Pricing Changes gonna hurt

[gnormy]

Prices on Tradeskill stuff has been nerfed. Even if the supplies are not stocked by vendors. The one I've seen so far is LoY dyes. Now worth under 2g from their 7p5g.

I guess this was done to prevent any macro exploiting. However, it does mean that EVERY PRICE will need to be reverified.

[Cubwynn]

about **** time.

Maybe it'll force out some of those who insist on ruining markets.

[Renjah]

You're ruined your own economy you won't ruin mine!

They need to update the vendors lines when ppl try to resell profittable trade skill items

[Sanna]

*really prays that her huge research pricing data is still accurate... being told I have to recollect all that right now... I would cry...*

-- Sanna
when it rains... it never stops raining....

[Koru]

Ah, the people who are skilling up on items will still make them. In fact with an even lesser sale value to NPCs they'll be even more likely to stick them on their seller mules for cheap since the loss per item made will be higher if they sell to NPCs. Of course those without a huge bank account will have a rough time since they won't be able to recoup as much money by selling to NPC and now have more bazaar sellers to compete against. So I'm not sure I see how this will help tradeskillers on skill up items at least.

[Lone_War]

Ruining Markets

I am one of those people that is ruining tradeskill markets. Specifically Opal Steins and Acrylia Arrows.

Why am I doing it, because I need to recoup at least something reasonable from my skill up paths. And I consider 80% of merchant cost for an item reasonable, and at that point I just burn items right back to the merchant.

Any less than that and I consider sticking it on my merchant. Down at the 1 percent rate I will put it on my merchant and undercut anyone in the market to move them.

What this means is that if Opal Encrusted Steins, if fired returned 15pp per I would immediately sell them to a vendor.

Hades at 10pp returned I would do the same. BUT they are at 4 silver per so I put them on my vendor and will keep them there until competition drives the price below 5pp bazaar price.

And about deep pockets, I dont have them, but with a constant cash flow I can ACT like I have them. But in order to do that I need items on my merchant to move,and move fast.

[Liwsa]

By doing that you are losing money which is what you are trying to recoup. By selling them at the going rate and NOT undercutting yours would sell and you would make more pp back.

You undercut then someone undercuts you so you go back and undercut them. You are all losing pp and a lot of pp.

On Terris-Thule there was 1 person that put up 200 sheets of etherial energy(for ornate armor) at 149pp. I have been selling them at a constant 250pp. Did they sell theirs yes but in the process they lost what would have been an extra 20k in their pocket. I still sell them at 250 and they sell.

If you undercut you lose pp. Price match but undercutting is a waste of pp.

[gnormy]

Heh - I know Liwsa personally but still have to agree with her. Undercutting isnt the best way to go if you are after pp. Doesnt hurt to have multiple traders up either =P

[andyhre]

It all depends on demand and your anticipated pace of supply.


But... if you plan on being in the market for the long haul, and you can pace your supply to "fill in" as demand lowers your stock, don't undercut, as you will race to the bottom. Instead find the price that all of the consistent sellers can agree on (formally or informally, no antitrust laws in Norrath) and deal with the "wildcatters' by buying them out if they are very cheap or letting them sell out their supply otherwise.

If instead, you are skillin gup and plan to get out of the market as soon as you finish the skilling up, and you are making more than you can sell sothat supply is building up, try to find the price that will sell quickly, esp. if you can induce the old-timers in the previous paragraph to buy you out. You get through your supplies quickly and can recoup your TS losses and then leave the market to the old-timers.

But if there is consistent demand for something and you have a trader alt anyway, matching prices is going to be more profitable. It's only when lots of supply is chasing little demand that you need to be cheaper than everyone else, otherwise just-as-cheap works just-as-well.

[Inyidd]

Near as I can tell, it's part of the whole new pricing structure that they put in where tradeskilled items won't cost any more than their components (if I remember the wording correctly). Mixing bowls, for instance, only cost a silver and change now, and sell back for 9 copper.

Perhaps only items that can be *created*, not the components themselves, are now changed in price?

[Quillium]

Hi,

Liwsa said:
----
By doing that you are losing money which is what you are trying to recoup. By selling them at the going rate and NOT undercutting yours would sell and you would make more pp back.

You undercut then someone undercuts you so you go back and undercut them. You are all losing pp and a lot of pp.
----

As the number of suppliers of an item go to infinity and thusly the number of items available to buy go to inifinity.. the sell price of an item will shrink to just above the cost of the materials needed to make that item. All you need to do is look at dye for armor. First day of LoY you were talking 100pp per. As the market got oversaturated, flooded, and what not the cost shrank to the current ~45pp. Or just enough so that some people still make and sell but not enough that it entices more people into making them. You can sit there posting a dye for 100pp all you want... it won't be bought. Same thing with eth sheets of metal. The more people get the skills in both brewing and smithing and find out how easy and simple the combine is, the more they will do them and the market will get flooded to just over cost. They'll sell for 50pp easy and have so many on the market that you can sell them for 250pp all you want, but nobody will buy. Is this 'ruining' the market? No.. its giving you healthy competition for the sale of that item that is so easy to make.

As per trying to sweat that you didn't make that 'extra' 20K? 200 Eth sheets of metal at 149pp is 29.8K. Normal is to just take that money and use it to buy either eth bricks off vendor or /ooc that you'll buy them for 20p each. Then just pump out a whole new set priced at 149pp each while you still get nothing lamenting that they are worth 250pp. As long as people can keep the supply up, price at 250pp all you want, you won't sell until they filter out of the marketplace. And that will never happen if they are making good plat doing it from the profit involved. That's just the facts of the economy you sell in.

We often get cycles on these items. Solstice Robes have been notorious. It was so bad on Fennin Ro at one point that you could buy robes for 50p each, really as many as you wanted. After a couple months, the people dumping their supply filtered out of the marketplace and the price rose steadily due to few suppliers until it reached 900-1000pp. Now the market is starting to go back down in price after a couple weeks of good weeks of sales as people started to understand you could make some money off them again.

Liwsa said:
----
You undercut then someone undercuts you so you go back and undercut them. You are all losing pp and a lot of pp.
----

Personally, if you wanted to be really insidious in the EQ market place you could use some of the same tactics that Japan used to take over markets. Come out underselling or working at your cost until people get run out of the market in frustration, then jack the price due to few suppliers. If people start flooding back in, reset to your cost. This is the danger of serious macro coding. Macro coding that scares me is *NOT* taking advantage of some goof on a sell back. That stuff gets fixed and the money gets filtered out over time. The macro coding that could be truly dangerous is that which uses the EQ enviornment just as it was supposed to be used, but uses it with a computerized knowledge of economics to be able to fix certain markets and keep a track of who sells what with an intention of frustrating them in their markets to the point where they stop selling in that market in order due to price in order to jack prices for a week or two of high profit margins.

-Quillium Lifehammer
65 Warrior Fennin Ro

Baking 250
Jewelry Making 250
Brewing 245
Pottery 223
Blacksmithing 221
Fletching 215
Tailoring 197

[Belhaven]

Originally posted by Liwsa
You undercut then someone undercuts you so you go back and undercut them. You are all losing pp and a lot of pp.

On Terris-Thule there was 1 person that put up 200 sheets of etherial energy(for ornate armor) at 149pp. I have been selling them at a constant 250pp. Did they sell theirs yes but in the process they lost what would have been an extra 20k in their pocket. I still sell them at 250 and they sell.

In another light - YOU lost 20k pp. Assuming that the cost to make the items are somewhere around 150 each, you could have bought all of his items at 150 and sold them at 250... and made your 20k pp. Treat him as a wholesaler who is saving you the time needed to make the items.

If the cost to make the item is ABOVE the cost the undercutter is charging... then you make even more money by buying his item and selling it yourself. Treat him as a discount supplier

When his prices are above cost, and yet below your price... he's just competition who is willing to make a lower margin that you are. Get over it.

=====

On another note- the merchants who all agree to charge a certain price - and then get REALLY bent out of shape when someone comes in below their price - should read up on "price-fixing" and its effects on the market where it occurs. In most regualted markets, that practice is discouraged, if not expressly forbidden.

[andyhre]

The price to which items will fall in EQ is not the cost of their materials, if it is on a skill-path, but rather, to just above the vendor purchase price. People will make LoY ribbons, for example, and sell them well below the 105pp price of the starter platinum ribbon alone, simply b/c they cannot use it for the next step of tailoring (cultural restriction) and the merhcnat only pays 26 or so.

As for price fixing, it tends to increase price, lower consumption, and lower total welfare. It also tends to increase suppliers' welfare, which is why cartels form. And it was only made illegal in the US in 1890, and in some parts of Europe, some cartels were legal in the 1990s [Newspapers in the Netherlands, I believe, is one example].

Price Fixing won't work (well or at all)if the barriers to entry are low or when supply far exceeds demand. But when the barriers to enter are very high and the product is highly desired, a small number of producers can profitable maintain prices above the competitive level. And consumers suffer. And until Norrath passes antitrust laws and send Red-conning mobs out to kill cartel members, it will be a fact of like just like pre-1890 US economy.

[Ndaara]

At some point I decided to look at the undercutters in a different light, and I started seeing them as my "suppliers" rather than as my "competition". This ONLY works to my advantage if i have deep pockets at the time my suppliers are selling, AND if i am shopping when they are selling.

So i have a shopping list with price limits set, and i go through my shopping list a couple times a day and buy out the undercutters.

One person apparently doesn't like this. I'm tired of Mistletoe Sickle subcombines so if anyone sells the stupid things at 1800p or less I buy them all up and resell for the going rate, 2k. One guy sells his consistently for 1750, but he only puts out a few at a time after i bought him out the first time.

I don't really understand that. If he is skilling up on them, why not put them all out and i'll buy em all at once and he can go get more skill?

Or is he really so concerned with everyone's bank accounts that he wants to sell them for 1750 so that folks can save 250pp?

Anyway. I must admit I now enjoy aggressively searching the bazaar for crafted items that are selling at cost, so that i can buy them up and not have to do all the arm-numbing clicking. Much more fun for me than being angry about undercutters. However it does require that I maintain a rather large bank account, and have a LOT of patience. These are 2 things I do not have in RL, but i am getting better by practicing in Norrath.

[Quillium]

Ndarra said:
----
At some point I decided to look at the undercutters in a different light, and I started seeing them as my "suppliers" rather than as my "competition". This ONLY works to my advantage if i have deep pockets at the time my suppliers are selling, AND if i am shopping when they are selling.

So i have a shopping list with price limits set, and i go through my shopping list a couple times a day and buy out the undercutters.

One person apparently doesn't like this. I'm tired of Mistletoe Sickle subcombines so if anyone sells the stupid things at 1800p or less I buy them all up and resell for the going rate, 2k. One guy sells his consistently for 1750, but he only puts out a few at a time after i bought him out the first time.

I don't really understand that. If he is skilling up on them, why not put them all out and i'll buy em all at once and he can go get more skill?

Or is he really so concerned with everyone's bank accounts that he wants to sell them for 1750 so that folks can save 250pp?
----

A lot of people have considered doing this at one time or another. If you want to take the risk on it that's great, but its also a great way to be left with a lot of stock that you can't sell for a long period of time. You never can tell from one day or week to the next when exactly the market will become oversaturated. When it does, you'll be left with umpteen sickles that you can't sell for even the 1750pp price because it has been driven well below that. So you are faced with either selling at a loss or waiting weeks at a time for the current supply to dry up and for the price to rise. I'm not one with the fortitude for that, but if you are and are willing to take that risk, I certainly don't believe anyone should be irate at you for making 250pp off the deal when they do sell. Thanks.

-Quillium Lifehammer
65 Warrior Fennin Ro