Artisan Archive

I don’t mean to be a naysayer. The purpose of this thread is to identify a problem and provide a solution. Please feel free to agree or disagree.

Currently the player economy isn’t working well. There are some significant issues that need to be addressed to fix the problem. For starters, there is very little cost associated with making items. Sure, you need to pay maintenance cost on your harvesters, factories, vendors, shops, etc. However, these costs can be absolved by doing a few delivery missions. Also, these costs are arbitrary and don’t transform well into specific item costs. What I mean by that is you aren’t paying 1000 credits to make item A, hence it is difficult to set a price on item A.

Even more significant is the fact that there is unlimited supply and a very limited demand. A crafter can crank out 100’s of items in a short period of time. In fact they need to do this to advance their character. The problem is that the market doesn’t support a demand for these 100’s of items. Currently there are 100’s of CDEF’s in the bazaar that will never be sold. 2 months from now there will be hundreds of T1 rifles in the same situation. Crafters are in a situation where they are building, and need to build, way way way more items then can be sold.

The third issue is the availability of money. Crafters can currently get money faster (at early levels) by running missions then they do by selling items. Money is being greatly deflated. It doesn’t have worth. There is little incentive to sell beyond the UXP. Granted UXP is a great incentive to sell items. However when money has no value and UXP does what do you think happens? Simple, items are sold at greatly reduced prices. This undermines the economy. This will get even worse once people catch on to the concept of UXP.

So in summary we have unlimited items with zero direct cost to build in an economy with limited demand where it is advantageous to have players use your items. This is a recipe for disaster and will only get worse as time moves on. Resources will be stock piled, cash will be gained, and people have already bought the best stuff and need only repairs.

Possible Solutions In order to alleviate these problems we need to:

- Create costs directly associated to item production

- Increase demand

- Decrease supply

- Provide worth to money

Here is my proposal. Resources are way to accessible and the resource cost for items is way to low. Resources must have value for the items they make to have value. If resources are a dime a dozen then so are the items they build. Increase item resource requirements. Since Xp is directly proportionate to resource requirements this will have the impact of reducing the number of items in the market without effecting xp progression. Hence we have a decrease in supply.

As for resource cost, some people may remember a profession by the name of the miner. Originally artisans didn’t extract resources; rather that was the job of the miner. The theory was that the miner would sell the resources to the other professions. Since it would now cost X credits to make item A (as opposed to sampling the resources for free and making the item for free) there would be a starting point in making a price and provide direct worth to the item.

The problem was that the miner was not interesting enough to qualify as a profession. I don’t understand SOE’s solution to the problem. “Hmm, we have a profession that is completely dull. Rather then look at ways to make this profession interesting lets just amalgamate its skills into the artisan and force everyone to put up with the dull resource extracting.” IF THE SKILLS ARE BORING TO USE THEN WHY AND THE HECK WOULD YOU THINK OF A SOLUTION OF REQUIRING ALL CRAFTERS TO USE THE SKILLS?! Not only does this dampen the enjoyment of other professions by making them participate in the resource grind, but it makes them independent. Needless to say I think the miner profession should be brought back, but in a redesigned format that makes them fun to play. Look to sim games as to ways how. Also, many people would specialize in the class just to gain access to the resource skills and the new market for resources.

With the miner back we just need to ensure that they are selling resources at an appropriate price. If they are giving them away, it doesn’t solve the problem. A suggestion would be to provide them with access to a supply/demand resource tracker that provided them with a suggested price for items. This item would provide a base price for resources and modify it based on the availability of the resource. That would provide them with a guideline to prices.

By limiting the availability of resources and associating a cost with them we are ensuring that items are sold appropriately. Case and point is bone armor. Since pure artisans can’t extract those resources they are forced to purchase them or take significant effort and skill points to develop scouting and combat skills. Take a look at the bone armor at the bazaar and you will see what I mean. Bone armor is expensive and available in limited supply.

That solves the problem of providing direct item cost and reducing supply. Now we need to increase demand and provide worth to money. My suggestion is to first eliminate delivery missions. Now here me out entertainers and artisans. What I suggest we do is replace the delivery missions with gig, crafting, and healing missions. Rather then getting money for delivering someone’s love letter in a world with access to email and the like, you would get money doing what your profession is supposed to be doing. An example of a quest would be to make me 20 CDEF rifles. There is the phrase it takes money to make money. This makes that true as resources are required to complete the quest. Also, this provides an unlimited demand since crafters would always have a market for their goods.

Now, the one flaw in this formula is how do you start out. I don’t have money to buy resources, and I can’t make money until I get resources. The answer is to provide crafters with some rudimentary forage/sample skills that would let them get very small quantities of a poor quality generic resource. IE make a forage skill mineral that harvests a resource called mineral that has very low traits. There would be a forage skill for each item type. This wouldn’t let them make the advanced items since they wouldn’t be able to harvest specific resources, steel for instance. Also, they would still want to purchase other resources for the quality and the quantity. SOE would also need to comb through the beginner schematics to ensure that they didn’t require a specific resource, otherwise beginners couldn’t make them.

Fourflaws.

One, you said let them get free crap resources. If they have crap resources, they make crap items, and don't get money. Cycle continues without loop unless they find a charitable miner.

Two, you forget rarity valueation. What is my cost on a power up? Not much. Even running two harvesters to get the material and a wind generator to power those will net me enough to make 200 a day (even though I can tear down the generator after a few days and save the deed because I'm not using nearly the power it's producing). Since my cost to produce that material was only 2880, should I sell them for 15 credits each? I think not. Nobody else is making a +30.485/+15.015 power up right now. I'll sell them at 300 creds a piece. Does it matter that I'm profiting at more than1000% (I'mtoo tired to do the math, but that is low, I think)of my cost? Nope, it just shows a void and a man to fill it making money.

Three, you say no direct cost. Time is a cost. Maintenance on harvesters is a cost. Is the cost a lot? Yes, if you are using the resources in a poor manner by grinding out crap. But if you aren't the costs are relatively low. It's all dependent on what you are using and what you are making with it.

Four, supply and demand not existent. They are. A demand for power ups is a constant one. And one that INCREASES as characters grow. Why? A power up is more valuable the more powerful the weapon. A 30% increase to 68 damage is a 18 points. A 30% increase to 150 damage is 45 points. As my weapon gets better, so does the intrinsic value of the power up. CONVERSELY as demand for power ups INCREASES supply of power ups DECREASES. Why craft for hours to get a supply of power ups when making weapons needs the same resources and yeilds a higher credit/item gain? MOST Elites won't craft power ups. Waste of time. Resources better spent on weapons. I'm going to be a weaponcrafter. There are already masters advertising, so I'm breaking into a market. One which CAN become saturated. Competition will become fierce, and only the strong, or agile, will survive. But power ups are more than funding my extensive expansion into a multi planet conglomerate.

Mike

AKA

Oka Higre
President, HigreCorp

Mike

First of all, when I say crap resources I am talking about crap resources in very limited supply. This is simply to allow crafters to get started so that they are able to perform crafting quests. Since crafters rely on resources to build items it would be unreasonable to completely eliminatetheir ability to harvest resources. However, the means needs to be limited enough that they will purchase resources from the miners. I am talking like 1 resource per forage on a 20 second cycle. As for your comment that they can't get any money and hense can't buy resources, that is where crafter quests come in. There isn't a market to support all of the new crafters even now, they are making their money via delivery missions.

As for your comment on rarirty.Yes rare itemscould sell for more. However there isn't any control on prices. Since there isn't any direct cost associated with making a product, many players are selling for much less then products would go for. Furthermore with unlimited access to funds via missions they can continue to sell at a loss without going out of bussiness. That makesit impossible to sell products for appropriate prices.Also remember what is rare now will become common in a few months.

And yes, I said no direct cost. There are many indirect costs such as maintenance fees and time. However, there isn't a direct cost per item made. That is what makes it difficult toestablish a specific priceon any good. If it costs1000 credits directly to make anitem then it is easier to establish a price. Otherwise people are selling for much less then they should be. In fact without appropriate costs it is impossible to have a competitive market place.

And finally as per your comments on supply and demand. I never said supply and demand don't exist, I said that supply is going to significantly out weigh demand in a few months, and it already is in many areas. As for your comment on only the strong survive, this is a game that people play forenjoyment. Furthermore it takes place in a persistentonline world with new players entering all of the time. It is unacceptable to create an atmosphere where other playerscannot compete due to a limiteddemand market place.

(sorry to dump this on two threads, but I posted it in the wrong place the first time)

I think that what will happen is that the economy will crash and a lot of people will leave the crafting professions for combat professions, increasing demand and lowering supply. One or masterweaponsmith in each town is probably all that the economy can support. The economy will level out some, but I don't think that many people will get to play the crafting professions they want to. Perhaps that developers should consult a professional economist about ways to ensure a stable economy for the long term.

For the record though, my ideas:

1) Create a routine that sometimes purchases items from the bazaar priced at or below the average. The more of a supply for a given item, the more purchases the system would make, but at lower prices. The items will be destroyed (no UXP), but at least the economy will be stabilized and could accomodate an unlimited number of crafters. This discourages undercutting for the purpose of hoarding UXP, since low-end items will be bought by the system and zapped, and keeps things flowing as tehy're produced. As the price of an item rises through this process, crafters will take note, and make more in order to profit, thereby increasing supply and driving down the price the system buys at.

2) Special attacks such as overcharge shot should have a deleterious impact on the decay rate of weapons. Combats who fight hard will go through weapons like candy, which is realistic. Being shot should impact the decay timer of armor (again this is very realistic), repairs can only do so much for a chestplate that's been blasted several dozen times - time to buy a new one! Maybe instead of impacting the decay rate, these events could impact the overall damage potential of weapons or armor level of armor on a long-term basis. This will pick up demand for new items pretty quickly.

3) Faction representatives should buy arms and armor!!! These groups NEED weapons and armor to fight the ongoing war, they need to supply thousands of NPCs for battles. Faction reps should always be ready with crafting missions where someone has to craft 20 CDEF Rifles for 50 credits a piece. This allows newbie crafters a chance to make money while gaining XP, and it provides a market for advanced crafters as well. Then if someone crafts a pile of powerups, there's no need to destory them, just go hunt down a mission to sell them to an NPC so he can arm his faction. NPCs should buy weapons and armor. Plus, setting a fixed price for these transactions would give a good baseline for newbie to learn how much items are worth. Heck, NPCs should even buy houses and clothes! Don't they need these? Where do they get their supplies? Is there some seperate NPC economy? Add them into the mix and demand will stabilize.