Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
Well, I'm throwing in my 2-creds even though I doubt SOE will ever read this:
I found this "explanation" of the crafting experimentation changes to be less than compelling. I felt like I was reading a political speech, full of meaningless jargon and double-speak.What I got from it was"we are going to do it, even if 90% of you disagree, so get used to it".
I'm a weaponsmith, and as such I can tell you that I almost always max out damage first, because this is whatmy customer base wants. This isn't the result ofa monopoly by established crafters, nor is it a result of master crafters using the best resources to always make the best products. Nor is this the result of a 'broken' economy. In fact, quite the opposite, this shows that the economy is working fairly well, at least from a crafting perspective (duping and buying credits on E-bayare another issue entirely).
Weaponsmithsmax out the damage first-and-foremostbecause it's what our customers want, andwe listen to our customer base (unlike SOE apparently). If we didn't do it, we'd be out of business.
I made a few specialty weapons that traded maxed-out damage for higher accuracy or higher wounds. These are a high-accuracy D-18 with +100 to Ideal Range (110 max damage instead of the usual 129), a Power Hammer with -5/-8/-5 accuracy modsand 428 max damageinstead of the usual -28/-28/-28 with 470 max damage, and a high wound republic blaster using an advanced scope experimented for wounds, resulting in relatively high HAM costs for the pistol.
Guess what? They hardly sell at all. Why is that do you think? Maybe because players don't want all these fancy weapons with varied accuracy and HAM costs. 99% of the player base wants weapons with maxed out damage, everything else is secondary.
The only way you can possibly fix the economy now is to do a complete server wipe, then implement these changes. Of course, if you did that, I'm guessing that most people would simply quit the game.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
JustG wrote:
Howdy...
Thanks for the feedback thus far.
I would ask that you try to keep the emotional responses out of it... that has no effect other than to make us skip that post. I really appreciate the rational replies.
We are still reading... and thinking about this.
- g
The one thing I would ask you, and all the devs reading this thread to remember, is that most people that are quite willing to go ahead with the proposed system, and even think it will be good in the long run, are not going to be posting here - in very large part because of the abusive and insulting posts made by some of its opponents against both the devs and others that have supported this idea, here and in profession specific forums.
Less than 10% of players read these forums on a semi-regular basis and will not have been stocking up for the change (btw, you may want to curb old THs enthusiasm for handing out bits of 'advise' like that). With the change already made to the mobs and NPCs it is patently obvious that PCs are significantly more powerful in PvE than they should be. Elite professions take a matter of a couple of days to master using current weapons, meds, buffsand armor. The fact that some people have stockpiled to mitigate the effect of this change on them personally should have no bearing whatsoever on the decision to implement the change. Either mobs and NPCs all need to be taken up in difficulty again, or players need to be made weaker - and slowly weaning them into less powerful, all-effective versions of the gear they are using now seems to me to be a far more sensible solution than simply raising the bar again.
....(*Cough* like factionally controled resource mines that people could fight over for super-resources*cough*)
) I now see the two major systems of this game (crafting and combat) both broken. Verging on shattered. Good job on getting your priorities straight... Here's a rough diagram of the crafting system as I see it (and how it portains to what I'm saying):
JustG wrote:
Howdy...
Thanks for the feedback thus far.
I would ask that you try to keep the emotional responses out of it... that has no effect other than to make us skip that post. I really appreciate the rational replies.
We are still reading... and thinking about this.
- g
KrothParYskin wrote:
This will save you people soooo much time concerning this subject.
Dont argue anymore. The Devs Don't listen to player's concerns.
Just do what i do.........Grab the economy size lube.........bend over............and take it like everyone else does.
They haven't listened to people before this and they aren't about to start now.
Fine if you wanna fix the broken economy the best way to do it would be to install npc dealers that sell equipment thats not as good quality as a player can make but at a reasonable price. This would act as a benchmark for new crafters to place thier items prices at. Also one reason why the economy is so screwed up atm is that easily 50% of the crafters in the game quit offering thier services to pursue the hologrind as soon as that happened the ones still in business had no problems about raising prices. Also alot of those that are still in business are jacking the consumers so that they can fund thier Jedi character and stock up on pearls.
If you get rid of the hologrinding for Jedi, put npc vendors in the game and raise the condition cap on sabers so that Jedi dont have to replace them as often then you will see the economy go back to a decent level where it should be.
well i have to say that, I have never seen a company ACTIVELY try to slit its own throat. I'm not sure you guys understand the major repercussions this kind of nerf WILL have. If this has anything to do with invalidor exploiteditems, delete them, decay them, whatever. But to considerably hinder and assualt the crafting professions is just wrong.
I have been a master BE for 6+ months now and feel we need more points to spend rather than less. And seeing as how most of this uber stuff is made with crafters with skill tapes, id say remove the frequency of those from the game world as well.
If you really want to help the economy so bad, give something to the lower crafters to make that the masters cant, let them have items that are needed as well, so they can get into the economy and supply goods that are needed, instead of giving the masters everything.
Eldrikk wrote:
Fine if you wanna fix the broken economy the best way to do it would be to install npc dealers that sell equipment thats not as good quality as a player can make but at a reasonable price. This would act as a benchmark for new crafters to place thier items prices at. Also one reason why the economy is so screwed up atm is that easily 50% of the crafters in the game quit offering thier services to pursue the hologrind as soon as that happened the ones still in business had no problems about raising prices. Also alot of those that are still in business are jacking the consumers so that they can fund thier Jedi character and stock up on pearls.
If you get rid of the hologrinding for Jedi, put npc vendors in the game and raise the condition cap on sabers so that Jedi dont have to replace them as often then you will see the economy go back to a decent level where it should be.
We are very aware that with the introduction of the modifications to the experimentation system in Publish Seven, quite a few questions have arisen and understandably so. The foremost and majority of these are curious as to why this change was implemented. We will do our best here to respond to your concerns, and to explain our reasoning behind moving forward with this change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
*Kettemoor