Architect Archive

I have seen this argument used over, and over, and over again. It seems to be at the crux of someones point of view, and be the main agument for not introducing decay.

"The player base is constantly turning over. You WILL NEVER run out of customers."

You are 100% correct. We will NEVER run out of customers. Unfortunately, you are engaging in a game of semantics. Wording it like that, you can say that one new player every week, would be enough to qualify that statement as true. What is wrong here, is for PRACTICAL intents and purposes, we WILL run out of customers. One new player ever so often when someone quits and someone starts, for 50-100 ma's does not qualify for not running out. 100 architects pouncing upon one new player a week that needs structures is NOT a steady stream of repeat business. As a matter of fact, it is no business for almost all of the architects. Where do you come off by saying player turnover is going to be enough to compensate for no decay?

Think about it, once someone has the house, furniture, harvestors and factorys the want, they never need to buy another architect item again... ever. A new player every so often, will not compensate for that.

Yourargument is incorrect, but for the sake of this below discussion, I will assume that it is....

Now, what I really want to know is, why the orginal poster can selectively apply the arguement to only one profession? Why is it that only architect goods should not decay.

Do you not have any confidence in your statement? Lets remove decay from all items. When people of other professions wonder where the next sale is coming from, we can just tell them, "Thats ok, once one player quits and another player starts the game, you 100 weaponsmiths can... well ONE of you weaponsmiths can sell him a gun.. ohh, btw, make sure it is not the best you can make, because you will want the new player to come back at another time to buy an upgrade."

So, as you can see, you cannot selectively apply to decay. You either give the benefit of repeat sales to every crafting profession, or none of them, not just the ones you see fit.

Sorry to inform you, but if you haven't noticed, decay is suposed to be in the game for all crafted items. That is why architect goods have a duribility rating. Allot of things in the game are not finished, and architect craft is one of them. So do not assume that because it is not here now, that you can prevent it from coming with some post intended to influence opinions."

The intent of the original post IMO is an biased attempt to influence the powers that be, to not inlcude item decay in architect goods. If the original poster truely believed in "The player base is constantly turning over. You WILL NEVER run out of customers.", the arguement would be applied to all items. Since this is not the case, the idea is only beingpushed to things that the original poster does not make.

The problem here is that your whole argument rests on the assertion that no-one will buy houses if they decay.

Presuming that SOE would make the replacement of a "Rotting" house relatively painless (No moving furniture etc... see my posts on other threads), I don't see that the "No one buys them" argument holds water.

No actually, my argument rests on the assertion that a rotting house CANNOT be painless to the player, if it is to relieve any of the pain to architects. Anything that is painless to the player will not generate enough income or things to do for Architects (assuming the situation is as bad as all of you architects is saying it is).

My argument is that if they make any change to houses to fix architect that change, to actually matter, will be too much. This is why I cay simply leave houses alone. Make it so you can't redeed houses (i'm fine with that). But, there is not reasonable amount of decay to houses that will actually help architects.

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Everyone already pays a maintenance fee for their house. What if the maintenance fee was removed.. and instead the house SLOWLY lost condition, until it had to be replaced. If the replacement cost was aprox equal to the amount of maintenance that would have been paid in the same period of time, then the ONLY real change is that Architects now have a market for houses. (Very minor inconvenience of having to find an Architect to buy from also).

Wait. Replace my house? I thought you said I wouldn't have to move furniture.\

Also this proves my point. Maintenance for me is roughly 500 credits a day. 3500 a week. That's peanuts compared towhat you guys need to survive, right? Also, I boughtmy house for 75k.Under your formula, I would have to replace my house twice a year. That's unreasonable. I'm not moving my furniture twice a year (or even once a year for that matter).

Last night I came to an epihany (You will be pleased). House maintenance is dumb. Make it so you can't redeed. I think that is a reasonable compromise. Furniture maintenance is bad news. Leave it alone.

So then I came to harvesters. I thought, well why not just take redeeding off of harvesters, it doesn't make sense that you can just pick up and move harvesters...harvesters are relatively cheap. Then I thought, no that is bad...what if a person places a harvester and there is a resource shift the next day. Then I thought...wait, just give the harvester a useful life (say 7 days) that can be experimented (to say 10 days). After that time the harvester doesn't poof (it lets you get your stuff out) but stops operating. BUT WAIT, isn't that idea the same as harvester decay? Yes it is. You guys are right...I agree with you (on harvester decay).

Daker,

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"Wait. Replace my house? I thought you said I wouldn't have to move furniture."

Where is it written in stone that replacing your house means you MUST move your furniture. This is a computer game... not a real physical world. I see it as simplicity itself to allow you to change the structure without effecting the contents....

Purchase a deed for a structure of the same type you wish to replace.

Take deed to the 'Old' structure.

Select radial option to replace structure.

New deed is destroyed.... old structure is updated to 'Like-New' condition...... DONE

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"Also this proves my point. Maintenance for me is roughly 500 credits a day. 3500 a week. That's peanuts compared towhat you guys need to survive, right?"

Actualy we only make up a very small percentage of the user base. Lets assume 5% for the sake of discussion. So now we have 20 people replacing 3500 creds of structures per week for each Architect.. and of course you are only counting your house.. what about all the people with harvester fleets?

I don't know if the total effect of this rate of replacement would maintain the current number of architects.. but it would certainly maintain a much better number than zero decay.

Again.. even this limited form of decay helps us... andat a net zero cost to the rest of the player base.

Not being allowed to move residences has been discussed a number of times.. i agree with it... but for reasons other than decay.

A heavier cost to moving harvesters is probably in order.... but Im surprised you would be as extreme on that as you seem to be. I dont want to kill other classes to protect architects... i would impliment a more modest restriction/cost on re-deeding harvesters.

In a computer game, the sky is the limit as far as options are concerned. Lets not fence oursleves in believing that some thing can't be done.

Tell me what the nextproblem with "Decay"is. It is interesting looking for solutions.

Where is it written in stone that replacing your house means you MUST move your furniture. This is a computer game... not a real physical world. I see it as simplicity itself to allow you to change the structure without effecting the contents....

Purchase a deed for a structure of the same type you wish to replace.

Take deed to the 'Old' structure.

Select radial option to replace structure.

New deed is destroyed.... old structure is updated to 'Like-New' condition...... DONE

Ok....why buy a new deed? Isn't this comprable to a "repair kit." My objection to this is merely semantics. New deed = new house = move furniture. Repair kit = fix old house = no move furniture.

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Actualy we only make up a very small percentage of the user base. Lets assume 5% for the sake of discussion. So now we have 20 people replacing 3500 creds of structures per week for each Architect.. and of course you are only counting your house.. what about all the people with harvester fleets?

I don't know if the total effect of this rate of replacement would maintain the current number of architects.. but it would certainly maintain a much better number than zero decay.

Again.. even this limited form of decay helps us... andat a net zero cost to the rest of the player base.

I'll believe it when I see it. As I have said several times, I am all for replacing current maintanance costs with something that makes architects money (see my posts somewhere on the first and second page). What I am against is adding to the maintenance costs with decay. Maintenance costs and decay should be an AND/OR thing.

The problem is that the devs will not let decay and maintenance be "and/or." In fact, they have pretty much told Archangel they won't consider it. They need a money sink to take credits out of the money supply (to prevent inflation...more money = money worth less). Instead, if you ask for decay, it will ONLY increase the costs of owning a house, and most likely double that cost. This is unacceptable, and the main reason I don't want decay on houses.

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A heavier cost to moving harvesters is probably in order.... but Im surprised you would be as extreme on that as you seem to be. I dont want to kill other classes to protect architects... i would impliment a more modest restriction/cost on re-deeding harvesters.

Did you read my post? I said decay on harvesters is fine (and have been for...what are we up to now...17 pages?). In fact, I just contradicted all of my "scared about maintenance posts" in my last post. Am I scared that decay on harvesters will drastically increase the price of all goods? Yes, very much so. But I do agree that some form of harvester decay is needed.

My idea would be this. Add a 3rd stat (power, maintenance, and life (new)). Base life is170 hours(7 days). The life can beexperimented up abit.Every hour you run the harvester, the life ticks down one. When life gets to 0, the harvester stops running. It doesn't blow up unless you stop paying maintenance, it simply won't work anymore. This would allow the person to let the harvester run its whole useful life, without worrying about the harvester poofing and teking resources with it at the end of its life. At 0 life, you can no longer redeed, and you have to rebuy the structure.

Now, how's that for a solution?

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The "New Deed" isnt the same as a repair kit (though it can serve a similar function) for several reasons...

a) It can actualy be used to place an additional structure if thats what you need.

If you have a house that you want to repair, why do you need to have the ability to place the same building again somewhere else? If you wanted to place another building of the same type, wouldn't you just buy a deed for it? If youneed place an additional structure you have the means to do so (buy a new deed), if not, you buy a repair kit. The additional ability to place a structure is not a bonus, it is simply surplusage.

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b) It takes all of the same materials (and therefor cost etc) that the original structure took. (Unless you know of a repair kit that can takes 160+ sub components, this is a big difference)....

Item b is probably the most important, bacause it removes a very large quantity of resources from the game. It also takes quite a bit of money to gather those resources.. so that is gone too.

Why can't a repair kit take over 100k materials? Think of it as a new roofing kit. Doesn't replacing a roof take a lot of materials? A lot more materials than fixing, for example, a bulletproof vest (armor)?

Also, since you charge by the resource, how is using less resources, and charging less for those resources, hurtful.

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c) It requires that every schematic still be produced, and not just a repair kit....

Item c is important from a developer perspective... They spend time designing something (the various structure schematics), and its doubtfull they want it to cease being a usefull part of the game.

Every schematic WILL be produced...for new home buyers. Those of us who are repairing a house should not have to buy a new one.

They ARE being used, by people who have bought, and who will buy, houses.Are yousaying that every recipe in the game HAS to be used all the time? Look at CDEF guns. The latest poll of players said that a vast majority of players have maxxed their characters. So... with all these maxxed characters, do crafters have any reason to continue to make CDEF guns? Should the devs FORCE players to buy CDEF guns just so that the recipe is used? No, that's dumb. Same goes for house buyers. Anyone who has already bought a house should not have to buy another just to use the recipe.

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From your perspective I can see that there isnt alot of difference, but thats because you are the user and not the crafter.

Ha!!! Haven't you ever heard the customer is always right? I don'tgive a rat's azz what you think I should think. My perspective is everything, because I am the one who is going to swallow these changes. My perspective is, "It is dumb for me to buy another house, but I might be ok with a repair kit." It may not make sense to you, but I guarantee that most of your customers will agree that buying a new house is unreasonable, even if a repair kit takes the same amount of resources and does the same thing (just a difference of wording).

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If they introduced a"StructureRepair Kit" that had to be used twice a year and cost 75K (and used 20-30K of resources) how would you feel about that? You already said yourself that that wouldnt generate enough revenue for us.... so how much should it cost to use the "Repair Kit"? As a crafter i would rather take my chances with less revenue but crafting my full set of schematics.

Well that depends. If theywouldstill require payingmaintenance for houses, which they probably will, no way Ho'se. 75k is too expensive all at once. I would shoot more for 25k credits in resources every 6 months (however many that is). Any more, and I am beginning to get pissed about how much houses cost.

Before you freak out about that number...please remember that you will still have first time house buyers, even if less than now (by the way...did you notice that 20% of players on these boards--the really hardcore players---don't own houses, and that many more share and don't have their own?...better get selling), and thoseamounts, in addition to all the harvester decay income (that you are not currently making), should give you MORE income than what you are currently making.

I think this is a reasonable compromise (eventhough I am still a little uncomfortable about conceding ANY house decay).

I am starting to think they only way to drive the point home is to do to combat types what is happening to us.

For every combat type put 10 combat missions into the game, DO NOT replenish the missions. There are a set number of creature liars in the world and they do not ever re-spawn, once those lairs are take out, thee are nor more lairs until someone new joins the server.

You don’t have to worry that there will never be a mission again for you because as people quit the game and more join there will be 10 more missions created that you can compete with other combat types to get.

Dayln,

If you want the continued comfort of the game always giving you something to do (like combat professions have), why don't you agree to let the game do the same for architects?

Architect missions.

If you want comfort, you can grind boring NPC missionslike the rest of us. You have continually said youdon't want this for your class, so you can stop complaining that we have it, couching it as a "perk."

Really, if they took missions out of the game tomorrow, I wouldn't care. Really it would be perfect. Then I would just take up Teras Kasi (no armor or weapons needed) and see the world. What I really want to do is to explore the world and stop grinding xp and credits. However, at the moment, I have a 1000m rope with one end attached by my waist, and the other to a mission terminal. This is why I am so opposed to any more costs I have to pay...

You have 2 choices: (1) Grind like the rest of us (artificially created market for you) or (2) accept an amount of money for your services that we feel is reasonable. I include #2, because if you hike up prices too much, other players will tell you where to shove those prices and stop buying.

That is why my advice to you is leave house and furnituredecay alone. Take away redeeding on houses...make harvesters decay...great, whatever. But if you push for more, you are selfishly pushing for something that is going to incite a mob beating of architects.

Look Dayln. You are never going to understand my viewpoint until you try it. Start a brand new character on a server. Stay out of all the artisan professions, and master marksman, dabble in medic, and then work your way up to an elite or hybrid combat profession. Grind missions until you are blue in the face to expensive guns, expensive armor, and expensive stimpacks (because everything we buy is expensive). Then try to save up 150k for a house with decorative furniture that you are proud of, but that costs you thousands of credits in maintenance each week and does nothing for you. Start grinding missions again, because by that time your equipment will be starting to wear out and you need to replace it. Then imagine that an architect comes along and says, "I want your house to fall apart so I can charge you more money for it...go grind some more missions." Piss you off a bit? Me too.

Now, before you give me some sad (read: totally exaggerated) story about how dried up your market is (despite that fact that over 20% of the hardcore players on this forum don't have houses yet), I don't want to hear it. I know, and will be the first to admit, thatarchitectsMAYhave problems in the future. I am telling you house and furniture decay is not the answer. Please open your narrow mind and think of something else.

We do want to grind out our boring houses and extractors.... that is aprt of the point.

Look, I know you are not as clueless as some that argue this ( in another thread ).

You have to see it, that without a recuring need for a product a profesion will basically die.

If all creatures in the game never re-spawned, combat PvEr's would die

If weapons never degraded there would come a time when weapnsmiths would die

Same with armorsmiths.

a\And it is the same with Architects.

one last try(the devs will sort it all out anyway.. they have to preserveEVERY class, not just combat).

You said yourself that 75K per 6 months wouldnt generate enough income for Architects..... how is the 25K you are now suggesting going to work?

If you maintain the demand at the present rate (aprox 200,000 structures in what, 3 months) then you maintain the current number of architects at the current structure prices.

You can get more customers into the structure market by increasing the usefulness of a house, but you can't do the same with harvesters (because SOE wants less resources not more). So add maybe another month or so to current demand....

Posi, you TOTALLY didn't read what I wrote...

You and Dayln have both admitted that you are not starving right now. You have stuff to do. So lets create a hypothetical for you. Assume no turnover in the player base.

In the last 6 months (note months)you have sold 100 houses (all simplified to one type) for 75k a piece, and 1000 heavy harvesters for 12k a piece. You made 7500k in houses and 12000k in harvesters for a total of 19500k. That is all you make because there is no decay.

Now lets put in decay. Houses need repair kits that cost 20k every 6 months. You will make 2000k in the next 6 months because of repair kits. Less than you made in the initial sale, but better than nothing. Now make heavyharvesters decay and blow up after a month's use. You sell 6000 heavy harvesters over the 6 months (1000 a month for the next 6 months). That's 72000k for heavy harvesters. You just made a total of 74000k, almost 4 times as before. In fact, if you take house decay out, you still made more. In fact, if you only make people replace their harvesters every 3 months, AND you take out housing decay, you still made more.

Now, take that same scenerio and add in all the new players that will also be buying structures.

Do you understand now? You are currently making NOTHING off of harvestersafter yousell them, there are a TRUCKLOAD of them in the game, and simply putting a little bit of decay on harvesters will ALONE double or triple your income, without even touching houses or furniture.

THAT is what I am saying.

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then what?

You keep saying that there will be a market for new houses..... WHY?

When the server has 10,000 houses and 10,000characters where will demand come from.

This is stupid. I'm sorry, but it is.It's justhypothetical wishful thinking. There is no way that is possible. Everquest isover 5years old and has new subscribers every single day. I started everquest just over a year ago, and was able to make it as a crafter ina player economy heavily saturated with high-end players that had no need for the low end crappy stuff I could craft. Why? Because afterover 4years of being in existance the playerbase STILL was constantly turning over, and there were STILL new low level players who needed the stuff I could make. Stupid argument. Stop making it.

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Even player turnover doesnt help much, because nothing stops their structures staying after the character leaves.

Oh, you mean except for the fact that if they don't pay maintenance the structure disappears?

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Lets say I compromise, and we have SOE create a whole bunch of new schematics for all the different repair kits they would need (you dont realy think they would waste their time on this do you?). So now I have my "Large House Repair Kit", which took me 20K or more resources to build. To sell it to you Im going to have to charge you the same as I would of for the house. Are you happy now? It simply makes no sense for SOE to do all that work for zero benefit above and beyond making you comfortable with the name.

So, they aren't going to do that work anyway? Forced structure decay and being able to repair your house by plugging in a new deed is already in the game isn't it?........ It isn't? Oh. They are going to have to reinvent the wheel regardless. Might as well give it an acceptable name.

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Your idea of using less resources (and therefor costing less) wont work unless you are willing torepair your house alot more often.. if you need a certain level of revenue its a simple case of math.

Not true. See discussion of additional income off of harvesters above.

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I love that you keep claiming that YOU will be the one swallowing these changes. Except according to your posts you own one house (medium?) and a few small harvesters. I own two houses, 3 factories and about 40 heavy harvesters. Guess who is impacted most by this? Its not about making a class feel good or make more money.. its about basic economics. This will cost me alot more than it costs you... but it is necessary to the long term playability of a class.

HA!!!! Bullstuff. You make your own houses for cost.

And by the way, I don't just own a couple of small harvesters. I have a vested interest that I paid for a bunch of heavy harvesters owned by craftsmenwhen I bought my armor and weapons. I would say over 80% of price of those weapons was harvester costs for collecting resources. Want to try that argument again?

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Face it....Comat characterswill never want decay because it might be a minor inconvenience to them. It doesnt matter tothemwhat any other class needs to maintain its viability. And please dont post some poverty plea... i had a discussion just last night with a combat based friend.... he pulls down over 100K per hour doing missions. Makes anything an architect could make look like chicken feed.... lol.

Let me put to you this way:

Over 50% of home owners get nothing from their houses. They have them as pretty things. Structure decay = more cost for nothing= Bad. Any additional money is not inconvenient...it's extortion.

100% of furniture owners get nothing from their furniture. Even in shops, they are merely pretty things. Furniture decay = more cost for nothing = Bad.

100% of harvester owners make money (or save money if they use the resources themselves) from harvesters. These harvesters currently last forever, letting them make money forever. Structure decay = Good. Structure Decay = more money than you are currently making (by 2 to 3 times). Why isn't that enough? You already stand to double or triple you income from harvesterdecay alone, and you are lecturing me on chicken feed because I don't want to spend any more time grinding credits for my worthless house?

You have to see it, that without a recuring need for a product a profesion will basically die.

If all creatures in the game never re-spawned, combat PvEr's would die

If weapons never degraded there would come a time when weapnsmiths would die

Same with armorsmiths.

Agreed.

HOWEVER, how many master weaponsmiths are currently making CDEF weapons? (not very many)

How many master armorsmiths are making bone armor? (not very many)

How manyWILL be making CDEF/bone armor a year from now if, as you argue, there is no player turnover and everyone maxxed out their characters? (none...no one would ever rebuy a CDEF gun or bone armor....they would already have better stuff...assuming no current players start new characters)

Here is my question to you... Every other class makes all of their money making certain items (high-end) and not using 90% of the schematics they have. Why do you need to make EVERYTHING decay so that you can make everything? As I said above, you will already double or triple you money from harvesters alone. Additionally, artisans ALREADY have to constantly babysit their harvesters, so replacing them adds little to the chore (other than expense).

Why do you NEED to add decay to houses, that a majority of players get nothing out of and don't babysit, and to furniture that 100% of players get nothing out of and don't babysit. You don't. You don't need to.

The logical, least annoying, solution to your problem is harvester decay. Why do you insist on more?

Its has really bothered me that you need actual liquid credits to own or operate any type of structure. Because of this, everything is tied to the proximity of mission terminals, and the "player-run-economy" is therefore dependent on what hard-core combat types can grind out, and most players are forced to congregate around the NPC cities.

It seems like the ideal for crafters would be to have more realistic maintenance be necessary. Instead of feeding money into harvesters and houses, these should periodically have a component "wear out" and have to be replaced with a new one. It would work a little like your battery idea, but you wouldnt be as able to stock up if it was unpredictable which component might go bad. The odds of each component would be determined by resource cost and complexity, so little things would go bad more often than big expensive things.

A component of you harvester goes bad, and you have to buy a replacement. sometimes from an architect and sometimes from an artisan (depending on the part) Mybe you even have to have an artisan use a specific tool to replace the part. Periodic preventive maintenance would keep any part from going bad. Now you have two levels that mirror what we have now, but not require credits:

Each structure would have a "condition" that would slowly deteriorate. Novice artisans would use a repair tool to perform preventive maintenance, raising condition and counter-acting deterioration.

If the condition ever reached 0, the structure would cease to function as normal (harvester would quit working, houses would refuse any changes and/or their contents would begin to deteriorate or something like that) until the required part was acquired and installed. This would mean that even low-level artisans could "earn their keep" by repairing other people's structures, and architects would stay busy providing replacement components.

The one problem I see is that the single benefit of the current system would be lost: that you can "pay up" a house and then leave it, almost free from any worry. This could be solved by having an "insurance system" for those who prefer to use credits and operates basically like what we have.

The best part is that this would mean that mission payouts could be severely reduced, and the most valuable commodity will become the time a player has to invest to acquire something. (and all of us who have been playing will be super rich!)

Also, I think that saturation of the housing market isjust as much a function of a lack of choice thana lack ofhouse decay. I live on Rori, and once you get a large generic there's nothing else for you to do but decorate. If there were more housing options: styles, color schemes, floorplans, etc. then I might very well periodically change my mind or want to try something new.

Daker,

The "New Deed" isnt the same as a repair kit (though it can serve a similar function) for several reasons...

a) It can actualy be used to place an additional structure if thats what you need.

b) It takes all of the same materials (and therefor cost etc) that the original structure took. (Unless you know of a repair kit that can takes 160+ sub components, this is a big difference).

c) It requires that every schematic still be produced, and not just a repair kit.

Item b is probably the most important, bacause it removes a very large quantity of resources from the game. It also takes quite a bit of money to gather those resources.. so that is gone too.

Item c is important from a developer perspective... They spend time designing something (the various structure schematics), and its doubtfull they want it to cease being a usefull part of the game.

From your perspective I can see that there isnt alot of difference, but thats because you are the user and not the crafter.

If they introduced a"StructureRepair Kit" that had to be used twice a year and cost 75K (and used 20-30K of resources) how would you feel about that? You already said yourself that that wouldnt generate enough revenue for us.... so how much should it cost to use the "Repair Kit"? As a crafter i would rather take my chances with less revenue but crafting my full set of schematics.

You are right, the Devs probably wont let maintenance/decay costs remain the same.

If, as you postulate, they would double the total cost when implimenting decay then surely you see that not implimenting decay will simply force them to double the cost some other way.

Sorry.. I guess I wasn't clear on the harvester item..... yes, I agree with you in principal. The degree to which they are limited is where I was saying i might be less severe.

Speaking of not reading what was wrote I'll restate what I said before that you conveniently overlooked.

"I think the key questions about degradation of a house structure is how much, how fast, and whether it can be reversed or not. Another question is the consequences of your letting it degrade to 0. My simple take on it is that once it goes to 0 you can't drop anything new into the house until it is repaired."

This would have no impact on you at all since you never use your house to store stuff. This provision would make it so you would never ever have to repair the house and you'd never have to move and it would have no impact on you since you never use the house for anything at all. Is there a reason you didn't comment on 1/3 of my post but made sure to reply in a threatening manner to the first 2/3?

Fidg'Ter