Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Undercut by my own...
MichelaSundiver You assume too much and I'll leave your personal defimation of my character's character at that.
You completely missunderstood my comment on location. I was pointing out that location is a moot point unless a person puts their house so far from town that no one would want to go to it.
Very intelegent response with, "uh, the class is called mechant". Again, you have missed my point and my sacrasm.
Yeah, imagine that, not everyone sells droid the same way you do. ooo, crazy, I know! Lots of DEs on Intrepid sell person to person as well as on their vendors.
See girly, what you do not understand is that I can not dictate a price to you. However you can dictate price to mebyselling droid exceedingly cheap (which, according to your post in another thread, you do not) or even at a loss.As this would be your free action there would be no recourse for me to deal with the loss your business practiceshaveinflicted upon me. How, girly, is that fair?
Why should this game be fair? Because unlike business in real life, games are desgined to be fair.
I sell probots at 15k (with Medium Armor at 40%). I've never had a complaint and I find it impossible to keep them in stock (sold 11 of them last night). The argument about needing the lower prices to increase sales is a catch-22 argument and a weak-one at that. If all DEs could settle upon price ranges that were acceptable to everyone (the ones who are "greedy" and the ones who "don't care") then you could keep your prices at the standard rate and still have the same amount of business.
I sell higher than some DE on my server, and less than others...but I still get a HUGE amount of sales. Why? Because I'm polite and helpful. I offer above-the-norm service to all my customers and will always take time to answer any questions truthfully, even if it means explaining the faults in the profession. Now, I'm not saying you don't do that, but my level of service has people coming to me even with the statement "You're prices are a little bit higher than so-and-so, but I really like dealing with you."
Sunfire1 wrote:
Unfortunately people are greedy. Lets look at my cost for a droid. Wind power at 35% yields me 100 wind per hour or 2400 power in 24 hours for a cost of 1200 (actually slightly less I use generators that have great stats due to experimentation). Or 2 power per credit. My harvesters (personal only) use 600 cash and 800 power per 24 hours. I always harvest over 75% so I end up with 2000 resources per 24 hours. With a power cost of 400,and maint cost of 600, resources cost an average of 2 credits per resource.
If you run a factory, you can add .8 credits per resource that has to go thru factory. .8 is just an average, create time in factory is governed by item complexity level just like when you create by hand. And thus can affect cost by .2 in either direction depending on item.
I wasnot going to add in travel cost as if done right, it adds less than .1 credit per resouce. But lets add in .2 for those who like to visit harvesters frequently anyway.
OK, so now we have a fixed cost of3 credits per resource used. Add 25% for profit ( I only add 20% but I'm not that greedy) and we are up to 3.75 credits per resouce.
The average droid has 1000-1500 total resources used. But lets use 2000. If a droid uses 2000 resources, your cost was 6000. Add in a 25% profit, and total cost to customer is 7500.
People will charge whatever they can get away with, but, there are some of us who understand that the other players work just as hard for their money. And when they find a good deal, they will stick with it. And tell friends. So yes, you may still be able to sell an R2 occasionally at 20,000 credits. But I assure you, I am selling 5 for your every one at 7-8k. And I am making a decent profit.
As for seekers for 250 each. Thats what i sell them for. But only from factory crates. I am constantly making GPs and EMMs in factory for adv droid brains. When i do, usually once a week, i make a few extra runs of GPs and EMMs. Then its just a simple matter of running 60 or so seekers off after brains are done. It is a loss, but it brings BHs in to the store. And I have sold quite a few adv probots to them as well, And since I sell weapons too, I dont mind selling 1 item at a loss if it increases foot trafic in the store, and gets the BH to buy a few crates of powerups (talk about ripoffs have seen people charging 5k for a box of 10 that has a total of 600 credits in materials in it).
Well I respect the fact that you use your seekers at a loss to draw interest to your store, if it brings more money to you by doing so then of course its a good business move "for you". The only problem here is this, other people need your respectby not selling them at a loss. Other DEs need to make money and the fact of the matter is if you found out what a normal price on a seeker was and used that price the same amount of people will be interested in your store, unless others like you on the server sell them at a loss in order to accomplish the same goal...that is what happens when you decide to sell items at a loss to draw interest, one person does it then everyone starts doing it then before you know it everyone is selling seekers at a loss and yes Im glad you agreed, 250 creds is a loss.
Here is the problem, to many of the DEs right now dont understand that all DE sales are interlinked, one person selling seekers for 250 only hurts DEs in the long run. In an ideal gamingworld with ideal situations a standard price would eventually meld itself into the gaming world. Everyone wanting a seeker would know that they cant find one for anything less than "Price X" and that is the standard. So paying that is no big deal, but when people screw with making a standard by selling at a loss they inheritantly shoot all other DEs in the foot AND possibly grow the server standard of seekers to be 250 creds per. Dont you understand that?
Not only that let me present you with another problem your going to face soon and how selling seekers at 250 creds per is REALLY going to hurt the DE profession. When charges on the seekers gets implemented (5 charges per seeker) DEs are going to want to be paid quite a bit more for each of them, I assume you will charge more as well, but here is the problem you created for yourself.
Bounty Hunters will come to you and ask "how much for the seekers?" your response is "1000 cred per" their response is "but it takes the same amount of resources" your response "but it has more charges" their response "Im sure I can find someone selling them for 250 creds or around thatsince DEs use to sell them for that much and end up just fine"
Do you not see how detrimental selling seekers and probes at a lossis for the community and yourself?
The game is new and people are shaping the economy of their servers everyday, people selling seekers at a loss hurts the DE community an insane amount. Out of all the artisanprofessions in the game DEs need to hold to selling seekers at a good price to the community SINCE we have so few droids we are able to sell. People selling them at 250 is slitting other DEs throats, when we should be a profession doing all we can to help eachother since we are in such bad shape!
I sure hope these words dont fall on deaf ears, if you find that pulling in the money for that extra probot sale is worth destroying seeker prices for all DEs after what I have explainedthen I do pity you andyour lack of business knowledge and I pity all the other DEs on your server for having to compete with someone who has no disregard for stable pricing and accurate sales.
Okay here is my price list.
ADV MSE, Seekers =1000
ADV r5, r4, ADV DZ70, WED Treadwell=2000
I'm lucky to sellone, maybe twodroids a week, Admitadely I'm not an active droid pusher. I'm doing the merchant thing. Four Shops on four planets. So, no I'm not barking adds on street corners in Theed. I spend most of my time running around re-listing items that don't sell. The R models started at 3000 but I didnt' sell any, I finally found a market at 2000. That's why I sell them at 2000. And if I sell out of stock at any time I'll up the price, but I don't see that happening until Droid Engineer gets a major shot in the arm.
I honestly don't know how I'm keeping my head above water and everyone else is starving, I'm keeping four residences, four vendors, (yes the kind that take money now) and two harvesters going. And I'm doing it alone. I am not in Player Organization. Yes as Merchant I'm making business deals to carry other items in my shops. But at meager profit.
But, here is my question. What price do you sell fireworks at?
We've all been there. The first few days. Grinding out fireworks because it was one of the few fun things a novice artisan can make. And there were quite a few people that loved fireworks (keep in mind I was here on day 2 and for the first few weeks there were constant fireworks going off over Kaadara). I sold a few fireworks, most though I gave away. And gave them my business name. Vortex Mercantile. And told them to check me out when they needed better equipment in the future.
So, if some newbie walked up and said, "Hi, could you make me some fireworks?" Would you figure out the cost of every thing then figure in your profit margine and the time it takes you to fill in those four slots and tell him 16 credits. Or would you run one off hand it to the kid and say keep me in mind when you need Probot?
The way I see Seekers is they are the capability of a Novice Droid Engineer. A begginers product. All it takes to make them is someonegrinding off a ton of fireworks or 10 sided dice. Sono, no one is going to want to pay top dollar for them. Everyone and his uncle can make one. Sure we could set a price, 1000 per unit. That's it, bottom line. So where's the benefit there? One guy who has mass-produced them will be raking it in, while the guy struggling to get to blueprints III can't selll one for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the guy that is mass-producing them could be spending his time pumping out high quality Probots for 15-20k. He could make his profit there.
But what I'm getting at and no I'm not doing this yet.Seekers could become the fireworks for the droid engineer. Just something to get noticed. And if a guy wants to take a loss he can. Will it hurt business for me today with my 1000 credit price tag? Yes. Will it hurt it in the long run? I don't think so, because I hope to soon be off to bigger and better things. And he's doing what it takes to get his product sold and I can't blame him for that.
And in the wider spectrum of the economy. All I have to say is, you have to do what you have to do. If a guy can't sell his extrusive ore for 6 credits per unit, drop it to 5. Or hold on to it and have no money. Yes if you list it for 5 and a guy wants to sell his for 6. He'll be mad, but you'll have credits in your hand instead of ore. We can't force people to play what fits us. Just as Ford can't force Honda to raise the price of the Civic, no ford comes out with the Focus. McDonalds can't tell Wendy's to get rid of the 99 cent menu, they have to put up their (and now I'm going to slip into opinion) pathetic dollar menu. And I know people are angry because of "underselling" but that's the way business works. If someone can't make any money selling their wares for 500 creds a pop, then they will go out of business. And they won't be there to sell it at that price anymore right?
Also since I'm on the subject, I've had tons of people say to me, "If I cant' get X amount for it I'd rather destroy it." Now some are saying this as an economical thing yes. But others are just pulling the little kid/super villain thing of "if I can't have it, no one can". "If I can't get what I want out of it I'm going to destroy it." And that's fine with me, but I think it's a little silly and I'm not going to yell at them for doing it because I believe everyone is entitled to thier own decission. And if someone wants to loose money selling a product for a lesser price it's also their business. They'll loose their money,get tired of it, and either change their ways or quit.
So in closing, let people do what they want and quit worrying what they are doing to you. No amount of yelling, screaming, argueing, or flaming is going to change their minds. All we can do is what we do, we can't force anyone to do anything they dont' want to.
Love,
Vohrteggs
Vortex Mercantile
East of Restuss on Rori.
West of Mos Eisley on Tatooine.
East of Kaadara on Naboo.
And in the south west corner of Corillea. (sorry never can remember that cities name)
Ahem, hmmm uh forgot to say... um.. Bloodfin server.
Sorry about having to make a second post.
Love,
Vohrteggs
Let the flames begin.
JonasBlackmore wrote:
That's all well and good MadCat09011, but what about costs for maintaining shops and vendors? How about travel costs to get to your harvesters? What if you crit fail a final combine?
Well, let's look at that. Shops and vendors, if you sell at 300 -- I have a house that costs 400/day and a vendor that costs about 20/day, with 20 droids on it at 300.
Every droid I sell nets me about 150, so 3 droids covers all those costs. My main income comes from probots, but I still move about 4-8 BH droids a day, which pays my market expenses. Probots net me about 1.5-2k each, and I'm currently moving about 15 a day, if I can keep up with demand. I was broke last Sunday and even with a guild hunt to Endor, I'm up 65k this week.
Travel? I mine at between 0.6 and 0.75 per unit. From time to time I have to go to corellia or tatooine from my home base in Naboo to pick up resources. I only go every 3 or 5 days, and fund and power my harvesters accordingly. When I hear of a shift or when I run low I pay about 1400-1500 cr to go pick it up. Netting around 6-7000 resources, that's about .2 added (still less than 1 cr/resource). Soon I'll be getting larger harvesters and the price per unit will go down.
And of course mostly I get all my stuff local, so it's no cost for travel (I have a craft station droid and grind out product on the run between harvesters -- I have to spend the time to grind so why not keep moving?). I usually put down harvesters in the area between Keren and Kaadara, or near Theed, so I can usually come up with an efficient circuit.
Point being, if you're smart and careful travel and shops don't have to cost ya much at all.
Browndaddy,
But what I'm getting at and no I'm not doing this yet.Seekers could become the fireworks for the droid engineer. Just something to get noticed. And if a guy wants to take a loss he can. Will it hurt business for me today with my 1000 credit price tag? Yes. Will it hurt it in the long run? I don't think so, because I hope to soon be off to bigger and better things. And he's doing what it takes to get his product sold and I can't blame him for that.
Your wrong about this, when seeker charges are implemented MANY DEs (whether your master or not) could make a good living selling only seekers and probes they mass produce...yet on some servers this will be thworted because people have made a standard price of seekers being 250 creds a pop, so even with charges DEs wont be able to make a good living on the server selling them because people will expect to only have to pay 300-500 creds per with the charges. Agian assuming that selling items at a loss has no impact on the game economy, as well as everyone in your profession, is a very short sighted assumption. Selling items at a loss hurts the DE profession as a whole, whether your moving on to bigger things as you said or your a novice trying to pull in some creds, your not looking far enough down the road.
That's why I'm glad we're not. See, in this system, we're free to operate our businesses and crafts as we see fit. Not get dictated by others who seem to think we're harming them in some way.-----------------
Actually its REAL competition. You just like playing a single player game in a multiplayer gaming platform... Who cares about anyone else, and there's certainly no stopping you or any way to compete without going lower than your prices.
Michela-----------------Careful, with that attitude, I'll give away another 63 advanced surgical droids (with med-6 and food/chem) like I did when I made Master DE a few weeks ago. "Give away" as in "free".------------------
Heh, damning evidence that you truly ARE stupid and have no idea what you are talking about.
Michela-----------------Personally, I read these sanctimonious pricing threads and get sick.----------------
You get sick over a game? How utterly pathetic. Most of us here are willing to talk things over but I think we still realize it's a game... Some people apparently aren't so fortunate. Of course when everythings all about me! me! me! with our droid makin diva here =).
Michela-------------There are other ways to compete than just in price ... location, service, quality of goods, etc.--------------
Lol do you even play this game?
JonasBlackmore wrote:
*Sigh* -- This was my point, you just don't "get" our side of the argument.
I wouldnt worry to much about it Jonas, many people playing dont have the faintest clue of business and forming a good competitive market thats beneficial to all. They lack the ability and knowledge to see how their sales impact the game world. However some people do...and hopefully with their intuition the sales market will find the rightstandard. Its only so long that people will sit their and decide that selling at a loss is stupid when they could be making more money.
But what I'm saying is...
Yes you can make a good living from Seekers, but no you dont' have to rely on it if you are a Master Droid Engineer. Seekers may be all that guy has. You dont' have to rely on them as your sole income, you have other higher class items to fall back on for your profits.
And also it's daNdy not daddy, an N in there, no kids here, everyone sees it as daddy though, don't know why either. Hmmm
Love,
The Brown Dandy
Vohrteggs
TheBrownDandy wrote:
But what I'm saying is...
Yes you can make a good living from Seekers, but no you dont' have to rely on it if you are a Master Droid Engineer. Seekers may be all that guy has. You dont' have to rely on them as your sole income, you have other higher class items to fall back on for your profits.
And also it's daNdy not daddy, an N in there, no kids here, everyone sees it as daddy though, don't know why either. Hmmm
Love,
The Brown Dandy
Vohrteggs
Dandy,
Your missing the point...DEs dont have to rely on any droid they make for their "sole income" they could go do destroyer missions all day. The point is a master or a novice should be able to consistently turn toseekers and expect to make a profit selling them, selling at a loss destroys that, we have3 legs to stand on, probots, medical/crafting droids, and seekers/probes. Your basically saying "Its fine to chop off one of our ONLY three legs since we have another two to stand on". When your wrong its not "ok" to do that, no sane business man would look at that as a smart business move and no sane person competing with that business man would hold any respect for him since hes costing himself as well as others money....I dont know how to explain this to you any better.