Artisan Archive

I read many threads which where about whiners who complained about the economy in SWG, because many people are selling below the production costs at dumping prices. But in fact, they are RIGHT.

This ruins the whole economy. Low level crafters cann't make any profit because of high level crafters, selling their items at dumping prices. So, low level crafters produce for the garbage can,only to gain skills they need to produce items they can make profit with.

But there is such an easy way to avoid this:

If you see someone selling the items at very low prices, buy and resell them. You won't get any UXP ( but hey, it's not so important) but you will earn good money. Only buy and resell the dumping items and let all the people out there get a feeling how much time and ressources it costs to build a bone armor. I hope, the prices will get to a normal niveau soon.

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Altrian wrote:

If you see someone selling the items at very low prices, buy and resell them.

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I do this all the time. I have a shop outside Kadaara that sells medical supplies, food, clothing,excess resourcesand pets and what ever I find on the bazaar cheap I want to resell. I think it helps the economy along and I don't mind making a profit off the item either.

After several weeks deciding how I wanted to play my character I settled into a trader type idea. Iam taking a few artisan skills along with entertainer and merchant with hopes of owning a well know shop/cantina someday.

Jaliss Anarawyn

Look for Anarawyn Tradeing Post on Naboo or mail me for a waypoint.

wholesale vs. retail.

Selling items cheap is NOT bad for the economy. Buying and reselling them with a mark-up is not bad for the economy.

The only thing that is bad for the economy is making items unavailable to people who want to buy them *coughrobotscough* and have money to spend.

Keep in mind too: the low end crafters aren't meant to get rich making bofa treats and CDEF weapons. There's a price to pay to get into the elite crafting professions. Originally, players were going to lose the ability to craft low-end items as they earned higher abilities, thus making low-level crafters ESSENTIAL to the crafting process. However, people whined about that too.

So, let's keep whining and eventually they'll reconfigure EVERYTHING about the game so none of it isplayable.

perhaps people aren't meant to get rich off of CDEF weapons, but that's the way it should work right now. Weaponsmiths are pumping out DL44s, DH17s and all the other advanced models - yet they are flooding the market with very poor quality guns (horribly experimentation and low quality resources would be my guess). The guns that they are making are, in fact, so poor that the CDEFs that I make (I put a lot of effort into using only the best materials and experimenting all the way up) are, in 95% of the cases, far superior to the DL44s that others are making. Unfortunately, everyone thinks that a more advanced model equals a better gun, so my CDEFs sell very poorly on the Bazaar (but when I am actually speaking with people, they sell quite well).

Liquid, that problem has two reasons.... one is that currently most weaponsmiths are going up the weapons lines so they get the more "advanced" models and don't put anything into techniques... this creates less experimentation on the weapons they do make and thus inferior product....

The second problem is that the CDEF has many advantages, the least of all is that the base stats of it isn't that far from the weapons that weaponsmiths make(especially weapons like the DL44, D18, and DH17). This problem is enlarged by the problem in that at eng 4 a player has 6 experiment points to toss into a weapon, at Novice Weaponsmith he has 1, and at tecniques 1 he has 2. It takes eons to get up to the point where he has just half the points that an engineer gets. This is a major flaw in my mind and either one or the other needs to be solved in order to create a seperation between CDEF weapons and first tier weapons made by new weaponsmiths....

There will always be the problem of cheap goods flooding the market as long as people grind out 1000's of identical items to skill up. It is interesting that this is one of the central whines across all crafting type professions. I am sure that those clever types at SOE anticipated this, and that is probably one of the motivations behind the experimentation and resource quality system. This allows those who wish to spend the extra time searching out higher quality materials, and then experimenting during creation, to make better items. People who are grinding for the XP are unlikely to worry about material selection and experimentation. If you stick to making quality, you will find a market for your goods eventually. It just might take some time for the great unwashed to figure out that a higher damage weapon is rarely preferable to one with lower HAM costs.

The faster solution would be for the devs to pick an item which needs a high number of basic resources (more bang for your click!), give it a healthy XP bonus, and ensure it has no real use in game. With this one item then becoming thegrinders' preferred choice, that would leave the rest of the market free forthose who wishto craft items that people want, focusing on quality not quantity, and maybe even make a modest income!

I also think that a lot of grinders will reach a day of reckoning. While they were grinding out crap, true artisans were crafting good items and developing a name for themselves, with clients who are loyal. Gridners may reach the top, but still have few people to sell their goods to because a). no loyal customers, and b). They didn't take the time to learn experimentation to actually make good items.

I for one have one architect that I contract with. I've seen other architects dumping deeds at a loss. I refuse to buy from these people. Who knows if they'll be in game after they're done grinding. i don't trust them to be honest.

I've got my contacts for all sorts of various products. I'll not be switching anytime soon.

I grinded, and aside from travel packs I destroyed every single item I grinded. Travel packs I let people know that these were ridiculously low prices and not to expect to ever see them again after I got my level(200 2 sockets, 500 3 sockets, 1000 4 sockets). Even for those low prices I only sold half a dozen or so.

I think I am seeing a lot of similar ideas in may posts (a few of mine included). Most Artisans are starting to feel their value in the game is slowly dropping. A level 1 or 2 combat profession is pretty much able to buy almost any single item in the game right now, aside from buildings, after running 2 or 3 newbie destroy missions. This is ridiculous.

So to agree with the post, absolutely. You see items on the bazaar for ridiculously low prices, snatch them up and repost them for more stable prices.

In another thread I have given a basic formula I use that has been working. 10 credits per resource and 500 credits per required skill level per required component or final product. So a Master Artisan product that requirs three master quality ingredients and 100 resources would cost 11,000. A level 1 product that takes 75 resources would cost 1250. Novice elite artisans are level 5, not 6.

An artisan can still make it in a place like wayfar. On my server we don't have any armor or weaponsmiths selling stuff. I don't think there is even a vendor anywhere in the area. The closest one I know of is between anchorhead and bestine.

I don't buy and resell product when it's horribly cheap. I buy it and DESTROY it. So if you are dumping stuff on the bazaar on my server at ridiculously low prices, don't be surprised when you get NO UXP.

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Korcid wrote:
I don't buy and resell product when it's horribly cheap. I buy it and DESTROY it. So if you are dumping stuff on the bazaar on my server at ridiculously low prices, don't be surprised when you get NO UXP.

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Hey Korcid, I just wanted to say thank you if you bought my low-price stuff.

I craft the things for the crafting xp, and place it on the bazaar to sell it on the OFF chance that I can make some money off it. If it's not good enough for sale, I destroy it.

But I DO check the prices that are there and price a little lower. It increases the chances my stuff will sell.

So if you paid for the stuff that I crafted, I'll say thank you and think of you when I spend YOUR money on something I want.

Malgg -

Thanks for writing what I was thinking. Early on as an artisan I did grind, and the stuff that wasn't an embarassment went up for sale, very cheap. Like you said, someone has been buying it. The UXP you get early on is pitiful anyhow and impossible to plan for if you're tryingto advance levels.I do notice it gets better as you go along.

Too bad there is no therapist career - I think Korcid would benefit from one. Lot of hostility there.

So I guess what you are saying is that you don't care if you make a profit, eh? It's actually fine with me if you like getting the paltry sums I pay for the stuff I destroy. The great part for me is that I no longer destroy ANY of my own product, and I can now sell it at prices about 5-10x what you are dumping yours at. I might have spent 1000cr on stuff I destroyed today, and I sold about 6000cr worth. All dumping does is make that process more expensive - it doesn't make it impossible.

Dumping does one other thing - it takes advantage of the poor combat types who don't know that a well-made CDEF is more effective than most weaponsmith-created weapons. What dumping doesn't do - and this is important - is increase the number of any product sold in the galaxy. The market for any product you can make is small and, with the exception of food and powerups, there are few, if any, repeat buyers. That one newbie who buys your crummy axe for 10cr and dies because it sucks his HAM bars down now assumes that all axes are crummy AND assumes that a good, quality axe should cost 10cr, too.

Grind and destroy/grind and dump are both approaches to PLing the artisan class. Grind and destroy doesn't really hurt anyone but the perpetrator, but grind and dump hurts the economy and thereby everyone in the game by introducing an externality (GCXP and UXP) into the balance the economy would otherwise seek. This, more than anything, ruins the immersion factor for me playing as a crafter. If I sound hostile about this, it's because I am aware that the game could be so much better if artisans were trying to make credits instead of trying to make levels. That the leveling treadmill has infected SWG despite our hopes for a true "player economy" is really, really sad.