Architect Archive

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Elyssa wrote:

If we limit lots to an account total rather than a character total, that limit should be 80.
I play multiple characters across multiple servers and at least 3 of my characters use all 10 of their lots.

The reason people do cross-server trades is because they have 7 other characters who have no use for their 10 lots.
If instead they could use all 80 lots on their single character, they would be more inclined to keep them on their own server since giving away their lots on other servers would actually hinder them on their main server.

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Okay, her I'm not pissing off.

/hide

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Flatfingers wrote:

5. On balance, I'm inclined to think that nerfing admin rights would make SWG slightly better: the number of people whose gameplay would be improved islarger than the number whose gameplay would be harmed.If, as you say, the dedicated players will always be able to find a way to dominate, then that takes away one of thearguments against this change. We'd just find a new equilibrium point, but presumably it would beone where the gap between the big player and the average player isn't so extreme as to make the resource trading game not worth playing for the average player.

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Cafa wrote:

I'm at a total loss as to how you can make a statement like #5. I've displayed data here that reflect this change would immediately affect the play of 200 accounts. Others have point blank stated that this would destroy even their small guild's ability, nay reason for existence. Quite frankly, I don't know of any independent operators on Tempest now that are prominent in any circles and do it alone. I am mining gas that Akkori (for a name you see on this board semi-often) needs for his droids right now because he doesn't have the lots to do it. Why? He's my guild mate, plain and simple.

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You're responding to suggestions I never made.

I didn't propose that independent merchants shouldbe able to be "prominent" -- I suggested that they ought to be able to have fun playing the sales game. They don't have to dominate; they just need to be able to survive.A few obsessed players should not be able to damage the game for many other players; that's just bad economics (from the SOE "we're trying to sell subscriptions to this game" point of view).

I'm a firm believer that the correlation between hard work and profit should be approximately linear. Achievement should be rewarded; that's how you motivate people to participate in an economic system.

Butthis applies less to SWG than it does in RL, and for two reasons:

1. SWG is more of a zero-sum game than RL -- a few big players in SWG prevent the many smaller players from being able to compete


2. SWG is a game -- economic domination by a few is less desirable than fun for the many

The result of these two points is that having some limits to achievement within this game is both necessary and acceptable to allow a majority of economic-game players to have fun. When a few big players can crank out tens of thousands of units of some product on the first day that product becomes available, why should anyone else play? I have no problem with there being a gap between the novice and the master (in fact I would argue that there has to be a gap), but the current disparity is abusive and needs to go.

I respect the desire of the highly motivated to be highly compensated. But other peoplepay to play SWG, too, and their desireto havefunneeds to be respected as well.Some amount of change to accomplish thisis necessary (despite the insistence of the vested interests that no amount of change is acceptable). So if you're willing to consider or suggestchanges that level the playing field somewhatwhile still providing meaningful rewards for special effort, that improves the odds that everyone can come out of this discussion better off.

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8.As an initial suggestion, how about limiting the number of lots to which any individual can be admin'd? Would 50 be too much, or too little? What if the maximum was limited to strictly harvesters (so that homes andPA halls wouldn't count against the cap)? Would a cap be acceptable then? Or is any cap unacceptable? If so, why, and what would be an acceptable alternative solutionfor improving the ability of independent resource collectors to participate usefully in the resource trading game?

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Cafa wrote:

Again, I ask, for #8. What have you accomplished? Do you really think artificial limitations hurt the people serious about this issue? There's a guy on Gorath that has some pretty big and remote farms. He doesn't talk much on server about them. But, once you get to know him you'll find he's obsessed with his SWG resource business. He makes anything I've ever seen on Tempest pale in comparison and I knew some 30 to 50 milliion a day resource salesmen during the hologrinds. He's going to pay for the accounts to do whatever he wants. You're not going to stop his unless the ability to trade at all in game is removed. If this were my focus in the game, I'd do what was necessary to expand my span of control to my comfort zone, too. I can't see how you would implement this and not remove people with single accounts from the game all together. Would the 50 count on harvestors admin work for me? Truth is, it really wouldn't matter if I cared to be a resource king. I'm more interested in players to participate and become community leaders within their own guilds. That requires, at some point, the equivalent of an economic leader within the guild. Why can't a single account user play that role? Why must that role be played by people with multiple accounts?

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Why is it consideredwrong to limit the scope of any one character's abilities?

This is a multiplayer game. What one player does affects other players -- more specifically, it affects the amount and kind of fun that other players can receive in returnfor their subscription fees.

That implies that there must be limits to thepower ofindividualsand groups. Yes, you want to reward effort, but you cannot allow those rewards to go so predominantly to one person or group that the entertainment of other players is severely limited.

If SWG were a non-zero-sum game, I'd agree with you; let single account users be a combine point for many other players... but it's not that kind of game. There's no way to increase the amount of capital in SWG. There's only so much to go around, and if some game feature (like unlimited admin rights to harvesters)or meta-game feature (likehaving50 accounts) allowsa few playersto grab most of the in-game capital, then that is a design flaw that needs to be corrected no matter how attached the vested interests may be to it because it's fouling up the game for too many other players.

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Our mayor is a single account player. She's literally the surrogate mom for a good portion of the entire server. She has relationships and trusts I've never heard of and I'm one of her best friends in the game (and in RL too now). Limit her admin, and you remove a part of this game that she loves. She loves being mom/older sister/caretaker to us. She loves checking on us to make sure we don't forget things. She doesn't even play into the economy on an active basis, but her care towards others is an important part of her experience.

This isn't about credits to me. Money is easier than ever after the CURB. This is about developing communities that rely and interact with each other.

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Which I support, but not at the expense of everyone else being frozen out.

Doing better through being part of a community is good, and there ought to be game features that encourage this.

Doing fabulously better to the point of preventing others from doing even minimally well is bad, no matter how great it may be for that particular community, and game features that allow thisought tobe changed.

If lot limits on accounts will work and can be tolerated by most players, I'm willing to support it, too.

--Flatfingers

(No, I don't expect to persuade you. We're just swapping opinions here -- thanks for making a good case for your point of view, and for giving me the opportunity to try to do the same.)

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Elyssa wrote:

If we limit lots to an account total rather than a character total, that limit should be 80.
I play multiple characters across multiple servers and at least 3 of my characters use all 10 of their lots....

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Would you be able to live with 30 lots? How about 40?

I'm actually using around 40 lots right now between 5 servers on one account (not counting my 2nd account). But I could live manage well enough with 20 lots.

I'm trying to find a compromise solution that would hurt the fewest people the least. I don't think a lot of people have a lot of characters across a lot of servers that actively use a lot of lots. Boy I just said "lot" a lot. So anyway, it seems that this solution would probably be easiest to swallow for most people.

Nerfing admin rights *would* be a big pain for most of us. Cafa's got a real valid point there.

I think I'm gonna pause to comment back on flatfinger's points. But, what amazes me is that we're really talking about impeding the game from it's originally advertised point, too. Elyssa is correct. The game was sold and advertised as being able to have 8 accounts so you could do different things. I'd bet, specific to Architects, there are maybe 40 Architects (averaged on each server) really doing any sales whatsoever. I'd also bet that maybe 3 do 90% of the sales, except of course on Valcyn where it's been one player for some time. Honestly, we're talking about maybe 3 people a server this would be directed at to fix something and "make it fair". I just don't see hownerfing over thousands of different players to fix an ambiguous problem with no statistical means presented is a good thing. I assert that I further don't understand why this is an Architect issue. The fact that admin on cantina's has been borked for 20 months, that's an Architect issue. Too much time being spent on why we need nerfing and no new anything for Architect in the past year.

Fivo Asia

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Elyssa wrote:

Giving me a pool of 80 lots across all characters is acceptable.
Giving me an average of 3-5 lots per character is not.

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Elyssa, it seems to me that this would only affect those who were running lot-using characters (such as miners)on at least four servers per account. Instead, Isuspect (no hard evidence, but strong suspicion) thatmost players specialize -- they havea character on one serverwho's primarilya crafter, a character on another server who's primarily a combatant, maybeanother who's a doc, and so on.

In which case, the majority of players will still do better with a 50-lot pool such as Pawlin suggests than they're doing now with just 10 lots. Thosewho actively run crafters onevery server for each account theyhavewould be impacted, but how many of these folks are there, really?

And even having one character suddenly getting 50 lots instead of the 10 now available would have significant economicrepercussions that would have to be thought about. There'd definitely be some meaningful percentage of players who'd give all their lots to one character (I certainly would!) -- what would that do to resource prices? And from resource prices, what would happen to the prices of objects that require large quantities of resources (such as Architect items)?

Furthermore, if admin rightscan still be granted, but you now let players have 50 lots instead of 10, isn't there the potential for evenmore massivedisparity between the big PA-backed players and the little guy? And wouldn't 80 lots make that even worse yet?

I'm open to the idea of pooled lots per account, but I'm not seeing howthat would helpunless it includesrevoking theadmin right ability. Otherwise we justwind up withmore of the situationwe've got now, which (speaking for myself) doesn't seem helpful.

(I have to add that I'm not desperately trying to find ways to makeadmin rights go bye-bye, honestly. If there's analternative proposal that leaves adminrights intact but stilldeals effectively with the "centralization of power" problem, I'll be happy to considersupporting it.)

--Flatfingers

I would NOT give us more than 10 lots per server.

If we were to pool the lots so that you could use them on any server that would actually just replace cross server lots with all your own lots. The problem with cross server lots is it allows individuals to produce more resources than the intended 10 lots would allow. Letting us pool our lots so we have >10 lots on a server would give us the same problem of more resource production. But it would just be easier. So it might actually worsen it.

There have been a lot of "unacceptable" changes to SWG since its launch. The sad thing is, many of them were made with little regard to the players wishes. This is something that many people recognize as a problem. The solutions to it are varied and run the gamut from harsh to useless. But the facts can not be disputed that the Devs do NOT like cross-server swaps. They have said it on these forums. We can expect one day to see an announcement that the patch is on test. So it seems to me that we would be best trying to find a workable compromise.

I have in the past run lot-swaps. I ran about 400 harvs on 3 planets for several months. Got boring. I play on one server. I dont even dabble on any others, tho I do have a toon on Test. I have 2 accounts. Personally, I would be fine with 20 lots per account, to be used on one or many servers, but no more than 20. I also woudl prefer a secondary limitation in the number of HARVESTERS you can be admin on. You get to have your name on 40 harvesters per account.

I am in complete agreement that there are WAY too many items being mass-produced, thanks to the flood of resources being generated. I am very biased tho, in that I run a DE and Architect biz where about 95% of my crafted items are hand made. Powerups, Seekers, and Arakyd's are the only regular exceptions. If the amount of resources drops, the demand will begin to approach the supply, and maybe even edge over it, and many more crafters will have the *potential* to run a successful biz. I woudl love to have 50 Architects on Tempest regularly selling stuff instead of the 3 or 4 we have.

I admit, my hopes for the results of the end of HARVESTER cross-lot swaps is based on a dream. But I do suspect it is pretty close to what will actually happen.

Just dont mess with the ability to share houses. Thansk to the stupid vendor bugs with P17, and the stupid decisions to limit the stack sizes of resources, and most Architect crates, I am always bursting at the seams.

I would love to see stack sizes upped significanatly on everything (CRATE OMU!!!!) at the same time HARVESTER lot swaps are fixed.

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Elyssa wrote:

...It has nothing to do with my gameplay. I could easily survive with a pool of 30 or 40 lots.
However, just because it wouldn't affect MY gameplay doesn't mean that it wouldn't affect someone else.
...The current system allows for 8 characters per account and each of those characters is allowed to have 10 lots and I absolutely will put my foot down and stand against anything that alters that system for the worse.

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Ok, so who plays 8 characters using 10 lots each? Who exactly are you helping there? Someone you don't know, havent heard of that might possibly exist who could potentially use all 8 characters and have need/desire to use all 10 lots on all of those 8 characters?

Find me one such person.

If you can't then you're fighting a fight to defend nobody. Your abandoning what might be our best compromise solution for... nothing.

I understand the principle. But we're dealing with SOE reality here. I think throwing out our best compromise solution out of principle is not the best way to go.

My goal is to find a compromise solution that would nerf cross server lot trades yet do the least harm to the rest of the game. If theres a way to nerf cross server trades without harming anyone then that would be the obvious best way to go. If there isn't then limiting us to x lots / account seems like the best compromise right now.