Merchant Archive
Thread: SOE: Set Minumum Prices
Simple Idea, 2 parts.
1. New Resource Attribute: Base Value
Similar in function and design as the familiar 'Overall Quality' and 'Decay Resistance' attributes. Calculated by the following formula,
(Total value of all resource attributes + 2*Overall Quality) / Number of Attributes
2. Base Item Value
- For stacks of resources, the BIV is simple BV*Quantity of resource.
- For crafted items, BIV = (BV*Quantity of resource) for every resource used to craft the item
The Base Item Value would then be attached to the crafted itemfor use with the Bazaar and Personal Vendors. BIV for resource stacks would be calculated 'on the fly'. When a player clicks on an item using the sales screen, now a base credit value would apear in the price screen.This value may be increased without measure or decreased by a maximum of 10%.
Idea Spin Offs:
- Smugglers could slice the BIV of crafted items to be higher or lower.
- Merchants could lower prices by 12 to 20%
- Miners, if the class were brought back, could alter the BV of resources
- Consumers could compair the quality of their items with eachother, thus creating desire to replace sub par items.
Uhhh, while this system might indeed be implementable - this is supposed to be a player driven economy. That's like the core theory of the system.
Back in beta I recommended there be gatekeepers at the resource level. What miners/harvesters mined would sell to them (NPCs concentrating resources) and be resold to crafters. While not completely true to the player driven concept in entirety - it would be player driven as what the NPCs had would be largely determined by what was sold to them.
A system like this could work with THEM, if you added in additional computations for rarity or abundance of a material - or possibilyeven demand (although that is NORMALLY reflected in scarcity).
But even that didn't seem to go over big as a suggestion, primarily because the theory is to have all transactions occur purely between individuals.
Trying to set minimum prices between individuals simply won't work, far too many ways around that.
Gotta disagree with you Falacy. (maybe we should take heed to your name?!?)
Keep the free market economy!!!
(Just fix the vendors, factories and schematics.)
No thanks. I use my time and my credits to obtain the resources and make the items, and I'll charge what I want... I don't need some horribly flawed formula telling my customers "he used crap OQ metal to make this so it's not worth as much" when overall quality has absolutely nothing to do with makinga good melee weapon.
VETO!
I think it sucks that there are folks out there price gouging and I think that it sucks that there are folks out there driving respectable merchants out of business, but that's the nature of the beast. KEEP the Free Market....if we get that regulation-ball rolling, it will spin out of control.
aria
silly communists....
Wow, I'm surprised by the avid support of the current system many of you have expressed. As such, I'd like to offer into the fray a few additional thoughts on my original post.
- Quite correct, Overall Quality oten has no bearing on craft quality. However, it is the overall quality of the resource. I didn't make that so
- No minimum price would be set for player to player trades.
- This system would truly empower mechants, as they would be the only ones who could give you an amazing deal on items
- BIV would be set in such a way that it would not account for time spent working on the items. As such, many, many people would always charge higher than BIV. Having the BIV simply lessens the effectiveness of market whores, which this 'level playing field' game does not desire.
I understand the desire to maintain a player based economy, but quite simply, the factors in effect in the current gaming system are not effective enough to maintain a steady-state economy. This is largely due to the fact money is easy to come by in the game. The combination of easy money and exceedingly low prices creates a conundrom of issues regarding game play quality, which is something SOE likes to remain on top of.
We pay to play this game. This is why SOE and Lucas Arts worked very hard to design a 'fail free' game, meaning that everyone from the power gamer to the casual player will have the opertunity for success in their chosen field. I don't understand why some people can not get that throughtheir heads.
Setting a base price for items, based on the quality of their components as I have suggested, would help SOE ensure that they keep casual players despite how the power gamers have been attempting to drive them out of their profession of choice. No paying customer should be forced by others to get fedup with their product and have no real choice but to get rid of their product or to use the product in a manner that they did not intend and do not truly desire. SOE understands this and it is one of their prime concerns, which is why I have taken the time to help them out by suggesting this pricing system. All though my suggestion may not be perfect, it is a solid effort at creating balance without removing game play quality.
Futhermore, I often wonder what part of 'Star Wars Galaxies' many people confuse with reality or 'real life'? It's not real life, it is a game. At that, it is not a perfect gaming system. It does need measures in place to level the playing field for all paying customers. It does not need limitations upon what a paying customer can get with her money, to suit the needs of power gamers.
Disclaimer: I am a power gamer. I play many, many hours each week. I do not have money troubles. I also do not willingly or knowingly create money troubles for other players, because I am a responsible human being.
When i make crafting stations, the ONLY thing that matters for effectiveness (since there's no decay for it) and I mean the ONLY thing is Conductivity.
I will pay a LOT more for a resources that has 999 or 1k Con than i will for 1k OQ if what I'm crafting is crafting stations. But the architect next door will pay LOTS for the 1k OQ for his components and won't give a fig about the Con. Average the qualities of each attribute doesn't cut it either. There's no good way of pricing in this manner unless the system asks you what you plan to craft with the resource, and of course, that's just silly.
aside from that...i'm sure many of us are not really happy with the current system (skewed by some PA's and skewed by grinder's, uxp seekers,etc)...but would rather stick with a free-economy rather than a socialistic one.
No bloody way.
This is a free market, player driven economy. There should at NO time be artificial economic enhancements OR controls placed on and end resource. The bare minimum has already been established through vendor, housing, and harvester maintenance fees.
A simple solution to that issue, Kissalicious, would be to change the wieghting in the formula I suggested from doubling the Overall Quality to doubling the highest attribute value of the resource. This actually makes better sense anyhow, as it would play nicely into the hands of the current crafting system.
Why wieght the average value at all? Because it lessens the possiblity of resources having very close Base Values.
It makes zero sense to "set" a value for anything.
Honestly though, its a moot point anyway. The entire economic system would fall into a state of collapse if you attempted to alter something so fundamental to it structure as the baser resources.
We are too far along in the game to make a change this drastic to the system. The game economy would not recover for a very long time. Small countries have failed over less.
You know, Kissalicious, me and my seven professions will have to agree with you. I am far too self sufficient and though that may be my greatest strength in my Player Association, I think it isn't quite right.
Currently, I have the following, which allows me to be good in battle, even PvP, heal myself in battle, craft all artisan items, craft decent medical gear, use scouting skills, craft basic scouting items,craft droids, and have mulitple vendors and a bazaar discount... with 14 points to spare.
Master Artisan
Novice Droid Engineer 0 0 0 1
Novice Marskman 1 1 4 4
Novice Carbineer 1 0 0 0
Novice Medic 3 1 1 3
Novice Merchant 0 1 3 0
Novice Scout 4 0 2 0
I may not be remembering all of those exactly, but it's close. Basicly, I don't need anyone else, aside from a couple weaponsmith and architect items on the horizon. However, to reach my goal of Master Carbineer, Master Droid Engineer, and Master Artisan, that will take up all of my points. This means no mroe fast movent, no more self healing in battle, no more vendor bonuses, etc. I think that is a fair trade off to maintain excelent battle ability with a character who can craft....
Maybe we'll see all of these issue work themselves out when more people advance their specialization.
What you seem to have missed is that there are already minimum price drivers in the game
They're called Maintainence fees
Maint fees on wind generators (for example) are quite high (relative to personal extractors for example) this creates a base price at which the power should be sold (excluding other factors for a moment) or should be passed on.
Maint fees on harvesters subsequently create a base price for the raw material (modified by the how much the power 'cost')
Discounting tools as a one off investment this create a base price for any item constructed
On top of this you are then left to factor in your time collecting power and resources from Bazaar/harvester/generator your time constructing the item(s), travel expenses (shuttle or off world) and any additional maint fees needed to move the goods (i.e. maint fees on your property and vendor)
Now I'm not suggesting every item made by every player should be calculated in this way (for one thing you dont know until you sell the item how long its going to stay on the vendor in your house so those 2 maint rates cannot be known in advance) and these point fail to take into account any other source of income (such as mission) but they are there to provide an indication on how much goods cost.
Once you look beyond a single item and into long term production some of the otherindicators become clear
Those with generators/harvesters on the best yields have the highest resource-maint ratio and as such can afford to sell there goods cheaper - the side effect is they will spend more maint relocating those installations when resources shift, its possible those people will also incur more travel expenses
Factory maint rates suddenly feature in the calculations, while they allow high volume production high volume transactions often involve a discount which needs to be taken into account.
This is all before we consider the quality of the item (in instances where it matter) while it may cost the same to create 2 Ubese helmets from 2 identical production setups, one made from higher quality materials can command a higher price - what usually happens however is that they both get listed at the same price (because the sellers dont bother to take this into account) and the low quality one will only sell after the high quality one....if at all.
Unfortunately people do not look beyond the costs placed in front of them (i.e. power and maint for harvesters) and unless the material is rare and high value (i.e. Bowcaster iron) we arrive at the famous 3cr. per unit calculation regardless of any other factors (it seems alot of people place no value on their time!). Whats is more unfortunate is that the game is casual-friendly enough to let them get away with it (dont get me wrong I'm a big fan of casual-friendly)
I believe the current system is sound in principle - the problem is that several things are not working and have thrown the system out of balance
1. Missions were paying too much - this allowed players to support unprofitable crafting operations easily
2. Some mission types way to easy (Baz Nitch,standing in Lairs, fighting from camps etc etc) - this allowed alot of cash to be earned to easily/quickly
3. Mineral dupe exploit - this allowed infinte construction of items at no cost other than the persons time (which we have already observed they place not value on) or income on which to run unprofitable crafting operations
4. No current need to cloning or insurance - Given the listed problem with missions this vital counter balance was all the more important, unfortunately its missing
5. Bugged maintainence fees - Accelerated maintainence due to server downtime, factory Maint bug, Merchant vendor maint bug. To be fair some of these should have driven the price ofitems up, oddly it doesnt seem to have done that.