Image Designer Archive
Thread: Image Design Skill Gain Opinion Thread
JuJutsu wrote:
Anything a casual player can do a powergame can do more quickly. But I'm certainly willing to consider proposals that people think will do it. Anyone have any ideas on how to do it?
Hmmm.... A few suggestions
- What if image design took *both* mind and energy (as with sampling)? You would have to get mind buffs AND energy buffs, and two different types of spice. May be slightly more difficult.
- What if image design took mind/energy points from *both* the image designer *and* the intended victim?
- What if spice /buffs were of limited effectiveness for image designs?
- And again, modify the low level changes to take an appropriate amount of mind points, as compared to the high level changes. That way it would be impossible to do the current "grind" of low-mind designs that the muon can "catch up" to.
What we should NOT do is make the skill point prerequisite higher for image design. As it is, there are very few players who actually stick with it and make it a primary profession. If you make the skill point costs too high, our profession may dry up, and it would lock potential image designers into an entertainment based-existence when really image design can be paired equally well with other professions (i.e. tailoring).
Okay I got a little bit of insight, and want to say I was wrong. It's not 3 months to master a profession, it's 3 months to complete a character template.
Most character templates include three master skills, or the equivalent. So judging by that, one mastered skill should take approximately one month to complete, if you werejust work on that one skill all month.
I would say casual players (be it by time or style) prob average out to about a month, with some mastering ID in one to two weeks, and others in two to three months.Given that time frame I think ID experience is fine for casual players the way it is. Powergamers are of course able to master ID much faster than that, but then many other professions have the same issue. That is even less time than I was basing my arguments on in my previous post on this thread. I also thought the devswanted one profession to be mastered in 2-3 months by a casual player.
Rilawyn wrote:
Okay I got a little bit of insight, and want to say I was wrong. It's not 3 months to master a profession, it's 3 months to complete a character template.
Most character templates include three master skills, or the equivalent. So judging by that, one mastered skill should take approximately one month to complete, if you werejust work on that one skill all month.
That would probably be BH then, or a "true" master Architect, which really requires being Master Artisan & Master Droid Engineer along with Master Architect (sorry, little rant there).
I agree about grinding quickly not making you necessarily good at the profession, which is why I've always said the really good ID's will get tons of work from word of mouth & that any loss of work is more to do with the slowdown in people needing changes & not because we are losing business to holo grinding ID's.
This is why we need to be striving for additional content. Some of which needs to be more of an ongoing service that is needed on a regular basis by all players.
I had a good suggestion for mastering professions that would have made it fun & totally gotten rid of any macroing to get from novice to master in any profession, yet it died like so many other good ideas. My idea was to make it so that to make master in any profession you had to perform every single thing you could do in that professionat least one time. You could never macro this & it would give you experience in every aspect of your profession so that you are a true master. So in this case of ID you would have to practice every option at least once including the ones that differ between races & genders.
This originally was an idea for Test Center to help them find all the bugs faster by forcing people to try every option in their profession instead of just being able to grind one to get to master, & to encourage more people to go there. But I think it would work equally well to keep people from getting bored while moving on in their professions & would totally eliminate almost any form of afk/macro grinding which most players find boring anyway. As far as the Dev's go this would be an awsome time sink too, because it would slow us down but at the same time be giving us more content!
Anyway, I'm done with that little sidetrip...what were we talking about again? hehe.
You're right, nothing will stop the holo grinders (including me, hehe) & there really is no sense in trying to make it harder, unless we're actually doing it in a more practical way that decreases boredom & increases your overall knowledge of your abilities & limitations.
The bottom line is we really need new content that will be useful & needed in the game on an ongoing basis.
Keep the ideas flowing guys, this is good stuff!
ToppDog wrote:
You're right, nothing will stop the holo grinders (including me, hehe) & there really is no sense in trying to make it harder, unless we're actually doing it in a more practical way that decreases boredom & increases your overall knowledge of your abilities & limitations.
The bottom line is we really need new content that will be useful & needed in the game on an ongoing basis.
Keep the ideas flowing guys, this is good stuff!
Absolutely right. I think it would encourage people to get to know their skills better if there were some sort of benefit in using the higher-xp changes that come from the higher levels of the trees (which there is none). This is why I suggested a change in the xp ratios - to make the xp/mind ratio MORE favorable for the higher level designs, to encourage people to use those designs, instead of mindlessly grinding eye color. I was myself bitterly disappointed when I got a new skill, and using it to gain XP actually made the XP go SLOWER. But if, when someone gains a level, he or she pauses and says "ooo, what new things do I have that will get me better xp" he or she may well investigate and try out a new skill with each new skill box, instead of saying "ah hell with it, I'll use that when I'm master."
In that way both ID and crafting are borked because the best xp comes from the lowest items, and there is no "point" in making/doing the high level stuff until master.
I also want to stress that when we *do* get new content, we need to seriously consider *how* we should redo the skill tree. We will need to "move down" character creation skills, not simply add the "new" skills to box 4 or master.
Another suggestion I have to slow down the grind is to make each line self sufficient and fully functional. For example, why are lekku markings and lekku marking color in different skill lines? Wouldn't it be nice to know that you could do "everything" for a given feature going up a given line? Probably this is beyond the scope of this thread, but making each line self-sufficient may halt the grind to master b/c people may be satisfied for a while with one line. I know an image designer who decided *only* to go up the hair line - that is completely self-sufficient (for humans). You can change facial hair, eyebrows, and hair styles and hair colors, and there are no other lines necessary for a "barber" character.
I'll mull this over for a bit...
Yes, Skill gain is too fast.
BUT.
There is a reason for people to grind all the way to master just to get past the "Available at Character creation" stuff. This has been mentioned many times in other ID threads.
People don't necissarily WANT what they saw at creation (I have not seen anyone yet at least) if they did, they'd have taken it. The big one I see asked for is "something new". And if you can't offer it then you need to get there. And if you have to master the profession just to be able to do that... well, then you have to master the profession. Otherwise there is little use for the ID as a professional at that point.
Entertainers may not be ale to mind buff until master, but they are useful before that. Tailors don't get ALL of their colors until master, but they do have a variety of fun things that people want. But the image designer is just like Character creation for a very very long time (When it comes to hair really) And to top it off, even as master, to some races they have little to offer.
Skill gain is too fast. But it is just right for the profession as it is now.
However, I'd rather they fix the "Any shmoe who knows the /imagedesign command line can change their own or someone else's appearance to be a twi'lek with zabrak horns." Then they could worry about the skill gain.
To me, the Exploit and the lack of abilities/varieties in the Image Designer profession is more important than skill gain. Once the abilities/varieties are fixed then skill gain needs to be slowed down.
ToppDog wrote:
I had a good suggestion for mastering professions that would have made it fun & totally gotten rid of any macroing to get from novice to master in any profession, yet it died like so many other good ideas. My idea was to make it so that to make master in any profession you had to perform every single thing you could do in that professionat least one time. You could never macro this & it would give you experience in every aspect of your profession so that you are a true master. So in this case of ID you would have to practice every option at least once including the ones that differ between races & genders.
I really like this idea, but I think the devs nixed it because it would be problematic.
- you couldn't get master ws/as/tailor etc, if the lack of one lousy rare resource prohibited you from making a particular item. It could take literally 2 months for a given resource to come back.
- in terms of ID, it would be hard finding some races. Female rhodians? I could go for days without seeing one.
However, maybe a modified version of this idea may work well. Perhaps if you can manage to ID 4 different races, you can become master. That would be kind of fun.
Honestly though, nothing will dissuade the hologrinders. They will get a 2nd account and create every race/gender combo, delete, repeat, just they can ID one of each. The more difficult we make it for the "hologrinders", the more it will seem to hurt the casual gamers, while the hologrinders find new and inventive ways to get around requirements made for the purpose of getting them to socialize with their fellow players, and interrupt their mind-numbing grind.
It's a very frustrating situation trying to reconcile the needs of the casual gamer with the utter disrespect to our profession caused by the "2 hour grind" braggarts.
I'm really torn on this issue. On one hand, I really don't want to screw over those who aretruly interested in doing ID, by making them grind for three months just to do some skin color changes. On the other hand, anything that can be mastered in four hours is just way too fast.
I really don't see a lot of the arguments for either side. Not being able to do the "cool" stuff until master was never a problem. I ran around doing whatever I could when I was a novice ID, and I did ok. Someone would give me a list of things they want done, and I would tell them which I could do. Most people were happy with that because I tried to be as helpful as I could, and because ID's were very rare. Looking at the other side, I really would like to see the hologrinders in and out as quickly as possible. I have nothing against someone wanting to be a jedi, but I still like to see ID done by ID's. We are the ones who have dedicated our time to it, and we are the ones who care about it.
So I guess I'd really be ok with whatever ends up happening (probably nothing) 
well when i did it i didnt know about the macro all i did was line the boxes up and spam a friend as fast as i could it was a pain and hard earned
but with the macroing(which everyone knows by now) i was able to master a friend in about 30 hours max pobably 20hours.
it took me like 10X that amount at least
so yeah goes by too quick
maybe 1/3 all the xp gain in image design
theshuuji wrote:
I'm really torn on this issue. On one hand, I really don't want to screw over those who aretruly interested in doing ID, by making them grind for three months just to do some skin color changes. On the other hand, anything that can be mastered in four hours is just way too fast.
This is the way I feel, too. The one thing that allows people to master it in four hours, as opposed to four weeks, are spices, and mind buffs.
So maybe instead of a nerf to the profession itself, there need to be some limitations on how spices and mind buffs benefit image designers. What do you all think?
One suggestion I had in the past was for image design changes to take up a certainpercentage of the mind bar, instead of a set value. That way, no matter how much you loaded up on spices, foods, and mind buffs, the result would be the same (only X amount of changes, and then you had to rest your mind). However, this is just my opinion, and I would love to see what everyone else suggests.