Artisan Archive

How much do you charge for this? for that?

Well, I remeber thinking of this idea before release (not saying I was the first to, but still think it is a good idea). Now that I've played, and now the specific game mechanics, and see my galaxies, one of the common questions is "How much should I charge? or is this reasonable, etc..."

My solution is a consumer price index. Real life (RL) economies have such things (think Kelley Blue Book), so that consumers and sellers all have an idea of what the market actually is. I know that all this data is in an Oracle database, I know that they can get the data out ( Holo or Q have quoted economic statistics before on threads, either in Live or Beta, can't remember ).

Ideally, this information ( described below ) would be available through computer terminals in cities or thru datapad analysis or whatever. You can bring up this information, and have your own character do analysis on it.

Realistically, this is how I envision it. Every night/morning (4AM PST, when the servers reboot, that is when Corbantis reboots), after the servers come up, a batch query is run for that galaxies economy. It can be however detailed or general that the devs want to, i.e. Resource Container, Lokian Wild Wheat, or Ranged Weapon, T21, Misc, Fishing Poles, and be by region, either on a galaxy wide scale, planetary or Regional (e.g. Regional would be South Crimson Flats, Talus). The data would be, for each row (data item/record), you would receive a Min Price, Max Price and Avg Price for that Item. Example:

Tatooine, Western Dunes, Talusian Water Min Price = 0.5/per, Max Price 10/per, Avg Price 5/per
Tatooine, Western Dunes, Scout Blasters Min Price = 200, Max Price 5000, Avg Price, 3235.32
Tatooine, Anchorhead, Scout Blasters... etc..

Then, this data is exported to some data format (csv, xml, tab-delimited, fixed-width),zipped/compressedthen placed in some location on the starwarsgalaxies.com website. Either for public consumption, or to people who have a valid active swg account. The result, is every day, each server has economic data that is available for people to download. Now there are plenty of fansites out there, that would download this info, and slice and dice this info, providing all kinds of economic analysis from it.

My vision, then would be that the prices would come from Public Vendors and Bazaar sales. (I'm not sure if Private Vendors are still allowed or not, but a Public Vendor, is a Vendor, inside a building that is marked Public, i.e. vs. Private). The price indexes would be only for stuff that sold (maybe even with the additional requirement that the buyer is not the same person as the seller, and possibly even the manufacturer). That I think would be the most useful data, but I suppose they could include Secure Transactions also, but not sure how that would be implemented, or how useful the data would be.

Well, that is my idea, below is more of technical ideas and stuff, but please, discuss. Tell me if I'm a dreamer, if it sounds good, maybe even Holo, Q, or Jasarina or some other Correspondant will post and read. With this information available to consumers and sellers, more consistant pricing would be made.

So, some things would be challenging (like things that have charges, vs. things that don't, but then again, maybe not, depending on the database tables). Maybe the existing structure of data would make it too hard. So, a new log type table could be created, and everytime something is bought on the bazaar, a record could be created, with export friendly data. Maybe this isn't the best thing to suggest based on current issues of bazaar performance, but I think one SQL Insert statement, to a table wouldn't be too hard. (For sizing concerns, the table could be truncated every morning, after the export files are created.

That's a great idea.

If that sort of thing is reasonable to implement from the coding side, I think that would be a good skill to give to the Business line or Merchant tree to be able to pull that data, who seem a little light on cool abilities compared to other professions.

Maybe having additional grades of data at each skill box, i.e. first you get min/max prices, then average, then broken down by region/planet, etc. There are probably a hundred different pieces of data you could mix and match at each skill box that would be useful for a business type in game. It would also make the profession more "interactive" and fun on a day to day basis.

Just a thought...

Why do you want the consumer driving prices galaxy wide? BY creating a tool like this (allbeit a cool lili toy) what good does it do us, the merchant? Not a **edit** thing I say.

I will charge any number of credits I chosse for any item I choose to sell. Because, say, copper is in short supply on Naboo and it isoverflowing on Tatooine, why should my customers demand to pay 2.5 cr a unit for a resource that isnt available on my (being Naboo) planet? Hell no, and I certainlky dont want to give them an easily browsable portal to all goods sold throughout the galaxy so they can spend 2K in airfare to pay 2.5 cr for a resrouce that I without this handy lil toy could sell for 8-10 cr a unit.

For me, bottom line, my char (Master Aritisan/DE) is a businessman and I see it as such. THe abillity to so numbers and charts and crap does nothing for me, I deal with then at work, although I understand other would enjoy this and find it useful. What does do it for me is finding steals and deals and making cr from them.

Well, that and slaughtering Rebels . . .

Muhahahahahaha!!!

You implement that and I'll start a futures market. I'll sell contracts of resources using a strike price based upon a future date.

The best way to understand market prices is to understand costs. If you track all your costs on developing resources, you will know how much a resource costs. If you know how many resources it takes to make an item plus the fixed costs for the factory,you can determine how much the item costs. The power of understand the costs will help you to price your product competitively.

Remember the act of production is only worthwhile as long as the marginal cost is less than the marginal benefit. You should continue to produce until the marginal cost is equal to the marginal benefit.

BaseballMartinez

Ideally, this would be a feature available to Merchants only. But, I don't think it is easy to do. The amount of analysis and different searches, filters, etc... that people would want to use (as well as historical data), would be too complex an interface (IMHO) for the devs to be able to tackle in a timely manner. It would be awesome to have for the merchants, but I don't think it would be doable.

-Stinky

I think this tool is for both the merchants and the sellers. I know that in my galaxy board (Corbantis) I always see questions from sellers how much to sell for this, for that. As a merchant, I think it would be valuable to know what the competition is selling for. That way you can know if you are above the curve, or below it (as far as pricing is concerned)

Regardless of what you say, currently, today, there are websites that have resource availabilites now, to say, that on your server, that will tell them that copper is in short supply on Naboo, and is overflowing on Tatooine. Not everyone will know, or spend the time to go to these fansites. Maybe the majority, maybe 50%, maybe less, will go, but I doubt 100%. Regardless, there are plenty of people that might pay you the money, because they don't want to spend the time to fly to tat, then buy the stuff, then fly back.

You are thinking about all the advantages that the conusmers will get. If you see that the average price is on Tat, it is 2 credits, you may want to buy up some of that, and bring it home (Naboo), so you can sell it for your insane 10 credit price.

To me -Stinky, you seem to not like this, cause then you won't be able to gouge your consumer base for 10 credits a unit (I personally think that is way overpriced, unless it is for a rare resource, with good stats, that is shifted away).

WaerbGloofin

oops, hit the Submit Post button by accident. /doh

WaerbGloofin

Hey, I'm all for you to implementinga futures market if you want.

Costs is already understandable. I can calculate how much the base resources it is going to cost. Extractors have pretty much set formulas, and you can calculate the variable cost per unit for the resource. Based on that, you can determine, how much anything costs (based on that data).

Now, if this new tool/feature is done, you can more accureately determine resource prices for things. And better judge actual costs.

Summary

I think this tool, is just for indicators. My theory would be, that if implemented, to start, the Min and Max ranges would be huge. But after awhile, the value of Max-Min would slowly decrease over time. Averages on the other hand would go up and down. And regardless of what -Stinky might think, no matter what, it is both consumers and sellers who drive prices in the galaxies. If you have the this tool, then the consumers and the sellers will just be more informed, instead of having their prices based on estimates, guesses and feeling.

Edit

I guess one more thing to add to add to the statistics above, would have to be the number of items sold. So form my example above, it would have to be:

Tatooine, Western Dunes, Talusian Water Units Sold= 20k, Min Price = 0.5/p...

That way, proper roll up averaging would be accurate.

Wanted to see if anyone else had an opinion on this. I think it adds alot of information, and would help the economy alot, and wouldn't require alot of work, atleast in my opinion.

Somepeople think that it would be bad to have the consumers have pricing information, I tend to disagree. As a consumer or a seller, I think it would be adventageous for a percentage of the population to understand the current market conditions. In real life, we have the wall street journal, stock markets, consumer reports, and all sorts of other publically available information on the state of the economy. In star wars galaxies, it is non-existant.