Concerns suggestions with time vs reward of playermade tradeskill economy

[Garndart]

There are several concerns I have with alot of the tradeskills and there marketablilty. Let me preface this with I'm not expecting Sony to make it so I can become Super rich doing tradeskills. But I would like to see more of a balance between time money spent on tradeskill to the profit money made from them.

POP trade skills
1. Drop rates and rariety of pop items. A good number of pop items especially the ones involving smithing and tailoring need to be looked at.
Some rates need to be upped. Like Akaline etched stone. Stormwatchers stone, hero parts for example there just really rare.

Certain recipes in smithing and tailoring should have the need for a temper/curing/tanning agent removed from the sheet, ring, Chain jointing, swatch etc. The components are pretty rare to begin with which is good. Needing 3 to 6 tempers per attempt makes them insanely hard and totally unprofitable.

Certain Food items need a stat increase to make them marketable. Justice pies are a good example. You dont want them do destroy the current Halas and MTP market but it would be nice if they had a profitable niche market of there own not just a way to skill up. Swamprat cruchies are a good example of a stat food that has a semi profitabler useable niche market the dr/pr resists are really nice and desireable to many people. You dont sell alot but can make a decent profit when you do.

LDON /LOY
Theese expansions have been pretty dry for tradeskillers except for there smoothing out tradeskillups. I hope theres more meat and potatoes in GOD.
The other problem is especially with LDON there are certain drops like the steelslave surgeons gown and bejeweld archeitects BP have really trashed the player made market. Most of the times you can buy theese items for substantially less on the open market then you can for one attempt of a pop playermade item that has substantially less stats. I hate to call nerf but the drop rates on certain LDOn drops need to be really looked at in general not just concerning tradeskills.

Required/Recomended Levels need to be looked at across the board. There are lots of new dropable items that are a lot less restrictive on theese levels then Player made items that have less stats.

More items with required skill level to make.

A prime example would be the opal encrusted stein. Average selling price ive found is just barely above cost. A big reason for this is that it is one of the prime routes for skilling up in pottery. There are hundreds if not thousands made everyday on each server. The item would be quite sellable for a decent profit if not for this fact. A good example of how this would effect the market price is etheral rings and sheets. You can make a decent profit on theese but only because of the required skill level. If theese did not have a required skill rate they would sell for 5 to 10pp each.
Geerlocks are a good example of something that would benefit from this also. Dont touch brewing or fletching geerlocks leaving them as a viable skillup route but all the others would be a nice way to make a little money from if they had required skill levels on them.

[Chenier]

Re: Concerns suggestions with time vs reward of playermade tradeskill economy

Originally posted by Garndart
Certain Food items need a stat increase to make them marketable. Justice pies are a good example.

Justice pies have a niche market; Bristlebane Party Platters require them. I buy out the bazaar when I'm making mine.

I agree with planar smithed and tailored (leather) items - 6 and on super rare components required is ridiculous, especially when you compare it to silk, which is much lower.

[Garndart]

bad example heres another

Okies I overlooked the justice pie market being used for bb platters Ive always made my own pies, but you have the breaded fish / jord meat pies and umm im to lazy to look right atm at others that if you added a niche stat like a nice resist a cha boost something that doesnt directly compete with halas and mtp's that would be real nice.

[Krazick]

The general pricing scheme one chooses to set the price of an item you make, is UP TO YOU, the Vendor/Tradeskiller.

You decide how much the item is worth based upon the rarity of the drops, and difficulty of the combines (ie chance of ailure).

You decide is that Smithed "Farwater Plate Breastplate" that take five Povarian Mist Tempers (each which takes a Water Mephit Blood, Shimmering Fish Gills, and 3 Soapstones) is worth selling for.

If YOU the vendor choose to set a price of 10K, 50K, or 500K for it, based upon YOUR determination of the difficulty of obtaining the components... then that is YOUR price.

If YOU choose to set the price at 500K, and someone else who can much more easily get the materials sells it at 50K... then are you overpriced? or is he undercutting and ruining your market?

Whether you actually sell the item at ANY price, depends upon the value the purchaser is will to pay for it.

The "profit" you consider worth the time and trouble might not be doable, if you don't have a buyer willing to pay your price.

At this point, I recomend you find a product people will pay the profit margin you are after. Some items simply aren't worth making for re-sale.

[Taushar]

Originally posted by Krazick
You decide how much the item is worth based upon the rarity of the drops, and difficulty of the combines (ie chance of ailure).

You decide is that Smithed "Farwater Plate Breastplate" that take five Povarian Mist Tempers (each which takes a Water Mephit Blood, Shimmering Fish Gills, and 3 Soapstones) is worth selling for.

If YOU the vendor choose to set a price of 10K, 50K, or 500K for it, based upon YOUR determination of the difficulty of obtaining the components... then that is YOUR price.

Well, it's not that simple. You also have to weigh it against other armors available in that area as well. Last night I spent over 25kpp in items from bazaar to try for a storm plate BP. BTW, it was first time in a long time I actually found enough items for one attempt at it, of course I failed. I currently have High Elf BD cultural BP. The difference between the two BP in stats are not that that great. I don't have access to stats but for example, I would gain few ACs, gain 2 wis and 2 int but would lose some AGI, I believe. So, if I was to make this BP and try to sell it for, let's say 75kpp to cover the failures, it that worth the upgrade for someone who bought the cultural BP for about 10kpp? These prices are not exact but you get the picture.

People who makes Haversacks would love to charge 10kpp per bag since that's how much it would take them to make the product including the efforts of foraging etc. However, there are similar bags readily available for about 5kpp so they can't really go higher than that.

You can't just use your cost in calculating the final pricing, you have to look at similar product and how much it is selling to get an accurate pricing to sell. Of course it may mean that it's not worth making those items other than for pride of owning one, like a tradeskill trophy.

Taushar

[Dunthor Warsmith]

You also have to weigh it against other armors available in that area as well.

I think Krazick is considering that, but putting it under a different category: "Whether you actually sell the item at ANY price, depends upon the value the purchaser is will to pay for it." And the price the purchaser is willing to pay is naturally dependant on the other armors available.

You can CHOOSE to factor that into your own pricing scheme (which most people would do without even thinking), but it is in no way required.

[eniamn]

soe can't control ppl selling fish gills for 5k and the other parts of the temperr for 3k. now for the attempt you need 55k just to buy the tempers. soe can't balance that. it would be nice if they reduced for a temper at each step though. or made it so the same rings, folded metal could be used in all pop combines and the temper changed it at the end like ldon stuff. that will take a good sized overhaul though i doubt it will happen.

i use justice pies on my wis casters instead of mtps. some of the melee get it for the +15dex to learn skills and up proc rates.

again soe can't balance what others charge. it just doesn't work. they come in and decide fish gills are to be priced at 1k max but your tunic is also maxed at 10k to sell. see the problem? it doesn't fix your problem just lowers the profit margin for those that farm themselves.

i loved ldon for smithing stuff. i thought it was a fun idea. i loved loy for bank space and until last week i had never been there. will prolly like the ribbons when i max wu's tailoring too though.

[Chenier]

I think the only people making those armors are those who are farming the area for xp or farming for that particular stuff because they want to make it for themselves or a friend.

No one in their right mind would farm that stuff to make combines to sell; although I have heard of xp groups in PoE farming components and xp, making tailored stuff and then splitting the profits when it sells (only on silk on, since silk has a logicial amount of difficult stuff to get).

[Tinile]

I think they should increase the drop rate on the temper ingredients, that would lower the costs in bazaar. Everything else I disagree on. I have made almost every type of PoP baking and it all sells well and fast at profit.

[Renjah]

Lets take an example Stonehide Tunics.

It used to cost me about 125k to buy all the items to make 2 attempts. IF I was lucky to make 1 out fo 2 tries (which was about average) I could sell the tunic for 200k with about 1 week of auctioning. Increased ornate drops have lowered the tunic to 100-130k. In turn the liquified ear and chips of granite have gone WAY up. Granite used to be 1-2k each MAX now I sold 1 for 10k in an hour.

Drop rates and prices are way out of whack. "The price depends on YOU" logic is faulty. To me the stonehide tunic is a 200k item. It costs me 125k to make assuming normal success rates so after adding in the time it took me to skill up, the hours looking for the items, and the risk of failing I think 200k is a decent price.

At 200k the items doesnt sell thanks to ornate tunics which sell for 100-125k. The stonehide is MUCH better for a monk in my opinion but most cant justify the extra 75k. The price doesnt depend on "YOU" it depends on the market.

Yeah Ford can sell their new economy car at $300,000 but who would buy it? After all the price does depend on "THEM" doesn't it?

[Koru]

It seems to me that a lot of the problems come from dropped items being released that are farmable and better than tradeskilled items. Or about equal but easier to get.

Which may sound very obvious, but what I mean is that when you factor in the component cost and cost to raise skill for the crafted item and then weigh that against the time spent gaining an object from an instanced dungeon the crafted item will lose. You have a certain control over the rate of spawns in static dungeons. A ph or named can be set to only spawn so often and there can only be one group camping one ph at a time in most cases. Instanced dungeons don't suffer from this.

In addition the farmed items really has no game price on it. I mean there's no minimum price forced by the game. Take kunark armor for instance. Sells for a nice change to vendors - so you won't see it on most traders below a certain price. The price is forced by the game not the players since it's pointless to pricewar down to 200 plat when you can sell the armor for 400 to a vendor. A lot of the newer loots I've tried to check the npc buy prices only to find they don't even want to buy it. Or if it does sell for a measly amount then the NPC sells it cheap back to others. LDoN armor would be a good example of that. A piece of cultural is priced by the game by the components and success rate. You have to spend to get it. A looted piece of armor is priced by either the NPCs (who never seem to pay that much for them since that might throw the economy into chaos) or the players - whoever has the higher price winning. When the two items are of similar quality who do you think will win?

I don't see this being a big problem with food. The justice fruit pies seem to sell ok on my server, those who can afford them (or eat party platters for breakfast) buy them and the rest get the MTPs. It would be nice to see more variety in drinks though. They could use some expanding niche marketable drinks. I'd say some of the trades are most certainly due for more usable, and more importantly, sellable recipes. And it might perhaps not be a bad idea to look more closely at where and how the looted items conflict with the crafted to see how to best find some balance. Old example that's irked me would be silver arrowtips, you'd think you'd save money crafting them but last time I checked there was really very little incentive for any smith to make and sell them to fletchers. An illogical recipe that could be easily tweaked to make more of a market for lower level/skill smiths.

Personally I'd love to see crafted augments added for intermediate to high end say, pottery for instance. Even if they weren't nearly as good as the dropped stat ones you're still looking at a largely expendable (destroyed on upgrading equipment) items that people will want to tide them over until they can get better. Or adding more mid level silk recipes for slots other than the chest. I think the LoY cultural tailoring could have used tweaking there, having them all produce robes has made it so that I've picked up +11 int robes for 150pp. One aid to the planar crafted items would for instance be more augment slots on the crafted items to compensate for their lack of effects and the effort in gathering components to make them. Of course I freely admit that I may be speaking gibberish here. I'm no EQ econ expert, but hey, can't hurt to throw ideas out there.

[ColdHeart]

The price you give an item is up to you, the price someone pays for it is up to them.

I see the big problem as being, LDoN drops are plentiful and cheap. Actually they cost nothing and are gained while doing what you may be doing normally. Cultral, Tae Ew, PoP armour needs dedicated time and effort to make. They may need bits from the bazaar to make and can always fail.

Undercutting a dropped item's price means nothing. Undercutting a crafted items price, which already has had a cost attached... I can see why people say there is no money in tradeskills, as you may as well go farm dropped items.

[xaanru]

Well, first: there is money in tradeskills, and I have a VERY tidy sum in the bank to prove it. And thats after dumping several 100s of kpp back into other tradeskills, like tailoring, and JC, and over 500k in purchased gear for my main and his twinks.

If they made the components for the PoP armors more common, all that would do is drive prices down on the finished item. I've been making tae ew gear long enough to have seen this happen, regardless of the item stats. For example, my cleric still uses a tae ew shield. I could buy ANY droppable shield in the game, but cannot find one that is an upgrade. WOW best droppable shield in the game, what's it worth? 2500pp on my server right now. Oh and there are over 40 Tae ew bloods for sale in the bazaar. Average price? 1500pp. Hmm, do I want the elemental armor parts to become common? HECK NO!!!!

I've made a couple pieces of elemental armor, and sold it profitably. VERY tough to get the items, since I don't have elemental access. I think what drives prices up, for raw materials, are not people like me, who need ALL the parts from bazaar, to make the item, but people who HAVE elemental access, and have saved up 80-90% of the parts for a combine. To them, the cost of the item seems low, because they only have to buy 1 or 2.

The problem with tradeskills, if it has one, is that they are making it TOO easy. The more people that can waltaz in,l and GM a skill in a week, the less the items end up being worth. Heck, I sold my first 50 Sickles for 5k each, back when it was harder to get skill high enough to make them. Now with LDON armors, and enchanted velium bits, any shmo with a little plat can get awful near to GM in 2 days.

[eniamn]

Originally posted by Renjah
Lets take an example Stonehide Tunics.

It used to cost me about 125k to buy all the items to make 2 attempts. IF I was lucky to make 1 out fo 2 tries (which was about average) I could sell the tunic for 200k with about 1 week of auctioning. Increased ornate drops have lowered the tunic to 100-130k. In turn the liquified ear and chips of granite have gone WAY up. Granite used to be 1-2k each MAX now I sold 1 for 10k in an hour.

that is not an soe problem. that is a farmer overcharging you. if bazaar farming for the ingredients only cost you 10k and you sold for 200k you would be exstatic. then the people selling supplies to you would up there price as people bought them out rapidly and you get to the point you are at today. soe can't go in and say the most you can charge in the bazaar for drops of pure rain is Xplat. i don't know why you have a problem understanding this. if the drops were more common that might fix it but would likely just make everything less.

[Renjah]

Thats not a farmer over charging. People can NOT over charge in bazaar. The market supports a certain price. Right now that price has inflated. If 10k per chip of granite was over charing people wouldnt pay it. Right now 10k is the fair market value.