Image Designer Archive

I believe in early design ID required some medic as well. The reason it was put in entertainer, I think, is that it really doesn't fit anywhere. Image Design is used more by entertainers than others and entertainer had a "free" tree that wasn't used up and so it was selected.

In regard to buffs: this was discussed in length a while ago, we don't want to buff or provide combat enhancements. What's wrong with a profession that caters to the purely aesthetic? SOE has made the attempt here to cater to a sect that isn't straight-combat or crafting focused. That's unique among MMOs.

Elitist? Yes, but I haven't met an MID that has kept the skill for more than 3 months that I haven't liked. Frankly I like small communities, as I adored the Chef community on UO long before they "made it useful" by creating tribal paint and other things. Heck, we couldn't even put our maker's mark on our foods until they put that paint in.

I don't recall any IDer, let alone the long-time masters, saying "Yipee a timer!" when we found out. Everyone of us groand and moaned about it, read the past few pages of forums and see for yourselves. The only reason we say "ok" with the timer is because of all the hardship we endured with our chosen profession taking 20 minutes to master. Yes it's selfish, we're human. The majority of us of the Master ID Mafia mastered the profession without foods or spice or macros, and it took us weeks to months to finally get it. We took the time, share the discoveries we found with each other to make ID changes easier. Then holocrons come about and we extend those "secrets" to them. In return we don't get thx or anything of the sort, we get "this profession sucks, it only took me 20 minutes to master, you all are gay" type posts. Then to top it off those same people decide to ID everyone for free because they expected it to take at least theexorbitant time of one hour to master it, so now they have 40 minutes to kill. Then they decide it's neat changing themselves to balding and fat among other things and being a general pain.

1. First of all, I don't understand why Image Designing is a part of the Entertainer skill set.


2. The timer, which is a good concept I guess, will theoretically keep people at it. The money maker of MMORPG's is retention, but this was a bad implementation.

My first issue is fairly cut and dry.

Now I have been reading through these threads, and the common consensus from ID Masters is that it is a good idea, and that this was long overdue. Well that seems decidedly convenient, as I assume that they didn't have to endure this mindless droning process of clicking, waiting a ridiculous amount of time, rinse/repeat, ad-infinum. Besides, it lends an air of elitism to those who mastered it; cornering the market for them and fostering a sense of being part of a small caste of elites.

The common consensus from the devs and those in the loop seems to be that they are trying to make us work towards a profession, whichI couldn't agree more with. But in this case, it's tantamount to breaking my leg, driving me to the hospital, charging me for gas money and then saying "See, what would you do without me?"

Like I said, I agree with the idea that a profession should carry with it, a degree of difficulty. That way people can feel a sense of accomplishment, and SOE retains customers willing to perform the grind. But on the other hand, let's have a bit of consistency here. When oneeliteprofession can be ground out in a matter of a few days, it does not make sense to put such a huge penalty on a non-elite profession. After all, there are folks like me who are grinding out holocron assignments (which is bad enough) and probably don't intend on keeping the profession once we finish with it. I can see adding timers like that to master the profession itself, but a penalty of this degree added to a prerequisite profession is simply unreasonable.

No, don't hand the game to us but don't make it so tedious that the game becomes more of a job than a game. This is exactly why people are leaving Everquest in droves. I quit the game after almost four years because of the timesinks involved with PoP and beyond. If this is what SWG is going to become, then you can expect people to leave it in droves as well, save the few purist hard core types.

If you want to keep people playing the game using methods like making professions a lot harder to master, that's fine. But do it for all of the professions. The timer is also fine, but for crying out loud - give us a break here. If I wanted to mindlessly point and click for hours on end to achieve a measly promotion, I'd go back to my job - only this time I'd be paying them.

In short:

1. Remove the ID skill set from the Entertainer profession. I've jostled my brain endlessly and cannot figure out why the hell it's there in the first place.


2. Keep the timers, but lower the time.


3. Listen to those who are now made to suffer this nonsense, and not those who didn't have to.

I think you have me a bit wrong there. I don't rub anyone's nose in it. I don't "feel good" because ID is harder to master. I quite frankly don't play that much, maybe an hour or two a week. I've logged in a total of twice since publish 8 went in. Making assumptions that I need ego trips from this game are quite off base. If I wanted that I'd make a flavor of the month template, engage in gank-style pvp, and then smack-talk whomever the victims are. I log in, go and entertain people. Not just by dancing or playing music, but by chatting, being humourous, and getting people involved.

I like for you to point out where I wanted the game tailor-made to me, as I don't recall posting anything like that. I did post the widespread sentiment that ID's don't want to turn into buff-bots. This goes along with the idea that for a profession to be useful it doesn't have to be tied directly in to combat (which really makes some people think.) I also made the point that I was glad that Image Design was made more difficult to master (as I've said several times before too difficult to master.) Mastering any non-resource profession in a day is a bit excessive I think, let alone within a half-hour, don't you think? This again goes against the "catering to me idea" as all of us were against the institution of a timer, the Devs forced that one on us.

I don't "snub my nose" at new characters because it's easier. The fact that I post how difficult and long it took me to master is to counter the "it's impossible" posts. I've never been fond of generalizations (especially untested ones) and I'm trying to show that Image Design hasn't always been as easy to master as in the past few months. Again, I've stated several times before that well over eighty-percent of my total income I give in hand-outs to new players in the form of skills, equipment, clothes, or for training skills (as well as time explaining things for them.) I've always gone purely by tips ("Whatever you think is fair is fine by me") as an Image Designer, and still do so.

I as well can care less regarding how long somebody has played the game. I tend to enjoy interacting with new players as they are invigorating. However, what I do care about is how well someone knows what they're talking about. I'd say about half of the recent posts here are from people who have one goal in this profession: mastering it as quickly as possible and then dropping it. How is someone with that mindset going to do good for the profession? Yes, SOE introduced it with Holocrons which has ruined the economy as well as trivializing many professions. That still does not make the mindset constructive to any profession.

I could go on about UO here as I made a character with all "useless" skills and had the most fun with it. Six of the eight skills that character had were never changed in over 4 years of the game. Skills like Herding, Begging, Taste ID, and Musicianship (with no other musician skills) were thought never to be used. The reason I made that correllation to UO was the sense of community that used to reside in this forum before the ID Publish.

You're not infringing upon my game at all. I play professions that beget me the most amount of enjoyment from the game, and that involves entertaining other players. I knew I wanted to play an Image Designer when I first heard of the profession a few years ago. I knew it's purely social role was something I'd enjoy. Regarding other professions: they don't really matter to me. The only thing that does matter to me when I come across another player is their personality. If I don't take to their personality I don't interact with them (though that doesn't mean I decline ID requests.)