Architect Archive
Thread: People who are jacking up our economy...
Daylnwrote:
Smile, treat your custmoers like the are are somebody, because they are! Make your customers feel like they are more important than you are. ( kids have a really hard time doing this )
I think I'd rather have to deal with greedy kids than selfish adults. At least the kids won't undercut, cause they want all the money they can get their hands on.
And something else that has really been bothering me...Dayln, please do a quick once-over on your posts and re-spell at least 50% of the words you misspell. It really detracts any credibility from your arguments, not that they really have any in the first place.
By the way, I think I have figured out who Dayln is: In game name is:
Notlaw Mas
(someone will understand that last joke and appreciate it)
Getting vicious, and nasty, and telling people that their ideas are retarded is inappropriate behavior regardless of the game, be it football, chess, or a computer game. I've been around computer games too, and quite a few MMORPGs, such as Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Ages of Camelot, Earth and Beyond, Anarchy Online, and have seen quite a few people get carried away, like they have forgotten that games are supposed to be fun. They get eaten up by bitterness and envy, and start lashing out anyone who's doing a bit better than they are.
Sure this happens in other games. That doesn't make it right, though, and reminding them that it is just a game is reasonable advice, whatever the game may be.
It doesnt bother me, they expose themselves for what they are.
Look at it, they are offended when I sugguest you treat your customers nicely.
Having a difference of opinion is fine. Personally I know half my ideas (maybe more) are half backed crack head Ideass and desiver a retarted tag. I don't take offence to it.
Infact please tell me if my Ideas are retarted or from the tail end of a crack pipe I don't mind.
Daylnwrote:
It doesnt bother me, they expose themselves for what they are.
Look at it, they are offended when I sugguest you treat your customers nicely.
No, what bothered me is that you insinuated that "kids" aren't good at treating people like they were people. oh, and that youmanage to misspell words with amazing alacrity.And with as much time as you're on this post board, I can't imagine that you craft more than 2 major items a week. I don't think anyone is feeling any pain from your "fantastic business", and I'm done here.
Best advice I ever got was on the bottom of Adune's (I think) posts. price ranges. people ask me for a price on something? i don't have a clue. but i'll take a quick look at the schematic, toss out Adune's price, and see what happens. if they think it's too high, maybe i'll come down after checking out the materials. otherwise, hey, good luck finding Dayln.
I used to do this, unwittingly. The first 5 small houses i built i sold for 4500k. why? cause i needed to move the inventory, i needed to feed the harvesters, and mostly, because i had no clue what they were worth. The first time a fellow architect (and yes, that argument does carry some weight) saw this, they sat me down and told me that i should be selling higher. I explained that "Hey, I'm a pistoleer, I can make money, I don't need architecture to do that". He calmly explained a couple of things to me, logically, and they were very well accepted.
whatever. i'm gonna go back to work now. i'm not sure if i hope dayln is on my server, or isn't...
No I am saying that younger people have a hard time doing that, it isnt thier fualt. The social preasure in Jr high and high school is intense to dothe exact opposite. My wife is a teacher and deals with that every day. ( you think you hate my typing and spelling, I dont even try near her ). The preasure for a kid is to make themselves look and feel important and not others.
My busisnes is not all that fantastic, it is doing well for me and my partners though. But I know I am not alone, there are a lot of us out here that are totally bypassing the old economy and gearing for what we think is to come.
We dont buy resoruces, at least not at 3cr per, at 1.5 per I might consider it.
We set our own prices and ignore it when people tell us what we are "supposed" to sell at. We do sucueed at lower profit margins that others refuse to sell at.
I wont ruin anyone, but I am not alone.
Dayln wrote:No I am saying that younger people have a hard time doing that, it isnt thier fualt. The social preasure in Jr high and high school is intense to do the exact opposite. My wife is a teacher and deals with that every day. ( you think you hate my typing and spelling, I dont even try near her ). The preasure for a kid is to make themselves look and feel important and not others.
Thank goodness "mature" folks like yourself don't have that issue, eh?
---- Walmart smiley just for youTued the Master Builder
okay, i'm calling a truce for a couple of reasons Dayln...
1) there was really no call to rip on your spelling. i've seen much worse, but for some reason it was standing out to me at the time. i think i was just crabby that i had to rebuild a server today, a task i'm really not enjoying.
2) while I don't agree with your pricing, i don't live or die by it either. I happen to appreciate and agree with your business practices as they relate to the clients. I'm very personable with my clients, and they always come back, and I'm always getting some /tell: "SoAndSo said you could build me a PA Hall! how much!!"
So really all it comes down to is that we have the same business, and the same products, and the same type of people buying them from us, but i have a little extra money coming from those sales. You'll build your customer base, just as i'll build mine, but I'll have some extra cash, that's it. I've had people buy things from me and tell me that they had a better price from someone else. Usually i get a hold of that other guy, and verify this, and a couple of times it's been true. So, while there are the deal-hunters out there, there are also the loyal consumers, who will continue to go to Target, even while Wal-Mart has better prices. (even worked in your Wal-Mart hook for you! lol)
anyways, good luck to all.
acer
After looking into it and thinking about it, I do agree with you that he would probably be considered a vertical trust, and possibly illegal. I guess my main point is this: he may not sell to anyone at that price, but there isn't that much of a barrier to anyone getting their own minerals at that price. I don't accept the argument that time is a barrier; I can only play a couple of hours a day, if that, and I have accepted that I will never be as rich or as powerful as the those who can play more than I can.
And I know that not everyone is talking about price fixing, but some people seem to be. I just don't see how instituting a minimum price will help anyone. Even if it could be enforced, eventually everyone would just sell at the minimum price. There would again be no differentiation between products.
The reason that people like weaponsmiths are making such higher profits are simple: their products are more in demand, and they have ways to differentiate their items from other weaponsmiths. Until these occur for architect items, the architect economy will be bad.
I have seen arguments that this game is trying to be a real market economy, but it never will be. Money is created out of thin air all the time. There are no antitrust laws in the game. While there are elements of a market economy, it does not and should not be expected to behave like one in real life.
There is a fine line between being competetive and anticompetetive, which is why we get so many real life court battles over it. But I don't want that to be a part of my gaming experience. Some people might be selling their items at a loss just to screw up the economy, but I sincerely doubt that any significant number of people are doing that.
Microsoft is smart, but not in that it is making a profit on the XBox. Selling an item below cost to generate future sales of another item is called a loss leader. Here is an article about it:
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/0624/xbox062402.html
And here is the relevant paragraph:
"The costs of goods for every Xbox amount to $325, according to the source. That means that Microsoft is currently losing at least $150 on every box, and probably more due to shipping, advertising, development overhead, and return costs. Microsoft sells the box wholesale to retailers for $175. Microsoft would have to sell a lot more than three games apiece to break even."
Of course, this isn't really the case with architects selling for low cost, but it is interesting anyway.
Adune,
Brotherhoods like that work well in a sellers market, but I think those days are gone now. This is a buyers market. The people that post on these boards are maybe 5% of the population of Architects. I don’t think you will ever get that, not now, not when it gets tough.
Yours isa lofty and commendable ideal ( for the architect it is, for the customer it is price fixing and OPEC all over again ), but I see it as impossible.
Just my opinion
While I agree that real life laws are not relevant, I once again point out that anti-trust laws are applicable only to monopolies. There are some well-defined characteristics of monopolies that don't apply here, like the control over an essential input andthe existence ofsignificant barriers to entry. Instead, low pricing is a characteristic of perfect competition, which is not a crime. See for example,
http://www.economist.com/research/Economics/alphabetic.cfm?LETTER=P#PERFECT%20COMPETITION
I have played pretty much every MMORPG there has been, and this is the aspect of it I hate... is people trolling to other people cause they chose to play a different way, I see your point that people don't want to buy a small house for 12k which is actually cheap, but what are you going to do? put a gun to their head? I explain to people that ask me how much resource it takes and they buy sometimes, I started a couple of days ago and I prepared myself and placed harvesters everywhere to gain enough resources to at least be able to make something by the time I would reach Novice, I will sell for 3cpu cause I think it's fair, I am not loosing money or time cause I simply place my personal harvesters or hand harvest and with that I have to make a small house a day and I am happy.
I am not playing this the same way most of you guys do, I play it to have fun not to have a second job after I get home tired from the real one, seriously you all sound stressed and by all means if a game stresses you why the hell play it? I also don't play so I become rich here and fulfill my real life dream of making a million a day I guess I am a simple person
I will try to make it reasonable and sell for what I think is fair, to me is not 4 or 5cpr cause like I said is not too much work and I am not intending to have a profit margin per day
Maybe people that don't harvest should (this is why surveying is on the artisan tree?) I am a master artisan so it's not a problem, I guess the people that went right thru to get architect are the ones that suffer the most.