Development Cycle Archive

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Vercin_getorix wrote:

...Your problem -may- be that 4 Master Weaponsmiths can easily meet the demand of weapons on a server. This is a different problem than you are adressing...

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Hey Vercin,

You have put this very well. Although the economic system of SWG is brilliantly set up there are someimportant imperfections andI too believe this is the main problem of SWG. Manysections of the economy are just oliegarchies where a few can dominate the whole market (in the real world there are laws against oliegarchies and monopolies). There are just too few of diversity in the commodity market and wehave too much of mass production. What can you do as a single account newby against someone who has a double or triple account, a fleet of heavy harvesters and has accumulated hundreds of thousands of those rare "attribute-1000" resources over the 7 months? I too am sceptic regarding the new change. Although I can make 35k per day, a lot of my friends (who began playing recently) have a hard time earning several k's per day. In my opinion the remedy of this problem is -1- to increase the spawn of rare resources with a significant factor so that newbies have a chance to be competitive against the settled merchants, and -2- perhaps limit theamount of mass production.

Galaxyburst

I dont need to post the reason why I think this change is very BAD... its been posted hundreds of times already.

I have two chars and three professions that this is gonna hurt majorly. I stopped playing my doctor because It was so hard to rind good resources (months go by and the only dolovite that spawns has horrid stats, etc) Unless after this nerf the resources that spawn are going to have at least uniformly decent stats an the rare resources spawn more often, I cant see how this is going to work.

The only profession I have that this wont affect is Tailor. our experimentation relates only to the colors we can use. The only stat on our products is sockets of which there can be only 4 and that is already determined by resource OQ.

My Big Beef is this: Since the games LAUNCH, there has been no graphics for 99% of the jewelry. In the cerafting window, you cant even SEE what the item or colors will look like. Theres no graphic even in the inventory!!! The only way you can see what it is, is to wear it or drop it and if the colors didnt come out right, thats a product wasted because youre working blind. Can we please fix the obvious troubles first rather than messing with something that 9/10 of the population thinks is fine the way it is?

People who make schematics will find out what happened with this last patch. Some items renderedunable to be removed from crates. This didn't happen when patch went live first but occured a couple weeks later to chefs who were still burning up some old alcohol.

Heard it happened to some crates weapons as well but thats heresay the chef thing happened to me had to buy back some stuff i sold.

Ok,

I've read several posts on this and 20+ pages in a day is alot, so if you're truely reading all this maybe you'll get the hint that the crafters REALLY don't want this.

You say you want to fix the economy, but last I checked the basis for an economy is supply vs. demand. By doing this you're putting a greater demand on the high qual resources, reducing the supply of top end products, and therefore increaseing all prices. People will still be able to run missions for outrageous amounts of money, and therefore crafters will still be able to charge an outrageous amount of for their goods. If you truely wanted to fix the economy, I would change the pay amounts of missions, and increase the high qual resource spawn for a time, THEN evaluate the state of the economy.

On the note of skill tapes, you seem to think that all master crafters are equal. This is far from true. As a Master BE, I will never get the extra skill points that a weaponsmith, or an armorsmith can get. In fact, a BE can NEVER get skill tapes cause they don't exist. In addition to this, we don't even know what fricking qualities to check for our pets. So this is the scenario for BE's. You blindfold us, and put us in a dark with a bunch of furniture...then once we start to figure out what REALLY hurts, you move it all around on us. So, point being, that this again is going to hurt more than it would help, cause all the pets that are made before this goes through would be even greater priced than they already are.

Oh and since Jedi's are partially crafters, imagine how this effects them as well...They don't get a whole lot of exp points (As far as I know) so the qual will be even more important, and the price on crystals will skyrocket even higher! So PLEASE evaluate all these things before carrying through with this. and if you do carry through with this, you haven't listened to your customer base and are ignoring what your customers, the people who pay for this, and play devotedly, truely want

I guess it has all been said before in the thread already, but I thought I'd voice in as well.

While the goals of the change stated in the initial post certainly sounds reasonable, I just can't for the life of me see how you think that these changes will achieve the effect you claim to work towards in the initial post.

As far as I can tell, the main reasons for the changes are:

1)The economy is in a poor shape: “We want to take the first steps in rebuilding the economy”

Well I don’t really disagree with you here. But I can’t for the life of me see how these changes would improve the economy. I feel you need to explain just what you feel is wrong with the economy. As I see it, that crafters can make more or less identical items wouldn’t hurt the economy as such. It might devalue the challenge of the crafting aspect of the game, but that would seem to be another issue all together?

As far as I can tell, the proposed changes would not help the economy; if anything it would have a negative effect on it. I hope you are not underestimating the problem of pre nerf equipment that the changes will cause.

2)It’s to easy to ‘max out’ items, resulting in little or no diversity in the items available: “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.”

I cannot really see how you feel that these changes will change the situation. It’s not like items with several variables for experimentation will have all variables maxed out. Currently, (and mileage will vary depending on resources, item in question and number of experimentation pts.) you’d normally be able to ‘max out’ one bar, and have a couple of points left to experiment on other variables. What I don’t see is how these changes will change this? The general effect will be that a crafter will need more of his available points to max out one variable. You seem to think that this will lead the crafter to avoid doing this and instead spread out the points. What do you base this idea on? Personally it would seem much more likely that the crafters would still spend the points in maxing out the ‘most useful’ line, and simply spend less (if any) points on the remaining variables. In other words, you’ll end up with even less diversity that we are currently seeing. The problem is not that its to easy to max out the variables, the problem is that on pretty much all items, there is one or two variables considered more useful than the others. Thus that’s where the crafters spend their point, and that’s what players will look for when shopping. These changes won’t do anything to change that.

Overall, as I see things, the changes will result in a number of negative effects on various aspects of the game. And in spite of your post, I fail to see what positive effects the changes will add.

The negative effects I see from the changes:
Pre-Nerf economy: We already had more than our fair share of this. Pre-Nerf Krayt FWG5’s, Pre-Nerf T21’s, Pre-Nerf Geo Lab loot items, Pre-Nerf Harvesters, Pre-Nerf Launcher Pistols, Pre-Nerf Republic Blasters, Pre-Nerf skill tapes.. There’s probably more that I’m forgetting. Now you plan to change the system to make just about everything “pre nerf”?! I’m still seeing auctions for just about every item you nerfed at some point, people still have ‘Pre-Nerf’ FWG5’s to last them years. Every time you add more items to the “pre nerf” pool, you create a problem for the game and the economy. You create problems for the new players that weren’t around when the changes took place. You take the crafting game away from the crafters (the crafters wont be selling items they make, instead the people selling will be the people who stockpiled the pre-nerf items. As I see it, it will take a long time, a year or more, before the ‘pre-nerf’ syndrome of these changes will start dying out due to natural decay. That’s a long time to run a game with a severely damaged economy; it’s a long time for a new would be crafter to wait until he can play on somewhat equal footing with the experiences / stockpiling players.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a person who just bought the game and wanted to become a weapon smith for example. Not only would he be fighting an uphill battle to gather resources that might be comparable to experienced crafters, somehow gain access to the skill tape bonuses that are becoming so vital to crafters to be able to compete with others, get the reputation and costumer base in a situation where there is already other weapon smiths that he’d be hard pressed to compete with. He would also have to work in a market where he would compete with items of a quality he’s unable to make because he joined the game “to late”. The same problem, of course, will exist for other classes who will have to pay a much higher price to be able to gain equipment comparable to what the more experienced players have.

The sum of it?.. You make it a lot harder for new players to get into the game and exist on par with the older players.

The next negative effect goes hand in hand with the first one. The changes will place a much greater empathies on a) resource quality b) experimentation points. Both will be things that the new player will lack, and both will be things that a new player is less likely to be able to afford to buy from other players. Once again the effect favors the older and more prepared player by increasing the gap between the have and have nots.

The third negative effect is ironically enough one of the problems you point out in the initial post: diversity in items. You seem to think that the changes will encourage crafters to experiment differently on their items, to focus on different aspects of the items instead of ‘maxing’ them out in one or two preferred attributes. As far as I can tell people will still be maxing out as far as they are able. They will overall be less able to experiment on the item, and thus most items will be of a lower quality, but the reason why crafters are all ‘maxing out one or two attributes while ignoring others is because they feel they get more value for their experimentation in those lines. The changes would do anything to change this. If the gain from experimenting on weapons damage, make the weapon more useful to the buyer than experimenting on the HAM cost, crafter will still add as many points as possible to damage and only experiment on ham if they have points left over after maxing damage.

I do not see how the changes to experimentation will result in more diversity in crafted items, on the contrary.
Now these are the negative effects of the changes, as I, and it would seem a lot of others, see them. However, it’s understandable that changes, even for the better, might sometimes carry a negative effect. However, I’m currently unable to see what positive effects the new system would provide. How is it an improvement over the old system? What benefits to the game does the new system provide to make it worth while considering the negative effects?

Overall we seem to have a situation where a large majority of players are asking (if not downright begging) you, not to go through with the changes. Even if you personally feel the changes are for the better, the massive outcry from the players should be enough to make you at least put things on hold to allow more time for a better in-depth discussion. What I would suggest is:

1)Explain clearly to the players what it is you think is broken, and why you see it as being broken
2)Explain clearly why you think your proposed changes would solve these problems, and why you feel that the benefits outweigh the negative consequences of the change.
3)Let us hear your ‘visions’ as to what an ideal crafting system would be like, rather than simply suggesting a number of changes that a lot of people fail to see the benefit of.

That would give the players a much better idea of just what it is you seek to ‘fix’ and why you consider it broken. Also it would allow the players a much better chance of suggesting possible alternative solutions to the problems you see. Even if the system is as broken as you feel, waiting with these changes until a better discussion have had a chance to unfold won’t really hurt.

21PAGES not posts of folks againts the crafter nerf bat..........To be continued

I'll just put it this way, though because of the point I'm going to make, you won't actually see it ("you" being the devs, of course.)

You're being stupid. Listen to your players. Implement *something* on the TC so that getting to high levels is easier, meaning that things can actually *gasp* be tested. And, most importantly, fix everything that really truely is broken FIRST. The bugs are known. Fix 'em. THEN you can play around with a system that actually works, provided that you do it intelligently.

Nerfing crafters will do nothing to aid the economy.

Insurance and vehicle decay are two examples of money sinks that are annoying and make the game less fun.

Some examples of money sinks that could add fun to the game include:

- Casino's.

- Special shuttle tickets that cost more but have no waiting involved.

- NPCs that ask for a bribe so they don't deathblow you.

- Missions that reward the player with an item or schematic instead of credits. If a player is going to do two missions in an evening, and they do1 mission for cash, and 1 mission for an item, thats 50% less cash earned for that evening.

- Temporary mercenaries you hire to help you complete missions.

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Skedoozy wrote:

Wow... you guys must be republicans if this is how you think you will fix the economy.

A. Rich Crafters will makes TONS of current weapons and sell them for ENORMOUS PRICES.. The rich get richer..

B. New Crafters will not have a snowballs chance in Arizona to make it. It was hard before, this makes it nearly impossible for them.

C. Crafters who can afford(Read: Rich beyond any players dreams) will be buying up skill tapes with + to experimeantion that are already OVERPRICED and will now be even MORE OVERPRICED. And the Crafters that can afford (READ: Rich getting richer)to buy these will be the only ones crafting things that people will buy.

Your reasoning for wanting to change the system is valid.. your changes howerver are going to have the reverse effect that you are looking for.

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Ah, a flaming liberal maggot. How cute. Class warfare is such a communist idea--can't you liberals accept that no one buys your "rich get richer and trample over the poor" bull**edit**? If the rich receive tax cuts just like the middle and lower class, then they will invest, thereby boosting the economy and causing the ever famous "trickle down theory." In essence, if the rich get richer, so do the rest of us.

Liberals piss me off.

"In essence, if the rich get richer, so do the rest of us."

bwahahaha . . . . because, as we all know, there is an endless supply of money to go around and the rich just luuuuuuv to share.

you know where rich people's money "trickles" to? to other rich people!