Image Designer Archive
Thread: Changed my mind, you might too!
I just finished reading a thread on the Jedi forum. Essentially the subject is what professions are the easiest to master and how to use macro's to powergame. Entertainer professions were generally considered the easiest either due to afk macros or simply less time than other elite professions.
Until just now, I had held the opinion that we shouldnt ask for increased difficulty due to fairness for new entertainers and so as not to be accused of wanting more difficulty to protect the existing Masters. I have totally flip-flopped now. I conclude that we as entertainers and image designers will never,,ever,,be a respected profession until the difficulty is dramatically increased and the consensus of "combat" players will dread the entertainer holocron instead of leaping for joy. Its why players are "surprised" we charge,,its also why some in our profession dont charge,,its why some rely on tips.
Can you envision an armorsmith making a 80% resist breast plate and then relying on a tip,,or providing it free to a player they dont know. I cant.
We need to first view how we are percieved by other players and that was an eye opener for me.
I vote to dramatically increase the difficulty to reach master,,any way it can be done. When I mastered both dancer and Id ,,muon gold was only a rumor and afk dancing was almost never seen,,the game has changed and we need to support changes that reflect these changes.
biwan:Call me naive , but I think there is a way to increase our reputation and respect at the same time,,,let me invent this scenario:
1. Id'er in a new patch are given the ability to change race,,and by doing so you the player defaults to a random male or female of the new race with stats and and abilities similar to what you get at creation. The right to do this applies to every player but an Master Image Designer can only perform this change on one player per week and the change takes one server maintenance to take effect, meanwhile the player and the Image Designer are so incapacitated that neither have any health or mind until the next server up.
2. Want to be on how long the line would be??
PS this invented scenario in no way means that i would actually support this exact ability or am proposing it as a change !!
It was something that Ood_bnar or however his name is spelled actually took suggestions from us.
Just like IDs aren't going to get wider 'ranges' for body changing aspects (ie, torso). Best might be to try for minimal (temporary) buffs with some of our changes...
On the overall topic. It is a hard nut. It would not be fair to change the experience tables or drastically change the ammount of experience earned, yet it may be that some change/alteration is necessary
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I was the same way. When I mastered mine, there were no smugglers out there yet. The smuggler profession was much harder to master than Image Design, so I did all of it without ever using spice.
And when it was first suggested on these forums that the difficulty be increased, I again, didn't think twice. I remembered how long it took me to master mine, and thought it was plenty of time. But that was before ANYONE had the skill, so I also spent a lot of time earning credits to buy my skills up. It wasn't very accurate.
But now everyone is gloating about the "three-hour trip to master image designer". And the fear of "holocron" players is getting bigger,while respect is dropping. So I also changed my mind as time went on. Welcome to the club, Jaela. 
You will, of course, surrender all of your skills and start over from the beginning in this new and improved profession? Odd, all of the people I see that want to make ID harder to master are already masters.
I'll be there soon. Then I'll be happy to join you in making life more difficult for those that haven't done it yet.
Personally I always thought it should be much harder to ID. It is almost ridiculous.
Yes, we may be masters, but all of us have worked hard none the less to achieve our Mastership. And even if everything was different and it was much harder to gain master, I for one would still work **edit** hard for it because this is the profession I chose and love.
It's people who are just trying to get ent professions for their holocrons that do it and get master that dump it as quickly. Well if it was harder to get it, many would think twice about trying or dumping and we that love our profession would be more respected.
I don't know how many times people make fun of Image Designers but when they want something changed they come running to us.
Skips
Harder or easier, it's all the same to me. The fact of the matter is we have no efficient way to achieve mastery other than grinding one click after another. Frankly, it doesn't matter how much XP is required.
A non-master weaponsmith can make weapons people can use. They won't be as good as those from a master weaponsmith, but he can still make them, right? The same goes for a novice chef, a novice armorsmith, a novice tailor, and so on. It is nice, but not necessary, to achieve mastery before beginning to sell your services.
IDs don't have this luxury. We have to grind all the way up to expert hairstylist before we can even be sure we can give you your old hair back. And if we can't do this simple thing, we're useless. Most players won't ask for services of a novice image designer because they don't know if a novice can give them what they want. When I was a mere novice I referred away a lot of business because people inevitably asked for what I didn't have yet. So the problem is, in my opinion, that we don't get enough new material to work toward so the title of Novice ID is pretty much a joke.
And just as frankly, we don't get much XP for helping actual clients. It's not a good use of our time. I can spend 20 minutes adjusting someone's beard color until it's the color he likes, and I get... what, 50 xp for it? 25? Sure, in that 20 minutes I could grind out 5K-10K ID XP with a partner. Why bother helping clients when the return is so much better to mindlessly click at someone?
I'm afraid that no matter how much XP our profession takes, we won't be respected by the l33t bounty hunters and CH-commandos of the galaxy. Why not? Because we face no danger, we don't die, we don't (generally) PvP, we don't face item decay, we don't use resources, and, well, we don't need to do much of anything to achieve mastery other than stay in town, be friendly, socialize, and occasionally sit down for a click-grind session.
(We'll ignore the fact that every profession in the game does nothing but click on stuff, and that the "danger" is just the illusion of losing positions and items that are ephemeral digital puffs of air, basically a BH plays the click-click game too, they just want to think that their clicks are somehow more valuable than ours because their clicks make exciting music come out of the speakers. They're not real bounty hunters, lest we forget; they're players at a keyboard clicking on stuff with a mouse just like us.)
So forget about achieving the respect of the 12-year-old wankers who play bounty hunters or commandos or riflemen or creature handlers or (Flavor-of-the-Month Powerful Template). Don't even bother. For the achiever-grinder-must-be-master mindset, the game is over when you reach Master. For an Image Designer, the game is only beginning.
Escia
Sigh.
Rilawyn wrote:
I was the same way. When I mastered mine, there were no smugglers out there yet. The smuggler profession was much harder to master than Image Design, so I did all of it without ever using spice.
And when it was first suggested on these forums that the difficulty be increased, I again, didn't think twice. I remembered how long it took me to master mine, and thought it was plenty of time. But that was before ANYONE had the skill, so I also spent a lot of time earning credits to buy my skills up. It wasn't very accurate.
But now everyone is gloating about the "three-hour trip to master image designer". And the fear of "holocron" players is getting bigger,while respect is dropping. So I also changed my mind as time went on. Welcome to the club, Jaela.
Ok Rilawyn since we're stuck with you as our correspondent why don't you do as many other correspondents do and set up a thread where IDs can voice their thoughts and provide priorities. Ask the ID community if they want the experience for ID redone to make it more difficult. Go to the Doctor board and see how its done if necessary.
Additional capabilities which I am certain will occur should be accompanied by higher exp requirements