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

If you manage to consistently sell unenchanted tier 1 armor on a public vendor for more the the price of coal, smithing tool charges and smelting tool charges, you are a better man than I

 

You must have missed the part when I said you need to know what you're doing.

 

What I think would help this situation a lot is if there were repeatable 'buy order' quests from NPCs. Like if the Guard Captain in Owl's Head had a repeatable quest (that gave a non-trivial amount of producer XP and a non-trivial amount of gold) to bring him 10 personally crafted longswords. Then maybe you put ones with better rewards for 10 longswords with two masterworks on them. Or 10 rings with two enchants. Given that to keep gold income balanced you should be making a profit (and XP gain) of approximately equal to an adventurer at a similar level, and if you restrict these quests to only give production XP, you have a decrease in supply that keeps prices reasonable, a second source of income and producer XP for people who don't want to grind materials(or even people that do - producer XP gains need to be increased anyway), and an overall more healthy economy.

 

What I am reading from the OP is "you are pricing me out of my profit". What should happen is people quit selling. Then the price will go up.

If you don't like the return you are getting on your crafting maybe crafting isn't for you.

 

Much of this could be fixed by enhancing salvage and creating a better loop between refining and manufacture. Create more opportunity to destroy things. Make masterworking and enchanting more desireable and less costly to perform.
I think they need to reduce the amount of junk created with crafting. As a crafter I should want to pay more for your loot than an NPC.

BUT, it's hard to gauge anything about the economy right now because of the small, well experienced population.

 

You read incorrectly. I'm not foolish enough to craft gear at the moment, and that's fine with me.

If you would kindly reread the post, you may find that what it actually says is "Don't drive the prices into the dirt, people, you're going to regret it!"

And by regret I mean you fondly looking back over a brew at the pup, saying "Remember SotA? I sure wish they would have been able to get the pricing right, but people kept selling bows for 10 gold, and then crafting died. And then SotA died."

 

No that's an hour you mine or gather resources on an Alt.

 

@uhop I have to go to bed, big day, so this isn't as detailed as I'd like to make it. There's a book in front of the S Mart vendor that has the method broken down step by step, with helpful estimates for components. And a chart. One is for sale as well.

So quickly, I take the market price of resources, not the high price, a normal price I'm fine paying, for instance right now Copper is going for about 45, gold for 50.

I then run that through a bunch of spreadsheet pages so that I can know exactly how much the item cost to make materially.

If there is enhancements I take the chance of it exploding based on a skill level 100 (which I am nowhere near, so I'm essentially pricing the item cheaper than I can craft.) I multiply that in.

I will give you prices up to that point. These are exact prices given the materials cost listed, so I can change them if I feel the market is operating at a different price.

• Maple Long Bow: value 150, price 299 (see more rules below).

I'm assuming Cotton bowstring. Cost 869g with wood at 50, cotton at 5.5

• Rock Maple Long Bow: value 150, price 749.

Again cotton bowstring, Pine Resin 40. Cost 1217

• Iron Longsword: value 110, price 249.

Iron hilt? Iron costing 45g: Cost 663g

• Meteoric Iron Longsword: value 110, price 549.

Please bring me all your Meteoric gear, I will buy it immediately.
Nickel and Tungsten both 100, although I've actually been selling them at 120 lately, so this is conservative.



Meteoric hilt as well: Cost 3358
Iron hilt: Cost 2280

• Bronze Two-handed sword +1: value 175, price 1749.

For some reason Tin is going for 150 now, so Bronze went through the roof.
With Bronze hilt: Cost 2858
With iron hilt: Cost 1980

The discretionary bit is last, how much is a +1 worth? At the moment I'm selling non-exceptional for 50% crafting cost, and exceptional for 2.5x. So out of 4 the price is break even.

1 Enchantment, Gold at 50: Cost 1124. It's actually 1068 for one enchantment, but at 5% failure that brings the true cost up to 1124
1 Masterwork, Silver at 55: Cost 1192 with failures, 1133 true cost

Somehow I need to get this into a public spreadsheet, but it's massive.

At the moment my book is pretty good, it cuts out a lot of the calculations and lets you say "Oh, at today's prices (50 for wood) a Crimson Pine Bowstave is approximately 630, 2 Hardened Leather bowstrings are about 1100 total, so a Crimson Pine Longbow with Hardened Leather Bowstrings costs about 1730 to make!

It's an estimate because there's an 8000 word limit, but it'll get you within 50 gold.

 

I sell everything sub market value, because I farm all my own mats and pay 0 gold for them.
If you can't compete it's because you don't put in the necessary work.

 

You see, there was once this dream of a player run economy. Little did the developers realize that many of their players value their time at zero. Thus everything is worth nothing, including the economy.

 

Bulk order deeds from NPCs can be used to set a minimum value. And this would fix this ( imo ), as discussed in previous threads.

 

I'm not sure what to think about this statement.

 

But.. thats a complicated thing.

Before the DR change, i could kill the 40 wolf spawn in like 2 minutes.. and have a person doing nothing but skinning behind me non stop. How does my time value against someone doing it solo at 3x the time needed to get the same amount of leather?

It took me 15 minutes to get 100 hides, but the other guy took 45 minutes. So in the same time im at 300, hes at 100. I Sell at 5G a peice, to recoup my time ( lets say 1500g total) yet he has to sell at 15G a piece. How do you value someones time? Should i be ALSO selling at 15G a piece? So now my 45 min was worth 4500G?
Boy i wish thats how it worked. Then the guy doing it in 5-10 minutes is laughen! And people wonder how the rich get richer..

Tho im still rocken a concussion so maybe im just mis understanding what your hoping players do to fix the economy ?


Edit - Didnt UO use Bulk order deeds to control this? Like small order deeds would set the minimum by the raw mats? Example, i would never sell 100 hides for 5g, because i can use a bulk deed to get 10g out of them?
Didnt the bulk order deeds effectivly draw the line for what mats were worth , preventing undercutting and adding a base value to them?
(this doesnt solve the problem of .. levels = faster farming = richer players) but i thought PO deeds were supposed to be coming soon in SOTA to address this general issue?

 

If your neighbor's prices are too low... buy their stuff

It's that easy, markets aren't rational they just are.

 

zame gets it!
what to sell what im selling for more?? buy all of my stuff and relist.

 

I'm not sure which games you are referring to but I am willing to bet that they died for a different reason than you think.

The OP was way off on the macro economics so I bailed on pointing it out. Instead I opted for the blunt route.

For example, you've stated that someone selling gear can lower the price below the cost to make it. Someone that gathers their own materials has a very different cost than someone that buys all the materials.

Which means material availability can kill SotA. OR, the ability to gather, refine, and craft gear can be done by anyone can kill SotA.

 

dude, you're way off base on some prices.
for a rock maple bow, it takes 10 pine resin and 40 maple timber. that alone is 1.5k cost.
you'll also be using a supple string, that takes suet...

I get that you are finally trying to set up a vendor of your own, but take a step back on the tears.

 

I don't think making things break easier is going to make things sell more. Why would I pay good coin for something if its just going to break? What this is going to lead to is people using founder gear for everything. I mean already, most people with warlock necklaces don't even wear them 95% of the time. Most times, I am not wearing my best gear, I am wearing something disposable. With the way things break 25% easier, they better fix bows at least to not break so dam fast. They should look at bow sales if they want to see if things breaking faster makes them sell more. Rapid fire eats the bow durability like mad.

So, you might ask, why are my things not selling? Most people are selling the garbage they don't want, with useless buffs like hp and focus. Why don't people want to buy the garbage you don't wear yourself? Corp por is selling wands, its the wands with good buffs on them that sell. I have bought only a few pieces of gear because I have only found a few good pieces for sale. Most stuff I see is garbage. Go look around, and try to find things with max int stats, or max str stats, stuff like that. You will find 95% of the stuff people are selling is crap.

want to get the crafters selling more stuff, get rid of the hp and focus enchants and masterworks so we have better chances at making good stuff. As well, get rid of on hit procs on wands. The durability enchants and masterworks are kinda nice, but I am more likely to keep my skills at 97 so that option does not even come up to increase my odds of getting the stuff I want.

 

There are so many problems with establishing prices. I appreciate all those here who have tried to consider various aspects of the problem.

So can there really be a market for weapons/armor in SotA?

Anyone who wants to start as an archer should craft their own bow. A maple bow with cotton bowstring is quite fine for starting out, and it's well within even a new player's ability to gather and craft. There simply isn't going to be a market for starter weapons unless you want to take advantage of those who don't take the time to learn how to play the game. Everyone should be able to craft their own weapons up to a point, the only real player to weapon user market is for items that require a lot of time to make... masterwork/enchant and probably not the +1's to +5's. The way the game is, when I find a new player I say, hey let me help you learn how to make your own weapons and armor. That's SoTA. That's what being able to have every skill does. Even if they limited it, people would just do it with alts. Another reason I tell new players to make their own is there are always people trying to take advantage of them.

So if basic weapons are not valuable to the weapon user, what about high masterwork/enchant stuff? Will people use it and lose it in PvP? How valuable is it for PvE? People may buy but need to consider price vs. repair costs, esp. since there are rumors that durability will go down faster. It makes no sense to calculate cost based on mats alone if that prices them above a reasonable return on investment. I'm a pretty regular player and no way I'd pay 100000's of gold for high masterwork/enchant. The return is low. There is a market for the high-end stuff right now probably because it's a nice perk for those who have the patience to grind continuously and for the achievers who just want stuff anyway. Because it's all play money (even though gold has value, the time it takes is less than a minimum wage job where the vast majority of players live), the "market" will always have people who buy stuff just for the fun of it.

So really what's left for a solid market? There could be a market for selling basic items to masterworker/enchanters. I can imagine some would appreciate being able to buy 100 rock maple bows to go through the destruction required. However, don't many masterwork/enchant right now simply to raise their skill for a better market in the future? Will it come?

There is a crafting market right now - buying and selling does go on - but part of the reality I'm trying to express is that it's not all that simple to say exactly why. I don't mean this to sound insulting, but it could just be "play" markets because it's fun. A real market has to be based on economic factors established by the game. It can't be a "hey guys let's all play nice together" message. That will never, ever work. To establish those economic factors in the game takes a LOT of hard thought and hard work. Someone could pony up to pay for a game economist for a year if they really wanted SotA economics to work well, otherwise probably not going to happen.

TL;DR. Let me use a familiar quote: "who knew it could be so complicated?" And it's up to the devs to establish the proper mechanics for a working market, not the players. And a mat cost system can only be one of the many factors that need to go in to setting prices and will never be a baseline for what people should use for a price.

 

I think a good solution to this problem is having the ability to disassemble items for additional experience. You would lose some of the materials in the process, but you would also gain skill. In this case a person who made 20 bows trying to get the right one, would disassemble the 19 he didn't want for additional experience and some of his resources back instead of dumping them on the market.