Architect Archive
Thread: My final say on this small house pricing fiasco.
Terrorbeat, I really think you need to learn the meaning behind words. If you think calling someone "incompetent" is hardly an insult, then I'd like to know what you think is. Not only that but you also had to end your post with something incredibly un-original. If I read your post correctly, you put a lot of thought into your posts and work. If thats the case, be original because I can call the waaambulence too. On that matter also, I clearly stated that though i think 10k is underpriced, I dont care what you sell it for. I can hardly keep up with my current orders as it is. I have plenty of loyal customers and I tell them all that they can find a cheaper sale price, some think I'm joking and others see me as a good deal anyways.
You continusally compare the economy of SWG to the free market of the real world. You say you run a business right? Well the economy of SWG is Free, in that it doesnt cost anything to make and sell a house. You can go out and hand sample everything, tax-free I might add.
I also didn't state that it wasn't good business to raise your prices, but you seem to not catch my point. Yeah there is a greater chance of failure, but if you could "manage" your resources effectively, as you put it, you could still sell for cheaper. Thus it is ironic that you are raising your prices and now cannot manage your resources effectively. Now you calling others incompetent is directly relating to what your doing. Good business or not.
If your going to reply and with thought, be original and try to keep the insults to a minimum. Don't forget to read what I typed also, because you seem to come to your own conclusions that counter what is actually there.
Chelis, you're the one who doesn't know the meaning of words or what's behind them, apparently.
I said, and I'll say it again, I am going to charge more per resource for a medium house because there's more room for FAILURE. Not because I don't have enough resources or can't manage them.
I'll try to explain this really simply for you, in hopes that you'll finally understand.
If I fail on a wall, I just used over 2000 pieces of Ore and lost them. So now, that INCREASED the cost of building the house by 2000 pieces of Ore, see? It now used MORE resources. I never failed on a small house, and if I dropped 200 Ore on a strucutre module in a failure, it wasn't a big enough deal to worry about. When it's now 2000 ore, that's a different story, isn't it?
The price I sell a house at is my cost + what I deem fair profit. If my cost is higher, it follows suit that the customers will be too. If I sold a Medium House at the same exact price per resource as a small, and had one or two failures on say a wall, I'm now actually selling it for LESS per resource. Get it?
You're obviously an intelligent person, and I imagine my secretive "cost + fair profit" method is the same one you use. The only difference between us is what we deem "fair profit." Isee it as enough to increase my bank account by a couple thousandAND keep all my harvesters running, you obviously see it as more than that. I really don't understand what the problem is.
Terrorbeat, if i may ask what server are you on? on my server (kauri) if i sold my small house at 10k or even 15k it would be like selling the materials for the minimum price on the bazaar(5 creds a unit), this is not taking into account the time i have spent making it, the times i fail, nothing, and thats the minimum on the bazaar. i have seen people sale ore for 7 or even 10 creds perunit on the bazaar. so what server are you on? It would help others greatly if every one mentioned what server they were on when talking about prices, as every server is different. i would hate to have people come up to me saying i saw on the boards some one was selling small homes for 10k, and not know its on a server were the economy is lower then ours. and dont get me wrong, i am not looking to be rich, just looking at what if i need to buy some armor, or if i fail on a house or factory i have to have money to fall back on, just in case.
btw this is not a flame, just a question.
I think the bazaar resource prices are inflated if anything. It does not cost nearly as much as 7 to 10 credits per resource to find and harvest yourself. You can find a moderate quality ore without too much work and contrary to some complaints, they stay there for quite a bit of time! Therefore I don't think you can price items based on their resource cost at the bazaar. Unless, of course, you are using purchased resources to make your wares. And then, you are paying someone a lot of money for a little work and only making a marginal markup in profit.
I price items based on how much it costs me to get the resources, deal with failures, and the time it takes me to make them. Add a small markup for profit, and you have a price that is fair and profitable. I do not base prices on the "perceived" value of the resources and I do not want to alienate my customers by artificially inflating the prices.
Mysterious
Terrorbeat:
Points 1-4 are idiotic at best.
1) Pointless at best.
2) You're right not ironic, but stupid. You could have choose to sold more for smalls but didn't because you wanted the quick sale, not because the market didn't support it.
3) Everyone is right, you choose poor words and sounded just as poor.
4) You're wrong. Just too lazy to try to sell for more, and more importantly, doing a disservice to the rest of us.
It dose have a big thing to do with the bazaar, because i , to tell you the truth would rather extract 2k of ore, and sale it for what 14k at the bazaar(7credsper unit- which i do see alot)and not have to worry about failing on any thing and with out any extra work, then to use it plus metals, plus my time and get 4k less. it makes no sense.. So when i price i do take the material as if your buying it from the bazaar, there is no other way of putting an accurate price on it other wise, as the economy is in a constant flux..
ScytheX wrote:
I think the bazaar resource prices are inflated if anything. It does not cost nearly as much as 7 to 10 credits per resource to find and harvest yourself. You can find a moderate quality ore without too much work and contrary to some complaints, they stay there for quite a bit of time! Therefore I don't think you can price items based on their resource cost at the bazaar. Unless, of course, you are using purchased resources to make your wares. And then, you are paying someone a lot of money for a little work and only making a marginal markup in profit.
I price items based on how much it costs me to get the resources, deal with failures, and the time it takes me to make them. Add a small markup for profit, and you have a price that is fair and profitable. I do not base prices on the "perceived" value of the resources and I do not want to alienate my customers by artificially inflating the prices.
Mysterious
But realistically anyone should be able to walk up to the bazaar and buy everything they need to make a profit and sill walk off with a profit. When prices for materials go up for me I sell on the bazaar instead of making products that sell less than the resource cost. I'm not interested in gettin XP. I'm interested in credits. With credits you can get XP. With resources, not so much.
I am not an architect in any way and really do not know much of what is happening with pricing in that area. I am a musician and came to this board to see how much PA Halls were going for.
Then I got into reading these posts about small houses and people not worrying about them since they will move on and make the more profitable medium and large houses.
That doesn't make sense. Smaller houses should bring in the highest profits.They take less resources and have less critical failures from what I read. It is a lot easier to mark-up something that is cheap to make rather than something that is more expensive to make.
So the issue of small houses should be an interesting one for you all.
I also understand that Master Architects feel that making small houses are below their skills, but those who ignore that are not realizing their full potential.
Rath:
While I appreciate your constructive criticism (insert sarcasm here)...
You're right, I *could* choose to sell the houses for whatever I want, and so can you. If I'm an idiot for selling my homes at a profit and moving up the Architect tree, then so be it. What kind of moron would want to make money AND XP?!?!? I'm clearly deranged, and playing this character completely unlike SOE intended, because you say so.
However, I'm not too lazy to sell it for more. I'm VERY busy, working my way up the Architect tree while you whine about my sale price.
And my price isn't affecting you in the least, you moron. I'm on a different server, nobody on your server hasa tiny little clue about my pricing. Maybe if you spent less time whining about me and more time working on you, you'd be a happier person. Just a thought.
Naraku hon, look under my little avatar icon, it says my server name.
And as I've said 100 times, I'd love to sell these homes at 10 per resource, but people would just laugh at me, go to Coronet, and buy it from the Architects over there who've been selling them at 10K since before I even got Novice Architect.
Architects should try to find a new way to level-up, besides making small houses. I know it attractive at low-levels; they're relatively easy to make and the lure of selling them for even 10k apiece can make the small house seem like a very worthy endevour, let alone the 6500xp or so you get from them (all components included).
Ok, so, if the XP is attractive, why not just focus on making the COMPONENTS that get you all that xp in the first place? I mean structural modules make you 500xp per, and you'd be making them anyway right? So when you get too many of them, why not make WALLS? Your going to need them to make larger components, and the xp for making them is not too much less than a small house. I would venture to say that at the end of the day, you will get as much xp for crafting all of these components, using the same amount of resources, as you would by making small houses (I am sure there are power-levelers out there who can crunch some xp numbers and rip my theory to shreds).
Besides getting the XP, you're building your stock of items you will need down the line, when you get into factories and such. Not only that, but a valid argument can be made that these items are much more marketable on any planet than small houses are. I don't know about you, but after a day of mission running between ALL of the cities on Naboo, pitching my small houses, I am LUCKY to make 1 sale. I haven't tried to sell any yet, but I am sure there are plenty of architects out there who would pay $$ for walls and Str. Mod's rather than grind through making them themselves.
The fact is, it is highly unlikely that the small housing market will EVER be stable enough to support all of the novice architects trying to support their harvesters while level through their craft. Another thread brings up the point that small houses are just not USEFUL enough to warrant even 10k architects are asking.
So, architects, I have heard you talking of collusion, forming unions, trying to fix prices. Well, I think thats impossible. We can still work together, however, and support eachother. Higher-level architects can support lower-level architects by buying the components they make. Lower-level architects can help to create a trickle-down system that will stablize the prices on the upper-end items that their components go into; when they reach that higher level themselves, a new crop of novice architects will be there to supply them with components.
Mentioning factories to automate the process and take out the low-level supplier would just complicate the issue. I think you could buy handcrafted components from low-level architects for less $$ than a factory would cost to make the same thing.
Think about it, and support your fellow architects. Are numbers are dwindling (which is not bad), and we need to make sure those of us that stick with it will have a solid economy from which to reap rewards.