Image Designer Archive
Thread: ID Top Ten Concerns Runesabre Answers Inside :)
Syzygy-Gorath
Wed May 12, 2004 10:27 am
#53
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
3/ Stat Migration Timer
Both Image Designers and customers feel that the current timer for Stat Migration is torturously unbearably long (10 minutes). We are assuming that the long timer was put in place to limit how quickly stats can be migrated. We can however conceive of ways in which being able to migrate stats that often could lead to various game-play issues. A way to kill both birds with one stone would be to have the Stat Migration timer happen after the ID session, allowing the customer to be stat migrated only so often.
a) What is the reason behind the 10-minute timer?
b) Is 10 minutes between stat migrations seen as enough time to avoid abuse?
c) Couldan enforced delay be put in place between initiating stat migration sessions on a player, regardless of which ID does it, removing the need for the ID to keep the UI active?
There were several design proposals on the table on how to handle Stat Migration. We knew we needed to limit how often Stats could be migrated because we didn't want people changing their stats instantly whenever and whereever they wanted. The question was how much limitation was needed. The most extreme proposal being considered at the time was allowing Stat Migration to happen only once a week for an individual player. We decided to settle for a 10min timer.
The timer occurs like it does now (wait 10 min before the stat migration changes activate) because theimpetus of giving Image Designers stat migration was to provide Image Designers a game function that was not purely cosmetic. At the same time, I didn't want Image Designers to be treated like vending machines where players would stop by, pay their credits, get their stat migrations and then leave in the blink of an eye. The Image Designer is a social,face-to-face service provider style of profession and I wanted to preserve that environment going forward. Finally, while it wasn't a major rationale, I felt the residual gain with the 10 min timer is players will perhaps decide to check out other things that the Image Designer could do for them and hopefully stimulate more business and interaction for the Image Designers.
We've fixed a number of exploits and abuses with the stat migration timers and range. If you know of other exploits or abuses, please don't hesitate to let Kwee or myself know so I can have those issues evaluated and addressed.
Again, I don't have a problem with the concept of timers, despite not agreeing with the length of them. What I have a problem with is that we have to keep the UI open the entire time. This keeps us from seeing what's going on, and in some cases even obscures the chat box. This is totally unacceptable. The fact of the matter is, there is a huge amount of resentment on both sides regarding stat migration, and the chances of those ten minutes being put to use doing what most of us got into the professions for—you know, Image Designing—is relatively slim. Please, please, please make all of these timers post-change. Having them pre-change is punishing everyone to spite grinders.
SWG-Runesabre
Wed May 12, 2004 10:30 am
#54
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 macroing has done to Dancers and Musicians.
Message Edited by SWG-Runesabre on 05-12-2004 01:46 PM
Syzygy-Gorath
Wed May 12, 2004 10:31 am
#55
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
4/ No Timers for Master ID’s
Master Image Designers no longer have to get experience and have few perks for their final skill-box.
a) Why were Master Image Designers given timers for cosmetic and body changes?
b) Could these please be removed?
The original design was going to limit Stat Migration to Master Image Designers as a perk for mastering the profession. We decided to give Stat Migration to Novice Image Designers (for reasons I will explain in an upcoming question) and really just do to time constraints, we never really revisisted a perk for the Master Image Designer. I'm working with my designers as we speak to evaluate giving a time reduction perk to Master Image Designers.
Followup question: if it became aparant that changes in ability placement were needed why not take the time to thoroughly revise it, rather than pushing out a half-finished product? As you can undoubtedly tell from the responses to Rogue_5's delay announcement, we as a community have no issues at all in waiting as long as it means our fixes are actually fixed—this answer leads me to believe even more strongly that this patch was pushed as a placating measure to put us off for another 6+ months. And that makes me very, very unhappy…especially considering some of the very concerning problems introduced in this publish.
MarinhaTiga
Wed May 12, 2004 10:33 am
#56
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
4/ No Timers for Master ID’s
Master Image Designers no longer have to get experience and have few perks for their final skill-box.
a) Why were Master Image Designers given timers for cosmetic and body changes?
b) Could these please be removed?
The original design was going to limit Stat Migration to Master Image Designers as a perk for mastering the profession. We decided to give Stat Migration to Novice Image Designers (for reasons I will explain in an upcoming question) and really just do to time constraints, we never really revisisted a perk for the Master Image Designer. I'm working with my designers as we speak to evaluate giving a time reduction perk to Master Image Designers.
You said yourself that "The timers exist to ensure advancing as an Image Designer is not considered a trivial accomplishment and couldn't easily be macroed in any way to gain a significant advancement advantage"..... Masters do not need XP, so there should be no wait at all for a master. I have the perfect timer amount for a master image designer for you... 0. Zero is a wonderful number for masters. Why am i being "punished" for someone else's abiliti to master my profession in a matter of hours?
No waits for Masters or im gonna pout! 
AND FIX THE FORUM LOGIN! I cant stay logged in to save my life!
Vrykolakas
Wed May 12, 2004 10:36 am
#57
Runesabre, you can keep giving whatever explanations or rationales you want for these changes, but the fact remains, just about everyone hates them. Your vision of this profession doesn't match that of the people who actually use it. It's time for you to just open your eyes, admit you were wrong, and fix it.
Syzygy-Gorath
Wed May 12, 2004 10:37 am
#58
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
TroThorns
Wed May 12, 2004 10:41 am
#59
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
The timers exist to ensure advancing as an Image Designer is not considered a trivial accomplishment and couldn't easily be macroed in any way to gain a significant advancement advantage. Mastering any profession in SWG should be an accomplishment that should be make the player feel like they have put in some effort and been successful and those who master their respective professions should feel proud of their accomplishments.
Players really working towards accomplishing a cool, unique look shouldn't notice the timers since the timers start counting down as soon as the Image Design session begins and the changes should be able to be activated immediately when you are finally pleased with your results. We are considering timer reduction perks for Master Image Designers.
Message Edited by SWG-Runesabre on 05-12-2004 11:03 AM
I.e., we wanted to make another time sink 
By the way, advancing in almost every profession in this game is a trivial accomplishment right now. Its not about time, its about difficulty and/or the amount of action involved on the part of the user. You can pretty much afk your way to any profession in this game - that is a problem, not the amount of time involved in doing so....
Veldcath
Wed May 12, 2004 10:43 am
#60
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
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.
This has bred a certain inequality in the game, however. Dancers and Musicians can mind-heal themselves, but they can NOT buff themselves. ID's can change their own appearance but can not stat-migrate themselves. However, doctors can cure themselves and CAN and DO buff themselves. Weaponsmiths can pick up a weapon they've made and use it, given having the associated skill. A BE can use the items they produce themselves, given being a CH or Tailor or Chef. But the "Entertainer" track have limited use of their skills when applied to themselves. And smugglers can use the spice they've made on themselves.
I think this is what bothers people the most - that the idea that you are striving to limit some people's ability to be self-sufficient, but others are openly so.
And as far as that goes, I'd like to point out that making it so that IDs are the sole way to migrate stats has already given us a whole new set of interactions to have to deal with, let alone also having to seek out another of our rare number on the same server to get our own stats migrated.
-V
Sir_Voor
Wed May 12, 2004 10:44 am
#61
SWG-Runesabre,
I can appreciate your stance on 5/ ID’s Cannot Migrate Their Own Stats but I would like you to consider making self stat-migration a Master-ID perk.
Strikke
Wed May 12, 2004 10:45 am
#62
SWG-Runesabre wrote:
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.
IMO, if you had made the change so that IDs could do it in 10 minutes, but everyone else could do the normal 'wait a week for the stats to migrate' method, you would have accomplished your goal.
There is a hugedifference in the ID/Stat Migration'as a carrot' method (ie, near instantaneous, but with a slower option) versus the ID/Stat Migration 'as a stick' method (ie, near instantaneous, butwhat are you going to do - there is no where else to go).
Instead of having people coming to IDs saying, "Wow, you can migrate my stats in 10 minutes?!? Cool!!!", they'll be saying, "I've got to waste 10 freakin' minutes with you and pay 50k? This bites and so do you."
Carrot = Happy, praisingcustomers
Stick = POed, complaining customers
See the difference?
Message Edited by Strikke on 05-12-2004 02:47 PM
AFHyper
Wed May 12, 2004 10:47 am
#63
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.
Rune, would you consider maybe allowing master ID's to stat migrate themselves? I don't see anyone taking the long time that it now takes and the skill pts just to be that self sufficient.
Hyper
RabidEwok2
Wed May 12, 2004 10:49 am
#64
The self sufficiency goal is applied inconsistently. Doctors can for example buff themselves (which is a major reason for the common doctor + combat profession template) while dancers and musicians can't buff themselves.
Furthermore, making it take 128 hours like someone calculated to master ID is way longer than any other profession. With hologrinding still being the way to achieve jedi, introducing this new xp system now is plain cruel.
ScDarkKnight
Wed May 12, 2004 10:50 am
#65
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.
Then ... a MASTER ID should be able to migrate his own stats