Image Designer Archive
Thread: ID Top Ten Concerns Runesabre Answers Inside :)
that was directed to other MIDs. To other players.. I can only say that unless you're highly eccentric, the most you have to spend migrating your stats is once a month or upon changing classes. When hologrinding goes away in publish 10 the demand for stat migrations will plummet. With people not changing classes as often who's going to need it?
Are you realizing yet that MIDs were handed an old bone that's going to be near useless before long?
-Nah-
Syzygy-Gorath wrote:
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
5/ ID’s Cannot Migrate Their Own Stats
Other than the three Entertainer professions, all other professions benefit from every single one of their abilities.
a) Why was the decision made to not allow Image Designers to migrate their own stats?
b) What is the difference between Image Designers, Dancers, and Musicians (who will now all have an ability they cannot use on themselves) and other professions who get the full benefit of all of the skills they worked hard for?
In order to preserve the market for Image Design services as well as create a valuable service that even Novice Image Designers could provide to all players and profit from while they are learning their profession, it was imperative that Image Designers could not stat migrate themselves. Allowing Image Designers to migrate their own stats would immediately give all players seeking stat migration a means to perform the task themselves and avoid bothering with the services of those players playing the Image Designer profession. Considering you only need Novice Image Designer to migrate your stats, the demand for Image Designer services would have been greatly reduced from the get-go as many players would decide to augment their characters to migrate their own stats and the whole point of giving a game function such as stat migration to Image Designers would become largely moot.
As Lead Designer, it is one of my most important goals to stimulate and encourage player interaction and set the stage for players to form lasting relationships and dependencies with each other. Player interaction is what MMOs are all about. Self-sufficiency is my greatest nemesis in striving for this goal and it is human nature to try to become as self-sufficient as possible. In my6 years as an MMO developer I've seen the extremes players will go to in trying to avoid interacting with other players. In many cases, it is these same self-sufficient players that later quit because they got bored with the game. If you ask any veteran gamer of an MMO as to why they still play their chosen game after many months (or even years!) invariably the answer is "because of the people I know in the game and play with". I made a design decision to disallow Image Designers from migrating their own stats to preserve the social environment of this game and ensure the Image Designer profession can't be reduced invalue and damage the appeal of the profession much like AFK macoring has done to Dancers and Musicians.
You know, I argued against a wording for this question that sounded like asking for doctors to be nerfed. Given this answer, I'm retracting that suggestion. Doctors should not be able to buff or heal themselves. Nor should medics. Nor entertainers. Nor image designers ID themselves. Nor weaponsmiths with backup weapons skills use their own weapons. Nor armorsmiths use their own armor.
The more of these answers I read, the more convinced I am you spent no time in thinking through these changes. For shame. Your rationales are shaky at best, and other options that would have created far less resentment and inconvenience have been continually suggested since before this revamp was even begun. Further, you are displaying an extreme ignorance of the systems you've had implemented, and the playstyles of the players you implemented them for. It is now next to impossible to gain Novice Image Designer, and those that are longstanding image designers are IDs because they enjoy social interaction. To Implement a system which you feel would change the tenor of the profession to such a degree that a pre-emptive nerf was required is criminally negligent.
Edit: By the way, this system totally fails to address the "mule" problem faced by many playing-professionals when faced with attempting to compete service-wise with guilds that provide "buffbot" alts for guild use. In other words, you were worried about the wrong thing, and you only ended up inconveniencing real IDs while not affecting the "mules" at all.
Message Edited by Syzygy-Gorath on 05-12-2004 01:50 PM
Syzygy...I absolutely HAD to five-star you for that, as you took every word straight out of my mouth!
And, as for SWG-Runesabre's comments in red above?
That is the most narrow-minded, most non-out of the box, most ill thought out plan of action for game design that I have ever seen! You have now spelled out in words what we have been witnessing as a complete 180 degree turn from what you advertised this game to be prior to release. This game was supposed to be attractive to the "average gamer", yet at every single turn you have geared it more towards the tiny minority of MMO "purists" & in so doing you have already lost countless millions of real dollars that you will never ever recoup!
I have news for you, there are plenty of other game types that enjoy years & years of healthy existence online that not only don’t subscribe to your flawed way of thinking, but have a much larger thriving player base to boot!
What you fail to realize is that too much interdependency keeps the game from being fun for many players & THAT is why many quit these types of games. When it becomes a hassle or a chore to do anything in the game it is no longer a game. The reason why "veteran" MMO players only stay around because of the friends they play with, is because that’s all you’ve offered to them – a chat room with graphics! You take away all the fun aspects of the game that a large population of players were initially attracted to in an effort to make a few more dollars with the least amount of effort on your part (time/money sinks, char limits per account, etc.). And the result of this squeezing of the few willing to stay, is the loss of the multitude not willing to…just like wet clay oozing out of your hand as you clench your fist!
I was eagerly awaiting the Jedi revamp & the space expansion. But after reading your highlighted comments above, it is obvious to see the direction you want to continue taking this game as lead designer…& that’s not a direction I am willing to go.
I played this game because I was a Star Wars fan, not because I needed a second job. I played ID because I thought the individualism in character creation was the best I’d seen in any game to date. But after a year of stealth nerfs, time sinks, money sinks, lack of communication by the devs, poor customer service, my loyalty as a Star Wars fan is not enough anymore to keep me playing.
Message Edited by ToppDog on 05-15-2004 04:10 PM
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
10/ New Art Content
Getting new color palettes and holo-emotes of course has brought on floods of questions about whether and when the most requested art content might be added. Extended color palettes were one of the top five wish list items for new art content (as voted on by ID’ers). The remaining four are: new hairstyles, tattoos (and scars), hip/rump sliders for female characters, and 3D facial hair (for all male species, but most often requested by Bothans).
a) Are any of these under consideration for the future?
b) How soon might we see any of these features?
I have talked a lot with the Art Director about about new hairstyles, tattoos and scars, hip/rump slider and facial hair. I don't have very high hopes for the hip/rump slider for female characters. That change requires a re-export of every female model and most likley many many wearable changes that would result in a very large patch download and take literally months to accomplish.
I do, however, foresee a future of tattooed, scruffy looking characters with some new hairstyles in the future; it's really a matter of when I can get the art and development time authorized to put it on the schedule.All of these featuresare very art resource intensive additions to the game as well as time consuming for the artists to create which is a bad combination these days in terms of development prioritization and scheduling.
Okay, that's is an understandable asnwer. However,at char creation, FemChars have an acceptable flair throughout the waist/hip region. That feminime flair tends to disappear completly if the weight slider is adjusted post character creation. My followup question is if there can be anything done to correct this bug? The art is already there throughout the entire slider range of values. It's just that the frame being referenced seems to convert from fem to him during this process.
Can you comment on this issue?
Kwee: if it's too late for RS to comment directly (I've been away and only now getting caught up in the forums), can you see about getting this on the next list of questions to the devs?
Hmmm....from what Kwee posted in the femal body shape and male face shape thread after I posted this, all I have to say is "nevermind". It appears it is already addressed.
SunsetSam wrote:
Okay, that's is an understandable asnwer. However,at char creation, FemChars have an acceptable flair throughout the waist/hip region. That feminime flair tends to disappear completly if the weight slider is adjusted post character creation. My followup question is if there can be anything done to correct this bug? The art is already there throughout the entire slider range of values. It's just that the frame being referenced seems to convert from fem to him during this process.
Can you comment on this issue?
Kwee: if it's too late for RS to comment directly (I've been away and only now getting caught up in the forums), can you see about getting this on the next list of questions to the devs?
So i find out that it has been changed and instead of mastering it in about an hour it will take 60+!!!!!!!!!!!! hrs to master it...
Saratoga wrote:
I can get 100 xp in 20 seconds with artisan or scout or marksman or medic... why is ID penalized so bad? Why dont you add timers to other professions for equality. You are suppose to be promoting more people to be IDs not the other way around. I think someone mentioned it would take 62 hours just to master. My god. I could finish threecrafting professions in that time given the resources.
heh Given the resources...
I'm a Master ID (on Radiant) so I'm not even gonna try to comment on how long it takes to Master now. Only complaints I have as a MID is:
- It's nearly impossible to get apprentice points now from ID.Seems noone isgaining any skills!I know the goodold days of 600ap in a night are long gone, but this is ridiculous.
- Waiting for 10min doing nothing whiledoing a stat migration is... well,just bad design and no fun at all.
- Many people still don't know where to get holoemotes. Is there a loading screen with this info yet?
All the other timers (for me, being a MID) seem reasonable. After chatting with the customer and making the changes its usuallyalready over so I don't mind, but a stat migration takes 4sec to do. It's two clicks and done. If you're gonna have us wait 10min you might as well just have us guess the bloody stats they want and have us enter it for them. Don't do this! I'm just saying...Fortunately I'm working on Tailor, so at least I can do that while I wait, but I don't even want to consider what it would be like once I'm done with that. If I was a dev, I'd be sitting scratching my head coming up with an alternative to timers, because I guarantee you this issue is gonna crop up again in another profession... Speaking of other professions, why don't you just make an ID crafting kit and treat it like the other crafting professions?
Strangely enough, I don't mind the whole ID tent/salon thing. It's given me a central location to find customers. I get flooded with requests sometimes, but its usually better when there are other IDs around that can relieve the load. I would love to be able to place one of those ID machines in my shop, however.
LOVE the new holoemotes. hehe So 'bleh!' to everyone who doesn't. I've handed them out to people in Coronet and tested to see if people got lagged, and nothing. Well, I did get a ton of requests for more as my free advertising worked. lol With only 20 charges, people don't really seem to be spamming them as feared. I mostly get people asking for the rebel or imperial emotes. I'm guessing this is for pvp, something I'm unfamiliar with since my Commando on Bria is STILL waiting for the combat revamp. /whiplash!
The money is much better now. I do it by donation only, which usually works out great. Noobs and poor players pay me 5 to 10k and rich players 20 to 100k. It evens out in the end and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside being able to help the less fortunate. hehe 
~kindjie
ps. Next time you walk by the combat revamp boys and girls, smack 'em upside the head for me and tell them to hurry up please! My Commando chick on Bria is feeling lonely. 
Kwee, I think you've done a great job as correspondant for ID, but I think your list needs an adjustment concerning the timers. There appears to be hugh skism between most (not all) current Master ID's and most (not all) folks working on ID about the timers. I think the issue of timer reduction that you raise in your post does not reflect the current debate on this issue. To be fair, there is a great uproar to remove the timers entirely and I think some of the other threads in the forumhavelisted several validarguments as to why so I won't belabor the point. I don't think the way you talk about the timers reflects the newer folks working on ID.I alsothink this skism isreflected in your item that requests the removal of the timers for Master's only. If the timers apply, they should apply to everyone or else you the non-Masters will feel you are purposefully building a class system to keep them from attaining the highest levels of the profession. So I don't think there's a consensus on that one either!
I'm not asking you to espouse either of the views but simply to present them both and to let the devs know that the timer issue has caused a great degree of animosity not only between ID's and their customers but between Master IDs and new IDs. You are our conduit to the devs and I think we all trust you to present to them the state of affairs from the user's perspective but in this case, there is quite a difference in perspectives on this issueand I don't think you are accurately capturing it in your list.
Thanks,
Shmook