Architect Archive

treat.. not threat ( LOL )

I do agree,

There are some tips to selling that are not easy foryounger peopleto internalize. I am not running the kids down ( heck I wish I was one of them ). All thier social experience is working against them.

You need to work to make sure the customer feels important, more important than you are. ( the preasure of youth to make themselves feel important and belittle others is huge )

You need to look beyond the one sale to the many sales that may lay ahead.

It is the little stuff that makes a difference, a tree or peice of furniture as a housewarming gift along with a sale, 5k of good high energy potential power to go along with that Heavy Extractor you sell.

A willingess to drop youown needs and desires at a moments notice to provide service to a cutomer.

For me it is making sure that they pay a lttle less then they do at most other places.

These things to me are what make customers that come to you for everything.

I totally agree with the original poster and have adopted a similar mode of operation. I am a master merchant and a master architect so I buy and sell to support my business and I will build structures to help friends. If someone else wants something, they are gonna have to pay a hair higher than whale poodoo if they want it.

The other day I had, what you might call a minor victory in the education of customers. It went something like this..

Customer: How much you charge for a (medium extractor of some type that takes 3 walls)?

Me: I won't touch that for X credits(I forget the specific structure and price I quoted).

Customer: WOW!! thats allot!! (customer was not rude or anything, just suprised that my price was way above average)

Me: Well it takes allot of resources and time. If I sell for average I make less than what I could sell the resources for.

Customer: (not sinking in yet)

Me: But, if you bring me the resources to make it, Ill do it for free.

Customer: You will? Cool, what does it take?

Me: I start naming off the quantities of materials, customer is still ok with it, then I get to the walls...

Me: Takes 3 walls, each wall is 10 blocks, each block takes 200 ore and 50 metal, so total of 2500 resources per wall....

Customer: forget it.

After that, the person was kind enough to come to the conclusion that architects that sell for the current prices are stupid. One informed person down, who knows how many to go!

Anyway, my new pricing scheme, no longer will I quote prices, I will take bids. But not flat credit bids. My question will be simply, when asked a price, I will say "how much are you paying per resource?" When the give me a number, I will in turn take that number, and calculate the total, based on resources needed. When I return that value and the customer falls over or insults me, I will say something like...

May I suggest either requesting a structure that requires fewer resources.

When they continue to spout off, I will give them a...

I am quite happy to work for 5-7 cpu profit magrin. I do not mind being the lowest by far of all the professions. I would never consider charging you 100 cpu like weapon crafters do, but I refuse to work for less than the cost I could sell the materials for.

I keep getting tells of people asking me why such and such structure is so hard to find, I happily reply that is because the pathetic prices being paid. I said when people start to be more reasonable and start treating architects with more respect, they find a few more structures "in stock". Until then, I suggest said person to try and find some lowballer that will quite when they realize they make more mining.

I am not going to be quitting architect anytime soon, but that does not mean I will be building public welfare housing units. My skills can wait.

To the original poster..

You got it right!!

"Personally I see no point in having more credits than anyone else."

I agree 100% with this. If only I did have more credits than anyone else. Right now I think I have..300k or so. Which I don't think is that much, but it does allow me some breathing space for maint and so on. The days when I could spend 14 hours in this game are gone, which I guess is another reason why I'm just as happy making fewer but more valuable sales.

"I appreciate this board and all the posts here greatly but I wish I could see more of a sense of fulfillment and community as I have with my endeavors."

Again I agree whole heartedly. I'm lucky that I have a few good friends that I help and that helps me. (For them I build for free, since it's 'our' resources, not 'mine'.)
We did have an unlucky stint where we tried to turn it in to a Corporation (Guild), but it fell to pieces since we seemed to attract the kind of people who would rather hunt and run around on their own than work together as a community. I guess I just ended up with the wrong kind of people, I'm glad to hear there are community oriented people out there. (Well, except for the couple of lads I work with too, of course.)

Anyway, I'm glad to hear my post got a positive response. It wasn't meant to tell people what to do, I would never assume to tell someone how to play their game or have their fun.
But I do want empower us Archs, as I do feel we've been handed the short end of a lot of sticks. Like someone said, we're the 2nd most Mastered profession.. But I've seen a lot of people quitting, so we now have the power to move us from being the slave labourers of the Star Wars universe to at least giving us somewhat of a dignity.

Oh, and PS: If you do end up with more money; Spend it. Go to the Cantina, make sure you tip well, tip healers, what have you. Putting more money in circulation like this is a Good Thing(tm). Besides, most entertainers are females, they're normally the ones who buy most of the furniture.. You see where I'm going with this.

Cheers, and Power To The Architects!
Morlok

THis is the way a market is supposed to work. Looks like the devs maybe did something right You can always buy stuff online for cheaper than locally, especially computer parts. But you have to wait a few days for delivery. If you want it right now, you pay more.

I have long said that if there are 1000 people on a server, 800 will want a structure. Whether you charge x or z for it matters not, they will still buy one, it will just take them longer to get the cash for it. Really, if you charge more for it you won't sell less, it will take them longer to get the cash for it. I up my prices each week and still just barely keep stuff in stock.

My new profession is that I quit SWG until they involve architects in the GCW. Until then it's just like playing the Sims, except less fun. Running around to my harvesters and selling resources fun was never fun, but I did it for a couple of months. Made a ton of credits. Have about 2 mil resources stocked up. Lost a ton to a bug, which SoE never responded to. So I cancelled my account. When they release player cities, I'll log on and build a bunch of structures for my PA and then quit again. SoE cares nothing for their customers. Architect is boring as hell. And the game pretty much sucks right now.

Architect is boring? So don't be an architect. Be something else. Sounds like you arent the kind of person that enjoys the number crunching/resource management/salesmanship required of the profession. Be a pistoleer or dancer. Better yet, try out all the other professions. We have ...about 15 (?).... other servers. More than enough for you to try out other professions and find one you enjoy with destroying a character you already have.

Bo-Nes,

You dont understand, by threatening to quit they actually believe they will in some way influence SOE, it is a lot like believing your are Napolen.