Shipwright Archive

I do not know why, but my impression of SWG is quite different from yours.

The reason might be, that I came in from another MMORG, that to me was much worse. Oh, it did have its strength (the combat system among them), but my overall impression of SWG is much better. And while I stayed with that other game for about half a year I am at 16 month with SWG now.

I do not know your background, whether you have studied game design or something related. But if you did, you will know, that good game design sometimes calls for hard decissions. Due to technological reasons.

But also due to gameplay reasons. Remove all the hard choices (e.g.: Should I be a crafter and drop my combat skills?), might make the game more fun for a short period of time, but would definitely be bad on the longer run.

The factory issue might be a similar case. They do have a profound impact on the economy, whether a player uses them or not. So removing them will hurt some players (like you). On the other hand, many more? players (like me) will benefit from this. I also believe the economy will profit from this. Just thing what would have happened if some of the ultra rich players had started producing factory runs of master level ships. What would that have done to resource prices?

Regarding things like mounts, vehicles, player cities,...

I agree, it would have been nice, if those things had been in the game from the beginning. Only, I thought, the game was fun, even without those things. So, if the decision was between going to market now, or wait half a year until these things were ready, I think the decision was ok.

Somehow, it is always the case with MMORGs. They get better with time. And while I would like some things to get here faster, or do not agree to all design decisions, I still think our devs are doing a good job. I, for one, would not be willing to spend 50 bucks a month on SWG, just so they could add a few more devs to the team and speed things up.

But this is, of course, just my opinion.

Regards

Niacia

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RedDestinyCC wrote:

Lets just say we agree to disagree.

And this single sentence illustrates the devs dilemma quite well.
A decision, one person is happy with is a bad decision for another player. Earlier I mentioned another MMORG. I did not like part of the game design. But what made things worse, the devs kept making decisions, which made this situation worse and worse for me. With that game, I could not play the way I liked. Finally, I left...

The interesting thing about this is the following. I know quite a few people from that game who tried SWG. Found it lacking and returned to that other game. And the reasons were mostly those design decisions that made me leave. What made those people happy was precisely what hat made me unhappy.

There really is no way, game design can tackle such a situation. Game design requires the designer to focus on some target audience.

Now there are several possiblities:

1) You might not be part of the target audience. If this is the case, this game might become worse and worse for you. If this is the case, you might want to look out for another game that is targeted at another type of player, that fits better to your play style.

2) Or maybe the game is still the one for you, despite its shortcomings. If this is the case, keep posting your opinions, but try not to offend. Offending the devs might help you venting your anger, but will not help your agenda. In this case you will have to live with the bad decisions.

Regards

Niacia

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Flop wrote:


Here is a link to the thread:

clicky

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Interesting thread, and very good points made by the crafters who advocate turning up the volumes on the factories, so we don't have to make a totalof 33 items in a factory run due to subcomponents... I don't know why that thread was closed, but following is a good quote from that thread that hits it pretty squarely on the head. There's alotof other gameplay issues that are related to the same issues, but good quote:

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IlyaMasool wrote:

This is devistating to most crafters. what little there is left of us

Could we get some kind of explanation as to why this was done? seems like no other reason than to grief us crafters from where I sit.

I guess crafting is not for casual players. Since if you only play 2-3 hrs a day, you are limited to 1 factory run of 100 per day, and since you need 3 subcomponent for stimp B, and each subcomponet takes about 4 hrs for 100, casual player with 1 factory can make 100 stimp-B every 4 days. Nice. 2 crate of Stimp-B every 4 days?

It would be same as making all combat class go to cantina of your starting planet city after 1-2 hr of fight.

Why not make it so that harvesters can only hold 3k maintance and 3k power? would be just as annoying since what is point of having factories that will not run all the way when we are sleeping or at work?

So basically you are saying no more factory runs when we are offline except for first hour of that offline huh? Seems pointless to waste a whole lot for something we can only use while we are online.

Just very mean thing to do.

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GraySeven wrote:

styx66, I hate to say this, but we need increased factory support. I'm getting tired of going through 8 crafting steps to make one piece of SS Armor, or one Booster, or one of any component. I don't want to make runs of 1000 of them for crying out loud, but I'd like to be able to make a run of 50, put 10 on my vendor and not have 40 items littering my house.

Without the ability to make factory runs, people will forget about the Shipwrights and go with loot components. I got real tired of searching vendors for a Mark II Blaster and just started using loot items (before I went shipwright). I'm sorry, but we really need it, no matter what the poll said (and I didn't see the poll so I didn't get to vote).

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Well, look at it from their business perspective they need to get as many people playing the and paying the subscription- now they could have had no crafting at all and concentrated on PvE and PvP combat. But, marketing of MMO's is such that 'Complex and Involving Crafting System' is a necessary box to have ticked when selling this generation of games.

So, they put in the crafting system - they now need to maximise the number of crafters that play the game to make the most of the investment - so they make design decisions intended to frustrate the aims of those who want to 'kick butt as entrepreneurs' because that process of kicking butt reduces the number of crafters, and hence their income, and then alters the game economy by forcing up prices, which puts off new players. (I'm not stating these as incontrovertible facts but as a possible plausible position for SOE to be taking)

SOE would rather give 100,000 people a 'nice time' instead of 10,000 people a 'great time'.

So SW's don't get factories, people who want to mass-produce get frustrated. It's a little ironic that the players in-game that want to be govern vast industrial enterprises are frustrated by the business decisions of the people make the game.

Anyway, I've no secret channel to the Devs - but I think that is their motivation for the 'busywork'.

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IndustryAndGuild wrote:

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Flop wrote:


Here is a link to the thread:

clicky

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Interesting thread, and very good points made by the crafters who advocate turning up the volumes on the factories, so we don't have to make a total of 33 items in a factory run due to subcomponents... I don't know why that thread was closed, but following is a good quote from that thread that hits it pretty squarely on the head. There's a lot of other gameplay issues that are related to the same issues, but good quote:

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IlyaMasool wrote:

This is devistating to most crafters. what little there is left of us

Could we get some kind of explanation as to why this was done? seems like no other reason than to grief us crafters from where I sit.

I guess crafting is not for casual players. Since if you only play 2-3 hrs a day, you are limited to 1 factory run of 100 per day, and since you need 3 subcomponent for stimp B, and each subcomponet takes about 4 hrs for 100, casual player with 1 factory can make 100 stimp-B every 4 days. Nice. 2 crate of Stimp-B every 4 days?

It would be same as making all combat class go to cantina of your starting planet city after 1-2 hr of fight.

Why not make it so that harvesters can only hold 3k maintance and 3k power? would be just as annoying since what is point of having factories that will not run all the way when we are sleeping or at work?

So basically you are saying no more factory runs when we are offline except for first hour of that offline huh? Seems pointless to waste a whole lot for something we can only use while we are online.

Just very mean thing to do.

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Please do not forget, that a) you can use mulriple factories and b) SW does not need factory produced subcomponents for any schematic (and subcomponents can be produced in runs of 1000). So while this commet might be true for other crafting professions, SW is different.

Regards

Niacia

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RedDestinyCC wrote:

Ya true in many cases, both posts...

However THIS game has the MMORPG lock on the SW franchise, so there's not another one out there with sabers... tho again there's one apparently coming with "set phasers to stun" if you know what that means.

I can't let up on the devs or accept that the game may not be for me, or that I'm not the target market. Why?

Cause they've ####ed the pooch so badly on this I do not for one minute believe that that the lead decision makers are competent in either game design, leadership (customer satisfaction, communication, and feedback mechanisms; maybe not even internal staff), or project management, so therefore I don't believe at this point they know what the game is or who it's made for. They've been flying by the seat of their pants for so long, making radical changes in direction, throwing out nerfs and supposed fixes, and then reversing themselves or making things worse, they don't know what they are doing. They were wrong, they were wrong again, and again, and they're still wrong, and all the while they're horrible at planning, communicating with their customers, and stepping back for an informed, customer-centric (rather than designer bias-centric), approach to fixing their mistakes. They continue to operate in a vacuum based on internal bias, and delivering new approaches still mired in their fundamental biases, and scratch their heads when it still doesn't satisfy the customers. I was appauled by the lack of constructive input afforded the customers at the fan fest panels, and the yes-man attitude displayed by a mob-like mentality of the players.

And hence why they're advertising for new lead designer and staff. Thank goodness.

I will give kudos to the rank and file dev and designer who has done an excellent job implementing their leader's poor design, and delivering it with a lot of great artwork.

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Something I do not understand...

Why are people convinced, that other people would do a betetr job? This was the same, as there were rumours, LucasArt was going to take over?

Yes, maybe some things might work better, but on the other hand, things could get worse...

I do not agree with all decissions (for example, I think the combat system is completely boring). Still I have a lot of fun playing SWG, especially after JTL came out.

Ok, I see why you would not want to drop this game. For me too, it was a hard decision to drop that other game . Anyway, if factories are so important to you, you still can choose any of the other crafting professions. I really like it, that SW is new in this regard. That it is different in many aspects. (REing, no factory support).

Fact is, if they fix the game in the way you want it fixed, they will make the game a lot less fun for me.

Regards

Niacia

• That you can join a guild and sell your product just as competitively with the industry-level competitors you're so afraid of


• That you can partner with a major merchant market place or playercity to sell your product so that you're not limited to your wee little one shop vendor in the middle of nowhere, as you seem to depict it


• That you can apprentice or partner with others of the same profession to cooperate (MMORPG) on anything and everything from tape mods to factories to harvesters to resources to specializations on who will make which parts between one or more players in a cooperative


• That you can use social skills to build a customer base so that you are always the first choice supplier for your trade, due to your friendships, partnerships, groups, and social wherewithall


• That failing to choose to do any of the above, seems to be a choice, rather than imposing the inconvenience of the industry constraints on the rest of us who want to enjoy non-busywork time

Who is to say that your 5 items in a vendor cant compete with the 50 items in someone else's vendor ??? Don't you have a customer - social base from which to draw support? Whenever I make something good, i'm able to sell it, no matter in what quantity small or large. It's not the quantity that matters, its the effort and the quality and the social elements and the Location, Location, Location. So make something that you want to, but that shouldn't mean that the rest of us are constrained with busywork and shackles.