Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Did I get ripped?
AudioOrgana wrote:
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
Just as a sidenote on pricing, I got a serious shock tonight looking round the shops for combat droids.
Would you believe 100k for a probot 500?
I nearly gagged when I saw that..and then I started thinking..and then I saw this thread..and then I realized I am selling too cheap for my server at least.
Oh how the galaxy changes.
Shian_Tavkin wrote:
Just as a sidenote on pricing, I got a serious shock tonight looking round the shops for combat droids.
Would you believe 100k for a probot 500?
I nearly gagged when I saw that..and then I started thinking..and then I saw this thread..and then I realized I am selling too cheap for my server at least.
Oh how the galaxy changes.
Gribnitz wrote:
I didn't didn't get to sell any the same day as the patch, so I didn't get a chance to snow people on how great our droids were even without the armor.
Yes, the armor sucks and people know it - but it's something new, and the damage is pretty impressive - again, better than a pre-nerf Probot.
AudioOrgana wrote:
In three and a half days I've sold well over 100 of them with zero advertising - just putting them up on my vendors with stats listed and armor nerf explained.
Plzurpilot wrote:
How are you guys getting Combat ratings over 510 on probots? With 98% experimentation my combat mods are only getting ratings of 102?
On the mods sure, but they are talking about after the probot is built, The Combat Rating on the probot. not each mod used. (5) at 102 eacy that would be a combat rating of 510 right? 5 x 102 = 510
AudioOrgana wrote:
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?
Time is still a double edged sword... What is worse? Time to wait for a factory to make a crate of items or time to wait for a harvester to pull something out of the ground?Both can be pulled out of the hopper "mid run" but,for me, I'd still rather wait on a factory than a harvester. At least a final product (or a step removed from final product) is being completed while I'm waiting, and not a raw resource that still needs to be carried back to my shop/factories only to undergo more personal processing and placementinto the factory.
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.
People can be pretty darn inventive... I knew people who were "renting" out their datapad back then (usually so they're guaranteed a free mount) so the CH could have an overall higher number of pets to sell. I don't think this was very common, but hard times usually promote ingenuity. In any case, the mount issue of way back when is a bit different from this situation, I'll grant you that.
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.
Of course... I'm not saying it shouldn't have been raised to offset the increased resource costs... I've done the same thing. Also, increased ranged damage is a good selling point and the market has increased on that end (especially for tank types who want additional damage that rarely gets aggro, since they're usually taking the aggro). On the other side of the coin, it's lost market share, IMO,for those people who wanted a really tough tank with high HAM (I'm talking about relative HAM before the armor nerf, to now...). It just seems to me that, aside from resource costs and "new and improved damage", pricing is still pretty high... obviously, your mileage varies.
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.
As we both understand, servers are different...
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.
I brought those issues up because they're still, I believe, good examples of cost bizarreness that happens after a new gimmick is introduced into the game. I still feel there is a degree of that same bizarreness with droids, at this moment. I do understand your points (limited pet capacity for CH's, rampant undercutting for vehicles) and I yield that they're not great examples resource wise, since they're so unlike droids. Capacity/difficulty to build and resource costs aren't the only things to consider when pricing droids.
You have to admit there are going to be people who buy a droid and, once the droid is in the field, that person might consider being "ripped off" because of how limited their droid is. I know people who have complained to me about droid prices (not mine) with the ADV-LE, for example. Yeah, nice lowbietank... talks smack... funny to watch.... but it can't even keep pace with his owner. Is that factored into the cost?
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.
Agreed... unless you want to switch gears and get into statistical CPU costs?
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.
Well!! Maybe things are cheaper on my server?The guy who originally posted this thread was asking for opinions, and I gave mine: he didn't specify, "Tell me if you think I got ripped off only if you're on theTarquinas server, all other opinions are unwelcome, especially you Corbanteans!!" My opinion is based primarily on what I think is reasonable, equitable for my server, fair, and modest... how else could I offer an opinion without drawing from the experiences of my server and all the time I've been playing this game? It's my opinion. No need to get so huffy, Audio. If there is anyone who should take off the glove and slap me, it's the guy who sold the droid to this person who started the thread and the other DE's from that server. For all I know, a CDEF pistol could fetch 20k on that server or maybe Princess Leia's "personal massage tool" could run for 300k and I wouldn't know it.
My opinion stands.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Well, that's nice and all, but you came in here and said that what people were doing was gouging - the way you presented your opinion was a bit offensive because it implied that people who did not share your opinion were scammers.
Heh, subject of this thread: "Did I get ripped?"
Audio, please point out to me where I said: "Everyone must price their droid at exactly 3.14159265 cpu... anything less is undercutting, anything more is gouging"?
It's all opinion... heck, who knows what the original poster's definition of "ripped[off]" means?
Price Gouging: "Pricing products or services unreasonably high in the presense of unusual demand, disaster, or monopoly status."
Scammer: "A person who swindles by means of deception or fraud."
Who knows if that DE was a "scammer". Did he really say 6 combat modules? If so, he did defraud the original poster, ergo, a scammer. Did this guy slap together this droid at a starport on Tuesday (the day when you could get much higher combat module ratings due to the crafting system change) and justify hishigh pricesbecause he's got factories, harvesters, maintenance, power, buildings, and a thousand other things to take care of (when he might have none of the above)? Trying to say that I have called anyone who prices higher than my price range here on Corbantis a "scammer" isn't accurate. I'll get more into that at the end of this message. Yes, I said it was gouging, but again, that's my opinion based on my own personal ideas, my list of points, and especially based on the idea of unreasonable pricing in the face of unusual demand. The points that support my opinion as to why I think that price is unreasonable, from my current perspective, listed again.
- Astronomical CPU.
- It's just CL10.
- Sub-standard actual HAM for that cost.
- No buffing, no specials, no utility.
- Droids are far easier to build than BE pets.
- Smells really fishy, akin to what happened with mounts and (initially) vehicles.
We've discussed the finer points of most of these with some detail... but I offered my opinion based on the sum of everything mentioned above, the specifics on my server, and what I consider "fair". I still hold to that. By nature, definition of "reasonable" is very subjective... based on a plethora of things: server economy, personal opinion, production capacity, inflation, resources, etc. It can also change wildly over time. To illustrate this:
AudioOrgana, regarding Probots, 7-30-03:
"I can't in good faith charge someone 15-45K for something that can only take out noob mobs."
AudioOrgana, replying to MichaelaSundiver's price list (ADV-Probot listed as 15k), 9-1-03:
"I price along very simmilar lines, in concept and in practice. My prices are a little lower on a few models, a bit higher on a few others - I charge less for surgicals, more for R3's."
AudioOrgana, 11-23-03:
"People are willing to pay well for well made droids by a DE they know, but by pricing them as some people say in the 45-55K range is going to price out a lot of the population. Not every combat person is rich anymore - between decay and armor and weapons and buffs, some of them are just breaking even. The days of easy 25K missions is largely over. By keeping droids in the mid-range you are saying your product is quality, but not luxury. A lot of this is going to change when we get the "new" combat droids we are told are coming - and to be honest, I only see it getting better from here."
AudioOrgana, 12-29-03:
"We charge a premium, but not an outrageous markup. I mean, sometimes someone in the forums will talk about selling an R2 for 50K or a Probot for 80K - and that's just insane to me. Then there are people that sell R2's for 6K and Probot Adv for 10K. Equally insane to me."
AudioOrgana, 2-13-04:
"Don't undercut yourself. This is the dirty little secret of DE : our profession has a LOT of issues, but being profitable is NOT one of them. I'm not suggesting you gouge people, but get an idea of what people are paying on your server for the droids that you produce."
AudioOrgana, 2-25-04:
"Drashk has posted that the requirements for Probots (presumably the added combat modules) are definately going up and suggested that we stock up - which means prices will go up as well."
AudioOrgana, 3-13-04:
"The probots, as I said, will be 150-175% of what their current price is; the LE's will likely follow the same route, priced about one and a half times what one with say item storage and medical went for before the patch."
As you full well know your own posting history, prices change wildly and with good reason. Everything you mentioned in these posts were very reasonable and logical for that time period. Things change, get altered, get adjusted, and get tweaked. The AO of March might call the prices of July an "ridiculously low" just like the AO of July would call the prices of March "hyper inflated". Change happens, that's fine... I never argued against that. Also, the prices for your server are your's alone, it's entirely moot for me or anyone else to point fingers cross-server and say "inflated", "too low", or whatever.
What I'm really trying to get at is this: Is it Price Gouging, base on the definition?
Is that price unreasonable?
Are those prices being inflated not because of logistical, manufacturing, or production costs, but simply because someone is trying to make a quick buck for greed's sake?
This is all highly subjective... you don't think there was price gouging... I presumethere was, therefore; would you feel better if I retract my statement: "once the novelty wears off, it's gouging, pure and simple" and rephrase it to "you might be getting gouged due to the novelty of it"?
Because that's what I'm really trying to say.
Ok something isn't right... I had 102 rating on combat modules....Placed 6 102's(from a crate) in a R3 and maxed at 600. A probot with 5 102 ratings should max at 500 then.
Olo'rin
Virtanis wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
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?
Time is still a double edged sword... What is worse? Time to wait for a factory to make a crate of items or time to wait for a harvester to pull something out of the ground?Both can be pulled out of the hopper "mid run" but,for me, I'd still rather wait on a factory than a harvester. At least a final product (or a step removed from final product) is being completed while I'm waiting, and not a raw resource that still needs to be carried back to my shop/factories only to undergo more personal processing and placementinto the factory.
It's clear we simply stand on two ends of opinon here. To me, harvesters are nothing - something I do once or twice a week and forget about. Factories need to be constantly tended, especially when doing large runs of items that require components. Basicly, it will be nearly impossible for me to create enough Probots as deeds in factories at this point, because of the amount of parts and their need to have consecutive serial numbers - it's quicker and easier for me to do the final assemble myself. I liked selling crates of Probots before - now it's just an insane amount of clicking and dragging and organization to do on any sort of industrial level.
As opposed to harvesters, which I dump down on a good spot, get enough to last me for months, and move on a week or so later to another spawn until I have all I need, and then I stop for awhile. It's actually fun for me when I do get to go out and survey.
I guess what the distinction the both of us are missing in each others arguments is that of two types of time : calendar time and play time.
Calendar time (the X hours it takes to produce a factory run) isn't the issue, it's my play time. I don't especially love crafting, I'll admit. I enjoy the end result, I enjoy the money, and I enjoy the recognition of a satisfied client. In the end, however - it is work, plain and simple. I will have to work actively more and spend more of my play time making schematics, the nightmare of managing inventory, production of more than twice the subcomponents, and just dragging crate from place to place instead of out adventuring and doing missions and doing the more fun things.
No one makes me be a DE, but no one makes anyone buy my droids either.
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.
I brought those issues up because they're still, I believe, good examples of cost bizarreness that happens after a new gimmick is introduced into the game. I still feel there is a degree of that same bizarreness with droids, at this moment. I do understand your points (limited pet capacity for CH's, rampant undercutting for vehicles) and I yield that they're not great examples resource wise, since they're so unlike droids. Capacity/difficulty to build and resource costs aren't the only things to consider when pricing droids.
You have to admit there are going to be people who buy a droid and, once the droid is in the field, that person might consider being "ripped off" because of how limited their droid is. I know people who have complained to me about droid prices (not mine) with the ADV-LE, for example. Yeah, nice lowbietank... talks smack... funny to watch.... but it can't even keep pace with his owner. Is that factored into the cost?
If people feel ripped off it is their own fault for not researching the product. I would never spend 70K on something that I didn't know a lot about - that's why I'm rich. As long as a DE is honest about the stats, there should be no guilt over what SOE has failed to give us as function.
To be honest, difficulty to build, resource costs, and my time ARE the only things that I consider when it comes to prices. You see, I'm not desperate to sell, never have been. Never spam sold in my life, never apologzied or haggled. Before I went to a strictly vendor business I had a detailed catalog with all my prices, firmly and clearly stated. Now that I have vendors the droids go up - and they sell, or they wait to be bought. It's all fine by me. I have always had this attitude, because it's the only way to do business in an MMO - once you startbowing withfor undercutters and "so and so sells this for..." you fall into a trap you can't get out of.
I believe people are responsible for their own purchase decisions - it is my job to provide honest information about the product. If they do not think it is a fair price they do not need to click the "buy" button. My bots are labeled right up front "Damage/Speed/Resists" - the deed name lists all the stats - and they can see the HAM when looking at the deed. If someone is disapointed, they had unrealistic expectations.
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.
Well!! Maybe things are cheaper on my server?The guy who originally posted this thread was asking for opinions, and I gave mine: he didn't specify, "Tell me if you think I got ripped off only if you're on theTarquinas server, all other opinions are unwelcome, especially you Corbanteans!!" My opinion is based primarily on what I think is reasonable, equitable for my server, fair, and modest... how else could I offer an opinion without drawing from the experiences of my server and all the time I've been playing this game? It's my opinion. No need to get so huffy, Audio. If there is anyone who should take off the glove and slap me, it's the guy who sold the droid to this person who started the thread and the other DE's from that server. For all I know, a CDEF pistol could fetch 20k on that server or maybe Princess Leia's "personal massage tool" could run for 300k and I wouldn't know it.
My opinion stands.
Well, that's nice and all, but you came in here and said that what people were doing was gouging - the way you presented your opinion was a bit offensive because it implied that people who did not share your opinion were scammers.
My point simply is that for someone like myself that is treating this as a business situation it was natural for our prices to increase with the undeniable extra cost and production time of these droids.
I agree with you - they are not what they used to be. But you know what I saw today? A group of 7-8 people on a hunt in the middle of Endor. Each of them had a pet - 1 was creature pet and 6 WERE PROBOTS! I talked to them - I couldn't believe it - and they saidthey are working VERY well as extra fire power. 7 Probots = 1500dps extra for that group - that's an awful lot when killing even 15-20K HAM creatures with a group. Are they gonna put a dent in a Kimo or a Krayt? Of course not, but they do have some advantages to those who hunt upper-middle class MOBs and those are the people that can afford 70K for a droid, as they likely make that much running missions with a group in one night.
In some ways their new use is even more valuable - the Probot was a good low-level tank before, but let's not romanticize it. They didn't appeal to a anyone who was past doing kaddu and gnort missions most of the time because of their lack of healing. I too was scared that this market disapeared, but a whole new one has appeared to replace it. Now, with the new Probot stats, as I said above - it's like an extra FWG in your pocket, it's just fragile. For some people - that's an advantage that is well worth the cost.
They have player tanks, as the Devs want - the Probots are simply to give them a boost in overall damage and to help get them out of a tight situation, like keeping an enemy off a downed member to keep them from being /db before a doctor can reach them.
These are the people who are using the new Probots. I still have old Probots on my vendors, with utility modules, at low prices for "noobs" - but I'm certainly not going to make compensations for price based on functionality when new people are finding them very useful.
Do droids still suck in a lot of respects? Yup, but unexpectedly I have found players mumble and grumble about the loss of armor, and complain that we didn't get droidekas, BUT they still wanna buy droids and are already finding ways of using them.
Today has been another banner day so far- at last count I've sold 143 of them since the patch. And I've gotten four complaints - about the armor coming out 20% the first time bug. As soon as I told them to store and retrieve them, they come out 40% as I advertise and they run along happy campers.
We've lost customers, but we've gained a few too - it's up to them if they think it's worth it or not, but from the repeat names I see show up in my "Item Purchased" emails an hour or two after their first purchase (sometimes returning for 2 or more additional droids), it seems that many people do feel it's not a "ripoff".
So I guess you could say my opinion stands as well.
AO