Development Cycle Archive

8 pages, I doubt this will be read, so I'll keep it breif, no sense in wasting my time.

1. Most servers don't have nearly enough crafters

2. Specific resources don't spawn often enough to make this system work

3. We've been spoiled by the previous system, crafters will try to make stuff as close to what they used to be - with 1 exp point making a difference of about 1-2 HAM on armour, I'm never going to try to make low encumberance armour.

4. There aren't enough crafters on any servers to make this work

5. There *really* aren't enough crafters to make this work

6. New crafters aren't going to bother, it's almost possible to compete with masters earlier in most professions, various specialist markets etc - this will not be attractive anymore

7. Looks like it's time to drop Armoursmith for me - I'll switch to a combat character, that way I'll finally be playing the game properly.

8. This will not encourage people to try to make different stuff, armour will be cookie cutter high protection, weapons will be cookie cutter high dam/speed, food will be borked, meds will be horrible.

9. R.I.P. SWG Crafting system - please don't take this as a glib comment, I really belive that it's all gone - send me a PM, I'll give you my phone number, we can talk it over like rational, sensible human beings, but *please* *please* *please* listen to the people that try to run big crafting businesses - it's already hell with the constant /tells and rubbish resources and everything, I really can't face carrying on with my crafting, I'll have to drop my crafting account, IT JUST WON'T BE FUN ANYMORE

I don't expect to be heard, but sometimes, if you wish hard enough, miracles happen - Ring me, I'll explain it all!!!!!

-Orobas

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Chrysalide wrote:

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RallyFire wrote:

Oh and one more thing I know you guys say you always read and lurk around but just checking... are you guys reading this?

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Yes, we are!

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AnXdiety wrote:

Have a fun and safe weekend with the other dev's as this seems to be the norm now. Its now normal for you guys to post volitile information on a Friday afternoon, let things get heated up and walk away from it. Thanks for having a "discussion" rather than a statement. Just shows how much the player base's ideas and input actually mean to the core systems of the game.

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I assure you that we are not doing a "post-and-run". We will be still be reviewing the comments and questions for a good while this evening, and over the weekend as well. I have compiled a list of the top concerns from the thread already, and have put it up for discussion and comment to some of the other developers. We will review these and get some comments and feedback to you all as soon as possible.

Thank you to everyone for all of your comments and suggestions (both good and bad) so far.

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Exterminans77 wrote:

This is quite possibly the dumbest decision made by the devs since they put decay on death in pvp and thought that by doing so it would make people PVP more since there were consequences LOL, what a joke that was. I've talk to many crafters in game who say this is the final straw for them. DEVS all this will do is cause many to cancel or stop crafting. This won't fix the economy. This won't bring diversity to crafting. This is a HUGE mistake. Listen to the playerbase for once.

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No one could say it clearer, my friend.

We are the players. We know the game. We know what will work, and what will fail.

LISTEN TO US FOR ONCE!!!

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ideas wrote:

I thank you for offering the explanation. It helps me to understand the reason for the changes, and what these will mean to me.

However, for your overall stated purposes: Better economy and increased variety of crafted items, you are doing exactly the wrong things.

Let's first of all agree that increased variety of crafted items probably will help the economy somehow. I can believe that. Different customers seek different things, and most crafters will have a hard time catering to all the goals.

So, how to achieve greater crafting variety?

Your assesment is that making experimentation more dependant upon material quality will introduce variety. I disagree. First of all: Every crafter on a server has (theoretically) access to the same resources. Certainly the rich masters have the ability to get the best resources. But in a purely hypothetical world, you have to assume that everyone in the same market has the same resources. Therefore, resources do not introduce variety.

Second, you claim that harder experimentation makes for "hard choices" when choosing how to optimize gear. Unfortunately, this is not often the case either.Let's assume, for sake of argument, that customers want a variety of features -- some wantarmor with highresists, others want armor with low HAM cost. Under the current/old crafting system, a crafter withgood materialsuses probably 7-10 experimentation points tomaximize one feature to 90% or better. That leavesup to5 points (for a 12-exp crafter)to put into the other categories. We achieve variety based on how the crafter allocates these secondary qualities.

Under the new crafting system, it seems that it will take all 10 points to maximize any quality, no matter what resources are used. This guarantees two things: (1) There will be less variety because there are fewer points left over after maximizing the "popular" single category. (2) Anyone who is not a Master of the craft will not be able to make competetive products at all. Their points are worth even less now, and they will never be able to maximize even a single property.

Finally, you explained that product stats have been tuned to account for the quality caps of resources that go into them. This is very useful information but I think sets yourselves (and players) up for disappointment. Let's remove for a moment the actual stats of the gun, and just focus on the % rating that the crafter sees. It sounds like you expect 50% to be considered "superb quality" in some products, yet for others 50% is "average quality". The crafter has no way of knowing that you intended 50% to mean different things in different products. All a crafter really wants to do is get 99% in everything they can make. The inability to do so disappoints them and causes them frustration.

But for your developers this nightmare requires making assumptions about the materials available, and the ingenuity of players -- assumptions that will someday fail you. If you set up a system in which every category could reasonably go up to 100%, you would be able to ABSOLUTELY predict the high-end damage on a weapon, rather than fudging it. Furthermore, your players would always know good quality from mediocre, because the numbers they know (0% - 100%) mean the same thing for every item.

I accept that this system is coming around, and I appreciate understanding it a bit better, but just realize that this system will not improve variety nor the economy as you are hoping. As others have already stated, it will simply create a greater divide between the rich mega-Masters and the struggling up-and-comers. This divide will increase the cost of the high-end goods that are about to become even harder to make than before.

My recommendation is that the next time you want to make a change like this, that you come to your forums BEFORE making your own assumptions about how to fix it(and definitely before designing & coding them), present your goals (better craft variety and economy) to the community, and ask for ideas from us. You have thousands of creative and eager minds at your disposal here, and explaining your thoughts to us is far less effective than gathering our ideas and picking out the best ones.

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This has got to be one of the best posts I have read on this entire discussion. 5 stars for you, some very good things in there. I was going to try to write a response to this information, but I couldn't quite figure what to say and you summed it up perfect.

Potnik

Chrysalide wrote:
And after this, consumers will need to decide what types of equipment will best suit their playing styles.

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WRONG - example weapon:

1) those who dont fight buffed get the same HAM weapon, with less damage;
2) those who fight buffed STILL dont give a flying **** what the HAM cost is.

Chrysalide wrote::
We believe that the introduction of items with a wider variety of attributes will be a step leading to the leveling of the playing field between crafters.

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Chrysalide wrote:
We are aware that in most cases, items that will be crafted after Publish Seven will not have attributes as high as items created pre-publish.

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PRE-PATCH HINT -Stockup now

In a constructive manner - one of the many problems with this game is the lack on new equipment & problems with existing equipment (*cough* republic blaster usable by all) & (*splutter* hmm i need some new armor what shall i buy? Padded? Tantel? Mabari?) not the crafting process...

What your explaination does not make any sense at all. I really hope that you guys start playing your own game than sitting and assuming things. I can let you play my acct. for a month or two and you will know what we all refering to. Trying to make explaination out of paper, nevertheless is useless.

So let me get this straight: they are shifting the focus from Experimentation, shich while may not be the best, works on a system of Skill and Reward (which most people agree is at least fair) to Resource Quality?

RESOURCES ARE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED; of all the aspects of SWG, resource-placement and shifting seems to be the least watched and regulated. On some servers, some items like Advanced Bio Controllers were not available for quite some time after release simply because the proper resources had never spawned. So now they're changing the focus to this even more?

They said:

"The point as we see it though is that the current system is broken, and does need to be fixed. We feel that this is a change needed for the long-term health and enjoyment of the game, and we wanted to provide and frank and honest explanation of our reasons behind its implementation."

Well I'd like some details please on exactally what they think is broken. Resource-gatherers will get rich off this, quality resources will skyrocket and the price of everything else will follow. That's the long-term effect, the short-term effect will be that no one will buy anything that wasn't made pre-nerf.

-Bender (Bloodfin)

A few first thoughts in green. I'll do a better write-up this weekend if I have time.

Greetings everyone,

<snip>
The driving force behind a change to a fundamental system of this magnitude is the current state of the game economy. To put not too fine a point on it, the game economy is in poor shape. There are a few factors that contribute to the detrimental condition of the economy, and we are reviewing and assessing them all. Of these factors, one of the most significant is the ability for many crafters to easily maximize the attributes of items and equipment through experimentation.

True to a point. The problem isn't the way experimentation works though. The problem for weaponsmiths is that experimenting HAM values has such a small effect andcombat types have so much money that they don't care about durability. Weaponsmiths only have one line to experiment on. For armorsmiths it is not as bad as they can try to lower HAM, but look on the boards. Do combat types ever comment on encumberance? Almost every thread is on resistance because they can buff touse their equipment. Armorsmiths must fully experiment resistance (one line) as well. These changes do nothing to change the facts of what the people who use ouritems will buy.

Our main concern centered around the fact that with most master crafters all making the best equipment possible, there is very little variety on the market. It seemed to us that there were almost no hard decisions to be made during the experimentation process by the crafter, and none to be made by the consumer when purchasing these items. When a majority of the equipment on the server is top of the line, there is very little reason for customers to seek out new sellers, and new vendors find it difficult to break into the business.

Correct, see above. Guess what? These changes don't address that problem. The only thing that will occur is master smiths will sell items and nobody else will becuase their stuff will be inferior by 20%. The way it is now, someone with techniques 4 at least can eek out a living as a weaponsmith because they can fully experiment the only line that matters in weaponsmith - damage. Established smiths who have experimentation tapes to +20 will be able to produce items about as good as current master only smiths. With tapes going for 2 million credits or more per point of experimentation, a new master weaponsmith will have to spend at least 40 million credits to try and compete. This change actually reduces the chances of a new smith "breaking" into the market.

The primary goal of this change is two-fold. We want to take the first steps in rebuilding the economy, and we want to redefine the crafting game within Star Wars Galaxies. By having resource quality play a more significant role in the experimentation process, the focus should be shifting away from trying to make an item with maximum attributes and minimum encumbrance. We would like to encourage players to carefully choose where to spend their experimentation points, especially when using lower quality resources. For example, do you want to craft a faster weapon with higher damage but with heavier special move cost, or do you want a slower, less powerful weapon that is very easy to use? Do you want armor with higher resists and heavier encumbrance, or less protective armor that even the weakest person can use? Or do you want a general purpose item that is not especially strong in any area, but not weak in any area either? And after this, consumers will need to decide what types of equipment will best suit their playing styles.

I do carefully choose where I spend my experimentation points - they all go to damage or resistance. Players won't buy anything else unless you allow us to significantly lower the HAM costs on finished products. If we could reduce HAM costs by 50-75% maybe and I mean maybe some of the combat types will see the light and use low HAM items - but I won't hold my breath.

We believe that the introduction of items with a wider variety of attributes will be a step leading to the leveling of the playing field between crafters. And hopefully, this will lead to an increase in competition between crafters. Keep in mind that with this change comes a paradigm shift of sorts. We are aware that in most cases, items that will be crafted after Publish Seven will not have attributes as high as items created pre-publish. But still, I have seen some cases in which the heavier dependence on resource quality in this publish has resulted in items with higher attributes than are currently on Live.

What variety of attributes? Oh you mean masters weapons will give you 20% more damage and master armorsmiths will get resists 20% higher than non-masters (not 20% total - 20% of max resist). Thanks for driving all of the non masters out of the market. Biggins and Tortilla to name a few smiths should get ever richer with these changes.

One valid concern that has been raised with regards to this issue is that there are certain resources that are required for higher-end draft schematics that have capped qualities. For example, a certain item that has a dependency on conductivity might require Plumbum Iron as a resource component. The trouble with this being that ferrous metals, and specifically iron, will most always have poor conductivity (and realistically so). The perceived result of this is that any experimentation line that depends on conductivity can never be raised to an acceptable level. It is important to note that we are and have been aware of draft schematics like this. In such cases, we have artificially inflated the maximum values in the draft schematic for attributes that depend on the capped resources, so that the end result is in line with the expected values.

OK, so you meantfor advanced blaster rifle barrels and pistol barrels to have a maximum of +4 min/max over their normal breathern and have the advanced pieces skyrocket HAM cost? This is because Rhodium steel is their major component and never has a conductivity over 50. Thanks, I'll stick to the normal ones. Oh, if you experiment down the HAM, its still higher than normal barrels and the advanced onesdo less damage.

That may be a little confusing to follow so I will try to explain a little better with an example. Very simply, say that you have a weapon, and we want the maximum damage for that weapon to be no less than 50, and no greater than 100. Say that experimentation for maximum damage depends on conductivity, and the schematic requires iron and aluminum. For the sake of argument, let's say that the iron conductivity is capped at 10% of resource maximum, and aluminum conductivity is capped at 90% of resource maximum. When these two resources are used in crafting the item, the maximum conductivity possible is averaged out to be 50%. With this in mind, we have set the range of values for max damage on this weapon to be 50 to 200. The result of this is that with the maximum conductivity possible with these hypothetical capped resources (50%) the maximum damage that can be achieved with this weapon is what we wanted it to be (200 x 50% = 100). These artificially inflated values are not new in Publish Seven; these have been around since the launch of the game. In short, it is a valid concern, but it is one that we have always been aware of, and took steps to address in the original implementation.

I hope you check the math on advanced barrels - its not inflated enough, unless you count HAM.

In reviewing the threads on this forum regarding this new change, I have seen a lot of intelligent testing and discussion going on. More than a few people have mentioned that "if it isn't broken, we shouldn't fix it". The point as we see it though is that the current system is broken, and does need to be fixed. We feel that this is a change needed for the long-term health and enjoyment of the game, and we wanted to provide and frank and honest explanation of our reasons behind its implementation.

As always, we welcome and will happily address your comments and questions.

Most sincerely,

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Please reconsider these changes. It will lead to less variety rather than more. Currently, you can buy a top of the line weapon at a top of the line price from a master with +20 Exp skill tapes. Or pay a little less for really good weaponfrom a straight master. Or get a great deal on equipment of high quality and slightly higher HAMs from a smith with just techniques 4 trying to grind their way to master.

These changes do everything we don't need them to do and completely ignore the one thing that would make the marketplace more diverse- let HAM costs be effectively experimented on.