GDARN PRICES!$@$@!#

[Cigarskunk]

I"m not asking for cheap...I'm asking for a fair price. Try to understand the difference.

We know, but the problem is that your response to folks pointing out that as a 65 druid you've got an excellent chance of foraging them up yourself was that if you wasted your time doing so, you wouldn't have time to rack up 50-70k a week plat farming.

I'm not trying to bag on you or anything, but you've got to understand that statement came off as the hight of arrogance to many of us here.

Most of us don't have your plat earning potential, so we've learned to either figure out whether we can earn the plat to buy the materials we need or farm the materials themselves faster - then we go with whichever is most efficient for us.

Yes, 100plat for a common forage is highway robbery considering how many you need and how much the end product sells for - we all agree on this.

The problem is that you don't want to forage them for yourself (which you can easily do) because you're too busy earning plat - your justifiable complaint about the cost was lost in your refusal to do like everyone else here and simply farm the items for yourself - it's not like you can't forage or the tufts drop from a mob which is too high level for you.

[Reflan]

You're rich and can get even richer at an incredible rate in a single week...AND can forage the item if you don't want to buy it...AND it is a dirt common item so you are not locked out of getting it in any way by farmers or griefers...and you care what people charge for it?

Wow.

Writing that it's a FORAGED ITEM in big letters doesn't make it any more pertinent a point. Foraged items take some time combined with some luck. The game is all about time, on the one hand, and a bit of luck on the other. Same as if you loot that fungi and sell it. Maybe you won't get a fungi drop if you spend the time, maybe you will. Foraging or hunting or tradeskilling, you spend time to get your result, and so does everybody else. There's nothing more special about hunting or raiding than anything else; it's just a personal choice.

If someone makes the personal choice to do something, it's his right to do whatever he wants with the result -- and it only make sense, doesn't it? Why would he try something if he couldn't do what he wanted with the results? If he wants to charge 5 copper or 5k plat, who cares? Both are equally fair, and you don't have to buy it either way.

And he sure as heck doesn't have to sell it to you, either, at whatever prices you want, reflecting what you think his time is worth. Don't like the price? Move on.

By the way, Cigarskunk mentioned he thought people learned the wrong lesson from seeing how much tradeskilled items go for in the bazaar, in that they wanted their piece of the pie. I think contrarily that they learned exactly the right lesson -- they wanted to be paid for their time and effort at a fair price. Seeing your piece of the pie and going for it is a great thing. Especially since something like foraging isn't exactly locking people out of spawns or spoiling their quests or bugging the Hollowshade war on purpose or something. It's just clean, fair business.

Another by the way -- a druid especially should be able to visit thurg very quickly anytime he wants to check vendors for tufts. I used to check Thurgadin every day for velium and gems -- even bound there sometimes -- and I've seen untold stacks of tufts there for sale. This is not an uncommon item. It's not unlikely you've passed by oodles of virtually free tufts week after week because you couldn't be bothered even to check for freebies.

[mepper]

hmmm i seem to remember a certain someone buying 200 of those at , what, 35p each? /wink ..heh but yah id rather forage them myself with a book or magazine than pay those ridiculous prices for them

[OberonMiM]

they should make using a skinning knife on dire wolf pelts give a number of tufts + the lower quality pelt (or destroy the pelt in case of the lowest pelt)

I mean do you think the fur magically dissappears from the pelt when you degrade its quality (but first they have to allow using the skinning knife on dire wolf pelts)

[Phabos]

I"m not asking for cheap...I'm asking for a fair price. Try to understand the difference.

Kinda reminds of the old Depression letter sent to President Roosevelt. He had asked for feedback on price control legislation, and one merchant wrote to him (tongue in cheek) that the price controls should be left in place on the things he bought and eliminated on the goods he sold.

In other words, a fair price is in the eye of whichever party is getting the better deal. If a few people have what a lot of people want, the price will be high. If a lot of people are selling and few buying, the price will be low. The market has nothing to do with what is "fair." In a land with no economic regulation (EQ), the free market sets its own price.

If the market won't come down to an acceptable price, go around the Bazaar. Make a deal with a friendly forager that you will pay whatever is an acceptable price for you both if he/she will supply with all the tufts found. Trade other tradeskilled items that you could sell for profit, but don't cost very much for the ingredient outlay. Use the market, but don't complain.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, also thinks your prices are "unfair".

Phabos

[Quinner Sparrowhawk]

Slight derail time -I know that the following is a DH but why can't people actually place value on the time spent making items. One of the most common complaints about tailoring is making Heady Kiolas. It is very tedious, requires going dirtside, and is required in large quantities to accomplish any skill-ups. I once overprices my headys by mistake at 15pp and sold out anyway. The market is there, waiting to be filled. So I do and usually I price my headys at 5pp. Nothing unreasonable and a price that has been well established. Well, some bozo comes along and prices his 380 headys at 3pp. I understand that it is a free market and an uncontrolled economy but come on, isn't the time spent worth anything? BTW, this same person had 10 items priced at over 10k apiece and another 10 above 1k each. I hate to resort to d00dspeak but WTF?!

[Lilosh]

I"m not asking for cheap...I'm asking for a fair price. Try to understand the difference.

Kinda reminds of the old Depression letter sent to President Roosevelt. He had asked for feedback on price control legislation, and one merchant wrote to him (tongue in cheek) that the price controls should be left in place on the things he bought and eliminated on the goods he sold.

In other words, a fair price is in the eye of whichever party is getting the better deal. If a few people have what a lot of people want, the price will be high. If a lot of people are selling and few buying, the price will be low. The market has nothing to do with what is "fair." In a land with no economic regulation (EQ), the free market sets its own price.

If the market won't come down to an acceptable price, go around the Bazaar. Make a deal with a friendly forager that you will pay whatever is an acceptable price for you both if he/she will supply with all the tufts found. Trade other tradeskilled items that you could sell for profit, but don't cost very much for the ingredient outlay. Use the market, but don't complain.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, also thinks your prices are "unfair".

Phabos

Will you bear my children?


-Lilosh

[Phabos]

Will you bear my children?
-Lilosh

We've been over this...

Please stop asking...

Phabos
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr

[Quesci]

If the market won't come down to an acceptable price, go around the Bazaar.

So few people think to do this anymore. If it isn't in the Bazaar, it isn't available.

I needed Imbued stones by the hundreds for pottery idols. I could get them in small doses in the bazaar, but mostly emeralds and plains pebbles... both priced prohibitively for a skill item with no resale value.

After some creative auctioing in PoK, I found a level 34 ogre shaman who would imbue me stacks of jade and a 47 iksar shaman who would do amber. They did the imbues in their down time, while LFG or watching TV or while their group was medding. Every couple of days, one of them would drop off a few stacks. I paid them quite a bit less than I would have paid in the bazaar, and they were happy because they didn't need to spend time as a trader. It was win/win.

I have a pipeline of people who give me hero meats. I pay them in sandwiches (one sandwich for three meats--that is 50/50 split on the successes and 1/3 failure). I don't have to pay bazaar prices and they don't have to stand in the Bazaar when they could be off farming/raiding.

As far as tradeskill supplies go for me, the Bazaar is for: emergencies ("Oops, I forgot I need TWO of these for this combine...") or minor consumables that are exceptionally common (roots, fruit, vegetables).

[xaanru]

The way I see it, "fair prices" depend on what ANYONE is willing to pay. It may be that I am unwilling to pay a certain price, but if the seller finds someone willing to pay that price, then their price is reasonable, and hardly unfair.

I used to be one of those who whined about the price of pelts and spiderling silks, until I realized that they were not sitting on merchants unsold. THey were blowing out the same day at over 10pp per pelt, and several plat per spiderling silk. Finished padding were 40pp and selling. I was making field plate, so it seemed expensive to me at the time.

Now I make heraldic. I still prefer not to pay 40pp per padding, but recently purchased a stack at that price, because it seemed too inconvenient to transfer some off my alt, who had 200+ paddings in his bank.

Our server has a trader who has had the same mistletoe sickle for 5995 for the last 3 months. THAT is overpriced.

On the other hand, I purchased 5 tae ew bloods today, for prices ranging from 1750p-2300pp. Shortly before I bought them, someone was complaining about the prices of tae ew bloods (tipped me off that they were there, as a matter of fact). They thought the price was unreasonable. To me, it was pretty decent, but then, at 243 modified skill, I don't fail that many tae ew items.

In the first case, I along with EVERYONE else, think the price is too high. It has not sold. In the second, the price is fair, as the items sell.

An example where I am unwilling to pay the price, is windstones. they range from 175-250pp in bazaar on Rodcet. I won't pay that, because a BP is a hard sell now for 1k. On the other hand, they never stay up for long. I usually offer buyers 120pp for them, when they post them. Usually, they refuse, but the windstones are gone that day.


Apparently, no matter how I personally see it, they are priced fairly. Why accept less than market rates for your labor.

Same thing with the tufts. I forage them occasionally by accident. so far I've just been holding them, as I hope to work some skill swap for a bag combine or two. However, I WILL NOT sit in Thurgadin long enough to forage stacks of them at once. Therefore, I would veiw the worth of tufts to be fairly high, as I personally would not be tempted by the market price to produce them. The equilibrium pricing model would suggest that, particularly in the case of something with low barriers to entry (anyone can make a foraging alt), if the price were too high, new producers would enter the market.

Ergo, since there is no mass flood of foragers in Thurgadin, the current price is not excessive.

[Ilona]

Bah, Xaanru - no wonder there are never any tae ew bloods when I look for them! You grab them all from under my nose! *pout*