Architect Archive

I'm going to try not to bag on anyone here, so please don't take any of the following personally.

1) The Architectural market is not broken. I sell homes all day long for 15k, I've got over 250k in my bank account, I run a fleet of 10 medium harvesters, AND I work alone. That's right, I'm a SOLO character.

While it is true that combat types don't "need" houses, nobody in Ultima Online "needed" a house either, yet tens of thousands were sold. Know why? They are a STATUS symbol. I rarely get people saying, "Hey, how much for the crappiest, smallest house you make." They say, "Hey, what's the biggest house you can buy?" Then when they find out the price, they buy a small one with the promise that "They'll be back when they get more credits."

2) The game has been live for all of THREE weeks. The fact that there is ANY market for high end structures this early in should tell you that the market is alive and flourshing. On SWG's release day, over 75% of new characters started out as artisans. It will take some time for those people to filter out and find their "true" calling in the game. For now, they are all just beating their heads against the wall, selling small houses for 8k.

3) Agreed on experimentation being worth something, reduced maintenance fees, better harvesting rates, SOMETHING.

4) The reason that we have to sell for less than a weapons or armor smith is because our material grade means NOTHING in the final construction of a house. All of those resources you see selling on the bazaar for 10 credits each will go away when the armor and weaponsmiths stop buying them because they are crap. I talked to ONE guy, asked him if he would be interested in bringing me any of the minerals for 2.5 credits each and he jumped on the opportunity. I've done probably 100k in business with him in the last week.

5) The maintenance issue: We should NOT get a portion of the maintenance fees unless we have to physically DO something to maintain the house. If you want to make a new profession called the "handyman" who uses hammers and materials to go "fix" a house so be it, but to have an automatic revenue generation system is ludicrous. Imagine how cheap structures would sell for if you knew that you got 50 credits per day back from them. Hell I'd just GIVE them away, go on vacation for 2 weeks and come back to a bank vault of credits!

It has only been three weeks and I'm already seeing attrition in the architect ranks. I know of two guys who have gone bankrupt and have switched professions in the last few days. Guess what, they were the same people who would sell small homes for 8k.

If you are short on money as an architect, consider changing your prices (upward), changing your selling tactics (yes, you are SELLING your goods) or perhaps be inventive and offer creative financing programs for your customers. I've financed people for up to 20k and every one of them has paid me back ON TIME and MORE than the original loan was worth. How's that for customer service?

The architect profession shouldn't enjoy special "protection" in the form of fixed price floors nor should the invisible hand of supply and demand theory be tampered with. The market has to stabilize before any changes take place.

If you truely love the profession, hang in there, charge reasonable yet profitable prices for your structures, and build a customer base from your good service and good name.

Floyd Wright

Architect, Bria Server.

ItsDEMAND controlling the market plain and simple. As the starter of that thread "Why we get such rediculously poor credit/resource ratios"pointed out "People need to kill, they dont need houses". You could play with house quality and funky ways for experimentation to make houses better all day but in the end, its not going to do anything at all. I guarantee it.

Weaponcrafters / Armorcrafters are making it big because people NEED that stuff to go up since 75% of the starters are combat types and even crafters need a good weapon if they have harvesters in the fields. Weapon crafters get repeat business as the people advance to new certifications or as their "latest model" comes out. We have no means of repeat business...

The only people buying homes right now are merchants anyway. (i.e. weaponcrafters tailors armorsmiths etc) and the odd person who wants a home. But when it comes down to it, youre average Joe does not NEED a home. Nor does he gain certifications to use larger ones as he advances. He can wait for the biggest one, or just get a small one whenever, but he doesnt need it so if you want him to buy it you need to give him incentive by lowering your price to the point where its practically not even worth your while.

The answer?

A fixedpercentageof all maintenance fees paid into equipment you sold, goes to your bank account! Say its a "Labour Cost" and the rest of the maintenance is going into "parts" or something and thats why we dont see it. Whos maintaining this stuff? the weasels that live in your basement? NO THE ARCHITECT WHO BUILT IT THATS WHO! Now granted, we cant wander around and fix their crap but its logical... lets just say thats what our avatar does when we're offline *wink*

Ive come to the conclusion that the Architect market is trash, and always will be trash. And yes I think experimentation should make better harvesters and such. But lets face it, even if they do get made better everyones used to paying JACK and now they will always want to pay JACK and youll never get all the architects to band together for stupid pricing unions andall stuffthat everyone tries to do.

So we cant sell our stuff, who gives a hoot. All we want is to keep up with some of the other crafters cash wise while supplying our service but no one is rich enough to pay the ratios other crafters get. If they sell for say 7.5cr / resource .. whod buy a small house for 30k nowadays? or a factory for 80k+? Only a fool you can be certain. Or someone who BADLY wants one NOW. THIS is a good way of having the difference made up out of an expense the population is already paying.

Though I STRONGLY suggest that medium extractors be made partially more efficient, hardly anyone wants them. so say, smalls are 720 for 2 extraction, mediums are 1440 for 4 ext. Make Mediums 5 Extraction. Then make larges even more efficient (For the amount ofstuff you need to make them they DESERVE this...) so theyd be... what? 2160 for 8 Extraction. Or something along those lines.

Plus experimentation should allow you to alter A) Maintenance Cost, B) Power Usage C) Extraction Rate. Everyone agree's on that Im sure.

If all of the above was implemented, I know id be alot happier with architect... and might actually finish getting myself to master after all. But now? No point until its fixed... bleh. Selling stuff for less than you could sell the resources for is lame lame lame.

And if none of these methods are good enough, then come up with a REASON for EVERYONE to want a house / extractor AND/OR make up some NEW Architect only items that would be in HIGH Demand.

Can we get a devs mention on the odds of any of this? Or are you already considering other options? Come one... wheres our light at the end of the tunnel.

Battlefield structures..... It said we could make them in the manual, where are they? Once people start going to battlefields they will want these and they are somewhat disposable. Without battlefield structures I plan on changing profession.

Idea #2.

Structure crafting missions

NPC 1 will pay you 15k to make a small house for him.

Make them easily available and have missions for every structure type.

This will set a BASE price that only an moron architect wouldnt follow. I.e. why would I sell YOU a small house for 8k when I can take it to the "Remax" and they will get me 15k for it.

Its all about Control. Yoda knew the value of control... set some controls in for us, because we obviously cant control the market ourselves.

"Yet another Idea from the people who brought you beer milkshakes!"