Merchant Archive
Thread: Egg Throwing debate on Monopolies
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LonelyGhost
Thu Jun 03, 2004 12:54 am
#27
I think it's important that we not forget the principle of "supply and demand". If Soe were to be so stupid as to find a way to delete all those cross-swapped homes, then the ones hardest hit would be the big businesses. I too would leave that profession, and I would seriously consider leaving the game. The crafting is, for me, the more interesting thing to do in SWG. I'm not very interested in combat and PvP. Its the economic and crafting game that gets me logged in every day.
So if you have a lot of long-term masters droping, and those uber weapons and armor become scarse, it is logical to assume prices will go up. Drastically. I will admit freely that if I were the only one who couldbeat the standard "best" T-21 or Detonation droid by 20% or better, I would charge a significant premium for it. The demand would be high enough that they would still sell.
I really dont fear monopolies in this game. What I fear is the massive earning potential many players have. 20k mission that take 10 minutes to do if you are the right combat profession. And I'm sure there are ways of making more that I dont know about. The amount of credits available to every player makes this issue stand out. Sad as it seems, I expect them to put schematics back to 100. I wouldn't be suprised to see a significant increase in maint rates too.
Numen
Fri Jun 04, 2004 1:13 pm
#28
lisasdarren wrote:
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.
Assuming they actually did that, I think a lot of crafters would stop crafting. When storage limits how I can craft, that is one annoyance I will not deal with. If I could not even keep my vendor stocked, could never get more than 500k of a certain resources, crafting just wouldn't be worth it.
Going back to the Stry'ker analogy. First I will say he didn't have a monopoly. At the time he left there were at least 3 well known smiths that produced the same weapons. The one thing his business did do was cause an increase in resources across the board. He needed to offer 4-5cpu just to be assured he would get the amounts he wanted. 4-5cpu is nothing compared to the markup on almost all weapons, so I don't see why other smiths couldn't offer more or the same amount.
A monopoly isn't possible in this game just because it will never be possible for one crafter to corner the market on any item unless the devs make it possible. Every item is craftable. Any person can go mind any resources they want. It is possible to have a monopoly on the best items, but unless people are willing to pay huge prices for a small increase there is no bonus to having a monopoly.
SeaRaptor
Wed Jun 09, 2004 9:33 pm
#29
I was sorry to see this topic die out as quickly as it did, as I believe that the concept of the in-game monopoly is one of the things that drives the developers to make some of the decisions they do regarding the economy and merchant changes/fixes.
Anyone else have thoughts to share?
Cafa
Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:22 am
#30
In large part, though, the people crying for the end of successful large-scale crafters are only hurting themselves. They just do not want to admit it.
When the only argument you have is to let the "little guy" compete then you are without cause. I was once the "little guy". I started off with NOTHING, went architect in Oct 2003 and have become the largest supplier of deeds on Tempest as far as I can tell. It's not a title I often enjoy, and I often log in on other family accounts just to have some peace.
Felton Kel, a long time friend and someone I deeply admire, does not do custom orders. He leaves that area of the game to people who really specialize. Also, I assume, it gains him some sanity.
Casual players got a chance in hell of becoming the best at anything in this game to do with crafting professions. There's too much research, resource gathering and relationship building necessary to truly become successful. The game was set up that way and blaming "successful" people for the game's woes is pretty piss poor. It definitely shows the caliber of the developers when they allow TH to make statements like this.
Fivo Asia
JeCy
Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:36 am
#31
To me the whole idea of limiting the number of items on a vendor is insane.
Im part of a huge player city. we have tons of crafters. 2 armorers 5 chefs, 5 docs, 1 combat medic, 3 architects, 4 droid engineers, 8 aritsans, 2 weapons smiths, 2 bio's
We try to have the best vendors in the galaxie We sell millions and millions a week combined and we are constantly restocking. Still we can never find time to make stim e's, pet stim d's many foods.. custom armor. all sorts of stuff gets missed or sold out in record times. We have all these crafters and still can not keep up with the galaxie demand there are a few other cityies just like us and they all have the same story. I and many other crafters get compliments all the time,, wow i cant belive you have survey tools.. or WOW fireworks.. on a armor vendor no less..Ive reposted some stuff for 4 months cause it doesnt sell but eventually will,, obviously i dont have a monopoly,, or wait i do,, im the only crafter in the galaxie that had the item !!
The only thing that is going to happen if they limit vendors to a certain # of items to stop thre so called monopolies, People are going to quit.. Period.. It will also kill any low lvl item being able to be bought by anyone with out custom orders.. No more food singels, spice, meds, amor parts, intsrements, power up singles,, small blocks of reosrces,, ext i know about half the crafters in our city that will flat out quit all together if this is implemented what about a tailor vendor,, as it is its hard enough to find a stocked one,, and we all dont want to hang out at night making custom orders,, a 3-4 hours crafting session and restocking a vendor to bring it upto 1000 items and i still hit 1000+ item tailor vendors and i have to settle of find one and get a custom order
I just opend up a new store selling all newbie stuff on one vendor.. i own 1 other store with 1 vendor, selling amror, and some misc items, like power ups, and fireworks, and 1 cantina with 4 vendors purely for looks, but i sell resorces, housing harvesters, high end sliced items, food, droids, pets. all on seperate vendors. names to look like Npc's not Joe shmoes sliced armor...
Now this store i opend with one vendor
10each of the lower level weapons.
power ups creates + singels
grenades, crates + singels
Food, crates Pluss singles
Armor to start 10 suits of mabari and 10 suits of chiten
harvesters,, personals,, 10 each
meds, b's singles
wound packs, b's singles
Clothing,, a small vareity to get you outta newbie gear..
spice,, every gotta have there daily moun
some resroces,, cheap blocks of 500-1000
crafting tools, servey tools,
mounts lvl 10's
vehilces,, a few this is a newbie vendor they cant usally aford much
Most of the items on this vendor are under 1k and 98% are under 4k.. cheaper than you get get on the bazzarIve seen crapy cdefs with 200 durra left on um for 5k.. and people buy um cuase they cant find a vendoe selling any let alone a good oneand better quaility..
I say this is not a monopoly,, or wait it is,, im the only selling 95% of this stuff.. Im not getting rich on it,, im selling maybe 100-200k a day,, i could make that selling armor or droids no porblem. this store is all about helping the new guy,., I know im not out there steeling someone else bussiness cuase no one else does it.. You think i would use my 6 vendors just to open this same store and sell food singels for 200c a peice??? NO F'n way i would delete only the items that sold ever day as would every one else,, you wont find speicalty stores,, you will find every one in the galaxie selling the same Crap,,
no one will make survey food to sell maybe a 10 units a month,
no one will make jawa beer,,
no one will sell crafting tools on there vendor,,
no one will make personal harvesters when houses and heavy, medium harvesters sell for much more
What about the non marksmen that needs a good CDEF you think anyone will stock um?? i sell maybe 4 a month,, bye bye CDEF's
item limits will break the game economy way faster than its going to help the little guys, and piss off tons of people in the process. I spend tons of hours ever week mining and gather stuff to make the best stuff i can and have the best stocked vendors i can.. my new store on this one vendor is me and 5 other crafters working together to help the newbi market,, 5 masters helping the little guy,, this would not be possible with item limits,, we all have 6 vnedors,, and 10's of 1000;'s of items between us and not a day goes by i dont send somone to another city, or another merchant cuase someone needs something we DONT have...
Sure you could call our city a monopoly,, or you could call us what we really are,, Dedicated crafters, who bust our asses to serve the galaxie... atm after opening up this new newbie store,, the monopoly of me has 1.5 million credits,, and i bust my ass 40+ hours a week and thats not even being honest....cuase i dont ever keep track
this newbie store has been the most fun i have had in months cuase everyone is fresh and not jadded by the tons of bad decistions that have been made. i dont see many people ever bending over backwards to help out others,,but there are some taht do.. soo what if someone wants to have a med vendor with 1000 crates of stims on it... i know im not traveling across 2 planet hops to get to it,, ill go next door and buy one,,and tons of other people feel the same way,.. I know the girl in our city that puts up 200-300 suits of armor a week isnt gonna care about this nerf cause all the stuff is in packs,, 100 suits of armor is fat cash,, she only sells that much cuase there is only a few people in the entire galaxie that makes qauntiy and quality..
Do i want to make armor like she does,, and make tons of money,, No i make just as good as stuff as her and could compete, but i like my quirky little market selling everything and anything i can get for cheap and sell for a sllight profit. Ill stick to making my custom armor for 1-2 orders and make due with what i make on everything else...
You want a bunch of hack crafters selling 100 items be my guest,, ill be cancling my acc the day that goes into effect.. Or maybe all of us will just be jedi and run around saying
Im the L337 You have been PWN"D !!!
Je'Cy Dax, Master Merchant, I hope to stay that way
Songe
Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:03 pm
#32
Yeah I have some thoughts about it... How exactly did they think that the crafting changes they wanted to implement were going to stop monopolies, when it was just making the difference bigger between the very good crafters and the others? Just another proof that SoE prolly doesn'tgive usthe good reasons to explain a change...
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