Artisan Archive

How can you be so inconsiderate?

"If you can't earn money from your craft, you should at least be able to earn experience. Your plea falls on deaf ears as far as I am concerned because I just don't see how giving away free CDEF weapons HURTS the novice artisans. "

If you read my post you would realize that the world does not revolve around you!

Thanks for the input and opinions from everyone, I'm glad to see a couple of the beta veterans suggest that the economy will play out to support the craftsmen (and women!) givin a little time. I liked how Dark Age of Camlelot had addressed their economy item deluge by making useless items, or 'tinker-toys' the item of choice to make for grinding out the exp. These are useless items that teach the necessary skills without flooding the market with cheap-o weapons, armor and items. I'm still not sure I completely suscribe to the argument of being forced to sell items for mainteneance capital; that premise assumes the buyers will all of a sudden be willing to pay premiums on things they were getting for free, and additionally require the other crafters to start selling the wares simultaneously. Personally I think the uxp is a great idea but may hurt the monetary economy a little as it encourages free items and undercutting competition just to get more of your weapons out and in use, but I digress as we'll have to see how this plays out.

Rath

You hit it right on the head with the junk dealer thing; I totally agree junk dealers should pay a tiny fee for scrapping items, or even keep 80% of the resources used for himself, and give 20 back to you or something similar. Bringing a 'black-hole' npc where items and rescources disappear to might help cut down on the excess of useless items, and clean up those auction boards.

Sup3rtr00per (great movie if that's your namesake)

I'm not on your server so no the topic is not directed to you, or to anyone in particular for that matter. I just wanted to bring the issue up for debate hoping to be assured it would taper out. I dont know why many crafters who are giving things away are getting so defensive (like you belittling my argument by calling it dramatic); I certainly wasnt trying to insult them and I even stated a few times how I empathized with the notionthat just junking useable items seems silly, but that's the way the early stages are playing out. It's not anyones fault the early economy is playing out like it is; I think a little more thought needed to be put into the bigger picture from the dev's standpoint. Other classes are able to simultaneously make exp and money, while artsy-pants' like us are struggling to give-away free weapons for exp, with no real money coming in.

There's definately some desparity between servers however as several of you have stated you were still able to sell cdef weapons, upgrades, and tools personally and on the auction; that's not how it's been for me but maybe I'm on an artisan-heavy server or something. Lastly, I'm well aware of the fact that there are delivery missions available to make some quick cash (and this fact has nothing to do with the debate), I guess I was under the impression that we would have several avenues of income other than fed-ex missions. Thanks again everyone for weighing in and there are certainly good points from all sides on the matter. Happy crafting!

-Chans

At KD+G, we stress quality over quantity. We hand craft each item with the same painstaking methods our family has been using for hundreds of years. I've been having great success selling our popular line of modified CDEF pistols as well as our KD+G "Craftsman" line of tools.

I think most people, if given the proper information, can determine between a quality item and junk. I don't sell garbage and I don't sell my items for the lowest prices either. I regularly sell pistols for 250-500 credits, which is a fair rate for the time I have to invest in obtaining resources, refining schematics, and my research & development costs for experimentation to create new, powerful exciting models. So far, my items have been selling at what I consider to be a consistent rate and business is good.

Am I making a fortune and living in a mansion? No, I probably have about the same amount of money as most other people who've put in the same amount of work. But it is nice to keep getting emails from the bank notifying me of another sale. I have to keep running back and making more items to sell!

I guess what I am trying to say is, consider what you're selling, how you're selling it, and who you're marketing it to. If people are just slamming out cheap pistols and stuffing the bazaar full of them for little to no credits, well.... their not making much of a profit, and the buyer won't remember that sale and run back to that crafter either.

supply and demand take a while to work. Some will lo-ball the economy to make market share. When enough get frustrated with the low prices, they will leave the economy. Then, prices will rise.

Trust me Chan the higher level weapons all require more exotic resources. Those aren't going to be as easy to come by and it doesn't really offer any more xp then the lowest level weaponcraft weapons. People will always grind the crap. Personally I think CDEF weapons should give weaponcrafting XP as soon as you become novice weaponsmith, and not before. They need to switch the harvesters that way too.

Basically nobody is going to give away the higher end commodities. When a small home takes over 1500 resources to build, you're not going to give it away. You can hand sample all the resources, but that would take forever. So you end up running harvesters. I figure on a decent spot harvesters run you about 0.5-1.0 cred a unit. However a fair selling price for resources is 2-4 creds a unit. I feel that as soon as the commodities market picks up, nobody will sell anything that took time to get away for free. Even as a Master Weaponsmith I'd give away an unmodified CDEF and just tell the player when he needs something better come back to me and I'll sell for a fair price.

Every Item I have ever placed on the Bazaar has sold and sold for a good price. If I'm dealing with someone Directly I Charge 150 credits for a unmodified Cdef (I only use High grade resources), 250 for a lightly modified cdef and 350+ for a Custom Cdef. Some of you will scoff at My Prices but I get these prices everytime someone askes me to make them a weapon. I also do Freebies, but these are very low grade Cdef's (Bottom of the food chain resoures or stuff I can sample at the crafting station) and goto newbies who want to go up the Carbine or Rifle skill Tree's. After a little while these same Lowbies come back and ask if I can make them a better weapon, I'll do this at a discount if they return the Freebie gun to me (I'll turn around and give this to another noobie). As to Crafting tools, these things sell like hot cakes. To me the More low grade equipment on the market the better as it makes my equipment look even better.

Pricing will even out as Artisans start moving into thier Elite profession and lower tier gear becomes rare and higher quaility equipment becomes more abudant. I do belive junk dealers should buy theuncraftedweapons that are found on mobs to keep them out of the market and provide a minor source income for the non-crafters.

I can't manage to sell much of anything. It is getting a bit frustrating. I was hoping to be up a couple credits by now.

If you want to sell your items on the bazaar you need to differentiate your items from the other crap. I make decent CDEF weapons. I was only in Engineering 3 and I would get 27-57 damage consistently. So I put that in the name of the weapon sell them for 350cr and I can't build them fast enough. I also have a look at whats on the bazaar and try to sell that. For instance I noticed that there was absolutely no armor so I put up a pair bone armor boots and it sold within a day for 1800cr. As soon as everybody made Eng 2 there were some bone armor boots up so I had already made it to Eng 3 and started putting up bone armor leggings and helmets. Once again I couldn't keep them in stock even at 2400 and 2000 cr each. I'll concentrate now on chest pieces because fewer people have Eng 4 or can't get the resources. You just need to differentiate your products and make good quality items not large quantities.

Arg, lost my two paragraphpost trying to add indents. I'll just sum it up. XP at the moment is far more valuable than credits. Artisans can get by with only a few credits, perhaps to buy bone or hide. So essentially, artisans don't need to charge high prices (or sometime prices at all)for their items. Unfortunate, yes, but it's the path of least resistance. This problem will decrease as people become advanced artisans, weaponsmiths, armorers, architects, etc. If anyone wants more clarification, I'll be willing to add.

As artisan is not my main profession I will have a slightly different point of view. I know selling things is your main source of income but at a low level the items just don't sell for much. When you get to higher levels myself along with others will not mind so much paying a good price for a nice weopon or some armor or whatever you are selling. In beta, a nice laser rifle would sell for 10,000 credits, sometimes you could find them a bit cheaper after more weoponsmiths could make them.

So I say sell the low level stuff cheap or give it away if you wish, and make your price for the good stuff. Hunter

Well I agree free items can hurt. However if your a good businessman you can overcome somebody giving stuff away. I just started friday and went into business with another artisan. Even after training expenses we have two harvesters in operation and are raking in about 10k credits a day simply selling CDEF's and Bone Armor. I can't see how somebody can NOT make money.

I've had two things sell on the Bazaar: a chemical survey tool and a mineral survey tool. The bazaar is so completely flooded with CDEF's it's amazing. Right now the supply is too high to warrant selling CDEF's at a high price.

The great thing about a market economy that is operating efficiently is that it isn't your job to fret about prices. The market is going to tell you what the price is. Period. It doesn't do you any good to say "the market should be this or that". It is what it is. If the supply of CDEFs is flooding the market, stop making freakin' CDEFs and do something else. Markets are great at controlling supply. If there are too many people doing an activity, then the number of people doing those activities will drop off eventually. We are also in the 4th day of this game. Do you really expect to have a stable economy? lol. People are trying to power level to the professions that they want. The easiest way to get there currently is to power up the Artisan tree to Eng 4 and beyond. Money also flows like candy in SWG. Compared to EQ at release where you could barely rub 3 copper pieces together and maybe afford some tattered cloth armor, you can easily make thousands per day in SWG right now.

The limit on the economy right now is time, not money or resources. Hence, time is FAR more valuable. That means that people will give away stuff for free and pay for someone else to mine their resources for them so they don't have to spend time doing the same. That is why people are selling resources for 1000 per 100 while giving away CDEFs for free.