Merchant Archive
Thread: Egg Throwing debate on Monopolies
The fact that all players want the exact same "configuration" on thair weapons is what makes it encourage monopolies more so then any vendor related buissnes.
I bet Styker could have easily sold the weapons in bulk to resellers and still have had the same effect, the product would just have been more expensive for he end user.
SoE have to decide what role crafters should have. Weather they should be artist like, where each product is different made specifically for the end user. On the other hand, weather the crafters should be more big business like, and mass-produce generic goods for the masses.
This is desisted in the crafting system, a schematic that requires factory identical components is encouraging the crafter to make factory runs of them, and so does critical failures and bad experimentation results.
Tarnak_Archvold wrote:
I disagree that unlimited vendor space is an important fact in encouraging monopolies. I am a weapon smith as well, and lately all custom orders ate along the lines of "max out the damage, and I do not care about ham, I will be buffed". Adv stocks experimented for damage, and advanced scopes experimented for range is asked even on carabineers.
The fact that all players want the exact same "configuration" on thair weapons is what makes it encourage monopolies more so then any vendor related buissnes.
I bet Styker could have easily sold the weapons in bulk to resellers and still have had the same effect, the product would just have been more expensive for he end user.
SoE have to decide what role crafters should have. Weather they should be artist like, where each product is different made specifically for the end user. On the other hand, weather the crafters should be more big business like, and mass-produce generic goods for the masses.
This is desisted in the crafting system, a schematic that requires factory identical components is encouraging the crafter to make factory runs of them, and so does critical failures and bad experimentation results.
I am sorry, how does the "exact same" configuration have anything to do with discounting my statement?
If I wanted to drive you out of business, I simply load up a vendor with your 'exact configuration' weapons make my prices 1/4 of your prices ... and since I put 10k weapons on there, I don't have to worry about selling out of them.
You see, you missed that point ... if I could only put a few hundred weapons, somebody like you might come and clean me out to protect your business, or another business person do the same. But it's quite another story when you are talking 4 or 5 vendors all with 10k weapons listed on them.
Having Unlimited storage on vendors can promote monopolies, I have shown that to be true, and you have shown nothing otherwise.
As far as your "Styker Probably Statement" ... I already covered that, and I could go into great depths on what he was going to do and what not, but the reality is that it would have been much, much harder without having unlimited storage.Limited storage is a discouragement to monopolies.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:You see, you missed that point ... if I could only put a few hundred weapons, somebody like you might come and clean me out to protect your business, or another business person do the same. But it's quite another story when you are talking 4 or 5 vendors all with 10k weapons listed on them.
Having Unlimited storage on vendors can promote monopolies, I have shown that to be true, and you have shown nothing otherwise.
As far as your "Styker Probably Statement" ... I already covered that, and I could go into great depths on what he was going to do and what not, but the reality is that it would have been much, much harder without having unlimited storage. Limited storage is a discouragement to monopolies.
If weapons could not be mass produced for a broad very marked, then the "load 10k weapon up on a vendor" would not be feasible. You would have to make 10K of every possible configuration, and if the different configurations were varied enough, there would always be a nice you had not filled yet.
Take tailoring goods, if a jacket using 2 colours, each colour with 100 different selectionposibilitys, the jacket would have 10k different configurations. You could make say 100 of each configuration but that would be 1M jackets of that type, and that would leave all the other types. Whit this many configurations, the only way to get what you wand is by a custom order, and NO player no mater how productive could fill out custom orders for 70% of a galaxie.
If factories was removed, you would also not be able to make 10k weapons, again the vendor storage is only a problem because the rest of the system is geared throe words mass production.
The vendors are only an issue because it is the end of a long line of game features, that promote mass production. Saying it is the cause of monopolies is like saying that the ground is the cause of death for someone jumping of a 20-storey building. If the building had only been 1 storey high, death would have been mush more unlikely.
I think a lot of the changing that needs to happen is simply the expectation of the player. I know mine will have to change. I have a modest bank account, and I have not crafted anything out of need for credits in several months. I run a resource business, solo, and it provides for me. I'm probbaly still small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, having never broken 30 million, but I have plenty to do with what I wish. I have been spoiled. The "work" I put into the business is tedious, and a full maintenance/pickup run takes about 7 hours once every 5 days or so, but for that work I get a nice income. I have 52 million units of resources on my personal storage vendor, well over half of them great spawns I have been stashing. If I wished to monopolize the Droid market, it wouldn't take but a week to get things in place. I *could* do it, but I have no wish to. Even if I were broke, I wouldn't do it. But I bet there are those out there that would.
It wold tae a duanting amount of work to store 52 million units of resources in homes. Thats well over 800 stacks of stuff (since they are not all in 100k stacks), and then if you add component crates, well, we're looking at another 300 storage needed minimum. Thats a lot of homes to run between when I need stuff. But as I've said before, the dedicated people with a goal in mind will still be able to do it. They will just cross-server lot swap homes.
Yes, unlimited vendor storage make monopolies *easier*. It seems to me that SOE needs to start to work on players expectations and soften the blow. The combat balance will be a big enough shock to the game.
LonelyGhost wrote:
It wold tae a duanting amount of work to store 52 million units of resources in homes. Thats well over 800 stacks of stuff (since they are not all in 100k stacks), and then if you add component crates, well, we're looking at another 300 storage needed minimum. Thats a lot of homes to run between when I need stuff. But as I've said before, the dedicated people with a goal in mind will still be able to do it. They will just cross-server lot swap homes.
Yes, unlimited vendor storage make monopolies *easier*. It seems to me that SOE needs to start to work on players expectations and soften the blow. The combat balance will be a big enough shock to the game.
Now imaging they find a way to stop lot-swapping, and limit the use of vendors for storage in some way, assuming you want a house and some harvesters,you are going to have a maximum of 660 spaces to store stuff, including3 factories, 1 house, your bank and inventory. Would you not be storing signifcantly less of the stuff you are currently storing, and would this not make it much harder for you to establish a monopoly of any sort.
Speed of production is a good thing, but with limited storage speedy production is not going to create a monopoly.
SeaRaptor wrote:
Storage has long been an issue for the weaponsmith community, as we have the most extreme resource requirements in the game. I am mystified as to why SOE thinks that vendor item caps will help their database problem, because as cross-server lot trades are in effect, there is nothing that SOE can do to prevent us from stockpiling materials. They can keep massive amounts of them out of "storage vendors", I suppose, but I think that attempting to sell us this vendor change for this reason is a joke. The only way to prevent long-term stockpiling of materials from going on is to find a way to disable cross-server lot swaps... and I think that would be a disaster of gargantuan proportions for so many crafters that the economies of many servers would collapse. If they eased them out somehow, yes. But going cold turkey on them would be a mistake.
Being a long-term master crafter in SWG is such an immense amount of work and frustration already, it is baffling to me why SOE continues to look for ways to make it even more difficult and more painful instead of the opposite. SOE may want every person who picks up a crafting tool to suceed instantly, but the reality is that the IBMs and Microsofts of the SWG world will always out-sell and out-class the Mom and Pop fly-by-night establishments. SOE needs to be encouraging the pillars of their player run economy to continue to play and craft by making their lives easier, rather than implementing changes that cause wholesale turnover in the various crafting markets that make it impossible for players to find quality crafted goods on demand.
The long-term crafter should have some inherent advantages and benefits of having stuck with his profession, such as stockpiles of high-quality materials and thefactory capacity to provide well-stocked vendors. SOE is seemingly seeking to remove some of these benefits through various means, and I believe that to be a mistake.
They don't want new crafters to be as good as experienced long term masters, I doubt anyone expects that, but the advantages of being a long term master, such as knowing exactly what to do to make your product the best, having a loyal customer base, owning high quality resources (in reasonable amounts not multiple millions of units) will always exist.
What they are seeking to remove is the way that long tem players hoard so much of the best resources and produce so much stock that everyone can get top quality products of any type, on demand, for very reasonable prices.
With only 50 storage slots dedicated to storing resources you can easily store enough resourses to make, for example, 400 suits of armour (200 composite, 200 ubese). Assuming that using factory hoppers for storing resources and components is legitimate then on a single set of 10 lots with 5 harvesters you have room for a medium house (150) 3 factories (300) your inventory and backpack (110) and the bank (100) I make that 660 storage slots. Leave 100 slots for furniture and 100 slots for personal stuff that leaves you with 460 storage slots. Enough room to store the materials for several thousand suits of armour.
Great thread.
Monopoly power is possible in the crafting market given enough time (at last for craftable tems where resource qualty matters), for all of the reasons stated. If I can stockpile unlimited supplies of resources, than given enough time, I can guarantee that I have better resources than anyone else. If I can harvest enough, eventually my competitors will run out of most of the "best ever" spawns.There stillwill besome pricing limit on how much I can charge for an item before someone will pay significantly less for an item that is "almost as good", but basically I control the high-end market. Reducing stockpiling would lead to a system much more in flux, where new entrants can gain a foothold more quickly against establshed competitors.
I'm not convinced that monopoly power is possibl n the resource market. In this case, everyone is on a compltly equal footing. If we take the power market, as an example, if my local power monopoly charges too much for power, I can begin to harvest my own. I have down my own set of calclations and for me, if I can sell resources at 4 cpu, than power at 2 cpu is worthit to me on a pure profit basis (and worth a bit more due to convenience).
The same applies to other resources. As a doctor crafter, if I can sell product at 10 cpu, then it is worth buying resources if they cost 5 cpu or under. As soon as the local resource monopoly charges more, I will shut down some factories and start harvesting more myself. I will maximize the profits from my true limitied resource (lots) however I can.
In essence, the cap on the price of any resource (power or otherwise) is determined by the opportunity cost of using that lot for something else (a factory, a regular harvester, etc). To some extent, this also sets the floor on the price of my crafted items - if I can't sell finished goods for 10 cpu, but I can sell resources for 5 cpu, I'd be better off using my lots for harvesting instead of factories. Of course cross-server lot swaps (which I don't participate in) change the economic equation.
The difference between the crafting and resource market is that there is some barrier to entry for the former and none for the latter.
lisasdarren wrote:
Why would this make the economy collapse? Lots of people are not playing the game the way it was intended, which in my book means they are cheating. So some suppliers wouldn't be able to produce as much stuff, the best items will become rarer etc. this won't kill the game.
Why exactly should everyone be able to get the best goods on demand? is there a reason why the less rich or newer players can't use lower quality crafted goods? Whats wrong with a fighter aiming to one day be able to afford a set of composite armour, working towards that goal rather than being able to pick up the great quality stuff almost straight away?
What they are seeking to remove is the way that long tem players hoard so much of the best resources and produce so much stock that everyone can get top quality products of any type, on demand, for very reasonable prices.
If this is true, it is quite possibly the dumbest thing they could be doing. One of the signs of a healthy economy -- such as that of the US or UK or Canada -- is an abundance of quality goods at a reasonable price. Why on Earth would they want to weaken the economy of the game by destroying that? If the above statement is true, then every non-crafter in the game should be screaming bloody murder, because they are about to be thrust back into the early days of every server where nothing was available and if it was a master-level item it was obscenely expensive.
Songe wrote:
Good post Hero... But even with an item limit, if the crafter can log on 4 times a day to make sure the vendor is stocked, won't it be the same thing?
Of course ... although if you had a vendor on 4 different planets the downtime due to travel might be prohibitive.
Overall though the Dev's are looking to discourage several activities, and one of them is monopolies ... the vendor limit does, on one level, discourage that activity. It's not a *solution* for the reality is that BER13 harvestors and static lot swap harvestor fields do more to promote monopolies then unlimited vendors, but limited vendors is just one more "discouragement" against monopolies.
Why shouldn't monopolies exist in SWG? As it is, they are impossible, because as someone mentioned, you can't 'own' rights to ideas in SWG, anyone can get/make anything. So if some have been around longer and have stockpiled resources, what exactly is the problem with that? That is their right as someone who has been around for a while and done their homework and drudgery to get those stockpiles. Should they then be forced to give them up? or share them with newbies? I should think not.
I predict that this game is going to disappear within a year or two. People can only play soooo long without long term character growth, and as it is now, with the general game design that is in place, there is no growth. You hit master and you are done. You are as good as everyone else. That gets boring after a while. How often can you solo a krayt or build the best weapon/armor or stock vendors until you get tired of it and go find a game that if you do those things you actually get something more permanent than an item or credits. And it seems with changes designed to limit monopolies and bring all the professions more in line with each other and jedi being the ultra cool super duper special thing to be, that all they really want to do is make carbon copies of everyone. Seems sad.
gah. sorry. that was a ramble, but listening to some of these people speak about how monopolies are bad and everyone should be the same is just depressing. No one should be able to start playing today and in a week be as good as I am. Call me elitist, call me whatever, it is bad planning on the DEVs part to make it so that there are no long term benefits to having played for years and years.
If SoE wand new master crafter in a profession be even remotely competitive with long time masters, then they should make have fewer named resources, It is the named resources that takes so long to get good versions of, and it is because it takes so long that that crafters horde them in insane amounts.
If SoE wand the best quality products to be more rear and expensive, they should reduce how many could be made. Say my making so that all factory produced items have cap on thair max stats, no mater how good resources was used (say 50-60% max stats). Then all the high quality resources would have to be hand made. That would make them a limited product and that would make the available only to the rich or well connected, with out making the cheaper generic weapon less available and overly expensive.