Development Cycle Archive

I feel it will add variety but at the same time destroy the econ for a period of time. The armors that are 'pre-nerf' will sell for millions. I personally like the changes even though it means my armor wouldn't be the best ever any more but thats the whole reason behind teh changes....

Your right.. and the numbers were made up.. But if you havent noticed how many less people are on at any given time?? Did you ever play planetside??? They pulled the same crap.. Within amonth you were spending more time trying to find a fight then fighting.

This change is a bad idea. And it will cause ALOT of cancelations. I generally stick things out through a few bad changes. I already have stuck it out through some of the earlier nerfs to the classes I played CH/BH.. Considering the same patch ruined the template for both classes. I quit being a combat char and picked up crafting. Now they are doing same with crafting.

These changes upset people.. Don't get me wrong most changes upset people. But this change is far from neccisary. There is no point on breaking the entire crafting field when there is still SO MANY ISSUE not fixed that have been around since release.

I already have 3 friends that have quit. 2 More I advised not to start playing because its going to be broken soon. We will just all wait for WOW.

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JustG wrote:

Thanks for the responses. I do understand it is an emotional issue.

Still reading... still thinking...

- g

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Greetings,

Short and sweet - still thinking about what? Is there a chance you folks may reverse this decision, which is so carte blanchely opposed by the overwhelming majority of people?

- Ker'shakk

After reading the "explanation" of the crafting changes I have a few questions/observations. Saying this change is necessary to help fix the economy is very weak to me. The economy has much bigger problems such as instant multi-millionaire macro cave campers and afk meatlump looters getting crystals and selling them for outrageous amounts. The fact is that this change will do alot more to hurt the economy than help it. A huge pre-nerf market will be instantly created and will be there for a long time. Imagine if you started playing the game next month and worked your way up to master weaponsmith. You make your first T21 rifle and it is 100 points less damage than the weaponsmith down the street who has a large supply of pre-nerf weapons for sale. My first thought would be why bother with this profession, time to move on. Instead of leveling the playing field for crafters it will create a much more uneven field. Those with 2 extra experimentation points will be the only crafters selling quality goods while the rest of us who actually stay with our crafting profession will be forced to use the bazaar to peddle our inferior goods for a max price of 6k. I can't imagine any new crafters even getting into the business and succeeding if these changes go into effect. Also, instead of creating more variety in goods this change will actually do the opposite. Take weapons for example, 95% of the customers will look at one thing, speed and power. With most crafters being forced to use all their experimentation points on one line weapons will become more uniform than different. If you really want to create more variety in weapons expand the crafting options instead of limiting them. Using weapons as an example again, put speed and power on different lines and increase the benefits of experimenting on HAM and range modifiers. Give us more grips/scopes/barrels/finishes that actually enhance the cosmetics of the gun as well as enhancing its stats.
To me this change was very disappointing, but maybe even more so is the lack of direction related to the game as a whole. Complete revamps of core systems 8 months into the game with the hope that they may fix other areas of the game are unacceptable to me and make me question my future participation in the game. The game should evolve not revolve. It seems like there is more focus on changing things for the sake of change instead of fixing broken things that are detrimental to the game. The game should build upon its strengths, crafting included, instead of cutting them off at the knees. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

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JCatano wrote:

Have any facts about why it isn't more efficient in regards to coding? It's seem very logical to me, especially when the devs have already explained why.

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Using the argument that the economy is out of whack to justify changing the crafting system is just completely illogical. The economy is out of whack because of the money that is freely available with no serious money sinks. When crafters are charging margins on their goods that are far in excess of real-world equivalent markups because they can (50:1 in the real world would have your company out of business before it even started), you have to consider why it got that way in the first place.

There are many reasons why is it so badly out of shape - your resource spawn system is badly screwed up. It's getting better, but not great. 5 months between rare resource spawns is horrendous if you are trying to encourage a casual gaming style. As a 7 month DE and 5 month chef, I can say with absolute certainty that I had to be almost a professional player just to keep up. It required 5-6 hours of game play every day of the week just to remain standing still. That is totally unacceptable.

If you want to fix the economy up, you have to look at the cause of it, and this is the first place to look. The easiest way to do this is to have more resources available at once and have them available for longer. A 2-3 week period that you have for the flora resources is more appropriate than the 6-8 day cycle of everything else. What this does is open access to all of the resources to all players rather than the select few who spend most of their life in-game rather than getting to log on for a few hours each weekend.

The second major problem was your brain-dead idea that the way to get to Jedi was to grind meaningless professions. This one factor has driven the pricing for resources through the roof. Grinders come in, buy half a million units of steel and fibreplast then grind their way to the profession and then leave, leaving nothing to show for it for the rest of the players other than a huge demand for resources allowing the miners to reap huge profits. Because of this, those few of us that remained crafters through this time will no longer be able to charge huge prices for items simply because there is no competition. Players will return to their "roots" and you'll see more crafters, more competetion and lower prices.

If you want to have a huge effect on the economy returning to normal, simply announce that grinding professions has been turned off and that no more slots will become available until the quests system is implemented. This will have an instant effect of stoping the high demands for resources. All the fly-by-nighters disappear will disappear and a more stable system will result as people settle into their chosen profession again. PvP will increase, GCW will pick up and we'll be back to being Star Wars, not Grind Wars.

On the crafting side, it is your own doing that is causing the messed up nature of the goods being crafted. Quite simply, the way you have put the craftable items together means that there is no reason other than to experiment on the two main attributes. Why bother with range or HAM mods on a weapon when spending 10 points on it makes a 3 point difference in the final product when those 10 points can double the damage output of the gun. From both the crafter's and the user's perspective, there is no point in having anything else experimented on.

To fix the experimentation system, these changes you have should never proceed. They will only make it far worse than it is now. Leave them as-is. Why are people not putting experimentation into the other areas of products - because it is simply not worth it. Fix that. You really need to expand the ranges of available values. Make HAM values for a weapon have a huge range - between 20 and 200, not 20 and 40. For food, have the filling experimentable between 10 and 90. That way a crafter really has to think about which one is more worthwhile. Sure a pistol with 150-300 damage is good, but what if it costs the users 200 points of health every time they fire a shot? (right now it only costs 20). That alone will be a huge incentive to the WS to think about putting more points into HAM and/or range mods before doing damage. A horrible weapon should not be able to shoot straight and should be a large burden on the user. Same with food, armour etc.

On one particular point that would make a huge different to weapons - separate speed and damage experimentation. Why would a WS bother to spend points on anything else because they are making a huge difference to the final performance through a single experimentation line - they dramatically effect the DPS output. Break speed and damage into two separate lines of experimentation and now users will have to decide whether they want rapid fire, low damage or slow fire, high damage weapons.

Finally, to make the changes worthwhile and to prevent the same problem that happened with the pre-nerf weapons from the last time around, make the new versions substantially better than the current ones or nerf the old ones into oblivion. That way there's no incentive to stockpile thousands of weapons/armour/food. There's no point making changes if the changes don't show up for real in the economy for 6-12 months because of the millions of stockpiled items that are substantially better than the new variants.

generelz,

Very nice ideas with sensible, logical approaches.

Wow, to be honnest I stop reading the thread after the page 12 (approx 2 hours of reading).

I first want to say I specialy agree with Orobaswats, Bryan1138, Morwen, Speardancer, Rencon (you're amazing dude), Asmodeus, Arnwald, and I'm sure I forgot tons of people.

Crafting in the game works fine (well, maybe except those critical failures)! So what is not working right? I'll shortly tell you about my "career" in the game (this is a snapshot for you devs, who apparently DON'T play the real game,except on TC):

I started to play around 27dec 2003 (guess why), I quickly decided to build a WS+ TK template as I love fighting as much as crafting. I didn't realized (well quickly enough) that WS was the most difficult crafting profession (in any kind of ways). After one month of playing I decided to take a second account, I just joined a guild, I wanted to stay WS to serve them, but I was too light on the fighting side. So the first one remained WS, I added AS, and I'm building a new 100% fighting template.

How easy AS is compared to WS!!! And why? Just because only ONE thing matter in that game: Ressources!!!

You want to help newbies?

• Give me a decent Desh Copper so I can built decent Vibro Knucklers.


• Give me a decent Polonium Iron for T21


• Give me decents ressource to build Adv Blaster Power Handler, Adv Blaster Riffle Barrels


• Etc..etc...

HOW do you want a new WS to compete when good quality ressources are spawning THAT rarely? Being a good WS+AS is ONLY having the best ressources...So wait my boy, wait for them to spawn, and try to explain everyone in your guild and clients, you can't make T21, you can't make good VK, Republic Blasters, etc, etc...

AS is much more easier than WS coz you have a LOT LESS resources to care about (everybody only care about Ubuse and specialy Composite). So when I see a good one, I put at least 20 harvesters on it (thanks to the fighters of my guild for giving me their lots) and I'm set for few months (I hope).

After two months of gaming, maybe I missed some rare good ressources for a specific weapons (coz there's more than 40 differents ones to check everyday, ...), but for the most of it other WS playing for 3months or more than me only have better stuffs, so they can do better stuffs...

That way you ONLY make people that are playing since the beginning RICHER and more powerful, than people (like me) starting few months ago...

I tried many times to explain some people of my guild that I couldn't even compete with pre-nerf weapons. And when the good prenerf FWG5 are getting more and more rare stuffs, you devs are going to change one of the ONLY thing in the game that actually works and please people to recreate a HUGE prenerf market? Are we playing the same game? Are you working too much for being so tired to not realize what will go on?

I won't make tons of schems like some crafters to be prepared for that change (coz I don't want to play the game that way), and if I see I'm crafting stuffs that can't compete with prenerf ones, I'll quit crafting (one account less for you guys), and maybe even the (game, that would be two accounts, then).

To sum up: you want to help newbies, work on the resource spawing, make them possible to craft good guns after 2months of game, waiting 6 months for having the same GREAT Copper/Steel that can make you a good competitor with a old time establish WS will just make the economy the way it is now!

One last thing: you know what people hate the most in this game? Searching for many hours a good vendor of WS+AS+Ressources, etc... 90% of the vendors registered on the map are just empty (less than 20 items), you spend an AWFULL amount of time (not enjoying the game) to find the thing you want, and why? Onlyold timers have a good vendors, coz they have big stocks of good ressources andhad a chance to grab the best ones! New comers have to be TO MUCH patient to have a decent stock (I repeat this is more true for WS than AS). The raise of the bazaar to 6K was supposed to help things? Don't be kidding me...Add an indicator on the planetary map that shows how many items are in a given registerd vendor. That way, people could at least see that my new WS vendor (in the middle of 80 ones in Naboo/Kauri) has a good stock compared to at least 60 others. They woud certainly come to check things out.

For most fighters if they have the choice between a VK at 2.4 / 170for 10K and another one at 1.9 / 180for 50K, guess what? They'll run more missions to get the 50K to buy the good one... The 2.4 won't be sold, except on the bazaar because that's where people that DON'T know a good WS buy stuffs.

And the guy selling at 50K could sell it maybe more, but if there's was a spawn of Desh the laster two month that were only 20% worst than the one that spawned at the start of the game, you wouldn't have see a VK for 50K and someone that get richer compared to someone that say to itself everyday "tired of waiting, maybe I should surrend...".

DON'T CREATE A HUGE PRENERF MARKET! I'm ready to accept any kind of changes as long as they don't make old-timersuntouchable compared to new comers.

Just sat here for the last hour shaking my head...

sounds like it might be coo l

Wow, I'm amazed. What is there even to discuss among your co-workers? HELLO? THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYER BASE DO NOT WANT THESE CHANGES!

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Chrysalide wrote:

I assure you that we are not doing a "post-and-run". We will be still be reviewing the comments and questions for a good while this evening, and over the weekend as well. I havecompiled a list of the top concerns from the thread already, and have put it up for discussion and commentto some of the other developers. We will review these and get some comments and feedbackto you all as soon as possible.

Thank you to everyone for all of your comments and suggestions (both good and bad) so far.

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In my opinion with this publish you want to definitively make new crafters OUT of buisness as i'ma crafter, I'm stocking the maximum number of item i can stock and other people will do the same.

I'm also a buyer as i can't craft all i need so do u really think i'll go to a new weak crafter when i can buy something good from an experienced one?.......

The priceses will be raised and the old crafter will become richer (yes i will pay also double price to have a good item and won't ever spend a credit for a weak one, it's a waste of money and I think also noob will do the same, they'll save money untill they have enough to buy an old item) and the new crafters will remain poor as never as they're item will be now of an iindecent quality nobody will buy from them and if they want to have fun or simply survive they' ll have to change profession...

So compliment, your new publish is gonna ruin the game and have the opposite effect you think it will have....

And by the way.....don't pick us up from the nose.....new items are NOT going to be more belanced, only more weaker......The thing i loved most in STW was that it was a game belanced in power....u want to make it balanced in weak? OK i will be bored of this game VERY soon......