Artisan Archive
Thread: Comments regarding Harvester Certification issue poll
Scooter,
This isn't a greed issue. Everyone can take the skills required to get resources if skills become required.
There is an issue with the number of resources in the game. And I think it's a serious issue. One that isn't best solved by letting the resource barons shift their resources into stacks of a million for easy storage.
Maybe the way to deal with existing stockpiles is to make resources older than a specific number of months start to decay in quality (all stats) if they aren't placed inside a special container...each one can only hold a certain quantity of resources...say 100k...and each container takes the space of an article and counts toward the limit of total articles in a structure. This would let folks keep their most valuable resources but would make new resources and new merchants able to compete with the older resource barons out there.
Unlike some, I think it is possible to curtail the wealth of those who have lots of resources, etc. And not in a completely negative and confiscatory way. (Although maybe the empire in a galactic war might want to come take a large stockpile of resources come to think about it....)
PadiOne wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
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
I agree with you in many ways AO. There are two kinds of faucets flowing into the game: Cash and resources.
One point i disagree on is the organic resources. After the chef revamp there was a pretty big shortage there. The organics are in a lot better shape now than other resource types.
I'd like to see the inflow of resources slowed somewhat myself. I'd like to see special requirement resources with good stats become rare at a quicker rate. It's not gonna happened when 8 guys from one guild harvest over 1 mil units each of it.
One of the thoughts that I had was raising the price of harvester maint. I think this would only cut back on the amt of resources harvested that never get used. This is the stuff that ppl destroy or grind anyway. Keep in mind that many of these harvs will no longer be placed when ppl don't need the resources anymore. If ppl stop buying, ppl will stop mining.
I'm basically rambling some thoughts about this issue here. Sorry for the disconnection.
If a WS decides he wants 3 mil units of the new ostrine ore, harv certs aren't going to stop him. Most likely money won't either. He'll have as many ppl as he can put down personal harv (no way the devs will ever cert them). As long as you can mule any harv, the resource flow isn't going to slow with certs. What will slow it is higher maint costs for harvs. Ppl won't harv stuff they don't need. (or not as much of it, anyway - even if this assumption is wrong, it doesn't affect my final argument. The point here was to demonstrate that certs weren't going to slow down harv rates, and they won't as long as the crafters that want it have cash). This will cause them to delve into their good stuff quicker as they draw lower on stock. Now that we've rid ourself of the notion of slowing server wide harv rates with certs, lets go on to what artisans gain from certs.
Artisans can become resource providers. They can already though. The difference is that they can provide in a higher volume than other ppl, but since we already said we were going to have the same number of incoming resources, the prices aren't going to change. It's just that more of the money will be going into artisans pockets.
So what we have now is an environment that could possible cause some high volume elite crafters to jump through hoops to get the number of resources that they desire in order to put a few extra bucks in an artisans pocket.
I don't like it. It puts alot of inconvenience into the game for other professions without giving artisans a new skill or ability. It only gives them a larger cut of the pie. I agree that harvester certs would make some things more rewarding from a gameplay aspect to the artisan, but I don't think the end result is an overall improvement to galaxy wide gameplay.
There's also a problem inherent to harvester certs. Certs for all of the harvs would have to take place in the artisan prof. they couldn't go into the elite crafting profs. Sinist (I'm not bashing here, I'm using your example - I'm gonna shoot down my original cert proposal in a sec) proposed medium harvs at novice elite and heavies at master artisan. This is fine if you make the assumption that the player is a master elite crafter first, and an artisan second. This give him/her extra reward for picking up master artisan. But does it makes sense for me to master artisan and be able to use a heavy harv, yet not be able to use a medium one? That's just a bit silly. That's what happens when you become a master artisan but don't take up an elite crafting profession. I had propose mediums at survey 3 and heavies at novice elite. Under this method, you could get heavies without mediums again if you became a novice elite but didn't take up survey. The only way I can see certs working is mediums at survey 3 and heavies at master artisan, unless you want to gank them from artisan and put them at novice elite and master elite.
doh, just occured to me. You totally screw the architect too if you cert them. they now have less business.
Absolutely.
In fact to your point to organic resouces.
Being in the medical professions for a long time organic resources have long been an issue before the chef revamp.
The vast majority of resouce vendors just deal with the massive amounts of ore and metals that are required by the AS/WS/Arch professions and do not even look for good medical resouces and other organics. Add the chef and BE revamp and it has gotten worse.
That is one of the main reasons doctors have been asking for limited survey skills in their trees. Because since most doctors have to mine for themselves since the resource needed is not on the market. And the medical professions are the only elite crafters that are not inherintly given survey ability. This forces doctors to use 27-29 skill points on survey which prevents them from mastering a third professions. All other elite crafters can master that third profession since they iherently get survey.
Well that was a RANT not meant to drag it off topic please DO NOT post a reaction to medical syrvey that is a discussion that should be on a different thread and should not be debated here.
The point being the organic resouces issue has been on going and is rougher than before.
One problem is the perception that the artisan is the defacto resource provider because they can find the resource.
If we look at common sense that act of survey does not make you a resouce provider. One could argue that it makes you a potential one.
However the original miner profession was an elite based off of Artisan that required the survey line. Hence survey was the precursor skill and not the skill that gave the mining ability. Now miner was deemed for seveal reasons to not be beneficial to the game. Because of boring low content it was seen that not many would enjoy it and hence slow the resource flow into the game so the skill of mining was moved to a basic skill everyone could have.
Now you have talked of slowing resouce flow.
Well that will happen once the holo grind is done.
Ask yourself who is doing most of the mining. It is the elite crafters. The vast majority of elite crafters don't want to mine, they want to craft their wares and enjo other content. But currently they have to because of resource prices. I think you will see as the demand goes down you will see many of the elite crafters just not deal with mining and those that have chosen to just be resource vendors will not be adversly affected.
joined42904 wrote:
Scooter,
You are correct that it looks as if the majority in the poll voted "No." In a context in which many of the people probably couldn't have even seen many of the yes votes at the time they posted due to the 1-starring of posts (some of which such as a few of Sinisit's may have deserved 1-starring but the majority didn't).
We do realize that artisan is a basic profession. Just as medic is a basic profession. But there are some very useful things that medics can use that non-medics totally can't. Stim Bs come to mind.
Yeah and same with Artisan, Marksman, Scout so whats your point?
It is certainly appropriate for there to be discussion of what abilities should lie in which trees. I imagine that most medics in the medic forum wouldn't say that everyone who takes one set of skill boxes should have access to almost all of what medics are capable of doing. There is thus cause for ongoing discussion about the harvesting of resources and the value of the artisan survey thread.
Define have access? If it is input in the medic profession go look at the profession thread. Everyone is encouraged conatantly to input on the profession and its impacts not just masters. Non masters of any profession should have equal input into the polls and discussion threads for that profession.
Read what Guruweaver said. I am satisfied with Guruweaver's response. A hard look at harvesting and other issues related to acquiring resources is one of the artisan top 5 issues. Who knows what the devs will decide when they take a hard look. And it's really up to the devs, not me, not you, not the marjority of the community. Making it one of the top 5 issues, added to what Guruweaver has done in bringing other entire threads to the attention of the devs is really what Guruweaver is able to do about this. And I don't think proponents or opponents of certification can really complain that Guruweaver has unreasonably taken sides. I might have been a bit unhappy if something related to resource harvesting weren't one of our top 5 issues given the amount of discussion the topic has received in recent days in comparison to what the artisan's other issues could be. But that didn't happen. And it didn't happen because Guruweaver is committed to representing a sometimes-divided community as best he can. And in some cases his is a difficult task.
Well I did and I do agree with what he said. He did the right thing to poll and test the community response. He is also correct in keeping acquiring resouces in thr top 5. This poll was to determine the feasabilty of a solution to the proble and just because it failed miserably does not mean the problem went away. It just means that more thinking has to be done for a possible solution to forward to the devs.
I am listening to what Guruweaver has to say. I expect it to be fair and balanced without taking a position on the issue of certifications if it mentions them at all. But don't think that listening to our Correspondent means that the certification issue has been dropped. It hasn't. And as I understand it, this issue rears its head from time to time in these forums. I will certainly listen to the devs and drop this issue. And I'm not going to argue for "harvester certifications" to be the question we ask the devs. I might argue for something like increasing the value of the survey line of artisan with respect to resource extraction, which seems to have some support even among the opponents of certification.
Well I do think this poll does show that the certifications as proposed is dropped. It is clear that most feel that it would cause a lot of damage to the game. That does not mean that the underlying issue does not have another solution. One thing that makes it dropped is that how it will affect the economy and all crafters is speculation. The community is not going to agree to such a thing like certs unless hard data is brought in that can solidify the cert position.
Data that needs to come from SOE such as (and I am sure more people can come up with more items)
1) What classes are actually doing most of the mining.
2) of those classes are they mining resouce for just themselves and their profession?
3) How many artisans are mining that do not also have an elite crafting profession?