CUEmu - Thread Posts

Glizzy

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:03 pm

if miner was an elite profession that hada set # of lots (say master miner gets 50) i think this would solve it. But its not and players have to work in the confines of the system. The current system allows for lot trades..

the day they limit lot trades is the day people will start paying double or even triple per unit. think of that medium naboo house costing 300k.. 90k fora swoop. ouch! Armor,won't even go there...

and the guy that said "limit harvesters to master artisen.." How will a new player even master artisen without mining minerals to make stuff?

_____________________________________________________

Gunga Din ~ Master Weaponsmith ~ Master Smuggler
"Gunga's Weapon Shop" & "Always Stocked Resources"
Less than 800m south of Theed Starport -5131, 3390
Newest Vendor on Lok in Fanoveti next to shuttleport
______________________________________________________

GarenTore

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:19 pm

#54

Over and above the 20 lots Im granted by paying SoE 2 x an account fee every month, I also run68 Med/Large Harvesters, through lot trades. 25 Assorted Large/Med Minerals, 11 Large Gas, 10 Med Chemicals, 8 Large Flora and 4 Large Water.

The Flora and Water are there solely to pull grind quality resources for Holo-grinders/whatever, 99% of the product pulled from them is sold at less than 1.25cpu, something my customers are grateful for. The 25 assorted Minerals are there to catch that special shift of metal/ore/whatever I so richly desire as a Weaponsmith, same with the Gas and Chem. When not pulling things I need/require, any resource pulled is sold at no more than 2cpu, oft times 1.75 or less. Again, my customers are thankful, and while they are grinding their chosen profession Im pretty sure Lot Trades and Harvester certs are the last things on their mind.

I pay upkeep on my Harvester Farm in a 30 day block. Costs me around 6mil per month to keep them running, and thats if Im lucky enough to buy my power at 1cpu, or find a supplier selling higher PE stuff for around 1.5cpu. Im fully expecting to see a message upon logging in one day notifying me of the changes to the harvester system. What I'll do with 68 harvesters is anyones guess, but I'll figure that out when it happens.

One thing people like to forget, or simply not mention is the POSITIVE effect Lot Trading has had for the Architect profession. Everytime someone organises a Lot Trade, theres 20 more harvesters sold, 10 per server involved. Architects on Ahazi are lucky Ive done 7 trades, cause theyve sold an extra 68 Harvesters because of it. And like wise of the servers Ive traded with, the Architects on those servers have likewise benefited form Lot Trades.

Az' - Master Weaponsmith

Everything dies baby, thats a fact.
Maybe everything that dies someday comes back..

ThothTheWise

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:21 pm

#55

Pawlin wrote:
So does anyone know exactly what PROBLEM would be solved by the rumored lot trade nerf?

Usually you start with a problem and then move on to finding a solution.

I don't even know what the problem is. Is it that the DEVs think cross server lot trading is wrong on principle? Or is it actually causing a real negative impact?

Of course its just a rumor so, kind of pointless to debate it too much...

Ok sorry I havent been back. I posted this very early in the morning and didnt feel very good today when i awoke.

On another note I am a horrid typist ...I am not the "players Representative"..I ment to infer that Because TH WAS the player Rep ..that i sent it only to him. Sorry for my bad grammar.

1) From what was "said" at the Fan Fest...their major concern is that players are able to "Owne" large tracts of land.

2) while i make 30 million credits to keep my harvestors running...curreently i possess about 2 million to my name the week after doing so. I have personally decided tokeep my own money sink that i Do Not truely need to help curb some of my income. I have a LotTraded lvl 2 player city with no people in it =P It sucks up about 1 million a month to maintain not counting all the admin credits to keep them from poofing.

From what was "heard" at the fan fest, They are thinking about doing this only to factories and harvestors..not necessarily houses.

Thank You all very much for continuing this conversation. I would like to try and propose some kind of Compromise to the Devs if/when they begin discussions on this.

My thoughts on a Compromise would be this (and mind you its a proces in constant revision)

1) Have this affect ONLY harvestors (as i truely feel that few gain much advantage by doing this to factories and Houses..feel free to argue this point if I am in error)

2) Allow Player Cities to be able to be CHOSEN to remain at a lvl 1 outpost.

- a) Since there is a natural 450 meter Radius (that for all intensive puropses creates a "player owned" plot of land) allow harvestors to maintain their current Admin right capabilities as long as they are within / tyed to the cities max 450 meter radius.

- b) For harvestors outside of the above mentioned radius disable the admin feature making Specific Moveable Harvestors a viable solution for those who wish to operate on that lvl.

3) reguardless of if any of this be implimented do NOT change admin rights to the hoppers, as it just creates a Time sink and a Major hassle.

What the above does is make Static Miners then INVEST and thereby lose a certain amount of capital to upkeeping their Mining Outposts, as well as ,in effect, Placing a Max Cap on the Number of Static Harvestors that can potentially Be placed.

This in my opinion is a compromise between the two extremes...what do You think?

♠ Semi -Retired

For Public Viewing: LOWCA GALACTIC GALLERY of FINE ART: LOK -3219 -269 (StarForge)

ThothTheWise

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:29 pm

#56

Aucob wrote:

If there is a "flood of resources," then it's due to the efficiency of the harvesters. The only way to stem the resource flow is to nerf the rates at which the harvs collect material. Nerfing admin rights may have a small effect, but I doubt it. As other posters have mentioned, sufficiently motivated players will find a way to get around those limits.

That is a wonderful insight. Thank You Sir. Also in retrospect, on reading what others have been posting, I do see the issues now with Factories in the fact of them being used as storehouses.

I believe both could be curbed by doing just what you suggest..Limiting the effective pull rates of the harvestors back.

♠ Semi -Retired

For Public Viewing: LOWCA GALACTIC GALLERY of FINE ART: LOK -3219 -269 (StarForge)

EdOWar

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:35 pm

#57

masselin wrote:

soe doesn't try topolice cross server lot trades because there is nopractical way to do it. the christmas holos were added because not enough players were getting close to becoming jedi. holocrons were expensive because they were rare and holocron sales neither introduced credits into nor removed credits from the economy... as such they had little influence on the game economy as a whole. in fact, anything that causes money to change hands within an economy is generallyregarded as a healthy stimulus. soe reps knew that they could not possiblymonitor cross serverholocrontrades so they saved face by giving the go ahead toswapin order to maintainthe appearance thateverything was completely in their control. no cross server trading of any kind should ever be allowed and if there were a practical way to prevent it,they would.

There is a practical way to stop cross-server lot trading---limit us to 10 lots per account. But the Devs haven't done that. Maybe they will, if they feel lot trading isthat big aproblem.

players are restricted to 10 lots per character for a reason. cross server lot trades circumvent this restriction by exploiting the fact that each account can create characters in up to 8 galaxies. when one character owns 300 lots, it does harm to players on his server and to the state of the game as a whole. it enables him to drive down thecost of acquiring resources which in turn enables wealthy crafters to corner their marketand producehuge numbers of the highest quality goods at very low prices.... the spectrum of the quality of goods is destroyed leaving only the highest possible quality goods available. most servers have a handful of elite armorsmiths or weaponsmiths making the highest quality products possible in huge numbers... causing any armor or weapons crafted by non masters to be worthless.each playeron the server runsaround in 70% base composite armor soloing lairs of enraged rancors... and then complains that grinding professions is boring and swg has no content. if players were required to interact with each other in order to advance and to survive, they would create the content. in a role playing game.... YOU ARE THE CONTENT.

True, players are limited in the number of lots they can have, but not necessarily just to limit harvesting. The lot limits exist to limit storage (i.e. houses), base placement, turret placement, factory placement and to help limit griefing and land grabbing. But the limit doesn't stop someone from renting lots from another player on the same server. Why should it matter for a cross-server lot swap?

Running 300 harvestors doesn't decrease the cost of acquiring resources, because there are basically no economies of scale in SWG. The only factor that determines the cost-per-unit of resource harvested is the % concentration for the resource being harvested. In other words, your cost-per-unit is cheaper on a 90% spot than it is on a 80% spot. Now, how easy is it to fit 300 harvestors on a 90% spot? It's impossible. Hundreds of harvestors would have to be spread out over a large field, some on 90% spots others on 80, 70, 60 maybe even 50% spots. Theaverage cost-per-unit for a large lot trader is going to be significantly higher than for someone who drops only 10 harvestors on a 90% spot.

There are no economies of scale in SWG and, likewise, there are no monopolies in SWG. No crafter will ever be able to corner their market, mainly because the barriers to entry are so low, and obtaining cash is so easy. If a crafter prices too low, then his competition will buy out his stock and resell it at a markup. If he manages to ban all his competition from his shop, then he'll burn out eventually from constantly having to restock his vendors. If he doesn't burn out, his competitors can just hibernate their businesses. Eventually he'll raise his prices to take advantage of his 'monopoly', and then his competitors can reopen their businesses to take advantage of the sudden increase in prices. Trying to 'corner the market' in SWG is an exercise in futility.

Items crafted by non-masters, especially non-master weaponsmiths and armorsmiths, are going to be worthless compared to master crafted items no matter how many resources are available on the server. Players are willing to pay top credit for the best items, and getting lots of money isn't that hard to do. Cross-server lot trading didn't create this dynamic, nor will eliminating cross serving lot trading solve it. The solution is to give non-masters something worthwile to make that master crafters can't make any better. For example, more items like WUKs and AUKs.

I don't know about everyone running around with 70% base armor. In my experience, high quality armor is exceptionally rare because it's so hard to make. It usually sells out quickly when it's stocked. That's why, despite cross-server lot trading, good comp armor can cost hundreds of thousands of credits per suit.

Holocrons did more to ruin the economy, and fun, of SWG than cross-server lot trading. That's why people complain about grinding. The Jedi revamp will hopefully correct most of this (though at the cost that now Jedi will be fairly common), and the combat revamp should correct the issue of people being able to solo Krayt dragons and NS Elders and such.

levelling a crafting profession from novice to master is supposed to be the fun part.the gamehas been transformed from a roleplaying experience into a complicated first person shooter.....

Slim Vargo, Corbantis

ThothTheWise

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:44 pm

#58

DingoBoi wrote:

(Sir, As the Players Representative I am sending this to you Alone. Feel free to forward this to anyone you deem might be interested.)

PPS: YOUR FIRED.

Lol first that is a grammatical error on My part. I was trying to infer because TH is the players rep, that i had sent it only to him and didn't spam every Dev with the information.

As for me exploiting..that also is not an accurate analogy of what I do. It has been stated that Crossserver Lot trades are legal..so that doesn't allow me for to be exploiting.

Instead of being agrumentative and jumping to conclusions...please try and think about what is currently..VS what you would like to see from the game's mechanics in the future.

This was a question to discuss this particular State of the game. It is a discussion going quite well in the Architect forums. I would hope the same level of intellegence can be found here.

Thank You.

♠ Semi -Retired

For Public Viewing: LOWCA GALACTIC GALLERY of FINE ART: LOK -3219 -269 (StarForge)

TheOxygen

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:50 pm

#59

I don't think that people are grasping the consequences of eliminating shared harvesters. The most obvious solution, in SOE's mind (and the easiest to code, more than likely), is to make it so that only the owners of a harvester can access it, deposit power, etc. However, as often is the case, the easiest or most obvious solution is not always the best.

Let's examine this point by point, first from the miner's perspective.

The easiest point to address was the objection that static harvesters take up good spots for great resources. This is so far from the truth that it is not even funny. I currently run approximately 100 static harvesters (none of which are cross-server trades), and over the past 5 months I can count the number of times that a great resource has spawned underneath any of them (with a good concentration) on one hand. In fact, I can only recall one time that it actually happened. From my personal experience, and I do a ton of surveying, player cities have gotten in the way of great resource spots far more than any static harvester fields. Essentially, this is a non-issue and I'm not even sure why it was brought up in the first place.

Next, let's look at why people choose to have a bunch of static harvesters. It is simply not efficient to maintain harvesters for 6 months for only one or maybe two worthwhile spawns popping up beneath them. So why do people use them? Grind materials. However, with the elimination of "Holo-grinding", the market for these low quality resources will drop out almost completely. Therefore, through the revamp of the Jedi system, there will be a drastic reduction of static lot trades occuring. Maintaining these static lots will simply not be profitable enough. This should be enough to completely end the discussion, however, I feel that some of the posters in this thread could use some insight on running a resource business, or any business for that matter.

Let's assume that SOE goes ahead and makes it so that only the owners have access to the harvesters. As I said before, I run approximately 100 static harvesters. I do this by renting lots from members of my guild. These are people who prefer combat, and often times are only able to log in once a week, sometimes less than that. I pay these people 125k in credits once a week in order to supply them with a side-income so they can enjoy the times they do get to play. Under the proposed system, these people whom I rent from would have to receive power and maintainence from me, as well as having to manage, remove, and deliver resources to me. This is not fun for these people, nor for me. It simply creates more hassle all around for absolutely no benefit. It takes time away from their enjoyment of the game by making them do a tedious task that is easily taken care of by myself in the current set up. "But Iaan, they have the choice to not rent you those lots in the first place!" Yes, and then I would be a resource dealer using only 10 lots, 6 of which are currently used for storage of loot, resources, and my shop. That leaves me with 4 lots, which is simply not enough for a business.

Now, let's look at the other half of my operation, which I can assume is typical for dedicated miners on any server. In addition to the static lots that I manage, I also have mobile units. These are for particularly good spawns that my customers place orders for, or for resources that I predict they will want in the future. Currently, for any given good resource that comes in, I receive about 5-8 orders. The average order is in the neighborhood of between 300k and 1 million units worth of a resource. That means I have to mine up to 8 million units (though my average, admittedly, is more around 3-4 million units) to satisfy just my pre-orders, not counting the amount I want to have on my vendors for future customers or those that did not preorder. This is obviously a large task, not something that can be done with 10 harvesters, let alone the 4 lots that I have. Thus, on a weekly basis, I seek out guildmates who want to make some extra cash. I search out a suitable spot, and set down about 40 - 50 harvesters down. I put in enough power and maintainence for a week and a half, and when the resource shifts out the people redeed and get paid (actually, I pay half up front these days). Now, this is all fine and dandy because I can access the hoppers mid-shift, so as I mine enough to fill orders, I can deliver them immediately. This makes my customers very happy, and is part of the reason why I do such good business. If these people whom I rent from were the only ones with admin, I wouldn't get the resources untill a week after I started mining. This eliminates my competitive advantage compared to other resource miners, and thus ruins my business model of customer service being top priority. Also, there's the "real life" factor here. Real life happens, and sometimes people who are supposed to log on a week after I rent lots from them aren't able to log on for several weeks instead. This could lead to me losing not only the harvesters, but also everything that's in the hopper, which is not a very safe way of operating business.

Now, let's assume the worst of the worst. I only have 10 lots with which to operate. That means I'm only going to be able to harvest a very limited amount of one resource at a time. This is a problem when there is a great chemical, organic, gas, and several good minerals in shift at the same time. If I was a specific profession, it may be easier to determine which resource to mine, however, since I am a resource dealer, I have to mine them all in order to satisfy my customers. However, for simplicity sake, let's say there is one really good steel in shift. I deal with about 5 Weaponsmiths on a weekly basis, and probably another 5 to 10 on somewhat regular occasions. Obviously, I will not have enough of a given resource to fill all their orders. So you know who gets the resource? That's right, whoever is willing to pay the most (something that I hate doing). That means there will be one or two happy customers, and 8-10 very unhappy customers, who probably won't do business with me again. As any marketing major can tell you, word of mouth is a powerful tool, and unhappy customers are much more vocal to their friends as opposed to happy ones. If SOE were to implement the proposed idea, they would actually eliminate mining resources as a viable business, and speaking as someone who takes a lot of pride in the business that I run, I'd be very unhappy.

Now, let's look at this from a crafters perspective. Older crafters, by and large, are much wealthier than newer ones. Therefore, the older crafters would be able to afford the higher prices on these resources (higher prices created by a lower supply), thus the newer crafters would have no acces to them, and would be forever stuck making inferior goods. However, let's not forget that these older crafters are running a business too, and when the price of an input goes up significantly, so does the price on the final product. In this case, the rich would simply become richer, and the poor would be forced out of their business entirely. This is not even taking into consideration the vast stockpiles that some of the top crafters on each server have accumulated over time, which, although giving them an advantage over newer crafters currently, would be magnified greatly if newer crafters had no ability to acquire the quality resources to compete with older crafters.

SOE seems to have this idea that finding good resources and mining them yourself is supposedly some type of substitute for actual content, as if it's some type of mini-game that every crafter can't wait to start playing. However this is very far from the truth. Many crafters spend enough time working on schematics, filling custom orders, or answering stupid questions that they simply don't have the time to go surveying and dropping harvesters all over the galaxy. Thus, resource mining is a viable business, and it is both time-consuming and tedious (although fun for some of us who are masochists [sp?]).

Again, if SOE implements the rumored changes to harvesters, here are the direct consequences:

Elimination of resource businesses

Massive increase in price on all market fronts

Widening of gap between established crafters and new ones

This is not something that will "balance" itself out. It will simply ruin the economy and the enjoyment for many who play this game. However, let me reiterate the main point that needs to be restated a million times:

STATIC HARVESTERS = GRINDING RESOURCES

GRINDING RESOURCES = GONE WITH FSCS REVAMP

Therefore, this idea shouldn't even be considered by SOE. The problem will solve itself, there will be virtually no cross-server lot trades occuring after Hologrinding is gone.

--Iaan K'Vork

Galaxy Resources

Goontown, Naboo (Lowca)

Tzim

Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:57 pm

#60

As a person who runs 200+ harvesters I have to say TheOxygen is right, the grind material market is the only reason static harvesters exist, and that market will die with the Jedi revamp. These changes will just make it harder on me to manage my mobile harvesters, and harder for the people who rent lots to me.

- Tzimisce

TheOxygen

Wed Jun 09, 2004 5:04 pm

#61

Reposting from the WS forum because I think some people underestimate what this would do to the game economy: