Development Cycle Archive

---

AldrakSWG wrote:

Ya know, I think this is one of those cases where the devs should have labeled this a "bug fix" and not solicited input on it. Who says crafters asked for this? Who says we should have squat to say about it?

Everything player related in this game needs to be nerfed. Other than that portion of the playerbase that likes being God, the rest of us know we're vastly overpowered relative to both the environment and each other.

So what's the team to do?

---

Well, I think you have part of it right. It should have remained an internal change, unannounced in the pre-Publish release notes. Instead, not only did the Dev/CS teams mess up once or twice, they compounded it at least three times in dealing with the players about the change.

1) They announced it in the pre-Publish release notes. It drew little interest at first as the wording was convoluted and the actual implications weren't clear.

2)Crafters finally got the gist of what was entailed and began to /flail .

3) Crafters were told this was "what we had asked for". That smokescreen lasted less than a day.

4) Crafters were advised that the "smart" thing to do would be to start stocking up on their goods before this went live.

5) Several high profile posts were deleted. None were abusive. All were well reasoned opposition in a courteous tone.

6) Long delay in responding to the growing frenzy.

7) A promised "explanation" was delayed two days past its promised delivery, fueling the fires even more.

8) When the explanation did appear, it made no sense whatsoever in the context of the change.

9) More dissenting posts disappeared.

10) Too late to stem the widespread panic this whole mess engendered (not the players' fault), we finally get an assurance that the team might be listening.

I think players might have understood if the changes had just appeared after the patch and have it described as a tuning issue to balance the game. Instead, we've been sold a bill of goods twice in terms of a rationale for the whole thing. Honesty goes a long wayin developing a trusting relationship. Now it's a PR nightmare. Are the players to blame for this? Absolutely not. Someone mentioned earlier in the thread about an early Dev statement that it was easier to code if you initially overpower the players then tune (nerf) them down. Unfortunately ease of coding doesn't mesh well with a player's mind set. In every MMORPG out there, playershave not taken kindly to having their powers reduced. Since games are a product, it might behoove designers to not take the easy route initially and avoid situations like this. Besides, what has actually overpowered the current crop of players? Could it be better medical buffs? Could it be good spices? Could it be the newly introduced foods and drinks? Dropped stat enhancers (of all types)? All things added or modified upwards after release for the most part. Through lack of foresight and testing they've unbalanced their own game with post-release changes. The players have only used the tools given them. Its no surprise that players get upset when something positive is handed to them and then are dealt a bunch of misguided and conflicting reasons as to why it needs to be taken away.

---

Cordellbacination wrote:

Dont rearrange the assembly line because you dont like the product, change the raw materials. If you think an adjustment is necessary, then do something about resources commonly having high properties.

---

The experimentation change is obviously a way to a). control the economy and b). stop the creation of uber weapons.

That's how i see it, and i don't have a problem with it. Established crafters are not going to go broke with this change. newbies will have some difficulty making quality weapons though, thus affecting there income.

---

JustG wrote:

That's alot of pages about this!

Thank you everyone for the responses. We will be talking about this tomorrow.

- g

---

---

JCatano wrote:

Repost from Naritus forum:

---

Matchstick said:

I've made so many posts on this subject my brain is starting to leak out of my head.

Essentially it's the same song that Sandoz is singing.

Bottom line... the content in this game is too easy. One of the primary factors in that is the ability to easily manufacture very high end goods in HUGE quantities. When everyone has the best stuff... what's the point of it all? Crafting has no meaning anymore really for most professions. It's not challenging or exciting. I've made about almost 3 dozen full suits of 63-65% base armor with 20% stun in my spare time. That's just goofing off with armorsmith. With the slices everyone in my guild has full effective sliced armor over with stun protection which with buffs makes you damn near invincible. And since I'm a master doc... guess how often any of my chars run around without buffs?

And it was cake. Why should I, who was just sort of piddling with armorsmith, be able to make products in the realm of what you make?

People are pissed off because it's a natural reaction when they make something that was easy harder. But in the long run... having the game be more challenging will be to everyone's benefit. We'll all enjoy it more. And having resource quality play an even larger role in crafting will really make crafting more interesting to me. People complain because some resources are gated in their stats... or that sometimes you get just TERRIBLE spawns... or that some things rarely spawn if ever.... to which I say... DUH! That's life. Not everything is going to be handed to you. It's supposed to be a challenge.

Anyway... I don't even care anymore. I'm tired of crusading around on this topic and defending what to me is an excellent step in the right direction. People are short sighted and only see things to their personal benefit... then they go make a post the next day about how boring the game is and how there's no content. Whatever. Anyone that wants to quit... quit. You'll be back... they always come back. Cuz we get to fly spaceships soon.

---

Exactly.

---

---

JustG wrote:

That's alot of pages about this!

Thank you everyone for the responses. We will be talking about this tomorrow.

- g

---

---

Gunsablazen wrote:

Still can't get off my speeder without getting launched 100 meters, not mention the auto store feature, and you have been focusing time on adjusting something that actually works ?????

---

1. Come to a full stop first, then you usually won't get thrown forward.

2. Auto-store or not, next patch we'll be able to pull things without camps, correct? Well, either publish 7 or 8, and then it won't be a big deal, right?

So, no reason to complain here while there is serious discussion going on. Thanks!

I responded in this thread 24 pages ago, so I'm not going to dwell on what's been said in the 24 pages since...suffice to say, there are a ton of great viewpoints, and I daresay that many of us have a more extensive business/economic background than the SOE dev team would. But I have to say in partial defense of the dev team, creating an economy, whether real or virtual, is an extremely difficult thing to do. It depends on so many factors, that one cannot possibly predict how it will work. This game attempted to do something that was mostly heretofor unheard of...create an economy based totally on the players. Everything that is used in this game (and I say "used" because loot drops frankly suck) is created by players. Everything. With a player base of over 100k (or whatever the number is now), it is to be expected that things won't work in some areas. Creating a "perfect" economy isn't possible. Nor should it be...perfect competition does not exist in the real world, but I won't digress into more economic theory.

I think the basic message here is that while the economy may be broken, it is not because the crafting system is broken. The root of the cause is the inflow of money into the game greatly exceeds the outflow. Consider the US Federal government as an example: Money comes in to the economy when needed, via Federal Reserve Banks, and leaves the economy (in theory) from taxes paid to the government. Now, it's obviously not really this simple, but you get the idea...the basic John Q. Taxpayer has a nice money sink in his own wallet, in the form of taxes, food, housing, etc. We don't have that in this game, save for a weak maintenance requirement that anyone can meet by running 2 missions once a week. And that's if you choose to own a house...which you don't actually need unless you want it. One poster said he had enough resources and schematics stockpiled to make full suits of armor for something like 2 years...and that he could sell them collectively for over 1 BILLION (with a "B") credits over that time. You will be creating a more monopolistic economy, and that benefits nobody except the monopoly.

I said it 24 pages ago: the crafting systemin this game is a work of art. Please don't change it just for the sake of change, or because you think it's causing the rampant economic inflation in the game, because it isn't. Hundreds of posts on this subject have explained what the true problems are...the combined experience of all these players must be in the hundreds of thousands of hours at this point. You lose nothing by at least delaying this change for a month. At the very least, it gives all of us time to have a roundtable discussion as to how to really fix the problem.

My two sense.. I'm not a crafter, I'm a PvPer.. So when I heard about this "patch" I went and bought spares and spares for my spares of my armor, the food I use, the buff packs my doc uses, the weapons I use so that for the foreseeable future I won't need to buy any of the new items.

Not particularily sure how this will help the economy, since I have no doubt most every other PvP or PvE character with money will do exactly what I did, which basically means the economy will be dead for a few months...

The people that will be buying the new items are the less rich players and newer players, who will then go and try PvP against those of us with money who stocked up, and they will be likely be slaughtered left, right and center..

Their armor will be inferior, they'll probably be buffed by inferior packs, they'll be using weapons with much less accuracy, damage or speed, with the higher ham costs on their armor and weapons and the lower quality buff packs they'll die sooner in a fight, and the food they can use to enhance their minds will be of lower quality.

So all this will do is give the rich players a brutally nasty edge over the poor players and new players...

So, to conclude: Economy takes a hit, all poor players and new players get to deal with pre-nerf Acklay stun batons, Krayt Ion Rifles and Genoshian Blasters ripping into their lower quality armor while they return fire with peashooters..

Food for thought G...

Do you think that any of those who say these changes are good follow that position because they are noble and altruistic? That they call for this hardening to cleanse the game and make it balanced and better because they know what is best for us all? Do you think they will destroy their stockpiles of resources, schematics, and crates of superior products to start with everyone in a new playing field? That they have no selfish motives whatsoever in this deception? Look closely.

In the not too distant future, we will log in to find we are playing the ultimately balanced game that results in such a driven frenzy....we will be playing checkers. TH's illustration of a checker in describing a recent proposal to the droid community is ironic, for it seems that this is what this game will become when all the life is squeezed from it.