Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Poll: Which is more unbalancing?
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Amizar
Sun May 30, 2004 10:15 pm
#1
Greetings fellow weaponsmiths,
I have been thinking about an issue for quite awhile now, and would like input from the rest of my esteemed colleagues. Most of you are familiar with the one-day crafting window where the original SOE crafting paradigm was instituted, before being hotfixed in the next server reset. For those not familiar with it, this isn't really the place to go into all the details, but the basic essence of it is that resources counted twice against you instead of once... they determined the 'normal' maximum level you could experiment to on a given item (like they do now), but they alsoproduced a smaller % increase for each experiment if they were lower quality.
Example: A Republic Blaster uses plumbum iron, which is notorious for being of poor quality and causing the maximum level of experimentation to stay approximately in the 60%-70% range. It takes maybe 5 or 6 points presently to reach that level, and you have leftover points to put elsewhere. Under the crafting change, it would require all 10 points (for a normal master WS) to reach that same level, with no extra points to put elsewhere.
However, another effect of this crafting system was that the aforementioned "normal' maximum experimentation level was removed as an absolute constraint, and weaponsmiths with 11 or 12 points could exceed the expected maximum, up to a theoretical maximum of 100%, regardless of resource quality. This basically introduced a more significant impact on the quality of weapons that a WS with extra points could create versus your prototypical "10 point smith". A WS with extra points could actually create weapons that exceed the maximum levels in effect today.
During the one-day window, those extra-point smiths who knew of these changes and had planned accordingly, created arather large numberof schematics, thereby ensuring that they could produce weapons with higher quality for months, possibly years, down the line. And once the day was over, the ability to produce similarly higher-than-normal quality items was gone, also ensuring that anybody who either didn't take advantage of it, or lacked the ability to do so, would remain at a significant disadvantage to those who had.
More recently, we have been plagued with a new "crisis".. the unserialized loot bug. It effectively allowed mass production of weapons that were intended to be very limited production. It also could allow one to use a high quality looted unserialized component in a schematic and let the user substitute lower quality (but similar type) components in a factory run, over-riding the lower stats of the component used and passing on the higher stats into the final crafted item(s).
The effect of this, if abused, would be the saturation of a server with weapons of significantly better statistics than their more mundane counterparts. Also, if taken advantage of by only those individuals aware of it (or those whose personal enjoyment of gameplay allowed the rationalization of using it), those individuals would be the only ones with the ability to make these higher quality items and would again have a significant advantage over those who did not or could not pursue it.
Two unpalatable situations. In both cases, a certain subset of crafters have access to a short-lived in-game mechanic that allows an unrepeatable advantage over their peers and competitors. And in both cases it results in the potential flooding of a market with items that are "better" than what can be produced under what most would consider normal circumstances.
Without considering the intent of the situations that SOE produced (a whole 'nuther argument that people have already been hashing over for weeks), my question is as follows...
Which of them has had more of a negative effect on the game? Please consider the community as a whole, the weaponsmithing industry, and both veterans and newcomers alike. I don't want this to devolve into a discussion of what was or wasn't intended... just about what actually is.
Thank you in advance for your well-thought out responses and civil behavior.
-Amizar (Valcyn)
Amizar
Mon May 31, 2004 6:35 am
#2
28 views, 0 opinions. Not bloody likely. I know what it is... everyone's taking their time to craft a well-formulated response.
Dodece
Mon May 31, 2004 7:33 am
#3
Well lets get technical about it. How much of the crafting day got utilized. You had to be a twelve point smith and the right resources and the unlimited supply of them, and nobody knew it was going to be a one day fiasco. So I think the effect is quite minimal. Though it does urk somewhat. As for the unserialed exploit. Do the right thing and report the cheater when you find one of these exploit weapons. All you need do is look at a vendor and if you see five dxrs with the same serial exploit city. Report the punk, and then he or she can have a new kind of ingame fund. Its called a raid.
Redguard
Mon May 31, 2004 10:46 am
#4
Amizar
While these issues do have some merit it's not realistic to asume that any game will be perfect. I understand your concerns about the way in which they have handled these situations. The crafting "nerf" was a huge terrible mistake which lasted for one day. While many 12 point smiths probably made a large number of schematics on that day other priorities have come up in which some of those resources will be used elsewhere. We will have to deal with this issue until the resources required are spent and the weapon is sold. The unserialized loot drops would be a bigger problem because it demonstrates poor planning and an unwillingness to address the issue right away.
Lately we've been getting less feedback because ofother concerns (E3 and Fanfest). Though I appreciate the fact that the development team is busy and is going to have the opportunity to meet face to face with its consumers the product should not suffer because of this.
smork
Mon May 31, 2004 1:53 pm
#5
As a newer WS I've thought about crafting day quite a bit. My weapons using the best resources to my knowledge are good and I'm happy with them. There is another WS who made crafting day schems and is still producing weapons using their subcomponents. This sucks for me but its just life. He was there at the right moment and seized it.
LLJK_Griz
Mon May 31, 2004 11:16 pm
#6
The botched crafting patch will have more of an effect on the game economy, but it's nowhere near as bad as most people seem to think. 12-point patch day weapons were much better than normal, but the amount of schematic and component juggling was so annoying that only very few people made large numbers of finished weapon schematics. I made two patch day flamethrower schematics using patch day components, then decided that was too annoying to make any more weapons so I just made a bunch of power handler schematics and logged out. Power handler schematics are only like 5 damage and .05 speed better than normal which is meaningless to anyone who deals with sliced weapons.
Unserialized loot exploit,with bothkrayt and geonosian items, has the potential to screw up the economy a lot more than patch day schematics, but it is greatly limited by the fact that it's an exploit and they've banned people for it.
The whole 12 point patch day thing wasn't supposed to work like that anyway. There was apparently a very large bug in the system that would bypass the point caps more often than not so you were able to put all 12 points into damage. All this could have been avoided if Sony tested their patches more, or if they'd delayed the patch a day instead of pushing that buggy piece of crap and reverting the next day in the hopes that all the crafters who hated the idea on TC and the forum would somehow change their mind after seeing what a buggy piece of crap it was on patch day.
MonroeThanes
Tue Jun 01, 2004 2:02 am
#7
just wait until patch 10 comes down and we all get the extra 2 points from the FS boxes and some of us become 14 point smiths. thats going to be fun. wont see much difference in my weapons but my armor is going to be about 100 lighter to all HAMs
Bladewraith
Tue Jun 01, 2004 8:55 am
#8
Where is this +2 points from force sensitive coming from? I've read most of the notes on publish 9/10 and the revamp but I've yet to see anything mentioned that states it will give crafter's +2 exp points. Has someone on the test center confirmed this? This is the third or fourth post I've seen that has mentioned the +2 experimentation points from being force sensitive and just wanted to find out if I had missed a post somewhere...
EdOWar
Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:23 am
#9
By far unserialized loot is the bigger problem. To the best of my knowledge, Crafting Day has not significantly affected my sales; I still sell plenty of weapons.
Unserialized loot, however, is a big problem. Being able to produce 2000 Scythes from one schematic, while honest smiths can produce at most 4 Scythes, is a huge game-breaking advantage. And all a cheating smith has to do is charge 25-50K less on a Scythe, steal most of the business and still make huge bank. Then they can use all that money to bid up components and schematics, making it very difficult for an honest smith to compete. Why not bid 2 million fora Scythe schematic when you know you can make 2000 Scythes with it? Even if he sold each Scythe for only 50K, that'd still be something like100 mil, almost all of it profit.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Kershakk
Tue Jun 01, 2004 5:17 pm
#10
Beg to differ on that point. Plenty of people knew. It was a very closely monitored thing by us. The key was that it wasn't certain
Dodece wrote:
Well lets get technical about it. How much of the crafting day got utilized. You had to be a twelve point smith and the right resources and the unlimited supply of them, and nobody knew it was going to be a one day fiasco. So I think the effect is quite minimal. Though it does urk somewhat. As for the unserialed exploit. Do the right thing and report the cheater when you find one of these exploit weapons. All you need do is look at a vendor and if you see five dxrs with the same serial exploit city. Report the punk, and then he or she can have a new kind of ingame fund. Its called a raid.
how much of a benefit 12 pts would yield. When it was discovered suddenly that superior stats could be yielded out of the extra 2 points, a rush was on.
I lean toward serialess components beign a far more damaging, angering and frustrating issue. It has been left alone for far, far too long. Too many weaponsmiths are taking full advantage of exploiting to the maximum. I did a tour and found just about every single large scale WS business on my server are blatantly and openly exploiting serialess items. Someone made a geo blaster schematic using high end serialess krayt tissues as well as a serialess yellow cube. Talk about being cocky.
They say next publish will eliminate this issue. I for one, sincerely hope in addition to this fixthat they simply do some math - e.g. sweep database for all instances of geonosian blaster pistols, keep count of all serial numbers - I believe there is a max 7 identical cube drop so a maximum of 6 legitimate geonosian pistols could exist - if there is 7 or more, take note of the object creator, and then send in the Inquisition. Deleting all of those instances might be nice too, but I don't know that'd be fair to people who bought them who may have thought they were just getting a good deal. Executing those people responsible forexploiting for such gain is enough for me, I hope they burn 
Can anyone confirm that if you report exploiting weaponsmiths that CSR's *will* take action? There was a post earlier where garva was quoted as saying they were not authorised to do so. If they are, then I have a very long list I could pass along.
EEMAN
Tue Jun 01, 2004 8:09 pm
#11
ive never seen more than 7 identical green but i have definitely seen 10 identical whites and 11 identical krayt tissues
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