Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Another DE product made useless
TheRealTK421 wrote:
Straker_Atrella wrote:
There is a finite amount of people that will ever really "dig" crafting, if we get neglected to long, we may soon be as hard to find as a live Entertainer. They need to say what they have planned to keep people around.
New crafters will come into the market all the time...it's not that that I'm concerned over.
The ease of factory production does really make it possible for a small number of dedicated crafters to easily supply most of the needs of the playerbase.
What I think would get crafters into the game more is a bigger support role to the combatants. Being a part of building what the combat players will really lust after (post-CU) is the key. How that's done (quests, GCW changes, new schematics, etc.) is unimportant.
What I think is important is to clue in to the crafting "thinking man's game". The crafting puzzles via the FS quests is the start of the example of what I think would keep some in the crafting game much longer.
The content just has to be built. It's as simple as that.
/shrug
/bow
Respectfully,
TK, while I agree in principle, there are problems with that line of thought.
Convieniance for the Combatents. Already people complain that they can't find stuff, that vendors are empty and such. Yes the global Bazaar system will help this to some extent. However, if crafting is slowed down and more fine tuned, there will be less product out there.
Couple that with (hopefully) a lot more people after the CURB and expansion, and you have a problem.
People in real life have ot accept they wont be driving that Ferrari, but in game, they expect to have a decent chance at it. If a lot of other people are running around with 200 damage stun batons, they want one as well. If the crafters can't keep up, complaining will start, they wont want to wait. Then the talk of NPC vendors will start.
I also wish I had your confidence about new crafters coming. The playstyle only appeals to some people, then even those people can find it to much work. Couple that with competing with established crafters and some may not bother.
I hope you are right though, but you can have my factories when you pry them from my cold dead fingers 
Nell2ThaIzzay wrote:You know, we had to deal with the whole "no extra checkers" mentality for how long?Then we finally got the modules for droids to give us some need, and now they are just giving away those "extra checkers" to everybody for free...Kinda freaking awkward if you ask me.
No, just a symptom of a complete turn-around in Development priorities.
When they did the droid upgrades, they were still going by the Koster book - give them what's good for 'em. Koster believed people should be forced to interact (great example? the AP system, now defunct) because, like veggies, it's just good for you so do it and shut-up. I remember saying at one point early on when the nerfs started coming that the Devs should take a piece of paper and write on it, "IS THIS FUN?" and post it at each and every desk. Then they should look at it every time they make a decision about the game, and ask themselves that question.
It took a long time, but it seems that someone has done that, in some sense. While some changes were really tough to take (although so many rejoyced about the removal of TEF, personally I prefered that system to watching people kill my fellow faction in front of my face and not being able to assist), most changes seem to be for the better in terms of what people truly want. Ever since JTL fizzled and they dumped more cash into the Dev pool the direction of the entire project seemingly did a 180.
In this case, we were "balanced", for lack of a better term, against the old model of usefulness. Things are changing relatively quickly these days. My guess is, after the combat upgrade, we'll get attention sooner than I would have thought possible before recent events. I have a strong feeling we will get some non-traditional combat roles (i.e. not damage or defense, but temporary buffs and other ancillary combat functions) and some of the modules they've been afraid to give us, like the slicing module, may be within sight.
Do I wish it hadn't happened this way? For sure. But it did, and things finally are going in the right direction. With the surprising changes elsewhere, things we didn't suggest before because we assumed them out of reach (or were told flat-out no to) may be reevaluated.
The future is bright, and although we should learn from the past we shouldn't live there. DE isn't so bad these days - but it would be nice if they would throw us a bone or three sooner than later since we have lost some functionality lately. That would always be nice.
AO