Smuggler Archive
Thread: Brother Smugglers: How to give sliced items the status they *need*
JTGAlpha wrote:
Well, my question is, what do relatively unknown, starport spammers (but career smugglers-just uber casual players) like myself do when YOU guys who HAVE a clientelle and the clout to support 15k slices, but slicers like me who do it for 2k because there's always a master around doing it for more (and I need to account for why me and not him)? I'm still 150k in pistol xp from master.
First and foremost...If you want help getting XP ... hit me up in game and I will go out and help you. The Pistol XP sucked for me and took forever.
Second, you should encourage the price increases even if it hurts you in the short term ... because when you get to the Master Smuggler level ... it will just help you exponentially and all of your current customers will probably stay with you because they trust you.
Effective Immediately: My slicing prices are $400credits per %. Discounted to members of the CA and TS guilds ... and free slices to Kayyla.
I will do this for at least the next 30 days. I would encourage all other smugglers to increase accordingly... if this catches on it will help everyone.
Message Edited by Geevo on 03-23-2004 03:13 PM
Geevo wrote:
Effective Immediately: My slicing prices are $500 credits per %. Discounted to members of the CA and TS guilds ... and free slices to Kayyla.
I will do this for at least the next 30 days. I would encourage all other smugglers to increase accordingly... if this catches on it will help everyone.
I do not charge per %. I do not mind aising my prices, but I will not go back to a per % rate. A flat 10k or 12k per slice would be fine by me. Heck, I'd go up to 15k if i knew people would pay.
im only slicing 4 yet, but i think this is a good idea, one way to make it work, and to make sure that slicing 2 + 3 go against it is to stop selling molclamps on open vendors and keep them on "private" vendors where only slicing 4 and master smugglers are alowed to use em.
im totally behind the idea of consorting on slicing prices the fact that players are willing to pay, 10k for buffs, 300k for armor and 40k + for weapons, they should be willing to pay more for slices. I mean seriously buff`s is a stat improvement for 3hours we improve the weapon for as long as its used.
If you haven't made Master yet, scale your charges appropriately, Masters are charging 15k? Charge 10k, but hold your resolve, Even in the face of holo-smugglers, as they will be grinding something new tommorrow, and it's the career smuggler that get the bulk of return business.
Will charging higher prices help reduce the perception of sliced items as a commodity?
Not much, if at all, but it will make it damn more profitable than it is currently.
People pay 10-12k+ for a temporary buff that will last them 2-3 hrs tops, we provide a weapon/armor buff that last 2-3 weeks+ and charge 2-3k? Madness, and it is this cheap & cheerful, slice-monkey attitude that to a degree Smugglers themselves have helped the playerbase to form..
If doing so cuts off sliced items to the newbie player, then so be it, they shouldn't be using sliced goods in the post-crackdown SWG anyway.
Most smugglers are probably dying to raise slicing prices but are scared to because of fear of being undercut, given the average playerbase mentality I think this is backwards, most Smugglers are likely to capitalize by raising there pricing to a level just under yours - They've still undercut you, but helped increase the market value.
I'd be interested to see how such an experiment worked, if the price of slicing rises, I'll think about slicing for others again. As it is I'd rather just slice for myself.
Ryutek wrote:
Geevo wrote:
Effective Immediately: My slicing prices are $500 credits per %. Discounted to members of the CA and TS guilds ... and free slices to Kayyla.
I will do this for at least the next 30 days. I would encourage all other smugglers to increase accordingly... if this catches on it will help everyone.
I do not charge per %. I do not mind aising my prices, but I will not go back to a per % rate. A flat 10k or 12k per slice would be fine by me. Heck, I'd go up to 15k if i knew people would pay.
I also lowered it to $400/% ... the reason I did this is that for lower % slices it would be less expensive than my current flat rate of $5k/slice. I thought it would be an easier sell to the customer base.
My plan is that in the future after they grow accustomed to the higher prices is to change back to a fixed rate price that is a bit higher than the average (hence a 2nd rate increase that they don't catch quite so easily).
It doesn't look it. Making a 500% price increase never will, but we are providing slices that are worth a fortune. I've seen the price hike on pre-sliced armor and weapons, and it's more than this.
That said, I don't advertise slicing, but I am searchable. We'll see how it works.
But I've taken *my* stand on Chimaera.
if we all strike?
some smugglers make all there money from slicing (not me) and all they are are just smugglers.
Since smugglers can t get good missions without getting a littler pistoleer or what ever striking would not be good for the little guys. raising prices would hurt them also. Drug sales on Val server have droped to almost nothing. I sell about 4 indevidual M. golds a day. Not a single crate has ben sold on the bazarr or my vendor for over a week. Also I dont get many tell for sliceing mabye 3 a week if Im lucky. the crackdown and revamped chef has taken over smuggling from my observation on the VAL server. Other people on other servers say diferent things.
HEGEWIZARD wrote:
if we all strike?
some smugglers make all there money from slicing (not me) and all they are are just smugglers.
Since smugglers can t get good missions without getting a littler pistoleer or what ever striking would not be good for the little guys. raising prices would hurt them also. Drug sales on Val server have droped to almost nothing. I sell about 4 indevidual M. golds a day. Not a single crate has ben sold on the bazarr or my vendor for over a week. Also I dont get many tell for sliceing mabye 3 a week if Im lucky. the crackdown and revamped chef has taken over smuggling from my observation on the VAL server. Other people on other servers say diferent things.
Message Edited by Geevo on 03-23-2004 05:30 PM