All About Crafting - a Necro post ressurected to be rehashed forever

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vladamir Begemot, Apr 22, 2017.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    I know we're all on SotA's side, but I'm afraid that doesn't mean we are always helping. I'm sure I've been detrimental with my loud mouth on occasion, and maybe some bad ideas. Most of us don't have the power to kill the entire game, though.

    But if you are a Crafter, you do. You wield immense power due to our Player Run Economy. Here's how you can use that power to destroy the entire game, much like Walmart destroys communities in the Outland.

    It is called "The Race to The Bottom" and SotA wouldn't be the first game to be wiped out by it.

    1. Get disappointed that you aren't selling gear fast enough, OR feel bad for players because gear prices are high.
    2. Lower your prices to below crafting cost just to make ends meet, to help other players, or because you want to run competitors out of business.
    3. See that your neighbor has lowered his prices to compete with your prices, lower your prices again.
    At this point Crafters start saying "We're just losing money at crafting!" (Sound familiar?)

    Cue the Crafter frustration, the eventual Crafter Exodus, and the reviews about a broken economy. There's no way we have a successful game if people think SotA is bad for Crafters.

    The Devs can adjust everything except you. If you choose to relentlessly price at under crafting cost, whatever your intentions, you may actually kill the entire game.

    With great power comes great responsibility.
    -------

    If you want a shorthand way to calculate your crafting costs, you can find a book on the desk in front of S Mart in Novia Market, near the crafting station.

    It will give you a good approximation of what the actual cost of any piece is, if you have the materials list (CTRL when hovering the mouse over it, or SotAcraft.com if you are about to start making the piece yourself.)
     
  2. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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    any chance you could make copies of that book?
     
  3. Vladamir Begemot

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    There's one on the vendor, I'll make some more just in case. If you see me in person I'll give you an autographed one ;)
     
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  4. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    Honestly if I priced my wares like you do, I'd be completely broke. I would hardly sell anything. You can determine what the prices should be all you want, but with a low population, the opportunity cost argument just doesn't work for me. If everyone follows your pricing, that wouldn't save the game or the crafting market, it would make it nearly impossible for anyone to sell anything consistently. If 20 people are selling something at the same price, why would anyone buy my products?

    I personally need to make items and sell them to be able to keep making more items and raise my skills. With your ideal prices I would just have vendors fully stocked with items collecting dust.

    Your ideal prices are great in theory and would probably work with a large population in a thriving economy, but I just don't see how it translates to this game currently.

    You don't gain skills in real life, in a real economy. There's no need to produce items just for the sake of gaining skills. There is in SOTA. You can decide to price those items like you are and hardly sell them, or price them like myself and sell multiple pieces every day.
     
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  5. MrBlight

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    Lol especially since i care more about killing, and the wood/beetles i gather just kinda fall in. So i make myself 1 bow that lasts me a month, but when i mke that bow, i end up with 19 extra copies. I could sell them all for 10g, because to ME they are just extra. Sucks for someone who tries to value everything at what its actually going for. Unfortunatly, theres nothing preventing me from doing exactly this.

    So pretty much anytime you put a bow on, i will undercut it RIGHT DOWN to the cost of fuel, becasue all that gathered materials i look at as, extra.
    =)
     
  6. jammaplaya

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    they should increase the time to craft one piece of armor or a weapon to 1 hour. That's one hour you sit and watch your Avatar scratching his beard or adjusting her bra chewing on a pencil and making your item.
     
  7. Vladamir Begemot

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    All I'm saying here is BE AWARE of what you are doing. It has killed games before, and you have the power to kill this game now.

    No one can ever stop you for pricing everything for 10g.

    But when the negative reviews overwhelm the game with complaints about "crafting sux, everything sells for 10g, what's the point?" will you hold up your hand and accept responsibility?

    It's called a Race to the Bottom for a reason. And after the bottom is no more game.
     
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  8. Xandra7

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    Many crafters have limited storage space, depending on housing and/or pledge levels. What is best for them?

    -Trying to sell at low cost, most often at a loss.
    -Give gear away to friends/guild.
    -Break down gear for the few basic metal bits *ugh*
    -Sell to NPC vendor for next to nothing.
    -Sell at cost of material + profit. (good luck on that one)

    Every crafter will have their own motivation behind their pricing and what works best for their situation.
     
  9. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

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    I just sell all of my waste to NPC vendors and calculate the waste cost into the price of the sellable items.

    There should really be some option available for salvaging or selling (NPC) unwanted crafted items that is just good enough that people will use it over flooding the market with cheap failure gear, but not so good that it can be abused.
     
  10. mass

    mass Avatar

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    I don't think you can put this on the player. If it is to be 'an economy', you cannot blame players for making rational decisions using the current ruleset. In real life, many businesses take a loss the first few years to develop market share or improve a product line (similar to leveling up a craft and selling at a loss to fund that progression). The highest expectation you can have from the player is to function within, and according to, the rules of the economy. The rest is on the devs. As well, as we often see in the real world that if you don't fix the underlying problems of an economy, policy placebos and cartel action typically fail over a long enough time line and often make the problem worse. At least by selling at a loss, inventory gets taken off the market.

    There are two obvious options to help either the supply side or demand side of the situation available to the Devs, neither of which will make people happy:
    1. Drastically increase item decay (increase demand)
    2. Increase explosion on craft rate (decrease supply)

    Alternatives would be preferable.
    If we had alternative ways to level crafting that were equally time intensive but did not consume raw materials or produce 'junk', we would also take inventory off the market, make crafting less grindy, and allow crafters to only make items, when they want to actually make items.

    I would agree, though, if players feel that there is no economic incentive to be a crafter, people who are here mostly to be a crafter might lose interest.
     
  11. Visaard's Producer

    Visaard's Producer Avatar

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    and same for enchanting and masterworking ? cooldown related to skill lvl
     
  12. Nexus-6

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    3. Increase assortment...
     
  13. jammaplaya

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    Yeah and also it would be cool if another Avatar jumped on that crafting table if there'd be a slight bonus to crafting time for both players. Max 2 people for the bonus though, because 3's a crowd and it's hard to work under such crowded circumstances. ^^
     
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  14. Vyrin

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    Is the "crafting cost" actually what you say? Opinions will vary, within the latitude the game provides.

    Problems with crafting cost:
    If you gather everything you can, the only in-game gold costs are the fuels, tools, and such you must buy from a crafting vendor. Even for a highly masterworked/enchanted item, that's not terribly much.
    If you are talking about crafting cost based on vendor prices for mats, how do you establish what that is? Even if people sold ore they mined with a prosperity tool for 1g, they'd still be "making money" in-game.
    The big issue is how people value their time and opinions vary.
    Guildies are the most "guilty" of providing stuff to others for free. This seems entirely appropriate, but reduces demand.

    End result: people are "guesstimating" what the costs should be based on some pretty arbitrary albeit stable material prices (people have come up with what they value their time at so to speak FOR NOW only). You are asking for the fixing of prices, which doesn't really work either. What you describe is just the simple workings of economics. If they want to put regulations in the game, to keep out the Walmarts, as you say, they can do it. Otherwise - this is MMO-land... if someone can do it, they will do it, and if you tell them they can't, they will try even harder.

    And just because vendor prices are low, it will not kill a game. This is not "Shroud of the Salesman". There are other things to do. In the end, without classes, many will choose just to make relatively decent stuff themselves anyway or join a guild that will provide it.
     
  15. Bubonic

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    If crafting was really fun and engaging, and NPC vendors paid excellent prices for crafted wares, then no one would be saying 'crafting sux'
     
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  16. uhop

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    Right now, with everything in flux, and market basically not working properly (especially for people like me, in a far corner of Brittany Fields), I still try to come up with a formula to set prices. Granted it is crude, decidedly unscientific, and wrong, that's what I do:
    • I use Port-defined value of an item as a starting point (I deal mostly in weapons and armor, practically no experience in other classes of goods) to calculate the base price.
      • If an item is made from a simple metal (copper or iron), I double its value. That's basically what NPC salesmen are doing.
      • If an item is made from an alloy (bronze, constantan, meteoric iron, white iron), I multiply its value by 5. Usually such items are made from all premium components, including hardened leather straps, fancy wooden parts, and so on.
      • Wooden items are separated the same way on simple (maple, pine) or complex (crimson pine, rock maple, and so on) with the same multipliers.
      • If it is an exceptional item, I double the price again.
      • Examples:
        • Maple Long Bow: value 150, price 299 (see more rules below).
        • Rock Maple Long Bow: value 150, price 749.
        • Maple Long Bow +1: value 150, price 599.
        • Iron Longsword: value 110, price 249.
        • Meteoric Iron Longsword: value 110, price 549.
        • Bronze Two-handed sword +1: value 175, price 1749.
    • When I add enchantments and masterworks, I use a decidedly oversimplified formula: 500gp per operation. Usually I don't do more than 2 enchantments, and 2 masterworks. It means that all 4 of them will cost a customer only 2000gp, which is low.
      • Examples:
        • Bronze Heavy Round Shield +4 (exceptional, minor enhancement, major masterwork): value 90, price 90 * 5 * 2 + 500 + 500 = 1899.
        • Copper Halberd +7 (exceptional, 2 enhancements, 2 masterworks): value 175, price 175 * 2 * 2 + 2 * 500 + 2 * 500 = 2699.
    • In support of the time-honored merchant's tradition, I up the price to the nearest 50gp boundary and subtract 1gp. :)
    What is wrong with this picture? Many things:
    • Port-defined value is frequently completely bogus. For example, I cannot understand how a ring or a necklace can be valued at 10gp. Someone can argue that they are useless and they bring no value to a customer. Yet the cost of making them is much higher than 10gp. So I arbitrary up the price to a reasonable level.
    • Quite a few values in my formulas are arbitrary.
      • Why does an exceptional item cost twice more? Its probability of making is ~20%. Shouldn't it be like 5 times more? OTOH, followers of the cost-based approach would argue that I spend the same amount of raw components and time to make a regular item as I spend for an exceptional one --- why their price is different?
      • Why do items from complex materials cost 2.5 times more? Not 3 times more, not 2 times more?
    • My formula to add enhancements and masterworks is linear, while their outcome is not.
      • This is a fair point, which should be taken into account, but the real formula would be too complex.
      • A fixed price per improvement reflects the nature of the formula: it is cost-based, not user-value based. But that cost does not include (directly) failed attempts at improvement.
      • So far I sold almost 0 enchanted/masterworked items. Basically anything with +N (even a simple enhanced +1) does not sell regardless of the price, which makes tweaking the formula a moot point.
        • I don't know how to explain this phenomenon. Are most of my customers noobs, who don't know what +N means? Are they seasoned experts, who like to enchant themselves?
        • The most popular items in my store are plain weapons/armor made with complex materials. God knows why. Because names sound exotic?
    What is missing:
    • I don't know how to price other classes of items, like decorations, food, and so on.
    • I do not price patterns yet --- I don't have stats for them, and don't feel their price. Clearly it should be an add-on.
    • The formula includes absolute numbers, and factors, and do not depend on actual current market price of materials. Again, it makes it simple, yet less market-oriented. It can be broken by unfortunate market conditions.
    • It is mostly cost-oriented, rather than user-value oriented.
    Obviously, like everybody else I buy some stuff from vendors, and see prices set by others. Sometimes they are fantastic, going into 10s, or even 100s of thousands for high-end items. I cannot believe they are justified in any way. But I want you to defend them. Please chime in.

    Do not hesitate to share other pricing strategies. Even if your prices are based on a "gut feel", please let us know --- at some point we have to define the economy. At the very least we have to have something tangible to provide to Port as feedback --- I am sure we both want the same thing: the robust working economy. We need to understand what Port should provide to us, and what we should do in order to make the game happen.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2017
  17. Satan Himself

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    Pretty sure that is called "capitalism". Good for the consumer until the producers consolidate and start to having pricing power, then the government steps in to level the playing field. Welcome to The Jungle.
     
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  18. Burzmali

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    Capitalism ends when XP systems that require grinding 100k or more in mats to approach a usable level are introduced. Since crafters must craft thousands and thousands of items to level up their skills, the sales price of that cruft is almost zero. If you have hundreds of folks producing hundreds of pieces each of items they consider effectively worthless, you will never have a viable economy.
     
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  19. MrBlight

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    Sounds kinda like something that should be accounted for in the general design of the game economy. Would i be able to do this with crafting caps? Nope. What if i had to specialize? Or if people had to actually play roles. (even with multiple characters) . Theres a reason most games do a class based system, and this is just another one of them.

    Im sure the dev's are smart enough to realize this long term, but untill theres actually a game mechanic preventing the excact scenario im describing, you wont see it stop. And if the crafting sucks because of this, then its a failure in the original design.

    I have to imagine in the grand scheme of things they have it figured out already, as this is kinda core stuff.
     
  20. Adam Crow

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    Heavy exaggerations here. You can produce sellable items at a very low level if you know what you're doing.

    It definitely takes a heavy investment to get to the top, but to be competetive it does not take an unreasonable amount of effort.
     
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