Scam or Fair trade???

[reddax77]

Here's a lil story and I would like to hear from you all what u think.
Been searching around for q170-q190 hvy armor and saw a few pieces in Thesos after a lil while. So bought a set of q170 pants for 86k, seems fair. then a helmet for about 60k, good deal. Got progressively excited, saw a set of sleeves and bought it too.
BIG MISTAKE. Next thing i knew, i was broke. Had about 19k left with me. Puzzled, I looked at the sys info. and what did i see----> Choice heavy sleeves for 560k+. Thats right not 56, but 560K+ !!!!

As u might imagine, i was p***** as hell. both at my own stupidity (oh i accept i was stupid to not see price properly) and at the person who placed it for sale. Swore a bit in guild chat, swore revenge at guy and made some comments about pvp, axes and dp's.

Now what do people say? Is that a fair price for a set of sleeves, or is that a scam????

[alibasil]

massive scam - i feel for you man

reminds me when i was looking for a new sword approx q150- i asked around as you do. Spoke to one person (not named for obvious reasons) and they wanted 250k for it. Admittedly it was high q plans- but surely thats way overpriced? am i wrong?

oh yeah and this person tried to sell it to me for 375k if i wanted it delivered!

Needless to say my communication with this person ended!

[usinuk]

Sorry, guys, I disagree. While 560K is expensive for a choice q170 armor component, it's not anywhere close to scam levels.

I haven't PL'd armor up that high yet, but I have sold full sets of q100 choice black/white heavy for 300k and up on the vendor within the last month - or about 50k per piece, not all that much less than you paid for the two other individual components. (This tells me those components were more than likely dumped on the market after they were grind failures.) 10x that for a q170 set? Yes, quite a bit, but keep a couple of things in mind.

There are a couple of possibilities here. First is that this was made by one of the 5 or so players on the server that can do individual q170 armor pieces without 5% success rates on lines other than the main grinds (helmet/chest). They can set their own prices given the scarcity of high level armor crafters and for the probably thousands of hours of work taken to get up that high, they deserve it.

Lets do some math if it was the other possibility - a person who had 60% success rates for chest plates (lvl 160) but 5% success rate for sleeves (anything below lvl 120). Sleeves now take up 7/7/5/5 mats for med q and 5/5/4/4 for low q; lets say for the sake of argument you bought a low q version. 18 mats * 20 attempts (5% possibility) to get a q170 sleeve = 360 mats. If you can find q170 choice armor mats for sale - which normally you can't - they'll run you something like 4K per mat. Base mat cost here is then something like 144K per sleeve. Give the guy something close to cost for time and effort involved and 350-450k is not out of the realm of realistic pricing. So yeah, 560k is a bit expensive, but not nearly scam levels.

Let me refer you to an older thread I put up that collected interesting thoughts by a number of high level crafters (it's in the crafting section) in response to some very direct questions about pricing:

http://www.ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8863

Keep in mind that since that thread was posted, mat counts for medium and high q armors (not sure if what you bought was that) have gone up by a not-insignificant number, so the base prices have gone up.

All I know is that after selling my q100 grind sets - armor isn't my main craft line - I have been killed something like 10 times in the middle of fights when I get a pop up IMs from someone I don't know with such polite conversation starters as "Armour?" or "I want ur armor I got 20k", even when I've repeatedly told them I wasn't making any more armor until I grind up other lines first. Not a whole lot of fun.

So sorry you went broke on that, and it sucks that the only way to make money in this game is to harvest. But I don't think either of you got badly ripped off. Just my two cents.

[reddax77]

I do take into consideration all that u've said. And yes i have paid 250K for a q140 sword and was very happy with that. Didnt think I was ripped off at all, on the contrary was quite happy with the deal.

But that was 250k for a sword which is just one item. 300K for a set again, I'm happy with those prices and have paid even higher than that for a specific race armor.

A sleeve is just one component in a whole set. Compared to what you're charging for u're armor, 300K for a set, 560k for a single component seems just excessive? Remember thats one component out of 6. so by same token should a full armor set cost 3 million dappers? At that rate I probably would have to fight naked pretty much all the time.

And the armor was medium quality Fyros WITHOUT any boost. The other 2 were exactly same quality but with HP boosts, but were by a different crafter(of course).

[1mage]

Could have been a honest mistake of the crafters behalve. I ve done this before when i have crafted aload of excellent light Fyros obvioulsy thats gonna cost more then choice gear so i put it on the vendor for a reasonable price for excell. After my excel mats have run dry i move on to grinding my choice mats once i have a full bag of casters ill slowly free up some space, 95% gets sold to the npc and 5% to players. But in my haste to get back to digging the few choice casters i put on the vendor went on at excel prices Luckly i noticed before i logged off.. but it can happen..

[hans1976]

Without having read the other post that was linked here I wanted to add a few things too.
I consider armorcrafting to be my main line, and although I am not *very* good at it, I tend to make sure HA always has the highest stats I can do (full choice, med plans, full hp, etc) before I sell it on to players. I want people to think: "Hey, crafter Frydeswinde. That must be good! Let's buy it". Currently I can do a ql130 set pretty reliable and I put those in store for sale, it saves me the time talking in tell with people who want a hq plan ql160 set for 250K, I just point at the stores.

If we look at the baseprice of a vest as I do them now, it is about 22K. WHen looking at the market in the several different lands, I look at how many items with the same stats are sold. So I look at stats, plan, modifiers, ql and setpiece. So I base my resale on the availability, the oldest market principle ever. To have a acceptable turnover, most of the parts are sold at a margin of 350%. That makes a vest and pants cost about 100K, but sleeves, boots and gloves almost 80K and the helmet some 90K. Totals 550K for a ql130 full choice, +hp, med qual plans heavy armor. I actually think this is a fair deal if you look at availability.

Also keep in mind that getting all the mats for a set like this takes about an hour digging. How much time does it take a hunter to loot this amount of dappers? And can you reuse and armor after that hour hunting (so called return on investment)?

Most crafters dont sell to stores, they craft guild only or charge *extreme* high prices, more then 3 times what I just described.

I think the price you payed for a lvl170 item is fair, just obeying the old laws of the free market. I also think you should watch the prices a little better or look at stats better (you bought a sleeves for 500K with no mods? What does this say about you?).

In the end, the digger/crafter and the hunter should work together and if you are a hunter that can kill the mobs the high lvl armor you want to buy, always try to contact the crafter. You can give him mats too, you see. In fact, I would like a few mats much more then more dappers that I dont know what to do with. The xp for mobmatscrafting is fine too and it saves me the digging.

btw: the ql130 sets are for sale in Fyros (Dyron) and Zorai (Min-Cho)

Grtz,

[dam23]

Not a fair trade imo.
Its well known that some players put normal items, and overpriced ones inbetween.
Given the serverpopulation, there *will* be a player not paying enuf attention, but sure paying enuf dappers ...

Scam I say, and that would need a temporary ban.
Newbies selling q40 mats for 30k each, hoping someone will buy them accidentally, is a shame.


Regarding a q150+ sword for 250k however, I think its a fair price.
If you're not happy with it, grind melee crafting yourself, and be bothered gathering the mats.
Then, see how pissing it can get, to receive tells saying "a friend has a friend who knows someone that makes q150 swords for 80k" .. "fine then, go buy there"

[kibsword]

What really gets me annoyed is at the mat merchants, where you are going along buying some mats to level a certain craft area (I was doing jewels the other day for the matis rite), and a certain player's name (who we have recently kicked out of RoA for abusive behavior and begging etc) kept popping up with q31 basic animal mats for 60k! And his name kept appearing everywhere, thankfully I was very careful with what mats I bought so stayed away from anything above the price of an NPC mat as I was grinding.

[kaetemi]

I always put the dapper filter on 1 dapper lower than NPC price.

[genod]

Check everything you buy. Know what you're paying, and know exactly what you're getting.

Because that's what this is basically about isn't it? If everyone paid attention to what they were buying at market, all those overpriced materials and such earn nothing more than base npc prices for our would-be conmen. You don't go into a store and buy the first thing you see that you think matches your requirements without consideration so why should you go frittering away your hard-earned dapper here on a similar principle?