Weaponsmith Archive

Greetings Everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I will be 'stepping down' from this position for many reasons, but the majority being that I just dont have the time anymore, and mydesire to play/facilitate this role has diminished.

I have alot of faith in this game, and eventually it will evolve into a game that everyone wants to play, but in my opinion we arent moving fast enough. I understand development lifecycles and all the headaches associated with them, but in my opinion, there were some critical components of the game that should have been focused on before release.

Don't get me wrong, I think the SWG engine is one of the best (if not THE best) that have been designed to date. I believe though, that something was missed on the content side overall during implementation. There is SOO much to do if you look at the grand scheme of thing, but what seems to be missing is that not everyone wants to try 'all' the things that are available in SWG. If you find someone that just wants to focus on the quest/combat side of the house (and maybe not so much pvp), then it gets tiresome really quick.

For me personally, I loved being a crafter. Being a weaponsmith was something I didnt expect I would like (I have never been a crafter in all the other mmorpg's I have played [Ive played them all to date]), but I loved the interface, system, all of it. Eventually it was tiresome and I had to retire from it, from the massive amounts of frustration with being one of the best weaponsmiths on the server. After I retired and started actually enjoying the combat side of the house, thats when I really noticed the lack of things to do.

The quest engine lacked any really appeal, as there was no 'exploration' attribute to it... you couldnt expect to be rewarded for going out and finding a quest to find, because you KNEW that the reward would be junk (because crafters are the primary means for equipment/goods). Again, I think this will change until it coalesce's into a wonderful balance between crafter loot (economic implications) <> looted/quest rewards. Until then though, there will be a large number of unhappy people.

One other point of frustration for me was the Jedi... Now, I believe the system the developers have implemented to keep the rarity in game is impressive, BUT I think we have gone a little far in being in operation for 3 months and still no one has achieved this slot. My last glimmer of hope was to work on opening this slot.. and by the time I was done with the holocrons, I was just too frustrated to continue (as Im sure is part of the design to keep it rare).

On the weaponsmithing side of things.....

I can't complain too much because there are some other classes that have been basically broken since beta, but I feel that there were some easy fixes that still sit on someones spreadsheet probably toward the bottom of the list. Before I go I will lay these out one more time in a seperate thread in the correspondents forum and hope something gets accomplished after my departure.

Anyway, I just wanted to give some clarifications on where I came from, where I am going, etc.... I actually wont be leaving the game for another 3 months.. I will keep my accounts, and continue to pay for em.. I will be taking a long vacation from SWG for now, but of course watch the boards closely, and contribute where I can. I simply think that with my lack of focus atm, someone else may be able to step up and contribute more to the weaponsmith community then I can.

Thanks go to everyone in the weaponsmith community; for your help, and fellowship...

DarkCipher (aka. Leviathan Deathcrafter, Radiant)

Good luck Darkcipher!

Thx for your efforts for this profession.

Hopefully some good willcome out of it from the devs, but I won't be holding my breath for too long.

As for Jedi-dom I'm personally still reeling from my holocron advice last night......Master Chef! Bah!

Take care man,

Best of luck to you, Dark. You will be missed. Thanks for the great job you did while you were here.

Could you copy us on theproblems you see, just so we know what's being said on the correspondents' forum? Thanks! And sorry to see you go. From what I've seen here, you've done a bang-up job as correspondent.

Thanks for all your hard work, DC. You are one of the best correspondents on the forums, IMHO. I hope you don't give up on SWG completely. Maybe one of these days, it won't be such a bug-farm.

Well, **edit**. You turned out really, really reasonable and level-headed, so I think we lucked out getting you as our Correspondent. It's unfortunate to see you go, but thanks for helping the community while you could.

Nice summary of the situation. Although I can understand why they perhaps haven't done a complete pass on WS yet (as they have for armorsmith for example) as they can't focus on all the classes at once, I agree that there really is no excuse for not fixing bugs like the Republic Blaster cert and some of the broken adv subcomps (e.g. chem disp modules). An elite carbine that sucks worse than a DH17. Most of these bugs have been around since Beta and have been reported a zillion times. We aren't talking major redesign here.... We are talking about changing some constants in a database and/or header file. If they couldn't support 30ish classes then they shouldn't have launched w/ that many. Period.

The whole idea that someone can get to Master WS, including learning the intracacies of Photon Grenade creation by making only WUKs and Adv Rifle Barrels is also silly. I know someone for example that macro-grinded all the way to master in a couple days w/ material support from his guild (yes it is possible to macro the WHOLE crafting process and be basically afk while becoming master). This stuff just wasn't thought out.

There are also features like adding a sliced descriptorthat shouldn't be so hard. Obviously they save the state as to whether a weapon has been sliced, since you can't slice it more than once. So displaying this in the desc shouldn't be difficult.

There was obviously a lack of testing. Compare CHs to DEs. Who was smoking what here? Both are pet classes. Hmm... a single probot with 600 health vs several 10k hp creatuers. This isn't a "balance issue" that wasn't solvable until the game was live for months. On paper this was just dumb.

I am a s/w developer w/ a masters in comp sci, so I know what developing s/w is like. Indeed, they have an enormous task. However, these are things that are bugs or design flaws. I think they tackled too many classes and perhaps too many planets. I would have preferred a smaller number of well thought-out classes and a smaller number of planets w/ more content on each planet.

Vehicles and mounts will help a little of the monotony, but they don't add any real content and actually make you burn through the content faster. Player cities will be interesting at least for a while. The cookie-cutter caves are worse than EQ's dungeons by far; they are on par with AC2's (and that game blew chunks). Granted I haven't been to the Warren yet. The space expansion won't be here for at least 9 months, and probably a year.

Another factor: Combat in groups happens so fast that you can NOT appreciate almost anything thats going on... At least not who else is doing what. Get a group of a dozen folks fighting several mobs and messages fly by so fast... They should slow combat down.

Oh well... I also agree that the basic engine is fantastic, and that the crafting system is unparalleled. The game is still holding my attention, as I am just starting down the commando road now after having worked the crafting system to death.

Cipher, you were a great coordinator, I thought your posts were extremely well-written and thorough.

Levi, I'll be looking for you, or at least a shadow of you, on the server. Take care.

Yeah, there are definitely issues with how progression occurs in the WS profession. And not just in terms of grinding. Grinding is unfortunately a side effect of the lack of a "middle class" in crafting. The master/non-master gap is considerable, which leads people to grind. Giving full experimentation and assembly, but gating the profession in the form of schematics would be the way I'd go. You'd give low end crafters the ability to make quality goods, and the high end crafters wouldn't be negatively affected. This would also require that high end named resources spawn with considerably better quality and that ALL the weapons become more useful in general.I'd suggest adding some more weapons as well -- give one of each damage type at each level for both combat professions and crafting, but cap their damage/speed rates. This would get folks used to the notion that it's GOOD to have weapons that do more than just heat, energy, or acid damage and that armor piercing is something to invest in.

Well, Im sort of feeling the same way. I cant imagine how you had time to be the corospondent and be a weaponsmith. It takes sooo much time. I dont really want the stuff. but remember when you got the job? I was the first one to ask for all your stuff if you quit. WoW is looking pretty cool.

"I was the first one to ask you for your stuff if you quit"

If it were me who were quitting the fact that you asked would be the reason you would never get anything from me. It would go to unassuming non-beggars who were friends of mine.

No, dont take that the wrong way. I have enough of my own stuff. I just wasnt really expecting him to quit. Im thinking about it too. /shrug. I will definetly give my stuff to my friends. Not that they care, I dont think they'll be around much longer anyway.

I had asked him when he got the job...

Greetings;

I am sad to hear the news.. Even if I just truned weaponsmight 2-3 weeks ago, I had started reading the forum a while back. And I have to admit you are by far the best correspondent ever. I hope and pray they will find a good andsuitable replacement... Your shoes are large ones to fill indeed... :-)

I just think you have earned mutiple thumbs up, it would take more sets of hands then any race as in the SW universe to place up as many as you need... You have expressed every concern and bug since ... .. ever... Nice job, I wish other professions had as good correspondent has you have been. Don't go thinking I am saying the others are crap, there are good, you just always had a edge over em, thats all... Well thanks for you efforts and time...

jPsGarak