Image Designer Archive

Over four months since the release of Star Wars Galaxies, the Image Designer profession is the third least-popular profession on the server. Other players are dependant on the Image Design profession for the ability to completely change their character. This is the first time that this has been possible in any MMORPG.

However, the profession isn't in high-demand, like many other professions. Unlike many crafter professions, things slow down as people create their idea of the "perfect character" and become happy with it.Yet, there are many changes that could be made to the profession itself, in the form of both bug fixes, and the desire for new abilities, which could easily enhance the popularity of this profession.

The following is a breakdown of where the skill stands now, and some possible changes that could enhance it.

Bugs - The following is a list of known bugs with the Image Design profession.

• Twi'lek eyebrows can not be modified.
  
• Twi'lek ears can not be modified.
  
• Male torso size can not be altered.
  
• Rodian female hair color is missing.
  
• When changing hairstyle or color, it shows up as the default color to everyone else (including the designer), until the customer times completely out of the server.
  
• Eye shape can not be altered. The current "eye shape" option on the menu is tied into eye angle, instead.
  
• Headwraps cancel out many styles on some species, such as lekku positions on twi'leks.
  
• Cross-species hairstyles (this bug has been under heavy investigation by myself and the developers lately, and a fix is on the way).
  
• Some sliders will automatically set to zero when the option to change that feature is selected - even if the player has a higher value (for example, we open the slider to alter cheeks, and suddenly the person has none, and the slider shows 0).
  
• Players are still getting stuck with "... already has an outstanding image design offer" if they crash while being worked on.
  
• Baldness is an option during character creation, but not with the ID skill.

Wish-List - A partial list ofchanges we would like to see, is given below. Species and gender changed was removed from this list, as we have already received final word on that. Feel free toreply withany additional desires for this profession.

• A "pay for services as rendered" option. A secure way to offer the style, but not actually completethedesignuntil payment is given.
  
• Body Tattoos.
  
• More hair colors (including un-natural hair colors).
  
• More hair styles (including more from Episodes 1 and 2).
  
• Hip/Rump adjustments.
  
• Shoulder-width adjustments.
  
• Eye spacing adjustments.
  
• Head size and head heightadjustment (excluding Mon Cals, which already have head size).
  
• Facial-weight adjustment (the ability to give double chins and/or sagging cheeks).
  
• Scars, bruises,and other "battle signs".
  
• Forehead angle/Brow protrusion.
  
• More facial hair styles.
  
• "Pet dye" - The ability to change the color of pets, within reason.
  
• Image Design vendors (the ability to sell a wig or lipstick, for example).
  
• More skin-colors and/or :body paint".
  
• Metallic shades.
  
• The ability to do some special "costume make-up" (such as making someone look like azombie with sunken-in eyes, and ghost-white skin).
  
• The ability to change eye depth.
  
• "All hair" styles for zabrak.
  
• Ability to alter horns and hair independantly for zabraks.
  
• A "customer-side menu" allowing the customer to see all available selections for the feature they want changed.

Skill Gain Issues - Recently, I have receivedseveral private messages and in-game emailsfrom both veteran Master Image Designers, and newly created Image Designers about skill gain. This was an issue that also came up back in July. I never thought it was too easy in the beginning, but after talking with several people, and testing it myself, I've been swayed to believe that the skill gain might actually be too fast, after all.

Just this past Saturday, a friend of mine came up to me four times within two hours to learn all four boxes of Image Design within the Entertainer tree. After doing a bit of math on it, I concluded that it would be possible, at that rate, to Master the entire profession within just over 13 hours of grinding.

Personally I believe this is much too fast, but I'm looking for your opinions. Do you think that Image Design skill gain moves much too quickly? Do you think spices should have such alarge effect on the ability to gain in this skill? Do you have any suggestions to prevent this? Perhaps changing the mind-cost of Image Design to use a percentage of your mind, instead of a set number?

I stated since launch ID skill was gained TOO quickly. FIX it NOW! All the force sensitive wannabie lemmings who are mindlessly following the Image Design holocron are killing us bonafied image designers.

I am a BE so I am completly oblivious to the problems of your profession but I thoughtI would check it out. Everything looked resonablr and oyu guys have problems like everybody else. The *one* thing that inspired me to post was the line about PET DYES or coloring. I (a bias bio engineer) fell that coloring pets should be an optionof craftedBE pets, thus incouraging players to want BE clones. Not to offend anyone or anything but BEs are those who specifically create pets so shouldn't we be the ones altering them in any way? Also, coloring for a ID would allow any creature handler to color his or her pet from the wild, but if it were BE only it would be at least one reason for a CH to get a clone.

ID skill gaining is far too easy. Especially now that people are afk'ing there way throught the trees. I cannot stress how much I think we need to increase the difficulty of progressing in ID.

If new abilities are granted (i.e. unnatural hair colors) they should be reserved for the upper boxes (3 and 4). Conversely, the "normal" char creation issues could be moved down to boxes 1 and 2. That way if experience were slowed, an image designer could be "fully functional" at tier 2, but be unable to do elite things until close to master.

The xp gains would probably be fine if it wasn't so easy to macro powerlevel yourself through it. If you were actually just plugging away gaining xp on actual customers your xp gains would probably be to low and to slow of leveling.

The problem comes in if you have a friend with a macro to accept the changes fast and you have a macro setup to request changes. Doing this you can power to master in a very alarmingly short period of time. You could pretty easily reach master in 1 day if you really wanted to. The flip side to that is even with that easy progression master ID are VERY rare if the xp gain was very slow many of those few who would seek to become on maybe turned off.

It is a hard thing to balance and it will be intersting to see what the devs do.

Kaide

I would like to see a poll among our community that would choose thetwo most important issues under bugs,,,and then two on the wish list,,and see if we could condense our request to the developers into something that might actually make it into a patch,,and as those issuesare added or fixed we just have another poll,,

As it is now ,each profession has so many "small" bugs and endless issues on the wish list that I think the developers are swamped,,and simply overwhelmed with lists that cant all possibly be dealt with in one patch

Maybe if we ourselves identified a priority for the patch ,,,we wouldnt have to trust that the developers would make a good choice,,or simply omit us,,

In regard to skill gain,,holorcron id'ers arent going to keep the skill long,,since to my knowledge achieving the master profession that a holcron has indicated hasnt so far resulted in a FS being opened,,and only someone who really enjoys our profession will actually retain the skills,,and quite honestly I would rather see more time spent in providing our profession with something new to offer our client instead of making it more difficult to achieve a master status,,and even if they somehow open a FS ,,they will mostly likely immediately drop ID anyway,,since they only took it for the FS opportunity

I don't see the problem of ID XP as one of being 'too fast' or 'too slow.' I see the problem is with the skill trees as a whole, in that nobody wants to do business with an ID unless she is already a master. Try this yourself. Wear a Novice Image Designer hat for several hours. Then wear a Master Image Designer hat. Chart how many /tells and requests for business you get. See? As a puny Novice ID, nobody wants you. That is for a simple reason. There is little to no saleable content for any ID until she reaches master hairstylist: everything else is merely a duplicate of the character creator.

Would aweaponsmith be content to sell CDEFs until he reached Master WS, at which pointhe got all the "good" weapons? No.

Would atailor be content to hand out newbie clothes until he reached Master Tailor? No.

Would a chef be content to hand out melons until he reached Master Chef? No.

And yet an ID has to grind 400K ID XP just to get to Master, at which point you have mastered all the newbie styles available and nothing more. Nothing extra. A few human hairstyles? Piffle. One new lekku style? Bleah.

Because you cannot even master the newbie styles until master ID, and since non-master IDs get a tithe of the business that masters do, there is no way to gain enoughID XP through the normal course of business. You must grind it. There is no real or perceived value to advancement until Master ID. The value of the entire ID profession is grossly weighted toward mastery.

This is because there is no new content for IDs at all (except for a handful of human hairstyles, a handful of Zabrak hairstyles, and one lekku style).

So it doesn't matter how "fast" or "slow" people can get ID XP, because the way our profession is structured, people will always grind up to master ID as fast as they can because

a. there is no profit in being less than master, therefore

b.there is no way to get XP until master without grinding your way up.

So please do not change the rate of XP ID until there is new content. When there is new IDcontent, arrange the profession so that every newbie style found in the character creator is granted at or beforeNovice ID. Every skillbox up the tree should have something new that the ID can use to sell as a service, whether that is to provide out-of-range specifications (taller players than standard, fatter, different skin colors, different eye colors, different hair colors) or newart for existing features(hair styles, tattoos) or completely unavailable features (body tattoos, scars, eyepatches, piercings).

The problem isn't that ID XP is too easy. The problem is that life as a non-master ID is too hard. Non-masters have no customers. Non-masters have no content. Without this, non-masters have no alternative except to grind the XP with someone, or use a macro, or use two boxes and double-mouse your way to the top, at which point it doesn't matter whether it takes 13 hours or 130.

Escia

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Rilawyn wrote:

When changing hairstyle or color, it shows up as the default color to everyone else (including the designer), until the customer times completely out of the server.

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That's the bug that ticks me off the most. PLEASE tell us the second a fix is on the way.

You can master ID in 4 hours or less *easy* once you hit novice, if you have the right conditions. These conditions are a Master Musician, Muon Gold, Master Dancer, and a trainer of some sort. The bonuses stack (or in the case of the buffs, they build off the spice-enhanced stats). I was literally getting 60k in 8 minutes with only Muon anda Master Musician, since you can get high enough secondary stats that you can just repeatedly press a macro, and so long as you have a friend who can click fast, you will not lose any mind for the changes.

EXPLOITS!!! The need to go. I reported a master ID'er last night for giving them out.

-Porc

I'd have to agree that the hairstyle tree seems to be the most rewarding skill to gain, though I'm asked for body customizations fairly often. I also agree that we have too few skills that are not available in character creation. As for a non-master not getting business though, I think that depends a lot on the ID population on your specific server. When I was a novice, I did get enough business to make a living at least. People will come to the novices when there's no other IDer around. I'm also rarely asked for master specific changes, so I don't think you need to be a master IDer in order to get customers - it does help to have a specific tree maxed out though.

As said before, there is no advantage to being a novice image designer. I like the idea of having "available at character creation" things available in the first couple of tiers, and the really elite stuff at the top of the tree.

About the XP gain.. there's something oddly funny about nerfing the image designers. I can hear the cries from the hills now. "Is nobody safe!?"

"It always starts with a haircut..."