Buying vs Acquiring

[Aalar]

I have seen a number of threads where people have been frustrated trying to get enough of X component for a skill up run. They do not want to spend the money buying something they feel they can easily get themselves - and I can understand that - I feel the same way. However, one has to keep in mind the cost of something vs the plat one could get while exping. Let's say it takes 1 hour to get 20 components and zero exp and very little plat. For the same time you could get "Y" exp and "Z" plat. If "Z" plat equals or exceeds the cost of 20 components would it not make sense to get "Y" exp and "Z" plat and then just buy the components? One comes out ahead by having the exp and the components.

This is what I use to determine if I will buy something or get it myself.

My idea of painless farming is where one gets all 3 - exp - cash - and components.

Aalar

[Akishka]

Very good post

I think the other thing to look at is, do you still make a profit if you are buying in the bazaar? For instance, I make leather padding with all bazaar bought components and then resale it. Components cost 30 pp each, I sell for 45 pp each which makes me 15 pp profit. Now, of course I would make more profit if I farmed the components myself but I just don't have the time to do it (not to mention the time vs pp mentioned above isn't worth it). So, I invest 20 minutes a day and can wind up with over 100 paddings on a good day. Iits not 45 pp each but 15 pp each isn't something I'd turn my nose up at given the minimal amount of effort I have to put forth

[Agosia]

Until the other day I was a purist, wanting to loot all of my tradeskill components myself. The other day I skilled up smithing to 188, when fine plate goes trivial. I spent an entire evening farming spiderling/shadeling silks and pelts and ended up having no where near the number of paddings I needed to go from 163-188 skill. In the end I spent about 6k on leather padding. In the same amount of time that I was farming I would have looted at least 10k in items in my favorite exp camp.

[Verdandi]

Alas, I have too much pride. I absolutely refuse to pay 45pp per leather padding (the going rate on my server) for something made of a few common drops off of level 3 mobs. It's not newbies who hunted for those drops that are making the money, but vendor divers and Bazaar watchers and those who farm the components themselves. I can't help but think of that huge markup as a gross injustice to tradeskillers, even though I know it's just the free market at work. I suppose that lurking in the deepest recesses of my brain is the memory of when 50 plat was a fortune, leaving me loathe to spend that much for something I could easily gather myself.

Fortunately, I do enough vendor mining while lfg or with little bits of time here and there to find more than enough pelts and usually enough silks to keep me afloat most of the time. And an hour or so of whack-a-spider can be very therapeutic when the silks run short.

[Taadieri]

I am like Verdandi. I find it offensive to spend 20pp per silk swatch when I remember a time that I was happy to receive 1pp per swatch. Particularly knowing that most of the people selling them are not hard-working newbies gearing up from the supplies the looted in an xp camp.

On the other hand, I paid the inflated prices when I was skilling up for the Aid Grimel quest. I was particularly loathe to spend too much time farming to GM skills that I had already GMed on alts before the NTCM aa was available. Particularly since my time was also being taken up by getting the last few flags I needed and earning more aa.

I don't see any solution to the high prices being charged in the bazaar. My personal solution, since I expect to keep working tradeskills on more characters, is to save all the supplies I vendor while venodr diving, even if I have no immediate use for them. I also buy up arctic wyvern hides when I see them for under 100pp. That isn't as good as deal as the 15-20pp I paid for my first GM tailor, but is a lot better than the 200-300pp most bazaar vendors ask now.

[Akishka]

You could argue that the inflated prices are bad for the tradeskiller. You could also argue that its a good thing. Almost all of the items that are selling for inflated prices are ones that you can get easily as a newbie, with low trivial. Leather padding, heady kiola, celestial essence, even fish rolls or patty melts are a quick and easy way for a tradeskiller of any level to finance the rest of their skill ups. The leather padding I mentioned above is currently paying my way through GMing tailoring.

Certainly it would be nice if we could walk into the bazaar and buy all the components we wanted for 2 cp each, while still selling the end product for lots of pp, but thats not a very realistic way of doing business - mostly because one person's component is another person's end product.

And yes, there is the standard answer of "if you don't want to pay the inflated prices, go farm them yourself" but I think we've covered that already

The only real problem I see in this inflation is when the newbies get paid 4 pp for a stack of spiderling silks right before the buyer runs to sell them in the bazaar for 20 pp each. The answer to that is educating the newbies though.

[uncleshmoozo]

I'm not going to pretend that I speak for anybody else here, but one of the reasons I am happy I skilled up a few tradeskills is that it provides me a way to make decent plat from things like leather padding, silk swatches, and other lowlevel to midlevel tradeskill products.

If people want to pay, say, 45 plat each for leather padding I can make from items I find for sale on merchants in newbie zones for a small fraction of that amount, why shouldn't I be the one to sell it to them? It's just another way to make plat using tradeskills if you ask me. You don't have to be a grandmaster to make plat using tradeskills, you know. You just need to be willing to serve the market.

[Cubwynn]

While inflated prices for low level tradeskill goods may be good for the up-and-coming tradeskiller (or bazaar tradeskill leech), I think that the artificial nature of the market hurts tradeskills and the market as a whole by psychologically devaluing platinum. Couple that with the well know plat farmers/buyers/dupers, and a massive amount of stored plat that never leaves the game, and you have an escalating financial mess.

The other day an elemental plane combine was being discussed in channel. The discussion centered on the fact that a certain BP was selling for about 300,000pp. The parts for said item cost approximately 280,000pp. 20,000pp may sound like a good profit to some, but that's a negligible amount considering that the trivial for the item was well above 250... and a fail would be financially ruinous. What I call into concern is not the fact that the BP sells for 300,000pp, but rather that the raw components for it are so ridiculously expensive. Rare components you can charge a premium on, but when everything is priced to that inflated standard, the tradeskiller comes out with a pretty rotten deal.

So, the market for goods for lazy tradeskillers may be booming, but as long as it keeps at this pace, will we even want to do high level combines anymore?

[Aalar]

I'm sorry to see such inflation on your server. It makes it very difficult for the casual player who does not belong to Uber_guild_101. I never buy any high end items in the bazaar myself. I acquire all the high end items myself. I can get anything (except the fiend gut - need raid to get that) I need for components out of the PoF soloing. That covers a lot of really good items.

A lot of people that are selling the high end items don't have the skills to make a high end item themselves so they sell the item at an inflated price to those people that cannot get the item any other way.

I don't have any solution for the problem. The game favors those individuals that play more. And I can't really complain about that. It should favor those individuals that put more time into the game. I know that even casual players can GM any tradeskill with patience. They may not be able to make high end items but they can increase in skill. And that is nice at least.

Aalar

[Akishka]

So here is a quick and easy answer for those who are worried about the inflation, go spend all your time getting to the elemental planes and then take the items you work hard for there and sell it for 2-3k each.

I'm certainly not willing to put the work into getting to the elemental planes so I will respect what others have done and pay the price they feel is necessary to make up for their hard work.

We talk here about how we want to be able to make a profit from the hard work we've done to increase tradeskilling but others do different work and still deserve to make their profit too.

[Kronepsis]

There's a difference between "work" and price gouging though.

Using my server as an example, I will never pay more than 10k plat for a Liquefied Earth, or 15k for a Shattered Crystal. Ceramic Totems of the Rathe barely move at 40k. Livestone Plate Breastplates have to compete with Ornate BPs which have dropped to 120k plat, which means they'll have to be below that. Livestone Chain Tunics are stuck at 30k. Yet people are selling for at least 150% of what I'm willing to pay for. Why on earth would I want to pay for at LEAST 94% of the price of the final item to TRY to combine it when the success rate on them is around 40%?

[andyhre]

I am an economist in RL. I'd like a working definition of "gouging" that has economic content to it.

Some of the trade items in EQ have high barriers to entry. I'm finally elemental (yay me) but I still can't get vergerog vine b/c I guess I need to get into Plane of Earth "B" and I just made it to "A." But that just means I'd expect to see less competition among sellers for vegerog vine and thus higher prices. That's economically rational to me, not gouging.

As for leather padding, I made my fortune buying thread and pelts and selling padding when the price was 25pp and rose to 45pp. I got all the money I needed and got out of the business b/c it was time consuming. Now on my server the price is more like 60pp. People wish it were lower. But they can take actions to change the price -- they can farm more silk for threads and more pelts and grow supply. Growing supply will lower the price. The first 100 leather pads you bring to market might get scooped up by the incumbent sellers. Get 1000 and they might get tired of buying you out.

There are no effective barriers to entry to the leather padding market. There is no reason to feel "gouged" whatever that is. Make it yourself. A new player needs 500pp, max, to get tailoring to 80 and have 95% chance of succeeding on LP. A new player can farm spiderling or shadeling silk at level 1, and can certainly get pelts in the 20s and 30s. First fill your needs. Then sell to the market, flood it with leather padding, bring down the price.

This doesn't happen because it takes a lot of time. Almost everyone would rather do something else than farm for spiderling silk. As soon as one recongizes that self-supply has HUGE opportunity costs, the price charged (to me) makes sense -- it's the price a lot of people will pay to avoid the odious task involved in self-supply. It turns out on E'ci, that the people willing to take the time to make the leather want 60pp per for their effort. And it turns out that the people who AREN'T willing to take the time are willing to pay 60pp NOT to engage in the effort. And the market works. And the people for whom 60pp is too much get to go off and self-supply.


I recently helped a monk work on his epic in Rathe Mountains. The zone was more or less empty and the PH spawned every six minutes and I shot HGs to help pass the time. There was lots of platinum to be had, but I would never, ever, do that again willingly b/c I would rather spend my time killing things that give me XP. The "cost" of that platinum was too high for me, outside the context of being there for an epic. It's not much different when someone decides to to kill green things for their tradeskill loot. In both cases the opportunity costs outweight the platinum you either give up (by not farming HGs) or spend (by not farming spiderlings)

Lastly, this is a GREAT thing. As a lower level player, I could get XP killing cats in SB. And I could get lots of pelts. And then, instead of selling them for 1gp, I could get (back then) 10pp per for them, or I could spend another 4pp, get two spiderling silks, and sell the whole shebang for 25pp. My friends were excited when mobs dropped 1pp per. I was making 21pp per cat. People bought out my stock and begged me to get more.

Leather padding is a young player's best friend. It is a great way to let the uber support the young, not with charity, but with fair pay for hard work. I bristle at the term gouging. Besides not knowing the difference betwenne gounging and a market-clearing price, I also think the "gouger" is providing a great service, an option to those who don't want to farm, without in any way hurting those who do want to farm (since there are many sources of pelts and silk, no one is going to monopolize the supply).

To "gouging" and al the benefits it brings!


Andy

[Kronepsis]

Andyhre: Is it economically rational when people try to price the cost of the ingredients of a rare item so that the end costs will come out to near double the finished product itself? Charging a bit for Leather Padding, Spiderling silk, etc is one thing. That's called making a profit, because your items will move. Charging so much that the final prices of all the finished items you can make from that one ingredient would end up costing more or less double what the item actually sells for on the market, when there is no ulterior reason to make the item other than to sell/trade it or to use it (e.x. NOT a skill up item, NOT a Grimel item, etc) is gouging because your items will sit there for a long time, yet it is rare enough so that you won't see as many other people selling it (although the finished product(s) will be nice and visible too).

[andyhre]

Do people buy it at that price and try the combine anyway, when the finished good is available at a lower expected value?

If not, and it just sits there, eventually the seller will drop the price. If not, it's not gouging, it's stupidity -- asking a high price no one will pay is not very profitable. It sounds like you have a great solution: buy the finished good, right? and let the high priced thing rot in trader mode. Maybe even send the seller a mocking tell now and then, or a counter-offer. Goofy prices don't last forever in those circumstances.

If so, ask yourself why. I thought the price of featherwood staves on e'ci was high relative to the featherwood bows (25K for the staff, 40-45K for the bow, which needs other rare drops and also has, at best, a 52.5% chance of success) until someone explained to me that it's ALSO used for Aid Grimmel for a different combine. (I see you ruled this out though)

But even if there is no other use, but people are paying that price, under your example, the buyers are crazy. They could do less work and get a better deal. Maybe some folks are crazy. I just don't think it's wrong to set a very high price and, if someone is fool enough to pay it, continue to do so until the product stops selling.

I like low prices when I buy. I just don't assume that when something costs more than *I* am willing to pay that it costs more than a more eager buyer is willing to pay.

[Akishka]

So.... a person has an item, they price it so that it will never sell, and this is hurting who? Its hurting the person who is trying to sell it. And who has a better right to make that decision than the one being hurt? The guy selling the liquified earth for 10k isn't really hurting you because its not like he has the only component in existence.

You are right, its bad business to price components for more than the price of the final item. But, its not your business (to use a very bad pun) to worry it about really.

However, all that being said, you might attempt to explain to people what certain items are used for. Point them towards this wonderful site. Have them price compare the components with the final product. Let them see why it is that their item will never sell at that price. I've gotten a few people to come down on their price this way, you might be able to also.