Image Designer Archive
Thread: Starsider ID Union Price List
invaliduser
Sun May 09, 2004 8:45 am
#27
^^^^ sorry bout the above post, its not my intention to get annoyed with IDs ^^^^^
Im trying to give you my feelings on the situation - Im VERY hacked off about removing the abilty to change stats - other people might not have changed their stats much, but I look upon it as an interesting way to experiment and see which set-up turns out best with different weapons/ armours etc - I know others do...I therefore quite frequently change my stats depeending on what I will be doing over the weekend (hunting/ healing etc), with what weapon etc,etc
and as for comparing the money I might make selling buffs (note my current bank a/c is 120k and has never been above 400k)...to IDing, then the only comparison I can see as justified is the tell hell and hassle in terms of time and bad and impatient customers that might occur.
Nevertheless, Im happy that Id should charge for their services, as I said above, 50K is too much - especially as I used to be able to perform this part of my 'gaming' myself. Im also against the idea of 'unions' setting prices, especially when there are less IDs than most other professions and therefore it will be less easier for then to be subject to competition.
If you dont agree with my commnets- thats up to you - but you need to recognise that my viewpoint is pretty well represented on other posts on this board.
Im trying to give you my feelings on the situation - Im VERY hacked off about removing the abilty to change stats - other people might not have changed their stats much, but I look upon it as an interesting way to experiment and see which set-up turns out best with different weapons/ armours etc - I know others do...I therefore quite frequently change my stats depeending on what I will be doing over the weekend (hunting/ healing etc), with what weapon etc,etc
and as for comparing the money I might make selling buffs (note my current bank a/c is 120k and has never been above 400k)...to IDing, then the only comparison I can see as justified is the tell hell and hassle in terms of time and bad and impatient customers that might occur.
Nevertheless, Im happy that Id should charge for their services, as I said above, 50K is too much - especially as I used to be able to perform this part of my 'gaming' myself. Im also against the idea of 'unions' setting prices, especially when there are less IDs than most other professions and therefore it will be less easier for then to be subject to competition.
If you dont agree with my commnets- thats up to you - but you need to recognise that my viewpoint is pretty well represented on other posts on this board.
Syzygy-Gorath
Sun May 09, 2004 8:46 am
#28
invaliduser wrote:
thought I'd post on this as well - Im not an ID, but I am a little concered about some of thee changes, but trying to take a balanced view...
charges of 10k or so are fine - no problems with anything like that - in fact, the times Ive used an ID, I've tipped more than this.
However, 50k for stat changes is a little steep. The often used rationale about 'our time costs money' doesnt really cut it - ALL professions take time, for example, I've jsut spent 1.5 hours flying round Yavin and Talus collecting resources to make my Doc stuff. This is on top of the time spent surveying and setting up the harvs in the first place.
Once made (using 100cpu avain meat), I still have to sit in coronet or wherever applying buffs - as you say, this is boring and hence I charge 12k for a buff buff set -my time costs money as well.
I feel that, with a more limited supply of IDrs in existence, 50k for a stat change will damage the ID profession (it certainly would in my eyes) - in the short term, you have a captive market and there arent many supplies (an oligopoly perhaps) - taking UNDUE advantage of these changes to hike the pirces will damage your profession (like is did to CH's when pets came in.
Perhaps it would be more fair if you had to purchase a one-use tool or wotnot from a master artisan to allow you to change stats, therefore linking you into the supply chain and creating a 'profession' interdependancy.
what do you think? - rather than just using no resources at all (ignore the time argument - I suffer worse time sinks when buffing/ healing/ collecting resources/ making buffpacks etc), either the stat change charge needs to be less, or you have to use a one-use stat change tool that you need to buy off a master artisan.
First: you can't base an argument on time expenditure, then sum up by telling us to ignore the time factor. It doesn't work like that.
Second: 12K per buff, 1 full set every 1.5 minutes, 6 full sets within a 10 minute period, 72K per 10 minutes…and you're complaining about 50K per 10 minutes? Suck it up.
d_h1234
Sun May 09, 2004 8:56 am
#29
rygell wrote:
at invalidusers prices that is 24000-120000 credits, just from me in one night. and he is complaining about 50k. i can make 100k in an hour running missions, plus i can harvest for a little more. (master fencer/0-4-1-3 ranger)
Good on you..but we all can't do that...the complaining is because, most IDers are NOT soley IDers...even if they take other entertainer professions, they can still atleast get a single master combat class, and make their money much easier...Why don't any of them do this,rather thancomplain that they're poor and their 'only' source of income is IDing? IDing, contrary to popular belief it seems, does NOT cost money...and if you say training, then you must not have looked hard enough...If for example,on Starsider the original poster can wrangle up 7 MASTER IDers, then you should surely have been able to find enough to train you...Besides that you probably don't need ALL tiers at once, so it would have been spaced months apart...So in all that time, you can't find a single other IDer who happens to have what you need to train you? Yeah, right...
Message Edited by d_h1234 on 05-09-2004 08:57 AM
Syzygy-Gorath
Sun May 09, 2004 9:16 am
#30
invaliduser wrote:
First: you can't base an argument on time expenditure, then sum up by telling us to ignore the time factor. It doesn't work like that.
yes I can - if I based my charge for buffs on the TOTAL time it takes to find/ harvest/ make/ apply buffs then I would charge MUCH more than 12k. Gues why I dont? - because there is COMPETITION over buff prices - the concept of getting together and fixing prices in this way negates competition...
suck that up
Uh…oookay. I'm not exactly sure what I should be sucking up here…but let me try to address your point of competition. So what? So we're not competing with one another? We're a small, fairly tightly-knit community. Why would we want to try to compete with one another? Instead we're trying to see that our profession has a stable economic basis rather than undermining one another. To me, that's a good thing.
Syzygy-Gorath
Sun May 09, 2004 9:18 am
#31
d_h1234 wrote:
rygell wrote:
at invalidusers prices that is 24000-120000 credits, just from me in one night. and he is complaining about 50k. i can make 100k in an hour running missions, plus i can harvest for a little more. (master fencer/0-4-1-3 ranger)
Good on you..but we all can't do that...the complaining is because, most IDers are NOT soley IDers...even if they take other entertainer professions, they can still atleast get a single master combat class, and make their money much easier...Why don't any of them do this,rather thancomplain that they're poor and their 'only' source of income is IDing? IDing, contrary to popular belief it seems, does NOT cost money...and if you say training, then you must not have looked hard enough...If for example,on Starsider the original poster can wrangle up 7 MASTER IDers, then you should surely have been able to find enough to train you...Besides that you probably don't need ALL tiers at once, so it would have been spaced months apart...So in all that time, you can't find a single other IDer who happens to have what you need to train you? Yeah, right...
Message Edited by d_h1234 on 05-09-2004 08:57 AM
Good point. I can make 35K in ten minutes with my alt and have a lot more fun doing it. You want me to sit in one place for ten minutes so you can have your stats changed? You're going to pay the 35K I could have made, plus a surcharge because stat migration isn't fun. I'd say 15K is about what that fun is worth.
Edit: one other thing, ID costs just as much money as every other profession. It costs me $15 per month. Now if you meant credits, that's another story entirely. But don't get all high and mighty because the pixels in your inventroy change more often the ones in mine. I will be providing you a service, and whether or not it costs me any credits to do it, I can do it and you can't. If you don't want to pay me for my time and expertise then don't migrate your stats and don't change your look. Honestly, I'd rather not have a client like you anyway.
Edit 2: Another thing, a Master Doctor can still master Swordsman and make 38K every five minutes with the help of an AT-ST. Given that rationale (the run missions rather than charging) I want all my buffs for free!
Message Edited by Syzygy-Gorath on 05-09-2004 12:31 PM
Warplex
Sun May 09, 2004 10:04 am
#32
...then the only comparison I can see as justified is the tell hell and hassle in terms of time and bad and impatient customers that might occur.
Nevertheless, Im happy that Id should charge for their services, as I said above, 50K is too much - especially as I used to be able to perform this part of my 'gaming' myself. Im also against the idea of 'unions' setting prices, especially when there are less IDs than most other professions and therefore it will be less easier for then to be subject to competition.
Thats why we need UNIONS. If we have 20 IDs per server (Bria has about 50), then the average value of an ID is low with out somewhat artifical price hiking. The compeition you seem to to think we need amounts to "who gets stiffed the most or paid 10-500 credits total"! Lets say i'm an armor smith. I won't take into account training and resources for this, since some IDs had to pay for grinding subjects. I take a 500 credit armor crafting tool, and a mineral survey tool, and I manually extract resources for a suit of good composite (its possible, just takes time). All i spent money on was travel costs (which IDs have to do for some customers), and action points. I craft this armor. Since my total cost was 2 hours and, 500 creidts, should I only charge 500 credits? Afterall, its only action points.
That argument aside, your average complaining customer wears a 500k suit of composite, has no problem blowing 250k on a kyrat weapon, and probably is going to go pay 12k for buffs. He complains about paying 90k for a very hard to do operation, which requires skill and creativity more than anything. You see nothing wrong with this invalid?
gman2000
Sun May 09, 2004 10:16 am
#33
Invaliduser, for that 10 minutes we're with you doing the stat migration, we cant do anything else ... we cant even see guild chat or tells as the ui takes up the full screen almost.
FalconsFortune
Sun May 09, 2004 10:30 am
#34
Total ripp off, no chance im going to pay any of them prices, and i know im not the only one
mirah
Sun May 09, 2004 10:38 am
#35
Well Invalid you have until tuesday to get your stats to where you want them. Don't moan and groan bc us image designers are trying to figure out a fair price to charge everyone. Yes we could very well have a combat class but some of us play this game for socialization not to PVE or PVP or if we want to do that we have second accounts to do this with. Oh wow imagine that some of us have 2 accounts to pay you for your doctor buffs bc we like the ent profession and have a hard time getting rid of something that took us forever to grind. I myself have 2 accounts. As Dolly I am a master artisan master weaponsmith and master image designer. But before you say something about me making money as my artisan class understand this on wanderhome I am the lowest priced ws and artisan bc I DON'T want to charge people a ton of money for weapons and vehicles. You moan and groan about paying 100cpu for avian meat? go kill some kaadus and get your own avian meat. then wow sugar you don't have to pay that 100cpu. I understand that the avian meat you are buying is high quality stuff but you know what? my brandy andcanape isn't cheap either neither are my mind buffs from dancers and musicians..but see I don't moan about that bc you know what those dancers and musicians have worked hard to be able to buff! I never have a hard time paying for buffs and 9 times out of 10 will pay more than the doc is asking for. See on my server they are only 6k still and they usually get tipped 15k from me just for action buffs bc i understand how you don't get to make money at that profession. So this is not about how you aren't making money at being a doc invalid this is about how us as image designers need to help each other (like we always do) and we are trying to figure out how much to charge for things. If you don't want holo emotes or color changes or stat migrations then sugar pie enjoy the game and dont crank at us bc we are trying to make some money, for that matter grind out image designer yourself and then you can see what it costs us. Image designers are never paid enough bc people look at it like all we lose is our mind and that regenerates but you know what? everyone forgets that it costs money to get trained, mind buffed, and food. As far as talking to fellow iders when some of us were grinding id there weren't any master iders on our servers atm. A lot of servers don't have 20 image designers that are active or if they are on line they are busy with doing other things at times. I have never seen a master doctor travel to a client who wanted buffed but have traveled myself many times to clients to id them and haven't charged them for my travel. You just can't compare master docs to master image designers it would be like comparing a mtk to a carbineer two totally different classes that have nothing in common..
I must apologize to my fellow iders I usually try not to get upset with people like this but I am about sick of people cranking at us iders bc we are actually wanting to make money at what we do..heaven forbid we actually get some money in the bank to do a profession we love.
So basically Invalid, if you don't like the new changes then don't have anything done bc we really don't need to deal with a guy who is moaning bc we are actually going to charge for our time, bc id isn't a "real" profession in your mind now is it invalid?
Dolly
Wanderhome
Master Image Designer
Master Artisan and master Weaponsmith
Don't like your look? Think you are ugly? Come see me sugar and i will make you gorgeous!
Roeding
Sun May 09, 2004 10:47 am
#36
Warplex wrote:
Thats why we need UNIONS. If we have 20 IDs per server (Bria has about 50), then the average value of an ID is low with out somewhat artifical price hiking. The compeition you seem to to think we need amounts to "who gets stiffed the most or paid 10-500 credits total"! Lets say i'm an armor smith. I won't take into account training and resources for this, since some IDs had to pay for grinding subjects. I take a 500 credit armor crafting tool, and a mineral survey tool, and I manually extract resources for a suit of good composite (its possible, just takes time). All i spent money on was travel costs (which IDs have to do for some customers), and action points. I craft this armor. Since my total cost was 2 hours and, 500 creidts, should I only charge 500 credits? Afterall, its only action points.
That argument aside, your average complaining customer wears a 500k suit of composite, has no problem blowing 250k on a kyrat weapon, and probably is going to go pay 12k for buffs. He complains about paying 90k for a very hard to do operation, which requires skill and creativity more than anything. You see nothing wrong with this invalid?
You do realize this will take you several months right? It requires very specific resouces that may be unavailable for very long periods of time, and the chance of it beeing good quality when it DO spawn is low.
I don't see how this is a very hard to do thing, i was master ID for a little while, it was very easy adjusting a slider and pushing a button.
I could not bring myself to work for anything but tips, usually got 3-4k per session which i thought was about right, but thats just me i suppose.
The union thing is to me in very bad taste, there need to be competition for a market to work properly. And you know there is a reason why these sort of things are illegal in RL.
invaliduser
Sun May 09, 2004 10:51 am
#37
ok..I see all I'm doing here is stiring things up - apologies to all whove been offended, I'd rather shut up and keep my opinions (to which Im perfectly entitled and you are perfectly entitled to disagree politely with) but I hope some of you have seen my point....as you said...
"A lot of servers don't have 20 image designers that are active or if they are on line they are busy with doing other things at times"
we'll have to see how this all goes on - and yep, Ive all migrated my stats to a nice nuetral level as you suggest.
"A lot of servers don't have 20 image designers that are active or if they are on line they are busy with doing other things at times"
we'll have to see how this all goes on - and yep, Ive all migrated my stats to a nice nuetral level as you suggest.
rygell
Sun May 09, 2004 11:03 am
#38
hmmmm since i am a union steward in rl, i am suprised by your lack of knowledge, a union is designed to protect the workers, ,to ensure they recieve competative wages. and are treated fairly in accordance with local state and federal laws.
to bring this back to game and more importantly to the point.
if all of the id's charge a set rate then you know what you will have to pay. i have seen a 30 person line in coronet for buffs 10k, when another master doc shows up and offers " buffs no wait 15k" they usually get a few takers. a union would eliminate that type of opertunistic price gouging.
union "members" also share tricks of the trade, combinations they have found work well together, and how to better serve the client. so do you want to spend 10 min with a MID that "knows" what they are doing or 20 min with someone who just finished the grind and is clueless.....(insert sarcasm) but you saved 5000 credits, only to have to pay a "pro" to fix what was done wrong
i am finished bantering with ppl who want to quibble about proposed prices for something that isn't even live yet
dart'
Syzygy-Gorath
Sun May 09, 2004 11:07 am
#39
Roeding wrote:
Warplex wrote:
Thats why we need UNIONS. If we have 20 IDs per server (Bria has about 50), then the average value of an ID is low with out somewhat artifical price hiking. The compeition you seem to to think we need amounts to "who gets stiffed the most or paid 10-500 credits total"! Lets say i'm an armor smith. I won't take into account training and resources for this, since some IDs had to pay for grinding subjects. I take a 500 credit armor crafting tool, and a mineral survey tool, and I manually extract resources for a suit of good composite (its possible, just takes time). All i spent money on was travel costs (which IDs have to do for some customers), and action points. I craft this armor. Since my total cost was 2 hours and, 500 creidts, should I only charge 500 credits? Afterall, its only action points.
That argument aside, your average complaining customer wears a 500k suit of composite, has no problem blowing 250k on a kyrat weapon, and probably is going to go pay 12k for buffs. He complains about paying 90k for a very hard to do operation, which requires skill and creativity more than anything. You see nothing wrong with this invalid?
You do realize this will take you several months right? It requires very specific resouces that may be unavailable for very long periods of time, and the chance of it beeing good quality when it DO spawn is low.
I don't see how this is a very hard to do thing, i was master ID for a little while, it was very easy adjusting a slider and pushing a button.
I could not bring myself to work for anything but tips, usually got 3-4k per session which i thought was about right, but thats just me i suppose.
The union thing is to me in very bad taste, there need to be competition for a market to work properly. And you know there is a reason why these sort of things are illegal in RL.
Are we looking at the same market here? A market that supports 5 mil for an AV-21 powerplant? A masrket where organic resources (and some inorganics) can go for up to 100CPU? If you think that's functioning properly I'd hate to see your idea of broken. The fact is that there are some serious problems with the SWG economy, not the least of which is that the primary sounce of money-making in-game is missions, which are wholly disassociated from the rest of the economy. It doesn't matter what server you're on, and what the cost of that T21 is, that Huurton Huntress mission out of Agro is always going to pay out the same amount (within a hundred credits or so.) Face it, the economy's borked. Weapons and armor have skyrocketed in price over the past 6 months while clothing has remained relatively stable. Resources are priced at 10 times what they're worth, except that hologrinders are willing to pay it…so that becomes the new worth. SEAs, my god, don't even get me started on that.
This price list is no more outrageous than any of those other inequities…the difference is, people are used to spitting on entertainers. I, for one, am glad that IDs are finally going to be able to inflate their prices to be more in-line with the rest of the economy, and honestly, I don't think competition does very much to normalize it as you suggest.