Business And Economy Archive

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Well it seems by your description to be a matter of supply vs demand. It seems there isnt much in the way of price competition going on so a vendor can pretty much charge whatever they feel like, basically what the market will bear.

And if you pay it, even grudgingly, then that is a defintion of what the market will bear.

You did not mention any examples of what the ungodly high cost of a peice of armor was but, its not uncommon to see a peice of good Composite (80% to all saves, Stun, and low encumberance) to go anywhere from 50k to 100k per peice depending on the peice.

That is not unreasonable given the level of protection obtained plus the effort that goes into obtaining the HIGH QUALITY resources needed to go into the armor PLUS the slicing.

Its not a matter of sucking free resources out of the ground (they are NOT free by any means)

As a armorsmith

You have to buy that harvester
you have to buy or harvest power (which requires more spending)
You have to survey for quality resources (which takes a LOT of time, and TIME = MONEY, what should a Armorsmith do with his time, he could be making credits on missions rather than wasting time with harvesters, he needs a return on his time investment)
You have to harvest those resources
You have to assemble the product (and likely you need to maintain a factory, which needs more money and power)
You may have to pay to get the armor sliced
For the best armor, you have to make it by hand if you want to apply the best for expiramentation points.

so you see (I hope) what goes into making that expensive peice of armor.

While you get to runa round and kill things for credits doing missions, the crafter is making ZERO credits. All his time is wrapped up collecting resources and assemblling them and running a merchant. He gets ZERO money until you click BUY. Its a real feast or famine way to play.

The crafter basically has millions of credits invested with no guarantee of getting his money back, as a mission grinder, you have a definite payday, so cut the crafters some slack because they have FAR MORE credits invested in their gameplay than you ever will.

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Kinshi wrote:
Well it seems by your description to be a matter of supply vs demand. It seems there isnt much in the way of price competition going on so a vendor can pretty much charge whatever they feel like, basically what the market will bear.

And if you pay it, even grudgingly, then that is a defintion of what the market will bear.

You did not mention any examples of what the ungodly high cost of a peice of armor was but, its not uncommon to see a peice of good Composite (80% to all saves, Stun, and low encumberance) to go anywhere from 50k to 100k per peice depending on the peice.

That is not unreasonable given the level of protection obtained plus the effort that goes into obtaining the HIGH QUALITY resources needed to go into the armor PLUS the slicing.

Its not a matter of sucking free resources out of the ground (they are NOT free by any means)

As a armorsmith

You have to buy that harvester
you have to buy or harvest power (which requires more spending)
You have to survey for quality resources (which takes a LOT of time, and TIME = MONEY, what should a Armorsmith do with his time, he could be making credits on missions rather than wasting time with harvesters, he needs a return on his time investment)
You have to harvest those resources
You have to assemble the product (and likely you need to maintain a factory, which needs more money and power)
You may have to pay to get the armor sliced
For the best armor, you have to make it by hand if you want to apply the best for expiramentation points.

so you see (I hope) what goes into making that expensive peice of armor.

While you get to runa round and kill things for credits doing missions, the crafter is making ZERO credits. All his time is wrapped up collecting resources and assemblling them and running a merchant. He gets ZERO money until you click BUY. Its a real feast or famine way to play.

The crafter basically has millions of credits invested with no guarantee of getting his money back, as a mission grinder, you have a definite payday, so cut the crafters some slack because they have FAR MORE credits invested in their gameplay than you ever will.

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Somewhat true. But there "is" a fee to run harvestors. 1 Heavy Harvester is 90/hour + Energy

90/hour = 15,120 per week.
Power is 12,600-25,200 per week.

So total that and you have 27,720 - 40,320 credits per week per heavy harvester.
To keep 15 heavy harvestors up it costs 415,800- 604,800 credits per week just to barely keep up with the market. I'd reccomend 25+ harvestors so it will cost even more. Now if the armorsmith buys his resources which happens alot because of time constraints you don't even want to know what they spend on the high quality resources to make your high quality armor. If a resource dealer pays this much to keep harvesters up then imagine what he or she will be selling the resources for. 4+cpu. Armorsmith will be paying 400K at the least for 100K of Aluminum. This is also just for resources. Not counting all the enhanced tissues etc.

Renting lots is also expensive but I don't know the going price for them so thats "Unknown".

So when you see Sets of Stun Composite going for 250K - 300K thats not that much. You have to factor in how long it took the armorsmith to make the awesome armor and then the resources, lots, havresters, and time. Many people spend there SWG time JUST crafting and the least they can do is make a decent profit off of it.

Message Edited by Diaso on 03-11-2005 10:07 PM

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D8alus wrote:

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Mission payout ISN'T that great. As a mission grinder, I STILL can't afford your armorsmith's armor. Yet, people claim the economy isn't broken. Not to mention that almost NO ONE makes the low-mid level items.

i can't speak for armorsmiths but if i get an email/tell asking me to make some low level weapon...its on the vendor the next day at the latest. all you have to do is ask

Secondly, I'm a scout, so I rarely take missions anyway. I enjoy just hunting specific creatures on my own. (And let's not bring up how stupid the explorer missions are...kill ONLY male potty poopers, and the females, kids, uncles and brothers don't count?)

if you are concerned about making money, this is very confusing to me. i have 3 accounts that function independently, my ws's money is his own in other words, i don't use one to support the others. and my master scout makes decent cash by endlessly wandering around gathering meat. on my server, there are always doctors and chef's offering 50 cpu or more for meats. if i spent more time at it, i kind of think my scout would be the wealthiest of my toons.

Also, so far, my answer to the high prices has been to not pay them..but that also blocks me from 90% of the game's content, so spare me the injured crafter routine. I make way less than you for doing more than just clicking through screens.

it isn't simply clicking through screens...as the response by kinshi points out, and i did above less explicity, there is an enormous amount of overhead involved in crafting for power and maintenance on harvesters, factories, vendors, and houses. it isn't simply clicking through screens as though thats less work than being a scout,a successful crafter is running a business and takes pains to be organized and this is easily as time consuming as meatgathering. heisn't giving you "the injured crafter routine" lol, he's attempting to help you understand what is involved

if you truly wish to understand, start a new toon on another server and walk in our shoes

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D8alus wrote:

Mission payout ISN'T that great. As a mission grinder, I STILL can't afford your armorsmith's armor. Yet, people claim the economy isn't broken. Not to mention that almost NO ONE makes the low-mid level items.

I agree about the lack of a low-mid economy. But the reason for that is that there isn't much of a market for those items. The cost of making lower quality items doesn't cover the reduced profits of selling them at low prices. And most people would rather just pay more for better stuff.

Secondly, I'm a scout, so I rarely take missions anyway. I enjoy just hunting specific creatures on my own. (And let's not bring up how stupid the explorer missions are...kill ONLY male potty poopers, and the females, kids, uncles and brothers don't count?)

I agree with you about the exploration missions, but.....didn't you just say you were a mission grinder??? If you aren't making an effort to make money, you shouldn't be upset because you can't afford anything! Not to mention that scouts can make serious money selling harvested materials to merchants. I routinely see crafters offering 50cpu and up for various bio-materials (meat, hides, etc.) that are currently spawning on the server.

Also, so far, my answer to the high prices has been to not pay them..but that also blocks me from 90% of the game's content, so spare me the injured crafter routine. I make way less than you for doing more than just clicking through screens.

I haven't seen any injured crafter routines, just crafters responding to your statement that extracting resources from the ground is free. If you actually knew what was involved in that process, you would know that that statement is quite far from the truth. To be honest, I think most people here are probably thinking the opposite - "spare me the broke combat class routine." I myself am mainly combat, and its what I'm thinking.

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D8alus wrote:

You shouldn't be trying to make all the profit for the upkeep for you shop/vendors/harvesters/factories off of a single sale.

I've seen prices in ungodly ranges for one vendor and found them at up to 200k difference on another.

Why are you ripping off the pure combat guys that don't go for uber loot?

Now, maybe I don't understand something, but I've yet to see a harvester that costs more than composite armor and last I checked, there wasn't an access fee on pulling resources from the ground.

So how did these arbitrary prices get set?

Forgive me if I sound angry or antagonistic, but I am. I'm tired of running all over creation from unstocked vendor to unstocked vendor only to have to spend myself into the poor house just for a piece of armor.

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D8alus wrote:

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Kinshi wrote:
Well it seems by your description to be a matter of supply vs demand. It seems there isnt much in the way of price competition going on so a vendor can pretty much charge whatever they feel like, basically what the market will bear.

And if you pay it, even grudgingly, then that is a defintion of what the market will bear.

You did not mention any examples of what the ungodly high cost of a peice of armor was but, its not uncommon to see a peice of good Composite (80% to all saves, Stun, and low encumberance) to go anywhere from 50k to 100k per peice depending on the peice.

That is not unreasonable given the level of protection obtained plus the effort that goes into obtaining the HIGH QUALITY resources needed to go into the armor PLUS the slicing.

Its not a matter of sucking free resources out of the ground (they are NOT free by any means)

As a armorsmith

You have to buy that harvester
you have to buy or harvest power (which requires more spending)
You have to survey for quality resources (which takes a LOT of time, and TIME = MONEY, what should a Armorsmith do with his time, he could be making credits on missions rather than wasting time with harvesters, he needs a return on his time investment)
You have to harvest those resources
You have to assemble the product (and likely you need to maintain a factory, which needs more money and power)
You may have to pay to get the armor sliced
For the best armor, you have to make it by hand if you want to apply the best for expiramentation points.

so you see (I hope) what goes into making that expensive peice of armor.

While you get to runa round and kill things for credits doing missions, the crafter is making ZERO credits. All his time is wrapped up collecting resources and assemblling them and running a merchant. He gets ZERO money until you click BUY. Its a real feast or famine way to play.

The crafter basically has millions of credits invested with no guarantee of getting his money back, as a mission grinder, you have a definite payday, so cut the crafters some slack because they have FAR MORE credits invested in their gameplay than you ever will.

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Mission payout ISN'T that great. As a mission grinder, I STILL can't afford your armorsmith's armor. Yet, people claim the economy isn't broken. Not to mention that almost NO ONE makes the low-mid level items.

Secondly, I'm a scout, so I rarely take missions anyway. I enjoy just hunting specific creatures on my own. (And let's not bring up how stupid the explorer missions are...kill ONLY male potty poopers, and the females, kids, uncles and brothers don't count?)

Also, so far, my answer to the high prices has been to not pay them..but that also blocks me from 90% of the game's content, so spare me the injured crafter routine. I make way less than you for doing more than just clicking through screens.

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Doing more? You're both sitting on your ass'.

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RelicOMO wrote:

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D8alus wrote:

You shouldn't be trying to make all the profit for the upkeep for you shop/vendors/harvesters/factories off of a single sale.

I've seen prices in ungodly ranges for one vendor and found them at up to 200k difference on another.

Why are you ripping off the pure combat guys that don't go for uber loot?

Now, maybe I don't understand something, but I've yet to see a harvester that costs more than composite armor and last I checked, there wasn't an access fee on pulling resources from the ground.

So how did these arbitrary prices get set?

Forgive me if I sound angry or antagonistic, but I am. I'm tired of running all over creation from unstocked vendor to unstocked vendor only to have to spend myself into the poor house just for a piece of armor.

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The price of things has nothing to do with how much it costs to make.

Read that again if you like, because it's true - people who try to justify the price of a finished good based on the cost to make aren't looking at it the right way. Everyone can add up the cost of materials, etc., that it takes to make a piece of armour, or a weapon, or anything. But that has almost nothing to do with the sale price.

The price of something depends on one thing and one thing only - what people will pay for it. That's it, really. I understand that you don't want to pay those prices, that they are out of your budget range. But the unfortunate truth is that the majority of customers will pay those prices. They absolutely will. That's what the market values those items at. A merchant who tries to undersell on the items that people value, that are in high demand and relatively disposable, simply finds that he does nothing but craft and restock, craft and restock, and even then can't keep up with demand.

The cost to make an item matters in one instance and one instance only - if it costs more to make than you can sell it for, then it is not worth making. This is why nobody makes the mid-low end stuff - because the cost to make is not significantly less than higher end stuff, usually, but the market values that product at nothing. Consider, for instance, a T21 that is 399 damage instead of 410, or a laser rifle that is 380 damage or something.These areperfectly serviceable weapons, and the cost to make isn't significantly less than the T21. Yet nobody wants them. You probably couldn't sell the weapon for the cost to make. Similarly armour - it doesn't cost a whole lot less to make composite that has 5% less resists, or a full suit of ubese compared to a suit of composite. But the market values them at so much less, that there's little point in wasting your time making them.

I know it's irritating, but that's unfortunately how things are. Not just in SWG, but in general. The price is set by the customers, not by the sellers. Customers show what they are prepared to pay for an item. Merchants wouldn't sell things for such a price if nobody was buying them. The fact is, people are buying them, and lots of people.

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Well this isn't exactly true in all cases in real life. But of course we all know the evils of unfair trade practices. Microsoft's heavy handed trade practices while plying bug ridden software. If you were California, I'm sure you felt the price of deregulation ON PRODUCERS and not distributers. But alas alack, these kinds of unfair trade practices mostly don't exist in SWG. 5 starred you Relic. Harsh, but good response.