Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Understanding the Crafting Experimentation Changes
I would make other statements retorting the initial post but there is nothing already stated within this thread that i would not be repeating.
Chrysalide wrote:
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.
Please explain how the new experimentation system addresses this concern. I have not seen any developer posts backing up the changed experimentation system as it relates to the above quoted concern.
As far as I can tell, the experimentation system will change, but the above quote will still be true. Master crafters will still have access to the same spawns of resources and experiment on them in similar fashions. Hence there will still be the homogony in product selection.
So, in short:
- The developers have asserted the above quote as the main concern, yet I am not convinced this is actually a problem. Could you please support your assertion that this is indeed a problem.
- The developers are changing the experimentation to address the quoted concern, yet I am not convinced it will address this developer percieved problem. Could you please support your assessment that your solution addresses the problem.
- Have you considered any of the 'fun factors' for your end users? Does this change make crafting more enjoyable? Less enjoyable? What user-centered processes have you used for this change? (Yes, I'm a software developer, and you should be using UCD)
Hopefully, I can get an intelligent response to these questions.
I thank you for offering the explanation. It helps me to understand the reason for the changes, and what these will mean to me.
However, for your overall stated purposes: Better economy and increased variety of crafted items, you are doing exactly the wrong things.
Let's first of all agree that increased variety of crafted items probably will help the economy somehow. I can believe that. Different customers seek different things, and most crafters will have a hard time catering to all the goals.
So, how to achieve greater crafting variety?
Your assesment is that making experimentation more dependant upon material quality will introduce variety. I disagree. First of all: Every crafter on a server has (theoretically) access to the same resources. Certainly the rich masters have the ability to get the best resources. But in a purely hypothetical world, you have to assume that everyone in the same market has the same resources. Therefore, resources do not introduce variety.
Second, you claim that harder experimentation makes for "hard choices" when choosing how to optimize gear. Unfortunately, this is not often the case either.Let's assume, for sake of argument, that customers want a variety of features -- some wantarmor with highresists, others want armor with low HAM cost. Under the current/old crafting system, a crafter withgood materialsuses probably 7-10 experimentation points tomaximize one feature to 90% or better. That leavesup to5 points (for a 12-exp crafter)to put into the other categories. We achieve variety based on how the crafter allocates these secondary qualities.
Under the new crafting system, it seems that it will take all 10 points to maximize any quality, no matter what resources are used. This guarantees two things: (1) There will be less variety because there are fewer points left over after maximizing the "popular" single category. (2) Anyone who is not a Master of the craft will not be able to make competetive products at all. Their points are worth even less now, and they will never be able to maximize even a single property.
Finally, you explained that product stats have been tuned to account for the quality caps of resources that go into them. This is very useful information but I think sets yourselves (and players) up for disappointment. Let's remove for a moment the actual stats of the gun, and just focus on the % rating that the crafter sees. It sounds like you expect 50% to be considered "superb quality" in some products, yet for others 50% is "average quality". The crafter has no way of knowing that you intended 50% to mean different things in different products. All a crafter really wants to do is get 99% in everything they can make. The inability to do so disappoints them and causes them frustration.
But for your developers this nightmare requires making assumptions about the materials available, and the ingenuity of players -- assumptions that will someday fail you. If you set up a system in which every category could reasonably go up to 100%, you would be able to ABSOLUTELY predict the high-end damage on a weapon, rather than fudging it. Furthermore, your players would always know good quality from mediocre, because the numbers they know (0% - 100%) mean the same thing for every item.
I accept that this system is coming around, and I appreciate understanding it a bit better, but just realize that this system will not improve variety nor the economy as you are hoping. As others have already stated, it will simply create a greater divide between the rich mega-Masters and the struggling up-and-comers. This divide will increase the cost of the high-end goods that are about to become even harder to make than before.
My recommendation is that the next time you want to make a change like this, that you come to your forums BEFORE making your own assumptions about how to fix it(and definitely before designing & coding them), present your goals (better craft variety and economy) to the community, and ask for ideas from us. You have thousands of creative and eager minds at your disposal here, and explaining your thoughts to us is far less effective than gathering our ideas and picking out the best ones.
The change sounds great to me.
The cries you hear are from players that don't want to actually have to do some research and adapt to a new crafting enviroment. An enviroment, which makes complete sense, by the way.
Right now, these people don't have to play around with experimentation, because the current process is so straight-forward and brainless. Find a good resource, stack the points into damage, and you have a winner.......They like it this way, since it's easy. Remember, easy leads to boredom.
I'm looking forward to the new crafting and economic dynamics.
AldrakSWG wrote:
atimes wrote:
You don't get it do you?
Actually I do, I'm a Master Doc. I agree with whoever above posted that to make the top quality goods it should take months of harvesting the best resources as they spawn. I agree with whoever said that no new master armorsmith should be spitting out 85% comp from the get go with no effort at all.
What do I envision happening? Suddenly, only those few who have stockpiled all the 1000 stat resources from day 1 and have 12 exp points are going to be selling 90% comp armor, 980 pt enhance packs with 37 charges, 800 damage pistols or what have you. Just a few. Everybody else is going to making and selling 60% comp armor, 780 pt enhance packs with 27 charges, etc. So the elite items are going to be 20, 30, 40 times as expensive as they are now. The currently mediocre items are going to become the norm for the server to use, giving more business to the general crafting population and not just the 3 or 4 best crafters on the server. This helps to stratify the marketplace, reduce the overall power of players (who are all grossly overpowered, btw), and give the new crafter the ability to make items that will sell.
So yes, averageitem quality is going to GO DOWN. This has been stated, restated, and then made into a whole post again. Items that are at today's level of power will still exist but should see their costs inflate drastically.
I get it because I've been paying attention and not whining because Bob is going to be selling perfectenhance D's at 200k a stim and I'll be selling mylesser but affordableenhance D's at 20k.
I totally see your point and I agree with your assements. What I'm saying and what the majority of the playerbase believes will happen is that the guy with the uber resources and 12 points will be the only guy doing business.
My sole point in all of this is the devs say a driving force for doing this is to get rid of monopolies and I'm saying there are no monopolies
Someone who deals with every aspect of quality of a item to make the best. I find the best materials. I assemble the item it gets done and I put it for sale.
See here is my problem as I see it
What happensif this new system is broken? You ask whatwould bebroken? How about certain resources stats being needed and the resource not having those stats? Will the schematic to craft be updated with the current resource stats?
How about critical fails it hurts chefs alot yes I know but we arent the hit the hardest because most of our items are in bulk amounts, and can just recreate another schematic, but what about the tailor who just got his hands on some rare items what then? A master now critical failing on assembly would kill him. My brother flipped out yesterday because he was crafting a new med apron with med mods with extremely rare resources. How can you justify not having a working bar in the assembly crafting table, telling you your chances of critical failing? We are not mind readers, but you still insist on having us work with a system that we have no idea what is going to happen next.
You say just let things work themselves out. I am asking you to post the limits of the crafting assembly and experimentions. For example how high will a amazing success go up too now, how low will a critical failure go? What is the % of failing on assembly of this fantastic schematic with rare BE mods going to be? Should I take the chance and create something like this? This is something that you have taken away from us the crafters and decided that even a master has to assemble items blindfolded. This shouldn't be the case. Their should be some kind of bar next to the assembly stage telling us whether outside factors are going to affect creation, whether they should seek another tailor with assembly mods or seek a chef who can create a food to increase chances of assembly and success.
We are mad because this system wasn't asked how it should work it didn't really include the people who accually craft and enjoy the game. It was just devolped and handed to us and we were told the economy is messed up soo the first people we are going to affect is the people who accually make the things in this game, Crafters. Why didnt you lower the mission pay outs to 1000 credits? Why do you attack my way of playing the game? I pay around 500k a week in harvestor maintanance in this game and you take away my ability to support my industry?
This new system will weed out the people who dont accually take time and try to find the resources, but what happens the the new crafters entering the game. What do they do if they only have crap resources avalible to them, and dont have enough money to buy the good resources? Do they lose the ability to enjoy the crafting experiance, or do they just drop being a crafter and pick up a weapon,and last but not least do they just leave the game because the system doesn't support the new starting out crafters? If your going to do this why dont you lower the maintanace on the harvestors? Because good resources dont spawn every time we have to wait and check and update every 3 days to see if what we can use has spawned.
I am at work and have to leave but this doesnt complete my thought I do have other reservations. When I get home I will add to complete my reservations about this new system being brought in with out any support or problems being hammered out with the currrent crafters in the game.
Georb
TheLateAnakinSolo wrote:
INSANITY!
First off, I seem to recall one single thing that I heard a time ago...
"The Best Items should be able to be crafted at this stage in the game."
HELLO!!?? This is the exact same! To put it simply, Items will NEVER have the quality that they have now. Just answer this... 7 or 8 months after release, and you don't want the best stuff around? You are nerfing EVERY profession in the game!
For example...
Bothans can't use composite armor right now because they don't have stat pools that high. If they slice it, and buy the best stuff they MIGHT be able to fit into a full set. After patch. NOTHING!
Weapons with high ham costs... Just reinforces the combat spam stuff.
Why do you nerf everything good in the game? Ever think that crafting is good right now? Ever think that players like it???? Ever think that we can't level without the best stuff in the game being usable to us?
Yes I also am wondering how some species will be able to wear a full set of composite after the change unbuffed. As a Twi'lek I can BARELY fit a full set of composite on unbuffed now.
Racist devs always catering to those dang blasted humans. . . .
I agree, that experimentation should be more complex and the results should be more different, but i don't understand, why should be a weapon's damage (or anything else) capped?
Nobody will use a CDEF pistol (as nobody use them now either), because the possible stats are capped.
Wouldn't be more interesting, if i could make a CDEF pistol the most powerful weapon in the game?
There would be more different weapons in the game and not everybody would run around with a flamethrower, just because it is the best weapon.
I would be happy if there would be more costumization and enchancing possibilities and a CDEF pistol could be as good as a Flamethrower, if the weaponsmith is a very good one...
I think generally, you are (the DEVs) somehow devoted to caps...