Concerns suggestions with time vs reward of playermade tradeskill economy

[eniamn]

so fair market value means that you charge too much for your product? and this is soe's fault? its not that maybe someone is farming and needs 1-2 other pieces peices and pays 20k for their new stonehide armor instead of buying 14 peices for 140k?

then stop paying that. i still fail to see how this is soe's fault.

edit oh and 5pp per veggie is overcharging. i will forage my own, ask a guildie, and/or wait to shop later before i pay that. some other things i get a bit more desperate on.

[Garndart]

a little clarification

Okies maybe my post was a little vague in areas.
Yes you can make money tradeskilling.
Yes we are free to set our own price
Yes people are free to pay what they want.
But there needs to be more active involvment and a consistent tuning of tradeskills.

Here are some hard examples and i bet if trade skillers from things i dont do yet, looked at there trades they could find similar examples.

****Required recomended levels.

2hander 34/35 str 6 wis 6 int 8 hp 100 mana 25 sv dis poison 14
required level 51 trade made

2 hander 50/44 dex 12 sta 12 hp 35 mana 35
recomended level 56 drop

ac 51 dex9 wis/int 10 hp 65 mana 50
recomended 61 required 46 player made

ac 54 sta 5 cha 9 wis/int 8 hp 60 mana 35
recomended level 60 drop.

Both of those player made items should be adjusted so that the the required levels is changed to at least the same recomended levels as the newer drop items.
There is an inequity in the level requirements on the trader made items versus drop items I beleive the changes like this would make more player crafted items sellable where now there not.

****Ldon drop rate need to be brought into line.

ac 54 sta 5 cha 9 wis/int 8 hp 60 mana 35
recomended level 60 drop
6.5k bazaar ldon drop

ac 57 str 11 dex 10 sta 9 wis 10 hp 100 mana 60
Aprrox 190k bazaar ornate chest

ac 14 sta 5 cha 9 int 12 hp/mana 50
4 k bazaar ldon drop

ac 15 dex 9 sta 9 cha 9 int 13 agi 9 hp 80 mana 100
122k bazaar ornate robe

an 8k improved damage 4 item vs a ceramic incense burner of ro.

Theese prices look like what windblade was before they nerfed its drop rate. I know new better drop items come out I actually enjoy and like that. But when you have drop items that come close to ornate in stats and drop so much that the price has dropped to what they are now sorry thats a sign that its dropping way to much.

Now I agree with alot of what people said about the supply and demand part. hey if it costs me 50k to make something and somethg better or close is selling for 6.5 k it doesnt make sense to make it. But as far as the game design aspect goes theese two items dont make sense. The 6.5 item should be going for alot more then its selling for. And the recipe and drop rate to make 50k item need to be adjusted. It might still not be profitable to make the item even after those changes... But... there shouldnt be a 900% disparity between the items. Things like this need to be looked at with each expansion release. Items that arent meant to be a skill up route need to be looked at and balanced to the new drops. When i say balanced i dont mean the older trade items need to be made equal to or better that should come in new recipes by balanced i mean there shouldnt be a Mt. Everest size in the difference between to similar items.

More required skill levels on certain tradeitems.

rng / prim / sec +25 cha 12 pp

gearloks all makes 5-30pp a piece..... Note i dont think all of them should have a required level because they help smooth skillup paths out but most of them should.

If you look at what happened with the price of etheral sheets and rings because they took them out of the skill up path you see there price went from 20pp per sheet to 75-200pp a sheet. Sony needs to look at the nicer player made items that sell at cost and adjust some of them to min level to make.

I'm not saying that there needs to be a total revamp of the system and that we should all be multi millionares from trades. But I would like to see a tuning of the trades to alleviate some of the inequities created from newer drop items and Market saturation because of skill ups.

I'm talking maybe1 or 2 items per tradeskill if theese changes were done or something like them. If you do as search on "what can i make for money at 250" in each of the trades forums you see that each one has basically 2 or 3 items that consistantly sell for profit. Making 1 or 2 more items per trade that sell consistently would help smooth things out and give trade skillers a little bit of a boost in income.

[Cavel]

Personally I agree with Garndart on this. I am not looking at this from a Plat making stand point.

My wife just created a Ranger Character to rejoin the game, I have one of 2 things I can do to help her get equipt, either Farm items or make them.... Now considering the item most likely to give the most AC (Chest) here is what I can make with some decent success:
Tae Ew Chain Tunic Required Level 51
Hurricane chain Tunic Required Level 46
Night Terror Chain Tunic Required Level 46

Now to use any of the above she must be at least level 46 and the lowest cost one is the Tae Ew Tunic required level of 51 at 1k per Tae Ew Blood Vial and approx 1K per Vial of mana (Cannot recall actual price for the Sapphires). so call it close to 3K. Looking at the other 2 she would need to be 61 to get full benifit from them.

Sellable items from LDoN
Crypt Robber's Chestplate around 1-2K Recomended level 65
Steelslave Breastplate of War No Pricing Data but assuming 1-2K there as well Recomended level 50
Diamond-Dusted Mesh Much lower in price due to lower stats. Recomended level 40

Now the difference here is not the AC or the stats but the Required vs Recomended Levels... All the LDoN armors I have seen have only Recommended levels no hard requirements meaning that I could drop something on a newbie that would have stats as good if not better than anything a player could make for the same level character. This I think is what Garndart is getting at.

If you put hard level limits like required levels on some of the LDoN drops it would help... Do I want to do that? No... What I would like to see is the removal of the required level from the PoP armors to make them more viable an option for either Equiping others or selling.

[Mindmelder]

I agree with the original poster. I see little to NO pop armor in bazaar on RZ even with 3 guild in elementals. Why? The drop rate on the components is so so so low that they are never even avilable on the market and the fail rate doubles the pain of rareness. The only items i ever see are hurricane/storm stuff and earth silk (since it is the only 1/2 reasonable armor type). Ive never seen plate elemental in bazzar on rz. NEVER. Which means something is severely wrong with the drop rate.

[Valic]

One reason is alot of the drops needed for some combines is so high is alot of guilds process the items for the guild. Therefore not many of the items make it to the bazaar. So in turn this keeps the items even rarer and the prices high.

[eniamn]

planar is level 46. i see no problem with req 46 on pop stuff. i would like tae ewe to be rec level instead of required though. have you looked at blackened acrlyia or cultural armor? maybe some velious stuff. only new cultural has rec level. velious has no requirement at all. i want better player made weapons that aren't harder to farm than drops of better quality. yes pop stuff is rare and it should be. once in a blue moon rare is fine. not every 415th time the planets all align on a full moon on leap years day rare though. get some decent int caster gear player made items.

[Koru]

I don't think geerloks should be required level. If you set the level too low nothing is accomplished, but set it high and it becomes useless to low level tradeskillers. And I doubt it would do anything for the market to cut them out of geerlok use. Ok, so people won't pay 300 plat for geerloks anymore. But you can still make a profit selling them. Not huge profit but still a profit. The only geerloks I won't sell are the brewing and fletching ones. The rest I can sell a few a day at a profit.

Err, and I just realized I misunderstood - doh me. But you say leave in brewing and fletching geerloks. Great, but I skilled up on the brewing geerlok to 215 skill in two weeks. It's not hard, just time consuming. So using that I'd still have been 215 in two weeks and now selling geerloks to pay off the rest of the skilling up. I doubt the problem with geerloks is the ones other than fletching and brewing.

[Garndart]

My suggestion with geerloks is is sorta right on with what you said. It took you 2 weeks to skill up on them yes it was difficult but.. alot easier than if you didnt have geerloks as a skill up route.
So thats why I wouldnt touch brewing and fletching which are by far the easiest of the geerloks to consistantly get components for. Its a good nice and fair skill up route. The downside is that being a skill up route bring 100's of theese items onto the market depressing the prices to at or below cost. Geerlok's are probally the most in demand tinkering product there is by a 10 to 1 ratio. If they made a required level to combine on say tailoring tinkering spell research alchemy.... smithing etc. to 215 you would probally double the price. Now 10-20 pp extra profit isnt a whole lot but it adds up.

[borblefoot furtoe]

edit: posted to wrong thread

[Quillium]

I think you guys are missing the boat and not understanding the market when it comes to elemental tradeskilled pop gear. You keep looking at a value of an item being that which it cost you to get the components say times 2 to factor out failures and expect that to be the value so that you can make a "profit" on reselling it. Now reality.

1) 4 elemental planes.. no guilds in them
2) a couple of guilds get in the elementals. They farm items which get turned into items via recipes discovered and posted here. These items get given to their members with the intention that if they upgrade, they pass it to another member. In the meantime.. xp groups from these guilds pick up comps and either give to guild or sell them as tradeskill ingredients in the bazaar for hefty amounts. Tradeskillers pick up these items and are able to charge the normal equation fee because there aren't that many items of that type being sold while the demand for it in guilds that aren't elementally capable is quite high
3) more guilds get in the planes. As the first guilds are finishing equipping their players, the tradeskilled items get passed down or sold. Now you have a lot of guilds farming a lot of components and a lot more tradeskilled items existing on server. Over time, this quantity will reach a critical mass and you'll start to see people putting these items on the market.

Its at THIS point that you have your problem. Its not the primary market of people creating items that will set the value of an item, its the secondary market of people who have received items from their guilds and selling that will set it. They aren't consumable so the accumulation on server of an item is cumulative. The more of an item that is on the market at any one time... say 5 of the item rather than 1 or 2.. the more the price goes down until its below the cost of anyone in the primary market buying tradeskill ingredients on the open market to make a 'profit'. At this time elemental tradeskilled items stop getting made from independents or they farm the items themselves. Thats just the way the cookie crumbles. The game was not made to keep you in business or leave you a 'get rich quick scheme selling elemental tradeskill gear'. And if there isn't a profit in it, find something you can do with your tradeskills that will bring you one. They certainly have been elaborated on before, pick one and go at it.

As per the original posters assertion that some items are uber rare or are very inconvenient to get? Well, i'd rather we had combines that were hard to acquire than just buying the parts off the shelf and slapping it together with little effort. If it were that easy everyone would do it, and if everyone were doing it there would not only be very low profit in it, it would oversaturate the demand rather quickly. All you need do is look at the armor dye market.

-Quillium Lifehammer
65 Warrior Fennin Ro

[Angelsyn]

I think a few things would "help"...

1. Required levels of ~10 below the Recommended Levels on LDoN drops. Putting a Required level of 55 on things like the Architect's BP, Orcish Master Greaves, Warlord's Gauntlets, etc. would reduce twinking/buying... but without also moderately reducing the drop rate, it will not help enough.

2. Changing the Required level of 51 on Tae Ew gear to a Recommended level of 51 would quickly increase the value of those items. Doing the same for Black Acrylia Weapons would help those as well.

3. The Temper requirements for PoP Plate have always been outrageous. The Recommended Levels on Nightmare & Hurricane items are also too high IMHO.


On a side note... Velious armours may not have a Required/Recommended level, but they do have huge Faction requirements which balance them just fine, IMHO.

[Arghargh]

Here is something else to consider. Item A at first is worth tons. It is THE must have item. Item B comes along and is just a little bit better then A. B now takes over as the must have item, and prices on item A drop like a rock. Minotaur Hero's Axe, Shiny Brass Halbard, short sword of Ykesha, and lamentations were all in their times must have items. Once better items came on the market, you could hardly give these away.

At first, level 61 and 62 (ethereal parchment) spells sold for tons. Now that the market has saturated, these go for a few hundred pp. Same is happening with spectral parchement spells now.

Granted, SOE has messed up big time with some items. Greatstaff of Thunder selling for 50-75pp is just rediculous.

The biggest obstacle I see to SOE doing anything to fix this is the size and complexity of EQ's economy. If they make some recipe easier, people might flock to farm items for that recipe. This in turn could lead to a flood of items allowing everyone to upgrade their gear on the cheap. This could mess up SOE's risk versus reward doctine. Whta happens when you can twink out a single group of 52's with PoP armor to kill Vox? The key question for SOE is how do they tell when this will happen? They can't. Furthermore, if they try to tune the economy, they are just as likely to mess it up.

[Quinar]

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).

OK... I make tons of Elemental items, silk, leathers, jewelry, pottery items etc etc.

It has taken a year and a half on Tunare but we now have like 12 guilds in Elementals and 3 more heading there by end of summer. You can buy items for combines in bazaar for very high prices (and people buy it). Tunare prices...
Metallic Substance - 15k
Liquified Earth - 15k
Earth Mephit blood - 5-7k
Chips of Granite - 10-15k
Elemental Stone - 30-50k
Eci Ice 10-15k
Wind metal - 5-10k
Stonewood bow staff - 10-15k
Osidianwood sap - 15k
Vergog vine - 15-20k
Those are the high selling items...
Now even with those prices in bazaar the market for Elemental gear such as Silk has drop... and dropped alot.
PoE silk robes were selling at 60-65k and could sell 1-2 a day, now your lucky to sell 1 a week at 40k. PoE silk legs sold easy at 60k and could make them fast enough, now your lucky to get 40k for those. This still dont seem bad but when saps are 5-7k each and bloods are 5-7k each is it worth it WITH the fail rate? You end up making a nice profit overall on silk but plan on taking awhile to sellit.
Elemental leather - $$$$$$$ Out of all the tradeskills in EQ this is the pp maker. Hard to buy items in bazaar but all items are farmable with 1 group in PoE or even PoF, PoA and PoW are to dangerous to go there just to farm.
PoE leather tunic = 100-125k on Tunare and never had one for more than a day. PoE leather arms = 80-90k and same, they last a day at most.
Note to farmers on PoE... This is the farmers dream, you can 1 grp farm this zone and get a variety of drops. I have seen this in one day by one grp spending 6 hours exp.... 1 elemental stone, a stack of immac metal, 13 saps, 5 stonewood staffs, 5 vines, 3 chips of granite. Only real hard part is mephit blood and liquified earth which drop uncomfortably close to the rings or mobs on rings.
$$ Sounds good? Well the issue is do you attempt to make items out of your drops for the day or do you sell the drops? With Tunare prices you can prob make more selling off the drops in bazaar. Items listed above would sell for 250k-300k, and yes they would sell in a day or 2.
Personally I have no idea who would pay sch prices but I figure it is those that have all but 1 item for a combine so over aying for that one peice dont kill them. Auction channel is filled with people offering to pay very well for any Elemental combine item which I think drives prices up since it advertises that they are in demand and people are willing to pay well for them...

Some of our prices just for fun
Stonewood bow - 90-110k
obsidian/featherwood bow - 60-80k
earthen ring - 80-90k
air ring - 70-80k
water ring - 80k
burner of ro - 90-125k
xeg totem - 70-80k

[Flabbo]

The temper requirements on PoP smithed gears is absurd compared to how rare it is. My guild has a TON more elemental mold/pattern pieces than the tradeskill stuff, and the tradeskill stuff requires skilling up, and has a chance for failure. Temper requirements need to go down, and the components used in tons of recipes (ie, earth mephit blood) need to have their drop rate tuned to reflect this. We'll be in time before we have a farwater bp.

[Furyrpied]

/e throws his two copper on the table...

Okay.. here is another thing that irks me about the trade skills, and value vs droppable items... take the halfling cultural studded masks:

clickey

Tailoring trivial at 122, requires a brute hide (granted not too too rare but still a major PITA) and Acorn Oil, and those darn acorns are MIA right now (5 hours of going over the spawn points that i marked on my map and foraging every chance and no acorns)

When I was making these for skill ups (yes i made these for skill ups, got them fast too) I couldn't give them away. I hung around in misty thicket and rivervale for hours linking the mask and hunting down all the halflings who would folow Karana to give them away, just to have the trade window cncled....

Made items are inferior to dropped items, and made items are harder to come by than dropped items... that's the imbalance.

/e walks away munching on some pie