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I know I have ranted and posted and all on this topic for ages now, but I really felt like sending one more letter up the kite string.
UXP had the promise to change the way crafters play. It could have moved crafting into a "participate and XP will come" system, rather than a "I have to log so many hours grinding in order to participate" game that it is so many places. For some reason, though, SWG lost sight of it through beta because of complaints about pace and bad systems. Here is how an all UXP system should have worked:
I. Schematics
Rather than making up a huge list of craftable items, then trying to redistribute them across the professions, you need to start with a patern. Any enginneer, especially a software engineer, worth his salt has studied the concept of design patters. The fact is, in software design, relationships are hard. In order to distribute system implementation across a large team you need to establish known relationship patterns between components that are "known good" and reuse them. This makes it easier for a team memeber who is unfamilial with a subsystem to come in and get up to speed because he doesn't have to grok the local systems design.
Craftables for a good system are like this. You are establishing relationships between players with craftables, and you need to establish a good patter.
a. One Social Service, One Easy Sell, One Cooperative Build.
This was my standard "level" pattern for crafters when I was doing MUSH development in the early 90's and I am a firm believer in it. Projecting this pattern into SWG, I would have the following:
1. Repair. This is your social service. Repair is the easy XP. Repair should allow you to repair items another character has dropped or has equipped. This means there is no potential for theft/scams. Much like "healing items", this would pay your UXP at the momement the action is performed. This is your short feedback loop, quick payoff activity.
2. Ammo. Consumables are important. The best implementation of consumables is a generic consumable, like ammo in AO. Bullets are bullets. However, a high level character using a high level gun consumes "more" bullets/plasma/batteries than a low level character. Likewise, a high level crafter can produce more/faster. Decidedly, however, NOT better. This means that as the population ages their demand for these consumables grows. It also means that the new crafter entering the market can make ammo just as good as the high level crafter's, and just as in demand. The fact that they can't produce as much, however, doesn't prevent them from selling their wares to the elders, and the fact that their per unit materials costs are the same as the elder crafter means they aren't at an inherent price disadvantage because the elders have an economy of scale. Elders get production bonuses, not efficiency bonuses.
3. Complex schematics that require more than one person to complete are imporant. Making sure that high level droids require a textile and a torch (weapon). High level deeds require droids. However you structure it, component schematics need to be crossing skills and professions IMMEDIATELY, with component schematics *higher up* the tree than the finished product. This gives you the same mechanical pattern you have with combact. If a schematic requires 2 components from Eng IV, 2 components from Dom IV and a post-process or modification from Biz IV, but you get the schematic at Novice Artisan then you have the option for 3 players with 4 skill boxes made to produce the item, or 1 player with 12 skill boxes filled. Moreover, since the 3 players are producting a high level item together, they are advancing in other areas faster than the 1 person (see XP distribution below).
The "higher up component" model also makes the sales model for the system (a) more realistic *gasp* and (b) more logical in terms of sales impetus on newer players.
It is more realistic, because that's just how things are. It takes a much more advanced team to build a video card than it does to assemble an OEM computer. It takes much more effort and engineering to produce all the components for a car than it does to do the final assembly. The lower level the stage of construction, the more techinical and skill based it is. Yes, I am sure someone can come up with exceptions, but I think its safe to say most of the products we would see in a Sci-Fi game fit this mold.
Secondly, it means that the higher up you go, the more selling to other crafters you do. That is, your market narrows from the general population shopping for goods to the smaller community of other crafters. This puts the drive to reach out and establish those sales relationships where it should be, on the elders.
II. XP Distribution
I know there have been issues with the devs reworking XP. First, I think if they had established a reasonable design pattern with services and consumables driving the early crafter, the immediate feedback of grinding XP would have been unneeded. Secondly, XP values need to not be multiplied, but exponentized (is that a word?).
In a UXP model, durable goods are generally all going to be your "cooperative" complex schematics. They should continue to pay UXP over the life of the item, and the XP payed needs to increase exponentially between levels. Let me go back to my earlier example.
Final assembly of an item is a low level task. It pays plenty XP, but the components are the driver because they are consumed. If our three man group each gets XP of those high level components that they can apply to other skills, then they are advancing faster. Since they need each other to complete the task, there is no logic to "grind up one tree then grind high level items" to advance. With the current system, however, bottom feeding or top feeding makes perfect sense, because XP is payed out not based on advancement, but resources consumes primarily. At any rate, barring Self-Use XP, the high level player "soloing" a task is still rewarded, but only for the final assembly-- an ongoing payout. He would rather be doing final assembly on high level items, working with higher level crafters, or performing higher level services. The rewards structure encourages working together.
Since XP payout on these items is ongoing, it is more nebulous. However, this is an easy place to begin tuning advancement. I would suggest that you balance this against the baseline of the "group". If you are expecting a 5 man group for early combat tasks, then 1 crafter, or a team of 3 lower level crafters should advance as quickly as a 5 man group using their weapons. That is, you PAY UXP, based on XP EARNED with the item. This saves you a gajillion constant database tweaks. All you have to tweak later is the percentage earned XP payout at a skill or even profession level, once you can observe how the relative crafter/user population will pan out. This also fulfills the UXP promise of supporting the casual player. A player could log in, play for 10 hours and go away. A month later, he could log in an advance. Since the immendiate XP payouts are relatively low on these items, but the long terms are huge, it narrows the time/advancement cure. Furthermore, since the XP payouts are exponential with level, the player who makes a gajillion long duration items won't bottom feed through the high levels, rather will simply get a "running start" at them.
III Resources
Another system that fell by the wayside was building-building interaction. Personally I thought this was key to the resources system and added the same dynamic. Players gathering resources should be more effective as a group. Screw sampling. Its boring in the extreme. However, if player mines were given their productivity bonus for multiple mines operating in the same area, you are encouraging "neighbors" to coordinate. Combine this with industrialization and UXP on resources, and you have a true community-building exercise for production that sees all the members of a localized area rewarded for working together, and provides a logical springboard into player cities.
There are a few things in here that are even counter to what SWG was "going" to be. Personally, though, I think the model for SWG could have worked. Yes, schematic revokation had a phychological "problem", but there was never anything like reapair or ammo to fill the gap. I still think their original design could have been workable with some tweaks. However, the development team tweaked the wrong knobs, effectivly "dialing down" the design intent rather than correcting the relationship patterns. Since this would obviously never correct the issues, eventually they dialed back the design to the point where there are no relationships. Bleh.
_________________
The SWG Discussionwill no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the board permanently. The last remnants of the Old Boards have been swept away.
The regional devs now have direct control over threads. Inability to post will keep the local systems in line.
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