Gemdiver tells all - How to make plat

[Itek]

And, again...

This thread isn't a "pricing ripoffs" thread.

It's a thread discussing the nature of the INTENT of "how to make plat guide"s that simply state "jack up tradeskillers for plat"

I don't CARE about market effects, supply/demand curves, distribution of wealth modalities, boycotts, monopolies, etc etc etc.

It's the nature of the statement that upsets me. It leads people to the mistaken belief that your best method of making plat is taking it from others. Well perhaps more misguided than mistaken...

No, I cannot in fact be ripped off, or hijacked by people in the bazaar. Part of the "free market economy" is that the buyers are supposed to have "perfect" information. But that doesn't apply to other less informed or less skillful players.

Real life: (prices are examples only, please don't quibble over 10 cents)
Cigarettes - Roughly, what, $3 a pack now? (quit smoking in '99)
Mexico - Much less, say around $1.20 in a store.
Cross the border - You'll see children selling packs for $1.50, and IF you DO NOT know what they go for in the store, you'd think you were getting a great deal.

Is the 30 cents that big a difference? Don't the children deserve to be paid something if this is how they make a living? Aren't the tourists paying for the convenience of not having to go to a store? Can't they afford it? Isn't it worth it to them? Doesn't everyone "profit" from the exchange?

Now let's say I hold a "how to make cash" seminar for street children in Mexico.

Itek: Ok kids... what's this?
Kids: A pack of smokes.
Itek: Ok, you can buy them in the store for how much?
Kids: Isn't it illegal...
Itek: Ok, this ain't reality, so ignore that.
Kids: Oh.... a dollar twenty american.
Itek: Ok, and see that... what is it?
Kids: It's a gringo.
Itek: Kids, will you believe that the gringo will pay you a dollar and FIFTY american if you offer him a pack and put on a sad face?
Kids: No way....
Itek: here, first pack is free... go try it out... I promise a better life if you just resell smokes to the gringos....

Evil? Certainly. And it had VERY little to do with the actual price of a cigarette right? So perhaps people will stop commenting on pricing and start commenting on philosophy. It's a vain hope, but I'll hope it anyway.

People charge: (on my server)
80 plat for a velium block
100 plat for a large velium brick
75 plat for a small velium brick
50 plat for a small piece of velium
10 plat for a velium weapon

So I could break down blocks to bricks and make a profit.
Or small bricks to pieces and make a profit.
Or buy up velium weapons and reprice my new small brick and 0-2 small pieces at a HUGE profit.

I -could- do this. But I'm morally opposed to taking advantage of less informed or capable people.

Pricing a small piece of velium at 50 plat isn't, per se, a rip off.

Buying a small brick at 75 plat, breaking it into 2 small pieces and selling them both for 50 plat... that's a "rip off." Because it takes advantage of an uninformed seller and an uninformed buyer. Because it makes my plat by taking it out of the pocket of a (fellow) tradeskiller who isn't keyed for the 5th floor of Tower of Frozen Shadow. Because "charging what the market will bear" encourages inflation rather than "correct pricing" despite the best economic theory of people who've never studied economic theory.

[Wyvernwill]

Buying a small brick at 75 plat, breaking it into 2 small pieces and selling them both for 50 plat... that's a "rip off." Because it takes advantage of an uninformed seller and an uninformed buyer.

I can't really agree with that statement. Breaking down bricks *can* fail. If he put the two pieces back up for sale at 37p 5g and failed one, then he is out money. That isn't good business practice. Refining companies get a product at one cost, break it down into 3 seperate usable items, and sell each for more than enough to cover time, costs and labor. A 12.5p increase on cost per Small Piece isn't all that horrible, but it's not that great either.

Also... I have been to Mexico a few times now in my life and one kid I spoke with was told by his parents to sell them at $2 american and that's what the kid did for 3-4 hours a day. They also sell things like little packs of gum which the price is more than what things cost in the stores also.

People will do what it takes to make a living and try to make their life better. The fact that someone is pointing out a venue to earn "easy" money off the needs of someone else isn't really that shocking or upsetting to me. But then again, like I have said before, I don't buy squat in the bazaar unless the prices are low. I don't like paying insanely high costs for tradeskilling, so I would rather spend my time farming for trades, which to me have no cost associated to them (though many people here look at farming as lost income *baffled*).

When tradeskillers stop paying those "inflated, unfair" prices for any long duration, and some people want to sell items because items on a trader are inherently worthless until sold, the prices will creep down to a point where traders won't feel so "ripped off." But as long as one person is willing to pay 50pp per velium piece, I can gaurantee you that SVP will remain around 50pp. That's the cold, hard reality of life in EQ.

[Cyrint Aircaller]

players rip of tradeskillers and tradeskillers rip of players
it all work out in the end.

[Phantron]

From my observation, there is no real motive to move inventory in the bazaar. People don't care if something they put up is never going to sell since inventory space is usually plentiful. This creates a lot of waste as you've a lot of stuff that will never get sold just taking up room.

[Itek]

players rip of tradeskillers and tradeskillers rip of players
it all work out in the end.

Which is PRECISELY the problem.

The problem being the FALSE perception that "do unto others before they do onto you, because they WILL at the first opportunity" as a philosophy is acceptable and correct.

It's a non-zero-sum game. You don't have to rip off someone else before they in turn rip you off. All it does is create, needlessly, bad feelings.

"If they charged half the price for pieces, they'd lose money because of failures."

1) I used it as an example of immoral philosophy, which I could abuse.
2) 20 small bricks at 75 cost 1500 and create 38 (approx) small pieces at 50 for 1900, a profit margin of nearly 27%. Almost entirely at the expense of tailors. (Who, in turn, following the above immoral philosophy of "stick it to them, they stuck/will stick it to you" price their desired goods higher.)

I think you would find a 10% profit margin (you still get paid for your time, effort, knowledge, and skill) would price small pieces more in the 43-44 plat range.

The plight of street children in Mexico and their living conditions wasn't the thrust of my arguement.

Here's one that's a little less morally ambiguous.

eBay charges a fee, based on a percent of the auction price, for it's services

Recently there have been a FLOOD of seminars on "How to Make Money on eBay." (No, I'm not kidding.)

The thrust of the seminar is NOT "find goods, price them reasonably, wait for the money to roll in."

The seminar teaches people to be a shill. They open auctions for goods they don't make, own or warehouse. They simply act as the merchant with no overhead.

Merchant: Item A for $12.
auction procedes for a week, Item A sells for $14 to Buyer.
Merchant arranges for Manufacturer to ship Item A to Buyer.
Buyer pays Merchant $14.
Merchant pays Manufacturer $6, keeping the $8 as profit.

Evil.

Now it gets WORSE.

The seminar explains that eBay will, oooo, take a percent of the acution price.

But NOT of the Shipping and Handling charges.

So if the Merchant marks their auction as a "quick buy" for $1 with $12 Shipping and Handling, they make more money and eBay keeps less.

Wow, that doesn't hurt ANYONE now right?

Wrong. See all eBay transactions are credit card transactions.

Credit card companies charge merchants (like eBay) a fee every month to use their service. And they charge them the lesser of two ADDITIONAL fees. Either a flat fee per transaction (a buck or so, depends on lots of factors) or a percentage of the total transactions for the month.

So if eBay goes from a thousand transactions a month totaling a million bucks to a thousand transactions a month totaling 400k the credit card company winds up charging MORE in fees. (it's a crazy world, and banks are evil cubed)

Insert: True Story Time
Once upon a time a close friend was finishing his degree. His girlfriend had dropped out and was working to pay the bills. She took a second job at "Elevated Train Transport" part time. One of the benefits of such employment is traditionally a "half-price meal" for each employee for each shift. She worked, exclusively, the close shift and had no other employees/managers working with her. She would get the cheapest sandwich, ring in her "half price meal" discount.

And pay with her debit card.

I saw her do this once. I said "did you ask your manager about doing that? because they get charged more in fees than the amount you just charged for every transaction." I was informed that she knew what she was doing. (As people have pointed out I have a caustic wit and tend to come off as obnoxious.) I shrug'ed and said "ok, I could be wrong."

About a month later (remember, the bills for credit card transactions come once a month, not every day) her manager called her in during the day to talk.

(Note: Itek is seldom wrong. He may not know, and if so he admits it before offering opinion/theory.)

Manager: Did you -charge- your employee meals every night for the last 6 weeks?
Katie: Yep, I put it on my debit card, so don't worry, I'm not paying 19% interest on it.
Manager: Um, please stop. Your meals cost under $1.50 each, but we get charged $1.75 per transaction. It's costing us money.
Katie: But...
Manager: Tell you what, I'll _GIVE_ you your meals free if you promise not to charge them.

Katie: Sorry Itek, you were right. But now I get my meal for free.
Itek: I might have been wrong, there's lots of different fee schedules for credit card merchants. But you can't go wrong getting free meals.
END True Story time.

So what response is forced on eBay?

eBay raises their fees across the board.

Which hurts the "seminar sellers" almost not at all. (They pay a bigger hunk of their trivial "sale price" and still rake it in on Shipping and Handling) But which hurts the honest people in regular auctions. Causing them to inflate the reserve and initial prices for auctions. Which in turn hurts buyers. Which causes inflation. Which means the buyer goes to their boss and asks for a raise. Which causes the price of hamburgers to go up. Which.....

Micro-to-Macro economics makes my head hurt. Suffice it to be said "inflation BAD."

We frequently hear "it's not the addict's fault, it's the dealer's" ... and the same is true here. I'm not complaining about the guy trying to hold Potters on my server hostage (480 zombie skins at 49 plat each, wow) for his misguided efforts to make himself plat. I blame, correctly, the guy that told him not only is it socially acceptable, but that everyone does it and he should get in there and participate in the "market economy" while the money is still good.

[Phantron]

You don't have to be held hostage for anything. In the pottery case you could've just taken a trip to Jaggedpine Forest and buy casserole dish sketches for around 1 plat each instead of buying zombie skins for 49 plat each. It might be a few more combines to do casserole dish (forgot, it's a long time), but you don't have to pay 49 plats to do that.

[mewkus]

While zombie skins can be used in pottery, that is no longer their purpose. Zombie skins are for the various DoN cultural quests. Where zombie skins were once used in pottery, Crows Special Brew has taken its place. CSB is vendor sold and works just as well as zombie skin.

[Brosh]

Buy vs Farm

My shaman wanted silkworm larvae to skill up alchemy so I took my druid to Broodlands and foraged for an hour (with bounty of nature 1) and got 2, along with a few other usable items and a bunch of other stuff. Now my 66 enchanter can easily make 1-2k an hour or more casting KEI, VoQ and SoV in PoK so it was obvious that it would be more cost and time effective to buy in the bazaar. One person had 180 larvae at 50pp, one had 30 at 40pp, others had anywhere from 1 to 10 at 2 to 10pp, enough to make 2 stacks. Instead of buying all the cheap ones, I bought a stack from the low price sellers while leaving most with 1 or 2 larvae. Came back the next day and Mr 40pp now had lowered his price to 10pp and some more had shown up at 2-7pp, so again I bought some of the cheap and some of the 10pp to make another stack. Came back a couple days later and lo and behold Mr 50pp was now selling his 180 larvae for 10pp and Mr 40 had 60 at 10pp as well, so I bought 2 stacks from each and my shaman trivialed the combine at a reasonable cost.

[Eggborn]

My shaman wanted silkworm larvae to skill up alchemy so I took my druid to Broodlands and foraged for an hour (with bounty of nature 1) and got 2, along with a few other usable items and a bunch of other stuff. Now my 66 enchanter can easily make 1-2k an hour or more casting KEI, VoQ and SoV in PoK so it was obvious that it would be more cost and time effective to buy in the bazaar. One person had 180 larvae at 50pp, one had 30 at 40pp, others had anywhere from 1 to 10 at 2 to 10pp, enough to make 2 stacks. Instead of buying all the cheap ones, I bought a stack from the low price sellers while leaving most with 1 or 2 larvae. Came back the next day and Mr 40pp now had lowered his price to 10pp and some more had shown up at 2-7pp, so again I bought some of the cheap and some of the 10pp to make another stack. Came back a couple days later and lo and behold Mr 50pp was now selling his 180 larvae for 10pp and Mr 40 had 60 at 10pp as well, so I bought 2 stacks from each and my shaman trivialed the combine at a reasonable cost.

Not a bad idea at all. I don't have the paitence for it, so what I usually do is buy all but a few of the lowest priced items I need and wait. I set a limit to which I will buy the item for. Sometimes I get unlucky and someone snatches the remaining cheap ones, but sometimes, it works out and I dont have to wait long before more are in the bazaar for me to buy cheap again.

I should consider that though. I sort of lost some pp making White Gold Inlays. I found several Dust of Discord in the bazaar for under 3k, so I bought 2 of them. Spent my 2k on 2 ingots and didnt fail on the combines. I priced my inlays the same as the lowest person in the bazaar (around 6k at the time) and they sold within an hour!!

Problem was a small price war on inlays started shortly after that. I went ahead and bought a lot more of dusts over the next week and combined them. Then the price went down in inlays to 3k. lol Now I have several inlays on my trader for 5k and many more rotting in my bank. I gave 3 away to friends, one I traded for another dust.

Buying high though might do the trick sometimes I bet. If the sellers are paying any attention that is.

[Ngreth Thergn]

You don't have to be held hostage for anything. In the pottery case you could've just taken a trip to Jaggedpine Forest and buy casserole dish sketches for around 1 plat each instead of buying zombie skins for 49 plat each. It might be a few more combines to do casserole dish (forgot, it's a long time), but you don't have to pay 49 plats to do that.

That is STILL not ITEK's point

his point is STILL that one should not be making the guide to "Making Platinum in EQ" be "The way to make money in the game is to have Tradeskillers pay you."

[KyrosKrane]

It's interesting to note that at the most fundamental level, there are exactly two ways in EQ to generate income:

1) Sell stuff to vendors.
2) Sell stuff to players.

By and large, selling stuff to vendors is much slower at generating large quantities of cash than selling stuff to players. In addition, players will only pay for stuff they need or want -- and never forget that some people need time more than plat.

Players will buy items for two reasons (excluding reselling or passing on as a gift): They want to use it (e.g., weapons or armor, clickie utility items, etc.), or they want to tradeskill with it. If you exclude tradeskillers as a market, that just leaves people acquiring items to use. I doubt anyone would suggest that the only things that should be sold are weapons and armor.

Once you acknowledge that players (not NPC's) are your primary source of income, it's purely a matter of interpretation and "where you draw the line" at what you feel is underpriced, a bargain, overpriced, or a ripoff. There is no such thing as an absolute fair price. Sellers will overprice both tradeskilled and non-tradeskilled goods. By the same token, they will underprice both. (Again, overprice and underprice are both relative, subjective terms.)

It just so happens that tradeskillers are often willing to trade their time and effort for plat. (E.g., skipping farming or subcombines and just buying the stuff.) This is not "evil" or "wrong;" this is the tradeskiller's choice. Once you accept that the tradeskiller has the right to buy stuff, you can no longer say whether a price is "acceptable" or not for anyone but yourself. It is very possible that some tradeskiller, somewhere really will pay 15pp per CE by the stack. It is no one's place to chide that person but that person himself.

You can argue all you like that Gemdiver's article was perhaps misleading in the way he structured his pricing suggestions. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. The price will be determined by the buyer and the seller, not by anyone outside the transaction.

[Phantron]

EQ's economy is not free. For example on the non consumable goods we have tribute in place to prevent items getting too cheap. Likewise there should be some kind of price ceiling on the consumable goods like tradeskill items. While you can't easily monopolize EQ tradeskill stuff, it is relatively easy to get a cartel, even if informally (everyone else sells Shissar Scales for 3k so I'll sell for 3k too). But short of putting a tax on Bazaar stuff or vastly increase drop rate of certain tradeskill items, I don't think there's an easy way to prevent things from being sold too high. Just because someone out there might be willing to pay a million for a TV doesn't mean that's the price he should pay.

[Neebat]

EQ's economy is not free. For example on the non consumable goods we have tribute in place to prevent items getting too cheap. Likewise there should be some kind of price ceiling on the consumable goods like tradeskill items. While you can't easily monopolize EQ tradeskill stuff, it is relatively easy to get a cartel, even if informally (everyone else sells Shissar Scales for 3k so I'll sell for 3k too). But short of putting a tax on Bazaar stuff or vastly increase drop rate of certain tradeskill items, I don't think there's an easy way to prevent things from being sold too high. Just because someone out there might be willing to pay a million for a TV doesn't mean that's the price he should pay.

Vendor sell-back and tribute are both effective price-floors for most items in EQ and many of those have an impact, but there are also effective price ceilings on many tradeskill items in EQ. For instance, you won't sell any steel arrow shafts for a profit. The vendors sell them cheaper. Those new potions can be made by alchemists, but they have an effective cap on asking price.

Aside from arrow parts, people creating / farming components for tradeskillers have very little NPC competition. That's why it's such a profitable market. In fact, I'd venture to say farming and selling components to tradeskillers is the most profitable market in the game. I think that's why Gemdiver points it out. Most people fail to recognize the opportunity created by us tradeskillers.

I think you could consider Gemdiver's guide a good thing, to the extent that it encourages more people to enter that market as a seller of tradeskill supplies. Itek is focusing on platinum and saying it's not a zero-sum game, but the supply of tradeskill components is ALSO not a zero-sum game. If more people farm and sell tradeskill components, it creates more supply of those components. Laws of supply and demand kick in and eventually traders see lower prices. If there were competition for the areas to farm those components, this wouldn't work, but from what I can tell, the average spider roams EK a long time. (And most other tradeskill-supply-mobs are less than fully camped.)

[Phantron]

A 800/2000pp storebought combine similar to pure velium bar and inferno scepter would go a long way evening out the insanity of prices at the top of tailoring. It might not stop people asking the ridiculous prices but at least it'd give people a choice.

[Bauhb]

That is STILL not ITEK's point

his point is STILL that one should not be making the guide to "Making Platinum in EQ" be "The way to make money in the game is to have Tradeskillers pay you."

In that case, I guess my point is that nobody is entitled to my money, and I am not entitled to cheap and readily available components in massive quantities.

It's dutch-door action here; capitalism is going to swing both ways. The prices have to remain under control if the farmer/reseller plans on making any money. If the price isn't "reasonable," then it won't sell. Of course, "reasonable" here is a subjective term, as it is determined by some random person deciding that they're willing to pay the listed price for the components in question.

On the other hand, if that "reasonable" price is too high for your tastes? Well, to be frank, boo hoo. It's capitalism. Sure, it's a vicious beast at times, but too bad. If you're not willing to pay the prices, you can try to reason with that seller, but you are in no way entitled to his loot. If you don't like it, go farm it yourself.

--------------------------------

As to the velium example listed above, say trader A is selling blocks and bricks for 50pp each, and then trader B comes along and buys them all, turns each one into 2 pieces, and hence is able to sell them all for 50pp each, thus doubling his capital.

Am I supposed to feel sorry for trader A, or feel somehow that trader B robber trader A? I don't.

All things considered, velium conversions are old news and easily found not only on allakhazam and EQTC, but they're also easily discoverable using the forge. The news about velium weapon conversions was in the recent patch notes. All of this is readily available information. If trader A is unwilling to research the items they are selling, I feel little pity for them. Trader B on the other hand has used no deception and cheated nobody, they have simply taken the time to do the proper research.

You, of course, are obligated to buy from neither. If you honestly think that trader B somehow robbed trader A due to trader A's incapacity to RTFM, well... have fun in TOFS.