Architect Archive
Thread: Association for the Protection of Architectural Professionals (APAP)
overherad on the streets of Bestine...
"HOUSEs 7K", novice architect
"SET OF MABARI ARMOR 12K", novice armorsmith
I think the whole point to this org is to keep people from killing our profession by underselling all architects out there... If we all agree to general prices - where there is always room to vary prices - we can all have fun by selling structures.
Its the folks who are selling houses for <10k - there are folks out there who try to sell for 10 to 15k trying to make an honest profit - and if you undersell them - you 1) push prices downward for yourself in the future and 2) you make architecture boring for those who want to make a respectable profit.
Shame on you
This is a game folks - lets all play together and have a good time - there is absolutely *NO* need to massively undersell your colleagues in order to profit in a game - How dare you =P
All I know is I work HARDfor my 5000 odd credits of profit... I manage 10 harvesters, 2 power generators and a house for my brother and I to share. To think that you are trying to put me out of biz infuriates me to no end - I want to enjoy selling some houses as well. Like I say - Shame on you.
As for the APAP org - I am all for it - Im signing up the minute you guys offer memberships. I want my clients to know that Im an APAP member and I support all other architects who wish to have some fun by working together to further our profession. There is no need for strict pricing rules - just as there is no need for extremely underselling your profession - Have some pride - expect more for what you do - and support your fellow architect.
Khsutep Ankham'un - Proud to be in the 10K+ club and will never sell for less
Architect Tarq server
Barma wrote:
Why is it costing me less to let the harvesters burn? i put in 1 dollar, let em dwindle to 5% and destroy/rebuild/rinse/repeat. This is sweet, but I just might be spoiling the milk by putting this on SOE's own website, oops.
B
That's why personally I feel that once the condition drops below 85% you cannot remove minerals and they don't harvest material anymore. Consider the structure condemned.
As for the issue at hand. Resources are limited. That's the most important thing to remember. Even if Joe Blow wants to sell his house for 8K it's no big deal. You can only harvest so many materials. The big PAs are going to do whatever the hell they want so talking about them even in the context of price fixing is pointless. Back to Joe Blow though, he makes 1 house a day because that's all the materials his harvesters can get. Joe sells his house for 8K and someone sees the transaction. They say "Joe man that's a great deal can I buy one too." Joe is like "Sure you can, but I used all my materials for the day. Let me check the bazaar and see if I can make you one." So Joe goes to the bazaar and realizes that it's going to cost him at least 10K in materials alone. Ah what does Joe do? Tell the guy to come back tomorrow? Well the guy might just buy from someone else. Or sell higher?
Lastly lets say that people say screw this, and won't pay more than 8K for a small home. Doesn't bother me really one bit. All the materials my harvesters harvest will go on the bazaar at 3 creds/unit. I'll make more money selling resources than selling a home.
Practical example of this...
This guy came up to me today and asked me if he could buy a weapons factory from me. I said sure, for 65K. That equates to about 5 creds/unit which is my pricing scheme. The guy told me that some other guy said he'd sell it to him for 30K and was hoping that I'd beat that deal. I told the guy that if I had to buy all the resources for this factory, barring any critical failures, that it would cost me 40K alone. Point of the story I told the guy if I had 30K I'd buy the factory from the other architect myself and just re-sell it for higher.
well now that free powerless harvesters are gone how do you feel about a less than 10k house i can tell you for a fact if you sell low youll see your house decay faster than your bank account .
undercutting only hurts yourself cause when you sold your bag of 8k houses and are out of resources for days my 12k houses will sell and i will be able to afford to run harvesters and power gens.
have fun spending all your money on making houses only to be able to afford 3/4 of the resources you will need for your next one.
oh and those saying you dont need a house . wait a few weeks and see what not having a house does to your bank and your pack.
mayby we should ask for a deposit fee on banks have the bank ask for 20 credits when you drop a item in it this will prompt ppl to want a house.when that house is full it will prompt em to buy a larger and larger. and when the fighting end needs a break and you want a social end where ya going to go?town with all the newbs asking you for this and that.no
just dont undercut your not hurting the others your hurting yourself. ifyou quote a guy 4k today and 3 days down the road you decide 3k isnt but a days maint on a harvester and you cant make a house again for a week or 2 (cause your harvesters dont work under 100 percent now and you must have power to run them) so you tell him 15k that way you can run your harvs he laughs at you and says he knows a guy who sells them for 4k,you say that was me but now i need 15k, he says no going price is 4k and i wont buy over 4k. guess what you just did to yourself?ill give you a hint it involves rope.
doing the math
if u pay 3x credits for ore
10k per house is extremely generous. Yes, House prices originated in bazaar terminals at 10k due to that being the highest amount u could trade for. However, it happens to be a good median in price because maintaining harvestors (wind, steel, ore, aluminum, copper, reactive gas, inert chemical, inert gas, etc) deals alot of credits to maintain daily. If 10-15k sounds outrageous, it's only because you havent figured out how to make credits yet. 10k in credits in easy to make just in missions alone.
I'm all for aggreeing to try and sell at a certain price. I for one will not sell a house below 10k. Its not worth my time and i could use the resources to make bigger things instead.
I am in favor of sellingselling houses for 20-25-k.
However I do not support buying the ones that are cheeper. I feel this will
reward those selling this low and they will continue to do it. Instead I propose
standing near those selling houses too cheapley and saying bad things about them to thier
prospective customers.
Price fixing is not only ineffective, but I find it immoral. The non-architect players on the server deserve to have a functioning market economy, not a communist state (as much as I'm a fan of socialism... but there is no central government to compensate us here). In any case, the incentives to cheat a price-fixing system are too large. If there are enough architects (and as it stands right now, there are too many), for example, almost everyone is going to have a friend who's an architect. Are you realistically going to tell me you're not going to sell your houses at materials cost to your friends - that you're going to charge the association rate? I think (and I hope for your sake) that you do not. But your system is ineffective unless a good majority of the houses on the server are sold at the association rate; otherwise, the combination of fraternity and low-price deviators is going to undercut it.
The problem here is that some of you are in the game to make gads of money. I'm in the game to make houses; if I wanted to make money, I'd grab my pistol and go on destroy missions. This is fundamentally irreconciliable. You are not going to be able to undercut someone who doesn't care about profit. And thanks to the game mechanics, you're not going to be able to harass them (much) either.
A chicken in every pot, and a house for every n00b, that's what I say...
Thockler, Architect specializing in artisan services, Coronet, Bria
Oh, and to the charge that I'm pushing my future prices downward. In all honesty, I'm pushing future prices up, because I'm driving other people out of the profession (the quick story of Microsoft - they killed Lotus 1-2-3 because they sold Excel at a tenth ofthe price, and now look what's happened). It is not my intention to destroy other architects, but it's a side effect of my desire to spend only a few minutes in the city each day to sell a few houses (because people snap up 5K houses like you wouldn't believe) so I can spend my time doing other things. And I have happier and more loyal customers as a result.
This is called "collusion" I believe and in the real world is often illegal. That being said, I think all Architects working together is a commendable idea and I applaud you for suggesting it.
Unfortunately, I think cross-server is nearly difficult, but the concept of an all Architect PA is an interesting one!
There are definately some people here that don't understand the free market system.
If someone is selling houses for less than what they cost they will not be selling houses for long.
It's that simple. It DOES cost money to make structures. The prices will naturally adjust to that cost. The rest is competition.
The ONLY mitigating factor to this is if a PA uses the success of one artisan (say a weaponsmith) to fund price undercuting of another artisan (Arcitect). However, the net result will either be a lost or break even. That means there is no motivation to do it. The only time they will do it is to get structures for fellow PA members. That is a closed system external to your market and so as no affect on you.
You may be frustrated that when you tell someone asking the price of your structure and the gasp and talk about how they know someone that will sell it to them for 5k. However, just tell them to go buy it. This will serve 2 purposes. First, it will drive the undercutters out of the market faster. The faster they loose money the faster they will either raise prices or leave the market. Second, it forces the hand of the buyer. They may get one for 5k or even 3 for 5k but when the supply stops it will be them that are hurting, not you.
I also don't understand why you care. Why do you care that someone else is selling at a loss? Because they are stealing business from you? No. They are driving themselves out of business faster. They HAVE to sell at what it costs them.
Therefore I conclude that the only reason you want a "Guarenteed Minumum Price" is to guarentee you get a certain profit. I disagree with that. I agree with free market.