Scout Archive
Thread: Stop Giving Away Your Harvests!
jmatt wrote:
Okay, I took a look at some Armorer schematics and have made a rather startling discovery.
As an example, on my server with its current pricing structure, an Ubese armor jacket sells for about 7900cr.
Know what the cost is? 1770cr.And I made that calculation by figuring all mineral resource needs at 3cr per and all hides at 10cr per, which is definitely higher than what these guys pay in bulk.
That's a430% profit! So the next time a crafter tells you that 30 cr hide is a ridiculous amount and that he'll just go out and get his own, let him.
When he tells you that paying that much will drive up armor prices, don't believe it. You could charge 50cr per hide and he'd still be making a fortune. It only takes 50 leathery and 30 wooly take make the Ubese jacket in my example.
Stop giving away your harvests at bargain basement prices. We should be charging 30cr per hide, at least, for anything with even a smidgen of quality.
I say we all stop selling hide, meat and bones for a week or two and see just how many crafters decide to spend endless hours in the field, gathering their own.
Ok ok.... you've convinced me. But I will still only charge my friends/guildmates less.
Japhy_Chilastra wrote:
When calculating how much an item costs, you have to figure in a little for vendor maint now and their initial investment for grinding material which will vary depending on the self made merchant and the PA made merchant.
Exactly! Quite a few smiths have tons of contacts, a steady PA, and are making a killing. Many are small-time crafters, though, and the situation is a bit different.
You have to take into account the price of the harvesters (at minimum, 1k per personal mineral a day... and most maintain at least four). In addition, there is the energy to run the harvesters, the factories, agreements with tailors for components, travel costs to find the higher quality resources... and I see the higher quality resources going for much more than 3 credits/unit. Of course, each server has its own economy, too.
I do believe quite a few are making a killing, but I know quite a few small-time artisans that struggle to stay in the black.
Selling hides/bones that are just grind-quality for 3 or 4 credits/per seems very reasonable.. As does 10 cr/unit for the mid-level, and more for the highest, rarest quality hides. 
A beginning scout doesn't know much about hide quality. Heck, I didn't really understand what was going on until I was really close to Master Scout. They tend not to provide materials in bulk, thus is good for the beginning artist. Their prices are low and that helps maintain that level of artist.
As the artist improves, they need larger amounts of very specific materials. This calls for a more advanced scout or ranger who can fulfill their needs. Their prices can increase and that's a different level of the market.
On a developed system, the tiers can be quite numerous. I think there's life in this game for the high priced, high quality, high volume ranger and the low priced, varying quality, low volume ranger.
On a side note, I just purchased some crappy bone from a scout because I needed bone and I've been spending my time with getting hides and meat in large quantities. It was two 200+ batches. He wanted to throw in another 19 bone he got, but I said it wasn't useful since the minimum amount I needed was 20. He then looked at the OQ of it (I'm not sure he ever really looked at it before) and he noticed it was quite good! I told him to keep it and I tipped him extra since he came to me. I think there is room for players like that in the game and players like me.
OK, you want to hear about this from crafters, particularly armorsmiths. Well, I'm NOT one, but a friend of mine who doesn't read the board is so... here goes.
Armors are crafted from multiple components, any one of those components can critical fail on creation or can suffer a critical failure experimentation, resulting in no product, and lost resources. Sure, they COULD use the bad segments, but then you'd have really really bad armor.... not a very good thing for an armorsmith who is looking to keep customers.
Pricing is more than a simple number of resources to cost per resource ratio. If an armorsmith wants to maintain a certain level of sales, meaning SLOW enough sales that they aren't constantly grinding to keep their vendor stocked, prices will go up. Then you have vendor fees, house maintainance, etc. And ranger materials aren't the only materials needed for the creation of armor. There are fees to harvesters, travel fees to the best resources (similar to ranger travel fees mentionedto Endor, and you can get just as good quality hide/bone on cheaper planets.... harder to kill does not always equal better quality resources), payments to master Tailors (if they aren't one themselves) for high quality reinforced synthetic cloth, and more.
In order for someone to profit, they have to cover -all- operating costs, so driving up the cost of hide/bone to armorsmiths is not exactly the way to go. At least, not as high as you are suggesting. Part of the reason crafters are so rich is because the FIGHTERS are so rich due to various exploits that people have taken advantage of time and time again. Sure, some of those rich fighters did it the right way, but many of them did not, no flames on that particular comment, it's just the way it is.
Crafters get their money second hand. Someone had to be making that money to give to them, so the real rich guys are the ones that had the cash to fork it over in the first place. /grin Anyway... that's enough on some basic economics on Armorsmithing. Next time, try to remember the other aspects of an industry, and not just the part that you (as a Ranger) have an impact on. You're just one factor of many.
I have two characters I play. One, is a tailor, and she'll never pay more than 3cr a unit on hides. Why? Because tailors have 3 grinding items, and the best one, cloaks, take 50 hides a pop. She can go through a 10k stack of hides in an hour, easy, providing she has the needed 60 units of fiberplast for that. After you get Casual Wear III, and you're trying to grind your way to Master, because every 3rd person who asks you for clothing asks for some item or some colour you can't make yet. Grinding is a very, very expensive process, and most Master crafters overprice their items to make up for it. Granted, you don't *have* to grind to get to Master, but it gets rather annoying to say, "I can't make that, yet." And in reality, most people will happily pay 9-10k for a Master Tailor item, when in reality it costs only 2k to make. The rest is the compensation for the agony that the crafter went through to get to their Master statis (carpal tunnel syndrome from the constant crafting), dealing with customers, and if they play a pure crafter like I do (no combat skills) the abuse nature puts on you to go check your harvesters. I don't know how many times I've died running the extra 200m to check on my extractors.
On the flip side, I play a Ranger who is Frontiering IV away from Master...and won't sell hides for less than 5cr per, and normally at 7-10cr per. There is no mercy for those cheap **edit** crafters. =P
And even if you did try to raise the price...ANY crafter will tell you...there's always someone out there willing to undercut you. So it's kind of a moot point. You have to base your prices off of what people are willing to pay, not from what they make off of their items.
~Casslyn
Reality check:
Three days ago on my server was a thread suggesting that resource sellers were 'on crack' for asking 30cr per for quality hides.
Today I saw a thread offering 40 per. In a week from now it'll probably be 50.
Nuff said. Stop giving it away and you'll stop being poor.
geez i dont even sell mine i think that just giving back to the community is enough pay
The Green Party has spoken! 
I usually let creatures kill me when in battle, it just doesn't seem fair to stay alive.
Okay, I took a look at some Armorer schematics and have made a rather startling discovery.
As an example, on my server with its current pricing structure, an Ubese armor jacket sells for about 7900cr.
Know what the cost is? 1770cr.And I made that calculation by figuring all mineral resource needs at 3cr per and all hides at 10cr per, which is definitely higher than what these guys pay in bulk.
That's a430% profit! So the next time a crafter tells you that 30 cr hide is a ridiculous amount and that he'll just go out and get his own, let him.
When he tells you that paying that much will drive up armor prices, don't believe it. You could charge 50cr per hide and he'd still be making a fortune. It only takes 50 leathery and 30 wooly take make the Ubese jacket in my example.
Stop giving away your harvests at bargain basement prices. We should be charging 30cr per hide, at least, for anything with even a smidgen of quality.
I say we all stop selling hide, meat and bones for a week or two and see just how many crafters decide to spend endless hours in the field, gathering their own.
Right bloody on! Yes! You nailed it mate. The master crafters are all millionaires and yet scream and shot that they pay too much for resources.
We need to raise the antee on this whole economy by not allowing the few to become filthy rich.
No more bazaare selling of your resources unless its something like 100 wooly hides for 3000 cr.
We're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
True capitilism works.................honest.
Oh, you still have enough hides to make camps?
Usually I just sit there.
I'm too stubborn to put up a basic camp kit when I used to drop HTFBs anytime I wanted.
-- YP
Give them back? Let me have them, jeez.
I have not been able to sell ANY resources. Between getting less, keeping my traps stalked, making a camp now and then, making camo kits, and the increase in needed resources to make all the above.......................
I DON'T HAVE ANY SURPLUS HIDES,BONES MEAT FOR THE BAZAAR!!