Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: ** Dev Response Regarding Uber Loot Items **
Soar wrote:
Sony promissed us they would never make loot items better than crafted items, It was the big drawcard for the crafter player base. It was thing that got us here and one of the main things that keeps us here.
The new loot flatout, in our face, blows this all to hell.
Where?
Where does SOE say this? Because frankly, I don't ever remember them saying this, but this quote keeps being thrown around as some sort of quasi-argument as though it was said on a daily basis.
And even if they did, I don't see how this causes a negative effect, other than you cannot say "I make the best guns to ever exist."
You can still skill-up. You can still make just as much money as you did before. You just have to do the occasional explanation of, "No, I cannot make the 500-800 3.0 rifles, you'll have to hunt for them yourself, though they're a 1 in 50,000 drop, so you might as well just buy my guns anyway!" It doesn't hurt the economy, it doesn't force you into selling fewer guns, it doesn't make Santa give you lumps of coal for Christmas.
So really, what is the problem here?
Q-3PO said:
I'll state this very clearly: It is a design objective to keep crafter integral to the game economy. We do not want to put crafters out of business by making dropped loot better than the best crafted items. Overall SWG is not an Uber-Loot game (like EQ or DAoC) and we don't intend to make it so.
That said, it is a common request for us to make better loot and we do aim to please. Every publish has seen an improvement on loot table and rewards, but we know there is more we can do without upsetting the crafters.
I believe this is the quote most are looking for. This post was made by Q-3PO after the legendary weapons were implemented. As you note, he says "We do not want to put crafters out of business by making dropped loot better than the best crafted items." Currently, they are not putting crafters out of business with what they have done by keeping the drop rates reasonable, and at the same time, managed to please combatants.
(For those curious: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=1784
Tissues are an entirely different issue, but those do not hurt the crafting economy like making these guns drop 5000x often would. Same with Holocrons.
I think the deal with the Holocrons/Tissues was that they have no way to predict how often players will hunt for these on a wide-scale basis, so the only way to find a good medium is to have the playerbase, essentially, beta the drop rates. Doesn't have to mean they gave into demands, just means they tried it, watched the numbers, said "Hey, this isn't reasonable enough, we need to up it", and did so. The testing of a group of developers and some ~500 test center players just isn't anything compared to the testing a playerbase of 200,000 can do.
Having an outright fear of change is just unreasonable. I mean, every day, I could wake up and fear that I might login to be told that all weapons now require 10x the resources. But it's unreasonable to be afraid of that until it actually happens.
The playerbase needed something more and they got it, and it did not negatively affect any other professions. So until it actually begins to have a negative effect that is more than "I can't say I make the best guns in the game!!", it's probably a worthy trade-off for the playerbase. Petitioning to have it removed even though it doesn't even hurt anybody is just really unfair to everyone else.
Agreed - fed up with people assuming all weaponsmiths are multi-millionaires, and that all were are are money hungry tight fisted fools.
In the other thread some folk mentioned about throwing a bone to the combat classes - things are getting boring, same old same old - must throw some incentive out there for them. That we are being selfish and egomaniacs.
Really. Thanks for sharing. You must be of the opinion that working with the same schematics - and not only that, but working with only a limited set of schematics because only a subset of what we have available is even worth loading into the crafting tool, on account of it seems no one up there has realised that half our items are stupid - and running mines, surveying, that must be all singing and dancing. The only reason I see other planets is tomine the heck out of it. I don't go exploring. I don't see POI. All I do, and so do many other weaponsmiths, is work to support ourselves. You go look at the how rich are you thread, aside from a handful of weaponsmiths, the rest of us are just scraping by. You want to talk selfish? Look at yourselves. You want your bone to be thrown at you, at *our* expense.
All our hard work paid off with being able to make the top line weapons. That's the only saving grace, what you think of as you die, yet again, trying to get to a harvester on some far flung planet that has Doonium Iron with +10 more conductivity than your current stock, so you have to keep up with it. Or as you spend 6 hours every resource shift, scattered before and beyond, planet hopping, checking for resources, finding rares, sampling, finding out it's utter garbage but you need it anyway, go find a palce to drop a mine.
Yes, all this is not boring at all. No, it's all sunshine and lollipops and rainbows. Ha!
But that was ok - the payoff is we make the best weapons, right?
No longer. Now all it takes is to go camp some NPC. And not only is it better, we're talking like the difference between riding rollerskates versus taking the concorde. It's not just a nice bonus above and beyond, it's just ridiculously powered.
We work our butts off to get a few more damage points here, some extra tiny smidgeon of a speed there - takes weeks for resource cycles - and it's totally at the whim of some random generator. Now entire gun drops are out there that are miles and miles ahead of not only what we can make now, but ever. Period.
This is not about the money. This is about our purpose. We didn't slave away before, slave now, or wish to slave in the future just to make weawpons which are seriously 10-15% aggregatecompared to insta-generated loot.
But that's ok, because the combat classes need their incentive, yeah? Where's ours?
A lot of people in the crafting proffesion play to make the best equipment and for the pride of being able to do so. To remove that ability is to remove their main reason for playing.
The economy and crafters going out of bussiness is not what this is about.
Maybe this does not have a negative effect on the way you play, but not everyone plays like you.
What Q-3PO said is right, and this probably wont have much effect on crafters businesses at all. But this is not what the fuss is all about.
We are not asking that they keep loot dumbed down, we just think there are better solutions than god made loot drops. Just a re-evaluation. Is that so much to ask?
maybe there is lack of communication between developers..
lines below arequoted from the dev chat 2days ago.
*Boba* Question: Currently loot is terrible in SWG. Are there any plans to add more items to the loot tables to make hunting more worth the effort?
(Blair) Good question.
(Blair) We are working on adding lots of additional loot to the game at the moment.
(Blair) One of the issues we have is we don't want to undermine the crafting market by adding loot that is better than what players can make.
sorry but "uber" loot the way it is now is just plain wrong. We put in hours and hours to be able to make the best weapons. That is the reward of our profession. The holy grail of weappon crafting. Any the devs with one swip take that away by putting on stuff vastly superior that what we could ever make. That is my bone of contention. The "uber" loot should be no better that comparable to what a master can make. I don't have a problem with making in unique by changing a few things (damage type, look, range, whatever). But it needs to be balanced against what a master can make.
Rewarding combat characters with cool loot is fine, but it doesn't have to be done at our expense. Also if this is the loot problem answer then regardless of how "rare" the drop is a whole lot more of them will start appearing, after all every combat character will just have to have one.
I think 1 in 50000 was just off the top of his head, but im sure its more like a percentage like .001 or something sick like that....
For once I dont really agree with everyone, I dont think it is a big deal.. I see EEMAN's position about people coming and expecting us to make these weapons, but once these 'legendary' weapons are common knowledge it shouldnt be that big of a deal...
I stick by my opinion that there isnt enough content and at least something like this gives you a 'hope/desire' to go out and hunt to posibly find something like this.....
But as always my job is to represent the views of the community, not myself...so we can continue this discussion, and I will bring up to the dev's whatever is appropriate 
Soar wrote:
We are not asking that they keep loot dumbed down, we just think there are better solutions than god made loot drops. Just a re-evaluation. Is that so much to ask?
Because it's not always all about you.
Uber loot drops do not hurt your gameplay. They may hurt the mindset in which you choose to play your character, but they do not hurt your gameplay. You were never guaranteed you would make the best weapons to ever exist by playing a Weaponsmith, thus you cannot complain about losing something you were never promised in the first place. The quotes being brought up state that weapons dropped will never be "uber" to the point where it hurts the business of crafters.
The keywords are "the business of crafters". They don't say, "We'll never have better loot because crafters are always supposed to have better items", they say "We'll never have better loot to the point where crafters are forced out of business". This is the point that is being misconstrued, you were never promised to always carry the best weapons, you were simply promised that your business would never be ruined by loot.
Just because your idea of what a Weaponsmith should be does not coincide with that of a developer's view is not enoughreason to sacrifice the few options combatants have left for content. They have to weigh hurting your gameplay against improving others, and I think they have done a reasonable job in doing so.
the biggest content downfall this game has is a lack of epic quests. So far the only complex quest ive seen sofar is the tri-monthly badges and themparks which prettymuch suck. Running around just killing crap over and over gets kinda boring after a while.
Even with uber loot your still just running around killing stuff to get the uber loot, its not quest based. Obtaining the weapon means your still running around killing stuff, or you might get into a few pvp for a bit. The end result of this type of system is very plain - imps w/ 3 at-st pets farming tough npc over and over to hoard the items and sell on Ebay. Anyone hoping to get this item for themselves will have to compete w/ 3 at-st and an uber-loot weapon who already had dozen of these but wont sell for less than 80 million credits or Ebay for $1200. Its not an exxageration of price.
Descartes paid 20 million for a holocron last weekend and ive seen several others go for that much. Saw one on ebay sell for $600. The people doing all the complaining for this type of drop know full well that Ebay is the end-game for this stuff. Probably the motive from the beginning.
The game certainly needs more content but they've continuously ingored my submitted ideas of scripted epic quests in favor of just loot drops killing creatures.
The last badge for COA2 definitely was a step in the right direction but this needs to happen on a massive scale with the random npc givers in the game.
This is not a weaponsmith issue, this is a general game balance issue.
Someone on Lowca looted a vibro axe tonight. 399-936 1.0 8/5/2 HAM. As if that wasn't ridiculous enough already, it also has +7 2H counterattack, +6 2H damage, and +7 2H speed and the highest stat poison DOT I have ever seen. Heath poison 1474 strength 1627s duration 447% potency 73k charges.
HALF HOUR POISON. A solo pikeman with this thing could clear and hold Anchorhead or a faction base forHOURS before being killed.
There have been a lot of suggestions and good ideas about how things could be done differently and it would be nice if we new the devs were getting these.
Thanks.