Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Galaxy Wide Vendor Search on TC POLL
maigy
Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:45 pm
#66
Scudder wrote:
Hey, I might even start a crafting profession and fill the positions that some of you are going to vacate when you leave.
Trust me if you have any kind of monet currently it wont be worth your time
bluejanus
Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:52 pm
#67
Scudder wrote:I was here when the holocron craze took over. And yes, a lot of people left. I doubt it can all be attributed to that one aspect of the game but it doesn't really matter what the reason is.You're missing one vital difference between this update and that one. That one came without any notice and without any input from the community and the response to correct the problem was much too slow. This one was posted for all to see, pulled back into development and then reported and published to the Test Center.No, they have not given Merchants everything they asked for. They also didn't give consumers everything they asked for either. One thing that is certain is that there is no way they could possibly make everyone happy. The best they can do is try to come to a middle ground.Exactly where do you think the Merchants are going to wind up if people get so fed up with the extreme prices and empty vendors that they quit the game. Have you not even noticed that this is happening already. Has this trend completely escaped your galaxy?My guess is that this is an attempt to address some of the issues that have been plaguing them for the last two years. I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt. Hey, I might even start a crafting profession and fill the positions that some of you are going to vacate when you leave.
It's not being test on TC-Bria, right?
Scudder
Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:06 pm
#69
maigy wrote:
Scudder wrote:
Hey, I might even start a crafting profession and fill the positions that some of you are going to vacate when you leave.
Trust me if you have any kind of monet currently it wont be worth your time
I don't play this game to make millions of credits. Why would I need millions? I mean, I collect some stuff because that's a quest in itself. I do the theme parks and seek out the NPC mission givers. I go to the adventure planets and try out the different missions there. I explore the POIs and even some parts of the planets where I assume many people have never been. I chat with my friends and I plan events. I guess maybe that's why I've lasted so long. I refuse to grind anything. I don't need to be "the best" at anything. I became Force Sensitive months ago and have only been to the village once. It's probably about time I took a crafting profession just for the heck of it. Most importantly I know one very simple fact: you cannot win this game. If you need to win you're playing the wrong genre of games. To me, the value of doing something in this game is not to make more money... it's to have fun.
Cafa
Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:23 pm
#70
Scudder wrote:
maigy wrote:
Scudder wrote:
Hey, I might even start a crafting profession and fill the positions that some of you are going to vacate when you leave.
Trust me if you have any kind of monet currently it wont be worth your time
I don't play this game to make millions of credits. Why would I need millions? I mean, I collect some stuff because that's a quest in itself. I do the theme parks and seek out the NPC mission givers. I go to the adventure planets and try out the different missions there. I explore the POIs and even some parts of the planets where I assume many people have never been. I chat with my friends and I plan events. I guess maybe that's why I've lasted so long. I refuse to grind anything. I don't need to be "the best" at anything. I became Force Sensitive months ago and have only been to the village once. It's probably about time I took a crafting profession just for the heck of it. Most importantly I know one very simple fact: you cannot win this game. If you need to win you're playing the wrong genre of games. To me, the value of doing something in this game is not to make more money... it's to have fun.
Whether intentional or not, you've commented that you've no experience either running a business in game, nor coordinating the activities of a large group that do.
To me, it's the selfish one that is willing to destroy my play so you can see what comes out. I build communities in the game through a combination or RL/game interactions. A huge portion of that is based around the economy in this game. If it were not for a large portion of crafters on Tempest there would not be things to collect and experience on Tempest. The littleworth you place in your fellow MMORPG player's value indicates to me you would not be a player in my communities, ergo the same is reflected right back at you.
Don't push your blandness on the community mate. There's enough underachievement in RL.
Fivo Asia
Cafa
Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:02 pm
#71
It has to do with the fact that I've established relationships outside the game that effect the game play of myself and others. The glue that binds a large majority of the players is the economy.
Also, what "parameters" are you discussing? You're not even a Merchant. Artisan and Novice level professions are not designed to compete with Elite professions and I can quote TH and a few move devs on that. Yet, you think you should get advertising without the skill point investiture. On top of that, you think that you should get to override my characters' property rights and potential eliminate any play whatsoever for my Merchant in the GCW. This change does that, among quite a few other things.
My RL decision to purchase 8 pre-order copies of the expansion for my family is being degraded more and more with this everytime I see the devs corrupt the one thing in the damn game that works, the crafting economy. Loot hunters, like you, are the ones that create imagined inflation in this game. You are the ones that have ticked people off about the fact that they cannot afford some stupid pike with a DOT. If you haven't a clue what it takes to perform as a crafter I invite you to partake immediately.
Fivo Asia
Message Edited by Cafa on 03-16-2005 03:10 PM
Scudder
Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:21 pm
#72
Ok, this has veered suddenly into a very strange place. I'm sorry that a game has overtaken so much of your life that you are making decisions in RL based on what happens here. I will go live my real life and let you guys have whatever you want in this matrix you live in.
Cafa
Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:26 pm
#73
So, actually making friends with people in the game and enjoying them as friends outside this venue is wierd to you. huh?
This game is one of my hobbies. I also sail and do a few other things.
What I find amazing is that in a venue that wants to encourage interaction, you advocate completely against it, call yourself successful at it, and call others wierd for actually connecting to other people as human beings rather than some "whack a mole" you can screw with anonymously via a network connection. This game is not X-Box Live, CoH, or WoWand I don't want it to become that.
Bottomline, I am advocating the game being something that continues to promote and build communities that do not require the Master Looter choice when we go out together. If it changes into the selfishness of a me first atmosphere, it is no longer the game that attracted me and most that I respect within the game.
Fivo Asia
Message Edited by Cafa on 03-16-2005 03:34 PM
Message Edited by Cafa on 03-16-2005 03:35 PM
Pawlin
Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:51 pm
#74
Scudder wrote:
...
5. Crafters willcan see where the market supply of a product is low and craft to meet the demand. For instance, there is a schematic that's all over the place for a technical console and yet it can be difficult to find. I assume that this isbecause some crafters probably believe that the wide spread availability of the schematic must mean that the item itself is wide spread. Now they will know for sure whether or not this is true.
...
Its difficult to find one... so... crafters probablythink they are abundant.
/boggle
Poldano
Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:13 pm
#75
Pawlin, I think Scudder might have meant the items crafted from the schematics are hard to find. In this particular case, the schematics are all over the place, but there are not that many finished technical consolepieces of furniturearound. I don't find this hard to understand at all, the market is probably becoming saturated and loot sellers want more for the schematics than the finished items will be likely to bring.
Saego, Wanderhome
WineGuyJr
Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:21 pm
#76
If I can add to what Ledao was saying, in large part he already is undercutting many other Docs on our server. I did a survey of the major crafters as well as a number of other med vendors that I could find via the overhead and global maps. The only stuff that I found to be cheaper was of much lower quality (compare Ledao's WoundB packs....190+/51 at 2k a pack whereas one other major competitor was selling 72+pwr/35Ch packs for 1.5k and 150+/42Ch packs for 3k....I could list a number of examples for stims, Flame Sup. blankets, cures, etc). He already has a reputation for producing the best products, and he can afford to go even lower if need be. Even without a global search ability, he could already drive almost everyone else out of the med business on our server. I don't see him doing that as he's always encouraged and helped others get started....but he could.
If the Global Search thing is implimented I have to think it would absolutely kill most of the starting and mid-level crafters. A new crafter would likely (in my opinion) have to invest months collected/buying resources and aquiring the skill tapes needed in order to produce products that would sell (that's the route I took starting last November and I'm only now starting to see serious returns on that investment). Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it isn't. I'm not prepared to say. But I do feel strongly in that if the Global Search thing is implimented as described in this thread then rightly or wrongly, a lot of crafters will suffer. I'd like to think that barring Ledao or one of the other well-established crafting Docs slashing their prices I could still compete. But the guys who have a small but profitable business selling 400 power/37 charge StimB's are out of luck.
Anyway, I just had to add my rambling, disjointed, ill-informed opinion to this thread. Thanks for having me.
Drecki
Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:37 pm
#77
Ledao wrote:
Drecki wrote:
Ledao wrote:
With zero cost (i.e., using resources that are already sitting in my factories -- not even using resource kits), I can produce easily a billion credits worth of product. Not instantly, for sure, but it doesn't take as long as you might think. If I keep my 40 or 45 factories humming, I can certainly produce 1,000 sets of buffs and 20,000+ stimpacks every week. Are you going to buy them all and mark them up for resale? And if you do succeed in cleaning my vendor out one day, what's to stop me from lowering the price further?
What stops you doing that today? I mean, if you want to undercut your competitors today, you can do so. And if you do that for a while, almost every player on the server will know: Your shop sells buffpacks for 50% of the cost of others and of course they will buy it from you. But you don't do it, do you? So, why would you do it, when global vendor search is active? Just because it's a bit more effective in ruining other crafters? Maybe some will do that, but I doubt for longer than 1 month, then they will become bored about producing for a permanent loss.
Actually, my prices are already lower than those of everyone else on my server producing comparable product. Not across the board, but pretty nearly so (based on the findings of one of my competitors who did a survey recently).
My buffpack prices start at 9k these days, and only that high because I don't want to drive everyone else out of business. Even so, I get regular queries from the smaller docs on the status of my going out of business sale (I haven't crafted anything for public sale since the resource kits came out -- however I'll be selling off current inventory for at least another month...).
The caveat is that I don't advertise in-game at all. Although I have a vendor in my server's most highly trafficked player structure, most of the customers of that vendor have no idea that I have vendors on other planets. So right now, there are Doctors on my server making a living selling lower quality products than mine at higher prices.
At any rate, the important point that you're missing or ignoring is that there is no "permanent loss". When the resource kits came out, the roughly 800k units of Avian meat in my storage factory dropped in value by more than 50% -- I already took that loss.
Right now, my costs are zero. Nil. Nada. Without planting a single harvester or using a resource kit, I can produce 40,000+ buffpacks. Even if I sell them for 5k a piece, I'm making more money that I would make selling the meat (if I could even sell that much meat). To go along with those 40,000 buffpacks, I can produce stims until the next ice age. Also for no cost.
Sorry, but this has nothing to do with economy. Of course, if you have raw material on stock, you paid for it. And if you're a businessman, you know, that if you use up this raw material, you will have to get new stuff. So the cost is there, using up your stock IS cost. You are just able to ignore it, because you have loads of it in your stock and you don't care whether you have 100m on your bank account or 500m, because you already have more than you will ever need in this game anyway.
The point YOU are ignoring or missing is,your profit/loss situation won't change in ANY way, whether your products are available on global search or not. Again, what is the difference between now, when you are taking "normal" prices, and in the future? What should make you cut down the prices down to where anybody else can't compete with, just because your products are now on global search? This would be interesting for 2 reasons:
- You want to spoil the game for others. As I said already, why don't you do it already?
- You want to get everybody else out of business and make more cash after every other crafter quit business. Again: You could achieve this already today. Maybe not as quickly, but as you said, you don't drop the prices in order not to kill business of others. Why would you do it tomorrow?
Lunariel
Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:47 pm
#78
'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'
The designers wanted this to make it easier for people to buy things. But they are playing with fire this time.
Someone compared thisnew systemto Wal-Mart. EVen in RL there's nothing like this. All major chains compete by keeping the price low on some common products. It's all about advertising the ones they are best on. Once the customer has been suckered into the store, they will buy other things which are not as cheap. No chain is cheapest on every product. The current system is actually more like Wal-Mart, where a few crafters have most of the sales. But this is due to reputation instead of low prices.
This will be a massive Ebay with instant delivery and a 5 minute walk to pick up your package. The price wars will be like you've never seen before. At first you'll enjoy drastically lower prices and after a while you'll wonder where all the crafters have gone. It will be all about having either the lowest price or the highest quality (best stockpile of old resources). There won't be room for any crafters between those two extremes.
I believe they have done the mistake of looking at thevendor searchin Everquest and thought it would work here too. The main difference in Everquest is that almost everything is made from loot. Which is in a limited and tightly regulated supply.It'sveryhard to flood the marketthere so a wide range of sellersare able to sell atdifferent prices. With the massive harvester farms we have here, there's almost unlimited supply of resources.
This hasthe potential to be a game killer. The strength and the really unique thing about SWG is the non-combat part. Due to the limitations of the Entertainer and Merchant professions, the craftingcommunity has been the main factor for this. If we lose enough crafters this will turn into just another combat MMORPG. And several other games do combat far better.
Lunariel