Architect Archive
Thread: Architects Getting Shafted (Sickened by the Economy)
Well if you know a lot about business you would realize what Player B is doing could be considered illegal. When you have people doing multiple tiers of a business it is against anti-trust laws. These same laws do not exist in SWG. So saying Player B is a smarter businessman is fallible.
Nyre wrote:
I am not an Architect but I know alot about business. If the person selling the item is making a profit selling it less that the other players that means that player has found a way to produce a way to make it cheaper and have a competitive price so he/she can sell that item. Thats what a Player economy is there is no set price for an Item. Player A selling a Small house for 15000 Credits each and Player B is selling the same house for 10000 Credits each. Now Player A buys his resources from the bizarre while player b mines for his own resources which essentially cost 1 credit each while player A is paying 4-6 credits each depending on the source he is buying from. Eventually Player A has to come up with a way to lower his cost so he can be competitive with Player B. For example maybe Player A has to add additional Services like helping the Buying finding land to build on to cover his cost. Maybe throw in some free Furniture like a free Bedroom set or Livingroom set. and mine the resources for the furniture yourself to bring down the cost plus it helps in your XP department.
what i have to say will make some if not a lot of people mad, but remember this is a game.
Im a novice architecht on StarSider, today i was seeling a small house deed for 8k, when i got a tell from someone cursing me, and calling me names for selling it for 8k. this person kept on for over an hour and i did get upset and curse him back.( i know that wasnt very good of me, but enough was enough).
now if this person would have approached me with some simbalance of intelegence and been half way considerate, and asked me to raise my price, i would have. since this person acted the way he did, i lowered my price to 7k. he then kept on and even got another person to do the same. he told mei wouldnt be able to get any traing and that i was blacklisted in all PA's. I found this very amusing. when this person gets over the age of 12, he might understand that this is a game, only a game.idle threats mean nothing to me.
I play this GAME for one reason, amusment, i love starwars and i realy enjoy this game.
i do understand that this is a player run economy, and that there are some ppl out there who do nothing all day but run from harvester to harvester getting resources or they but there stuff from the bazaar. to each there own, this is a game.
the way i see it, is like this.
i can sell my wares for the rate that the ppl with alot of backing say i should,( they set that rate because they have to pay maintance on there harvesters) or i can go out, set up a few harvesters here and there, collect a lot of resources from each, while they are doing what they do, i go out and HAVE FUN. i really enjoy doing this, and i seel what i make for what i feel is a fiar price, im not out to get rich, nor do i want to get rich off of each sell, besides, if i can sell a house or harvester to a weaponsmith or droid eng, for a fair price, then he or she will most likely return the favor. I HAVE FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE.
to this end, i wish everyone to play the game as it is, a game, and have fun. if its not fun, then why play?
SithRonin
I find it amazing how many people want to try and fix prices on whatever item. I'm not an architect, I'm a droid eng. and I see people complaining about how someone was under cutting their price on a probot, and what a **edit** they are. It just makes me laugh.
I look at it this way. Competition is what most of this economy is based on. If I fix a price with another artisan, say.. 20k for a probot. i get a higher price. but there's nothing stopping my potential customer from dealing with my price fixer friend. Now, unless I have some special attachment to my fellow droid eng's and I don't, why would I potentially wanna lose that 20k sale? I wouldn't, if he's selling a probot for 20k, i'm gonna sell it for 19k. maybe 19.5 if he's close and I wanna get a rise out of him. 
He wants to lower his price to 18k, I'm willing ot go lower. Way I look at it.. my cost on resources is less than 1cr per unit. less if I'm harvesting a decent spot. and that's including power. Now, I've been selling resources cause I just don't have the inclination to manual grind droids, and I only have limited use of a friends factory. On the planet I spend most of my time on, resources priced at 5cr/unit just won't sell, period. I sell at 3cr/unit for 1k piles, and 4cr/unit for 500 piles. Even with the fairly cheap prices. they don't always sell right away. So even if someone undercuts my prices on the droids I can make. I'm gonna have to take a serious look at exporting all these piles of 5cr/unit resources that are sitting on my home planet's bazzar to some place where some poor crafting sucker is buying them for 10cr/unit.
I run no more than 2 power generators, and maybe.. 5-6 harvesters.. and i'm doing just fine. might not be the richest, but i'm keepin up quite well. And will continue to do so..
and this isn't even taking into consideration the prices on the hides i can get on this cheap planet, from the kills i get while tending my machines.
I have been reading these threads ever since the game released and I have thus far managed to hold back and not post my opinion on this matter, but now. I believe it is time I added my two cents.
I am a Novice Architect on Gorrath. I am a tier 2 architect and I have invested roughly 40-60 hours per week since the game released, also I was a beta tester. You may ask, "well if you play that much, why aren't you a master architect??", well the answer is, I don't have a need to power level. Sure, I want to be a master architect but the fact is, the economy for architects is non-existant. I confess, when I first became a Novice Architect I sold houses for 12K each. At that time, minerals hadn't yet appeared on the market for sale en masse and it was kind of hard to guage a price. I heard some selling for 15K, some for 30K, and ever now and then for 10K. I felt 12K was fair. Two days after that, 10K was too much for people.
Well anyway, I won't go that low, and in fact, once I saw a market price for minerals appearing on the bazzar and in vendors I realized 12K was to low also. Then I looked into the markup on other crafted items which also confirmed my suspicions. I have sold things in RL on the retail market. I will not name the companies I have worked for, but typically if a company pays $1.00 for a finished product, they will re-sell it for $3.00-$5.00. And this is talking about finished products that are bought wholesale. The cost to manufacture said product? About 15 cents. That price pays for supplies, labor, any real-estate overhead, maintenence, taxes, etc. AND a reasonable markup for profit. The whole point of being in business is to make money. Why should I work my butt off in a game to be an architect when the economy will not allow me to make any money? Sure, if I sell a small for 10K, people will buy my houses and sure, if I drop it to 9K more people will buy them -not to mention I will be killing myself to keep up with the people beating down my door for a profit margin that doesn't even account for the market price of raw resources.
The lower price sell more theory will bring in more customers, but it will also lower net gains in profit. For example, if I pay 5 cr to make a box, and anybody who is anybody has to have a box, and I price them at 30 cr lets just say I sell 100 boxes. That's 3000 credits of which 2,500 credits is profit. Then Bo, Bob, and Billy decide they want to sell boxes, too. Bo wants to be able to sell Grandmaster Uber boxes which is at the top of the Boxcraft tree so he wants to power level. He pays 5 cr per box just like I do but sells his at 10 cr.. free if you provide the resources. He sells 1000 boxes that people pay for and actualy introduces 3000 to the market, thus satisfying a lot of demand. He makes 10,000 credits of which 5,000 isprofit. He did 10 times the work that I did to make twice the profit. Actually, if you include the freebies, he did 40 times the work for twice the profit.NowBob and Billy want to make boxes too. They think 20 credits each is fair so that's what they want to sell for. This is a nice 300% mark-up. Perfectly acceptable for manufactured goods hitting a retail market. But wait, in an ideal world, they would be competition for me but no one will buy their product for that price for two reasons: 1) Bo saturated the market and reduced demand and 2) market perception is 10 cr provides a reasonable profit for thebusinessman selling boxes - no thanks to Bo, and that's what the market is willing to pay now.
I am not willing to kill myself selling underpriced houses when I am playing a game for enjoyment. I am also not willing to listen to people haggle or belittle me when they don't like my price. I gave someone a price of 45K for a factory when I firstachieved Instilations 1. They freakedand told me everything bad they knew about my mother. Sorry folks, I don't have time for that. Hindsight has shown me that 45 K indeed was the incorrect price- it was way way too low. Let me quickly discuss pricing then I'll shut up:
I will assume for this discussion that minerals on the market are selling for 4 cedits per unit. So, if a small house takes 3388 units of various resources (I am not distinguishing between various types such as gas, etc. for simplicity) and the going rate for these resources is 4 credits each, than at a minimum the small house should be 3388 X 4 = 13,552 credits. This is just the price if I was to sell the resources required on the market. Well, we aren't done. There are failures to account for, I think it is safe to assume that 20% of the resources used by an architect are lost to failures since when an architect fails, he/she fails BIG. So, 13,552 X 1.2 = 16,262.4 or just 16,262. But wait, I'm not done just yet.This is where I see everyone messing up. I am an architect and I invested an awful lot of time to become one. It's the most difficult artisan skill to get and I expect to be compensated for it, not to mention building most of the things we build takes time. Just a factory alone is 38 combines. Asmall house is 13. Man, this is work.. WHEW!! So, we aregoing to have a markup on the price. This is so I'm not"might as well sellraw materials instead"ing. I think 15% labor is fair. I could charge by combines also, that would be fair but since it seems the number of combines is directly proportional (for the most part) to the amount of material needed, a percentage will work as well. Here goes...(drumroll) 16,262 X 1.15 = 18,701. Gee whiz. This looks like what should be a price for a small house. If an architect wants to be competitive, he/she can tweak the labor price as he/she wishes, and of course, the market price for minerals will vary. My point is charging market price for minerals is not enough. You have to account for waste and labor also. My time is not free. And I'd much rather have a large profit margin with fewer customers thus allowing me to enjoy the game more, than a virtually non-existant profit margin and billions of customers. Yea I'd be popular but that's just because people are walking all over me.
Lets use that same formula for a wearables factory:
13,050 in minerals/gasses/etc.
13,050 X 4 credits each = 52,200
52,200 X 1.2 = 62,640.
62,640 X 1.15 = 72,036 credits. This is what a wearables factory should cost... And I thought 45K was fair. I guess it was to the buyer, I was practically givng it away while screwing myself.
Oh and I have heard the "what are you going to do with all of those credits" crap. Well, Outside of maintenence and stuff, I'll buy armor, weapons, starships, vehicles, etc. Architects buy this stuff too but it's kindof hard to if we can't make a decent profit like the other professions, and in the long run, it hurts their income also. I might just save some of that money also. I may become rich... so what? I know some people hate the concept of a player being rich while they are not,oh well.
Now for my reality check. Yep, Iknow this isn't the state of the economy for architects now, and I doubt we will see it for awhile. Architects, YOU DESERVE THESE PRICES AND ONLY YOU CAN GET THEM BY CHARGING THEM CONSISTANTLY. As for me, I will continue being an architect but I will no longer sell to the public, at least not until I see some vague form of an economy show up. Until then, I'll make things for myself and my 6 RL friends who are in the game, and I'll support myself with destroy missions. For the person that can get that factory for 30K somewhere, go get it. You won't get it from me. For the Architect that likes to sell things dirt cheap, enjoy the stress. I get paied to stress in RL, I'm not gonna pay someone so I can be stressed.
-Weber Toleno
Novice Architect, Gorath
ps.. Sorry this was so long. I had a lot built up that needed to come out.
ahhhh i've finally flipped on this one. I was in mos eisley cantina just now, hoping to sell my 2 small houses at 10k(not even what they are worth) Just so i can buy a gun i am after. So as i start my advert this little bitch jaereth or somethign similaris sat there selling his house for 7k and starts taking the piss. i try and point out that small houses aredefinately not worth that and he gets all smug and says, "i think they are worth 7k." When i point out he could hardly be making a profit or, if he was it is no more then a destory mission. He gets even cockier and him and his mate start going on about ho they are selling and i am not.
This just did it for me, not only was he screwing the economy he was cocky about it too. I don't take myself seriously and i didn't get geniunely angry except that it made me realise that the economy can never work without ppl like him being policed. It just is impossible to work like this. Thee's no way a customer cares about my problems so they just buy the house at 7k, i ether drop my house and lose money or don't sell.
I wish i could say, refusing to train these guys to the next level would work, but they would find somebody eventually who had no morals on the subject and that owuld be that. grrrr
NEB
May I suggest an idea? =)
No - I did not beta test this game, hell...I didn't even know it existed until I over heard a guy talking about it 2 weeks ago, and I've only played a week or week and 1/2. I saw the servers seemed to be jammed early on with all the same stuff...bounty hunters, teras kasi, and architects..and not much else except for an occasional weaponsmith of armorsmith. Because of that I decided to play on a younger server- Wanderhome - and needless to say it is frustrating. I wanted to play a half architect and half TKA since I looked over the game guide... now, daily on my server it seems every guy who has been an artisan and gotten Engineering decides to walk into the town square and announce to everyone he or she has gotten "novice architect". I cringe when hearing this because obviously if the supply of architects is too high - then that what is will kill any market.
I've thought about giving up my dream or ideas of pursuing the 2 professions I orginally had picked for myself...heck, I've even emailed a Jonus guy from the BHSS pa trying to get advice how to play an architect.
But, in the end I think if I just call it quits and go into something else thats kind of like letting the tyranny of a mob screw me over....and it just ain't cool.I'm tough minded, and have a good strong core and we can take charge of this problem if we want to. My suggestion for what would help, would be for all the responsible architects out there..and we do have this power...to form our own "fraternal order of architects" to better fix prices and police our own professions. Real life doctors and lawyers have things like the bar or ABA and AMA that do this and with every artisan deciding to be novice architect for the hell of it...or trying to flood the market with low prices this may be called for. This may sound dumb because it sound like a "mini-PA" or "guild"....but lets really think about this? This is how the original carpentry unions or medeival guilds for professions came about. Going with their business in real life meant and sometimes still does today that you know that going with some who is from the "guild", or the fraternal order - will be a quality job and also fair and right. IE - you wont get cheated or stuck with some idiot doing work for you who doesn't know what theyre doing. Somehow we need to setup an offical "architect guild" across as many servers as we can so that us responsible players in the profession in the game can regulate ourselves and structure pricing and other things.
Well last night was probably the worst for me on my server. I've been in a mindset to sell large houses for no less than 155k because I really feel with all the effort and resources, it's not a bad price. After 3 full hours of going to multiple cities during peak time and getting dozens of tells from people, most were saying the following:
- nm
- no thanks
- yeah right
- ur the used car salesman I saw hawking houses 2 weeks ago
- my friend makes em for 90k
- I can buy them for 110k
- WAY OVER PRICED - GET A LIFE!
- I'll pay 125.. 125 credits LOLOLOLOL
Needless to say these were a few choice remarks I encountered last night. I even had to put several people on ignore. I also am feeling sorely depressed about why people are treating architects so badly. I believe most of the problems are because of PAs on our server (Radiant) undercutting the independant architects because I literally saw one selling larges for 80k. This made me upset. 80k for a large house!
After a full 5 hours of trying to sell just ONE house, (I did manage to get a few "I'll think about it" and a few "okay I'll be saving up" remarks) I'm getting a little fed up with things. I was all for a player run market in SWG but I'm thinking of the following:
SoE should allow architects and other artisans the ability to sell their wares to an NPC vendor for at a minimum of 2 credits per resource. These vendors can then inturn mark up the prices considerably. We could then all sell our houses to the vendors so that players realize what type of nice prices they were getting. If we could do this then we would have an outlet for our business and at the same time be making money rather than spending our WHOLE FRIGGIN TIME sitting on the game bartering with idiots! (end rant)
I'm just a bit upset to say the least.
There are 2 opposing forces at work here. First, people who complain about houses being sold for cheap are leaving the XP gained by biulding out of the equation. That XP is valuable, and the more houses you sell the more houses you can build and the more XP you get. For a beginning architect, that XP is probably more valuable to them than the credits. As long as they are breaking even, they are happy because they can keep advancing. That XP has a tangible benefit that people just ignore.
The other side is that there is no reasonto builda quality house. All houses are the same, so someone slamming out houses using the crappiest resources with no experimentation, is just as valuable as someone using the perfect resources andonly using components that experimented the best. Anyone who thinks that houses shouldn't decay has absolutely no right to complain about prices.
And once again I will reiterate- customers don't CARE how many resources it takes for you to build a house. They only know how much other people are selling them for and how much value they personally get out of it.
Just want to throw my two cents in here...
I'm very close to master architect on bloodfin. Underselling is a pain in the ass, but I dont have any real right to complain about what someone else does with thier game. Certain bottom feeders will always undersell other people. But word gets around about certain things. My prices are higher then normal and i have a steady client base of people becuase I use the best resources i can find to make my wares. I will by pass a 90% resource loc for a 30% one is the resource is good quality. I take pride in my work and people do actually respond to to that.
Another thing is building that client base. Example.. guy contacts me in game tonight, says "hey can you build me a few crafting stations?" I say sure no problem. I quote him a price of 6k for all four stations. he says ok and he is running to my shop. he says "I'm really looking forward to this, we just sat down our PA hall and we are trying to get things set up!" So i say "Wow thats great! Congrats on your new hall! Tell ya what, by way of celebrating, I'll give ya 50% off the price." he says "Wow thats so kind!" etc etc. Now i lost a bit on the market value of those stations, but I can garuntee you that I made a freind and lifetime customer tonight. Infact i got 3 tells from membersof this new PA to make houses for them.
Its not always prices that bring in customers. Always remember that not everyone is out for the best deal. Fighters etc can make money pretty fast. Credits are readily available to alot of classes. People will pay more for quality work and kindness. And that kind of person is who I want for my customers. I could care less about the "Dood I am L337 sell me a house!" crowd. They wont care about repeat business. They wont be back if they find someplace cheaper.
So guys, yes undersellers can be a pain, but I only get annoyed at the ones that do it out of spite. The ones that try and set up shop next to me and stand on thier doorsteps saying "dood i can make that for SO much less". But there are others who undersell for other reasons. Maybe a friend quit the game and gave them an extra house.. maybe the scored a 95% resource and are rolling in excess ore. who knows? Ya cant get angry at all of them. The best you can do is to be better, not cheaper.
-Oldman Rakon
Bloofin server, planet Nabo.
Raidon762 wrote:
XP is not more important than credits. Infact if you lower your prices now and just sell your wares to gain customers and get xp. your screwing yourself later, when you are crafting to make credits. But then again most of the architects are going to drop it after they get there PA Hall made. But, you all that are selling just to sell, screw the ones that sell to make a living. I keep getting laughed at, people telling me they just got an offer to make a medium for 40k. I have Harvesters to pay for **edit** it.
Raidon I agree with you completely here.
If experience is more important than credits to some architects - um exactly how does this equate into the credit scenario mentioned? You obtain a great deal of experience from making houses and if you have resources then you can keep on making them. How does screwing the economy over and causing severe price fluctuations have any influence over whether or not you get the experience? Making houses gives you experience! Lowering prices to sell the same house to another player doesn't give you any experience! It just gives everyone else a BAD experience when they have to deal with the morons out there that know that Pumdumbski Creditcrapper is out there selling his houses for less than he makes em for.
Yes its nice to have a large contact list and I have one that reaches about 60 names strong right now. I've sold to many of them and others are prospective buyers. Now the same people on my contact list tell me at times, hey I'm coming to you but so and so is getting their house for x amount and I'm just concerned that you may be charging unfair prices. Then I have to explain to them the entire process in full detail and reassure them. They are happy when I do that but the fact is I shouldn't have to reassure them because ol Pumdumbski is Creditcrapper is out there making it a living hell for other architects.
This scenario has NOTHING to do with experience. It's all about young kids not knowing how to add things up in their heads and those out for a quick credit. These are the same architects that will tell you (after you ask them why they are doing it) to **edit** lololol etc. These are not experience minded people. These people are the GLITCH in the whole system. Yes there is a large GLITCH in our system and its these renegade architects that have zero responsibility, care zero about the other architects in the community, and are willing to cause problems for other professions.
Want an even bigger example?
I know a weaponsmith that makes tons of money and decided to be an architect. He sells his houses for just enough to power all of his harvesters and uses the money from weapons to enjoy his gaming life. When the resources run out that he needs for weapons, he lets them work back up and goes right on over to the ore harvesters and plop plop fizz fizz - oh what a major pain in the arse he is! Does this person care about architects? No - he's just using the profession to get his PA made and then he's untraining the profession. While levelling up to get his PA, he gets rich off his weapons and screws the economy over. This thing is much bigger than the profession itself. It's going to have a lasting impact on the rest of us that are "primarily" architects.