Architect Archive
Thread: Architecture how did it all go wrong?
The problem:
Being a master arch for a long while now ive given some thought about what is the underlying problem with our profession as I see it the problem isn’t with all the under cutting/ lowballing architects, no it goes much deeper than just us selling our wares for low prices. The real problem is low demand for our wears and high prices we need to sell them at.
The reason:
As I see it our number one problem is that we do not have any wares that appeal to the “fighter class”. These type of players out number others by quite a bit. If I was to guess id would say anywhere from 75-85% of the players fall somewhere with in this class. I don’t have to explain it to you that if you are not selling things that don’t appeal to a very large portion of the population you are not going to be making a good living, for example why are the weapon smiths so successful? Their wears are in demand with almost 100% of the population. This also directly affects the prices we CAN sell our wares due to the very low amount of potential customers we have to literally fight each other to keep our customers. This leads to us trying to cut each others throats by “under cutting” each others prices as much as its possible to get that very small customer base that is in need of our wares.
Now let’s try and look even closer in to this and find out why our wares are not appealing to the majority of the population. Let’s look at what we can make and see why:
First thing you have a chance of selling when you pick up the first box of novice arch is a small house. The fighter class doesn’t need a house honestly because there is a lack of “loot” in this game everything a fighter class needs he can carry with the 110 items space available to him or her (60 items in inventory 50 in a back pack). Anything he can’t carry or doesn’t want to carry he can place in the bank safety deposit box. With out the ability of the fighter class “loot hording” any type of house isn’t really appealing as it’s just a novelty item which they don’t really NEED.
So while some people do buy a house just to say they have one there are far more who don’t want or NEED one so this really makes our houses Unappealing to them. What this leads to is seeing novice archs who need to pay their Harvester upkeeps having to sell at Cost or even below cost (aggressive selling) to sell their deeds. Now this isn’t always what they want to do but what they are FORCED to do. Because even if a miracle happens and everyone on your server starts selling at 10 cr per unit , you wont be able to sell small houses because the high cost and No reason to have one leads to one thing : not buying it.
Next up we have factories. Well these don’t appeal to the Fighter class either except a few (smugglers, combat medics). So again if you want to sell these you are looking to sell them to the 15-25% of the crafters. This is also a dead end deed for us soon everyone will have one and the market for these will dry up.
We can sum everything up in the installation tree to fall under the same rule as the factories.
One thing that might appeal to the fighter class is a large house, not because it’s a needed item but because (or so the Devs say) it is a brag item “hey look at me I own a large house im a big shot”. Also hate to say it but this isn’t a hot selling item, just because you can show it off to your friends. Unless there is a use or Need your not going to have that big of a demand that you can charge a Reasonable price. As it stands you have to lower your price to compete with the other 20 guys trying to sell and well we all know where that leads. 90k large house anyone?
Furniture is our best selling items right now because they take much less resources and actually appeal to the people who own a house you can charge 10-20 per resource for these and they still sell , reason being they don’t cost that much even if you do charge high cr per unit or resource. So the buyer isn’t taking that big of a cut in the pocket to buy these even though you are charging 10-20 cr per resource. Now the problem with furniture is that because the house market is not that appealing to the population you won’t have a lot of people buying furniture so it’s a vicious circle we are in, if you don’t have a big demand in buying houses your not going to sell much furniture.
Pa halls are the same as houses yes people need PA halls but we can’t charge high prices because well not a lot of Starting guilds who don’t have large member base are going to pay 500k for a PA hall. They are going to shop around till they find a hurting Arch that is low on funds and will make one for them for cheap.
What is needed to help us out?
I’ve read all the ideas and few I agree with and few I don’t. For starters unless we get something that is needed by the fighter class we don’t have a hope in hell to ever get out of this downward spiral our profession is in. second unless we get a degradable item/items we can sell we are going to tap the market dry and have to pick up a new profession., now you might say ohh wait player city is our saviour but that will just prolong our problems a bit longer if the above mentioned isn’t Looked at and fix.
I don’t think Experimentation is the answer to our problem that will just further make things difficult and “not fun” most other masters need to experiment with things that use up 1000-2000 resource , we need 64k for our largest and 10k and up for the other top tear things. Now everyone doesn’t like crit fails, imagine failing on your experimentation on the PA hall what a bummer huh? also because we use up so much resource making a schematic is plain nuts and wont work because resource shift way to quick for you to get enough resource to build 10 PA halls or even large harvester/house unless you have an army of harvesters going.. Which shouldn’t have to be the case (remember this was meant to be the casual gamers game).
1st Major Problem: Too many of you tinker toy price takers think there is money in this.
2nd major problem: experimentation/good materials do nothing
3rd major problem: 10% to 20 % crit fail rate at master(on a 35 crafting station with 13 tools)
4th Ore harder to harvest then steel etc... intead of used to make steel, give me a break. This is the major reason being an architect is stupid. If youhad to choose which to harvest,a premium 55% ore spot or a 85% titanium aluminum (used to make advanced weapon components). Which would you harvest? I being an ex master architect would harvest the aluminum. Why? You can dump the aluminum on the market or on a weapon smith for about the same as you would making a building. But you would harvest 30% more and you wouldnt spend all day doing it.
5th major problem: this is what got me to unlearn finally. Cant change the color of a couch.
The real problem is low demand for our wears [sic]and high prices we need to sell them at.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't experience this problem.
As a Master Architect, I don't sell a lot of things, and granted, there are many days that my net worth goes down, but over time, my income is steadily increasing,
I agree we need something that our current customers will come back to us for, A Harvester fixing kit when they break down a little (not just because of not paying maitence, time cause breaks too)
We also need something that appeals to the fighting class. I think factional buildings like bases, towers, and turets would be good, because there would be raids on bases everyday and a HQ would need to buy and replace turrets from several (not just one) architects to get their defense back up before the next day.
Its so easy
In order to become a master in any field you must have a residence declaired. Wala! Now you must have a house of some kind.
Once you drop a house/factory you CANNOT pick it up. You must destroy it and buy another.
(granted they must fix the factories first)
Harvesters need to havedeterioration. Yes, you pay maint but things dont last forever. Just apply the same things weapons and armor have. 1000/1000 then let it count down while the harv is running. Once is reaches 0/1000 you can retrieve your power and maint left in it then destroy but you will not get a deed back.
24x7 usage
Smalls last 2 weeks
Mediums last a month
Larges last 2 months
Ohh not bad Sedryn,
I like both of those..... Heck I would say the same for harvestors ( ducks ) That would raise even my prices 
Sedryn wrote:
Its so easy
In order to become a master in any field you must have a residence declaired. Wala! Now you must have a house of some kind.
Once you drop a house/factory you CANNOT pick it up. You must destroy it and buy another.
(granted they must fix the factories first)
Harvesters need to havedeterioration. Yes, you pay maint but things dont last forever. Just apply the same things weapons and armor have. 1000/1000 then let it count down while the harv is running. Once is reaches 0/1000 you can retrieve your power and maint left in it then destroy but you will not get a deed back.
24x7 usage
Smalls last 2 weeks
Mediums last a month
Larges last 2 months
Great idea. however i have to repeat my self, unless the Devs add somthing for us that is a Needed item for the fighter class anything else they do is just not going to work. look at all the other elite crafter profs weapons smiths can make an insane amount of money because everyone needs a weapon. armor smiths do good too , even Droid eng's can make a good living because the BH class is Dependant on them for seeker droids and so on. we are the only elite crafting proff that the fighter class really doesnt need and can do just as well never buying anything from us.