Artisan Archive

Guys, I've seen this so much in the past 2 days and it's already killing the crafters economy. Stop giving items away for free. This means no standing in the middle of the bazaar and yelling you're giving away free guns/parts/armor! It's destroying the crafters economy completely. If you've gone artisan, then chances are youre only source of income is selling items, or missions. We cant really do destroy missions, and resource ones are still messed up so: if youre an artisan your only real source of income are those horrid marathon missions.

If every intermediate and new character is running around with a free scope, barrel, coupler, muzzle, grip, and gun, that means they wont look to buy anything in the auction. Dont feel bad for them: theyre getting an income from looting corpses and such so theyll have plenty of money before you do. We artisans have no such luxury and as such depend on those small purchases! If you need to make room in your inventory then just destroy the items, wasteful as it seems. You worked for those resources and crafting time youre giving away!

Auctions have already gone from being a moderatelydecent source of income for the struggling artisan, to a wasteland of spent $20 items. The price of everything is already driven down from crafters training up exp and putting things on it for little cost. It doesnt matter that the materials produced a total crap modifier outcome:I guarantee that freebie you gave away has delayed a bazaar purchase from that character regardless of poor quality. Just destroy it... I know it's hard to destroy something youve created.. but it's necessary.

If you're more into the rp thing, or a realist, how likely is it that any character in a star wars novel or movie just stands in the middle of a city giving things away for free? Not bloody!

I implore all artisans to stop this practice, and politely tell any others you see engaging in it to please stop doing so. The reasons should be fairly obvious but if they demand an explanation ask them how much they have in thier account, then ask them to compare that to a combat class of similar level (and play time). Teach for free! Give something to a friend for free! just dont drag yourself and all artisans down to poverty!

-Chans (The Starving Artisan)

and please bump this if you see it as a problem too, or present the other side if you dont

Actuly what needs to happen is play education. Why get a free crap qual item or power up when you can get a good qual one from the bazzar? I don't think the new players relize just how much diffrence in quality there is between items of the same name.

Well, not to be the nay sayer here, but I've tried for hours on end to sell anything, I've had 7 credits to my name sinse day 1 and can't make a dime.

Dr. Woo

I disagree chans. Basically Novice Artisans items suck. What are you going to sell that crappy CDEF, unmodified, Pistol for anyway? There's no way you'd get more than 50 creds for it. A single mission nets you over 500 creds for 10 minutes of work. Plus the UXP for giving these things away is worth more than the 50 creds of money. Once you start making high quality powerups or high quality weapons, the agree with you. But the crap we're making now is worth giving away to try and get a client base.

I have to respectfully disagree ranth. What happened that I've experienced is that the cdef and low mods were selling fine the first day or so, and at 150-250 each. Then since more and more people started and practiced crafting the same items, the auction got flooded, and then followed the crafters inventory. Next crafters started giving away the same things that were selling previously to make room in their inventory (and hey logically it doesnt seem right to just destroy something). So now most crafters are left with low level crafting items, for the low level players to use, that just wont sell because the milk is free, so to speak.

I agree that the quality of items do suck comparatively, but all of the same crafters will begin producing the better items at around the same time, and because they want experience and practice we'll have a flood of new items at the next tier. So again we'll probably see a day or two of next-gen items on the boards that may sell, only to then be followed by the crafters who are all more skilled and experimenting with and crafting items giving them away again in the bazaar because thier auction slots are again full and they need to clear some inventory. It seems to me this pattern will happen as the galaxys' crafters all progress in levels and level of item output. Does the experience gained from crafting items scale up with the level of the item? If so then I dont see how this cycle will change at all in the later levels.

I know it's a somewhat abstract concept to adhere to: why destroy something, no matter how crappy, when it could be used at some capacity? Well real life manufacturing facilities regularly destroy and bury items that were not deemed purchasable at even very low prices (E.T. The Atari game anyone? there's a landfill full of those cartridges)because setting the precedent for giving goods away is just bad business.

The only way I see this scenario not continuing is if the exp from crafting is not scalable: like is the exp gained from crafting a very high level rifle not different from a cdef one? If there's no difference then I guess i'm wrong, but if you get more exp from crafting higher level items then obviously every crafter will be crafting those items instead of the cheap ones, resulting in yet another abundance of crapola and give-aways at the bazaar.

-Chans

I play a crafter named Chan on Bria

I don't know what server you play on but on Bria every CDEF I've put on the bazaar has sold. I price them under 100, which is a nice price to me since it doesn't cost me anything to make. If you're still trying to turn a profit of 250 on a CDEF, you gotta remember that was the price day 1, where half the people who had the game couldn't even get in the game. The more people that get their game copies and register, the more crafters you'll see in the game, and you're gonna have to compete with them if you want your stuff to sell. And if they wanna give it away for free, it shouldn't matter much because it's mostly just low level general artisan crap anyway, which costs very little time to make and is just a buffer for all the elite equipment. When people start giving houses away for free, then I'll start worrying.

I'm one of those guys who gives stuff away. Not in mass but I notice there are players out there who are playing around with combat professions, broke coz they made mistakes, whatever. That free CDEF makes their experience more enjoyable.

Exp from crafting is based (from what limited things ive seen) completely on the number of resources used in the item made. But I may be wrong. So high complexety items give more exp not becuse of there level but how much stuff it takes to make them.

Hi Asianguy

I play on bloodfin and there're rifles, pistols, and carbines (cdef) that have been between 50 and 100 all day. I've personally made stuff for poor players for free because they had a tough time like you said or just dont have any cash, but I still feel it's a mistake to just announce that you have several weapons to give away for free in the middle of town. Then you get into people just garbbing backups for the hell of it, a spare for a friend, something to junk, either way they have money on them that (imo) should be spent on the stuff he's using instead of being banked and sat on.

Hiya Saice! I too just found out that the minerals are the key to exp but if higher level items require much more resource input, then the scenario still holds because who wants to spend 4x the amount of time producing barrels when you can just crank out the nice weapons for more exp? People still cranking out

I'm ready to give up on this though because apparently the logic (or lack thereof) of my suggestion is so counter-intuitive that people poo-poo it right away, or actually get annoyed at the suggestion of destroying something useable. A few minutes ago I produced a +17.42% to max damage grip (the highest i've seen) and asked a pistoleer-type if he was interested. He replied: 'lol I got the couple I have for free'.. but he did thank me for the offer You were right before when you said we have to drill the importance of the stats into the combatants heads.

I really hope I'm wrong on this, and I'm sure we'll all be able to sell the occasional 'amazingly crafted' experimental weapons/items, but i guess I was hoping for a market even on the medium to high rated crafted stuff, cuz I dont like fed-ex missions at all but hoping the fix the resource ones soon enough since that's apparently we'll be making our money (or be forced into a combat hybrid or something). Happy crafting!

-Chans

It's an unfortunate side effect of an artificially started economy. Prices won't stabilize for a bit, and as long as production is essentially free, people WILL give things away, just for the xp.

Give things a week or so to stabilize. Once the 'average level' for players has gone up, there will no longer be much market for lower items except for new people coming in, and the crafters will be putting out tougher, higher quality items that they can't afford to give away because they need to besupporting shops/vendors/harvesters.

I have been selling Crafting tools, and survey tools on the Bazarr. They sell within an hour, and this was during the day on Sat. I finally started to raise the price they were selling so good.

I give away weapon powerup items for free, since I'm using them to grind and I need the space in my inventory (if I didn't give them away I'd destroy them, it's too much trouble to try to sell them). Anything fancier than that I'll usually charge for, though as I was a medic in beta and I know how tough it can be to get inorganics I'll usually help medics out with a free surveying tool to get them started if they ask.

As an Artisan, I will continue to give away for free any item that I make that I feel is of too poor quality to sell.

I feel that quality items should be sold. But if I make a junk item, I'd rather give it to a new player than destroy it. The Bazaar markets are already filled up with crap. Total, worthless crap. I don't care if that crap is priced at 10 creds or 100 creds, it's still crap.

I take pride in my work. I'm not going to charge anyone for anything that I wouldn't use myself.

If you're having a problem with money, get novice marksman and join a group. I make plenty of cash that way.

I've given out free samples to totally new players who are outta creds and outta everything.

However, I'd never imagine shouting around giving out crap CDEFs for free or for like 10cr. I put em up on bazaar, and they sell. I mostly sell high quality ones tho, and people are slowly learning that there can be a reason why one CDEF costs 50cr and one costs 1000cr.