Architect Archive
Thread: New harvestors selling like hotcakes...
People like DadeCrash are just price gouging, armor/weaponsmith wannabes.
You think we are too cheap and ruin the economy when selling for 3CPU and we think you are price gouging, greedy, armorsmith/weaponsmith wannabes.
I can afford to sell at 3CPU because I mine all my own stuff.
Why don't I just sell the resource at the same price? Because I didn't get into Architect to sell resources. I got into it to make structures for people.
I have a thriving business and make plenty enough money with my prices because I get tons of business. I have enough now to just completlyreitre and play a fighter for a long time to come if I wanted to.
Besides, what are you going to tell all those customers that baught the higher extraction rate harvesters for higher prices when they all revert back to old extraction rates? Are you going to refund them the price difference of a 10 extraction rate harv. versus the price on the 7's?
An item is worth whatever it will sell for. If I can sell a Heavy Harvester for 150k (which is about what the resources sell for on the open market) then I'll do it, and it's a fair price. It's a more than fair price actually, when we can't even really buy the resources for that little. To some people,time isn't worth money apparently. If you sell big harvs for 90k or lower, you're making somewhere around 2.5 per unit, not considering what all different types of resources go into it, not including factory parts and the chance for crit fails. It's BAD BUSINESS to sell for so far less than the average rate. Even wal-mart won't do that. As a businessman in real life, I would go broke doing what I see Architects doing in SWG.
Nobody is asking anyone to price gouge. Just have patience, and charge a fair and reasonable price for your skill and time and effort. If you don't, then you're shooting yourself in the foot, and frankly, you don't belong in business. That's what I would (and have) told people in the real world, and i've watched them fail and laugh.
omnibuscortex wrote:
Also, I certainly hope this kind of ridiculous undercutting doesn't happen when cities pop, otherwise yet another good thing will be ruined by poor businesspeople.
If someone can sell a product for less and still make a profit that makes them a good business person. Sorry if you don't like it.
If they can't make a profit then their business won't survive and you don't have to worry about it.
Believe it or not, it makes no difference to me. I'm just trying to show you how resource economics on another server have evolved and how your assumption of cross-server price-gouging falls short when you try to compare prices across servers. Case in point: Drakeous Avalonius on the Scylla server rents people's lots at 1K per lot per day, mines exclusively with heavy harvesters and primarily mines carbonate ore. He sells at 2.0 cpu (2.5 cpu for high quality ore). He places harvesters on non-core worlds where the resource % tend to be a bit higher. He's done it for a long time and he brings in 100s of Ks of units per day. He's wealthy even at those prices. It happens. It can work. This has also had the added effect of driving the price-gougers out of the market almost entirely. To assume that what is true on your server is true of every server is pretty much the definition of over-generalizing.
I'm not trying to flame you here. I'm just trying to point out that there are too many variables to consider to make your or anyone else's criticism of someone's prices on another server anything but a waste of time.
Hey, I want to say first that I understand your frustration, but I can't necessarily agree with your line of reason. I sell my harvestors for about 90-100k unexperimented (heavies) and to tell you the truth, I have a hard time finding people to buy them. Maybe its because I am not in a huge PA that creates shopping malls and has dozens of players that will help advertise, but personally I just think that the demand is not there, at least on my server. At launch there were thousands of new players, so there inevitably was going to be a sharp increase in demand at a certain time period after launch, but now there number of new players is a fraction of the first launch,the demand will never be that high again. You might be in business, but this business is economics, and each Architect essentially is his/her own factory. What we have here is a natural drop in demand, and since we are not decreasing the supply, the price is inevitably going to drop. I wish I could sell my harvs for 150k- but I wouldnt last a 2 weeks, and I dont have a bank account with 5 million credits to squat on. Right now I am selling the new 10 extraction harvs for 150k. the reason for this is because that 520 or so HQ steel 992 that I am using i am selling for 100 cpu just like weapon/armorsmiths. and thats tagging on 50k to my price, and the extra 10k is because demand right now is high, cause everyone wants new, better products (harvestors).
So to conclude, I agree with you- I feel that 2.5 cpu isnt good, and we deserve better/more for our time and efforts. But if 95% of the other architects are going to sell at 2.5 cpu, and I want to stay in business, I have to meet that price. And because demand has been so low lately, it makes sense why the price is lower than it should be. Just my thoughts.
-Fitzhume -Master Architect- Kettemore -Naboo
While I was grinding I sold at almost cost.
Now I have my business running and am a naster architect I have upped my prices. Why ?
I require more ore than the lots provided can give me. The diversity of pruducts I produce requires about 5 prime resources (carb ore, steel, copper, allum and reactive) to be on hand at all times in quantities worth using in a factory run (say 30 generator turbines). I need a medium house and a factory (40% of my lots gone boink).
I have 5 people who supply me with ore, walls, fibre, chems, hides etc. I support a micro economy on my own. I buy about a million credits a week in resources.
I sell most of my items for about 4cr (pre exp). So a heavy miner clocks in at 110k (for BER 7), fusions at 160k and pa's at 400k (they soak up time so I charge for that). I spend all week filling my vendor for the weekend rush and making to order. The ONLY items that fall off the 7 day vendor cycle are furniture which I stock in mass 60-100 items as a teaser to the shop.
I also sell personal ext. and small houses at near cost to get new customers in.
I see other architects selling houses at 5k and PA's at 250k...its cool with me...indeed I often buy them and sell them on. These folks are clearly mining for themselves or have access to sub 3cr resources. They will evolve or fade away. I deal with 40-60 customers a week 25% of them repeats. I am prompt, polite and helpful......and with the 5 folks supplying me I get a 'group' fun component to the game.
Be Well, Bob'the Builder
Xader_Vartec wrote:
omnibuscortex wrote:
Also, I certainly hope this kind of ridiculous undercutting doesn't happen when cities pop, otherwise yet another good thing will be ruined by poor businesspeople.
If someone can sell a product for less and still make a profit that makes them a good business person. Sorry if you don't like it.If they can't make a profit then their business won't survive and you don't have to worry about it.
ROFL, last I heard business was about making the most profit from each sale possible. Maxamize profit for the number of sales you have. Don't give me any of that wal-mart stuff either because IF that was the case and we were like walmart we would be able to buy our resources for .7 cr per unit in any volume we wanted(IE. buy from china or some other country without child labour laws). I just have to wonder sometimes what kind of RL experience you guys have. When you go to pick up your paycheck each week do you say "Oh, no that's too much, I can live on Min. wage and still make a BIG profit so would you please cut my salary?"
That's all you're doing is working for minimum wage at best. Combat classes and resource miners are spending 1/30th of the time making the same amount of money you are making...oh forget it, no use talking to a fence post.
Anyway back on topic, Personally I could care less if these things sell like hot cakes. I do have orders for about 30 heavies but don't intend to sell any until I find out for sure if the changes are going to stick. The real reason I want the changes to stay is that I have to pull all my own ore (since no one in their right mind actually sells ore for 2 cr per unit...or 4-5cr per unit for that matter). On a 58% spot with a spec 10 heavy vs a spec 7 harvester I am pulling up an extra 2500 or so ore a day. That's a little over 1 extra wall module per day per heavy I have in the field. Time is FAR more important than credits. With my schedule I may get to play a little over an hour a night on weekdays. To me crafting/experimenting is my play time and without ore I can't do that. This allows me to get more play time for the time that I have. Credits? bah, I've got enough now I could quit arch and never have to run a mission again but I'm not going to work for minimum wage either.
Fitzhume wrote:Hey, I want to say first that I understand your frustration, but I can't necessarily agree with your line of reason. I sell my harvestors for about 90-100k unexperimented (heavies) and to tell you the truth, I have a hard time finding people to buy them. Maybe its because I am not in a huge PA that creates shopping malls and has dozens of players that will help advertise, but personally I just think that the demand is not there, at least on my server.
-Fitzhume -Master Architect- Kettemore -Naboo
I'm a lone wolf too, I've never had a PA backing me, never had more than 1 account, I've only AFK sampled once (just wasn't worth it to me), and only once have I been able to field my own house (a small naboo style 2). I bum house space off of a friend, and I've only advertised my business once (back a long time ago I made up a low level crafting station with my small naboo style 2 house location and put it on the bazzar). For a long time I had the same problems, having to run missions 2-3 hours a day to pay harvester maintenance...not being able to give up my combat skills for that reason as well, rarely having money, trying to compete with the lowballers,...etc. To be honest I was ready to quit when a friend of mine (Teiwaz) beat some sense into my head. Now I deal with quality customers who understand that time is money. Besides, they make a huge return on their investment even with my piddly 6-7 cr/unit prices and they will tell you so. I just don't have to deal with the other type people anymore and my life is much less stress free because of it.
You guys sit around typing about how mad you are that others are undercutting your prices and yet you are the same people who shop at Wal-Mart or other discount stores because they're cheaper than Macy's or other "Big Name" stores.
Nuff Said
Ration Hawkeye - Architect - Bria - Coronet, Corellia
I just want to back up what Isaac is saying - I don't know why Scylla seems to be an exception, but we have a number of merchants who are doing great business AND selling to us at low prices. When I first asked Drakeous about buying 50K of his ore and hoping he had it, he chuckled - he typically sells it in 100K lots. And yes, his price is 2 cpu, as are two other ore merchants I've run across (such as Joram). Likewise, to power my harvesters, I'm buying energy from Faellyn at .375 cpu -- it was .75 until she cut her prices in half a couple of days ago. She also has about 5 vendor locations, one nearby me in Coronet, and keeps them stocked with 100K, 50K, and smaller chunks.
At those prices, I can do well turning around Heavy Mineral Harvesters at 110K and Deep Crust Chemicals at 105K (and I give 10K discounts to fellow rebels).
If prices are still 6 cpu on your galaxy, you probably might want to get out of architecture and into mining... sounds profitable. But for those of us that can get cheap resources, and don't need to pad our pockets to have millions in the bank, we'll stick to supplying structures to the masses...