Image Designer Archive

Sorry for the long post, but this has been weighing on my mind for some time and I really would like to get my thoughts into the forums in the hope that someone who has the ability to change things will consider my point of view. I also invite comments and criticisms from others in the profession. Please not that I do not mean to offend anyone with my comments but I do feel strongly about this post and do not assume that everyone will agree with me. While I love the GUI changes, the payment system, the addition of colors and options like holo-emotes and even stat-migration, I think that the addition of timers only benefit those who are already a Master ID and will dissuade others from getting to master forcing them to abandon ID profession altogether.

The timers make it prohibitively difficult to achieve the best levels of the profession. Folks who were able to reach master prior to the publish are in a position to raise prices quite a bit as they are the only ones who will benefit from the timers since they new ID’s won’t be able to compete with the Masters who can do everything (recent prices lists circulating in the forums seem to bear this out). I think that timers will destroy the profession and I think it’s even worse to have timers for non-masters only as this will only reinforce their superiority. In the end, the only way for a new ID to compete is to stand outside the tents and offer to give away their services for free in order to slowly gain the xp they need to achieve master. As a result, the profession will become a commodity where no one will be able to actually earn any money and the interest in it will plummet. I think there have been other professions that have suffered the same fate. It may just be my perception but Medic comes to mind; it seems that since tips are rarely given anymore most medics have moved to Doctor in order to buff for money. Once the ID profession collapses, I don’t think the ability to stat-migrate will be enough to keep up the interest in it. I think, in the end, the timers will make the profession worse off than it was prior to the publish and I’d very much like to stop that from happening.

I think that the purpose of the timers (as well as changes to the Jedi system) was to stop all the grinding; to change it from the "easiest profession to achieve" to one more in line with others. I, personally, think that grinding has somewhat of a bad rap. Let me first say that I have been an ID in the past (before the publish) and liked it a lot. I ultimately gave it up because, like others, I wanted to try something else and I felt that the profession was too incidental to the warrior-focus of the game. I also thought that it didn't allow me to make enough money to justify the point cost. It was a really fun profession though and I really enjoyed it while I had it. Hearing about the upcoming changes, I started a new character and began grinding my way toward master. Unfortunately, I didn't finish before the publish (currently at 4,4,3,2) and now I don't think that I ever will.

When I first got ID (before the publish) I used a combination of doing it the old-fashioned way (just ID'ing people who requested it) and by grinding. My personal experience was (and yours may be different) that many people did not want to trust me to ID them unless I was a Master because (A) I may not be able to get them back to the way they looked at the time of the change and (B) they felt that they might be missing something by not going to a Master since I didn't have all the skills to change absolutely everything. As a result, gaining xp was difficult through a natural process and gaining money was nearly impossible. I decided to just grind away with a friend and once I made it to Master, I really started having fun and actually made some money. I also came to find out that most (but not all) of the ID'ers I spoke with also seemed to grind to Master for similar reasons. From this, I came to the conclusion that grinding was a part of the profession and, in fact, a part of every profession to a certain degree. Continually shooting creatures to earn marksman xp may not *seem* like grinding but it certainly is a repetitive and there's a reason you see so many camping out at noob-spawns... every profession requires a certain amount of rather dull "dues-paying" or grinding to achieve them. The only difference was the ID could be "ground" rather quickly compared to others. Was this such a bad thing? I don’t think so… It’s not like you couldn’t move around the galaxy without tripping over Master ID’s. Even on Corronet or Naboo, you might not come across any IDs for a long stretch of time. In short, I think we had rather few ID’s before the publish. The new content seemed to be a way to raise interest in the profession and increase the number of folks interested in it (similar to Chef and Droid Engineer). However, the timers will destroy that interest, and quickly.

Because of the timers, the ID profession is now the most monotonous, tedious profession to get and it will take me so long just to finish those last 3 boxes that I'm considering dropping ID altogether. I don't think it’s possible (or necessary) to eliminate grinding and I think the timers have only made the profession unbearable. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for someone who is just starting out. And what about those folks who want to master Entertainer? Are they going to have the patience or the time to get up those four ID blocks in the tree? I’m beginning to doubt it! The only way I can compete again the pre-existing Master ID’s, as I’ve said above, is to give away my ID capabilities so that I can reach the Master level and compete with those who can do everything possible. If everyone does this, no one will be able to make any money and the profession will collapse as everyone will abandon it for professions that can sustain them in the game (or worse, they will leave the game).

Three more quick things and then I’m done, I swear! First, every other profession can use in-game macros to help them and now ID cannot. I think this is wrong and further penalizes the IDer. It also seems an odd choice to make on the part of developers but it is clearly necessary to remove the macro part of the profession in order to maintain the timers. Second, I’ve been knocked off the system on several occasions while waiting to click the accept button due to the timers. I can only guess that this is happening because of some time-out function in the server but it has happened repeatedly and at various times (not always the same ID session). Last, I know that the current system allows you to revert to normal (this was a point I brought up earlier about not being able to compete with Master’s who can do this) but I’ve found that often my client s don’t know they want to revert until after many, many, many changes!

Whew, I feel much better now! Thanks for taking the time to read my post and please feel free to respond with any comments or criticisms. Please keep in mind, though, that I didn’t write this to be inflammatory or to upset anyone so please keep that in mind if you don’t agree with me!

Thanks!