Artisan Archive
Thread: Negative Inflation Destroying Artisan Profession
I've been playing an Artisan character since the game was released and have totalled more playing hours now than is probably healthy. I couldn't earn any money making crafting tools for other players, so I had to give them away in order to get a little bit of usage XP. A full set of bone armor seemed to sell for a fair price but once I'd earned enough XP to start making it, I couldn't even give the stuff away. Power-levelling players who had been online for even longer than me began making whole new ranges of armor and the bottom fell out of the bone armor market.
What is even more frightening is that exactly the same thing is happening now with basic resources. Putting aside for a moment the quite unworkable eight-day turnaround on resources, I can barely break-even selling harvested metal for 6 credits per piece. The maintenance cost of the mineral harvesters is bad enough, but the cost of running the wind turbines to generate the power for them is crippling and eats up all the profits from selling the harvested items. On the server on which I play, metal is now selling for a mere 3 credits a piece - well below the cost of production! The simple fact is that new players don't stand a chance of having an enjoyable playing experience with economics like this at play. Move my harvesters to a more profitable location? Not a chance - there's no room. The high-level players moved their equipment there hours or days before I find the new area.
I hoped things might improve once I began an Elite profession - weaponsmith was my first choice, but when other players had to start giving away medium-level guns I opted for droid engineer instead. No luck there either. If the market for all but the most sophisticated droids has already gone the same way as the market for bone armor, how can a player hope to fund their advancement in their chosen field? Logging in to the game in order to run 20 delivery missions whilst crafting and then destroying countless mouse-droids every day for weeks on end is not my idea of fun and certainly not something I want to pay $15/month for the privilege of doing.
I can't even reach Master Artisan as players who still need artisan training are almost impossible to find, and when a new player does shout for training, the inevitable scrum as a dozen artisans scramble to be the one to train them is kind of embarrassing.
The problems I've discussed seem to be found in all areas of the artisan profession. A fortnight ago, houses were selling for 15k credits, last week it was 10k, today architects are being forced to sell them for 7k. The game hasn't even been live for a month yet and the in-game economy is already breaking down. By the end of the month, houses be free too. It seems that if you've now made it to the top of an Elite profession then you're laughing. For the rest of us, despite days and days of hard-work invested in our SWG characters, it feels like we've 'missed the boat' already.
Are we very soon going to end up, if indeed we are not already there, where each server has only a dozen or so ultra-high-level power-players who make *all* of the good stuff on that server and any new artisan finds that they simply don't have a source of income to use in order to work their way up to the same level?
becoming a succesful artisan is very hard and most people will give up early on. i think this is true in the real world just as much as in the online games. you need tenacity and imagination to eke out a living in the early stages buts its worth all the work once your able to make the uber weps & armour.
the reason your harvesters are losing you money instead of turning a profit is probably due to the locations you have chosen to place them. its a waste of money and power to place a harvester anywhere that has a resource density lower than 70% (rule of thumb but there are excepetions) so scout around for better locations.
The artisan class isn't supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be very hard, because the benefits from climbing to the top of the ladder are huge. You're not supposed to become a master artisan overnight, nor a Droid Engineer/Weaponsmith/Architect/Armorer/etc. It's supposed to take you months to achieve your goals, and it's supposed to be filled with times of crisis andstress.
If it's too tough for you, try another class. The dev's are putting all these restrictions and limitations on the classes to try to make it so there aren't fifty bajillion artisans all over the place, selling the same stuff, and not getting anywhere. If you want to be a good artisan, you have to work very hard, because it's a competitive market with a huge following.
Instead of complaining, you have to adjust and move on.
RNK is right, things will even out in the long run hopefully. People who were powering their way up the artisan tree (like me) saturated the market early and drove down prices. But once we reach the elite profession, we stop making artisan level stuff and hopefully the market normalizes. I certainly don't sell powerups or heavy axes or crafting tools anymore, because as a master artisan, the XP is useless to me, and I can make more money selling buildings.
There will be new players for awhile on each server as it goes live, but eventually people will find their niche and things should level off a bit.
However, there is the problem of multiple incentives, which has been discussed at length iby others, so I won't rehash it all. Just remember that when someone only cares about XP, they will charge next to nothing in credits for the stuff they were grinding out anyway. As long as there are multiple rewards for making stuff, the credit reward won't always be the most important one, and so the economy won't work like a real world one.
If they'd gone with their original plan of most of your XP coming from people actually using your stuff instead of most of it coming just from the crafting, this wouldn't be as much a problem, because it would have been 5 times harder to grind your way up. But that would have required a major rework of the crafting system to make it work, and they chose to instead actually release the game 
prices were even worse than now since no-one bothered to make a profit cos it was sell no matter what even at a loss cos you needed the XP.
I don't agree with either of you two. I myself am a Master Artisan (within the 1st weelk of release) and I have yet to find any real use for what we can craft. If I would've rushed up the engineering tree like my peers, I might be making a decent living peddling the next Laser Carbine, or Tantel armor set, or maybe some Robes of Honor....but that isn't the issue.
The developers did not make 'Artisan' a basic class because it is supposed to be hard, it's a basic class because it is supposed to be well rounded and relatively fun to progress. Being a Droid or Weaponsmith is, however supposed to be Hard, as is a Pistoleer, Teras Kasi Master, etc. I feel for all the players just starting or who are 'stuck in the middle' of where they should go after investing so much into their character. Yes they can surrender skills, but why should a person have to give up the class they wanted to play because of bad design? To me all the other 'basic' classes seem pretty self-sufficient and well rounded. Artisans get the bottom out because their wares are not needed after a certain level.
Being at the top of the ladder does not automatically = success. Artisans need a rework, or players should lose schematics when climbing as originally intended.
Q'Tessa Xexy
Corbantis Galaxy
<HR> I couldn't earn any money making crafting tools for other players, so I had to give them away in order to get a little bit of usage XP. <hr>
I have been selling survey and crafting tools reliably for 200cr each since release. Perhaps you need to find a bazaar terminal that is not as convenient to artisans. I have found, for instance, that cities with terminals next to crafting stations are more likely to be full of underpriced items.Sales have declined recently though. Certainly, even at the height of my sales in early release I could only supplement my advancement, not maintain it, through sold items.
<HR>I can't even reach Master Artisan as players who still need artisan training are almost impossible to find, and when a new player does shout for training, the inevitable scrum as a dozen artisans scramble to be the one to train them is kind of embarrassing.<hr>
Keep at it. I found that I got apprentice xp in waves. Nothing for a few days.. then suddenly in one day I train three or four people. As more people trickle into the game you will get continued opportunities. I do think, though, that there should perhaps be alternatives like quests handed out my trainers to supplement apprentice xp if a player needs it.
<HR>Are we very soon going to end up, if indeed we are not already there, where each server has only a dozen or so ultra-high-level power-players who make *all* of the good stuff on that server and any new artisan finds that they simply don't have a source of income to use in order to work their way up to the same level? <HR>
I think to some degree this will be true, especially in weapon crafting. However, I have already seen some posts from higher level crafters saying they dont bother making components anymore. I think the jury is still out on this one.
My concern is more for crafting in general.. right now everyone needs stuff made. However.. I see a future where with players pretty much skilled up and owning what they want, demand will drop precipitously.
Good post.
Regards,
Artuk
My concern is more for crafting in general.. right now everyone needs stuff made. However.. I see a future where with players pretty much skilled up and owning what they want, demand will drop precipitously.
This is my biggest concern also. Your going to hit the point where your not going to be selling anything. I am extremely worried how this will work in my chosen profession of tailor. Right now clothing decay is turned off so what you buy will last forever.
I wish they would have kept the origianl weapon certs from beta also. It would have strung out the market more instead of going CDEF to one of the best pistols in the game in the course of a night or two of play.
Because items have a decay rate people will always need new items. you don't see it much now because everyone wants the newest coolest looking piece of junk available. so there will always be people looking for new items only as the market matures the sales will happen less often on big ticket items just as in real life.
Power-ups and expendible items will always sell. but the huge profits people are seeing now won't last forever. gee just like a real economy we're headding for a recession 
The clothes I make don't decay!!! Same thing with the uber loot clothes that no other profession has to deal with. They don't decay either so they'll always be around. 
>> I couldn't earn any money making crafting tools for other players, so I had to give them away in order to get a little bit of usage XP.
This cracked me up. Here you are, complaining about levelers ruining the economy, and yet you openly admit - you're one of them! Good grief.
The reason the economy stinks is because most players are more concerned with XP than with credits, the UXP feature encourages them to pretty much give their goods away because it's worth XP. This is all due to people not role-playing their characters. Your character doesn't even know what XP is, so it shouldn't affect his choices, but he certainly knows what money is. A real artisan wouldn't give things away, they're in it to make money. Merchants, shop owners, smiths, and engineers are all out to use their skills for making a living, the idea of giving products away or selling under cost is ridiculous, you don't walk into a store and get a bunch of stuff for less than the owners bought it for. Bill Gates doesn't come running up to you and offer you a free copy of Windows. If you're selling under cost, you're ruining the economy. If you're giving crap away (outside your PA), you're ruining the economy. Don't trash the economy and then complain about how you have to run missions to make ends meet, please, that's just disgusting.
I only hope that the PowerLevelers will getbored fromhaving no competition and play less, allowing things to level out some. As long as the second wave of crafters is less concerned about XP than credits, the economy will bounce back. Prices should be high. So what if it costs 10,000 for a suit of bone armor, or 30,000 for a small house. Combats can earn 10k in 2 hours, easily. 10k isn't much money for something that should be a mid-level game item. Houses sell for 15k, a good marksman can earn that in no time, 10-12 missions. It's abusrdly low, there's nothing to work towards. Crafters need to stop focusing on XP and focus on credits or they won't be able to afford getting any XP in the long run. That or the XP won't be any use to them because the crappy economy will make their characters boring to play.
" Prices should be high. So what if it costs 10,000 for a suit of bone armor, or 30,000 for a small house. Combats can earn 10k in 2 hours, easily. 10k isn't much money for something that should be a mid-level game item. Houses sell for 15k, a good marksman can earn that in no time, 10-12 missions. It's abusrdly low, there's nothing to work towards."
I would never pay 10k for a set of bone armor or 30k for a small house.Missions are BORING I only do as much as I need to if I find somebody selling stuff for 3k over what I think is fair I do without Im not going to do more missions than I need to...