Architect Archive
Thread: Intentions..... Price.. Structure ... and Availablity..
Message Edited by Dvnce on 06-03-2004 10:53 AM
I know that post is a little choppy .. people keep coming into my office here at work... ( what are they thinking? I am actually suppose to get stuff done for them? bah .. bosses what do they know? )
Again I really want to express to you this is just a mere way of looking at things take it How you may .. I am saying nothing more than Our Products are meant to be a BIG deal..
If I get a little more time today I will try to maybe freshen up this post ..
I agree. Architect items were intended to sell for much more than they are selling for.
I see the main problem is that soo many people were selling these for so little early on, as a product of the grind, that everyone got used to the low prices, and nobody wanted to risk raising their prices to match the higher selling prices of resources.
The negative impact this has on the Architect community is that it makes it almost impossible for an Architect to makea living selling items unless he/she also runs Harvesters. Something that I, for one, would like to avoid, but can't.
/agree
ButI also think the devs shot themselves in the foot when they made every structure in the game last forever.
Message Edited by Grisbilen on 06-04-2004 01:27 AM
Dvnce,
It seems that your point is simply that it should have been harder to make the larger items and therefore they should have had higher prices. That about it?
I think it is quite possible that this is right. It is reasonable that the larger items were intended to be harder to make and the DEVs felt they should be a bigger accomplishment and that they were meant to be more expensive.
But... so what? That does that mean to us right now? If its the case that our larger items were supposed to be harder to make and more expensive because of it then what does that do for us right now? How does it impact our current pricing debates? If the DEVs had intended for something to happen but it didn't then it seems kind of irrelevant to me.
Both the players and the DEVs need to look at the game in its present tense. Not what how they imagined it to be when they were planning it 12 months ago.
Pawlin wrote:
Dvnce,
It seems that your point is simply that it should have been harder to make the larger items and therefore they should have had higher prices. That about it?
I think it is quite possible that this is right. It is reasonable that the larger items were intended to be harder to make and the DEVs felt they should be a bigger accomplishment and that they were meant to be more expensive.
But... so what? That does that mean to us right now? If its the case that our larger items were supposed to be harder to make and more expensive because of it then what does that do for us right now? How does it impact our current pricing debates? If the DEVs had intended for something to happen but it didn't then it seems kind of irrelevant to me.
Both the players and the DEVs need to look at the game in its present tense. Not what how they imagined it to be when they were planning it 12 months ago.
It is not necesarrily about price.. although when we are talking about crafted Item Playing with the price is the easiest way to modify how easy or hard it is to get an item..
I agree.. as far as action goes we need to adopt the... yeah so this is now and it obviously didnt work that way.. attitude.. I guess a couple things promted me to post this.. and quite honostly I do believe that architects are hurting themselves with the attitude that if you price more than 3 cpu your rippen people off.. We arent meant to be a volume craft.. Houses sold for over 30k .. for a small.. it took longer for someone to come up with that cash.. and it meant more.. plus the longer time it took was made up to the architect because they didnt have to sell so many. to make a decent income...
But you are right .. what do we do now? We certainly cant raise our prices... because so many make it clear that they will never do that.. So I guess that is the underlying question of this thread.. What to do .. How do you fix a craft.. that has been hurt by making the meat of its products TOOO easy to obtain?
Dvnce wrote:
...But you are right .. what do we do now? We certainly cant raise our prices... because so many make it clear that they will never do that.. So I guess that is the underlying question of this thread.. What to do .. How do you fix a craft.. that has been hurt by making the meat of its products TOOO easy to obtain?
Pawlin wrote:
Dvnce wrote:
...But you are right .. what do we do now? We certainly cant raise our prices... because so many make it clear that they will never do that.. So I guess that is the underlying question of this thread.. What to do .. How do you fix a craft.. that has been hurt by making the meat of its products TOOO easy to obtain?
I think the root problems we have with pricing on most items are:
a) quality for our goods either doesn't matter or its too easy to get maximum quality
b) its too easy to get to master.
When the quality doesn't matter or if everyone can easily achieve maximum quality then that makes competing on the basis of the quality of the goods a moot point. I can't charge more for my BER13 harvesters just cause they are better cause everyone else makes BER13 harvesters. My white armoire is just as good as another master and my small house is equal to that of a novice. If quality is equal then that only leaves things like availability or customer service to compete on before you start undercutting people.
Furthermore if it is easy to master our craft then that makes for more competition. If you could master weaponsmith in 3 hours then I think there would be a lot more weaponsmiths and therefore some more competition on prices.
Some things that might help us:
Make it so that more of our items vary in quality.
Make it harder to achieve higher quality.
Make it harder to master the profession.
If the quality of factories mattered then a master could potentially make a very factory and sell it for100k.
If it was harder to master the profession then you would have fewer people doing it and it would be less likely to result in price competition and less difficult for the serious crafters to sustain businesses.
THis is good input.. see that is part of the problem .. if we get new items.. our market is already in the I can sell cheaper than you mode.. so the true value of the object is lost.. I did some numbers. and found that in most cases.. we could actually sell our products 2-3 times more than we already do.. and it still would not take very many days ( or hours) for someone to pay for it..
I agree that making it harder to make the best is one way to increase value ( at least amongst ourselves.. I would argue most of the people know our stuff is worth way more than what we sell it for but why should the argue.. they are the ones getting a steal>?) also I would say making it take longer to make some of the more complex items.. even with factory runs. we can make a full run of medium miners with 2 factories in 3 days.. it takes a doc 5 or 6 days to make a full run of stims.. (and they cant even get 1000 out of a full run) does that really make sense?
I know Pawlin and I are talking about some ideas that wont make our profession easier but if its medicine that we need would it not be for the best.. I really have been thinking .. about some issues with our profession.. I mean If the players control the market just how much of it is the Dev's fault that we ripped the value out of most of our products? I guess what I am saying is that if we want to Devs to help fix the Economic situation with our profession maybe we need to take some of the responsibility upon our selves and find where we can do some trimming to help?
This is 100% me stepping out of the Correspondent Box and talking to you as a fellow player.. too.. What Do the rest of you think?
I guess my input or ideas are simple and yet, very nasty sounding too.
The key to this is decay.
The higher up an Architect is, the less decay his highly experimented item would end up having. You know, as well as everyone else, that weapons decay with use. Armor decays with use as well as death. Clothing, decays with use/death as well. Food is expendable, but the higher it's experimented on, the better the effect. Droids for the most part are the same way, highly experimented parts going into the droid get a significant boost to their final product, however, the droid doesn't seem to have decay. However, it does take a Master DE to give you a 10 item storage compartment, which even the Architects can use for certain items.
There are so many other items out there that rely on decay or a lack there of, every crafting proffesion with the exception of one, the Architect. Every time we bring up the issue of Decay on our items, i.e. Houses and/or Harvesters, we get 10,000 people screaming about how they'd quit or never buy anything again.
Bring decay into the game on harvesters, and the price of the item falls back on the crafter. Why? Because, if I can get a 97% final experiment to prevent the decay, and a mid-ranged Architect can only get a 55%, if they don't like the price, they'll be paying out the nose in the long run. They'll save money in the short run to buy from me rather than running over to a mid-ranged Architect to build them something that will decay at 2x the speed than mine will, and may not be able to harvest as well either. This will also increase our economy, or atleast put a few more credits into our bank accounts. Heck, it may even get me interested in going full time with my architect again, who knows. But when I can make millions of credits a day with my Master TK/Novice Rifleman, I can afford to buy the best, regardless of who's selling it.
So Decay doesn't sound so hot, but you know, most of the player base has gotten so used to having something from an architect that never goes away, use after use after use. That to me isn't right. EVERYTHING decays, nothing should be overlooked. All structures, furniture, everything that we can build should have some form of decay to it. After all, those adobe huts on Tatooine are for protection from Sandstorms but not invulnerable to them. Same with Generic, Corellian and Nabooian houses against their weather. Why is it that our houses and harvesters can stand out in the midst of sandstorms and torrential downpours and NEVER take any decay from the elements? Why is it that they can stand for years of game time and never break or wear out? It shouldn't be that way. I've gone through tons of armor, and yet, my house never changes a bit. Put a few credits on it every now and again, and it stays up indefinately.
WRONG ANSWER.
We should have decay incorporated into our items, and with experimentation, we should be able to keep it minimal, and still give someone the house or harvester that they are used to. Make our experimentation mean more than a BER 13 Harvester.
Ok.. /rant off.