Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Did I get ripped?
SkyeDarkangel wrote:
Wow, 75K? My Probots are 547 Combat Rating and 1093 HAM and I sell them for 17K - 20K (in case of a failure)
Thats about 10 cpu on it's resources, a good profit since I pay about 2 - 3 cpu for normal resources, 0.5 CPU for more of my resources (harvest them myself)
Is that really what you guys charge?!
Have a nice day!" in all sincerity.oh, and i just realized my city is manufacturing center, which doesnt that reduce production time by 20%?
guess that would make it 48 minutes additional.
Lonkley wrote:
oh, and i just realized my city is manufacturing center, which doesnt that reduce production time by 20%?
guess that would make it 48 minutes additional.
Manufacturing center is a City Specialization that boosts your assembly roll by 10 or 15% (been awhile since I checked which...sorry).
If it actually reduced factory times, we'd have more factories than houses within city limits....
stigukol wrote:
Knowing nothing of the driod business i agreed to the 75k per driod price. Again these are "Perfect Droids"
Virtanis wrote:
This may not be popular among my fellow DE's, but I personally think that's a darn high price. Here's my reasoning:
1) The CPU of that droid (while CPU isn't the best way to check prices) is stillpretty astronomical.
Compared to Armorsmiths and Weaponsmiths we're pretty darn cheap.
2) It's a CL10 pet. Just remember that. CL10.
Not arguing on that one.
3) After the armor nerf and the 40% resist bug fixed, it's HAM, no matter how you slice it, is sub standard.
Again, not arguing
4) No buffing, no specials, no utility, no drinking, no smoking, what does it do?
Who knows, not me?
5) Droids are far easier to build than BE pets. No multigenerations... no mask scent...no field sampling withfinite DNA rewards... standardized factory runs for mass production...no aggro mobs to attack you.... etc. Why does this cost more than a BE made CL10 pet?
Easier? Can't say I agree... finding metals with over 950 in BOTH overall quality and conductivity and chemicals over 990 sure aint no picnic. Less dangerous, sure! Easier? Nah.
Then on top of that you have items that require factory made items that require factory made items that require Master Artisan that require that you've either sacrificed a myriad of skill points or have a steady supplier which in their turn must be paid.
Yeah, I know... not a popular opinion... go ahead and 1-star me if you want,folks. Once the novelty wears off, it's gouging pure and simple, just like it was for creature mounts and vehicles. I don't like price gouging.
AudioOrgana wrote:
First, not sure if you've ever looked at WS and AS schematics, but did you know that guns take like less than 100 resources, even for some of the best weapons?
T21 Rifle: 639, LLC: 470, Flamethrower: 426, Laser Rifle: 299, Jawa Ion Rifle: 293, Laser Carbine: 276, Republic Blaster: 167, Launcher Pistol 161, FWG5 Pistol: 147, Scatter Pistol: 144.... Most of these are among the most commonly used ranged weapons on Corbantis (not including the new schematic weapons). I grabbed these figures from SWGCraft, so I'm assuming they're close to accurate (at least it was before Tuesday). Don't forget also that any combatant worth his salt will want to get one of these ranged weapons fitted with Krayt tissues, and that stuff doesn't grow on trees.
Now, I'm not devaluing the work they do in finding the rare resources, but in this day of BER10 medium harvesters, your only gate is the spawn. Find a rare resource just once, stick a couple of BER10's on it, and you have enough to make guns for months/years.
To me, this fact almost supports my reasons why prices should be a tad bit more reasonable. Most serious crafters I know avoid buying resources for 2, 3, or 4 CPU from dealers when they can pull it out of the ground with BER 10 mediums or BER13 heavies for a **fractional** CPU cost, even after power and maintenance are factored into that equation.
As you say, CPU isn't a good way to judge prices - my time in game, managing factories, building components - and let's not forget those Master Artisan parts; at last count, Probots now take 22 components instead of 9. (I thought it was 20 before, but I forgot about the additional brain in the combat cluster). That is a LOT more work. I would have rather they tripled the resources instead of doubling the amount of components.
Personally, I'd much rather have more components than resources. My ability to gather resources is gated not only by the spawn, but by my lot capacity (for harvesters). More components simply means I leave more things in my factory output hopper longer... or juggled between the bank, my storage houses, my backpack, or my input hoppers. If resources tripled yet components were slashed by a third, the only real thing we're saving money on is maintenance and power for factories (because we'd be building less overall). If you want my opinion, power and maintenance for factories is negligible for a number of reasons. I have merchant skills which grant me a 20% reduction on maintenance costs and I'm part of a large crafting guild which has a large number of shared factories we all pool for each other. Factories simply add "pennies" to my manufacturing costs. Just like in real life, most automated, robotic, assembly plants aren't the source of the cost for a product: it's marketing, R&D, distribution, and human wages.
I'll tell you what does give me reason to raise prices. My time... the time it takes me to ride around on a swoop bike looking for an 80%+ resource spawn. The time it takes me to drive to my 4 shops, put items up for sale, enter item descriptions, and wait for the Lagtooine bazaar system to update. That's costly to me... the player. Increased component needs simply means I start a factory on Droid Brains for 1000 units, instead of 300 or 400. Each night before I go to bed I start my factories working on something... each morning before I go to work I start those factories that finished on something else. As far as I'm concerned: this is all gravy... it's saved time for me and allows me to devote my energy into actually building my wares from crated components, rather than wasting my time waiting for stuff to finish up. My time wasted = bigger prices on the vendors.
Armor issues aside, do you realize this new Probot is BETTER than a Pre-nerf, damage wise?
I love the Probot... and it is better than the pre-nerfs and the pre-pre-nerfs.
Maybe they will have the good sense to undo the armor nerf - it's between our customers and the Devs now. We've done our part as DE's - if the customers continue to dislike the change as much as it has, it's time for them to speak.
Mid reply SOE rant here. I've been a big fan of the medium armor for ages. I don't understand why they've got such a hardon for trying to jam Droids into that inflexible, static creature pet system they've made for themselves. Why did they gut armor from droids to make them equal to CL10 pets when, as we all know, a perfectly viable plan for making hybrid droids is out there that would make the droid cap around, say, 35? Why did they have to jam droids into a system that scales up to CL70 (and higher) when nobody really expects droids to ever get that high? WHY???? These and many other questions just get my blood boiling!
The one thing I always said about the DE profession was that in spite of the broken/unfinished feel to the profession, the one thing we don't lack is a profit margin. People are willing to pay for droids. I sold Probots pre-publish 7 with item storage or medical utility for around 40K every day. I sold on average 5-10, but then again some days someone would pick up 6 crates of 5 (30 droids). I'm selling for between 65-70K now.
Trust me, I'm not wanting for money... in fact, there is nothing left in this game for me to buy, really. Most people who are multi-multi millionaires are in the same boat. I have a commando alt who is my sandbox character, she does the fighting and killing and I buy junk for her to play with. My main has his full DE-SEA work suit and there is really nothing left for me to buy. DE's can be a profitable profession, you just need to use your brain in doing it.
Mounts : People were unaware that the Kaddu they had a BE make them would need to grow for a few days in their datapad. Datapad space is at a premium for CH's - it's part of their skill tree, for cryin' out loud. I watched it happen, it was insane. A CH would stand outside a Starport in the first hours of mounts and say, "Mount, 50K!". Ten people would say, "I'll take it!", then start bidding amongst themselves. "I'll give you 100k!" "I'll give you 150K!" "I'll give you 300K!". The customers did it all - sure, the CH's took advantage of it, but who in their right mind is going to deny people throwing money at them? And then what happened? A week later no one was selling them, everyone knew the score, and CH's can barely give 'em away.
I would set my price for what I feel it will normalize at, and sell them. Even if the guy on the other side of Theed is getting 4 times as much as me because of foolish customers, I wouldn't mind a bit. It's those people who "knew the score" that I'm thinking of. I'm not going to ruin my reputation or rapport with those same people just to make a quick buck in the heat of the craze. It's those people who will remember reasonable prices and good service and hopefully will come back later because they don't want to deal with Coronet's lag and the throngs frenzied macro-spam-bombing opportunists.
Vehicles : Vehicle prices have actually gone UP. *snip* Again, no one ever got gouged - if they did, it was their own fault - you couldn't /tumble five feet on patch day without seeing people at Starports undercutting each other. I made ten million that week...how? I didn't spam at starports and waste my time working hard making very little; I made some excellent quality vehicles, placed them on my vendors at premium prices, and watched them sell. This was a vendor 800m away from Coronet, where most of the spamming was taking place - people would rather pay for a quality product reliably than support some spam-seller whom they will never see again.
I did the same thing. I priced my vehicles for what I figured would be a good price after the craze (not less than 6 cpu) and for the high SR I was putting into them. I knew people were getting fleeced at the starports and when people asked me why my prices were so "low" (note: lower then = higher now), it's because my vehicles were 95% quality and won't blow up underneath them in a few hours. Foolish sheep weren't thinking about that when they were buying that junk, but I made it my job to let them know why, out of respect for my customers.
It all depends on how you look at it, of course, but remember : something is worth how much someone is willing to pay for it, and how much you are willing to part with it for. Some may scoff at paying 70K for a Probot, but those people certainly have a choice - they can buy a lower-priced model, or they can find another DE. /shrug.
"A fool and his money are soon parted." All I'll say is, I try to price a Probot as if they've been out for months... and aren't subject to a silly trading floor frenzy. In 4 weeks, assuming we had no further changes to the Probot and the 40% resist bug was fixed (to 20%), are you still going to be selling them at 70k a pop? What if the rest of the server "normalizes?"
Bought a crate of Vassarian Brandy lately? I used to think it was a lot to pay 65K for a crate of fishak, LOL. If they can get 300K for a crate of brandy, we can get 50-75K for our droids.
My guildie is a very well known master chef on Corbantis. I get the stuff for free.
(p.s. I posted this reply yesterday, but the forum ate MY ENTIRE reply. grr!!!)
How are you guys getting Combat ratings over 510 on probots? With 98% experimentation my combat mods are only getting ratings of 102?
AudioOrgana wrote:
I understand what you are saying - I felt that way once too. But over time, I realized that becoming, and remaining, an established crafter is quite a gameplay commitment that deserves compensation like the other crafting professions for our contribution.
Heh, you're not in sales by any chance are you..........
Still in work mode?
Thats classic textbook sales script, feel/felt/found.
Virtanis wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
As you say, CPU isn't a good way to judge prices - my time in game, managing factories, building components - and let's not forget those Master Artisan parts; at last count, Probots now take 22 components instead of 9. (I thought it was 20 before, but I forgot about the additional brain in the combat cluster). That is a LOT more work. I would have rather they tripled the resources instead of doubling the amount of components.
Personally, I'd much rather have more components than resources. My ability to gather resources is gated not only by the spawn, but by my lot capacity (for harvesters). More components simply means I leave more things in my factory output hopper longer... or juggled between the bank, my storage houses, my backpack, or my input hoppers. If resources tripled yet components were slashed by a third, the only real thing we're saving money on is maintenance and power for factories (because we'd be building less overall). If you want my opinion, power and maintenance for factories is negligible for a number of reasons. I have merchant skills which grant me a 20% reduction on maintenance costs and I'm part of a large crafting guild which has a large number of shared factories we all pool for each other. Factories simply add "pennies" to my manufacturing costs. Just like in real life, most automated, robotic, assembly plants aren't the source of the cost for a product: it's marketing, R&D, distribution, and human wages.
Well, I guess that is a personal choice then. It doesn't make a lot of sense based on what you said - if resources are a dime a dozen, and time is static, wouldn't you rather have more resources to use than time to take in construction? You are right, power and maintainance is largely negligible anyway - when you have tens of millions of dollars it really doesn't matter.
It's not about the maintainance, it's about the time - preperation, the moving of crate after crate after crate from factory to backpack to factory to house...that is the not fun stuff. It is tedious and a pain in the behind - to have to keep extra houses just to drop backpacks in.
So I stand by what I said - for me, I'd rather have many times more resources and less components - more components limits the factory runs based on serial number schematics, and if you construct them by hand, it's more than DOUBLE the amount of time, effort, and clicking to construct.
I'll tell you what does give me reason to raise prices. My time... the time it takes me to ride around on a swoop bike looking for an 80%+ resource spawn. The time it takes me to drive to my 4 shops, put items up for sale, enter item descriptions, and wait for the Lagtooine bazaar system to update. That's costly to me... the player. Increased component needs simply means I start a factory on Droid Brains for 1000 units, instead of 300 or 400. Each night before I go to bed I start my factories working on something... each morning before I go to work I start those factories that finished on something else. As far as I'm concerned: this is all gravy... it's saved time for me and allows me to devote my energy into actually building my wares from crated components, rather than wasting my time waiting for stuff to finish up. My time wasted = bigger prices on the vendors.
I guess it's also a question of quantity - I was already doing runs of 1000 units most of the time, and this is going to make it a lot harder for me. Storage was already a HUGE issue - now it's nearly impossible.
Surveying for resources takes little time to me - maybe I'm just lucky, but every week or two I pick up and move them to another spot, the best I can find, but with such high BER even 60% can net you a huge load of resources. That's it.
It takes much more of my time and frustration to store and produce more than twice the components than to gather extra resources.
The one thing I always said about the DE profession was that in spite of the broken/unfinished feel to the profession, the one thing we don't lack is a profit margin. People are willing to pay for droids. I sold Probots pre-publish 7 with item storage or medical utility for around 40K every day. I sold on average 5-10, but then again some days someone would pick up 6 crates of 5 (30 droids). I'm selling for between 65-70K now.
Trust me, I'm not wanting for money... in fact, there is nothing left in this game for me to buy, really. Most people who are multi-multi millionaires are in the same boat. I have a commando alt who is my sandbox character, she does the fighting and killing and I buy junk for her to play with. My main has his full DE-SEA work suit and there is really nothing left for me to buy. DE's can be a profitable profession, you just need to use your brain in doing it.
Totally agreed.
Mounts : People were unaware that the Kaddu they had a BE make them would need to grow for a few days in their datapad. Datapad space is at a premium for CH's - it's part of their skill tree, for cryin' out loud. I watched it happen, it was insane. A CH would stand outside a Starport in the first hours of mounts and say, "Mount, 50K!". Ten people would say, "I'll take it!", then start bidding amongst themselves. "I'll give you 100k!" "I'll give you 150K!" "I'll give you 300K!". The customers did it all - sure, the CH's took advantage of it, but who in their right mind is going to deny people throwing money at them? And then what happened? A week later no one was selling them, everyone knew the score, and CH's can barely give 'em away.
I would set my price for what I feel it will normalize at, and sell them. Even if the guy on the other side of Theed is getting 4 times as much as me because of foolish customers, I wouldn't mind a bit. It's those people who "knew the score" that I'm thinking of. I'm not going to ruin my reputation or rapport with those same people just to make a quick buck in the heat of the craze. It's those people who will remember reasonable prices and good service and hopefully will come back later because they don't want to deal with Coronet's lag and the throngs frenzied macro-spam-bombing opportunists.
You are ignoring the situation that day and the unique situation that data-pad mounts had. It's totally off topic at this point, but it wasn't a question of putting them up on vendors - it was literally a CH would have 5 in his datapad, and before he got the first one sold 10 people around him started bidding. Arguing amongst each other - the CH's (at the beginning) were largely out of it - it wasn't up to them.
Those people that "knew the score" already had their pets in their datapad and weren't buying them that day anyway.
It all depends on how you look at it, of course, but remember : something is worth how much someone is willing to pay for it, and how much you are willing to part with it for. Some may scoff at paying 70K for a Probot, but those people certainly have a choice - they can buy a lower-priced model, or they can find another DE. /shrug.
"A fool and his money are soon parted." All I'll say is, I try to price a Probot as if they've been out for months... and aren't subject to a silly trading floor frenzy. In 4 weeks, assuming we had no further changes to the Probot and the 40% resist bug was fixed (to 20%), are you still going to be selling them at 70k a pop? What if the rest of the server "normalizes?"
Well, I think that is very short sighted. Probots have NOT been out for months in this form. If all of a sudden a car took twice as many components as they do now, don't you think car companies would raise their prices? This Probot, with such high damage, has never been in the game before; regardless, even if the stats didn't change one bit I would have raised my prices - simply because the amount of components has more than doubled.
It has nothing to do with "trading floor frenzy". I was selling them for 40K before the patch, and now I sell them from between 60-70K. I think that's quite reasonable considering how much more time and effort it takes, not to mention finding the good metals for the combat modules and the good chem for the assemble. The "trading floor frenzy" was case with mounts, and the polar opposite with vehicles - which I talked about above because you compared the two to this current situation, when both of them were completely different to begin with and nothing like this current droid pricing.
What you fail to see is that these ARE normalized prices. It is normal for when the costs of construction go up for prices to go up. It's very simple.
They will remain at that price on my vendors for the forseeable future. If they sell, as they have been, great - if they don't, they will sit there. No skin off my back - I've got tens of millions to keep me warm. They are priced at what I feel the work to produce them was worth, and it's up for consumers to decide.They do not NEED a probot, neither do they NEED to buy it from me, if they feel my price isn't worth the value of the product.
I think much of this conversation is moot, because it is so server specific - but 70K for a droid is darn reasonable on a server where people pay 60-90K for a piece of BE clothing, 300K for a crate of brandy, or 80K for an average T21; this is especially true when the droid will most likely outlast these things by months or longer.
Perhaps things are cheaper on your server, or like your chef food you get everything for free, but please refrain from insulting people by calling them gougers when they are doing what is perfectly normal for a business.
AO
PS - I saw someone selling Probots and R3's on vendors (with admittedly nice combat ratings) that were prices between 150-250K...I'm not worried about selling for 60-70K.
Asteroids wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
I understand what you are saying - I felt that way once too. But over time, I realized that becoming, and remaining, an established crafter is quite a gameplay commitment that deserves compensation like the other crafting professions for our contribution.
Heh, you're not in sales by any chance are you..........
Still in work mode?
Thats classic textbook sales script, feel/felt/found.
LOL, no, I meant what I said.
I used to sell Probots for 8K back in the day, and got beaten down by DE's telling me I was undercutting. This is while I worked my way up as a DE, I was making enough to pay my harvesters and that meant I was doing well - right?
I really do understand how DE's who sell for very lowfeel about DE's that have higher prices.
Then I realized my value as a player in this game, the value of other players in relation, and I have yet to have one single complaint about my prices - ever - from anyone that wasn't in newbie clothes (expecting me to sell them "best droid you can make!" for 1500cr).
Once the charm of the DE profession wore off, I realized that *I* was getting ripped off in terms of compensation for my sometimes tedius play time and my opinion changed as my prices went up to be in line with other products in the game.
So I *DO* understand what Virt is saying, as I used to say the same thing; I just don't agree based on my experience in the DE profession since.
DE's are rare - good DE's even rarer post-Hologrinding - andwe deserve to be compensated for our continued commitment, which is totally aside from the fact that the cost of making our combat products just skyrocketed and I'm going to have to rent lots just to store all the damn crates. Add all this together, and DE's who are selling themselves short are, well, selling themselves short.
That's fine and dandy - as long as they don't insult those of us who are selling ourselves just about even.
AO