Sort of Bummed Out ... Need a Hug

[Maisie]

I agree with the original poster.. Tradeskilling was the number one thing I enjoyed in EQ.. ever since "the incident" IE solstice robes.. it just hasn't been the same for me. Waiting for tradeskill vague promises and paying more money( come June) for a game that frankly just isnt as fun anymore isnt cutting it. I stopped playing for a couple weeks due to RL things.. but I came back and besides the friends I have made in EQ I have no real desire to be here.. sad.

[Silverfish]

Angelsyn wrote:

"I prefer selling at only a modest mark-up over component prices...
But most of the time, people are asking more for the components than I can sell the finished pieces for!
Example: Tae Ew Blood Vial. Usual asking price: ~1kpp"

Angelsyn, I think you're missing a point that SOE and others have hit a lot of folks over the head with. You have a 58 cleric and 60 paladin and you're buying Tae Ew blood in the Bazaar for a thousand plat a shot? Go to the Temple of Cazic-Thule and get your own, and the cost for the temper drops to zero. Have trouble ponying the cost for magnetic pieces? Get a group and go to GoD. C'mon, folks, the goal of the game isn't to farm the Bazaar for parts and make twice what the average toon gets. It's not hard to turn a profit on this stuff. If you can sell Tae Ew leggings for 1500 plat and you're getting the tempers for free (by farming your own blood), you're going to make a good chunk of change.

All that said, I do see Kaaba's point. Wanting to make items that are useful is one thing. Wanting to turn a better profit than you could playing "normally" by using tradeskills is a different thing. I make plenty of stuff that's still quite useful, but I don't expect to turn a big profit off it. I still make more than my compatriots who adventure constantly, and isn't that enough?

Silverfish

[Maevenniia]

A few points:

-While it is possible to farm Tae Ew blood reliably, not all tradeskill components are the same, thus the only place to get them in the quantities needed may be the bazaar

-Farming tradeskill components is not "free". There is an opportunity cost - the cost of whatever you could have been doing INSTEAD of farming those components ....In the time it takes to farm a stack of Tae Ew Blood, how much platinum could Angelsyn farm instead? Probably FAR more than the blood could ever sell for.

However

-if people are actually paying 1K for Tae Ew Blood, why shouldn't the trader sell them for that much? Supply & Demand, folks. If people are willing to fork out that 1K because it's more convenient than farming it themselves, then the price is fair, and people who can't afford the 1K pricetag will have to do as Silverfish suggests, and farm it (or farm the plat to pay for it.). On the other hand, if no one buys it at 1K, but will buy consistently from Trader#2 who sells them at 500pp, then Trader#1 needs to get a clue.


Personally, I've always been rather independent, I always liked to farm my own components when possible (or vendor-mine them )....but as eventually happens with most tradeskillers (ornery cusses, the lot of us!) I am starting to buy some components in bulk, because I'm impatient, farming stuff means I have less time to grind exp and finish quests, and I have the plat to pay so why not use it.

[Maisie]

The money I could make from tradeskilling was never the issue.. frankly how many of us devoted to tradeskilling do it for the money?? LOL

I didnt even mind farming, as long as getting skillups was actually coming.. but with the newer systems in place, getting items to do skill ups takes 4 times as long < I dont care about peoples "stats" about how they got X of one item in Y many hours, I am speaking for myself alone> ; getting supplies before was a pain to be sure, but at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel.. Doing 600 silk swatches, and finding 600 inbued emeralds may have been "easy" to some people's thinking... but it took me months and in one day it was no longer viable.. Now months later and snatching up every possible skillup combine component possible, I am still only 266 tailoring... 250 before the patch. This "new" system has fubar'd me totally and drained a lot of the fun out of it. For me personally.

"Is it because they made changes to the trivials without telling us first? Is it that they made the last 50 skill ups to 300 even harder than ever before without a clear way to progress from 250 to 300?"

These are the things that bothered me.... and yes while it would be nice to make things that people wanted.. I made HUNDREDS of arctic wyvern masks to get tailoring to 250 and no one wanted those either. And while I spent hours and hours getting hides, velium etc at least I knew I would get to 250 eventually..

Doing PoP/OOW combines with ridiculously rare drops is just not a viable skillup path. I dont feel SoE is going to give us any REAL explanation, the whole situation is a real drag

[Angelsyn]

I have exactly 1 EQ Account. I do indeed have a level 60 Paladin in incredible gear and a level 59 Cleric in incredible gear.

Neither one is going to solo with any serious level of effectiveness in CT 2.0... and yes, I've tried it. So farm my own Tae Ew Blood? Not likely. Get a group? In CT? Never going to happen. The RvR there for xp/loot is terrible for the average player. The only people who go there are the high-levels farming Blood or looking for a specific drop.

Personally, I don't pay the 1k each asking price for Tae Ew Blood. I'm a very patient person when it comes to EQ... I have to be. My available free time is usually broken up into 10 minute chunks at best, so I rarely get much chance to go out and farm stuff anyway. I made piles of pp by being the first to market with many, many tradeskilled items in the past... and by being a shrewd puyer & seller in the Bazaar. It does not affect me very much that the average price for a Gashed Magnetized BP is 9k and the selling price for a finished Magnetic BP is 10k... but it does affect those who aren't in my position. Those who don't have the huge bankroll can't afford to make these items.

Me, I just keep watching for the great buys whenever I have a little free time to peek in to the Bazaar.

[Nefertiti Nazguul]

Me, I just keep watching for the great buys whenever I have a little free time to peek in to the Bazaar.

I wait months to buy gear for my characters. I do the same for words also. If I see a word and it is fairly cheap compared to the outrageous prices I see I will buy it. But my average price for words is 10 pp. I dont hardly go over 20 pp for words. I wait and wait then I wait some more. I dont expect to grandmaster any tradskills untill I am level 70. And then sadly some e-bay player will raise all their tradskills in one day because they bought all that plat.

[Hildaorm]

I have exactly 1 EQ Account. I do indeed have a level 60 Paladin in incredible gear and a level 59 Cleric in incredible gear.

Neither one is going to solo with any serious level of effectiveness in CT 2.0... and yes, I've tried it. So farm my own Tae Ew Blood? Not likely. Get a group? In CT? Never going to happen. The RvR there for xp/loot is terrible for the average player. The only people who go there are the high-levels farming Blood or looking for a specific drop.

Personally, I don't pay the 1k each asking price for Tae Ew Blood. I'm a very patient person when it comes to EQ... I have to be. My available free time is usually broken up into 10 minute chunks at best, so I rarely get much chance to go out and farm stuff anyway. I made piles of pp by being the first to market with many, many tradeskilled items in the past... and by being a shrewd puyer & seller in the Bazaar. It does not affect me very much that the average price for a Gashed Magnetized BP is 9k and the selling price for a finished Magnetic BP is 10k... but it does affect those who aren't in my position. Those who don't have the huge bankroll can't afford to make these items.

Me, I just keep watching for the great buys whenever I have a little free time to peek in to the Bazaar.

Actually, the 60 Paladin could easily solo there, at least the front 2 spawns. simply zone in, pull the 2 by the door, run to zone line, stop, root one of the Taw Ew there, and zone, heal your self, zone back in and kill the rooted one. wait a min or 2, and pull and kill the other one.
Then simply wait and pull each as they spawn. Its pretty easy, you can pull the ones inside the entry hall with out adds from out side, just make sure you pull them to at least the bend in the hall (that is out of aggro range from the door. And make sure they don't run. (root is your friend)

[Aeght]

I prefer selling at only a modest mark-up over component prices...

But most of the time, people are asking more for the components than I can sell the finished pieces for!

Example: Tae Ew Blood Vial. Usual asking price: ~1kpp

Best price I can hope to sell:
Tae Ew Shield: 650p
Tae Ew Longsword: 900p
Tae Ew Two-Handed Sword: 900p
Tae Ew Chain Leggings: 2k on a good night, 1800p normally.
Tae Ew Chain Tunic: Same as Leggings.
Other Tae Ew Chain pieces: 1400-900p each.

The Chain requires 2 Bloods each, the Swords & Shields require 1 Tae Ew, 1 Iksar (200-400p each), 1 Froglok (100-300p each) Blood each.

On Xegony, most people want 2k-per-brick-value for raw Magnetized pieces, and 8-11k each for BPs & Leggings. This means the materials cost for a BP or Leggings is 16-20k. Yet I can't sell the BPs for more than 14k or the Legs for more than 16k.

The problem is people see the tradeskill tag and assume that they struck a plat mine. They stick it in the bazaar at an exaggerated price, others finding the same drops come along and see that price and assume it is market.

If the part does not sell, rather than simply lower the price they either keep it there and hope some idiot or otherwise desperate person actually does buy it, or they simply vendor it. After all, most such drops were obtained incidentally to a normal camp, and thus the cost to the seller was essentially nil.

The reason this is so prevalent is that the majority of EQ players are retail management in RL. They are average people who have little RL interest or training in price setting or even basic economics. Even of those with such training, even fewer are tradeskillers (who have a direct interest in paying attention to commodity and finished goods prices).

After all, we are the purchasers of raw materials, not the vendors. When we get raw materials, we are much more likely to use them ourselves, or save them until we can use them.

Aeght

[Angelsyn]

Actually, the 60 Paladin could easily solo there, at least the front 2 spawns. simply zone in, pull the 2 by the door, run to zone line, stop, root one of the Taw Ew there, and zone, heal your self, zone back in and kill the rooted one. wait a min or 2, and pull and kill the other one.
Then simply wait and pull each as they spawn. Its pretty easy, you can pull the ones inside the entry hall with out adds from out side, just make sure you pull them to at least the bend in the hall (that is out of aggro range from the door. And make sure they don't run. (root is your friend)

Have you ever done this?

I took my (now level 61) Paladin there a few nights ago. Had a fresh Virtue & KEI...

Zone in... Root one of the two and wait for the second one. Melee away for a bit, root breaks (long before the time it should have just ran out) and in little more time than it takes to cast Root again I'm at 40% health. So, in roughly 2.5 minutes, two Tae Ew chewed through ~4000 hp on a tank with over 1600 AC. And for about half that time only one of them was hitting me!

[Railina]

All that said, I do see Kaaba's point. Wanting to make items that are useful is one thing. Wanting to turn a better profit than you could playing "normally" by using tradeskills is a different thing. I make plenty of stuff that's still quite useful, but I don't expect to turn a big profit off it. I still make more than my compatriots who adventure constantly, and isn't that enough?

I'm sorry, but when finished products sell for less than the materials, you're making less by tradeskilling, not more. I don't mind too much, because i play to have fun, and tradeskilling is more fun for me than having a full bank account. But it would be nice to be able to make things that people would actually want to use. Spending the time to raise a tradeskill to 300 should be more rewarding than farming components and selling them to tradeskillers in the bazaar.

[Silverfish]

Around the Point

Railina wrote:

"I'm sorry, but when finished products sell for less than the materials, you're making less by tradeskilling, not more."

You're going around my point. My point is that if you farm your own components, then the cost for those components drops by quite a bit. In our example, a thousand plat Tae Ew blood drops to the time to farm it in the temple, which means that the margin for profit grows considerably. Where she can't turn much profit at all (or is getting negative returns) by buying the blood, she can make a chunk of change by getting it herself.

If you're paying more for the comonents than you can earn on the finished product, then you have two choices. Get those components yourself, thereby reducing the price, or take the loss (which is offset in some cases by skillup path or whatever). Sure, it makes it harder to turn a profit by tradeskilling, but that was also my point. It's unrealistic to think that you should be able to make better money by tradeskilling than by adventuring. Sure, it happens sometimes, but to expect it is to ask for disappointment. I closed by pointing out that I don't have problems making more money on tradeskills than my guildmates do by hunting, and that's about all I can reasonably ask.

Silverfish

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Get those components yourself, thereby reducing the price

That still doesn't work. You get the components yourself, then sell the components, you still come out ahead of tradeskilling with the components. The Tae Ew Blood (or whatever) is still worth 1000pp. Only now you've payed for it in time (to farm) rather than in plat (to directly buy). Once you have the Tae Ew Blood in your possession, it has the exact same values associated with it regardless of method used to acquire it.

Farmed or bought, you're better off selling the Tae Ew Blood. And that's frustrating.

Farming doesn't negate the cost. It just changes the currency used, from plat to time. Thus what matters is the exchange rate (what's your ability to convert time into plat?) and the value of what you're farming (to give a measure of pp per unit time when farming, based off items per time and plat per item).

[Angelsyn]

That still doesn't work. You get the components yourself, then sell the components, you still come out ahead of tradeskilling with the components. The Tae Ew Blood (or whatever) is still worth 1000pp. Only now you've payed for it in time (to farm) rather than in plat (to directly buy). Once you have the Tae Ew Blood in your possession, it has the exact same values associated with it regardless of method used to acquire it.

Farmed or bought, you're better off selling the Tae Ew Blood. And that's frustrating.

Farming doesn't negate the cost. It just changes the currency used, from plat to time. Thus what matters is the exchange rate (what's your ability to convert time into plat?) and the value of what you're farming (to give a measure of pp per unit time when farming, based off items per time and plat per item).

It's not a matter of making money... it's a matter of getting skill-ups at the lowest cost.

Of course, now I'm up to 295 skill... so I can't do Tae Ew Smithing anymore.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

It's not a matter of making money... it's a matter of getting skill-ups at the lowest cost.

Point is though, is that the lowest cost?

If it takes you 3 hours to farm 1 blood, that's ~333pp/hour. (for the sake of simplicity, assume you don't get much else of plat value)
If farming random_zone, you can get vendor trash worth 400pp/hour, you're better off doing that, then going to the bazaar and buying the blood. In three hours, you'd get 1 blood and ~200pp.

The numbers are plucked out of thin air, but the point remains. Farming rare components can have pretty horrible drops-to-time-spent ratios, and pretty bad collateral loot. A lot of people can farm platinum with a pretty good bit of success.

Hence, farming isn't necessarily cheaper.

(Note: This does assume bazaar availability of the item. For many tradeskill goods, you simply can't but them, of course. Then you get into cases about "cheap" recipe becoming more expensive than the "pricy" recipe because of farming time ... but that's a lot more variable.)
----
I don't mean to sound like "farming is bad". Personally, I find it more rewarding to farm my own ingredients than to buy them. And economically, farming often can turn out to be the better option. My issue is with the assessment of farmed goods as relatively free. They have a significant cost associated with them, and determining cost/cheapness of farming vs buying is something that really needs individual attention per item and per player, rather than something well-approximated by a broad generalization.

[Wyvernwill]

Your numbers are way off. Cazic Thule has a good set of VT drops, and if you are getting 1 blood per 3 hours, as per your example, either you are running away from a lot of mobs or somethings not right. Blood are not that rare. When I have farmed them, I averaged 2-5 per hour. If I brought a dps friend to help, it went up a lot higher.

Though I get your point about the hidden costs associated with farming (loss of RL time and possible greater income), one has to remember, they are working at a skill, not just doing something to kill time.