Architect Archive
Thread: Trying to sell small houses for over 5k, getting laughed at..
DO NOT SELL HOUSES FOR 5k!!!
I have had people do the same thing....I tell them to go get bent....
I sell the resources for 12k alone. I do not need them.... All I need is steel for leveling... So screw them...
I have sold 3 houses...all for 15k a pop(3k deposit and 12k on completion).
I have had people say
Shenn:
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The 3K houses at Bazaar are just renamed harvesters... So watch out for what you buy!
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I think what is happening is everyone that has made it to Architect, is churning out small houses. The Bazaar price cap (3k?) plus the experience required to get higher skill levels is causing even some of the more "casual" Architects to offload their small house deeds at a really low price (even at a loss).
Also, there are the powergamers with their resource/credit empires that fling small house deeds around as if they were worth a CDEF weapon. This is something that will never be able to be addressed, I'm afraid.
I think this is similar to the CDEF weapon phenomenon. Newbie Artisans in large part even have a hard time GIVING AWAY their crafted CDEF weapons. There is a resource drain, but they end up eating the cost to provide for their advancement. One could go at a much slower pace and find people willing to pay for goods, but CDEF weapons as well as small houses are at the low end of the spectrum and people will undercut to get themselves ahead faster.
I think over time, things will settle a bit more. Houses will take longer as many people will build/buy small houses, but then will want medium then large houses. It'll take awhile for things like low grade ore to be available in bulk for reasonable prices. House prices will probably stabilize some as the people making them find it unprofitable and the market goes down, but I have a feeling prices will still be too low just based on the fact that small houses are a stepping stone for the bigger ones.
Back in beta, the price had stabilized at around 10k for a small house. I bought my house at 5k because the Architect thought houses on Bria were going to be wiped the next day (and he thought I DIDN'T know); as it turned out, only factories and harvesters were wiped, so I got a cheap house.
What's a "fair" price? Well, resources cost around 1 credit per unit to harvest, assuming variations in concentration and power requirements. While you may be able to get better than this by finding good veins, you're just as likely to have one of those weeks where there's no ore anywhere on the planet, so it balances.
In general, I can easily sell raw resources for 2-3 per if they're just normal ingredients, higher if they're ones needed for specific items, but I personally never go above 4. Why the extra? Because I'm saving some craftsman the time and effort to track down the exact material he wants, and I'm giving him a thousand units immediately (from his point of view) instead of forcing him to wait a day. But let's say that "material costs" run you 2 credits per unit for houses.
So, just from a material standpoint, I have no problem paying 10k-15k for a small house. 20k is getting on the high side, but covers for failures and such, and it's worth it to buy from a respectable craftsman (who you KNOW hasn't just renamed a harvester deed). You'll get less profit margin per resource unit, because you're not having to spend two hours madly clicking away to combine items requiring only 10-20 resources each, but it's still a nice chunk of money on your end.
But now to reality.
The problem is stability. I hear a lot of people say "just wait, once the market stabilizes prices will go back up." Why would it? Will the market ever stabilize for CDEFs, making them a viable way to make money? No, of course not. The number of players capable of making the item will always exceed the number who need them, so they became a worthless item. It becomes impossible to ever make a profit making them, as a result, because it's always in someone else's best interest to undercut you.
Small houses are the Architect equivalent of a newbie item. There'll ALWAYS be some new player who picks Architect, can only make Small Houses, and needs the XP. He has no choice but to glut the market further. As a result, you will never see the Small House price stabilize at anything above 10k, and I doubt it'll even stop there.
If you're charging 20k for a house, he has no reason NOT to charge 10k or less. From his point of view, he either undercuts you or gives it away, because there's no way he can compete on a level playing field. After all, you're a known entity, people prefer the Architect they can trust, so he has to bring SOMETHING to the table. If it costs him 4000 to run harvesters for the raw materials, he'll keep undercutting the market until the price drops to around that level.
Then, he'll keep going further, to where he takes a loss. It doesn't matter that he takes a loss, because once he makes the house he takes a loss no matter how he does it. He either sells the item for a price people will pay, or he destroys the item. It's how grinding worked in EQ, and it's inevitable in a saturated market where the craftsmen still need XP to get to more profitable items.
The only items that are sure never to suffer from this are the ones at the very top end, like PA halls, for the simple reason that anyone who reaches that skill level has no need to advance further. So, with XP out of the equation, there's no gain at all to selling below cost. But even so, eventually you'll glut the market, because once a PA has a hall they never need to buy another from you, while you continue to make new ones to keep your income going.
Large houses and such won't be hit by this as much as small ones, but it's still a question of basic economics. Supply versus Demand. Demand for houses is small, since once a person has one they like they have no reason to ever buy from you again. But, we have a lot of architects, and each one will continue to make more houses. So, the market will stabilize (if at all) at the point where the profit margin is so small that architects decide it's not worth their time to make the item. This'll drop lower and lower, since even established architects will run out of customers (all their old ones will have large houses they're happy with). And like I said before, that still assumes people are looking for profit; grinders simply aren't.
"A small house takes exactly 3388 resources to assemble. If we charge 3 creds per resource (Assume you bought all resources from the bazaar/players, going best rate is 3 creds) you would have to charge AT LEAST 10,164 credits to just BREAK EVEN, and that's not figuring a critical failure on ANY PART OF THE PROCESS, including the darn house itself!
Players selling for less than 10k are ruining the market, they are ruining our ability as a "class", simply because they don't care about costs and want the "mad XP" to be a 1337 Master.""
Posts like this make me laugh to hell and back. Crying more and more and more. The problem here isn't the person selling the house for 10k... it's the person buying his materials from the bazaar. /boggle. Check this out....
1 Wind Generator @ a 50% spot harvests 3600power/day and costs 1440cr/day.
1 Harvester @ a 50% spot harvests 1440resources/day and costs 720cr/day and 600power/day to run.
A little math show that 1 wind generator @ a 50% spot can fully power SIX harvesters.
Going a little further now... you need to pay 5760cr/day to keep all of your tools running. You don't have to buy or trade for power since your wind generator provides all the power needed. That is the bad side. The good side is that each harvester is producing 1440 resources/day... which means you are taking in 8640 resources every 24 hours IF you areONLY at a 50% spot. Credits spent/ resources gained = cost per resource.... in this case 5760/8640=.66credits/resource. 5x cheaper than buying @ the bazaar, even more savings for items over 3cr @ the bazaar.
Here is the crux. One house costs 3388 resources to make. 3388*.66=2236cr actual cost to build. If you sell ONE house per day @ 10k you paid the 5760cost of your machines, you made a profit of 4240cr, AND the best part... is you STILL have 5252 resources left of the 8640 you mined. That is enough resources to make one more house and then have half the resources to build ANOTHER house, and all the money you get back will be pure profit. :\
If you are buying from ther bazaar you are overpaying and losing money. So it takes you an hour or 2 to gather resources my way... big deal. You are self-sufficient, can make what you want, and you'll make money very fast.
BTW, if you can manage to get your harvesters at an 80% spot you are able to make 4 houses/day with leftover materials netting you a profit of 34k+ if you sell them for 10k each. If you need to grind the xp that 34k can be used to buy ripoff bazaar materials to p-level your skill.
Phearing,
Nice post, but are these numbers from what the harvestors are telling you, or are you certain that this is true from actually measuring? I have found that although the harvestor may tell me it uses 30 maintenance an hour, it seems it actually uses 60. Anyone else notice that? In fact it doesn't state 30/hr, it just says maintenance cost 30. Do people think the numbers add up or not?
I agree that if you maximize the resources you can make houses for less than 10K. My problem is that when I get a few hours of play time I feel I should be doing something to improve my architect skill when all I can really do is wait for my harvestors. I find it difficult to go and do something else because I naturally feel the need to 'get ahead'. When I only have an hour or so it is easier, as I maintain my harvestors, stock my vendor and log off. It is strange when it seems more productive to play less!
I want to travel the world and see the galaxy, but I also want the cash that would go on the ticket to pay for a little more hide to make some more couches. **edit** I'm hooked!
Actually my numbers are correct. :\ The game is still in Beta 4 so there is no continuity atm when trying to make sense of something. Thegenerator 'cost' lists as 30... but that is per half hour. The power consumption is listed per hour.. so it is kind of confusing. I waited out a day and then made sense of the numbers, and it was confirmed by swgcraft.com's numbers.
"I agree that if you maximize the resources you can make houses for less than 10K. My problem is that when I get a few hours of play time I feel I should be doing something to improve my architect skill when all I can really do is wait for my harvestors. I find it difficult to go and do something else because I naturally feel the need to 'get ahead'."
Dude, I totally agree with ya. But the point is that harvesters allow you to maximize the income. It's not making a 'profit' when selling for 10k, it's the fact that you can make 2.5 of them from scant resource supplies. Gather resources once a day, and then buy the rest off the bazaar to p-level... at least you won't be losing as much money. :\ My goal, when p-skilling, is to not LOSE money and to try and break even. If spending an hour colleting resources/maintenance allows me to 'gain' money, hey even better. 
Phearing wrote:A little math show that 1 wind generator @ a 50% spot can fully power SIX harvesters.
[buzzer] Wrong! I have 2 wind gen's on a 45% spot and they're barely keeping 7 harvs going.
-Atoner-
Well, obviously small houses market is totally saturated right now. Isn't there something else you can produce for which there is a higher demand?
Example 1: I spend several hours yesterday asking people to make me a Wearables Factory - there were no takers. I'm glad that after I posted here a guy responded, so I'll try to find him later tonight to buy one. I doubt I'm the only one who needs factory badly.
Example 2: I've heard tailors complaining about lack of market as well. I'm an Armorsmith. I need tailored components to advance - nobody sells them. Why? There is certainly a market for those. People simply don't realize that.
There are low-levelcomponents you can make to get XP, like Structural Module, or Wall Module. Even if you cannot sell them right now, you will NEED them in the future to make higher-level items anyway.
Yes, small houses market is saturated, but there are other markets out there.
Okay, so housing is ruined. Lets take it further, to the worst case scenario. People start dropping their architect skill levels to become, oh...let's say Pistoleers. This would have a number of effects.
1. The supply of architects would decrease. This may come too late to save an already saturated market, however. But then again, it would be possible for someone to then corner the market by buying all of the deeds from the bazaar and inflating the price. Also, since items degrade over time, I was wondering if housing does the same. In any case, this does take care of the problem of too much supply.
2. The sudden influx of pistoleers feeds the war machine on which our economy stands. Shooting big ugly frogs and chickens is boring, so people are likely to try and get better missions. In any case, the more people you have out there shooting, the more injuries they accrue. This pours money into the support classes, primarily medics and entertainers, but some of that money is probably going to chefs and smugglers, of whom there seem to be very few (at least on some servers).
3. Someone will realize that it is inconvenient to have to run all the way back to town for healing. Already small outposts near popular hunting grounds and battlefields are popping up. These outposts will require...buildings. If the bazaar isn't still flooded with the remains of the housing market crash (that is, a bunch of really cheap deeds), then the profit from this move will go to the remaining architects, or whoever was smart enough to buy up the cheap deeds and inflate the price.
Based on this, I'd say what we need are more pistoleers. =)
Everywhere I look on these forums I see complaints from the support and infrastructure professions. To generalize, their markets are down, they're engaged in very intense pricing wars, and they feel underappreciated by their customers. This is because the ratio of consumers to producers is out of alignment. The reason for this is that, as I said earlier, shooting frogs and chickens is dull. I got tired of it pretty fast with my marksman, which is why I'm an entertainer now. Gaining enough faction points to join the Rebellion or Empire can take a long time, as the mission computer jobs generally dole out about 8 faction points on average (in my experience). Seeing as you need about 200 or so faction points to join, it can take a while, unless you have the location of a battlefield. Since this information isn't just hanging around in your datapad, you can either search the internet for it or wander the desert, which is also kinda dull. So here's my suggestion for solving this problem and the problems of the other professions:
1. LEAVE TATOOINE. I'm sure many of you who are complaining aren't on tatooine. Good. You're part of the solution. But on the servers I play on, Corellia and many of the other planets are woefully underpopulated. It only costs about 750cr or so to go someplace else.
2. FIGHT. There are a ton of ways to do this, all of which will make you money, and require you to give some back into the economy. Join a faction, be a scout who hunts for bone and hide, kill random swoop gang members or CorSec agents, or be original and set up prizefights. Have people bet on the outcome. Swallow your pride and take destroy missions. You'll make money and get hurt, so you'll pump money into medics and entertainers, who will in turn pump money into artisans. Artisans will buy various buildings from architects to help them in their manufacturing. It's a cycle.
3. If PLAYER ASSOCIATIONS ABUSE YOU, ABUSE THEM. Anyone who is a member of a player association is, as I recall, marked as such. They're generally quite proud of it, just like frat boys. Most PAs are quite nice, but it sounds like a few of them are screwing up your business. Well, if they want to play in a closed economy and society, let them. The most powerful pVp tool that exists in this game is social pressure. If you refuse to talk to, sell to, or in any way acknowledge members of an abusive player association, it will isolate them, and they will either bow to societal pressure or create their own world someplace else. If they go with the latter, good riddance.
Gib_Slater wrote:
A small house takes exactly 3388 resources to assemble. If we charge 3 creds per resource (Assume you bought all resources from the bazaar/players, going best rate is 3 creds) you would have to charge AT LEAST 10,164 credits to just BREAK EVEN, and that's not figuring a critical failure on ANY PART OF THE PROCESS, including the darn house itself!
There is a flaw in the above analysis. You assume 3 credits per resource as the cost. However, you have to remember that these people are not sell those resources to break even. They are selling them for a profit. So, you can lower your cost by cutting out the middleman and get the resources yourself.
How do you know that a good player can't get costs down to 1 credit/resource?
And don't say that it's because you can't do it......you don't know that someone else hasn't figured out a way.