Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Did I get ripped?
/bow
Respectfully,
stigukol wrote:
What about the ham and the dmg on the weapon? Is it really this low?
From what I've seen/made, those stats actually are really pretty good for the new Probots.
I agree you might have gotten a slightly lower price but I wouldn't say you got "ripped". It always costs more to get on the "bleeding edge" of technology (no pun intended).
/bow
Respectfully,
Remember no matter how bleeding edge you get your probe it is a cl 10 creature and has stats of a cl 10 creature.
kaid
This may not be popular among my fellow DE's, but I personally think that's a darn high price. Here's my reasoning:
1) The CPU of that droid (while CPU isn't the best way to check prices) is stillpretty astronomical.
2) It's a CL10 pet. Just remember that. CL10.
3) After the armor nerf and the 40% resist bug fixed, it's HAM, no matter how you slice it, is sub standard.
4) No buffing, no specials, no utility, no drinking, no smoking, what does it do?
5) Droids are far easier to build than BE pets. No multigenerations... no mask scent...no field sampling withfinite DNA rewards... standardized factory runs for mass production...no aggro mobs to attack you.... etc. Why does this cost more than a BE made CL10 pet?
Yeah, I know... not a popular opinion... go ahead and 1-star me if you want,folks. Once the novelty wears off, it's gouging pure and simple, just like it was for creature mounts and vehicles. I don't like price gouging.
Virtanis wrote:
This may not be popular among my fellow DE's, but I personally think that's a darn high price. Here's my reasoning:
1) The CPU of that droid (while CPU isn't the best way to check prices) is stillpretty astronomical.
2) It's a CL10 pet. Just remember that. CL10.
3) After the armor nerf and the 40% resist bug fixed, it's HAM, no matter how you slice it, is sub standard.
4) No buffing, no specials, no utility, no drinking, no smoking, what does it do?
5) Droids are far easier to build than BE pets. No multigenerations... no mask scent...no field sampling withfinite DNA rewards... standardized factory runs for mass production...no aggro mobs to attack you.... etc. Why does this cost more than a BE made CL10 pet?
Yeah, I know... not a popular opinion... go ahead and 1-star me if you want,folks. Once the novelty wears off, it's gouging pure and simple, just like it was for creature mounts and vehicles. I don't like price gouging.
Virtanis wrote:
This may not be popular among my fellow DE's, but I personally think that's a darn high price. Here's my reasoning:
Well Virt, I agree with half of your theory, but your last statement regarding gouging meant that I had to reply...
1) The CPU of that droid (while CPU isn't the best way to check prices) is stillpretty astronomical.
First, not sure if you've ever looked at WS and AS schematics, but did you know that guns take like less than 100 resources, even for some of the best weapons? That's guns that go for 30-80K. Do the math on that one. An AS friend who was leveling sent me the resource list for a full suit of composite, which goes for a minimum of 200K - 300K or more if it's got good resources used - and it takes a couple hundred resources to make.
Now, I'm not devaluing the work they do in finding the rare resources, but in this day of BER10 medium harvesters, your only gate is the spawn. Find a rare resource just once, stick a couple of BER10's on it, and you have enough to make guns for months/years.
As you say, CPU isn't a good way to judge prices - my time in game, managing factories, building components - and let's not forget those Master Artisan parts; at last count, Probots now take 22 components instead of 9. (I thought it was 20 before, but I forgot about the additional brain in the combat cluster). That is a LOT more work. I would have rather they tripled theresources instead of doubling the amount of components.
2) It's a CL10 pet. Just remember that. CL10.
Agree. Armor issues aside, do you realize this new Probot is BETTER than a Pre-nerf, damage wise? Pre-nerfs had like 120-130dmg and 1.5 speed, and these new models have 160dmg and .75spd. They definately deal a bigger punch; droid stims IMHO don't make up for the loss of armor or HAM, but as far as damage goes they are pretty good.
3) After the armor nerf and the 40% resist bug fixed, it's HAM, no matter how you slice it, is sub standard.
Agreed. But that doesn't mean that we should sell ourselves short either. Maybe they will have the good sense to undo the armor nerf - it's between our customers and the Devs now. We've done our part as DE's - if the customers continue to dislike the change as much as it has, it's time for them to speak.
4) No buffing, no specials, no utility, no drinking, no smoking, what does it do?
This is the biggest weakness of droids past the armor issue - that they can't be buffed, but creature pets can. We need a droid buff pack...
5) Droids are far easier to build than BE pets. No multigenerations... no mask scent...no field sampling withfinite DNA rewards... standardized factory runs for mass production...no aggro mobs to attack you.... etc. Why does this cost more than a BE made CL10 pet?
Because BE's, like Architects, sell themselves a bit short in general, I think. Then again, I know BE's that regularly sell million dollar Kimos.
Yeah, I know... not a popular opinion... go ahead and 1-star me if you want,folks. Once the novelty wears off, it's gouging pure and simple, just like it was for creature mounts and vehicles. I don't like price gouging.
The one thing I always said about the DE profession was that in spite of the broken/unfinished feel to the profession, the one thing we don't lack is a profit margin. People are willing to pay for droids. I sold Probots pre-publish 7with item storage or medical utility for around 40K every day. I sold on average 5-10, but then again some days someone would pick up 6 crates of 5 (30 droids). I'm selling for between 65-70K now.
I don't think that is gouging. It's good business.
You cite the mount and vehicle markets, which were largely misunderstood.
Mounts : People were unaware that the Kaddu they had a BE make them would need to grow for a few days in their datapad. Datapad space is at a premium for CH's - it's part of their skill tree, for cryin' out loud. I watched it happen, it was insane. A CH would stand outside a Starport in the first hours of mounts and say, "Mount, 50K!". Ten people would say, "I'll take it!", then start bidding amongst themselves. "I'll give you 100k!" "I'll give you 150K!" "I'll give you 300K!". The customers did it all - sure, the CH's took advantage of it, but who in their right mind is going to deny people throwing money at them? And then what happened? A week later no one was selling them, everyone knew the score, and CH's can barely give 'em away.
Vehicles : Vehicle prices have actually gone UP. The HAM bug screwed things up a bit, but no one ever gouged the Vehicle market - it would have been impossible, since people were selling them for 2cpu at the Starport competing with each other from the moment the patch went up. I had to laugh at the people who bragged, "I sold a hundred of them today!" for 20K - when they used resources that could have gone for two, three timesthat if sold raw. That'show much crappy vehicles go for now, but until the HAM bug there was a nice market developing for high priced,high HAM vehicles versus the lower-end models. Again, no one ever got gouged - if they did,it was their own fault - you couldn't /tumble five feet on patch day without seeing people at Starports undercutting each other. I made ten million that week...how? I didn't spam at starports and waste my time working hard making very little; I made some excellent quality vehicles, placed them on my vendors at premium prices, and watched them sell. This was a vendor 800m away from Coronet, where most of the spamming was taking place - people would rather pay for a quality productreliably than support some spam-seller whom they will never see again.
It all depends on how you look at it, of course, but remeber : something is worth how much someone is willing to pay for it, and how much you are willing to part with it for. Some may scoff at paying 70K for a Probot, but those people certainly have a choice - they can buy a lower-priced model, or they can find another DE. /shrug. I don't force anyone to buy anything - and I am very up front about their capabilities. It's up for people to decide ifthe product has value, and it's up to DE's to decide if it's worthwhile to make.
Darn tootin' I raised my prices to about the same level as the MDE described in the original posting - more work for me in any case, no matter which way you cut it (cpu or no).
Bought a crate of Vassarian Brandy lately? I used to think it was a lot to pay 65K for a crate of fishak, LOL. If they can get 300K for a crate of brandy, we can get 50-75K for our droids.
AO