Architect Archive
Thread: Proposed Solutions for Architect Decay
If you move to the "only re-deed 10 times" thingit comes to the same thing though.
It removes money from the economy, and creates a demand for archetect products.
Right Dayin, you just can't remove the maintenance fees... to be honest, most here know I'm against decay, but if it is implemented, limited redeed is the way to go IMO as it gives people the option of leaving the harvester in place and paying maintenance gathering whatever is there and waiting til something more useful comes along.
I won't restate all my arguments against decay again here.. they are too long to elaborate all of them again when they've been hashed out a hundred times previously.
Im sorry, I was thinking re-deed fee, not maintenance fee.
No pay Mantenance needs to stay, I agree.
I agree that most craftable items need decay to provide income to artisans. But most time frames I've seen have been rediculous.
Replace my house every 30 days?!?!?! Forget it!
Decay is one thing, repair or replacement parts would work, but replacing everything every month is a terrible idea that won't work.
Any solution must be economical for players and managable. Otherwise no one will use the items. And that won't provide repeat business will it?
Isn't this what we pay maintenance for? So you're suggesting we pay maintenance and lose our house as well after X amount of time?
WORST IDEA EVER
Particularly with harvesters, it's a simple fact of life that resources will shift and unless you want to mine whatever's right under your harvester every week (some people do it), you're going to have to move them. I seriously doubt the Devs would want to change this as redeed fees on something like harvesters which are moved so frequently is a big way of getting money out of the economy.
With factories, there are some people that leave a factory up permanently while others only have them up when needed (I fall into the latter category). Restricting redeeds with these as well will cause an uproar.
What I could see us requesting and perhaps getting is a redeed kit that we craft then sell that would allow someone to redeed a structure (for no fee, for a minimal fee, or the same fee as now just that the kit is required). This would give us renewable income plus serve to remove money and some resources from the economy.
The price of everything in this game is going to double. If ya think about it.. people will now incorporate more into there prices.. and it will be much harder for business classes to see the big picture.. which isn't to bad, the business classes are blindlingly simple already. Ill flesh out an example here.. as i know that prices are different on all servers. Especially for large oporation mineing.. i know people who have upwards of 26 heavies.. supported by multitudes of fusions. The upkeep on this sort of array of buildings is going to be insane if they have to rebuy them every few months.. going out and droping a good 3->4 mill every 2 months is going to hert no matter what class you are. Meaning the prices of ore will go up stageringly to counter act this.. because the ore harvesters and sellers arn't going to want to take this hit and be stressed about being short on cash to replenish there operation. Then we can include all the other classes.. crimeny.. u think weapons are expensive now? wait till they are even more expensive because the WS uses them crazy style to fill orders.. it will cost him now 70k to 80k a factory instead of 40k to 50k.. so hes going to throw that upon the buyers of the weapons.. then the clothiers who also want to have decay on clothing..
All the above is all well and good if you are a business class.. but what if your a lowly shooter who has to do multitudes of missions as it is to get anything in the game.. just means people will invest in uber expensive backpacks instead of houses thats all. In return the price values on missions will have to go up... so that the lowly newbies who start this game dont have to do 50 missions to get some half decent chitten and a better pistol/rifle/carbine.
Does what im saying make sence? its easy for us to complain that our field is disapearing.. but what about the effects on the rest of the game? We may balance the architect field out.. but we are herting the game in the process.
the original post is exacly my view. 
of course experimentaton should influence the redeed possebilities, like give some more times redeed possible with good experiantations.
i was always thinking of condition loss when u redeed. this would imo help us really most and brings up a consumable good finally for us.
if we dont get such, in some month we wont sell much anymore.
You're right. Before decay is added expirementation needs to work. Otherwise everybody will just pick up novice architect to build factories. However a use base decay is what is needed. Factories shouldn't be able to make more than 50000 items before they break. Harvesters could bring up about 1/2 million resources before breaking. These numbers can easily be effected by durability of the structure.
Neilla wrote:
Decay has three problems:
1. It doesn't help us with the problem of experimentation being useless
2. It doesn't help us with the problem of resource quality being useless
3. This nerfs everyone else and is likely to draw the ire of the rest of the community.
Issues #1 and #2 are, from my point of view, as important as the problem we have with there being no recurring revenue. Without any notion of quality, a master has no competitive advantage over a novice. In addition, architecture becomes VERY dull after you've built your 30th identical heavy mineral harvester, which is identical to every other heavy mineral harvester that has ever been made.
Guys, adding decay or limited redeeding to structures will not enhance your profits in any way. Everyone would just build their own personal harvesters. The large majority of players rely on them already, as medium and heavy harvesters are extremely cost restrictive and difficult to utilize due to placement considerations.
As it is, neither the consumers nor the architects are happy with the current situation. Architects simply cannot make decent profits at 2-3 credits per unit, unless they work very hard. Consumers simply don't want to buy something that costs 4+ credits per unit, unless they have no other choice.
What needs to be done:
1) Get SOE to reconsider the resource costs of high end structures. Give them a reasonable price list for structures, and a desired credit per unit rate. For example, lets say 50k is a reasonable price for a heavy harvester.. and that architects would be happy at 10 credits/unit. So, a heavy harvester would take about 5k resources.
2) Getthem to make experimentation effective. Decreased maintenance, decreased power consumption, or increased harvesting capacity. This is a broken part of your class, and needs to be attended toimmediately.
3) Get themto allow larger harvesters to occupy rougher terrain. Many people just don't want to buy the big expensive harvesters when they can't be placed anywhere. Kind of ironic that our biggest mines are in mountains.. but in the star wars universe you can't have a big mine on a 1% grade.
4) The mine powerup idea sounded good, however if all the above were fixed, it could wait a while.
5) Give architects the ability to build all the furniture in the game, barring only factional. Allow vertical movement of objects inside homes, andchange it so that you can move objects fractional distances.Make lights produce light. Give data terminals a function. Give chests, bookcases, cabinets, and any other storage medium the ability to store items. Once these things are accomplished, there should be a broad market for furniture.
That should fix, Architect. 
First let me say this power up idea stinks. I am an Architect. Looking at that name, I build structures, not powerups. It would be like telling weaponsmiths that once everyone has a gun, all you can do from now on is make power ups for them. How lame is that? Really, once the servers are saturated with deeds is that all you guys want to do is make power ups? Sorry, but that is what artisans are for, not advanced professions. It's like the poor BEs stuck making only pet stims all day. It is horrid and this is exactly where we do not want to go.
We need real structure turn over so there is a true need for new deeds on all servers and all times. Any other solutions to saving our economy should be found to be unacceptable. What if someone new comes to the game after reading the game box and thinks, wow building being an architect allows me to make buildings and houses. That would be very cool. They get into the game only to find out they will never ever get to build anything other than their own house and harvesters since the server is saturated with deeds. Even then it would be cheaper for them to sell their resources and then go buy the cheap deeds. This isn't fair to current players, it isn't fair to new players, each pay $15a month to play this game and to be architects.
This is a hugely popular profession, the second most mastered one. Many people pay to play this game to be architects and to make structures, not power ups. SoE owes it to their customers to allow them to play this profession to its fullest, not one of simply factory powerups all day.
First, let me say that your decay rate idea stinks. Yes, let us force entire PA's to disband and restart every 3 months just because some architect wants to make an extra buck. Yes, let us force every merchant to move every 1-2 months because of one lone greedy architect. I'm sorry, but your "brilliant" idea would be devastating to the game, and they will never implement it.
Your entire idea revolves around a theory that is completely untrue. You somehow think that your market is drying up because everyone has all the best structures. If you wander around any town, 95% of the harvesters running are personal harvesters! A good 80% of the houses are small!
There are thousands upon thousands of people on every server who could use an upgrade or two, and indeed they want those upgrades. They just cannot afford the massive costs, and architects cannot afford to charge any less. If you just get SOE to rebalance the resource costs of buildings, a whole new (and more profitable) market will open up for you. It doesn't need to be a huge shift either, as heavy harvesters shouldn't be overabundant. It just needs to be enough so that architects can make a fair profit.
However, Architects are probably one of the most balanced classes in the entire game, and can be quite profitable. I know an architect who gets 2 million + profit a week, and he sells his wares at 2 credits a resource. Granted, he has several accounts, so most architects can't do this. But entrepreneurs like this is where all your business is going. If you don't like it, go chef or droid engineer and see how well your business goes. Not even weaponsmiths have as broad a market as architects do, as not everyone in the game uses a gun.. but at some point just about everyone wants a structure, or 10.
There are plenty of things that can be done to make the architect class more exciting and more profitable, as well as making the game more fun as a whole. Screwing over hundreds of thousands of paying players for the profit of a few is not one of them.
I completely disagree. As a doctor, I need to be able to redeed on a regular basis over various planets. I can't constantly afford new harvesters which is the primary result of what you suggest. What's goodfor architects (insuring constant income by destroying other players potential livelyhood) is not good for my profession and possibly many others.
How bout this: Instead of forcing people to buy new harvesters all the time, why not have the architech who made the harvester be able to incur a small income based on some of the harvester maintenance over time, like.5-1% this was they would alsways have a steady income. AND why not tie this to a particular column in the skill tree, so that the "commission" fee goes up till it maxes at master?