Architect Archive
Thread: The Pricing Debate
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Alemap
Thu Feb 24, 2005 9:16 pm
#40
You know I play this game for fun. I have seen so many venders on this server where people are just over charging left and right. I on the other hand don't care about my prices. I sell my stuff anywhere between 200 to 10,000 credits. I only charge 150kto makea guild hall. I have venders on Naboo and Corellia. I keep them well stocked. I do special orders not only for guild members but for others. I am also a decorator. I charge 500k to decorate a guild hall. I make all my own stuff. If you want loot in it you have to supply it your self. Other then that I have flat rates. If people want to tip the are more then welcome to. I know most Archts can't compete with my prices, and I don't expect them to. But like I said before I play the game for the fun of it. NOT for the money.
Protilious
Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:23 pm
#41
I don't think any architect does it strictly 'for the money'. That would be an asinine. Don't get me wrong, I see your point, I don't mean to be rude but this is NOT the profession for those who want to be strictly millionaires.
All I'm saying is for those of you that price cheaply because you have contacts, guild members, or friends helping you.... well I'll leave the prof before letting my prices dip so low that I can't have some fun with my credits.
To be honest, right now, I like the way I do business. Here's why- I don't undercut, so people never have to fear that I am trying to cut them out of business. Another reason is I buy quite a bit of resources. I just spent 2.75 million on ore yesterday. This keeps the economy going! Sure my prices can't compete, but how many people are making money off of me? I buy resources, I build for people wanting to start their own resource business, therefore I consume more, I will require a power supplier as my needs grow, etc, etc. It's a great circle of economy.
On the other hand, if I am undercut so much that I can't compete while purchasing resources to supplement my own, then what? I go under, my suppliers have one less ore monster to supply to, same with the power guy, etc. To me this will be the beginning of a downward spiral.
So I conclude that there's nothing wrong with charging 'more'... as long as you're not gouging! I never do that. In fact I think charging more can be pretty beneficial to a few groups of people.
All I'm saying is for those of you that price cheaply because you have contacts, guild members, or friends helping you.... well I'll leave the prof before letting my prices dip so low that I can't have some fun with my credits.
To be honest, right now, I like the way I do business. Here's why- I don't undercut, so people never have to fear that I am trying to cut them out of business. Another reason is I buy quite a bit of resources. I just spent 2.75 million on ore yesterday. This keeps the economy going! Sure my prices can't compete, but how many people are making money off of me? I buy resources, I build for people wanting to start their own resource business, therefore I consume more, I will require a power supplier as my needs grow, etc, etc. It's a great circle of economy.
On the other hand, if I am undercut so much that I can't compete while purchasing resources to supplement my own, then what? I go under, my suppliers have one less ore monster to supply to, same with the power guy, etc. To me this will be the beginning of a downward spiral.
So I conclude that there's nothing wrong with charging 'more'... as long as you're not gouging! I never do that. In fact I think charging more can be pretty beneficial to a few groups of people.
LonelyGhost
Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:20 pm
#42
Alemap wrote:
...I sell my stuff anywhere between 200 to 10,000 credits...I charge 500k to decorate a guild hall
This, to me at least, highlights the problem at the root of this. I ask myself to guess why you charge so much for the decorating and so little for the building itself. My answer to myself? Your factories. Its so easy to get all the components to make buidlings in quantity, that there is no "feeling" that your products are worth more.
But, something like decorating takes TIME. It has to be done by someone actively in the game. And its very difficult to make the items you need for each individual job in a factory.
Compare the actual time, AT the keyboard, it take sfor you to decorate ONE guild hall with the actual time AT the keyboard it would take you to, say, make 100 heavy harvs in a factory.
Yeah.
Factories are the devil. 
If dont know if you were in the JtL beta, but there were some rabidly vicious people there screaming and ranting and ripping their hair out in a desperate fight to have Shipwright factories added. They were full of doom and gloom over the fate of SW without factories.
They were WRONG!
When I see threads about pricing in an Architect forum, I inevitably come back to the evil of factories andcross server harv farms. If it wasnt so easy to get so many resource for so cheap, and to make so many items so easily, people wouldbe aLOT less likely tocharge 150k for a Guild hall.
Luckily, there are plans coming together to purge inactive characters and fix the lot-swap problem.
Niklesnitz
Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:46 am
#43
ah, the old "I play this game for fun" adage. I would think just about everyone plays this game to have fun.
You said it yourself, that most other archs can't compete with your prices. Think about that statement. Maybe you are taking fun away from other archs? For whatever reason, you can charge such a low price, but what about that guy who can't?
In the real world, people would say that is survival of the fittest. Move onto something else if you can't compete in the current market. But, this is a game, its supposed to be fun. Why do we need to compete? Well, in a way we do since SOE decided to make this a player run economy.
I will quote what one customer said to me one day. He bought 6 medium Naboo houses from me at 80k apiece.
"I feel like I've just been raped, but you need to restock your vendor."
Why did he buy from me if he thought he was getting an unfair deal? I don't know, I didn't ask and I don't care.
I havefun playing my architect. I love doing it, but if I didn't sell anything, I wouldn't be having fun and if I had to charge low prices to sell things, I wouldn't feel fulfilled from all the work I have done.
Smart_Darwin
Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:07 pm
#44
Now that my toon's beard is a bit grayer, I have realized that I was severly underpricing my products. At one point I was charging 9k for small houses (8k for guilmates). Though I think I beased that price a calculation of 5cpu, I realized (once again) that I'm bad at math. I have retained and recalculated my prices to be in line with the 5 cpu model, but I round down so that the cost ends up with a bunch of zeros at the end. I use this pricing model for my homes, harvesters and factories.
My furniture is a different beast. Though I have tey to think about it objectively I usually charge about 1k per level of item though the really ugly couches I can't bear to sell for more than 500. I use this model for the items that use resources I already have on hand (like metals), but revert to a CPU model for stuff that needs organics.
Here is where I see the advantage to my system. At 5 CPU for my good selling, higher ticket items I insure a decent profit if I mine all the steel, ore and some few high quality metals myself. I understand that aquisition costs for these resources tend be be less than 1cpu. So even if I have to pay more for the few things I don't harvest myself (like gases and copper) the amounts are so small that the increases in convenience justify the small reduction in profit.
bluejanus
Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:13 am
#45
There might be an important factor that we're overlooking here between the cheaper and higher sellers. Are the cheaper sellers selling the same amount of goods as the higher ones? It's great to say you craft for fun, but my being an architect is almost like work, but I produce a lot of goods, though it varies day to day how much I sell.
This data is incomplete as I already deleted all the resources, artwork and furniture (I don't keep track of my stock in those. Over my architect career my income from resources vs architect products is roughly 50/50).
Feb 24th
3 crafting stations (55k)
8 heavy harvesters (100k)
9 large houses (120k)
5 medium houses (55k)
1 factory (45k)
Total: 2,365,000
Is that the typical day for all you guys? There are of course days when I don't sell anything.
This data is incomplete as I already deleted all the resources, artwork and furniture (I don't keep track of my stock in those. Over my architect career my income from resources vs architect products is roughly 50/50).
Feb 24th
3 crafting stations (55k)
8 heavy harvesters (100k)
9 large houses (120k)
5 medium houses (55k)
1 factory (45k)
Total: 2,365,000
Is that the typical day for all you guys? There are of course days when I don't sell anything.
Anthemion
Mon Feb 28, 2005 1:05 am
#46
You've got it Niklesnitz, I play the game for fun, but if I am not rewarded for my work in the game, it is no longer fun.
Aside:
I also don't understand why a guild would subsidize a product to be sold outside the guild. It would make more sense to simply give that guildie the money directly. On the other hand, there is no reason a player can't sell products at 1CPU or less if they want to.
Aside:
I also don't understand why a guild would subsidize a product to be sold outside the guild. It would make more sense to simply give that guildie the money directly. On the other hand, there is no reason a player can't sell products at 1CPU or less if they want to.
Puertoriqueno
Wed Mar 02, 2005 10:49 pm
#47
Well, my sales usually come in hurricanes. I just did an order for 34, 22 and 38 BER10 Asst, 94 total. All together I made around 1800000, with 1450000 of that in profit. Most of my business is in bulk sales. I did about 24 Million in sales last month, but 14 million of that went back into the guild. The rest I used to replenish stock and buy toys and tapes. Still havent bought a xp suit yet.
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