Artisan Archive
Thread: Comments regarding Harvester Certification issue poll
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.
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.
I would humbly like to make several points
- At any given time 99% of the resources that are in active shift are either grind level resources or mid-level resources
So, while there may be billions of mined resources let us make sure to differentiate between useless grind/mid-level materials and actual Elite level usable material.
- Many items that are made, while require relatively small quantities of resources, are either consumable or are subject to some type of decay requiring constant replacement
Once you cut out all the worthless junk, that nubs pull up who dont know better or the stuff savvy miners are pulling up to quench the thirst of holo grinders, you have a MUCH smaller resource pool.
Then you have to add in the fact that making factory runs of these high level items eats through the resources you have quite quickly. I can easily go through 100k stacks of meat and flora on Chef Additive alone in a given week.
The stuff I go through more slowly actually seems to spawn less frequently... It makes me suspect the DEVs have a way of tracking these things from server to server adjusting the frequency of different types of resources based on "popularity". This leads me to my next point:
- The fact that there is such a huge variety of resources and the fact most elite level items require specific types of resourcesbalances even further the abundance of resources in general.
Again, this cuts the pool of useable resources even smaller. I have found that resources that are not specific tomaster level wares canspawn **frequently** at high quality... the ones that are needed for master level spawn very **infrequently** are high quality levels.
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 have to disagree here 100%. Resources are, if anything, a money sink. The over abundance of money is due to the fact of:
- money duping
- high mission payouts
- low outflow of money
If you looked at the chart in regard to money in SWG I believe you would find that the harvester money sink was the largest as far as moving money out of the game.
Resources are in themselves worthless. If anything that represents a credit drain not gain.
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.
Well you are correct that the BER10 mediums and BER13 heavies are draining the economy... I'm a master Merchant so I get a discount on maintenance.. It costs me 13,824 credits to pay for 8 days and 14,400 power to power the harvester for 8 days... Oh yeah, when I pull up a harvester it takes out4k or 5k out of my maintenance.I forget how much I pay for maintenance on my fusions but it is safe to say that is a nice drain from the credit pool when you consider how many people use these harvesters 23hrs a day
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'm glad we agree there
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.
I think credits not resources is what the whole economy rests on. Resources is just one way of getting a piece of the money pie.
As a MBE, my pet clones require next to no resources... something along the line of free DNA I sample, 20-100units of meat and 100 or so flora... I turn around and sell that pet for 75k-5million credits.
In the instances that I do use resources as afactor in my price I do so only as a way to judge what the market can bare... I look at is a "market indicator".
I know that if people can spend 50cpu for meat and 10cpu for flora I can surely get away with not only adding that into the cost but also a nice slice of profit.
In the end however, the value of my goods is based on what I value my time at in proportion to the value of the credit. The value of the credit is based upon how many credits are in circulation at any given time.
More credits = higher prices while lower credits = lower prices.
Again, resources are just a marker I help judge the market by.
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.
I just dont feel requiring people to "tighten" up their character templates and thus narrowing their gameplay options as being the solution the economy. I know as a MBE I already have a chronic case of "lack of SPs"...
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.
You are correct. It was a bug the DEVs decided to leave in...
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.
While I do not support this solution, I would say the most effective solution (after blending my argument with yours) would be to lower the BER of harvesters and increase the maintenance and power requirements.
More money would go out and less would come in.
I dont support that though because it has been shown that the game is already in deficit mode.
The reason given why weare not seeing the "fruits" of this SOE effort is credit duping that brought in billions of credits illegally.
I would promote SOE stays on course with its current credit sinks and to add some additional credit sinks in the forum of content **not** game taxes... When the economy recovers then SOE can loosen things up a bit.
You provided a good argument and certainly made many valid points
I just dont agree with them all.
CityCowBoy wrote:
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.
You are correct. It was a bug the DEVs decided to leave in...
Which I think is one of the larger mistakes they have made, and one that will come back to haunt them. The impact wasn't as noticed because the resources were being consumed so by Hologrinding, but now that it is winding down it's becoming more apparent.
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.
While I do not support this solution, I would say the most effective solution (after blending my argument with yours) would be to lower the BER of harvesters and increase the maintenance and power requirements.
More money would go out and less would come in.
Which would be another great soloution, like harvester certs in the survey line.
It comes down to this - maintainance is a joke to most elite crafters. I figured it out last week, and as long as I sell a droid every two weeks I can cover all the maintainance and power on all my homes, factories, and harvesters, pay for all travel and other expenses.
I generally sell much more than that - and it's all profit. This is new to me as a DE, but it's the way WS, AS, and others have always played.
When resources and maintainance don't matter, an elite crafter is "untouchable" by the money sink system.
I dont support that though because it has been shown that the game is already in deficit mode.
If you refuse to acknowledge the resources coming in, yes. It is impossible to track resource sales because they occur in so many ways, and often for barter, and if you take those into consideration the only people in deficit mode are those who aren't elite crafters.
The reason given why weare not seeing the "fruits" of this SOE effort is credit duping that brought in billions of credits illegally.
I would promote SOE stays on course with its current credit sinks and to add some additional credit sinks in the forum of content **not** game taxes... When the economy recovers then SOE can loosen things up a bit.
You provided a good argument and certainly made many valid points
Back at ya'.
The issue really boils down to this - resource gathering is too easy.
Increased money sinks would help, but the problem is that they only affect poor people. That is why some sort of gate on harvesters needs to happen, and I don't think money is enough.
I just see it as the same as weapons certs - if I want to use an FWG pistol to run some missions, I have to get a few boxes in novice marksman. If you want to drop a heavy mineral harvester that will get you thousands and thousands of units of resources a day, you should have to have a few boxes of artisan. Even if it's just novice.
Resources are gushing out of the ground in much, much greater quantity than can be used. Some type of control needs to happen or all crafters are going to be forced into a commodified market, which is exactly what the combat players want. I wish more crafters could see how free harvesters for everyone is hurting us in the long run, past the fact that you might have to pick up a couple of boxes of survey.
Would all the crafters who have argued so hard-core against this mind if you simply needed to have Novice Artisan to place harvesters?
AO
AudioOrgana wrote:
CityCowBoy wrote:
It comes down to this - maintainance is a joke to most elite crafters. I figured it out last week, and as long as I sell a droid every two weeks I can cover all the maintainance and power on all my homes, factories, and harvesters, pay for all travel and other expenses.
I generally sell much more than that - and it's all profit. This is new to me as a DE, but it's the way WS, AS, and others have always played.
How much do you charge for those droids?
I know each heavy harvester cost me1,728c per day (72c/h)per harvester. I think for non-merchants it is 2160 (90c/h).
So assuming you have 5 heavies running for two weeks you are paying out 151,200per two weeks.
Then we can assume you have one medium house... I pay 30c/h with my merchant bonus (not sure on the reg cost).. so that is 10,080per two weeks...
Then we can assume you have 3 factories... that is 50c/h I believe on the food ones (not sure on the equipment).. so that is 50,400 per two weeks.
Grand total is: 211,680 give or take a few. Oh, this isnt including traveling expenses
You make that selling one droid every two weeks?! Good lord I am in the wrong business
When resources and maintainance don't matter, an elite crafter is "untouchable" by the money sink system...
...If you refuse to acknowledge the resources coming in, yes. It is impossible to track resource sales because they occur in so many ways, and often for barter, and if you take those into consideration the only people in deficit mode are those who aren't elite crafters.
Well I dont think elite crafter should ever run a deficit... if you are you're doing something horribly wrong
Credit sinks do effect the bottom most wealth pool... Just like taxes in rl, in wealth proportion, effectpoor folk more then wealthy folk.
But, when the "poor" folk cant afford the services of the "wealthy" folk prices must drop.
I dont think sucking things out from the top to bottom works...
The goal shouldbe, IMHO, to reduce the inflow of credits and increase the outflow of credits.
Prices will the drop due to deflation. It will have to start on the bottom and work its way up.
The issue really boils down to this - resource gathering is too easy.
Increased money sinks would help, but the problem is that they only affect poor people. That is why some sort of gate on harvesters needs to happen, and I don't think money is enough.
Resources are easy to gather. However the "check and balance" is the quality of the resource.
The good stuff just doesnt spawn long enough and frequent enough... Everything else is just worthless junk that, once the holo grinders are gone, will likely be deleted.
Furthermore, as I eluded to above, money sinks must effect the poor first. The rich aren't going to want to lower their status in disproportion to the poor.
Again, it has to come from the bottom up.
I just see it as the same as weapons certs - if I want to use an FWG pistol to run some missions, I have to get a few boxes in novice marksman. If you want to drop a heavy mineral harvester that will get you thousands and thousands of units of resources a day, you should have to have a few boxes of artisan. Even if it's just novice.
Not a valid comparison IHMO.
1. The markman's FWG5 is a tool given to him via his skill box. The harvester is not a tool that is in any profession's skill tree.
2. Resources, unlike the FWG5, is the life blood of the game from the perspective that nothing can be crafted without them.
This being the case, any limitation placed on harvesters will funnel huge amounts of cash to whatever profession it is based on... Especially if all other professions are limited to personals
3. Artisan does not encompass all the crafting professions. Bio-Engineers, Combat Medics, Doctors, Medics, and Smugglers are all professions that require resources but they do not fall under the Artisan tree.
To give Artisans the ability to use heavy and med harvesters would give AS, Chef, DE, Tailors, and WS and unfair skill pt advantage over the non-artisan crafters.
A personal harvester isnt going to cut it for a BE, for example, that requires 60k of flora per 1000 schematic run of BSN supplements.
Resources are gushing out of the ground in much, much greater quantity than can be used. Some type of control needs to happen or all crafters are going to be forced into a commodified market, which is exactly what the combat players want. I wish more crafters could see how free harvesters for everyone is hurting us in the long run, past the fact that you might have to pick up a couple of boxes of survey.
Would all the crafters who have argued so hard-core against this mind if you simply needed to have Novice Artisan to place harvesters?
Resources are nothing more then a credit sink that plays to the tune of .5cpu
Too many resources will do nothing to the elite market unless the overflow is of top quality resources.
On Bria, that just isnt the case. The best stuff hasnt spawned since the game went live.
I have to wait on average of one month to see one elite level resource. The rest is garbage that has no value other then to grinders and nubs.
I just dont subscribe that the SWG market will collapse due to an over abundance of junk resources.
I dont feel that taking away other player's ability to use cash cow harvesters is going to benefit anyone other then the class that gets dibs on them.
Credits, not resources, are the foundation of the SWG economy. Resources, while vital, are nothing other then a conversion of .5 credits into a resource.
Some of these resources are about to become worthless and that, my friend, is the best damn money sink I can think of
Idea
Keep current Harvestors the same. No changes.
Add new Harvesters, exact same BER but....... can be put down on rougher terrain then normal Harvestors. Must be MA to use the new Harvs.
How many times have you found a great spot, but couldn't drop a harvestor?
I don't understand why artisans are asking for these certifications since all they can make are personals. Artisan is a basic profession. If anyone should have a right to ask it would be the elite crafting professions. I would also like to point out that almost every profession has some crafting involved. Are you going to force these players to purchase resources if they are not able to run their own extractors?
/cheer Sinist quitting. Quiters never win.
Actually I make computer games. So well I dont really need any of you.
Good luck on your games...lmao
GrafvonSoden wrote:
Dvnce
this is tough for a correspondent to do sometimes.. Even though we are players too.. it is easy for some to assume that we speak directly for SOE.. When in fact we speak for our fellow players... it is also easy for some to assume that when we speak our personal opinion we ignore what the majority wishes..
on the subject... I had someone suggest to me.. (i guess because we make the harvesters this guy thought i had the final say ... ) but he suggested instead of ripping harvesters from everyone why not cert them like a gun... He pointed out that as a crafter he is not certed for a lazer rifle but he still can pick one up an shoot one... So his point was maybe it is not unreasonable for certs to be in the Survey line.. but people without the certs would only loose a little effectiveness from their harvesters..
Yes, I understand people making assumptions
even this bit of certing would help to some degree. But you will still get an outcry from those same players that are vehemently arguing against it now. I given up trying to reason with them and will wait for Dev interaction.
BTW even though I'm not an architect, thanks for your service to the game too, and as for all the correspondents.
I understand.. one of the biggest things I try to express sometimes when a change needs to be made.. is that in fact some of the biggests sacrifices are the ones that will in the end make the game much better... I think the whole problem with this debate is that no one truly defined the problem.. (which there is one big one that does infact involve resources..)
Sinist wrote:
Thats nice garvin but I deal with people how they present themselves to me.
I dont know or am priveleaged to seeing his threads on the correspondant forum. We were not even made aware of his intentions until after we made aware that it wasnt fair to single out 1 issue out of the 1000000s of other issues in every single profession forum for exclusive seperate voting in order to NOT have it.
Why coudlnt it just be the top 5 issues poeple posted. Since as you all say it is reflecetd my the majority then well that one thread should of been enought o find out wether it was or wasnt. It was clear 98% of the popel cant touch base ont heir argument why they shouldnt. Its the same old prices will be higher and there wont be enough resources and that is false.
And the only time I personally have called anyone an idiot or a moron is when either they 1) trolled me 2) said something moronoic or idiotic.
IN a perfect world I can hear you plea to not call people morons or idiots but it is a fact the world isnt perfect, and moron or idiots are something we can all deal with being called. Its used by kindergarteners. If you didnt learn to deal with someone calling you a moron or stupid during your life then you have issues outside and need help outside of what this forum can give you.
Anyways I still think the community as a whole are idiots and morons. Because thay all make the same arguments but cant prove any of it. They just dont know. And they shoudlnt be expected to make the decisions that they dont know anything about.
Seriously, you denegrate this entire community, nay game with your vile. I hope someday you find someone that cares about your personal problems but I have neither the time nor inclination.
Your obvious inability to carry on a conversation above the sandbox line is obvious, and the only place this vaulted IQ of yours exists is in your own fantasy world. Go away.
Fivo Asia
I will stay and work with whatever the final decision is and continue to offer my sometimes, not so popular ideas.
Sinist wrote:
Thats nice garvin but I deal with people how they present themselves to me.
I'm not sure if I have an average rating of 1-star or not. I know my average has gone down with the harvester certification thread because many of the proponents were one-starred by opponents. I didn't do the same. All I did was 5-star every one-star post (except some of Sinist's) which I thought had content related to the discussion so that people who haven't set their accounts to one-star posts could actually follow the discussion.
I apologize if my post in the top 5 issues thread seems like an attack on Guruweaver. If correspondent is likemost of SOE's other CS positions, I wager it is unpaid and something done on a voluntary basis. I'm grateful that Guruweaver and others have brought the issue of harvester certifications to the attention of the devs.
Now, I just want to know what the devs think. I'd love to hear from Q-3PO, Thunderheart, and Holocron on the topic. The economy has only been running in deficit if resources are assigned a value of less than 1 cpu. That may be what they end up selling for. Or it may not. After all, these stockpiled resources will probably be used in large quantities in the upcoming JTL expansion by shipwrights. Maybe that is what the devs intend.
I really wish the devs would have solved the problem of duping the old fashioned way...by a reasonable currency devaluation along with some sort of FDIC type insurance per character to make sure a bare minimum number of credits were protected. Then raise the cost of all sinks and the values of all payouts accordingly rather than treat these duped credits the same as non-duped credits in perpetuity. Sure...some people got banned. But lots of duped credits have been introduced into the system and have altered the SWG economy as severely as the check-duping problem altered the UO economy. I wonder why no MMORPG that has had a duping problem has opted for currency devaluation (with some minimal currency per character protected from the devaluation) as a solution. Because it's the sort of thing I think would have been accepted by players. "Counterfeiters have made lots of credits that we can't tell from real credits." "The rebels have done this to ruin the economy of the empire as a form of economic warfare." Or some such. Sure...innocent bystanders get hurt when there is a duping problem. But those who continue in the game can be made to suffer minimal long-term consequences. And things could have been brought back into balance without the need to put the money into resources though hologrinding so that there are now large numbers of jedi on every server.
Actually, I hear that some of the UO devs are working on SWG. Hmmm. Please tell me that you guys didn't let THEM be the ones to make sure there weren't any duping bugs! (I'm only half kidding.)
The main reason I wanted the certification issue to be in the questions submitted to the devs is that I would like to know what the devs think. And I don't think they're going to come out and tell us if they aren't formally asked. I suspect that even opponents of the certification idea would like to know what the devs think. Maybe we should have a second poll asking whether (without the question supporting one resolution or another) the devs should be asked whether they think there is a problem with all the resources that come out of the ground every day and if so whether they have any sort of solution in mind.
One of the reasons I favor certifications so much is that I think that when the grind resources market dries up as it inevitably will...I think the folks who are accustomed to supplementing their incomes by mining resources will continue to do so. Only now they will have to go after the high-quality resources to make any profit. So they will place harvesters. Perhaps in such large numbers that the crafters who actually use the resource won't get to place their harvesters and will have to buy the resource from a commando/TKM. And perhaps the price will be such that established crafters can afford to buy the resources but new crafters can't. That seems inequitable to me, but maybe it doesn't to everyone. Sometimes my sense of what is fair isn't in agreement with the majority of the community.
It seems to me that harvester certifications will keep this problem from arising. But maybe the problem won't arise at all on its own even without the certifications. We'll just have to wait and see.