Ranger Archive
Thread: A Pricing Guide for Animal Resources
ievb4fun wrote:
3) I've never understood pricing resources on their quality. Did it take you less time to harvest the higher quality resource over the lower quality resource?
Market demand.
Ranger #1 posts a message to his server forum saying "I am auctioning off 20k units of OQ 500, PE 500 Herbivore meat.
Ranger #2 posts a message to the same forum, saying "I am auctioning off 20k units of OQ 950, PE 950 Herbivore meat."
They're not setting a price. They're letting the market do all the thinking for them. The price will be set 100% by the purchasers.
Which Ranger do you think will get the most money for their 20k units of herby meat?
haha, and after I paid you the utmost respect 
I agree with you regarding your last post, but what Ranger hunted the 500+ meat??? I guess my point was more along these line:
1) The best Herbivore meat is OQ 700 PE 700, which the current market rate is 15cpu.
2) It shifts to OQ 800 PE 800 and the market rate increases to 20cpu.
3) If it shifts back to OQ 700 PE 700, why should we go back to accepting 15cpu for it? It takesus the same amount oftime to gather it (not always true, i know). Thats why I don't like pricing on quality, although I do like increasing price on better quality.
We recently had a price run on Avian meat, all the way up to 70+ cpu. From the price run, Docs started charging more for buffs to compensate. Needless to say, anyone who participated in the rewards from the priceincreasesare not going to want to hunt Avian meat for 15 cpu anymore (which is a good thing for hard working Rangers). I guess what i'm trying to say is to keep inflation on you Galaxy in mind, before pricing resources.
Yes, but the person who sells his low quality meat at the same price as someone elses high quality meat is not going to sell to alot of people.
When you price your resources you should always factor in time, because it does take you the same amount of time to harvest resources none of your resources should fall under that set price. However to add on the extra bonus or profit you add quality into the equation.
Either way you will be making enough to cover your time spent, just that if you spend it on different resources you will basicly be getting a bonus from it.
I have a suggestion regarding the pricing of hides. Armorsmiths are primarily looking for a high OQ and high SR, more than Mal. These stats outside of OQ should not be weighted equally as the demand in the AS world is different. While MAL decreases the amount of encumberance in a piece of armor, the higher SR increases effectiveness. A higher effectiveness will ALWAYS outsell a lower encumberance, given that both sets are made with the same number of layers and that the only difference is a higher MAL or higher SR hide.
so maybe instead of
[(OQ * 7) + (MA * 3) + (SR * 3) + UT]/14
it can be something like...
[(OQ * 6) + (SR * 5) + (MA * 3) + UT]/15
Demand for the higher SR hide should mean higher prices for it. Just a suggestion from an old ranger.
What about eggs? They can be harvested by searching lairs and there seems to be only two kinds on each planet at a time. One good one and one bad one. Would they fit into the fish category of pricing since it is slow to get, especially since you get live samples or nothing half the time, or its own formula? To tell the truth I don't know who would use them other than chefs, and they won't because their class is sorely in need of work.
Gibbro, I'm not positive, but I think that eggs are also used by either one of the elite medic-type classes (i.e. Doctors and Combat Medics) or by Bio-Engineers for higher-level items. I've been driving around searching every lair I see for a while now and I've seen two things:
1) I've only ever harvested one type of egg at a time. I've never seen two different types on the same day, but I live almost exclusively on Corellia (except when I want to bulk up on SL experience), so maybe the planet you are on has more than one type.
2) You can sell 100 eggs of fairly good quality for 3000 credits on the bazaar. I had three stacks of 100 units on the bazaarabout a week ago (the last time I've really had a chance to play) and within one or two days all three stacks were purchased for 3k a piece by one person. I don't know if I price-gouged or not since there is rarely a stack of more than 10 eggs for sale on the bazaar at any given time for my region and planet (Tyrena, Corellia), but it seemed to be an acceptable price for the person that bought them.
Personally, I feel these prices are absurd. We've had conversations about this in guild chat, and there are very few people in my guild who would pay such ridiculously high prices for meat, bone and hide. Fortunately, in my guild, it's easy to say, "Let's go bug hunting on Dathomir, 'cause the insect meat is amazing." Blammo, we have a dozen people and petsblowing up spiders and mites. An hour later, I have 15k of high quality meat in my pocket.
Let me explain why Rangers will never make any money off me. A Pet Stim C, made with advanced medical components, contains 165 units of resources . 41 of these are meat resources, comprising some 25% of the total resources used. Assuming 950+ OQ meat (which my recent batch of stims contains), this 41 units of meat would cost 1435 credits. The standard BE formula for pricing is charges / 10 * power. My recent batch of stims were 28/1033, running 2900 credits each. I further discount my stims 10% for any sold on my vendors (as opposed the bazaar, which I use for advertising purposes, and which I sell at full price to entice buyers to visit my shop). The discount drops this stim to 2610 credits. That 1435 credits worth of meat, at my discounted vendor stim price,would account for 55% of the cost, even without any markup to profit from the purchase!
Okay, so those of you doing the math will say, "But at 2610 / 165 units of resources, you're selling your stims for 15 cpu!" Well, let's do some additional math...
28 charges on a 1033 power stim, which cures your pet's health, action and mind for 1033 points, consistently. That's potentially 3099 points of healing across the board, assuming your pet was damaged enough to absord the full power of the stim. 2610 divided by 28 charges is 93 credits per heal. What a steal! If you walk into a med center and get yourself healed for 1033 points of damage, you're certainly going to tip the Doctor more than 93 credits, aren't you?
Further, there's the cost of running the harvesters necessary to acquire the other resources required for this stim...
36 units of Lok wild wheat
36 units of Tatooine fiberplast
16
Wonderful. Stupid forums.
Continuing...
- 36 units of Lok wild wheat
- 36 units of Tatooine fiberplast
- 16 unts of Class 4 liquid petro fuel
- 6 units of Dantooine berries
- 6 units of Talus water
- 24 units of generic fiberplast
That's quite a bit of planet hopping, power, maintenance, vendor maintenance and factory power and maintenance that goes into crafting a stim. Not to mention the time required to fly all over the friggin' planet trying to find the necessary resources in sufficient quantity, and hoping they don't poof two hours after dropping the harvesters.
Sigh. Anyway, my opinion is that the prices you're recommending are way too high. I used to be a ranger, and sold hide fora mere 4 cpu. I made a fortune doing so -- more than enough to cover my travel, which was pretty much my only expense. I'd never consider selling resources higher than that, given my past history as a resource dealer. It was extremely profitable, even at 4 cpu. As a BE, I have no desire to pass your recommended prices to my customers.
mmaughme wrote:Sigh. Anyway, my opinion is that the prices you're recommending are way too high. I used to be a ranger, and sold hide for a mere 4 cpu. I made a fortune doing so -- more than enough to cover my travel, which was pretty much my only expense. I'd never consider selling resources higher than that, given my past history as a resource dealer. It was extremely profitable, even at 4 cpu. As a BE, I have no desire to pass your recommended prices to my customers.
Yeah and buffs used to cost 1000 instead of 6000 and there was no decay on items when dieing.. and weapons, powerups, spice and food were all cheaper. The bottom line is that in most cases, we don't set the prices, the buyers do. Resources are in demand and dedicated hunters are in short supply. That means the buyers are offering more to get what they need. These forums are plastered with people offering 2 to 3 times what even Volsted's guide recommends.
There is rampant inflation in this game, but the cost of resources is a symptom, not the cause. There is HUGE influx of money from running NPC and GCW faction missions and all the money comes from thin air. That makes money worth less, and that makes prices higher on everything.
I suppose that right now as a BE you are going to charge 75% less for the same pets as your competition? That's basically what you are asking us to do... take 25cents on the dollar of the going rate for organic resources.
mmaughme wrote:Personally, I feel these prices are absurd.
It would be interesting to see how many Rangers and Scouts are using my pricing guide successfully and generating return business and repeat customers.
All I know is: For an "absurd" pricing structure, it works exceptionally well for me. I have people clamoring for my organic resources, and are more than happy to pay the prices I ask. The market will [i]easily[/i] bear the prices I request; I am routinely offered a higher price by people who want to buy some large quantity of <x> that they know I'm offering to another party for my standard price. Emails of the "I know you're selling Endorian Wooly Hide to so-and-so for 15cpu, but I'll pay you 20cpu if you sell 'em to me instead" nature are reasonably common.
Therefore the prices are by definition not absurd.
Couple of thoughts from a crafter perspective(albeit one that have very little use for harvested resources)
Most of my goods, whether weapons or artisan items sell for between 15-30cpu, I believe most other crafting professions are in this same range some lower like Architects selling for around 5 cpu.
The harvesting cost of these goods I sell is around 0.25-0.5 cpu giving me a minimum 600% markup
With this in mind I could never justify paying upwards of 40 cpu for my resouces.
Applying your pricing structure to a crafters desired markup would require the crafter to charge 2400cpu!
Another consideration that Rangers need to make; you are selling to a select few individuals on each server, There aren't that many "big time" crafters on each server that can afford large orders of organics at 40cpu, and most of these crafters will likely already have a regular source of organics and may only need your services on an irregular basis at best.
I would think that small orders in the area of 1000-2000 units would be your bread and butter and I doubt these types of orders would command 40cpu.
Don't get me wrong, I think harvested resources and greavously underpriced now (you can get almost anything of high to low quality on bazaar for 3cpu on Lowca) (and while I'm at it resources that are mined by Artisans are grossly overpriced but that's another thread); but if I saw someone selling 75 units of anything on the bazaar for 3000 I would laugh my ass off.