Merchant Archive
Thread: Rational discussion of the nerf
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TheLadyLillith
Mon Aug 09, 2004 9:08 am
#1
Hello,
Well, I've been on a crusade to stop the devs from implementing something that would be catatrophic to the game. I doubt it works though. So hopefully one of them will read this and understand (a bit) where we crafters are coming from.
1. Economic issues at play (as seen by the Devs).
I understand the the developers do not want all the economic power in the hands of just a few people. As it stands it is almost impossible to be a casual crafter and be successful at it. But I would hazard a guess that it is less because of huge vendor stocks and more because of the resource situation on the servers.Here are a couple of facts I'm not sure if the devs are aware of.
I have been a master Armorsmith for 7 months now and I am just now able to compete with the older smiths on the server. What was holding me back? Resources. It wasn't so much that I couldn't afford them. It was that they didn't spawn in good quality regularly. I had to wait 6 months for all the named and needed resources to spawn in good quality. This (and NOT excess stock) creates a huge gap between New armorsmiths and Old armorsmith. Some people would point to experimentation tapes, but that is not so much of an issue either. You pretty much use the extra points to lower your HAM costs in armor (if you know what you're doing). It's the LONG wait on good resources that causes it to be so very hard braking into armorsmithing market. It's the same way with weaponsmithing, doctor, and chef.A more specific example of this problem from my particular trade are the named and required resources Colat Iron and berylious copper needed to make composite armor. On my server (scylla)it is well known that they generally only spawn in decent quality every 4 months!! Most Armorsmiths quit in frustration before they can see all the good spawns and get all the good resources. These resource spawns make it impossible for a casual player to craft at any decent level. Excess vendor stock doesn't begin to enter into it.
2. What are the problems that these rare resource spawns cause?
One of the most frequent (and I'm guessing undesirable in the Dev's view) side effects of rare named resource spawns is that it FORCES master crafters to stockpile huge amounts of resources when good resources do spawn. We do this because we don't know when the next good spawn will be and we cannot afford to run out of a named rare resource. So when you do get a good spawn of this resource, you must stockpile 500k-1million units of it. And where do these resources (generally) get stored for large crafters? On vendors, thus creating the aforementioned database problems. But honestly, the way the resource spawns are set up, there's no way to be a competitive crafter and get around this. People WANT to compete and craft the best stuff possible. Stockpiling is a requirement to do so under the current system.
3. What would be some better alternatives to severe vendor caps, the devs economic concerns, and the database problem?
A. Increase the amount you can stack resources in to 500k or 1 million. This alone would take a huge strain off the database. It would create less stacks and therefore most merchants would probably take to storing stuff in a house because it would now be possible. Even if a crafter had 70 million units of resources, if it was all in 500k stacks it would fit into a small house. It would be infinitely easier for large crafters to store stuff in a house with 500k stacks of resources than it is to restock a storage vendor every month with resources in 100k stacks. Personally, I would never use a storage vendor again if I had some other way of storing my resources.
B. Make named resources spawn in good qualities more often. Even if they spawned 35% more often this would greatly cut down on stockpiling and make it infinitely easier for new and casual crafters to enjoy that aspect of the game and get into business. Older crafters wouldn't have a monopoly on stuff if new crafters could catch up in a month or two. It doesn't matter if you have a vendor with 50,000 items on it. If more new crafters can get the resources and start crafting sooner, they can compete with the big guy. Another pleasant side affect of more frequent quality spawns would be resourcers would stop trying to charge 8-10cpu for these named resources. TA-DA! Problem solved.
C. If you put a vendor cap into live anyways, please do so at a reasonable level. 700 per vendor at master is not too much to ask. Even at 700 per vendor, most serious crafters with high traffic shops would have to pick up master in order to keep any sort of devent stock. Vendor caps are another step towards discouraging crafter/fighter templates as well. If someone has to eat up 60 skill points (that's about close anyways) to master merchant on top of mastering a crafter class...they won't have much left over to master any decent fighting class. This severely discourage dabbling. I'm not sure if this is the affect SOE desires or not.
D. Get rid of junk loot in the game. Period. Nobody needs a cdef rifle or components that can be crafted at a far superior level. A lot of players dump this crap loot into a house or on a vendor, intending to get rid of it later, and they never do. It just sits there. And honestly, I think there are many people that would just rather not get anything than constantly loot stone knives and reinforced combat staffs. That's just more junk we don't need.
E. Something I would like to see is the number of skill points required to have master merchant reduced. Not every profession should take the same amount of skill points to master. Furthermore, if you limit the amount of items per vendor, it would require an incredible investment of skillpoints to get master merchant just to be able to run your business.
You really shouldn't have to master a second profession just to be able to play your first one (crafter). Crafters can't sell more than 25 items on the bazaar. And there are no safeguards for crafters trying to sell through another master merchant. There is no consignment option on vendors. That leaves crafters to either find a merchant willing to pay them upfront for thier goods (and therefore take on the chance that said goods won't sell) or to trust the merchant to pay them for the goods as they sell. I think you'll agree that neither option is very good.
4. Positive affects of this patch as it stands. (with no tweaking).
A. Getting rid of empty vendors would be a God send. They are, personally, a pet peeve. And I'm sure they're a pet peeve for many other players as well. Also, if you're going to make crafters utilize precious skill points to have a vendor, please get rid of vendors belonging to people that have not invested said skillpoints. These are very good and needed changes coming to merchant. I think most crafters agree with these alterations 100%.
5. Negative affects of the merchant patch as it stands (with no tweaking).
A. The first negative effect will be that it forces all major crafters wth high traffic shops to stock every day. They would also have to run 10-20 schematics every day. There would be no way to make stock up ahead of time because there would be nowhere to put it.
Another side affect of this patch as it stands is that it would also hurt the casual crafter that likes to load the vendor once a week, and then go PVE the rest of the week or just not log in. Again, backstocking so that you don't have to craft every day would be nigh impossible.
B. I would venture that most of your oldschool, dedicated, and quality crafters would quit crafting in disgust. They may not quit the game as they are threatening, but I'm sure it would drive quite a few out of business or to quit. While many people would say, "Yay. Down with the monopolies/big guys," there are just as many that see this as not necessarily a good thing.
The people that have large businesses have spent a lot of time in game with an SOE product developing thier character to this point. Such a severe change would cripple them. Also, all too often, it is these big shops that have worked extensively gathering the best resources and buying thier tapes that have the best quality goods. When you cripple these major crafters, you cripple the quality of goods available on live servers. It may become impossible to get the same quality of good after this patch goes in-especially if our old school crafters quit. Another possible side affect would be that quality goods inflate to a horrendous level because it becomes so hard to store all the quality resources needed to make them.
C. Customer cancellations. I'm not trying to be alarmist here. I can't honestly say how many would cancel thier accounts if this patch went in as currently proposed. However, if quality goods became scarce or terribly inflated, it would greatly reduce how much an average player would enjoy this game. Currently, with so many new MMORPG's on the verge of coming out, this is not a wise tactic. There are too many unknown variables to implement a patch of this severity at this point and time in the game's life.
I apologise in advance for all typos. I'm a bit sleepy this time of day and am genuinely in need of a nap 
I hold out hope that the devs will read this and at least consider what I have written.
Lillith
Master Armorsmith/Master Smuggler
Scylla Server
LVDogma
Tue Aug 10, 2004 1:58 pm
#5
Excellent post. I believe you covered all of my concerns and there is little I can add to what you have stated. This seems to be a good summary of how I feel as well.
EmperoressPalpatine
Tue Aug 10, 2004 3:04 pm
#6
Anyone know how much a factory can hold, and if backpacks count as 1 or 50 in a factory?
Also those long term crafters... well they have dealt with any number of bugs and changes. You think this sort of patch is going to scare them away. Nope. They like their monopolies. It's just going to give them more of a monopoly. The big crafters on our server, tend to stock or atleast log on and check their vendors daily. Those 'big' crafters are the ones who have been playing daily. So they will manage, and it's the new and the casual that will suffer.
Anneke (Princess of Sanctuary)
Dorilys
Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:21 am
#9
Very good post, thanks Lillith.
@Anneke:
Factories can hold up to 100 items in the input hopper. Backpacks count as (number of items in pack)+1 items, although this is not displayed correctly.
Feisen
Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:45 am
#10
You do make some valid points. Personally, I'd love to see resource stacks increased to 500K. That would help me a lot. Make crates hold 100 crafted items each would be helpful, too. Let us combine crates of items with the same serial numbers.
One of my favorite ideas is let us use a lot and some appropriate extra maintenance and let us "upgrade" our houses, so that we can store 100 additional items in one house. As long as you have more lots (up to your full 10) and are willing to pay extra maintenance, you should be able to continue to upgrade the house to hold more. I'd much rather keep my stuff in one place than in several warehouses and holding factories. It would reduce the number of buildings to load, but I'm not sure how that many items in one spot would affect performance. I just like the idea.
I've been thinking about WHY they are implementing this change and the inactive character wipe. I think they are anticipating large numbers of new players when JTL goes live, but also I believe they are anticipating lots of people reaching Force Sensitivity and opening another character slot. The latter will potentially double the number of items on a server as one more character begins to store their stuff.
Whatever they decide, certainly the current vendor limits are too low for serious merchants.
One of my favorite ideas is let us use a lot and some appropriate extra maintenance and let us "upgrade" our houses, so that we can store 100 additional items in one house. As long as you have more lots (up to your full 10) and are willing to pay extra maintenance, you should be able to continue to upgrade the house to hold more. I'd much rather keep my stuff in one place than in several warehouses and holding factories. It would reduce the number of buildings to load, but I'm not sure how that many items in one spot would affect performance. I just like the idea.
I've been thinking about WHY they are implementing this change and the inactive character wipe. I think they are anticipating large numbers of new players when JTL goes live, but also I believe they are anticipating lots of people reaching Force Sensitivity and opening another character slot. The latter will potentially double the number of items on a server as one more character begins to store their stuff.
Whatever they decide, certainly the current vendor limits are too low for serious merchants.
TheLadyLillith
Thu Aug 12, 2004 2:21 am
#11
Feisen wrote:
You do make some valid points. Personally, I'd love to see resource stacks increased to 500K. That would help me a lot. Make crates hold 100 crafted items each would be helpful, too. Let us combine crates of items with the same serial numbers.
One of my favorite ideas is let us use a lot and some appropriate extra maintenance and let us "upgrade" our houses, so that we can store 100 additional items in one house. As long as you have more lots (up to your full 10) and are willing to pay extra maintenance, you should be able to continue to upgrade the house to hold more. I'd much rather keep my stuff in one place than in several warehouses and holding factories. It would reduce the number of buildings to load, but I'm not sure how that many items in one spot would affect performance. I just like the idea.
I've been thinking about WHY they are implementing this change and the inactive character wipe. I think they are anticipating large numbers of new players when JTL goes live, but also I believe they are anticipating lots of people reaching Force Sensitivity and opening another character slot. The latter will potentially double the number of items on a server as one more character begins to store their stuff.
Whatever they decide, certainly the current vendor limits are too low for serious merchants.
I think they're more anticipating a char rush from jtl than the fs thing. Honestly, everyone's hoping JTL will save this game. If it doesn't, I rather think it will be canceled before too long.
There are plenty of things they could do to reduce strain on the database and make it easier for new crafters to compete with the new one. What happened was that they put into testing the first thing that came to mind without much forethought or knowledge of what makes the gaming economy tic.
AND I think there is some manipulation going on. I really do think this was a VERY lowball figure tossed out so when they put out the real number they intend to nerf vendors to, the community would be more likely to accept it. I simply find it very sad that the devs find the need to manipulate people in this manner. Even more disheartening is the fact that thevendor nerf won't solve the concerns of the devs and are only detrimental to the game.
I keep bumping this thread to the top in hopes that people will discuss the issues I have listed and perhaps it will gain the attention of greenmarine or whoever is working on the economic side of SWG.
Lillith
temptres
Thu Aug 12, 2004 3:33 am
#12
Nice post Lillith,
and I agree.
now to get the answer from the devs.
I heard there sopuse to be telling us today what there going to do.
fingers crossed.
temptres
TheLadyLillith
Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:47 pm
#13
have the devs said anything else about the nerf?
Has TH said anything at all?
lillith
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