Artisan Archive

Here's my latest rough summary from the Yes/No survey thread. I wanted to talk a bit about it and ask why for some of the trends I'm seeing.

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As of Artuk's answers:
1: pro 43, con 20, overall +23 (43/63, 68.3%) Miner Profession
2: pro 39, con 23, overall +16 (39/62, 62.9%) Harvester Certs
3: pro 23, con 38, overall -15 (23/61, 37.7%) Email Monitoring
4: pro 54, con 11, overall +43 (54/65, 83.1%) Droid/Terminal Monitoring
5: pro 36, con 27, overall +9 (36/63, 57.1%) More Lots for Crafters
6: pro 44, con 22, overall +22 (44/66, 66.7%) Salvage
7: pro 34, con 28, overall +6 (34/62, 54.8%) Resource Improvement
8: pro 42, con 12, overall +30 (42/54, 77.8%) Craft UI Tabs
9: pro 47, con 8, overall +39 (47/55, 85.5%) Installation UI Tabs
10: pro 48, con 12, overall +36 (48/60, 80.0%) No UI Shades
11: pro 44, con 11, overall +33 (44/55, 80.0%) Custom Schematics
12: pro 45, con 13, overall +32 (45/58, 77.6%) More Forced Consumables

As a reminder: this is a *rough* tally. It's not perfect, it's likely I've missed on or two answers. The order of magnitude is correct.

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Okay. Now let's look at this by sections. NOTE: This is *my* interpretation of the trends, and *my* opinion on the state of the world.

Section 1: Miner/Prospector Class

The first two questions (should there be a miner profession, and should access to harvesters be limited in any way) tie into this.

As a number of people have pointed out, most of the people around want a unified prospector class, rather than a miner class for only minerals, plus a farmer, plus etc. I think everybody's clear on that. I'm not clear on why the people who support miner but don't support harvester limitations are thinking. Just that miners will produce more than normal people, I suppose. That's problemmatic, though (see below about resource glut issues.)

Section 2: Monitoring

This comprises two questions, the first of which is "should there be remote monitoring of structures through email only", the second of which is "should there be monitoring/maintenance of harvester using droids."

The data shows that email monitoring is rather less popular than droid/terminal monitoring and maintenance. A couple of possible reasons: one is that people read #3 as "nothing except email ever". The reason *I* voted no on that is that I receive too much automated mail already, and thing this should be a pro-active thing: you want to know, you check. I also like the idea of the droid engineers getting a boost from this. I personally voted yes on #4 even though I'm only certain about monitoring. Maintenance is workable. Retrieval of materials or adding power should not be possible. I know some people answered no because of that.

In short, people want monitoring, and a good number of people prefer some droid or terminal based solution to automated email.

Section 3: Buff Crafters!

The section comprises questions 5, 6, and 7. The first is whether more lots should be available based on crafter level. The second is whether it should be possible to salvage goods to regain materials use. And the third is whether some form of resource-to-resource crafting should be made available to artisans (but only if miner doesn't go through.)

Of these, the salvage idea is quite popular, more lots is slightly less popular, and resource improvement is about 50/50. I think the reason that salvage is popular should be obvious, as is more lots for crafters. Resource improvement is somewhat of a don't care for a lot of people. Some people think it should never exist except as part of a miner profession. Some people would like it for artisans. My take on resource improvement is the former: it's too specialized for general artisans, and including something like it would be a good motivating factor for a new advanced profession. It might also be dangerous as it adds another element of "masters can always make stuff better than beginners." And the final worrisome details are: could cause more database problems, and could throw the scarcity economy out of whack. I think that last problem could be countered by making the improvement of material very expensive. (i.e. Sure I can make titanium for you even though we don't have any--but I'll need 300 aluminum and 300 steel for every 100 titanium aluminum I give you.) That would also provide another sink for resources. If this were done well, it could be quite powerful, providing the most absolutely high end expensive items.

As for salvage and more lots... see what I have to say below.

Section 4: UI Improvements

This comprises questions 8-10. The dissenters on these questions seem to want UI improvements, but not to believe that tabs is the right way to do it on 8 and 9, and not to believe that there's an actual problem on 10. I took 10 on faith, and voted yes on 8 and 9 as more "please do improve it somehow", rather than "this is the right change". This is all pretty non-controversial.

Section 6: Other stuff

The two questions here are just random and different from the rest. Number 11 is "Ability to create custom schemtics though a custom crafting interface." And... I'm not really sure what this is supposed to mean. This seems generally split between "sounds like a great idea! custom stuff!" and "I don't know what you're talking about", with some "it will screw up the database" thrown in for good measure.

For more forced consumables, a number of people voted "yes, but just more consumables, not forced consumables." A lot of the yesses seemed to be "let us make more stuff!" My vote was no: better to have things people *want* than things people *need* for many things. On the other hand, things that create new market forces (like the resource improvement), it might make sense. For example, an item that only a master artisan can make which is consumed in the process of creating improved resources. Or for vehicles, special vehicle fuel cells that actually deplete and must be replaced. Or for harvesters, perhaps the monitoring droids that are installed in harvesters must be replaced when you re-deed. Adding something like food that you *have* to eat, or adding a new requirement that you must install some item in a house periodically to keep it running seems wrong. You shouldn't change the old mechanics that drastically.

Okay. Now on to the ranty part.

The Resource Glut and What Can We Do (or not Do) About It

The most troubling part of the survey for me is questions five and six, because they indicate to me a lack of concern over the health of the economy, or perhaps a lack of perception of certain dangers. Let's imagine that you received 50% of your materials back from salvaging, and that master artisans get an extra five lots to use for whatever.

Now, the first impact is from the salvage: at this point, demand for resources will fall, and since there's already a glut in the market, the glut will get worse. On one side, this means that potentially the prices for materials will drop, driving people who aren't committed out of the race until price, supply, and demand stabilize. But it could easily turn into a downward tailspin. As another person has pointed out, the relationship between XP gained for crafting and cost in resources would also be broken by this.

My feeling is that prices for resources are in general too high, because of the unnatural demand produced by so many beginning crafters at once--and also perhaps because of the artifically high increase in money supply from things like baz nitch missions. I don't think this is price gouging, it's inflation. And the trouble from a crafter's point of view is that it's inflation due to an increase in income that crafters don't see much of until the master level (when they get to the point where people who do things like take lots and lots of baz nitch missions will buy their goods.)

When everybody has a lot of money, and demand is high, prices go through the roof. I'd be happier if it made sense to charge less for resources (and in fact I do try to price my resources below the competition, not at the same price as the competition.) And it's getting better now that the money supply is being reined in by the devs. The really big deal that happened here is that resource harvesting became highly lucrative because of the inflation: the profit margins became higher, and the cost of doing business did not increase, since maintenance and power use rates are constant. If I were a government leasing out lots, I would've raised taxes. If I was a landlord, I would've raised rent. And I would not be surprised if at some point SOE increased maintenance costs, assuming that demand doesn't drop enough. The high profits encouraged a *lot* of people who probably would never have done it otherwise to get into the resource market to make a quick buck.

Anyway, the danger is that salvage could do the same thing all over again, perhaps the same way, perhaps the other way around. If salvage is used a lot, it potentially reduces the amount of money leaving the world through harvesters, which increases the amount of money in the world, increasing inflation and increasing prices. Prices could further be broken by a deflationary effect, as more harvesting people find it's no longer possible to sell their goods (not enough demand) and stop harvesting. This could decrease supply, incrasing prices from those able to stay in the market... And now you get into a topsy turvey thing where you go from inflation to deflation, back and forth in bad ways.

More lots for crafters essentially does the same thing on the supply side. Crafters with more harvesters decreases the demand because now crafters will have enough lots to do pretty much all of their own harvesting. The danger is that this will marginalize the people who harvest for a living to such a degree that they'll stop--leaving the world in a position where a crafter *must* mine their own materials, including surveying for it, picking up material from the harvesters every few days, paying maintenance, dealing with power issues, etc. etc. Or they may have to hire someone to do it for them. (So: why not hire someone to do it for you now, using their own lots and not yours?)

Resource improvement falls into this category a little, at least the way I think people are interpreting it. I think they're imagining some device where you mix up n units of stuff and get n units (or perhaps n/2 units) of better stuff back after using some mind pool. When I think of it, I imagine a crafting schematic where you mix 300 units of one kind of stuff and 300 units of another kind of stuff, possibly experiment, and produce 100 units of better stuff (or worse, if you're unlucky.) A way to provide access to all types of materials, even while they're extinct, but at a very very steep price. Without that steep price, this would make resource statistics meaningless.


Another factor in this is the miner profession and certifications for harvesters. The concerns non-potential-miners have here are about price and quantity: if you need to be a miner to use a medium or large harvester, will it make prices go up exceptionally high? Will supply get to be in trouble? I'd like to believe not. Personally, I intend to drive prices down as soon as I start getting into more volume. (I'm working on getting some medium or large flora farms now.) Why? Because I don't feel that I deserve a 900% or better profit margin. The margins are just plain *way too high*. Now, as I said above, I think that this is due to inflationary pressure, not because people are price gouging. *If* there were more dedicated miners, then the merchant/miner would become a very very useful addition to the world: suddenly people know where to go to get resources affordably. Suddenly the prices go down *because the miner can make a living even on a low profit margin.* Why would that happen, because there's more volume being sold, and because dedicated miners are willing to search for the most efficient sources of materials rather than digging it up wherever it may be found.


Okay, perhaps one crafting profession could be seriously hurt by this: architects. But I know that if I could reliably move all of my ore from 10 large harvesters every day, I'd be willing to sell it at a pretty low margin. I don't need that much money.


Okay. I've blathered and protested for miners too much now. I'd just like to point out one final significant piece of the SWG economy:

The Heart of the Economy: Skill Points, Lots, and Time

In reality, the basis of the economy is on these items. Any valuation of resources or money should probably be correlated with it in some way. From the devs point of view, the goal is to keep the money supply in the world relatively constant once a certain level per capita is reached. The money sinks (travel, bazaar fees, maintenance) that exist do so in order to do this--because the devs understand that if inflation grows, prices grow with them. Money *loses its value* to people. The other side of the system is the money supply: mission payouts and money from NPC enemies corpses, essentially.

Now, what items of value in the game are limited in such a way that they have value? One such item is natural resources: but that's also a system with supplies and sinks. If the supply of resources grows so high that it is valueless (as with item duping), things go very very wrong. Likewise, if the supply drops too low that it is super valuable, something is wrong, because new players who have not made zillions of credits already will not be able to buy items. Rather, they'll have to be given them.

The resource supply is tied into the money source-sink system through items people need or want, like weapons, homes, etc. On the sink side, they're tied in through maintenance fees on harvesters. So, in essence: resources are money. Again, this is not really a good thing to evaluate as an "objective" value, apart from the monetary system.

So we come down to (I believe) three things of value that are in limited supply, valued by everyone, and tied into the market system.

The most obvious thing of value is *time*. This is tied to money very very closely by mission payouts, which is one problem that the high mission payouts caused. This artificual constraint is, basically: if you need money, and something you're going to do to earn it takes longer than a mission to earn it, you'll be tempted to do a mission instead. So in a way, mission payouts set a lower bound on the value of your time: your time is worth at least as much money as you can get from a mission in that time. Mission payouts increases with combat skills, and should increase with entertainment skill, survey skill, hunting skill, etc. for the other sorts of missions. (That the other mission types are somewhat broken is irrelevant.)

A less obvious but no less real thing of value is *lots*. A single character can only have ten lots occupied at a time. This limit constrains what that character can do, and is tied into the resource side of the system: each character has a limited amount of resources they can acquire through lots. It also ties in to crafting: each crafter needs lots to do various things (like run a shop, or set up a factory.) It ties into the money sink in that each lot causes maintenance to be used up. A character could probably make a reasonable living selling their lots space to a crafter or miner. At the moment, *everyone* is limited to a maximum of ten lots, and it is their choice how they use those lots. I suspect a reasonable amount of peoples' valuation of resources is based on "lot time"--how many lots times how many hours does it take to get that stuff--and this is why architects are raising prices: low-grade ore has one of the highest values in lot-time around.

The final aspect of the economy is skill. This is constrained by skill points, and again, there's a single limit to the number of skill points any individual can be using. This ties into the resource system through hunting for animal products, to the lot system by requirements for various lot usages for different skills, and to time through the time required to attain those skills. The best example of a fairly purely skill and time-based profession is image designers: they need no resources whatsoever to do their work, but it takes a lot of time to help a person find the image they want, and it takes a lot of skill points to be a good image designer.


Now that's been set up: my take on the world is that there are four levels of manipulation available to the devs, and we need to think about the impact on these four parts of the economy of various changes we ask for if we're to be responsible members of our professions. All of them are, to my mind, based around trade-offs: I can do X or Y, but not both. But I want to do both! Oh no! I have to make a choice! Good thing my friend can do some of Y for me.)

1) manipulation of money sources and sinks to adjust the monetary system of the game and keep inflation or deflation from becoming rampant

2) manipulation of what buildings are needed and desired in order to keep the system running smoothly through interdependence (more efficiency by working together with others than by doing everything yourself)

3) manipulation of what skills are needed and desired in order to keep the system running smoothly in the same way (one person can heal and fight and craft and so on, but a dedicated healer will heal better, a dedicated fighter will fight better)

4) manipulation of the amount of time it takes to do things desired by other people ory yourself (crafting, entertaining, hunting, mining, fighting, etc.)

When we talk about increasing the number of lots per crafter, we're seriously undermining the interdependence side of lots: it's no longer interesting for a person to be a pure miner, because there is no market for resources. It's also no longer a trade-off between having personal perks like a shop, a house, your own factory, a vacation home, and harvesters. You can have it all, why bother making choices? Why cooperate in a local crafters' group to share useful tools when everybody can do it themselves?

When we talk about making salvage possible, or increasing the amount of resources coming into the world, we're tweaking the relationship between the money supply and the desires of players seriously. The value in lot-time or person-time to dig up material goes down, because less is needed. So again, miners are marginalized, and the economy is upset. But now crafters won't even be able to do everything themselves, because they won't have extra lots. In general, this kind of change would mean: less people can mine if they want to mine, or contrarily, crafters will need less lots for mining.

And, of course, if less resources are used then prices go down on crafted goods, decreasing the profit margins of crafters until only the best can compete, and *then* making the devs decrease mission payouts or increase the money sink costs in order to make all of that money leave the economy instead of staying in the hands of crafters.


Okay. I think I just spent about ten times too long talking about that, but I hope it explains to some people why I'm concerned about seeing requests like "more lots for crafters" and "salvage things we make for materials". The economy is a complicated thing, and this kind of request would change it seriously. To be honest, I'm surprised that devs have not jsut out and out said that maintenance rates, shuttle costs, and the like fluctuate and are set by the "government" on various planets. If they did, they could use these to adjust the system on a week to week basis--and, for example, you would never have seen the huge profit margins on mining happen, because the rent would've been increased.


Now, get to work. I won't be happy until I have three pages of flames in response.