Bio Engineer Archive

This was the response I received from several CH's, Tailors and a couple of Chefs this weekend. After speaking with them about pets or tissues, as the case may be, the immenent question ofitem cost always seems to be the last detail discussed.

After I give them a price for whatever it is that they want, some....not all.... rant and rave about having to pay what I am asking for. I don't think I am unfair and I always offer the alternative.... to sell a schematic for a reasonable price if, they have the necessary resources on-hand for thetissues they need. They sing a different tune when I give them a grocery list informing them what I need to make a schematic for a full run of +117 INN's or +88 BSN's.

As far as CH's go, they are a little different. Ifthe pet I make them isremotely close to what they want, most will pay whatever I ask. Generally, there isnot too much haggling with them.Occassionally, I will invite them out to help me get the DNA I need to make their pet...inadvertantly trying tojustify to them why their pet order is costing so much....I even give them a discount if they helpkeep the aggro off of me.

However, they generally lose interest after planet hopping a few times, waiting on me to pull DNA from some high level creature orshare anoccasional funtrip to the cloner with me. In the end, nothing is more satisfyingthanhaving all the DNA together to make their pet while they are waiting with baited breath...to only then crit fail and lose everything. I smileand tell them we have to start all over.....I crit failed on their pet.....

I had one impatient CH, who needed his pet right away....do the /gasp at me and say nevermind. This was after2.5 hours of DNA gathering with me...lol. I even bought his buffs and travel tickets for him. I'm such anice BE...haha.

Is anyone elsea little beaten up over the whole haggling and catching hell for the prices of their tissues or pets? I evaluate my profession from time to time when these issues rear their ugly head and ask myself, "Self....Do you really like this profession?" and "Self....could you be happy as an Architect or something simple?"

Each timethis happens, Iladle deep into the bubbly, black cauldron which holds my soul and take a sip to see ifthe BE profession still suits my taste. All in all,BE is awretchedly bittersweet profession that seems to take me to the outer tethers and reel me back in.

God...I thinkmany of us veteran BE's are a bit masochistic for staying as long as we have.....honestly....look at ArthurDentOnBria. Need I say more...rofl.

j/k Arthur

Hehehe, well the only reason I've been able to stay sane this long is I don't wear my BE tag anymore. I put it back on "briefly" for a couple months this summer, but I soon went nuts and took it back off again. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good situation you have there on Tempest. Bria still has a lot of BE's. Probably too many, so there is a lot of price competition. It's very rare that I hear somebody exclaim how glad they are to finally find a BE, or anything remotely similar to that. More often it's people bemoaning the fact that I take a while (generally 3-4days for something kinda "standard" and about 10 days for a CL 70is pet) to fill custom pet orders, or, especially more recently, that I don't sell the "uber" non-ch pets.

Last week we had a guy running auctions on the Bria trade board for the 10k+ HAM/60% kineticCL 10 pets that we've read so much about here on the forum. He was getting well over a million credits a piece for them. That's fine, that's his decision to do that, and I don't begrudge him that, but the thing that I resent is that now I'm getting a big rush of customers coming to me, asking me to make them. Usually those discussions don't go well either. I simply tell them I don't make them, they ask why, I tell them, and then.... ugh. But anyway, then yesterday I had a guild mate tell me he had some low-level CH skills. Cool, I thought, I told him to just let me know if he ever needed anything and he laughed. So he opened up a trade window to me, and proudly showed me 4(!) CL 1 creatures, that I'd swear have stats like they were CL 50+. He called them "pre-nerf" and said he got them earlier this year. So now I'm competing what that set of expectations now also. I may have to stop selling CL 10 pets completely becuase of this now. Ugh. Why am I a BE again? lol

ArthurDent - former Bio Engineer, Tailor, and Droid Engineer
Account cancelled 7/8/05 due to game breaking bugs in these professions that have been neglected for FAR too long. Last day July 27 2005
custom tailoring and droid orders welcome. "making Evil products since July 2003"
Achiever: 80%, Explorer: 60%, Socializer: 46%, Killa 13%

I've basically decided to give up trying to sell any BE products, at least aggressively. I'm going to pursue research for research's sake. I have a blast making pets and do okay selling lvl 10s, but the (admittedly decent) income I derive isn't worth the SP for a vendor.

It's a shame they don't have mission terms for BEs--go get a VHQ sample from a grassland voritor tracker, that sort of thing. But of course that would only add to the woes of the economy, the money for nothing phenomenon. Add in the schizophrenic nature of the profession (having us create chef/tailor additives would be like asking Marty Stouffer to do an Oxyclean infomercial) and I want out of the business. I want to pursue the unadulterated joy of making perfect pets, the rest of it be hanged.

---------------------"...race you to the cloner!"

xaq, Ossifrage: bloodfin-----------------------------------------Sechs: tempest
Lammergeier: bria------------------------------------------------Accipiter: ahazi

Jinks, Zaw ZeroEight, Raphael', Shub-Niggurath, Randolph Carter, Belpo
...the thorns of Test Center

-------------------------------lammergeier tracker

Amandil Morier - Tempest - Master Chef

Well, I joined the game because I found the concept of a complex player-run economy fascinating. I'm not much of a Star Wars fan. The BE profession was interesting to me because I could fill a niche supplying chefs and tailors with tissues. I was extremely successful, having 100 million credits in the bank at one point. I was very reliable as well: multiple full runs of all three supplement tissues could always be found on my vendor, as could crates of all tailor tissues except Enhanced Myoflex Treatment. Unfortunately, when the price of decent meat shot up to 50 cpu minimum, the cost to produce my tissues shot up to what I used to sell them for, and chefs and tailors gave me the impression that they would not purchase my tissues at the higher prices, most with a hearty "lol". I take pride in being a member of a player-run economy and I take pride in my profession. Therefore, I refuse to hunt for my own meat, make schematics for ANY price, or profit less than a resource merchant running 7 13BER harvesters on choice resources. I like to joke that I didn't get my PhD in Bio-Engineering to drive a used landspeeder. So, I started a Rifleman/Ranger on Shadowfire, which is where I'm spending most of my time now. On Naritus, my 7 factories and merchant tent continue to collect dust. I miss being a BE. Well, more than that. I miss the enormous pride I felt knowing that so many chefs and tailors relied solely on me for their tissues because there just weren't any other BE's who could meet their demand. I'm thinking I should try to get back into it, sell my tissues at exhorbitantly higher rates, and see if chefs and tailors finally cave in and pass the increase in price onto their customers. It is an economy, after all, and prices should reflect supply and demand.

Isscossk Osli, Master Bio-Engineer / Master Merchant (Naritus)
Caji, Master Ranger / Master Rifleman (Shadowfire)

I guess I am going to be taking my BE tag down for awhile, stock up on resources and have a little fun from all the whining and complaining....lol.

Here's a toast to me making Master Creature Handler in a coupe of days. Hopefully by this weekend....hehe. Spent sometime down at the Geo Caves this past weekend and made a ton of CH xp.....with a CL 37 Kliknik....the xp just rolled in. I let my friends handle the hard stuff. I ran around for a half hour, unbuffed, no armor.....EEEEKKKKKKK!!!.......rockin........rofl......was a lot of fun.

I always wear my tag on Gorath just because as I like to say, Gorath only has five Master Bio-Engineers.... and I'm the only one who speaks English

I enjoy my work though the people seriously grate sometimes... but hey their money is worth just as much as the next guys and though it kills me sometimes to stay polite when dealing with the L337 folks its still intresting

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Gorath Master TK/Master Bio-Engineer
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry

"A cult is a religion with no political power."
-Tom Wolfe

MBEs on WH are like finding $20 laying on the sidewalk. Almost no one expects to find one of us, but people keep an eye out. I've noticed I've had a fair reputation forming with my level 10 pets and some of my chef stuff, but its a wonder I've keep master for the months and months that I have been. I really, really wish those who deal with BEs (tailors and chefs mostly, but everyone who deals with us would benefit from it) would take a moment and look at the websites about BE. Take a look at how pets are made, take a look at the resources needed to make 1k units of INN or BSN. Even five minutes of reading would allow some to understand why we do what we do and charge what we charge. I tend to run with my tag out everywhere I go, EXCEPT cnet. Over the months, I've noticed that about 80% of the unpleasnt customers and ignorant questions come to me in tells when I visit cnet. Not sure if thats how it is elsewhere, buts its WH.

Not discouraging folks from sending me tells. I'm happy to talk with folks who at least try to be pleasent or have questions about this or that. Take a sec to check a website or two might save you time in-game and answer more than you were looking for.

My thoughts, take them as you will.

Wandering through Wanderhome...

Siros Vazren

Master-Bio-Engineer

Wanderhome

I've never had a problem with tailors or chs. Non-chs occasionally complain, but mostly just new players who feel they should be allowed to do everything in the game before their first month is out. Chefs... well... are still chefs.

My new pet peeve is hunters who complain when I pay them only 100-200k per hour.

Ilka's Biotech
Theed, Naboo, -3795 4425
Selling high grade creatures, food additives, tissues, and pharmaceuticals.

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Account cancelled on May 17, 2005 due to the inferior combat upgrade.

Heh, i've kinda turned BE into my "charity profession". that is- i make pets for fun and when i find a CH that i like i take them to my house and say something like "take a look at these and tell me in your opinion which is the best?" Then they tell me and i give it to them for no price. I just like making them happy, it's a lot of fun to see their reaction from getting a pet that's better than anything else they have and that they can still use. I've only done this a few (read: 2 or 3) times, but it's alot of fun to find someone who's fun to talk to and give them something useful.

As far as my tissues for chefs go, i'm a bit of a hard @$$ about pricing, and i've told just about every chef i've worked with that the prices will depend "on how i'm feeling". One chef that i had worked with for a while was discussing a run of +117's with me and told me that while my prices were 3 million/run he could get them for alot less, around 2-2.5 million. I simply told him that the meat was a pain to get and the resources cost me alotso the runs wern't going for anything less, and that i couldn't care much less if the runs sat on my vendor untill hell froze over. needless to say, i dont' bargain and he got the point .

Oh and i also haven't had my title up for more than about 1 minute for a long time- and the last time i had it up was because i saw a MCH and wanted to show that i was a BE.

Grozzer
MBE/Sentinel

um so sad but as soe killed ch'ers u guys went right with em. I used to be be ch and be...nice but useless professions.

I mean i went 3 weeks on valcyn looking for a ch.