixing.
They hinted that perhaps what they were really trying to accomplish was to give a novice a funner alternative to grinding in practice mode, which really would be a great thing to do, but alas they've bungled that really badly and this is just a laughable attempt at accomplishing that.
Apratew
Thu Jul 29, 2004 4:53 am
#9
I cant agree more that these things are damned useless i got one asking me to make 7 bone armour right bicepts it took 2 hours to gather the materials from scratch surveying and killing things outside mos espa then knocked them together and gave the guy hi kit
What did i get
"I bet that was good practice"30EXP and 175 creds
i could have done 50 surveying missions and earnt 20K in that time 175 creds didnt even pay for the return shuttle flight to Anchorhead to find some people to train me
steveiulaw
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:48 pm
#10
I'm not saying these missions should be huge payouts, but they should at least offer some help to a novice. Look at the bazaar, on every server i have played on, junky raw materials will easily sell for 3 cpu. So why not have these missions pay out at least 1 cpu. This will at least be some incentive for a novice to do them. Sure, you don't make all your money back, but its better than throwing it away with a bunch of practice items.
But, the main reason for these missions was certainly supposed to be an alternative way to gain xp. But they missed the boat there. The mission says craft 5 amount of X items. When I'm finished, maybe I get a 20xp bonus. I could have crafted the same 5 items in practice and gotten more xp. There has to be real xp given for these missions. Using these missions is much more difficult than grinding, there should be a reward for that, not a penalty. You can't use a macro for these missions, you are crafting a variety of items instead of one item over and over (meaning a wider variety of resources needed), and you have to actually make the items, place them in the crate, and talk with the NPC. This all takes a much greater amount of time than grinding, is more difficult than grinding, and should be rewarded accordingly.
Copey
Fri Jul 30, 2004 11:15 pm
#11
Okay, I play various professions on various servers, and here's what I see. Quests for combat classes give out pretty nice items as rewards. My commando on Starsider has a Bol Skull, a Krayt Skull, Armor, all kinds of things he got from doing combat missions.
However, my tailor on Sunrunner doesn't stand a chance in getting any of this stuff because he doesn't have the skill points to dump into a combat profession. So what the crafting missions should give for successful completion is LOOT! Preferably things that can be used to spruce up a vendor tent maybe? Or one use schematics for your crafting profession? A small monetary reward and crap xp gain won't make me go to the trouble of taking these missions.
Chipp Endale
Tailor 4343 - Sunrunner - Slave Village, Dantooine
However, my tailor on Sunrunner doesn't stand a chance in getting any of this stuff because he doesn't have the skill points to dump into a combat profession. So what the crafting missions should give for successful completion is LOOT! Preferably things that can be used to spruce up a vendor tent maybe? Or one use schematics for your crafting profession? A small monetary reward and crap xp gain won't make me go to the trouble of taking these missions.
Chipp Endale
Tailor 4343 - Sunrunner - Slave Village, Dantooine
Elyssa
Fri Jul 30, 2004 11:27 pm
#12
I think their theory is based on the premise that we ultra-rich crafting professions will buy the loot items from the cash-starved combat classes.
Personally, my friends can sell ONE good loot item for what I can make in a week of sales.
Maybe I should ask them to start buying furniture from me.
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