Business And Economy Archive

With the uproar lately over the proposed vendor changes, and the combat upgrade, and the GCW changes coming - I thought it might be a good idea to go back and look at the original objectives of SWG's crafting and economic systems.

When Holocron, Sunsword, and the original dev team were cooking up these parts of the game, there was pretty much one public document for the "vision" that the game was trying to realize. It wasn't written by the dev team, and it wasn't ever put up "officially". But it was referred to in numerous posts explaining what they wanted to do, and its followup essay was explicitly invoked to help explain the resource and crafting mechanics. The concepts put forth in these essays were also referenced by community members interested in the crafting systems of the game.

I am referring to the essay "I want to bake bread!" written by Sie Ming. The followup, which people may be more familiar with, is "I want to forge swords!".

You can read them by clicking the links above. I think that they're helpful to keep in mind when considering the future of the game's economic and crafting systems, because back when everything was first conceived, they were primarily what both the devs and the players were working from.

I will go back to lurking now.

Deregen - proud SWG player since Beta 1

Trace Silverhawk ~ Smuggler & RSF Ace Pilot
(Elder Weaponsmith)

Darice Starshadow ~ Elder Shipwright
***Visit the Starshadow Foundation vendors, located at 750, 4950 on Talus, about 3k west of Nashal Starport***

SWG Community Contributor since 2001. Beta 1, Shuttle 1.

Links didn't post.

Don't worry, happens to me 50% of the time when I post.

Bother. I'll try and fix it - in the meantime, here's the raw URLs:

http://www.stratics.com/content/mmogweekly/mmog/vol17.shtml

http://www.stratics.com/content/mmogweekly/mmog/vol20.shtml

Trace Silverhawk ~ Smuggler & RSF Ace Pilot
(Elder Weaponsmith)

Darice Starshadow ~ Elder Shipwright
***Visit the Starshadow Foundation vendors, located at 750, 4950 on Talus, about 3k west of Nashal Starport***

SWG Community Contributor since 2001. Beta 1, Shuttle 1.

Ok - it appears to be fixed now. Hope it stays that way.

To explain why I posted this - an argument broke out in-game in our city chat channel between one of our avowed non-crafters and several of our crafters over thewhole bazaar vendor search thing. I asked the non-crafter to go look at these essays, and he said it helped him quite a bit to understand the crafter's positions. Oddly, most of the crafters didn't know about these either, and they were pretty much the basis for SWG's entire crafting system and economy. Go figure.

Trace Silverhawk ~ Smuggler & RSF Ace Pilot
(Elder Weaponsmith)

Darice Starshadow ~ Elder Shipwright
***Visit the Starshadow Foundation vendors, located at 750, 4950 on Talus, about 3k west of Nashal Starport***

SWG Community Contributor since 2001. Beta 1, Shuttle 1.

I'll say it,

Damn good. Very thought out, and illistrates a lot of important points. Thank you for posting this.

Good god almighty, those are some nice essays.

/adds to bookmarks.

Regarding the "Bake bread" one, it looks like SWG got some things right (item desirability, no NPC buyers/sellers, salability) and some things wrong (the need to grind through a lot of items, low-level items made by low-level crafters much worse than low-level items made by high-level crafters).

Thanks for the links.

---

Kriles Ch'artoff , Chilastra server
Master Chef (retired)
Currently doing....stuff

Jesus, I haven't thought of those in years. Good call.

Dayasi Vo'Boda CEO of SCUM PA.
Founders of Agrilatia in the Agrilat Swamps Of Corellia (Intrepid).
Taking Scum and Villainy to a new Level to Serve YOU.
Remember: SCUM does it dirtyAnother Horseman of the Smuggling Apocolypse