Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
Honestly , all there needs to be is a way to obtain new types of ressources. It could be via artisan survey misions, It could be via PA City specific extractors that have unique ressource extracting capabilities and could be fought over in the GCW or it could simply be adding new types of ressources in the actual ressources database.
Personally I would hope for all of the above but right now , I guess we ll just have to stick to our pre nerf weapons (like we always did anyway) 
JustG wrote:
Still reading...
Still thinking...
- g
Here are a couple of things to think about.
1. Variety in crafting is great in theory- it's easy to imagine a continuous spectrum of weapons of every conceivable quality, and prices to match. But in practice, almost nobody has any use for less than the best quality weapons. People are willing to wait and save their money for the strongest weapons and armor, the top-BER harvs, the uber stims and tools and foods. And crafters are willing to wait and destroy/discard their "seconds" until they get them. So all you are going to accomplish is more waste, not more variety.
2. People know this is coming and have known for some time. Stockpiles of uber pre-nerf items are being laid down even as we speak - stockpiles sufficient to last many high level players through the remainder of their active SWG playing careers. This means that for the foreseeable future there will be two classes of player: the elite who have access to pre-nerf items of lost-art perfection, and the common rabble who have to make do with flawed post-nerf hardware. The elegance of your carefully thought out scheme fails at the high end. No expert playeris going to give a **** about the nuanced choices of partially maxed stats. They're just going to look for the guy with 150 crates of pre-nerf LLC's in his house.
Going through all 25 pages, most of the player base does not agree with this change, and some very intelligent, well thought out posts were made to counter your (devs) reasoning.
If SOE goes through with this change,then ittruley does not listen to it's player base. My heart sinks at the prospect of this change.
What is more, Bio-engineer's are being overlooked, and as a Bio-Engineer, I feel I need to point that out.
Justg, and all involved. Take a step back from your reasiong. Experimtation points are at the bottom of the economylist. As one other poster put it (I can't remeber who) high end gear will still always be available, it's not the economy that will be fixed. This is poor logic. Deal with ebay and credit duping first, or has that totally escaped the Dev's abilities now? Since launch e-bay credit have been selling, with no respite in sight.
Jedi's too and hologrinding lead to the current state we are in.
I'm asking personally, as a customer, DO NOT go forward with this. This is a very big mistake. Why you may ask? re-read the fantastic and intelligent posts many people have made on this thread.
*deep breaths*
Please listen to us.
The only way such a massive change like this can possibly work, is if you completely purge the system of all player crafted items and schematics and make us start over. Until such time, a later term nerf... err fix like this will only break things as we know them.
Note: I would actually support a purge of all player crafted items to start over with a system like this. However, considering such a wipe will never take place, I feel this change can only do harm.
Is this update/nerf (depending on your perspective) really a back-door way to get to PvP? All the smiths say that everything (weapons, armor, etc) will basically all be the same now, i.e. everyone is equal. If all the buffs are the same, weapons are the same, armor is the same, ad. nauseum, is this not the PvP world that everyone (devs) wanted in the first place? I think it is naive for people to think that all the pre-nerf weapon/armor stockpiling is going to NOT result in a situation that will be post-patch "fixed" by the powers that be. It happened before, it will happen again. If what I am reading is that everything will be "more fair," then a monstrous or unlimited availability of items that "should not be available" can not possibly be tolerated, again, by said powers.
If the real goal is to "fix" the economy, the devs need to take a hard look at how the economy is structured. There is an unlimited supply of money, readily available to all players through missions and looting. There is no removal of that money back into the system at a high enough rate to offset the money that is available. I can run five heavy extractors, pay maintenance on my large house for a month, get all my equipment insured, and pay all my travel fees by running solo missions on dantooine for half a day. Not to mention that all my buffs/spice/food is provided for free from the guild. Basic economic theory will tell you that if the devs REALLY care about fixing the economy, they have not only missed the mark entirely, they are shooting blanks from a CDEF pistol at 1000m.... at a Krayt.
I think what will happen is this:
1)Patch will go live, despite the intense outcry.
2)Economy "fixes" will not occur as intended by patch, and a hotfix will eliminate all the pre-nerf economy.
3)Many long time crafters will simply quit. Not quit crafting, mind you, but cancel their accounts. Who really wants to be exactly the same as the next guy out there? They tried this in Russia throughout the mid 20th century, and look where it got them.
)/ Master PistoleerAlright, a few points. I noticed someone earlier mentioning:
- This will only put more money into the hands of the crafters and out of the hands of the combat players, the crafters are already ungodly wealthy.
Response: The crafters are generally poorer in this game than the combat characters. Take a look at the skill tape markets to understand one reason why. Everything that is good is going loot drop now...this is making the combat classes (those who honestly work towards money anyway...) insanely wealthy...not to mention things like the 2 million credit pre-nerf guns are mostly owned by combat characters who bought it way back when...those who make them, sold them...after all, that is what they do...make and sell. Pre nerf markets favor the combat end. Putting more money in the crafters hands (which btw...resources are the only real money drain in this game...who pays into harvesters to get resources....not the combat characters..) moves the economy along. The economic flow is supposed to be mission terminal->combat character->crafter->harvesters, with random stops in departments like shuttle tickets and the like. The crafting classes should be more wealthy, regardless...after all...that is ALL they do...make stuff and sell it...if they are poorer than the combat, then their entire purpose isn't happening. A pure combat player from day one has no clue what goes into getting these resources. HINT: It is a lot harder than you doing missions.
- The new system will promote diversity of products.
Response: No.
- The new system will kill the crafter's market.
Response: No, it won't...but it sure will make a bunch of random people who have the crap insanely wealthy.
- Combat characters having to have multiple sets of a certain item with different stats is a bad thing.
Response: No, this is what was intended from the beginning...a combat character should have a speed weapon and a damage weapon for instance, and switch between them in different instances. This adds something more to combat. Will this actually happen from this? No.
My 2 credits.
God this is SO EDIT EDIT EDIT DAMN LAME ... Way to go VERRANT .... OH wait you guys arent verrant .... But you are sure turning out like verrant ... On my server its hard as hell to find a decent suite of 80+ composite that doesnt go for over a million credits a suite .... Lets look at how long a suite will last with your screwed up repair system .... What 2 weeks of playing? How long does it take to run around and find decent armor ? what several HOURS ??????? How long does it take to make several million credits with doing missions? Several weeks ....
1= How does this HELP the ECONOMY ? It Gives all the money to the armor smiths and weapon smiths !!!!
2= Who is complaining about the needed changes? NEWBIE ARMORSMITHS that dont realise they can become master in a week !!!!!
3= How do you fix the economy? Add more armor schematics and im not talking about gay quests !!!! Redesign the armor system !!!! Factional Armor better than the 30% storm trooper armor .... Hell NPC armor vendors that sell base armor at a base rate so it will keep prices down .....
4= What is the main PROBLEM = THIS GAY RESOURCE SHIFTING !!!!!!!! I swear I have 3 damn accounts with you chicken suckers and I have waited over 6 months for KERIUM STEEL , BERRYLIUS COPPER, and COLAT IRON .... and when it does pop it SUXORS !!!!!! While on the other hand for like 6 months in a row HIGH QUALITY WEAPONSMITH ORE AND ARCHITECT ORE poped up on every shift ... You need to set a day for resources to shift !!!!!!! and let people know when !!!!! You need to keep resources up 2 weeks at a time ..... And needed resources should not take over 2 months before they pop .....
As it is your system totaly blows and with this new change its gonna get really worse .... I can care less about the newbie armor smiths or the master armor smiths .... You have basicly just screwed the avg player who needs decent armor ......... The problem is the majority of the people grind the trade skill professions for what JEDI ..... that is the whole problem !!!!!!!!!!!
Everytime a Dev nerfs something god kills a kitten.
Think of the kitten G! Do you want to be the cause of the death of yet another poor helpless innocent kitty? 
Devs you really want this economy to stop going the way it is then do what someone suggested earlier. Create an influx of really good resources for as long as you want it to run.
With an influx of good quality resources the first time they spawn people will think they can make a killing selling this stuff at 50credits per unit. Next resource shift should result in very little change in stats if anything and people will think that they can make a killing off that too. After a number of resource shifts with very little change you'll have people wondering why anyone is charging 50 credits for any 1 unit of resources. When that happens, resource prices will drop. After some time you'll then see that prices on goods will start to drop as well. This economy is unlike the real world economy (at least I think it is) in that it is completely transparent. Prices got this way because mission terms were paying out large amounts of credits. No one could forsee the problems that would have created because during beta prices weren't outrageous and there were very few people than there are on the live servers at one time. Anyway, once resource prices and item prices drop, you can then lower mission payouts.
The mission terms led to inflation, but putting out resources with good stats every shift will cause a chain reaction that can help you put the economy where you thought it will be. I don't know how much simpler you can make it. Just don't announce when you're making the change and just watch how the economy rights itself and then fix things accordingly so you don't see inflation of this magnitude again.
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.
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.
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.
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. Keep in mind that with this change comes a paradigm shift of sorts. 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.
One valid concern that has been raised with regards to this issue is that there are certain resources that are required for higher-end draft schematics that have capped qualities. For example, a certain item that has a dependency on conductivity might require Plumbum Iron as a resource component. The trouble with this being that ferrous metals, and specifically iron, will most always have poor conductivity (and realistically so). The perceived result of this is that any experimentation line that depends on conductivity can never be raised to an acceptable level. It is important to note that we are and have been aware of draft schematics like this. In such cases, we have artificially inflated the maximum values in the draft schematic for attributes that depend on the capped resources, so that the end result is in line with the expected values.
That may be a little confusing to follow so I will try to explain a little better with an example. Very simply, say that you have a weapon, and we want the maximum damage for that weapon to be no less than 50, and no greater than 100. Say that experimentation for maximum damage depends on conductivity, and the schematic requires iron and aluminum. For the sake of argument, let's say that the iron conductivity is capped at 10% of resource maximum, and aluminum conductivity is capped at 90% of resource maximum. When these two resources are used in crafting the item, the maximum conductivity possible is averaged out to be 50%. With this in mind, we have set the range of values for max damage on this weapon to be 50 to 200. The result of this is that with the maximum conductivity possible with these hypothetical capped resources (50%) the maximum damage that can be achieved with this weapon is what we wanted it to be (200 x 50% = 100). These artificially inflated values are not new in Publish Seven; these have been around since the launch of the game. In short, it is a valid concern, but it is one that we have always been aware of, and took steps to address in the original implementation.
In reviewing the threads on this forum regarding this new change, I have seen a lot of intelligent testing and discussion going on. 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.
As always, we welcome and will happily address your comments and questions.
Most sincerely,