Observation on Crafting Enjoyment: Deco vs. Armor/Weapons

@Aldo well, according to the Devs in the latest Postmortem "Weapons and Armor are just sitting on the vendors." Prices are far below crafting cost, and yet they still sit.

What does one do at that point? Just figure that there will never be a market for gear again?

 

That's like getting upset when a stock doesn't price at your expected value. You can't argue with the ticker tape. Everyone should expect at least a little volatility (maybe a lot).

The difference is that I can go out and adventure without mining and make a higher adventure gold earn or I can adventure and mine and make less money adventuring but make some money selling ore; and then if I use that ore to make armor and sell the armor, I am at typically at a loss. They are all separate activities that may closely coincide in terms of time, but if you don't believe they are separate in terms of economic endeavor, try participating in only one and not the others and see the difference in gold earning outcome. But I'm fine to agree to disagree here.

 

Sorry not buying it. Less of a profit is still a profit. It's not a loss until you have less than you started with.

Having crafted my own armor and seen some of those prices.. I highly doubt this statement as a generality.

In my view the devs are being stubborn on some of these points but eventually they will be forced to concede certain points.

In general: Money is too easy to come by at high levels

Things they ought to do..

1: NPC merchants need to only purchase the type of items they sell.
2: NPC merchants should have limited currency available for purchases per 'day'
3: switch to multi-tier weighted currency
4: Increase the degradation on gear.. (which they eluded to doing last post mortem)
5: Implement a means for gear to "break" (a point where a piece is still salvageable but not repairable).. plenty of good suggestions out there..
6: Abandon the notion of reforging gear which is just another way keeping the same item forever. (Except perhaps under very specific circumstance)

Would be a good start.

 

There's like 2 pages of math back there! What "Generality?" All I see coming from you is generalities, maybe back up some of your statement with actual numbers.

 

Exactly. There will never be a market for crafted gear. The devs have limited supply of or and usage of same to the point that no crafter will ever be able to economically be active. Crafters are forced to be self sufficient and not depend on the economy to the extent of sales of their items. Presently they are in a limited sense active in that they are bypassing the collection phase of crafting by becoming adventurers to slowly accumulate enough resources to buy ore. The people who want to be pure crafters are left in the dust. They can not mine enough to advance skills so are finding themselves gathering ore and selling it, making some cash but not advancing whatsoever in their desired crafting skills. It is a shame. This is a prime example of people who assume they can control the economy. It never works, never has, but the lesson is never learned. Sheesh, I hate getting dragged into this. I thought I could just go with the flow and enjoy myself but it appears that the issue is critical and I may not have a game to play before too long. Like everyone says, this is still Alpha and everything will be OK. Well then, lets wait it out!! I am sure that there is a economic genius who can mastercraft this scenario.

 

That's only because you don't include the price of self-gathered materials into your crafting cost. Doesn't invalidate your opinion, but the clarification is needed.

 

Trying to reflect on some constructive criticism from the thread. Things that would improve the crafting experience (though perhaps without specific fixes):
1. Crafting (making items and equipment) should be profitable (even if negligibly profitable) without gathering ones own materials.
2. Crafting should be specialized, but not limit crafters to specializations; e.g. you can profit from specializing, but profit more from multi-specialization.
3. Gear and items need to decay at a rate to make buyers replace them, but also provide buyers with a value that incentivizes purchase and re-purchase.
4. Perhaps, if better tools were available to evaluate market conditions, players could better price items to make them relevant to market conditions.

 

To add to this, what's the highest Masterworking Proficiency anyone has and what are the percentages? I'm at 108(Blacksmithing) and even with the Wayland Loop my success chances past 2 effects are pretty dire(The percentages are 95%/86%/48%/15%/8% for reference). Numbers like that pretty much guarantee that the negative profit margin problem continues. There should be a better way to restrict high level gear. My suggestion would be that failing MW or Enchant adds an effect to an item that prevents it from being further improved, rather than destroying it, along with maybe a tweak to the numbers.

Another thing I thought of but am not sure is practical from a technical standpoint is for masterworking and enchanting to be done on components that are then combined into the finished weapon/armor as usual. This would have the added benefit of getting crafters to trade with each other.

 

It's perfectly simple.. coal is 6g a piece.. molds are 50.. those are the only expenses you need to incur.

And what cost is that? How is coming away with more than I started with a cost? It's only a cost if you have less than when you started.

 

op·por·tu·ni·ty cost
noun
Economics
noun: opportunity cost; plural noun: opportunity costs

1. the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.
   "idle cash balances represent an opportunity cost in terms of lost interest"

Not selling your mats represent an opportunity cost in terms of lost revenue.

 

You can't lose what you didn't have. It's like saying.. well I can make 10g an hour doing A or 20g an hour doing B.. if you chose to do A that's a 10g loss but that's a load of nonsense. This kind of thinking is deceptive. less profit is STILL profit.. and profit is NOT a loss. Besides that.. potential is not guarantee.. The "loss" is purely in your head. That there's a definition for it doesn't make it a literal loss.

Besides, we were never talking about selling materials but the need to BUY materials as a cost for crafting. Soon as you start buying you're incorporating someone else's (likely) inflated costs which may or may not be market value.. (whatever that is.. ). You don't NEED to buy what you can get for a little effort.

 

Why are you arguing with him? He's either trolling or he isn't, and neither of those seems like a chance for meaningful discussion.

 

I have to disagree a bit with you about this. I grow my own cotton to make items, and there is no way I would be able to sell that cotton on the market because everyone has cotton to sell.

The only way I can actually sell it consistently is by making it into armor. So your argument about opportunity cost really doesn't fit here. The opportunity for me to sell cotton is slim to none.

 

And this isn't earth. There are unlimited resources in this game so real world economics don't exactly translate over to this game.

If one player decides he wants to sell a certain item below cost and below everyone else prices, they can. Like Bowen is pointing out, your not losing... you're still gaining, just not as much as you could and prob not as much as if you sold the raw materials. But if that one player was able to keep that item stocked and get the word out, everyone would buy from them, effectively changing the price for that particular item.

Why would someone do that you ask? I'm sure you could come up with plenty of reasons, but a good one that comes to mind is that it would increase traffic and allow you to get exposure and possibly sell different items at a bigger profit.

 

So, maybe also 5. Alternative outcomes to failing masterwork/enchant; 6. More skill based ways to choose masterwork/enchant outcomes; 7. More depth to items used to masterwork/enchant; (and mine) 8. More diversity of craftable equipment.

 

How about some positive effects to spur new gear and deco sales? I don't know what the answer might be for decos, but what if armor and weapons had a modest damage/armor boost (heck, or just experience boost if messing with damage and armor is too much) for a limited time?

Say a 5% boost for 30 days, starting from the first time the gear is equipped?

Not everyone will feel compelled by this (by design, you don't want it to be so great that it is a defacto requirement) but I bet enough would be to drive more gear cycling than today, and it avoids further perceived punishment with decay.

 

Disclaimer: slight rant

The cost of a lot of crafted gear is too high, and I am a crafter myself. When I originally started playing back in Sept 2016, and didn't visit the forums to read X Y Z (I actually despise this requirement, of this game is immersive, let me take you out of game to understand how to play)... I found all the prices too high. As a new player I didn't know where to look, so I got the gouge player base setup in all the starting points (OH, Sol, Resolute... I'm looking at you shitty vendors)

So I became a crafter out of necessity. Granted it meant I was broke all the time as over the first 4 months I bought EVERY single damn recipe.... but you know what... that uber set that Vendor X sells at what they think is a reasonable price, would have degraded or been destroyed 6 times over by now, and have cost me at LEAST half of that.

Gear degrades... the prices people sell their wares for does not justify it. I know I can craft level 13+ plate like nothing. The ore for one set, easy as hell to get... but people like to keep prices high... for whatever the hell reason. I deal with that mentality in real life... no idea why a game community tries to do the same.

so let me AS a crafter show you what I see:

Ore can be mined by any player for free... depending on build and competency success may vary.
Recipe: 250 for each recipe you need... Say average piece requires you to know 6 recipes = one time cost 1500

We'llgo with epic plate armor. The only real cost is chunks of coal, curing salt OR wax, and time. (because you cannot successfully mine it anywhere (except Ulfheim and it's clones)

8 sheets - 64 chunks of coal = 386gp
4 bindings - 4 chunks of coal (my math is correct, as 1 ingot provides 2 bindings) = 24gp
2 straps - 2 Cur or Wax = 16gp or 8gp
3 chunks of coal = 24gp

So realistically ANY epic plate armor you sell for over 500gp you can selling at a profit. With enchantments rough it out to 1000gp at a profit.

However, people want to say well I'm a GM crafter I make better gear etc. Thing is your better gear still degrades, and will at some point become unusable. So your 30K+ price tag on ANY armor... gets the side-eye. I'm all about paying people for their time and hardwork, but don't say people are selling at cost, and don't gouge the new players. When I started seeing gear at 1000+k for +1 or +2s in starting areas, it spoke volumes to me. I tend to avoid vendors like that and all their guildmates too (exceptions here and there). It's a game stop driving up prices for... why now? So you can justify the resale for RL money?

Not for temporary gear... nope not gonna.

PS. I forgot to add... this rant only applies to gear found on vendors... not requested gear via contract.

 

Decay + economic demand ftw

i also seem to enjoy crafting furniture the most. maybe because of the diversity in things to make, plus its a tangible thing you can take out and move around, position, layout a room, etc. unlike a food, potion, enchanted sword (until recently), these things you can only equip, cant put them out to display/observe.

 

No you're not, you're about paying people for their chunks of coal. At least be honest about it.

 

So you think paying people 30x their costs is worth it... then more power to you. It's why most people turn to crafting, because at 30K that's at least 6 hours of monster grinding for one piece. During that amount of grinding you gear is going down at least -1... and that's WITHOUT dying.

During that same period of time, I can grind the materials, and keep the money while becoming self sufficient in the process. It just doesn't add up, when you look at it that way. Which is why I make gear for myself and friends.