Architect Archive

I have couple of ideas that I would like to share:

1. Set a timer in which a structure will inevitably decay even if maintenance fee is fully paid at all time. In RL houses, structures and various other man made constructions all decay even if it is properly maintained. Effects of weathering is harmful to a building's life span. Usually a typical residential building will have around 20 ~50years worth in them depending on how well they were designed, how well they were constructed, how well they were kept, and how severe weathering effect was in the area. This is inevitable and very realistic. All structures should have a timer on it as soon as it is constructed. This timer can be altered and prolong by using experiementation points on them. An alternative is that maintanence fee is gradually increasing as the building ages. Which makes sense too, the older a building gets, the more expensive it is to maintain it.

2. Make "redeed" an option only to the architects and/or a new type of construction droid, and result of redeeding is an acceleratedshorter life span of the building. Furthermore, make redeeding require a percentage of the total resource used in the original construction as well as credits. Moving a structure around is expensive and time consuming. It should be not a matter of 2 clicks of mouse.

3. Add a decaytimer on all furnituresand crafting stations, as time passes their "functionality" begins to dwindle and decrease. In order for furnitures to be actually attractive to the buyers, there should be "perks" in furniture. Furnitures should be allow to grant bonuses when used such as faster regen rate,a bonus added to the amount of battle fatigue regen when you sit on a chair to watch entertainerst, and other things. Hell, make furniture required for some activities such as you need to be sitting or laying down when you're receiving treatments from medics and doctors.

4. Allow all architects new schematics of military structures that are attackable by opposing factions. Allow architects to build terrets, massive shield generators, field bases, stronghold, keeps, fortifications, and other military structures that are destructible by opposing factions. Also allow buildings belonging to players with a delcaredfaction alignments be attackable or be raided by opposing factions.

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X-EQholic wrote:

I would love to have more military structures also, but we need decay on harvesters now or there will be no demand by the time they implement military structures .

Please explain how demand could possibly be lower if there was decay on harvesters?

1. Most harvesters are personal harvesters, I would hope they would make these way way less attractive. Doing this would increase demand for medium and heavy.

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I don't know of anyone that redeeds personal harvesters. When you can buy a new one for less than the cost of re-deeding, decay on personal harvesters is meaningless.

So we add decay to mediums & heavies? A heavy doesn't even PAY for itself until it's been running for 25 days +. If they decay once a month, there is NO reason to ever use heavies. Everyone would use mediums or smalls.

So what now? Take decay off heavies? Then everyone will run heavies, and once they have, the market for harvesters is once again gone.

Decay should not happen on items that require maintenance payments. Maintenance payments will not go away, because they're the primary money sink.

Adune,

The numbers are not set in stone, in fact I just threw the idea out there. Your calculations don't consider that some people prefer to get resources quickly. Also they could make the med and heavy more efficient, I really don't care. I just hope they make a renewable revenue of some kind for the architects.

Personally it is in my best interested if it stays the same, I have enough money to last me forever and with the harvesters not decaying I will always have resources coming in that I can make more. I don't even have to make items.

The major objection to structure decay seems to be "people will not buy {item X} if it decays and falls apart". This is not an accurate assessment. People buy weapons that decay and fall apart. People buy armor that decays and falls apart. Decay is about to be added to clothing, and I bet you that people will continue to buy clothes that decay and fall apart. People buy food and medicine that are used up (which is just another way of having something decay and fall apart). And, yes, people do double-pay maintenance on these, because they buy repair tools to make them last longer. Putting maintenance credits into your house is the same as buying a weapon repair tool.

The key thing here is that a structure represents a greater expenditure of resources for a population that generally has fewer resources (crafters, who are the majority of our clientele), and therefore has to last a proportionately longer time. (Nobody would buy guns if they fell apart every time you shot them.) Further, because people get more emotionally attached to their houses than to any other item in the game, it would probably be worthwile to allow houses to be repaired in-place with new house deeds (which is functionally equivalent to having the house fall down and then be rebuilt in terms of giving architects new income, but is much easier on the player involved since they don't have to replace every item of furniture by hand). In other words, if the contention is that people won't buy a new heavy harvester every month, then make them fall apart every two or three months instead. As long as there is some kind of turnover in structures, we'll still be able to make money.

As for the idea that architects are just greedy... well, a class that sells its items for less than the resources that compose them would sell for must be getting something out of it other than money. Like most of you, I joined the architecture class because I enjoy building houses and factories and harvesters and furniture. I do not want to spend the rest of my career building nothing but turrets. (Or nothing but harvesters or nothing but generators or nothing but furniture or nothing but repair tools.) Can you honestly say that you would enjoy having only one item that you will be crafting again and again forever? It's not about wanting to make piles of money, it's about wanting to have the opportunity to keep building structures of all kinds. Monotony doesn't serve the crafter or the consumer - who wants to buy six hundred structure repair tools one at a time?

Part of being able to do this, of course, is having the ability to make a basic subsistence-level income - and even that will be denied to us if there is no decay. The devs cannot produce enough new items with enough frequency to keep us in business - and even if they had a new house type every single week, very few people would actually upgrade their house to that type. How many people have you seen buy a style 1 house, then come back later and buy a style 2 because they didn't like the first layout? The other possibility is to make the items functionally better instead of cosmetically better. If they do that (New and improved MegaHarvesters! Harvest six kinds of ore while you sleep!), then they're implementing decay in a disguised form - miners will be forced to continually upgrade to newer and better harvesters to stay competitive. It would be more honest and take less development time to simply implement the decay and be done with it.

The reason decay will hurt more than help is demand will go down not up.

Why would someone want to buy and refurnish a house every month hell every year even they dont and wont. A house is suppose to be a luxury item not some thing of a pian in the neck.This is a game not a full time job.

Same goes for furniture why would i ever go thru the pain of decorating every time furniture decays.Simple i would not.

Harvesters are the same way. you already pay maintance and now you want decay on top of it. I am a master architect and if some one comes to me and says hay run with me for 3 hours to my harvester for repair guess what. It is not getting repaired.

Decay is all in all a bad idea and would kill our profession. Decay adds a tediuos problem on top of the fact none of our items are actually needed. Furniture is some thing people do for fun if they have to do it they wont or at least very few will. Harvesters decay well hay where is that artisan i need personals. Houses will be used by crafters and thats all. I can see it now 50 crafters in one small house crafting or all crafters dragging a bot around every where.It would totally kill the merchant proffesion. Not only do they have to pay out rageous vendor fees now they must buy a new house every week. hehehheehehe yea ok.NO ONE NEEDS OUR PRODUCTS NOW, DECAY WILL MAKE THIS WORSE. there is no benifit to haveing a pa. i know who my freinds are and we can all can join a private join a chat channel which is better than the public pa chat that any one can join.Artisans can build harvesters. they get resources slower which in turn would make all crafters raise there prices due to demand being high. There is no benifit to owning a house. There is not one product we craft that is absolutly needed by any other profession. Other professions can make things that cover every item we make.

There is not one idea i have seen here or any where else on the boards that would make decay work.

Laruther,

I agree furniture and houses have little value currently. I would hope in the future a bed would help heal and maybe have a music box that would heal mind slowly of course, wouldn't want to step on medics or entertainers toes.

I would not put decay on those items for awhile, but they do need decay of some sort in the future. I went to one house and found 50 different dresses. They have no value in the game just like furniture, they are going to have decay and people will still buy them.

But harvesters on the other hand are needed and should have decay implemented asap. Harvesters are needed just as much as pistols, the problem is no decay and personals being to good compared to med and heavies.

I think the whole idea of decaying houses and furniture is worthless. People pay maintenance on their house which would account for simple repair fees. Possibly the more furniture you have in your house the higher the maintenance fee but pieces of furniture should not decay. I'm an architect myself but I don't want to force my customers to return on a monthly basis to replace some furniture they bought from me that 99% of the time sits there and looks pretty. UO is different then SWG (at least when I played) in that there was no maintenance on houses other then someone standing on the door stoop once a week. There is much more land space in SWG and a much higher price to be paid to mantain the land that you own so I don't believe it will be as much of a problem.

What we should be able to do is colorize our furniture much like tailors can colorize clothes. This would create a much large market for furniture and maybe get some use out of some skills that are pretty worthless right now. The quality of materials and skill of the Architect should also effect what the maintenance cost of a building is, shoddy construction requires higher upkeep while a master would make things that stay together better.

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As for the idea that architects are just greedy... well, a class that sells its items for less than the resources that compose them would sell for must be getting something out of it other than money.

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There's been plenty discussion about selling items for less than price the resources would sell. From many of the posts that have been presented I think you would find many objections to that practice. Especially from those whose principal interest is in power leveling their character.

I can understand many of the pleasures that being an architect can have, but that doesn't relate to the title of this post which is "Renewable Revenue".

I still sell a ton of furniture and get many offers for factories and houses. I can't getenough material to buildeverything that people ask about. I may not be the sharpest architect in the game but I'm having a very difficult time understanding why some architects are saying they can't build or sell anything.

Adune,

They can make personals only 1 as far as I care. Lets just take your numbers and see how it would play out if you had 8 harvester running for a week.

Personals produce 85k x .55 =46,750 cost if you sold them for 2 per you would make a profit of 123,250

Heavy would produce 451.5k x .88 = 397,320 if you sold them for 2 per you would make a profit of 505,680

The numbers I gave make mediums to good, so they may need lowered. But I would much rather have heavies than personals using your numbers.

Ibev I like your idea about colorizing customizations =)

I am a Master Architect, and I too am completely against the gradual decay of buildings and harvesters. When people start thinking of Heavy Harvesters as "Disposable Items", things like that will have their selling price fall through the floor.

Instead of buildings decaying, some real life and/or variety needs to be built into the profession. Simply rebuilding everything for people all the time is NOT going to be fun at all. For myself included... I sure as hell don't want to have to replace my 10 heavies... EVER... let alone every month.

There are too many bugs in this game to be fixed for decay to be implimented. This is a pipe dream and should be dropped for something more realistic. Also the whole player community will speak out against the house decay, so this isn't happening.

There are two simple ways to keep our profession going. One is more structures, via player cities. Two is make all structures not redeedable. When someone wants to move, they will need a new house deed. There will always be a demand for newharvesters and all but the very rich will afford the heavies. The resource market on starsider is already saturated. Everyone an their bothan doesn't need a full set of heavy harvesters that will never leave the game. Non-redeedable buildings is the way to go. All that needs to be done is to break the redeeding function.

In order for the Architect to have a long term use, there needs to be some reason for players to continue to come back to the Architect for more.

I personally like Adune's idea about involving architects in the galactic civil war, by allowing them to create military buildings. It would add a lot of fun into the game, and make PvP and when implemented, player cities, more interesting.

However, I believe that decay is something that needs to be added, across the board for all architectural structures. If we don't have decay, there is nothing creating a sink for these structures to drain into, and eventually most of the server will have what they need. Whether decay is through having architects repair houses, or just having to make new structures altogether is what should be discussed.