Droid Engineer Archive

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Velneth wrote:
Warning, at heart I'm extreamly pro hand crafting. But there's some sides to the issue that I think need to be addressed.

Okay, with the warning done, I'll get to the point.

Hand crafting for DE's doesn't make a single bit of difference either way. Most of our stuff is quality doesn't matter, and the stuff where quality does matter, well, one can normally create "acceptable" results even with imperfect materials.

Where this is going to hit hard is the weapon and armor people. They're in a position where they -need- identical, high quality parts to make thier items. So they need to make factory runs. Even if they hand craft what they can, their quality is going to take a hit.

Which of course results in the combat classes being loud and obnoxious.

If this idea is good or not probably will end up hanging on how they do the combat revamp, and how it affects the equipment crafters. If the CR puts in certain limitations and if handcrafting can create a bit better of a weapon, then possibly we'll see people accept hand crafting as a legitimate means of doing buisness.

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This could hit Droids as well, depending how they did it. For example if they said that you had to pick whether it was a schematic first or not. Then they said you could only use 8 exp ponit on a schematic. This would prevent you from making runs of Droids with max health, and totally eliminate people from making Combat, Harvest and other quality modules in factories.

It would hurt everybody. I simply don't think the crafting system is broken.

Ok, I willargue the 'industrialist's' view on this subject as a DE.First, some background. I operate my business on a purely factory based on operation. I have 5 factories running more or less continuely cranking out droid parts. I have a very extensive stock of droids, pretty much every useful combination available for sale at pretty (I think) reasonable prices. This is only possible because of factories, Droids just have too many parts to support the level of stock I supor. And I have more fun things to do with my time than manually crank out 1000 droids by hand. Hand crafting the same item over and over again isn't my idea of fun.

Most of this discussion centers around what the player economy 'should' look like. Some people (including the devs) have quaint visions ofa cottage industry, forgotting that whenbooks were hand printed, that means only the rich can afford to read. This game has created a great economic sim, by mirroring real world models, where industrialization is an inevitablity. Forcing a cottage industry will only hurt customer by forcing prices higher.

What is often forgotten is that the Player Economy is argueably the best and truest form of PvP. The game can support an infinite number of Pistoleers. However, the laws of supply and demand will eliminate weak, incompentant and uncommitted crafters from the game. So having forgone PvP combat, elite crafters have only the PvP economy as our end game.

So the question is what's wrong with this system? Nothing? Not interesting enough? As an industrialist, my desire to hand craft is very close to 0. Who wants to spend more time crafting? Mostly newer, less established crafters, who are will to trade their extratime (spend handcrafting) for better results (i.e. additional sales/profit). This is a fair desire, as the game has provided very little viable products for them to produce. But it comes at my expense. If I use my factories, I can't produce the best goods anymore. I have to go back to spending my time grind. And I'm to have to charge more for these items, because I can't make as many.

Here's a better idea, one that will allow me and other 'endgame' crafters our industrialist companies, and provide newer crafters the oppurtunity to have a viable service (since they don't mind spending time). It would also open up a new supply chain, which is an yet another interesting choice to be made.

Post Construction Customization

Allow crafters to improve the quality of products by experimenting, adding new parts, and loot items AFTER the producthas beencrafted (whether by factory or hand). This opens up a million possibliltys all of which are more interesting than forcing the hand crafting of thousand of items (which won't meet the demand). This is the model that the JTL seems to be promoting, and works great in game like Battletech, privateer, and my old favorite AutoDuel.

This allows new crafters to spend their time (if they want) extensively customizing, but they don't even have to produce the good themselves. They could even buy droids froman industrial DE(produced cheaply) and make a business doing customization. This is an interesting choice, not a limited one (which making hand crafting 'best' would be).

With all due respect to TheRealTK421, this is absolutely *HORRIBLE* idea.

If he wants to encourage better limited/single run hand-crafted items, then Droid Engineers should have special "loot drop" inserts like other crafters have (weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, tailors, etc).

Because these loots drop with a limited number of identical serials, you are really only ever able to craft one or two items from a single set of materials and experimentations.

These items are invariably superior to those available without special loot drops.

However, the proposal to globally nerf factory production for standard parts is plain madness.

I work hard every day to supply my customers with special order droids. As it is, I can maybe make 3 or so special order droids a day.... and that is only possible because I have stockpiled factory run subcomponents and components available to make these customized droids.

If I had to make every flaming piece by hand every time, I would probably only have enough play time to serve one customer a week.

With an effort-to-return ratio like that, people won't be interested in the services of a Droid Engineer and I would have to give up a profession I love dearly.

Why punish people who have a real job?

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ArveMennderchukk wrote:

With all due respect to TheRealTK421, this is absolutely *HORRIBLE* idea.

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Just to clarify...this whole thing was:

• not my idea - I'm just seeing what you all have to say on the subject.


• just talk - there's no factory nerf on the way that I'm able to see.


• more of an attempt to have a reason to hand-craft at the Master level (of any profession not just ours).


• more about a 'buff' to hand-crafted goods....factory use might well stay the same.


• not an attempt to say that crafting is "broken"...just seeing if it can be made better in a way.

I'm not espousing any particular side on this myself. This discussion is more for me to gather info / ammo for when this discussion might be put forth in a more official way.

Obviously, we are in a somewhat unique situation in all this, given our number of rares needed and number of sucomponents. For now, that won't change.



/bow

Respectfully,

My character lives in a Research Center. He uses 14.85 tools and has a brand new 42.xx station (I've heard it doesn't matter). Within 10 minutes of setting up the new station I got my first crit failure on assembly. Want to make hand crafting better? Great! Loosing prime resources in that 107 Creature harvesting R3 because of a crit failure on assembly hurts.

However I have the following concerns:
1. Hand crafting is not always how you get the best items. Find a hand crafted PC, or any sort of sophisticated electronics.
2. Inventory is a nightmare. Preaching to the choir, I know, but now it gets worse with unstackable sith loot-resources. Resources I've heard crafters will *need* later in the game...
3. Hand crafting is unreliable in my experience. This makes it very expensive in terms of time and rare resources.
4. Inventory is a nightmare. My droidsmith bandoleer doesn't get used anymore because I /don't/ /have/ /room/ to unequip, or drop, my backpack.
5. As a sometimes combat character I frankly have no desire to buy good brandy by the bottle. Inventory is too much of a PITA. Don't belive me? Ask a doctor. Unless they want to clutter a toolbar, their meds/buffs/cures have to stay in top-level inventory. Not fun.


At the moment I don't find hand crafting to be particularly fun or rewarding. I'm playing a MA/MDE regardless because I think MDE is a neat profession. I'm playing a DE *despite* the deficiencies I see in the crafting experience. I would gladly welcome any improvements in the crafting interface or improvements in the hand-crafting path. Both would benefit us all, the latter would very much benefit starting players. But *please* don't railroad me.

Ok. Here I think is the main issue that some people seem to be missing.

In this game there is typically a cost/reward dichoitmy.

Here are some examples.

Cost: Skillpoints + Xp
Rewards: You do X in Y profession after meeting the cost.

Cost: Harvester Lots
Rewards: You don't *have* to use a middleman to get all of your resources. And thus you get resources effectively cheaper than you might otherwise. Look at maint+power+time for a good spawn.

Cost: Credits spent on Harvesting Middlemen
Rewards: You don't have to spend your time finding a high percentage spot and spend your lots on that. You can spend your lots on storage. Or whatever else you want.

Cost: Using Factories(maint+power+time+identical stuff)
Reward: It takes you less personal time to get the items made. You can make more of them, and after you get past the initial hump of making a good schematic you're golden.

Now here's my question, whats the reward for Hand Crafting?
Obviously,
Cost: Time, Resources expended on crit failures, less than perfect experimentation(on some items).

So whats the reward?

--------------Vague Rebuttal------------------------------
Some people have been saying customizeability is the reward.
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Technically this is a reward; however, I don't think it is one that even remotely balances things out. It sounds good on paper but in the end it doesn't work. Someone using factories can easily split the resoures up into different configurations. Yes they suffer the hit on crit failures, and on less than perfect items, but it's not nearly as high as it is for hand crafting. And the hand crafter can do the same thing and spend more resources and time doing it.

But, where's the reward?

I discussed this quite thoroughly in the other thread, so I'm going to be real blunt here : for some reason a small segment of crafters is unwilling to put in the large amount of work it takes to fill and manage factories for whatever reason and wants those of us who put in the work to be nerfed because they are scared to compete/don't want to do the work/or have some romantic notion about additional clicks increasing quality.

Until you've done runs of 100's of droids while juggling thousands and thousands of components, filling and refilling factories a couple of dozen times with sub-sub-components and sub-components, matching serial numbers, gathering the large quantity of identical, good resources required, I guess you can't understand. If you have, then you would know that it is just as hard "work", and much, MUCH more planning and business risk assumed. Handcrafting requires very little organization or thought - and this is from someone who did it for a long time (the first 6-7 months I was a DE). Once you have the 20 or so resources (even in little bits), you can bang out a droid by hand whenever. This does not make one a superior crafter. If I want a load of harvesting R3's, it takes me a WEEK of planning and work from start to finish. People seem to be under the very false impression that you just load up a factory and poof you get tons of droids, but it is a very long, drawn out process.

If anyone wants to read my views on the topic they can read that thread, where I was rather verbose in explaining this - but as we know romantic notions aren't exactly based in logic, are they? It may be a different kind of work, but it takes a great deal more commitment and just because someone who produces Industrially and doesn't endlessly click over and over by hand doesn't make them deserving of the rewards of Industrial crafting.

I agree that it's all about choice, but as Darker pointed out above, that choice is already there. Indusrial Crafting is the advanced version of crafting in SWG, if you want to accept it or not. It comes with more risk (some less tangible than others - like the stocking of resources, products becoming obsolete and the risks of carrying excess inventory), and therefore has a greater output. This is in much the same way that there are many intangible benefits to being a hand-crafting DE - including low-risk in stock, better customer service, endlessly more customization abilities and other things to attract customers. These all get ignored because some of us produce them in greater quantity and therefore make more money.

Let's not beat around the bush - this is all about money; if people just liked crafting by hand and "want to make people happy", then we wouldn't even be discussing this and no one would give a crap about Industrial work. What asking for a bonus to your product really means (besides a nerf to mine) is asking for a product that is more valuable than mine so you can sell it and make more money for producing less because you can sell these single items for more than mine. This is why I believe some people just don't want to compete to make that money, and want it handed to them without increasing their workload.

Factories are one of the core points of crafting in SWG, so much so there was almost a profession based on them (I even have about 4K of Industrial XP left over from launch) - a crafting system that wasn't click-click-click-click-click. Go back and read the pre-live FAQ, where the reasonings for these systems was given - that previous MMO's had made crafting a click-game where you had to sit online clicking for resources or clicking items together. Very little strategy or true business coming into it, so they designed the SWG system with things like harvesters and factories. Advanced features that require thought, place, and timing - not just bludgeoning your mouse by "hand-crafting", i.e. click-click-click-click-x100-done.

It sounds so nice and cutesy when you try to say, "just a bonus to handcrafting", but that ignores the intended design of the game, the way the player economy works, the way players play the game, and the less tangible yet vital work and risk that goes into industrial crafting, and the benefits inherent in hand-crafting already (especially to DE's) in customization and service. Other professions will be going this way in the combat balance, where a WS who can custom make you a T21 with custom stats is going to become more valuable.

In the end, this will do nothing that you want to accomplish, because industrial people like me will not continue to make these products if they are nerfed, and will invest the millions or resources we have and bang out the best droids just like you. Now, instead of competing with a big corporation, which made it easy for hand-DE's to distinguish themselves, you will be competing with someone who still has a huge customer base and demand, and it would simply change how we play SWG, only without the burdon of inventory and other risks of Industrial production. And we'll just sit for a couple of hours every few days and bang out 100 droids by hand, with our of rare warehoused resources which we have been saving in Industrial quantities, and those people who are complaining about the system as is will be no better off. Industrial Droid Engineers are pretty, well, industrious, and simply will not continue to use factories if they are nerfed. Oh, and let's not forget about the customers, who already complain how hard it is to find a decent droid vendor.

It comes down to this : if you choose to build by hand because you like it better, take advantage of the benefits of it but don't ask me to subsidize your playchoice. If you want the benefits of Industrial crafting, then become an Industrialist. If you are not willing to do the work that goes into that (even if it means running missions to make your start-up capital, as many of us had to), then you don't deserve the benefits. Giving a bonus to handcrafted items would be welfare for people who are choosing very actively their station in the game.

I'm all for looted components and other additions - but an inherent bonus because you choose to make a prototype instead of manufacturing the item industrially would not only be an unfair nerf to Industrialists, it will never accomplish what you want it to, because Industrial work would simply die. I'm sure this would bring relief or personal satisfaction to that segment that are afraid of or don't want to put in the work to compete on that level, but long-term it's still not going to help those who choose not to help themselves.

AO

Message Edited by AudioOrgana on 09-10-2004 01:55 PM

Tarne, what are you talking about?

The person who creates a factory schematic *HAS* hand-crafted it.

To make a really good schematic takes all the top end resources and multiple failures of handcrafting, because it *is* handcrafting.

Once you've handcrafted a schematic you then need to assume a large degree of risk as you commit a significant portion of good resources to stockpiling a particular configuration.

The reward of handcrafting is preserving high value resources for the greatest number of possible applications (vertex crystalline gemstone for example)

I get the impression that people who are pushing for some kind of hand-crafting tweak are just tired of being droid engineers. Rather than focus efforts on resolving the many problems we still have which need fixing, they are searching for something that can re-kindle interest through novelty.

So the idea of "hand-crafting" emerges for the dilettante droid engineer.

Instead of pushing something onto the droid engineer community which is fractious, ill thought out, and of questionable value, why not intensify out efforts to solve the many many existing problems?

Why can't we store anything other than schematics in data modules? Why can't we name anthropoid droids? Why can Bounty Hunters get endless uses out of seekers? Why can't master droid engineers pull out more than one droid at once? Why is the best combat droid equivalent to some of the worst creature handler creatures?

These are the kinds of things we should care about... not running off tilting at special interest windmills catering to a minority of droid engineers to the detriment of the majority.

...mostly because it is sometimes hard to find crafters that stay in business more than3-4 months.

Maybe this is because they didnt want to play that profession. The game does not yet reward people for "sticking to it". Instead, it rewards them for constantly switching (get to use the new power of the FOTM template). Changing professions is great, but those who are dedicated to their craft should be rewarded.

I see no problems with factory crafted things as they currently exist, because they allow players to obtain items without spending a full gaming night (1) looking for a live crafter who is willing to help you, (2) waiting for the crafter tohand-craft things for you.If you make regular hand crafting superior to factory crafting (in essense nerfing factory crafting because the developers will never give us a free bonus for hand crafted items), you are just making it harder for regular players to get good regular items when they need to....

This is one of the things people might be missing. There will be MORE WS making guns. If there were no powergamer crafters around cranking out hundreds of items a day (thousands?), then the demand for the items will increase. Someone will take up that demand and supply it, usually at a higher price, but the fact is, there are players (like me) just WAITING for the "need" for their product to be justified by the cost it can sell at. I wont make small houses. Aint worth it to get 1 or 2cpu out of it. But maybe one day the powergamers will stop flooding vendors with hundreds of small homes and charging 8k. The demand for the houses will go up, and the prices may get to a decent level. When you can no longer buy a crate of 25 heavy T-21's, you will turn to singles. If you cant get the singles you need, you will start to shop around more (instead of just at the one or 2 places you normally get your items...probably run by a powergamer WS). This opens up a new market for newer WS who cannot run T-21's in a factory. The demand will go up, and the price will too. The cost to you will increase, but it means that MORE people will be able to be a part of the crafting game. Other real people want to play SWG too, and its not fair for the powergamers to dampen their fun just because they can.

The reason I use factories is to escape the critical failures.

Crit failures on loot-enhanced items suck, i agree. But do you really care if you crit fail on a med droid?

If I had to hand craft 100's of EMM's, EGP's, Droid Brains, ADFU's, etc, I would run out of space in an evening.

I dont suggest we hand craft components. Well, not for everything. But I noticed you said "hundreds"... hundreds of Adv droid brains? Do you frequently *use* hundreds of Adv Droid Brains in a night? This might suggest that you too might be one of those who make hundreds of droids a week. Not that its a bad thing, mind you. I dont blame anyone here for doing ANYTHING wrong. But the fact is, that the more of us out making hundreds of items a night, the harder it is for non-powergamers to get a hand-hold. Yes, I can be considered a Powergamer, since I play every day, and have 2 accounts. I could, if I wanted, flood the market with hundreds of cookie-cutter droids. But its just not interesting to me. I LIKE to hand craft.

What is often forgotten is that the Player Economy is argueably the best and truest form of PvP. The game can support an infinite number of Pistoleers. However, the laws of supply and demand will eliminate weak, incompentant and uncommitted crafters from the game. So having forgone PvP combat, elite crafters have only the PvP economy as our end game.

The problem lies in balance. In PvP you can choose when to participate and in what way. In the crafting game, you dont get that choice. The new crafters are facing off with establish gamers with the credits to buy them out a hundred time. These Masters have fleets of factories, harvs, storage homes, vendors, and stock levels that make them the WalMarts of SWG. The best a non-powergamer can hope for is to fill a niche selling to local people who have not yet learned about the WalMarts. They get dominated right away.

But, where's the reward?

The reward is in providing a useful service, and better quailty goods than the WalMarts. Its in being a part of the fabulously complex and interesting crafting system. Its in building a local and profitable business. What it's NOT is dominating the market, and holding sway over the entire server economy (for better OR for worse). Instead of allowing people with 5, 10, or 20 accounts (yes, they do exist) to become a ONE PERSON powerhouse, you get hundreds of local SMiths, making quality items for thier community.

And dont forget, much of this will change with the combat revamp. I hope that those with multiple accounts will have no reason to have them any more. Right now the advantage is too much to ignoe. Its why I got one. Those extra lots are useful (and needed to get around the STUPID item cap on homes). But if the number of resource entering the game drops significantly, harv farms die, and mission payouts brought down, then the game will become a rewarding experience for many more people. IMHO.

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

• more of an attempt to have a reason to hand-craft at the Master level (of any profession not just ours).


• more about a 'buff' to hand-crafted goods....factory use might well stay the same.
  

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Message Edited by Daker-Naritus on 09-10-2004 01:13 PM

Message Edited by Daker-Naritus on 09-10-2004 01:14 PM