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

Are you really suprised by this? Developers always have big dreams of how a multiplayer game will work and then players come and ruin it. The idea for Open PvP in Ultima Online was a great one but PKs ruined it. A player run economy is great idea but there will always be players who will ruin it, some unintential, some just for the "fun" of ruining it. The same with housing. There are players who like to decorate them in an immersive way and others ruin the atmosphere with junk. Players spoil others by telling them how quests play out or tell them how puzzles are solved, jump around in front of them and tease them or name pets as advertisments. This is why I am not that much of a fan of online play. Because there are always players ruining the fun and how a game is intended to play.

 

I was curious how you came up with 299 for a maple long bow - from my calculations (using your 'wood @ 50' equation) I get a cost of 1500gp just for the bowstave... Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong here, or what I'm not understanding?

 

Many of you will hate the example I am about to use,but I feel it does apply, World of Warcraft.

To just about everyone who ever played,it invokes a lot of different feelings. Now of course SotA does not have a auction house,we have vendors. With vendors,you have to either travel to see what other people are pricing at,watch a video on YouTube where someone has done that and shared it,talk to guildies or look at listings in the Player Marketplace. At any rate,we have to put in some time or leg work to see what is priced where to stay competitive.

In Warcraft,there is one big auction house for each realm. So you can go there and see what everyone else is pricing at. And you might list your item for a few copper,silver,gold less so when someone looks your item is cheaper. And so the process continues until the "under cutter" comes to list a item. He doesn't care about the economy of the realm, all he knows is that he wants his item to sell and that's his main goal,so he will price,let's say for example,200 gold less than the cheapest one. And then someone who listed earlier looks and sees they have been undercut by a price of 200 gold and has to decide to leave their item or take it down and relist it cheaper than the other guy. So he removes the item and relist it cheaper than the under cutter. While all this is happening,the others who listed the item see the prices drop less than 200 gold from where they were and panic,removing their listings and relisting them to be cheaper. And this,what I call the "panic mentality", will drive the price of a item way below the actual cost of crafting it.

Now I have watched as a crafted item gets so cheap it is shocking. The materials may be rare drops that take a lot of farming that may not be available on the auction house. So down and down the spiral continues until it gets so low, I swoop in and buy them all. Then I list one for sale and put the rest in a guild bank and hold onto them. I have sold items I bought like this at a 600% profit. It's not my fault the panic mentality set in. And if you get enough folks who farm their own materials,they will forget about what their time farming is worth or the what the base materials can sell for,all they want to do is sell to get more gold.

There are addons that can tell you what the current listing price an item is not only on your realm, but the mean price across all realms. And it is certainly not unusual to see a large difference between your own realm and some others. There are some realm where the economy is "tanked",driven so low you can't make gold on anything like you could somewhere else. So, in theory and in fact,the economy on a realm can be affected. But, that does not make it "ruined". The rates and returns are less than other realms,they still make something.

Now in SotA,there have been plenty of times I have purchased wood,just to name one item. I saw a vendor price listed in the Player Marketplace and traveled there and bought a lot of it. So I will take the maple wood, make maple timber,turn that into maple poles and maple boards and craft some furniture,all the time getting some crafting XP. Then I will price the items to sell on my personal vendor and maybe 2-3 of them on the guilds vendor in Owl's Head. Now, I will price them the same if I farmed my own materials or not. If I see someone selling it cheaper,I will make note of it. If I see someone selling it a lot cheaper, I can (a) adjust my price or (b) buy theirs and resell it at my price.

The one thing I refuse to do is get into the "panic mentality". And it is this that can drive prices into the ground and make people say this crafting thing is horrible. We already have some who are trying to "regulate" the economy by telling others what to price their items for. If you want to sell your +15 sword for 150k or a stack of 200 maple for 4k that is your business, not anyone else's. The economy of part of the game,it is NOT the game. If you feel you can't be bothered with farming materials and want to buy from others to craft,go for it,you are free to do as you want. If you want to farm material and sell to others,that is your business. If you want to buy cheap materials or items and resell them for what you think they are worth,more power to you.

If anyone feels the need to regulate prices and the economy because of fear or control issues, #$%^%$#**&^%##$$%%. You can't have a free and open market and try to dictate to people what they can set prices at. To me,this is what can kill an economy,people trying to have control of what others do and what prices they can sell at. If people are scared of crafting prices,maybe crafting isn't for them. If people are worried of the price of their materials,maybe gathering isn't for them. SotA has a gathering system,a crafting system and a selling system. What I do within those confines is my business,not anyone else's. It is your business,not anyone else's. What I do or you do cannot be regulated or dictated. You have to let the market regulate itself,by itself.

This post is not directed at the OP,just a general thought on the subject. If anyone doesn't agree with me, it is OK. It's not like it's the first time I have swam upstream.

 

Hey, what wrong with SOTA craft system ?

Many words was said with bow as an example:
I proud that I have both high advanture level and high producer level (I`m archer in leather, and have great masterwork in both leather and bow carpentory) And I can again say it, almost all leather and bows which you can see on a market(on any vendor) is useless **** which are not build focused.
Example: Only as an archer I need to choose now, in what archer build to go in future? my future way will cost me tens/hundreds million adv. exp. of course each way will have armor(with unique ench. and master.) with what it will work good. So I will need VERY specific armor for this build, it will cost really huge money only for resourses. I can create it yes, but if i will see this one on a vendor I will probably buy it becouse it will save me HUGE ammount of time. All +3/+3 stuff which are build focused goes by huge prices and mostly to friends/guildmates now. It need huge ammount of resourses and have huge time consuming, and I think it work as it should and as intended.

Yeah maple bow with cotton bowsting is relativity cheap. There is random in Sota and sometime it is great sometimes it is terrible once i made 70 bows and get only 5 exept, so it would not cheap )
But only one build use such bow, other use pine with suet, maple with BC. In extremely high level you will need rock maple with BC.

P.S. I dont see anything bad in competition, market will regulate it in terms of XP/specific resourse gathering/igg per hour terms. Also there is a good way to win the race - be effective. From the point of capitalism is someone sell same gear for higher price on free market he will lose and not worth saving him.
Play Sota for a bit more than 1 year, and never feel that sota economy more healthier than now. There is no problem to sell smth(resourses or craftable items) now at all, I have not got time to make all orders which i have on a gear. There is a healthy competition now. Sota craft system is good crafting system(system have stupid things like hard maple bowstave which gives damage resistance to item but overall is great). The only thing which I afraid of is exploits and bugs which can affect it stability. Just one rules for all and crafting system will be heallthy and thriving. From my point of view we really need is advanced stock exchange for resourses ingame.

 

Weapons and armor are a losing proposition at the moment.

I came in the game intending to play business owner. As soon as I figured out that gear crafter will always operate at a loss (for now) I sadly chose not to craft them. I have saved huge amounts of gold by steadfastly refraining, even though I want to foe fun.

As Warren Buffet says, "don't lose money."

 

Gotcha. I play this game to have fun

 

Yea, whats described in the OP is the market cycle Things go up when prices are so low people that people who want to sell cheap get sold out and the others don't want to craft and sell in bulk anymore. So the things that come back on the market after this period are more expensive.

But yea I do get frustrated when other sellers are unnecessarily pushing down the prices sometimes.

I would note that, from a game design perspective, people have to think carefully about the best game solutions to the economy, because sometimes they can be counter-intuitive. So people naturally want faster spawns and more spawns, but the slower the spawns and less spawns, the more valuable a single resource will be. Also the more valuable a single resource will be, the more the devs could afford for balance purposes to lower crafting requirements on high end items, lower the amount of mats needed to craft a single item. So GIVE US MOAR will not necessarily be the right solution for the economy.

 

Those are uhops prices, mine are in green, so 869.

Are you using scrap to make your timber?

I'm on the road until Tuesday so not near my magic abicus, but I'll be happy to break it done completely when I get home. Occasionally that helps me find errors too.

 

@Frederick Glasgow That's exactly what I was trying to get across, except about regulating. I was simply giving a warning about the possibility of us tanking the gear economy as you said has happened in certain realms.

I don't want to regulate anything, just get people thinking.

And I don't craft gear at all right now, but I do buy stacks of underpriced stuff from people who subsidize me with their time and money.

Will I ever sell it? I don't know. It's not really that important. What is important to me is that when release comes we don't start with a tanked economy, and new players come in and sell their first bow for a little more than they made it for, a D are happy and say how great sota is.

And despite a lot of people misreading my post (seems like you got it) I feel like the message was heard at some levels.

 

Me too. I've always wanted to play shopkeeper in a more dynamic system than we see in the single player shopkeeper games. SotA is a lot of fun in that way!

 

Btw, I'd argue even non-economic aspects of the game work this way, too. Nobody wants the game to feel tedious or slow or boring, but if you give players everything they want, you're going to make the game less fun -- more boring -- in the long run. There is an "economy of fun" so to speak. Sometimes whats good for the game in general is counter-intuitive IMO.

 

"tanking the gear economy"
"sell their first bow for a little more than they made it for"

I hope you realize these statements are very hard to nail down. As I mentioned in my post, the only rational reason a new player would sell a bow is in the hope that a masterworker/enchanter would pick it up to destroy. In SotA, no one should buy starter equipment for their own use. It is simply too easy to gather and make yourself in a classless, every skill is possible system.

And what is the "what they made it for?"

Let's take a maple bow with cotton bowstring... I've seen creosote dropping as loot, so maybe the cost of wax? Wax may drop as loot too, who knows. But let's assume they have to pay for these fuels. That's about 30ish gold if I remember correctly. DLMB. So let's say 30 is the gold cost. If you want to factor in time you have to establish a gold value for that time. There is no way to standardize this. Someone could desire to sell things at cost. Even in real economies there are "loss leaders".

If a person decides to sell a bow for 31 gold, it does not "tank the gear economy". It may not make it fun for you, since you want to be a salesman who earns money. Some may enjoy being salespeople who don't earn money. You can't dictate how people play.

Throwing around these vague terms doesn't respect the complexity of these issues.

Why not own what this really is? You're frustrated that the SotA economy makes it hard for you to earn gold since earning money in-game through vendors, maybe even to convert it to real money, is what you find fun. It's a frustration with the game economy mechanics and not the responsibility of other players. The only solution is to think through the very complex mechanics required and offer solutions - not to try to cajole others into fixing prices.

 

Thanks for thinking for me, but no.

I'm not frustrated with anything, except the few of you who keep putting words in my mouth.

I'm not trying to cajole you, and clearly neither am I getting through, so we are pretty much not communicating.

However, I would like to offer to buy any and all gear you make that you are only putting fuel costs into the price.

Good day

 

You were the one who said what you found fun, and making money is implicit in what you say. I don't think I'm putting words in your mouth if I use your own words.

The way the discussion ends is only when a complicated subject like economics is reduced to "you players need to keep your prices up." Economics is a serious and deep field of study. This is fact, not opinion, so it doesn't matter whether you or I agree with it or not. It just is.

As far as I'm concerned, I choose to make all my own gear because SotA allows it. Often I will make gear for friends and give it away. SotA allows that and many, many do it. To be honest, I don't find the grinding required to do high level crafting fun at all. That is not killing the game, not at all. "Killing the game" is hyperbolic language that doesn't advance your argument in any way. What I believe would advance your argument is to dive into the complexity of SotA economics and describe how game mechanics could promote a thriving economy. That's what everyone else who comments on the economy does.

Long story short, everyone is here to have fun in a million different ways... work with what you're given and try to find the fun you can have. If you can't find fun, it's never going to be a good day here. But that's not the responsibility of other players.

 

Low population and the crafter's impatience for "someday" when someone buys their gear is what will (and likely is?) killing the economy/game? Can't do anything if there aren't enough people playing the game to supply the "demand" to buy items.

 

You nailed it. That is the only thing that kills an MMO - when not enough people play it.

 

In pretty much any MMO, crafters tend to lose money (opportunity cost of selling raw materials) until the very high-end gear, simply because of supply and demand of raw materials. It's pretty much always been this way, simply because raw materials will always be in high demand, making them very expensive, and therefore multiplying the cost to make X pieces of gear.

Only when very high level and rare/precious gear comes into play will charging premium prices pay off because not many crafters can make that kind of gear : low supply, high demand. This is especially true in SotA given how hard it is to get a lot of materials, how much gear you'll blow up and how insanely expensive fuel becomes after a lot of crafting.

Basically, if you want to make money fast, harvest and sell raw materials. You'll make a fortune very quickly. If you want to be a crafter, expect to spend A LOT of money and not make a profit until the very high end. Pretty much standard for MMOs, so pick your path wisely.

 

When I was confronted with this problem I thought immediately: a spreadsheet. It is nice that somebody put some effort and actually did just that. Major kudos!

Interesting that in most cases my approach produced similar prices. While a businessman will be all aghast, a math guy says "it is well within an order of magnitude!". In most cases the difference is twice less than the actual expense.

Come and get it. Go to Brittany Fields on sotamap.com --- my house is listed under my name. I am uhop in the game as I am here. After the current batch is gone, I may adjust prices to be more in line with your calculations.

If I do an alloy weapon, minor components are going to be from a complimentary alloy. So if it is a bronze sword, it means it has a bronze blade, but its hilt will be made from a meteoric iron. And visa versa. Another popular alloy pair is a constantan and a white iron.

I don't know why I do that, I just do for some forgotten historical reasons.

I think what you have here for exceptional items is simple to understand, and mathematically sound. Well done!

---

Reasons I didn't pay much attention to market prices (and that's wrong) are:

• I get all necessary materials myself. I don't buy them, I don't even know prices.
  • Running around all of New Britannia to compare prices sounds exhausting,time-consuming, and frankly boring.
  • There are some stuff I cannot get due to my avatar's limitations, like a dragon meat, or some other parts of bosses.
• My sales volume is very low to make a financial dent at literally any price.
  • I don't consider my character a merchant, nor a dedicated crafter.
• I didn't decide how to price my time yet.

In any case, what we have now cannot be called a "market". Look at modern trends in the real world: markets are getting consolidated to improve their purchasing power (Brexit notwithstanding). Local markets go by the way of dodo. Internet allows us to go way beyond local or regional in our purchases, and allows us to find merchants and suppliers we never even heard about before. So far we have a system, where merchants are all over the place, not concentrated in malls for our convenience, but spread thin. No realistic ways to compare prices across vendors. No common market of any sort. No way to offer service, no way to find what you need, or order what you need. I hope we'll get there.

 

You know what UnKills an MMO. Relationships.

Be that crafter that a group of people want to deal with. Keep them coming back for more and profit will be found.

 

Like I said, for a weapon made with simple materials, I just double its value supplied by Port --- just look at your armor/weapon stats, and you will see "value". That value is more-or-less unsynchronized with the reality, that's why it is so low.