Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Ethics
Ethics seems to be lacking in our field.
I ran into a Newbie yesterday that after one week in the game, spent his first 3000 credits to buy a Bluurg in the bazaar. I do not want to have any association with a BE that would do that without makeing is Painfully clear that it was not usable.
I also have non CH's telling me that they bought a Dewback, level 18,in the bazaar and cannot use it.
The BE's who do this know they willnot hear back from most that buy these. And they make no effort to supply any usable information and perhaps even a deliberate effort not to.
I would like to state here that I am going to be distanceing myself from anyone who is doing stuff like this. It is not rare that I have 3 BE's coming for training every day. If you are doing this, you will not receive training from me.
Monday, I will start compiling a list of names.
Yeah, have to agree that we need to be very aggressive in educating people about what can and can't be used. Blurgs need to be advertised as furniture, dewbacks for CH-only, etc.
However, it isn't unreasonable to expect some level of awareness in the purchasing public. I don't feel that I need to advertise 25k rancors as non-CH pets. And I don't think I need to add a disclaimer to petstims that say they only work on pets. If a customer isn't willing to educate themself AT ALL, there isn't much that can be done on our side.
I somewhat agree here. I will inform people if a creature is bugged...I will type it in the description field...we have an obligation to do that, I believe.
I will not, however, do the buyers homework for them and tell them if they are able to use a non-bugged creature or not. That is their job as consumers. My job is to make the best creature or pet-stims that I am able to make and try to make a profit from it. The weapon/weaponsmith analogy was exactly dead-on in this regard.
At the same time, if someone wants to buy one from me personally and not off my vendor and I don't see a CH profession under their name, I will inform them that they might not be able to use the pet.
We don't need a bad reputation...it's bad enough as it is, but we also don't need to hold peoples hands.
the Pets I make that I sell on my Vendor I clearlly label what class can and can not use them
Examples
Bearded Jax - Useable by everyone!
Bantha - Useable by everyone!
Dewback - CH only!
Gurreck - High Lvl CH only!
Kilmo - Not useable by anyone! But look really cool!
Most of the other Broken pets I dont make unless it is a request for fruniture...
A friend of mine just bought a Large house that he wants to turn into a museum of sorts, and is asking me to make yardtrash DNA creatures for that use... So I am like yeah sure... and I get to place a vendor in there as a museum giftshop of sorts... So it could be intersting... I might places strange things like DNA samples from low level creatures like durnies in there, Creatures, Stimpacks (Ugh), just an assortment of stuff...
Because dev has failed to lable the stuff sold plainly, we must carry the flag they dropped.
It is not rare that I run into a BE in town advertising "Bluurgs for sale". I say, "those are bugged". The BE replies back, "they aren't bugged, they are just high level". If a BE can say that without feeling like a total idiot, and I cannot easily disprove them, then how is it that we can expect a person that doen't have a clue about their own profession, know ours?
Saying that "they ought to know" is a justification for grey colored dishonesty.
I love this profession so much, I will do it till i'm broke.
GreenStok wrote:
Ethics seems to be lacking in our field.
I ran into a Newbie yesterday that after one week in the game, spent his first 3000 credits to buy a Bluurg in the bazaar. I do not want to have any association with a BE that would do that without makeing is Painfully clear that it was not usable.
I also have non CH's telling me that they bought a Dewback, level 18,in the bazaar and cannot use it.
The BE's who do this know they willnot hear back from most that buy these. And they make no effort to supply any usable information and perhaps even a deliberate effort not to.
I would like to state here that I am going to be distanceing myself from anyone who is doing stuff like this. It is not rare that I have 3 BE's coming for training every day. If you are doing this, you will not receive training from me.
Monday, I will start compiling a list of names.
The Dewback thing happened to me as well. Dude actually wanted me to take the dewback in trade for the Kahmurra I made him and got pissy that the Kahmurra had less HAM...needless to say I "educated" the dude on what he could do with his Dewback AND the Kahmurra I just sold to him for 1k credits cause I felt sorry he got duped.
Needless to say when I am selling a non-CH creature I would always state it was non-CH useable in the name and the description field. If you buy something else I have listed and your a non-CH and you didn't read than it's not my fault.
Matt, you seem to express no feelings of guilt for selling pets to people who can't use them.
If this is true, then you are the grey colored ethics person I was speaking of.
I love the BE Profession so much, I will do it till I'm broke.
Ummm.... W-T-F?
Where in the hell do you get the idea that I mislead customers into buying the wrong pets? Did I say it was ok to mislead customers? Did my evil twin Skippy take over my account?
No, I said not a word like that. All I said was that there is no reason for a novice BE to know any of these things, since there is nothing in game to tell them about it and the strategy guide is full of misinformation, and a logical person might think "well, its been 3 months, surely if there were problems they would have addressed or removed them." Assuming they even think to ask if the pet they created doesn't actually work.
I know when I first could make Blurgs and kimos I made a bunch and sold them at the bazaar thinking their was nothing wrong with them. How would I know otherwise, I couldn't tame anything without CH?
So, I'm asking you to not assume everyone is a **edit** who is selling these things. It is very likely most of them simply don't know. SOE controls the in game environment, frankly it is their duty to inform players when things aren't working, it is not the player's job to assume things don't work until proven otherwise.
But then again, you all sorts of malice into a very bland statement asking for a little understanding and compassion to new BE's who don't realize yet they are **edit**ed. So I'm guessing this appeal doesn't get far with you...
Yes, I think that a lack of usage instructions is just another in our long list of bugs. Skill checking is a common feature in many online games, but does not exist here. I put a tybis and a blurrg up on the bazaar when I first started making them. I was thankful that no one bought them before I found out they were bugged and removed them. I can't tell you how many people have bought my dewbacks who weren't qualified to use them. I used to put those up for 2500 that way the person could resell them for 3000 rather than bother me about it. These days I use a tag like Kahmurra (domestic cl15) when putting things on my vendor, but a brand new BE doesn't know that they have to do that. The fact that we need toshows that the game is still lacking.
True, there are those who know and don't care. We just can't prove which ones, unless they continue to do it after being warned. There is no mechanic in game for doing anything about these people. CSR just doesn't have the staff to deal with it.
Mattager, I am not calling you a crook. I stated that even if we get took or if the game does not fulfilltheir responsibility,it does not give us a moral justification to take advantage of people. To you, all I was saying that the game drops the ball so we must pick it up and carry it.
We all know that dev lacks adequate buying information.
Someone stated that people should take the responsibility to know what they can safely buy. Then someone else said how can a newbie BE know.
The fact is, we do know. The only people I have issues with are the ones that are selling blindly.
I love the BE profession so much, I will do it till I'm broke.
I won't put my pets on a vendor. I would rather have face to face conversations with the customer, to let him know what I have, and what he can use. Yeah, it's time consuming, but I am building a customer base. People know what I will create and what I can't/won't create. The face to face sales pitch is better then a vendor, because I am there for any questions.
Yeah...It's time consuming, I could be out harvesting creatures, or getting CH xp or something, but the face to face contact is better, get out there and meet your public. Don't be a faceless vendor. 