Constructive feedback from the crafting test...

[Ventisly]

<DIV>I was there today for the crafting test on the test server and while it was very laggy with over 100 toons in North Qeynos, that's not my main concern (although it is a major one to be sure but it's not one I need to expand on any further).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Towards the end of the Q&A session we asked Glendral why these changes were being done and he reponded with two tells:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Glendral BROADCASTS, "We really just want to try and make crafting more of the community, rather then the hidden thing in the basement."<BR>Glendral BROADCASTS, "The crafters are there own community, but seperated from the adventurers. We want to try and make it one big community."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The idea of a crafting community and the interaction between the crafters and the adventurers has been a hot topic through several recent changes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Most notable were the changes in where rare crafted armor and weapons rated with respect to raid/quested/dropped items.  In the days of DoF I had a level 60 woodworker.  My goods were highly sought after and I had a blast "running a business".  I played the market, buying rares, crafting high demand items to put on a broker and custom crafting 5, 10 or more items every night for people that sent tells to one of the several public channels or directly to me.  There was a lot of interaction between my woodworker and adventurers in those days and life was good.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In KoS, the rare crafted armor and weapons don't even rate better than items that can be gotten from a simple quest in SoS or a run through one of the many group level dungeons.  So my first suggestion is that if you want to create some interaction between crafters (armorers/weaponsmiths/woodworkers/jewelers) and adventurers, then make the crafted stuff desirable.  If you don't want to make items crafted out of a single harvested rare too powerful then go back to the concept of <STRONG><EM>fabled crafted that require a crafter to make something out of a fabled item that was dropped from a master chest</EM></STRONG>.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The harvesting tools (woodworkers) and vendor containers (carpenters) were a good start but somehow I just didn't get the same kind of demand for items as I did with T6 rare crafted.  I've read about some of the changes coming in EoF and they sound interesting, but I'm reserving judgement until more details are released.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Another problem that a lot of crafters have is that often we are on the "wrong" toon.  I've got 6 crafters and only one of them is an adventure/crafting toon, all the others are pure crafters.  It would be great if I could have <STRONG><EM>all of my crafters LFW at the same time</EM></STRONG> while I was harvesting or grinding or whatever so that adventurers looking for something  could get ahold of me.  Enhance the community page to make it easier for an adventurer to find the crafter they are looking for.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I do watch the Freeport_crafting, 60_69 and 70 channels but the number of people looking for a crafter on those is getting more and more scarce.  Not sure if that's because:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1: There's just less demand for crafters in general<BR>2: Adventurers have figured out how to use /who all crafter_type and are contacting the crafter directly<BR>3: It's gotten so easy to level a crafter that most guilds have one of each type already so there's no need to go outside of the guild (this is for sure why my provie never gets any requests for work)<BR>4: Everyone is sending tells in Qeynos_crafting so I never see them on my freeport toons (I'd ask you to make a single world-wide crafting channel but there's this one wizzy crafter in qeynos that I'd really rather not listen too all day <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><EM>I will say that removing the TS instances are the completely wrong thing to do.</EM></STRONG>  In all my days of crafting I can't remember a time when someone came up to me at the crafting table and asked me to make something.  Normally it's either someone sends a broadcast in a public channel, guild chat or sends a private tell that they need something.  I'd see people running past me all day long going to and from the broker (in Freeport the broker is at the bottom of the TS instance) but they never stop to talk.  We don't need to be in the same place as the adventurers to interact with them.  With the way the crafting stations are spread throughout the city zones on test currently, it looks like it <STRONG><EM>would now be harder for an adventurer to know where to look for an armorer than it would be in the TS instances</EM></STRONG>, even if they wanted to.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Think about it this way, the people I feel the most connected to in the game are my guildmates.  I group with them sometimes and we pass each other on the way to the broker and such but most of our contact is through chat.  I can easily tell who is online for my guild and there's a great sense of community within our guild even though we are rarely in the same physical location.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You've already got a great way to bring the crafters to the adventures, it's called the broker and the new system is really nice.  That's really about the only way we can offer our stuff to adventurers without spamming the chat channels with advertising or standing around while doing nothing with LFW on.  You can make the fanciest looking crafting area and marketplace around, but <STRONG><EM>unless the adventurers want something that we can offer them, there won't be any connection</EM></STRONG>.<BR></DIV> <DIV>What you need to do now is instead of stirring up the ants nest by throwing the crafters out of the TS instances, <STRONG><EM>figure out a way to bring the adventurers to the crafters</EM></STRONG>.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Gaktar Ssssaltytail (guard/provie) [other crafters - woodworker, carpenter, alchemist, weaponsmith, ar morer]</DIV> <DIV>Five Finger Discount guild on Everfrost</DIV>

[Ronin SpoilSpot]

<blockquote><hr>Ventisly wrote:<DIV>hidden thing in the basement."Glendral BROADCASTS, "The crafters are there own community, but seperated from the adventurers. We want to try and make it one big community."</DIV><hr></blockquote>I haven't seen any need for such a community yet, perhaps because I'm both crafter and adventurer (or equally little of each). If the goal is to make crafters more visible, picking Sneed's in NQ as the most obvious crafting hub sounds like a bad choice. NQ has bad connectivity, so the only reason to go there is if you need to get a writ or hand in a collection. It's probably the zone I spend the least time in in Qeynos. The adventurers that should notice the crafters seem to be in the suburbs or harbour anyway.Also, while crafting, crafters don't <b>want</b> attention, or other disturbances./RS<p>Message Edited by Ronin SpoilSpot on <span class=date_text>09-25-2006</span> <span class=time_text>11:32 PM</span>

[Seffrid]

<DIV> <DIV>I found the Playtest a lagfest, and all my worst fears proved well-founded (since Friday generally, in fact, not just during the Playtest) in that many crafters were on horseback or carpets.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm thinking that the logic behind these changes is based around a few complaints in the past about the TS instances and the decision to make a different system of immersive crafting within the city itself under the expansion. The freeing up of servers for the expansion zones resulting from the closure of the TS instances is probably a fortunate by-product, and not in itself the reason behind the changes. The official explanation that the devs want the crafters and adventurers to be a single community sits oddly with the original decision in beta to lock TS instances to non-crafters. As a customer I used to enjoy visiting my crafter and chatting while he worked, but I wouldn't now run around a laggy city to do that.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The problem with the reasoning behind the changes, if I'm correct, and apart from the lag that will assuredly affect the expansion city as it does Freeport and Qeynos, is that the Kelethin buildings will have been designed with the placing of tradeskill stations in mind, whereas in the existing cities it is transparently obvious that the stations have been crammed into buildings already full of furniture, paintings, and NPCs. Frankly the buildings now look a mess, and seeing a line of tradeskill NPCs standing by the side of the road in SQ with no obvious reason to be there ruins any sense of immersion for me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The key to any problem is that the solution may involve compromise, and that is true here. If the existing village TS instances can be kept open for those who prefer them or want to craft in the villages, then that will  spread the load in the cities where less equipment will be needed. That means that fewer stations can be better placed with less lag resulting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thus the absolute key to all of this is retaining the village TS instances. Do that, and you buy yourself time to sort out the teething troubles with placing tradeskill stations in the city zones - although I'm not convinced personally that they will ever deal effectively enough with the lag problem for crafting in city zones to be remotely viable. If they haven't fixed the lag after 2 years without any reason for most people to visit cities, I don't see much chance of them suddenly producing a solution when more people are aggravating the problem by being drawn into the cities.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In its present form, the overall TS change is a disaster which surely cannot be tranferred to Live. Keep the village TS instances open (preferably with the Qeynos doors removed and all recipe merchants moved inside), and then take the necessary time to provide a limited tradeskill setup in the city zones but on a much neater and more rational basis than currently on Test. Only do that, however, if you are confident that the lag can be eliminated without everyone having to play in EGA graphics.</DIV></DIV>

[Cybrdroyd]

<DIV>I got that sinking feeling that SOE is gonna do it their way anyway for logistical and economic reasons, not to improve player experience as they claim.  All this player testing will be for naught because they will just screw up the game like they did with SWG.  This way they can say, "We did extensive testing, and based on OUR analysis we felt this was the best way to go, blah blah blah (more corporate madison avenue bs to follow)..."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This new setup certainly did not improve my crafting experience any.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Get ready for an NGE-like mass exodus once again.  :smileysad:</DIV>

[Xaqari]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ronin SpoilSpot wrote:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ventisly wrote:<BR> <DIV>hidden thing in the basement."<BR>Glendral BROADCASTS, "The crafters are there own community, but seperated from the adventurers. We want to try and make it one big community."</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR><BR>I haven't seen any need for such a community yet, perhaps because I'm both crafter and adventurer (or equally little of each). <BR><BR>If the goal is to make crafters more visible, picking Sneed's in NQ as the most obvious crafting hub sounds like a bad choice. NQ has bad connectivity, so the only reason to go there is if you need to get a writ or hand in a collection. It's probably the zone I spend the least time in in Qeynos. The adventurers that should notice the crafters seem to be in the suburbs or harbour anyway.<BR><BR>Also, while crafting, crafters don't <B>want</B> attention, or other disturbances.<BR><BR>/RS <P>Message Edited by Ronin SpoilSpot on <SPAN class=date_text>09-25-2006</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>11:32 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Yes, it is obviously them looking at nothing but their bottom line.  Instead of investing in server space, they have chosen to drastically increase lag in the areas that absolutely need it the least.  I'm so glad they "want to try and make it one big community".... where did they get this idea that what THEY want is the same thing as what the PLAYERS want.</P> <P>They gave us the broker system.  Great!  We can put things up for sale, and connect to adventurers that way.  They see who made the products and can always contact them if/when they see them online if they want more stuff.</P> <P>They gave us LFW, and the ability to do a /who on specific crafter-types.  Great!  When wanted or needed, adventurers can CONNECT with the crafters and do business!</P> <P>They gave us crafting chat channels.  Great!  When needed, adventurers can simply plug in and see if anyone is available.</P> <P>So why do they somehow feel that (1) crafters and adventurers are not connected, and (2) THEIR idea of connection is a good one, and one that we want, and one that makes sense, and... here is the biggie, one that benefits their playerbase!!!!!???</P> <P>And as was very aptly spoken just above, crafters don't necessarily WANT distractions while in the middle of crafting... which is exactly what they will get when stuck out in the city (we won't even go down the road of how much worse griefers can make life with lag).</P> <P>This is an absolutely abysmal change.</P> <P><BR></P>

[Magic]

I would like to add that some of us are closet crafters who prefer privacy in the basement away from public view.  There are those of us who don't mind being outdoors in full view.  Allow us the option to craft in private or in public.  Please do not remove the old tradeskill instances.  Thank you!