Business And Economy Archive

Thread: Economy is not broken: Example

Ciirybeccaskyr
Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:18 pm
#27






Smart_Darwin wrote:

I have been a fan of these forums for a number of weeks now and have noticed that periodically someone will complain about the in-game economy. A few days ago I had an example of how the economy is not broken...


After a pretty decent week of sales, my bank acount was pretty healthy (about 700k). This may seem paltry to many of you vets, but its the most I have ever had. Feeling happy, I went on a shopping spree (mostly reinvested into my business interests). When all was said and done, I was down to about 5k. Oops! I overspent by quite a bit. The day wore on without any sales and I had no idea how I was going to pay the maintenannd a bunch oce on my harvesters and vendors. Man was I worried!


Real life interrupted and I escorted my wife to a movie. When I re logged a few hours later (about 4), I found a bunch of email waiting for me, along with 35k in my account. Yippee!!! I don't have to beg after all! This got me to thinking, how exactly is the economy broken? I took this as evidence that it isn't and am hoping that by sharing this other posters will re-think thier positions on the economy. If you are smart and fulfil your customer's needs, you will not want for credits.


Anyone else have any examples of how the economy keeps you in the black?




True. However its not enough to make that run of 1k stims that will sell in a few days and another to keep the field of factories going to make enough to have a real effect on the servers economy.

Then you have to step up your marketing efforts in a huge way to sell them.

After 3 factories you move away from efficiencies of scale and into Inefficiencies very quickly. It is a real life job to keep more than 9 factories working and effective.

And again just making them its any money in your pocket. They also need to be sold and the thing about that large of scale the marketing required is no longer linear in nature either since you now need to convince people that they need a product that could be done without. To pick up 0040 medic for your 1100 heal Es or to destroy there old crate of 40 400-power stim Bs for a new supper duper crate of 50 440 Power ones





SoroSuub Industries
Located just 830m south of Coronet at -237-5557
12point -- Armors, Sliced Weapons, Foods, Buff Packs, Top quality Tailoring and Resoruces
Ledao
Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:54 pm
#28






Ciirybeccaskyr wrote:

True. However its not enough to make that run of 1k stims that will sell in a few days and another to keep the field of factories going to make enough to have a real effect on the servers economy.

Then you have to step up your marketing efforts in a huge way to sell them.

After 3 factories you move away from efficiencies of scale and into Inefficiencies very quickly. It is a real life job to keep more than 9 factories working and effective.

And again just making them its any money in your pocket. They also need to be sold and the thing about that large of scale the marketing required is no longer linear in nature either since you now need to convince people that they need a product that could be done without. To pick up 0040 medic for your 1100 heal Es or to destroy there old crate of 40 400-power stim Bs for a new supper duper crate of 50 440 Power ones








Again, I'm just not sure where this comes from...


My personal experience is this: keeping 45 factories running at or near 100% capacity requires roughly 6 hours per week of my time. Stocking and restocking vendors (of which I have roughly 15,on 3 planets) takes another 3-4 hours a week. Marketing takes a negligible amount of time, because, having been a crafter on my server for a year and half, I don't have to do any. As you'll see if you click on the link in my sig, I haven't even updated my price list in over a month (in spite of some fairly huge pricing changes).


And to the part about convincing "people that they need a product that could be done without", I really have no idea what you're talking about.


When I started making 40 med use stim Es (in late december of 03), it didn't take long before a significant portion of the server picked up on how much better they are than stim Cs or Ds... They sell themselves. For a while there, I had 8 factories making nothing else...





Ledao Bohi, Master Doctor
Now with 3 locations: Ledao's Meds in beautiful downtown Galatorbria, Rori (327 -1770), Ledao's Fine Pharmaceuticals @ UAT City, near Coronet (970, -5590), and Ledao's Premium Meds and Resources on Tatooine @ (-1922, -4041) just 750m SW of Bestine.
Comprehensive Stock and Price Listing Here
Ciirybeccaskyr
Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:27 am
#29

lol if you can keep 45 running and effective in 6 hours a week with all the stuff associated with it. (resources and vendors) you are far more organized then me or anyone else I know


Heck it takes me more than 4 min a factory to find the right resources makea top waultiy schematic and get over to it. Much less moving thousands of crates into hoppers, keeping up with resources, stocking vendors, advertising, and the inevitable times you cant find ome item or another whle you are moving all that stuff around



SoroSuub Industries
Located just 830m south of Coronet at -237-5557
12point -- Armors, Sliced Weapons, Foods, Buff Packs, Top quality Tailoring and Resoruces
Smart_Darwin
Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:31 am
#30

From what I can tell, it takes a tremendous real-life investment to get into the position where you can seriously impact the economy of a galaxy. Why the heck would ANYONE have 10 toons on a single galaxy? It is one thing to engage in cross galaxy lot swapping, but this is a bit more extreme. It seems like the very reason for someone to have that many toons on a server is to exert an undue influence on its economy. In real life we have anti-trust laws to protect consumers from this practice. Having this many toons on a single server smells alot like a monopoly to me.


In this ocntext, its not so much the economy that needs un-breaking, but something else, don't you think?


On a separate note, I was a bit more enthusiastic about the galaxy-wide vendor search before I read Cafa's big post... Now I'm not so sure. All we can do at this point is ride it out and the economy will find its equilibrium; if at that equilibrium state there is only room for 1 crafter (unlikely) then I guess that is what the dev's want...


I am particularly troubled by the lsuggested ack of input the merchant communit had in this modification to thier profession. I haven't been around long enough to know this for sure... Im accepting Cafa as an authority in this respect. If the merchant community offered a bunch of alternatives (some I have seen seem reasonable), none of which included the galaxy-wide vendor search, then why did we get this? Again, I am basing my attidudes on heresay, but the implications are serious. I have seen little communication from any SOE authority to counter this lack of customer-focus from SOE.



Success is not sufficient; others must fail.
Cafa
Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:46 am
#31






Smart_Darwin wrote:

From what I can tell, it takes a tremendous real-life investment to get into the position where you can seriously impact the economy of a galaxy. Why the heck would ANYONE have 10 toons on a single galaxy? It is one thing to engage in cross galaxy lot swapping, but this is a bit more extreme. It seems like the very reason for someone to have that many toons on a server is to exert an undue influence on its economy. In real life we have anti-trust laws to protect consumers from this practice. Having this many toons on a single server smells alot like a monopoly to me.


In this ocntext, its not so much the economy that needs un-breaking, but something else, don't you think?


On a separate note, I was a bit more enthusiastic about the galaxy-wide vendor search before I read Cafa's big post... Now I'm not so sure. All we can do at this point is ride it out and the economy will find its equilibrium; if at that equilibrium state there is only room for 1 crafter (unlikely) then I guess that is what the dev's want...


I am particularly troubled by the lsuggested ack of input the merchant communit had in this modification to thier profession. I haven't been around long enough to know this for sure... Im accepting Cafa as an authority in this respect. If the merchant community offered a bunch of alternatives (some I have seen seem reasonable), none of which included the galaxy-wide vendor search, then why did we get this? Again, I am basing my attidudes on heresay, but the implications are serious. I have seen little communication from any SOE authority to counter this lack of customer-focus from SOE.





For the record, I defer to Doc Savage for his insight and guidance. He has offered quite a few alternatives to the search option that still value the young merchant and communities.


FIvo Asia





- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

Ledao
Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:37 pm
#32






bluejanus wrote:


I'm assuming you don't survey and harvest your own materials.





Actually, these days I do. I didn't when I was running at full capacity though -- I paid surveyors and miners, and only had about 15 movable lots myself.


Now I have 27 movable lots, which I move roughly once a week, to the tune of a few hours of time.



But as this was a discussion about whether a large-scale crafter would have the time to supply an entire server with products, this is a bit beside the point -- having been actively mining for over a year, I no longer have any resource needs (for the next year or two, even -- I'm having a tough time imagining burning through the 8-ish million units of fiberplast I mined or bought last time it was in shift). Things that I harvest now are purely speculative, and not at all necessary for the continuation of my business.


So, therefore, the time that I do or do not spend surveying and harvesting has nothing at all to do with the time it takes for me to produce and sell at full capacity, which is all that's pertinent to the discussion of whether a crafter would be able to supply an entire server's demand.


As an aside, in the past, the larger time investment was in sourcing old resources -- establishing and maintaining relationships with resource hoarders, networking, working out buyout deals on businesses that were closing, things like that. But, of course, that's no longer necessary since I can just create any old resource I decide I want...




Ledao Bohi, Master Doctor
Now with 3 locations: Ledao's Meds in beautiful downtown Galatorbria, Rori (327 -1770), Ledao's Fine Pharmaceuticals @ UAT City, near Coronet (970, -5590), and Ledao's Premium Meds and Resources on Tatooine @ (-1922, -4041) just 750m SW of Bestine.
Comprehensive Stock and Price Listing Here
Ledao
Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:40 pm
#33






Ciirybeccaskyr wrote:

lol if you can keep 45 running and effective in 6 hours a week with all the stuff associated with it. (resources and vendors) you are far more organized then me or anyone else I know


Heck it takes me more than 4 min a factory to find the right resources makea top waultiy schematic and get over to it. Much less moving thousands of crates into hoppers, keeping up with resources, stocking vendors, advertising, and the inevitable times you cant find ome item or another whle you are moving all that stuff around







The nice thing about crafting is that it's consistent -- I know before I even log into the game what resources I'm going to use for X, as well as what stats I'm going to get.


And out of 45-ish factories (assuming that I'm operating at full capacity), 25-30 are always making subcomponents, which take seconds to get started. A run of buffs takes a bit longer simply because of the number of crates that have to be moved around, but when you have as many factories as I do, it becomes pretty easy to make all of your subs in the factory that you're going to use for the finished run, which cuts down significantly on the crate-moving time.





Ledao Bohi, Master Doctor
Now with 3 locations: Ledao's Meds in beautiful downtown Galatorbria, Rori (327 -1770), Ledao's Fine Pharmaceuticals @ UAT City, near Coronet (970, -5590), and Ledao's Premium Meds and Resources on Tatooine @ (-1922, -4041) just 750m SW of Bestine.
Comprehensive Stock and Price Listing Here
Ledao
Fri Mar 25, 2005 10:53 am
#34






bluejanus wrote:



But don't you burn through LWW?





Lol


Yeah, same burn rate as (tat) fiberplast. I think I pulled 7 million units of wheat from the last shift a few months ago (not all mined myself, of course, but all had for 3 cpu or less), and I'll probably pull 3 or 4 million from the shift we're having now (since I'm only using my own lots at this point).


7 million units of wheat is enough for about 92,000 buffpacks and 110,000 stims...


But anyway...




Ledao Bohi, Master Doctor
Now with 3 locations: Ledao's Meds in beautiful downtown Galatorbria, Rori (327 -1770), Ledao's Fine Pharmaceuticals @ UAT City, near Coronet (970, -5590), and Ledao's Premium Meds and Resources on Tatooine @ (-1922, -4041) just 750m SW of Bestine.
Comprehensive Stock and Price Listing Here
bluejanus
Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:46 pm
#35



Ledao wrote:


bluejanus wrote:


I'm assuming you don't survey and harvest your own materials.


Actually, these days I do. I didn't when I was running at full capacity though -- I paid surveyors and miners, and only had about 15 movable lots myself.
Now I have 27 movable lots, which I move roughly once a week, to the tune of a few hours of time.
But as this was a discussion about whether a large-scale crafter would have the time to supply an entire server with products, this is a bit beside the point -- having been actively mining for over a year, I no longer have any resource needs (for the next year or two, even -- I'm having a tough time imagining burning through the 8-ish million units of fiberplast I mined or bought last time it was in shift). Things that I harvest now are purely speculative, and not at all necessary for the continuation of my business.
So, therefore, the time that I do or do not spend surveying and harvesting has nothing at all to do with the time it takes for me to produce and sell at full capacity, which is all that's pertinent to the discussion of whether a crafter would be able to supply an entire server's demand.
As an aside, in the past, the larger time investment was in sourcing old resources -- establishing and maintaining relationships with resource hoarders, networking, working out buyout deals on businesses that were closing, things like that. But, of course, that's no longer necessary since I can just create any old resource I decide I want...





But don't you burn through LWW?





Isander Aperin - Kettemoor Master Architect (home: Serenity, Naboo)
Structures vendor in the HorkCo Shop near Coronet, Corellia (CLOSED)
Structures vendors in the Mos Mesric Mall near Mos Espa, Tatooine (CLOSED)
Structures, jedi kit, crafting station and resource vendors in Serenity near Kaadara, Naboo (CLOSED)
KronosHellion
Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:29 am
#36

The ecomomy is the whole reason this games sucks and the fact that 5 mins ago I canceled my account and am never returning.


I just wanted some armor for my new character and beacues merchants are greedy pricks they aren't intrested in selling anything unless its comp armor and is going to make them squeel like the swine they are when they see that near orgasmic number.


70% kinetic ubase jacket shouldn't sell for more than 16k and some piggy pig sells his for 50k.. Its not even worth that much.. some other swine sells it a complete set for 250k? hello like 75k? thats fair.. I spent hours for nothing...


and no merchant wants to have a vendor search beacuse they know they areripping everyone off.. they prey on uneducated consumers and they are uneducated beacuse who can go flying to every vendor on every planet to educate themselves? that would take day of doing what should be easy to see and find... and yes you blood sucking piggs you sould play the price war like everone does in the real world.. they seem to do alright.


And the fact that not one merchant has any knowledge of ecenomic theroy even in the simplest and easiset comperhensive manner we all suffer for their stupidity.


I can't tell you the degree in which I hate this game and worthless tyrants who run it. This game beacuse of it ecomony is a monumental failure... it sounds so inovative.. and they patted them selves on the back and got the sparky award.. well swine? your rich and all of us who actually work for the money... like doing piss poor paying mission, and yes even 10k is poor.. cause of the bloated prices... and what do you do? Ohh click click mindless clicking and wow and over priced f'n pig squeels and begs to be bought... but I really can't say to the degree in which I so vehemntly hate you do to censors.. and such... clean language... and people wonder why others say humanity is a virus?


well its your fault this game will die and there will be no more victems to pray upon for your never ending greed and no one is going to give a rats ass if you have a jet pack when there is no one here to gloat about it to...


Odio bajael alma.. Odio en el alma... Hocico de perro

bluejanus
Sat Mar 26, 2005 7:06 am
#37



KronosHellion wrote:

The ecomomy is the whole reason this games sucks and the fact that 5 mins ago I canceled my account and am never returning.

I just wanted some armor for my new character and beacues merchants are greedy pricks they aren't intrested in selling anything unless its comp armor and is going to make them squeel like the swine they are when they see that near orgasmic number.

70% kinetic ubase jacket shouldn't sell for more than 16k and some piggy pig sells his for 50k.. Its not even worth that much.. some other swine sells it a complete set for 250k? hello like 75k? thats fair.. I spent hours for nothing...

and no merchant wants to have a vendor search beacuse they know they are ripping everyone off.. they prey on uneducated consumers and they are uneducated beacuse who can go flying to every vendor on every planet to educate themselves? that would take day of doing what should be easy to see and find... and yes you blood sucking piggs you sould play the price war like everone does in the real world.. they seem to do alright.

And the fact that not one merchant has any knowledge of ecenomic theroy even in the simplest and easiset comperhensive manner we all suffer for their stupidity.

I can't tell you the degree in which I hate this game and worthless tyrants who run it. This game beacuse of it ecomony is a monumental failure... it sounds so inovative.. and they patted them selves on the back and got the sparky award.. well swine? your rich and all of us who actually work for the money... like doing piss poor paying mission, and yes even 10k is poor.. cause of the bloated prices... and what do you do? Ohh click click mindless clicking and wow and over priced f'n pig squeels and begs to be bought... but I really can't say to the degree in which I so vehemntly hate you do to censors.. and such... clean language... and people wonder why others say humanity is a virus?

well its your fault this game will die and there will be no more victems to pray upon for your never ending greed and no one is going to give a rats ass if you have a jet pack when there is no one here to gloat about it to...

Odio baja el alma.. Odio en el alma... Hocico de perro






Well it would be easier to take you seriously if you weren't such an atrocious speller. And why quit anyways? The galaxy search function went in yesterday. As for armorsmiths only selling composite, that's more a function of customer demand. If customers only want composite, very few armorsmiths are going to bother stocking ubese or padded or anything else. And guess what, just about everyone wants composite. And would it have hurt to find out who was an armorsmith and got a special order for your ubese? Oooo, you only checked two vendors, whoopdedoo. That was really hard work.

Well they don't have price wars in real life in the bigger markets. You see it locally usually, but in the larger markets, it doesn't happen due to protection they've bought via lobbyists (government protectionism/tariffs) and anti-trust regulation. Do you think Microsoft got where it is by acting fair? Hell no. And now it's on top and its products are unreasonably expensive. That's the real world. Walmart is often touted as a great example. I think it's in Montana, but the state is trying to levy a special tax on companies like Walmart saying that the companies pay their employees too little and those employees end up needing government assistance to the effect that the state is subsidizing Walmart low wages. Of course Walmart disputes this. But hey they make a good profit and they're expanding. This is the real world you like so much?

You also make it sound like no crafter ever runs or ran missions. I've run lots of missions including those so-called little ones. Get over it.





Isander Aperin - Kettemoor Master Architect (home: Serenity, Naboo)
Structures vendor in the HorkCo Shop near Coronet, Corellia (CLOSED)
Structures vendors in the Mos Mesric Mall near Mos Espa, Tatooine (CLOSED)
Structures, jedi kit, crafting station and resource vendors in Serenity near Kaadara, Naboo (CLOSED)
bluejanus
Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:03 pm
#38






Ledao wrote:





bluejanus wrote:



But don't you burn through LWW?





Lol


Yeah, same burn rate as (tat) fiberplast. I think I pulled 7 million units of wheat from the last shift a few months ago (not all mined myself, of course, but all had for 3 cpu or less), and I'll probably pull 3 or 4 million from the shift we're having now (since I'm only using my own lots at this point).


7 million units of wheat is enough for about 92,000 buffpacks and 110,000 stims...


But anyway...







Oh yeah, I forgot our businesses aren't too alike. I get custom orders a lot.





Isander Aperin - Kettemoor Master Architect (home: Serenity, Naboo)
Structures vendor in the HorkCo Shop near Coronet, Corellia (CLOSED)
Structures vendors in the Mos Mesric Mall near Mos Espa, Tatooine (CLOSED)
Structures, jedi kit, crafting station and resource vendors in Serenity near Kaadara, Naboo (CLOSED)
Tavtrin
Sat Mar 26, 2005 3:17 pm
#39






KronosHellion wrote:

The ecomomy is the whole reason this games sucks and the fact that 5 mins ago I canceled my account and am never returning.


If you look at this logically instead of being "angry" at a game, it really isn't that bad. People pay 40 or 50 dollars for a 20 or 30 hour single player game. This game has much more content, look at how many people play it for months.


I just wanted some armor for my new character and beacues merchants are greedy pricks they aren't intrested in selling anything unless its comp armor and is going to make them squeel like the swine they are when they see that near orgasmic number.


Has nothing to do with merchants being greedy, but because of there only being 2 viable armors and 1 of them selling badly it isn't really a option for some. You went from 12 year old insult, to 1576 insult, to a weird insult, i just thought I'd highlight them.


70% kinetic ubase jacket shouldn't sell for more than 16k and some piggy pig sells his for 50k.. Its not even worth that much.. some other swine sells it a complete set for 250k? hello like 75k? thats fair.. I spent hours for nothing...


Did you know how much resources and time it took to craft ubse when you made this post? If you didn't making this post wasn't very smart. If you did your not very smart, I'm not sure which.


and no merchant wants to have a vendor search beacuse they know they areripping everyone off.. they prey on uneducated consumers and they are uneducated beacuse who can go flying to every vendor on every planet to educate themselves? that would take day of doing what should be easy to see and find... and yes you blood sucking piggs you sould play the price war like everone does in the real world.. they seem to do alright.


No merchants don't want it because it makes a large % of the merchant prof useless. It makes the advertising and hiring line totally null. What do you think would happen if they made half of the fencer profession useless? And it takes less than 5 minutes to educate yourself on a product, using the trade forum search.


And the fact that not one merchant has any knowledge of ecenomic theroy even in the simplest and easiset comperhensive manner we all suffer for their stupidity.


Coming from you this was kind of funny.


I can't tell you the degree in which I hate this game and worthless tyrants who run it. This game beacuse of it ecomony is a monumental failure... it sounds so inovative.. and they patted them selves on the back and got the sparky award.. well swine? your rich and all of us who actually work for the money... like doing piss poor paying mission, and yes even 10k is poor.. cause of the bloated prices... and what do you do? Ohh click click mindless clicking and wow and over priced f'n pig squeels and begs to be bought... but I really can't say to the degree in which I so vehemntly hate you do to censors.. and such... clean language... and people wonder why others say humanity is a virus?


Ummm if you hate this game why were ever paying for it. Further, if you ever "hate" something in game its probably good to get some counseling. And yeah I'm a fighter and your argument is foolish. It's so so much easier for fighters to get money.


well its your fault this game will die and there will be no more victems to pray upon for your never ending greed and no one is going to give a rats ass if you have a jet pack when there is no one here to gloat about it to...


Ok.....


Odio bajael alma.. Odio en el alma... Hocico de perro










Trin Tavtrin
Proud Member Of RGU
Wanderhome

Page 3 of 4