Development Cycle Archive
Thread: The Path of the Jedi: Reckoning of Effort
LordOfTheComp
Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:00 pm
#2458
Ok, I have had SWG since October of last year, i did a lot of grinding, and spent time having fun. 3 months ago i took a 2 month break from the game, cancelled account. I had done everything there was to do except grind. I returned only to the death watch bunker, an exit/enter command on hovercraft, and my prosperous guild in ruins. Yes, I am force sensitive, but i did not recieve a bar. That isn't what aggitates me. Its that all you did for content since May (?) was build a danjari type settlement 5km from a starport on Dathmir and set up an 18-week (maybe it will keep people interested) plan. Thats bull. We need content. 18 weeks gets you $75 for each "chosen 1". Cut it down to 1 week and build a Disneyland smack dab in the middle of Lok and maybe people won't leave. that gets u like $30 from a larger group, 1 that is very likly to buy JTLS. Lemme c... today is my last day before i get billed.... can u say cancel? I'll come back in 3 weeks and monitor the updates closly. Don't screw up, because u have over 100 pages of hate from ur subscribers. If people c this maybe they too will change their minds.... oh ya..... over 100 million xp for jedi..... GL on selling copies of the game!!!
Tantuine
Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:18 pm
#2459
TH:
I like many others must profess my immense disappointment with the new jedi system. There are several reasons for this disgruntlement.
1. The xp conversion rates are incredibly high. I realize you don't want people to easily get jedi and that's fine, but I thought the whole reasoning behind this jedi revamp was to eliminate players ability to grind jedi. That was already accomplished simply by having the different phases of the Village. You can't race through the process because you are gated by the 3 week time period for each phase change. The xp conversion rates really need to be looked at and lowered. Having to get enough xp to master a profession 32 times is exactly the same as the old holo grind.
Possible Solution: Please lower the conversion rates to reduce the mind numbing grinding that currently will have to be done just to fill one branch, much less 4, 5, or even all 6 branches. And, remove the xp caps so people won't have to make 100 trips to convert it every time they hit the cap. That way, people can hunt, craft, heal, whatever for a few days if they want to, then go to the village and convert the xp.
2. The rewards for previous hologrinders was fine if you were someone that wanted to grind endlessly over every profession to unlock their jedi. Another one of your reasons for this revamp was because you "want people toplay the game AS they achieve jedi" not "play the game TOachieve jedi". But what about all of us that HAVE played this game?? I HAVE played this game for over a year, but now it feels like I'm being punished because I didn't grind professions. I did my holo's and then went back to the professions I wanted after I got my silent one. I was actually excited about a revamp because I thought I'd have a chance to become a jedi and not have to grind endlessly to get it. Even more excited because I knew I was only one profession away so I should be really close to it anyway. Now, I have more grinding to do then if I had just done all the professionsin the first place. I thought I was almost done with my quest to be a jedi after my silent holo, now it seems like I'm farther away from it then I was the day I bought this game.
3. The silent holo stealth nerf was just wrong. When I got my silent profession I knew that I was only one profession away from jedi. I then went back to just playing how I wanted to play knowing the revamp was coming and that I would be very close to jedi. Then the stealth nerf that you have now admitted to goes in, and suddenly I'm 4 professions away. Again, it's like a punishment for not grinding professions. Instead of getting 5 unlocks as I should have for only being one profession away, I get two, TWO!!! For playing the game like it was meant to be played and like you had envisioned it to be played,we get penalized?? You reward those that grinded by letting them be one or two branches from jedi. The people that grinded so much that you had to revamp the entire system.But you penalize those of us that just played and had fun by giving us months and months of doing the same stuff we've been doing for a year, or at least since the first whispers of a revamp were heard. I have no problem with the grinders being rewarded, but please don't punish the rest of us because we chose to play instead of grinding.
Possible solution for 2 and 3: Increase the rewards, i.e. higher number of free unlocks for those of us that HAVE played thegame. Possibly one free unlock for each holo profession they have done. That would feel more like a reward. And since the most holo professions anyone could do is 4, becausethey went silent after that, it would also still leave people with some work to do without seeming likethere was no end in sight.
TH, these are very important issues to a lot of people and I hope we can get an official dev response to them. Everything that gets put into this game is alledgely watched and tweaked by the devs as needed, I hope this is no different. Even an official statement of "we aren't changing a thing, get used to it" would be better then just not hearing anything.
Thank you.
Message Edited by Tantuine on 09-04-2004 09:42 PM
Mortissen
Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:30 pm
#2460
well.
swg is a product, just like any other product around. be it sky tv, magazine subscription, anything.
the level of anger here on this fairly major topic surrounding Lucasarts and SOE's product is startling. I thought at 800 posts it was unbelievable.
anyway, my point is, when any other product recieves complaints as numerous (and as public) as this, usually they act on it in some way, be it a press release, conference, or (god forbid) actually fixing the problem.
but nothing? no replies? even worse, an almost patronising friday feature on the subject as if there is no problem?!
I decided to try for it. I did badges and the oh-my-god-how-un-variable-are-they themeparks (go bring this person back, go kill this person, go bring this person back, go kill this person) and oh look im glowy. Now I wait, in the middle of nowhere. But i know whats coming. Whats coming is what people did before, andthat is mindlessly grind their way to a profession, except this one will take forever.
can i just ask.... when you become jedi and complete the trees, what will there be to get from the game? what jedi-related content will there be after the trials? jedi specific themeparks? i doubt it. the odd dual with a bounty hunter (which is an easy grind in comparison)? joy.
i liek the looks of jump to lightspeed, but i feel that releasing a new X-Wing vs Tie Fighter with online support would be more successful and more enjoyable. And i'll replay jedi knight to be, well, a jedi.
scary stuff.
AltharXXX
Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:58 pm
#2461
I have several master armorsmiths. Thought I should run some numbers.
1,250,000 fs xp (for 4 boxes in crafting mastery)
4,100 armorsmith xp for a complete set of composite armor
5:1 ratio for conversion.
-------------------------------
(5*1250000)/4100=1524 suits of composite armor.
1524 suits of composite require 320,250 units of wooly hide (with no critical failures.)
In the process of grinding I ground out master ranger. doing so I collected 37k of corellian leather hide and 25k of dathomir leather. It took about 5 days (at that time I was playing about 3-4 hours a day.) I'm not master ranger now, but I think a master ranger can easily collect 20k of endorian wooly hide per buff. Figure that they want fair compensation so - they would want at least what they would make for running janta's - maybe 2M credits per buff. So now with 1 master ranger you can get enough hide to grind the FS xp in 16 days. Cool it's going to cost 32M credits too. (And honestly I highly doubt any ranger will hire to do this as they will be interested more in higher yield xp harvests on dathomir.)
Those 1524 suits of composite require 4.4M units of resources. Lets say you get your 8 harvesters on a 95% spot for each resource and the resource doesn't shift. You yield 17,784 units per harvester per day. Your 8 harvesters will take aproximately 31 days to collect these resources.
Stoked? Never mind that one factory likely doesn't have the bandwidth to support this grind. 3 weeks isn't enough time to collect the resouces.
-------------------
Architect -- 35:1 ratio.
I know why the devs did this. Statue heads. Well I'll tell you one thing. The devs are block heads. At 35:1 one branch will take 21.8M units of resources. (That's 7295 statue heads.) Maybe some people will start this grind...It's 137 ber13 harvesters on 95% ore (not likely) and gems.
This essentially means the only players with crafting mastery skills will be ones who got free unlocks.
Message Edited by AltharXXX on 09-04-2004 07:01 PM
N_Dak_Moonrider
Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:10 pm
#2462
Alright, this has probably been answered before, but there are just WAY too many pages to read and look for the answer I want. Here's my situation:
Back in the day of holocrons, I did 3 holo profs and the 4th holo I used was silent. Didn't this mean I had ONE profession left to master? I got my silent holo about a month or two after the first jedi popped up, and I dunno if they added more prof requirements just to the new characters (it's my understanding that as soon as we created our character, we had a hidden template of 5 profs that needed to be mastered to unlock; I started in October of '03, so that shouldn't have been changed, yet, right?) or if they added to EVERY character, new and old alike. If they only added it to the newer chars and didn't silently add required profs to existing characters, then, according to TH, I should have unlocked 5 FS branches, correct? So then why when I got to the village and talked with Paemos could I only unlock 2 friggin branches?
The only solution could be that the devs did the silent addition of more professions for ALL characters. Which would royally piss off everybody who had a silent holo back in the day. I sent in a ticket to the CSRs asking for an explanation and, of course, get totally ignored and sent to this thread, which I had already read and was happy to see I'd be unlocking 5 FS branches.
So...with my silent holo many months ago meaning I had 1 profession left to master, then getting to the village and seeing that I actually had 4 f'ing professions left, made me utterly angered. If anyone could explain this in more detail, could you please? Or if it's been done already, provide a clicky to the post? Thanks a lot, everyone.
Back in the day of holocrons, I did 3 holo profs and the 4th holo I used was silent. Didn't this mean I had ONE profession left to master? I got my silent holo about a month or two after the first jedi popped up, and I dunno if they added more prof requirements just to the new characters (it's my understanding that as soon as we created our character, we had a hidden template of 5 profs that needed to be mastered to unlock; I started in October of '03, so that shouldn't have been changed, yet, right?) or if they added to EVERY character, new and old alike. If they only added it to the newer chars and didn't silently add required profs to existing characters, then, according to TH, I should have unlocked 5 FS branches, correct? So then why when I got to the village and talked with Paemos could I only unlock 2 friggin branches?
The only solution could be that the devs did the silent addition of more professions for ALL characters. Which would royally piss off everybody who had a silent holo back in the day. I sent in a ticket to the CSRs asking for an explanation and, of course, get totally ignored and sent to this thread, which I had already read and was happy to see I'd be unlocking 5 FS branches.
So...with my silent holo many months ago meaning I had 1 profession left to master, then getting to the village and seeing that I actually had 4 f'ing professions left, made me utterly angered. If anyone could explain this in more detail, could you please? Or if it's been done already, provide a clicky to the post? Thanks a lot, everyone.
HolySpirt
Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:31 pm
#2463
I think we are all missing the point. If you read Thunders message it said to many people where unlocking. They upped the slots needed to make the jedi unlock. This being said....... They created a system that would make it longer to become a jedi.... Not shorter. This goes with the logic you see stated in the beginning and the one you are seeing now.
THEY DONT WANT TO MANY JEDI.
I, personally, think that is horrible and it is very frustrating. 
Regards
Tricerix
Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:46 pm
#2464
If everyone who played got the same credit as the people who play 10-15 hours a day(is possible with a job or school) then why play at all? Here's my theory, I think that there was a wave of hard cores that played way more then everyone else and so the developers decided to move the bar as a reward to the people who are the most obsessed with game play. I mean there are noreasons why one person who plays every once in a while should get the same opportunities as someone who plays all the frikkin' time. If you expect to be able to quit the game for a few months without losing any ground on the people who play this game a religious as some people watch football or porn, then why not think the game should start where you are given a free jedi master?
NewHopeFan
Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:58 pm
#2465
Ibelieve the ones that should actually count for free branch unllocks are the holos you did and then the # you did after reaching silent. Thatway what most believed when they heard the system would be changing and decided to wait and mistakenly thought that they would be fully credited for the HOLO professions they did would not be as upset as they are now. This is how i believe the system should have worked remember 24 boxes to get to exit trial
1 holo done 1 free branches
2 holos done 2 free branches
3 holos done 3 free branches
4 holos done 4 free branches (now most of those players that reached silent got to the silent after 3 or 4 professions)
5 holos done 5 free branches
When you reached silent say on the 3rd holo well you will automatically get your 2 free branches if you didnt master any more thats where you wouldbe on your holo credit. This leaves 16 boxes for the exit quest every 3 professions mastered would give youTWO FREE BOXES (not branch)
This system would be fair for everyone the grinders & the regular players alike. Each would get credit for what they accomplished.
NewHopeFan
Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:19 pm
#2466
OK i know my math was wrong here but the idea would be the # of remiaing prfessions in proportion to the number of boxes left needed, mind has been elsewhere watching Hurricane Frances so am trying to do the forums til the power goes out !
NewHopeFan wrote:
Ibelieve the ones that should actually count for free branch unllocks are the holos you did and then the # you did after reaching silent. Thatway what most believed when they heard the system would be changing and decided to wait and mistakenly thought that they would be fully credited for the HOLO professions they did would not be as upset as they are now. This is how i believe the system should have worked remember 24 boxes to get to exit trial
1 holo done 1 free branches
2 holos done 2 free branches
3 holos done 3 free branches
4 holos done 4 free branches (now most of those players that reached silent got to the silent after 3 or 4 professions)
5 holos done 5 free branches
When you reached silent say on the 3rd holo well you will automatically get your 2 free branches if you didnt master any more thats where you wouldbe on your holo credit. This leaves 16 boxes for the exit quest every 3 professions mastered would give youTWO FREE BOXES (not branch)
This system would be fair for everyone the grinders & the regular players alike. Each would get credit for what they accomplished.
NoUnderShorts
Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:26 pm
#2467
I have been playing SWG since September of last year, in October I got my first holocron and began my work towards jedi. Yay. I wasnt a hard core grinder and kinda just played the game and enjoyed which meant i finished my 4th holo in January, since then I have been grinding through professions somewhat rigorously (I'd finish a profession play it for about 2-3 weeks then drop it) and ended up doing 18 professions in all before pub 10 hit live. Anyway back to my main problem. I was allowed access to the village and when I went to see how many trees i had unlocked, to my disappointment i see that i have only unlocked 2 trees. I know some of you will say "Shut up, at least you got some trees," well yes i did but i have been working for it so S.TFU. Now here comes the really messed up part...after reading some other forums i come to realize that a player that has done all 4 of their holocron professions is guaranteed 2 trees in the conversion process. W.TF is that B.S, are you devs telling me that i could have just done nothing with my character for the past 8 months and I would still be at the same point I am now on my path to jedi? You say reckoning of effort, I say a serious loss in revenue for SOE.
Flame on people, at this point i really dont care.
-NoUnder Shorts - Master Complainer
Alixir
Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:09 pm
#2468
I am going to wait until the next phase....If they have not fixed this problem by then, to at least give some of us players that have to grind out all 6 branches a chance, I will cancel my account...which also means I will cancel my pre-order of JTL.
Dagrin
Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:20 pm
#2469
AltharXXX wrote:
This essentially means the only players with crafting mastery skills will be ones who got free unlocks.
Agreed. No one crafts by hand in this game anyway. Crafting by hand is ONLY used to grind the XP nessisary to master a profession, and now they expect master crafters to start grinding all over again? That's absurd! AltharXXX is quoting the numbers for a full suit, that's 9 parts per suit (not counting the subcomponents). Add to that he's only looking at 4 branches, if he wants to finish he'd need to fill 2 more branches.
Wasn't the idea to make the process for making Jedi even for all types of professions? At least combat CAN be minutly fun, craft grinding is like beating your head against a wall for hours on end.
Heck, even a crafter that not looking for Jedi andjust wants a few FS skills will spend forever doing this.
AndarDedev
Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:20 pm
#2470
Okay, we can all say we are , for the most part, dissapointed in this new system. We counted up the jedi xp we need, we counted up the reg xp we need to convert to get that, and we know these numbers are horribly high; thus meaning hundreds of painstaking hours of gameplay to grind.
(those of you who decided to do this are probably in an area like Rancor Valley on Dath or other places with good xp grinding out small amounts of xp at a time, while you look the many events that are going around you. Your guild, and friends are having a good time while you are stuck on dathomir grinding because you need the equivalent of 32 professions xp to convert)
Now we all did the math, and know how bad this system is for the powergamers, and casual gamers, who did not do holos, alike. The question is WHAT ARE THE DEVS GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
**Its easy to say hundreds, if even, or more are dissapointed and several are losing interest in the game, hence SOE is losing customers.
So, here are your options SOE:
1. Lose many customers (MONEY!!!)
2. Live up to what you promised, an end to powergrinding. (so you end this rediculous amounts of xp we need just to get initate)
It's up to you!