Architect Archive

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lisasdarren wrote:

This is just not true, i see a lot of posts on these boards complaining about how it impossible to craft with only 10 lots, so here are some hard figures to prove it is possible.

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Show me a written rule, anywhere, where the practice is disallowed? I have plenty of commentary in person from CSRs saying it is perfectly legal.

Fivo Asia

Actually if you remember back around christmas when they gave all the characters a free holo, they actually encouraged people to do cross server holo trades. Not exactly the same thing, but in the same ballpark.

Using static fields and extra factories from cross server lot swaps and rentals allows me to always have a stocked vendor full of a variety of things, as well as the ability to meet multiple demands. I run about 275 harvestors and i'm maybe third largest on my server (Starsider). Take away these fields and factories and you'll see a ripple affect across the server. For the first week or so people will be snatching up any resources they cna get their hands on just to horde and sell later on. The harvestor market, which is already dead will become completely nonexistant. Prices for everything will begin to double and triple as quantites of good materials become one tenth what they were. Sellers of power will dwindle away as their major source of income is now gone. yes eventually the economy will stabilize but it will only be a shadow of itself. yes the little guy will now be able to compete with the once large resource sellers, but how will that be better? Large resource companies are able to bring in large quantities and sell them at lower rates, allowing people to grind professions fairly cheaply and easily, how many more items are more readily available cause of the massive influx of resources?

Take away these harvestors and you'll see alot more empty vendors, alot higher prices, and alot more price gouging.

It'll be just like a year ago.

G

I do lot trading in a small way. I have a friend on another server that created a character on mine and simply holds a large house 2 factories and a small house. I hold a house on my character for declaring in our city and the other 8 slots run harvestors. I am a Armorsmith and just started Architect. Armorsmith if I could place as many harvestors as I am now, it would be very hard for me to get the specific resources that I need. When I see a spawn of a rare resource (Vertex Gems - 4 months since last one), then I drop what I can on it to be able to hold me over. It is either that or buy it from someone else at 50 - 60 cpu. With being able to harvest my own resources efficiently, I can cut my cost to only about .32cpu and offer better prices. I also help to subsidize a fellow crafter with resources to help their costs. We are in the same guild and mainly supply our guild and city with items, so we want to be able to charge less for these items. I also will give resources away to other city members that need it or that are starting out in a crafting profession to give them a boost. It is very hard to start a crafting profession unless you have some money or a good support group to help you along the way. I was fortunate to have this and I am trying to return the favor. I do not sell the resources I harvest, I only give them away to fellow guild crafters and other members of out city.

All of the harvestors are on my character as I move them ofter to get the best spawns of resources. I am particular as I want to make the best items possibly and the only way to ensure the best supply of resources is to harvest what I want and need. If I want to be a serious crafter, then I need a reliable source of resources and the only way to guarantee that is to be able to harvest what I can and hope it last til the next spawn of high quality material.

I know several people that have left the crafting professions and the game in general due to how hard it can be to get the resources needed and not being able to find them to buy and not having the ability to harvest to amount required.

There is a way and I hereby predict that what's going to happen is that they will remove the admin function from structures. It's not really an essential element of the game to be able to share ownership of structures so I expect that SOE is going to take that out of the game as soon as the lot "nerf" hits.

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It's not an "essential element" of the game; are you smoking crack?

I'm an Interior Designer by trade. I very much enjoy being an architect as it allows me to create very unique furniture that is my main source of income. My secondary (and sometime larger profit margined) source of income is decorating OTHER PEOPLE'S HOMES. Without the ability to added to the admin list of THEIR structure, I'd be **edit**-out-of-luck for that part of my game. I'm NOT a massive static harvester abuser (although I do have several factories via lot trades so I can drop my harvesters AS NEEDED) and I see no problem with lot trades UNTIL the whole storage issue is resolved AS PROMISED by Q (or whomever) back when the TEMPORARILY lowered building storage.

So in closing let me say that I am NOT against the limiting of lot trades PROVIDED that:

1) HOUSING is EXEMPT and

2) STORAGE LEVELS ARE RAISED TO A WORKABLE LEVEL TO SUSTAIN CRAFTING PROFESSIONS

Anything less is a game breaker and it will be the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

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Huntercrom wrote:

There are 5 people that have done this, of those 5, 4 of them are semi-active, only 1 is a weekly log in. The other 4 actually enjoy coming over and doing something with thier character from time to time.

I do the same on their server as well.

It gives us EACH a break from doing the same old thing day in and day out, that it's nice to take a break, spend some time with old friends and go kill things or make things.

So, with the WHOLE picture not really being let out, and I still haven't told you EVERYTHING involved in it, then you realize that it's not always what it appears to be.

They do their weekly log in and log out, didn't tell ya that they do it more than 1x a week though, and I shouldn't have to.

It's not over-inflating a city, it's trying to get some old friends from other games that are on different servers, together and spend some time together in one place or another.

It works for us.

EDIT: I'm active, to a degree on 3 different servers, plus Test Center as well. I don't have to put a million hours of play on the same server to enjoy my game. The fact that they give us the ability to choose multiple servers to play on is something I enjoy. The fact that I have 2 characters per server is something else I enjoy. It gives me multiple options without changing templates on anything I already have in place.

Message Edited by Huntercrom on 06-28-2004 10:31 AM

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Sounds to me like you have a community of people playing on multiple servers, not really lot trading is it?

More power to you if you want to play on multiple servers with different people, its people who create a character just to allow someone else on that server the use of their lots and not to ever play that bother me they are adding production or storage capacity to the system and nothing else, screwing up the balance.

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Cafa wrote:

Your supposition, as with most of these perfect math analogies, does not take into consideration any swap or activity OTHER than crafting. In fact, by your own analogy you have shown that you believe no one should aspire to do better than thhis formula, in my opinion.

No i see no reason why people shouldn't aspire to do better than this using legitimate business practices, hiring lots from other real players on your serverusing in game cash, buying resources from non-crafters who run harvesters, etc.

You provide no room for archiving resources in quantity. You provide no room for components storage, unless you demand they only make one crate at a time. You show costs based upon some perfect world because power sells for far more than that on Tempest and we (supposedly) have one of the more stable economies.

No i don't allow room for archiving resources in mass quantity, unless you purchase (in game) use of anothers lots to place a storage house, because apart from grind quality resources a single stack of 100k will produce loads of any product... If you want to be able to produce more than this you have to "purchase" storage facilities using your ingame credits (your gonna make more money why shouldn't you pay out for facilities?)

And I am basing my power pricing on Wanderhome prices... i can easily pick up PE 750ish power for 1.5 cpu, which is effectivly 1cpu of actual power. Shop around, you telling my you can't get 750 -980 PE rads for 1.5-2cpu? If not then fair enough, but there is plenty of room to triple the cost of power and not even scratch the potential profit.

Heaven forbid that an architect would want a nicely furnished house or long-term storage.

You have 100 slots in your bank for long term storage, if you want more then pay for it in game credits, its a legit business practice and i don't see how anyone could object to it. You are getting something for a cost rather than for free, which is my bug with lot swapping (that and it artificially inflates the number of lots available on a server compared to the number of players buying and making stuff)

And with 50 of your 150 slots in your house you can decorate it, my shop is decorated and used as storage. Its about compromise.

Fivo Asia

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Lot swapping contibutes to the fact that nearly everyone can afford composite armour and the best weapons and second rate kit never gets sold, if there was less stuff available the prices would go up and those with less credits would buy lower quality, your ber 12's would be snapped up because not everyone could afford ber 13s. Not everyone would be able to afford master furniture and it would be something exclusive... There would be a real reason not to own a swoop as you might not be able to afford to buy one.

It would create an economy of scale, where the richest own the real expensive stuff and the poorer own cheaper stuff and not everyone looks the same.

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Cafa wrote:

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Fueller wrote:

Even though it has been allowed and has happened, I doubt that the Devs wanted this to happen. You are given a set of rules to live by, yet some find a "Loop Hold" to challenge the system. Yes you can have those lots on other servers, but the intent was for "Those Servers". Does it bother me that others have static lots? No, not at all..I think they might be a bit greedy, but I don't think any less of them. They have found an ingenious way to monopolize resources.

Nerfing the lots won't bother me in the least, but I can see allot of people getting bent because of it. But, if they had lived by the rules of game play in the first place, This would be a non-issue.

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Show me a written rule, anywhere, where the practice is disallowed? I have plenty of commentary in person from CSRs saying it is perfectly legal.

Fivo Asia

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No where did I say it was "Illegal" to Lot swap... All I was saying is that it wasn't the intent of gameplay. Big Difference.

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Tunturi wrote:

All i could think is they could make it so you couldnt give admin to other players on your harvesters/factories. This would make it a pain for players since they would have to log into there dummy accounts to put in power/money and to empty the hoppers for there friend. This would get old real quick and would discourage alot of players from doing it...

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They also could limit you to 10 lots per account, regardless of how many servers you have characters on. You could have 8 lots on Scylla on2 lots on Bria, for example, but not 10 lots on both. This effectively allows in-server lot renting while preventing serious cross-server trading.

The downside is it hurts people who actively play on multiple servers, particularly those that craft on two servers (though how many people actually run businesses on more than 1 server is surely limited). A crafter on one server still could run a lotless combat or entertainer character on another server if they wanted to without hurting the crafter character.

Message Edited by Happymob on 06-29-2004 12:46 PM