Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: My Beef with the Weaponsmiths of Flurry
Message Edited by Okeefe on 04-03-2004 04:49 PM
Joshie, strangely enough this is how real commerce works. In RL if you get together and set prices with your competitors you can be fined and jailed for price fixing, or face penalties under the combines investigations act. The market will go down until many get out of it because it isn't worth the work. The survivors will then reset the prices to realistic levels. Of course this may take 100 years....
Skedoozy, at 8K, unless you only make melee weapons,you are losing money on many of your weapons. Sooner or later you will run out of money, and have to raise the prices back up.
Okeefe wrote:
Joshie, strangely enough this is how real commerce works. In RL if you get together and set prices with your competitors you can be fined and jailed for price fixing, or face penalties under the combines investigations act. The market will go down until many get out of it because it isn't worth the work. The survivors will then reset the prices to realistic levels. Of course this may take 100 years....
Skedoozy, at 8K, unless you only make melee weapons,you are losing money on many of your weapons. Sooner or later you will run out of money, and have to raise the prices back up.
only in certain countries though, price collusion is perfectly legal in many countries outside the US, lets look at a well established cartel, OPEC....
Redguard wrote:
8K for some weapons is incrediblely over priced. There is absoltely no reason that a Dl44, Scout Blaster or even a Striker should go for over 3K. Most of the resources required to make these weapons are relatively inexpensive.
The real problem is reputation, and demand. You said it yourself weapons last a heck of a long time. Most do anyway you can buy a llc and it lasts for a month solid before you repair it. This means that as it used to be before the weapon repair nerf. A person could have a llc for up to three months. Pistols can last upwards of a month.
When the game started smiths could charge a freaking fortune, because hey you want it and I am the only one around. You could not get weapons second or even third hand. Then people saw how much money they were makeing, and decided to get in on the action. Result a glut of smiths. I can run around any npc city and find four weaponsmiths at work. The npc city usually supports around two hundred too a thousand inhabitants. Depending on what the npc city is. If it is coronet high anchorhead low Theed high kadarra low. With my example being in the two hundred range, and competeing against four weaponsmiths for every cent. I have estimated that it takes two hundred loyal customers to support a weaponsmith. Competition I am fighting against one well established weaponsmith that has three to four partners. Another specializes in krayt and hard to find weapons. The other is a weekend builder, and that just leaves me just starting out. How in the world can I compete. The others charge more so I charge less. Trying to make up profit in bulk sales.
I absolutely need to establish a customer base for my weapons, and good low prices is a way to do that. One I am getting alot of new players to buy my wares. More established players are already loyal to another smith. Two these start up players have very little cash to spend. So I cannot gouge. On sunrunner it seems to be more the opposite of flurry. The weapons are overpriced. I laugh when I see a house selling weapons that are lower quality then mine at four times the price.
It is all a matter of supply and demand once the hologrinders find out their remaindered weaponsmith aint makeing tons of dough. They may take a couple weeks to switch that character into a moneymaker. The less dedicated smiths will slink out of the market, and the surplus of smiths will shrink.
The reason doctors and smugglers make so much dough is obvious. Low supply high demand where as with weaponsmiths. Low demand high supply. I am starting to sell weapons at mid range. I do not sell at cost or just above, but I do not skyrocket them either.
You have got to be patient. If you do right on the weapons and your customers you will start to get noticed, and people will refer others to you. There are few better ways to advertise. Then two people talking one says he got his elite carbine for twenty thousand the other smiles and says I got mine for five, and they are virtually identical. Where do you think the twenty thousand guy is going to buy next.
If you are looking for high priced goods. You should focus on harder to find weapons. T21s dxr6s elites rocket launchers. Crates of grenades. These are hard to find on novice weaponsmiths shelves, and many masters may not carry grenades. Second focus on a few particular weapons to work at. If you get a scatter up to minimum 125 people will pay a fortune for it. Third variety there is nothing better. People take notice of variety so when they come looking for something uncommon they know where to go. Really my combat alternate went looking for a tangle pistol one day. Could not find it anywhere. When I finally did find it I made sure the waypoint that shop.
Being mad at people working hard just to get noticed is not a great thing. You have to do what the high chargeing masters do. Get a good clientel, and constantly work on makeing better weapons. You will be surprised how much people will pay for just .2 more speed, or five more points of damage.
I've been doing my part to inflate Flurry's economy!
But only cause I'm too lazy to restock daily.
While it may be true that newbies can't afford much, they are only newbies for a day or so. I do not produce any weapons for that market. All my weapons, even D18's and DLT20's, etc, are all top of the line in their respective categories. I price based on BASE DPS, at minimum speed mod you have at certification for that weapon.
In straight DPS terms, some of the low end weapons are as high or higher than the so called high-end weapons because we have 90+% materials for them as opposed to crap for the high end stuff.
Also, my vendors are on Dantooine, so I am not catering to the newbie crowd.
As for OPEC, someone needs to sue the U.S., Canada and any other country that has laws against price fixing and yet participates in that Cartel.