Architect Archive
Thread: A Miners Message: Sent To Thunderheart
Actually you can look at it either way. You can look at things as "socialist" in that their are regulations, sure. But then you can also look at things as radically capitalist. The restrictions here are not laws of a government, they are laws of the world. No matter what you have to set up some laws for the world, otherwise there is no meaningful way to achieve. As I've pointed out, setting up no restrictions would lead to a very poor game. If you can make whatever you want, with whatever resources you want then no one would need crafters. If you think that a "capitalist" game is a game with no limitations on what you can do, then "capitalist" chess is a game where you can land your pawn on the enemies king on the first move and scream "checkmate". It would be "socialist" chess that is actually the time-honored and revered game we know (with horrifying, evil regulations on what moves players can make). I said you can look at things as radical capitalism as the goal of capitalism is basically to set up equal opportunities for participants in the economy and then allow them to do whatever they want. This equal opportunities thing is strongly enforced here because players strongly desire it, i.e., it is there for capitalistic reasons. If playeres come into a game and immediately feel that they don't have and never will have the same opportunities as some other class of players then they are likely to leave.
FWIW, I've lived in Europe, and the standard of living is very high and I simply don't think you are correct about the assertations you make. To take an example, look at fast food markets. In Europe, while of course there are McDonald's and Pizza Hut's and Germany and France, the majority of fast food restaurants are independently and locally owned, offering a wide variety of cuisine. In the US, the vast majority of fast food restaurants are parts of chains (some of the independently but most not). While I think there is a lot of good stuff in capitalistic philosophy, I have to say that my experiences in Europe do often suggest that Europe does a better job of providing opportunities, for small businesses, etc,.
Be that as it may, I don't think the analogy is useful here either way. It is absolutely necessary to pick rules and restrictions for the game world. The rules you pick will make the game succeed or fail. If it were true that picking no rules at all would make a great game then we'd be playing something else. Obviously no rules at all doesn't work and obviously absolutely restrictions don't work either. Somewhere between there is hopefully a happy medium and it's up to game devs to find that.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-16-2004 01:48 PM
Taco_Panocea wrote:
Gotta love the people that posted "I will loose 300+ harvesters because of this change"... when the harvesters were never theirs to begin with. It was good while it lasted, time to move on.
Actually thats not even my issue mate. since i will no longer be upkeeping them, its all profit for ther next three months. at approx 20 mill a month with out having to save 60 mill to upkeep them again..you think I care? Lol not in the slightest, except that now i have nothing i want to do in the broken arse game with my 3 hours a day i spent managing my harvs =P
Been playing since early beta...i do this to stay in the game till they hopefully fix it. Now i'll be trying to find anything that works (which is a tad harder than one might think) to keep me here till SE. dunno.
Raja_Asenn wrote:
I'm curious as to the motivation behind hardcore static harvesting - maybe some of those of you who engage in it can explain the draw. Are you in it to make real life money from credit farming? If so, how much do you make? I'm willing to bet that you could do better by spending that three hours a day doing, well, probably just about anything. Mowing yards. And anyone who says that static harvesting is more fun than mowing yards hasn't spent three hours executing harvester maintenance scripts, heh.
2 cents from a small time resource wrangler,
Raja al Asenn
Lowca
My Motavation was simple, it kept me playing. Having been playing this game since early beta, I have done most of the professions...created a lvl 4 city comprised of 5 PAs (which was quite the chore)..and THAT actually lead to me doing harv fleets. as people got fed up and just stopped logging in i gre bored and my city collapsed.
I had already done the PVP thing (and even had started a second city that was comprised of 15 to 20 bases and 9 citizens) But with the inbalance of PvP combat and the absurdity of how easy it was to take out all those bases in a two day time frame by 4 people...../end critical thought
Anyway..I simply needed something to do (other than grind professions) to keep me in a game that was facing heavy attrition.
There are plenty of solutions that prevent rampant harvester sharing but still allow you to have friends maintain your buildings.
You would have to get metrics on all servers to ensure the problem is not isolated to particular servers.
Not really. First of all, you can't put specific code in only for servers that have problems. Secondly, if an abuse exists, over time more and more people use it. Thirdly, imbalances need to be fixed even if not everyone uses them.
This is a common position to take in economic debates: the position that the other sides points can't be followed up on simply because not every little last detail is known. There is always uncertainy in economic systems however. In general we see that significant imbalances do exist, and I think we've seen evidence that the devs are increasingly concerned about that. That is really enough to start thinking about solutions. We can't hide in our shells forever waiting for absolute certainty.
So allow admins but only allow the owner to access the hopper or change the resource. Wow, I could almost be a game designer!
Furthermore, when you go on vacation it's houses and factories that are a problem. If you have time to go admin your friends and tell them to take care of your harvesters then you have time to pull up the harvesters in the first place (or to just dump in lots of cash).
StGabe.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-16-2004 11:11 PM
Well anyone that pays for anotehr full price account should get full benfits of that accoiut after all they are paying for it. They are not only brining a producer into the economy but also a producer unlike cross server trades.
I agree that SOE needs to do something about cross server lot swapping, but not necessarily lot swapping with friends and guild mates on the same server.
Since we dont have accurate metrics a lot of what has been said is speculation.
I think whey you will see in the post holo grind is obviously a vast decrease in demand. Those mining will will be more focused on quality resouce. Proces will probably go down which is a good thing.
Also most elite crafters feel they have to mine themselves rather than purchase because of availability and cost of high quality resource. Most elite crafters would rather be crafting than mining so another post holo grind aspect is you could have quite a few less people mining.
The SOE stats show that we are now draining as much money out of the economy which is being brought in which shows things are stable at present.
By it's nature the lot swapping will lessen as the demand for resouce lessens in the post holo grinding economy.
You also have to look at the causual gamer or those that might go on military leave,vacation, or family emergencythat might need to have their structures monitored by a friend. Administration is crucial to those. In thse situatuations what you will find is people feeling forced to violate their EULA and give people their user ID's and passwords. There are multiple sides to this issue.
And yes decreased efficiency does aliienate multiple accounts. I am sorry, if someone pays SOE for another full priced account they should get full benefits. They are paying for it. Now if they have the income to pay SOE for 22 accounts so be it. The majority of people that have an extra account only have one to augment their main character. You are talking about hurting the majority for the actions of a selected few.
I still think what you need is to get accurate metrics from SOE. Other than cross server trades there is really no defined issue that can be supported by actual metrics. The fact is you do not know absolutely the level of the problem or whether it would even be a problem if SOE found a way to stop cross server trades. We need numbers from SOE to support either side.
The fact is you do not know how many people lot swap on the same server, what percentage of that number is to the population on that server. You would have to get metrics on all servers to ensure the problem is not isolated to particular servers.
The other question would be when you speak of balancing the economy, like I said the SOE stats show as much money leaving the game as coming in. What server are you talking about?What metrics have you seen that show this is an economic catastrophy in the making? What metrics do you have that show that doing this will have a beneficial effect?
We need to work off of facts here on bith sides
Taco_Panocea wrote:
Gotta love the people that posted "I will loose 300+ harvesters because of this change"... when the harvesters were never theirs to begin with. It was good while it lasted, time to move on.
Okay, you need to shut your yap because you're apparently an idiotic retard who is literate to the point of being able to write, but most certainly not read.
Whether or not the people who have done these STATIC lot trades should have had them in the first place or not is one issue. However, their proposed fix hurts more than those people. As Iaan has stated many times his buisiness model would be swatted like a fly if they did the idiotic easy way out of simply taking out the ability to give other players administration rights on a harvester. As he legitimately rents his lots from other players on the server - in the guild, even - not being able to access said harvesters is an enormous inconvinience to both him and his renters.
He's not the only one. I run a similar buisiness, however, I have my niche - i supply fusion power by the megaton. I don't use static harvesters either...in fact, static fusions are massively stupid as there is only really ever one or two types of fusion in shift at a time. I too rent lots from guildmates - OBTAINING EXTRA LOTS IN A LEGITIMATE FASHION, that is. I depend even more on being able to go to my harvesters every day or every other day to empty them - fusion shifts, unfortunately, do not ever match the scheduled delivers that I need to make to meet my various contracts. My vendor would also stay empty for most of the week if I couldn't do this. It wouldn't put me out of buisiness on its own, but it sure would make things a big enough of a pain that I would consider quitting the buisiness.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS NOW? A simple removal of the administrator option on structures is NOT by any means a good thing. As has been stated many, many times over, mass harvesting of grind resources will not be a profitable venture following the end of the hologrind. Furthermore, because of the nature of resource shifts, static lots cannot be relied upon to ALWAYS be sitting on a high concentration of the latest uber l33t resource, much less ANY concentration of it at all, and therefore are unsuited for specific mining of only the good stuff (which is what Iaan does). Lets just say that again so that maybe you (and everyone else who wrongly believes this...) might get it. Because of the nature of resource shifts, static lots cannot be relied upon to ALWAYS be sitting on a high concentration of the latest uber l33t resource, much less ANY concentration of it at all, and therefore are unsuited for specific mining of only the good stuff.
Got it? Maybe the static cross-server lot trading stuff is less than legit, maybe it's not....apparently the devs want to stop it for one reason or another though. So, yeah, I guess the static grind-quality dealers will have to, yes, just move on to something else, or change their buisiness model. Don't go blathering off the same stupid response to everyone else though, because not everyone does that, but a lot of us would still be hurt by this change.
Understand now?
StGabriel wrote:
There are exactly two ways that a friend can maintain your harvesters for you:
So allow admins but only allow the owner to access the hopper or change the resource. Wow, I could almost be a game designer!
Furthermore, when you go on vacation it's houses and factories that are a problem. If you have time to go admin your friends and tell them to take care of your harvesters then you have time to pull up the harvesters in the first place (or to just dump in lots of cash).
StGabe.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-16-2004 11:11 PM
I dunno, I tend to keep the belief that systems were designed the way they were for a reason.
Of course they were. But many of those reasons ended up being poor. We've seen literally dozens of game systems revamped since release and we'll see many more. The devs have come up with an interesting game, but they certainly didn't get everything right the firs time.
We should spend a lot of time thinking about how those changes would impact everyone, not just ourselves.
Exactly! Limiting lot swapping is going to have a big NEGATIVE impact on me. I lot swap all the time (in-server only). However, I still think that limited resource output is going to be required for balancing the economy on the long run. It is simply far too easy for one crafter to supply goods for a good chunk of a server. I know this because I do it myself. The answer is to buckle down on resource production and to require active harvesting and to set resource requirements accordingly. The economy should start with the assumption that every active character can at most have 10 lots. Then production of crafted goods should be costly enough that there is a healthy amount of production given that restriction. This will equalize returns on harvesting, minimize the advantages of guilds and monopolistic practices, and do a better job of providing real "jobs" to crafters. What we have no is resource "inflation" and just as in real world economics, the result is a low employment rate. In game terms, that means that crafters aren't making money for their work (at least for many, if not all crafting markets). The way to cut down this inflation is to cut the supply.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-17-2004 10:23 AM
StGabriel wrote:
There are exactly two ways that a friend can maintain your harvesters for you:
So allow admins but only allow the owner to access the hopper or change the resource. Wow, I could almost be a game designer!
Furthermore, when you go on vacation it's houses and factories that are a problem. If you have time to go admin your friends and tell them to take care of your harvesters then you have time to pull up the harvesters in the first place (or to just dump in lots of cash).
StGabe.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-16-2004 11:11 PM
In cases where friends are away for the reasons I have previously posted one on the main things nbeeed to ebe done besides maintenence and power is make sure the hopper is not full lol