Smuggler Archive

Recently I posted a thread similar to this on the weaponsmith forum and decided to share some of these thoughts here. The basic petition was to remove sliced items from being sold on a vendor, and here is the gist of it.

The smuggler is becomeing a required adjunct to weaponsmith/armorsmith. Players are demanding that they buy items already sliced. This comes in a two fold reward for the customer. One they do not have to seak out a smuggler to slice the item. Two the player literally gets to choose a slice. A player is more then willing to pay a premium for a well sliced item. That way they can just avoid all risk together. This is a serious question on many fronts. How can a regular smuggler compete. The smuggler/crafter can run the operation like a las vegas casino. They can always manage the odds. Simply be makeing huge freaking runs of these items. They can simply run out a hundred scatter pistols, and price on a slideing scale based on the slice. From my experience the bad slices either get sold at cost meaning the crafter simply charges less for the item then it costs to make. On the other hand more prolific crafters just destroy or throw away the item. The regular smuggler cannot compete against this especially on mass manufactureable items. After all the regular smuggler has no control over slice. Being that in weapons it can either be speed/damage or in armor effectiveness/encumberance. Then to top that off a smuggler has no control over the percentile. So in all fairness most players will choose to use a preslice vendor. Far better to pay more upfront and get a sure thing. You want a plus twenty five damage slice a vendor will have that. The non smuggler crafter likewise suffers in this system. The reason is obvious how can you compete when the customer wants demands that they get an item presliced in the first place.

This phenomena has even more specific drawbacks on both sides of the line in crafter and in the smuggler I will start with the crafter first. With the preslice shops in total bloom this has brought about alot of bad mentalities. That not only reduce the fun of crafting, but also devalue the skill set. First off the slice is being used to cover up poor craft its an obvious result. Players are spending less time and less focus on their respective craft. In other words what is the merit of pushing an item for one more point when that point will be nullified in the slice. Most players cannot tell you what the average base stat of an item is because of this. This is bad a crafters number one focus should be makeing the highest quality item in the first place. This flows into the second problem to control slices crafters are makeing huge runs of items. Huge runs they should never be required to make. If your only selling 10 laser carbines a week you should not be makeing runs of 30 or 40 just to keep a decent number of high slices on a vendor. You should be makeing 10 laser carbines. This in part leads to another bad phenomena poor selection, and the player base knows this. Most shops will carry a paltry selection. When were you last able to go to a masters shop and find chittin or a striker pistol with any degree of regularity. You cannot because the crafter has 40 laser carbines on his vendor where he or she really should only have 10. Finally the craft is reduced to makeing a whole bunch of items. and usually of poor quality. Early in the game players would pride themselves on makeing an item even marginally better. This was the proof of prowess. Plus to boot the crafter would focus more on good selection fair prices, and you might even find the same weapon built 3 different ways for speed for power for accuracy. All in all this phenomena has taken the bonus of actually makeing the best you can. Instead its now based on the randorm slice. A 32 percent slice makes an item good not the original workmanship.

True smugglers on the other hand have an entirely different problem. The smuggler problem is simple who needs a smuggler when everything comes presliced. After all its not like a smuggler can reduce the risk reward ratio. This has basically limited smugglers to sliceing loot weapons. One argument I read said but smugglers charge 20k for a slice, but this in and of itself points to the problem. Smugglers cannot drum up more general sliceing so when their skills are called for they have to charge a high price to cover all the time they are not getting to slice. To add to the woes most smugglers are not getting to enjoy this perk of their profession. Imagine a world where medics could not treat wounds. There is no good reason why dedicated smugglers cannot make a decent liveing off of sliceing. Infact if sliced items were unvendorable there would be more smugglers not less. One can argue of coarse that a smuggler could do bulk orders for non smuggler crafter, but that is still a weak argument seeing as its always cheaper to slice for yourself then to have someone else slice for you.

This phenomena has even farther reaching problems in the game. Problems most players are totally ignorant of. When a crafter feals compelled to be a smuggler or a smuggler feals compelled to be a crafter the end result is cookie cutter templates. A player is really placed in the position of being a pathetic crafter, or a pathetic smuggler on one hand. On the other is to be a full on crafter. This basically results in less combat smugglers in the game and less fighting crafters. The truth is even after mastering a craft a player can easily go and master a low level combat like TKA or riflemen. This seems like a small problem to many players, because they are useing a craft/smuggler as a money maker. While they have a second account to actually fight with.

This phenomena also promotes the inbalanced economy in the game. You have the mass production driveing a out of control resource market for one. You have near perfect slices going for huge sums, and promoteing gougeing on an epic scale. When the truth is sliceable stuff should be in a realistic price zone. The randomness of slices should actually keep prices down not jack them up. If you see two weapons one being slightly better then the other. Both weapons should have similar prices. Simply because the slice is random. The player will need to take into account poor slices, and good slices when makeing a selection. Is it worth 2k more credits to buy that weapon or not. Denying slices vendorability will actually stabalize priceing. Weapons/armor are staples when the staples go down in cost players are even less compelled to accumulate massive wealth. Infact this could make the economy more liquid seeing as players just accumulate massive wealth just in case.

Finally this phenomena is part of why combat is so broken. Seeing as players can always get a perfect set of armor or a perfect weapon. This allows players to dish out more damage and take more damage. Yes I am sure there are people in the game that will just buy crates of armor and crates of weapons just to get a perfect slice. Thats fine if you want to waste 300k to get a perfect laser rifle by all means. The question for you though is what your going to do with the 24 guns that did not muster up. Give them away? Go for it. I think most players might buy a few guns and use the best slice, or accept that slices are not always perfect, and when they get a good slice they save it for special occassions. This is actually good for combat in the game it would atleast increase the difficulty.

In summation why would makeing sliced items non vendorable be good. One it reinstills value to the smuggler profession. More importantly to dedicated smugglers. Crafters will be back where they should be trying to make the highest quality item preslice. This would mean better non sliced items will come into the game along with more variety in each weapon and variety of weapons in general. The economy will stabelize. Players on either side will get more flexibility be it smuggler or crafter the two groups should not be joined siameese style at the hip. If your a armorsmith you should feal you can go be a carbineer if you want. If you are a smuggler you should not feal you have to be a weaponsmith/armorsmith just to get use out of your sliceing. Lastly sliceing is a curb issue the use of mass runs makes it so. These mas runs give players perfect armor and perfect weapons. How hard a fight is it when you fork over half a mil for perfection. Players should be makeing due with randomness in sliceing. You shouldnt always have a 80 percent comp helmet.