Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: over saturation of rare weapons
Hey everyone. I'm not a weaponsmith, I'm a commando, and all I've got to say is more power to you! This has been a buyers market the past 3-4 weeks. Prices are dropping and quality is going up. I do have to agree with a few things said earlier in this thread. 1. There are going to be too many master weaponsmiths around and the economy is not going to be able to support them all. 2. The ones that will survive will be the ones that already have a solid customer base NOW. I already have my personal armor and weaponsmiths. I'm not planning on going to any new one that shows up and starts shouting around town to come to their shop. As long as I keep getting quality weapons I won't be taking my business elsewhere anytime soon. So I wish that everyone who wanted to be a weaponsmith could be a master and have a very successful shop. But that sad truth is that there won't be enough buyers to go around for everyone.
Solo4114 wrote:
Something that was discussed earlier was the eventual forgetting of certain schematics/components from higher level crafters. IE: masters can no longer make DL44s or what have you. This would help create interdependency in the profession, for one, and ultimately help create a true tiered market for the consumers. You wouldn't go to a master to get a D18 -- only a novice could make that. Want a scout blaster? Better go to a Firearms 1 player. Only they can make it. Want that DX2? Better talk to a master. Only they can make it. Alternatively, components at firearms 1 would no longer be craftable at firearms 3, thereby creating a market for both master-crafted or expert-crafted components in the downward market, and for lower-level crafted components going up the food chain.
Schematic revocation, the way the profession was designed to work. I wish they fixed it in beta instead of just scrapping it.
/sigh
And part of the reason prices MUST be undercut my newer masters is because of all the people saying "I've got my weaponsmith why should I buy something for you?" They totally ignore the fact that you can make a weapon just as good as the person they normally go to. The thinking I see often on my servers board is the old masters must be better than the newer masters. Resources aside people think the first masters have some majic formula to miraculously make better weapons than anyone else.
Well, when I was a pure consumer I never believed that the masters were better than each other by virtue of primacy. I just figured that some masters had better guns than others, and some sold 'em cheaper than others. So I went to whoever gave me the most bang for my buck. Service counts, too, but only insofar as I'm actually interacting with the WS.
Unfortunately, even WITH schematic revocation, the problem wouldn't be completely solved. There'd still be the issue of having to max out the Techniques tree in order to compete even at the lower levels, because of experimentation and assembly points being housed there. I'd say scrap the Tech tree and assembly benefits, keep experimentation constant (after all, it's experimenting, so it'll still keep things relatively random), and leave it as a purely schematic based situation. Masters should be able to produce DIFFERENT goods from other smiths, not better versions of what everyone else can make. That just leads to the situation we have now: market saturation of equal quality goods.
Sooner or later, the only difference will be who has the best resources. And with the way resources shift randomly, you'll never be able to hold your edge in that regard. This is why I'm going to be a small-scale operation that does personal service and custom guns, as opposed to mass-produced guns. Working that way, I'll be able to keep my overhead low, use smaller quantities of the best resources I can find, and will be able to afford to maintain my smaller harvesters. I won't NEED tons of resources because I won't USE tons of resources. That said, though, I'm still gonna have to grind to hit master. There's just no way to even enter the market, really, without doing so. Kind of makes the whole profession a joke, when you get down to it.
"I'm a MASTER Weaponsmith! HA!"
"So? I am too. So's that guy over there, his brother, and their two cousins."
"Hey, what about me, I'm not a master yet."
"Well, then you're really only an soon-to-be master, once you get your grinding macro worked out and accumulate enough resources. Just make a ton of PRBs. You'll get there."
Is this really what SOE envisioned?
Solen80 wrote:
Hey guys, i'm not a master weaponsmith or anything, but what has happened with the architecture profession is that the master architects have taken architects that are not masters in, and are having them craft components for them for money.
I don't know if you can apply this to the weaponsmith profession, but i am just putting this info out there in case there are craftable items that the non-master weaponsmiths can make for the masters.
there isnt, every subcomponent we make (barrels, powerhanders, scopes) all HIGHLY depend on experimentation to get "UR BEST BANG BANG" into the hands of the illiterate class in SWG. So every step of the way the difference between master and expert is 3 experimentation points which amouts to as much as 30% and thats from EXPERT, nevermind those that werent intelligent enough to grind to techniques4 before going beyond firearms1. The only solution is as masters to price our stuff high. The problem is new masters are being idiots about the whole thing and are trying to undecut the market by 50%.
Ove I completely understand your situation but the people who are killing you are the EXACT same people complaining about the EXACT same thing 2 months ago. Now suddenly they dont CARE about the novices and are charging 3k instead of what they should charge 10k on. If they would just keep the price up and actually MARKET their wares you would still be selling and the would still be making a profit.
But dont worry , lower prices only means 1 thing, they will run out of the really great resources 4 times faster. When they run out of the resources for ABPH's and have to make lesser ones (if they can even get new resources) then their whole attempt to corner the market is over. Its absolutely retarted to try to play price wars when the customers sit on 5 million credits. Consider they pay 5k for 2hrs of stat buffs, something that last far less than your 3k gun that should cost 10k or more as master.
I recently helped a new master get back on track with his pricing, he was charging 500 credits for a laser rifle. No i didnt forget a zero that read Five Hundred credits. He didnt do any research, he ground straight to master even before thinking of opening a shop. Whats worse was he couldnt sell his wares at200 credits because people suspected there was something wrong with them so he discounted them to 500. What do you think that does to non-masters. Soemtimes people tend to forget about other players in their comunity.
I have people see me (i actually keep my title on) wanting me to make htem a reinforced combat staff etc, total noobs. I insist they go to a artisan because I want artisans to have some income, theres no reason why I should take his profit. The same holds true as to why I wont make powerups. The only exception is if im looking for a modifier noone is making. Otherwise I do my best to avoid this whole situation. Instead of new masters trying to undercutt everyone to get business they should simply sell powerups.
My vendors are in the same store as a master architect who specializes in furniture. We both experience plenty of cross sales where they went in for one thing, came out buying plenty of everything else.
".......thats the difference in being master and not being master........"
absolutely not.situation at handis what happens when supply exceeds the demand. a factory can pop up 100 weapons in 2 hours. lets say counting in the subparts you can make 100 weps in 8 hours. so, thats 100 hours per a day's playing time.
WHERE is the market for that ? you buy a good weapon and use it at least 1-2 weeks. if you get it repaired, even more.
even if you are master or expert or novice, that makes no difference in terms of the minimality of market demand. being a master enables you take a small portion of what market there is, and being a novice means you will be able to make 10 k credits in 2 days' playing time.
1.5-2 week ago a 2.6 spd scatter pistol was selling for 12 k. nowadays 2.4 s or lower sell for 8 k, and the seller master ws es have tons waiting to be sold. theres an over supply of weapons, and some weapon buying players have begun to show tendency to use the weapons until it is 10 durability or so and throw them away, because weapons are easy to be found and very cheap. they dont even feel the need to get it repaired and use it more.
what should we do ? should we demand faster decay for weps ? no illogical. whatever the decay rate is it cant be more than a foodstuff's decay, and even this wont be enough.
as a matter of fact source of the problem is clear. factories produce too fast. for every profession they create an over supply of finished products. there isnt enough market for great percentage of them. i might venture far as to say that maybe 10-20 weaponsmiths alone could supply all the weapon needs for any server.
The solution is actually quite simple. We have too many weaponsmiths and the economy is too rich, money for most, is not a problem. Soooooooo...the way I see it is drastically reduce the durability of weapons! This way everyone has to come back for more! Mosts weapons now last way too long. Just my 2 cents
The problem is not PURELY a supply-side problem. Yes, there are more and more masters, and in order to get business, they'll cut prices. That's natural, and that's what most people will do if they want to maintain a particular preconceived level of income. Other folks will say "Screw it. I'm just going to accept that I'll make fewer guns and less money at the same time and do other things with my time." But ask yourself the following: WHY is there such a high supply? Simply saying "It's simple! Supply is too much!" doesn't address the real core of the problem:
Which is, if you are a novice up to expert, you have no market. Demand is also a big factor in this. Many of the weapons that we CAN make are useless. Anyone here actually ever use a striker pistol or a tangle pistol? How many curved swords have you sold lately? Anyone find a sizeable market for grenades yet? What about anti-vehicular mines? Are there even any VEHICLES to use said mines against in this game?? And even IF people actually had a use for striker pistols, why in God's name would anyone buy one from an expert when you can get one from a Master?
Take the pistol line. There are a grand total of about five really commonly used weapons, NOT counting CDEFs: D18 (which BARELY makes the list), DL44, Scout, FWG5, and DX2. That's it. Scatter pistols don't count, nor do launcher pistols. That's disregarding tangle pistols, striker pistols, DH17 pistols, and Power5s. So, of the full range of pistols available, only about half are at all useful. Now throw in the fact that masters can far and away outperform any novice, and what do you have? MAJOR PROBLEMS. You have a clear incentive to grind up to master status. Forget expert. Forget any of the intermediate levels. You won't make it. Whoever said that novices can expect to make 10K in two days playing time is dead-friggin-wrong. It just won't happen. Who, pray tell, are you selling to? I've been able to sell maybe 5 D18s on the bazaar since I hit weaponsmith. I'm about 5K XP from cracking Firearms 1, which will then let me grind through techniques.
But that's the point, really: I have to grind to live. There's NO way for me to make it, economically speaking, unless I grind. Even if we did forced schematic reductions at each level, I'd STILL have to grind Tech IV to be able to do quality work at lower levels. The whole system is basically screwed.
And you know what? I'm not the only one who realizes it. Why do you think people grind, anyway? Because they have to, for starters. There WOULD be plenty of non-master, non-expert weaponsmiths running around if the system was set up so that you could actually economically survive doing that. But as it is, you HAVE to become a master if you're going to bother to be a weaponsmith at all.
Now, me, I want to become a master not only to compete economically, but also because I want to see all the various options on how to customize guns. I like the idea of being able to make my own weaponry as well. But be that as it may, it's still master or nothing. There is no in between. And as long as that system remains in place, the folks at the top had better just accept price wars as a fact of life. EEMAN, you can counsel new masters all you want, there's still going to be people who will undercut you. You'll see an oversupply of weapons, a lowering of demand, and a saturation of the market. Eventually, this may cause people to quit the profession, but even then, it'll just go in cycles like this. If we want the problem fixed, the WS profession would need a MAJOR workover.
1. Brand name. I picked an easy to remember brand name and I've put it on every item I sell, even if its not a weapon.
2. PA. I got involved with founding a PA and established myself as THE weaponsmith for the PA.
3. Merchant. As soon as I could place a vendor I went out an opened a store, having a place where I control whats for sale helped.
4. Pricing. I keep abrest of what the current pricing is for common weapons. Based upon the difference between what I can craft a weapon at and what a master can I try to price my weapons. ex: If a master crafted Laser Rifle is worth 10k and my weapon is only about 60% as good I'll try to sell it for 6k.
5. Stock I stock my vendors with 2 of every weapon I can make. It really does not matter if the DH17 Pistol is percived as a pice of crap if someone buys it to check it out, or just cuase it looks cool, or any other reason its still a sale. IMHO the various weapons all have their strong and weak points.
6. Recrafting. If I suddenly find a new resource that will add 20 damage to every weapon I make then I start mining the hell out of it while recrafting all my inventory of weapons, or selected weapons as the case may be. Same thing for when I increase in the tech tree.
7. Bazar. I use all 24 of my bazar lots to keep lower end weapons out on the market to keep that brand name going. Also this is a great place to advertise store locations.
8. Burn out. If I'm tired of crafting I take a break. Its a game and I allready lost the race to get master weaponsmith. Course I've allready seen a few masters quit the game of the profession due to burn out.
9. Customer contact. I encourage customers to contact me with any questions or requests. Many people do not know much about the weapons they use still. Many still just buy what ever weapon does the most damage, paying no mind to HAM costs or range bonuses. I try to inform whenever possible.
10. Long View. If I was to not sell a single weapon this week I would not worry much. I'll probably sell plenty of other stuff that any artisan can make, but that most don't.
11. Stick with it. I've gotten down and felt that it was hopeless a few times. But after a break or swapping to a different toon for a bit I allways come back at it from a different perspective. Its frustrating trying to sell in an economy like this sometimes, but not impossible.
Thanks for reading this and I thank you for your time.
Sam Moonlighter
AcroCorp
Valcyn
Novice weaponsmithing BEGINS at master. upon taking stock of my situation I realize that resources are everything to weaponsmith. On Scylla, I missed the shift for polonium, titanium aluminum and Irolunn gas and one of the steels for ABRBs. Because of resource shifting I am limited to making dh17s(all types), dl44s, d18s, scouts. Happily I snuck about 10k of class 3 for AVMs. So let's review, I can make, essentially, NOVICE weapons.
Now I am not complaining, actually one of my favorite activities is wandering around on the various planets killing critters. I actually look forward to the idea of popping open my survey tools to see what is around to make better weapons. But, my point is that if I want to make sales, I am going to have to make the very weapons that you non-masters are asking me not to make.
Now this may not be something you want to hear while you are grinding up, but the Master Weaponsmith profession isn't really about making guns, it is about collecting the best resources. Think about all the resources required, specific resources, something over 100 for all the weapons. Weaponsmiths are, without a doubt, the scouting artisan profession.
Now, I will admit, that during my grind, I did feel similarly to many others about the masters. "I have no market," I thought, "something is wrong here." Now that I am master what do I have... three experimentation points. Few credits, no name recognition and most importantly few resources.
Now that the grind is over... I am finally, truly, and 100% a NOVICE master weaponsmith.
Lunafice wrote:You make the best product, you sell more of that product. After a few more hours of grinding and achieving master, you will wish you hadnt put this thread up. Its not fair to gate the masters who have put their time and money and resources into a profession just so you can make a little more cash. How much money does a person need anyway? I can sell my expert crafted DLT20a's and DH17 Short Carbines on the bazaar for 3k each ALL DAY LONG. I manage to go through a crate of each a week, and while thats certainly not a lot of money in anyone's book, thats more than enough to fund my harvesters and to buy whatever else I need for the week.
Nerfing others for your own good is never a good idea
Lunic Onivar
Weaponsmith 4/4/3/4, et al.
Moenia, Naboo
Sunrunner
Luna - I can't believe someone one-starred your post. Sheesh.
I can't agree more. I am not yet a master wepsmith, but so many times wepsmiths who want to build guns sacrifice time, click, and resources to go up two trees that they will barely use. It's a huge overhead to get those last three experimentation points, and you should be well rewarded for it.
I, of course, would love to see an economy where people had to actually worry about the cost of guns. It would be nice for the merely decent smith to make some living because people couldn't afford the best weapons in the game. However money has little or no meaning in this game, as it flows like water. I feel the original poster's pain all too acutely, but truth be told, if you grind like mad up half the skills just to work on the tree you love, you certainly should be reewarded for your efforts in cold hard cash. It's just a shame that there's none of those stockpiles of cash left to go around for anyone but the master.
Best of luck to the original poster, from one not-quite-master to another.
-Rev
Solen80 wrote:Hey guys, i'm not a master weaponsmith or anything, but what has happened with the architecture profession is that the master architects have taken architects that are not masters in, and are having them craft components for them for money.
I don't know if you can apply this to the weaponsmith profession, but i am just putting this info out there in case there are craftable items that the non-master weaponsmiths can make for the masters.
Solen-
It's a point that has been brought up from time to time, but truth be told, the Architect is the only crafting class that is working appropriately. This is due to the fact that experimentation has, like, zero effect on the profession. Only the schematics and resources count. Apprenticeship in Architect works because 1) Archs don't have enough plots to pull in the truly MASSIVE amounts of resources they need. An apprentice can help in this aspect. 2) An apprentice wall mosule is little different from a master wall module.
To carry this analogy over to weaponsmiths, highly experimented components make up a huge chunk of the effectiveness of a weapon. No master weaponsmith would entrust their construction to anyone not as skilled as themselves. Furthermore, it's pretty easy for a weaponsmith who has planned ahead to gather all the resources they need themselves, further eliminating the need for apprenticed underlings.
I'm glad the Architects have found a way to help each other out. I fear that such friendliness will not be so prevalent in the weaponsmith market.
Now, all of that would change for architects if a harvester's effective rate of pulling up resources, or the cost of maintenance for structures depended on the experimental ability of the architect. Apprenticeship would fly out the window.
-Rev
Peadar wrote:The solution is actually quite simple. We have too many weaponsmiths and the economy is too rich, money for most, is not a problem. Soooooooo...the way I see it is drastically reduce the durability of weapons! This way everyone has to come back for more! Mosts weapons now last way too long. Just my 2 cents
I tend to agree. Furthermore, I'd like to see a drop in stats at 75%, 50%, 25% durability akin to the vitality stat for the zookeepers.
This, however, should be contingent upon two things:
1) Weaponsmiths get huge bonuses to weapon repair at LOW LEVELS. I suggest that a weaposnmith's repair ability is MAXED at tech 4.
2) Weaponsmiths get good weapon crafting XP for repairing weapons.
This would help the young not-quite-master weaponsmiths, and provide a reason to buy new weapons more often.
Either that, or cut the amount of cash paid for missions by about 90%. /grin
-Rev