Image Designer Archive

Question: When would professions stop being a grind?
Kirk mentioned that when he joined, he noticed all the grinding and felt that there needed to be a better way to make professions happen. Part of his vision is incorporated into the Jedi revamp, where profession advancement will be done through work and quests, not just grinding some object or beating up on the same mob over and over. They are working on making profession advancement fun instead of "like work".

http://swvault.ign.com/articles/521/521475p1.html?fromint=1

I would love to see some changes in all the professions and training. Something like having to demonstrate your skills before you could progress to the next rank instead of just pay your fee and now you know more.

This would cause problems with AP and player to player training but I wouldn't have a problem with that going away if something better was put in place for advancement in your profession.

Ravanne Esi
Master Dancer, Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Ragin' Rancor Enterprises
New Hope, Naboo

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Sounds good, but how to learn to fight without beating things up? How do you learn to cut hair without clipping some dead ends? I guess if they put more content and xp into the quests, I would enjoy that as an alternative to grinding. That said, one thing I did not like about other games I played was that you did not matter, at all, untill you gained the highest levels. On DAOC I played ten months of fairly hard grinding to get my toon to the highest level, and before that, there was little I could do there in pvp to matter. AT lowerlevels you jyst got ganked. Here in SWG I like that it does not take 10 months to matter, as I am a casual gamer, I might be able to master TKA in a month or two, I have mastered DOC and medic, so I am a capable healer in pvp, and in the highest level of pve fighting. My (wandering) point is that while I dont ever like to grind by crafting the same item for 6 months, or by hitting the same mob for a long while, the system here is better than I have seen.

If they fix it further great, but on this point I would give SWG some props for grinding being better than it is on some other games.

Oh wait....I just remembered that the only way through some professions here is to undertake a horrid grind, so forget all that I just said.....well forget some of it heh...

Nice to see somebody saying something positive

Reports I've heard of the up-and-coming jedi quests are fairly positive. They're making it quite hard to grind jedi through out-and-out combat: not impossible, but so that it isn't really worth the effort. Meanwhile they're putting the bulk of jedi exp into these quests. Even if the quests aren't much different from theme park missions, in my opinion this is a great idea. Also it's led to some fun times watching the jedi on TC whimper and whimper about their xp, apparently never having read the dev notes.

On the other hand I don't see much light for ID in the future. What kind of quests would we have? Knowing RuneSaber: "Travel from Moenia to the Imperial Outpost on Dantooine: General Clover needs a stat migration. Pay 50cr, exp 2500."

Current main character: Saersha, Privateer and Jack-of-all-Trades (Flurry)

Maybe they're finally getting around to listening to us. I remember suggesting this very thing a long time ago when they were asking for ways to get players to participate on TC. I suggested making all profession advancement be mission based & that in order to master the profession you would have to actually use every skill at least once or craft one of every schematic at least once. This would have been good for finding bugs as well as making players familiar with all the functions of their professions. Plus it would be a way for players to earn as they learn.