Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Vendor Search: Will you turn it on for your vendors?
Lukos wrote:
I'm already ashamed when i tell a noob a combat droid is 55k, because i'm thinking that's all his money and it costs me less than 10k to craft if. What if i tell him the droid is 100 or 150k ?
Would you be ashamed if you would be a Master AS and someone would would ask why your composite costs that much?
Do you tell them that they NEVER will need a new one?
Lukos wrote:
I'm already ashamed when i tell a noob a combat droid is 55k, because i'm thinking that's all his money and it costs me less than 10k to craft if. What if i tell him the droid is 100 or 150k ?
Part of playing an MMO is getting the things that you want. In some games, that means working for a better weapon, or better armor. Why should a noob the first week of the game have the best Combat Droid the server can make?
I sell "Beginner Combat Droids" for 25k, they can buy one of them for a hunting buddy. Saving up money for a full combat droid is something to work for. If you get everything that you want the first week, you get bored and quit. After a year, I am still looking for better weapons, tapes and gear, this is part of what keeps you playing.
I had a friend who started playing recently, he made 1 million credits in his first week with zero help. Money is not hard for new people to get.
Reaperss wrote:
Not true. I have tons of repeat customers. I have customers that have bought 4-5 probots from me. If, for instance, new resources spawn that allow me to make better combat moduels customers buy new droids. If I launch a new configuration, or if they they change professions for the 10th time. Or, and this has been happening alot lately, they start a new toon.
Also, we do not sell in a vacuum. While combatent $ is infinate, that does not mean pricing doesn't matter. My customers come back to me and refer others to me because I stock quality droids at very good prices.
Couple of points:
- New resources spawn to make better probots: Mine are 548 and 1% away from max HAM, no-one is going to replace those. Unless I get 550/3200, then they'll be a novelty item.
- I also have tons of repeat customers and word of mouth referral, not because of my prices since 90% of the players couldn't care less if they pay 50k or 100k but because I keep my vendor stocked with a wide variety of droids.2 examples to prove my point:
- I sell a crate of droid batteries for 25k. They're on the bazaars and vendors for 2 to 6k. Same crates, same amount of charges. I'm still making a full run every 2 weeks. I could be making 2 full runs a week for 5k, but why would I want to do that? I supply batteries for the rich and lazy, best customer group around
- I've seen people buy 7 med droids of my vendors, one without (45k) and 6 with personality chips (50k). That's 345k spend in 5 minutes, when I asked, he said he wanted to see which personality he liked bestand haddestroyed the rest.
In the past few months I've had 1 person complaining about my prices. And that turned out to be a low-pricing DE from another galaxy trying out an alt on Eclipse. The average droid on my vendor is 50k. An MSE with 2 modules is 30k. A basic MSE with 110 medical or 10 item storage is 15k. An R3 with 6 modules goes at 75k. At these prices I get about 250k revenue/hour invested in DE (crafting, locating resources and such). About the same rate a combat char will get doing missions. I think that's a nice balance. Am I worried about the vendor search? Not really, I'm expecting a decline in sales such as MSE storage droids and Med droids but most of my droids are pretty unique and will keep selling, until someone copies my formula and knocks 10k of the price ofcourse. But we'll deal with that when it happens.
- From our point of view: Because we feel that we offer a product at a decent price for the time we invested in it.
- From the customers point of view: The customer is left with a droid that goes on forever. After a couple of months most chars will be down the hole for several millions on armor, buffs, weapons, food/drinks, etc, all stuff that will need to be replaced. If we DE's take 250 to 500k of that for something that lasts forever, how could we be overcharging/gouging?
People have 5 slots for droids, then they might replace some because they get to know the game better or switch professions. So say you'll be able to sell an average of 7 droids a customer. Selling them at lower prices then the market is willing to bear is hurting your and mine income. You might have combat skills somewhere to supplement your income, but we're trying to make a living on it. And if you are living on it, please get an expensive hobby in game 
Combatant $ is infinite, our potential sales shrink with every droid sold.
Lukos wrote:
To Washell (who got a nice droid vendor you can check on TC5) asking for numbers, here is some data for you so you can compare
That's more than 13 mil/mounth of sales. Let's say my margin is 80%, i get paid 10 mil a mounth and that's enough for me
Message Edited by Lukos on 03-23-2005 09:46 PM
Thanks for the compliment.
My figures since I started (x1000, Revenue):
Week 3 € 1.891
Week 4 € 983
Week 5 € 2.334
Week 6 € 2.121
Week 7 € 2.864
Week 8 € 1.883
Week 9 € 3.529
Week 10€ 8.853
Week 11€ 3.729
Week 12€ 2.743
Total € 30.930
The 8 million peak was the week I used a bought resource kit to build a run of bombdroids. Week 12 hasn't been fully processed yet.Build my own database to keep track of stock and sales, rather neatto generate graphics and see that steady climbing line
Lukos wrote:
I'm already ashamed when i tell a noob a combat droid is 55k, because i'm thinking that's all his money and it costs me less than 10k to craft if. What if i tell him the droid is 100 or 150k ?
Don't be, one month later the noob will be tipping 100k to an entertainer to get the 1st spot in it's tip hitlist. Money is easy to come by, especially if they have JTL.
I have a combat alt, that does nothing but spend $. I use my loot to decorate, not to sell. My DE supports my alt. I've been a MDE since November 03 and I've made plenty of money selling droids. I like my business model, and I'm not going to change. I enjoy selling droids and I think I charge fair prices.
Washell wrote:
You might have combat skills somewhere to supplement your income, but we're trying to make a living on it. And if you are living on it, please get an expensive hobby in game
Combatant $ is infinite, our potential sales shrink with every droid sold.
First, happened last night. I just made Master Doctor with my character on Bria, and decided to start saving up for my first buffset. (Sure, the system will be changing soon, but there's still over a month where buffs are basically required to do anything in combat.) As part of this, I decided to do some checking around for prices. I went through the planetary map, set waypoints to vendors listed that either said they had buffs, or looked like they might from the name. I may have missed one or two, but I went to most of them. For 5 hours I searched, and found a total of: One vendor selling buffsets only in 5 and 10 factory-crated versions, way above a price I could reasonably reach, who also had some single buffpacks up (about 30 use versions), but didn't have all six stats... and, one vendor selling only single-use leftovers for 2k each. Since it could take me days to make up enough money to buy a buffset, I couldn't really make a special order. So, I'm basically out 5 hours of searching.
My second story happened with my DE. I'd been making good business on my original vendor, but then eventually (due to player city and guild politics) had to move to a newly-founded town. With the work it takes to stock a Droid vendor, (you need, what, 12 sets of factory runs to make a single factory run of R3's? Easier to stock by hand in my case), I wasn't able to keep my old vendor stocked. People visiting on Naboo didn't want to venture out to Dantooine to get to my droids, so I lost all my repeat business. I was getting occasional sales, but not that many, and then I caught the flu, followed by computer problems. Despite being up for over a month, and despite my barker droid being put to use except the final week when I caught the flu, 90% of my products remained on my vendor to time out, and since I wasn't there to restock, I lost it all. (This all is perfectly reasonable, I know, especially since I didn't have a fantastic selection on my vendor, but the kicker is what happens next.) Later, when I got back, I was talking to someone (a former regular customer) who'd been looking for a droid of a specific set of modules back in December, one set I had on my vendor. When I mentioned this, the person said that it was too much work to go searching every vendor in the galaxy on the slight chance I had the configuration they wanted. So, I asked around further, and two thirds of the people I asked, even the crafters, never searched further than 1.5k from Theed, Coronet, Mos Eisley, or Bestine, unless it was in a player city they passed through regularly.
How are those of us out in the middle of nowhere (which isn't even really true, since my vendor's just a short trip from the mining outpost) supposed to compete? I eventually stopped stocking my droid vendor, just taking special orders, as nobody was coming to check anyway. With this new change, I'll start stocking again as people searching from the mining outpost may just find me.