Development Cycle Archive
Thread: 19 Answers 5-26-04
Saratoga wrote:
I have three accounts which equates to 30 lots and 300 storage in bank accounts. I use the 30 lots for 5 housesand5 factories for additional stroage. I can place 12 harvesters and I am renting8 lots from a friend.My guildmates and I look only for the best resources and we are sitting on millions of the best WS and AS resourcesthat have spawnedon Eclipse. In most cases i will never lack for a certain resource. The only thing I ever need to buy is food because i do not have a character that can make food.
I have a small operation because I do not want crafting to be my second job. i dont have the 12 experimentation points and dont care to get them because all they do is increase the condition or the range modifiers on weapons or a slight improvement to the base%, HAM requirement (buffs negate), or condition on armor.
What i am getting at is that what I have is typical across the servers and in many cases it is more dominating for those who don't mind crafting as a job in SWG and havemade effective advertising campaigns There is no way a new crafter will ever be able to compete with those of who have such a grip on the economy. Just take a look at the auctions. Only those few people who have the fortunes win the best resources.
It can only be helpful to the database to consolidate and reduce the number of resource stacks. It isnt going to cause a mass flood by one or two crafters to dominate the market as that already exists.
I do think harvesters should deteriorate after so many uses. Mining companies have to replace gear all the time. maybe make something like the new starship or light saber model where a particular gear or part wears out and you can swap it in or out. The harvester shell itself remain always, but the ore mining unit, generator turbine, turbo fluid mining unit, and add more fail and have to be replaced. That would make harvester swapping that much more difficult as people are not going to want to come to a server and have their equipement repaired.
If the DEVS really want to reduce the amount of money in the economy they need to look at the "solo" grouping for enraged rancor missions which pay out 36k per mission and most elite combatants have no problem completing those missions. As a master swordsman I could take 5 on at the same time no worries
/salutes the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who are in harms way and cannot play SWG.
Pappi wrote:
DeQuosaek wrote:
...
aha! found you...
are you still playing on TC? if you aren't, would you please remove the vendor from the (now overstuffed) artisan tent? it wouldn't decay properly with that vendor bug
... one person down, bunches more to go O.o
I actually am playing more on the TC again. I just sold a few more speeders from that vendor last week, but that's beside the point.
I was actually very pleased to see that my vondor hadn't decayed properly. I hadn't logged on in a while because I had a nasty virus that forced me to reformat my PC. I hadn't gotten around to reinstalling TC for a while, and I'd been concentrating on my live character. Luckily when I finally decided to log in again, my house still had about 10% condition and I was able to repair it with my amassed wealth (about 30k)
If you need, I can remove it. I am probably not keeping it stocked as well as some others, but I was planning on making another run of start equipment (pistols, axes, staves, rifles, carbines, survey tools, crafting tools) and maybe some vehicle spray paint kits.
Sorry about the long gap when it was empty.
Gracyon wrote:
Oh, and as for the factories, Lets say you can only create factory schematics using 80% of your experimentation points? (I know some components REQUIRE a factory run. Maybe components are the exception) So big production runs make inferior products.
Have a great day,
Frosty
This is a great Idea in my opinion. Sure, it would still allow a power gamer a huge advantage, but still for guns and armor it would significantly lower the supply coming from those power-gamer types. Even if they could play for alot longer each day, they could make like 30 suits to my 5 or 10, instead of their 100 suits, to my 5 or 10.
Even without the penalty for making lots, the time required to make alot of suits by hand would lower the supply more than simply not changing the storage.Sure, crafters would charge more, butsince the only money sinks in this game of note are maintenence, it makes sense that the money should eventually trickle our way.
Ke3PeR wrote:
Come on TH, cant you see? Thats what is happening right now. I know90% pf the people on my server gets thier armor from the 2 or 3 main Armorsmiths that everyone knows... 1 especially, no one else can get an elbow in the marker, as they have the extra 2 experiment points and have many alts to get all the best minerals in super bulk.
Its the same deal for weaponsmiths, I know if anyone asks "What weaponsmith should I goto to get the best and cheapest weapons" I know that there will ALWAYS be 1 name given, and yes, you guessed it, he has the 2 extra experiment points from clothing mods, and now had so much money he doesnt charge high prices.
The econamy is already saturated by these few crafters. It is a fact that if you see anyone wearing composite armor on my server it'll mostprobably of been made by the same armorsmith.
If the devs cant see that, thats the way it is now.. something is wrong.
Well ... the *real* problem comes from BER13 Harvies ...
As a Master Weaponsmith selling 130 weapons per day I can tell you with all assurances that the market would be more competitive if resources were scarce, but with BER13's there are resources a plenty.
For instance ... it took a couple of months before Ostrine Carbonite Ore spawned on Eclipse for the first time ... what? 9 months ago or something. Ostrine is used in advanced power handlers that are in most Guns today. Takes 5,000 units to make 1,000 handers and most guns average 3 handlers per weapon. so ... 5,000 units for about 300 guns.
BER13 on a 75% spot pulls 14k per day ... or approximately 1,000 guns worth. Most spawns last for 6 - 7 days ... so that's 6,000 to 7,000 guns ... I had like 8 lots on the stuff ... so that's like 40,000 weapons from that 1 spawn.
I don't sell 130 "guns with power handlers" per day ... I guess about 50 or so ... at that rate I got enough resources from that 1 spawn to last me 2 more years!!!!
So TH, if your concerned about the economy then you need to nerf BER's back down to at least 10 ... if not 7!
Hero out
TH, I would agree that increasing caps would create more problems than fix them. But I dont see why you have let extractors get resources at the rate they are now. We can get more resources than we will ever need. After the holo grind, we just wont know where to put resources and the supply will outnumber demand. Please consider toning down extractors to the way it was intended. I see it as something that needs to be fixed soon.
Thunderheart wrote:
RotorofCorRng wrote:
Okay, you said No.
Why not?
Would the database not benefit from this?
It would actually, but the economy would suffer. Don't think of it in terms of how many items you can make as a player, but rather, how many items all players can make. With only a few thousand playersper server,any player can manufacture enough several thousand items, thus making enough items for eveyone on a server. This creates a situation where the players who are part of the most efficient crafting PA's can saturate a market all by themselves and completely squeeze out most other crafters. If you couple this with that same crafter's ability to get the best possible resources at any given time, it is very easy for a a clever crafter to get the best materials and saturate the market with the best items and make it too difficult for anyone else to try and sell their goods.
LLJK_Griz wrote:
If those stack with SEA tapes (which I expect they will since they are on "force experimentation" skill and thus not affected by the +25 cap on individual experimentation skills) it will have the opposite effect and make crafting impossible for anyone who doesn't have both the +16 FS experimentation and +25 in SEAs for 14 points.
HemiKeeroc wrote:
Actually, the armorsmith/weaponsmith/chef monopoly may not be around for too much longer.
We see from the new Jedi changes that they can invest more skill points and negate the need for experimentation SEAs.
Joe Nobody Armorsmith can in effect make the same qualityarmor as Mr Leet Haxorz Kingpin 12 point Armorsmith Esquire
A hard-cap at 12 points would be required to prevent the total collapse of the armor/chef/med market (weapons/buildings/droids receive little or no benefit from extra points and would not be affected).
Actually if you do the math, the difference between 10 and 12 is more than 12 and 14, 120% and 117%. So the difference between a 12 point and a 14 point isn't so bad and 12 points can still compete, but the difference between 10 and 14 is quite big. This gives crafting a more epic quest feel to become the best crafter out there rather than just grinding out a profession. It now requires doing small time stuff at 10 points, doing the jedi quests up to 12, making more money to again buy the skill tapes for 14. The end game isn't at the master level, which is great. This game shouldn't be too simple and the goal of becoming the best should never be stepped upon. If so you turn a goal driven game to one of stupid boredom by moving 40 crates from the output hopper to the input hopper,you won't get renewed subscriptions that way.
Thunderheart, please read this....
The Musician question about a buff interface MUSTbe addressed by the Devs - I refuse to accept the "answer" given to our honest question about a very serious concern we have. The issue is not the recipient knowing that they have a Musician buff, it's that the Musician (a Master profession!)relies blindly on the honesty of their customers as to whether the buff worked or not. Neither buffee nor buffer know if the process is working, until anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes of time has been devoted to trying the buff. Then, if it doesn't work, we try it again. Then, if it works,maybe it's only a 20 minute buff for who knows what reason - so we have to wait 20 minutes, then try again for another 10 minutes, then maybe it'll work correctly. And when the Musician buff does work, the Master Musician has no freakin' clue if it did or not - we need something similar to /diagnose for Doctors - we NEED to know our buff actually worked - we NEED to see mind secondaries somehow!
To further illustrate:
How would a Doctor like it if he/she tried to buff a patient, but didn't know if the buff stuck, or if it even worked in the first place (no testing on yourself). What if Doctor buff packs would be used, and someone would get "buffed" only to find out after 3 minutes of work, oops, do it again Doc, it didn't stick. 3 minutes later - do it again, it didn't work. 3 minutes later - do it again, it didn't work, i'll take off my armor this time. 3 minutes later - "ah, forget it - just gimme my money back" and the Doctor has no idea whether the person really got their buffs or not.
How would a Merchant like to havea customerbuy something off of a vendor, then claim the purchase didn't work, and they didn't get the item, and demand their money back - with no recourse for the merchant to prove the person actually in fact received the item in exchange for the money.
How would a Dancer like it if they buffed someone's mind and didn't see that Mind pool bar hovering over everyone's heads extend to indicate they're buffed? Wasn't too long ago (I believe) where this didn't happen actually. It was fixed by the Devs.
How would a Medic like it if they healed someone with 90%wounds, then the person said "You didn't heal me, I'm not paying" and the Medic had no way of proving any healing was actually done? What if they had no idea in the first place (the entire time they were "healing") that the healing was actually working, without total blind faith in their customer's word?
How would an Image Designer like it if their "interface" was non-existant. No indication of what you're doing. You just started the ID, and waited (with a stopwatch) for ohhh, maybe 3 minutes, maybe 5 minutes, maybe 8, maybe 10 minutes, and then told the person to "/stopID" and then, only then, the customer and only the customer would know if the changes worked, and what effect the changes had on their avatar. Maybe the stat migration would work, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe all the avatar changes would work, maybe it wouldn't.
Customer: "Oh, my hair and eyes changed, but notmy muscle mass."
ID: "You'll have to wait42 minutes now before we can try this all over again. Maybe it'll work then."
-OR-
Customer (lying): "Nothing changed, stats didn't migrate, give me my money back."
(ID has no proof the changes did or didn't work)
ID (grumbles): "OK, sorry."
The Devs are seemingly ignorant to this particular problem for us Musicians. We can't see a secondary stat! How do we even know if our "Master" ability to mind secondary buff even works? Blind faith in the customer, are you kidding me? Here I was, all hoping to see this problem finally dealt with or at least addressed, and it finally got to the 19 questions post by Thunderheart. And what do we get?
"You can see if you're buffed by checking your stat sheet or looking in the buff window for the buff icon."
Yeah - the recipient of the buff can, but WE can't - the Musician that's doing thebuffing! We have no proof that we've done anythinguseful with our time that we're supposedly "buffing." How was this question so ignorantly misinterpreted? Seems pretty straightforward to me. Heck even NewJedi, the Musician Correspondent, tried desperately to get the Devs to get a real answer, not whatever we ended up (which personally, I felt was insulting. Of course I know how our customers can tell if they're Musician buffed. We have to tell em how to check the buff almost everytime we buff, because people think it didn't work all the time. Also, since we can't self-buff, we have to get Musician buffed by other Master Musicians - so yeah, we know how our customers can tell if they're buffed).
TheNarcis wrote:
While I am not against a rewards system for folks, that just stabs us long time Beta Veterans in the back. I remember when most of us in Beta that worked really really hard and spent almost 100 hours a week on this game going to work on 2 hours sleep asked about "rewards". And the community stabbed us in the back and said it wouldnt be right because it would make us look more special than them. What makes this situation any different?
/sarcasticWhat are you complaining about?Allof us who spent so much of our time beta testing gota really nice listing on one of two web pages for all our effort. Isn't that enough? We can almost find our own name within five minutes of squinting, eyestrain, and Asperin.
I guess now we will get some goodies though. Our time is due. And we only have to share them with everyone else that's played more that two months!
Bitter? Me? Nah...
-----
Wolfschadowe
Yeah, I know I don't post much, but I'd swear that number keeps getting reset.
It would actually, but the economy would suffer. Don't think of it in terms of how many items you can make as a player, but rather, how many items all players can make. With only a few thousand playersper server,any player can manufacture enough several thousand items, thus making enough items for eveyone on a server. This creates a situation where the players who are part of the most efficient crafting PA's can saturate a market all by themselves and completely squeeze out most other crafters. If you couple this with that same crafter's ability to get the best possible resources at any given time, it is very easy for a a clever crafter to get the best materials and saturate the market with the best items and make it too difficult for anyone else to try and sell their goods.
To all those Naysayers who are saying it's too late, this won't help there is a way round it etc. I think you are failing to read between the lines. The Devs obviously know that the ability to store as much as you like is breaking the economy. What you are missing is that they obviously intend to stop lot-swaping, stop people using vendors as free storage and force those hoarders who have enough of teh best resources available 2 months ago to last them another year or so to destory / lose lots of it and only keep what they can use. In the long run this will eliminate much of the dominancy fo the millionaire crafters who so dominate the economy.
And no this is not realistic, but it is necessary in the real world businesses are there to make money, in SWG crafting is there for fun and if new crafters can't have fun then they won't craft.
In simple Economics Terms.
If a shopkeeper could order 500 trucks of oranges and put them in a closet and they would never go bad. he could keep his store Stocked with Cheap (he bought in bulk) and spend more time not running around stocking shelves.
so basically they want crafters making items , but making batch runs.
Jedi crap is only +16, and SEA prices have been rising to ridiculous levels since the borgle bat cave lootbox was fixed. 14 point crafters will only reinforce the anti-newbie bias inherent to all crafting professions. The rich get richer, and everyone else gets screwed.
Meplorium wrote:
Actually if you do the math, the difference between 10 and 12 is more than 12 and 14, 120% and 117%. So the difference between a 12 point and a 14 point isn't so bad and 12 points can still compete, but the difference between 10 and 14 is quite big. This gives crafting a more epic quest feel to become the best crafter out there rather than just grinding out a profession. It now requires doing small time stuff at 10 points, doing the jedi quests up to 12, making more money to again buy the skill tapes for 14. The end game isn't at the master level, which is great. This game shouldn't be too simple and the goal of becoming the best should never be stepped upon. If so you turn a goal driven game to one of stupid boredom by moving 40 crates from the output hopper to the input hopper,you won't get renewed subscriptions that way.
The order there is a bit off. You grind out the profession, 10 points, do a few quests to get 12,(which are hopefully are fun, but I won't say they are or aren't as I haven't done them personally, neither has anyone else) and then work as a crafter. Get to know the trait and build up that resource library. Once enough money has been made, start collecting SEAs.
I know a number of crafters with only 10 points that are doing very well. This additude that only a select few are in control of the market is very wrong. You get that idea if you read the trade forums, but most people do not read and hence most business does not take place on the forums. There are even mircoeconomic environments in the server were prices can be much different than the rest of the server. Seen it happen. Prices vary a lot and no one has visited every vendor there is to see.
Extra experimentation points are great, but they do not make or break the crafter.
Pootian wrote:
Thanks for the report! Sounds as if most people's questions have been answered pretty well.
Hehe, yes they were all give the answer 'No' or we will work on that after JTL. Basically expect no help until after JTL. Even thou we have been waiting for a year for most of these issues.