Development Cycle Archive

I have two things to say. One, the game economy should be a closed system, guided or managed by SOE through the game. Enterprise groups are advertising to sell packets of 50 million swg credits and less. I don't know if these are related to players who have monopolized some aspect of the game, or hackers who have beat the security, or SOE employeesadjusting their own player accounts, but the effect of this many credits in the hands of one individual or group removes all strictures of the economy for them. I don't think you can have a fairer system until these sales are reduced. Inside the game, I would point out that resources are the only free (fixed costs)item in the game economy.

Two, I wonder about the player input system. Is it lacking in consensus?Is itpossible to let groups work with developers in more meaningful ways so that changeswould havemore player supportfrom the beginning? Is it possible to have the forum systems reflect more player leadership besides just sharing and venting. Is there a Librarian Development Group that sifts through the thousands of messages for the occasional gem that can be implemented and credit(s) given in a Sticky to the responsible player?

Boy, if they back out of this change, I would hate to be in that meeting.

Dev: "Hi, we're here to discuss the implementation of Publish 7."

SOE Exec: "Did everything go as planned? I assume there were some minor bugs, but everything else?"

Dev: "Well, we pulled out the crafting changes that we thought would help the economy based on player feedback.:

SOE Exec: "Oh really? The majority of players didn't want this implemented?"

Dev: "Um, well, less than 10% of the player base voiced a negative opinion towards the change."

SOE Exec: "Hmmmm, they tested it out and didn't like it?"

Dev: "Yeah, sort of. See, of the less than 10% that use the forums, even less than that play on the Test Center server and those are the ones that actually played with the system we were going to implement."

SOE Exec: "I don't understand then. How could the players that didn't use Test Center know that they didn't like the change?"

Dev: "They were basing their opinions on the feedback of the test center players only."

SOE Exec: "So what you're saying is that less than 10% of the players knew that it was coming, and even less than that even tested out the system? So the 90% of players that didn't even use the system will never even find out if they like it or not, because a minority of players said they didn't like."

Dev: "Yes."

SOE Exec: "Now, how many man hours and at what cost did you devote to these changes?"

Dev: "Ummm, Thunderhearts check was $1,000,000.00 plus a small house in the Hamptons for having to deal with irritated players. Tack on about $5000.00 for everyone else, that's about it." C'mon, laugh, it was funny.

SOE Exec: "Alright, just wanted to make sure we were under budget. Thanks."

While yes, this an attempt at humor, you get the point I'm driving at.

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HandCrafted wrote:

I make pistols. (I make them for me, no one buys them plz see above.) I make DH17 pistols. I don’t make D18 pistols. Why? The damage is to low. There should not be pistol schematic levels. The reasoning that sense a DH17 pistol is higher in the skill tree than a D18 means that it should be better was a game design mistake. IMHO there should be at least 8 pistols, one for each damage type, Kinetic, Energy,… I agree with you that variety of choices will help the economy. Don’t nerf the “High end” schematics and create a ‘pre-nerf’ market. Bring the “Low end” schematics up. Making all items have a place and time for there use.

HandCrafted

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DS

This is what I've produced so far:

300 T21 Rifles, mine are best on server. I have schematics made to produce another 1000 (well10 sets of perhaps 98 Rifles) of them, each with an individual unique APH, Rifle Barrel and Stock which I traded over to another non-crafting character of mine.

200 Laser Rifles & Laser Carbines, again, best on server and unique schematics to make 1000 more of each.

200 Jawa Ion Rifles, again, best on server and unique schematics to make 1000 more.

For Composite Armor, I've focused on only 3 pieces of two types. I have produced 160 of each of the following:

80% Kinetic 71% Chest Pieces

80% Kinetic 71% Helmets

80% Kinetic 71% Leggings

40% Stun 64% Base Helmets

40% Stun 64% Base Leggings

40% Stun 63% Base Chests (can't seem to get 64% on the chests due to 4 required segments)

And I have schematics to produce another 160 pieces of all 6, all ready to go, stored on a 3rd non-crafting character I have. Since these 3 peices wear the most, I'll live with the other arm, hand and foot peices that are not the major ham burden.

Now, Dev team, explain to me, how a day-one-launch miner like myself, in the time since this thread first appears, is going to do anything other than continue to elevate myself as the "richest" player-character on my server. How is any crafter on my server going to be able to compete with my resource stash, my 9 armor factories, my 6 weapon factories & my immense knowledge of the current crafting and experimentation system.

I use NO SKILL TAPES, I do not live in a Player City to recieve any experimentation bonus, yet, I produce the best weapons, period, on my server and can produce armor on par with the launch masters still going at it.

Oh I've got a couple 100 DXR-6 Rifles also pre-made and sitting in the input hoppers of my factory.

It has to do with one thingand one thing only, experience.

On my server there are handful of Masters who have the resources and experience to utterly destroy any recent Master who has been struggling to break into our niche. How are these proposed changes going to benefit them when we have already produced weapons and armor and schematics to continue to produce the same quality even once the NERF is put into place.

We've already beaten you at your own game. If the nerf is put into place, as I have outlined above, I can just sit on what I have produced and can continue to produce and continue to rake in cash. My weapons vendor has been selling like mad. I've even stopped stocking it since I am just going to sit and wait to see if you guys actually do this and destroy any possibility for non-launch Masters to compete with ones such as myself.

With the declining player base that will occur I can only hope I get a chance to sell everything I can produce with the schematics I have stored in the datapads of my other characters.

Malfunction

Radiant Server

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snipaho wrote:

And what's with only being allowed to experiment on one attribute bar? How is that going to increase variety? Pre-patch we can put a few points here, a few points there, make some efficient combinations. Now we have to choose a bar and shove all the points there? That's retarded and will decrease the variety of items.

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That is a bad rumor. You can still experiment in any number ofattribute bars. The problem some people are having is that now you can raise one bar higher than you could before, so more people are tempted to keep using the points in the "main" attribute like damage for guns, effectiveness for armor etc. It used to max out at a lower level so you would have more points left over. Now you are able to put more points into each attribute. Basically it's crafters not using self control and putting all the points into one attribute and then bitching about not having pionts left over for other attributes.

In their defense I will note that the points don't seem to go quite as far. It seems like the successes that I had while crafting were slightly lower % gains than the old system, but I could make a better product with the same materials if it only relied on one attribute (like speeders)

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JustG wrote:

That's alot of pages about this!

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

- g

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JustG wrote:

That's alot of pages about this!

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

- g

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Yes, its a lot of pages! Guess what, it could be condensed in one simple sentence:

STOP THE NERF!

The problem here is that the best items will be the best items, regardless of wha they are. If the best out there now is 85%, and after patch the best is 75% the new items will eventually be the same price as the old. It doesn't matter what you do with experimentation, material quaility, etc, the best will be what the best is, and everyone will strive to have that.

What will screw this up forMONTHS is the tens of thousands of 'pre-nerf' items stored on vendors all over. I know of one WS that made over 2000 items, stocked his vendor and untrained. I know of another WS that normally stocks some 1700+ items on ONE of his 4 weapon vendors (the one I look at), I assume the other 3 are similar

I have no problem with the way material quality, experimentation works now, but I can't say if the changes will make it better. I doubt it. No doubt they will make things DIFFERENT, but better/worse is a matter of opinion. In the long run I suspect it will make little or no difference to the overall game.

That being said, what I would like to see is a change in the epxerimentation itself.

My question is: What is the purpose of crit failures?

They do not happen often enough to limit quantity, and with factories this is multiplied. The only purpose a crit failure is for is to PISS people off. Really. you lose materials, your 250,000cr tissues, etc.

The change I would like to see is getting rid of all but good, great and amazing successes. I am serious. Make a Novice crafter get mostly good successes( with rare greats), and as they work up the skill tree the goods turn into greats. At Master you getmostly great/good successes with a RARE amazing. What happens then is that you can count on your nominal quality, and when you do get one of those RARE occurence you are HAPPY, not totally ticked off at getting a crit.

This still limits the amount of awesome stuff out there, but everyone is happy, not being irked by the stupid failures. When you make armor you will get minor variations of your nominal product quality, and are happy as hell when you get that odd amazing item that you put aside until you have a set.

I know this would be part of an overall strategy to making people HAPPY, as opposed to ANGRY, but hey, have to start somewhere.

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Tuanga wrote:

Sorry its time consuming enough beta testing on the live servers, without also having to do it on Test Center. Some of us do have lives beyond this game.

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It's all part of playing an MMORPG. The game will always be changing. Call it Beta if you wish, but I call it better than a static unchanging game.

If you don't test, you don't know what you are arguing against.

Yes I fail to see how this change will fix the economy.

Prices will remain the same. The only thing that will change is item quality will come down but prices won't since top end stuff will still price exactly the same as it does now. It will just be of lower quality but the "best' will always cost the same even if the "best" today isn't as good as the "best" yesterday because of the change.

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Tuanga wrote:

Sorry its time consuming enough beta testing on the live servers, without also having to do it on Test Center. Some of us do have lives beyond this game.

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Isn't it kind of hard to argue about something you haven't tried out?