Architect Archive
Thread: Underpricing Archs
Now you are making me laugh, a house at 15 cpu? That is rich. The pricing models you have are fine for things that take a few hundred resources to make, and are in high demand. Houses take thousands of resources to make and are in low demand.
Also, the bazaar cost for resources is extremely inflated. If you shop around and talk to people you can get resources for half the going rate on the bazaar. I mine 90% of my own resources, and if I buy any I never pay more than 1.5 cpu, unless it is high quality.
Architect is the one profession that needs lots and lots of crappy resources. To suceed you need to keep your cost per unit for everything under 1. If you can do this you can do well. I 15 million in my account, probably made 50 million in all by now since launch. I charge my guild 2 cpu for structures, and full retail is 3-4 cpu.
Many people would say I am underpricing, I don't think so. When the average resource costs .5 or less to mine, selling to guildmates for 2cpu is still profitable.
Just price it the way you want - make adjustments as necessary and decide on what your business model is going to be. - High volume traffic or Margin based.
Don't be part of the lemming factor and shoot yourself in the foot. You have the same right to sell it at 15 cpu as someone who'll sell at 2 cpu. Yes, you will be successful - don't buy into the BS that there is only way to be successful ... the lowest price point. You only have to sell 1 house for every 7 the other person does and you make the same amount of money but with 14% of the effort (I hear that's funny /shrug). Availability is key, be known for always having product.
Mkappus wrote:
Now you are making me laugh, a house at 15 cpu? That is rich. The pricing models you have are fine for things that take a few hundred resources to make, and are in high demand. Houses take thousands of resources to make and are in low demand.
Also, the bazaar cost for resources is extremely inflated. If you shop around and talk to people you can get resources for half the going rate on the bazaar. I mine 90% of my own resources, and if I buy any I never pay more than 1.5 cpu, unless it is high quality.
Architect is the one profession that needs lots and lots of crappy resources. To suceed you need to keep your cost per unit for everything under 1. If you can do this you can do well. I 15 million in my account, probably made 50 million in all by now since launch. I charge my guild 2 cpu for structures, and full retail is 3-4 cpu.
Many people would say I am underpricing, I don't think so. When the average resource costs .5 or less to mine, selling to guildmates for 2cpu is still profitable.
I disagree 100% with the comment in yellow... I choose to allow more people to benifet from my business than just me.. I hire Miners to supply me with the resources I need and I pay them 2 cpu to do this.. I am doing just fine in this craft..
As per the topic of this thread.. Do 80% of our fellow archs leave money on the table ... Yeah Of course they do... But if they are still able to do what they want to do in the game more power to them... Bottom line we have no power to say what something is worth .. that layes in the buyers they are the ones that determine what they will spend on something.. And If you still truly get upset at how low somepeople price buy them out and resell .. there is no rule against doing that.. I know a few people that do that all the time and they make great profit..
Dont worry what the other guy sells for.. just price at what you feel is fair.. If it is higher than everyone else show why your product has that value.. If the buyer agrees they will pay..
Until the "minting" process is changed to fluctuate the amount of cash flowing into the game, and as long as the cost of gathering resources is fixed, well, lets just say that the cost to make stuff is known by everyone who cares to know, and those who charge significantly more for goods than it takes to make, and those who actually charge at or below the ROI point will always be at odds.
I would be interested to know how many Architects mine 75% or more of their own resources. I very rarely buy anything, since running a resource business is my primary activity. But I think it must be interesting to have to or choose to buy everything. Especially of you have less than 100k in your bank account.
I firmly believe a new infrastructure is needed in the game, adding a fluctuating cost to operate harvesters (power), maintain structures, travel between planets, Repair vehicles, etc... A fluctuation based on the state of the economy, and based on the flow of credits in the game. If more is coming in than going out, the cost to operate stuff goes up to compensate, and the price of goods goes up in response. Some random things can be coded that effect the game in general, in a similar fashion as the Bestine voting system. Remove the need to place power into things, and hook those structures to the global "power network" to whom you will have to pay for the power needed to operate things. This "Company" would raise or lower the cost of electricity in response to the economy. Homes need electricity, water, sewage, etc...which could be another "Company" who you pay for access to thier services.
As long as the cost to operate is so rigid, those who can "powergame" the system by dropping harvester farms through lot trades, buy multiple accounts, and have large and organized Guilds will always dominate the system. This game was built around a Single Character Model, and anyone who is able to circumvent that system automatically has the overwhelming advantage over those unable (or unwilling) to. The Guild advantage is legitimate, and worth the effort, but even then it has its challenges. Anyone (single account) player can fight that by either joining up, or working to form thier own alliance of friends. The Lot trading is much harder to fight, and once the cost to setup is paid, it pays for itself.
I know for a fact that most people who employ farms, either Guild farms or traded ones, pays about .3 to .5cpu per unit they gather. Thats including paying 1.5cpu or so for all the power they need. Generally they wouldn't run the harvs if there was less than 20% or so of anything worth it under the harvs. So a Statue using 3000 units would only cost them 1500cr to make, and a sale of 3k is a 100% profit. This is why some of the people you see sell stuff so cheaply.
I would love to see things get more challenging in this game. Every aspect of the game coulduse more challenge.
moody628 wrote:
I've run every crafting profession except architect, so now I've decided to give it a peek.
My pricing structure is based on a standard real-world model... wholesale = 3x cost of resources; and retail = 5x cost of resources. It puts my weapons in the lower 33% of price, my armor at the lower 20% of price, etc. The one true anomoly is that it makes my vehicles about 3x the going rate... but I still get a rare sale of those every now and then.
You fell into the same trap that a lot of architects fall into when they first set their prices. Since we use far more resources per item than any other craft we have to price our items differently. The only exception is vehicles, which, as you say, you price higher than other Master Artisans.
Architects, unlike other crafters have to price our goods in terms of value added per crafting session. While Architects use vast amounts of resources in their crafting, they still only need to do one or two crafting sessions to create their product. This means that our costs are closer to the costs of the actual resources.
For example:
Say the average cost for resources is 4 cpu. A weaponsmith crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 500 resources. His total costs were 2,000. He estimates his selling price as 10cpu, and charges 5,000. The value added for his 3 crafting sessions was 3,000.
Now an architect crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 10,000 resources. His total costs were 40,000. If the architect used the same formula as the weaponsmith he would charge 100,000 and realize a profit of 60,000 for the same amount of work as the weaponsmith. Not only does that make no sense, but the market would not support it as buildings would be too expensive.
Instead, most architects calculate their prices as the total value of the resources plus the value added by crafting sessions and not by calculating prices by increasing the value per cpu.
I am very frugal by nature. I buy various resources and bits and pieces for cheap when I see them. thus my costs are quite low... but its hard to compete with someone offering full factories for 20k... even buying them out just fuels things more if they are truely not loosing money, getting all the materials via server lot trades or other darker means.
I just hope that some sanity comes back into the trade, When JTL comes out, I plan to stay Architect. I hope then these undervaluing people go elsewhere... its an annoyance to constantly tell people, "No, I sell these for x credits. Well tell me who sells them for y and I'll go buy them up, then you can pay x + travel from me."
There's no real reason to severely undercut others in Architect, especially when repeat sales are pretty few and far between... it costs me a good deal to stay in business, with payments on factories, vendors, the shop, storage, etc...330k per month with merchant bonus... not including power, harvesters, and various resource purchases, which far outweigh that.
IntoTheGarbage wrote:
moody628 wrote:
I've run every crafting profession except architect, so now I've decided to give it a peek.
My pricing structure is based on a standard real-world model... wholesale = 3x cost of resources; and retail = 5x cost of resources. It puts my weapons in the lower 33% of price, my armor at the lower 20% of price, etc. The one true anomoly is that it makes my vehicles about 3x the going rate... but I still get a rare sale of those every now and then.
You fell into the same trap that a lot of architects fall into when they first set their prices. Since we use far more resources per item than any other craft we have to price our items differently. The only exception is vehicles, which, as you say, you price higher than other Master Artisans.
Architects, unlike other crafters have to price our goods in terms of value added per crafting session. While Architects use vast amounts of resources in their crafting, they still only need to do one or two crafting sessions to create their product. This means that our costs are closer to the costs of the actual resources.
For example:
Say the average cost for resources is 4 cpu. A weaponsmith crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 500 resources. His total costs were 2,000. He estimates his selling price as 10cpu, and charges 5,000. The value added for his 3 crafting sessions was 3,000.
Now an architect crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 10,000 resources. His total costs were 40,000. If the architect used the same formula as the weaponsmith he would charge 100,000 and realize a profit of 60,000 for the same amount of work as the weaponsmith. Not only does that make no sense, but the market would not support it as buildings would be too expensive.
Instead, most architects calculate their prices as the total value of the resources plus the value added by crafting sessions and not by calculating prices by increasing the value per cpu.
Have to strongly disagree there. I would also argue that your position IS the trap you speak of, not the other way around. To me, it makes no sense that 2 items should cost the same even though 1 uses 20-times more resources than the other. Simple mathematicsalone should dispute that logic. Houses should cost more than a weapon - the reason they are not is because Architects fell into this 'sticker shock' trap ... "I can't price it like that, number looks too big" and then the lemmings follow. How many crafting sessions are used to make an Ackley Bone weapon? and they sell for millions.
Everyone is free to price as they like - I was just strongly disagreeing with your trap position.
I just want to give my 2c worth here, as it seems that a lot of people feel threatened by the undercutters. I deal with them in my own quirky way, I totally ignore them. I have been arch since back in October 2003, worked my way slowly up the tree since August in the old fashioned grind way, none of this holo stuff. I decided from the start to specialise in Harvs, first with mediums which I successfully ran until February, then eventually switched to Heavies when I felt the time was right. I am one of the more expensive architects on Bria and live in a sparsely populated area just outside of Kaadara on Naboo, with a few other archs in the region who are priced considerably lower than I am. I buy in ALL my resources so my average resource cost is easily over 2cpu, probably nearer 3cpu. So business should be tough. But it isn't. I have 100million + in the bank, I have stock on vendors and resources of around 50 million more, I have repeat customers who head to my store before anywhere else because they know they can get what they want. That is my secret weapon, I have stocks at all times, my customers know they can do a one stop shopping trip, I actually had an amazing email last night from a customer who told me exactly that, they think I am the best arch on Bria and will never shop anywhere else, and they are recommending me to all their friends. If I believe the first poster I shouldn't even be in business, but here I am, and I am doing moderately well. Oh, and here's a shocker, due to other commitments I have only played for around 10 hours a week since I started.
My point is that you do not need to price low to do this, you do not need to undercut the opposition, you do not need to be a power gamer, you do not need to harvest all your own resources, you do not need to be in a player city, you do not need to belong to a guild. You just have to have fun, and if you get the breaks then you can make a comfortable living at the same time. Maybe I am just lucky, but I don't believe that.
Using your model moody I would make a profit of $6000 on one gungan head statue...that seems a little out of line to me.
statue = 2000 ore, 1000 gemstone * 3 = 9000 cost
statue = 2000 ore, 1000 gemstone * 5 = 15000 retail.
It just seems a bit high to me.
Message Edited by Mkappus on 06-01-2004 01:51 PM