Artisan Archive
Thread: artisans whine about not making money? Want harv certs? Try selling something....
Bugbait wrote:
Do I have to spell everything out for you? Shuttles don't generate money (player shuttle ports may be an exception but they're not exactly cash cows). Mounts, armour, factories, and houses don't inherently generate any money. Yes, riding a mount may increase the rate at which you can generate cash but it does not generate income while you ride it. Armour assists in money generation but wearing doesn't generate money. Combining armour with combat skills does generate money but the combat skills cost skill points. Factoriesrequire schematics which must be made by crafters who have spent skill points. Houses don't inherently generate income but they and other structures are required to place vendors who do generate income but at a cost of skill points, for both Merchant and the crafting profesion used to make the goods to sell.
Harvesters don't fall into the above category. They are used to generate income at no skill expenditure. You buy a harvester, you place it, drop power and credits into it and watch it generate income. The resources can be sold in raw form for credtis or converted into goods that sell for credits. Besides harvesting what other activity can be undertaken in game that generates income without skill point expenditure?Begging and theft do not count
.
Actually there is an activity that can do precisely that - and surprisingly, you bring it up below without realizing the potential
EDIT: In case my examples weren't clear enough, imagine a new character with absolutely no skills and they are not allowed to acquire any skills, ie. Everything being equal.
- Give them a mount and 10k credits. They can spend the money on food for their mount but they really can't do anything productive.
- Give them 10k credits to spend only on shuttle tickets. Yay, it's fun to fly around.
With fed-ex missions, 10k to spend on shuttle tickets can make you boatloads of money. It's not fun. It's not exciting, but it kept me in credits until I had my surveying skills developed enough to take survey missions to keep up with my travel and maintenance expenses. Absolutely zero skill required.
- Give them armour and 10k credits. Great, they can stand around but not fight.
- Give them a factory and 10k credits. Useless since they can place it and load it with power and credits but not make anything.
- Give them a house and 10k credits. Sure, they have a roof over their head but not much else.
- Give them a harvester and 10k credits. Even without survey they can drop it on the ground, fill it with power and credits,pick the highest concentration and start making money.
See the distinction now?
Message Edited by Bugbait on 05-20-2004 03:37 PM
There is a perfectly legitimate reason and it's in the very post you responded to. You may not agree but it is a legitimate reason.
Spekter wrote:
There is no legitimate reason to take away other players right to plop a harvester down whenever and wherever they feel like.
Actually an abundence of resources is POSITIVE as oppesed to having to little think about it : if there a 30 docs on a server and there is 100k of lokian wild wheat availeble and each doc needs 10k of it to be able to make enough buffs then there is a 200k shortage, the doc then have a bidding war and the resource ends up being sold for several 100 cpu, the docs then need to increase the prices of buffs to cover material cost and a set up buffs can end up costing say 30k pr set or alot more
Then you have another server where everyone can mine and harvest and there are 30 docs and there is 1 million units of lokian wild wheat then the docs can get it at 10cpu and as a result there is a limit to what they can charge for the buffs before the community will complain.
What SWG needs is not to nerf players ability to harvest but the players need to say : hey thats way to expensive and refuse to pay it, there is only so many who can afford to keep full storages of buffs or weapons and not sell anything. SWG players need to take a stand and say we wil not accept these prices when you get resources at 5 cpu, its not sane of you to charge 50cpu when selling hte finished produc. free harvesting is exactly whats needed to balance this economy since it will at some point force crafters to lower the prices to match lower prices for resources
Bugbait
I for one do believe that galaxies will probably stay around just as long as any other MMORG out there. The Star Wars license is something that millions of people want to be a part of. While the game has flaws they will be worked out in time.
As for your harvester issue I would like you to define your point clearly. Is it your belief that only artisans should be able to place any harvester or specific harvesters?
I've read your posts and you actually sound like a reasonable individual so I want it understood by all thatwe're discussing an issue and not one another. I'm just presentinga token of respect andestablishingtheunderstanding that we all can agree to disagree at times. This is one of those times.
I'm going to discount the credit system in SWG because as an economic model it's a joke.Therearetoo many credits and not enough methods of disposing of them in this game. Resouces are the only real economy because the quality affects the outcome of the product. Resources actually have value to the crafter and consumer and the quality of the product is something thats tangible. If I understand you correctly you're suggesting that artisan profession be in virtual control of the resource economy. Do you really think that this is a good idea?
Be critical of your argument and consider the consequnces of such an arrangement. Limiting the gate way which resources flow creates a choke point for the entire economy. You could use the argument that scouts have the hide/meat/bone markets locked but these components are not necessary for every crafting profession. Resources are required in all crafting professions.
I believe only personal harvesters should be freely available to all. Medium harvesters should require either Novice Artisan or some Survey boxes. Heavy harvesters should reauire a minimum of Survey 4 but I'd be happy if it didn't require Master Artisan. Basically I support harvestering certificatons in the context of having people "pay" (in terms of skill ponts) for greater efficiency. Why? Because that's the general structure of the game. If you want to become more proficient at killingyou need tospend skill points on the various combat professions, if you want to be more proficient at healing you need to climb the Medic tree, etc.
Redguard wrote:
Bugbait
As for your harvester issue I would like you to define your point clearly. Is it your belief that only artisans should be able to place any harvester or specific harvesters?
I've read your posts and you actually sound like a reasonable individual so I want it understood by all thatwe're discussing an issue and not one another. I'm just presentinga token of respect andestablishingtheunderstanding that we all can agree to disagree at times. This is one of those times.
I'm going to discount the credit system in SWG because as an economic model it's a joke.Therearetoo many credits and not enough methods of disposing of them in this game. Resouces are the only real economy because the quality affects the outcome of the product. Resources actually have value to the crafter and consumer and the quality of the product is something thats tangible. If I understand you correctly you're suggesting that artisan profession be in virtual control of the resource economy. Do you really think that this is a good idea?
Be critical of your argument and consider the consequnces of such an arrangement. Limiting the gate way which resources flow creates a choke point for the entire economy. You could use the argument that scouts have the hide/meat/bone markets locked but these components are not necessary for every crafting profession. Resources are required in all crafting professions.
Redguard wrote:
I have a few issues with this certification proposal.
1. Why should Artisans be able to exclusively profit from the work of an Architect? You're suggesting that the individual that made x harvester wouldn't be able to use it? (You could make the same argument about weaponsmiths and their guns but while the weaponsmith but the gun can be used without a cert)
2. Fewer resources in the game really does not benefit anyone. You're in competition with combat classes who can tap the unlimited supply of credits available from missions. Limiting access to resources will only serve to drive up the cost of those resources but not the value. Resources/goods are the only real consumables in the game while credits continue to be created on a daly basis. While I usually harvest my own resources there are times when I have to purchase them if the resource suppply were curtailed given the amount of credits in the game I'm spending more on those resources with money that is continuing to devalue.What should happen to my costs? (This is an issue that is allready a problem). The costs will have to go up on my goods but does that increase their usefulness.
The argument that it will change the nature of the economy is not valid. Doing this will serve to move credits from one group to another but that doesn't change the fact that the credits exist in the first place. At some level credits need to be consumed, money sinks as we call them. Redistribution of wealth is an admirable goal but as I see it you're taking from the rich and giving to the affluent. This will probably hurt new crafters more than it helps because the costs of getting started are going to go up. The costs of harvesters/equipment will be passed onto them.
3. Monopolistic practices will start to become a problem if one class becomes the sole/primary resource gathering class. It's neither appropriate or proper for one profession to have control overresources which all crafting classes require. It will encourage monopolistic practices.
4. One of the real issues with Artisan is the way getting to elite combat professions require a great deal of general crafting experience to acquire novice. This means that there is a glut of items that master artisans should be able to make some profit on but cannot because they are competing with cast off products from those grinding their way into the profession. This problem continues to occur once you enter into the elite crafter professions because the novices are always trying to compete with grind cast offs or once you achive masterm legacy items.
Just a thought on this: Perhaps as people progress to the elite crafter professions with general crafting xp all of their experience should come from practice mode....yeah thats gonna be popular
Finally, while artisans do make useful items there are a number of schematics that could just be replaced with far more useful products. I really dont see the need to have a chance cube when something like this can be integrated into the game. The homage to the die rolling style of game play is cool but really does little but take up valuable database space.
/cheer
Especially point 4.
Look at the point of artisan which can easily be seen by its skills.
It is a jack of all trades. Why? To learn the base crafing required by the elite crafting professions. In fact you do not have to master artisan to get to those professions. However those elite crafters do get benefits from mastering Artisan it is not required.
What is required by all the elite crafters..the ability to find resource (survey) and the basis for theirt skill..pick a line and it goes to the elite.
Artisan is a novice profession. Novice professions are not designed to be the great money makers or have uber abilities. You are meant to go on.
The ability to find resource (survey) is the main argument that is used for saying that the Artisan professions is the mining profession and that is clearly not the DEVs intent if you simply look at the whole skill tree.
The Miner class was removed from the beta, there is no sole mining profession.
There are just too many people that wan the easy way to make money and lets face it selling resource is a way to do that.
Monopolizing something that has such economic ripples to one class that has proved themselves to goiuge at ever time they get is insane.
I will say this. There are Artisans like "outta" that are fair and never gouge. But when you look at all that are out there people like him are few and far between. When he says in his posts that he would be fair I believe him because he is one ov the very few that are fair and doesnt gouge today. What I dont trust are the others that I know that will.
Bugbait wrote:
In regards to point (2), I already explained this in another thread. In summary: Reduce supply of raw materials --> Increases unit price since supply is now less than demand --> Consumables increase in price --> Excess money is slowly consumed by the cycle since the cost of earning money has now increased --> As money in system decreases so does purchasing power --> Consumables and raw resources also drop in price since demand is now equalising with the original drop in supply
One inherent problem with this arguement - it assumes the excess money can be bled out of the economy in a timely manner. The fact is that most elite crafters not only have huge stockpiles of cash but we also have huge stockpiles of resources. Considering I only mine if there's a current resource that is better than the old stock I keep, four BER11 mediums more than suffice.
I don't think harvester certs will do anything at all to the economy. With the pending vendor changes, anyone who wants to run a resource supply store will have to be an artisan anyway and the larger resource dealers I do businesswith from time to time (once in a while I'm lazy, or need more than one current resource) have survey IV.
So, you really think that anything will change if you suddenly yank away everyone's BER13's? I don't. Heck, most of those same dealers operate on BER10 or BER11 mediums because they're the most credit efficient.
Bugbait wrote:
Look at the state of the economy and inflation in under 12 months. Imagine this in 1 or 2 years time (assuming the game is even still around). If no changes are made the economy will be ruined for any new players. Thing is, that doesn't really matter to me since it's not the main reason I support certifying harvesters. It's a flow on that I'd like to see but not that big a deal to me.
The devs said this was caused by Duping. They've eliminated the duping (well... hopefully), and according to their metrics they're draining money from the economy slowly to fix this problem.
Resource mining has nothing to do with the inflation that has occured.
Bugbait wrote:
Look at the state of the economy and inflation in under 12 months. Imagine this in 1 or 2 years time (assuming the game is even still around). If no changes are made the economy will be ruined for any new players. Thing is, that doesn't really matter to me since it's not the main reason I support certifying harvesters. It's a flow on that I'd like to see but not that big a deal to me.
The economy got where it is now from hologrinding and credit dupes. Holocron showed what credit dupes were doing, and the impact that eliminating them has had. I can't prove the hologrinding aspectas fact, but it's a feeling I have based on what resource and finished good costs have done since the Jedi revamp was announced.
It sounds somewhat out of whack, but I use eBay to judge the health of the economy, and the true value of the credit. A few months ago, credit dupes and hologrinding running rampant, $5 could get you 1 million credits. Now that same 1 million credits sells for around $20, give or take a little depending on how much is up for auction.
It may seem an odd way to judge an economy, but frankly it's the most objective method we have. Looking at the cost of finished goods and/or resources can introduce bias, since those prices are also dependent on the number of people producing them. My armor has gone up 10% in base resists (for you non-armorsmiths, that's a huge amount) in months since I mastered armorsmith. The price has remained the same. I'm sure some of it is deflaction, but a large chunk of it is that more master armorsmiths are popping up on the server.
Because the dev team has better things to spend their time on.
If you don't think harvester certifications will do anything to the econmy then why oppose it?
Where did I say harvesting was the cause of the inflation? I agree with your last post. Sorry if I implied it, I can see how it could be comprehended that way but that was not what I was trying to convey.
Srednii wrote:
The devs said this was caused by Duping. They've eliminated the duping (well... hopefully), and according to their metrics they're draining money from the economy slowly to fix this problem.
Resource mining has nothing to do with the inflation that has occured.
Bugbait wrote:
Where did I say harvesting was the cause of the inflation? I agree with your last post. Sorry if I implied it, I can see how it could be comprehended that way but that was not what I was trying to convey.
Srednii wrote:
The devs said this was caused by Duping. They've eliminated the duping (well... hopefully), and according to their metrics they're draining money from the economy slowly to fix this problem.
Resource mining has nothing to do with the inflation that has occured.
You said "Imagine this in one or two years time. If no changes are made the economy will be ruined for new players".
I was merely pointing out that chages have been made, the inflation has been halted and reversed. There is no need to cert harvesters since they have nothing to do with the inflation anyways.