Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
You must not be too concerned about the changes then if you are not willing to test and help out. I know how time consuming collecting resources is. I did it on my live server and on the Test Center. You don't have to tell me how hard it is. I just figured the patches might be better if there were more people dedicated to making this a better game instead of just whining about it.
Betatoxin wrote:
And how would that help to test a crafting change that has to do with the resources you have, not the skill points.
So are you suggestion 2 hours of resource collection on TC for every 8 hours of live?
Resource collection is incredibly time consuming. It is hard enough on one server, you want people to do it on two?
Sorry people most likely have better things to do with their time, and that includes not playing SWG anymore, something which from what I can see is happening more and more.
Chrysalide wrote:
"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."
From the Publish 7 patch notes:
"Adjusted experimentation so that the overall quality of resources will play a larger role in how much or how little someone could experiment with an item's attributes... This will help give master crafters more of an advantage over their less skilled counterparts in this area."
If your goal is to combat these "monopolies", you sure as heck aren't going to fix it by making those people who run the monopolies even more powerful than noobie crafters. Starting Tuesday morning, new crafters are even more screwed, and the monopoliesbecome stronger. People will always buy from the best, and the only way to be the best is to be a monopoly with your 12 experimentation points and huge resource supplies/buying power. No novice crafter stands a chance to sell anything that needs to be experimented on.
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.
Take stimpacks for example. Now, I can use a 2-3 points to get the med use down to a good level, and then put the rest into power. After patch, I can either make A) High powered and very hard to use, or B) Low powered and very easy to use.
/slapDevs
You have a lot of unhappy customers. You better get that Space Expansion out in a hurry, and it better kickass. Or else.
"Or else what?"
Game over.
darknacht wrote:
Those FOR this change would have you believe that those AGAINST are a small vocal minority, when they speak within the same so called "narrow" forum. This claim that this forum is therefore irrelevant and that THEY speak the true voice of the players is therefore just as questionable. The question is why do they want it done so quickly? Is there money to be made for those who have prepared for this?
This issue is important enough to study further and not dump its experimental effects upon the players. If you think it is truly an issue supported by a small minority, go ahead and put it through.....you willthen see how many really care...but it may cost you dearly when all you had to do was study it more fully before you pulled the trigger.
the thing is that i would say that maybe 80% of the players never use the forums...some are nevre really aware of changes until patch day...
the only thing that draws fresh voices here is when there is a new problem after an update..ie vehicles poofing, items vanishing from vendors, armor a different color.
i bet you a billion billion credits that once this hits you will hear from the majority..they will get vocal and it wont be pretty....
and to the people saying this will make crafting harder, HOW???????????? it will in no way make crafting harder or more interesting or more enjoyable.....most of us have always used the best resources available. will we still do the exact same thing only now we will have a crappier item to show for it...all items will become even more cookie cutter than they already are.
Nobody wants varied items, from a WS point of view they all want as much damage as possible to grind their way through as many professions as they can, as fast as they can due to theamount of holocrons floating about.
The first step to destroying the enonomy was the introduction of architect experimentation which effectively doubled the resource extraction allowing the stockpiling of resources that lead to the hoarding by older masters of the best resources that ever spawned, thus making it even harder for new crafters to compete.
This also allowed the resource miners to make more money than alot of crafters.
The introduction of holocrons at xmas and the allowance of cross-server trading of these, completely devalued every profession, especially crafters, with the market being flooded with every craftable item, but still not bringing the value of the items down.
The appearance of the trade forums allowing the sale of anything for 10-1000 times any reasonable value put one of the final nails in the economy's coffin.
Then there was the bat cave...
And the soloing of krayts by getting them stuck on harvs/houses. Selling pearls/tissues for upto 10 mill.
It's not the crafters fault the economy is broken.Is it ahuge coincedence the economy of every single server is in the same state? As most have had nowhere near the quality of resources as many others have.
I can guarantee i wont sell any8 speed carbines with 100 max damage and all points in efficiency, yet you're sugeesting this is what people want. I seriously have doubts that anyone who makes decisions is playing this game.
DirkTheDaring wrote:
"You must not be too concerned about the changes then if you are not willing to test and help out. I know how time consuming collecting resources is. I did it on my live server and on the Test Center. You don't have to tell me how hard it is. I just figured the patches might be better if there were more people dedicated to making this a better game instead of just whining about it."
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.
Ocu_Lus wrote:
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.
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.
It is insulting to me that you are telling me that the last eight months I have spent playing this game gathering the best resources to have spawned since release in an effort to make my armor top of the line is an miniscule and easy effort. Eight months and I still can not create most of my products with over 93% resists, and can not significantly reduce the encumbrance of armor. You may see it as easy on your test servers where you can spawn yourself some 1000 quality materials and use them, but for those of us who went through periods where beryllius copper, colat iron, kiriium steel, nabooian fiberplast, axidite iron, nutronium steel, and countless other resources didn't spawn close to the best spawn in history for months on end, driving the price of those resources into the millions for small parcels of it, it is an absolute insult for you to comment that it is easy to maximize attributes of items and equipment.
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.
This is so untrue it is unbelievable, and yet another prime example of how the DEVs have never played the game on anything other than a test server, and base all their decisions on metrics and statistics that only tell part of the story. If you truly think that there is not heated competition between crafters, than you sir are quite the fool. Weaponsmiths fight each other for single digit differences in damage, armorsmiths would sell their children to gain even a single percentage point in resistance, or lower their suits in encumbrance by 5-10 points. Again, this is an insult to those of us who have spent the last eight months striving to obtain and maintain our stock of incredibly rare quality resources so we can continue to produce equipment that has stats that are even viable for someone to use.
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.
Again, we apparently have people in charge of designing the system we use, and making critical decisions on how it is to work, who have no clue how the system works beyond how it should work on paper. Do you not realize that in every profession other than combat medicine, there is only one type of experimentation that can significantly change the quality of the final product.
Armorsmith (using composite as an example): Resistance can be increased from base values around 18-20% to values upwards of 56%. Encumbrance can at most be reduced 20-50 points on a FULL SUIT of composite, and doing so requires near entire use of all your experimentation points from the component level thorough the final build. What is the value of a 20% resist suit with 40 points less encumbrance than a suit with 56% resists? If you think that is a significant reduction in encumbrance, than I have a feeling you are the one who also thought that the Zabraks ability to increase their main bars by 50 points would be a valuable trait.
Weaponsmith: Damage on weapons can, just as armorsmith, be increased significantly from the base values. Weaponsmiths can also experiment the condition of weapons, the range mods of weapons, and the HAM cost of specials. Yet again, the only stat you can significantly improve to a point of usefulness vs point cost, is damage. At most you can achieve a few hundred points of condition improvement, a few points less HAM cost, some minor improvements in ideal range, but increasing any of those by any means requires almost total loss of damage.
Chef: Power of foods can be increased by leaps and bounds above base values. Charges and filling, even when focused on to the maximum with experimentation points, can only be slightly improved.
Architect: Extraction rate can be improved dramatically over base values, yet putting all your efforts into increasing hopper size will yield no more than a 10-15% gain in hopper size.
Droid Engineer: You jerks have so totally borked this profession, and ignored them for going on eight months now, that they probably don't care that you are totally screwing up experimentation in crafting. They don't care because they can't craft anything. DEs I feel for you guys, I would gladly step back in line as an armorsmith and take a later date on a fix if they would put some effort into your class.
Doctor: This and Combat Medic are the only classes where there is some decision making during crafting. With doctor it is lowering the med use of some supplies to a slightly lower level and sacrificing some power, it can be effectively done. Yet, you can increase the power of medical supplies dramatically, for example you can take Stim Bs from a base power around 100, all the way up to 420+ by using advanced components and good resources. But if you gear your entire crafting effort towards increasing charges, you will only see an increase from around 30 charges on the high power meds, to 40-45 charges, and the meds will have such low stats that they will not be desired by anyone.
Combat medic: Again, this and Doctor are the only classes I can think of where you have to decide when you are experimenting, and for Combat Medic it is only on the poison/disease crafting, not the other medical crafting the class does. You can significantly increase the range of your poisons by spending points on it, while still maintaining effective power. You are sacrificing total high end power for range, but you can effectively create different meds for different situations. Also, this point will be null and void as soon as you nerf the CMs ability to throw over 64m as that is far lower than the base range of the poisons I can currently create, so yet again there will be no point other than to increase the max damage on poison/disease.
Tailor: You cant experiment anything anyway... yeay
Bio-engineer: Don't know much about the class, can't comment on it, have never done BE crafting.
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.
You are not increasing the verity of items in any way. Items will still be created the same exact way, by maxing the stat that can actually be changed to any significant value, and tossing a few points into the second most important stat. The only thing that will change, is that the second most important stat on items will decrease in quality slightly. Armor will have higher HAM, weapons will have slightly less condition and high HAM cost, food will have slightly less duration and charges, medical supplies will no longer be able to be effectively lowered in usage value.
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.
So you are not changing resource caps or the way they impact experimentation in the least, so there is no compensation for classes such as weaponsmith for the changes going in. I believe the weaponsmiths will be hit the hardest, possibly will be damaged beyond repair, due to the poor resources they use commonly letting them spend 50% experimentation on damage and the rest on another stat. Hence it will now take 100% experimentation to get the same damage, and the secondary stat will drop by a huge amount in comparison to some other classes that commonly only put 10-20% into their secondary stat after maxing the one truly valuable stat.
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,
Please reply to this, what are your feelings on my comments? Do you not understand that there is nor realistically more than one value that is worth maximizing in crafting? Do you have any "real world" crafting experience outside of a test server? Where are you basing your opinions that there is no competition between crafters? because there sure is a hell of a lot on my server. Can you make any comments back that have more substance than "we feel" and "in our opinion", rather can you provide any hard examples that you feel warrant the changes in crafting?