Architect Archive

X-EQ I've been selling to the same customer since day one. He continues to buy new products (Furniture especially) every day. He sends me new customers nearly every day that want a new house. I will bet money that the "cap" on server population is high enough that we won't see it ever reached in the time that we are playing. The failsafe they put to allow that is only allowing one character per server. It prevents the DB's from being overloaded with too many characters on a server. We won't run out of customers. There will always be new ones. Fear not.

BTW, Customer Service will keep your customers coming back to you or referring their friends to you, thereby not requiring you to go out and drum up new business when you sell that small house you just made.

I also can't stress enough just how bad an idea it is to bank our entire class on the devs adding more content for us to build. We needa game sytem that is:

1. Viable without the need of new content

2. Compareable to other crafting classes

I can agree on one thing you mentioned.. that would vitalize our market, give more value to owning a house. Have it be more than a status symbol. Have it be a place where you can regen battle fatigue. Have it be a place where if you are sitting or laying down you slowly heal your wounds. (similar to a medic bay). But adding decay is still not a good idea. AT least not to houses. Harvesters would make more sense... they have moving parts... but then again... they have a considerably higher maint pool too.

I will be happy to wait 6 months and see who's still the architect too... I'm confident that I'm right... I'm not argueing that things with architect need to be change... I agree with that stance... my argument is that your percieved fix of adding decay to our items is wrong.

Making us on par with WS and AS is cool too... but look at it this way... weapons/armor decay with use, Weapons armor do NOT have a maint pool to keep them in working order, weapons and armor instead of repair kits. There still MUST be a way for creds to go out.. and doing away with Maint to add repair kits isn't the way... if you have a harvester decay... that's well and good... but if you're going to keep maint pools... decay rate better be EXTREMELY slow or it's not viable to own any equipment housing.

You have to consider to consumers point of view as well as the retailer. Would you want to own a house if you had to go visit your contracter every 5 years to get it "repaired" or would you keep dumping money into a pesron (or droid) to keep the house maintained on a continual basis thereby defeating the need of a contractor to repair?

One thing that might help... if a piece of equipment/house becomes damaged because maint pool was NOT paid up and it started to get dmgd THEN a repair kit would be feasible. THERE it would make sense.

One more point... this game is NOT viable without new content... it will die... it's an MMORPG. It is in CONSTANT flux and change and development. EQ would have been dead 3.5 years ago if new content was not added. SWG will die too, without an influx of new content. So the class is viable right now without new content.. and for 6 months or so... but without new content.. ALL classes will die... not just Architect.

CandaVespin:

I have your take on decay, which I am in the camp that decay is wrong idea.

What about limited deeding though, 5,10,15,X deeds allowed to be redeeded.

Do you see that as a problem or have any constructs towards it?

People are harping in this thread about decay, but I asked for a decay vs Limited schematics discussion.. can we pull this back to the track of that?

-C9-

Would you want to own a house if you had to go visit your contracter every 5 years to get it "repaired" or would you keep dumping money into a pesron (or droid) to keep the house maintained on a continual basis thereby defeating the need of a contractor to repair?

---

I own guns, I work on my own guns, I don't expect to take them into the shop every few days either after active use. Some TLC and they are back to good. With a house every 15 years you need a new roof, every so many years you might need to check for termites.. there is an upkeep associated with housing in the real world, just own one for a full loan term and tell me how many things went wrong.. a home in the real world can be one helluva money sink depending.

I digress though, this isn't reality we are playing, its a game, and in a game the mechanics of the world must equalize. We have permanent structures, no semipermancence about it. The rest of the world has a maleable semi-permanence. I'm just looking for equality within the marketplace.

-C9-

I agree harvesters is were the decay should start. If they can implement it somewere else great.

But there is no way around not having a harvester. Of course if they do decay they need to make med/hvy harvesters more valuable since everyone would use personals and just destroy them since they go for 500 credits on the bazzar.

Honestly I think the Devs are counting on expantions for new planets, new types of houses and maybe new public venues to keep the arhitect trade alive. What happens if you could now choose between 4 kinds of houses for each planet and have a public venue to go with it? How many of us would have a place of residence and a place of business? Not to mention who here thinks that each PA will only have 1 hall? Most PA's the bigger they get will have a hall for each planet esp the ones they spend alot of time on maybe more then one.

Each time there is an expantion (hopefully) new territory will be introduced where new types of houses can be built. I think were jumping the gun on this issue and cant really say either way if or if not decay is needed. Now if some of the decay that happened could only be repaired by an architect then we would have stable business. And who know maybe people will be able to add expantions on to thier existing house? Like a 3rd room. Its too early to say. This game was made to be vastly expanable in every aspect. That is what makes a good MMORPG and if any one knows this best its SOE.

Keep on building the houses I say and let the player cities rise!

I could see how limited re-deeding could be a viable option. It would have to be done well though.. so as not to imbalance our class over others.

The first mistake they made was calling it maintenance and treating it as such. For AS and WS, maintenance comes in the form of akit you have to buy. For Architects it comes in the form of a credit sink for the game. Right there we are at a disadvantage comapred to the other crafting classes. Our goods are not expendable nor are they non-durable.

I understand your point on you already have to pay maint, why get double tapped. I just don't agree with it Maintenance paid to the game does not justify putting a class at a serious disadvantage. So, I'll line up all my points:

1. Smiths goods require maintenance, provided by players either as service or by sellable kit. Weapons/Armor cost less (resource wise at least :smileymadand the maint also costs less. Architect goods also require maint, of which the architect draws no benifit.

2. One med harv sold is one less medium harv ever needed by the game unless someone let's it rot. They can use it till the end of the game, othercrafters products will wear out, even if repaired 100% successfully every time.

3. In expansions, other crafters will also get new items furthing their class and expanding their business. Architects will require expansions in their current state, or their market will dwindle and the class become non-viable for all but a few architects.

Those are my arguments for limited redeeding and home decay. Limited redeeding would have a serious impact on architects, as to compte in the market now, we are mostly required to self mine our resources. This would require me to replace my own fleet on aregular basis.

I think a lot of this would be cleard up if the devs would bother to reply to the last three weeks of corospondant issues.