Gemdiver tells all - How to make plat

[KB1]

Real simple, don't like the price don't by it. I didn't like the recent prices on CEs, so I made my own, I don't like the prices on velium so I farmed my own, I well, you get the point.

[Ixiola]

Actually, what always gets me to shake my head is the people who try to make a profit off of tradeskillers that price it high simply because it's got a TS tag, and have no concept of the value of the item. Then wonder why it never moves.

Case in point: Raw Dark Matter is only used to make mana batteries by a tinker. But Mana Batteries are also dropped in POI and sold on a vendor in POK. So at no time should someone price a mana battery for more, or honestly even equal to the vendor price.

Since the vendor price of a Class 5 battery (the biggest seller due to it being the kind to recharge GVDs) is 52p, and since Battery combines are relatively low trivial (ie not a real skillup path), asking 300p for raw dark matter is simply nuts. Even given that I am guaranteed to turn each raw dark matter into 3 dark matter when I refine it (because I've done enough refine combines), this makes the final cost of a class 5 battery at least 100p each! Bottom line, I never pay more than 40p for my raw materials, but I see some of this stuff stay for sale in the bazaar at these prices and keep shaking my head.

I see stuff like this all the time. Either items are priced far too low (even below the cost to SELL to a vendor) or priced so high that it's not even worth buying to do the combine. What these guides should really do is tell people to research not only the going rate in the bazaar (by watching prices for several days) but also look at the value of the finished product AND know the vendor buy/sell prices.

I actually don't mind guides that suggest supplying components/subcombines to tradeskillers. And I don't mind giving farmers/vendor divers a fair profit for time it takes them to supply me goodies to tradeskill with. It's when sellers (and buyers too really) set unreasonable prices that I get .

[Brosh]

What gets me is things like...

last week, where I bought 33 or so Ocean Inks for my shaman for 5pp each and left a few on each of the two sellers to, hopefully, keep the price low. Logged back on a couple days later to find those two sellers gone and replaced by two who had 5 Ocean Inks each, one at 4k each, the other at 6k each. Times like that I'm sorely tempted to use the new in game e-mail system to probably get myself in trouble by sending them a strongly worded (un)diplomatic note.

Brosh

[Phantron]

I thought of a way to bring back Arena to the bazaar and take care of overpricing in the same time.

When you sell something in Bazaar you'd be informed The House of Fordel (or whatever) requires you pay X plat for 'protection money' which would be determined by the sum total of the PP you're asking on your goods (e.g. 10 water flask at 100K pp = 1000K pp), and once you paid it's good for say, 3 real life days (can even have long term package deals)

When this time runs out (or you just refuse to pay in the first place), you either have your goods immediately stopped being listed on Bazaar (default option), or you can keep selling but this makes you PvPable to any trader who also hasn't paid their protection money and they can kill you loot everything you're currently selling if they kill you (you, of course, can fight back and loot them). That way people who want to PvP can just put a water flask and not pay up money and beat each other up, and there would be a motive for people to have more reasonable goods (because protection money is based on your total asking price). And if some guy forget to paid, you can kill them for free loot!

Okay, that's never going to fly, but I wish it would.

[Bumkus]

Trust me... eventually people will lower prices if nobody buys their goods.

Not always true. Since there is no cost for holding inventory, a person can hold a high price indefinately. If person places a higher value on the "ooh, ooh, I get good price" than they do on the plat generated by that bag slot, then they will leave it up there indefinately. Plus they get to feel good about all the big numbers they see next to their name in the baz search window.

[Neebat]

When this time runs out (or you just refuse to pay in the first place), you either have your goods immediately stopped being listed on Bazaar (default option), or you can keep selling but this makes you PvPable to any trader who also hasn't paid their protection money and they can kill you loot everything you're currently selling if they kill you (you, of course, can fight back and loot them).

Heh. I like the idea of mandatory insurance based on the value you choose. I would even be in favor of skipping the combat. If you've had some 400kpp augs rotting for a month and your insurance expires, anyone would be free to walk up and loot them.

I guess I'm a wild-eyed free-market economist. In fact, I like this idea so much, I wish property taxes were done this way in real life. Pay your tax as an insurance policy against emminent domain, you pick the appraisal. That would prevent the current scam being pulled by local governments in the US.

[Phantron]

My experience is that people are perfectly content to keep items in inventory forever since inventory is quite plentiful. Hence that's why I'd like to see a tax based on the asking price. I think 0.1% per 1 real life day isn't asking too much assuming the goal of Bazaar is to excahange goods as opposed to just listing them. The auction house in WoW charges like at least 1% on a successful sale and probably some lesser number for a listing and people don't have a problem with that.

[Yammez]

The auction house in WoW charges like at least 1% on a successful sale and probably some lesser number for a listing and people don't have a problem with that.

Go play WoW. Getting mighty tired of people crying about bazaar prices. Too many lazy people out there not willing to go farm the stuff for themselves and just wanting to buy things cheap from people who spent the time gather materials. waaaaaaaaaaaaa!

[Phantron]

Go play WoW. Getting mighty tired of people crying about bazaar prices. Too many lazy people out there not willing to go farm the stuff for themselves and just wanting to buy things cheap from people who spent the time gather materials. waaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I guess you're one of those guys who thinks placing smithing combine components at twice the cost of an inferno scepter represents an efficient allocation of resources. In reality they shouldn't even be higher than the cost of a Pure Velium Bar.

[Angelsyn]

I guess you're one of those guys who thinks placing smithing combine components at twice the cost of an inferno scepter represents an efficient allocation of resources. In reality they shouldn't even be higher than the cost of a Pure Velium Bar.

It really depends on the value of the finished combine, now doesn't it?

[Neebat]

It really depends on the value of the finished combine, now doesn't it?

Not really. There's two "rewards" for those buying tradeskill components. One is the item created. In some cases, that result is completely worthless. The Enchanted Velium Bits combine for smithing is a good example. The potential for a skillup also has a value. The chance for a skill up is definately worth something because so many people spend money on tradeskill components when they'll be losing money on the combine. (Gem studded chains and Ceramonial Solstice Robes turn up on vendors all the time, at a massive loss.)

Tradeskill supplies vary absurdly in bazaar. I think that derives partly from the difficulty in placing a consistent value on the chance at a skillup.

For instance, many people practicing tinkering make collapsed containers in bulk, watching that "Duplicate LORE item not allowed" scroll by, JUST for the skill up. I want cash from my tinkering combines, so that's not worth it to me for the skillup alone. Some of those folks will go so far as to pay HUNDREDS for the coiled springs, then destroy them in a LORE combine. I think that's silly, but guess what? Some traders in bazaar list their wares specificly for the people with more pp and less time. They won't get my business, but someone will buy.

[Phantron]

As a rule most tradeskill combines have very little worth, if any, as a finished product. The exceptions are quite obvious and the market needs no help in selling such components at an appropriate price.

It's one thing the market can put its own value but if you place a pile of gravel at 3000pp that either means the seller doesn't know inferno scepters exist or that he's hoping the buyer doesn't know inferno scepters exist. There's no other way but to call this a ripoff when it is inferior to a storebought solution (1.5 combines X 3.5% (skill up chance at 290) > 5% (pile of gravel)).

In light of the fact that Pure Velium Bars exist, no smithing component with no resale value should be placed at more than about 800pp without creating some kind of ripoff. And this actually applies even more so than people with 'lots of plat and no time' because if I'm willing to consider making 800pp per combine to just skill up in the interest of saving time, I can easily find an Enchanter willing to enchant velium bars for say, 25pp each, and someone making purified water for another 25pp each. We'll assume that you're not so lazy that you'd rather pay significantly more plat to get around the fact that this combine is a quest combine so it has to be done manually.

[Yammez]

I guess you're one of those guys who thinks placing smithing combine components at twice the cost of an inferno scepter represents an efficient allocation of resources. In reality they shouldn't even be higher than the cost of a Pure Velium Bar.

Neebat said it the best imo. There are different *costs* than just platinum. Time, for MANY people, is worth more than platinum. If I'm willing to spend the time making tons of sub-combines to sell to a market of people who have the plat to spend but not the time, then the price I set for items is reasonable to a specific market. If I find that my prices are no longer agreeable to my target, then I adjust accordingly. If I need fast plat, I price for a quick sell to different market of people: the ones with more time and less plat. Very simple strategy. I don't feel a vendor needs to set their prices so EVERYONE can buy it at a bargain price. The bargain is target for a specific market.

[Wyvernwill]

But, here is the alternative to Pile of Gravel selling for 5k each.

The human cultural armor that I have been working on (master's level) sells for roughly 500pp to 10k per piece. 10k is the absolute best I was able to get for a Breastplate. That's a 3 Pile of Gravel combine. At 5k each, that turns into a 5k loss for ONE combine.

Personally, I see 3k as the absolute highest I could even fathome putting forth for Piles of Gravel because even if I am successful, I only stand to make a 1k profit from the combine... but then you have to factor in the metal costs for the cultural armors too.

Some things are just completely unreasonable.

[Phantron]

The time argument doesn't work when stuff at bazaar is sold for more than a combine you can buy from a vendor. With the exception of sickles, it doesn't get faster than storebought. Even sickles probably come out to be faster than buying when you start factoring in availability (making 1000 sickles takes 10X time of 100, while buying first 100 whatever smithing combines could be pretty fast but buying the last 100 would be very slow because supplies run out even if money is not an issue).

As far as I know Master armor have very little resale value because it is hard to get the right augs for it.