Architect Archive

WTB Paragraphs. PST

What happened to my damned paragraphs?

Building houses is paying your dues in this business I think. That's how you get the xp to make it big. Furniture is bank. You wanna make a load of money as a 'tech, stick with furniture.

As for hides, I'm sitting on around 10k Dathomir Leather, trying to get a hunting party of my guild out to Endor =) I can't wait until they fix the graphic on that Armoire though, because I like the upper-class style of the master furnishings.

Cyber,

You're right.. harvesters do run at a low expense. You're on the money with 2 credits/per unit, but you are ONLY addressing the harvester cost. In any business if you are to be successful, you need to respect your time and your skill as well.This is where most people sell themselves short.

I charge 3.5 credits per unit. From your estimate, the additional1.5 credits covers theexpense of:

1. My time running around paying/fueling my harvesters

2. Pulling them up/destroying/rebuilding when resources shift

3.The time I spend in game building the item for a customer

4. If I critical fail, which happens about 10% of the time, I lose those resources (at 2c/per) and the time it took to get them, etc. I have to replace those at my expense to complete the structure.

Because of this, I don't find myself continuously strapped for time to meet the building demands. I still build and maintain a very faithful customer base. But I have more time to work with my customers, answer questions and readily be able to provide them with the merchandise they want (usually within the hour) without being strapped for time or resources.

Quaydork,

Obviously you're no marketing major in college. Ask most businesses like Wal-Mart or Super-K, and they would rather sell cheap. They make that up in VOLUME. It's a standard business practice used to put your more-expensive retailer out of the market. Sell LOTS, and sell CHEAP. :-)

OneTrueShaylen,

You're right on the money. My arguements completely ignore the value of time. Personally, I consider gaming a fun way of wasting time, so I try to ignore the number of hours I've sunk into it. :-)

Besides, I'm not telling anyone what their price should be. If people can sell for more, then all the power too them. I'm just trying to quiece the posts that order everyone, 'stop selling for less than 5cr per!'.

Think of it like a casino. The house always wins, right? Well, I look at casinos as an entertainment expense and try not to worry about the money lost. Playing SWG is the same as I try to look at my time lost as an entertainment expense. lol

I price my stuff at 5c per minimum, don't like it, buy from someone else. Simple, to the point. I let folks know what I have in stock and at what price. I don't do special orders. If folks buy from me it's because I have it in stock and they don't want to jack around waiting for some cheap guy who's backlogged himself into a corner.

Architect class changes will come. When weapon smiths can make 166c per unit on the finished product, but people don't see enough value in architect goods to pay at least market value for the resources used to build them, the game has a serious balance issue.

You talk about 17k profit. Thats a joke. I laugh at 17k, it's kinda funny people still think thats a lot. Top of the line FWG5 going for 24.5k, with about 1k investment. Then you look at and go, so he made 22k, you made 17k, both ya sold one item, whats the big deal?

Here's the math:

To make one large house I expend 37344 resources. That same number of resources will make 254 FWG5's. Let's say the architect self mined and had an investment of 1c per resource and sold the house for 5 (pretty high considering current sales) So, he makes a profit of 4c per unit, 0 fails included. Thats 150k (rounded up) in the bank, not a bad deal, probly take a week at min to gather the resources. I'm leaving out redeed fees, etc, switching harv types for each material, etc or any units bought on bazzar cause it was easier than suffling harvs.

Now, the weapon crafter has 254 FWG5's, of average but not the big money fetchers. From my sever experience, these guns can easily go for 7k, and sell quickly. Not heard a single complaint ever from agun maker that makes decent stuff not selling anything. We will also assume that he was in hurry, hates mining and decided to buy all his stuff, he also paid a lot more, cause weapons need the best avaialble materials to be worth a hoot. 15c per unit he pays, which may seem insane, but bear with me. All the guns sell, and it takes about a week or so, total sales 1,778,000 credits. Minus cost to make, total profit is 1,217,930.

Same units, same amount of time. Architect 150k, Weaponsmith 1.2mil.

What makes the difference here is three things:

1. Perceived value of the end product, houses lack real value to the owner. Why people belive harvesters should be cheap is beyond me, I don't get it. Those have massive value to the smart miner. However, I don't even shrug paying 25k for a top of the line blaster.

2. Quality matters in guns. This seriously hampers the ability of the architect to make things that other people will pay more for cause it's better.

3. Guns wear out, houses and harvesters don't.

I pick weapon smith not cause I have an axe to grind with them, I think it's great that they can inves the time and create something of real value to the customer and make their products stick out from the others. Since they can do that, they do however make the mineral business very competitive. When a weaponsmith can afford to bid us 5 times over on resources and still turn way more profit, the classes lack balance.

Most people have never encounterd this type of balance so it's unfamlier to them. But in a game, all classes should be somewhat desireable to play, and right now the architect is probly the least desireable of the crafting classes from a profit point. Heck, the miner class, which was left out in a official capacity, does better profit wise than a architect.

Sorry, fogot to state what balance I think folks are not familer with. In alsmost every other game, it was about combat balance. For Armorsmiths, Architects, Tailors and Weaponsmiths, if we are 100% dedicatd to the crafts, our classes need to balanced on several different points that combat classes.

Profitability, Usefullness to the player, etc. It's a whole differenct set of rules we play by, because we don't fight the bulk of the game.

I see your points clearly. However, there is no rule that Architects should be able to make as much money as weaponsmiths. That does not make sense tho -a house is MUCH more resource-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to large losses with final-assembly critical failures. SO, the logical thought is that they should be selling for MUCH more than weapons do.

However, when you have a market flooded with architects, that doesn't hold water. MOST of them will hold true to their prices, and still sell an adequate amount to keep themselves busy and happy. BUT, the percentage of bargain-basement sellers increases proportionately with the architect overpopulation. As time progresses, most markets like this will stabilize and the 'market' averages will become more like what you would expect. Personally, I think they're TOO easy to get. Housing should sell for at least 20cr per, so that it becomes more of a status symbol and a greater goal for people to achieve.Add to that your mention of the lack of quality issue, and no need to ever replace them, and you get a very skewed market. Hopefully when vehicles are implemented, they will be so hard to get that we don't see the same sort of issues we see now.

In real life, I agree 100% with ya, there is no rule.

But, in agame, the designers have to balance the classes, not just by combat effectiveness either. With decay the way it is, the game can support far far more weapon smiths than architects, that alone makes it a more attractive class.

There is no real upside to playing an architect over a weaponsmith or armorsmith, unless you like being foced to do all your own mining, low profits, critical fails that cripple your business, products that never decay and quality that don't mean a hoot.

Cyber, you say you can make it up in volume--only to a limit. If you have people feeding you materials then yes you could sell cheap to dump off all the stuff you have on you and be ok.

I have all mediums up right now (too busy getting exp to start building heavies and large houses cause I don't have room yet) pulling in the max amount of resources I can using medium. I get rid of every single thing I make and run out of resources AND I have others helping me gather them.

If you were solo and had to BUY the resources then about 3 credit per is the best you can hope for unless you find someone stupid enough to sell lower (considering you can put them up on your vendor and sell at a minimum of 4).

There is a limit to what you can dump off because you can only mine so much. I sell my stuff at a minimum of 5 credits per resource and always run out before I can make more.

I sell the same VOLUME of stuff--I just make more money.

Cyber: you are incorrect. In fact I have a marketing degree and will enlighten you to the errors in your comparisons.

The Wal-Mart model works because of centralized purchasing and distribution. They use this to drive prices from suppliers down and then sell it for cheaper at the retail level. However, THEY are still making higher percentage margins then their competitors. In fact, Wal-Mart's gross margins lead their respective industry. They don't do that sellingitems atbelow market value. Compare this to your example. If I were using this strategy, I would use my leverage in buying millions of resources from miners per day and I would require them to sell it to me at 1.2 credits / resource. You pay LESS when you buy in quantity, not more.

There is a point at which the volume model works, however you cannot properly apply it to this game. The architect is limited by his/her own resource collection/gathering methods to how many structures or items can be produced. No matter how many lots you have access to, without the help of the owners of those lots, you will not be able to consistantly reproduce a .8 cr/u resource cost. You'll have some harvesters sitting idilly by waiting for a favorable resource shift and those will add to your variable costs.

That being said, you CAN elect to HIRE people to gather and collect resources for you and by having them manage their own collection efforts, you enable them to be efficient in their work, keeping that cost down to the .8 cr/u, however you're going to need to compensate them for this, again adding to the total cost for building a structure.

You are missing the big picture with your examples. Most of what you say is true, when taken from a singular person's perspective. It is erroneous to try to apply a business model based on a sole character and apply it to the economy as a whole. The single architect, owning and operating his/her own harvesters will ALWAYS be able to sell at a lower price then someone using the volume strategy, but they will not be able to keep up with demand. You could broadcast that you are selling large houses for 50k and take 1000 orders for them, but it will take you 6 months to fill those orders and remain profitable because you can't afford to buy resources on the open market. If the people who do this would realize that they can sell their structures based on what the open market resource cost is, then they could meet the demand, and remain profitable. On the few houses that they DO make based on personal resource collection, they would realize even greater rewards.

CyberDeity wrote:

"Even better yet - do a few missions to cover the cost of the maintenance on the harvesters. Then your resources are basically free (only a time investment doing the missions). And while you're running around doing the missions, you can survey for better resource concentrations. Don't you realize that maybe these low priced sellers are doing something like this so they can sell for less and still make a profit? The architect scene is WAY too overcrowded, so people will come up with a more ingeneous way to outsell their competition."

Are you freaking serious? Run mission to pay for harvesters? THIS is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of the type of thing that is screwing up the economy for Architects right now. CyberDeity is not the only one, but this is a perfect example of the thought process behind it. In my opinion, that kind of stragety is not PLAYED. Your basically a NPC. Delievery missions are WELFARE. You shoulnd't be forced to do it to stay afloat or make a profit. Thats not creativity, thats stupidity. You might as well be a NPC.

CyberDeity wrote:

"I cannot stand all the threads that try to convince architects to stick to the same bloated price structure. What you're trying to do would be illegal in the real world. It's called price-fixing. The record industry has already been sued over this twice."

Ok, so now its about the RIAA. Ok, sure thing. Tell me again how the MP3's and copyright infringement have ANYTHING to do with the economy and how it relates to architects. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that backs up these people selling small houses for 3k. Now you know what your up against folks.

Cyber: I have some thoughts to add to your well-thought out reply.

Wal-Mart does INDEED force suppliers to sell goods at a certain price. They actually have people whose job it is to call up a supplier and say, "We will buy 5 million widgets at 2 dollars each. Yes, we know that you current price is 4 dollars each. Yes, we also know that you sell us several other products that your company produces. It would be a shame for us do have to discontinue our business relationship because of this one little widget" Now, in the truest sense of the form, that company doesn't HAVE to lower their price, but if they don't they will be losing out on quite possibly their biggest customer. You see, Wal-mart can make a supplier instantly rich and dependent on their orders for survival. When that happens, the supplier is succeeding complete control to Wal-mart.

Suppliers end up using their walmart sold items to pay for their variable costs of production and the bulk of the profit comes from their other customers, which of course are paying higher prices, and setting themselves up at a competitive disadvantage versus Wal-mart. It will be interesting to see how Wal-Mart operates in the future, they are opening 6,000 grocery stores by 2005. If they use the same distribution and purchasing model (and they will) every grocery store you currently do business with is at serious risk.

"Who says you HAVE to keep up with demand? People are doing this in-game because they have no concept of economics. They are so desperate to sell as many houses as possible, that they will buy expensive resources or whatever it takes to get those orders out the door. If they would listen to you, and take their time, the unfullfilled demand would cause an escalation in prices. In real-life, businesses know how things work. In games like this, the majority population of kids have no idea, and crank away at it, doing anything they can."

I am in agreeance with your statements here, people in MMORPG's have always grinded to get to master, then grinded to get to 1,000,000 credits and then they find something else to grind to. In fact, I'm crafting a PA hall tonight and afterwards I will no longer take orders for structures. I will craft them as I see fit and sell them on my vendor. I'm pulling my master title from my avatar to facilitate this. I do have a mil in the bank and frankly I don't have anything to spend it on

Cyber:

I will make yuo this deal. If you are on the Tarquinas server I will buy everything you are capable of making for 2cr per resource. I will give you a list of goods. It's cool that you are willing to do this. here is how I have figured my costs and charges.

1) Failure rate of about 11%

2) Overhead of harvesters for pulling the up on average every 5 days

3) My time to make the harvester run (yeah my time is worth something)

4) the cost to train - I paid for almost all of my training

5) The time I take to make what a person wants and to keep it stocked in my store. I usually have 500k-1m worth of inventory in my vendor.

My approach is this. Sell for what you think is reasonable. I think 2cr per is too low for me. When I see architects selling for what I believe is market price, I just buy it and stick it in my store at my standard price. Simple as that.

You won't get any flames from my at 2cr per, just a lot of my business <grin>

Teiwaz - Architect - Tarquinas - Naboo - Kaadala