Architect Archive

Architect RAISE your prices.... right now selling building deeds is ridiculous... we're the only crafting profession not bugged that has little to none margin of profit!

I know if you sell lower you're going to sell faster and make xp... well let's look at this if we all sell at the same price we'll sell at the same speed and make profit! This thread is to make a convention on pricing... since experimentation is still doing nothing we should be able to fix prices...Furniture are not worth enough for that at the current moment...

We need to fix houses, factories, and harvester to have a fair price that could let place for profit... The Architect shoud also have enough ethics not to undercut our collegues. That said i'm playing on Starsider and I would really like if all architects could meet somewhere and debate those question... That you be a novice or a master it must be done... lots of people are leaving the profession and i understand them since a novice pistoleer could buy that nice PA hall you just made in spending less time killing critters then it's going to take you to craft it!

We can't allow master or high level craft to sell with that small of a profit margin...

In doubt of the price, charge at least 1-2c per ressource over the crafting cost... even thought you should charge about 3-6c per ressource or more to really make money....

The people that are doing this have themselves convinced that they are making a profit (and they are not if they just calculate their costs) and they think they are doing everyone a service when in fact they are doing the community they chose to be a part of a disservice.

Also unfortunately you will never convince them they are wrong. They are like politicians and radical religious groups, their view couldn't possibly be wrong and you are insane for saying otherwise.

Just do as I do and buy everything from the guys handing out deeds, mark it up to your price, sell to customer and make a good chunk of profit without having to do any work.

They may not have realised that they're losing money at selling houses at 7k... but they've started doing that when they saw somebody selling it at 8k ... A small house is worth 15k or so from what we architects know maybe even more if we really would set prices... If they see that everyone is selling at the same price they'll ask for about the same price and won't hurt the profession since they can't keep up forever... they don't have the ressource power of a better architect with better harvesters... Everyone in the end will still be winning if most ( 80% or more start selling for a higher price... No one would sell them at 7 if everyone else was selling for 15... would be crazy to miss making profit...

I understand your plea and agree with it, but it won't work. The harsh reality is that many architects won't check these boards. Of the the ones that do check the boards, only half will read your post. Of those that read your post, half of them (at best)will take action. That probably leaves you with 10% of us raising our prices.

What you're asking for is collusion. I have no problem with that, but it won't work unless we only have a few people making buildings and they all verbally agree to do it because the first person to drop their prices again will break the whole deal.

"Okay, so what's the solution?" I don't know, but my suggestion is to tough it out. All markets balance out in the end. At least, I think that's what they said in college.

I will stick to my prices and charge 4-5 credits per resource. I can make aprofit on that.

You have to look at how we were trained to get here:

We all had to grind weapons power ups, or shirts or axes and destroy them to get the 33,000 GCXP. So I was used to running my harvesters, selling enough resources to cover cost and make a little profit and using the leftovers for crafting.

So now I am an architect. I continue to sell enough resources to cover my over head. Now I have a house that I can actually sell and not have to destroy. In my mind anything I get for it is profit, thinking that I am used to destroying stuff and getting no income. To many 5000, 8000 or 10000 is a lot when we were used to having bank accounts under 1000 during the grind to get here.

So in the process of getting to architect we ruined our business sense. As you said you will never convince people they are wrong, because in a sense they aren't. They made enough money on selling resources that the remaining are zero cost to them. So they can sell for whatever they want and they see their bank account getting larger and larger.

Hopefully, once people want to build factories and medium houses and they see that they don't have enough resources to sell, things will change.

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Vasser wrote:
Just do as I do and buy everything from the guys handing out deeds, mark it up to your price, sell to customer and make a good chunk of profit without having to do any work.

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Not a bad idea!

I would agree in that, at the grinding stages will make a load of weapon power up or what ever we thought was giving us the best exp, turning around and destroying most of the items or giving them away. Run a few missions or sell resources to cover the cost of harvesters and be on are merry way will little or no credits in the bank. With being at the Architect stage and still running missions or selling resources for maintance costs, what ever price we sell our items for is a +(profit) for us. So selling under cost is and able to make some money from the point of making nothing at all in the begining is all good. For me anyway.

Cya on the dark side of the moon

Cronis - Talus - Nashal- Crafter by trade

I think another thing that you're not considering is that while there is a general thought of "undercutting" people when you start out, I know it's been hard for me personally to find a single static post that states what the common prices there are for things. It's easy to say "Ok, it's 15k on my server" or charge 4c per resource but people are lazy for the most part, they'll just undercut or sell it for cheap for a while.

So anyway, instead of just griping about it, why not postwhat your actual prices are as well?

Why is it that the people trying to keep prices are always so insulting to those who sell low? Does your experience with the world indicate that you that this will help?

I would have stopped selling small houses at 8k a pop when I hit master architect, but I find that selling low upsets exactly the people I like to upset. You can't sit on your behinds, buy resources, and then expect to get rich, and the rest of us certainly have no obligation to alter our behavior to suit you.

If what you are saying were true, people would change what they do without you saying anything. Which leads me to believe that what you are saying is not, in fact, true.

"We can't allow master or high level craft to sell with that small of a profit margin..."

It's not up to you, bub. I sell for roughly 3 credits per resource, and I have plenty of money (and repeat customers). You sell far too high, and, well, youcomplain on the boards about other people out-competing you. Which of usis doing the wrong thing?

[BTW where are all the people from the old boards who were convinced that all prices would be sky-high because competition doesn't work?][My guess is that they're right here complaining that prices are too low ]

Alright, I have seen this idea (price fixing) come up several times here. Please keep in mind that I am approaching this from the point of view of a consumer, not an architect myself (at least, not yet). But I am fairly certain that price fixing will never work out for this game/profession, and here is why.

I was going to say a lot about supply and demand, but I assume everyone gets that. Right now, there is too much supply and so the price is dropping. Normally, some competitors would be priced out of the market, leaving only those who are most efficient at creating the items in the market as sellers. Here is where the problem starts, which is that monetary profit is not the only reason for someone to be selling things. The addition of XP gain for creating items makes it worthwhile to sell even at a loss in credits.

If everyone decides to sell at a fixed price, no consumer has any incentive to choose one vendor over another. Sure, you will be making more profit, but you will be selling less product, which in the end may hurt you more than it helps. The only way to generate more demand for your products, as compared to other vendors, at this point is to lower the prices on them. Price fixing might actually help you, but there is NO chance you would be able to make everyone agree to it, when all they have to do is shave 5% off of your fixed price to gain ALL of the possible buyers business; that is, if 99 people have houses for sale for 8K, and 1 person has houses for sale for 7.5K, that one person will sell all of his product and see profit before anyone else does. I dont see how you could counter that kind of potential.

So, XP gain breaks the standard market economy, and price fixing would never hold, since price is the only factor in making your product more attractive than someone elses. To fix the first problem, I think that the experience bonus for not actually creating the item needs to be based on the relative cost, or at least amount, of materials used. I imagine (again, I have not done this myself) that the 5% XP bonus is worth it when grinding out shirts, but for houses that 5% is probably not worth the monetary cost of all the resources spent. If the bonus went up as the amount of materials needed increased, maybe fewer people would grind out houses and dump them on the market.

Secondly, I think that when experimentation actually does something for architects, that you will find that pricing will improve, and become more like, for example, weaponsmiths. Experimentation will give you something to differentiate your product on rather than price alone. I for one would love to be able to spend more initially for a house which costs less to upkeep.

Anyway, this turned into a way too long post, what I am basically trying to say is, don't focus on price fixing, it won't work and even if it did would not necessarily help. Getting bugs fixed and features completed will, I believe, help you much more in the long run.

Factory 40k

Med House 60k

Med Harvesters: Mineral 13k, Solar 15k, Gas 30k, Chem 30k

Small house (any kind) 8k, any personal 750

I won't commit to a price in the OPEC fashion. I will, however, take current market prices into consideration when making my own prices. I think when things calm down, when there is much less grinding and resources are sold for reasonable ammounts (not 3x), then perhaps a fair price will establish itself for each item for each server.

However, if a cartel of architects push prices unreasonably up it will be my duty to undersell them and take their market-share. If everyone is trying to sell for 5x cost, and I can make a healthy profit at 3x, well I'm going to do it. That isn't hurting our profession, it is helping it, imo.

Be fair.