Business And Economy Archive

My 2 credits worth thrown in:

Everyone has their own perspectives on the Vendor Changes that were pulled. Each of them are perfectly valid because they are from a different view.

Non-Crafting Classes: They see e-bay becoming available. They now see that they no longer need to drive around for 30 minutes to 4 hours to hunt for items. I agree that this sucks. This needs to be eliminated or reduced to a MAXIMUM of 30 minutes of in-game time.

Loot: The system that was proposed was perfect for this industry. Would normalize prices and make it so that everyone can get these items. It would pull sales from the Trade Forums into the game (where it should be).

Resources: Resources prices will probably steadily go down in price because there will be high competition for prices and quality. As a crafter, I am 50/50 on this. In one respect, this will allow me to search fora wider range of resources and eliminate the need to run around to find resources. HOWEVER, it completely eliminates bargain hunting. It will become impossible to find 300+ day old resources at low prices at a remote location.

Quality Crafting: These people will see some prices decrease due to increased competition. However, they are still dealing with high end quality items. For instance, Krayt-made weapons or High Quality Composite Armor will not take a huge hit because they require a 12-point Master. These crafters will be less inclined to undercut other crafters because they require a GREAT deal of high end, rare items.

Middle-Quality Crafting: Crafters that require marginal amounts of quality. Like Droids. Droids reauire only a Master and some choice Resources. They will be hurt hard. Droids require a lot of work, but are in mild demand. The problem is that because of this, there are a lot of crafters that believe these should be made in bulk at the lowest possible price to make money. While this does attract a lot of customers, the itemsdo not decay and once a person has a set of droids, they do not get another set other than a few minor repeat items. I suspect that Chefs would also be hard hit and architects would be horribly hit. There are a lot of Architects and I suspect that there is a lot of architects that would undercut each other for prices.

Low-Quality Crafting: These would be the worst hit. Tailors would see their prices plummet. A lot of low end, non quality items would be made available at zero profit. Why? Because there are altruistic players that do not join the Crafting mini-game that has been built. They will price Crates of Droid Batteries for 500 CREDITS because that is how much they harvested the resources for! Swoop Bikes will go for like 6,000 credits.

Another major issue:

If ALL they did was add a PC Vendor Button that allows you to search galaxy-wide PC vendors at the Bazaar, do you know how many items you will have to look through?! How difficult is it to sort through FACTORY Crates of items? Every item in the game can be made into factory crates. You will never be able to find anything under that category. How long will it be to look through every shirt that a Tailor places on the bazaar? As it stands, without adding Vendors onto the Bazaar, it is almost too much in some categories. How long will it take to look through thousands of listings of Inorganic Minerals. 100 at a time. Have you seen some of these resource vendors? Some have hundreds per vendor. There would be at least a 100 pages under that category. Sometimes MORE!

If this revision is brought to live (despite Tiggs saying that it was put back to the drawing board) there HAS to be a change to the way things are sorted and searched. There needs to be a Google/E-bay function that allows you to refine your search paramaters. Not just a tree.

Finally, I believe that this needs to be looked at from a fresh perspective. IF these changes went live, I propose the following:

If the non-crafters REALLY want this change, make it so that THEY have to pay the fees. Not the Crafters. If they want the convenience of Uber one-stop shopping, make it so that they pay a 50% convenience fee. This would be tacked onto the final product. Do NOT make it so that they crafters have to pay for it like the Bazaar Listing Fees. Maybe make it so that Merchant can reduce this by 10% or so (maybe they cut a deal with the Imperials or the Hutts or something). Non-Craftershave minimal direct money sinks from the game. They have:

- Vehicle Repair Fees (So do Crafters)

- Housing Maintenance Fees (Crafters also need to worry about their Vendor Tent, Harvesters, Power for Harvesters/Factories, Factory Fees)

- Travel Costs (With JTL, this has been drastically reduced because everyone can go to starports for free)

- Cloning (This is probably theironly uniquecosts, however it is a minimal drop in the bucket. However, Crafters also have to worry about this and probably more so. When checking harvesters, they need to go to multiple planets)

- Insurance (To insure that they don't have to BUY NEW ITEMS)

All other Money Sinks go straight to crafters. Repair items, replacing items, purchasing new items, getting new furniture, etc.

Their real money sinks come from crafters. Crafters have a HUGE money sink market in Resources, Vendors, Multiple Houses, etc.

Therefore, I think it is only fair to add the money sinks to the Consumer side instead of the Supplier side.

So that is my 2 credits worth thrown in.

La'varian Blisar
Sunrunner Galaxy
Master Droid Engineer Extraordinaire
Vendor: Lei'a Bounty Hunter Droids (1 km NNE of Coronet)
Look for me on the Planetary Map on Corellia

I think an excellent analysis of the situation. As an architect, I sell my goods below what others charge. I have a small but loyal clientel and make a respectible profit. Once the market goes 'Ebay', prices for deeds and structures will drop and although many will see this as a boon, architects, tailors, resource gatherers and chefs will take a big hit on this. I also believe that this will favor the established players and those with multiple accounts and a lot of time to play the game. Likewise I think the non-crafters should help out a little more with the 'tax burden'.

You do make some good points, but I believe you are being a little too pessemistic concerning what will happen to the so-called "middle and low quality crafters".

As a long time Master DE, I've been able to earn a credit even with undercutters dumping cheap droids on the Bazaar at 6k a droid. The sheer amount of options make purchasing "pre-made" droids an iffy proposition because you may not get exactly what you want. I also have consumables such as the BH droids and batteries, customization kits etc.

I don't know about Tailors. I do know that I spenta lot of money on clothes at one time, but don't need to any more.

The big problem isn't the bazaar in these instances, but a lack of item decay. Only combat droids decay, not utility droids. There should be some sort of usage on those, as well as on clothes. I don't know about you, but I tear up jeans on a regular basis, with just wear from washing and wearing...

If the Vendor change is to take place, the Dev's simply have to examine the impact these changes have on each profession and how to mitigate those impacts. The Dev's have retracted and are re-examining the change. In theory, I like it, but not without some major changes. As it was it cause to much damage and stepping on of toes to be a good change.

I have faith that the Dev's saw that, listened to everyones concerns and went back to the drawing board.

I was thinking... they should probably hire an economics major or something. Someone who understands economics when it comes to video games.

I think it all boils down to one thing: Credits. I will admit this.

In my case, I have devoted my time to making Seeker Droids, Arakyd Probe Droids, and Detonation Droids with54 to 58 Detonation Power. Unfortunately these droids are comsumable (well seekers are bugged and I guessare not consumable once BHs hit Investigations III). As such, I just see my market being hit hard by the e-bay effect. There are probably just as many positives as their are negatives to the system. High quality and custom orders will not change much because they require human interaction. However, those bulk crated items are going to take a hit.

Even ifyou ignore the effect that this event will happen to the economics of crafted items, there is still the problem of the cumbersome categories. When you are looking for a particular item, it is going to take forever.

Crates are going to be a mess. Every single crafted item in the game can be made into a crate. There are probably going to be hundreds of different types of crates that will be placed with what is in effect an uncapped market. It is going to be impossible to navigate through crates of items to find what you want.

Plus I am afraid of Resource Hunting. There is a few hundred different types of Inorganic Minerals. It will take forever to filter through to get good quality copper for instance. Yes, you can sort by type. However, you will have to examine each one. This is going to take a long time and it will suck.

Resource Hunting will be easier, yes... but it is going to be extremely cumbersome. They need to fix the UI of the Bazaar before I will endorse adding NPC vendors to the searchable function of the Bazaar.

La'varian Blisar
Sunrunner Galaxy
Master Droid Engineer Extraordinaire
Vendor: Lei'a Bounty Hunter Droids (1 km NNE of Coronet)
Look for me on the Planetary Map on Corellia

One item that MUST be addressed is that customers need to be able to inspect items in bags. A galactic bazaar search sets up a huge opportunity for scammers to fill a bag with 9 cdef's and list it as a bag of composite armor. I feel that this could be very detrimental to any profession that sells items pre-bagged, escpecially AS's and docs.

- I support keeping & balancing the current combat system You can too