Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Weapon Prices
Logix wrote:
Popojiju wrote:
Prices i charge never exceed 5000 credits - tho they may change up 1 or 2k tops once i make the highest level weapons, and if their good. I base my prices on quality, i destroy junk. My pricing is not because Test Center population is tiny, it is because i dont think anyone should be forced to pay ungodly amounts for a weapon, period.
While I understand you are on Test Center and thus things might be slightly different there, on other servers, charging 1.5k for a1.4 Scout Blasteris highway robbery-- on theWeaponsmith community.
Anyone, I mean anyone, can make 1.5k instantly. Those easy Survey missions?Pay 2k a pop. Pick a couple of missions asking for a certain resource and keep doing that resource mission over and over again after you find a nearby spot, extremely simple and no risk. Higher level destroy missions pay 16k a pop. Faction missions have much higher payouts now, as well.
So, if you are basing your prices off of what the average player can afford, they can outfit an army within a few hours with your prices. What's worse, any Tech IV smith on TC has absolutely no chance in hell at selling a gun with prices like that for Master-level guns. Let's see, in one easy destroy/survey mission, I can afford your best Scout Blaster. That took me all of ten minutes, why in the hell should I go for the Tech IV smith's gun? In an hour of this, I can afford five more of yours!
It's one thing to charge like that on TC for the better of community, seeing as how it would greatly benefit all of us to give players an easier opportunity to test weapons and the profession, but to throw out baseless accusations of greed because of your own lack of foresight? That's just disrespectful. Do usa favor and donate all of the money youare not spendingto the other lesser smiths on Test Center, you obviously do not need it.But as there's no way they can advance in their profession and continue testing with you undercutting them like this, they will need it.
Oh but i do donate money, all the time actually. And , sorry, i do apologize if you think i was taking a pot shot at "most" of the weaponsmiths, that was not my intent. I was meerly stating that some people charge insane prices for junk weapons on live, this is not ill forsight, it is fact. It may only be heresay from me, but from over 3 dozen people on TC who play on live too, i have no choice but to consider it fact. I have seen first hand fair and honest pricing from folk on live, and to them the general rule of, if you can sell it that much, go for it would apply, but to those other Ws's who sell , lets say, a scout at 38-118 dmg 2.2 speed for 10k, i dont think thats much of a bargain, do you? I was basically wanting to add my input on pricing for TC, since this topic did not specify live only, and my reasoning behind low prices is simple. Get the player to buy excellent weapons at a cheap price, so that they will be able to enjoy the game without having to run hours worth of missions to afford. Now, on TC we have folks who carry over 300k on them, i realize this is far less than live players carry, so even if i charged 5k for a nice scout, that would still be considered a great bargain, but like i stated earlier, just because i can charge that much, doesnt mean i should.
Again i apologize if anyone took my last post ill, it was not meant to call you all greedy, only "some" of the weaponsmiths around, i guess i should have elaborated more.
Popojiju wrote:
Now, on TC we have folks who carry over 300k on them, i realize this is far less than live players carry, so even if i charged 5k for a nice scout, that would still be considered a great bargain, but like i stated earlier, just because i can charge that much, doesnt mean i should.
Again i apologize if anyone took my last post ill, it was not meant to call you all greedy, only "some" of the weaponsmiths around, i guess i should have elaborated more.
I just got the impression that anyonecharging anything more than your pricing was greedy, I apologize, thanks for the clarification. 
I understand your biggest priority is having fun and helping other players have fun, money coming second. I just feel you are only taking certain players into perspective -- your customers. You are completely forgetting about your profession's community, those below you on TC, your fellow Weaponsmiths. It's not at all fun for them to watch their sales fall because of snotty players turning up their nose,knowing they can get a much better weapon for an easy price. It's already hard enough to get sales for a Tech IV smith against Master competition, but trying to make a profit when you're at the point of selling your best guns for 100 credits, it becomes futile. No, you do not have to sell for higher prices, but this is why I feel you should.
You are the only active Master Weaponsmith poster of TC I have seen thus far, so you hold in your hands a large responsibility of setting the bar for the futureWeaponsmith economy to come. So, try to keep that in mind, if you set that bar too low, it's not gonna go back up on its own, the only way for the economy to go from there is down.
**edit**, here I was, avoiding the TC, cuz I didn't feel like starting a new character.
I'm gonna go to TC, and start re-selling Popojiju's weapons. 
(And that's a situation *I* avoid by keeping my prices at market value)
Somebody else already pointed this out but since there have been several more posts since then I will add my opinion that whoever originally posted this was right ....
The pricing is going to be self regulating by the laws of supply and demand. If anyone sells weapons at a substantial discount to the going price on their server then they will end up depleting their resources and be unable to continue to supply the market at that price. Also the grind of making so many weapons will get to them as well. Additionally they will have a hard time keeping their vendors supplied. Eventually they will run out of supplies and not be able to make more weapons or they will tire of grinding them out.
I think that each weaponsmith that reaches master will kind of go thru a pricing curve something like this. At first no one will know about them so they will start with lower prices to build up sales. Eventually word will spread that you can get great weapons at a bargain price at their shops. They will soon find it difficult to keep their vendor stocked, they will start exhausting their supply of whatever resources are not currently available on their server. They will also get fat bank accounts with nothing to spend the money one. Finally they will tire of the grind of making lots of whatever is selling out all the time. Eventually they will raise prices so that the demand for their weapons is in balance with their ability to supply them and still have fun at playing the game.
Also the established weaponsmiths will either lower their prices or be content with reduced sales to their core customers who have accepted their standard price as the price they expect to pay and don't bother to shop around any longer. Either way the overall supply and demand of the server will reach a new balanced price point each time a new master weaponsmith opens up shop on a server and if someone's prices are out of line with that point then circumstances will balance things out quick enough - if someone's prices are too high then their sales will fall, if someone's prices are too low they won't be able to meet the demand and that demand will have to go somewhere else and pay a higher price.
Also if someone's prices are way too low, you will find players going in and just cleaning out their venders so they can resell the weapons at a profit for themselves in which case the weapons will ultimately be introduced to the market at the price point created by the balance of supply and demand it will just be that some of the profit will go to a middle man instead of to the weaponsmith with prices set too low.
Logix wrote:
Nox_SWG wrote:Otherwise, the best materials typically are non-existent and stockpiled, or in the middle of nowhere on Lok, where no resource dealer is going to tread.
Most of my mining operations are based in the middle of nowhere on Lok.
It's not actually nearly as difficult an area as you might think - Once you get away from the city, the mobs disappear. None at all. I go on auto run aimed at my harvs and afk for 5-10 minutes, because I know I'm not going to run into any trouble. Apart from static spawns, which are rather uncommon away from cities, most mobs are from missions, and hence close to the city.
The "hard" planets, aren't.
I used to play a game where there is a player ran economy like SWG except that the game didn't have any form of money other than player made money(backed . the economy is bassed on resources of different manifacturing complexity. this game too have some resource sink like credit sinks.
in the other game we had real problems setting prices to resources but different systems were developed to calculate reletive values and exchange rates. also used web price listing to compare pricing. most of the prices were strongly related to time of production but to a few other things
here is a list of basic price componants that probobly apply to all economy:
- resource costs - price it cost you to get resources, maintnance ,travel costs
- time cost - how much time it takes to produce a resource,travel time
- click costs - alot of clicks = alot of athritis (multitasking was easier there) but in game macro reduce that
- overhead - that include factory buying cost, harvesters buying cost etc, cost of training skills.basicly the more you produce the lower the overhead(usually dwindle to 0)
- markups - fail rate markup, quality markup,skill level markup,profit markup etc.
- markdowns - compatition, discounts etc
prestige is very important. and if you don't build a good reputation people would go somewhere else(you can sell goodnewbie weapons at bazzar and when people want an upgrade they'll know where to come). another thing is that if you overprice your goods you will loose prestige if someone sells same or similar quality goods cheaper.
being a theif or unfair can be fatal =>. and carpet mining a very rare resources can get people very unhappy. SWG limits your buildings and larger vains so it's harder to do.
Using those figures can give you an idea as to what to charge for your weapons, with price adjustments made based on the quality of your wares to the others.
There's no real base price list as each server's resource qualities and economies are different.
Hope this helps ya..
