Architect Archive
Thread: Garages are EXTORTION!!! Don't use them!!!
You, Sir, are a pompous a$$.
Phetro wrote:
As much as you want me to be wrong, I think by now you know you originally spoke in haste, and now have no substance to veryify what you've claimed.
Ok, I'm done arguing with teenagers for the day.
Phetro wrote:
I'll try to explain this in more simple terms for all of you who think resources are worth 2-6 cpu for an artisan who mined them himself.
I'm sorry but you are not correct in your logic from any former posts. As other people have stated you fail to realize the OPPURTUNITY COSTS associated with you transactions. Lets say a loaf of bread costs you .25 cents to make and you have a buyer willing to buy the bread for 20 million. If you eat the bread yourself how much did it cost you?
$19,000,000.75 in lost sale of bread (Oppurtunity cost)
$0.25 in production costs
$20 million is the cost of the item if you consume it yourself.
Message Edited by Ender007 on 03-23-2004 11:01 AM
Well... I have no respect for capitalism...
Lets look at it this way: Market value instigates profits....
Profits are supreme! So... What difference does it make if you can make 1million, or 100 million credits?
It makes a BIG difference huh? Well who cares? I've been running off of less than 100k credits and I'm doing fine. I'm a chef, and I like to RP as a bartender... why do I need LOTS of credits?
Another thing is, in reality, profits = everything, so if you can make a few more dollars, at the cost of thousands of employees jobs, ... you go after the profits... AARGH! Capitalism is sickening... pure communism is great! But, I don'tlike soviet communism... Pure communism without corruption is utopia... I'd like that... but money is everything...
hmm... Communist movement in north america hehehehe....
I'd probably get nuked =P
hmm... Communist movement in north america hehehehe....
I'd probably get nuked =P
Bandola wrote:
ActuallyI believe it does, I hear all the time that architects charge a low price when compared to Weaponsmiths and Armoursmiths for example. This is primarily because Architects seem to base their prices on how much an item cost, rather than how much it is worth. By doing this we have created the condition whereby the market now expects our prices to be within a certain range and it is extremely difficult to change that without appearing to be greedy, or failing in business. The argument that a WS charges 5 times the cost to sales price ratio as an architect for an item that will need to be replaced (weapon),has no validity when so many of the architects you are competing withacross all servers are selling on a cost based model which has created a low market price for our goods. ...
I think one of the big factors driving down our prices is the enormous cost of many of our deeds.
If you look at the cost of houses in the real world they are a good analogy. Houses are definitely worth a lot but people can't afford to pay too much more for them then they do already. Unless there is a high demand for housing the costs of houses normally tends to be close to the cost of construction plus a profit. This is basically how many architects have set their prices e.g. 3-4 cpu + 20k. Its a lot harder to ask people to pay a larger premium for the value of an item when we are looking at 100's of thousands rather than 1-10k increments like you get with weapons and guns. Buyers will easily throw out an extra 100% for a good gun if that means 20k cause it is useful, but if you ask 100% more for a deed that already costs 100k then that additional 100k is pretty hard to swallow.
However the place where we are shooting ourselves in the foot is when we don't react to demand with higher prices and instead stick to our arbitrary cost based pricing model of 3 cpu + and even get into price wars with each other for no apparent reason.
Or of course the worse thing we've had is the folks that sell for below cost just to gain XP or because they have absolutely no sense to see they'd make more money selling raw materials.
Ok I have to try and make these guys understand cost vs value here.
If someone is willing to pay $22 million for a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is worth $22 million. If I make 10 sandwiches out of it and sell those sandwiches for $5 each, I will have lost $21,999,950. Why? Because if I had sold the loaf to my special buyer, I would have had $22 million in my pocket, now I only have $50 in my pocket. Since $50 is a lot less than $22million, I lost money.
Lets say I have a painting valued at $100. Then a woman comes along and says that it is a painting of her grandfather, and she will pay me $500 for it. To everyone else it is only worth $100, but because of sentimental value, it is worth $500 to this woman, and she is offering $500 to me. Since I have an offer for $500, the painting is now worth $500 to me, even though the rest of the world would only pay $100. If I sold to another buyer for $100, I would lose money, since I could have made $500.
Let me try another approach here. The value of an item is not the cost of producing it, it is determined by what others will pay for it. Lets say I find a gold nugget while walking home one day. I have it appraised and am told it will fetch $1000 on the market. But it cost me nothing to get this nugget. So is the nugget worth nothing, or is it worth $1000? Obviously I would be a fool to give it away, it is worth $1000.
And regarding the costs of weaponsmiths vs the costs of architects. I am not sure on this one, but i believe the difference is the value added of there merchandise. Architects use vast amounts of resources in their crafting, but only need to do one or two crafting sessions to create their product. Therefore our costs are close to the costs of the actual resources.
For example:
Say the average cost for resources is 4 cpu. A weaponsmith crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 500 resources. His total costs were 2,000. He estimates his selling price as 10cpu, and charges 5,000. The value added for his 3 crafting sessions was 3,000.
Now an architect crafts an item in 3 sessions and uses a total of 10,000 resources. His total costs were 40,000. If the architect used the same formula as the weaponsmith he would charge 100,000 and realize a profit of 60,000 for the same amount of word as the weaponsmith. Not only does that make no sense, but as was already pointed out in this thread, the market would not support it as buildings would be too expensive.
Instead, like most architects I calculate my prices as the total value of the resources plus the value added by my crafting sessions. I do not calculate my prices by increasing the value per cpu. My profit per crafting session is probably greater than a weaponsmith, but that is only to factor in the greater difficulty in obtaining the larger amount of resources needed.
ZenDragonMLS wrote:
You mean I'm the only middle-aged, overweight gamer with a mortgage out here???
