Development Cycle Archive

Thread: Publish 6 Feedback: Vehicle Customization and Ownership

Up_and_Comming_Architect
Sun Feb 15, 2004 8:02 am
#131

So happy to have more then 1 vehicle!!!



Noomie Arei Master Architect & Master Artisan
Shadowfire, Tatooine, Located @ -155 -5692
"I am going to Architect a world of pain all over your candyass"

Akinoor
Sun Feb 15, 2004 8:13 am
#132

As many as said, the color wears off. For me, itwore off after one store/generate and since then I haven't bothered again. Am I negative? Yes! I don't think I ever saw anything in the release notes about that the colors were supposed to wear off. And after one store... How hard could that be to see in the tests? I don't wanna be an ass, but this kind of bugs really makes me frustrated.


Week after week we've seen the ads for it, and when it comes it's broken from day 1. Unless it is supposed to wear off after one store/generate but you didn't wanna advertise it.


I like that we can have more than 1 vehicle though. And I like theidea to be able to customize them.



--
Ingame: Akinor, Erynh: Shop is in Sun City (Tatooine), at 6323 3707
"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency."
Lorien-swg
Sun Feb 15, 2004 2:06 pm
#133

Oh joy. Spiffed up my swoop just before logging. Guess itll be gone when I log back on.

Great job



--
Ojoi Teki
Tempest
Ranger
Rifleman
Kdr_Kane
Mon Feb 16, 2004 1:39 am
#134

Publish 6 went real well.


After weeks of touting that vehicle customization will appear, everyone has to buy customization kits for 1-10K and your paint wears off in a day or so. I'm sorry, but how would you feel if you had to recolor your clothes every few days?


So, we make a few extra vehicles and place them on the vendors before Publish 6 goes live. Of course, everybody is going to want another vehicle or two since they can now have three. But, no. I have to pull all the vehicles from my vendor after Publish 6 goes live.


Listen, vehicles weren't worth the effort to sell in the first place. But, if you're going to trash the experimentation done on them, then I'd rather destroy 100 vehicles than sell them gimped. I only made them available to generate retail traffic.


If my products are no better than anybody elses, I'm in the wrong crafting profession.


And the silence is deafening.

KzinKiller
Mon Feb 16, 2004 12:03 pm
#135

First impression: wow, looks great


Second impression: a galaxy far, far away has crappier paint than Maaco! Wears off in 1-2 days? Forget it, not worth the hassle. Too dang many unneeded mouseclicks in this game as is.




*
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them
Albert Einstein

CU-1 ... CU-2 ... CUL8R
LukeBorgman
Mon Feb 16, 2004 5:41 pm
#136

Customization fading is WAY too fast. If it has to fade at all, it should last more than a month.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
testing SWG again
FangbonerX
Mon Feb 16, 2004 9:38 pm
#137

Please just fix vehicles so they don't autostore so quickly. I hate riding out into BFE just to kill a lair, then have to run all the way back (minus the scout terrain negotiation which I dropped).
BackBite
Mon Feb 16, 2004 10:01 pm
#138


I agree with those who say the customization doesn't last long enough, especially when you're having to call your speeder 10-20 times a day. It really needs to last much longer, at least 100-200 pulls.


Artisans may think that this will hurt their business, but it will hurt their business even more when people stop buying kits altogether because the novelty has worn off and they realize there's no point in coloring their speeder ever day. Just make it so the maximum yield for the kits is 3 uses and, rest assured, once people get used to having their vehicled colored for a while they'll come back for those kits over and over again and they'll pay through the nose for them.


Having more than one vehicle in your datapad is great, though. Good job there.





-------------------------
*Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this post do not reflect those of anyone of immediate importance.
Bisshop Case - Proud to be a Pikeman Since Beta & Raising the Bar for Masochists Everywhere
ACCOUNT CANCELLED AS OF 7/15/04 DUE TO THE NUMEROUS DELAYS OF THE COMBAT BALANCE AND OTHER CRITICAL FIXES AND CONSTANT DISSEMINATION OF MISINFORMATION FROM SOE'S OWN REPRESENTATIVES
ideas
Tue Feb 17, 2004 11:08 am
#139

Okay, I've played with these changes for a few days. Now for my feedback...


All in all, this was a great addition. I can now tell my vehicle apart from others when I get off it briefly. I have the sense that the vehicle is "mine" because I can choose how it looks. I can have different types of vehicles for different occasions -- when I am crafting in my workshop (not in a Player City), I leave out my X34 because it decays slower. When I check harvesters, I use the zippy-quick swoop. I like having these options available. I never tried the X34 before but now it's becoming my favorite for short jaunts!


* Is there any need to limit us to 3 vehicles? I mean, there are only 3 right now, but if someone wants to fill their datapad with a variety of expensive expendibles, does that hurt much?


* The trim/striping colors are nice, but I was rather disappointed in the selection of frame/body colors. I'd like to either have the trim palette used for both colors, or perhaps have a (future) skill branch or tool quality option that expands the palette. For example, let the artisan design kits for more colors instead ofmore charges.


* Although I am a Droid Engineer, I concur with the complaints that people have about an Artisan product requiring parts from an elite class. Having cross-class interaction at the elite level is fine (e.g. Droid Storage Compartments used in Crafting Stations), but basic professions (like Artisan) should really be self-sufficient in their crafting.


* I'd like the next step to be re-naming our vehicles from the datapad. I'd like to see "Joe's Hoopty-Swoop" and "Landwagon Turbo-Cruiser" instead of just "Speederbike Swoop" and "X34 Landspeeder" all over the place.







So, let me get this straight: To advance my character, I have to give up my current abilities?

Flurry: Ikeya Ibye (Master Droid Engineer, Master Artisan, Master Merchant)

IKEYA Grand Mall - Naboo, Moenia - Waypoint 5000 -4000



AudioOrgana
Tue Feb 17, 2004 1:15 pm
#140






BackBite wrote:


Artisans may think that this will hurt their business, but it will hurt their business even more when people stop buying kits altogether because the novelty has worn off and they realize there's no point in coloring their speeder ever day.








A key point here is that the Artisans generally don't think this way. We are told how interdependence is next to God-liness (a topic for another thread), and a few vocal people may agree with it - but most people understand the point you made above - if the cost does not justify the value, the product becomes useless to the majority of players.


It's the Devs that need convincing on this topic, not the Artisans. It's like what happened when droids were (temporarily) made perma-death - the cost of making them didn't change, but their value to a player went from one extreme (indestructability) to the other (perma-death in one shot). We were told this would only help our business - and a couple of people were like, "Come on, duh, people will have to buy more now!", which just was not true. The cost of them didn't change, and instead of replacing them constantly people just stopped using them for the most part.


The same is true here - the current cost (1K/charge it seems) on many servers does not justify the benefit. Artisans will likely not lower prices because of the elite components required, and will either a) settle for selling a few at normal prices, or b) stop making them all-together. A few people are likely going to do factory runs and sell tons of them cheap (say, DE's with MA as well), but as usual these will be anomalies that either disapear quickly due to burn-out or the ninja-wholesale market.


The soloution is :



  • Make the colorings semi-permanant. Maybe even UP the resource costs, but make it last longer. There are enough consumables we've all got in our packs as we run around : weapon power-ups, spice, medicine, food, batteries, camps, and repair kits mean that most of us have a dozen or more crates in our inventory, and carrying another just to color our vehicle every day or two isn't going to be worth it for many of us; this is especially true with the ability to own three vehicles per player.

or




  • Reduce the cost of the kits,and make them a lesser Artisan item (Eng II or III). The DE community appriciates being thought of here, but requiring MA parts and DE parts. Or,heck, dump them in novice artisan - make them a grinding item THAT CAN ACTUALLY BE USED! If this was done the components would definately need to be looked at - but if they were available on every street corner for a few hundred credits the current fade might almost be tolerable.


One or the other really needs to be looked at, or this will be one of those good ideas that only appeal to a niche because of their lack of cost/benefit value for the average player.


Audio

slaier0702
Tue Feb 17, 2004 3:25 pm
#141

My character is a new Master Artisan on Tempest who is also working to be a DE.


There has been a lot of discusion about the complexity ofthe Customization Kits as recently released with Path 6. What I haven't read is anyone putting this together with a re-release of Vehicle Creation. There has been a few threads thatstate that theintiial Vehicle release was rushed to production. These thread also indicatethere wil be a re-release of vechile creation that uses sub-components to make better engines, frames, possible on-baord weaponry, and intelligence, etc...


Could this simple Customization Kit be a beta .001 of the new vehicle release?

Atom_Kannon
Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:57 pm
#142

I have an issue with the bike going back to default colors after i port. I saw it posteda few times already but thought i would put in my 2 credits worth.
Fromme
Tue Feb 17, 2004 9:50 pm
#143

I love the fact that a droid storage maduale is need to make the vehicle costomization kit. I think it was a great idea.
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