Let's talk fair crafting and gathering pricing...

It's not impossible, but the list of profitable items is pretty limited. You have to stick to things that aren't in direct competition with garage sales, which isn't much.

Not that it would solve everything, but it would sure be a lot more fun if the scaling on enchant and masterwork skills were adjusted to incentivize specialization. I'd love to dump 30 million producer xp into a masterwork to be able to make the best something or other in the world, but the way it is now, the items I could make would still only be a tiny bit better than GM.

 

Pretty much sumarizes all skills.

Gm 5 other crafting trees.. or get somethinf 5% stronger..

 

That does seem to be the dividing line. I can count on one hand ho many times I've bought raw materials off other players. I find the prices to be ludicrous.

I recently sold a basic piano I crafted for 20k, I think. If I had bought the materials from other players, I would have had to price it more like 250k+.

People seem to come to a consensus that 1 maple = 45g, which doesn't seem to be based on anything... just some nebulous sense of "worth". I'm willing to pay maybe 7-8g each.

 

Or the telethon items.. that people seem to waaaaay overestimate the value of.

 

Na, the plan was set before the Kickstarter even began.

Kickstarter reason - serialization, the way they planned on having affixes and customizations on the gear would make them personal. To destroy them or replace them with upgrades constantly would be less appealing.

Speculation - the store model. Who’s going to purchase something that is destroyed after x amount of uses.

 

and that's another issue in itself, - you can make something you can sell for 20k by gathering the materials yourself, or you can sell the materials for 250k and not make the item...

 

The Gatherer - This playstyle will be safe there will always be a need for the raw resources. The drawback is population and new accts coming in.

The Crafter - Very easy to do if using your own mats as you climb in levels. Making armor will be more of a acct savings than profit based on the current playing population . Most have been outfitted in the first month or so now all crafting on their accts are more for alt accts building and gearing out. So if your a crafter and a gatherer you do not really need to buy anything, mats or gear.

Crafting will only be as profitable as the length of time you can make others that are new and come in think they need it now or can not do it themselves... Of course there will be players that have the money to just buy what they need but they will not be infinite in numbers and need to purchase constantly for a indefinite period of time.

Using your gathered mats to create what you need is far cheaper than buying them and your can control the stats on the gear better than trying to hunt for the gear with the stats you want to purchase. Falling into the old give me the mats and i will make it for you delays your ability to craft at that level for yourself and binds you to getting other crafters to do it for you. Yes there will be players that do not want anything to do with crafting and they will exchange mats for crafting but only until they gear out.

It will be interesting to see which way the founding old timers and guilds handle this and how the new players coming in handle it once they figure it all out...

 

That would be easy ..decays over time ...just as you access house interface to pay the rent ..you could access house interface to see the overall damage of the items inside your house .... payment cost /day could be 0.5 % of production cost of item.

 

Or sell the mats for 250k and buy the item for 20k of some other random dude who was dumb enough to craft the item with mats worth 250k and put it on sale for 20k.

 

Yup, so true...
Getting your enchant or masterwork to like 120 or even 130 is totally useless, waste of time. They might as well just hardcap all enchant and MWs at 100...

 

lol

 

This is why I am so anti pricing manipulation by some within the game. Some people try to set pricing on materials to and hold them at a certain price,trying to force everyone else to be at their price or just below it. It becomes even worse when a guild or clan does the same with it's members. While some may view this as trying to stabilize a market,I view this as an attempt to control. And in a free market,this has no place. A free market will set itself,it doesn't need or require manipulation.

 

Welcome to market PvP.
Let me be your guide ;-)

 

The market for crafting gear is in specialty items.

Filling a vendor with low priced items is just a way too get your name out there so people will ask you to craft specific items.

There is plenty of a market for gear because everyone can do everything. I've sold 5 custom sets of armor to just one player because he likes the option of being able to switch classes to fit the mobs he's fighting. He was happy with the first, so kept coming back for more. I've had many customers like this.

These sets take a long time to make and I charge a lot for them. I've made a lot of gold doing this and I'm sure many others have too.

When you sell a set of furniture for 1.5 million gold, let me know.

 

That's kind of the point. They're not "worth" 250k. That's just how people price them. So everyone else just gathers their own.

 

I think (and I've said this elsewhere a few times, so my apologies to the dead horse) a huge improvement would come if crafted items were unique. Maybe through a sliding scale of effectiveness dependent on skill.

For example, at alchemy skill 1, a potion of wolf speed lasts ten minutes, like it does now. Every ten levels of alchemy = an extra two minutes duration. Or health restore potions restore more health, poisons do a little more damage, etc.) Then GMing alchemy lets you add a second effect. (Maybe random, or maybe a choice form a random list.) So now, my potions of wolf speed last 20 minutes and maybe have a +1 DEX as well. Now, there's a reason to buy my potions over the hundreds that are already out there. Gear could work in a similar way, though I would probably prevent masterworking/enchanting until GM. I'd probably also split it out into different base items- making/masterworking/enchanting axes is a different skill than making/masterworking/enchanting swords or bows. Which would result in dedicated swordsmiths and bowyers. (Come to think of it, you could probably do that for alchemy too- health/focus are different from poisons are different from buffs.)

 

Your spreadsheet seems to have some serious errors. A crafted piano, if your wood is 40g and your iron is 45g, costs 9694g to make with Prosperity / Artisan tools. If you don't have tools add a few hundred more.

You would have doubled your gold if you had bought the materials.

(Yes, I did read that you will only buy at 7g. If you paid the same for iron, and used free scrap (it would have to be or you would just use wood at that point, scrap is pointless at 7g) your piano costs 1950g to make with Prosperity/Artisan tools.)

@Elay @GrayFog

 

"The Pure Gatherer" - We don't have many of these folks in game yet. I would assume that 90% of the current folks who gather, intend to craft "some day". I hate to say it though, but once we get MORE people in game, we should have more Pure Gatherers, and hopefully prices on gathered mats will drop. I have noticed when your gathering and adventuring skills are low, it can take quite a bit of work to get "1000 wood" to sell on a public vendor... and then possibly lose your 1000 wood if you priced it wrongly? Seems a bit punishing to me for a the new "Pure Gatherer" just trying to make a buck. Also the crafters, who have figured out that gathering isn't for them, don't automatically have access to low priced Mats. They must search them out...

The economy is still in it's infancy, no matter how many years we've been buying/selling/trading raw materials. Once the raw materials prices start to drop, it'll be much easier on crafters getting their start (I also agree that the gathering skill trees need some balance passes, more dedication to them = more raw materials easier should be the case)

 

I'll have to check this later, when I'm out of work (I actually do have a spreadsheet). My cost calculation was based on NPC prices, which came out to 7160, but not based on scrap. With the same model, adding in some loose player prices shots the construction costs up to 30k. I'll admit I threw out a slightly too-large number.

But regardless, your response isn't particularly relevant. The original point is that adding in player costs multiplies construction costs, thereby making crafting based on purchased materials non-competitive. This still holds true.

 

The higher the pricing the more crafters it will create.
The lower the pricing the more affordable gear will be and the there will be less of a need for crafting and less crafters.
If a player can not afford the gear it will be a necessity for them to be a crafter or have a close friend that will take care of their crafting needs in exchange for ???????