Artisan Archive
Thread: Why Harvester Cert's can never happen...
HalasterTheBlack wrote:
CityCowBoy wrote:
Why? Even if Volume is not effected the pool of players who have access to these resources would be, likely, greatly diminished. Less competition always equals higher prices as people will always charge as much as they can get.
No. If you leave the capacity the same, some might try to raise prices for a while, but they'll be quickly brought back in line as competition for business forces the prices back down. You will definitely see a short-lived spike in prices. But after the miners achieve mastery (if it's implemented), you'll see prices normalize again. That's the way competition works in a free market economy. The trick is to balance it so that the new miner class has at least as much capacity as we have now without certs. (Note: I only floated the miner idea to shut the whiners up. Even though I would truly enjoy playing one, I don't think they're needed.)
Let me get this right...
- We take all the resources that exist now
- We putthe bulkin one profession instead of every profession
- We now have the same amount of resources but in a smaller population
Again, what point does this have?
It seems the only 2 reasons for a cert system is you're either:
- Trying to funnel money into one profession (this case abasic profession) so as to make Artisan a more profitable profession.
- You're trying to reduce the amount of resources in the galaxy
If you're trying to do#1 (more money in artisan) you are effectively wanting to make a basic profession in line with an elite one... No sense
If you're trying to do #2 (no pun intended), the whole purpose would be to reduce resources **not** keep a status quo... Keeping a status quo only makes sense if you want to do #1 No sense
**IF** resource reduction is deemed something that needs to be done it makes the most sense to go about this through reduced BER of harvesters and increased power and maintenance. The price spike would be much more controlled due to the wide player base that would be controlling the market.
Where am I wrong?
First of all I'm not at all sure that greater resource scarcity is equivalent to inflation. If oil becomes scarce we do not say that the dollar is becoming inflated. Inflation refers to a decrease in the value of currency but increased resource scarcity would simply mean an increase in the value of those resources.
Furthermore as the miner profession is "equal opportunity" I'm not certain why a miner profession would lock power into a small group. In practice miners will span the entire playing population and won't be any more coordinated than any crafting professions. Miners don't seem any different than weaponsmiths. In theory weaponsmiths hold complete control over all combat professions (outside of TKA perhaps) as all combatants depend on weapons. In practice, competition between weaponsmiths will tend to keep these crafters honest.
You can't just look at the allocation of a certain power to a certain profession and determine that it is outright unbalancing. You have to look at the details. In particular for this instance I think it seems that the specifics of harvester certs would lead to less monopolization and not more. Harvester certs tie a skillpoint cost to harvesting. This cost will be prohibitive to monopolistic practices such as large-scale lot-sharing. It will focus resource generation more on character investment and less on collective operations and networking.
Finally I'd like to say that I think that, overall, a decrease in resource supply is actually good for crafters. On the surface the opposite seems true. More resources means more production. Looking more deeply though we see that with scarcer resources we have scarcer products and prices will simply increase per object. This will increase the overall importance of crafters as crafted items will become less ubiquitious and more valued. It will tend to mean a larger price per item. Assuming that markups stay the same this will mean a larger profit per item, for the same actual amount of work. If I know I'm going to be able to have a 50% markup on my costs then I'd much rather be selling a million credit item than a thousand credit item, especially if they require the same amount of work. I'll make 1,000 times the profit on the former.
So I think that inflation is not really relevant here. What really would happen is an increase in the value of resources (which would lead to lots of players from all strata taking up harvesting) and a corresponding increase in the value of crafted goods. This will increase the overall importance of crafters and at the same time will probably open up new spots in the market for casual crafters.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-01-2004 11:52 AM
StGabriel wrote:
I find myself disagreeing with this post even though I've never been a huge fan of harvester certs.
First of all I'm not at all sure that greater resource scarcity is equivalent to inflation. If oil becomes scarce we do not say that the dollar is becoming inflated. Inflation refers to a decrease in the value of currency but increased resource scarcity would simply mean an increase in the value of those resources.
In a supply and demnd economy when a basec resource like oil comes in high demand the price goes up. Now everything that uses oil whether it be for gasoline or any petrolium product the price goes up. Yes the increased value of the resources reduces the value of the currency, look at what the Arab oil embargo did to the US economy in the 70's. While it was not on forever it did escialte the high inflation of the 70's
Furthermore as the miner profession is "equal opportunity" I'm not certain why a miner profession would lock power into a small group. In practice miners will span the entire playing population and won't be any more coordinated than any crafting professions. Miners don't seem any different than weaponsmiths. In theory weaponsmiths hold complete control over all combat professions (outside of TKA perhaps) as all combatants depend on weapons. In practice, competition between weaponsmiths will tend to keep these crafters honest.
Ok you want to know why.. here it is.
Your common combat profession has the following class interractions
Weaponsmith - weapons obviously
Armorsmith - Armor actually
Artisan - For powerups, vehiclesand such
Doctors - for healing
Chef's for food buffs
Tailor - for clothes
DE-s - because the utility droids are very helpful
Architect - Because they may want a house and furnish it
Ok we see here a lot of things that a combat type needs. Lots of player interraction (a good thing).
Now your statement "I'm not certain why a miner profession would lock power into a small group" is simply answered. When you look at all the above professions that a combat type needs to interract with what would those professions need the services of in order to craft a single item? Answer "Miner". You are making all crafters depend on a single class. Currently each crafting profession already has dependencies on other professions but you are proposing that all crafters have an additional dependency and it is all the same one!!!
So how many miners do you think there will be to service all these profession. Not enough that is for sure. Ask around to the elite crafters. You will find that 90% of all elite crafters do their own mining today because of availability of resource.
You can't just look at the allocation of a certain power to a certain profession and determine that it is outright unbalancing. You have to look at the details. In particular for this instance I think it seems that the specifics of harvester certs would lead to less monopolization and not more. Harvester certs tie a skillpoint cost to harvesting. This cost will be prohibitive to monopolistic practices such as large-scale lot-sharing. It will focus resource generation more on character investment and less on collective operations and networking.
Basically what you are saying here is that you are nerfing crafters. You will force people to use skill points for a skill that they are given today. Wellmost crafters will quit the game or make an alt rather than be subjected to this. Well SOE will make out because of alts being made, but actually most would probably quit. No crafters, no game.
This game is based on the fact that you have enough skill points to master 3 professions. You are telling crafters that they cannot. You are forcing crafters to a specific template. Do you know how many crafters would stop crafting because of that. Quite alot.
Finally I'd like to say that I think that, overall, a decrease in resource supply is actually good for crafters. On the surface the opposite seems true. More resources means more production. Looking more deeply though we see that with scarcer resources we have scarcer products and prices will simply increase per object. This will increase the overall importance of crafters as crafted items will become less ubiquitious and more valued. It will tend to mean a larger price per item. Assuming that markups stay the same this will mean a larger profit per item, for the same actual amount of work. If I know I'm going to be able to have a 50% markup on my costs then I'd much rather be selling a million credit item than a thousand credit item, especially if they require the same amount of work. I'll make 1,000 times the profit on the former.
Ok guess noobs and people startng the game dont count anymore so its ok to have buffs cost 100K, mabari armor cost 100K, a CDEF pistol cost 25K. It is cheap resources that keep the prices down for the noobs also. Also look at the Astromec stats. Being a faucet based economy that money comes in and the only time money goes out of the economy is paying the game for things (vehicle repairs, training, maintenence, player cities) and you will see as much money is coming in as is going out. So what suffers since we are raising all the prices. Well player cities, veihicles etc could not be afforded because you can only bring so much money in through missions.
So I think that inflation is not really relevant here. What really would happen is an increase in the value of resources (which would lead to lots of players from all strata taking up harvesting) and a corresponding increase in the value of crafted goods. This will increase the overall importance of crafters and at the same time will probably open up new spots in the market for casual crafters.
Ok Take an economic class.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-01-2004 11:52 AM
Conclusion:
Lets face it. There is a vocal minority that believes that the act of finding resource means that gives them the sole right to get it.
Well many have found they can make money by selling resources. Because the vast majority of them are greedy they want to stop people from mining resource to keep their prices down. I dont want to insult any of the good resource vendors however, because there are a few that firmly believe that since you can mine it at 0.5 cpu selling it at 3 is plenty as a maximum. but they are few and far between and are not included in my greed statement there.
Well you want to spend little points to become the class that EVERYONE has to go to. If that is not monopolistic I dont know what is
Inflation = devaluation of currency, not rising of prices. Prices can rise simply to increase in demand or decrease in supply. There was a lot more at work during the 80's than oil prices. That gold happens to be a scarce resource that has a high price does not magically conjure inflation.
When you look at all the above professions that a combat type needs to interract with what would those professions need the services of in order to craft a single item?
You haven't made a complete argument here. I pointed out that all combatants rely on weaponsmiths. That they rely on other professions is irrelevant. The majority of players are completely dependent on weaponsmiths. Furthermore, the majority of crafting professions are already dependent on harvesters -- organic harvesters. Even resource gathers are 100% dependent on arhchitechts for harvesters. Yet these completely fail to develop the abuses that are alluded to.
Basically what you are saying here is that you are nerfing crafters. You will force people to use skill points for a skill that they are given today. Well most crafters will quit the game or make an alt rather than be subjected to this. Well SOE will make out because of alts being made, but actually most would probably quit. No crafters, no game.
No, I'm not. You're defaming me for reasons completely irrelevant to my post. I said right at the top that I've never been a huge fan of harvester certification. In part that is due to reasons like this. I am simply discussing the ORIGINAL POST which I think is missing the point.
Ok guess noobs and people startng the game dont count anymore so its ok to have buffs cost 100K, mabari armor cost 100K, a CDEF pistol cost 25K. It is cheap resources that keep the prices down for the noobs also.
First of all you're making up numbers to make things look quite a lot more horrible than they would be. Secondly, you have to remember that these new characters are also going to see potentials for greater incomes.
Ok Take an economic class.
I have. I also do collaborative research with economists from time to time. You're barking up the wrong tree.
What we're talking about here is NOT inflation in the strict economic sense. You can't just slap the term you learned in 101 on this. It is a repricing relevant to a newer distributions of resources. A new supply structure leading to new prices. The primary effect of this would be a shifting of value towards crafted goods and away from missions. This would be all around good for crafters who would be offering more items made from scarcer resources. As a player who can generate 500k/hour doing missions and can't make nearly that crafting I have to say that I think this is all around positive for crafters.
No new money is entering the system. With respect to what money buys in terms of maintenance and other game services there is no change. Thus in a very real sense there is no inflation. There is a pseudo-inflation in that the proportion of credits to resources tilts towards credits. In general however this will only lead to a tilt of power towards those who deal with resources: crafters. This could potentially have a backlash towards newbie combatants. I never really denied that. Redistributions of value ARE going to negatively affect some as they positively affect others. However if you happen to be of the opinion that newbie combatants are in a lot better shape than newbie crafters (I tend to agree with this) then this is not necessarily a bad thing. Crafters gain overall economic power versus combatants.
If you insist on discussing things in terms of inflation then you have to admit a certain sort of opposite force to monetary inflation: resource inflation. With the current system it is quite possible for resources to become too easy to obtain, bottoming out the value of items created with these resources drops. I think we see this with a number of crafted goods where there is not a sizable time investment for crafting. This leads to a devaluation of crafted goods which is bad for crafters. In general however this simply alludes to the very important insight that in SWG credits do not directly map to money in economic terms. Resources are themselves a form of currency. By focusing on credits so directly you are operating at the wrong scope and missing the important global scope and the actual effects on crafters. It is at this global level that we realize that inflation is not really the issue. Globally the issue is more scarce resources which of course leads to an increase in relative value of resources and crafted goods.
StGabriel wrote:
Well many have found they can make money by selling resources. Because the vast majority of them are greedy they want to stop people from mining resource to keep their prices down.
Also, unfortunately, what we see happening is that single players own not just their own harvesters on their own lots but literally hundreds of harvesters on other peoples lots. This in turns leads to the "resource inflation" with huge amounts of resources being dumped on the market leading to a devaluation of crafted goods (and enabling large crafting monopolies). You seem to be appealing to the rights of the more casual harvester that harvests a bit here and there to make a buck. Insomuch as harvester certification would create large gates for massive lot trading and massive resource farming it will be very good for the more casual harvesters (and crafters). It makes smaller-scale harvesting much more valued. It requires actual character investment and makes 10 more lots a lot more trivial than asking your buddy to place and then completely forget about his 10 harvesters.
You speak of a greed? Shouldn't we look at the "greed" of resource magnates who own 400+ harvesters? Is it not a form of greed that crafters would want to be able to do all their harvesting themselves with no personal investment? Now, again, I'm not a huge "miner" fanboy or anything. I agree that it would be a nerf and personally I'd like to see better alternatives. But I think a lot of the claims in this thread are off the mark. Making resources more scarce won't be doomsday for crafters, far from it it will almost certainly give them greater economic power and it would be more likely to damage existing monopolies than to create new ones.
What existing monopolies. Currently there are resource magnates that have 4-6 chars to get resource with I will admit that. But usually they have one main and instead they will just levekl
But as a crafter I have a choice of paying a lot of money for resource or gathering it at 0.5 cpu.
But if a miner class is created or certs I would have no choice but to redo my character to a template I dont want to harvest. Why? Because I now have to go to resource vendors which creates a monopoly. A monopoly in the sense that one class MUST be used by all crafting professions.
Resource vendors now dont deal with nice market like doctor and just comcentrate on inorganics because Architects, AS, WS use so many.
To say that ALL crafting professions must go through a single class for resource is insane
As a crafter I have no issue with prices lowering because of abundant resource I welcome it. I do not welcome having to create alts or altering my template because some want to funnel resource gathering through one class
while there are good arguments on the possible effects of having harvester certifications, instead perhaps considering what the problem is in the first place is a better place to go. so here are the reasons i have seen people give for why harvester certifications should exist:
1. resource glut - i don't see one to be honest, i generally don't buy my resources. i sell off some of my doc resources if a better spawn comes along but thats about it. so the argument here seems to be a few people may or may not have cornered a market i don't actually participate in. but that doesn't really make too much sense to me, if what you are selling doesn't sell, get another product.
2.artisans unable to compete with the big resource magnates as someone called them - well ok so due to lot sharing some people sell more resources than others. i can see people being angry perhaps but that is capitalism, again, just need to market better or find another product.
if there has been another argument i missed, my apologies..
now, for why i think this still doesn't mean too terribly much as far as the current situation goes..generally the people i see spamming resource sales have been selling large stacks of random metals and ores and judging from the specific names they will sometimes use, they have been none too picky about the stats on resources. this suggests to me that what is primarily driving the current market is well who would want big stacks of crap metal, hologrinders. hologrinding is coming to a screeching halt..i was in a cantina the other night doing my entertainer thing, at the keyboard with a group that was (gasp) at the keyboard. the first sign of the endtimes 
if there is a resource glut and if resource selling has been a huge moneymaker i would argue that a majority of the buyers have been transient holocrafters. the future of the resource market is coming and it is to people who want to craft and that means specific resources of appropriate stats needed for each crafter. the combat types aren't going to pick up survey to do this, sales will drop i think and they will go on to other moneymaking opportunities.. if i am wrong,time will tell
that means the only people capable of supplying such a market are the artisans, we are already equipped to do this, we don't need to nerf a number of already skill point starved part time crafters to do this. nor do we need to bring back a profession deemed boring so early on it didn't even make it all the way through beta lol
if the perceived problems continue i would suggest that a better solution would be to give harvester bonuses to artisans instead. that might mean increased BERs or placement of harvester bonuses or anything else that improves what it is to use a harvester. it has been argued that weapons are certified and therefore harvesters should be but to any dancer who picks up an llc well actually yes you can use it, you just can't hit the side of a cantina with it. the same could be true for harvesters..sure a commando can use a BER 13 heavy but instead maybe he gets an effective BER of 7 without the certification so to speak. if it is tied to the skills of the owner, this actually serves to discourage some cases of lot swapping. this idea has been mentioned before and i think this is a great alternative - give to people don't take away from others. i hate to think how long it would take my doctor character to make a crate of health wound packs if i'm stuck on personal harvesters.
Of course each server is different. However I'd say that in a lot servers, lot trading is becoming an epidemic. I've read reports of resources traders with hundreds of harvesters and it's not too hard to believe. I have used this myself. When there is a very good armorsmithing spawn I will simply ask some friends to place harvesters for me. I've had as much as 60 harvesters up without too much additional work. In practice this means the ability to generate millions of resources that will last for a very, very long time. In general this practice promotes market dominance through superior resources harvested in large enough bulk to last indefinitely.
The issue is not really that anyone can monopolize resources. While possible in theory, in practice resources are fairly equally available. The problem is twofold:
-- massive resource mining dumped on the market makes massive production far too easy thus undermining the cost of crafted goods. While good for consumers this is bad for producers. Crafters find that they cannot compete without selling at low prices that will not justify their time comittment.
-- massive resource mining allows massive production by one source thus enabling a monopoly. If one crafter is able to supply slightly superior good due to having a better resource available to them or having higher experimentation then they may be able to completely dominate the market.
Many players are highly critical, for example, of skill tapes as they seem provide a large competitive advantage. This seems at odds with typical MMORPG systems. Players are quite used to loot items that provide subtle advantages to a plsyer. Not many players complain about loot enhancements such as spider fangs which provide a subtle combat advantage. So why is a crafting enhancement so controversial? I would argue that the real problem is that, through massive resource harvesting, it is possible for one player to supply goods for a large segment of a server and thus their small advantage in quality allows them to become the dominant monopoly on that product. If it was more difficult to obtain resources in the first place, or there were more gates on large-scale production, then such monopolies due to small advantages in quality would not be possible. Some players would have higher quality items, certainly, but they would be fundamentally limited in what they could actually make and sale. If resources were much less abundant we would actually see bigger niches opening up for less than premium items.
But as a crafter I have a choice of paying a lot of money for resource or gathering it at 0.5 cpu.
There's a lot more to it than that. Harvester certification or a similar mechanic allows you to gather a certain amount at a cheap rate. Anything beyond that however is of course going to be expensive. This makes smaller scale production efficient and introduces inefficiencies that would limit massive scale production that would lead to server monopolies. This opens up the market for the casual, smaller scale crafter.
Furthermore, to quote a very good email sig I read recently: whomever said that time is money vastly underestimated the value of time. Harvesting your own stuff takes up very precious time. You can always pay a premium to buy resources. This shouldn't be cheap as you're buying time which is an incredibly valuable resource for many (and a resource that is most important to the casual gamer -- the non-casual gamer can cheaply buy an advantage here than they will dominate).
As a crafter I have no issue with prices lowering because of abundant resource I welcome it.
I think you need to look at the more global effects. The more resources that are available to any crafter, the more he or she can produce. The more that each crafter produces, the less crafters that can actually make a living. If a server requires 10,000 weapons per week and any individual player can harvest the resources for 10,000 weapons every week (that isn't so bad really, 10,000 T-21's is only 6 million resources -- 100 ber13 harvesters on a 90% concentration could harvest about 12 million resources per week) then it is possible for one weaponsmith to provide all the weapons needs needed by an entire server. As we scale down the production capabilities we similarly scale down the production of each crafter. This in turn provides more opportunities to make a living as a crafter. If resource acquisition and item production become too easy then the result is simply a game that doesn't need more than 1-5 of each crafting type per server along with a few massive crafting combines.
I do not welcome having to create alts or altering my template because some want to funnel resource gathering through one class
And why would you need to do this? Is every combat character required to own their own weaponsmith due to the fact that weapons are funneled through one profession?
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-01-2004 11:19 PM
As I mention above the problem is not really about a monopoly of resources itself. And you can still of course save money by doing your own harvesting. The real problem is that as resources get dumped on the market it becomes increasingly easy for one crafter to supply the entire needs of a server. This leads to a bad game for crafters in general as they simply are not needed by anyone. Prices for crafted items will simply drop until there is very little return for your time investment.
Consider sword cores. Advanced sword cores require 25 resources. If there is a good spawn then 100 BER13's on a 90% spot might harvest 12 million of this resource before it despawns. That is enough for 480,000 sword cores. Any single crafter with a bit of money to throw around and 9 friends could get this much of the resource and then do the same for other sword resources. Or if other lot-traders harvest in vast amounts and sell at incredibly low prices they can simply buy it outright. With this much resources they could then sell 10,000 swords a week for a year. I highly doubt that any server requires nearly that many swords. The same argument exists for a lot of the different crafted items. The result of dumping very cheap resources on the server is very likely to be a quite small market dominated by a small number of crafters.
StGabe.
I wanted to give this one its own reply as it's a very interesting topic.
Many think that MMORPG economies are highly capitalistic. Indeed, in a lot of ways they are. SWG does seem to supply a relatively unfettered amount of competition. One might say though that the goal of socialism is simply to provide truly equal opportunities for all participants in the economy. This is done through regulations and controls. Arguably MMORPG's are the ultimate in socialist constructions in that the regulations and controls are hard-wired into the system from the very beginning. One of the big design goals of MMORPG's is to provide a fun game environment that does indeed provide equal opportunities to participate in and enjoy the game.
So really I think that there is a very uncapitalistic component to game economies. I do think that equal opportunities are very important to the game design and there is some merit to this view and to utilizing the sort of controls inherent in the game design itself.
But perhaps capitalistic and socialistic dynamics is the wrong way to look at this. Certainly I imagine that if I compare MMORPG economies to socialism then I'm going to lose some my audience by default.
Really what we have to look at is the complete control of all of the economic systems and the desire to create a system that is indeed fun for everyone involved. Something needs to be created no matter what and it is impossible that this creation won't have dramatic effects on the resulting game. I think the opportunity exists to create systems that will provide lots of niches for crafters and the opportunity exists to create systems that will tend to devolve into control of a few. You can't say, "that's just capitalism" as it is really a feature of the system as it has been constructed. If you make large-scale resource acquisition very easy to do (and do not sufficiently gate the production, using those resources, of crafted goods) then it is an obvious conclusion that the market will not be able to handle that many crafters, that crafted services will become devalued and that in general crafters won't have very much economic power.Thus it makes sense to put restrictions on resource incomes to limit the per-crafter production. Ideally this can be tweaked until the appropriate number of crafting "jobs" are created per server so as to create a good-sized and fruitful crafting game without overly restricting the availability of goods.
StGabe.
Also, unfortunately, what we see happening is that single players own not just their own harvesters on their own lots but literally hundreds of harvesters on other peoples lots. This in turns leads to the "resource inflation" with huge amounts of resources being dumped on the market leading to a devaluation of crafted goods (and enabling large crafting monopolies). You seem to be appealing to the rights of the more casual harvester that harvests a bit here and there to make a buck. Insomuch as harvester certification would create large gates for massive lot trading and massive resource farming it will be very good for the more casual harvesters (and crafters). It makes smaller-scale harvesting much more valued. It requires actual character investment and makes 10 more lots a lot more trivial than asking your buddy to place and then completely forget about his 10 harvesters.
You speak of a greed? Shouldn't we look at the "greed" of resource magnates who own 400+ harvesters? Is it not a form of greed that crafters would want to be able to do all their harvesting themselves with no personal investment? Now, again, I'm not a huge "miner" fanboy or anything. I agree that it would be a nerf and personally I'd like to see better alternatives. But I think a lot of the claims in this thread are off the mark. Making resources more scarce won't be doomsday for crafters, far from it it will almost certainly give them greater economic power and it would be more likely to damage existing monopolies than to create new ones.
St Gabriel,
It was refreshing to read your thoughts about the SWG economy. I agree completely with what you have said, and thinking similarly to what you have written is why I favor harvester certs (and also as a game mechanic they just make a lot more sense that a lot of melee guys running around harvesting inorganic minerals).
But you have also hit on something else that has come up in the discussions which is very important. That is the existing stockpiles of resources. There has already been so much harvested on most servers that certifications without more would just drive resource prices through the roof to the benefit of those who have massive stockpiles of resources. I actually think the only way to make it work so that many crafters rather than a few are needed is to implement resource stat decay for resources that have been around for a long time. I can think of no good explanation for this but it would be better if the decay rate were faster if there were more than one administrator on a structure. And perhaps an item to protect the resource from decay...usable only one per resource...which takes up storage space would be useful.
Of course, it occurs to me that with skill tapes and the ability to mine resources in massive quantities perhaps...just perhaps...the devs *want* each server to be dominated by a small number of crafters. The current system of cheap resources and skill tapes is more condusive to this outcome than the system has to be.
All of Gabriels ramblings (acoutally most all of us) on this is based on speculation since we would really need statistics form SOE to accuratly determine the impact.
You all need to do some polling yourself on your local servers of people that you know. You know what I have found on Valcyn. I have asked many crafters/artisans
1) The vast majority of Artisans do not consider the miners of the galaxy
2)Most of the mining is done by the elite crafters because of either high resource sot from resource vendors or they just dont mine what ius needed. This is especially true in the area of organics for the medical/be/chef professions.
3) The vast majority of elite crafters would prefer not to mine resource but they feel they have to function and deliver a product where the cost is down.
With that said.
Harvester certifications just nerfs the whole commmunity of a skill that was split across all people when the mining profession was removed. The artisan although very well equiped to mine, just because they have survey does not make them the defacto miners of the galaxy with the way SOE has implimented automated harvesters.
A better focus would be to determine "why do elite crafters feel they have to mine" and address that. If you remove the need for elite crafters to mine they will in fact pruchase their resource, and the problem goes away or at least lessens considerably without an accross the board nerf.
Here are some reasons they mine: (I am sure there are more)
1) Cost of the resource form resource magnates versus what it costs to pull up themselves.
2) The resource magnates don't mine for niche crafters (organics) in general
3) Many resource magnates dont pay attention to what stats are good for what class and many times mine resource that is not good.
One added thing.
This solution to the overall problem has beemn shot down in poll after poll and by TH.
Isn't it about time we refocus on the problem and see if there is another solution