Development Cycle Archive

Doh,

Sorry about the formatting... teach me to cut and paste from notepad again

If you do revert back to the old system, I think one thing you should consider in the future is retaining the old system, but allowing more diverse areas to apply experimentation points.

Let's look at Weaponsmith.

Weaponsmiths have the ability to modify 4 things currently, but usually end up only modifying one thing. They usually modify the attacking power and spend the one or two extra points on condition or HAM costs. Weaponsmiths usually never change the To-Hit bonuses.

regardless of what they do, this patch has done great harm the the economy.

I think these changes achieved almost the exact opposite of what they were intended to achieve...

As a doctor, the new system emphasizes how many experimentation points I have over even resource quality. Rather than having to use my best resources to maximize power on Stims, for instance, I was able to hit 100% effectiveness with any resource that would have gotten me over 92% (or so) before. This would effectively level the top end of the market -- the 4 or 5 point variance between a "best" resource and a close second would be eliminated.

Enhance packs with only 10 points spent on power came out significantly worse than before (20-30 point drop I think), while those with 11 points in power turned out quite a bit more powerful than they should have been. In this case, the simple result is that anyone with 12 experimentation points can turn out 90-use Enhance Ds with 30-ish more power than the resources would otherwise allow, while only 11 point smiths can match the power level with default med use.

Further, I find the new system to be quite a bit *less* intuitive than the old one. In particular, the effect of amazing successes is now quite a bit more variant (and schematics are quite a bit harder to reproduce). Crafting Advanced Liquid Suspensions, for instance, I achieved the best result (I did more than 50 of these, so I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done better) when getting "great successes" on the first 10 exp points, and an amazing success on the last 1. Even if I used all 8 points possible in the first experiment run and got an amazing success, all that would happen is I would only be allowed to use 10 points, and so not quite reach the maximum (nor even reach what I would get with all "great successes").

Now, under the old system, a certain number of amazing successes on any given attribute would allow it to be filled up with 1 fewer point than was otherwise necessary. For instance, with a 5-point amazing success, I can hit 98% on charges on an ABEC with 9 points instead of 10. So, amazing successes provided an indirect benefit -- an extra point to be used elsewhere. This makes quite a bit more sense to me than their rather dubious value in the new system...

I figure 10,000 75 power ASDSs should last me a while... And I didn't even have to use my best iron!

I'm a master weaponsmith and I jsut did 50 experimentation with Advance Weapon Stock and Advanced Blaster barrels. These are 2 of our msot gated items (I really consider the blaster pistol and rifle barrels the same from a resource point of view). I didn't see a single critical failure or amazign success... Which is quite different, I'm used to see crits at a 20% rate and amazings at an 5% rate... However, moderate and good success where much more common is it took many more attempts to get an all great success schematic. BTW... I still believe there should be no randomness in experimentation, just allocate your points and be done with it! We already have randomness with assembly, resource spawning, loot items and SEA! That aside, I'm at a loss to determine this 'constant' experimentation progression with points spent. I got anywhere from 5-7% with a great success on the stocks... Going from 7% to 67-71% with all great succcess. With the blaster barrels, I got 1-3% with great success going from 11% to 34%. Note that I only have 10 experimentation points. For both items I was unable to max out the 1 tree out of several available to me. For both items I came up 3-4 experimentation points short and my current schematics are 1-2 damage poitns less than my old ones, with of course no increase in ideal range or HAM reduction!

So in essence for some basic components for my weapons, there is a significant nerfing. The fact that a great success doesn't have a consistent meaning, keeps experimentation confusing. I thought one of the reason for this change was to make it more intuitive! I did a 2nd round of experiementation consuming qutie a bit of Bespin Port... It had no noticeable effect! So I doubt that it is working. I also played around with some DX2's. As reproted from the test center, I can make this weapon have the same damage for 1 point more than pre-patch. However it takes all of my experimentation points todo, leaving nothing left for ideal range or HAM! This effectively removes all variability from weapons unless you have SEA! One of the benefits of this change was to increase variability! It is interesting to ntoe that I started off with 1 less min and 2 less max and .3 mroe speed due to the poor blaster barrels and I was able to over come all of this.

I also experimented with a t21. I was unable to max the damage line with 10 exp points for my t21's. This is most likely due to the fact that even though I have the best iron that has spawned on the server, it is still not very good. My t21 only loses 2 points from min and 1 point from maximum, but it has an WHOLE extra point of speed!

i have been talking about this stuff for months ever since as a master archetect i failed on my first attempt at everything i tried always failed the FIRST attempts....this system would have made almost everyone of those failures<guildhall large house hospital cityhall etc>not fail and i wouldnt have lost all my resources and almost have a heartattack on several occasions. Masters should have better chances to craft things than nonmasters and if a non master wants to craft like a master then they will do the work TO GET THERE

all my master crafters have been crafting with the changes and i believe that it may need some tweaking but all in all i am most satisfied with the results SO QUIT COMPLAINING and try to work with the new system for in the long run i believe it will be more advantages to everyone not just the high end crafters

BTW i also believe that the ones that will be most rewarded are the ones dedicated to doing their craft and not the grinders that get the mastery just to mass produce high end gear to undercut or compete with the dedicated crafters

Kandorianan Kordeth MASTER ARTISAN MASTER ARCHETECT and have been that way for a LONG time

Sherinala Shirou MASTER MEDIC MASTER DOCTOR

Hodeni ClanKordeth MASTER ARTISAN working on master weaponsmith

Vekki of Margaritaville marksman master and needing app for master artisan Margaritaville Tailor

The general consensus:

Being able to reach 100% experimentation without perfect resources: GOOD

Everything else: BAD

I'm glad that they're removing the changes to the crafting system. Being a weaponsmith, I tried making an E11 carbine (requires plumbum iron and using advanced blaster rifle barrel) under boththe old and the new system. The carbine came out much worse under the new system. A few points less indamage, terrible range modifier and a few points worse in HAM. Okay, so I could have played around a bit in order to get the old damage back by getting an amazing or two instead of all greats. Still, the weapon would be a lot worse in range and would only be sellable to those that don't look at anything other than damage. If this system is ever to hit live again, it's obvious that the weaponsmith schematics need a lot of tweaking first. As for watching some people hit 100% using the new system - eh, not good really. What's the point in hoarding that rare rating 1000 resource if people can just "roll the dice" and get 100% anyway using rating 950 or even less resources? Seems to me that this is the exact opposite result of what was intended.

Anyway, there's an important lesson to be learned from this. We -need- the ability to copy our character(s) to test center and -some- features need to be tested for more than a month before going live.

I allways laugh out when I see the first couple of answers to DEV posts. Theya re so grammatically correct and focused to the points and so blatantly and obviously orchestrated.

I see all kinds of positive responses from 1-Line crafters here which is as expected. Anything more complicated is messed up. Damage is already done with 1000s of schematics already made. Consider this : these are the same folks who tried to nerf FWG5s because they are were unbalanced but now messed the whole economy themselves.

Now there is talk of making the game more loot dependant. If the aim is to cure the boredom of non-crafters by introducing more loot and turning this game into EQ then say it out loud ! There is nothing wrong with that and I am sure a lot of people will like it but just dont candy wrap it.

The reason I quit EQ was crafting in SWG and I was sick and tired of camp,kill,camp,kill,camp,kill. If this crafting change was part of a oh-so-big picture that we mere mortals were simply unable to see then pls complete the whole package and introduce at once.

Here is what the new system is allowing...The crafters who have been at it for months, and have the best quality resources from the last 6 months WILL make better products.Most have the 12 points by now to create even better results.

The newbie crater will never be able to compete, unless there happens to be a magic spawn of everything they needed that was better then the previous 6 months. Not going to happen...

Problem with this is, the market will be flooded by even higher priced items, due to the fact that they are now better than before, and greed always wins...you know that. So again, inflation hits, all prices rise due to the crafters have more money to blow on resources, and the same problem is there...all vetran crafters will sell all the goods, and they will be exactly the same....still.

Now, a better approach to the crafting may be to think of something new. Why not let all armor be able to be crated to the same stats. Or weaponsmiths choosing damage types for their weapons. This at least adds more variety to the game...Time to try a new approach I think....and variety is the key.