Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: R3's for 65k too cheap it seems
/bow
TheWoody wrote:
<< A lot of cool stuff that he ripped off from me... >>
(Wow... I should do Focus Threads like the TKA-man does)
Yes but then I'd have to sue you copyright infringement.
Respectfully,
Uhhhh....Wood?
I know where you got your "Name the droid chassis with descriptions of what's inside" thing.
/kicksyourfishybutt
/bow
Respectfully,
If you're referring to your place then I sadly have to inform you that this was how I originally had my beachside store set up oh so many months ago.
Was an interesting thing to find the probot i had on display (with the price and all) in storage. A very nice feeling seeing as I had more than doubled my price of droids since I began work as a DE
I guess great minds think alike.
Note: You still can't use my "Focus Threads" (TM).
/bow
Respectfully,
I'm going to chime in again in this discussion... I've read everyone's posts, so now it's time to get to what I believe is the crux of the problem:
Warrhawk says: "I have seen master weaponsmiths and master armorsmiths selling thier products from the 100's of thousands into the millions. I have never seen the customers of these crafters scream gouging."
The root cause of the problem we're talking about in this thread is the fact that, as far as we can tell, noob crafted droids and modules are pretty much the same as MDE crafted droids and modules.It is most certainly not the same for noob weaponsmiths vs. master weaponsmiths.
** As a weaponsmith, I would want to squeeze every singleiota of quality, experimentation, damage, speed, range, and wound % chance out ofmy weapons like an obsessed madman. My customers would scrutinize every single aspectof theseweapons andjudge them bytheir obvious results (use and damage on the enemy).**
** With droids, people might try to use "ok" materials, try to achieve at least a quality rating of "0", and just pray they don't have a crit fail on their final assembly. Customers would be fairly clueless what the quality ratings are, if a deed actually has a crafting station in it or not, and would try to judge them by their nebulous andpoorly documenteddeed descriptions. **
This is a HUGE difference and it'sadding fuelto thefirethat is forming in this thread.
1) You're getting DE's on some servers who can produce theVictorinox ADV-R3 and sell it for much more than "a standard" 10x or even 15x resource cost. Much much more, in fact.
2) You're getting DE's on some servers who can't selldroids at even 10x cost, let alone "full featured" ones.
3) "Fullfeatured"R2's or R3's may not sell on some serversbecause their customers don't see the need for multi-crafting stations or they don't mind having their 3 MSE droids loaded with a crafting station in each... Why? because beginning DE's struggle to sell even these bargain MSE droids just to try to make back some of their money spent on grinding DE. Why would people want to spend 100k on a single droid when they can pay lowbies 6k total on 3lowbieMSE's? Try gettingthose lowbie Holo-DE's into your pricing unions?
3a) Those same lowbie MSE droids loaded with a -6 quality Weapon/Droid/General crafting station simply "appear" to be the same as the modules one might find in the "Fully featured" ADV-R3 loaded with +12 quality WDG stations... Nobody can really tell what the heck is loaded in what, what the quality does, and why buying the big R3 is any better than the junky MSE's! Even if your customer asks you what the quality is, a stone cold liar could fool anyone, as there is no proof documented anywhere what the quality of your modules are.
----------
So, what's the moral of this story??
This argument is going to continue and continue and continue until:
a) SOE addresses thedocumentationof features on a droid deed (we need to know exactly what is loaded in every single droid, the quality ratings of the modules, and their effects on).
b) The quality ratings on crafting modules affect their crafting with a truly percievable and quantifiabledifference. Even BE's have a better display for their creature pets than DE's do with their droid deeds.
c) Droids are able to be re-deeded (thus allowing people to have the options for easiertrade ins, trade downs, trade ups, or re-sales).
d) Master DE's need to truly be able to make better *quality* droids than their lower tiered DE friends. Just like a master weaponsmith is, without a doubt, able to make a truly better gun than a novice, we need to be able to also. Again, we can argue that we currently do make better quality droids, but folks simply have a hard time seeing that quality when they're staring at a 100,000 credit pricetag, unlike they can with weapons.
e) More modules!! The ADV-R3 should not be the one "end all and be all" of droids. Prices will fluctuate much more noticeably when there are a greater choice of modules to be had, modules that simply can't be "slapped" into an MSE.
Hopefully, with some of these steps taken, you'll find markets improving on "depressed" servers and maybe DE's on servers with "inflated" markets might now really be able to show some proof their droids are really worth their (extreme, IMO) cost.
Virtanis, your points are well taken and I agree with you on almost all of them. Your post is well thought out and very well presented. Thank you.
As for myself, I have spent my time since launch setting up my shop and getting word out to my customers where I am, what I do, etc, etc.... I have pandered to a great many customers and I have worked with a number of DE's on our server as well. I know there are a number of DE's on my server. I also know most of the DE's dont have vendors or if they have vendors they dont always keep them stocked with a variety of droids. I, on the other hand keep my vendors well stocked. I have probots for the combat folks. I have medical droids for the medical folks. I have a vender devoted to the BH's. I have misc. stuff on my vendors like the items Master artisans build and other professions needs. When folks come to my vendors they can pretty much rest assured that they will find what they are looking for in the Droid area. I have spent the last 6 months tracking down the resoures we need to craft our products. Dropping harvestors, searching for resources, you know the drill. Because I put so much work and time into providing so much for everyone on my vendors, I do ask a premuim price.
Like I said, I am not out to gouge people. It would be a different story if I was trying to take every last credit from my customers. But lets be real, most of my customers have plenty of credits and they come to my vendors because they know they can get what they want, when they want it w/o having to run all over the planets looking at empty or poorly stocked vendors.
Another point, and this is a personal philosophy: I dont EVER pander to the lowest bidders or discount shoppers in RL or in this game. I prefer to deal with the people that know what they want and dont mind paying what it takes to get what they want.
Like you said, the best weaponsmiths in the game build superior weapons because they have superior resources and that makes them stand out where we can only build the same old stuff with inferior resources. Again, I agree with you there, but dont forget that those vendors positioned themselves so they could be the best. I am doing the same thing in positioning myself on my server. When the day comes that we can build superior droids with High qaulity resources I am ready and able to go there. In fact I dought I will have to raise or lower my prices. With luck, I will set the standard on droids on our server.
With respect