Artisan Archive
Thread: Why Harvester Cert's can never happen...
I've been a master weaponsmith and artisan for about 8 months. I've been a master armorsmith for about 3 1/2 months. I now also have a master CM and am setting up a CM shop. I make top-quality items in all of those fields (like 257 max damage 2h curved swords, 483 max damage power hammers, 68% base composite, etc.). I regularly deal with crafters from all the other professions. I handle millions of resources at a time. I try not to let it take too much time away from my Swordsman but I spend 20+ hours a week on crafting and have been doing so for quite some time.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-06-2004 11:58 PM
You haven't really argued my points against this. You are looking at one crafter and not at the market of crafters. If one crafter saw a decrease of supply and no other ones did then of course it would not be good. But as all crafters see a decrease of supply the market suddenly changes dramatically. This change will be increased prices for all crafted goods. This will make it harder for monopolies to form and create more crafting and harvesting "jobs". A decreased ability to supply a certain crafted good would be counterbalanced by an increase in the ability to sell that item and the price obtained for that item.
Your perspective is far too narrow. From a global perspective, scarcity of resources is just fine for crafters. It's clear that resources are MUCH more abundant than was intended by the designers. It's also clear that relative incomes for crafters are going down not up and that we are seeing markets converge on smaller numbers of crafters instead of a more diverse market. Resource gluts enable smaller numbers to supply the whole market.
You say:
As to the effect of putting resource collection into a small groups hands...Any given profession has "X" number of people playing it. "X" is a finite number.
This is also incorrect at least in what it implies if not what it says. It implies that the player population will always converge on a static number of crafters. That's not true. The number of crafters is a product of the economic system. If resources were free and items could be created automatically in any number -- then there would be almost no crafters. If resources were impossible to get then again there would be no crafters. In between these two points we have widely varying possibilities for the number of crafters. Like many economic tasks, the task here is that of finding the difficulty in crafting so as to create a healthy market. Clearly at points increasing the difficulty will improve the market and at other points decreasing the difficulty will improve the market. Supply-siders use a similar argument for taxation (although for some reason many refuse to admit that this argument supports raising taxes as well as lowering them) saying that we should optimize our tax rate to find the "best" government revenue. Many economic indicators show us that currently resource gathering is far too easy which is leading to a relatively unhealthy and small market. Thus we increase the difficulty. This should increase your "X" as it will make it harder for smaller numbers of crafters to supply the bulk of the market and will increase demand for crafters in general.
You're treating X as a constant when it's a variable. It changes to reflect the market. As resources become more scarce new players will pop up to do harvesting as an actual career and not as a quick buck (i.e. renting lots) and a more dynamic and healthy market would be the result.
StGabe.
Message Edited by StGabriel on 06-07-2004 11:54 AM
StGabriel wrote:
To make a vehicle you have to be a master artisan, so introducing certs for harvesters wouldn't affect the "idiots" quite as much as you seem to be inclined to believe.
I think I've already addressed this twice now. You are reading me as an advocate of a specific harvester certification plan which I am not. I am simply pointing out that increased scarcity of resources will shift economic power to artisan professions and not away and thusly is not a "nerf".
You've also the point that the resource gluts themselves stem from the fact that ANYONE can be harvesting and that those master artisans can put up 100 harvesters if they want to and have 9 friends willing to donate just a small amount of time.
StGabe.
Ok, sorry... I was mistaking between Harvester Certs and simply limiting resources as a means to empower artisans then.
Though the limiting of resources are still intertwined with harvester certs. Since everyone can dump extractors at the moment certs would be the way to reduce resource harvesting, don't you say?
So my misstake, even if bad, is somewhat understandable.
I was merely pointing out, since the debate I was reacting to was about artisans spewing out vehicles at a lower price than the CPU for the resources involved, that anyone capable of building vehicles will be (regardless of harvester certs) capable of pulling up enough material for building all the vehicles they can want.
a little side note from fan fest (for those who missed it)
i attended the crafting and economics forums and the devs are aware that the economies of all servers are very much askew however while a few people mentioned harvester certifications this was not something that was discussed much. it was mentioned by several dev's that some of the problems with the economy was caused by credit-duping (which is no longer possible) and hologrinding. hologrinding is coming to an end and the problems in the economy caused by that will probably come to an end as well, including some of the excess resources that will no longer have a market.
many times it was mentioned that we the players are packrats who don't destroy much, so the excess resources may stay in game but with a market shift away from the hologrinding, it will be less profitable for some of the resource people to continue the way they have. for the devs, this creates database problems, all the extra items that are not beingused. for example, just the number of ingame melons was in the millions, including one house that was all melons LOL
what was mentioned a few times was cross-server lot trades..it is seen as a big problem. one solution thati heardmentioned as a possibility (no one said this is the solution they will go with) is eliminating administration rights on harvesters. in many cases cross-server lot trades involved harvesters being placed and allowed to burn rather than being retrieved by the owner.
the problem is that the devs are OK with in-server lot trading because they see some of this type of trading as valid since all members are presumably contributing members of each server's economies (factories, etc shared by guild members for example). a second possibility mentioned was limiting the number of lots per account but it was admitted that this also creates problems for non-exploiting players. the difficulty is separating the 2 issues, cross-server versus in-server lot trading, without causing problems with what is a valid form of lot trading, such as when a crafter is holding guild buildings. this is partly alleviated because many city structures do not take up lots but for a functioning guild combat people often hold storage buildings for example. the response in the room when the suggestion of eliminated admin rights on harvesters was alot of booing. for the record, anyone that asked a question stated their profession and all were crafters of some kind.
it should also be noted that not everyone with lots in the hundreds are not necessarily doing lot trades. one person at fanfest had 22 legal and paid for accounts and therefore must have 220 lots to play with. there were a fair number of people there with at least 5 legal accounts and more. eliminating admin rights on harvesters hits people with alts hard and this is a valid form of lot trading, when it is withinone server.
i now return you to the debate
I think eliminating admin rights and limiting the total number of lots per account are good idea. Two servers with 10 lots and three more with two lots are plenty for almost anyone. That's two active crafter types and 3 combat types who can have houses but not hold things for a guild. Certainly more characters than I can play.
I don't think eliminating admin rights hits people with multiple accounts hard at all. I have two accounts and would be happy to have each character deal with the harvesters on that character's lots. I just wouldn't be able to use my crafter to do all the harvester related chores. That actually doesn't seem bad at all to me since I can have my chars on simultaneously (2 comps and router).
I'm encouraged that the devs are already starting to think about the problem. I wonder what should be done about the existing resources, though. Should they start to decay in stats over time? That might encourage their eventual deletion. But the devs are right...we are packrats.
I don't see the problem with swoops and the like being solved anytime soon though. They require generic resources. So anyone can make em out of the stored grinding resources. I really wish the devs had solved the duping problem by currency devaluation rather than by coming up with hologrinding. It would have saved them their current database problems.
joined42904 wrote:
I'm encouraged that the devs are already starting to think about the problem. I wonder what should be done about the existing resources, though. Should they start to decay in stats over time? That might encourage their eventual deletion. But the devs are right...we are packrats.
joined42904 wrote:
I think eliminating admin rights and limiting the total number of lots per account are good idea. Two servers with 10 lots and three more with two lots are plenty for almost anyone. That's two active crafter types and 3 combat types who can have houses but not hold things for a guild. Certainly more characters than I can play.
I don't think eliminating admin rights hits people with multiple accounts hard at all. I have two accounts and would be happy to have each character deal with the harvesters on that character's lots. I just wouldn't be able to use my crafter to do all the harvester related chores. That actually doesn't seem bad at all to me since I can have my chars on simultaneously (2 comps and router).
I'm encouraged that the devs are already starting to think about the problem. I wonder what should be done about the existing resources, though. Should they start to decay in stats over time? That might encourage their eventual deletion. But the devs are right...we are packrats.
I don't see the problem with swoops and the like being solved anytime soon though. They require generic resources. So anyone can make em out of the stored grinding resources. I really wish the devs had solved the duping problem by currency devaluation rather than by coming up with hologrinding. It would have saved them their current database problems.
as i said..these issues are being discussed by the dev's, they have not made any decisions yet (at least as of last saturday) on how to deal with cross-server lot trades but a couple of thoughts here:
one, decay of excess resources..this might not be necessary. people will eventually overcome our packrat tendencies and destroy the more useless resources (stat-wise) just to free up inventory. this post mentioned some of the changes that people are seeing on ahazi:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Ahazi&message.id=295785
i'm guessing that the entire basis for the harvester certification debate will falter as it has already stopped being terribly profitable for non-artisans to sell resources without the kind of effort it takes to be picky about the stats.
two, making bikes out of grinding resources makes for bikes with less durability, and with the vehicle fix bug gone, well people are shopping for the bikes that experiment out at 98% to save on repair costs. i've already had a few people ask me to make them better bikes than what they have for just this reason.
three, the exact numbers you mention for account lot limits are not sufficient in my opinion and i think many would agree with me to allow one to be a successful elite crafter. Enough for MAperhapsbut even my doctor is strained at 7 lots (one house, one factory). this will be the future point of contention i think if the dev's do decide to limit account lot numbers as a means to control cross-server trades. but time will tell, and this issue will fall under the auspices of core systems, not the artisan only group.
Giami,
I am perplexed by your saying that the lot numbers I have mentioned are not adequate to allow one to be a successful elite crafter. 10 lots per server are what you have now! I'm not proposing a diminution of your lots on either of two servers that you might have an elite crafter on. Please explain this to me. I just don't get it.
Are you telling me that you see cross-server trades as legitimate? And that you presently engage in this practice? I agree that 10 lots is constraining for crafters. And I'm almost a master armorsmith, so I end up using all lots on two accounts under the present system. I refuse to engage in cross-server lot trading or lot rental. I do buy resources when I can get a good price on them, though.
There is nothing wrong with borrowing a friends lots.
Limiting lots on alternate accounts will just cause SOE to lose monery. Lets face it the majority of people who have alternate accounts their main reason is for lots and skill augmentation.
There really is no need for decay of resource. Packratting is limited by storage and since the devs have no intent of altering the maximum stack size storage is always a constraint.
Unless that leads to imbalances which make the game economy less healthy and less fun.
Limiting lots on alternate accounts will just cause SOE to lose monery. Lets face it the majority of people who have alternate accounts their main reason is for lots and skill augmentation.
Well removing limiting sharing of admin wouldn't prevent alternate accounts it would just make it more difficult. And it is incorrect to say that SOE will lose money off of this. You are only looking at first-effects and at the limited scope. When considering a change such as this you have too look at the players with multiple accounts that might quit (but generally these players have enough time to overcome small limitations like no admin-sharing) versus the other accounts that might quit simply because the economy is unbalanced and no fun.
To those who say that elite crafters dont need 10 lots. Anyone doing a good business needs several factories to keep components up, so usually one factory does not cut it. Also many of the items created by elite crafters takes a lot of space to store along with the resource. Many elite crafters have to have multiple houses, so yes they will create an alt so they can harvest.
Limiting harvester sharing would do nothing to prevent factory and house sharing. Furthermore, this will simply make for a healthier post-hologrind resource market. Just as combatants aren't necessarily expected to make their own armor and weapons crafters aren't necessarily expected to harvest all of their own resources. In fact I'd think that buying resources from others as a primary source of resources is quite intended.
Limiting admin rights does not solve anything when in fact most people just use alternate accounts. It just makes things more difficult.
Well according to the polling data most people don't use multiple accounts. Furthermore, a person with 3 accounts gets 30 lots out of that. But if they have 20 combat friends to tap for extra lots, each with 3 accounts each, that is 630 lots. That's a difference of more than an order of magnitude.
Instead of shoving a nerf down everyones throat...
The nature of an imbalance is that something is too much or too little. In the instance where something is too much, the only solution is a nerf. Yes, people will not like it initially but if it is required for a healthy game then everyone WILL like it eventually.
edited because my comp sent posted alot more times than i expected
Message Edited by Giamai on 06-08-2004 02:46 PM
joined42904 wrote:
Giami,
I am perplexed by your saying that the lot numbers I have mentioned are not adequate to allow one to be a successful elite crafter. 10 lots per server are what you have now! I'm not proposing a diminution of your lots on either of two servers that you might have an elite crafter on. Please explain this to me. I just don't get it.
Are you telling me that you see cross-server trades as legitimate? And that you presently engage in this practice? I agree that 10 lots is constraining for crafters. And I'm almost a master armorsmith, so I end up using all lots on two accounts under the present system. I refuse to engage in cross-server lot trading or lot rental. I do buy resources when I can get a good price on them, though.
actually i may have misread your post to mean you want 10 lots per account which would mean3 lots per server for those characters of mine that are crafters. this would be way too low for the typical elite crafter.
and no, i don't cross-server trade..here's the current standings if you want
giamai on ahazi has 4 lots free atm
giaman on ahaziis now master weaponsmithhas 2 lots free
giavamai and gehenna on sunrunner both have 4 lots free each
all 10 of my flurry lots are currently free. i bought a second account to increase my lot numbers and have both crafting and power killing characters.i don't have an alt on flurry where my future ranger currently resides.
what i am saying is that there were 2 possibilities offered for ending cross-server trades, one is limiting the numbers of lots per account, the other is eliminating admin rights on harvesters. both have both good and bad consequences and they may not be the only possible choices for change.
