SWTOR

[Cyrrex]

Still, following the logic that "it was in the movies as a reference to a character so it's alright to use it as a class name", I propose a petition to rename the smuggler Gunslinger to Nerfherder.

Hah, that would be awesome.

Really, non of this is movie canon anyway, so who gives a shit.

[Paelos]

If there was a Nerfherder class, I'd name mine Scruffy.

[tmp]

Yeah, I always figured that it was used as a pejorative for to describe Ben an old man with white hair and beard who wears long robes who has strange powers and may, or may not, have a staff with a knob on the end. 

That and probably because it was easy way to explain the idea jedi is guy with strange powers to first-time audience that'd have no clue about that.

[Lantyssa]

I think the idea was to keep Luke from asking questions so he didn't go off on some galaxy-spanning adventure where he might cross paths with Daddy.

[Cyrrex]

I think the idea was to keep Luke from asking questions so he didn't go off on some galaxy-spanning adventure where he might cross paths with Daddy.

I agree with you, but really then, shouldn't he have chosen his words more carefully?  Going off on an adventure with a crazy old wizard is exactly the sort of thing that sounds like assloads of fun.  Especially for a kid who already professed his desire to join the academy.

[Surlyboi]

I think the idea was to keep Luke from asking questions so he didn't go off on some galaxy-spanning adventure where he might cross paths with Daddy.

Or worse, get into trouble with the empire and then have them track the source back to them and end up as smoldering corpses outside their own home.

Oh, wait...

[Malakili]

Or worse, get into trouble with the empire and then have them track the source back......
....
....
....
home.

fixed.

[Samprimary]

may, or may not, have a staff with a knob on the end. 

I found out today I am a wizard

[Lantyssa]

(...and I do mean rimshot...)

[Tannhauser]

Maybe Owen's still a bit miffed that Obi-Wan kidnapped and gave him the kid of the second most dangerous creature in the galaxy?

[DraconianOne]

Maybe Owen's still a bit miffed that Obi-Wan kidnapped and gave him the kid of the second most dangerous creature in the galaxy?

Not enough to change the kids name, obviously.

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, but Luke Lars just sounds too... Norwegian.

[Draegan]

Or worse, get into trouble with the empire and then have them track the source back......
....
....
....
home.

fixed.

That got me.  Lol

[Surlyboi]

Or worse, get into trouble with the empire and then have them track the source back......
....
....
....
home.

fixed.

That got me.  Lol

Same. Took my joke and made it better.

[UnSub]

Maybe Owen's still a bit miffed that Obi-Wan kidnapped and gave him the kid of the second most dangerous creature in the galaxy?

Obi-Wan: "Hey there Owen - you know your half-brother? The one who I trained into one of the deadliest killers in the galaxy, who slaughtered those sand people like dogs after they took your foster mother? Well, he's now extra-psycho and has full government backing. So here's HIS child. No, no, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know he's still alive and here, on his birth planet, which he could one day come back to. Look after him for me, will you? Since I'm sure this will end well, I'm off over those hills and won't bother interacting with you for the next, say, 18 years. Especially not to train the son of an incredibly powerful Jedi."

"No, I'll be too busy having blue-ghost Qui-Gon Jinn bust my balls every day from here on out how badly I screwed up."

[Cyrrex]

....must....resist....nerdfight....

[Lucas]

And here we go, "Crew Skills" (also known as "Crafting in SWTOR") unveiled:

http://www.swtor.com/info/systems/crew-skills


A couple days ago, Darth Hater also posted an interview with Lead Writer Daniel Erickson about the same subject.

http://darthhater.com/2010/11/12/daniel-erickson-on-crew-skills/


We'll see how it goes, but it looks very very promising.

[Ingmar]

That actually seems pretty cool in theory.

[Reg]

I'm deeply concerned that this crafting isn't enough like Wow crafting. Or perhaps it's that it's too much like WoW.  Either way I'm deeply concerned and predicting doom.

[sam, an eggplant]

It's not entirely dissimilar to EVE online's skill training system, except it doesn't directly let you progress your character when not playing. It gives you a reason to login every day, even when not actively playing, to trigger long crafting or resource gathering actions. Pretty neat.

[DraconianOne]

I thought I was a fairly big SW nerd but I have never come across a Houk before - that Krogan lizard type dude in the video. Obviously haven't been reading the right EU stuff.

[tmp]

They had a guy frozen in carbonite in that video. Now that's sort of housing furniture i can get behind.

[UnSub]

That actually seems pretty cool in theory.

I'm waiting to see what balance there is to this system - any cooldowns so that you don't set a companion to just do missions for you all the time, or treasure hunt? Set every one to 23 hours, get the best outcome you can.

Plus it sounds good described, but will end up being a series of menus and there will be a demonstrably 'best' crafting companion / class that players will use as an alt.

[Paelos]

Plus it sounds good described, but will end up being a series of menus and there will be a demonstrably 'best' crafting companion / class that players will use as an alt.

This general knowledge of the MMO player habit is what concerns me most about the "story-driven" thing as well as the companion things.

[caladein]

Well, there's five slots but with possibly needing a companion each for solo play, grouping, and a few crafting/mission specialists that doesn't leave a lot of room for choice on the basis of flavor or story.  Which is a bummer.

On its face though, it's not an explicitly awful system.  Unlike the animations.

[Lantyssa]

Well, there's five slots but with possibly needing a companion each for solo play, grouping, and a few crafting/mission specialists that doesn't leave a lot of room for choice on the basis of flavor or story.  Which is a bummer.

The way I read it is three slots that can be gathering, production, or missions.  Since they seem to show the number but the names are unrevealed, four gathering, six crafting, and four mission skills.  3/14 isn't a lot a single character can do.  I'm not sure why you need five slots at a crafting station.

[tmp]

I'm not sure why you need five slots at a crafting station.

Maybe they're planning 5-6 companions per player class at high end? Depending how long it takes to produce an item/carry out a mission all of them may get occupied, probably.

[Lucas]

Looking at the Dev Tracker on the official forums, Damion Schubert took the time to be a bit more specific about the Crew Skills:

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

Damion Schubert wrote:

To be more precise, players can have up to three crew skills but only one of those can be a crafting skill. The fictional reason is that you only can have room for one crafting table on your ship, but the real reason is that we don't want all players to be self-sufficient.

We call the system Crew Skills because they are skills possessed by your amorphous crew as a whole. If your crew can go treasure hunting, you can order any of your crew members to run treasure hunting missions. Vette may have a bonus to treasure hunting (being a native treasure hunter and all), but to be honest we currently have these bonuses set to be relatively mild - we don't want people to choose NOT to take their favorite companion out on the field with them because the economic bonus to keeping them on the ship is that much greater.

So you can mix 'n match among the Crew Skills, but keeping in mind that you are allowed only 1 crafting.

Damion Schubert wrote:

So just to throw a couple more stray thoughts about our philosophy.

- No, you the player cannot craft currently - which is to say you cannot choose to watch the progress bar fill up yourself. That being said, to us, watching a progress bar has always been the least interesting part of crafting in other MMOs. The part of being a crafter that is interesting to us is things like finding rare schematics, finding hard-to-find components, and the social game of finding customers and suppliers. We really wanted devoted crafters to be able to focus on these aspects of crafting, and not so much on the 'watch a progress bar go forward' part of things. Crafting should be a social thing - staring at a progress bar is not.

-No, you don't see companions running missions out 'in the real world'. While I laugh at the idea of a stream of companion characters filing into the palace on Alderaan, it's unfeasible for a lot of reasons.

- The real test of the value of crafting is less about whether companions or players are swinging the hammer and tongs, and more about how the itemization of crafting is balanced in a way that the gear is useful. Crafting is important to the systems team, and we're devoted to ensuring that crafted gear has a place in the economy, especially at the endgame, and doubly especially for the devoted crafters.

- It's worth noting that we really want the system to support the casual crafter (the guy who is taking crafting largely to outfit himself while levelling up) and the devoted crafter (the guy who wants to be known as the best Armormech in the galaxy). Supporting the former means making the system accessible and easy. Supporting the latter means ensuring that hard work can allow you to provide goods and services that almost no one in the galaxy can. The systems design team is striving to satisfy both groups of people.

-My own personal goal is that some crafters can get so good that players all over the server seek them out. My problem being a crafter in most other MMOs is that you tend to become a guild's pet at some point, and you're expected to do all of the work for free. We want those devoted crafters to be exceptional enough that they can actually demand a price, and that people will actually break out of the guild in order to pursue those goods and services. The system isn't there yet, but we have plans...

[Koyasha]

Well, it doesn't sound horribad, but it still sounds bad.  Specifically the part where you're restricted to one crafting station thingy.  The only thing left to see is if there are unique advantages for the crafter alone, like nodrop items that you must personally craft, or must possess a certain amount of skill to use.  If there are not, it will be largely ignorable (for those of us who hate crafting) since you can just go buy what you want (and good for those who like crafting, since they have a strong market for their best wares).  If there are such crafter-unique items, it will be both annoying and non-ignorable since it will be necessary to match up the right crafting skill with the right class in order to get the optimum bonus, etc.

[UnSub]

I'm failing to see, based on that description, how any player isn't going to become a crafter. Dedication to crafting would seem to only change how quickly you pass through the crafting tree.

And in an economy where everyone is a crafter, things tend to blow out fairly quickly. Rare materials in MMOs only fuel hyper-inflation while players grind out the low end of crafting in order to get to the good stuff. One reason that EvE's economy works is that there is lots of item destruction as well as possibility for creation, so I'll guess we'll have to see how SWOR handles taking resources out of the economy.

Plus has BioWare ever got an armour / equipment system that is approaching balanced? I haven't played Dragon Age, but my impressions are that they haven't.

[Ginaz]

From what I've read, while the crafting probably won't be as deep as say swg, there will be a place for crafters.  High end stuff can be made by crafters (though I don't know how it will compare to the high end loot drops), there will be "rare" crafting patterns and since you can only have one crafting line there will be an interdependency within the community.  I've never really been into crafting in any game I've played but this sounds like something I might get into.

[Lantyssa]

Interdependency has a lot of problems on its own.

People will just make sure their characters have different crafting professions and do it all themselves anyways.  Limiting you to any three of crafting, gathering, and missions seems like it'll be more annoying than causing interdependence.

[Goumindong]

"-My own personal goal is that some crafters can get so good that players all over the server seek them out. My problem being a crafter in most other MMOs is that you tend to become a guild's pet at some point, and you're expected to do all of the work for free. We want those devoted crafters to be exceptional enough that they can actually demand a price, and that people will actually break out of the guild in order to pursue those goods and services. The system isn't there yet, but we have plans..."

This is impossible without competitive advantages... which is impossible without either exclusive resources or knowledge... which is impossible in a "fair game".

So don't expect them to make this work. There are some ways you can simulate it but they aren't all that attractive.

[Nebu]

In Tale in the Desert they made this possible by a) limiting resources, b) making the demands of getting to a high level of proficiency costly, and c) by requiring a skill component in crafting. 

I don't see any way to implement this in a very limited basis without requiring some kind of skill to separate the great crafters from the good.  Could be twitch, could be spacial relationships, could be puzzle solving. I'd welcome any crafting challenge beyond rarity, time, and cost. 

[Goumindong]

In Tale in the Desert they made this possible by a) limiting resources, b) making the demands of getting to a high level of proficiency costly, and c) by requiring a skill component in crafting. 

I don't see any way to implement this in a very limited basis without requiring some kind of skill to separate the great crafters from the good.  Could be twitch, could be spacial relationships, could be puzzle solving. I'd welcome any crafting challenge beyond rarity, time, and cost. 

On the other hand, ATITD was relatively small, frankly, i think those things will all be solved to a point. As well, since you aren't crafting yourself there isn't much room for mini-game type solutions.