Architect Archive

I am not an Architect.

Just to get that out of the way. However, if you make pets Perma-death, or nerf Eyeshot it doesnt effect me at all, except that if I'm a non-nerfed class maybe I can make more money and buy better gear than the nerfed person.

Resource gathering however is fundamental to every crafter class, and thus indirectly effects every single person on the game. The gathering of resources is the basis of the entire player economy. Saying that non-Architect opinions shouldn't count because it'ssomething in the Architect class that changes is like saying that only Droid Engineer opinions should be considered if there's a proposal to give DEs mining droids that pull in twice the resources of a Heavy Harvester, or only Weaponsmiths should be consulted about doubling the HAM costs of all weapons.

Now, I do think that Architects (and Tailors) need a fix so that people will continue to buy their products, but considering how much of a money sink maintenance already is, the idea of having to worry about decay on top of it... Ugh. And thinking of trying to relocate my house with all of it's junk... Double ugh. Is there really no other way to make Architects viable in a 'mature' economy? Furniture, I don't own any right now because my house is currently just a repository for my junk. If furniture wore out I'd be even less likely to buy it. I'll tell you one thing I would (if I could afford it) buy over and over again though... A widget that let me check on all my harvesters (And possibly any I had admin control on) and see when they were out of minerals, change what they're harvesting, and feed them money and/or power. If Architects could make a little control station that wore out... Well, a ton of the richer people would buy them for convenience sake, and the up and coming poor people wouldn't be seriously hurt. Which brings me to something else...

There's already a barrier to entry for new players. Mostly for the crafting classes, but it extends to the combat / support classes as well. Almost everyone wants a master crafted item. They don't want to settle for alower priced butlower damageweapon, orhigher encumbrance armor. They want their exact color from a Master Tailor, they want the 110% medical capability. They'd rather bystims, or get buffed by a Master Doctor.They even want the highest possible mods from the Bio-engineer inserts.

Of course I realize that this is not true for the Architect.The factory made by a bare novice is exactly the same as that of a Master. Woohoo! Master gets an End Table! This doesn't mean it doesn't affect the Architect though. On the contrary, it means that it's easy for someone to make Novice architect long enough to make a couple factories, compete with you, but that most of your customers will have to make Master before they can afford your higher end products. Sure, repeat business is good & neccessary, but if new players aren't able to have fun on established servers then the game will slowly die as people drift away and aren't replaced.

And this isn't just crafters, either. If weapons cost more (and they will, because the established players seem to have plenty of money to spend on them) then combat characters will havea harder time competing. Likewise the dancers and medics who rely on tips will likely make less money because tippers will have spent more on everything else.

So by all means! Fix the Architects so they can get repeat business. But I don't ever want to encourage the devs to experiment willy-nilly with the underpinnings of the entire game economy. And I don't think it's really fair to essentially tax every single other class just because Architects were poorly designed.

Here are some things I think they could do instead :

1. Let architects make the master control objects to check on/control harvesters remotely.


2. Make limited use structures that couldn't be redeeded, or could only be redeeded a limited number of times but cost no maintenance.


3. Give the Architects a cut of our maintenance fees. Maybe instead of the useless experimentation, the increase would be what percentage of the cut they'd get.


4. Let experimentation actually make a difference. If your heavy has a max rate of 6.8 instead of 6 I'll no doubt upgrade. And as different resources phase in and out you could get better and better.


5. Reduce or remove maintenance costs, and instead make us replace various components of the structures from time to time. (You need a new wall!)


6. Some other 'luxury' item that would be useful to those who could afford it, but that wouldn't seriously hamper the newcomers who can't.

Of course, I don't believe that removing maintenance will ever happen because it is the primary way that money leaves the economy. Remove it, and inflation will become incredibe as cloning and travel are the only ways money leaves the system. Maybe insurance if corpses are ever fixed. In fact... it's an even worse idea than making structures decay in addition to maintenance.

Oh well, it's late and I should've gone to bed already... I will note though, that I'm a weaponsmith and I wouldn't mind if decay rates for guns were reduced, or removed entirely and there were weaponsmith only powerups that were better than the artisan ones. I'd still have fun with the resource hunt, trying to find the absolute best resources in the galaxy. Of course, it might not be so good for architects because I wouldn't need to buy as many harvesters... But who knows, maybe they'll make that DE mining droid and it won't matter anyway.

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Skedoozy wrote:

Why would anyone who is not an architect want an item they buy to decay?? So when it comes to that, no. The non-architect opinion matters not.

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Fulltime (albeit only 2 hours a day) Miner here, vote FOR decay, experimentation, anything that makes the game HARDER for me as a customer. This game is to easy.

As a sidenote: Architects raise yer prices!

Goff McMerrii
Miner

i hope the majority of this profession don't feel the way you do. This "elitism" does not endear you to your potential customers. I come to these boards now because their are suggestions (decay, limited redeeding, etc.) on harvesters/housing which will horribly effect my class (medic/doctor) along with many others. I do not want these to go into effect as they add a level of frustration I'm not willing to deal with in this game.

No his opinion is not everyones opinion. I want to hear from our customers as much as from other architects. After all, it is our customers that we work for.

As a non-architect, let *ME* enlighten you:

If decay on my house is added to the game, I can guarantee you that I WILL NEVER PURCHASE ANOTHER ITEM FROM AN ARCHITECT. Your profession will become worthless, and you will be sealing your own doom.

You and many architectsseem to beunder the false impression that a poll on this boardshould affect whether or not decay is implemented.

This is not and should not be a democracy, this is a game design issue. If it goes in or not will not be because architects or non-architects do or dont want it. It will go in or not depending on the design intent and what it will do or not do for the game itself.

We can post our opinions, and I hope they read our opinions. But I hope they never let the players rule what mechanics are included in the game or not. A game created only by what players want woulld be a lousy and way too easy game.

Berratus, your head isn't on straight.

Personally I don't care if you ever buy anything from anyone. I must infer that you're an unarmedbrawler, because you probably swore off Guns long ago because they decay.

It doesn't matter if you say you won't buy anything.

Weaponsmiths: Need harvesters to make and sell the #1 product in the galaxy.

Armorsmiths: Need harvesters to make gear to protect us from the #1 product in the galaxy.

Doctors: Need harvesters to make meds to heal wounds from the #1 product in the galaxy.

Droid Engineers: Need harvesters to make and sell the #13023493 product in the galaxy.

Architects: If they had played their cards right, could have had the #1 product in the galaxy.

The fact is, everyone depends on weapons and armor. And the people that make them depend on us. We just never exploited that fact, cause we were too excited making the sale to think about it. If decay is implemented, and you don't buy anything, it doesn't affect anyone, because all the Architects will be busy re-constructing fleets of harvesters for the classes above that need them to stay afloat.

As long as the decay theory for harvesters is fairly well implemented (I'm personally mostly against house decay), then it will be a welcome change to our profession. If I have to rebuild my personal fleet of Heavies? So what...I'm getting really good at making them. If they last 3-6months....I managed to construct that fleet in the first place while i was working my way up, i'm sure I can do it much more easily now.

acer

heh - i guess if this pissing match gets real bad everyone will just switch from guns & armor to just being TKAs (and CH's

It would be nice to have a place where Architects could speak with their active collegues of the profession on occasion although I wouldn't exclude Novice or Intermediate skilled Architects. However, I respect and underatnd the importance ofhearing the views from anyone that uses our products.

It is unfortunate that this respect of nonarchitects isn't returned to the architects who seek clarity of the views of those who are active in the business. I don't understand why our fellow board visiters can't sit back and let us talk about 1:100 subjects without sticking their nose into our business.

My request (which will be ignored) is this. If there's a (Architect Opinions Wanted) post please respect this if you are not an active Architect. If you feel strongly about the discussion make your own thread on the same subject. Just because you are asked not to post on that thread doesn't mean you can't post on the issue.

Thank you,

Fidg'Ter

Fidg'ter,

i think the real issue is that they won't read your post, ignore it, and then post anyway. They'll just never read your post asking them to respect the boundaries, because it's not flashy enough. As soon as we're looking for learned opinions, though, everybody thinks that theirs should be heard, and will post there...not because they didn't "heed" your request, but because the didn't "read" your request.

acer

You must've missed my smilie. It wasn't meant to upset you, sorry if it did.

I don't really see the usefullness in decaying structures. Decay on housing is probably not coming (Housing in real-life doesn't really decay if it is good maintained and well build), Furniture isn't useful anyway, so why should it decay? The only thing where it makes sense at all is on harvesters. But there is maintainence to pay for them, plus you want them to decay ? That's not fair to the other professions where you do not have to put coins into your gun, and have them degrade anyway. Why keep maintainence if they pop from the planet anyway. But soe won't remove it since it is a money-sink. I don't see decay for structures coming into this game (although i wouldn't mind).

That's why i said we need ways to seperate our products.

Can i have an edit button, please ? that (although i wouldn't mind) was not supposed to go into that post.

Hi DW - Acer well done you have hit a home run with your post.

What you said is my point exactly Harvesters are the main issue for decay because every crafting profession needs them and we are the only ones that sell them. Had NO architects over sold a harvester we would all be sitting back and making cash selling resources unless the these other professions felt like self sampling all day every day.

But ubfortunately I think what happened was the first architects went out and sold all the houses and pa halls they could until theat market was slowed to a trickle and then the next lot of architects comming up the skill tree had to sell something else and they decided to sell harvesters and fussion generaters.

I also agree that House decay and Furniture decay is not an issue unless you happen to own a shop which would be a small percentage of the hous market.

Harvester Decay has to come in and the sooner the better. Our only other hope is that with cities and going live and Urban Planner skills opening up that will revive the architects but that would also mean dumping all other skills you may have learnt to become an urban planner so it would help people who want to just stay at Master Architect.