Bio Engineer Archive

---

LloydPickering wrote:
There are somethings you have missed, however they have a negligable effect on your hypothesis.

The 'Free Market Economy' never truly existed because people are able to do more than 1 jobs by buying a second account. If 1 person performs 2 jobs, then thats a job not available for someone else. this 'powergaming' philosophy has affected the price of tissues, because it has slowed down the catastrophic impact on chefs by allowing them to become their own supplier.

Chef/BE gets the same profit as a Chef would in 'olden times'. A Chef who has to pay for a BE product suffers teh profit that that BE gives.

for Chefs, they have not been seeing a profit decrease, simply because they have been factoring the BE/Chef profits together.

With there being EVEN less BEs available, and the resources available shrinking furthur, they have/will start to see the impact on their profit and will ither a) increase prices or b) suffer less profit.

You haven't taken into account the alt chars, and this has had the effect of minimising the effect on chefs until now.

The second thing I feel you missed was the amount of produce people make. I have heard that the devs originally only intended factories to produce 100 items not 1000. If you take this into consideration (assuming its true) then it becomes apparent that the developers never exected people to be producing goods in these quantities. Armor was never meant to be used all the time (Just read the manual), buffs were never meant to be used every hunting trip and food was never meant to be consumed so much. This means that the way they planned the resource gathering is not in keeping with how they intended the economy to run, and as a result, have a shortage of labour intensive resources. (There is still a problem with harvested resources - hence lot swapping).

The effect of this is to drive the prices up. Why are Tailor tissues more profitable than Chef tissues? Because the resources needed for a crate (with a few notable exceptions) can be bought off the bazaar for pocket money. In Chef tissues, you are dealing with Mass Prosuction, and need to hire people especially to gather resources for you.

---

---

Zadokk wrote:

Adding to what Lloyd said:

Many people don't understand the reasons behind the supposedly low storage caps on buildings and inventories. I've heard arguments from crafters that they have "hundreds" of different resoruces to store, many in large numerous qualities (e.g. "1.5m units of the greatest steal to spawn to date"etc) - but what people don't realise is that the devs never intended for people to store such large quantities of a single resource. Crafters were supposed to balance their lot allotment between factories, houses and mines. With the introduction of lot swaps, this has changed. It is not uncommon for crafters to have 40, 50+ static harvesters. Of course it is not exploiting as we are free to let anyone admin our structures but it was not intended. This leads to the fact that people are producing and storing more. This means that people were using extra lots for storage. I myself have 4 storage houses filled with loot and junk on one server. The fact remains that we were never meant to have so much stuff. With the recent addition of the extra loot and bowing pressure from crafters to increase storage, the devs have done so and by doing this they have given in. I personally think the devs should have stuck to their guns and told players that the reason they have no space in their houses is not because they dont have enough lots, but because they are the epitome of Western Culture: they have too much stuff.

---

You added even more to what Lloyd said by bringing up the 50+ harvesters. This requires 5 accounts with their lot spaces DEDICATED SOLELY TO HARVESTING. The only way this can be done while playing the game as intended is by having a large cooperative group in which combatants are willing to share their lot spaces in exchange for some of the goods produced. This is essentially guild economics, which I think they did intend.

However, those who have so many harvesters rarely do so by guild economics. More often it is by alternate accounts and cross-server lot space trades. While alternate accounts benefit SOE and would be almost impossible to directly regulate anyway, I don't think either method was given consideration during game design.

As for increasing lot space allowances, it was done in such a way as to primarily benefit those who are trying to decorate rather than the crafter with hoarded resources. People on other threads were complaining that they were not able to decorate every room in a large house or guild hall. Since objects are essentially a character's motivation within the game (a 'score' so to speak), the limits were having an effect on play motivation. I agreed with them being raised for that reason.

As for the crafters, by destroying the input hopper exemption, the net effect on the resource hoarder was a negative one. Crafters do have a higher storage need than a combatant, since they require storage for their profession. For example, I have the flora for nutrients, but not the meat. It is nearly impossible to get both for a product at the same time, unless the quality of the product doesn't matter, and even then it is necessary in cases where one of the resources is a rare spawn, such as class 4 liquid petrochemical fuel, or the metal used to make white furniture. Also, once products are made and on the market, some method for storing them needs to be in place until they are purchased. The latter exists in terms of vendors.

The problem with destruction of the one method is that it still leaves the vendor method open for crafting professions that are awarded vendors in their skill trees, so those professions still are able to hoard resources while crafting professions without vendors (BE for certain, but I don't know any others) do not. Also, professions that require pure resources have lower storage needs than those who require nonstackable items such as DNA or loot.

So storage needs differ by profession, and they even differ between crafting professions.

And I strongly agree with you that, while from a BE perspective I saw the one saving grace for a BE's increased storage needs go down the tube, I was shocked to read some of the complaint posts which talked about the enormous quantity of hoarded resources that people had in those crafting stations.

DNA isn't really a hoardable resource. It doesn't spawn at various qualities at various times on the same creature. No matter how much Mutant Rancor DNA a BE has squirrelled away, another BE can go out and get his own DNA of exactly the same quality at any time. After thinking about this, even with our increased housing storage capacities, I still feel that DNA-specific storage is needed. This is strictly for the convenience of having a variety for the sake of experimentation. I also feel that any such storage should have a means of viewing that DNA without having to examine.

Some really good thoughts have been brought up in this thread. Keep them coming.

---

Halthron wrote:
Lloyd, I didn't miss any of that at all.

---

I think Lloyd was telling me that I missed a few things. I specifically asked what I had missed, so I was glad he did.

---

Aleskander wrote:

A lot of the probelms with making chef additives come from the "uber" mentality. I can make BSN's at an 84 level with decent meat and high stat organics, but the chefs all want BSN's at an 85 and IN's at 115, not the 114 I can easily get.

---

The uber mentality is actually a market pressure for the highest quality. It is a little more extreme since the demand side insists on the very best and has the money to pay for it.

---

Hylidex wrote:

---

LloydPickering wrote:
There are somethings you have missed, however they have a negligable effect on your hypothesis.

The 'Free Market Economy' never truly existed because people are able to do more than 1 jobs by buying a second account. If 1 person performs 2 jobs, then thats a job not available for someone else. this 'powergaming' philosophy has affected the price of tissues, because it has slowed down the catastrophic impact on chefs by allowing them to become their own supplier.

Chef/BE gets the same profit as a Chef would in 'olden times'. A Chef who has to pay for a BE product suffers teh profit that that BE gives.

for Chefs, they have not been seeing a profit decrease, simply because they have been factoring the BE/Chef profits together.

With there being EVEN less BEs available, and the resources available shrinking furthur, they have/will start to see the impact on their profit and will ither a) increase prices or b) suffer less profit.

You haven't taken into account the alt chars, and this has had the effect of minimising the effect on chefs until now.

The second thing I feel you missed was the amount of produce people make. I have heard that the devs originally only intended factories to produce 100 items not 1000. If you take this into consideration (assuming its true) then it becomes apparent that the developers never exected people to be producing goods in these quantities. Armor was never meant to be used all the time (Just read the manual), buffs were never meant to be used every hunting trip and food was never meant to be consumed so much. This means that the way they planned the resource gathering is not in keeping with how they intended the economy to run, and as a result, have a shortage of labour intensive resources. (There is still a problem with harvested resources - hence lot swapping).

The effect of this is to drive the prices up. Why are Tailor tissues more profitable than Chef tissues? Because the resources needed for a crate (with a few notable exceptions) can be bought off the bazaar for pocket money. In Chef tissues, you are dealing with Mass Prosuction, and need to hire people especially to gather resources for you.

---

Yep, I missed that effect. People with two accounts on the same server slow the effects of the market on the manufactured goods even further. The hunter-BE can hold out longer than a pure BE, because he can afford to lose money on his BE for a while as long as the profit is still good in hunting. The same is true of a BE chef. So the pure BE is the one who feels the pinch first, but his pinch has very little effect on the economy as a whole, because alts are still there to take up the slack.

So the artificial supply of credits prevents it from being a pure free-market economy, the influx of loot gives the economy a short-term shot in the arm that only positively affects the people who do the looting (although I agree that in a true free-market economy this effect should, over time, diminish), all drive people away from supplying meat, and the ability to compensate for in-game market pressures with real life money by buying an alt character reduces the overall market effects on the two-account holders, thus slowing natural factors in the economy.

As for tailor tissues being more profitable, I can never find enough eggs on the bazaar to use it for my supply. I have to collect my own. I figure that up until the TC update, I was probably earning 100 cr/hour doing that, but my willingness to work for 100 cr/hour as a lair-searcher did allow me to earn a profit on my Tailor tissues. Unfortunately, earning a 50% profit isn't all that great if I can only make 10K worth of it.

Finally, just to clarify your factory point for others, it has very little overall economic effect if I can make 100 items or 1000 items in a factory run. It increases the schematic cost by 10, and it will keep me from making more than 100 items overnight, but I can only make about 200 INN's overnight as it is. I think it is a rare profession that can get resources fast enough to keep factories going 24/7. That being said, I think the factory issue in your message was merely support for your point that goods are being manufactured faster than the developers intended, which is probably true, although I've only trained in "Developer Prediction I--Running for Cover," so I'm still very bad at it.

Fantastic analyses people! I love working with the BE community. We seem to have more than our share of very intelligent people. It is great to have a discussion of this degree of importance without a lot of finger pointing and name calling.

---

Yep that was my point. The part about the factories is not somehting that effects the economy on its own, it was there to demonstrate that we both create and consume way more than the devs expected us too. This wouldn't be so bad if the consumption automatically meant more resources available for creation, however there are more uses for consumed products than harvesting, ie loot, money and JTL(Loot and money). (It is worth pointing out that I am talking about all crafting professions, not just BE)

This massive creation/consumption market we have created, when added to my argument that anti-competitive behaviour is prohibitive to a free-trade economy (Even if some people dissagree to this), means that those who are able to produce goods in massive quantities cheaply (Economies of scale and the ability to use multiple accounts, bypassing supplier inerdependancy) will generate more profit than your average joe crafter. As the crafters with more money are able to front more resources for periods with bad spawns (Products on the market in a drought = more money), and are able to take a substantial hit on margins because of their increased output for a short time period when there are spawns (Average Joes are able to make products undercutting the biggies), the rich still get richer, and the poor get poorer (as there is only a finite amount of money floating around in the economy).

The devs have a faucet drain economy where if the number of credits going in increases, they remove credits in another way, to try and balance the economy (The drain part is things like maintenance, vehicle repair, solo group nerf, city costs). The only problem with this is that it often hits the people at the bottom of the scale, not the ones at the top, who have a disproportionately large amount of money.

The difficulty in SWG is not about killing enough creatures or making enough goods, its about getting to a point where u can compete with other people effectively. This is why it's so hard for a new player. For a new player, Triple 80 Comp is too expensive, Brandy is too expensive, you need to spend hours getting the money for buffs, and when u get enough money, make damn sure u earn it back in the buff session.

To balance out the economy, the Devs need to tackle the problem with a Robin Hood attitude, take from the rich, and give to the poor (Maybe a maintenance based on income?). Also with a decreased harvesting population, they need to make it possible for just 1 or 2 people to supply enough meat for a crafter. When you need more than a handful to supply a single crafter, there are more crafters chasing resources than there are resources, this leads to a price hike like what we see now.

Id suggest the use of Fixed costs and Variable costs (Thats what I used in Business Studies A-Lvl) instead of 'Price fixing'. Price fixing is where a Monopoly/Duopoly/Oligopoly decides to artifically set the price of their products.

As for solutions for Q2...(BTW Everyone will hate all of these and if implemented would shout till they are blue in the face)

1. Take away ALL mofidying loot. Either we have a player driven economy or we have a loot driven economy, both together cause problems. It is ok to have decorative items as loot, but there should not be a situation where one player is better than another because of loot.

2. Make it easier for the little man to compete with the big man. Have maintenance fees based on the amount of money in someones account, or the number of items in the house. Also, make it easier to get resources in large quantities. This will have the knock on effect of 2 things. People will be able to make goods during shortages of good resources as there is more to go around, and it will also lower prices allowing newer players to be able to buy goods.

3. Make items more useful (Has been happenning recently with things like factional armor and such from the CURB). By this, I mean, make Non-Master crafting Items worthwhile, and stop a single best use item. I would give everybody the same number of EXP points, and just have schematics for every level. This will make it easier for newer player to compete in Niche Markets, by having some products that are as good as Master products, just not the range. (I know this goes against the whole novice/master concept, however it will help stabilise the economy)

4. Leading on from 2, address the issues associated with Storage of Items. People lot trade and use things like factories for storage. Crafters do not have enough space, and should be able to store as many resources as they like, but if they store too many, make it prohibitaly expensive to do so.

5. I liked the galactic vendor search idea, so long as you have to pick upthe item rather than instant delivery. This will help stop price fixing, and the little man can get some sales. Whilst some people may dislike having their prices compared to others, it makes it easier for everyone to find items. If someone is able to undercut someone, and still make a profit, then somewhere down the supply chain, someone is suffering. This will not happen for long as people will be unable to continue to make a large enough quantity of goods to sell to EVERYONE on their server. This is supposedly a free trade economy after all

Im sure there are plenty more ideas that can be implemented, but 5 is enough for now.

---

Hylidex wrote:

---

Zadokk wrote:

Adding to what Lloyd said:

Many people don't understand the reasons behind the supposedly low storage caps on buildings and inventories. I've heard arguments from crafters that they have "hundreds" of different resoruces to store, many in large numerous qualities (e.g. "1.5m units of the greatest steal to spawn to date"etc) - but what people don't realise is that the devs never intended for people to store such large quantities of a single resource. Crafters were supposed to balance their lot allotment between factories, houses and mines. With the introduction of lot swaps, this has changed. It is not uncommon for crafters to have 40, 50+ static harvesters. Of course it is not exploiting as we are free to let anyone admin our structures but it was not intended. This leads to the fact that people are producing and storing more. This means that people were using extra lots for storage. I myself have 4 storage houses filled with loot and junk on one server. The fact remains that we were never meant to have so much stuff. With the recent addition of the extra loot and bowing pressure from crafters to increase storage, the devs have done so and by doing this they have given in. I personally think the devs should have stuck to their guns and told players that the reason they have no space in their houses is not because they dont have enough lots, but because they are the epitome of Western Culture: they have too much stuff.

---

You added even more to what Lloyd said by bringing up the 50+ harvesters. This requires 5 accounts with their lot spaces DEDICATED SOLELY TO HARVESTING. The only way this can be done while playing the game as intended is by having a large cooperative group in which combatants are willing to share their lot spaces in exchange for some of the goods produced. This is essentially guild economics, which I think they did intend.

---

I was referring to cross-server lot swaps. There are crafters in my crafters guild on Farstar (Eden, for those who know I am with Asir [probably most famous AS] and Ackew [famous Shipwright, ex BE]). Ackew has over 40 static lots and Asir has more. Both of them do not own the land they were built on, instead have taken part in the said cross-server lot swap and are given admin on the structures. AFAIK, they do not use combatants land nor do they give out free goods (damn ).

---

LloydPickering wrote:
Id suggest the use of Fixed costs and Variable costs (Thats what I used in Business Studies A-Lvl) instead of 'Price fixing'. Price fixing is where a Monopoly/Duopoly/Oligopoly decides to artifically set the price of their products.

As for solutions for Q2...(BTW Everyone will hate all of these and if implemented would shout till they are blue in the face)

1. Take away ALL mofidying loot. Either we have a player driven economy or we have a loot driven economy, both together cause problems. It is ok to have decorative items as loot, but there should not be a situation where one player is better than another because of loot.

Yep people would yell and scream till their head exploded if this happened. Taken as a solo idea with the limited scope of only the economy this isn't a bad idea though. Once you put the rest of the game parts into the box with this, it looks less and less like a good idea.


2. Make it easier for the little man to compete with the big man. Have maintenance fees based on the amount of money in someones account, or the number of items in the house. Also, make it easier to get resources in large quantities. This will have the knock on effect of 2 things. People will be able to make goods during shortages of good resources as there is more to go around, and it will also lower prices allowing newer players to be able to buy goods.

A specific idea for this one is to raise the limit for stacks and crates. Would help specifically with storage for crafters.

3. Make items more useful (Has been happenning recently with things like factional armor and such from the CURB). By this, I mean, make Non-Master crafting Items worthwhile, and stop a single best use item. I would give everybody the same number of EXP points, and just have schematics for every level. This will make it easier for newer player to compete in Niche Markets, by having some products that are as good as Master products, just not the range. (I know this goes against the whole novice/master concept, however it will help stabilise the economy)

This one brings up a point that I think many people who have been around for a bit forget. New players don't start out with a ton of cred. Furthermore, there are a ton of people that don't have the foggiest idea how to make credits in the game. Giving them goods that they can afford, and making the goods they can make worthwhile will have an overall softening effect on the game. Why is this good? Well, not only for SOE profits, but also for the number of people we get to interact with in this game.

4. Leading on from 2, address the issues associated with Storage of Items. People lot trade and use things like factories for storage. Crafters do not have enough space, and should be able to store as many resources as they like, but if they store too many, make it prohibitaly expensive to do so.

See sugestion on #2

5. I liked the galactic vendor search idea, so long as you have to pick upthe item rather than instant delivery. This will help stop price fixing, and the little man can get some sales. Whilst some people may dislike having their prices compared to others, it makes it easier for everyone to find items. If someone is able to undercut someone, and still make a profit, then somewhere down the supply chain, someone is suffering. This will not happen for long as people will be unable to continue to make a large enough quantity of goods to sell to EVERYONE on their server. This is supposedly a free trade economy after all

The more I look at it the more I like this idea. I heard alot of gut reactions from this. Mostly people against it. I've also heard that people will stop being X crafter because they won't be able to compete anymore. Or that this change will ruin the game. I've yet to see any solid argument to support their claims. Lots of emotion too little thought.
I think that you made a very good point in there too. While a crafter might be able to supply a guild or two, they're not going to be able to supply the rest of the server. I could very easily see micro and macro supply and demand becoming more defined with the global vendor search.



Im sure there are plenty more ideas that can be implemented, but 5 is enough for now.

---

If I may, I'd like to point out the backside of having a maintainance cost based on the amount of money a toon currently have in his bank/inventory. This mainly come into play with the lot trade system but is still very valid since many people own multiple accounts.

What's there to stop people from doing something like this?:

Lot/Alt account ----> zero to little money in their account ----> lower maintainance cost
Main account ----> has admin on above characters account ----> pays less cost on all of the building above account own

Now... multiply that with the static lot trades... someone would stand to save a hefty sum of creds if the system was unchecked as so.

Fortunately, I've a (partial) solution Namely ---->

Let's say that a factory has a fixed maintancance of 15% of your total sum of money per week

Char X has 100000 credits available to pull maint from and he currently have 6 factories placed and he now wants to place a 7th factory, however he can't since his budget don't allow it. ^^

Naturally, the above monetary balance will shift once you place the money into the factories... Hmm... It could be solved if the pull-money-from-bank-for-maint-when-money-reaches-0 system was made standard practice for maintainance paying... *ponders*

---

droidekasnightmare wrote:
If I may, I'd like to point out the backside of having a maintainance cost based on the amount of money a toon currently have in his bank/inventory. This mainly come into play with the lot trade system but is still very valid since many people own multiple accounts.

What's there to stop people from doing something like this?:

Lot/Alt account ----> zero to little money in their account ----> lower maintainance cost
Main account ----> has admin on above characters account ----> pays less cost on all of the building above account own

Now... multiply that with the static lot trades... someone would stand to save a hefty sum of creds if the system was unchecked as so.

Fortunately, I've a (partial) solution Namely ---->

Let's say that a factory has a fixed maintancance of 15% of your total sum of money per week

Char X has 100000 credits available to pull maint from and he currently have 6 factories placed and he now wants to place a 7th factory, however he can't since his budget don't allow it. ^^

Naturally, the above monetary balance will shift once you place the money into the factories... Hmm... It could be solved if the pull-money-from-bank-for-maint-when-money-reaches-0 system was made standard practice for maintainance paying... *ponders*

---

Another way to deal with this is to deduct the money from everyones account who is on the admin list...That will stop lot trading, and people switching money from one char to another.

If you think about this, the more it makes sense. The devs are worried about database space so put a sliding scale on maintenance based on the number of items. The people who NEED more space tend to have more money than those who dont. A new player will not have many items, and will therefore have an almost non-existant maintenance. A heavy crafter who doesn't get out of bed for a few million will have a maintenance possibly of a few hundred K. Moving back slightly to the devs wish to decrease database load, if you are going to be charged for more items in your house, you are going to make damn sure that the stuff you do have in your house is worthwhile. No more CDEFS and useless bits of crap lying around the house because it actually costs the player something to keep it.

(The only down side I can think would be people who want to decorate houses, but u could make it so that certain items were exempt from the item count, ie furniture.)

Hylidex,

One thing I'm wondering about when I read this is: is there a server-wide shortage of bio-engineer-additive-made food on your server then? Or it is just that there is meat, but only chefs can afford it?

I tend to think that such imbalances will eventually sort themselves out for the most part, but sometimes they need time, and they need to reach crisis-levels before they do. The fact that people are going out looting, and earning credits, and buying goods requiring creature havestables with that money, means that somebody, somewhere is trading loot for creature harvestables, and probably valuing his time less than the looter is. That's very likely a temporary situation which will self-correct. It may very well be that people have stockpiled vast amounts of meat from when it was relatively cheap, but those supplies will eventually dwindle, and when they do, the new realities will set in. If worse comes to worse, people needing creature harvestables will simply not accept credits for their goods, but will demand meat in return.

I recently had kind of a "fun" experience with something similar. An aquaintance of mine asked for a custom pet, and he asked if I'd like to barter for it, him being a ranger and skilled hunter. I said "absolutely!", but rather than telling him a fixed amount of resource, I simply told him that it would probably take me 2-3 hours to go get the dna needed and get his pet made. I simply pointed at a resource I wanted (turned out to be avian bone from dantooine) and asked if he'd spend around the same amount of time hunting for me, and whatever he could get would be fine. The next day, the swap ended up being, I gave him his pet, and he gave me around 20k I believe it was, of dantooine avian bone. I was kind of shocked, and started to feel a bit bad because such bone would probably fetchseveral hundred kon the open market, assuming you could buy such a thing at any price, and then he told me how happy he was with this deal, because he had made over 100k in mission money while hunting for the bone, in addition to getting a custom pet out of the deal.

---

Hylidex wrote:

Meat is now impossible to find on Gorath at almost any price. Some time back, I figured my break-even meat price for BSN's with 5cpu for flora to be about 50 cpu. Anything more than that, and the ingredients cost more than the product. The last meat transaction I actually saw was at 300 cpu. At this rate, I would have to increase my price to six times higher just to break even.

---

Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 02-17-2005 04:57 PM

---

LloydPickering wrote:

---

droidekasnightmare wrote:
If I may, I'd like to point out the backside of having a maintainance cost based on the amount of money a toon currently have in his bank/inventory. This mainly come into play with the lot trade system but is still very valid since many people own multiple accounts.

What's there to stop people from doing something like this?:

Lot/Alt account ----> zero to little money in their account ----> lower maintainance cost
Main account ----> has admin on above characters account ----> pays less cost on all of the building above account own

Now... multiply that with the static lot trades... someone would stand to save a hefty sum of creds if the system was unchecked as so.

Fortunately, I've a (partial) solution Namely ---->

Let's say that a factory has a fixed maintancance of 15% of your total sum of money per week

Char X has 100000 credits available to pull maint from and he currently have 6 factories placed and he now wants to place a 7th factory, however he can't since his budget don't allow it. ^^

Naturally, the above monetary balance will shift once you place the money into the factories... Hmm... It could be solved if the pull-money-from-bank-for-maint-when-money-reaches-0 system was made standard practice for maintainance paying... *ponders*

---

Another way to deal with this is to deduct the money from everyones account who is on the admin list...That will stop lot trading, and people switching money from one char to another.

If you think about this, the more it makes sense. The devs are worried about database space so put a sliding scale on maintenance based on the number of items. The people who NEED more space tend to have more money than those who dont. A new player will not have many items, and will therefore have an almost non-existant maintenance. A heavy crafter who doesn't get out of bed for a few million will have a maintenance possibly of a few hundred K. Moving back slightly to the devs wish to decrease database load, if you are going to be charged for more items in your house, you are going to make damn sure that the stuff you do have in your house is worthwhile. No more CDEFS and useless bits of crap lying around the house because it actually costs the player something to keep it.

(The only down side I can think would be people who want to decorate houses, but u could make it so that certain items were exempt from the item count, ie furniture.)

---

Lloyd, think about it. I could add the entire galaxy onto my admin list and spread the cost of maintenance over thousands of people