Shipwright Archive
Thread: Need an honest 'guess' at your customer demographics...
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styx66
Tue Jan 04, 2005 9:32 am
#1
Sitting here thinking about factories and solutions... Thinking about what the devs have said (at least to me) about why shipwrights are factoryless - shipwright is thought of as more of a custom order personal interactive type crafter.
I have very little business like that. Mostly (and from what i can see of other shipwrights) i stock vendors and make some stuff for guildies and friends and myself. I have had my vendors on the map, a good name, a reputation, and an ad bark advertising i will do custom orders. On top of that my stuff is about the best you can find, as i use very high quality resources, and i sell at a very reasonable price.
I've watched foot traffic come and go, many buy things, some dont. I've never once gotten a tell or an email saying "I need a reactor with XXXX power but only XXXX mass" or something similar. Not one custom order...
So for me, my guess is that 90% of my sales are on the vendor with no interaction with the customer. The other 10 is from guildies who i mostly just recreate my cookie cutter stuff for anyway.
So my question is, primarily (whether you are for or against factories), what percentage of YOUR customer base is custom orders?
Please try to give an honest answer (i.e. if you are against factory support and are afraid to say you do 90% vendor sales). This is by no means a 'vote' or some deciding factor in to whether factory support is changed. It's just that if most of us are doing most of our business that way then thats not fitting in with the 'design'.
Message Edited by styx66 on 01-04-2005 08:36 AM
Chiwawa
Tue Jan 04, 2005 9:50 am
#2
I would say that about 80% of my sales are repeat customer drop in's. The rest are custom orders from those same people. I have as yet to decide how I feel about factorys, im easy to be honest.
TrueBoom
Tue Jan 04, 2005 9:58 am
#3
I sell most of my stuff from venders... well.. all of it really. I could do the occasional custom order if I want to, but I don't. I don't like being interrupted when I'm doing other things. But even if I were to take those orders, they'd probably account for as much as 4-5% of my total sales. A really miniscule amount.
FlereImsaho
Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:10 am
#4
The only "tailored" request I have had has been for components which consider reactor drain rather than mass (YT1300/Decimator). I pilot myself so I have also crafted to get just under a mass limit n' used other exp points elsewhere. Pilots are still spoiled by the initial loot drop overkill and feel no need to fine tune their ships to the degree of generating SW custom orders. I have a TIE Advanced which tears through anything short of a high tier gunboat so although it only has 65k mass it still has 3k spare (inc booster, 2 weapons, micro-chaff counter-measure n' the other necessities).
Rgds.
Rgds.
Doo-Boo
Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:19 am
#5
95% of my business is through vendor now. I will custom order chassis for people when they ask. Also, the few custom orders that people have requested have resulted in a huge time loss for me as the players end up saying thanks but I'm doing something else now.
Hand crafting is still the way to go!
Hand crafting is still the way to go!
Bastilaa
Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:41 am
#7
Since JTL went live, I have handcrafted over 60,000 parts (at a guess) and used over 80 million resources, and out of all that I have had 3 custom orders, the rest has all been vendor sales, I keep 25 of every item in stock and simply spend 2 evenings a week crafting what I have sold that week, basically being my own factory.
The devs view of what Shipwright was supposed to be is a far cry from what it has become. The idea of lots of SW's on line doing handcrafted custom orders simply put does not work as most people prefer the drop by a vendor and look shopping method. The only custom orders I have received have been for low mass items when someone can not find either a looted or crafted one low enough to fit. Personally I like the lack of factory support it keeps SW from becoming just another crafting profession.
Scythykins
Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:50 am
#8
Back in the weeks right after launch, I would say it was about 90% Custom, only because I couldn't craft fast enough to even consider keeping vendors stocked. Except from guildies asking for ships that just happened to run out of stock, I haven't had a custom ship order in quite some time, but the stuff flies off the vendors. Please though, stop mulling factory support over! It's the only thing that holds this promising profession from being another resource drain for minimal profit like architect.
Kalano
Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:50 am
#9
Not to try to buck your post but, how long have we been playing SWG? I find myself and people pretty much in generalare creatures of habit. So, whats on the vendor is what we get, unless you got krayt scales or and extra mill of creds burning a whole in your pocket
So, there is are a few probabilities that might be why the custom orders don't happen.
1. Most custom jobs, like composite and kyrat weapons, are very very expesive compaired to the lesser powered versions.
2. I myself am still figuring out what i want, how to put in, and what can be done with my own ship. Its expensive to really buy a lot of parts to find out what will fit and what won't.
3. Players are also creatures of habit, we go to vendor, looks what is there, buy if we see something we wantandlike the price. If we are educated on the options, we then make custom orders when we are unable to find the item were are desperate for.
4. We still have several parts we cannot produce at all anywhere well enough to compete with just plain loot drop. So, who wants to get a custom job when you hunt down some filler loot to get the one loot item wanting to reverse.
I still love the lack of factory support. Infact, if all the crafting professions when that way, it might actually get players to start doing custom orders more do to that all the pros are this way. Like i said, we are creatures of habit that are ignorent to the new possibilities and just need some education on what we can have. Its been way to long that we been feed that x item is the way to go. I strongly suggest putting a lot of the info we have on what we can and can't create over on the pilots forum and maybe they will start thinking of what they want and don't want in there ships.
I don't get any orders yet sense i am grinding the slow way.But i been a crafter since the game has been in existance. But a crafting revamp might truly change the way we all think. Or the last possibility is that, you stock your vendors with just the right varieties that pilots have no need to ask for special builds.
lexington23
Tue Jan 04, 2005 12:29 pm
#10
I started SW on day one. Had my vendor set up by the bagining of the 3rd week. I have an add in my shop offering custom orders and my droid barks it too. No one has asked me for custom items yet. I sell about 3 or 4 chassi a week now and about 40-50 components a week. People come in, look at the vendor, and buy. They rarely even ask me questions.
Subcriminal
Tue Jan 04, 2005 4:38 pm
#11
Most of my business is off my vendors (30-40% repeat customers and climbing). However, I really make a huge effort to carry different types of products with varying mass- specially armor. I've gotten a few custom requests for weapons/countermeasures/armorfrom customers who have a very strict mass budget to work with. But I also get requests from people who are doing a whole ship upgrade (after getting new chassis)and theyjust want me to outfit their brand new ship, this way they don't have to go to 100 different shops to get their new ship off the ground. I also vaguely remember being asked to make a custom engine with more P/Y/R than speed.
I'm very much against factory support for shipwrights. I think that subcomponent support is enough.
Message Edited by Subcriminal on 01-04-2005 06:40 PM
Rogue1970
Tue Jan 04, 2005 5:11 pm
#12
The first week or so of JTL, I was all about custom stuff - now I haven't had a request or order for custom parts in over a month.
Basically I just learned what everyone needed and what works in which ships and reproduced those parts, offering 2-5 flavors of each part on my vendors.
At this point, hand crafting is becomming a burnout chore, and I dread restocking some days. We fight against the SWs who are selling parts at cost (1-5cpu), knowing they'll burnout quick. We are dealing with lowering our prices to compensate for the lack of money coming into the economy ala solo group changes. Hand crafting is just another burden at this point.
If I were to suggest a 'phase-in' of factory support - I'd say start with Armor for now. It makes sense to turn this item into another consumable item, as thats what it is - consumable. It decays so quickly it becomes devalued quickly - a reduction in resources used for armor would also be prudent. Being able to sell crates of armor would be very pleasing to both the customer and us - inventory wise.
Adding factory support will also REDUCE the prices our customers would have to pay or that we could charge for HIGH quality items, as supply would skyrocket, forcing price declines - so this is a double edged sword - but our markup is not exactly very high anyway compared to other crafting professions. Maybe pricing wouldn't be hurt that much, but it needs to be discussed.
Also, the ZERO Decay for PvP is really killing our market, it needs to come back - at least at 50% decay. There is zero penalty for dieing right now - is that fair to the game or us?
Rogue1970
Tue Jan 04, 2005 5:18 pm
#13
Eaca wrote:
Since your profession, with its myrad of upgrade options, is quite unlike any other profession, its likely your customers don't know what options exist in order to make a educated custom order. Perhaps if you setup a vendor or some sort of display, showing all the available upgrades, as well as a few "base models" of all the parts, without an upgrade, people would be able to see what thier possibilities are, and actually be able to custom order.
Your opinion is apprecaited, but I see you are not a crafter. 
This is a game, and people want instant gratification usually - they would rather spend hours looking at vendors for the part they want instead of waiting a day or two to get the part custom built. Even with the multitude of differences in our various parts, there are still only a few combinations in the end that our customers want.
Many of our 'upgrades' are completely worthless too. As an example - we have these upgrades that reduce the mass of armor but they also reduce the effectiveness of the armor at the same time. Using one will make the armor lighter yes, but it also reduces the effectiveness of the armor so much - you'd be better off buying a MUCH chepaer un-upgraded lowerlevel armor instead - which would have the same effectiveness and less than half the mass of the upgraded higher level armor.
Those that do custom order are ready to wait - but thats the issue, less than 1% of the playerbase has the patience to wait. So, we just stock what everyone custom orders anyway.
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