Architect Archive
Thread: Architects Getting Shafted (Sickened by the Economy)
They completely fund my operation of 15 harvesters (4 mediums, 11 PME's) each day. I can sell at whatever I want, and don't need to make a dime...but...I do make a dime because people like my stuff. I don't shout, I don't advertise much (a few posts in the vendor threads on my server board), people just seem to flock to me.
Also on Lowca I've been subcontracted out by other architects that have too much work. We all have been getting along great on our server, I've gotten 200k worth of work from other architects, and have prolly given away 100k worth of work to others as well. I'd give more away, but I'm not a master yet so I don't get as many /tell requests as they do.
Arelathan wrote:
Padashar, if you could please tell me the easiest way for me to start out as a novice architect!! I've never been one nor have I had much experience talking to one, but IMO I was thinking maybe I should start with furnishings. I mean when someone gets a house they're going to think "time to give it a make-over" so...Anyone have any ideas?
Obakib
Eclipse,Naboo, Moenia
Greetings:
I've been working up some major intrigues on Radiant and I think Architects will start moving things more if we are simply creative. As a good guide to being an architect here is what I suggest.
Philosophy One:
Make money in order to pay for your upkeep and provide for your non-combative downtime.
Always keep your prices stable and orderly. Help the market and don't wreak havoc.
-- There is nothing worse than changing prices and having prior customers come back to you and say HEY, you sold that house to so and so for 10k less than mine! This is why the overzealous cut-you-in-the-back entrepreneurs won't last very long.
Furnish your houses.
-- If you don't give them something to look at they have to go inside and sit on the barren floor! Frozen butt cheeks aren't a good thing and will put you out of business faster because you aren't providing good service.
Add services for your customer that aren't dictated by game mechanic "A" and game mechanic "B". SoE never said you couldn't be a real estate broker, an estate salesman, a combination city speculator and architect merchant. If you are creative, then you will add a "punch" to your business.
Work with other architects.
-- Give 15% discounts ONLY to other architects. If another architect needs to fill a medium house order, doesn't have the supplies and doesn't want to lose a customer, hey you can help him or her out! Sell them the medium house for 15% less than what you normally do, hook them up with some furnishings, and they can inturn sell it for a slight profit and not lose face. Turnaround will help you out as well.
Be informative to your customers.
-- Give them a lot of information about house placement, use, administration, and the ins and outs of things. I use a "reply" macro that gives all information that you could ever want to know about house placement in under 2 minutes time - separated by 8 second intervals.
Last but certainly not least:
-- Be a team player and work within your community. An architect is not like other merchants. We are literally building the world around us. If we can't be a part of the world we are living on, why try and be an influential factor at all?
As a last note on where to go first in your training? That is really up to you but here is a good bet for you.
- Housing 1
- Installation 1
- Installation 2
- Housing 2
- Furniture 1 (gotta furnish them mediums - smalls not overly important because most people use them for workshops and businesses)
- Furniture 2
- Housing 3
- Furniture 3
- Furniture 4
- Installation 3
- Installation 4
- Housing 4
- And the rest...
I'm an architect on Wanderhome, currently only at the stage where I can build medium houses. I don't really care what the prices for houses are, the only thing that matters is that I make more money from building homes than I would if I sold the resources seperately.
Houses are expensive items and because of that players feel things are too expensive and architects feel they have to sell low. Other professions can charge 10c a resource and sell their products easily, partly because smaller value items are easier to sell AND they can put them on the bazaar.
I sell my small houses for 20k on wanderhome. Its one of the newer servers and the resource prices are still quite high. I'd say its about 4 - 5 at the moment. Its hard to get a grip exactly on the prices that resources sell for as the bazaar is often misleading. The resource prices are coming down though as more people get harvesters up and running and the market for the sale of resources becomes more competative. I do get alot of tells from people telling me my prices are too high. Alot of people do sell for 20 on wanderhome at the moment. Personally I think its a reasonable price. Other professions are able to sell at 10c so I think a little over 5c in the same market isn't too unfair. I am seeing alot more people selling for 15k but they always seem to be out of stock whereas I usually have enough stock to be able to supply a house instantly.
I'm not really going to castigate people for selling low. Its their choice. I think they are abit silly though spending the time to learn the profession and then selling their goods at less than they would make if they just sold the materials, but its their choice. I do often tell my customers that if they shop around they can get a house cheaper as I do feel slightly bad that I charge more than some, although I shouldn't really as its a fair price in the current market on wanderhome.
I reached medium buildings today and realise they take about 20k resources. I don't think I'd sell these at the moment less than 5c a resource. So that would be 100k roughly. Compared to other professions 5c I think is pretty reasonable, considering the resource market prices on wanderhome currently. All I want to do is make a profit over what I would get if I sold the materials seperately. I don't want to rip anyone off, just make a little profit from my profession, otherwise whats the point in doing it. I could just set up harvesters and sell the resources and spend my time doing easy stuff instead of fulfilling orders for people all the time.
My 2c.
5.5 Credits per resource. 4 credit discount per resource provided from the customer (who probably bought it off the bazaar)
it is the formula that so far is working for me, albiet at a very slow rate. Dispite resources changing while I am sleeping I am still able to keep afloat.barely...
The correct price should be closer to 6.5 credits per resource. I won't charge that untill I have suffcient product in inventory. I know I can charge more when the product is ready to deliver. Unfortuantly I still need to make things as I get orders. But trying to get ahead 
My time counts for something running from installation to installation. I will not sell for less. Although for close friends special deals are always available.
There are just some items that you can't make that huge a percentage of profit on.
Take the computer industry for example, a printer cable costs a retail store about 2 dollars. How much do they sell it for? at least 10 dollars. That is a 400% margin. Now, a computer costs them $500...should they sell that for 2500? No, nobody would buy that computer as it is clearly priced too high...
In a real world situation what you're suggesting would get you hauled in front of a judge. Its called COLLUSION and lots of professionals go to jail each year because of it.
Obilon Whitsonobi
Ahazi Galaxy, Tattooine
I'm somewhere in between, on this one, i think there is two extremes and the correct answer is in the middle. For instance seeing some butt chump selling small houses for 5k credits, made me want to have the ability to hire a bounty hunter, but then i alsothink some of you are being greedy too.
I mean i am only at the stage where i can make smalls, style 1 and 2 including generic, but i still make a small profit. I look at it like this, i can have 1 wind powermill, 2 harvs in a spot of roughly 50% ore and 1 with 70%ish aluminium. That will cost me around 3500 credits to maintain, then i can buy off some resource sellers advertising in the streets, 3k units of ore for 10k(i've done this twice now). So overall it's a cost of 13.5k in that day and with me sampling maybe 300 steel myself,i get enough resources for 2 houses. If i sell at 10k, which i am forced to, due to others making it the market(personally i too think 12k is more like it) then i make just over 6k in profit and have maybe 800 ore spare which carries over to the next day. Now ok 6k ish and some ore isn't a great deal, but i am not exactly grinding here, i'll check my harvs on a monring, pay the maintenance, do a little steel sampling maybe an hour max, craft the house, sell them and that's it. It helps me level, gives me some cash and I have plenty of time to look into....ahem cough splutter....other ventures.
So if we could just get rid of the losers selling houses at 5k and to be honest, they will realise they aren't making any money and die out anyway. Maybe if those who set up 100 harvs are being greedy and get what they deserve for eating up all the resources and dreaming of being the kings of bling bling.Maybe it's almost balanced, with a bit of tweaking anyway.
NEB
tattle wrote:
HA! You're selling your products for less than the resources are worth. That's not a great business man, that's stupid.
Actually just because a resource sells for a certain price on the bazaar does not mean that resource is worth said amount. It means that a person wants a certain amount for the resources and if your willing to pay for it then goody! If he makes a profit selling **edit** at the amount he sells it for and he is selling alot then he is like wal-mart and others gouging and trying to make the larges credit amount profit per sale are like macy's or some other big store that cant seem to stay in business cuz everyone wants to pay less baby!
Yes it does. If resources are being sold for 4 cpu then that means that is what the resources is worth. Selling for less than that would be bad business.
FurthermoreWalmart and other large chains DO NOT sell products for less than what the raw materials are worth. Nobody sells anything for less than what the raw materials are worth. Why you may ask,because Walmart is not in the Manufacturing Business. Walmart is not in the Mining Business. Walmart is in the DISTRIBUTION business. So the mining companies sell their product for x dollars per kg. Then the manufacturing plants take the raw materials and fashion an item. Then they mark it up to x + y dollars per unit. Now they go to Walmart and say you want to buy this item and sell it to the public. Walmart says yes. So Walmart increases the price of the item x + y + z dollars per product. The final price takes into account the prices they had to pay for the product then they set a markup.
Now lets look at SWG again. You have architects that are playing as the miner/manufacturer/distributor of their products. It costs 1 cpr to mine. Then if they sold the resource to a manufacturer, aka weaponsmith, armorsmith, or architect, they would sell their minerals for 3 cpr. Said manufacturer would then make a finished product and sell it for, say, 5 cpr. Now two things could happen. A player buys the item and uses it, or a merchant buys the item and resells it for a flat markup 1K cred item sells for 1.5K creds. Basically the reason it works that way in this game is because you can do all 3 parts. That is illegal in almost every Capitalistic nation. Have you ever heard of the term vertical trust? This is made illegal in the US by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
So maybe we should enact some of these laws in SWG. What do you think?
Well maybe that's a little harsh. How about people don't cut themselves and others short and actually sell products for what they're worth.
I've actually no problems getting money. I'm not going to divulge the info, (because business is buisness) but it's possible to dovery well, financially speaking. I've made 60k today, and thats purely on the resources gained from six harvesters no "power" sampling.
As far as the economy is concerned. It's not a matter of figuring how much things cost and how much profit you want to make, its all about how much you can GET for it. How badly the customer wants his goods.
The worlds economic historyis littered with examples of companies who have sold their wares as a loss leader, and all that does is create more demand for the product. Which then outstrips that particular supply,the suppliereither goes bust or sticks there prices up to lessen the demand. So your back toa descent price that everyone can compete at.
Granted, various professions are going to experience peaks and lows, but thats the nature of economics. It;s cyclical. You just gotta diversify. Dont bang out the most expensive thing you can, look at profit ratios if your faced with choice, choose what suits your capacity.
Of course, this is the first game I've played with this kind of economy, and theres always the D3Wd element. You can't alwayspredict what kind of behaviour an online community can conjure up. But I think it's gonna be pretty **edit** close to following true supply & demand rules.
I agree with the concerns over the bazaar. The $limit is just too low. They should add an upper rate mod to one of the skill trees in all advanced professions. I get most of my business through referals, so i'm never short for work,but not everyone has that.
I am not an Architect but I know alot about business. If the person selling the item is making a profit selling it less that the other players that means that player has found a way to produce a way to make it cheaper and have a competitive price so he/she can sell that item. Thats what a Player economy is there is no set price for an Item. Player A selling a Small house for 15000 Credits each and Player B is selling the same house for 10000 Credits each. Now Player A buys his resources from the bizarre while player b mines for his own resources which essentially cost 1 credit each while player A is paying 4-6 credits each depending on the source he is buying from. Eventually Player A has to come up with a way to lower his cost so he can be competitive with Player B. For example maybe Player A has to add additional Services like helping the Buying finding land to build on to cover his cost. Maybe throw in some free Furniture like a free Bedroom set or Livingroom set. and mine the resources for the furniture yourself to bring down the cost plus it helps in your XP department.
Cant Compare sellers in game with real life businesses. businesses like walmart can sell for cheaper because they buy smart and when a good deal comes along they buy a big quantity and maybe they get a bigger deal. In a players economy that doesnt work that way some players sell large Quantities of resources and want more per unit then if you bought in smaller quantities well because they have to work harder to get it. instead of paying maintenance on 1 Harvester they now paying maint on 10.. This has alot to do with the shifting on Resources in MHO The resources shift too frequently making players spend more credits to move the harvesters.
Learn to deal with the economy the way it is Competition is always gonna be around especially in the future as more players become Architects. Im on Rori in the city of Nermle and right now there are several Architects trying to sell the same small house at different prices 1 sells for 17000 another 15000 and the 3rd 13000. Eventually the one selling for 17000 will have to either move on to another city or Sell for less. but then you have to realize soon there will be a 4th player selling for 10000 then a 5th player selling for 9500. So the ones complaining are the Bill Gates of the SWG community they want to run everything and have their names on everything and guess what thats not gonna happen live with the competition and learn how to win.