Armorsmith Archive

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Keeper32 wrote:

Would you stop arguing whether or not the okram quoted prices are correct? Servers vary in price.

Even with mediocre resources some of those prices are low. I've seen grinding resources at 15cpu on starsider.

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Message Edited by Fellstaff on 04-20-2005 12:12 AM

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Fellstaff wrote:

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Keeper32 wrote:

I've paid over 200cpu for some oq950+, sr950+, mal900+ wooly hide and close to 100 cpu for the best intrussive ore at the time.

Those prices are cheap compared to what decent quality resources would cost on starsider. I think some of the best phrik alum (Dating back to launch) was sold recently for about 300cpu.

Starsider is the server where people will pay anything for everything

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And you're only looking at the number 1 resource on the server. Some of these resouces have a 10% or less spread between the #1 and #10 resouce if you compare the stats. All this does is lead to inflation for little or no gain. Crafters have gotten greedy pushing for higher prices but its killing the economy because noone will go for second best and sell cheaper with little or no decrease in quality. Whats the difference between 80% and 79%? Alot in price I'd guess if you have to pay 200CPU for hide to get 80%...

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just a question. Are you a crafter?

(hypothetical situation below)

If not, lets talk uber for a second. If a uber pvp'er comes into your shop, lets call him 'l337 kid', and you have a 39% stun suit and a 40% stun suit. What do you think he is going to buy? If one of your competitors is advertising 40% stun triple 80 armor and you can only make 40% dual 80, what do you think l337 kid is going to buy?

Those differences in CPU arnt just for a few extra points, they are the differnece in making something that sells and making crap that sits in your vendor for a month.

Oh but to get the resources to make the 40/80/80/80 armor (teh ub4r) you have to compete for those resources with the competitor armorsmith that already had them. Thus raising the price because as law of supply and demand dictates, with limited supply and unlimited demand prices skyrocket.

There for is paying 50cpu more for 1% better? yup. well worth it. And it can mean the difference between a succesful crafter and a crafter that is rejoining the fighting ranks because they couldnt cut it.

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Brutus_Krylop wrote:

The funny thing is -- resource cost has absolutely no bearing on value or price. The only area where resource cost matters is in setting a price floor -- if market price dips below resource cost, you should stop production and instead sell your resources.

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Brutus_Krylop wrote:

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Fellstaff wrote:

The market price can't dip below resource cost unless people start settling for resources that are less rare. Its a sellers market out there, if someone IS paying 100-200 CPU for resources, their costs are gonna be high, and this seems to be a universal trend, many smiths quote these higher prices for resources. Those smiths that aren't paying 100-200 CPU for resources are making the same or nearly the same quality of product and riding on the coat tails of the uber crafters that price their armor higher. Its a viscious cycle, those that are paying high prices for resouces seem to like bragging about it, and those that aren't are just riding the wave of higher prices (and higher profits for them).

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Way to miss the entire point of my post. I'll say it again.

Resource cost has absolutely no bearing on value or price.

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I'd like to think people are 'smart' enough to price above cost (i.e. armor PRICE > armor COST). Value is what the BUYER places on an item or quality, but because prices are pretty uniform, they have no way to place a value on armor when there isn't much variety for them to compare the differences bettween armor made with 100CPU resources and 10 CPU resources.

This has alot to do with it, but most smiths don't use a nice formula like (I want to make profit that is x% over cost). It seems pricing for everything is just a mob mentality. Those that do price lower can't make items faster than anyone else, so they can't take a higher market share by selling cheaper, so they're just screwing themselves by selling lower than everyone else. the factors aren't right. Crafters can outproduce demand, but since it doesn't cost much to sit on inventory, they can just price it high and it will sell eventually.

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Fellstaff wrote:

I'd like to think people are 'smart' enough to price above cost (i.e. armor PRICE > armor COST). Value is what the BUYER places on an item or quality, but because prices are pretty uniform, they have no way to place a value on armor when there isn't much variety for them to compare the differences bettween armor made with 100CPU resources and 10 CPU resources.

This has alot to do with it, but most smiths don't use a nice formula like (I want to make profit that is x% over cost). It seems pricing for everything is just a mob mentality. Those that do price lower can't make items faster than anyone else, so they can't take a higher market share by selling cheaper, so they're just screwing themselves by selling lower than everyone else. the factors aren't right. Crafters can outproduce demand, but since it doesn't cost much to sit on inventory, they can just price it high and it will sell eventually.

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It has nothing to do with what the AS paid for the resources. If he can put the resources on the trade forums and get 15cpu for his intrusive, then his intrusive is worth 15cpu. It doesn't matter what he paid for it. That is the "cost" of the item. Or to use a business term, an "opportunity cost". It can also be looked at as what it will cost you to replace it when you run out.

So essentially just because one smith mined and hunted his own stuff, and another smith paid full retail for it, their "costs" are the same. Yes, one of them is making a bigger profit, but he also put in the work to earn that bigger profit.

To look at this further in real world terms: 2 shops sell the same quality chocolate at the same price. 1 of the shops buys all the ingredients, including the extremely high quality cocoa beans they both use. The other shop actually has set up their own cocoa bean plantation. The second shop will make a higher profit, with the added hassles and problems that come with running the plantation, and having a larger payroll/company. In the meantime the owner of shop 1 has extra time to devote to other things. Maybe he's a bounty hunter, or even a smuggler who likes to slice his own beans.

Message Edited by Virtuell on 04-25-2005 09:57 AM

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01011101000111010110.................................U I support Pre-NGE U.

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MrGouda wrote:

Since you won't get a dev answer on this, here's my supposed reasoning on their part.

Part of the reason for the new resources MUST be that some are gated and they lower the maximum attainable resists (no matter whether it's a 4-digit number or percentage). (anyone done the math of this to confirm?) It can be done I'm sure.

Another facet with the amounts is so the relative weight of the gated resources helps lower the possible resists AND to further tax us so that it's more demanding/time consuming to gather gobs of resources to sit on top of the mountain for as long as we like to.

Seem plausible?

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@Okram: very good post

@rest: discussion of absolute CPUs or Armor Suit costs/price or AS profit is quite off topic to my eyes. The baseline of Okrams post is:

• significant increase of resources to be spent for a armor suit, while the difficulty to obtain resources from harvesters and animals has significantly increase.
  


• significant increase of time to be spent to craft the armor suit
  


• change in named resources to be used for armor crafting

if think there is absolutely no discussion about the factthat the relative value to be invested into armor is higher post CURB than it was pre CURB. Therefore the pricing of armors post CURB will be relativly higher than it was before. The margin will be probably lower and so will be movitation to play an armor smith. There are two additional facts that will lead to frustration of pre CURB armor smiths who provided professional services for all of us.

a.) decreased significance of extra Armorsmith Experimentation due to the fact that there is not so much to experiment on.

b.) decrease of importance of excellence in armorscrafting in general.the most prominent tanker template does not rely on armor but has innate toughness. The asymptoticfunction that translates armor value into resitances makes it less important what quality resources AS are using. Armor value 9000 is 55.0% resistance while Armor value 10000 (max) is 55.4%

as a result a lot of excellent community contributers will leave and the people who still need armor have to buy it from the WOW/EQ-kiddies that got trapped by the SOE/LA marketing machinery.

i am not whining, there wont be any changes of these factsand i am not asking for changes. All but one , unfortunately prepaid, account are already cancelled and i am not wasting any more money on this .... so to all the (15%) Pro-CURBers: Enjoy your game

Message Edited by NewEco on 04-28-2005 10:10 AM