Architect Archive

They can't and won't stop people from hording if we've got a reason to. Right now we've got reason to horde for a lot of things. Good material is rare. It only makes sense for us to keep adaquete raw material stock on hand. So of course we horde.

e.g. I make high quality crafting stations. I need high OQ and Cond resources. Steel, copper, aluminum, gas, ore and polymer. If a good spawn pops up I can put a half dozen heavies on it for a week and get 500-700k of it. 500-700k will last me friggin forever when making stations. If I want more than that I can hire a miner to contract me a few hundred k at 3 cpu.I store can store that amount of resources easily.

Little guys can horde stuff easily.

You don't need cross server lot trades to horde.

To stop really hording they need to make it so that hording has less benefit.

For my chef character I try and watch SWGcraft and see if any good resources pop up. When I see something decent I try and put a few heavy floras on it. After about a year playing the chef a little on the side I've got a smattering of decent materials. The gating factor is entirely the frequency of spawns.

For my harvester resource requirements I really don't intentionally horde. I've got a pile of decent duralloy steel but just cause I've accumulated it. Decent HR, SR, UT duralloy spawns often enough that I don't really need to keep a huge amount of it on hand. Everything else is rally grind so I can just buy it as needed.

I do have a decent amount of grind resource stock on hand but just cause its more convenient to go on occasional big shopping sprees and stock up when I find stuff cheap. If it takes 25k of material to make a heavy and I sell an average of 20 heavies a week then I'm going to want to keep a few M of material in stock.

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Cafa wrote:

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TK42I wrote:

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Dvnce wrote:

the main reason why I keep bringing up the lot swap issue.. Is I wish you all could see How many times I get told No because of peoples abiltiy to Horde. Soe says we have too many resources ... well.. why? this is the discussion. .. Look at some of the answers some people got at fanfest.. the amount of resources pulled into the game prevents us from getting alot..

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If this is how the DEVs truly feel they should treat it like economists treat inflationary currency situations in the real world. They should slowly cut the resource harvesting rates of existing and future harvestors. Then they should adjust the resources needed for schematics appropriately.

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Coming from a position where I've seen Ionite Intrusivespawn ONCE in 9 months, I again look at this response (channelled through Dvnce ) and wonder if they actually play the game or get their resources froma blue frog. It's DIFFICULT to get stuff that only spawns good once every 3 or 4 MONTHS. People (now I'll say this with emphasis) WANT TO BUY THE BEST AND CRAFTERS ACHIEVE THROUGH MAKING THE BEST. For the most part, if they would leave it alone things would stablize. Right now, for example, people still think they're going to get 5 or 6 mill for a BARC, but the people that could afford to buy at that price do not hoard them. They buy enough for their character(s) and no more. Auctions go up, no one bites, prices come down.

I just never will agree that this is a zero-sum gain. There is an unlimited amount of credits. The limit is effort to get them. Hoarding resources is NECESSARY is order to make the best products over the two-year life of this game. No matter what you change the scale to, the market will reflect the same dynamics, IMO.

Fivo Asia

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Cafa wrote:

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TK42I wrote:

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Dvnce wrote:

the main reason why I keep bringing up the lot swap issue.. Is I wish you all could see How many times I get told No because of peoples abiltiy to Horde. Soe says we have too many resources ... well.. why? this is the discussion. .. Look at some of the answers some people got at fanfest.. the amount of resources pulled into the game prevents us from getting alot..

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If this is how the DEVs truly feel they should treat it like economists treat inflationary currency situations in the real world. They should slowly cut the resource harvesting rates of existing and future harvestors. Then they should adjust the resources needed for schematics appropriately.

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I just never will agree that this is a zero-sum gain. There is an unlimited amount of credits. The limit is effort to get them. Hoarding resources is NECESSARY is order to make the best products over the two-year life of this game. No matter what you change the scale to, the market will reflect the same dynamics, IMO.

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That is what I am saying Cafa. By decreasing the harvesters ability to pull resources we are in fact increasing the effort needed to get them. That along with some changes to administration rules to harvestors would put a big dent into hoarding. I wouldn't advocate thechange in harvestor pull rate as it doesn't take into account many things that Dvnce mentioned in his original post about efficiency to create product, decay of products, and # of actual customers.

I'm going take a look on the web on the economics of deep sea commercial fishing. That seems to be the closest thing we have in real life to what SWG created.

the main problem I see is that SOE is confusing what is the Cause of the true problem... The problem and one of the Few TRUE problems with SOE crafting game is It is Just as easy for me to Make 1000 of the best Versionsof a Item as it is for me to make 1000 of the Worst Versions of an Item. Thus there is no reason or market for anything but the best. This is not true in ANY OTHER game.. ANY other game has a market for starter gear and each stepping stone up to the final achievment of the best.

As a result Unless you make the best you dont last long as a crafter. and that is wrong and that makes for a dull bland very Un dynamic market. There is No Niches for people to find their way. This is why we only see really very few crafters of each type. For a new crafter (though it can be done ) it is not easy to enter the market because of (as Cafa Points out) rare spawns that someone has always got a few million units of horded. So there is no way to compete period Unless you are rich and can afford the rares.

As for Our profession there should be a market for BER 7 8 9 and 10 Medium harvesters. Max BER should be an Extreme Challenge to make. This is not the case .. The cause is two fold.. 1) I think the experimentation is too easy. 2) many architects have Millions of units of the Uber resources required to build Max BER for a very long time... I personally bought almost all my resources from hired miners. I recently made 4k medium and heavy harvesters houses and factories.. I can do this probably 2 more time without buying more resourses.. Now imagine if I had a fleet of 100 lot swapped harvesters behind me.... I keep my prices High but if my true cost to product is a fraction of a credit per unit think of what I could do to the market.... I could Price Heavies at 1 cpu and still make a profit. How fun would it be to compete against me if you only had 10 lots and didnt swap at all... That is the problem..

SOE has done good in presenting the ground work for a true Player Run Economy something that is new to the Gaming Industry. Since its new I think the experience in Gaming programing is lacking the experience of truly understanding Economic principles. What needs to happen to make Crafting game in SOE truly Great is introduce a true dynamic Market. Where If you build a crapy gun or a Crappy harvester it doesnt get deleted because there is still someone that is starting out and can use it. When SOE says their is a Hoarding Problem what they are truely saying is there is NO DIVERSITY in the market. You can go from vendor to vendor and really see the EXACT SAME ITEM for sale except for the way the crafter named it. To combat this problem you have to make the quality of the final products fluctuate as much as the quality of the spawn of resources. If all that is available is crap resources then all that should be able to be produced is Crap items. Until a better resource spawns. To make this happen we must drastically reduce how much resources are pulled into the game.. We can Nerf BER or we can NERF the amount of harvesters 1 person can control....

I personally want a market that is Diverse. I want to see crafters not having to Mad Grind to master just so they can make something they can sell.. They should be able to level by playing and support their leveling with the products they can make as they climb the ladder. If it was Extremely difficult to mass produce the BEST then the market would have ROOM for everything else....

Message Edited by Anthemion on 06-09-2005 12:47 AM

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VWBugKing wrote:

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Poldano wrote:

In the context of what was being said in the previous messages, I'm going to toss an idea into the ring.

How about if the max experimentation on lower-level items were capped? To usea weapon example, it would not be at all difficult to max a DL44 basic pistol, andwould not require uber resources and maximum experimentation points. The amount of experimentation and the level of expertise required wouldbe analogous to the combat level of thetoonfor whom it isan appropriate weapon. Likewise, architect equipment would follow the same pattern. It would not be difficult to max the stats on a low-end harvester, but high-end harvesters would require significant investment and care to achieve competitive statistics. Using lower-quality resources, and botching the assembly or experimentation, would result in a more resource-intensive item that is no better than an item that is much cheaper to produce and operate.

Obviously, what I have proposed is not fully developed. I havesome ways to fill it outin mind already, but what do other people think?

A similar approach can be applied to the use of devices, but that is another proposition.

Saego, Wanderhome

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This is actually already true. With a D-18 Pistol, I can max out Wound, Damage, and get a really good SAC on the gun, without any problems or even being a Master. I was maxing out Damage at 0102 WS. The problem with this solution for Architects, is that Harvestors do not require certifications to be used. A person using a weapon is forced to use whatever he can at his level, since he is unable to wield anything higher. With Harvestors, players just want the best. And if the best can be made, then they will wait and hunt for it.

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I didn't know that about weaponsmithing, thanks for the info.

The usage certification was something I didn't want to get into in the previous post, but I guess it's appropriate now. I'll start with weapons.Right now, usage of weapons is limited by certifications. I see this to some extent as unnecessary. It would be better to replace overt certifications with player skill limitations entirely. Anyone can buy and use any weapon, but higher-level weapons do not give any effective advantage to players who do not have sufficient skill to use them. Weapons would enable the basic skills of players (accuracy, speed, etc.), but a player is always limited by skill; a player with an accuracy limit of 50, for example, would not be able to achieve better accuracy on a weapon with an accuracy rating of 70.

The player skill cap applies to at least one thing in the artisan sphere, survey tools. Surveying range is pretty much limited by player skill. Survey tools, however, appear not to fulfill the other part of the system I proposed, because experimentation on them provides no useful advantage, and there is exactly one level of each kind. One could imagine surveying improvements requiring both increased player skill and increased survey tool capabilities. This is analogous to your example with the D-18 pistol.

With respect to harvester usage, it could be argued that surveying skill is the player skill that limits their usage. This is a rather indirect effect, and not absolute, but it is a restriction. Players with limited or nonexistent surveying skills find it more difficult, time-consuming, and costly to place harvesters effectively. Oncea harvester is placed, of course, there is no player skill involved in operating it. I suspect, however, that you have in mind amodification of the effectiveness of placed harvesters depending on player skill. If so, how should players acquire the skill enhancements to maximize the effectiveness of harvesters?

The same kind of pattern can apply to other things, such as factories and droids. In each case the question is how the enhanced player skills are acquired.

Saego, Wanderhome

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Elyssa wrote:

Simple solution to cross-server lot swaps: Forced re-deeding of harvesters to change the resource being extracted.

What must change: Re-deed cost MUST be removed.

Potential impact:
- Owner would simply have to pick it up and put it back down at no cost in order to change resources.

- Cross-server trades become too cumbersome to deal with.
- Same-server rental requires more work.

Potential outcomes:
- A single account may continue to access all lots to which they are entitled.
- Cross-server trades not completely eliminated, but would significantly decrease as it simply becomes too much work to maintain them.

- Cross-server building/factory trades unaffected, but the negative impact of these arrangements is minor compared to cross-server harvesters.

- Renting same-server lots requires more interaction amongst players since the harvesters are no longer set and forget.

- Placing harvester down on the same spot might require that creature spawns be cleared out first.

The only thing that really allows these cross-server trades to be appealing is that I don't have to come to your server for you to deal with the harvesters.
If instead the system is changed so that every 7-10 days you had to contact me, I had to interrupt my game, come to your server, travel to the harvesters, pick them up, put them back down, set them all back up from scratch, I would be much less inclined to do it for you.
Once you remove the convenience of "set it and forget it" for harvesters, you remove a LOT of the appeal of these things.
Sure, some people will continue to do it but the numbers will fall off significantly!

Keep in mind that the cross-server player is not your friend. They could really care less about your gameplay. They won't go out of their way just to make your life easier.
Your same-server friends are a different matter. Either they are friends willing to help you or your are paying them money that their character on your server can actually make use of.

This solution would not penalize people who actually play on multiple servers or families that share a single account. You have to visit your harvester when there's a resource shift anyway, so no added effort on your part is necessary. However, the fee for re-deeding the harvester must be removed for this to work.
In fact, the only real drawback to the owner is that if a lair has spawned near the harvester, it will have to be cleared before the harvester can be put back down.

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Elyssa wrote:

Read the updated version of it.

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