Business And Economy Archive

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SidlandianTrufor wrote:

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FeydmanKassan wrote:

I have a confession to make. You see, I'm one of those "undeserving n00bs" who had it easy.

When I started 2 months ago, I had the usual 1k and and melon. Fortunately, my RL son, a long time player, was a millionaire several times over. By the time he found me on Tat, I had sold my gun, spent my 1k and eaten my melon (didn't know what it was for). He gave me 500k, a bunch of uber weapons, 4 heavy harvesters, and a full set of comp armor. Quite a start for ones first day, huh. Well, after spending a month grinding my toon, group hunting and touring the galaxy, I found myself with little more than 1k credits, a house and the harvesters. At that point, I decided it was time to make my own living. In the past month, I have been able to make more than 3 million credits with my business. I know, I don't deserve that kind of success; I'm a n00b. Anyway, in a few months, if all goes well, I will never have to earn another credit in the game. Btw, I am paying my son back by selling him excess ore from my mining operation at cost. I also survey for both of us. To date, he's made about 1.5 million credits from his 1mil investment. :-)

Even more appalling, I not only got the DD, I bought the TT because I needed more lots. So I have both the BARC AND the lizard. So, I'm a multi-millionaire n00b with a cool speeder and an oversized iguana. I'm sure you find this state of affairs as appalling as I do.

But I do feel bad that I got so much stuff I didn't deserve. So, I decided to start making BARC repair kits (did I mention that one of my three ships is outfitted for mining?), and I'm going to give them away to as many n00bs as I can that still have their speeders. I'm going to tell them to either keep the speeder, or sell it and the kit for all the money they can get. All I ask in return is that they lay cash (or something really useful) on the first 3 penniless n00bs they see.

Now, why would I do this? Because in RL, people who have it all, but whine about others getting a few crumbs they didn't "earn", rub me the wrong way. That attitude with reqards to a game of all things, irks me even more. We should be helping new players instead of denigrating them and calling them undeserving. Without new players, this game has no future in the long term. And if ensuring that future means giving n00bs some trinkets, so be it. I will never get the Sorosuub vet reward. Somehow, I will learn to live with that along with the tons of other cool things SOE will offer new players in the future.

So instead of crying about a speeder (which is only slightly faster than a swoop and also decays twice as fast) show some love for the new player. Help them out. Give them advice. Show them the ropes. Give them some credits or goods to get started. Do what you can to make it easier for them than you had it. For example, you could teach them all of the languages you know. My first few days, half the people I met were speaking gibberish until someone just walked up to me and started to teach me all of the languages they knew. They never asked for a thing in return. I never even saw them again. What they gave me didn't cost them a thing but it made my life a LOT easier.

IMO, helping others sounds like a lot more fun than sitting around your virtual mansion admiring your virtual possessions and counting your virtual money.

Btw, I haven't forgotten about you long time uber rich players. You can have a BARC of your very own for the low price of 50 million credits. Hell, I'll even throw in a free repair kit! The lizard I'm keeping because I already lost it once trying to trade it from my datapad. A CSR took pity on me and gave it back, so I guess we were meant to be together. :-)

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Wow this is comical.... it truly shows the state of naivety and lack of grasp for the English language.....

Listen I go out of my way to HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP .... WOW rediculous direction with this response that is ABSOLUTELY OFF THE MARK of the original post!

THIS IS NOT ABOUT New players VS. Older players..... This is about an immediate Lottery win for all newer players and a total slap in the face to players with real ivestments. It's not about giving new players trinkets and incentives it's about integrity of the game. You don't here me crying because I cannot have that really cool set of sunglasses that was a special reward ..... and although I would like the Barc for obvious fan reasons that is not the point either.......

Here is an example perhaps you can grasp.... and forgive me for using a real life correlation to a game because this is about PRINCIPLE NOT greed and whining like a suck:

How would you feel if you were a War Veteran say WWI ... yes you were there when the s h*t went down and all your sons went off and fought in WW2. Let'ssay to make it interesting you losttwo of your three sons in the wars that respresent our freedoms as weknow it today. Okay now lets take it a step further and suggest that last week a new war broke out and the governement decided to reward those recruits a TRINKET worth MILLIONS if they go to the show in, let's say Iraq.... ( timeline is irrelovent heed the point )

Now all of a sudden as a war veteran with a humiliatingly modest war pension and HUGE LOSS and sacrifice to this country the government said you have already received your rewards you will receive NO MORE than what you already have from us!

Would you not feel like THE GOVERNMENT has treated you like a useless fop?! Could ANY person with honour and a sense of past and integrity justify this action?

NOW PAY ATTENTION ..... AGAIN THIS IS ABOUT PRINCIPLE.... NOT ABOUT newer players vs. older players! Not about a game vs. real life! As an old veteran would probably again put his life in danger to sacrifice for the newer recruits lives and freedoms and survival abroad by offering anything they were capable of for their well being etc. so do MOST genuine players of SWG treat and respect Newer Players. This is because WE have been there before and WANT to help to some degree at least!Yes it's so obvious we need new players especially since SO MANY WERE LOST with CU.... but THERE WOULD BE NO SWG if not for the old fore fathers...lol...

Perhaps if you take ONE MINUTE to digest that correlation... and not run off at the mouth about pet peaves...lmao...you may understand the PRINCIPLE of the message!

Barcing out!

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you are a very disturbed individual...

d4mit Jim, i'm a doctor not a combat medic!

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IcepickIIIDragonrider wrote:

I am a 1 yr vet and just recently got my apartment-mate hooked on SWG. So seeing as this was right after the CU hit, I told him the best way to make money was Armor. It decays and alot of the armorsmiths left because of it. There was also a shortage of armor on the server for awhile. So i helped him out, tipped him money, allowed him to rent some of my heavy harvestors I wasnt using at the time. Essentially I invested at least 1 million into his character, which together has become a symbiotic relationship. Its like having an alt, but not really. We share harvestors, factories, and the occasional resources.

So yeah, he is a noob and where he is at NOW after 3 weeks of playin he is at where I was about 6-8 months into the game.

But anyways, yeah Im annoyed that the Barc is limited like that. But since i got my "pimp" V-35, its fine. Im so glad I dont have to worry bout gas mileage in that thing.

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a great example of community =)

/cheer

d4mit Jim, i'm a doctor not a combat medic!

Since I have a few counterpoints to make in your post, I'll post my stuff in green so that it will stand out among what you say and that way nobody is confused about which one of us is saying what.

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swampwampagus wrote:

Yet another post with the same crap. ..

Let me address a few things first:

1. This is not a Noob vs Vet debate. Any "vet" could have waited and bought the Total Experience from a store like Best Buy and could be riding around on their own Barc. You do not need to create a new account either and trade it. All you do is register it just like any other expansion. I did this. I already had SWG & JTL. I waited the extra couple of weeks and bought the Retail version so I could get the Barc. Hell I paid $24.99 for it at Best Buy. So to say that only "noobs" got the Barc is BS. SOE said on the website that you had 2 ways to get ROTW. Either by doing the Download and getting the new mount. Or you could wait and get the Barc with the Retail Version.

So SOE did not reward the "Noobs" Everyone that bought the download had the chance to play the game for 2 weeks before the rest of us got to. So in that time you were able to do all the quests and sell the rewards.

Ok, for me this isn't any goofy "Vet vs Noob" debate. I'd just like the justification on why a BARC has to be a reward for buying the expansion in the first place? Isn't the expansion good enough that they don't have to stoop to using methods of extortion as a way to force people to buy it? Why not let Master Artisan's make it like all the other vehicles in the game also?

5. Be happy that you can still play. With SOE putting out The Total Experience & Advertising it they are bringing in alot more people to play the game. Without them the game probally could have been shutdown. Especially after everyone quit because of the CU.

Let's see, SOE/Sony/Lucas/Whoever, waits 2 years to finally advertise the game? What's your justification for that? And why not put the adverts in gaming magazines like PC Gamer, PC World, etc?? Why does it have to be a television commercial *only*?? Wouldn't those mega-bucks been better spent fixing the game problems and winning back the customers, instead of trying to hood-wink new people to the game who will end up quitting for the same reasons everyone before them did? DUH

Let me tell you about a personal experience. I use to play a game called Motor City Online. This was a combination RPG & Racing Game. EA made it and ran the servers. You bought the game and paid $10 a month I think to play it. EA wasnt smart though with the game. After the first month or 2 it was on the shelves you saw no more advertising for it. No new expansions. They did do free updates. But they didnt bring in any new customers. So eventually EA pulled the plug. So be happy SOE did this.

You probably picked the worst mmorpg of all, to use an example, and calling it an mmorpg is a stretch. At best, it was Ultima Online On Wheels. First week you got people trying to sell car setups and car paintjobs for $500 on ebay. Just like in UO, the people at EA encouraged people in MCO to do business on Ebay as a sort of "free advertising". Ebay will kill a game's base faster than any exploit or game breaking bug. Not to mention it's against the law. As far a free updates, that's the #1 thing that any smart mmorpg would do. I've got better examples. City of Heroes. Already they've put out 4 major publishes that brought in more stuff than most games off-the-shelf expansions do. And they did it for FREE. That, is what made me happy. That they care about the players enough that they give them what they ask for and do it for free. After all, they are making their money off that $15 a month. Asking for anything else is just trying to "get rich quick", which also will alienate a game's base and kill it quick. Also, another example. Look at the Quake games made by ID Software. At first they were hugely successful because they were 100% PvP driven. But they also had their share of problems. And it didn't help things at all, when the top 2 devs were going around acting like rock stars and doing magazine interviews that showed off their new shiny red Ferrari's that they bought with the players money. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have their cake and eat it too, just that it alienated alot of their fans who started thinking "We're stuck with this crappy game and they are driving around in a Ferrari and don't even care about us". Just more of that "get rich quick" mentality at the expense of the players they too often ignore. An expansion might as well be that shiny red Ferrari. One thing leads to another, and it's not hard to figure out who is paying who's paychecks, and who isn't listening to who.

7. If you dont like it Quit.

That's exactly what I'm doing, which will happen just 2 weeks short of my 2 year anniversary. June 17 is my drop dead day. I'm not going away mad, I'm just going away to find something better. But at the same time, i can't help but think about "what could have been". Besides, you can let SOE/Lucas treat you like you are a dummy and runover you at every opportunity, take your money and not care at all about you or how you feel. More power to you. Good luck on getting them to listen. I haven't been able to, so I'm moving on.

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Just Gwen

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Sehvral wrote:

snip....

Imagine what would happen if we didn't all rush out to buy the bloody things. They'd have to work for their money, and a few months down the road they'd be selling them at more reasonable prices once they realized how crappy the decay rate is. They may be insta-rich, the credit may be devalued as a result, but hey, that's OUR fault for buying the things.

This is the part I'm still not getting. How is the credit devalued? I just don't see how credits lose value just because they change hands, whether those hands belong to a new playeror an established player. It happens every single day,both in game and in real life. The value of any "money" is not based on who owns it, but what it can buy. In game, while there can be a kind of inflation/deflation cycle, just as in real lifethis cycle is not dependant on any singlefinished productor products, especially not a finished product which took no resources to make. If the new player reward were say, 50 mil units of prime resources, and that reward was paid by reducing the amount of available resources in game, maybe I could see an economic issue. But that is not the case.

FWIW, based on my own testing, the decay rate for BARCs is higher, but the repair cost at a garage is much lower than for a swoop in the same condtion. It may be a bug, but who knows? I think a newbie should be able to maintain their toy just fine as long as they don't get it disabled. In which case I for one will fix it for free, if I can ever mine enough asteroids to make a decent number of kits.

Shoulda seen the shock on TC today when anewbie showed up after installing the game for the first time. He bought the game, skipped Live and came straight to TC. I think it brought a collective tear of joy to all of tcpa's eyes. I've never seen people scramble to get someone up and running that quickly =)

Off topic, but I'm curious, what's it like playing on TC? Don't you guys get wiped on a pretty regulat basis? And WTH is a "blue frog"?

Okay, I had some closing theme to explain the long post, but it's late and I forget what it was. So it'll just become a few random thoughts, and maybe someone can make something out of it.

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FeydmanKassan wrote:

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Sehvral wrote:

snip....

Imagine what would happen if we didn't all rush out to buy the bloody things. They'd have to work for their money, and a few months down the road they'd be selling them at more reasonable prices once they realized how crappy the decay rate is. They may be insta-rich, the credit may be devalued as a result, but hey, that's OUR fault for buying the things.

This is the part I'm still not getting. How is the credit devalued? I just don't see how credits lose value just because they change hands, whether those hands belong to a new playeror an established player. It happens every single day,both in game and in real life. The value of any "money" is not based on who owns it, but what it can buy. In game, while there can be a kind of inflation/deflation cycle, just as in real lifethis cycle is not dependant on any singlefinished productor products, especially not a finished product which took no resources to make. If the new player reward were say, 50 mil units of prime resources, and that reward was paid by reducing the amount of available resources in game, maybe I could see an economic issue. But that is not the case.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't really buy into the notion of devaluing the credit, but everyone I hear is always whining about it (no personal experience, as I don't play on Live and TC doesn't have very many BARCs).

FWIW, based on my own testing, the decay rate for BARCs is higher, but the repair cost at a garage is much lower than for a swoop in the same condtion. It may be a bug, but who knows? I think a newbie should be able to maintain their toy just fine as long as they don't get it disabled. In which case I for one will fix it for free, if I can ever mine enough asteroids to make a decent number of kits.

Shoulda seen the shock on TC today when anewbie showed up after installing the game for the first time. He bought the game, skipped Live and came straight to TC. I think it brought a collective tear of joy to all of tcpa's eyes. I've never seen people scramble to get someone up and running that quickly =)

Off topic, but I'm curious, what's it like playing on TC? Don't you guys get wiped on a pretty regulat basis? And WTH is a "blue frog"?

Pretty much the same as Live, but with a few differences. Since we get patches early, we have more bugs to deal with than Live. Every account gets three toons to help testing. PVP and GCW are consentual-only (no killing opposing guys without their permission...this includes BH/Jedi fighting). We have a smaller playerbase (probably only 150 regular players on 3+ toons and a few occassional players), so resource demand is pretty low (and 3 toons means most crafters can supply most of their resource needs). Everything is quite a bit cheaper than on Live (I've never seen an item go over 250K in the time I've been on TC), and there aren't very many millionaires.

Contrary to popular claims, TC has NEVER been wiped, not even once. The worst we have is the periodical mothballing (where our server and toons are placed in stasis to bring up the frog server, and brought back later). After the last one, most of the vendors (and everything on them) had vanished, and the few that remained were nearly empty, but that's probably the worst problem we've had in quite a while. We get taken offline for restarts, mini-fixes, etc on a regular basis (anywhere from once every few days to a few times a day) with little warning (used to be 10 min, but now it's about 1 minute). It's a very close-knit group, you won't find the usual garbage players (when someonegets city-banned in every player city and ignored by everyone after being an ass, they don't stay around very long).

Come check it out. I enjoyed it enough to leave Live altogether. Everyone hangs out on TCPA (/chatr join swg.testcenter.chat.tcpa), and you can get up to high levels very quickly with the XP groups on Naboo that are almost always running (no level restrictions...it's usually a mix of 80 down to 1 doing level 78-82 missions...easy money andfast levelling).

The real fun is when SOE staff come on to help try to reproduce bugs. Gathered a bunch of us in front of the Theed Starport and started spawning ultra-high-level mobs to test a framerate lag one time. That was a sight.

Blue frogs are insta-levelling systems. They let you train up whatever skills you want for free with no XP requirements (up to the 250 cap, and Jedi and Pilot skills can't be frogged), and give you items to get you testing faster (money, weapons, armor, resources, etc). When used properly, they are a good tool for quick-testing a publish. Unfortunately they are never used as intended.

Okay, I had some closing theme to explain the long post, but it's late and I forget what it was. So it'll just become a few random thoughts, and maybe someone can make something out of it.

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Hahaha, I saw someone say "slap in the face", so of course I had to respond. People... get over it. Don't blame SOE because a lot of rich players want the cool bike. I mean, why is this a BAD thing. The newb who doesn't want the bike gets a bunch of money to start off, and the guy who has too much money gets a cool bike he likes. Who looses here?

And the new player didn't "earn" his money? Please. It's a GAME, folks. You are not some honorable martyr who sacrificed to earn your credits. You killed Rancors.. in a STAR WARS Game. It's fun. Enjoy it. Calm the hell down.

Awwww, cannot get your BARC out...

Well, I'm going to give my opinion on the matter.. I have been around on SWG since launch (July '03). I made my fortune(6million total when I left a year ago) by miningand supplying the holo-grinders and by weaponsmith.

When I left the game, it was before JTL came out and the game was pretty broken then.. WoW was coming out soon and my whole guild just about left SWG for WoW because of several issues with the game and with SOE in general.

I didn't think I was going to come back so I donated credz to newbies and dancers etc.. in 25-50K chunks.

So, fast forward to a week ago when I decided to get back in game and pick up SWG:Total Exp... and I was surprised by the amount BARC speeders were going for..

Honestly, I like my swoop better.. it's much faster and since I'm a master artisan, I can make them by the crate. But upon getting back into game, I have no harvestors, no house anymore as I let the maintenance lapse.. I had hardly any creds left because of my generosity upon leaving the game. Of course at that time, I had no intentions of returning.. but later changed my mind now that I saw that SWG had 2 expansion packs out..

I now have a dilemma of trying to get a profitable business ramped up so I can again be making weapons and now starcraft to support the SWG economy..

the easiest way for me to do that, is to sell my BARC speeder to someone who wants it.. I just don't really need it when I can make swoops by the crate. Since swoops are faster, I can do my harvestor runs faster and allocate more time to crafting.

So, if someone wanted to shove 6 million in my face for one, it's sold! I got bills to pay and startup costs for my business. To me, it's an investment.

And I don't think it's going to hurt the economy at all.. sure, you'll have more wealthy n00bs.. but they wealthy n00bs buy stuff.. and I am in the business to sell stuff.

And that, my friend, is the whole nature OF an ECONOMY.

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alwayslost wrote:

Some of this reaction to the BARC speeders is sort of silly. How does it ruin the economy to take credits from one player and transfer them to another, in a completely voluntary transaction? Yeah, so new players can get a million credits. So what. What will they buy that ruins the economy? They still have less credits than the guy who buys the BARC, since unlike real life, we know the BARC buyer didn't take out a mortage on his home to buy his mid-life crisis Porsche. OK, they can afford top class weapons and armor. So what, new players aren't certified for either. And don't the crafters who get to sell houses or furniture or art or foods or weapons or whatever, to all these new players, have a role to play in the economy? I can see the point about making it too easy for new players, but even that only goes so far. Their credit balance won't stop that kreetle from killing their level 1 characters. The doorman won't let them waltz through the death watch bunker or the warren because of their bank statement. Even if you gave three million to new players, that's not enough to buy all the resources needed to grind some of the crafting professions. To advance in this game in anything but bank balance, one still has to earn the respective xp somewhere. Yeah money is a big step up (goodbye BER 4 personals, hello BER 13's), but it is only one step on a long journey. If a lot of wealthy veterans weren't just jealous of a simple BARC speeder, it wouldn't be a big deal.

The other way to look at this, is that it is easy to measure the real life value of in-game credits. Anyone can buy the total experience, create an alt for one month, transfer the BARC speeder to their main character, and drop the new second account. You won't have to enrich some underserving player who simply joined the game we all like to play, and whose presence (and hopefully ongoing future presence) will help ensure that the game will still be here for all of us to enjoy.

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