Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
Perhaps we can compromise.
Put in limited-use SEA-like Experimentation items as rewards for crafter only missions given by NPCs. Limit me to one of these missions a week. Restrict these SEA-type items (necklaces?) to NOT combine with any other SEA bonuses on Experimentation.
That would be fun. If I want to go through the effort every week of doing the mission, and then decide where to apply my 5 shots of 12 experimentation, and put up with moderate failures, why then I can be almost on a par with the Mega Rich dewd with the 40 million in SEA tapes for experimentation. But not quite.
He gets unlimited use of 12 points, I get 5 shots a week.
It would be better than what you have planned for us now, which simply screws the 10 point Masters and 8 point Experts on down.
The precedent for limited use special items has clearly already been set.
Currently, this is how it works on live:
- simply having high-number resources will give you good weapons.
- it's only possible to push certain aspect of an item (damage, for example) to "100%" in experimenting if your resources are at least 990 for that aspect.
- no matter what the resource value, experiement percentage gain is standard.
- depending on the resource value, the experiment percentage gain is capped. (990-1000 gives you 100%, but it curves downard from there. 600-700 will give you maybe a 50% cap.)
This is how it'll work with this publish:
- simply having good resource numbers will give you goodweapons.
- it's possible to pushcertain aspects of an item to "100%" in experimenting so long as you have experimentation points to spend
- experimentation percentage gain is dependant on resource value. higher numbers yeild higher gain. (note: low numbers are artificially inflated in certain resources by the schematics to be in line with other aspects of the item. ie, low conductivity capped iron)
- experimentation percentage gain is cappped, but at a lower rate than before. it's possibe to hit 100% off of lower value resources.
The difference here? For those of you uber crafters with insanely good materials, your market will GROW. Your guns will be BETTER. People will pay more.
The people with poor materials, or not as much play time? They'll be able to max out 1 or 2 parts of a weapon, but at the cost of ignoring the other aspects. That'll give them more of a fighting chance in the economy, and will allow them to sell for less, apealing to those of us without endless pocket books.
And this is a bad change... how? I think too many here have posted without considering all the facts of this change.
All i can say is that I'm going to go buy myself a new set of composite, and make sure the one i have on gets repaired at the right times.
This is why i do not playing a crafting profession as my main anymore. I have a Doc on Tc, and i recently gave up on trying to sell stimpacks. It's horrible! You have to find a spot on a planet (or have someone graciously give you a WP, because you, as a TKM/MD, have no surveying skills...). You then have to go there, and usually the place is already full with 50 harvies. You find a spot at half the concentration of where most people got their harvies on. Set them down, pay the maint/power for 7 days, leave. 2 days later, your PA mates tell you it's shifted out. So now what? You have to waste another hour, shuttling, waiting, shuttling, to pick it up, then find a new spot, put it down, shuttle, wait, shuttle, wait, shuttle and finally you are back at where you started...
I used to love crafting in SWG. It was a very fun game for me for a long while. I even did architect on my TC character (the profession requiring alot less quality ressources than other professions, but still...).
The problem is that the economy is too full of money. Most everyone has millions, or can get them easily...
I did a little test on live, because i was bored on TC after testing out pub 7 and the corvette, etc... So i went back to my live character, and i'd always wanted to try ranger (and i still have tracking 4, mind you, it rocks!). Then, as i came, i checked wich ressources were going for the most on the trade forums. Dath avian meat, going for 100-200 cpu!!! So i tried to get tracking 3 or 4 before it shifted, but i didnt make it. But then, lucky me, spawned endorian wooly hide! That thing had over 950 in all 3 statas that mattered to armorsmiths to make composite! So i hung out with my PA buddies on wooly hunts, i hunted myself (all while XPing towards MBH). Finally, we all sold our hide to the Pa AS at 45cpu. I believe i sold him 30-40K total... that was over 1.35 million credits. (He ended up broke and with 300K wooly, but the next day he fond a skill tape, sold it and was back up to 5 millions cash...) I then hutned on the side some dantooine carnie meat for my chef, 30K of it at 30 cpu, bam, 900K... And i forget wich herb meat i got too , all while leveling BH.I had started with 150K on that character, with novice BH. I ended up with over 2.3 millions in one week of lazy playing in guild hunting groups or doing missions from the terminals, and in the meantime i had bought a full set of 80% kinetic composite, doc buffed every time i logged on for 8-10K, A ton of new weapons, slicing for all my gear, overpriced brandy, vagnerian canape and vegash (harvesting bonus)..
This just goes to show, making money in SWg is EASY, if you have some brains and a guild to help out. THAT is the problem! When i go to one of the most famed WSes on eclipse (Sanu for instance, or Hero...) they sell me a scatter for around 10K credits unsliced... 10K is NOTHING for me. 10K is a set of doc buffs with a pricy doc!
There is too much money in SWG, and anythin goes for incredibly high prices. Lets not talk about that dath avian meat, wich to this day still sells for over 150cpu . Had i gotten there with ranger skills in time, i would have well over 10 millions by now. But what frightens me is not that i can get money this easily, it's that a full set of 80% kinetic composite will cost me 300K, when a skill tape looted from the borgle bat cave with +3 to pistol speed will cost me well over 1million, when the first item took months of investement from the crafter, and the second was taken by semi-afking in an overcrowded cave...
I hope the combat balance fixes this, because it is the core of the problem. All professions in SWG have the sole purpose of supporting combat characters, even if indirectly (except for ID and Tailor, wich seem to be the oddball in there...). Architects make harvesters that help crafters make weapons or armor... that combat characters will use. Entertainers and doctors heal... combat characters... Musicians, dancers, chefs docs, buff... combat characters... Etc etc...
So i would think that, if you ""fix"" combat, you will ""fix"" the rest of the game... At least i hope so... Oh well, there's always the SE to look foward to if land combat turns bad 
Chrysalide wrote: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.
I agree. The economy is in bad shape.
I am a former Master Artisan/Architect that moved away from crafting a few months ago mainly to try something new. I haven't read all the responses yet, but I'm sure the changes have many crafters up in arms.
From my own perspective, the changes appear to add importance to resource statistics. I'm not sure how this will really help "the little guy". PAs, powergamers, and those who have been at it for awhile will likely have hoards of nice resources. This will lead to the rich getting richer.
I don't know what the "right" solution is (ideally, changes along with a character wipe would happen but of course that can't happen on the Live servers!). Even with changes that affect all "new" crafters, you still have people out there with millions of credits (I'm one of them) that can buy pretty much anything.
I'm not opposed to crafting changes, but I think other things need to change along with it. Surveying and mining need to be changed so that the playing field is a little more level for those entering a crafting profession. Currently, resource sellers can make huge profits even with low quality resources. People are able to amass huge stockpiles of great resources and credits, yet the little guy is left struggling.
A LOT more needs to be done to balance the crafting economy and it shouldn't just consist of changing experimentation. With the millions of credits (and resources) in the game today that's hard to do, but I hope further changes are coming to fix the current imbalance!
I'd like to address a few fundamental points in this post. I'm an delighted you have shared the reasoning behind why you think these changes is necessary, but there are more than a few problems with some of the premises - and I honestly don't think the changes are going to have any bearing on the issues you are putting forward as causitive factors and indeed will have totally opposite results than your stated desires.
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.
While I totally agree the economy is in very poor shape (if you use the yardstick that 'money is a counter and should retain value) the ability to make topnotch goods has very little bearing on this - there are far more factors at work and if topnotch goods are even on the short list at all - it would be at the bottom. Whatever system you implement - eventually 'the best' is still going to be 'the best' and therefore this is a circular argument regarding the economy. What isn't circular is the stockpiling of pre-patch goods which will further skyrocket in price (read make things worse overall - and specifically for newer crafters which this is supposedly helping). The only 'legitimate' argument that can be made is that items are too powerful and you want to see a 'nerf' of player power which is basically what this is doing. If that is really the problem you need to be honest about it - because the problem isn't in the crafting, it's in the initial design, and this change really doesn't change a think for a LONG time with all the prepatch goods stockpiled.
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.
While all this sounds great in theory - in practice it's a wash. What this does not take into account is player behavior. They can - will - and ALWAYS do decide what 'is best' for a player template and that's what the majority comes to expect demand as product. Moving the bar on 'best' is simply going to create a period of time (I wouldn't be surprised if new sales of adjusted 'best' bottom out for over a year or longer) in which time new crafters without stockpiled goods will have abysmal business and established crafters used to a certain amount of traffic are going to be extremely dissatisified with a change that will make THEM look like they aren't as skilled and decrease in sales once stockpiles move out. Again, this will further concentrate the money in the hands of a few and I gather from this reasoning that's the oppositie of desired intent.
If some items are better after than before - that's all that will sell till stocks are gone - and that can take a LONG time. I don't have a particular problem with resource quality weighing more heavily into the equation - but it should be to make things better - not worse. All this seems to focus primarily on weapons and armor but there are other crafting fields that are likely to be impacted with unintended results. Leveling the playing field is fine in theory - but it will never ever work in practice. One of the beauties of any crafting system is that the real keys to being successful aren't necessarily in the game mechanics (see above) although game mechanics can certainly go a long way to supporting the functionality of a merchant. If resource quality should count - perhaps more attention should be put on the MANY items where it doesn't matter much at all - although I do hate to suggest that, having some items where quality doesn't matter levels out the resource market so all resources retain value for SOMETHING, this is a good thing. While it can be argued that the complixity of this system makes for a complicated (read interesting) crafting system - the question remains - is that the area players desire complexity in? Some will answer yes, some no. IMHO you've come very close to overtinking the plumbing in complexity already. There is very little relation to doing what are essentially mathematical exercises on a spreadsheet to the creative crafting process. If I had my personal druthers - I'd rather see a larger range of variety on the intangibles side of the table (style, color, looks) than the functional side. Creativity that comes from the player is good - plugging numbers into a spreadsheet for optimum outcome is tedious. Someday perhaps technology will actually catch up to player desire and crafters really will be able to create from their own imaginations (even if it's from a finite set of parts). Some of this is already present in SWG - but for my .02, this would be the area I would focus on both for crafter satisfaction - and consumer satisfaction.
The only part 'broken' was the insane amount of critical failures - especially at master levels. While there are legitimate game mechanic reasons in some games for 'waste' in failures - in SWG those reasons do not hold true. No resources are purchased from NPCs (goldsink) and in a system where things can be mass produced - crit failing on items does nothing to stem the flow of items into the economic system. All crit failures do is frustrate players and make them perceive a need to charge more to cover 'waste'. A waste charge from an economic point of view makes sense if materials are coming from NPCs - when they come from players it just shifts money from one pot to another but at such a tiny rate it isn't a drop in the ocean in regards to economy. Again, the challenges to a crafter/merchant - the 'game' as SWG is constructed is far more in the players lap (a good thing) to advertise and become known than the physical crunch the numbers - pop out the product part. If more areas of MMOs were more focused on player creativity, knowledge and inspiration - you wouldn't have nearly the complaints you have about them feeling flat and boring.
By far the biggest problem - really the only impacting problem - is that there are far too few areas of desireable ways to spend money back out of the economy from where it came. Taxes (maintanence, fees) are fine but will never level the playing field as to those with 'too much' money - it doesn't matter - and to new people trying to break in it's gating. The casinos were are great idea -but the implementation of them is frankly - miserable. A little text on the screen is just not compelling. There aren't even any sounds with them - much less visuals. I think they were a terrific idea, but they provide zero excitement so no one uses them.
While I personally like the idea that all product and services come from players that theory hamstrings you in the legitimate function of NPCs to suck money back out of circulation and are thereby your best main tools for regulating an economy.
There are only two requirements for intangible rewards working as a goldsink. They have to be desired by players, which usually means visual to them and others - and they have to be totally optional. Anything you can come up with that is seen as a means to display wealth and is purchased from NPCs WILL suck money back out of circulation. It doesn't have to have tangible rewards past being a display of wealth and desired by players as a display of their success.
The problem with the economy is all the cash flowing in and none going back out - at least none going back out in a 'fun' fashion. The faucet is on fullblast - but the plug is in the tub - it's inevitable that it will eventually overflow.
RaijinE wrote:
Doesn't this seem to everyone that the real problem is with the stupid skill tapes? The crafter with +20 experimentation tapes is really the one that is benefitting most from this and causing the others to suffer. I've gone an inspected the caves and dungeons where there are loot drops and just left because of the AFK looters. As a Droid Engineer I feel that this "fix" is just the final kick in the pants. What's the point in even trying to work on profession if everything that is done will just make it worse. I don't know, very frustrated by all of this. This is no longer a game for the casual player.
If you can get into a cave before anyone else, target a "structure", and set a macro loop to run over night, you TOO can be an SWG millionaire!
Is the above really how the devs want to people "getting rich"?
Someone mentioned monopolies, but no one has mentioned the fact that one to three people per server seem to ALWAYS have the best skill tapes...1+1=2, right?