Artisan Archive

Guruweaver,

I have two accounts on the Bria server.

One is a Master Bio-Engineer/TKM

One is a Master Artisan, Master Merchant, near Master ArmorSmith

I would consider myself a serious non-holo crafter who is an active member of the SWG community both on the forums (under my main character SomeUser) and in-game.

I do not think any profession should have an monopoly over the resource market. I am 100% against harvester cert asit has been suggested in regard to the Artisan profession.

Why? First off:

• Resources are the life blood for ALL crafters both under the Artisan tree and outside of the Artisan tree (Bio-Engineers, Combat Medics, Doctors, Medics, and Smugglers).


• Decent resources spawn only once in a blue moon on most servers and fade within 1-7days.


• Players on established servers demand top quality wares

What would happen if you capped all non Artisans from using Med and Heavies?

1. There would be an unfair bias against the non-Artisan crafters


2. Only those with Artisan would be able to have stock piles of good resource shifts to mass produce top quality items


3. Casual gamers, crafter dabblers, and players that wish to enjoy both crafting and combat elements of the game would be at an distinct disadvantage when it comes to mass producing high quality items

You would either have to further specialize your character (taking away from other elements of the game), be lucky enough to be a wealthy/well established crafter to front the inflated costs of the resources, be a member of a large guild that is oriented towards crafting, or buy a 2nd account.

None of the above enhances the game IMHO.

Not only that, prices **will** sky rocket just like they have in the organics market. You'll have a high demand/low outputmarket which will drive up the cost of all resources in addition to driving up the cost of all finished products.

I fail to see how this cert system is going to better the game in anyway other then to give a basic profession access to a huge cash cow market at the expense of others.

This idea "might" have worked in a elite profession when the game was first release **if** SOE balanced the in/out flow of credits better.

Even though the game is supposedly running a deficit there are an abundance of 100+ millionaires and Billionaires on all the established servers that are actually getting richer while the little guys are getting poorer.

I humbly suggest you focus on issues that are broke with Artisan rather then trying to redefine Artisan and the SWG economy.

There are soo many things that are not working in this game that need to be addressed... Things like the combat re-balance, the Jedi re-vamp (to stop the holo grinders), re-vamps of professions that are actually broken and not working as intended, and all of this while the space x-pac is going to be released.. Which no doubt will add 1000s new bugs/issues.

The economy of SWG does need attention but not via Artisans monopolizing the resource market. There needs to be lower mission payouts and more ways players can spend their credits on non-player services... I'm not advocated more game "taxes" as much as new game content that can cost money... gambling of some kind, NPC offering items that are currently dropped as loot, ect, ect, ect.

I'm sure Artisans are going to play an important role in the upcoming Space x-pac... They already play an important role when it comes to going up Artisan based crafter professions as well as providing DE subcomponents, vehicles, power-up, misc items such as survey devices, power-ups, repair tools, as well as a whole slew of misc items such as fireworks, bird cages, and creature habitats. That is a heck of a lot for a basic profession... I would argue that alone is more content then any other basic profession offers via skill boxes.

Again, I dont see how giving Artisans preference in med and heavy harvesters is going to make any positive game improvements... I dont see how it is going to make Artisans any more of a "complete" or less "broken" profession.

The idea of a miner profession was considered and thrown out. No good arguments have been given to bring it back let alone to give it to a basic profession... other then greed that is...

I urge you to look at what the community as a whole is saying here. From everything I have read the majority of players are against this...

/rant off

CityCowboy also by your post you understand 0 about it. And more importantly you understand 0 of the logic. And your post is one big assumption with nofacts only opinions.

The numbers have been crunched, the concerns answered. And well your wrong. Everyone hwo is agianst harvester certifications is wrong.

Understand it. Deal with it.Or play the game like it is broken.

entertainers can't do buffs or use the droids.

they also can't survey or make anything other than instruments that only sell to other entertainers.

the only crafting medics do if for themselves as doctors do a better job.

and as far as i know master artisans are the only people who makes vehicles.

Sinist,

I will only say this once.

I will not respond to any further post you make to me, or to others, on this account or my SomeUser account.

You sir are a troll with a one-star average rating.

I do not consider you part of this conversation.

Once Holo-grinding is done and over with, this is an issue that is going to come up again in some form or another - the economy simply will not be able to handle the amount of resources coming in.

I am one of those who has always said the economy overall in SWG is rather good - because it reflected a real life economy. This was confirmed when Holo made his post a few weeks back saying the exact same thing.

Hologrinding, horrible as it is/was, actually put money in the hands of players who never had it before because the resource market was absolutely opened up - everyone and their alt' had harvesters set up and the resources began pouring into the economy because of the intense demand. For awhile it lasted - some people got very, very richvery quickly doing very, very little. Not to belittle the survey/harvest mini-game, butharvesting costs way less than 1cpu and these materials (even crappy ones) were going for 10-15cpu in 100K stacks just because they were 100K stacks perfect for grinding.

What's happening already, since much Hologrinding has already begun to tone down, is that there are simply too many resources out there. There are so many resource vendors it gives me a headache when I look at the map.

As this continues until Publish 10, when Hologrinding finally dies, we are going to see a huge problem as crafters. Already people are offering up "millions of units at 1cpu" at popular Starports. A combat character that has 8-10 medium/heavy harvesters going at all times is pulling in 100K's of units a week and has been doing so for months will never run out of resources.

The core of the issue is that harvesters just don't cost enough. Maybe the soloution isn't with certifications. When Harvesters were enhanced months ago the issue got a lot worse, and getting resources has become way too easy. I'm a DE, and I have 4-6 harvesters going most of the time even though I don't need to - it's just because, why not? The maintainance and power are a pittance to anyone past a certain financial point. I have enough resources to make 1000's of droids - I could stop harvesting today and have enough materials to last me for a year or two AT LEAST.

The problem is accessability, and it's got to be addressed at some point. I think putting in "Miner" at this point (and in the first place, actually) would be (have been) a mistake - because it would concentrate all of this relatively free wealth into one profession. That's why personally I think certs in Artisan are the best way to go - not Master Artisan but in the relatively useless as-is Survey tree. While I don't think an elite profession is needed, I do feel like a minimal amount of skill point investment should be required.

It's clear that many people do not feel this is the solution, and that's fine - but the core issue of over-availability of copious amounts of resources to everyone is going to lead to a horrible post-boon economy as soon as Hologrinding is offically over. Something has got to give somewhere, or our economic problems have only just begun.

AO

Message Edited by GarVa on 05-20-2004 07:33 AM

AudioOrgana,

I agree with you that once the holo grind is over there will be an over saturation of resources on the market.

To be frank I could careless about the resource market so far as making huge profits is concerned. I personally dont think you should be able to do nothing more then survey a high concentration of a good resource, place a fleet of heavies, and become a millionaire.

I guess that is part of my problem with a miner profession or, worse, an Artisan/miner hybrid profession.

I just fail to see how driving down the prices of resources is going to hurt anyone, long term, other then players that just arent able to cut it in the elite professions yet wish to have to income of those in the elite professions.

Lets face it, once the resource market collapses like a deck of cards there will be a mass exodus out of the mining industry. Prices will eventually stabilize and the market will recover... not to the point that it was where you could make millions... but it will be a viable way to make some extra credits.

I just cant help but think that the DEVs not only saw this but wanted this... Why else would they allow the increase in the harvesting of inorganic resources if they didnt intend for even more resources to put into the market?

Perhaps an oversight, wouldnt be the first, but interesting nevertheless to ponder.

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CityCowBoy wrote:

AudioOrgana,

I agree with you that once the holo grind is over there will be an over saturation of resources on the market.

It's not just the market, it's over saturation of resources, period. There are consistently tons more resources coming into the game at all times than can ever be used. With the exception of vehicles and architect items, the majority of the products in the game take very little actual resources. They may need specific kinds/qualities, but when you break it down to an actual number of total resources it's tiny compared to what is being cranked in on a daily basis.

To be frank I could careless about the resource market so far as making huge profits is concerned. I personally dont think you should be able to do nothing more then survey a high concentration of a good resource, place a fleet of heavies, and become a millionaire.

This is going to be a long-term problem with SWG, which is the point here. It's not about the prices of resources - that's the symptom/indicator of the problem. The core of the issue is simply that there are too many resources in this game. All resource production could shut down tomorrow and the galaxycould chug along for quite some time just fine.

In the economic post, Holo said that there is too much money in the game - and I think a large reason for that is that there are too many resources because even if they are low-valued they still exist in their own, unalterable quanity - a 100K stack of steel may be "worth" more credits at one point than it is another, but it always remains a 100K stack of steel.

As much as the BER-10 mediums and even better heavies are great in terms of player gain, it is really starting to drain the economy. We are sucking up liquid assets out of the ground 23 hours a day, many more than we are using.

I guess that is part of my problem with a miner profession or, worse, an Artisan/miner hybrid profession.

As I said above, I agree that a profession isn't the answer for the simple reason that it directs all this liquid cash into one profession that would be the supplier of all professions on one level or another (to the crafter or to the combat player as a third party).

I just fail to see how driving down the prices of resources is going to hurt anyone, long term, other then players that just arent able to cut it in the elite professions yet wish to have to income of those in the elite professions.

Driving down resource prices by itself isn't a bad thing, but since the whole economy rests on resources (they are the basis for everything) it's going to have a huge impact across the board. Things would become so forcibly cheap that all business-minded crafters would likely not participate anymore.

The bank accounts of miners is the LEAST of the concerns. That's actually an argument for certifications, because those people would actually have to invest a few skill points in order to be able to dump their fields of heavies (same to those who "share" lots across servers). Sure, it's not a big deal to climb up the survey tree, but at least it's something - now all one does is roll, land, place, log and bam - 10 free lots. The concern here is for the crafting community that uses these resources.

Lets face it, once the resource market collapses like a deck of cards there will be a mass exodus out of the mining industry. Prices will eventually stabilize and the market will recover... not to the point that it was where you could make millions... but it will be a viable way to make some extra credits.

One can only hope. But we will still have a vast surplus, and the issue of resources being easy for ANYONE to gather in large quanities with only a small financial investment remains.

I just cant help but think that the DEVs not only saw this but wanted this... Why else would they allow the increase in the harvesting of inorganic resources if they didnt intend for even more resources to put into the market?

If I remember correctly, it wasn't entirely intentional. Architects, please chime in - but when it happened I believe it was a side-effect of another change. I actually was led to believe that it was a bug - but it has still remained.

Perhaps an oversight, wouldnt be the first, but interesting nevertheless to ponder.

Oversight or not, it comes down to this : the economy has ALWAYS had theproblem of too much coming in/not enough going out in terms of resources, but by the time it was becoming obvious Hologrinding kicked in and compensated.

It's always been here, but now that Hologrinding is winding down it's starting to become more obvious. Harvester certifications may not be the best soloution, but if the Dev team is truly trying to drain the economy a bit as they say they are the over-abundance of resources is certainly an obvious factor. It's not as sexy as mission terminal grosses, which are insta-cash - but the huge influx of resources compared to those consumed daily by crafters can't be ignored.

AO

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stop trolling please.

Message Edited by GarVa on 05-20-2004 07:15 AM