Bio Engineer Archive

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Kyreal wrote:

to all of us docs, including our original author here. Crafting after the CU will be greatly reduced in effectiveness due to the game-shift to a level based system where characters will be using innate abilities and skills granted without the use of crafted equipment. what this will do is pretty much cripple the crafting system as we know it, and while it will still be an option for people, the worth of such items will be greatly reduced due to its ineffectiveness in the combat arena.

things such as armor, buffs, stims and other things will only be marginally effective when your character is faced with a mob that is higher level than yourself or your group. you will still take increased damage despite your crafted protection and buffs. i find this very saddening because the true glory of SWG was its crafting system, and that people could rely on top quality equipment to get them thru their trials in the game.

what you will see after the CU is that most crafting if it is kept in its current form on TC will not be cost effective to do, and prices will be insane to make up for the increased workload, increased danger to non-combat crafting in the field to get to their harvesters and factories, longer factory times, increased resource requirements.

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Marrow1 wrote:

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Loviza wrote:

I have faith in Marrow accuratly forwards our negative responses as well as the few positive ones, but considering how they continue to ignore our pleads and actually just makes it worse all the time I start to wonder if they listen at all to our correspondent.

Without a voice I do not see how anything from this forum can improve, so what to do now?

I have a lovely guild Im in and would like to continue to help, but I have no energy to start all over as a crafting doc again. Without it I dont feel to be (according to me) a second rated doctor. I either do it all or dont.

Since all ive gathered been put into the resources and crafting for over a year back, Im practicly back to square one, any suggestion to what I should pick up instead. You who have already canceled docs what have you taken up?

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My suggestions are:

1. Ease up. Breath.

2. Use this time to reflect. Ask you self what you really like to do in this or any game. Do you like to craft, go out and help a group do things, ect.

3. Then pick your prof.

If you realy just like to crafter there will still be a lots of crafting to be had. I, for example, will be picking up BE and chef on one of my toons. That should satisfy my crafting needs.

On another I will be a CM/Doc since what I like to do most is do group hunts (PvP and PvE).

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RaistlinVII wrote:

2) What if the answer to that question is I like to craft AND I like to go out and help a group do things, join group hunts, PvP, etc? In
existing game you can be crafter and have fun in other aspects of the game. In CU it seems to me that if you like to go out hunting
with friends, you are gimped and punished for including crafting in your template. With crafting in there you do after all get less HAM
and you are considered lower level.

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Well, 0004 BE is not very skill point expensive. So I dont think it would be that painful to give up on say master CM and just dabble in it. This would allow you to be a 10pt crafter and still be very effective at group hunts, PvP, etc.

If you compair this build to a M. CM/M. Doc and 4004 marksman in Live, for example, I think you would find that the CU is actually better in many ways. (you get a much better weapon cert, melee/range def).

Bottom line is your going to have to make a choice.

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Loviza wrote:

I was in charge of our health department, Ive already begun work on getting someone to replace me. Ive been thinking it thru and I do not want to be a field doctor only. It would hurt my pride to much. I should cancel, but I love my guild and my guild loves me. However I will probably leave with the rest when they realise what this CU REALLY means to SWG.

I love playing the supporting role, but Im not a type that can make a character 100% crafter, I still need to be on the field. So to get back to my unanswered question, is there any other professions beside Doc and CM I can be supportive in?

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This was deleted this morning, so I thought I would try and preserve it here:

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The most fundamental rule of business, especially in SWG, is that if you cannot sell something for as much as it costs you to make, then it is not worth making. This rule will hold true post-CURB as well as it does before.

I have great fears for what SWG 2 will do to the noncombat aspects of the game (particularly crafting, entertaining, and the player economy in general), but not for the reasons so far outlined here. Yes, being a Master Crafter yet also being a level 1 character and thus onehit incapped by anything in the wild will be a pain. But ultimately, that can be worked around. It is possible to get around it, generally simply by grouping with a high level character and thus gaining the level benefits. My fear is that it won't be worth working around.

Let me try to explain. I have been a crafter for all my time in this game, to varying levels of intensity. When I do serious crafting, I'm usually working for hours on end. Run this test, run that test, try different combinations to get the best out of the item I'm making. There's a lot of experimentation involved, and I don't mean fill in the bar and hit experiment experimentation. Then there is resource management, factory time on the experiments, and then factory time on the subcomponents, experimentation on product, factory time on products, vendor stocking, special orders, etc. That's just making product - that does not include all the time spent gathering the very best resources. This is, in short, a lot of work. Probably a lot more work than anyone who has not been a very serious crafter realises. But I have never minded doing this work - not only has the crafting system been interesting and challenging, but it has also been very lucrative. It's been well worth the time to crank out those few extra %, get those very special results nobody else gets, both in term of play satisfaction and creds received. And people were prepared to pay the prices for exceptional crafted goods, because they made a tremendous difference in what they could do. They could see new areas, kill new things, win more PvP fights, etc. The work I put into my craft made a very real difference in someone else's game, and the satisfaction their praise gave me, as well as the creds they paid me, made a very real difference in mine. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my MMO. That's my 'grouping', right there. That's been some of my most enjoyable interactions in SWG, right there.

If I could continue to make this same difference in the game with my craft, I would endure hundreds more incaps at the hands of Maulers. I am already incapped a few times a crafting session by spineflaps and Maulers around my factories/house when I put in a heavy crafting session - I would be happy to have to take a few extra precautions. But nothing I see in SWG 2 shows me that it will be worth those incaps to craft.

The above quote suggests that people will start to run out of money as prices go up. I doubt that will be the case. The inherent difficulties in crafting (surviving as a lower level character with aggressive mobs, not to mention the increased and more difficult resource requirements, including such things as Dathomir Fiberplast, Endorian Mollusk, etc.) will probably mean that crafters raise their price to the point where they feel it is worth their while to make, hence my statement at the start of this post. In the case of many of the high end crafts, that price will probably be rather high. Again, however, people would pay it if it was worth it - the SWG economy has shown that people will pay almost anything if the goods are exceptional enough. My fear is that the system in SWG 2 won't make any goods exceptional enough.

This is because of the level system. Essentially, no amount of equipment, weapons, armour, or food makes any significant difference in your capabilities - a level 5 character is in the same boat as a level 50 character. For both of these characters, a creature 5 levels lower than them is trivial, and a creature 5 levels above is instant death, regardless of your equipment or anything. This is the inherent principle of a level-based game - level is all. PvP is the same - the best armour on the server, the best weapons, the best everything, will make not one jot of difference in your PvP capability. You will still be unable to hurt a naked opponent with a CDEF weapon, if he is 10 levels above you or so. I suspect that it won't take long for people to realise this - they'll realise that all their equipment is meaningless as long as they match levels correctly in what they can take on. They'll realise that the most important thing they can do is not loot/buy themselves a bigger weapon, or a better helmet - the most important thing they can do is to increase their level, either by skill choice or by grouping. I'll reiterate - the single biggest factor, and by far the most important factor, in determining damage done and damage taken is not your weapon or your armour. It isn't even your skills. It is your level compared to your opponent. Even if you have a much bigger weapon, you will not do any significant damage to something with an edge in levels. That's it. If this weren't the case, why then would people suggest having a naked, level 1 crafter grouping with high levels to survive? Because that is the solution that the devs and others have suggested. That's the proof, right there - the crafter does not need any equipment to survive hits. He only needs to be grouped with someone to increase his effective level. Armour, food, etc. - all meaningless.

It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate that. If a level 1 can survive hits stark naked, simply by grouping, why should anyone need expensive armour/weapons/buffs/food to do anything? Why not just group, or find a way to increase my level? This, then, is the 'balance' to the professions that we are getting - professions aren't being balanced, they are being rendered obsolete, because it doesn't matter if you are Swordsman or Rifleman, all that matters is level. This might see some increase in variety of templates briefly, but not all skill boxes are equal - soon enough people will find the combination that gives the highest level, and then everyone will be that. This then is also the 'balance' to equipment - equipment is also being rendered obsolete, because it doesn't increase your level. For those that said we already had a level system, we didn't - we had a rough 'level' for comparison, but it had no game effect. In SWG 2, level is the biggest game effect, just like it is in other MMOs.

SWG is more than just combat. It is centred around combat, but it also is an immersive world, with real estate, an economy, and a thriving non-combat lifestyle. But because it is combat-centric, these thriving aspects exist mostly to support combat - we've all played with that for 2 years. What is happening in SWG 2 is that the non-combat aspects, particularly player crafted equipment, are being marginalised to have almost no effect on combat, certainly not enough effect for people to go to the trouble and time involved. This is being done because it is the equipment that made us powerful in the first place - the 90% armour, the buffs, and so on. SWG's own freeform, creative game design allowed us to do these things. But rather than tweak or balance what we can make, the design choice has been to limit that freeform creativity, and to make it almost meaningless in the face of a linear, easily controlled statistic - a character's level. And that is why crafting has some very dark times ahead - because they won't make any real difference any more.

This level system might be more easily controlled, but it won't be any less buggy or open to exploits than SWG is now. It won't need any less balancing. It will require even more dev-created content than what we have now. And it will do immense harm to so many aspects of this player-created world that has evolved for two years in the absence of levels. To try and patch on a level-based system to a freeform world, especially now, is wrong on so many levels.

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I hope that the moderators here see the logic and the need for the community to see this point of view, which is NOT negative, but quite logical, articulate and well-stated.

Can i ask why was this post deleted in the first place cause i dont see any flamming going on.... it is just stating some facts about whats going to happen in the CU to us crafters.. if i get banned for reposting this that will make up my mind to cancel my accounts .......

Message Edited by maqss on 04-18-2005 06:20 PM

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Alyxian wrote:

Is is just me, or is anyone else saddened by the "just bend over and take it" attitude being exhibited by our so called corospondant?

It is completely ridiculous that most of the posters here are crying for help, and our own coro has taken s different view. My guess is the devs do not even know how we feel because the coro doesn't actually care.

/vote No_Confidence Marrow1

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Well speaking from someone who is pretty familiar with Marrow's posts both pre-correspondent and post, I'd have to disagree with you on this. Marrow does what he' supposed to do, he corresponds with the devs. Granted we don't hear from the devs AT ALL, however that's not Marrow's fault.

The majority of the posts herein are usually about quitting doctors and those who don't want the CU to happen as is. Marrow can't do anything about that as the devs have made up their collective minds. He is, however, in the TC continuously tracking the changes. He listens to our issues regarding crafting, however he's right in a way that he needs to liasion with the BE correspondent on that one as we crafters are being shoved into BE post CU, so the countless resource complaints go that-a-way.

So in the end we're left with Post CU doctor, which, at present, involves TC nearly exclusively.

Was there something specific that you can mention that you think he's slacking on?

Let's face it, whenthe last correspondentstepped down, whomever took the correspondent position was facing an uphill battle as only a select few of the docs in the forums are happy with the CU as it is, and nearly all of them are the pure healer, no buff/no craft docs.

Marrow's job right now is to try to guide us into the CU as best he can, the devs won't listen to anything else...

Message Edited by TarMangani on 04-19-2005 06:10 AM

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maqss wrote:

This was deleted this morning, so I thought I would try and preserve it here:

<<>>
The most fundamental rule of business, especially in SWG, is that if you cannot sell something for as much as it costs you to make, then it is not worth making. This rule will hold true post-CURB as well as it does before.

I have great fears for what SWG 2 will do to the noncombat aspects of the game (particularly crafting, entertaining, and the player economy in general), but not for the reasons so far outlined here. Yes, being a Master Crafter yet also being a level 1 character and thus onehit incapped by anything in the wild will be a pain. But ultimately, that can be worked around. It is possible to get around it, generally simply by grouping with a high level character and thus gaining the level benefits. My fear is that it won't be worth working around.

Let me try to explain. I have been a crafter for all my time in this game, to varying levels of intensity. When I do serious crafting, I'm usually working for hours on end. Run this test, run that test, try different combinations to get the best out of the item I'm making. There's a lot of experimentation involved, and I don't mean fill in the bar and hit experiment experimentation. Then there is resource management, factory time on the experiments, and then factory time on the subcomponents, experimentation on product, factory time on products, vendor stocking, special orders, etc. That's just making product - that does not include all the time spent gathering the very best resources. This is, in short, a lot of work. Probably a lot more work than anyone who has not been a very serious crafter realises. But I have never minded doing this work - not only has the crafting system been interesting and challenging, but it has also been very lucrative. It's been well worth the time to crank out those few extra %, get those very special results nobody else gets, both in term of play satisfaction and creds received. And people were prepared to pay the prices for exceptional crafted goods, because they made a tremendous difference in what they could do. They could see new areas, kill new things, win more PvP fights, etc. The work I put into my craft made a very real difference in someone else's game, and the satisfaction their praise gave me, as well as the creds they paid me, made a very real difference in mine. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my MMO. That's my 'grouping', right there. That's been some of my most enjoyable interactions in SWG, right there.

If I could continue to make this same difference in the game with my craft, I would endure hundreds more incaps at the hands of Maulers. I am already incapped a few times a crafting session by spineflaps and Maulers around my factories/house when I put in a heavy crafting session - I would be happy to have to take a few extra precautions. But nothing I see in SWG 2 shows me that it will be worth those incaps to craft.

The above quote suggests that people will start to run out of money as prices go up. I doubt that will be the case. The inherent difficulties in crafting (surviving as a lower level character with aggressive mobs, not to mention the increased and more difficult resource requirements, including such things as Dathomir Fiberplast, Endorian Mollusk, etc.) will probably mean that crafters raise their price to the point where they feel it is worth their while to make, hence my statement at the start of this post. In the case of many of the high end crafts, that price will probably be rather high. Again, however, people would pay it if it was worth it - the SWG economy has shown that people will pay almost anything if the goods are exceptional enough. My fear is that the system in SWG 2 won't make any goods exceptional enough.

This is because of the level system. Essentially, no amount of equipment, weapons, armour, or food makes any significant difference in your capabilities - a level 5 character is in the same boat as a level 50 character. For both of these characters, a creature 5 levels lower than them is trivial, and a creature 5 levels above is instant death, regardless of your equipment or anything. This is the inherent principle of a level-based game - level is all. PvP is the same - the best armour on the server, the best weapons, the best everything, will make not one jot of difference in your PvP capability. You will still be unable to hurt a naked opponent with a CDEF weapon, if he is 10 levels above you or so. I suspect that it won't take long for people to realise this - they'll realise that all their equipment is meaningless as long as they match levels correctly in what they can take on. They'll realise that the most important thing they can do is not loot/buy themselves a bigger weapon, or a better helmet - the most important thing they can do is to increase their level, either by skill choice or by grouping. I'll reiterate - the single biggest factor, and by far the most important factor, in determining damage done and damage taken is not your weapon or your armour. It isn't even your skills. It is your level compared to your opponent. Even if you have a much bigger weapon, you will not do any significant damage to something with an edge in levels. That's it. If this weren't the case, why then would people suggest having a naked, level 1 crafter grouping with high levels to survive? Because that is the solution that the devs and others have suggested. That's the proof, right there - the crafter does not need any equipment to survive hits. He only needs to be grouped with someone to increase his effective level. Armour, food, etc. - all meaningless.

It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate that. If a level 1 can survive hits stark naked, simply by grouping, why should anyone need expensive armour/weapons/buffs/food to do anything? Why not just group, or find a way to increase my level? This, then, is the 'balance' to the professions that we are getting - professions aren't being balanced, they are being rendered obsolete, because it doesn't matter if you are Swordsman or Rifleman, all that matters is level. This might see some increase in variety of templates briefly, but not all skill boxes are equal - soon enough people will find the combination that gives the highest level, and then everyone will be that. This then is also the 'balance' to equipment - equipment is also being rendered obsolete, because it doesn't increase your level. For those that said we already had a level system, we didn't - we had a rough 'level' for comparison, but it had no game effect. In SWG 2, level is the biggest game effect, just like it is in other MMOs.

SWG is more than just combat. It is centred around combat, but it also is an immersive world, with real estate, an economy, and a thriving non-combat lifestyle. But because it is combat-centric, these thriving aspects exist mostly to support combat - we've all played with that for 2 years. What is happening in SWG 2 is that the non-combat aspects, particularly player crafted equipment, are being marginalised to have almost no effect on combat, certainly not enough effect for people to go to the trouble and time involved. This is being done because it is the equipment that made us powerful in the first place - the 90% armour, the buffs, and so on. SWG's own freeform, creative game design allowed us to do these things. But rather than tweak or balance what we can make, the design choice has been to limit that freeform creativity, and to make it almost meaningless in the face of a linear, easily controlled statistic - a character's level. And that is why crafting has some very dark times ahead - because they won't make any real difference any more.

This level system might be more easily controlled, but it won't be any less buggy or open to exploits than SWG is now. It won't need any less balancing. It will require even more dev-created content than what we have now. And it will do immense harm to so many aspects of this player-created world that has evolved for two years in the absence of levels. To try and patch on a level-based system to a freeform world, especially now, is wrong on so many levels.

<<>>

I hope that the moderators here see the logic and the need for the community to see this point of view, which is NOT negative, but quite logical, articulate and well-stated.

Can i ask why was this post deleted in the first place cause i dont see any flamming going on.... it is just stating some facts about whats going to happen in the CU to us crafters.. if i get banned for reposting this that will make up my mind to cancel my accounts .......

Message Edited by maqss on 04-18-2005 06:20 PM

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