Mining, Are You Serious?

Silver & Gold - So, learn to fight (so you can survive the mobs) then hit the mines: Elysium, Etceter, and Verdentis
Just Silver - Learn to run, and get a good book to read while you wait for nodes to respawn: Hilt

V/R Brickbat

 

Programmers dont get paid **** lol Actually most company owners dont program... Richard Garriott is an exception...

 

I have the same experience here - https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...n-loan-crafter-not-viable-raw-feedback.59023/

I am NOT advocating change less than a month in and there are already to many high end items out there BUT balance is needed for some items and the issues with the materials needed to modify needs a huge adjustment.

Other than that keep the production rates low and should have started even lower since the damage is already being down with to much already there to those that have found ways to gather a lot faster.

 

Well, one of those ways goes away next Thursday.

 

Want to see what is wrong with your hypothisis on how the economy is supposred to work @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos ? read the thread where we discuss how to put a price on your crafted item. I try to watch the market, pick up ores and such at bargain prices and then, based on production costs, price my item. Then someone comes along and prices it at 1/3 my cost because they have harvested it all and, except for fuel costs, have no production costs, and tells me i am an idiot for trying to tell them what to charge for their item. They are happy with their 50g profit, and i, as a crafter, cannot compete with their prices, unless i too go and harvest my own stuff. As long as you have folks willing to do that, harvesting and crafting are in bed with each other for the forseeable future.

 

In a Player Driven Economy that's going to happen. Why would someone pay more if they can pay less?

The problem you're having though is that you're trying to sell swords like they're raw fish. If there are 10 swords on a public vendor, do you really need to put another sword on there? If you do, why would someone buy your sword over the other 10? You can't expect to just put a sword on the vendor and have it magically sell in this market.

I'm going to be starting my own shop at the end of the land rush. I'm going to sell Necromancy "stuff". It's going to be a high end shop. It's not going to be an everyday thing where people buy 3 swords a pack of gum and tube socks. This means that if I'm going to make a profit I'm going to have to work harder than that.

You guys are not working at the business side of your "craft". You're just dumping whatever you make on to a public vendor, eating the 20% tax fee, and then complaining when people undercut you. You have no client base, no awareness, no one has a reason to buy your product over others. In many cases (I'm not saying you) people have stupid names on what they're selling. "This sword was made by YourMom".

If you OR ANYONE had a cool shop that had INVENTORY and reasonable prices, at a location people could get to and were aware of, I'm sure it would do fine. Would you sell every item? No. Just like Walmart doesn't sell out of everything. It takes A LOT of money to keep an operation like that going.

The idea that you just put one item on a public vendor and it will sell in 7 days is a very VERY bad business model. Again, I'll use Umuri as an example. When you go to his shop, what do you expect to buy? Swords? No, you expect to buy pets. He's known for pets. Why is he selling pets? Because there's a market for it (or was, we'll see what happens next week).

I hope you understand that I'm telling you this to be helpful. I'm not trying to say "you're stupid" to anyone. I'm really trying to help. But people are not listening to me because they either don't want to work, don't understand what I'm saying, don't want me to be right, or some other weird reason.

I'm totally right. I totally know what I'm talking about. If you listen to me you'll have an edge on all these people that have their head buried in the sand.

 

Actually i dont make swords, and the things i make are not a dime a dozen on the vendor (and i use my own vendor, in a popular area so i dont have to pay vendor costs on top of everything else). But it only takes one other person selling lower than me to keep my goods for selling. So it's not 10 of these, it's 2. So your example is invalid.
And i do have a shop coming online that i am currently building up the inventory for, and the prices will be reasonable. And better yet, the best pieces will be displayed so people can actually see them before they buy. I was a financial analyst for 27.5 years, so i know how markets work, how supply and demand works, and i understand how to make profit. In the real world, many of these people would be out of business in a few months at most, but this isnt the real world, it's fantasy. In the real world, i would work this business for 8 to 16 hours a day, and so would they, to the exclusion of all else. But in the game, i can hunt, i can craft, i can have a shop with a vendor who sells for me when i am not there(and costs me nothing).
I get you are trying to help, i just dont agree with you =) I am not insulted. i am trying to tell you the reality is somewhere in between what you think and what i think.

 

It was a general example. It's not invalid, it's true. It may not apply directly to you, but it's still true.

If you have one person making 50 gold profit then you need to try to sell less than they are and run them out of business. Or you need to find more loyal customers, or both. You can't expect people not to undercut you.

Good.

Awesome.

Wrong. It costs you time. TIME = Money in this fantasy world. And I don't expect or think you need to work 8 to 16 hours a day to do any of this. You just need to work at building a client base and probably lowering your expectations or finding something better to sell where there's more demand.

I appreciate that. What I find frustrating though is you're saying that ONE person selling below your price is ruining your business. That seems to me like a problem with your business plan.

It's probably also true that the low population makes it harder for you to find buyers for whatever you're selling. But again that just means you need to be more focused. If your point is that "this is a game" and so people should just be more successful in a casual sense, I don't agree with that at all. I think the problem is that it's very easy to be a good CRAFTER. You just hit some buttons and you get something to sell to people. It's very hard to be a good BUSINESS person, that takes actual skill. That's where the gap is. Now what Portalarium should be doing in my opinion is making the "Crafting" part harder and harder to do. Ya know, like making it take more time?

That reduces the number of pure crafters in the game, and it reduces the number of items for sale, thus creating a more demand based on scarcity of the items. So while everyone is complaining about all this, it's by design and for a very good reason. It's the only way it will work.

 

I implied one person, but it's not literally one person. it's everyone who prices items by pulling a price out of the air, instead of considering the true market value of their item. And if they have done their own harvesting, they can do that and still make some money.
My goal ultimately is to list buy orders for supplies and do crafting without having to hunt raw materials myself. But at the current value most raw materials sell for, that's simply not possible. (and i do run occasionally to the far corners of the world to check for cheaper prices. sometimes i even find them) And dont forget, while swords wear out, furniture does not. So once you buy a bed, you dont ever have to buy another one, so in my case, one other person selling cheaper can have a serious impact on my business. I try to buy out cheaper sellers and resell at my price, but my funds this early in the game is not unlimited. I think in the long run i will get there. it's just not as easy as you seem to think.

 

Reducing the number of pure crafters is working as designed? I suspect that's not ideal when you're trying to grow your paying customer base in an online game.

 

The idea that every person can be a successful crafter in a player driven economy is not reasonable.

Crafting for yourself is very easy, it's just clicking buttons. It's time consuming, but honestly anyone can be an expert or grand master crafter. Not everyone can be an expert, successful business person. That's exactly what this thread is about. People complaining about not having success in the open market, but clearly not having much business sense or not putting in the work to make that happen.

If the expectation is that players want to make stuff and then sell it for a profit by default, that's not how it's going to work. It CAN'T work that way. Otherwise you'd just have bots making and selling stuff (like in other games) and inflation would go through the roof (just like other games) and we would have a pointless economy (like other games).

I'm not saying that new people can't craft and make stuff and be good at making stuff, they can and will. But if they think they're going to just dump all their unwanted stuff on the market and be rich, they're wrong.

 

Oh I didn't say that doing the business part was easy. I said it's possible. I also wasn't talking about making things that people didn't need. I.E. home decorations that everyone has already.

I do think that's a part of the economy that needs some fixing though. Having items that never break is going to hurt crafters quite a bit. The example of beds is a very good one. There's a issue there with "what's fun", as people don't want to have to re-purchase 1000 home decorations every other month, so we have to be careful about how we go about it. But I think having furniture and other decorations require long term repairs (once a year) might be feasible. The repair costs would have to be significant so players considered just buying a new one.

 

Miners trained in Trammel, and then once they GM'd they got a boat and went to felucca to mine the mountain shores at sea.
The trick was to get your Ore Pile so so large that no one could move it it had to be leap frogged to a forge. (there was one spot on the boat that kept it safe from drive by theives, and boats had no stealth option, so you never had to worry about someone sneaking up on you after you made it out to sea, and verified you were the only one on your boat.

Miners wore no clothes and carried only a stack of shovels, and a bag holding their few supplies buried under a heavy piece of ore maybe GM trapped box that was already picked open and in insta kill mode , a gm deadly poisoned blade, and purple potion or two.

Basically they made sure they had nothing of value, and the only thing the did have of value, (ore) they had so much of, even entire guilds couldn't haul off quickly.
They weren't built to survive an encounter with PK's or theives, they were built to also kill their attacker after they died.

It became very rare for a known miner to get jumped in Felucca, too much risk and no rewards.

 

Sure I get that, but the argument that you can be a pure crafter, in a market flooded with gatherer/crafters, who are making items and selling them at a loss just to recoup part of the price of skilling up means that the "pure crafter" is falling behind everyday the market is lopsided. The lopsided market should continue, until release as "new players" join the horde of gatherer/crafters.
However, I imagine instead we are going to see a tapering off over the next few weeks/months as the thrill of persistance, and house claiming wears off, and people stop logging in again, and then a few of us will get insanely rich, and then rest will effectively be playing a sandbox game, that can't afford the trinkets we swap back and forth with each other for insane prices.

 

You haven't been to Etceter have you?
I think a trip there that will clarify why gold is so much cheaper than silver.

I mean if your freaking out about how much silver you can clean out of Elysium, I think your about to have "the best day ever" when you journey to Etceter Crag mines.

Also currently Silver is used by both tamers, and Masterworking. (I think it's all three tailors, carpenters and blacksmiths)
Gold is mostly used by Enchanters.

 

Yeah, seems that the system is a bit screwed up

 

If above comments are considered true, that "Hunter/Gatherers's" are making the money by selling resources at high prices. My logic says that the crafters will in turn sell equipment at higher prices as their production costs are higher. Don't worry about selling your crafted items at higher costs, the fighters you're selling them to have the money in this scenario. If the fighters start feeling equipment is too expensive, they will lower their resource prices. However, this is only one scenario for the process of balancing.

Other options are for exclusive crafters to build trade relationships with the exclusive fighters. Bring me your resources+, and I'll craft your gear. Trade is a viable market option in both virtual and real worlds. If you're running a business, time to start networking.

Finally, I take the last approach, I hunt and craft. I look forward to slowly grinding my way to being able to collect the resources I need and craft the gear I really want to be carrying. It will make owning that gear all that much more rewarding when I get there, I see how much work will go into it, I see it's value. I don't think I'd want the 'best gear' to be churned out easily with unlimited access to affordable resources, I think it would destroy the reward of crafting/earning it and ruin the sense of accomplishment.

 

No, we want to be able to at least craft more then one set of basic non improved or enchanted or gemmed armor per day.

They sided on the most cautious potential as possible and its insane, not only expensive as crap to buy the burn mats like coal in order to refine mats.

3 hours today first time running through midmear, qual, spectral, etceter and kiln cistern... fighting along the way... my results.

Amethyst 1/9 (gem/fragments)
citrine 0/68
copper 11
emerald 0/72
gold 60
iron 70
nickel 28
ruby 0/200
saphire 5/256
tin 4
tungsten 35
approximately 400 gold

Frankly thats not much... can't even make more than a couple pieces of armor today never mind a single complete iron set... maybe one special piece of white or meteoric but could at least enchant it and gem it with a blue or purple if chest or weapon.

I think the balance needs to improve vs work/cost/time spent gaming (I'm here spending some of my real life gaming, its valuable please don't make the game "work")

Edit: and the amount of gold earned fighting along the way doesn't even come close to paying for the chunks of coal I will need to refine all of the ore I mined (which I blame on harder creatures should give more gold based on their level... I should get more killing a red hardened skeletal warrior then a green thug)

 

My dear Baron, that is all this player wants to is mine and craft. Even if they did not craft and only mined, it still took them 3 days staying in the mine, logging off in the mine to produce the ore to to make one set of plate armor. Besides that, you cannot be a crafter without being a gatherer. Most of your experience to level up your crafting comes from gathering resources. Actually making an item gives you less experience than will be applied to the crafting skill you used and it takes well over 1,000,000 experiences point to GM a crafting skill.
You sir, are among the most prolific and noted writers on these boards, but in a reply to Dreamlarp you admitted you do not craft. You lack the in game experience with crafting to really understand what is involved in gathering and crafting. You may well know how to play financier and get gold in the game, but without a functional crafting system you are going to have trouble finding equipment worth spending your gold on.

 

I don't think that's true. I think that's a common misconception.

I believe that players often want to do both. I think players may not have thought very long about the impact of doing both.

I'm aware of this. What I do to increase my crafting pool is chop wood. But I'm not trained in chopping wood, so it all goes towards my crafting pool, which I thankfully use to level up the skills I actually care about.

I hope I didn't misrepresent myself. I'm an enchanter. I do craft, it's just very limited and focused. I buy all my supplies from other players, I gather almost none of it. Although I do farm and gather small amounts of mandrake when I can.

Here, check this out. I'm proud of this...

When you see this you should be saying two things to yourself.

1. Look at all the opportunities I have to sell to this guy, he can't make anything himself!
2. What am I doing? Why am I trying to do all this myself. I need to come up with a business plan that makes sense! I'm not profitable because my business plan is horrible.

I'm often accused of "not having enough experience" but I'm rarely shown to be wrong in what I'm actually saying. I do realize that trying to be both a gatherer and a crafter is very hard and I've recommended that people don't do that.

If the market was better, I would probably buy my mandrake and stop gathering it altogether. But players are not selling much of it at the moment. I'm not having any trouble finding exceptional equipment worth spending my money on. I'm in contact with several excellent crafters (read: they have GM crafting skills) and are always happy to take my resources to use in raising their skills even higher.

I've said this many times in this thread, but it's so important I feel I must say it again here. Crafting is easy. It's just pressing some buttons. It's repetitive, and takes a long time to do. But it's not something that requires a great deal of skill to perform. There are lots of players with GM crafting "skill" and so what will separate a successful crafter from an unsuccessful crafter is business sense. That's the hard part, and that's essentially what you and others are complaining about. There's no button to "make a profit", it requires skillful adaptation of the markets.

I realize this is a game and it shouldn't be a full time job for anyone. @Qwark made some good points about that. Normally in real life she'd be working 8 to 16 hours a day on a small business like hers. But that's not fun and that's not what the game should be about. I agree. I think that's why the game should help simulate some of the basic business fundamentals that many players appear to be unaware of, building awareness, building a client base, differentiating your product from your competitors, and MOST importantly selling what people actually want.

I don't want the game to hold everyone's hand and do all the work, but I think there's some things we could do that would help cut a lot of the time out of those processes so that players didn't have to feel like crafting was a second job.

Here's one example:

• Public Directories (for a fee/gold sink) that allow players to broadcast what they're selling. The town crier could provide this service to players (for a fee/gold sink). Example: "Drocis Fondorlatos Necromancy: Selling high end items of arcane origin." This might also allow players that make purchases to rate these vendors up or down (need to think about how to keep this from being gamed). This would give players visiting a town a one stop place to check out what other players in that town are selling instead of just going to the public vendor, or trying to navigate through a sea of inactive or empty player vendors.