Development Cycle Archive
Thread: 9.2 Publish Feedback: Wookiee Armor, Old Mos Espa Arena Swoop Track & Crafting Quests
palladiumleader wrote:
I've tried out the missions, and I can tell you right now why they're not going to catch on. There are two types of novice crafters. Those who just want to power through to master (which is most), and those who want to play the game the way it was intended and work their way towards master. These missions won't help either type of crafter.
For those trying to power through, these missions will only slow down the grind and make it more complicated. Yes, the experience reward is a little higher than the practice bonus. However, the missions ask the crafter to make various items, not just the item that gives the most experience for the least amount of time spent crafting. The grinders will stick to making the same item 4000 times rather than making 8000 various items. Also, the extra steps of conversing and putting the items in the crate will further slow the grinder.
The other type of crafter, the one who wants to make useful items and play the game as intended, won't find fulfillment in these missions, either. What they really truly want is to be able to participate in the player economy and gradually find more ways to help as they progress. However,everything the devs have done since release has made it so only masters have a place in the economy, or so that what few useful items can be made by novices is flush in the economy due to the high xp requirements of advancement. These missions are too artificial feeling to satisfy this type of crafter, and even though the NPC asks them to make a variety of items, it will still feel too repetitive to this player to just make a random item and put it in a crate.
Based on Chrysalide's post, I think the intent of these missions is to help the crafter who just hates wasting the resources during the grind. The problem is, that player doesn't exist. Resources are too cheap and easy to get for the grinder to care, and the crafter who wants to participate in the player economy doesn't care about the resources, they care about people benefitting from their skills. In short, the credits reward from these missions just isn't needed, and the experience bonus is too small to be worth the extra time it takes to do these missions compared to just making the same item over and over.
What players truly want from crafting missions (besides a profit or faster progression in the skill tree, both of which the devs seem unprepared to give), is content. What we truly want is story, challenge, new items to make, and fun, unique rewards.
QFE. Excellent analysis of why the new crafter quests aren't gonna work.
Devs, had you described the quests to us (and what their rewards would be)before implementing them, there are probably a lot of people on this board who could have told you the same thing. Heck, I know for a fact there are a few fairly intelligent people working at SOE (Raph/Holocron, despite his occasional bungling, is a bright guy who knows how to think logically about what will make a game fun to play) who could have told you the same thing. Why don't you run this stuff by them before slapping it together and shipping it?
Heck, if you were to ask me right now, I could give you ideas for how to make these quests worthwhile just by adjusting the rewards to make them correspond to some extent to the effort put in. But given that we still have stuff like the "ten credits and a single unit of copper" loot drops, I won't even bother, since it's obviously a lost cause.
Bring me the head of Haden Blackman.
JenOrei wrote:
Mattt wrote:
When's that? After the third expansion?
No no...it's coming soon. Most of the code is already worked out. They've been looking over suggestions from the crafting community for months, and it should only take 1 or 2 more "most needed fix" polls in order to really nail it down.
See, they feel the pain that the crafting community has been feeling, and they know that this is a priority for most players. Thunderheart has been working closely with the devs and the community, so the devs know just how vital this is.
It's a complex system, and the devs want to take the time to do it right. They are determined to only put out quality, thoroughly tested patches, especially on something this big. Thunderheart feels confident that when the new system is in place, it will be a big improvement for everyone, helping make this the best MMORPG on the market.
Wow! Are you bucking for Thunderheart's old job? You are the Rich Little of these forums!
--Thrush--
nolan007 wrote:
Chrysalide / JustG:
What's the new development plan since Combat Revamp has been pushed out?
Any rough schedules for when things will be fixed, balanced, or introduced?
For example....
- Bounty Hunters do not have TEF on roughly 50% of their Jedi missions. Any one working on this bug?
- Vehicle dismounts warp you +/- 100m However, if you /wave;/pause 1;/dismount the problem is greatly mitigated?
- Often, you have to close extra copies of Compose New Message when clicking New and then try to close the message. Occasionally, you'll have to close5, 10, or more empty dialogs. Very annoying.
- The Combat Queue does notsave its location on the screen between gaming sesions. Currently, it's the only item that doesn't remember it's screen position between gaming sessions.
- Many Star Warsy things introduced such as Space craft landing and taking off at POI, in the wilderness, etc. More music introduced...such as when bases are destroyed, when crossing various parts of the planets (not often enough to become annoying), etc.etc. etc. See my signature for other suggestions.
The emote has nothing to with this. If you stop moving BEFORE mounting, and come to a complete stop before dismounting your vehicle will never warp. Try it out. Since I discoveredand began practicing this(months ago) my vehicle has never warped.
--Thrush--
Thrush wrote:
nolan007 wrote:
Chrysalide / JustG:
What's the new development plan since Combat Revamp has been pushed out?
Any rough schedules for when things will be fixed, balanced, or introduced?
For example....
- Bounty Hunters do not have TEF on roughly 50% of their Jedi missions. Any one working on this bug?
- Vehicle dismounts warp you +/- 100m However, if you /wave;/pause 1;/dismount the problem is greatly mitigated?
- Often, you have to close extra copies of Compose New Message when clicking New and then try to close the message. Occasionally, you'll have to close5, 10, or more empty dialogs. Very annoying.
- The Combat Queue does notsave its location on the screen between gaming sesions. Currently, it's the only item that doesn't remember it's screen position between gaming sessions.
- Many Star Warsy things introduced such as Space craft landing and taking off at POI, in the wilderness, etc. More music introduced...such as when bases are destroyed, when crossing various parts of the planets (not often enough to become annoying), etc.etc. etc. See my signature for other suggestions.
The emote has nothing to with this. If you stop moving BEFORE mounting, and come to a complete stop before dismounting your vehicle will never warp. Try it out. Since I discoveredand began practicing this(months ago) my vehicle has never warped.
--Thrush--
I know it doesn't.
We often don't have time to sit and wait before a dismount.
I'm provingthat you shouldn't have to stay idle for many seconds to dismount correctly.... with that dismount macro, you can hop off in a hurry.
Message Edited by nolan007 on 07-28-2004 05:47 PM
Artisan43 wrote:
The emote has nothing to with this. If you stop moving BEFORE mounting, and come to a complete stop before dismounting your vehicle will never warp. Try it out. Since I discoveredand began practicing this(months ago) my vehicle has never warped.
So when i went to lunch today, and left my toon who was on my speederbike outside of the Cantina on coronet, then came back half an hour later and was thrown thru the cantina wall, it was because i hadn't stopped yet? We need to decrease the time to stop to less then half an hour then!
LOL.
Chrysalide wrote:
Hello everyone,
We appreciate all the comments and feedback about the items in Publish 9.2, and I would like to follow up with a few of our thoughts regarding the Crafting Contractor quests.
The primary demographic for which these quests are designed is the junior crafter that is trying to work his or her way up to master the profession. The Crafting Contract system is intended to be an alternative for those that are trying to get experience at novice levels, but find it difficult to sell the items that they make to other players.
To this goal, crafters have had the option to use 'practice mode' on their crafting tools to earn slightly more experience at the cost of losing the prototype item that would normally be produced. This system is comparable to what we are trying to achieve with the Crafting Contractor quests. Filling the contracts may be a little slower, but the experience bonus is larger and the crafter will get a small credit reward (as opposed to no credit return in practice mode).
We wanted the main reward for these contract to be the experience bonus for completing the assignment, the credit rewards are intentionally on the low side. These are not quests from which you will make a profit, we still want the main source of income for crafters to be from selling items to other players.
We do not want to exclude intermediate or advanced crafters that want to take part in the system, and so your local crafting contractor will give you the option to choose the difficulty of your assignment. Keep in mind though, that since the primary return for these quests is the experience, master crafters may find the reward less satisfying.
I understand that this is not what many people had in mind for the crafting quests. That being said, and as some others have previously suggested, I think that having true "quests" for crafters is a fantastic idea (something sufficiently challenging and interesting, with an appropriately appealing reward). It is something that we have talked about, and it is something that I would love to be included with future content.
Again, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to participate and post your feedback. We do take all comments seriously and keep them in mind for revisions and future content.
Just thought I'd throw my two credits in and say that this is an excellent and long overdue addition to the early crafting process. Regardless of what was intended from the beginning, the process of leveling up sufficiently as a crafter to make useful and marketable products boiled down to just grinding away and spending credits that you had no other way to earn other than taking up a combat profession on the side. This makes a whole lot of sense; and could probably even be expanded in keeping with this same concept (maybe the empire needs a hundred uniforms that would be craftable at a novice level, and surely the Rebels need those camo green ponchos they're so fond of, etc.)
I do agree that there should be higher level, more intricate content for crafters and entertainers as well; theme parks, herald quests, and crafting "dungeons." But that's a whole separate jar of insect bait. It's no less important, but the continued need for those things shouldn't diminish the forward progress that has been made with this addition; even if it's not what many of you were looking for, there are many, many players that will get positive value out of it.
Chrysalide wrote:
Hello everyone,
We appreciate all the comments and feedback about the items in Publish 9.2, and I would like to follow up with a few of our thoughts regarding the Crafting Contractor quests.
The primary demographic for which these quests are designed is the junior crafter that is trying to work his or her way up to master the profession. The Crafting Contract system is intended to be an alternative for those that are trying to get experience at novice levels, but find it difficult to sell the items that they make to other players.
To this goal, crafters have had the option to use 'practice mode' on their crafting tools to earn slightly more experience at the cost of losing the prototype item that would normally be produced. This system is comparable to what we are trying to achieve with the Crafting Contractor quests. Filling the contracts may be a little slower, but the experience bonus is larger and the crafter will get a small credit reward (as opposed to no credit return in practice mode).
We wanted the main reward for these contract to be the experience bonus for completing the assignment, the credit rewards are intentionally on the low side. These are not quests from which you will make a profit, we still want the main source of income for crafters to be from selling items to other players.
We do not want to exclude intermediate or advanced crafters that want to take part in the system, and so your local crafting contractor will give you the option to choose the difficulty of your assignment. Keep in mind though, that since the primary return for these quests is the experience, master crafters may find the reward less satisfying.
I understand that this is not what many people had in mind for the crafting quests. That being said, and as some others have previously suggested, I think that having true "quests" for crafters is a fantastic idea (something sufficiently challenging and interesting, with an appropriately appealing reward). It is something that we have talked about, and it is something that I would love to be included with future content.
Again, I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to participate and post your feedback. We do take all comments seriously and keep them in mind for revisions and future content.
Message Edited by IgescaStorm on 07-28-2004 04:19 PM