Artisan Archive
Thread: How about NPC Buyers ? ... economics thread
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fearfulscout
Tue Feb 24, 2004 5:03 pm
#1
I'll start by saying that I'm still fairly new to SW:G (about a month) but I'm a veteran of several other MMO's. Namely Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online. Two fine games in their own right and time, but neither with a crafting/economy systemthat I was ever really comfortable with. Most MMO economies are contrived affairs with cash sinks to help Dev's balance things out, and to give credits a 'value'. The player run economy of SW:G was something that I was really drawn to while I followed the development, beta, launch and then finally bought the game. My only reason to wait so long after launch to buy was memories of being an AO beta tester/launch player. My stomach can't take another round of server yo-yo with another game like that.
Now that I feel comfortable with the game mechanics, and combat, I really want to focus more on crafting (especially droid engineering) and so I started to try and figure out how make a buck using my crafted wares and the Bazaar. And to my disapointment Ive discovered that it's really quite difficult to do with a player run economy. There are several reasons for it, most of which have already been discussed on these boards. Typically speaking, Ive noticed a huge discrepency in the value of gathered recources. People argue that Artisans should stop selling their products at a lower value than the sum of their parts, but for a less-than-elite character, there is relatively no value in either the goods, or the resources that they where made of, so there's no solution there. Sure, you may get the same cpu for your stack of steel as the next guy, but noones interested in it unless its a stack of 10k units. What's a character to do then ? You are left with a choice of watching your avatar kneel for 20hour sessions so you can get marketable stacks, or you can survey/gather/craft and gain some skill. Great for xp, sucks for the bank acount. Why ? Again , noones cares about the products you make, and the bazaar prices have dropped so low on most pre-elite items that at 20c per item you put up, you almost run at a loss just to sell. And so again, its back to xp to gain any value from your resourcesso you are better off underselling or giving items away for free so you can at least get some xp for your efforts.
Things are not all bad, of course. Maintenance fees are still a great cash sink for the game (for those of us who pay them *cough..shuttlebug..cough*), and missions are still a fun way to earn credits. I think there may another way to help, though. How about NPC "buyers" ? Ultimately how it could work, is that products left on the Bazaar after their time expires (6-7 days ?) would automatically be purchased by NPC buyers. There would have to be a preset, but variable, formula for calculating whatitems sellfor, but it would at least guarantee a minimal payoff to effort that could really help support the SW:G economy from the ground up. Surplus items (how many pistols can a person make ?) would have a way to disapear while still giving players a sense of purpose to their crafting.It could alsogenerate more interest in the items that are more expertly crafted, while new crafters can still get by whithout feeling the need for a harvester before he can afford the maintenance.
Just a few thoughts on the state of the economy on Bria, as Ive experienced it so far. That being said, I know that "my experience so far" is still pretty pretty small, so Id love some feedback from some of the more verteran artisans out there. How do you feel about this idea ?
payingcustomer
Wed Feb 25, 2004 4:34 am
#2
Resources need to be handled more like Futures, I agree.
Oar
AlaManQ5
Wed Feb 25, 2004 6:16 am
#3
I agree with NPC buyers. What about Artisan jobs? Like, you can be hired to craft X amount of Y and submit it to an NPC or a Terminal for a fixed or variable sum. I'd love to work for the fictional Star Wars Universe companies and corporations mentioned in many Extended Universe and/or Star Wars Resource Books. Like, crafting speeders for Soro-Suub, or weapons for Aratech. It would be awesome to craft at lower levels, but work up, like in RL, to a higher position in each galaxy server's company market.
And, an actual, functioning bazaar, where Artisans can rent slots and put up a stall and sell their wares for a fixed amount of time per day, with the ability to place some selling items in this stall for an actual visual.
Lovely ideas, I should say.
darkmane
Wed Feb 25, 2004 6:25 pm
#4
This is a very good idea (I came up with it myself at one point). And additional way to do something like this (And give crafters more input into the GCW) is allow crafters to donate components/finished itemsto bases, rather than resources. The logic being if the Rebellion/Empire doesn't have to make CDEFs for the people who can't use anything else, then they have more factory time to create T-21s. There should be some multiplier (1.1-2.0x) to make it worth while to donate the components rather than just the raw materials.
Dex1138
Thu Feb 26, 2004 1:25 am
#5
The bad side of NPC buyers is that people will make more junk than they already do and put it on the Bazaar knowing they will get some cash for it in 7 days.
I do like the idea of Artisan jobs listed above. That would reduce the junk on the Bazaar, get you some creds and xp.
I do like the idea of Artisan jobs listed above. That would reduce the junk on the Bazaar, get you some creds and xp.
Galaxyburst
Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:19 am
#6
fearfulscout wrote:
I'll start by saying that I'm still fairly new to SW:G (about a month) but I'm a veteran of several other MMO's. Namely Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online. Two fine games in their own right and time, but neither with a crafting/economy systemthat I was ever really comfortable with. Most MMO economies are contrived affairs with cash sinks to help Dev's balance things out, and to give credits a 'value'. The player run economy of SW:G was something that I was really drawn to while I followed the development, beta, launch and then finally bought the game. My only reason to wait so long after launch to buy was memories of being an AO beta tester/launch player. My stomach can't take another round of server yo-yo with another game like that.
Now that I feel comfortable with the game mechanics, and combat, I really want to focus more on crafting (especially droid engineering) and so I started to try and figure out how make a buck using my crafted wares and the Bazaar. And to my disapointment Ive discovered that it's really quite difficult to do with a player run economy. There are several reasons for it, most of which have already been discussed on these boards. Typically speaking, Ive noticed a huge discrepency in the value of gathered recources. People argue that Artisans should stop selling their products at a lower value than the sum of their parts, but for a less-than-elite character, there is relatively no value in either the goods, or the resources that they where made of, so there's no solution there. Sure, you may get the same cpu for your stack of steel as the next guy, but noones interested in it unless its a stack of 10k units. What's a character to do then ? You are left with a choice of watching your avatar kneel for 20hour sessions so you can get marketable stacks, or you can survey/gather/craft and gain some skill. Great for xp, sucks for the bank acount. Why ? Again , noones cares about the products you make, and the bazaar prices have dropped so low on most pre-elite items that at 20c per item you put up, you almost run at a loss just to sell. And so again, its back to xp to gain any value from your resourcesso you are better off underselling or giving items away for free so you can at least get some xp for your efforts.
Things are not all bad, of course. Maintenance fees are still a great cash sink for the game (for those of us who pay them *cough..shuttlebug..cough*), and missions are still a fun way to earn credits. I think there may another way to help, though. How about NPC "buyers" ? Ultimately how it could work, is that products left on the Bazaar after their time expires (6-7 days ?) would automatically be purchased by NPC buyers. There would have to be a preset, but variable, formula for calculating whatitems sellfor, but it would at least guarantee a minimal payoff to effort that could really help support the SW:G economy from the ground up. Surplus items (how many pistols can a person make ?) would have a way to disapear while still giving players a sense of purpose to their crafting.It could alsogenerate more interest in the items that are more expertly crafted, while new crafters can still get by whithout feeling the need for a harvester before he can afford the maintenance.
Just a few thoughts on the state of the economy on Bria, as Ive experienced it so far. That being said, I know that "my experience so far" is still pretty pretty small, so Id love some feedback from some of the more verteran artisans out there. How do you feel about this idea ?
I am not really a veteran in SWG, but I have followed the development of this game from 1999 (or 2000) and am playing it since two weeks. Also I have played UO more than for 4 years. UO has aneconomy with crafters but the system was flawed due tothe huge influx of looted items (especially after Trammel).
In this game most artisans gather their resources with relative ease by using afk-macro and running a fleet of harvesters. Resources are in high demand for grinding xps. They seems to be more in demand than items from low level skilled artisans. That is ok, because as numerous times mentioned on the boardswhen you reach an elite profession you can get wealthy, very very wealthy (egarmour smithand weaponsmith). The fact that the sum of all parts is less valued than an individual part is common sense. I hate bringing up "the real world" in any MMORPG discussion but I cannot find any other parallel.Even in the real world the sum of all parts can be less priced than the indvidual product component, just look how many manufacturershavered figures in their balance sheet.
Fact remains that resources are in high demand for grinding in SWG, items from less skilled Artisans are less valued by the customers but items from (some) elite professions are in very very high demand. So let the ingame demand-supply mechanism sort it out regarding this aspect. Just regard your "loss" as an investment for the future.
Galaxyburst
payingcustomer
Thu Feb 26, 2004 6:06 am
#7
Galaxyburst wrote:
the system was flawed due tothe huge influx of looted items.
They are purposefullyputting crafters out of work and into commerce and adventure. Help me stop this before it starts, please read this link:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=csystems&message.id=9358#M9358
Oar
warrenowen
Thu Feb 26, 2004 1:56 pm
#8
I' not sure this is a good idea, perhaps needs further thought and development. I think it will lower the amount of surplus resources and items in the galaxy, but increase the number of credits out there. Everyone gets richer and so will only buy elite stuff. It would give some money to lower level artisans but effectively make even more mid range items unbuyable as the money flow increases.
Nobody likes cash sinks, but they are necessary.
I do think moreNPC interaction is needed, but not as buyers, but as alternate service providers to create a baseline for prices, and an alternate money sink that provide a service.
As an example, NPC medics, placeable in player citiy medicalcentres,who will heal damage and more importantly woundsfor a small cost. By all means seek out a real medic, who wants the XP, but create a quick fix money sinkfor the busy fighter who wants a heal in a hurry (and has run out of stims...again). The same could apply for cantinas in player cities.... how about a jukebox to heal mind wounds, or a "personal video terminal". I think this would also go a little towards making the player cities more useful...although I personally think we need a huge rethink on them.
Or on the artisan side, the difficulty is that NPC sellers would create a maximum price. NPC buyers would provide an alternate source for cash, and we don't want people making more money, there is already too much of it in the economy, that is the problem.
Basically we have a problem with inflation. We need to restrict the money supply (and somebody is going to have to be taxed, and claim their profession is being nerfed).
The devs need to do some analysis of the cash reserves against the professions of people on the servers. Find out which professions are too rich, and find a way of taxing them (ie Money Sink).... it's horrible forthat profession,but that is the truth.
Astronaut_jones
Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:00 pm
#9
Your perspective is skewed fearful due to your profession choice. My first profession choice was also Droid Engineer. It is one of the worst climbs in the game. There is almost no demand for things that you can build before master. You will be dirt poor for most of your climb up the skill tree. I can remember logging off with less than 100 credits to my name for weeks on end. I would have to grind missions every day just to pay up the maintenance on my 7 BER 2 personals(before made variable) and 3 windmills. The money is at the end of the tunnel. You just need to suffer for a while.
Mosdl
Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:37 pm
#10
Rather than have any item past 6 days on the bazaar be bought, you could bring back the junk dealers, who would pay some small ammount.
Kisedd
Fri Feb 27, 2004 8:32 am
#11
There are two things at work here.
1) Many of the crafter professions are useless until you make master and can produce quality. This is true of Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Droid Engineer especially. It can also be true for artisan, however the watchful player can make a living as a pure artisan if he knows his markets. My biggest anger at this game is the fact that you have to be master in these professions to really play. It basically forces people to grind instead of making items to sell as they work up the trees.
2) Most MMO's people will gladly trade money for xp. This is a huge problem in most all the games I've played. A player will make 200 items and to recoup some of his costs will just dump them on the market or sell them to an NPC. One interesting experiement was Eve Online. You do not get xp for making items. Thus, people only make items to make money. If you can't sell an item you are stuck with the loss, very few players are gonna make unnessary things.
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