Artisan Archive
Thread: Master Artisan, the Welfare profession?
GraySeven and everyone,
I don't consider this a dead horse. The devs have a chance to respond to our concerns as artisans soon. We will see what they say.
I wonder if the lots were intended to let everyone make a living principally by mining and selling resources. Is that the kind of game the devs want to have? Where everyone is a miner, chemical extractor, etc.? I'm starting to wonder. With the upcoming Jedi changes, grinding is going to cease to be the norm...at least once folks settle back into the professions they want. So I think only the resources needed to actually craft things will be mined. Is it fair to ask the crafting professions to compete for the resources they need with master commando/TKMs using heavy harvesters? Maybe reasonable minds can differ on this issue, but I don't think so.
Limiting certs to the Artisan profession would not have devastating consequences. Because anyone can be an artisan and invest a few points in our surveying line if they are short of cash. Sure...it might mess with their dual elite profession template. And certainlyBHs have fewer points to spend on Artisan that other classes...but I think that's because the point system is a little messed up. BHs are also master scouts andcan spend 6 points for ranger if they want to make money havesting organics.
GraySeven...if this were a dead horse, I doubt it would have attracted the attention of the architect correspondent, the BH correspondent, and the commando correspondent.
My personal opinion is that masters of two elite combat professions should expect to make their living as mercenaries or soldiers...fighting for a living. Not mining resources. If the missions don't pay enough...well...that's something to talk to the devs about. I think perhaps a little inflation is in order. Becausecounterfeiting the currency (duping) put the economy way out of whack. And the best cure is a currency devaluation. Which would mean that travel and other costs go up but also that folks make more money since money is worth less than before.
Also, think about what harvester certifications would do for cross-account lot trading and other exploits used by ebayers. I see lots of positives to the proposal for certifications.
This is not the first, or the 100th or even the 1000th post on the subject of "bring back the Miner" or "certs for harvesters". I couldn't possibly count the number of times this horse has been kicked.....
You can think that just because some Correspondants showed up that this is a "hot topic" but the truth of the matter is simple. This issue has been answered by the Dev's in posts past and they have no reason to answer it again.
If you have one profession that monopolizes the basic economic block in the game, you will get trouble.
As an Artisan, you get to Survey. The bonus you get is that you don't have to "drop and pray" to find resources. Your skill lets you find specific resources in high concentrations in a simple manner. The bettter your survey skill, the larger the area you cover per "use". With vehicles in game, this lets you home in on good resource concentrations very quickly.
Non-artisans can either: A) Find places where others have put up harvesters and hope they get a decent concentration that will make the cost of the harvester worthwhile, B) Finda nice open piece of flat ground and just drop and pray, or C) Get waypoints from their Artisan buddies/guildies and drop there...
The ability for anyone to harvest keeps the CPU down to reasonable levels, simply because if the price gets too out of hand, then its easier to drop my own harvesters than to make the money to pay for what someone else is selling for.
Don't forget also that Medics, Doc's and others need Organics. Do you think they should have to be Artisans to use Organic Harvesters or that Artisans should be Medics to use them?
Finally, remember that Artisan is a STARTING PROFESSION. You want to get rich, do it through an Advanced Profession. Master Marksman should not have the expectation to be able to solo a Rancor, and Master Artisans should not expect to be able to make millions selling their wares. The Artisan profession is a stepping stone to the Elite crafting levels. You have enough craftables available to be comfortable financiallythrough power-ups and MA components, but don't expect to make as much as an Architect or Armorsmith or any other advanced profession.
Putting the gathering of resources in one profession simply isn't going to happen, and especially not in Artisan. Artisans have an advantage, yes, but not a stranglehold that would destroy what little Player Economy we have.
Tanks I tried explaining it in previous posts.
And I dont think this is in no way a dead horse and we arent saying to JUST have Artisans harvesting but for all Crafting professions on some scale.
And its the economic balance model in when you level the production of two rivals prices drop.
For example potato chips. The small potato chip companies had to work their butts off and reap in as small of a profit as they could in order to catch the bigger companies. They were so persistant that eventually they were both equalled in production. The bigger potato chip company realized that the smaller potato chip companies were selling just as many potato chips as them. So the big potato chip company lowered their prices. They were forced to produce less because both companies were selling alot so the bigger company originally scaled down and now you see more and more potato chip brands popping up because they dont have to catch up as much. Its a spiral of balance.
Lets face it. Surveying is not hard. Named resources always have the same stats. So every day or two you send out a small army of survey droids and collect all of the names of the resources on all of the planets. Then you goto each planet and collect 1 sample of each resource. You now know every single stat of every single resource in the entire game on your server. So you pick the best ones and then you go on the harder part of finding a decent concentration. If your an armorsmith you put down harvesters on the resources that have the best stats for making armor. If your a weaponsmith you put down the harvesters on the best resource with the best stats for making weapons. Etc Etc. Surveying101. If you play more then a few hours a day and you put the effort into surveying to be a good crafter your gonna be able to keep on top of resources almost ona day to day basis because resources dont shift out faster then you can go there and take a sample to find out what it is. So casual gamers should have no rpoblems always having their 10 harvesters on the best resources for their profession. If you cant do this then its your skill that is hidnering you not the game mechanics. A hardcore gamer is also always going to be on top of what resources are on the server and where.
Now who here is going to come here and realistically argue that everyone should be able to harvest resources that only the crafters need in any significance because they need a money making oppurtunity. This is false.
Day 1 of leveling marksman because I wanted to try the world of the combat professions out. I decided this was a good time to join a faction and do some missions maybe with a large group. I started out in a large 8 person group at Fort Tusken where there was 10000 people all in one small cave killing tuskan raiders. The credits and loot items were relling in almost as fast as my screen could scroll(little exaggeration but you get the idea). I did this for about an hour or less and had just mastered Artisan earlier(hence why I am doing marksman now). I started the day at maste Artisan at 10k and by the end of the Tuskan hunt I made about 10k more so I was at 20k. Next I went over to a large Rebel base and looked around the bases and talked to the recruiter and did a few missions to get my FP up to join the Rebellion. WAs making about 400 credits each ont hose missions plus 50 credits on average per npc i kill. Was getting about 30-50FP per mission so it took me like 5 missions to get the 200 I needed. So that was like 5k almost in a short time. Then I just took the easiest missions I could for the next hour and I got enough FP to get a rank increase to lance corporal. Im making like 10k+ an hour doing this. I did this for a few more hours and got up to like ranged support 3 and rifles 3 in the marksman line before I quit. Towards the end I was making like 1000+ per mission plus 50-100 credits on average per NPC(3 NPC's usually per mission). I am doing over 10 mission an hour so im making over 20k or maybe about 20k an hour.
Now im the proud owner of a FULL suit of composite plus a sliced rifle with 500 max damage all after 1 full day of running faction missions.I built a speednike and am now a Corporal in the Rebellion against the Empire. Not bad for focusing my attention on my combat profession. Im seeing the missions scale up in reward and the NPCs are dropping more as they get harder. So as of right now my opinion isnt swayed that the combat professions are nerfed as money makers. Cmon how cool I almost have a full suit of tuskan armor plus my very own tuskan rifle! Pretty fun and pretty rewarding to me.
Harvester Certifications are needed for the sake of balance. If you want to be super rich you shoudlnt be super rich killing machines you should be semi wimpy rich people. If you want to be the best crafter you should be out harvesting your own resources and keeping a small but steady customer base so everyone else can do the same BECAUSE SURVEYING ALL THE REOSURCES IN THE GAME EVERY DAY IS CHILDS PLAY. If I can figure out how to do it you all can too. The only thing that should set apart a good crafetr from a bad one is how much they have experiemented with resources to get the best possible combination that agve the best stats. Not who has the most friends. Friends should be rewarding in battle not in economic monpolization.
Man you're telling that potato chip analogy all wrong. You talk like by removing a lot of the resources being mined that the small time crafters will be increasing their production just cause the big time crafters run out of resources. But how does having less resources available give the small time crafters more resources?
There's no magical resource fairy granting small time craftes extra ya know.
So the potato chip thing should go something like this: All the little potato chip manufacturer's were jealous cause the 3 big potato chip company'scontrolled the lions share of the potato chip market, so the little potato chip companys got together and lobbied congress to make it so that only potatoes grown by certain certified potatoe growers could be used in potato chip manufacture. And so the supply of potato's for potato chips was cut by 90% overnight, and faster then their heads could spin the price of potato's went through the roof, the big 3 potato chip company's bought all the potato's, and prices for potato chips skyrocketed.
And as for that second big paragraph there Sinist... you do know about OQ right? It's that little stat that isn't gated like the rest.
I agree...the only rich people in SWG are really the crafters (on my alt, Im one of those) and then the hardcore resource sellers who do cross-server swapping, and have fleets upon fleets of harvestors (a hell lot more than I have....and I can prove it....with an order of 114 harvestors from ONE GUY...all heavies)
But wait? These hardcore resource sellers....most likely they have artisan, to survey for resources....hence they're playing by the rules somewhat...the only problem comes with a limit of lots...hence the cross-server swapping. Perhaps giving artisans/elite crafters more lots would stop this...afterall, for most of the miners out there...without artisan, its hard to find resources as its hit or miss...
And mind you...not everyone is freaking rich....alot of my friends barely even have 200k cash....my commando has 2 million, 1.2 million was done from mission grinding over a span of 9 months...crafters can easily make this in a short time span (like me...made 2.5 million in one night for dolovite spawning)
If prices rise cuz of this restriction, then the common player will hurt the most...for good weapons/armour, they are expensive already...dont make the basic/decent as expensive...creates a non-friendly casual gamer enviroment..and this game IS geared towards that. As Amizar of Valcyn put it to me during my survey on this issue with ingame people (which garvin will be posting somewhere here soon)....its a lesser of two evils....lots of cheap resources may be better...rather than a ton of poor people -- dont forget, JTL is coming...and spaceships undoutedly will be rather expensive.
Srednii wrote:
Man you're telling that potato chip analogy all wrong. You talk like by removing a lot of the resources being mined that the small time crafters will be increasing their production just cause the big time crafters run out of resources. But how does having less resources available give the small time crafters more resources?
There's no magical resource fairy granting small time craftes extra ya know.
So the potato chip thing should go something like this: All the little potato chip manufacturer's were jealous cause the 3 big potato chip company'scontrolled the lions share of the potato chip market, so the little potato chip companys got together and lobbied congress to make it so that only potatoes grown by certain certified potatoe growers could be used in potato chip manufacture. And so the supply of potato's for potato chips was cut by 90% overnight, and faster then their heads could spin the price of potato's went through the roof, the big 3 potato chip company's bought all the potato's, and prices for potato chips skyrocketed.
And as for that second big paragraph there Sinist... you do know about OQ right? It's that little stat that isn't gated like the rest.
Srednii wrote:
gods, what an unuterable noob.
Well, all I can say is that I hope the devs will listen to people who've been playing for the past 11 months, and not some whiner who wants massive game altering nerfs after 2 weeks of playing (and the smallhandfull of less noobish, but still misguided people who agree with him).
I can hope that they don't take seriously the person who thinks decreasing the supply of resources won't result in an increase in price, and a decrease in availability. The person who thinks that getting rid of mass production will lower prices.
Hell, I can hope that the artisan correspondent hasn't given in to your threats and put this stupid question in the question list.
Srendii i really am finding it hard to agree with the price increase issue as being an issue at all. Right now IMHO prices are waaaay to low.. Money is so easy to come by that even if prices tripled people would still be able to easily afford anything in the game.
Infact making everything more expensive along with harvester certifications may be just what this game needs to bring the economy back into order..
case in point..
1 day of doing nothing but mission, i am able to afford (easily) the very very best rifle that money can buy (sliced and all.. plus some left over for some great weapon power ups)..
now to me that says something right now is fundametally wrong with this game,
1. the resources are easy to come by making a relative easily crafted item..
2. with so many resources the weapon smith can make a lot of thes top of the line rifles and pay a smuggler to slice it for him. Resulting in a very good weapon at an ultimately cheap price. (too cheap IMH0)
when i was climbing the ranks of rifleman i was very suprised to see all these top of the line weapons at dirt cheap prices.. and all i was doing was destroy missions and easily made enough to buy one of the best weapons in the game.
with this better weapon i have already made enough $$$ in 4 days of just casually playing the game to buy 4 more of these top of the line weapons at that price..
maybe the problem isn't that hte prices will go too high, but that right now the prices are waaay to low..
i don't think anyone is disagreeing that prices will go up, but that isn't necissarily a bad thing
(just a note, i have been MA for 8 months and my rifle character i have been playing for about2 months on a different server)
Message Edited by SaleusCorwen on 05-16-2004 03:28 PM
Top of the line ubese 300k, top of the line composite 1m+. top of the line weapons 10-30k.
And you want those prices to increase? Granted these are screwed up bria economy prices, but they're still reflective of other servers. I consider prices for armor and weapons and food to be high. Hell I feel guilty charging 280k for my suits of 75% ubese, but I have to because demand is so high I'd get cleared out in days if I didn't charge that much. Demand is that high, and supplies are thatlow (we havn't had good axidite in 6 months), this mysterious resource glut that everyone is talking about doesn't seem to be effecting my world as an armorsmith.
And truly the resources arn't easy to come by. 6 months! 6 months we've been waiting for new intrusive orethat's armor worthy to spawn on bria. And these long droughts are normal, ever server has different shortages. Cripple the resource mining industry and everything gets worse. Cripple the resource mining and that intrusive ore that I'm reaaaaly tempted to buy right now at 100cpu just so I can make some composite goes up in price, which in turn either prevents me from making it alltogether, or drives my composite armor price up to compensate.
As for Artisan as a class, I havn't commented on that at all. Mostly cause it's a starter class, it's not meant to be the class you make your "career". Some people here seem to think that only Master Artisan's should be getting rich off of resource harvesting. But I don't think a starter class should be getting rich at all. None of the other starter proffs can, why should artisan?
That's not to say artisan couldn't use some improvements. But artisan has gotten more attention then some of the Elite crafters have already (think tailor and merchant), so I'm not too worried about the class itself. More stuff to make would be an obvious improvement, but it's hard to justify more for artisan when EVERY elite crafting class is screaming for new stuff for themselves. But they could certainly do something like fixing the bazaar's, their lag and general brokenness makes everyones lifea pain. They could make powerups easier to make, havn't I seen some threads asking for choice of mods when making powerups?
But it would be hard for the devs to add new content for artisan without the elite screaming. Anything new would have to be stuff the elites couldn't legitamately claim as their own. Add clothing in artisan and the tailors would complain that after 11 months and 1 chef hat they need all the new clothing. Add new buildings, architects, weapons, weaponsmiths, ect. Anything added for artisan would need to be something that doesn't fit in one of the elite crafting classes. it would be nice if artisans could make skill tapes and armor attachments tho. The devs told us all this isn't a loot based game, and that crafters would supply players with everything they need. But just look at any auction forum and you'll see that's a crock. If artisans could make skilltapes and armor attachments that would be a nice addition.
As for making M. Artisan worth taking... I would suggest something like a +25 bonus (or more? +50?) to assembly mods for all the elite crafting classes. Or for them to add some advanced gadgets into the M.Art box (nightvision goggles, parts for the new jet pack, hell let them make jetpacks,something to equip for a higher speed when running, ect), small things to make life easier. An increased range for surveying, or advanced surveying devices (think a survey screen that stays open and moves over the terrain as you move, exposing fresh concentrations as it reveals new terrain) would be a godsend that I would dearly dearly love for M. Artisan.
But do you all think M. Artisan is alone in this problem? Nobody takes master scout except bountyhunters and rangers, nobody takes master marksman except bounty hunters and commando's, nobody takes master brawler except... well nobody now that warcry 2 is nerfed. Nobody takes master enterainer except for a very very few people who want to play that little banjo instrument.
But that's all moot since this whole thread is about making a change that would inflict a horrible nerf on me, reducing me from using 22 lots to supply my own mineral needs, to at best 10 lots IF I place all my houses and factory's under my alts name. And also driving up prices for materials, I don't buy much in the way of resources, but when I do buy I want there to be large scale mining operations, I want resources to be available for purchase.
Which means I'm not going to ever support this idea.
It's like one of the resources I have for instance. Obic, a polymer. I think it's stats are like 900/800 ish oq/shock, and it's the best polymer we've seen in a very long time.
The spawn was4months back or so, and I managed to snatch up only 250k of it or so, I think I got unlucky and missed the first couple days or something (either that or it spawned at the same time as something else I needed forcing me to split my harvestors).
So anyways it's abunch ofmonths old, and I've already used up around 75k of my stock. That'sa thirdof my supply gone, and I have no clue whatsoever when another polymer with good stats will spawn again. It could be 6 months, it could be a year. Nobody knows, and I'm half terrified of using it all up because then I'd be forced to buy more at 50cpu or more, if I could even find some to buy. Apparently the mineral glut mysteriously missed Obic.
oo, another thing to improve artisan. Improve vehicles.
Make quality of the vehicles matter more, and make the stats of the vehicle show up in the deed. Vehicles seem to sell at like 1 or 2 cpu right now and changing that would be good.
Make quality effect the speed, increase the hams so it's more obvious what high quality is (2200-2400, who cares when the difference is that small). Make it so vehicles are repairable from being disabled, or for them to have 10 lives before poofing for good. Right now people hate the idea of a 10 or 20k vehicle dying in one hit as they fly by a nightsister, so they refuse to pay more then the 1 or 2 cpu people are charging.
Make them customizeable, have optional components like boosters (like burst run only for vehicles), storage components like in droids, armor, ect.
Hell, these idea's must have all been discussed at one time or another. These are the kind of improvements I would suggest for Artisan. Not massive nerfs taking away abilities from everyone else, abilities they've had for 11 months now.