Merchant Archive

> And I am far from certain that master merchants would want to be employees of crafters. The crafters would have it that way. But why would a merchant want an exclusive dealing employee relationship?

I'm not implying that merchants would be subservation to crafters. Not at all. But with the low vendor caps, it will probably destroy the possiblity of a pure merchant.That option will be destroyed, if it ever existed (due to the lack of consignment). Onecrafter could supply everything that amerchant could sell.Soa single merchant can'tin practice work with more than one vendor.

>But it wouldn't make you that person's "employee." Because if another crafter built a better mousetrap and were reliable and more cost-effective, you might shift to that crafter. Heck I would.

Technically, its moreof a contractor relationship, than it is an salaried employee. Certainly, a merchant could buy from me, or anybody else.A single in game 'corporation' could end up with a few crafters, who could more than supply enough goods for many merchants to sell. This organization would still squeeze out smaller crafter/merchants in overall profiablity.As the in game tools are wholly unsuited for resaleing, disparity could increase even more. Groups of trusted individual crafters and vendors will have an even bigger advantage over smallshops than they do now. Who knows though, Atlas may just shrug.

Overall, I can't see this a good thing and its really not going to help new crafters. Everyone who wants to be a Rifleman can, but not everyone can be a successful crafter, the market rules prevent it. So a new equalibrium will eventually be reached, but its not one thats going benefit small inefficient vendors or customers either.

May the force be with you, comrade.

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Kershakk wrote:

Anyone else noticed the hypocritical headless chicken antics that all these changes coming from the devs appear to be? All this talk about prevention of monopolies - yet in the past devs have introduced and attempted to introduce monopoly granting functionality.

First, skill tapes - experimentation skill tapes. The tweaking and hence, introduction of these created the first minor barrier to entry - it wasn't so much as important for single line experimentation but for multiline experimentation it became pretty key. Not everyone can afford the millions of credits that extortionate AFK borgle cave looters were gouging for (and looky there, that who borgle cave camp fest was a debacle to begin with, brought to us by the wisdom of those who allegedly know better....). Still, it wasn't immensely huge, as 10 pointers could still have some leeway with the crafting system.

Second, the attempted experimentation changes, which we fought against because it would have made the gap between 10 and 12 pointers huge. Of course some greedy 12 pointers whined to keep it in, but it was fought by the majority of us, 10, 11, and 12 pointers all, knowing that the introduction would turn those extra two points from minor/semi-important to absolutely critical. They still went ahead and put the changes in for one day and some 12 pointers jumped all over it, stamping out schematics of these new and 'improved' components like candy - we're still under the influences of it today, months later. Once tapes are taken out of the equation, cost of production remains the same between 10 and 12 pointers - so there's no reason why 12 pointers need to keep their prices high. THey can compete pricewise with 10 pointers and have 20-30 more damage on their weapons. Which would people buy if they were priced similarly?

And now again they say they want to stop monopolies but in reality they'll just create more by shaking down the crafter community and leaving only the hard core left standing.

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Skill tapes aren't required to be successful. 10 point and 12 point weaponsmith weapons do the same damage and speed, the difference is in a little lower ham cost and better range multipliers. Not really worth getting in an uproar.

with armorsmiths, yes, going from 10 to 12 points makes a huge difference in triple layered composite. But with everything else, its still fairly similar, the secondary resists will be a little higher and/or lower ham.

90% of crafting is in your resources.

Again, it comes down to this change will cause mork work. The very successful crafters/stores already work hard at this, no reason why they will become unsuccessful. This will just make the people starting up have a harder time.

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Ryche_Mykola wrote:

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Kershakk wrote:

Anyone else noticed the hypocritical headless chicken antics that all these changes coming from the devs appear to be? All this talk about prevention of monopolies - yet in the past devs have introduced and attempted to introduce monopoly granting functionality.

First, skill tapes - experimentation skill tapes. The tweaking and hence, introduction of these created the first minor barrier to entry - it wasn't so much as important for single line experimentation but for multiline experimentation it became pretty key. Not everyone can afford the millions of credits that extortionate AFK borgle cave looters were gouging for (and looky there, that who borgle cave camp fest was a debacle to begin with, brought to us by the wisdom of those who allegedly know better....). Still, it wasn't immensely huge, as 10 pointers could still have some leeway with the crafting system.

Second, the attempted experimentation changes, which we fought against because it would have made the gap between 10 and 12 pointers huge. Of course some greedy 12 pointers whined to keep it in, but it was fought by the majority of us, 10, 11, and 12 pointers all, knowing that the introduction would turn those extra two points from minor/semi-important to absolutely critical. They still went ahead and put the changes in for one day and some 12 pointers jumped all over it, stamping out schematics of these new and 'improved' components like candy - we're still under the influences of it today, months later. Once tapes are taken out of the equation, cost of production remains the same between 10 and 12 pointers - so there's no reason why 12 pointers need to keep their prices high. THey can compete pricewise with 10 pointers and have 20-30 more damage on their weapons. Which would people buy if they were priced similarly?

And now again they say they want to stop monopolies but in reality they'll just create more by shaking down the crafter community and leaving only the hard core left standing.

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Skill tapes aren't required to be successful. 10 point and 12 point weaponsmith weapons do the same damage and speed, the difference is in a little lower ham cost and better range multipliers. Not really worth getting in an uproar.

with armorsmiths, yes, going from 10 to 12 points makes a huge difference in triple layered composite. But with everything else, its still fairly similar, the secondary resists will be a little higher and/or lower ham.

90% of crafting is in your resources.

Again, it comes down to this change will cause mork work. The very successful crafters/stores already work hard at this, no reason why they will become unsuccessful. This will just make the people starting up have a harder time.

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I never said you needed tapes to be successful, either. It was a minor barrier to entry, just a small one, but if you combined it with the proposed changed experimentation changes, it would have suddenly been a much bigger deal. As a 12ptweaponsmith it would not have hit me personally as hard but it still would have affected 12pt vs 10pt smiths to some degree, but it doesn't stop me from being concerned for multiliners such as armoursmiths, chefs, and doctors.

I was just pointing out that they've been attempting to implement what were monopoly powers before and I reckon this change will backfire and result in less operations and hence more sales power to the few that remain.

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Kershakk wrote:

I never said you needed tapes to be successful, either. It was a minor barrier to entry, just a small one, but if you combined it with the proposed changed experimentation changes, it would have suddenly been a much bigger deal. As a 12ptweaponsmith it would not have hit me personally as hard but it still would have affected 12pt vs 10pt smiths to some degree, but it doesn't stop me from being concerned for multiliners such as armoursmiths, chefs, and doctors.

I was just pointing out that they've been attempting to implement what were monopoly powers before and I reckon this change will backfire and result in less operations and hence more sales power to the few that remain.

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K. I totally agree with ya on that change way back to experimentation. that would have totally screwed the 10 point smiths and give 12 pointers an ENORMOUS advantage. I'm very happy they took that out.

Agree with ya on the merchant thing backfiring too. They few crafters that remain are gonna dominate. SOE, 1 step sideways - 2 steps back.

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ElvisTheKing wrote:

Who is John Galt?

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Avair wrote:

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The folks who will consider it a time consuming pain are the present oligopolists.

For those who claim there are no oligopolies,

How many top quality weaponsmiths are there on your server? Docs? Chefs?

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You are confusing successful with the ablility to control or greatly affect prices. There are successful businesses (crafter/merchants) on every server, but they don't have the power to control the prices of items. All business-creatures (men/woman/wookies) want to super successful, a few have the requiste business smarts to do it. To eliminate the top end crafter through collectivist means (ok, pal, we have decided that you are successful enough, you are cut off) is to eliminate the dream of where the other crafters want to get to.

No amount of top end controls on the economy are going to convert a poor business-creature into a succesful one. They will only drive successful ones away (to World of Warcraft, for example). I believe SWG has the created one of the bestmultiplayer economic simulations ever (whether intentional or not), and to aspire to make a controlled socialisteconomy is sadden at worst, and tragic at best.

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I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.

I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..

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Rippen208 wrote:
This sounds like something from the Ayn Rand Institute, or from one of those turn-of-the-20th-century economists. I forget which. Am I close?

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It is very Atlas Shrugged.

In most of the claims of monopolies / oligopolies, I'm also hearing, "let the lesser crafters have a share of the market." Never mind that usually those crafters are where they are because they aren't or can't produce what the market wants. But hey, they're trying their best, so they should get just as much as anyone else, right?

The artist formerly known as Ittov