Totally not about Meticulous Collection

So I'm continuing this in a new thread, because apparently people were so distracted by the title of the old thread that they could not notice the actual issues being discussed in the post.

Fine fine, interwebforum netiquette, I comply.

This is about the market values of items, and the fact that I realized it is far more effective for someone grinding cash to just sell their raw materials unused. I think this is backwards. The player auction house might work that way, with players being more interested in the rawest materials so that they can raise their skill levels, but there should also be some vendor forum where having put time, effort, skill, and money INTO making something makes it more valuable than its ingredients were. It is truly a rare thing to imagine a world where worked goods are of lesser value than the things they are made from. Isn't that kind of the POINT of crafting, to take common and near worthless components and make valuable and useful finished products from them?

Case in point, 4 hides and a curing salt, value 52, plus a smidge off my 2g tanning knife. Result, two pieces of leather each worth 10.
Next, making yard of leather. 5 leather, value 50 , plus another curing salt, so I coulda hocked all of that at half value for 27, but it started off worth 134... and result? 1 yard of leather worth 110. Oh...kay...
So, what do I do with yard of leather? Well, I combine it with cotton cloth, and metal reinforcements, and so on and so forth. I make a leather chest piece. 5 yards of leather, 550... ish, 3 metal bindings two bolts of cloth, each experiencing similar fluctuations in value, plus more wax from the vendor for the threading, and the end result? "Leather Chest Armor of Defense, which grants bonus stats on top of simlar items I could buy in the store for 120(!), AND because I got a critical success crafting it also grants +3 strength, market value........... 40. FORTY! That's less than the inital stack of hides for TWO pieces of leather were worth! So I put in two and a half times that market value in leather ALONE, plus used all those tools, all that time, and I lost money? Then I look around the store and find something even BETTER than what I'm making for the exact same price... Ok, I guess that there is no reward for effort in crafting then. Oh, I could go buy a recipe for 250 and then do another magical-money-reduction, I mean crafting session, and make something else that was comparable to what I got in the store, which cost less to buy than mine did to make, and sold back to the vendor for more than what I made did, and in fact has slightly better stats than what I can make... or I could just hock all my wares immediately instead of wasting time crafting. Which, from what I've heard, is what everyone else is doing.

Ya know, I remember it was like this in WoW. You leveled your crafting skills as you leveled your character, but you never USED your crafting skills till grand mastery. It was all about what item was dropped by what dungeon mob. Then you got to max level crafting and there was like, ONE or TWO things you could make that were temporarily better than what you could get from drops. Then you got into raiding, and player crafted items just could not compete, and it barely mattered what professions you had. Nothing they made was ever worth using.

Where in the real world do we find a profession where a skilled worker makes a desirable, even lifesaving (and rather necessary) item, and gets paid only a fraction of what it costs to make the item? So, I show up to build your house, I bought MANY two-by-fours $6,000, concrete mix$300, nuts n bolts$50, wiring$30, drywall$3,000, paint$100, various fixtures$100, linoleum for the floors $400, light bulbs $20 (total cost of me spitballing something I've never had to pay for, about $10,000 in materials for a small house), me and my guys build the house, get it up to code, demonstrate our skill... and you expect to pay a grand total of $200 for it...

Something's not right here.

 

I think may correct itself once the next crafting skill trees are implemented.

Right now, everybody has a God given limitless talent for crafting all things. It's obvious that, when implemented, you're going to have to start making some tougher choices to specialize in one or two crafting/manufacturing disciplines. Be it tailoring or black smithing, you'll no longer be able to simply do it all...making fully crafted gear more valuable with less of the populous able to actually assemble those raw materials into whatever they want.

So yeah, as of now, demand is for the raw. Crafting currently is a very personal endeavor as you customize to you character and hearts content. The day will come that you can't necessarily even craft a wooden shelf as you already committed to walk the path of an alchemist and weapon smith. So you'll have no choice but to go buy one at the local market...at market price...and dammit if those shelves aren't a little pricy as only 7% of the population chose the less than sexy occupation of carpentry...

 

Yes, in point of fact the player market can already correct for this, just in terms of finding someone who really doesn't WANT to craft, but that is irrelevant to my point. The NPC vendors who supposedly cannot do any of this crafting, or adventuring, or leveling, that the avatars do should be willing to pay just a teensy bit more. Like, enough to make it vaguely profitable to make and sell crafted items. If you make stuff that's in demand and sell it for a fortune on the player market, great, if nobody is buying your product, you should be able to clear a basic living off the NPCs.

 

Hi all. Well also remember player owned vendors come in in R20 so that should shake a lot of things up. I do not believe anything is balanced out at this point, but the OP makes some good points. The economy is being set up to be a player economy and there will not be exactly an auction house set up as most already know, but player vowned and ran vendors will be a big part of the game. Also this and visiting player owned vendors can make you want to shop around and see the world at the same time for best prices and for exactly what you want, like that nice new red dress duh we already had one of those. It has also been mentioned there may be public places for these player owned vendors which we already see a small iteration of one in towns, but next you will see many. So to me it seems quite a bit like the premise in UO except we are missing our recall and mark skill and runes, which I so loved. *sighs*, but Oh well hopefully we will make up for it with embelishing on other features that UO wasnt able to or didnt have or do because of missing our feedback

 

Supposedly selling crafted items to NPC's is supposed to be avoided because it keeps items out of the economy. So selling to NPC's is made another money sink to keep gold in demand, meanwhile crafters are basically forced to deal with the player marketplace, to keep the economy healthy. That's pretty smart in my book. NPC's aren't going to sell players items they need in the long run, players will have to find all their items in the player marketplace. If crafters sell items to NPC's, those items will become loot other players will get 'for free' without paying you the fair price you need for them, so keeping the buy price low on NPC's will discourage you from 'giving' items to players through the loot system. ;-)

 

The interesting thing could be in players going here and there is that the loot table could be very interesting. If at times the NPCs mercandise gets thrown out into the loot table of creatures, it could be surprising of what we could loot. Say someone in a hurry doesn't care or want to see to a player and sells their regents or cool craftables t0 a NPC look and think what that will benefit Our creature loot table of course. So I think it could make for some more interest in the loot tables are now boring, no surprises. Right now creature loot is very boring, where's the body parts, like a wolf paw, or heart, or perhaps they could have a reagent here or there that's not fully digested and has some properties left to it, but watch out for the slime, yuk

edited to embelish and hopefully make sense.

 

There is a major problem with this thinking. It's called poor people. The players are all going to be high flying crafters, gatherers, and adventurers. They'll be the rich and elite of the New Britannia world. When you let the rich and elite set the values and availability of things, crazy stuff happens. It is NOT the route to a healthy economy.

In a real economy, the world is full of people who actually have to consider the cost of housing and food against their income each and every month. Those people are the ones who set the value and rate of consumption for most items, and that base is what most market fluctuations are based on and caused by.

Now, I'm looking forward to player owned venders, and a thriving economy that reacts not as directed but as instinct drives it, but remember that every REAL economy has both a massive substrate of working class consumers, and some manner of direct oversight, such as America's Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England. Dev controlled NPC base pricing would serve both functions in SotA, and we'd be fools to run without considering this option.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but there aren't even any crafting skills aside from gathering. That plus player owned vendors decentralizing the market should have a huge impact on prices.

 

RELEASE 21, August 27, 2015:

• Crafting: Crafting skills will start to come online, and be used during crafting to modify results. Additionally, players will now have the ability to salvage items for materials and components.
• Combat: The cover system will be introduced and will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.
• Maps: Perennial Coast polish will continue and new scenes will come online that expand the story, including the desert town of Desolis and the Chamber of Souls dungeon beneath it.
• Emote “Teaching”: Emotes will now be teachable to other players. Some emotes (like the ones tied to pledges) will only be teachable by the original owner. Teaching will be done via secure trading.
• Player Owned Towns: We will continue to expand the number of templates and introduce a new Player Owned Town to the game.
• Creatures: Dragons will begin appearing in Novia! Burninating will begin. All hail Trogdor, the Burninator!
• Localization: We will begin crowdsourcing the translation of the game into various languages.
• Weather: Weather will make a first appearance with rain and snow linked to seasonal changes.
• Spells & Skills: More new spells, skills, and combos will come online.
• Control Points: These scenes will now pull you into them automatically

• 
  Crafting skills coming in R21 and dragons

 

September: Month of Dragons & Weather & Taking Cover ;-) This will be a fun one. Emote teaching might be entertaining as well!

Yes, I think it's too soon to say what effects this game's style of decentralized player-vendors will have on pricing in the world economy. But it's good to know NPC vendors are there to keep prices reasonable if needed.

 

I like what has been said here, nevertheless I find myself in alignment with Malakbrightpalm's OP. The issue isn't what NPC vendors will do to decentralize the economy, it is that the final crafted item should be worth more than the raw materials. I am not talking about the jerk crafter who puts a price tag of $100,000,000,000 on his leather helmet. I mean walking to any vendor and getting more for the helmet than for the leather and more for the leather than the untanned hides. Getting progressively less for each crafting action (losing money) is not reasonable nor stable for a crafting economy.

Now, the argument that can be reasonably be made is that the crafting part of the economy has not yet been hit with the "makes sense stick". I agree, it hasn't. But at a release were we are smacking the skill trainers with the stick to the point of assault with the intent to cause great bodily harm, perhaps the crafting should also have been lightly touched. I have great confidence that future releases will address this issue and bring it into line, but as it is now; it is broken.

 

I have to disagree. Chris specifically said the created items need to get less money at an NPC vendor than the pieces they were crafted with, it's the only way to prevent the game from pumping more gold into the economy. For crafters to make money, they need player buyers. For players to get good gear, they will need player crafters. Crafters will know how much money they need to charge for their items, and players will pay, once that is balanced. But the NPC vendors can't be a way to make money through crafting/trading with them alone. (except in offline singleplayer where there is no player economy, of course)

 

I appreciate that you have a different point of view on the matter. I disagree with it. If we are trying for any type of reasonable reality then crafted items have to be worth more than raw materials. Now, I am not saying an NPC vendor should be a profitable way to go. Hides might be worth 1 apiece, leather 1+hide cost, and a helm 2+ the cost of the material. Where selling even the raw materials to another player might get 10 a hide or more. But to make crafted items less than raw material is tampering with reality for artificial economy sake. What if we said that to control the economy harder monsters would drop lower quality loot and less of it? That way when you are high level and killing strong monsters you won't be getting unreasonably rich. You won't be farming the low levels because you will not get any experience from them. There all that nasty gold problem is solved. EXCEPT that would be stupid! Nobody would like that. The entire PvE crowd would scream and rightly so. Please understand for those of us who want to craft, making fully crafted items worth less than the raw materials is equally silly.

And, let's not forget, having money in and of itself is not the problem in MMORPGs. People play games because they like to do things they cannot in real life, like cast magic spells, buy huge castles and eventually become stinking rich. If you don't want people to ever accumulate money, don't have it in the game. Buy your equipment with your experience points. That has been done you know. But in this game we have gold - and people will want it no matter how they have to get it. Gimping crafting is not the solution. I am not endorsing crafters spamming two board shelves and becoming billionaires, but to not make enough money to support the crafting is a deal breaker for those who would rather spend all day crafting than PvPing.

Crafting failure aside, a finished product should be worth equal to or more than the material. Every society works that way. To have it otherwise mocks reality.

 

I think the keyword here is 'NPC vendor. Chris said NPC vendors will not pay as much for items as you could get from other 'players' and their vendors so we have a player economy.

 

The NPC buy price of a finished product could also be dependant on the quality of the item. Meaning that because there is a chance to make poor or exceptional quality items (presumably), then NPC buy prices could be made to only provide a small return on exceptional items, break even on normal quality, and lose value on poor. Therefore possibly making more sense to just salvage a poor quality item, depending on what you would potentially lose trying to sell it to an NPC (since a player probably won't buy it).

Now, add to that a limited gold supply for the NPC vendor, programming to let the vendor evaluate nearby prices for the same item, and diminish value to vendors who wouldn't normally buy a certain item (i.e. baker won't buy iron ore), and it gets pretty realistic.

I understand the realism behind getting more for a crafted item than the value of its materials, but the reality of the issue is, that vendor should be less interested in buying your shield after you are the 47th player to sell her one. By providing a blanket sell value higher than combined material value, a gold faucet is added to the game that can be tapped into 24/7.

And I still suspect that there is going to be a finite amount of gold in the game at launch, and only players with the (eventual) ability to mint coins will be able to augment that.

 

The sum of my cars parts sold for more than as a completed item, so it's not always mocking reality when that happens

Most games the parts are worth more than the completed item - unless you have a rare event or success with your craft. If players aren't interested in your items and demand is higher for the parts then I don't see an issue with the NPCs treating you the same way.

If a crafted shield is worth more money - then when it is found later on in a corpse it will need to still be worth more money - and everytime people loot monsters far more gold enters the economy than at present and your faucet for crafters becomes a larger faucet for everybody and leads to more inflation.

Maybe you are requesting that raw materials be worth less when sold to NPCs? Of course then you would have the people that just want to mine for materials and sell them to NPCs might be upset.

 

Well Lord Andernut, you have kind of hit on my key point, though I don't think you meant to. Yes, I do think the prices for raw materials should be less. Yes, I do think NPC vendors should pay much less than reasonable market value to players. But to control the "faucet" of unlimited gold by squelching crafting is a bit off base. That is like saying you cannot hunt elves because they give money and that will be unlimited gold into the game. Remember, raw materials are not unlimited. Crafters are not unlimited in game time or skill points. BUT making the value of crafted products less than the cost of the parts is not sensible. It is quicker and far easier to hunt elves for money than it is to craft even with the older prices.

As for the car analogy, I am willing to wager that the initial car parts were less than the cost of the car when it was new. If you are talking the difference between a new car and an old car versus the parts thereof, an argument can be made this is "sale to players" and not a part of the discussion. Now, we have all heard of the financial blunders of the big auto makers (I live in Michigan I am familiar with it). BUT I assure you they pay less for the parts than a consumer would for the finished new car.

Solstar has elaborated on something I eluded to in a previous post. Namely that the quality of crafted items should be reflected in the price. If you craft a poor item, then surely it is worth less than the value of quality material. And likewise, if you use poor material and craft it expertly well, it is still worth less than fine material crafted exceptionally well. I like your idea of poor is worth less than material, normal is about equal and exceptional is worth more. Great concept!

BUT if exceptional is worth less than the material, how will we ever get master craftsman? The system as it stands sets up for master craftsman that are in fact high level adventurers who craft as a hobby once they are higher level. In reality, craftsmen don't often collect all of their raw materials in dangerous areas - skilled people who can protect themselves from the dangers do that. But the craftsman who is trying to buy the material will soon find himself broke. There is no impetus to craft if you can make more money just selling whatever you find UNTIL you are uber and can afford to burn tens of thousands in materials to train up your craft levels to make super gear and sell it for everything you can extort from the needy players. That does not provide easily accessible low level gear crafted by low level crafters and it is not my idea of a healthy economy.

 

Using the imperfect car analogy a little further - as a consumer you would likely pay more to every part of a car (new) than you would to buy the whole car (new) as well despite the fact that it was assembled for you

At current though I think we are going to see radical changes to crafting with the skills coming up so I'm looking forward to how that impacts things.

I don't agree the value of an assembled item should sell for more than it's component parts but I do agree that the pricing difference seems extreme. It could be that skill of crafting may add modifiers that do bring the pricing much more in line with the cost of components to build it.

It's hard to critique the pricing of incomplete systems though and I look forward to seeing an expansion of crafting in the future releases. It may be that a balance pass towards item values may lower raw material values in the future.

 

Take that imperfect analogy a step further, and the reason you (an individual) would pay more for the car if you bought each component individually, is because you are an individual, and are only buying at most a few hundred of any component (fasteners, for instance). More than likely, you are only buying one of any particular component, and therefore are not benefiting from high-volume pricing.

The company selling you the car is buying these components in the single, tens, or even hundreds of thousands per lot, and so get them at significantly reduced prices. This is why they can afford to pay anyone to put it together, much less dealers to sell them to you, while everyone at each level makes money (except you...).

The problem with this whole system is there is a huge component of the economy missing. Well, they are there... the merchants and the government, that is.

The npc merchants have to get their wares from somewhere... some are selling you semi-raw goods (farmers, for example), while others are providing finished goods (Armorer, Carpenter, etc). These finished good merchants are either making the finished product and selling it, in which case they are getting supplies from someone else, or they are retailing the product from the crafters.

The coins have to be minted somewhere, and we have a government in the game. It is the government that would be a large part of establishing the worth of these coins as a medium for trade, ensuring purity and content, as well as certifying validity of the coins, all of which comes together to give the gold its worth.

Other factors are also involved... surges and declines in supply, shipping and its regularity and/or danger, rarity of items involved from the base raw materials on up.

All of these combine to determine what someone would consider a price worth paying for any good or service.

The point remains, and cannot be altered, that the value of the base materials from which a finished product is derived contribute directly to the value of the finished product, and since everyone values their own time and craftsmanship, that too factors in to the price. The end result is that the finished product will, and should, always be worth more than the value of the things that were used to create it. For it to be otherwise is bass-ackwards and ludicrous.

 

I think we should look at the NPC vendors, as Pawn Shops. You as a seller would normally set your price, because the buyer wants your goods. But here, you're trying to get rid of it. Pawnshops never sell for a good price, because they are only purchasing to resell at the reasonable price themselves. So yes, if an NPC vendor is like a Pawn shop, I think their purchasing prices are right on target for finished goods.