Architect Archive
Thread: Stop selling for under 5 credits per unit!
I hate when people miss the obvious so:
1) It costs me X number of resources to produce product Y.
*Yes on a good day with no failures it costs you X to produce product Y, but on a bad day you have failures which add to the cost of a finished product.This is a law of business you can't argue with it. Very very seldom does a company or corperation ever swallow the cost of it's failures...Look at Windows 95, 98, ME, how many of you got a rebate check for putting up with that crap?
2) I get my resources for 4.5 creds and the nice man gives me a sucker cause I'm a good boy.
*Whatever, you mean to tell me you ALWAYS plant you're extractor on the exact same deposit % time after time after time? The maintenance on a machine is a time based factor, not a resource harvested factor. The only way you can get your resources for 4.5 creds is if you always put your harvestors on the exact same % of a deposit OR if you buy them for that amount from the bazaar. That's the only way you can say you get your resources for this amount every time because,resources are a like a commodity on the stock market, the more there is available the cheaper they are.Oohh look another business law. Dig yourself a little deeper and tell us how you manage to spend that much time running from a 95%metal resource to the 95% low ore resource, since I've yet to see both piled on top of each other in the exact same quantity, don't forget to swing by the generators and pick the power up to feed all of this, and at some point in your busy schedule of harvester tending be sure you craft a bit. So...looking at in this light either you're buying your resources for exactly 4.5 credsOR you're lying about what they actually cost you in a lousy attempt to prove this guy wrong. (Not to pick on the guy with the 4.5 cred cost, there's some of you out there with worse ratios than that.)
3) Several things effect the cost of resources, maybe you have several friends or a guild to help you harvest resources and finance the extractors and all you have to do is sit back and craft away happily for hours on end. This is a quick and clever way to skill up but at the same time you're ruining the experience for the little guy just starting out as a solo architect by putting those goods on the market, simply because there's no way he can compete with a booming industry. I can speak for the solo archs because I am one andit ticks me to no end to seeanother archcutting his prices in the dirt simplyto get rid of a bunch of crap he made while powercrafting, sure it's crap to you, but I just got the ability to make that and now I'm stuck because I can't afford to charge people barely what I'm spending to gather the resources and still progress at a level that keeps the game semi-interesting for me.Unfortunantly, this is a business model and the guy with the lowest prices wins and since quality means and has very little purpose in our profession, the lowest price will always wins.
4) I really really really hate to flame people, but to those of you that insist this fella is "ripping people off" you should stick it in your ear. Any item is worth what the what the seller is asking for it, IF he/she honestly feels that is the value of their item. Sure you may be getting your resources alot easier with your big miners and solar generators to power all of them, you may even be getting them cheaper ( I wouldn't really know because I haven't gotten that far yet.) but to tell this guy he's ripping people off because he's charging more than you is absolute crap, maybe he hand harvested every last resource that went into that structure, died 3 times doing it and still had to run back to finish getting that last 3 peices of ore to finish it. Not only does he have alot of time invested in this item but he's also got alot of annoyances to calculate into his final cost because he actually worked for what he's acheived.
The only way to fix this would be for them to impliment quality on our products, then we could strive to create the best quality product to justify the higher costs. The "practice crafting" option seems like it has good intentions but seriously it only works on the artisan level. I doubt many people are "practicing" with even small houses, not when you can turn even a small profit on them which will offset the amazing 5% exp you're missing out on.
100 exp X 5%= 5 exp (no credits)
or I can sell the item for 600 creds which will allow me to produce 5 more just like this one and
100 exp X 5 = 500 exp (600 credits X 5 items = 3000 credits)
Lets get Big Bird and Grover to tell us which one is the better. Jeesh
Just because I'm curious, what are all you power-crafters going to do exactly when you get there? In 2 months you'll all just be littering the message boards complaining that there's no end-game for your class and that they need to work on this and that, they need to add this for you and that for you and this game sucks...see EQ message boards for further details.
No matter what your stance on this issue is, fact of the matter is that everyone is too **edit** greedy for their own good. It's almost impossibleto mine resources at over 2 cred/unit unless you TRY to run at maximum inefficiency. So if you were to charge 3 cred/unit you're making 1cred/unit profit MINIMUM and when you're talking 10,000s of units, thats a lot of cred. Definitely more than enough to cover harvester moves and crit fails.
But I have to ask all you people who say you're not making enough money. What the heck do you spend your money on? If you wanted to get 2 of the most expensive weapons for the type you use, a full suit of the most expensive armor, a few droids, tip for your medics/ entertainers, tip for your prostitute you're talking 100k, maybe... MAYBE 200k. And the majority of your purchases are once in a lifetime things. Sure it might take some cred to get your stuff repaired, but no where near what it cost to buy in the first place. So the fact of the matter is, why do you all feel the need to be someone with millions of credits? To me, that just means you need to get outside more often.
I just want to sum up my statment after reading the other posts. This pretty much goes out to everyone saying why sell assembled items for less than the resouces are worth. Some people enjoy selling the structures and making people happy. It's not all about the money for everyone. I specialize in customer service when I take a job. I keep in contact with them and make sure they're happy. I enjoy my customers glee when I hand over their factory. For me what I "lose" in resource cost is offset by the peopleI meet and the experience I gain. Here ya go, for those who don't like long posts:
IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!
Suck my bottom
I sell for 2 creds per - and always will
Bring in pvp to the Architect proffesion plz devs - I want to kill him.
My good reason: there's a ton of architects out to get Johnny Marksman to buy their house, and get the xp. Now, once at master architect, I personally would just sell resources on the bazaar, and do special orders for a lot of cash (or, i'd make the point, I'll just put the resources on the bazaar)
But right now,mid-level architectsdon't want Johnny Marksman's money (at least, some of them don't, i think they're the ones you havea problem with), i want xp from selling him the house, and enough credits such that myharvesters don't fall into total disrepair, so I can make another house.
XP points are a driving force that is not calculated in real-world economics. If it doesn't drive you, sell yourresources on the bazaar.
BedroxX this is what I was talking about when I said no flaming, please debate.
If you want to sell at 2 credits per unit, fine, just give me the reason why? Expecially when you could make more money by doing less work.
One of the problems may be different economy, on Lowca server 4 credits per unit for general resources is pretty basic. So to me charging 1 more cpu for my services is more than fair. (weaponsmiths would be charge 16 cpu for their time)
There is a well know economic principle called opportunity cost. This is the cost of producing a good v. the cost of not producing that good. Unfortunately, in an MMORPG, there is another factor that effects the opportunity cost. XP.
In other words, if I will make more money selling raw resources (which I do) what is the point of me using my time and energy to produce a good that will sell for les than I can get for the resource? You might say well your getting experience, but is that enough? I have a very good mining business going and I make mroe money than most architects I know, yet I still get architect experience because I produce all my own harvestors and I produce harvestors, houses and furniture for my friends. I have been able to get to Installations 4, Furniture 2, and Buildings 1 and I have sold a grand total of about 5 buildings (only two of which were houses) and I have a good amount of cash built up to help during resource shifts and other emergencies. (Though not nearly as much as a combat character would have if they played as much as I do.
Last night, me and my friends started new characters on a server different from our regular one. In about 1 hour of doing destroy missions (as a beginning character!) I was able to make 4K. If we architects realize what the weaponsmiths realize, namely that our customers have the cash to pay us, they wouldnt be so eager to undercut each other just to make the quick sell.
If you want to sell small houses for 10K be my guest. I will not compete against you and I don't need to.
5 c/res is a VERY good profit if everything is going perfectly. More importantly, 5 c/r is a SMALL profit, or at the least breaking clean, even when EVERYTHING is going wrong.
Your harvs are dissapearing, you're getting maint bug on the ones that are left, you're crit failing buildings, the factories are **edit**ing up, but you can still break even, or have minimal loss by selling at 5 c/r.
Prices tend to go down over time. People discover more efficient ways of doing things, and do them on a larger scale. By starting at 5 c/r now, archs will still be able to survive 1-3 months down the line when it's 3 c/r instead. If prices are 3 c/r now, Arch will NOT be viable down the line when the price is 2 c/r.
To a newbie arch, who hasn't a clue about long term viability, selling at 5 c/r is great advice. The newbie thinks "I'm making a small profit here, and I'm still raising my skill! I'm selling at 2.5, **edit** those greedy archs that charge 5!"
The newbie has yet to hit any serious problems. They've failed to factor in their time, bugs that will cost them, resource shifts that will cost them, crit failures that will cost them, etc.
Their logic is that, I'm just selling low now to get the XP to hit master. In their stupidity, they never realized that there IS NO ADVANTAGE TO BEING A MASTER. They sell at 2.5, and develop a rep for doing so, and help people think that 2.5 is the norm. If for some crazy reason they manage to hit master, they soon quit, because they realize there's no profit for their work, and they're running into more serious bugs with factories now & the MASSIVE cost of Crit failures on PA's & other large structures.
To the new archs: You must make a reasonable living while working your way up the levels, or you're working for no reason. You will not magically hit Arch Utopia when you hit master, where you'll make large profits & have unlimited demand. (Try WS or AS instead) The profit you make levelling up is the EXACT SAME profit you will make at master, so plan your future accordingly. Depending on price deterioration over time, you might even make LESS as a master than you did levelling up.
Did I flame ?
Heheh - always wonderedwhat it was like.
I was very annoyed you see.
Its not easy to argue against people like you who think you know what is good for me and would obviously like to enforce it.
See, I am not interested in your argument, just your attitude.
Just play the game and confine your organising skills to your group - let them suffer. I dont belong to your group or any other.
Unlike you, I have absolutely no argument against your or anyone elses playstyle. Play how you like - charge what you like - I dont care, really I dont.
My game is to undercut you and everyone else in direct competition with me
Ok ?
see heres the problem.
Right its a waste to buy resources instead of harvesting them, but why the hell would you take these resources that you harvested, and craft them into something less valuable than the raw materials themselves?
Nobody has trouble selling ore, metal, energy, gas, etc.
So...an artisan with minimal skills can make more money than an architect.
I am personally a master architect and a master armorsmith as well.
I basically said to hell with architecture, its a huge waste with all you undercutters out there. So ill be selling resources as my secondary source of income...maybe ill sell all of my architect skills and take chef or something...
evilprize wrote:
Yes. Ageold is right. If your profiting more than 500 credits from ANYTHING other thana PA hall you are ripping people off. You think your time is worth something?
You should probably take this argument to the weaponsmiths charking 20k for guns that take 120 resources not the people wanting 150k for something that takes 37k resources.. use that lump between your ears...
I have six personal chemical extractors out right now. One is on an 80% grade, three on 81% grade, and two on a 69% grade. In order to keep these powered, I need 3600 units of power per day. Since the highest density of wind I found nearby is 29%, I can't meet my power needs with one windtrap, so I built two. The output of these two wind generators (ignoring the maintenance-doubling bug that's making one of my harvesters suck down my money, grrr, but I'm assuming that's accidental and will be fixed) is 4176 per day. Assuming I redeed the generators, the total cost of production is 8880, for a cost per unit of 2.13 credits.
At that unit cost for power, the harvester on the 80% grade produces at 1.52cr/unit, the 81% grade at 1.5cr/unit and the 69% grade at 1.76cr/unit (all assuming redeeding of the harvesters at the end of the cycle). The weighted average cost per unit for one day's chemical harvesting, including costs for power and redeeding harvesters, is 1.58cr/unit.
But that's for only one day, and redeeding at the end of the day. If you redeed, harvesting becomes more efficient the longer you can keep it up. My harvesters have been working as described above for four days now. If I had to break down my harvesters now, my unit cost for power drops to 1.05cr/unit, and the chemical harvesters get the same staying-power efficiency boost plus the benefit of the lower-cost power. At four days, the cost for the fiberplast I'm extracting drops to an average of 0.78cr/unit.
Now, if I got supremely lucky and my harvesters kept running for eight days (the maximum amount of time a single resource is supposed to be able to stick around), my cost per unit drops to 0.69cr.
That's with real numbers and assuming I redeed my harvesters. At that production cost, I could sell resources on the bazaar for 2cr/unit and turn a profit of 64,788cr, for four days work gathering a single resource. If I sold those resources at 5cr/unit, I would be looking at a 224,103cr windfall for those four days. For those keeping score, that'd make me a millionaire in under three weeks using skills I picked up easily in my first two or three days of playing.
So the real question is, are resources really worth that much? Of course they're valuable, but are they THAT valuable? If you want to avoid going broke as an architect, don't encourage price fixing. Just stop letting noobs gouge you for resources. If you don't want to gather your own resources, cut a mutually beneficial deal with an experienced surveyor instead. Or, if you're inclined, give up architecture for a while and sell some resources. You'll get filthy stinking rich in the short term, you'll be helping to drive the cost of resources down and the cost of housing up in the long term.
This is the way these things balance themselves out in the real world. For some reason this basic business psychology has not made it into the SWG populace quite yet.
BedroxX I don't know what you don't like about my attitude. (this is Not sarcasm, im being totally serious) I have tried in my posts to explain exactly why I think it should be this way, and I have always tried to say that I know you have the freedom to give them away for free. I just try to get a discussion going and try to help someone out.
If I turn out to be flat out wrong then I am the person that has been helped, if I turn out to be right then someone else has benifited from this.
It's not as if I am saying lets all charge 100 cpu. Therodically if everyone agreed we would all be billionaires eventually, that is if no one budged and no one undercut. I am not asking us to be greedy, Im just trying to examine what the fair prices for everyone is.
I think if 30,000 resources are worth 90,000 credits on the boards that a fair price to charging something with the use of 30,000 resource would be a little over 90,000 (120,000-150,000). At the very least is should be worth the same amount. It just troubles me that people can't seem to agree with the fact that I should get atleast what the materials alone are worth plus a percentage.
Again, if you want to give away stuff for next to nothing, feel free to, im not stoping you, just want to discuss it.