Architect Archive

Usual Responses

them: How much for a large house?

me: 250k (my price fluctuates 200-250 depending on my resources)

them: what!?!?! I can get it from so and so for 100k (or less)

me: great! have a nice wait (hugs)

a day later

them: hi, 250k huh?

me: yup

them: when can you make me one?

me: now ok with you?

them: what!?!?!?! I CANT get it from so and so for another week, how do you do it so fast?

me: (grins) Im not backed up, give me a sec, and an email with the item you want to buy and the price I quoted ya, and I'll get to workin

How often is that scenario played out daily? too many times to count.

on a side note, no one is doing anything bad. Prices will always fluctuate according to seller and buyer, it just all matters on what the buyer wants to pay, and when he wants the final product. Everyone works their own way, its neither right or wrong.

work smarter not harder

Hrm, I'm making huge profits, I can't keep my vendors full, and I have good word of mouth.

Yeah, I must be doing something wrong.

I have come up with a pricing scheme I like, however it means no set price...It iskind of likehow my rl mutual funds work with avg cost pricing.

I keep a spreadsheet of every resource I get. If it was something I sampled it goes in at a set low point. If it is something I used a harvester on it goes in at the price to set up a havester(my current sell price at the time) main and power cost. If it was a resouce that dried up and I had to buy off a vendor or bazaar the price goes in for that. In addition I keep track of additional expenises such as travel to pick up resources (and once insurance is working like it is supposed to, insurance costs of dieing on trips to harvesters). This additional expense is divided out among all the resources I have obtained. I then mark my resources up by 25% with a min markup of .1 cpr and a max of 2cpr. I also put a minum cap of 1cpr.

cpr =MAX(1,(units of type)/(cost of type) + misc exp + MIN(MAX(.1,.25*(units of type)/(cost of type)),2))

This is the price I setas the min costper resouce or mcpr. If I choose to sell these resources on the bazaar I do a quick avg cpr of the galaxy wide prices for this resouce and then avg mymcpr with the galactic avg, and sell the resources at the max of the two prices(This is to ensure that I sell it for atleast mcpr, and almost always my avged price is less then the galatic avg, so I can expect quick turn around). I sell maybee a 1/3 of my resouces out right in order to keep a small cash flow trickling in from the bazarr/vendor. The remaing I craft with.

Now when I craft, I have spread sheets setup with resourcetype/amt for the items/components/deeds that I make. It gives me a near realtime cost and sell price for the items I make. I choose a markup % on the finished item's mcpr total. To handle critical failures in my pricing scheme, when I critical fail on an item I roll the mcpr of each resouce back into that resouce's cost. (It cost me that much, cause I would have sold it for at least that much on the bazaar even though the mcpr is slightly inflated from my own cost.) I then roll the item markup profit I would have made back in to the general expense category that gets avgd across all my resouces. This slightly (well depends on my current resouce count and how big of an item I critted on.) increases my future price to avg in the crit failure on my next sell.

I do this for all my components, and finished items, so for example lets say my mcpr for everything in a structure module if 1cpr(to keep the example simple) my 'Structure Module' has mcpr total of 250. 6%(do not want to give all my formulas and amounts away so i just picked 6% out of the air) of this is 15. So my 'Structure Module' cost is 265. Now if I want to build a wall that is 500 in resouces and 10 SMs for a total of 3150. The 6% of that item is 339 so for components that use walls i use 3339 as the mcpr for the wall. And so on and so on up the components list to the final item I am selling.

When I find buisness slow, I lower my product markup and when I find myself behind on orders I raise my product markup. Thus my prices flucuate depending on avg cost of resouces and how well I am currently selling. Just as a note, with my current set of resouces and my current markup a small generic house is selling for 11961 credits.

---

Cylenthia_Tavishaun wrote:

Same song and dance across all of the boards I see. What gets me is this, you say that the "average" price for resources on the bazaar is 3 cpu and I ask what drives that price? Last time I checked it was what people would pay for an item. If a person wants to sell houses at 10K per unit all day long...let them. This is THEIR gaming experience. As I see it, that person is coming along as a personal threat to you. If a person asks you to build them something and you quote them and they bock at you because you quote 15K then turn them down. However, over time you're going to realize that you won't turn everyone down. What drives an economy is people buying goods. Vendors don't set prices...Consumers set prices. Learn that aspect and you'll figure out the rest.

Another thing to remember is that the retail game is only 1 month old now...things will change. If you have been around MMPORGs for any length of time you shall understand this without further explanation.

---

Actually that may be true in the real world, but not in a virtual world. My avatar doesn't die if he doesn't eat. He doesn't desire a big screen TV. He doesn't even care if he lives in a home. In the real world people try to make the most money for the least amount of work. Very, very, very few people do that in these games. I'm starting to think that architecture attracted all the anit-capitalists. Weaponsmiths and armorsmiths are both selling at a nice markup. I've started working up the weaponsmithing line. When I get back from a trip I'm going on, I think all my architecture related items are going to be bumped up to 10 creds/unit. I'll stock my vendor with everything and only replace what sells, if anything. Frankly I don't really care though. I would rather use all my resources on weaponsmithing now.

I'm with you guys though. I don't care what anybody else sells for. I'm selling for what it's worth for me to let go of my structures. I have a bank account that will cover harvester costs for a while. That's all I need.

---

terrorbeat wrote:

So the going price of the resource on the Bazaar really has nothing to do with the price of a home. If an Architect is actually buying ANY significant percentage of their resources on the Bazaar, they're going about it wrong. Unless SOE brings back the Miner class, the whole point is moot.

---

I would just like to add,do you realize that mining/manufacturing/distributing a product in the real world is illegal? I don't think it would be going about it the wrong way. Furthermore find me any weaponsmith that mines the majority of his own resources. You'll find none.

fact is guys that prices will fluctuate brutally in this game. New entrants trying to make a name for themselves, people getting rid of junk they don't want on ther vendor anymore, etc. I suggest everyone sets their own prices and runs with it. trying to point out things that are brutally obvious like the cost of materials vs price per unit used isn't going to sway anyone when their motivations have nothing to with that. As logical as it may be ( and I do sell everything for between 3 - 4 creds per unit ) it just won't influence some folks. If you were really smart and REALLY wanted to make money you would buy stuff from people you consider to be undercharging and just sell it for your price. If your selling stuff at your price and you want a stockpile of creds this is actually the path of least resistance