Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Anybody elses sales nosedive?
Drashk
Mon Dec 06, 2004 10:42 pm
#14
The introduction of new MMORPGs has had an impact on the Star Wars Galaxies player base. Overall, I have seen a lowered number of players posting on the forums and in game. Many people have graviated to EQ2 and WoW. We many not see the EQ2 crowd return, but I'm not so sure that the WoW crowd are gone for good.
We also have to keep in mind the time of year we are in. How many people have taken on an extra workload, to bring in a few extra dollars for the holidays. The same thing happened last year around this time, but it wasn't as pronounced to the DE community since we didn't have the increased market at the time.
JtL is actually a lot more lucrative then Solo Group missions were, from the stand point of the common player. As a Pilot, it takes 0 Skill point cost, so that the average person can participate in combat even if they have 0 ground game combat skills. You don't need buffs, food, armor or weapons to go into space and gain credits. The only thing that someone actually needs to purchase would be a Starship chassis. All of the components can be looted in space. If a person was to sell each and every looted component, without having some RE it, you can easily make 600k in an hour and that is with almost 0 risk.
I've seen an increase in Droid sales in the last few weeks, not a decrease, so it might be limited to specific servers.
BTW, one thing that you might want to check on would be to make sure that you are located on the Vendor map. With the changes made to server maintenance, some vendors do not always show up on the map under vendors. I haven't run any test on the subject in a very long time; however I know that at one point in time, only 50 of each vendor type would show up on the map each day. Also recall that Vendors will not show up on the map unless the building they are located in is visited, after server maintenance. One of these two items could have an effect on some peoples sales.
Crustyfur
Tue Dec 07, 2004 8:08 am
#15
If you build it, they will come....
Thats what the voices in my head keep saying.
wornol
Tue Dec 07, 2004 3:29 pm
#16
JTL droids are way down, flight computers, unprogramed chips, down...
but, odd thing happening, I had over 200 crates of BH droids, and about 20bomb droids and they are almost sold out, just from this weekend...
wornol
Straker_Atrella
Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:53 pm
#17
Yea BH hunter sales are about back up to where they were before JTL, yet the ground sales are way down. I was selling about 10 Harvs,maybe 20 Med / craftingand about 10 Combat , in a week. Yet those numbers dropped a lot.
BillyBobthe50th
Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:48 pm
#18
Drask, where can I see server populations? I, and most other scyllians are under the impression Scyllia is the most empty server, where else will you see coronet have about 6 people in it?
CTRL_ALT
Wed Dec 08, 2004 7:32 am
#19
If your prices I don't think your prices should take such a nosedive.
Straker_Atrella
Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:21 am
#20
I don't understand that last post.
Billybob, you can't get exact numbers, but if you go to create a character, you can see what server loads are.
From what I understand the European servers have the lightest load.
Drashk
Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:59 am
#21
BillyBobthe50th wrote:
Drask, where can I see server populations? I, and most other scyllians are under the impression Scyllia is the most empty server, where else will you see coronet have about 6 people in it?
There hasn't been an Astromech report on server loads that I know of.
Something that you need to keep in mind, when it comes to trying to guage a server by C-Net woud be the time you visit C-Net. If you go there during non-peak hours for your server population, of course you won't find people.
TC has all servers beat with around 100 to 500 people logged on at one time.
Something that I also forgot to point out earlier...
Guilds have a big influence on what people are doing. I know of close to entire guilds that have game hopped. MMORPGs are forged around guild play. They are a big part of the MMO standard. Games such as EQ2 are designed for strong guild play and from what I have heard have a better guild play set up then SWG currently has. This has helped to lower the population in some places. Once the 'new car smell' wares off a bit on games such as EQ2 and especially WoW, we should see population rebound.
Don't forget, after the holidays, not only will we have many of the workaholic Xmas shopper/workers back, but we will have a fresh set of nublets who picked up SWG and JtL as a present. After the holidays will be the most wonderful time of the year. 
Kassuff
Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:38 pm
#22
Yep, I have been playing WoW quite a bit (EQII was horrible in my opinion - I seriously cannot listen to Heather Graham for that long, LOL).
I can never get enough of Heather! C'mon! Who can say noto Roller Girl?!? 
Handsnake
Thu Dec 09, 2004 9:07 pm
#23
I had a 98% drop in sales.
One day, being fat from 750k a day rolling in. The next - 15k. A tool. That's it.
I lowered prices, advertised, and restocked. Next day BAM! Another tool sold. 15k.
I am focusing right now on harving some nice 904 CON steel and making 115 rate harv droids. (plus some dura. alumin. called Lola - can't let a resource with a name like that go unharvested. 
)
)Figure I can take the slack time that is due to all of the reasons noted previously and build up some stock and wipe out my singles and low number crates of parts. Hello hand crafted for fun!
The solo-group nerf is going to be worked around and eventually a new income median will be reached. At that time I should be fully stocked and ready to go.
1StarNinja
Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:55 am
#24
I'm actually having a problem keeping up to sales.
Unprogrammed Chips are flying off my vendor as well as "Jedi go Boom" droids, Harvesting droids, Arakyds and seekers.
Entertainer droids are selling pretty good, my JTL Flight packages are a good seller, Custom orders are sitting in my Email box for me (I'm a little behind on this).
My Droid Repair kits are a popular item. I also am Master Artisan so I make weapon and armor repair kits (currently sitting at 99.99999 rating) and I'm running through those faster than anything, but the DE part of my business is doing really well.
I think I'm at the point where I may have to raise prices just to force a small slowdown.
I currently either mine all my own resources or buy them at cheap prices unless I can't avoid it (I just had to shell out 8cpu for some Tholium gas) so my prices are all fairly low.
Fobok
Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:04 pm
#25
It really seems to depend on server, it seems. There was definitely a huge dropoff of people, but it's starting to recover already. (I can't wait until January.) Still, Starsider and Bria (the servers I play on) haven't been empty by far. Even at the lowest peak, there's still been hundreds of people in Cnet and Theed at peak hours. (Bria more than Starsider..I play Bria at mostly off-peak hours and still meet tons of people. Tons of AFK macroers too but still.)
Anyway, my orders have dropped off, but at the same time I'd been holding off restocking my vendors until I made Master DE. I've still had a number of custom orders. While it's not enough to keep me rich, they've been enough to keep me in business.
Fernas
Wed Dec 15, 2004 4:52 am
#26
i made 100k on droid chips alone in about a week (2kper)after JTL launched. since the change to the way programs are loaded into computers..... i've sold zero to none. 