Merchant Archive

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Areriye wrote:

In FF XI, you could choose to craft on the side, if you wished. You could spend time hunting the appropriate materials, then leveling your way through basic armors (that sold well to the lower ranks, something we don't see in crafting profs over here... if you're not master, you can't make anything that is going to sell). You could sell at the auction house (imagine a bazaar with no cap) or you could turn yourself into a vendor and people could buy staright from your inventory.

And this system worked just fine. The only detraction from your combat class was the time you spent gathering materials and crafting.

Well, we arn't playing Final Fantasy, are we? Jsut because you want to go back to your glory days doesn't mean that the rest of us need to be stuck in the Stone Age.

Games are supposed to evolve, not degenerate into some formulaic recipe that always worked in other games. If that were the case, might as well go back to playing Dark Forces I, Wing Commander... or better yet Pong!

SOE wants to make an MMORPG that is richer and more diverse than just "EVERYONE IS A FIGHTER!! EVERYONE IS A CRAFTER!!"Everyone is a rock unto themselves! That was the downfall of AC2. It was boring as hell when everyone was self sufficient. A little interdependency never hurt this game. It wouldn't hurt you to find some.

Over here, the system only encourages a borked economy. When you know a certain percentage of people rely on you to make their business work, you will set your price about where the rich and lazy folks are willing to pay. In a perfect system, sure... interdependance would be fine. But when folks start offering 100 cpu to swallow up all the available wooly hide onyour server or arranging their harvestors so you can't drop your stuff anywhere near a good deposit, etc., it makes one hesitant to want to have to depend on someone else for yet another aspect of your profession.

Hmmm... Either you don't apprecieate the hard work that Rangers put into their profession, or you are being lazy in trying to gather resouces. Remember the early bird gets the worm. You better decide what you want to focus on, because in the real word the specialist will always be better at a specific process then a generalist. Either make gathering resources your primary focus, or put your money where your mouth and and put your vast monitary empire to use by buying the resources like every other good crafter. Don't whine that you cant find resouces, because they are there. They just won't hop into your lap when you need it.

God bless the tailors... they've been a pleasure to work with. But I fear the few available merchants will become greedy like the rangers/scouts, and the costs of using someone's vendor is going to cut deeply into one's profit margin, making elite crafting professions even lessworthwhile to concern myself with.

Hmm...Let's see. Rangers spend hours upon hours to level up in their profession, mostly sitting around alone in their campsite. They can't collecttheir resource unless they are actually actively playing the game. Whereas any non Artisan can plop down a harvester and go to town collecting whatever resources are availible.

You think they don't deserve to increase their prices with what they collect because its too inconvinient to you to buy their wares? I hope that there are Rangers that are looking at this post and writing down your name as a buyer to ban from purchases.

My only hope at this point, being an economics student, is that enough people will take up merchant to fill the demand of vendors... in reality, people will most likely avoid it as merchants are generally considered somewhere below crafting and above politician and image designer on the 'fun' totem pole.

Man, if I were you, I'd sue my profs, because they have taught you the wrong lessons. You need to get some more lessons in MicroEconomics, specifically Supply and Demand.

Nature abhors vacuums. So do economies. If people finda niche that can make their gametime rewarding econmically in the game, they will jump in to gain its benefits. Remember the world is about scarcity: the more goods are percieved to be worth through a drop in supply, the greater the number of suppliers of the goods to the market.

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Balkstar wrote:

Well, we arn't playing Final Fantasy, are we? Jsut because you want to go back to your glory days doesn't mean that the rest of us need to be stuck in the Stone Age.

Games are supposed to evolve,

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Actually, I believe FFXI is a newer game than SWG. That makes your "stone age" analogy kinda incongruous.

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p4Samwise wrote:

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Balkstar wrote:

Well, we arn't playing Final Fantasy, are we? Jsut because you want to go back to your glory days doesn't mean that the rest of us need to be stuck in the Stone Age.

Games are supposed to evolve,

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Actually, I believe FFXI is a newer game than SWG. That makes your "stone age" analogy kinda incongruous.

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My apologies. Concidering the longevity of the line, it was assumed it used many of the economic freaturesof older versions of itself. If it has drastically changed from those versions, then I would be incorrect.

There have been downgrades in economic models with sequels to games. Concider AC1 vs. AC2.