Bio Engineer Archive

Yeah I know it's a bad title, but I couln't think of anything else with all the other stuff in my head right now.

I have a question to the BE community.

What specific things has BE alts, grinders and dabblers done to make the BE profession as a whole less fun to play?

Please, I'm not taking a side one way or another here. I just want some specific examples on the negetive impact that this type of play has had on our profession. Alternatively I also welcome comments on how "dabbling" has made our profession better as a whole.

I'll start with an example that is clear in my mind.
Chefs with an alt BE have taken away a market interdependancy from BE players that would otherwise be able to run a profitable tissue business. This limits the options that a "pure" BE player has therefor limits the possible ways that player can have fun in the game.

That is one specific example. I know there are more out there. I'm not looking for why's I'm just looking for who, how and what.

Thanks.

Good example, I agree with it. It'll be hard to find a BE that doesn't
I'll add that the ineffectiveness of pets in offensive combat, resulting in fewer CHs, has reduced the demand for CH level pets. The fact that people want to buy non-CH pets, and not just the tanks, shows the pet interest is there.

Well what you said basically is it - having alts takes away interdependency. Its not as big a deal for tailors, they dont have the pure profit margins of chefs and so dont need to get alts, but chefs with alts take away the core of our profitable business ability. Pet sales arent that big a deal, but thats mostly because CH is underpowered than because CHs with BE alts make their own

Message Edited by Kryxal on 03-03-2005 02:43 AM

I think the biggest issue is the alts, usually chef.

Taking chef tissues for example:
As I understand it, chef's can make quite a killing. Let's assume chef Joe has made alot of money and bought his 12 point suit. Combatants start complaining about chef Joe's prices. He looks at his goods, but he thinks his pricing is fair, for what he pays. So he looks at what he pays, and sees that BE components are expensive. He wants to pay less for them, but the BE he buys from can't charge any less if he wants the slightest profit. So Chef Joe has 3 options: lose business and therefore profits, get a BE alt so he doesnt have to pay for the BE's profit, and use the BE as a "schematic monkey." Obviously, he will choose the second or third option, both of which hurt the BE.

The way I see it, it's much like template stacking in PvP. Somebody who devotes 250 skill points to being good at PvP is going to be significantly harder to kill that somebody with just a single combat mastery.

Well there's certainly an issue where non-BE'd food is considered utterly useless. I think the devs meant for nutrients to be an optional component rather than a required one and somewhere along the line, people just stopped buying non BE'd food. The problem lies within the game mechanics where the bonus that nutrients give are far too great to make food without and generally, people are willing to pay the price for food with the extra power. Perhaps if the power of additives in food and drink was lowered, then there might be more of a business in it. At the moment, chefs have a great dependency on BEs and perhaps if that was alleviated then we wouldn't be under so much stress to provide additives and the chefs wouldn't be under so much pressure to provide cheap, high potency food.

Perhaps a different solution to this could be that since additives all have a positive impact on the food, perhaps they could carry a small negative impact as well (much like some looted armour segments that increase encumberance). So if you want to use a BSN, you also have to realise that it may reduce the amount of charges, add to the filling and also decrease it's effectiveness time. This way there would be more of a market in 'organic' food like we see today, where if you make food free of pesticides and additives then it will be 'healthier' on the user but obviously wont be as powerful.

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

The most predatory thing that I've seen is that there have been a couple of instances where bio-chefs, in addition to the food business, have run advertised side-businesses where they sell schematics for bio-additives to other chefs, which obviously is very damaging to somebody attempting to run an additive business.

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Arthur and some others touched on this before....BE alts arent just a resource for the player's chef main, people that know the chef has a BE alt will often hit them up for free/cheap schematics for tailor tissues, chef additives, etc. instead of going to a main-char BE for them.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts.

Is there any other instance where dabbling or alts have a negative impact on "full time" BE's? I know of the chef problems, and the problems with tailors finding tailor mods, but I would really like to see if anyone can come up with other ways in which dabblers or alts impact us as BE's.


On a side note I took up tailor on an alt because it was always very hard to find a tailor when I wanted clothes. Whenever I did find a tailor I always traded credits and tissues for the cothes they made, and my experiences with tailors has been very positive.

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

The most predatory thing that I've seen is that there have been a couple of instances where bio-chefs, in addition to the food business, have run advertised side-businesses where they sell schematics for bio-additives to other chefs, which obviously is very damaging to somebody attempting to run an additive business.

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