Architect Archive
Thread: Architects get with it!!
This will probably slide off the the front page fairly quickly and no one will see it, But I just thought i would post it.
Houses, most of you are selling for less then 3 credits per resource.
My buddy is a weaponsmith, can easily get 45 credits per resource from an elite weapon.
See a problem here?
Stop trying to grind your way up, its a slow and boring process whether you make money at it or not. Im not a master architect yet, and I refuse to sell house cheap. I would rather get to the top slower, attain valuable architectknowledge on the way up(granted atm there isnt much to learnatm)and end up with money in my bank than have the top level handed to me and be a broke, uneducated Master Architect.
Those of you with PA's pushing you and providing the resources and/or cash to get to the top faster. Fine, its a game play it the way you want to play it. But I ask you, dont destroy the craft's prices for everyone else. Charge reasonable prices for your houses, they will move whether you charge 25k or 10k for a small house. Why, would you cut profit margin simple because your not doing the leg work to get the resources. Your PA buddy is working his ass off so that you cansit in front a crafting station and grind.Make your products profit worth his and your efforts.
Fing Mandragoran
Tera Kasi / Architect / Scout
do you really not get it? I am in a PA and we all run missions to collect upwards of 50-100k a day to keep up with all of our harvesters, houses, factories, and other misc needs (buying resources).
The harvesters crank out the materials and our architect, weaponsmith, armor smith, droid engineer, tailor, and smuggler. We supply them with stuff to grind on and they grind. Because it is grinding that means you have quantities of stuff. The cost per resource for our clan is somewhere in the order of 2-3 cr/resource now that we have big harvesters.
We sell stuff cheap, but we still make a profit on all the houses/guns/armor/clothes/slicing we sell. Honestly we GIVE AWAY more houses than we sell to people we like, because it is a game and it makes them happy, which in turn makes us happy, which is the point of a game.
You want to maximize profits, well you will have to find the guy that does not find us first then lol.
Welcome to the player run economy.
Totoally agree, I doubt we would ever get 45 creds per resource, but we should atleast be selling at 10 creds resource
I went on the grind in order to make master artisan. I made tons of bone armor. I sold the best on the bazaar. But the other 50+ bone armor I destroyed. You are ruining the game for people like myself. I don't want to maketons of money. ButI would like to be self sufficient. I would rather not have to run a bunch of destroy missions to make enough money to keep up my harvesters. And since you are just giving away all of your excess items you are creating a supply and demand problem. This makes itvery hard for casual gamerslike myself torun a business. All I would askis that yoube considerate to the rest of us and either raise your prices onyour sales or destroy some of the excess that you produce. I hope this didn't come across like a flame. I just want to put my thoughts here to let you knowwhat it is like for me.
Yazule wrote:
We sell stuff cheap, but we still make a profit on all the houses/guns/armor/clothes/slicing we sell. Honestly we GIVE AWAY more houses than we sell to people we like, because it is a game and it makes them happy, which in turn makes us happy, which is the point of a game.
You want to maximize profits, well you will have to find the guy that does not find us first then lol.
The current problem is not how various architects decide to price their products. There are different approaches to pricing something and most of them are legit. If someone can get resource at a nearly no cost to him at all, he can afford to sell a small house for 3K while someone who has to spend 2 cr/unit might have to sell for at least 4 cr/unit to make a profit. Both approaches are legit and there is not really a sure way to "ruine" the market.
The problem with our line of work is this:
Most of the products we produce are -NOT- a necessity to the majority of the population.
Think about this...Why are weaponsmiths and armorsmiths making so much money? How do they get away with demanding ungodly rates of 30~40 cr/unit and still get away with it? A FGW5 pistol causes 147 units of material to make. Any Joe weaponsmith with advanced firearm crafting, a tier 2 level skill, can make a FGW5 pistol. On Starsider, an average FGW5 with little experiementation points on it can sell in the bazaarupwards of 1.5k to 3k, and a FGW5 made by master weaponsmith can be sold around 9k~11k. So basically, at tier 2 skill level, a weaponsmith is capable of producing a finished product that will net him at least a rate of 10 cr/hr MIN. A suit of armor can net an armorsmith with similar rates. While our (architects) skills would net us, if we are lucky, 3 ~ 5 cr/unit.
Why is there such a huge discrepency? Why are weaponsmiths and armorsmiths capable of charging such an incredible rate and we cannot? Simple, their products are desired by the majority of the population. Let's face it, SWG is a MMORPG. It is not your everyday traditional MMORGP like EQ, DAOC, Shadowbane, UO, etc, but nevertheless it is still a MMORPG. People wants to kill things and brag about their "uberness" in a MMORPG. The best way to do that is by showcasing their brand new toy that they have on with them. This is a general mindset for the majority of the players in game. When they see something that moves, the first question that pops in their head is "Can I kill it?" followed by "I wonder what things does it carry?".
Unfortunately, we architects are not capable producing "uber" toys for the majority of the public. Consider and compared the following two conversations and see which one applies to the general mindset more:
Conversation 1:
uber_player_001 : yo, dude, check this out! I just got this new FGW5 pistol!This thing rocks! 40-153 dam, FR 2.1, and low Ham cost too! I'll get this thing sliced and it'll be sweet!
uber_player_002: oh, dang! how you get your hand on this sweetness? I've been looking for something like that forever. How much did you pay for it?
uber_player_001 :not that much, I have a master weaponsmith friend and he hooked me up with a discount. I only paid 9K for this.
uber_player_002: for real? that's CHEAP! hey, can you help me get one of these from your friend too? I seriously need some more fire power. My FGW5 is a piece of crap compared to yours, and I had to pay 10K for it. Oh, well....it's not like we can't get credits easily. Destroy missions are a joke in Lok and Endor. I'm already saving up another 60K so I can get that full set of padded armor.
uber_player_001: yeah, destory missions are a joke! but I heard the dev is going to fix that soon, so we better grab ourselves some nice weapons and head over there to get some more credits before they're fixed. (for those of you who know the exploit on the destory missions, you know how much credits they are capable of making in an hr....)
Conversation 2:
uber_player_001: hey, dude, come check out my new medium home. I got furniture and everything...
uber_player_002: er......what does it do?
uber_player_001: it's my home, man! you know....i got it furnished and everything.
uber_player_002: yeah, but ...what does it do?
uber_player_001: oh, i get to put stuff in it, i get to put furniture in it, although I can't put things in the chest and carbinates, and I can't lay on my big bed but only sit, but I am sure the dev will fix that soon.
uber_player_002: er...o...k......so what does this medium house do again?
uber_player_001: hmmm....it looks good?
uber_player_002: does it help you kill faster?
uber_player_001: er...not really
uber_player_002: does it help you regen faster? heal your wounds faster? Let you do cool things like set up turrets and defensive structures like that?
uber_player_001: er.....not really, but it serves as a cantina! that's cool! right?
uber_player_002: er..i guess so....so are you going to be a dancer? and how much did you pay for the medium home?
uber_player_001: I ain't going to be a dancer...dancer are for @%@#$! and I paid 60K for the medium house.
uber_player_002: 60K?!!! FREAK! what the hell did you do? why did you spend 60K on a freaking house that does not help you kill faster, level faster, regen faster, heal wound faster? Do you know that you can get at LEAST half suit of composite armor for that price? LOL...you stupid!
uber_player_001: but I got my own furniture! and this is my home!
uber_player_002: dude, I think you're playing too long....hello? reality check! why are you even spending time wussing out in your home? let's go to Endor and do some destory missions! I heard it's going to be fixed soon and we need to make some money!
uber_player_001: oh, yeah....ok, hold on a second, let me pre-paid my house's maintaince for at least 3 days...I won't be coming back for a few days then.
uber_player_002: WHAT? you have to pay maintaince too?! dang....what a totally useless crap! whoever sold you that thing needs to be shot.
uber_player_001: yeah....that freaking starving_architect_001 is one cheating mofo! Freaking charged me 60K for a medium house! *sigh* Oh, well.....i guess i'll have to save up my remaining 50K and work on some more destory missions to get that full suit of composite armor........Onto endor we go!
heheeh..alright, so I am very cynical about all these....but which conversation do you think apply more ?
There ARE a few players who need our product: artisans. Those uber-weaponsmiths selling 10k laser rifles need factories to make the parts and houses to serve as shops. Pre-elite artisans will sell their souls for a factory to avoid the major grind of manually creating 2000 bofa treats to make droid engineer. There aren't a LOT of these folks, but the NEED buildings.
Baldrin,
As I quote your last sentence " That is why people will need houses. ", this is the main reason why they don't need houses right now. There is just not enough content to attract buyers to buy houses. I would go ahead and say that architect is a very underdeveloped profession. We don't have enough contents in our line of work to show. We can make houses (oh, yeah..the status symbol thing...bugged to hell, admin list doesn't work, etc. etc.), Factories (another bug heaven), Installations (Why is it that a large harvestor is approx. 4 times more efficiency, 3 times more maintaince than a small harvestor -BUT- 50 times harder to make?), and furnitures (cabinates, bookshelves, armoires, shelves that don't work, bed that doesn't let you lay on them, chair that offers no bonus other than sit there like a stiff and look nervous).
I'll agree that when everybody gets bored of killing killing and killing, they will eventually settle down and buy a house (retirement plan)? When will that happen?1 month into the game? 2 months into the game? 3 months into the game? By that time they'd release the space expansion and *gasp* more content for them. What's the odd of them "settling down"?
Ok I do the leg work and i still sell at reasonable prices 10k small 62k medium 3cr/unit rounded up for my tip and trouble. I have a nice bacnk account and 13 med harvesters running. I have a good client base, a good rep and a weeks backlog on medium houses.
What really needs to happen is we take our 20-25k resources a day and mass produce some high end weapons and sell them at 3cr/unit and bring the master wapon smith back to reality.
High prices are an effect of limited supply and high demand. Who is going to pay 40k for a gun a month from now when you then have 100 of those guns to choose from. Decay rates are too low to actually cause any real churn in turnover sales to replace worn out weapons.
We have absolutly no turn over in housing, as there is no decay so the only sales will be harvesters and an occasional house in the future.
Once weve met the demands of our local communities, ie everyone we know that wanted one has a PA hall or a large house we can put our harvesters in the basement room and go PvP because thats the only thing that will be left for the Master Architect to do.
Eventualy even the hunters will want a place they can drop thier stuff. I see the expanded storage space as a very valuable selling point. In EQ I worked on so many quests...arrg.. never had enough bank space for all the crap I had to hold onto.. I imagine in a few months many will run in to the same problem.. a house will be the answer.
Of course we will need a place to park our space ships too eventualy lol.