Tailor Archive
Thread: Downtime Reduction for Combat Profs with Vendor Changes. Do Crafters Need Downtime Reduction?
Message Edited by Aynianu on 03-22-2005 08:45 PM
- The day we get a relist button on our vendors will be a day to celebrate. I get so p.... when I log in and see 100 or more mails with "Auction unsuccessful".
- I don't care much about production time of factories, as a tailor most things are crafted by crafting tool anyway.
- What I would absolutely LOVE to see: Ability to manufacture clothes in the factory without color (!) and specifying the color for each itemlater. So I would have maybe 50 crates of "raw" clothes, and whenever I need something to restock, I specify the color for the item and put it on the vendor.
- About ressources: The survey droid should be enhanced, so it will give stats of the ressources as well. Would save a lot of time.
- About factories and harvesters: The maintenance droid should be able to put power into them as well. It's useless as it is right now.
- Successful auction mails should leave the name of the vendor and item sold in the subject, example:
From: Vendor Xanija's Design-Fashion
Subject: Sold: Winged Hawtpants blue
This would make restocking of sold items a lot easier, as I would not have to open each mail while crafting and I could sort my mails by topic, so I could craft the 5 Hooded cloaks one after the other instead of crafting 1 hotpants, 1 pair of dress slippers, 1 hooded cloak, 1 pair of dress slipper, 1 hotpants, 1 hooded cloak etc.
Ah, so many wishes, so few programmers.... 
Message Edited by Drecki on 03-23-2005 01:50 PM
Akaara wrote:
1. We need the ability to list several items at one time, not one at atime! If I am selling 2 (1000) factory runs of syn cloth it takes forever to list them all indivdually.
2. We need the ability to sell things in sets
6. relist button
These are all the things I think of when crafting.
Message Edited by Akaara on 03-21-2005 07:41 PM
Yes! Yes! Yes!
my husband knows by the look on my face when i login and open my email - "oh, it's vendor maintenance day again?" (and by maintenance i don't mean the money, i mean the dang restocking the timed out stuff) That is by far my LEAST favorite thing in game. A way to do that remotely, or a quick easy "relist at previous price", or a way to bulk sell sets of items would definitely let me spend less time staring at my vendor (atleast she is a hawt twi, but still!) and more time crafting and talking to my friends and RP'ing.
Gyopi wrote:
2) Image designable vendors. I don't want to scare away customers and I don't want to spend an hour trying to get a random vendor to look decent instead of having lime green lips and a hot pink mohawk. It would also give image designers something viable to make money from.
1) In your opinion, is crafter downtime a problem?
In many ways, yes. In others, no. I don't see downtime in and of itself a bad thing, but things that are just time sinks for the sake of being time sinks or because of design flaws are pointless.
The relisting thing is a huge factor for me. There's few worse feelings than logging in and seeing your mailbox full of 500+ "Auction Unsuccessful" e-mails. I spent *way* to much time dealing with the vendor restock issue. The listing method is cumbersome and as bulky as a box vendor as well.
Harvesters are another one of those time sinks that I think everyone hates, too. Between the inordinate amount of time you can spend trying to find a decent percentage, running to check them every few days, and coming back to find that the resource shifted less than an hour after you left them are all big issues.
Factories are supposed to be an efficient and predictable way of crafting goods. If it's so efficient, why is it faster for me to make it by hand? Instead, as others have pointed out, I have to wait a huge amount of time for it to craft what I could hand-make in a few hours--if I didn't need identical items for my schematic--and the crate size inconsistency is a minor time issue as well (finding a place to store architect component runs is always a joy).
Combat classes tend to be more impatient because they're used to getting the fruits of their labor immediately. Crafters have to be patient in order to see the process through to its completion. It's a difference in mindsets, but just because crafters are patient doesn't mean that they find enjoyment in the tedium.
2) What improvements could be made to remedy this problem without having a huge impact on immersion, our playstyle, or the economy?
- The Merchant system is probably the biggest time sink common to all crafters that sell their goods through vendors rather than custom orders only. A relist button (that puts the item back for sale on the vendor with the same description and price) would go a long way to alleviating some of the dread of a mailbox full of "Auction Unsuccessful" mails. A relist button would have zero impact on immersion (perhaps even increase it considering normal malls don't have items fall of the shelves into the stockroom after 30 days LOL), would seriously improve playability by giving us time to do something besides click buttons for hours on end, and should have no real affect on the economy because the system would still pull out old goods (it would just make it quicker for an active Merchant to relist them).
- Factories should make items at a rate that is, at minimum, comparable to the actual assembly process. To be honest, they should make items more quickly, although this could lead to the market having more finished goods flooded into it. A compromise would be for factories to produce subcomponent/component items at a very rapid rate (perhaps half the time of hand crafting) while still taking the normal amount of time for finished goods. A change to the complexity of subcomponent parts--particularly those that require no experimentation--would address a large part of this issue without a huge impact on the supply of finished goods. I am also a firm supporter of factory crates being equal to the size of the run: if you make a schematic for 1k items the crate should be 1k items. Not only does this cut down on storage and database fluff, it makes the crafter's life easier because they don't have to keep running out to their factory for more crates.
- Surveying is an absolutely horrid time-suck, but perhaps understandably so. Allowing to sample and survey from bikes was a huge improvement, but there is more that could be done without risking immersion. Droids. Not only does it add to the immersiveness by having more droids in use, it could also resolve some time sink issues for crafters. Survey droids should do exactly that--survey. It should not be instantaneous, but I see no reason why a droid should not be capable of doing what surveyors already do. The user tells it what resource to look for (owner should be on the planet to be surveyed, although they could leave after deploying the droid)and a minimum percentage; the average concentration of the resource on a particular planet determines how long it takes for the droid to find a desireable spot.
For example, I send my droid out to find Oolia Neutronium Steel on Naboo at a minimum of 75%. The average concentration on the planet is 50%. Finding a 50% spot would take 1 unit of time (whatever it may be), finding that 75% concentration (or higher) should take 1.5 units of time. Searching for a 25% or higher would take .5 units of time. There would always be a chance of it finding a higher percentage, but in general it would be close to the desired percentage.
The other option (and verymuch simpler) is to give the survey droid a waypoint, and it takes a pre-determined amount of time per meter of radius to search outwards from that waypoint. At the end of it's survey range, it sends a waypoint to the owner of the highest concentration within that radius. Perhaps make different levels of survey droids to survey wider or smaller areas with a survey skill requirement (in order to prevent a complete devaluation of the survey tree of artisan). The ranges would be much greater than what can be done with a survey tool, perhaps extending as far as 5000m from the survey start point.
More convienient ways of surveying, even if they are not necessarily faster, would go a long way to freeing up crafters to actually craft. It could also result in a serious reduction of stress-levels!
-
Harvesters should be droid controllable or have a way of remotely monitoring them. Allow a droid to check/add power and maintenance to a harvester and inform the owner of how many resources are inside (and bring back with a travel time factor perhaps). We could also have "smart" harvesters that send transmissions by the owner's request giving the status of the harvester and if it is still on/the resource is still there.
Those are my personal "main time-suck issues". I don't want to see the crafting professions made into something mindless, but there's no reason for it to be more like a job than a game.
Khristen wrote:1) In your opinion, is crafter downtime a problem?
In many ways, yes. In others, no.
The relisting thing is a huge factor for me. There's few worse feelings than logging in and seeing your mailbox full of 500+ "Auction Unsuccessful" e-mails. I spent *way* to much time dealing with the vendor restock issue. The listing method is cumbersome and as bulky as a box vendor as well.
... (edited for space)Those are my personal "main time-suck issues". I don't want to see the crafting professions made into something mindless, but there's no reason for it to be more like a job than a game.
I just wanted to say that this post sums up pretty much everything that bothers me about my time spent playing the game. Thanks, Khristen.
Also, I have 300 items of clothing that have been in my stockroom since the weekend, because I don't have the heart to re-list them right now.
Message Edited by Tokklyym on 03-23-2005 09:23 PM
Akaara wrote:1. We need the ability to list several items at one time, not one at a time! If I am selling 2 (1000) factory runs of syn cloth it takes forever to list them all indivdually.2. We need the ability to sell things in sets3. We need a droid to go fetch items from our factories or harvesters4. Some way to 'protect' ourselves out in the wild, near our factories/harvesters... pretty soon we won't be able to wear armor without certs.5. I wish we could opt to create 1 to 5 items at once, instead of using a factory. Say I wanna ONLY make 5 melee defense formfitting undershirts in black, I wish we had the option to make 4 to 5 at once, with one extra button click... not big enough for a factory run, and time consuming to make 5... Surely they could let us make say 5 items at one time... this would be a time saver for sure!6. relist buttonThese are all the things I think of when crafting.Message Edited by Akaara on 03-21-2005 07:41 PM
I like these ideas - well..and all of the above as well.
a relist button...drool...