Why can't I get the item I want at resale price?

[usinuk]

There have been a couple of rather heated exchanges on item pricing and availability on the main forums, and I thought some of the responses by crafters were worth saving here to answer other questions in the future.

The original poster wanted a set of q150 black heavy armor of high quality - arguably one of the hardest items to make - but many of the thoughts in here apply to all crafted items.

Posted by tinpony

...Understand that those of us making high level armour are doing our best to supply the general populace. Understand our restrictions:

1) Very limited packer space. What may seem like wide open spaces to a non crafter is small, cramped and woefully inadequate to a crafter. It makes absolutely no sense that I can hold 300 bulk and my entire apartment can hold 500. It's like saying that I can personally carry a TV, so my entire apartment should be absolutely full with a TV and a stereo. Insane. It means for the crafter that they have to pick and choose what mats to have. I generally keep a supply of linings and stuffing and may hunt out clothing and armour clips as I need them. It means I can't just drop and give you twenty on the spot. I set aside a portion of my time to craft and I can't just whip up supreme black heavy armour just because someone wants it.

2) Picky, picky, *picky* people have discouraged many crafters from 'going public' on the vendors. Frankly, unless you're prepared to vendor everything for resale price with no markup, people whine constantly. We get sent tells and told off loud and long and shrill for daring to place a choice q130 amp on the boards for 50K, or a set of excellent white dodge armour for higher than basic purple armour of lightness. Tell ya what, Poindexter, take a look at the stats sometimes. I can make an amp with excellent amber and get 3 out of four stats at 82%/82% and someone will swear at me for selling a choice amp at above vendor resale. It's choice because I use fine/basic mats to get the final stat bump. I could use all excellent mats and it would be a 70% amp. Excellent name, sucky stats. Being a crafter means having a bunch of people who have never picked up a needle and thread lecture you about how to do what you do and great volume, at great length over many continents.

3) Money. Get over it. You pay more for several reasons.
(a) It's hard to get. You want black armour? Fine, you pay for it because my supplies are limited. If I have limitless supplies, the price goes down.
(b) I vendor the crap stuff at resale price and the stuff that means something and that I put a little effort into costs more. You want to shop at WalMart? Fine, you get the basic purple set for vendor resale. Just don't go to Walmart and complain that the Louis Vutton costs more than ten bucks.
(c) I have to buy supplies. I need specific supplies of things I don't have the time or energy to hunt, and I need a wide variety. I can't get all the stuff so *I* have to buy it. I'm not going to pay the markup on mats and then sell it el cheapo. I am lucky enough that my usual team-mate is a high level harvester. He's pretty point and click when I want something. However, he doesn't have access to some of the mats and, newsflash, some of the hunted mats are *much* better than foraged for certain crafts. When I was a lowbie crafter, I was shocked and aghast that it would cost me 12K to level. Twelve-thousand dappers??? At my level now, that buys me maybe 5 mats which I can then put toward a 26 mat combine for 1 small fraction of one level of 6 branches that I have in heavy armour.
(d) I need money. Simple as that. We all have our needs. I'm not sitting on massive wads of cash. I'm a guildless crafter. I can have anywhere from 200K to 2.5mill depending on the day but I spend a huge amount of money crafting and for my own melee supplies and the teleporter tickets. I've had people request that I bring them armour and then bicker over paying me for the teleport. 20K daps charity to sell you something at vendor resale? Get real.

I can and do make tonnes of armour for friends and acquaintences. I had a fantastic afternoon playing dressup with my favourite Tryker. I genuinely love craft. I vendor a fair bit on the markets, anywhere from 3-5 full sets of light at a time in various colours as high stats as I can manage with my supplies. I price according to what I think the armour is worth and I have trouble charging too much. If it's a really good set of armour, I have a friend sell it. He's much more practical.

We work just as hard at our chosen branches as you do yours. Craft is a singularily thankless job because of the amount of *input* required. Pretty much every other branch is a 'something for nothing' scenario. What you have to put in to melee to fight is a so so suit of armour and a sword somewhat near your level. And that one input can see you ten or twenty levels or more. Mages need the one amp for a span of levels. Harvesters need a pick, lots of patience and the occasional rez. Crafters cannot advance in any of their fields without a massive supply of mats. I can't just pick up a needle and start sewing. I have to have the right mats, in the right proportions at the right quality to sell. It's not for everyone.

Posted by zumwalt

Small reality check for Q150 armor.

(not for us crafters, for those asking for it)

You CAN harvest the mats yourself, if you are high enough harvesting level and know where to get the mats, but since you are neither a harvestor or crafter.

In Matis lands, go to Fleeting Gardens, there is an outpost just south of the border, near this outpost is a good spot for q150 mats, depending on season, that can get you a full set of heavy armor.

Pay a harvestor to go get you mats from here, or just go to the market and buy all the mats for your armor you desire.

Then find a crafter who is willing to use there skill that they spent countless hours building up, and have them craft you a full set, find out first if they will do it for free or at a surcharge.

You 'might' be able to walk away with only spending 400k to 800k dappers from materials ALONE, then lets just say the crafter is generous, and only charge you a 10k dapper per full successful craft, thats only an additional 50k (I think)

I am not in game right now and don't have my notes on me, so can someone please type out the number of mats per each of the 4 areas for heavy armor.

So people wanting to see the cost can write it down and go buy the mats from market to see what BASE is? (on quality they are buying that is)

We need to start putting this into perspective for those who don't understand the dynamics of the costs.

Posted by tinpony

Heavy Armour (not in game right now, so I'll correct as needed):

Pants, Helmet, Vest:
9 Armour shell, 8 Lining, 7 Stuffing, 2 Armour clips each

Sleeves, Gloves, Boots:
7 Armour shell, 6 Linings, 5 Stuffing, 2 armour clips each.

Full suit:
48 Armour shell, 42 Linings, 36 Stuffing, 18 Armour clips = 146 mats (BTW, for those who think we should just have piles of this stuff, a packer holds around 10 stacks or 1000 mats, and I level amps, light armour, heavy armour and two-handed weapons, all of which have their own mat needs in addition to storing my own armour, weapons and some resale items. On a good day, it can take me 3+ stacks of mats for *one* level of one branch of heavy so a craft day can use a packer's worth of meks in about 15 minutes... and that's waiting on focus to regenerate and running to the vendor to dumps armour when I'm encumbered).

Average vendor price for straight resale is anywhere from 1600 - 3000 dappers a piece for mats and up for supremes although the chances of buying supreme mats on the vendor is hen's teeth rare. I've seen some for 10K a piece. I personally will buy mats at 3K daps a piece if I really like them or they're really rare. For the most part, I try to go for the cheapest brands. You cannot buy basic vendor quality supplies above q100 so everything is foraged/hunted and your supplies are dependant on whatever is foraged/hunted that day.

So, base cost is around 230K for a suit with bought basic quality mats.
You want higher q? Almost 440K. An average of 39K - 79K a piece.

Vendor resale for 150q is about 43K - 50K a piece, if anyone buys it. Otherwise, a staggering 22K or thereabouts.

Factor in the minor cost of tools (1K a piece and I've gone through several but not a huge deal), teleports to the various markets and to the roots (10K a pop), the price of grind mats that make armour that never sells to get to the point where you make stuff that sells.

That last point is significant. I vendor 10 pieces for every one that's good enough to sell. That means for bought supplies, I take a loss on ten pieces to sell one at a little profit. At my level, 10-20 combines per armour type (boots, sleeves, whatever) per level with 6 branches to raise. The resale stuff is a very small proportion of the actual combines done by a crafter. On top of all that, take into account the huge and, I still feel, inappropriate fail rate by crafters. With an 80% chance of success using a skill within 5 levels of my mat quality, I can still fail four in five times. It's been like that in beta where I would make 2 successful pieces of jewelry per 15 combines (and yes, I know about heavy armour and penalties and all that). A failure is useless for resale, gives a fraction of the XP but uses all the same amount of mats. Another dent in our vast profits it seems.

And just because it's foraged doesn't make it 'free' and everything's a profit. Foraging takes time, and even supplimenting half the foraged mats with bought ones eats up any profit quickly.

Posted by zumwalt

Thanks Tin, also please note, that the BASIC mats sold by the vendor are 2x the price of a harvestor basic mat in general.

So if the harvestor broke even for there time they would charge the same as a vendor (2x price shown at the time they set it for sale), then to gain a proffit, the general rule of thumb that I have seen for those who want a proffit is 3x price shown.

If the cost of a full suit ran say 500,000 just to make on bought materials, it would sell for 1,500,000 on market to make up for Time, Skill, Energy and Materials.

Just thinking it through, that is where the price comes from.

Posted by tinpony

I'm leery of posting this even as a joke, but for a melee to understand a crafter perspective, try imagining this tree split.

L1-20 fight
L21 'fight' splits into one-hand, ranged, close-combat and two-hand fight and each branch gets levelled separately
L51 each of those branches splits into weapons branches like pike, sword, mace and axe to be levelled separately.
L101 each of those branches splits into strike specialties like hand, arm, leg, foot, chest and head. While you may be a L150 2H-sword fighter in 2HS (leg), unless you have levelled all branches equally, you fight as a L100 2HS (arm) melee when you hit the arm.

If you are a L150 (hand) melee, you will have an 80% chance of hitting a L150 creature if you strike the hand (with no way to improve that percentage). You will not be able to attack anything higher than your highest skill level. If your 'arm' skill is 150 and you try to hit a L150 creature's head using your L140 (head) skill, you have a 64% chance of success. You have a 48% chance of hitting something 20 levels above your skill and over 40 levels difference, your hit chance drops to 5%.

You will have to fight everything solo and (again) you will not be able to fight anything above your maximum skill level even if it means hitting timorous yubos for 10 levels at 1000 XP a piece *max*.

Imagine having to do L100-L150 five or six times just for basic competance. And then again at 150-200.... and again at 200-250.

Welcome to the wonderful world of armour craft.

==========

And usinuk's final thoughts...

Those of us who play crafters (or balance our melee and magic and harvest with crafting) play the second least played tree in the game after ranged combat. There is a reason for scarcity of crafters. Patch 1 nerfed what was mostly a balanced profession. Packer space, raw mat prices, missions, resale prices all went down the tubes from the perspective of crafters. Instead, to level craft you needed to become a big-time harvester or have an insanely big bank account.

But, as pointed out above, there are other problems. It's not a whole lot of fun when people yell at you because you're charging them too much or can't make the item right now.

Why are they yelling? I think its a misunderstanding. I don't think they understand what many of us go through.

To level craft, you get to spend 2x the hours you spend crafting getting the raw materials by leveling harvest. Then you get to spend plenty of time and lots of DP finding just the right mat source to make the particular item. Then you have to come back to town, have 1 out of 5 same-level-with-crafting-skill items work and the others be worth nothing, with failure rates rising precipitously (often well above 80%) once you pass level 100 or before that if you're a jeweler and don't level all sub-branches. And then, if you're unlucky you find your carefully crafted items on the vendor competing with similar items posted by higher level crafters looking to dump grind items.

So, the next time you're tempted to scream at a crafter, please read this thread and understand that's why we're charging what we do. We're just trying to get some return on our time. Not a lot, but enough to keep playing.

[tinpony]

There have been a couple of rather heated exchanges on item pricing and availability on the main forums, and I thought some of the responses by crafters were worth saving here to answer other questions in the future.

To add here, I was not in game when I made my original post on the number of mats. The corrected total from Predzz was:

heavy armor parts are as follows:
helmet/vest/pants 9/8/7/2
gloves/boots/sleeves 6/5/4/2
for a total of 45/39/33/12
and 129 mats.

So my final rough calculations for the costs of mats will be off by a bit, but the main points remain.

Add to that

Amps:
8 shaft, 2 grips, 10 foci

2H swords:
8 blades, 4 shaft, 4 grips, 4 counterweights

Pikes:
8 blades, 6 shafts, 6 grips

Light armour sets:
Vests/pants/caster's pants:
3 clothes, 3 linings, 1 stuffing, 1 armour clip
Sleeves/boots/gloves:
2 clothes, 2 linings, 1 stuffing, 1 armour clip

Again, I am not in game so I can correct those as necessary. Those are the main ones I make, so those are what I can think of. The point is that many of the weapons are 20 mat combines which can cost 60K just for the raw mats and they require very specific mats to make useable items.

Tin.

[borg9]

I have read most of the post here, haven't had chance to read them all for which I appologise in advance.

As a humble crafters and Harvester, I set my prices based on a rough rule of thumb. I charge want I need at the time.

90% of what I craft goes to Guild, Allies of Guild and friends.... what I charge them is between them and me. (As a clue I mostly craft for free!)

When I sell to 'customers' I change what I feel is a fair price for the effort required to get the mats.

Note to crafters: If they don't like the price, don't sell them the item.

What the customers don't always know....

Aggro is varied in the places the harvesters harvest... one day you can pull mats with no trouble, other days you get kill before you pick hits the soil!

Teleporting cost money, Death porting costs XP in clearing DP.

Most of the main cost to a self surficent crafter/harvest is time!

When things go well ... I can pull 200-400 mats in under 1 hour, however other time I can spend an hour just getting to a 'good' spot!

So charge the price you want to .... if the customers don't like your prices, you may need to rethink them or find different customers.


Note to customers:

Whats you beef with the cost of items?

Do you know how long it takes to get high level in harvesting?
Do you know how long it takes to find the 'good spots'?
Do you know whats its like to spend long hours, on your own surrounded by aggro mobs that will kill you in one hit?
Do you know how frustrating it is to make 1 pair or ql120 gloves and have 30 degrades, which eats you 2 hours of you harvest time for a zero end result?

If you can answer the above questions, you are a harvester and understand. If not you try it and see how quickly you go back to hunting!

That set of armour, which will protect you for ages and allow you to have hours of fun with you hunting friends....... costs you a few 100k dappers and last weeks (days for the power players). That took the crafter hours to gain the skills to make it. You then port in and slap em in the face by saying 400k for a ql110 +55 HP hvy set is expensive!!!!! Well you keep your dapper, I will sell the armour the the NPC, outa spite!

I won't come to your hunting grounds and tell you how to fight, so don't come to me and tell me how to charge.



I, along with a lot of other crafters provide an excellent service. If you don't like my service shop else where. You have a choice the same as I do.


I got a bit ranty in the middle, but I have been frustrated with cancelled orders and price negotiations at delivery!

Remember how the Ryzom economy works!

Harvester -> Crafters -> Hunters

Harvesters need hunters for protection and travel and without them they wouldn't need to harvest (no end customer, no need to harvest).

Thats just my opinion, take it or leave it.

Pay ya money and take your choice.

[blogie]

Ow and i just want to add to the post of neun that to get to level 50 harvesting you need to play at least 2 weaks of harvesting non stop or have a lod of cash to get focus armor/jewelry And then we ar not talking about crafts! + dp + extraction loc's. overpopulation

[bcharles]

This is really just a case of Economics 101. If you don't like the price someone sets, buy it from someone who charges less. If there is no one else, then supply and demand dictates that the seller has the upper hand. If they charge too much then they can still lose the sale, but that's up to them. It's too bad that people don't get this and harrass the crafters. The best way to tell someone they charge too much is to give your money to someone else, not to yell at them.

[lyrah68]

Understand this, those of us that don't have millions of daps to throw around WILL go to vendors instead of "open crafters" and WILL buy the lowest price on the vendor, and might just burn a port ticket or two to save MORE than that ticket in prices.

It is quite simple, you get an order, player X does NOT pay whatever HIGH price you wanted, you choice is to shout you are selling it (EC in EQ anyone? *barfs*) OR put it on the vendor with highest mark up you can. Don't like either, don't craft.

Just because crafters supply the needs of all NON crafters does NOT mean that we are better, nor do we have a right to get snippy when the market will NOT support our desires.

If the time/money spent in making an item is NOT paid for with profit in the price the market will support, then don't make the item. Eventually the markets demand will up the price into your range, if not...oh well.

[iphdrunk]

Hello,

I don't want to whine or start a flame-war here just a few facts, since yesterday I saw a comment in Region Chat that a crafter was told 3 times that some crafters current policy regarding amplifiers/crafting was "nonsense/bull****/selfish". I saw this post, and I will complete it with numbers after asking a few crafter/harvester friends. One of them will be crafting q230 amps soon, and:

* after lvl 210, it takes him more than 30 x 33 (7 shafts, 6 grips, 20 magic) mats q220+ (more than 1000) to get 1 level. Asumming that he can buy the shafts (about 1/5th) still need 30x26 = 750 mats. Taking into account downtime, porting, depleted sources, inventory management, about 2h full time digging, of course, as long as he is 210+ harvester, can port to the spot and hopelly he does not get DP.

* He doesn't know what his dappers are for right now. All his craft trees are at least 100, crafting high quality fyros/tryker/matis q220 amps, q160 pikes, q180 high quality matis/fyros/tryker light armor, "Use your dappers to buy mats",indeed he does, but other than varinx, ocyx, tyranchas and jabs, he complains about not being able to buy q220+ clothes, ambers and resin.

* As we see it, his main problem is that there is currently no incentive for harvesters to sell highly required mats, so other than dapper, most high level harvesters support their own crafting, and crafters already earn enough money just by selling to NPC their grind items. This subject has been reported / suggested / discussed... hundreds of times, so no need to elaborate here

* Comment "You are not supporting the community, we should help each other": help each other does not mean providing 97/97 q200 amps at a ridiculous price, which he could often get in less than 1 hour. As most crafters, he sits on top of more than 20 milion (I've heard of 70+ for some crafters) dappers. Regarding 97/97, there are about 5 spots where it is possible to get the required supreme ambers, and they deplete around 70 mats. Guess how many spots after q200. To a few nice friends of his, he's offered 85/85 excellent amps at q180-q200 mostly to guildless players or similar, and usually in exchange for a few stacks of needed mats, he often gets frowned upon, or answered with irony.

* Comment "I am not a crafter/harvester": you can basically help in 2 ways, get less XP in some cases and hunt herbs and plants, they provide clothes/grips, lining and buds, or, without going into high level harvesting, you can get care 2/2 and increase the number of mats gathered per hour.

* Crafting and harvesting does not seem to me the funniest thing to do in game, at least for some players, but they are willing to invest time in it, so they can get the equipment we all want. It is not because we play only a few hours a day/week that we cannot dedicate a few % to harvesting and that we have the right to expect easily available/cheap uber equipment when the mats required are scarce and it takes a lot of time

[hans1976]

Just a tiny thing here I havent seen anywhere in this or other threads:

*whispers*
I actually *like* digging, but hushhush, dont tell anyone, plz...
*whispering ends*

People, lets face it: It is a game. Do what you like most and if you can gain player fame or personal satisfaction with it, that is cool. And always remember that dappers, mats, lvl's and items are mere bits on some server somewhere.

If there is something you should care about it is playerfame, unregistered playerfame. Do you want to be known as a sorry whiner? Then whine the best you can!
You want to be known as a crafter that can make you the best amp you have ever seen, but they have to kiss your feet first? Then act that way (and believe me, peeps will dive for them if you are high enough).

I want to be known as a kind person, one with some personality thingies and easy to irritate after a certain hour at night, but still nice. Helpfull, generous, loyal, those things. I try to act that way, do my best and so forth. So that when I wake up in the morning, I can look in the mirror and face myself. And always keep in mind that it is possible I actually might meet one of the players, somewhere, somehow.

So I like digging and crafting. It gave me some lvl's, I like that too. Giving stuff away like tp cash on a trip I like very much, crafting armors for the needy I like too. What I dont like is ruining someone elses game by frustrating the market and sell too low.

Think about it...

[usinuk]

...if you can gain...personal satisfaction with it

And that's why I collected the posts that are on this thread.

I just got the feeling that most non-crafters have no real idea what it takes to level up crafting and to make that nice shiny sword, and as a result get really frustrated when a. you can't make it or b. you price it 'too high'. What I wanted to do was list reasons as to why both happen, so that crafters don't get bombarded with messages and chat and such that express dissatisfaction and unhappiness and hatred and other such things that take away from our personal satisfaction in playing the game.

It's cool if you like harvesting and grinding; I personally would prefer to see a return to unnerfed crafting and missions that pay out enough to get us back to where we were pre-patch 1 where you could craft without spending 2x-5x the time harvesting. I'm now at the point dapperwise though that I may end up buying my own guildhall for storage.

[nbrsix]

compair the characterics (info) of NPC's item to a Player-Crafted item, then you will see why you are paying a higher price.... plus all the above posts