Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
This cannot go live. I urge the developers to actually take the time and examine what is going on on the servers. Many have accused the devs of not ever getting on to the actual servers and looking at what's going on. This is your chance to get in there and see what can be done. If nothing else, get Thunderheart in there to just walk around with people. I assure you there will be plenty of people talking about the price of resources.
Again, I urge the devs not to focus on private servers that are stable and look at chilastra, shadowfire, starsider, wanderhome, naritus...you know... the servers you put up for the playerbase to play and look at what problems there are.
Vercin_getorix wrote:
..."We believe that the introduction..."
This may be nitpicking, but please please please stop using language that reflect insecurity in your decisions, like "we hope", "we would like", and "we think". You are in control. You make the decisions. If you seem uncertain about the current course of action, then you are generating fear and trepidation in the player base. Much of the rancor in this dicussion is fueled by your unsure language. You may not be sure about your course of action, but don't tell us.
Lastly JustG wrote: "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."
People are emotional because they care. To openly say that you dismiss peoples feelings outright serves to really freaking tick people off. You cannot with a wave of your hand invalidate peoples feelings. People have feelings for a reason.
I said this before, and I really want you to listen. Your are the de facto governement in this system. There are few greater mistakes politicians can make than to discount peoples feelings. They will punish you mercilessly for doing it. The developement team may not be elected, but players can certainly vote with their credit cards.
Just in summary, I strongly urge the team to not move on this change. You have a problem you are trying to solve. That problem has not been clearly defined. No metrics have been put forth to illustrate the problem. You have not convinced large portions of the player base that there is a problem, most notably the successful master crafters and the people that have been playing the longest, ie. your most loyal and most influential players. You have not put forth any evidence that the your changes will actually work to fix the problem as you see it. All the discussion of effects is rife with speculation.
So, in finish, you are taking a HUGE risk in going forward with these changes. Are you prepared to move forward with this, against the will of the people, on a hunch?
mawgspawn wrote:
Here is a non emotional response to why the crafting nerf will not fix the
economy, nor will it take the TOO GOOD armor/wepons out of the game for OVER
A YEAR
I have 1 million + units of each of requierd resources to make advanced
composite segments, and 1million plus of the resources needed to make sweet
sweet kinetic layers that in the final product will make me a triple layered
suit of advanced composite with 80% kinetic damage and 60% everything else. I
got schematics out the ying yang. And the resources to use them.
Rough calculations work out to I can make 1000+ suits of 80% kinetic
composite.
Once these changes go into effect, i will sell them at 500k to 1million each.
they will sell. THey sell at 300k a suit NOW. I sell 20 suits a day when I
stock up on it on my vendor.
I have then 1,000,000,000 (thats ONE BILLION) credits worth of schematics
already made up, just waiting for this change to go into effect.
Ill be selling only 10 suits a week. JUST SO I CAN KEEP THE GOOD STUFF IN THE
CIRCULATING ECONOMY FOR THE NEXT 100 WEEKS. Nearly 2 years.
Your options to stop this are as follows:
Delete my "horded" resources by accusing me of duping them (when all it takes
is 10 days on a 90% spot with 8 heavy mineral harvesters of the best quality)
as you have done with several other people I know
Retro nerf all premade schematics, which would turn thunderheart not into a
liar but into a provider of crappy advice when he told us, TOLD US, that the
smart crafter would stock up on schematics now.
You havent nerfed the prenerf fwg5. SO option 2 aint happening. probably.
just thought id let you know what MY plans are. ANd I KNOW that i am probably
only one of a thousand masters on Bria who are planning on doing the EXACT
SAME THING.
We are all very glad to have some rational behind the changing of the crafting system. However I (and many others) respectfully disagree with this change and feel it is more detrimental to the game than beneficial. My coments are interspersed in green and I am discussing this for the point of view a weaponsmith has since that is what I am. 
Chrysalide wrote:
Greetings everyone,
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.
Two thoughts on this paragraph. First how will creating a huge pre-nerf market help the economy? The economy was train wrecked with Hologrinding, plain and simple. As hologrinding goes way it will improve itself. Second, the statement "one of the most significant is the ability crafters to easily maximize the attributes of items" is both missleading and not really true. As a master weaponsmith I know that no non-master can ever compete with my weapons... because thay can not maximize an attribute. So you are apparently only talking about masters in that statement. Any master knows that you can "maximize" an attribute but that maximum value is greatly effected by resource quality (as the system is right now). In order to truely maximize a value you have to find the best resources on the server which are often several months old. To say it is too easy to make the best weapons insulting to the hard work of crafters. The best weapons are made by only the best resources, the propoed change will not change this. If an itemmade with lesser resources can be equal to the best that item been to be changed, not all of crafting.
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.
What? It has been shown by several people that the proposed change will create less variety not more. Have you visited many shops on a live server? I visited many shops over 4 planets a coupe weeks ago and found a very wide range of weapon stats and qualities. Much of what I saw was not top of the line. EVERYONE does not make top line items. ONLY those who have either diligently collected the best resources over many many months or have a huge amount of credits to buy them produce the best. People only want to buy the best so of course the best will dominate the market, that is natural and will be be changed this change. Also this will make it even harder to "break into" the market. That has been well explained by many on the weaponsmith boards.
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.
If you want to "redefine" the crafting game why was there no In-Concept post? There has been discussion for months and months on "redefining combat" yet none at all about crafting. Does that mean crafters do not rate the same consideration? I seriously hope not! Completely "redefining" crafting in this manner sends a very poor message to the crafting community of this game. Frankly as a long time crafter I am offended that a change of this magnitude is being pushed to live servers with so little notice or discussion with the developers. Especially in light of how this will change the the fundamentals of experimentation in crafting, a critical part of the crafting process.
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.
The best armor has high maximum attributes with low encumbrance. Why would the focus ever move away from making the best possible items? You can shift what exactly is the best, the the focus will always be on the most desirable attribute.
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.
To a lesser degree that you appear to desire those decissions are made by crafters already. Case in point: I make three types of rifles 1 with maximum damage, 1 with very high ideal range mods, and 1 that is fairly balanced. Each type has pros and cons. They have a bonus in one area but less in another.
You as the developers can easily create more decissions in this area by increasing our ability to experiment with the attributes of an item. HAM is the perfect example. 99.9% of the time it is not worth experimenting because the return is nowhere need the cost of using the exp points.
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.
As we have stated the proposed change will only serve to decrease the variety of attributes in crafted items. Each crafter will experiment on 1 line, the one that is most desirable. There wil not be any points left over the use in any other line. Sure the range in quality of items my increase. But poor quality items are not desired by anyone, so variety will be very poor.
And hopefully, this will lead to an increase in competition between crafters.
It will lead to many leaving crafting. Making sub-par items is not fun! It is akin to getting killed by a gnort. If a newer crafter can not compete, and under the new system they would not be able too. They are likely to quit because failure is not fun.
Keep in mind that with this change comes a paradigm shift of sorts.
Actually this is not a paradigm shift at all but simply making the ecxact same paradigm more sever. Items are already dependant on resource quality, this only makes them more so.
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.
I personally have not seen this, but from all the reports I'veseen from test center only the easier to make itemsare improved. The "advanced"items suffer, and sometimes to the point of being crippled. It is not acceptableif "newbe" items get better at the expense of the advanced ones.
In reviewing the threads on this forum regarding this new change, I have seen a lot of intelligent testing and discussion going on.
And there should be more! But remaining mostly silent on a hottly contested subject, and starting the implementing of it to live servers only gives the signal tha inteligent testing and discussin is not what you want since you appear to be ignoring it.
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.
How do you view the system as "broken"? Because crafters can maximuze an attribute and have a couple points left over to place into a different one? That is a facet of the system that we love! It added depth to the system and the chance the ability to make items more unique. That may not have been on purpose, but as I scientist I know that may of the greatest discoveries are done on accident. You may have stumbled onto a system that is better than the original vission. Keep what is great about the current system and improve on the rest! Please do not change it because that ws not your original goal.
I don't have a position on this, as I don't fully understand the changes coming (not a crafter). But the economic argument Chrysalide made doesn't make any sense to me. For the first 7 months of this game, I was a merchant. Watched the economy on Bloodfin go through fits and starts with every change. It has only since January settled into some form of normalcy. This disruptive change will certainly alter the picture, and probably violently for a few weeks, but like a poster on Bloodfin said, it'll fall right back into place. Theitems that are the best, regardless of different stats than pre-patch, will move into the same price points as what was previously best.
The problem with this economy was supply side from the very beginning.
- Certain mission payouts were too high for their difficulty.
- Resources and Credits were duped for months.
- Itemdecay, player cities and other money sinks were not in game.
With the correction of these three items, the economy has slowly, but surely, been coming into balance. Prices for 70% ubese armor are very reasonable now compared to what they were in December. This trend would have continued, but the Bloodfin economy heated up so much in the beginning due to the power-players the 'unofficial PvP server' attracted, that it will never fall 100% in line with other servers. This is the big dog economy. We were approaching a point of equilibrium, but that point was higher than on other servers...greater "cost of entry" for this market.
Chrysalide wrote: "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."
Skipping past the upheaval period where pre-patch items are hoarded and let trickle onto the market at EXTREME prices, making quality of items more dependent upon resources is not going to change the situation at all. The economy will fall into another period of equilibrium where any crafter worth his salt will seek out and obtain the best resources on that spawn cycle. Once again, new vendors will not be helped, unless they first set up a top-notch supply chain. The best items will still sell, and the best items available will still be provided by those with good operations front to back. In fact, this change appears to me it will prevent crafters from getting a start. New crafters don't have the survey and harvesting networks established that the long time crafters will have. And the long time crafters will already know how to find and obtain the best resources. Experimentation notwithstanding, quality of items will be homogeneous just like it is now...just lower.
So the real economic shift will be the establishment of a secondary market of pre-patch goods that only the elite will have access to. If that's the "variety" they seek, then welcome to the real world, where some have, and some have not.
JustG wrote:
Thanks for the responses. I do understand it is an emotional issue.
Still reading... still thinking...
- g
i cant possibly read this whole post, it would take me all day! but i have some input as a master weaponsmith i would like to add...
im just starting out as a master weaponsmith and already find it difficult to compeate with some of the best on my server. i know for a fact that if this patch goes though you (the DEV's) will turn wanderhome and many other serversinto a monopoly. the strongest of the weaponsmith's will not be hurt as much as i will be. they will continue to flurrish and begining master's such as myselfWILL DIE OUT!!!!my weapons will suck even more then they do now and i will have no way to compete with the best. the best will continue to stay the best and continue to suck up all the money for there weapons!
PLEASE LISTIN TO THE US!
WE PLAY THE GAME!
WE PAY FOR THE DAM THING!
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!
Offering Vendor - Tatooine, Mos Kryat - WP 5688 3599Hi
I have been playing for about 2 months and recently became a Master Doctor. I have spent much time and effort trying to find the best resources I have to create the best buffs and stims I can make. I have had a lot of help but I don't have any "powergaming" connections.
I agree that established crafters who have the best resources should always have an advantage. I *should* have to work and put in a large effort to compete with these people.....but it also *should* be possible. I mention this because I think you have greatly underestimated the stockpiles of resources and items that powergamers currently have. Just listening in spatial chat in Theed has made this pretty obvious.
Right now I am forced to sell my items at bazzar rates or even cheaper to establish myself. I just got to the point where I am selling via vendor with better quality stims, etc. I am still selling cheap in an effort to "break in" to the market. I am also offering buffs slightly under the market price and offering refunds on bad sets. I believe I am trying to do everything right under the current system.
As "one of those newb crafters" that everyone is talking about I can tell you my issue with this change and what I am afraid will happen.....
......If, after this change, I am forced to lower prices even further than so be it. BUT, and this is the kicker.....If, after this change, If I am unable to sell anything, to anyone, for any price...then this is a problem.
I think if you want to make this change you have to ensure that these questions are answered "yes":
1. Will it still be possible for new crafters to enter the market. (please note the word "possible"....not "easy")
2. Will crafters after this change be able to bring a viable product to the market and make a profit from it? As much as I think you are hoping that the items before this patch will disppear from the market....they won't....not for a long time. I really think you must address that issue.
3. Will there be a fair chance, given time and effort, for a crafter who starts today to get the resources needed to produce quality items under this new system?
Also one last thought......I'm really not sure about this but have you tested to make sure that chest loot, npc loot is not stronger than the average crafter can produce after this change? If not that could be really bad. :/
Thanks for your Time.
/disagree with all the players raising all this ruckus each time Dev wants to make a change in the game.
So far the reports I heard are not so bad about this change.....
go ahead and push them to live !