Droid Engineer Archive

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Malitevv wrote:
As much as I like the idea of puzzles, I seriously doubt they will have the ability to create a set of puzzles to insert into the crafting process that will have enough flexibility and variety to stay interesting for more than say 5 or 10 tries. After which, the puzzles would just become an annoying and pointless grind because it's likely to be mindless permutations of the same small subset ofthings over and over and over again. Unless they have a dedicated team of people constantly creating new puzzles for us, even the interesting and difficult puzzles will likely get boring, and trivially easy, very fast.

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I agree with you on this one Malitevv.

I wanted to suggest different puzzles as an alternative to the 'Rock, Paper, Sissor' method that Smugglers currently have and add a degree of 'variety' to the mini-games. Its not so much the variety of the puzzles that is the point though. Its the fact that they would be included to create a type of mini-game that would be used to replace the Loot drop item suggestion.

Honestly, my creative juices haven't been flowing much, when trying to come up with suggestions for this thread and I was reaching from something that might get someone else a thinking...

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Jenden wrote:

Ok, here's an idea thats been sitting in the back of my head since... well, since I started playing really. Just haven't seen a good opportunity to bring it up. The basis of it is the idea that someone who works a lot with an object knows it very well, whereas if he doesn't work too often with something his knowledge of it fades a little. For example, a weaponsmith that primarily makes melee weapons (power hammers, swords, knucklers, etc) or doesn't do much hand crafting wouldn't be nearly as skilled at making a T-21 as someone who made a living making custom T-21's for people. Now, in game terms you couldn't make the difference that huge, but I'd say just a small gradual progression (along with an eventual cap) in the experimentation of an object the more you use it. If you stop working with a particular item, your bonus with the item gradually drops back down (never falling below whatever the standard value is).

Its just a rough idea right now with plenty of problems, but whats everyone think?

On a side note, I really hate the idea of introducing more loot drop stuff... what there is out there is bad enough, thats one of the things I really like about DE is I don't have to worry about all that crap.

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The only problem thatI could see with such a suggestion is that some sort of db tracking would need to be set up in the system to accomidate for such a bonus. It would lead to an increased number of 'Specialists' I think, which would help increase the number of Crafters that a Server could support. The question though is how item specific are we talking about?A pretty good number of crafters have taken up more then one Crafting Profession. Should the bonus be set up so that it is Profession specific or is limited to all crafted items by a single person?

As for the Loot drop items, one thing that you need to keep in mind about such a blanketed loot drop idea, that would touch all professions, is that the Loot drop items would be as common as the Rebel and Imperial Transmission disks, that still drop from the 'Monthly Story Archs'. If the Loot drop items were so common, were you could buy them in bulk, would you still have the same negative feelings about them?

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Jenden wrote:

On a side note, I really hate the idea of introducing more loot drop stuff... what there is out there is bad enough, thats one of the things I really like about DE is I don't have to worry about all that crap.

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what if the "loot drops" were in the form of "crafting enhancement credits" that don't sit in your inventory and can't be traded or sold, but which are instead some new consumable stat that each crafter posseses. Instead of new optional boxes in the schematic where loot items can be inserted, what if there are new optional boxes in the schematic on which one can spend his "crafting enhancement credits"? The "credits" are gained randomly, like loot drops, as a result of successfully completing the crafting phase of certain schematics, but they aren't items. I actually like this basic idea best of all, because it has the randomness of a loot system which can help control rarity of the enhancements, but removes the inventory clutter issue, AND decouples the acquizition of the loot items from the economy (introducing theoptional items that can enhance the crafted item into the economy directlyhas a tendency to inflate the prices of these loot items and thereby drive the majority of them into the hands of the rich players). I'm fine with players having more of these credits if they play more (though there would probably need to be a cap on the number of credits a player can have), but I don't like the idea of the items that enable one to enhance the quality of ones items be circulating around the economy. We have enough of that already with the need to acquire resources.

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

Now on Hand Crafting again. People keep saying over and over again that factories give businesses an edge, an edge that a hand crafter can't compete with. Your right, I have never really disagreed with that. My point is simply that nobody FORCES you to hand craft. You are just as capable of making factory runs as the next guy. You hand craft because you WANT too. That is your playstyle, now you want your playstyle to be "better."

There are pluses and minuses to both hand crafting and to factories. A plus to one is a minus to another, to get the best and optimum crafting, you do BOTH. However, some of you want to only use half of the crafting tools at your disposal (hand crafting,) then you complain about the minuses, and how you can't compete. The answer is simple, use ALL the tools available to you.

I have no problem using all my tools at my disposal, I do you factories for parts that I really need in large quantity or when it is required. Its that some people use more of one than another. Factory crafters and large scale industrialists use factories much more than hand crafting, I use hand crafting more than factories. Both options should be viable playstyles.

Now to be honest, I can see a lot of validity to the "other" side as well. Crafting should be more fun, as well as there should be another level of "uberness" to items. I support this. I am fully behind an idea, such as our group one in the other thread. This improves the "fun" of crafting, and adds a new level of interaction as well. Yet it's not done out of some need to "balance" hand crafting. Hand crafting is fine, when used with it's partner the factory.

/salute

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Message Edited by Jenden on 09-16-2004 09:15 AM

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Jenden wrote:

Right now factory crafting produces more quantity, has no virtually no risk, and costs very little time (player time). The only minus to it is the power/maintenance, which is really a very small amount. Selling one droid pays for power and maintenance of a factory for what, a week? Lots are also a minus, but with all the current lot swapping going on thats not a very big minus.

Handcrafting in contrast takes more time (player time), produces fewer items, has much greater risk, and produces the exact same quality items. The only plusesare no maintenance (again, not a very good one with the cheap maintenance) and some very minor customization (which you can also achieve by doing multiple smaller factory runs).

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I think JavelinCatcher was trying to find out....."What's the problem exactly?!?"


Jenden has pretty much put his finger on it, at least the problem I was trying to shed some light on.

I understand that hand-crafting is supposed to be a means to an end (ascending to a level where the 'factory game' takes over). That's fine.


However, I firmly believe that crafting would be more fun and better for the economy, potentially, if we find a way to ensure that hand-crafting doesn't simply dead-end itself as an option (as described by Jenden above).

This is the exact risk/cost vs. reward/benefit that I think is imbalanced and in need of revampin' love.


How we get there is another giant can of diseased vrelts....but I have to think we can come up with something that will fit both us and other crafting profs. as well.


For those that feel like I have some nefarious hidden agenda, maybe I do. To make the crafting aspects of the game better, maybe more fun (depending on what we can come up with) and.....this is key....to have a better overall impact on the economy. I want having the best to mean something...really mean something (and right now, it really doesn't so much).


Edit: If that goal is nefarious....then call me Darth.


/bow

Respectfully,

Message Edited by TheRealTK421 on 09-16-2004 09:55 AM

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

I think JavelinCatcher was trying to find out....."What's the problem exactly?!?"

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1. Are factory users over-supplying demand in some markets? Telling me to check some vendorsand count how many pages I see isn't helpful! That is anecdotal and deceiving/misleading. I'd rather answer that question by having the developers do some data sampling on their database, look at the rate at which itemsofeach type are added tovendors (summed accross an entiregalaxy) and compare it to the rate at which these items are purchased (again, summed accrossan entire galaxy). Of course, they aren't going to do that for us... but if they really do privately see a problem in the economy, they must see this as one of the potential concerns, and they may have plans to do this sort of analysis eventually all ready.


2. If some markets are currenlty heavily over-supplied, would putting the cap back at 100 address that issue?


3. But then again, maybe some markets are not currently over-supplied. If that is the case, lowering the factory cap might actually be a problem for those markets. So are there some professions where the 1000 cap is actually the only thing allowing suppliers to keep up with the total demand?

There's really no way to definitively answer any of these questions without getting some data from the game's database. But to the correspondents, and developers, is this 1000 limit issue even on the table as a potential "needs to be fixed" issue?

Message Edited by Malitevv on 09-16-2004 10:39 AM

Can we have a new thread that states the goal again, as we seem to be reaching a focus of "Given free reign to change the entire crafting process, How would _you_ design it to be more fun?" "Hand crafting and factory crafting" is only a point in a long list of discussion topics related to what would make up a "crafting revamp."

Message Edited by Snikrop on 09-16-2004 01:55 PM

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Jenden wrote:

I think as long as you don't make the hand crafted items a lot better its not an issue. If it was then no one would buy non-loot items, since they're not "the best". I know people that go to weapon or food vendors that arent' the absolute best but they're always stocked. Its the same idea. On top of that, as people have said, many combat characters want to get a crate or two and have them sliced, then throw away the bad ones. Since a good factory sliced item would be better than a poorly sliced hand crafted item the people that already make up the bulk sale will still go for the bulk items to get them sliced.

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I agree, that it can be done in such a way that that is not an issue, but one has to be careful I think. As I know I already mentioned somewhere, the decay rate of the item is an important issue here. Even if the bonuses from the hand-crafter version of the item is small, if the item doesn't decay and the demand is therefore small, that small delta in quality could be an issue if it isn't small enough. And what constitutes "small enough" for item's that don't decay is not clear to me and it does worry me that this could be screwed up.

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Malitevv wrote:

I agree, that it can be done in such a way that that is not an issue, but one has to be careful I think. As I know I already mentioned somewhere, the decay rate of the item is an important issue here. Even if the bonuses from the hand-crafter version of the item is small, if the item doesn't decay and the demand is therefore small, that small delta in quality could be an issue if it isn't small enough. And what constitutes "small enough" for item's that don't decay is not clear to me and it does worry me that this could be screwed up.

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Jenden wrote:

yea, for pretty much everyone but DE this isn't an issue, they've got a pretty good decay or consumption system in place.

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That's another huge reason why this entire thread is just so much hot air, right now.


Make no mistake about it......decay (for us) comes first. Period.



/bow

Respectfully,

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

That's another huge reason why this entire thread is just so much hot air, right now.


Make no mistake about it......decay (for us) comes first. Period.



/bow

Respectfully,

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