Architect Archive

Do houses/harvestors diteriate? Because if they dont, it seems likethe architect profession [and possibly most other crafting professios]are doomed to fail. If there is only a finite number of players allowed on a server, then what happens when every single character owns a house? Eventually every player will amass enough wealth in the game to purchase a house...then what? 500 Master Architects in a bidding war trying to sell their best item to some new player who just bought the game? It just seems as though after a certain amount of time, everyone will have the items that they want, and if houses dont decay, they will never have a reason to purchase a new one, thus nulling the point of the architect. [Almost true about other professions but weapons/armor have a decay rate so it is possible for there to be continuous growth]. This is just a thought and any answers explenations anyone may have would be helpful. travo [Bestine, Bria]

Couple things you can do to help:

Convince people that come to you for training that Architect is a really frustrating and unprofitable profession.

Stick to your prices, amass some wealth, and switch crafts altoether before the market totally bottoms out.

We can only pray that in the future, or in expansions, that Architects will have more to do... but I ain't holding my breath. I'm going to finish off master architect, make a few of each deed I may need down the road, and trash it all.

But you are agreeing that this is a doomed profession? It just seems as though alot of this game, however thought out and planned for, didnt consider what would happen in the long run.

It's not doomed. We are just going to have slower sells. Plus we don't know exactly how player cities are going to be implemented. Maybe there will be disposable goods there. Who knows.

it is doomed because it's a durable good with a limited amount of demand that can exist.

I don't believe its doomed, I do however believe it has a glut of architects for 2 reasons. First the PA hall syndrome which is causing the underpriced deed prices making it hard on everyone who is in it for the long haul and second the powerleveler who wants to make it to the top at all costs regardless of how it hurts the true architects that are in it for the satisfaction of building the *durable* goods (read no decay).

There will be alot more for us to build once player cities are in im sure and im betting vehicles and the space expansion will include the wares of the Architect. If you truly want to be an architect you need to hang in there untill the jonnyPA builders and power levelers get tired of it and quit. After all the ones powered for their PA will be pretty usless for anything else unless they drop the architecture line and I doubt most of those want to do nothing but build PA halls since there is a limited need for those.

This is theoretically correct - durable goods should by definition, assuming a moderate inflow of new players, reach a certain point where the number of producers must decrease or the price will decrease.

However, I believe we can expect a few things to be the case:

1.) Player cities will be a big proposition. They will require architects. Lots.

2.) Players will change what they do. Bounty Hunters will become Weaponsmiths. Pikemen will start Artisans. They will need harvesters.

3.) Players will break off from PAs. People are stupid. People fight. People start new PAs, and need new PA Halls.

4.) In the somewhat near future, we may see a viableBattlefield purpose for Architects. This will change the dynamic of the class.

5.) Players will begin to amass money soon. Millions. They will not know what to spend it on. Not knowing what to spend it on, they will purchase many different weapons to try them out. They will purchase different clothes for different occasions, just because they can. And they will purchase random furniture to switch around in their homes. It happened in other games. SWG players are no less vain.

At any rate, the fears are justifiable, and at the current rate we may see their effects to some extent. But, hopefully the dev timeline will come to our rescue.

I would suggest selling the higher quality goods at VERY high prices. Large harvesters and PA Halls require an insane amount of effort and coordination, not to mention dealing with things like buggy power cores. I was thinking 100k for a large harvester and now im thinking 150k and pushing it to 200k is not beyond reason. The ridiculous banter of the bazaar traders selling between 8-10 creds a res is almost forcing this at least on my server. And the CONSTANT lies of people bartering to get low prices just doesn't mean anything when your talking about crafting large harvester. Plus the fact that producing large harvesters are going to kill resources even faster should compel all architects to sell the top of the line installations for insane prices. After reaching master I no longer deal with 9/10 ths of the liars out there.

It was stated above that there will be an infulx of new players...what happens when the server reaches its maximum capacity of players and no new ones are allowed. Or, assuming new players do come in, the only players who could afford a house/harvestor/etc will already have their own. The point is, it is not possible for a market to work when there is an infinite number of goods that never deteriate or are destroyed, and only a finite or limited number of players to use them. People wont simply throw away a harvestor or a house just to help the economy. And when you mentioned the expansion pack and player run cities, why would an architect have anything to do with a space craft design construction? And player run cities, those are just simply groups of houses. If players can only have a limited number of deeds, then they will not opt for multiple houses in numerous cities over vast number of resources from higher class harvestors.

Also in reference to the comment about players emassing huge fortunes...I am not sure how well the economy in this game was thought out, correct me if i am wrong, but hear me out. All the money in the game comes from missions and the players who do them, they intern use that money to buy items. The only way for money to leave the game is for players to put money back in harvestors for upkeep, thus destroying the credits. However, many more players are doing missions than are using harvestors[Estimate 2:1], and since it takes 10 minutes top to earn and easy 2k by doing two missions [Low ballpark figure], and well over a day just for a harvestor to use up its upkeep of 1000. So, 2/3 of people are bringing in money at a rate of 2000 every ten minutes who knows how many times a day, and money is only leaving at best 1000 a day, there is going to be enormous inflation in the game. And when that happens, any new player who joins hte game, will have to play for a much longer time before they can even think of purchasing anything because there is well over 100 times the amount of money than what was in hte game upon initial release. My two cents, whats your opinion?

I don't think there is any question that there will be inflation in this game. The money sinks just don't match the money that is coming into the game through missions.

That said, I do think that there will be a couple of pretty massive money sinks coming in soon. First the personal transporters probably shouldn't be crafter made. They should probably cost a ton, have a limited life, but such a timesaver that people will pay it. They should probably be repairable by artisans, but that would just prolong the inevitable replacement.

I also think that there will be some sort of tax on player cities. The city will have to pay some sort of upkeep, and that upkeep will allow you to hold elections and ensure that no creatures will spawn in the middle of town. The bigger the city the larger the maintenance. There would be some sort of taxing mechanism in the game to facilitate the collectign of the maintenance fee.

I don't know if these 2 moneysinks will help, but they probably should help some.

I have to disagree.

First, harvestors. Whenever there is server downtime, people loose harvestors. Either they deteriorate over time, or they come back to find that the harvestors require too much maint and decide to destroy them. Resource shifts will add to this as well.

Second, houses do deteriorate if the maint isn't paid. How many poeple will take a break from SWG and come back to find their house gone.

Third, player cities. This has already been mentioned.

Fourth, As players leave the server for other servers and as they quit the game, SOE will up the limit of char per server or will do a periodic clean up to get rid of accounts that haven't been accesed for a long time.

Fifth, PA halls. As more people get high level, more ofthem will want to start their own PA hall. Also, as already mentioned, some PA's will fall apart and spawn other PA's form th ashes.

Sixth, bigger houses, more furniture, less architects.

Sensi

Installations Designer, Novice Merchant, Novice Entertainer - Ahazi

I can't say I agree. The view you're taking is simplistic, and makes the critical assumption that no one ever leaves. Houses do decay(and I assume fall down after a certain amount of time fall down.) Same with every other structure. What will happen is if Architects are overpopulated(and perhaps they are,) some will move to other professions, moving the system back towards equilibrium. And if it swings too far? Probaly some will get sick of high prices/low availability and either go or redo architect.