Merchant Archive
Thread: I feel dirty. or: 24 hours after the placement of my first vendor
There is some theory available from books or classes about this. It is no real mystery, and shouldn't make you feel dirty any more than gravity makes you feel weighed down. It is called micro-economics, and goes by the common phrase supply and demand.
There is a finite supply of any resource or crafted item, and individuals have their uses for them which is called the "demand". People who want some of the supply will gladly suffer a certain amount of cost to get it, but if it is too costly they may pass it by. Most of the time this means paying money, and this is a clean way to distribute things. You set the price high enough so the amount available just sells out, and the distribution is "fair" in the sense that everyone gets the amount they want at that price.
You could put part or all of the cost into some other form. Only sell to those who are, or appear to be, your friends and you will soon have more (apparent) friends. Sell more cheaply to those who tell sob stories about why they are poor, and you will hear more stories. You can make customers wait in line when you are online, or show up at your restocking time; that represents cost to them even if it gives you nothing. Really, pricing things appropriately is the cleanest way to distribute them, at least in this game world. Everybody knows how to make money running missions, so there is no un-employment. Yes, some characters are richer than others and can pay higher prices, but that is just part of character advancement justlike doing more damage in combat.
If you set your price too low on a vendor, somebody will decide to take advantage of that by buying all they can for resale at a profit. That can be good for you since it gives you your money quickly to get on with what you want to do, but it really isn't going to change much about how things get distributed.
Now, what *should* happen is that if the price is high others should start competing with you so even the demand from those who cannot pay much gets satisfied. The problem is that there isn't good advertising for them to get word out that they are selling the same product at a lower price, so even if they are undercutting you they won't get sales for a while until they are found. That makes for what is called an "inefficient" market, and allows those who get established to make huge profits. You can increase the market efficiency, if you have established sales ability, by finding the struggling competitors and buying their product for resale. That will fill your vendors, and eventually drive prices down -- which will mostly hurt those speculators who emptied your vendors before.
Adrastea111 wrote:
Simply reduce the money given by mission terminals by a factor of 10. For formerly a 2k mission, people would get 200.
This would fix the economy *tomorrow* if it were done. The simple fact that people can gain insane amounts of cash means that inflation will continue to hit (there are a number of relative economic theories which can apply in this), but the problem is caused by the simple fact that a new player who has never touched the game before can happily make 250k in under 2 days of playing.
That player was me about 2 weeks ago... Ok it was when I was sick, so wasn't working, butrunning a ton of missions, and it was done easily.
This is enough for a (fairly rubbish) set of composite (150k), a speederbike (25k) some new weapons (hrm about 30k) and furniture for a house!
In 2 days? Come on now.. that's just crazy. Composite should not be available within a couple of days playing, nor should speeders. Something is seriously wrong and the main issue is the very very easy flow of credits into the game via mission terminals.
And no, i'm not a merchant, nor ever intend so to be, I simply was browsing all the forums during a lunch break.
Well, I don't think your experience is typical for a new user, but it certainly is common for a new alt for an experienced player. I did a similar thing (comparable hours, but spread out more)without running any significant number of combat missions just by buying cheap harvesters off the bazaar and selling the resources.
The game is rather easy on newbies, I think on purpose. 10-15k per hour is feasible if you know what you are doing and fairly dedicated, but real newbies aren't going to do that well. If you do know what you are doing, you don't want to have to kill a lot of time chasing yard trash and hoofing it out to nothing missions. It lets you get to the good stuff quickly.
If you lowered the payout anywhere near that much it would cause major problems because of the fixed prices for maint, travel etc. The way the economy is structured, money is created in combat and paid out mostly by the crafters and merchants. Only the powergamers would have much fun if that was done.
If there werea slow drop in mission payouts and cash loot for a while, I wouldn't mind much. It would raise the value of a credit, and make the combat types work harder instead of playing PvP. It would start to address the imbalance between crafters and fighters in how much fun they had, but I think giving crafters combat droids, so they alsocould play the whole game, would be a better direction for that solution.
This would break the economy even farther. Are you insane?
Recently I started up a character on Bria, just 'cause I was bored and wanted to try something new.
Anyways, I went searching for a laser rifle (I was 3-0-0-0 Brawler, 1-0-1-0 Scout, and 2-0-0-0 Marksman). 15,000 credits for one. At 600 - 700 credits a mission, this took a *long* time to save up for.
Now, remember, lets say ten people buy a laser rifle off this vendor a day. That's 150,000 credits a day. That's about a week to make a million credits. Lets say half (it's far far less than that for sure) of the income goes back into making laser rifles. 500,000 credits a week. 1,000,000 credits every other week for one player. Two months, and he's got 5,000,000 credits.
Now, back to the original guy running missions. He's making 900 credits a mission now, 'cause the laser rifle boosted his relative strength up a bit. Lets say he runs 15 missions a day. That's 13,500 credits a day. A little under 100,000 a week (lets say it's 100,000 due to loot / selling hides / etc). 500,000 credits a month. Of course, as he builds in strength the amount he gets per mission will increase, however mission length, distance, and expenses will increase.
This may be a little off, as the new player hasn't spent near as many skill points, or time as the Master Weaponsmith... however new players need a steady source of income to stay in the game, and keep it rolling.
Anyways, lets say, he's hit an elite profession. 30,000 credits a mission, 10 missions a day. 300,000 credits a day. However, expenses are higher for him, 15,000 for a set of doctor buffs (he'll probably go through 2 sets of buffs, if he's playing around 4 hours, for 30,000 total). Then there are travel expenses. ~6,000 credits round trip to whatever planet he fights on. Chances, are, there isn't a doctor there to rebuff him, so that's another 6,000 credits roundtrip to get back to whever, get rebuffed, and return to the planet he fights on.
anyways... I lost my train of thought. But basically, the cash flow for new players needs to be a little bit better, or there needs to be more products available for them at a far cheaper price. However, you won't find a master weaponsmith who wants to make intentionally terrible weapons so he can sell them for a lower price. You won't find a doctor who intentionally makes poor buff kits for a cheaper set of buffs.
Dropping mission prices would turn all new players into beggers that stand around, asking for credits.
What the game needs is credit-sinks. Make travel more expensive, make maintenance more expensive, or something.
Imperio59 wrote:
Simple question: Are you selling powerups? food? vehicles? We WANT to know
Xieflow wrote:
<snip accurate comment about bad suggestion to reduce payout 90%>
Recently I started up a character on Bria, just 'cause I was bored and wanted to try something new.
Anyways, I went searching for a laser rifle (I was 3-0-0-0 Brawler, 1-0-1-0 Scout, and 2-0-0-0 Marksman). 15,000 credits for one. At 600 - 700 credits a mission, this took a *long* time to save up for.
<snip comment about economics of various professions>
anyways... I lost my train of thought. But basically, the cash flow for new players needs to be a little bit better, or there needs to be more products available for them at a far cheaper price. However, you won't find a master weaponsmith who wants to make intentionally terrible weapons so he can sell them for a lower price. You won't find a doctor who intentionally makes poor buff kits for a cheaper set of buffs.
Dropping mission prices would turn all new players into beggers that stand around, asking for credits.
What the game needs is credit-sinks. Make travel more expensive, make maintenance more expensive, or something.
Since you are on the Merchant board, I am a littlesuprised you went the missions-only route to raise money, but you did say you wanted to try something new. Buy low (or mine), sell high, takes no experience or skills on the part of the character (but takes both on the player's part) and raises money more quickly. The new bazaar limit really helps this a lot.
Being a merchant, unlike most other professions, doesn't requireany of what the Merchant Profession offers. It works well for a new alt.
The lack of low end products at cheap prices is, I think, mostly due to a lack of real advertising ability to make the market more efficient. Starting crafters have a hard time selling their product for the cost of the resources on the market. The bazaar seems not to be well used by new characters, who probably can't find their way through the interface. So the only way to sell low end products is by shouting which is humiliating and time consuming. There are no signs to guide the newbie to the mall in a player town, and even an alt is going to have trouble finding where full vendors at the right price level are located.
Raising maint and travel just hurts new crafters more, and they have a hard enough lot if they don't run missions or know how to sell things at a profit.
Some really good, but optional at low levels, money sinks are needed. Cool things or experiencesyou can only buy with money, but don't need to make progress. I would like to see a fewNPC vendors in remote places that sold expensive dodads like house decorations or clothes. The way vehicles are now is good, you pay a lot of repair costs to keep your fancy paint job intact, but don't really have to pay to keep it running.
Yeah, but you gotta remember. A new combat-only player, starting out with *NOTHING* has one choice for credits : missions.
I can't harvest resources on my own (no artisan skills).
And I know there are plenty of players out there who get their credits only from missions. If I really feel up to it, I can solo a 30,000 credit mission unbuffed, but I can only do about two of those an hour, and I get bored *really* fast. (on my main character : 0-0-2-0 Carbineer, Master WS , Master Artisan, and Master Merchant)
My alt on Bria I've played even less than I've played FFXI (I'm level 8 in FFXI...), 'cause, after starting what was going to be a combat-only character, I realized "I don't like combat in MMOs..." It's why I grew bored of EQ, DAOC, and FFXI so fast
I handle this in two ways:
1) I've included a blurb "Restocked daily!" on my shop sign, and thenI DO restock daily. My 2nd shop gets lower traffic so it's only stocked a couple times a week usually, but if I run low on something there I make the trip to get it back up to par!
2) I almost never put all my stock for sale. I keep about 1/2 day's normal sales in the output bin of my factories, and keep track of my stock when I'm online using a small spreadsheet (I currently stock exactly 10 different items, it's easy to keep up with). When I run low in the 'storage' area, it's time to get another factory run going.
On those rare times I do run out (I get two new customers who each buy 15 crateseach and I only stocked 30) I drop what I'm doing and get my factories running pronto if they weren't before. I also send out an email to all my known customers letting them know I'm currently out of _X_ but will be restocked shortly so they won't be surprised.
Xieflow wrote:
I can't harvest resources on my own (no artisan skills).
Well, I admit that you have to run a few missions at first to get about 2000 credits to start out
If you have 15 skillpoints available, the Artisan trainer will give you all the skillsyou need for 150cr and no exp, but you don't even need that at first.
Buy a cheap wind generator off the bazaar (350cr most likely) and set it up where you see others. Put a few hundred credits in for maint and logout (or run the rest of your starting missions). Come back ahalf daylater and pick up a survey tool, matching cheap harvester, and collect the power to run it for a day from your wind gen.
Now you need the basic surveying skill, and decent luck, to find a place to put it. Again, you will get a hint from the harvesters out in the field, and a personal will fit almost anyplace with its small footprint. Find a 70% or better spot of something that will sell well. (BTW that same spot will let you run a bunch of profitable survey missions if you want.) Set it running and the next day you will have ~1k resources to sell for between3 and 6 cr eachon the bazaar, take the money pay maint if the resources didn't shiftand upgrade your harvester array. On average youcan double your money every day until you fill all your lots with BER 4 personals and a BER 7-9 wind or 2. At that point you should have 100k cash and 30-60k credits per day income from an hour a day of work.
Add to that reselling a few bargains you find in your travels on the bazaar, and you are decently wealthy. That fancy gun and armour doesn't look so expensive any more, you can have a nice vehicle, pet and droid, and even keep a house if you want.
I am sure this can work, since I did it recently on Bria. I took the harvesters down when I went on vacation, and haven't restarted them since I still have plenty of cash. I have been concentrating on medic lately, my intent in the first place.
True, there are lots of ways to go wrong, and I haven't told all my secrets of what to sell at what price. But if you have been around a while you should be able to get close to that. The worst that can happen is that you go broke and have to run missions again to restart until you learn how or get a run of good luck.
byak wrote:
Imperio59 wrote:
Simple question: Are you selling powerups? food? vehicles? We WANT to know
Buff packs.. ~850 90mu and 870+ >90mu.
At 35k a pack, I was bought out. At 40k a pack, I'm getting sparse sales. So I have passed that magical price, obviously. (My initial price was 20k a pack.)
Interesting to note, I just went to visit my primary/only competition (who sells slightly lesser stuff at a far, far cheaper price) to buy buffs for myself. (I can make more selling my own packs and using his master-required packs for buffing myself.) He has a sign up stating that he has stopped making buffs. He was by far the biggest buff producer on the server.. every doctor that didn't make their own bought his (for 5k a pack.. which he upped to 7500 in his last two weeks.)
So as far as I know, (and I have looked long and hard in the past)I'm the only person on the server with a vendor that has decent quality packs. Now that the other guy went out of the buff business, demand is about to go way up as people start frantically looking fora new fix. I don't urgently need money at the moment, so I'm just going to let my packs sit at their insanely high prices. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
How many uses are in each pack? As the other member said, Dr. Buffs run 1k per stat. So unless your packs have a lot more than 40 charges, doctors will be loosing money using your packs.
If you have the resources, time and desire, you can always up your production and lower your price. However, if you don’t want to spend more time on crafting, your at the right price.
It is an interesting situation on your server. And I imagine that more than a few master doctors will start entering the buff sales market soon.
Haruspex77 wrote:
Xieflow wrote:
I can't harvest resources on my own (no artisan skills).
Well, I admit that you have to run a few missions at first to get about 2000 credits to start out
If you have 15 skillpoints available, the Artisan trainer will give you all the skillsyou need for 150cr and no exp, but you don't even need that at first.
Buy a cheap wind generator off the bazaar (350cr most likely) and set it up where you see others. Put a few hundred credits in for maint and logout (or run the rest of your starting missions). Come back ahalf daylater and pick up a survey tool, matching cheap harvester, and collect the power to run it for a day from your wind gen.
Now you need the basic surveying skill, and decent luck, to find a place to put it. Again, you will get a hint from the harvesters out in the field, and a personal will fit almost anyplace with its small footprint. Find a 70% or better spot of something that will sell well. (BTW that same spot will let you run a bunch of profitable survey missions if you want.) Set it running and the next day you will have ~1k resources to sell for between3 and 6 cr eachon the bazaar, take the money pay maint if the resources didn't shiftand upgrade your harvester array. On average youcan double your money every day until you fill all your lots with BER 4 personals and a BER 7-9 wind or 2. At that point you should have 100k cash and 30-60k credits per day income from an hour a day of work.
Add to that reselling a few bargains you find in your travels on the bazaar, and you are decently wealthy. That fancy gun and armour doesn't look so expensive any more, you can have a nice vehicle, pet and droid, and even keep a house if you want.
I am sure this can work, since I did it recently on Bria. I took the harvesters down when I went on vacation, and haven't restarted them since I still have plenty of cash. I have been concentrating on medic lately, my intent in the first place.
True, there are lots of ways to go wrong, and I haven't told all my secrets of what to sell at what price. But if you have been around a while you should be able to get close to that. The worst that can happen is that you go broke and have to run missions again to restart until you learn how or get a run of good luck.
If you didn't notice, my main character is a Master Weaponsmith. I know all about the "harvesting" game. And frankly, I don't like it. Don't like keeping track of harvesters and resource shifts. I tried doing it while I was still Novice Weaponsmith, it's *not* fun. And yes, I've got all the resources I need (except what's needed for advanced vibro motors, and crism siliclast ore...), and have *no* problem obtaining new resources off the bazaar, and resource vendors. (I only say this because 90% of players seem to think you *need* to harvest your own resources to succeed in a crafting profession)
So no, I am *not* going to pick up artisan on my Bria character. And running missions is not *that* difficult of money, it's just it is too repetitive for me.