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Can someone please explain pre-CU crafting to me?
pinkdaisy
Member CommonPosts: 361
I saw this in a darkfall thread today:
"Pre-SWG had the right idea when it came to crafting. It's a shame that no other MMO has picked up on that, and expanded it."
I played SWG just briefly right after the CU, but I didn't enjoy the game quickly gave up. Thus I was never exposed to the crafting. Can someone give me an executive summary of the main highlights of pre-CU crafting, and why it was fun/interesting/entertaining?
thanks!
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
Comments
It worked pretty much how it does today. What the CU did was change the crafting formulas in regards to resources and components...especially for armorsmith and weaponsmith. Well...weaponsmith was effectively eliminated. The millions of resources that crafters had gathered/purchased had become obsolete.
What they did was remove the persistent world moniker from the game when that was done. They removed player accomplishment and pretty much invited player angst and bitterness. Even worse when the NGE hit.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
i dont think the core crafting system from pre-cu is much different as it is today, besides the fact that some of the professions who had crafting abilities (doctor, smuggler, etc) have been removed.
the main difference on crafting in swg i suppose comes from the great depth brought by the diversity of components and subcomponents which can be crafted in order to craft the final product. additionaly, the crafters abilities, combined with the crafting tools's efficency (crafted) and the crafting station efficiency (crafted), as well as the stats from the resources used will all affect the outcome of the product.
in essence, a crafter has to create (or buy) tools, stations, components and subcomponents which are all crafted and their outcome depends on a wide array of factors.
resources are also an interesting subject when it comes to crafting because they randomly spawn across the world (not in a fix spot unlike other games) and they posess many stats which could make the resource useful for a particular product, but not for another one (eg a crafting tool requires a metal with high conductivity wheras a chef pie might need high meat quality). to find these random resources crafters can produce surveyance tools which scan the concentration (or lack thereof) of resources across a certain area. they then travell across the planet sampling the resource location until they find one wich suits their needs.
finally, crafting in swg allows crafters to experiment on their product during the crafting process to increase their stats. there is a risk in doing so but with the propper equipement and skills the outcome is generally positive. At the end of the process, an option to create a schematic of the item (rather than the item itself) is available. this schematic can be used in crafted factories which are placed by the user very much as houses to build their product automatically with the stats stated on the schematic. this allows an architect, for instance, to insert the schematic he crafted for a char onto the factory, come back an hour later (even if he has been offline) and find 10 chairs waiting for him at his factory. of course, factories require maintenance and power resources to function.
i believe that is the main idea which still remains today. one of the aspects which has changed though was that prior to the nge, there used to be professions which combined both crafting, combat or service abilities (doctor, smuggler, scout, medic, ranger) whereas in the nge combat professions have been stripped from their crafting abilities (jedi being the only exception - they are still allowed to craft their lightsaber) and crafting professions have been merged (one type of crafter can now do both tailor and chef, for instance).
the ability to hire npcs as private merchants to sell your goods in your house and other structures is not crafting but still a very welcomed solution for those merchants who can comfortably unload their factories and upload their goods to their merchants to sell in their player city, without having to travel long distances to sell them at the planet bazaar.
Besides more recepies than most MMO's can dream of and virtually everything being player made (though this caused huge issues for pve'ers, aka no loot so little point) best part about SWG crafting was the huge reduction in "clickyness" and monotony normally required in other games (you know the "dig, dig, dig ,dig, smelt, smelt smelt, craft menu, crafting sub menu, make item, congrats you have sucessfully made a screw" process
)
At release it was one of the few things SWG not only got right but exceled at
I need a new MMO world to call home as Tom Chilton keeps destroying them
Pre-CU crafting was literally like being a employee of SOE. You would get home from work, put on your apron and start your second job. The difference is the one you do in the day pays you, and crafting in SWG you pay to do.
It was a vast and detailed system enjoyed by a lot of people, but I hated it. Was a pain to find items as well, as vendors were decentralized and spread all over the universe (literally). 1/2 the time you'd find the vendor you were looking for only to find he had quit the game, but his house wass still up, chocked full of empty vendors. I played pre-cu, post cu and tried the nge action. The game never really stayed with me long in any form. I found it 1/2 baked in all its incarnations. I pray to god that SWTOR leaves everything SWG had, including the political and crafting systems, in a ditch and does its own thing.
Should have been a licence to print money, too bad SOE screwed it up, with a lot of help from LucasArts (the company George Lucas uses to violate the greatest thing he ever made over, and over again).
eh. some actualy enjoy crafting as much as you enjoy slashing and poking your sword time, and time, and time, and time again. its just a differnt way of enjoyment.
the depths was definaltely there. difference is in todays mmos crafting is implemented as a distraction to an otherwise pure combat mmo, whereas in swg crafting was, together with combat, a core system in the game, which in turn contributed greatly to its social aspect.
i agree though that initially, finding products was a bit frustrating because the bazaar would only list active vendors but not their selling products, and the buyer could only rely on the sellers propaganda to find the goods they needed.
this was solved though once they introduced the feature which allowed browsing npc merchant's goods at the bazaar, removing the risk to go there and find nothing of what you need it.
Also,
The system of Pre-Cu was not that different to what is in the game now, but the world is completely different into which the crafted items are utilized. Back then, almost everything was useful and everything had a use. Now? More than 90% of crafted items from the Pre-CU times have either been removed (with the proffs that made them), made useless, or not as good as loot items. At the begining, player crafter items were the basis of everything. Now? You could play with fully loot gear at only a minimal disadvantage.
Another difference is that in the old days, it was not possible for the dedicated crafter to mine or harvest enough materials to keep yourself supplied. As a result, people then were hiring hunters and miners to make up the difference. Everyone has a place in the crafting system, even the full combat guys that would pull weapon/armor suppliments/components from the highest end creatures.
Most everyone had a place in the crafting system, and now, with no decay and loot weapons/armor/structures/vehicles/ships being available, the primary crafting professions are barely relevant.
Another question: did this system allow continued improvements of items over the long run from the experimentation process? Maybe i'm not understanding it entirely but if I had a sword and experimented to end up with a +1 damage sword could I in turn eventually perhaps invent a +2 sword from the +1 version?
I've been working on my little 2D MMO for what's going on 5 years now and it amazes me how many similarities there are in my system.
I've heard people talk about harvesters in SWG. Can you explain their workings?
BTW i tried googling for all this stuff but most of the results were for macros.
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
Did items decay from use only or would simply having them around cause decay? Could non-crafter players repair their items or could they be repaired at all or did they just eventually break necessitating a replacement?
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
Another question: did this system allow continued improvements of items over the long run from the experimentation process? Maybe i'm not understanding it entirely but if I had a sword and experimented to end up with a +1 damage sword could I in turn eventually perhaps invent a +2 sword from the +1 version?
I've been working on my little 2D MMO for what's going on 5 years now and it amazes me how many similarities there are in my system.
I've heard people talk about harvesters in SWG. Can you explain their workings?
BTW i tried googling for all this stuff but most of the results were for macros.
Over time items were improved in two ways: the crafter was able to increase their "experimentaion" (read improvement) points over time by putting together a "ccrafting suit" and 2. by the gradual imrpovement of materials over time.
When you had a recipe that used a particular steel, for instance, and another type of that particular steel spawned with better stats, you would get a marginal improvement in the final stats of the item. Generally, these were never large improvements at once, as many items had multiple materials and multiple components and subcomponents. It could be the difference between a DL44 pistol doing 100-200 damage and having 1000 condition and then the improved one doing 102-204 and 1020 condition using the new material.
Harvesters were player made devices that used housing slots and could be dropped on a concentration of a resource of a certain type. Using the survey skill, a surveyor could track down locations with high concentrations of various minerals using a survey tool. Miners came in small, medium and large (basically) and were of various levels of quality based on the skill and materials of the crafter. Mineral miners, for instance, could mine any metal, ore, or solid petrochemical. Chem miners could mine liquid petro fuels, polymers and fiberplasts, for instance. The harvesters would mine non stop, at a given rate, based on the extraction rate of the miner times the concentration of the resource on which it was dropped, until the miner ran out of power, out of maintainence money or the resource "rolled" out of availibility.
Mining is more or less the same as the old days, only the devs have but in high effiency/productivity miners over the years, so it became much easier for a single person to satisfy their own resource needs.
Those high efficiency harvesters would have been a nice thing to have pre-CU.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Did items decay from use only or would simply having them around cause decay? Could non-crafter players repair their items or could they be repaired at all or did they just eventually break necessitating a replacement?
Decay happened as a function of 2 factors, use and death penalty. If you were weaing a set of armor, and took it out all day hunting Rancors, it might take a good bit of wear from the beating you took all day. Also, the rate of decay was a function of how much damage "got through" and damaged the player. A piece of armor that had a base protection level of 60% would decay "faster" than one with a protection of level of 70%. Also the protections would decay with stats of an item, at the lowest end. A weapon with 25% condition or less, would start to do less damage. At 0 condition, the weapon became useless. "Misusing" an item would also increase the wear rate. Using weapon "power-ups" for example would allow for higher damage, but cause wear on the weapon at double the rate.
Also, decay happened to items as a function of death. If you died in combat, all of your "uninsured" equipment would take a 5% condition hit. If you paid to insure the items, the decay penalty was only 1%. Not all items were subject to decay. Decay was mostly restricted to weapons, armor, clothing, vehicles, ships, and pets.
Repair kits were available for most items. Anyone could use one.Each time an item was repaired, the max condition was reduced. The "quality" of the repair determined the amount of condition reduction. A "near perfect" repair might only reduce condition by 10% but a Great repair would reduce the condition 20%. So, a never repaired gun might have 250/1000 condition before a repair and 800/800 after a "great" repair. A "failed repair" would reduce an item to having 1/1 condition. Repair skills by type, we also in the game, but it is not certain they actually did anything. As an armor crafter, I had a bonus to armor repair, wether or not it did anything, but anyone could use a repair kit successfully.
Not matter how well the repairs were done, an item would eventually wear out and need to be replaced.
Those high efficiency harvesters would have been a nice thing to have pre-CU.
Yes and no. Good for the individual crafter, probably bad for overall player inter-dependency and therfore bad for the overall game. I kept 6 or 8 combat types employed as hunters and miners constantly, when they weren't PvPing, so it was a good balance, I guess. It allowed them to play their own playstyle most of the time and still earn a decent income.
I was a Master Armorsmith on Kauri.
I found that who did the repair didn't matter but the quality of the repair tool did. I could make 100% repair tools since I used extremely high COND copper in the assembly. They sold like hot cakes like my armor did.
The sybiotic relationship between crafter and combat was a cornerstone of the game pre-CU. It was truly unique.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Those high efficiency harvesters would have been a nice thing to have pre-CU.
Yes and no. Good for the individual crafter, probably bad for overall player inter-dependency and therfore bad for the overall game. I kept 6 or 8 combat types employed as hunters and miners constantly, when they weren't PvPing, so it was a good balance, I guess. It allowed them to play their own playstyle most of the time and still earn a decent income.
I hired out a ton of mining and creature harvesting. I was ok with my heavy harvesters. I mostly used mine for the "HOT" spawn of something or other.
I loved my resource warehouse. It was an accomplishment when you could bump up your resists even 1%. I was able to hit 40% stun layers and you would have thought the world ended...LOL
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
I had some 99.9% armor repair tools and people still got a lot of failures with them. I had an extra 16 points of armor repair by the end, and I noticed only a slight difference, if any.
Yeah, those were good days. I remember commissioning many 20 person hunting groups for dant wooly or lokian leather or whatever. Never had a shortage of people that wanted to hunt, and I always threw in a discount for those that did.
Those high efficiency harvesters would have been a nice thing to have pre-CU.
Yes and no. Good for the individual crafter, probably bad for overall player inter-dependency and therfore bad for the overall game. I kept 6 or 8 combat types employed as hunters and miners constantly, when they weren't PvPing, so it was a good balance, I guess. It allowed them to play their own playstyle most of the time and still earn a decent income.
I hired out a ton of mining and creature harvesting. I was ok with my heavy harvesters. I mostly used mine for the "HOT" spawn of something or other.
I loved my resource warehouse. It was an accomplishment when you could bump up your resists even 1%. I was able to hit 40% stun layers and you would have thought the world ended...LOL
Yeah, I remember getting from 40% to 41% on those stun layers because of a good spawn of that damn crism ore and I was happy for days...
Those high efficiency harvesters would have been a nice thing to have pre-CU.
Yes and no. Good for the individual crafter, probably bad for overall player inter-dependency and therfore bad for the overall game. I kept 6 or 8 combat types employed as hunters and miners constantly, when they weren't PvPing, so it was a good balance, I guess. It allowed them to play their own playstyle most of the time and still earn a decent income.
I hired out a ton of mining and creature harvesting. I was ok with my heavy harvesters. I mostly used mine for the "HOT" spawn of something or other.
I loved my resource warehouse. It was an accomplishment when you could bump up your resists even 1%. I was able to hit 40% stun layers and you would have thought the world ended...LOL
Yeah, I remember getting from 40% to 41% on those stun layers because of a good spawn of that damn crism ore and I was happy for days...
That crism was a bane of mine. The absolute best on Kauri spawned in late 2003 for stun layers and finally after waiting and watching for years some finally spawned in 2005 just in time for the crafting change with the CU and NGE.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Even though the crafting window and ingredient assembly is the same now as it used to be, it was a lot more complex back then since it was much harder to readh weapon and armor caps and looted components (like ackley bone, krayt tissue, rancor teeth) were much more valuable and made the weapon's outcome differ. For example a scatter pistol with capped server resources with "perfect" (say it was 90% back then) success would be 89-252 with an attack speed of 2.1, add in a +100 damage krayt tissue and you'd easily reach 350-400 max damage and then get a 32% damage slice. That's how I got a 3.7 241-692 damage Krayt DE-10. It took a lot of effort to make quality products in the player controlled economy back then.
And the resource spawns were much slimmer back then, the game went live June 2003 but it wasn't until Octobor 2003 when we could finally get ostrine ore to make T21s and then a few months more for culsion gas and so on, I was one of those Uncle Owens that kept an eye out for resources (and read www.swgcraft.com) and went to lay down 10-20 harvesters when one came in.
Nowadays everyone makes the same damn damage gun, the only difference between sellers are prices nowadays. And the loot controlled economy is crushed as well with nearly everyone that's played for a year or longer carrying well over a billion credits.
if ya still have SWG CDs just go play preCU and try for yourselve lol
Basically they turned the game into a loot based game so crafters have a much lesser role in the game than they did. The mechanics work pretty much the same as they do now but in the old game crafters had a big role. There used to be things like Decay which kept the economy going and they took that out too. They've also given all the kool items to TCG screwing over crafters once more because really all them items should have gone to crafters.
Pre-CU SWG had a very interesting crafting system but I could never fully get into it due to the user interface for it. The leveling of crafting skills required an ungodly ammount of repetetive crafting and my mouse hand was going numb after making a dozen items. Of course crafting was one of the areas of the game that you could not macro (legally). No matter how much I wanted to get into the crafting side of it, the skillup grind was just too horrible for me.
I wasn't a hologrinder per se, because I would play a mastered class for at least a month to try to learn the mechanics of it well enough to later decide on a template I enjoyed the most. I hacked through swordsman according to my first holocron.... then crafted my way through doctor, followed by combat medic, then my last holocron ended up being Bio-Engineer. I literally wore out my left mouse button early into Bio Eng. At that point, after all of that crafting I decided "Screw it !!" I downloaded Auto-It , got my mouse setup to automate the necessary clicks and movements just to get through that last crafting grind. I knew I was risking a ban in doing so - but my wrist, mouse and sanity were preserved and I continued through as many professions as I could try until the NGE hit.
One other thing I would add is the ability to create diverse items. Items weren't "cookiee cutter" the way crafting is in most games now.
Crafters had/have experimentation points that are used when crafting an item. Depending on the item, different base attributes were available to be raised using those experimentation points. For many items it really only made sense to use one of those options, but the more complex items offered more variety.
A good example was Med Pack crafting. The crafter had a choice of number of uses and efficiency. So the crafter would have to choose between maxing out the number of uses (good for general combat situations where you may just need a little boost to health), maxing out the efficiency (for high-end combat situations) or a balance between the two. If you were going to be in a situation where you would only need a few smaller heals, you went with the Med Packs that offered more uses at the cost of a lower efficiency. If you were going to one of the higher-end dungeons where you would be taking more damage at a time, you went with the high efficiency Med Packs which provided larger heals at the expense of available uses.
That was really the prevailing theme of pre-CU (and to some extent, current) SWG crafting: balance. Crafting was a full profession in itself and not just something people did on the side, and the depth of the process legitimized that set-up. Crafters were not self-sufficient, though, and required interaction with other players and professions. Combatants needed crafters because the economy was set-up to be a player-based one; loot items were basically junk to be sold off as "vendor trash" and not as useable equipment, but to get good equipment often required certain looted components.
The lack of character levels facilitated this interdependency between crafters and combatants. If you went with a full crafting template, most aggressive creatures were instant death for you (nothing like getting killed by an aggressive butterfly while checking your factories to ruin your day!). To get your resources, you needed assistance from combatants. And combatants needed crafters to get their equipment. Since the game world didn't sell items, prices were set by the supply and demand of the players. Not only was there an in-depth crafting system, there was also a great economic game involved as well.
People underestimate what a big difference capped stats and identical items make in the current system compared to the old. Take this scenario for example--this is how you would make the highest quality weapons in the new system vs. how you would have to make them in the old system:
In the new, NGE system: As long as you have mid to high grade resources, you can make the best crafted weapons on the server. WooT! Congrats! Instant gratification now-now-now gameplay ftw!!
In Pre-CU: First you have to get the BEST resources available on the server for your particular item. If you weren't around to harvest them yourself then you have to pay tons for them, because it's one-of-a-kind and you have no idea when or if anything that good will ever be available for harvest again. A resource equally as good could be available next week, but most likely you'd have to wait about 6 months to a year to see anything comparable spawn for harvesting. Remember that there are several different resources required for each item, so you can see how difficult rounding up all the high quality ones would be for your particular item.
Next you have to get enough enhancers for your item(s). As stated above, quality krayt tissues would also be worth quite a bit, the really good ones are some of the most valuable items on the server. (Notice balance between combat and crafters--combat characters loot very valuable items but he needs a crafter to make use of them. Interdependece ftw.) If you're making scout blasters, you're in luck, cause you could get about 3-4 guns from a set, but if you're looking for a high-powered T-21 rifle then chances are you will only get 1 item from that particular set of tissues.
Them when it's all said and done, you get your weapon(s), but they aren't quite finished yet. Next, you take the weapon(s) to a player with Master Smuggling (and high quality, crafted slicing tools--interdependence between players again) and pay him to slice your weapon for you. (Better find someone you trust, smugglers ARE space pirates after all so you'll want to find one with a good rep or he may never give your item back.) Then you cross your fingers and PRAY that you get a damage slice. If you're unlucky and get a speed slice, you have a decent weapon, no shame in that, but it could be lots better. However, if you're lucky enough to get a damage slice, congrats, you have one of the best weapons on the server. And it is ONE-OF-A-KIND. Amazing, huh? (You would probably at this point invest in an anti-decay kit, another one of the most expensive items on the server but well worth it since then your weapon would never decay or break from use.)
So yeah, the current crafting system is nothing compared to how incredible it used to be.
Man this thread, actually made me stop just browsing these forums and sign up so I could reply. A lot of folks have already said it but on some servers certain armorsmiths or weaponsmiths were legends. A pistol or rifle on my old server naritus from edooka was like owning a legendary piece of gear. People would look at your character and your gear, see who made it and be awed. And the prior posters are right. Gear was unique and appreciated. The best crafters had just as much status (maybe even more) as the best combat ppl. They needed each other. Was a wonderfully deep crafting and economy system.
Imagine if a game as popular and successful as WoW had the same sort of crafting and economy as SWG. I know its apples to oranges but it really helped the immersion and replay value of SWG. Hunting solo or with a team was just as fun as doing dungeon crawls. I wasnt a big crafter myself, I was always a smuggler and slicer but I remember what a big deal it was as a customer to hear that my favorite armorer achieved a +1% in stun resists or had a rare cache of ore for their next production run. You'd plan your week around making sure you were first in line to get some of that gear.