Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Publish 7 news lifted from Artisan forum
Thunderheart just released to us the plans for publish 7. He says he'll publish all the notes to the public shortly, but I thought I'd give y'all a quick peek at the Artisan-related changes in the next publish.
Notes below:
Crafting System Enhancements: One of the top concerns for crafters of all types was the issue of “critical fails”. Critical fails are a risk that all crafters take when attempting to create an item. This basic dice roll function is the gamble crafters take as part of the risk of crafting, but as a resounding player concern, the developers looked at the system to see how the relationship of crafter and crafter-risk could be made to have a stronger relationship to the fictional act of crafting. Toward creating a stronger crafting experience, a new modified die roll model has been implemented to enhance the experience so that now, a crafter’s raw ability will have an effect on how often critical fails occur. Crafting still works on the same risk/reward principle of a 5% critical fail chance, but is now modified with the player’s assembly or experimentation skill. As crafters progress from Novice to Master they will have a reduced chance of a critical failure.
Experimentation Resource Quality: Crafting experimentation has been enhanced so that the amount of change that each experimentation point will affect an item attribute will now be calculated by the maximum value for the item. Therefore, regardless of the quality of resources used, each experimentation point will affect the attribute by the same amount. Now, the maximum value upon which a resource attribute is allowed to be experimented is affected by the quality of resources used. This will have a much more noticeable effect on the crafting experimentation process, making it more interesting, challenging and easier to understand. This will noticeably reduce the effectiveness of experimenting with low quality resources by all players. However, this will give master crafters more of an advantage over less skilled crafters, as they have more experimentation points to use, and will be more likely to produce an item with maximum attributes.
End Notes:
There are a number of other changes, such as combat changes, the ability to call pets/vehicles/droids without a camp, vertical movement of objects, new craftable light sources (I believe they are architect only, I'll confirm), sliced weapon tag, a number of significant droid enhancements, and junk dealers are being reactivated.
There is more, but I'd thought I'd pick out the tastiest bits for y'all.
Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?
Take care!
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=31722
Message Edited by Ybagi on 02-20-2004 12:17 AM
Although I'm willing to guess being master will end up with us having the current chance of critical failure, and novice will just be a lot higher.
Ybagi wrote:
The new Artisan correspondent posted this; looks interestingand applicable to us so here it is...
Experimentation Resource Quality: Crafting experimentation has been enhanced so that the amount of change that each experimentation point will affect an item attribute will now be calculated by the maximum value for the item. Therefore, regardless of the quality of resources used, each experimentation point will affect the attribute by the same amount. Now, the maximum value upon which a resource attribute is allowed to be experimented is affected by the quality of resources used. This will have a much more noticeable effect on the crafting experimentation process, making it more interesting, challenging and easier to understand. This will noticeably reduce the effectiveness of experimenting with low quality resources by all players. However, this will give master crafters more of an advantage over less skilled crafters, as they have more experimentation points to use, and will be more likely to produce an item with maximum attributes.
Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?
/sigh. This was a bone of contention the first time this was raised because of the reliance on some attributes that simply do not exist. I would definitely want to raise this point, and quickly.
From my experience, the experimentation effect referred to is the percentage movement for a great success. It is roughly 7% per point at this time. That means if something starts at 20% effectiveness, a single point of experimentation that yields a great success will take it to 7%.
The problem identified (the problem with the system right now)is thisnumber is being derived as if the resources had perfect scores - that is, 7% is the absolute maximum movement in experimentation for a single point great success - having near perfect to perfect scores on the key attributes. So having Cd 1000 and OQ 1000 means a 7%increase per single point great success.
Making it dependent on resource attribute's actual value and not the maximum range would mean that - if you were experimenting on a gun frame, which is 50/50 Cd/OQ -and you had Cd 500 and OQ 500 (that is exactly half of the perfect score) then the movement would be half of 7%, so 3.5% (for mathematical sake, we'll keep the decimal).
The problem comes in when an item has an identified key attribute but one or more of the involved resources is completely missing that attribute. Case in point - advanced power handlers.
Key attributes identified - 66% Cd, 33% OQ.
Ingredients - Phrik Aluminum, Diatum Copper, Ostrine Carbonate Ore, Iroluun Reactive Gas, Polymer.
Thing is - Ostrine, Iroluun and Polymer do not have a score at all for Cd.
Does this mean it counts for 0, or is ignored? If the latter, than it's all good.
If the former, we have a big problem. There is nothing that we can do to reconcile the fact 3 of the 5 required attributes are missing an attribute that is weighted at 66% importance.
I'd definitely want a clarification on what the intention is on how this new system treats attributes that aren't good or bad, but just not there!
Thing is - Ostrine, Iroluun and Polymer do not have a score at all for Cd.
Does this mean it counts for 0, or is ignored? If the latter, than it's all good.
Err... I dunno how long you've been crafting, but I figured out how that worked a few weeks after paying attention to what was going on when I was crafting.
Easy way to check? Say you've got some item that requires 100% UT or something, and takes two resources, a metal, and some resource that has no UT.
Put in a 1000 UT metal, and something that has no UT for the other choice. BLAM you still get to 100%.
This was even easier to check if something just requires "Chemical" and "Mineral". Put in a chemical type that has the stat type, and a mineral that has the stat type. If you notice, the max percentage is near the average of the two. If it needed 100% OQ, and you put in 500 OQ mineral, and 1000 OQ chemical, 75% would be your max. 'Course most items aren't this... vanilla. They don't require identical amounts of both resources usually.
Still, if you pay attention to what you put in, and do a bit of the math, you can see that a material without a stat is just ignored.
This sounds different than what they had before on TC to me. Before they counted resources without a specified stat as that stat being 0, effectively nerfing everything. This new system sounds like if you use something with say 1000oq, it takes 10 successful experimentation points to get it to max (generally you start with 2 or 3 already filled in from the assembly) just like before, if you use something with 50oq, it takes 10 successful experimentation points to get to max, where as before it may have only taken 1. Instead of exp points being divided into even increments of 10% regardless of of material quality, they are now going to be divided into increments of 10% of the max % it could be, so if the max % is 100, its still 10% per point, if the max % is 50%, then its 5% per point, if the max % is 5%, its .5% per point (as in my example)
Does this make any sense to anybody but me (the way I described the new system, not the validity of the new system itself 
)
Message Edited by Eaca on 02-20-2004 01:45 AM
Logix wrote:
The experimentation code previously on TC was a fantastic system. Problem is, it was also a terribly bugged system. Frankly, if they can push it back to TC properly coded this time, I think it could do a lot of good for us. Bear in mind, we'll likely have over a month to mess with the code on TC; it's not like it's going to be going to Live immediately.
But it depends on how they make this. today a great success raise exp. with 7% for each exp.point spent. If those new changes mean that 7% is what you get when using perfect resources (meaning 500 stat resources only gives you 3.5%) it will suck. But if they raise how much each exp. point gives you so for example 1000 stat resource give you 10% (or what ever number is reasonable) for each point spent and great success, then it is a nice system.
But also, max possible stats on the required resources shoudl be used when calculating this. For example max stats on Plumbum is CD/OQ: 100/1000. It should be compared to this value and not 1000/1000. So a 100/1000 plumbum should give you a perfect result (today the Plumbum will only be possibe to raise to 55% on final weapon)
I am really worried about this change. I think could cause a lot of pain if not done right. I really hope that Wanderhome get copied to test center this time :-) so I can test this myself.
GrueLokk wrote:
Hopefully what it means is that with perfect materials, you can take that 28 % startingvalue and experiment, 7 times for 70 % and get to 98 % and then take your other 3 points into someo other attribute to take it to 58% assuming your using like 999 oq material and thats 100% of teh experminetal stat required for your item. That should make more sense.
It would make more sense... but that's not what it means, because that what we have now. Currently, regardless of the max % of any given weapon's efficiency line a great success is still roughly 7% improvement, so if you have a weapon that maxes at 50% because the resources required for it have horrid stats (Polonium Iron, Plumbum Iron, Axidite Iron, Rainbow Gems, etc) and it starts at say 11%, than in 6 experiments, you'll max damage and have four points to use elsewhere.
The new system (as written by Thunderheart above) would chage so that if theweapon maximum was 50%, and the base was 11% than all great successes would be worth (50-11)/10 = 3.9%, so that it would take all 10 successes to get to 50%. However if the max was 90% and the base 22%, all great successes would be worth (90-22)/10 = 7.8% so again it would take all 10 to maximize a given line.
It's a fairly horrid idea in my view, because it means the the marginal guns, which had been able to be experimented for high max-condition at least? Will now be even more horrible because it will take 10 points of experimentation to get the full damage. It also means that the days of recovering from a moderate success on those guns will also be over.
Say hello to inflation in the prices of weapon experimentation tapes.
Eola wrote:
The new system (as written by Thunderheart above) would chage so that if theweapon maximum was 50%, and the base was 11% than all great successes would be worth (50-11)/10 = 3.9%, so that it would take all 10 successes to get to 50%. However if the max was 90% and the base 22%, all great successes would be worth (90-22)/10 = 7.8% so again it would take all 10 to maximize a given line.
Ybagi wrote (well actually TH wrote) :
Therefore, regardless of the quality of resources used, each experimentation point will affect the attribute by the same amount.