Dismiss Notice
This Section is READ ONLY - All Posts Are Archived

Cost of crafting vs achievable sale prices

Discussion in 'Release 33 Feedback Forum' started by KikkiJikki, Sep 5, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Drothar Battleforge

    Drothar Battleforge Avatar

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    46
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Sadly it does, I am on about 2k silver ore now and getting halfway through blades and plate armor on blacksmithing. So its no small amount needed
     
  2. Mimner

    Mimner Avatar

    Messages:
    152
    Likes Received:
    494
    Trophy Points:
    18
    It seems to me that one way to fix this would be to separate the resources needed for leveling crafting skills from resources needed to make items. If we could level by performing work orders for npc's which just took time to complete (instead of consuming resources), then the only use for resources would be to create items. The demand for raw resources would then drop, and correspondingly the price for them would drop.
     
    Epiphany likes this.
  3. Tahru

    Tahru Avatar

    Messages:
    4,800
    Likes Received:
    12,170
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Spite
    There is some saving grace to the current system.

    1. It's hard to sell except through a vendor
    2. Vendors have very limited space forcing people to choose particular items for sale, even if you own a vendor.
    3. Items that are expensive will continually be undercut when multiple crafters compete.
    4. Specialty items like armor and weapon sets with stats are actually permutations of items because of the stats, and a major pain in the rear for any new crafter to make. This means that craftsmen will choose a small subsection to sell and take custom orders for the rest.
    5. It is expensive to skill a crafting tree.

    For all these reasons, crafter's will make something else with prices are too low. They will avoid making the same things, so they can charge more. They will adapt to the ever changing market and player base or they will fail to live off it.

    Yes, material costs are currently too high for crafters that want to provide goods at a fair price. They are that high only because some very small number of players is paying the price. When prices are too high, crafters will choose to go gather themselves reducing the demand for the materials. That will eventually bring the price down of materials down or raise the price of goods or mostly likely both. The economy needs time to settle to a sane market.
     
    lollie and 4EverLost like this.
  4. Drothar Battleforge

    Drothar Battleforge Avatar

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    46
    Trophy Points:
    8
    You say that the price will go down Tahru, but your not catching all of it, I had to get to the point where I could take on earth elementals myself to mine, and when I go mine I get 200-500 ore in a few hours depending on meticulous procs with an 85 mining, so that means I can just count the ore as free and put my wares at a low price? If you are trying to be an actual merchant and provide good quality stuff, you will be cutting your own throat if you do not put a price to your time spent gathering.

    Just like real life, when I walk out the door for my 12 hour shift, I am not thinking ya know if I do not get paid for these 12 hours it's fine! People want to play the game for fun, and if they are always mining or whatever to have the goods to make stuff they will get burned out/bored real quick. I know I am really tired of seeing the same kobolds and earth elementals.

    In a way the problem is likely exposure, no way to get a vendor known to everyone, as not everyone comes to the forums, need something like a npc broker in the big key towns that lets you view the wares on various vendors, and then tell's you how to find the vendor with what you want.

    Say you are looking for a new set of plate armor, just go to the broker or whatever the mechanic will be named, click on little drop downs till you find what you want, then get some form of directions to buy what you wanted, or the ability to purchase it from said mechanic with a marked up price for the instant convenience, and the added money just goes to the broker/mechanic.

    The way this game is, it is probably a combination of things hurting people who want to be merchants and making prices wonky, the biggest culprit being no exposure to the market and then travel, I could likely go on for a bit on these reasons but this is already a bit much to read.
     
    Elwyn, Blackheath, uhop and 2 others like this.
  5. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

    Messages:
    1,473
    Likes Received:
    4,645
    Trophy Points:
    125
    Gender:
    Male
    Nice read. I have the impression that the easy possibility to craft and gather everything is one of the issues. Ok, you need let to all players to do what they want, but we need some kind of speciazalitions in a long term, more than just one innate skill (MW proc options). With time they will see that if they want continue making good gear they'll need to focus on one or two professions. Without a long term specialization/focus, 99% of the player base will be a GM gatherer and crafter, without any issue.

    The raw materials issue is something tricky too. And like some of you said, any economy needs time but we are here to help to reduce that time, I guess :p

    Plz, keep this thread up. They must take a look on this.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2016
    Acred and 4EverLost like this.
  6. Godra

    Godra Avatar

    Messages:
    589
    Likes Received:
    946
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Philadelphia
    I spent a week on just collecting enough resources to craft my own plate armor. I have hardly any gold coin so I really can't spend on a vendor to purchase gear because its so expensive. Now I see why because it takes a lot to make a set and takes forever getting it. There is no fun in the game right now, just grind and work.
     
  7. Drothar Battleforge

    Drothar Battleforge Avatar

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    46
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Yeah, I am currently not working and just started playing about 12 days ago, it took me about 4 days as a new player to get enough copper to make my first set of plate.
     
  8. sdbaynham

    sdbaynham Avatar

    Messages:
    70
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    8
    On the contrary- crafting removes value. 5 silver ore is an enchant and XP, an enchant is just an enchant.

    In real life, labor is a resource. You can only give so much of it before you collapse and die or whatever. In a video game, labor is free.

    The only resource in a video game is time, so a process that takes less than 5 minutes is never going to have an appreciable impact on the value of an item and is going to be counteracted by any downward influence on price whatsoever.

    There are some exceptions- characters with access to very high level masterworks are able to charge extra for those masterworks because the amount of time necessary to get access to them is substantial. However, over time the amount of competition they face will increase and the cost of those items will largely be determined by the usual MMO formula: (Materials + Breakage) - (The IQ of some guy who values materials at 0 because he gathered them himself)

    Archeage got around this by giving players a kind of silly farmville-esque resource "labor" that regenerated over time and was necessary to craft. You do that and labor is its own resource with value that you can imbue into items. It worked OK. If it was only necessary for masterworks & enchants the cost of getting into those professions would make it harder (not impossible) for people to just buy their way into more labor by getting more copies of the game. It would also allow the devs to stop obsessing over the precise amount of silver in the economy.
     
  9. sdbaynham

    sdbaynham Avatar

    Messages:
    70
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    8
    I actually really like this idea: you get 2 inspiration every NB day, making a premium ingot/timber/thread/leather costs an inspiration (pls make sheets 2 ingots), socketing costs 5 inspiration per gem, enchants & masterworks cost 10 inspiration. Maybe double the exceptional rate but require inspiration to "claim" it when it pops. I imagine a lot of people here won't like limiting the amount they can craft, but crafting a ton and dumping it into the economy is how you got here!

    NB: By "premium" I mean the rare combines that add additional stats.
     
  10. Vallo Frostbane

    Vallo Frostbane Avatar

    Messages:
    1,756
    Likes Received:
    3,572
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Again there is no need to buy anything as leveling crafting is way to easy, everything can be easily made by yourself. Only items on the +8 and above will be worth selling if it all.
    If you want to be a trader, make a makro just as a lot of people do and mine 24/7 on some of the broken spawns.
     
  11. KikkiJikki

    KikkiJikki Avatar

    Messages:
    29
    Likes Received:
    65
    Trophy Points:
    3
    I don't really see how enchanting removes value. Must be missing something.

    In a game - especially a sandpit - time, loot, gold, gear, skills are all resources, and depending on the game there are methods to convert one to another. You take time get some loot that you convert to gold which you use to buy gear or to get stuff to make gear that you use to get better loot or sell for more gold. It's a fallacy to argue that the only real resource is time.

    I run a crafting business in another game where I have sales of approximately 130k USD over five years with net profit of a little over 11k. So I know it's possible to run a game where crafting generates positive value. Clearly that isn't the case here right now and I am just trying to establish for myself what the longer term situation will be. Is there going to be a genuine economy in this game or are we going to end up with a game where people will mostly just grind hunting and sell to npcs, mixed in with an occasional quest? Not that I have a problem with a hunting game but I guess I am hoping for a little more, a sandpit that offers different paths to success.
     
  12. Drothar Battleforge

    Drothar Battleforge Avatar

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    46
    Trophy Points:
    8
    As to the labor thing brought here by the Archage, just no... I play on BDO and that system just really devalues crafting, the energy/labor system is horrible.
     
  13. sdbaynham

    sdbaynham Avatar

    Messages:
    70
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    8
    I can buy an item with an enchant on it, or I can buy leather, iron, and gold. If I do the latter, I also get an item with an enchant on it, but additionally I also receive skill ups for my crafting. If I then sell the item to you, you are receiving the item, but not the skillup. Since I bought items, removed some of their value (the skillups), and then sold them, the price you pay should be less than the price I pay.

    It is facile to claim that gear is another resource type alongside time and there are exchanges between the two. I can spend time to get gear, but I cannot spend gear to get time. "But having good gear saves you time" but you cannot get gear without spending time, period. You can spend it gathering gold or crafting materials, or trying to get it to drop from a boss, but you will spend time. The only exception is real world money. That, you can use to save time.

    What it comes down to is that the process of crafting itself costs no time. Even the process of leveling mw, the only mechanism by which crafting in sota can achieve fleeting value, is not about spending time crafting, it's about spending time attaining silver. If you want crafting to add value to materials, there has to be a mechanism by which something of real value is added to the materials. Right now, crafting is a process by which crafting XP is extracted from materials.
     
  14. Armeleon Vesaz

    Armeleon Vesaz Avatar

    Messages:
    214
    Likes Received:
    379
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Finland
    At this time many people are taking the loss knowingly because they want to level their crafting skills. This results in abundance of items available and it is practically impossible to make money by crafting. Possibly later on those who are significantly ahead of the curve with their masterworking/enchanting chances can make some money off off the better chances.
     
  15. sdbaynham

    sdbaynham Avatar

    Messages:
    70
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Let me put this another way: let's say tomorrow morning you wake up and the price of +5 spears, wood, iron, and silver are such that you can make a profit buying materials and selling spears. What would you do?

    And what would all other blacksmiths in the game do? What would stop them? And what would happen to the price of materials as everyone bought them? And what would happen to the price of spears as everyone sold them?

    What stops gathering materials from encountering the same issue?
     
  16. KikkiJikki

    KikkiJikki Avatar

    Messages:
    29
    Likes Received:
    65
    Trophy Points:
    3
    If I get a better sword that gives me a better dps than I am clearly obtaining benefits in terms of less time used to get an outcome. I can trade you some gear in return for a resource or a service. For example I dont have skllls to get access to silver mines or I am kinda busy due to real life, so I give you some good armour, in return for you going to get me x units of silver. I've just turned gear into crafting materials and saved myself some time I can spend doing something else.

    Crafting absolutely does take time. turning a bunch of ores into ingots into armour or weapons, raw cotton into thread, into cloth into armour, hides into leather into yards and straps into armour. All this takes non-trivial amounts of time to do.

    I understand that the only value you see obtained from crafting is the producer XP and related skill gains. And I agree that right now, that is the case. But what is the value of producer XP if you can't obtain a benefit from gaining more of it? With Adventuring XP, the associated skill gains give you the capability to tackle more difficult situations, hopefully gaining getter loot. Or if you happen to be into PVP (I'm not really), then you'll be better at that.

    If levelling just for the sake of levelling is someone's goal then great, I'm happy for them. But personally I am looking for something more than that. The open question for me is whether I am going to be able to meet my personal goals in sota.
     
    monkeysmack likes this.
  17. Drothar Battleforge

    Drothar Battleforge Avatar

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    46
    Trophy Points:
    8
    All the other blacksmith's would give carpentry the finger unless they had that raised as well, spear is in carpentry :)

    Honestly though, as what your saying it's the supply and demand aspect, along with laziness and get up and go. With no instant transmission from vendors to some form of auction house that cuts out traveling time prices will be wonky and sales will be non-existent, especially with control points. Is someone going to want to move 30 minutes, and go through around 2 control points just to buy an item with subpar enchants/masterwork abilities, or would they rather spend a little time at some point in the week to make a +3-+5 item that allows them to kill just as good as a +8-+10.
     
  18. KikkiJikki

    KikkiJikki Avatar

    Messages:
    29
    Likes Received:
    65
    Trophy Points:
    3
    Yes I understand market forces. And I think we are seeing the prices of gathered materials drop right now as crafters come to the realisation of the current situation. Hopefully we'll reach some sort of equilibrium point at some stage.
     
  19. sdbaynham

    sdbaynham Avatar

    Messages:
    70
    Likes Received:
    93
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Equilibrium requires crafted outputs to settle below crafting inputs, that's what you're not understanding. My point is not that XP is the ONLY thing of value. My point is that crafted outputs + XP = crafting inputs.

    Crafting combines do take a trivial amount of time compared to resource collection. There is effectively no value to crafting, it only appears valuable if you've burned so much silver (there value of which you will never make back) that you can corner a market for awhile. That won't last forever though. Eventually other players will catch up and the value of spending five minutes staring at progress bars to combine resources that took 4 hours to gather will be represented across the market.

    The only way to make crafting profitable is to add a time sink or force players to expend something that can't be bought, that is somehow unique to crafting.
     
    Elwyn likes this.
  20. Rofo

    Rofo Avatar

    Messages:
    809
    Likes Received:
    1,903
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Etceter
    I don't know how things work in Owl's Head because I don't own land there.
    But in Etceter, even if I'm cheaper, for the most part stuff doesn't sell until a reseller gets low on stock, then buys out most my stock.
    (unless 4k per 100 gold ore, and 5k per 100 iron ore isn't cheap, in which case I'll need to update my prices again)

    Sure I'll sell a 100 ore now and then, but then eventually I'll sell a couple thousand to a single customer.
    At that point it doesn't matter if I'm 1k cheaper or 3k cheaper, takes just as long to sell, and sells just as much.

    People that are complaining about high material prices aren't shopping around at all.
    There are plenty of people like me flooding the market with cheap prices on everything, but most of our customers are people that resell in owl's head at above market prices.
     
    Epiphany and 4EverLost like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.