Tailor Archive

YukonSam:
Buy and resell.

These are the only tools we've been given to combat market dumpers. Use them frequently. If you deny the enemy profit, experience and recognition, you can strangle them into irrelevancy.

An interesting tactic to say the least (and not the first time I’ve heard it either). And if you feel that’s what you need to do to survive then go ahead. Just a few things for your consideration…

When you buy my things, for whatever reason, you’re already giving me my profit. And once someone reaches Master Tailor experience isn’t going to matter either. And I get my recognition from person-to-person sales.

Also, every time you buy one of my items I get an email stating you did just that. Don’t you think that a light will go up in my head alerting me to what you’re doing? I might even contact you directly offering to make those things for you, bypassing the bazaar (or vendors) altogether. I’d absolutely love to have a steady customer like that.

And finally, are you certain you want to be a tailor, and not a merchant?

Bridik:
I think his/her spreadsheet is awesome, but I think dumping goods on the market hurts other players and s/he doesn't care.

Thank you Bridik for you compliments on the spreadsheet. I hope you’ll use it with the base prices you think are fair.

As to dumping goods, hurting players and not caring… I think those are all false assessments. I don’t think I’m dumping goods on the market, I think I’m charging a fair price for them. And I have no idea how someone can have so many tailoring costs that they feel that they need to charge 10k-20k for single items.

No, I think many players are overcharging and gouging. And while that might not hurt the tailoring profession directly (I can see that if people pay more for items that such can be considered good for the profession), I do think that it is hurting the game in general. I so remember from playing other games (for instance AO) that I went to stores to buy clothes and could even afford the simplest shirt because the prices were so ridiculously high. After a week playing I could buy a cheap outfit, but by then I was tired of trying. High clothing prices have been one of the reasons I left such games. For SWG I’d like to see people say: “All items in this game are ridiculously expensive, but at least clothes are very affordable”.

And I think that is only good for the game.

TripleDES:
I dont see why I should charge only 1870cr for a master tailor item.

I don’t see why you should either. But I don’t see why I should. If I can make a profit and have fun doing that, then why shouldn’t I? Just because people can pay more doesn’t mean that we have to force them to do it. Let them spend their money on armor, weapons, houses, etc. Why do you feel that as tailors we should act as the balancing force in the universe? I prefer to see us as providing the low-price items (since our costs are so much less than most of the other crafting professions).

Fawe:
On factory items I take the average cost of a factory crate (synthetic cloth) on my server (2200-2500) divide that by 25 and then remove my resrouce cost to get a factory cost time per item. I then charge that amount per factory Identical cloth (its about 40 credits). I based jewelry settings, shoe soles, trim, and metal fastners at 750 per crate (for a charge of 15, I didn't remove resrouce costs on this since I was doing 4 different items as 1).

I’m going to change the schematic to use number of identical components at least. But do you think I should make two columns, one for synth cloth and one for all the others? Making one for each of them will likely only bloat the spreadsheet even more than is needed, so I’m wondering now: two columns or is one good enough?

Fawe:
Your right, it is all about fun and about people liking your clothes.

One of the best experiences I’ve had was when I crafted some clothes for a newbie. When I was done he gave me all the credits he had (250cr) as payment. While I know it’s easy enough to get money (and he did too probably) that really touched me. I tipped everything back of course (calling it a ‘welcome to SWG’ gift ), but I’ll always remember that generous offer.

FamousJaney:
That is a very nice spreadsheet you have. It is apparent that you have worked very hard on it!

Thank you Janey. And liked working on it (or I wouldn’t have done it), so I’m glad that shows.

FamousJaney:
On your "Instructions" page, the words fall off the side of the page and i can't resize your column. So, either wrapping your text to fit, or changing your screen res to 800x600, which is probably overkill but at least safe, is probably a good idea.

Hmmm, I’m not certain how to make it wrap to screen size. But I can set it to 800x600 width. (I’m running at 1280x1024 and I’m certain it shows well at 1024x768 as well). But you should be able to resize the column. Perhaps you just need to remove the protection? I’ll change it in the next version anyway.

FamousJaney:
The only other suggestion I have is that in future versions, wipe your pricing clean before you post it. Why give yourself this headache..?

Well, I knew it would give some headaches, but I decided to post with my prices anyway for a couple of reasons:

- It shows an example in use, making it (hopefully) a little easier for people to understand how it works. Seeing a bunch of zeroes everywhere isn’t very informative.

- To get a discussion going. People could post their base prices and we could compare, perhaps improving on the calculations in the process. But instead people seem more interested on flaming than offering helpful suggestions. /shrug; Just shows how valuable their opinions are I think.

- In a hope that other tailor might see it and, out of laziness perhaps, would decide to adopt the prices so that we can get rid of the absurdly inflated clothing prices some hold to. I know it is ‘easier’ to charge a lot, getting a lot of money is very attractive to some people, but that doesn’t say it’s fair.

- For potential customers on my server to see my prices. Might even lead to more people coming to Rori to look me up.

And since I can well take some negative comments and flames I felt that the potential benefits outweighed the risks.

Anyway, changes coming for version 1.2:

- Change factory stack count column to identical item count (possible split into two columns).

- Change the width of the “Instructions” page to fit on 800x600 resolution.

- Add general and level-based multipliers.

- Add an “Order” page (this was the idea I talked about earlier). Select a number of items as well as how much of them and let this page calculate your total price. I’ve tried playing a bit with this and I can get this to work easily.

- I’m also thinking of adding some sort of ‘resource base-cost calculator’. Not completely certain how to do this, but thinking of adding something that calculates your based on expenses and resource income. Perhaps that’ll stop the price debates when people can actually see how much people are giving out.

Perhaps there’ll be some more changes, depending a little on if more people can start making positive suggestions.

- A. Kimusume

For the Order sheet:

It'd be really cool if in addition to giving you the price for multiple items (and maybe calculating a discount price), it gave you a materials list...so you'd know ahead of time how many fiberplast panels you'd need, how much crystalline gemstone, etc. Not sure if that's possible in a spreadsheet, but then, you seem to be pretty good with excel

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AyaneKimusume wrote:

When you buy my things, for whatever reason, you’re already giving me my profit.

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No, I'm inflicting an opportunity cost on you and profiting from your shortsightedness. That'll get you in the long run.

I'm a crafter at heart, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let kids with no understanding of business keep me from earning an honest living. Undercutting me is a declaration of war. I've done PvP, I fight dirty, and I play to win. You don't like it, stay out of my market.

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ReiAwakara wrote:
As someone stated, her prices are obviously going to be lower on a planet like Rori... low population, small market base.

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Yeah, well, fine. As long asit's not in my backyard, and on a seperate server to boot, it's not my problem.

It's just that I've just been out in the field for a long time (since nobody *gives* me hides) and I know what destroy missions pay. If we're charging fractions of that amount for our time investment, what does that say about our value as players compared to adventurers? If we give our wares away at the starport, besides really screwing over Artisans, what does that tell people about how much we value our skills, our craft and our time?

Is goodwill really so rare a commodity that we have to prostitute ourselves cheap to get it? Or are we just that needy of approval?

Charging high, roughly ten times what this spreadsheet indicates, I can make ends meet -- barely. Sometimes I have to do missions to subsidize, but that's okay. I've got no buffer - if the market dries up, my house, my harvesters, my vendor all crumble and blow away.

I'm not going to let that happen.

Jenny, I had already planned on putting in bulk discount as well. I just need to figure out the calculation for the discount.

The resource shopping list is a good idea and I’m quite certain that I can get that to work too. It will just be fairly complex seeing as I’d have to account for components as well. But I’ll see if I can get that working. I’m just a little afraid that it might bloat the thing a little.

YukonSam:
I'm a crafter at heart, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let kids with no understanding of business keep me from earning an honest living.

You mean like I’m trying to earn an honest living? I’m not undercutting you or any tailor specifically for that matter. I’m just charging what I think is a fair price. Which, for whatever reason, seems to be lower then what you’re charging. If you don’t like it that I’m charging lower prices for my wares then get out of my business.

ReiAwakara:
As for your prices, if you're having fun and making a profit why not sell at those prices?

My thought exactly.

ReiAwakara:
If she can't make a profit on her prices (according to you) she'll go out of business eventually... otherwise what's the problem?

I think what they fear is that if that would to happen that I’d keep the same prices and supplement that from other sources of income… i.e. by running missions. And if I keep those low prices by running missions that it’ll force them to do the same. Or even worse; that I might keep afloat in my way and that they’ll have to do missions to keep up with my prices.

YukonSam:
Charging high, roughly ten times what this spreadsheet indicates, I can make ends meet -- barely.

And I can make ends meet charging what I do. Why are your costs ten times higher than mine without getting ten times the return?

I do hope that I can get the resource cost calculation working, though I’m not certain yet how to approach a few of the details.

- A. Kimusume

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AyaneKimusume wrote:

YukonSam:
Charging high, roughly ten times what this spreadsheet indicates, I can make ends meet -- barely.

And I can make ends meet charging what I do. Why are your costs ten times higher than mine without getting ten times the return?

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Darlin', I got no earthly idea. I'm running five PHs and a small house. I get a gross daily income in the neighborhood of 6k per day if I keep everything stocked. 1500 of that goes to the wind harvester and 3000 to the other harvesters. House and vendor I don't know the exact rates on, but we'll call it around 1000/day combined. That's 5500 of my 6000, leaving me about 500 for travel, training and miscellaneous expenses.

That's why I've got Carbine 4/ Hunting 4: I can't afford to buy hides, so I take destroy missions and get my own hides, and hopefully enough spare cash to tide me over when sales are slow.

Compare and contrast with Architects at the same level of advancement, and Tailoring is just plain pathetic. My only goal in thinning out the market is to keep it from getting any more pathetic.

Thank you for creating this. It's very helpful.

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TripleDES wrote:
I'll be making sure that the next MMO I'll play will NOT have a player based economy, so that I dont get frustrated about stupid people.

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Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them stupid. Be fair.

I personally disagree with the super-cheap Tailors, and will always argue in favor of slightly higher pricing, but many of these folks have figured out their resource costs and aren't just pricing low on a whim. While I think that high level clothing should be high priced because it's more special and more of a status symbol, I realize not everyone agrees.

I think there is room for both the higher and lower priced tailors. For every customer who turns away from my shop because they can buy the same product at a lower price, there is another who is happy to pay my price because they think my time and expertise are worth what I charge. And since I'm making more profit, I don't need to sell as much to wind up with enough credits to travel, maintain structures, and take time off for other things.

Wow look at the capitilism in the forums.

I'm just a novice tailor with Tailoring I. I harvest all my own materials, I have rifle 3 and I go out on missions to pay for my harvestors/generators. Right now I have 3 harvestors and 2 generators, I am only using 2 of my harvesters the other is for a friend. I dump about 1k a day into each harvester/generator. Traslation, 5 paralope missions on talus. It takes me about 7-10 minutes to complete 2 paralope missions and get back to the city for 2 more missions. So I can pay for everything within a half hour of playing time. Now since I am just starting,up the tailor route, if someone asks me if I can make them something, If i have the materials I make it and give it to them for free. I really don't see the issue of making creds through tailoring until I hit the high level items which take huge amounts of resources. I figure I need 352k resources to hit master tailor, so I have a while till I have to worry about pricing.

As for the spreadsheet, I think it is great. I have been looking all over for something that tells me what components/level I need to have to make and item. It really helps when figuring out what I can make that will yield the most xp fastest. Keep up the good work . And just remember, your prices will never be as low as mine

The prices are so low, it's not even fair anymore.

Just an example from what I sold just minutes ago:

- Heavy Flightsuit
- Reinforced Pants
- Small Pocket Belt
- Panelled Boots

I'm using Niveas pricing sheet as orientation for my prices. The order would have been 20-21k. I offered it for 17k, the guy was more than OK. On ware exchange he tipped me 25k because he thought that'd be a better price for the items. So tell me, why is it so hard for these folks to get in into their head that people are pretty well willing to pay a lot? The guy payed 8k more JUST BECAUSE. Geez, seriously. "Fun" isn't a valid argument of deliberately ignoring the fact that people have LOTS of money.

I know exactly what you mean, I get tipped over what I ask for all the time. And that's exactly why I don't care if people are selling cheaper than me (as long as they don't try to do something rude like open a shop right next to mine). I can still charge my higher prices and still sell plenty ofitems.

Any customer whois so cheap that they don't want to pay me what my skills are worth is the kind of person I don't really want to deal with anyway.