Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
Ail wrote:
/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 !
Heh - As said by one of the top AS on Valcyn. Probably had has hundreds of suits of armor stashed away and dozens of "pre-patch 7" schematics made up.
I'm sure you'd be happy to see this change come.
The economy is busted due to a number of reasons.
- Hologringing. People stick with people they know aren't going to be changing professions in a day or two.
- Looking for the best deal is an impossibility in this game, there is no yellow pages to look though, no phone numbers to call to find out if they have the item in stock and if its any good. How many times a week are you going to fly to every city and shop on every habitable planet to find the best deal?
- Dupers that flooded the market with weapons armor and credits.
Lack of verity is not really the issue. Lack of know how on the part of many people is as is lack of good resources etc etc etc .
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."
I would not expect a new software company to create a new operating system and automatically expect to compete against Microsoft, how can anyone expect to compete against established businesses with out the tools needed. One being advertisement.
Since most crafters must also take business to get global advertisements only those dedicated will do it and most drop it once they have thevenders inplace.
What is needed?A way to look them up venders that's not cumbersome.Galactic shopping terminalsshould replace the bazaar terminals in all cities and placable in player cities by master merchants, leaving a tab for bazaar items. They should have tabs for world wide oruniversal vender listings item type etc etc. One central place you can go and see all the items forsale and even buy them but then stillmust travel to get the item.
Centralized shopping will change the economy to be price driven and competitive.It would of course needs to betied in withmerchantlikely at master merchant to put your venders on the galacticmarket, lower for global.
SkyeDarkangel wrote:
The change sounds great to me.
The cries you hear are from players that don't want to actually have to do some research and adapt to a new crafting enviroment. An enviroment, which makes complete sense, by the way.
Right now, these people don't have to play around with experimentation, because the current process is so straight-forward and brainless. Find a good resource, stack the points into damage, and you have a winner.......They like it this way, since it's easy. Remember, easy leads to boredom.
I'm looking forward to the new crafting and economic dynamics.
Are you awake? Now it means the same thing. Find a good resources, put 100% into damage (not j ust 80% and think about what would even the item out otherwise with that extra 20%) and put for sale. Don't mind that Master WS down the street that mined the exact same resources, and instead of putting spare points into duration or HAM now put them all into damage/speed bar just like you, with the IDENTICAL gun with the IDENTICAL stats.
Less variety, even more easy. Now you just max out [inert damage/speed or power depending on crafting profession] with all your points. Very challenging. After all, I'd rather have a gun with 1000 durability and 40 - 120 damage instead of 950 durability and 50 - 130 damage. I mean, duh!
You just explained the way crafting currently works. Either, I am confused, or you aren't as awake as you think. I see it as items having more diversity the way it has been explained.
Also, since when have Master Weaponsmiths not made the exact same weapons in regards to stats? I have weapons from 4 different Master Weaponsmiths on my vendors, and guess what? Every single one of their weapons have the same stats. Go figure......
I still stand by my statement that people are just upset, because every weapon made will not be of the current top end stats. When somethng is made more challenging, a lot of people scream.
We all have to deal with it, so it isn't a world-ending event.
A hugechange like this would probably be more acceptable if it came during a period where all obvious bugs were gone, and the game was simply in balance-and-add-content mode. As it is, player's frustration levels are high due to bugs that have had to have been worked around, some since day 1. The issue here really is timing and public relations, not a 'major crafting nerf'. As a Master Artisan, Armorsmith, and Architect, I don't like these changes anymore than the next person. But I would simply voice my opinion and leave it at that if we didn't have annoying, and sometimes game-breaking, bugs to have to deal with constantly.
If this change is supposed to mesh seamlessly with the combat balance, then say so. I'm not too happy about that one either (nerfing TK resolves nothing IMHO), but if one massive change requires another, then make the case. If this absolutely, positively has to be done during a period in which these types of bugs still exist, and the combat balance is the reason why, then explain it to us in no uncertain terms. It appears public relations is the biggest issue here, as it's the reasons why that are causing such an uproar.
People are upset because this game has been nothing but "nerfto fix bugs, nerf to ballance, nerf to fix economy" nerf after nerf after nerf ever since the games beenreleased. It seems like the onlyway they know how to deal with any problem is to nerf something.
JCatano wrote: You just explained the way crafting currently works. Either, I am confused, or you aren't as awake as you think. I see it as items having more diversity the way it has been explained.
Also, since when have Master Weaponsmiths not made the exact same weapons in regards to stats? I have weapons from 4 different Master Weaponsmiths on my vendors, and guess what? Every single one of their weapons have the same stats. Go figure......
I still stand by my statement that people are just upset, because every weapon made will not be of the current top end stats. When somethng is made more challenging, a lot of people scream.
We all have to deal with it, so it isn't a world-ending event.
Kiashia wrote:
People are upset because this game has been nothing but "nerfto fix bugs, nerf to ballance, nerf to fix economy" nerf after nerf after nerf ever since the games beenreleased. It seems like the onlyway they know how to deal with any problem is to nerf something.
JCatano wrote: You just explained the way crafting currently works. Either, I am confused, or you aren't as awake as you think. I see it as items having more diversity the way it has been explained.
Also, since when have Master Weaponsmiths not made the exact same weapons in regards to stats? I have weapons from 4 different Master Weaponsmiths on my vendors, and guess what? Every single one of their weapons have the same stats. Go figure......
I still stand by my statement that people are just upset, because every weapon made will not be of the current top end stats. When somethng is made more challenging, a lot of people scream.
We all have to deal with it, so it isn't a world-ending event.
18 pages so far. I wonder how many of these peopleare having a second-hand-information, jump-on-the-bandwagon,knee-jerk reaction and how many have logged onto test center and tried out these changes for themselves.
JCatano wrote:
Kiashia wrote:
People are upset because this game has been nothing but "nerfto fix bugs, nerf to ballance, nerf to fix economy" nerf after nerf after nerf ever since the games beenreleased. It seems like the onlyway they know how to deal with any problem is to nerf something.
JCatano wrote: You just explained the way crafting currently works. Either, I am confused, or you aren't as awake as you think. I see it as items having more diversity the way it has been explained.
Also, since when have Master Weaponsmiths not made the exact same weapons in regards to stats? I have weapons from 4 different Master Weaponsmiths on my vendors, and guess what? Every single one of their weapons have the same stats. Go figure......
I still stand by my statement that people are just upset, because every weapon made will not be of the current top end stats. When somethng is made more challenging, a lot of people scream.
We all have to deal with it, so it isn't a world-ending event.
Yes, cynics and "the glass is half-empty" players do not like it. The people that understand possible long-term fixes, challenges, and balance will give the ideas a chance.
Kylrathin wrote:
"A hugechange like this would probably be more acceptable if it came during a period where all obvious bugs were gone, and the game was simply in balance-and-add-content mode. As it is, player's frustration levels are high due to bugs that have had to have been worked around, some since day 1. The issue here really is timing and public relations, not a 'major crafting nerf'. As a Master Artisan, Armorsmith, and Architect, I don't like these changes anymore than the next person. But I would simply voice my opinion and leave it at "
You hit the nail on the head with that statement. That is exactly how I feel about this game. There are so many major bugs that have been around since day 1 (and probably beta) that have not been fixed. I really don't see any fix in site for most of them either.
The problem here is not with only being able to max one line when you're a master and have 990 quality resources around the board. The problem is that anything below that level has so little reward for your effort that it becomes drudgery. It's fun to get the best results out of what's available to you, and it's not fun to have all your products turn useless because you don't have 40 hours a week to devote to surveying and harvesting.
As an example, I have an alt who is presently a 1/3/3/4 chef, so has reasonable experimentation skills. Last night I ran into a friend at a starport and he asked me to make him some brandy, but the only resources I had on me were sub-par to say the least. The max I could hope to get any bar to was 45%, most lower. My only options here were to tell him to go buy his own, run away to find better resources, or try to get the best I could out of what I had on me.
Under the current system, I was able to throw one point into filling to drop it below 50, enough into flavor to max the bar at a modest 40% or so, and use the rest to try to bring the strength of the buff up to a reasonable level. Was the end product good? Of course not. But I was able to experiment effectively on three pools and feel that I squeezed the best I could out of mediocre resources. Under the new system, I would no longer have that freedom. Rather, I'd have ended up dumping all my points into one important pool, maybe reluctantly contributing one to filling and hoping to drop it low enough, still not reached a 40% mark, and ended up apologizing for the poor quality of the food. To me that isn't fun.
People have been frustrated with the current crafting system at times, and nobody likes critical failures. But it's existed long enough that we've learned to work with it and get the most we can out of what we have. Maximizing one bar is boring and takes no skill.
I've said this before, but to me this system seems not to reward actual skill at crafting in the slightest. It rewards mining and hoarding resources. A master should be able to get considerably more out of even poor resources than a novice, and the current system reflects this. With an increased focus on resource quality, it's my concern that the rewards for skill advancement will actually get considerably poorer, while the rewards for buying up all the good resources and cornering the market will increase.