Ranger Archive

Speaking as an armorsmith, anything other than leathery and wooly hide is not really something that we buy, at least not in volume. Theese 2 are the only animal resources that go into Ubese and Composite armors, and those two kinds of armor are the only ones in high demand. Any bone orhide other than wooly and leathery will either be used by someone trying to gain XP or to fill some special order by someone who wants a special suit of armor just for the looks of it (the suits dont offer anycomparable protection no matter what quality resources you use to make them), and in both of those cases I think people will go for price over quality.

I also dont think you need to worry much about the UT and MA ratings. The UT is completely ignored, and the MA is only used to tip the scale if you happen to have two kinds of hide available with almost identical SR+OQ totals. You could probably alter your formula for determining the quality of hides for armor purposes to (2(OQ+SR)+MA)/5 or something. The reason for this is that our customers primarily wants the highest possible protection rating on armors, and because of that the armorsmith will choose his materials and spend his experimentation points to achieve this.

I think that the thing to keep in mind is that this guide is just that.. a guide. This was carefully put together using empirial knowledge.

Resources ARE selling for these prices.... the numbers weren't just pulled out of thin air. And in fact, these numbers, at least on Flurry would be considered a starting point. For the most part, I use this guide when I want to know what something should be worth, but in reality, I am always being bombarded with orders from Doctors, Armorsmiths, BE's and CM's for resources and THEY are the ones setting the prices.. and they are setting them as much as 3 times as high as the prices I would be setting using this guide.

Why on earth would they be doing that?
I'll tell you why... there is a huge demand for the resources, there's not a lot of people how exclusively gather organic resources, and whatever they are selling after using these resources is STILL profitable for them after paying those prices. Supply and Demand. Its that simple.

I take exception to those folks that would declare we as hunters are "price-gouging" our customers when in fact, its the customer in virtually every transaction that has set the price. If a doctor is offering 50cpu for Avian meat publicly... what am I going to do? Sell it for 5cpu on the principle of controlling inflation? Get real.

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Ybagi wrote:

Touchy, touchy

I'll tell you where we are headed with this thinking;

Raw goods providers(rangers and scouts) collect some meat, get a big payday from a hardcore gamer that has more money than they know what to do with, now this is the price that will be become the expectation/starting point for all future deals, "anything less isn't worth my time"(lol if your time is so valuable go make some real money, there is more to this game than credits; adventure anyone?)

Now the market is forced to meet this price in order to compete, and here's the big one... prices of finished goods increase.

Why is this bad? I have lots of money, I just sold a tonne of hide for a sweet 50cpu!!!

Why this is bad is for all the new players/casual players that don't have the cash or means to make a decent amout of credit to pay for these inflated goods.

and guess what no new players staying and casual players quitting will result in the inevitable end of this game.

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I didn't mean to sound touchy. But the fact is..


This is a common misconception. Prices are not driven up by the costs of the resources, costs are DRAGGED up by all the cash being thrown around. Demand is king. Its more like this...

Joe Imp runs NPC and faction missions and makes a million dollars. Then he goes to his armorsmith and ....

Joe Imp: "Hey, I want a really l33t set of compo. I want to be Uber. I am tired of being pwned in PvP."

ArmorSmith: "Well I have some really nice sets here.. take your pick."

Joe Imp: "Thats the same stuff everyone has.. I want something BETTER than what everyone else has. Make me a custom set thats better and I will pay you 300,000 for it instead of your usual 100,000. I don't care about cost... I can make millions of credits by running missions."

ArmorSmith: "Hey you hunters, I need some hi qual wooly, not that stuff you gave me last time, I need to make some really really good armor for a special customer."

Hunters: "Yeah, but we are hunting this Herb meat some doctor wants us to get. He is paying us 5cpu!"

Armorsmith: "Screw that guy... I need some hunters. I will pay you 10cpu to go and find and harvest me some wooly hide so I can make lots of money selling this armor."

Meanwhile, back at Impville USA ...

John Imp: "Hey I really need some good armor. Anybody know where I can get some?"

Joe Imp: "I got some guy making me nice stuff. Just offer him a pile of this profuse amount cash we got from running these missions. He will make you whatever you want."

John Imp: "Hey ArmorDude, I want to buy some of that armor Joe got from you for me and everyone in my guild."

Armorsmith: "Well, I am in the middle of making a nice variety of things to put on my vendors. Armors of all types and prices so that everyone in the game can enjoy and afford a nice set of armor."

John Imp: "Screw that... here is 5 million credits, don't waste your time making any of that crap stuff. Just make the good stuff and we will buy it all from you. Better give us 3 times as many sets of armor so we can hope for an encumbrance slice."

Armorsmith: "Hey you, HunterDudes.. I need some more of that top notch wooly."

Hunters: "Sorry but we are hunting this herb and avian meat. Doctors raised their prices to 15cpu so we would hunt this instead of the good hide that is dropping."


Armorsmith: "Screw those guys... There ain't enough hunters to go around.. I will pay you 20cpu to get me that wooly hide."

blah blah blah and so on and so on...


I don't know if the chicken or the egg came first.. but I know for sure that demand must be present before supply is an issue.

Inflation is rampant in this game, but its due to fact that there is so much money being thrown around that its value is dramatically reduced, not because "greedy hunters" are trying to get rich... at least not any more so than "greedy armorsmiths" or "greedy doctors".

Well, here's a price check for you. Some Lokian avian meat on Starsider was recently an average quality of 900 for a doctor's use (that's factoring in % of importance for the used stats). That stuff was going for 90cpu, easy.

At the same time the Rori wooly hide was a lower quality level (something like 780 average) and selling for 25cpu.

At first, I used this guide to price products. It's fantastic in theory. In practice, demand outstrips supply by about 20:1, even for crap products. I used to sell crates of traps and camps to people, pricing it all at 6cpu based on resource usage. But I could buy bad quality bone and hide for 3cpu. Now, if you can get it for 6 you're lucky, and no one wants to sacrifice crafting XP for ease of use if they're paying 3K for a crate of wire mesh traps.

Either Rangers need to be able to harvest a lot more than they are now, or harvests need to be boosted across the board.

It's possible to use this guide and multiply the end result by a number which will put you more in line with your server's pricing.

Great guide, very informative. Good Job.

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NightBlaze wrote:

First thing first this priceing guide kicks ass, although i am haveing a little trobble getting my head around it.

Volsted would you happen to have an excell docco with all of this worked out on it, if you do could u share it plz, if its not too much trobble, would make life a lot easier for thoes of us who arn't so good at maths.

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Look back through this thread a bit and you'll find a link to both an HTML version and an Excel version of the price guide.

I use an easy schematic for pricing.

I hunt as much as I can get from topnotch stuff, sell all the PA wants for low prices to the crafters in the PA and the leftovers are sold to the best offer I can find on the boards (which is usually TOTALLY insane high, like the 150cpu some guy offered for in-shift corellian wooly hide on the eclipse galaxy trade yesterday).

Message Edited by NRaas on 02-11-2004 04:06 PM