Artisan Prices (Titanium+)

[apog]

...and a standard for forged eq (the new greatQ titanium that some artisans are able to craft have seriously lowered the already low prices).

Now I saw this comment as part of a different thread on a different topic, however I've seen this said on misc. channels as well.

Being part of the team that is creating these greatQ titanium items, I have a bit different perspective than some others. So I will share my perspective and hopefully others will share theirs as well.

Artisans is all about player to player economy. In general, a free market (not one guided with rules, restrictions, and regulations) will tend to follow the rules of supply and demand. In case some have not taken any economics that covers these ideas, they can generally (and I mean very generally) be expressed as the following:

1.) The price of goods and services will change according to the intersection of supply and demand.

2.) Generally speaking the different intersections of supply and demand are as follows (assuming the normal case of demand being greater with lower prices and supply being greater with higher prices):

High demand + High supply = depends on which changes more
High demand + low supply = Higher prices
Low demand + High supply = Lower prices
Low demand + low supply = depends on which changes more
Same demand + lower supply = higher prices
Same demand + higher supply = lower prices
Lower demand + same supply = lower prices
Higher demand + same supply = higher prices

Generally speaking high quality expensive eq's in Icesus are high demand + low supply schedule. Many people want high end eq, but there is not a lot of high end eq to go around.

I suspect that this low supply is not a result of the eq not existing, but rather the players owning them keeping the supply low in order to keep the value of the eq high. However, this is supposition on my part since I do not have access to any one's house to check. As circumstantial evidence, I can point to the eq train of 9 players that has been running for at least a week now, and will probably go on for a few more weeks. Even though eq is getting generated by the train in what I would guess would be significant quantities, the general amount of eq available on sales has not increased dramatically. However, over time as the eq is obtained by more and more people, the prices do eventually drop as the supply is increased. This can be seen with many eqs (raptor eq, rings of the night, etc, and low end df stuff).

However, where the previous paradigm was to horde eq and dole it out when necessary, artisans by their very nature want to sell as much as possible. The goal of the miner to smith guild chain is to make lots of money. This means miners want to mine a lot (better material = better pay), refiners want to refine a lot (better material = bettery pay), and smiths/geologist want to make a lot of eq to sell. Since the goal is to make lots of money as compared to making the maximum amount of money, artisans can sell items at cheaper prices and still have it be worth their time and energy. This is the same concept as chain stores or casinos. They don't have to take a lot of money, just a little from a lot of people.

Obviously this is not so good for the people hording eq or attempting to buy/trade eq for profit, since the prices for these high end eq's may result in a drop in prices for those spare eqs that might be sold later. However, as far as I know (and I'm pretty confident), the *only* titanium eq sold so far were throwing daggers for 300k a piece. While one titanium tower shield was made, and priced at 2.5M on sales, it *did not* sell. What this says to me is that from an artisan stand point is this: If we can't sell the eq for what others think is a really low price, then what makes those people think we could sell it for a higher price?. Obviously, if an artisan is not making money, and wants to make money, but isn't getting something sold, then they lower the price. It simple from a sellers standpoint, a piece of eq (or 5 or 10 or however many) sitting in inventory does not give us any money. In this particular case, demand for the goods at the prices we've made is non-existant. Since we want to sell, we lower prices. If people bought them, and there was an increase in demand, then the prices might be raised.

So my posited question is this: If you had a piece of eq that was valuable, but held no value to you personally (you couldn't use it, resize would cost 50M, etc), but you did desire some money, would you lower the price to a point where you know (or greatly expected) that it would be sold?

My personal answer is yes, and I've seen some people selling raptor bracers for 500k, and I'd guess their answer is also yes.

My other posited question is this: If no one wants to buy a piece of eq at 2.5M, what is the logic behind saying to the seller that they shouldn't sell for that much, but should instead charge 20M?

From my point of view, if it's not selling for 2.5M, there is no way that it is going to sell for 20M. I'm not talking about a different piece of eq, but the same exact one.


Footnote:
Refining recipes have recently been tuned so that it is considerably harder to make the bars necessary to create these items. This should exacerbate the problem even further since demand is the same, but supply is going to be lower than it is now. This suggests that the sellers will want to increase their prices, however if zero people buy the items, the artisans may be forced to lower prices just to get eq sold.

[misad]

I agree to most points Apog made, however market saturation is a situation which should be avoided. That means there is such a high supply of an item that it greatly exceeds demand. I.e. everyone who ever needs the item has it. And no one wants them anymore. A new player once in a week or month wanting that particular type of item is not enough to keep demand high enough, and playing fun for even one artisan.

Saturation can be reached quite fast in an economy like in here Icesus where there are only relatively few potential buyers for most items and items tend to stay in the market. Only relatively low amount of items disappear from the market through players suiciding or retiring. To keep a small (or any) economy healthy items should disappear from the market steadily to keep demand above zero after the initial rush.

This probably would be most realisticly achieved through item wear and tear. Most players will object this because they've payed high price for the items they have now. Price here means that they've invested a lot of time into getting that item, through eq trains or collecting money. I do believe that most players would accept wear and tear if it was implemented and introduced slowly, because current market economics simply does not work.

I spend around 200 hours of playing time to get myself my first singer...I really do not want it to start wearing down quickly. I would really like to have a good yield for my invested hours meaning that the singer should last at least 1000-2000 hours before its "quality" dropped below my previous weapon's, ocean blue falchion, "quality". If singer deteriorated any faster it would probably be a waste of time to aquire it.

The reason being that I've a whole set of eqs, which all would start to deteriorate also. If the yield was any lower all my time would go to keeping my eq set in the current level or even worse, the set would deteriorate no matter what I did. For me the aim in this mud is not to keep your current equipment, but to get more "powerful" (which I consider fun) through aquiring both experience and equipment. (I can chat with friends in IRC too, so I excluded that.)

If wear and tear is implemented it should introduced quite slowly, i.e wear being very slow first, and after markets accustom to new situation the tear could be fastened a bit more etc. If wear is set at the final wanted level from the first day off it will leave a lot of angered players (myself included :) This implies that it should be a slow process taking several years to complete. Of course this would leave unhappy players too, but "downgrades" usually do.

// Misad

[stalker]

i hereby second misad's analysis

[osma]

starting out to mention that this is an icesus is icesus idea problem:

one idea used in other games is that each item when created has a set time frame that it is "perfect" (185 days in medievia). should the item last longer then that, it is not "broken" simply worn down, dealing less damage. so while an exelent item would still deal more damage then a less powerfull one, it would deal less then (or protect less then) a brand new item of the same type.
{in other words, an old blue-ocean falcion will still be better then a steel falcion by a long shot, but would be a bit less powerful then a shiny new b-o fal.}

This would allow a fresh economy, from the players wanting best quality items, while still allowing artisans to make as many items as they want, to replace the old ones.

Another item to possibly add, in the previous example, when the days were getting low, a player could perform a quest or obtain an item that would extend the items time (restart to 185). this could only be done 10 times, but that still extends from 185 days to many years.
{way to use, finding "gems", "eggs", or "ore" that could be used by smiths to reforge the weapon to good as new (reset the days}

[arkady]

I am against the idea of counters on eq for the simple reason is that I keep a other full sets of eq beside the one I am wearing at any given time and if that all have counters that run down that no longer becomes practical... Personally I see wear and tear as a bad idea for the general state of the game. It is hard enough of people outside of the prime time zones to generate even midlevel eq so untill we have a generous helping of players from all the worlds population centers I think that making eq rarer by removing older eq in this fashion would hurt players outside of finland, since we hardly have the playerbase to make goku leggings. Untill the playerbase of icesus grows dramaticly I think that we should hold off on changing the way the game handles eq much more.

[yoz]

I really can't believe my eyes here. Eqmaking is NOT that simple, and only small partition of players in this game will ever be able to do the top slot eqs.

Ill make some calculations for you to show my point here:

lets say an 9man eqtrain of players worth ~700m-1g is formed.
Each player reincs to eqreinc and they spend aprox 15-25megs for the reinc itself. that is a lot of exp "wasted".

Then they start doing the mobs, and spend hours and hours practicing the whole encounter itself. lets say, that they spend 5-15hours with 9man train, practicing the encounter = 45-135hours when it is multipled with the amount of members in the "train". When they finally have practiced the mob and manage to kill it first time in 10-5hours, they gain 2-3 or eqs from this overpopular "eqpool" which most of icesus eq monsters seem to have. These "eqpools" consist of 10-15 different eqs, where often less than half of them are worth using/picking.

This particular monster has a spawntime of 6-10 days, meaning that it can be killed only once a week, or even more rarely. Namely, the eq"train" has to spend many many weeks in killing this monster to obtain the items they want, not to mention staying in the actual eqreincs, which often are not too suitable for expmaking or other fun parts than making gear itself.

Then again, we have this small tasty extra, which is also very liked when eqmonsters in icesus are planned. It is called "different versions" of certain topslot eq. Shit quality, lesser stats etc. No one in the eqtrain wants these versions, because they can get better ones.

It takes weeks and weeks and hundreds of hours of boring/annoying sitting on the computer (depending on monster ofc) to obtain all those good pieces of gear that you might need. You also have to make hours and hours of exp to be able to make them, and its even harder to obtain the certain pieces of eq you want.

I dont see, why do we have people who have never made serious eq in icesus, and prolly never will be able to make the best eq in the game, wanting some tune that makes the items that one has spend hundred of hours for, wear off and become an useless piece of crap over time.

And what comes to wizard, i doubt that not too many wizards in this game have no clue about how the eq is made, even though they can snoop, they can code the monsters itself. it just is not that simple. (this is especially to you stalker)

In my eyes, merchant products are aimed for lowbies/midbies and should never be close to topslot eq that are obtainable from the hardest encounters in game.

Instead of trying to make millions with those products etc, let merchants earn real money from what they should earn it from. Resizing/unmarking/marking/repairing. Leave those craftable items as a "bonus-income".

Clearly merchants do not earn enough cash from their main operations. Uptune those instead of asking for ridicilous wear & tear tunes, when you people obviously have no idea how much effort it requires to get those gear.

Also, before copying these splendid tune ideas from other muds etc, please find out how the things are in the mud where you are trying to bring it in. This is not batmud, where there are 1000 players actually needing those repairs.

A huge no to this, the day people's weloq blades/behemoth blades/gears start wearing out in effectivity, this mud runs out of eqmakers and people who actually know about this game.
Killing the passion of most actively players for this game, doesent really do too good for it.

ps. i have nothing against having to repair my stuff once in a while, but losing quality/effectivity permanently is something that would make me quit this game permanently.

Thanks, and out - Yoz

[belannaer]

First I want to give you the newsflash: Wear&Tear already exists in the game. It's called eqdamage and you can read about it 'help eqdamage'. That's the ONLY way you will lose eqs unwillingly in the whole game and will stay that way as long as I'm in charge or there's some extremely radical change in the game mechanics.

The way I see it is that what makes Icesus fun is that once you have achieved something you will keep it indefinitely regardless whether you play or not. You may take a month's break and everything will be there just like you left it and you can just pick up from there and continue what ever you were doing. Creating a wear&tear that destroys your items even if you aren't playing and using them will lead to many people quitting.

As Yoz said eq making isn't that easy as it might seem, many have tried and failed. Those items are designed to be really good and once you have earned them you can use them as long as you wish without fear of them getting obsolete by some wear&tear. Also whatever crafting shouldn't be even trying to compete with those items. It should focus on creating items that serve different purpose, offer something else than those items offer. If what you are offering cannot be gained through exp/eq making or other means and it's good people will want it and will be ready to pay possibly even lots of money from those. This of course works opposite way too. Good example about this is the titanium shield you said you've made. It's a good item but eq making can provide better shields thus rending the markets for that particular titanium shield non-existent. Knowing what items are available for different slots and what aren't helps a lot when crafting these items. If that titanium shield was titanium greaves or some other prot item in a slot where there aren't many or easily acquirable it would sell and for really high price also.

The problem I see currently is that crafting does not offer yet enough items that offer some new special things that aren't available on other items but don't worry these are going to pop up sooner or later.

[yoz]

First I want to give you the newsflash: Wear&Tear already exists in the game. It's called eqdamage and you can read about it 'help eqdamage'. That's the ONLY way you will lose eqs unwillingly in the whole game and will stay that way as long as I'm in charge or there's some extremely radical change in the game mechanics.

The way I see it is that what makes Icesus fun is that once you have achieved something you will keep it indefinitely regardless whether you play or not. You may take a month's break and everything will be there just like you left it and you can just pick up from there and continue what ever you were doing. Creating a wear&tear that destroys your items even if you aren't playing and using them will lead to many people quitting.

As Yoz said eq making isn't that easy as it might seem, many have tried and failed. Those items are designed to be really good and once you have earned them you can use them as long as you wish without fear of them getting obsolete by some wear&tear. Also whatever crafting shouldn't be even trying to compete with those items. It should focus on creating items that serve different purpose, offer something else than those items offer. If what you are offering cannot be gained through exp/eq making or other means and it's good people will want it and will be ready to pay possibly even lots of money from those. This of course works opposite way too. Good example about this is the titanium shield you said you've made. It's a good item but eq making can provide better shields thus rending the markets for that particular titanium shield non-existent. Knowing what items are available for different slots and what aren't helps a lot when crafting these items. If that titanium shield was titanium greaves or some other prot item in a slot where there aren't many or easily acquirable it would sell and for really high price also.

The problem I see currently is that crafting does not offer yet enough items that offer some new special things that aren't available on other items but don't worry these are going to pop up sooner or later.

amen, atleast for once, we share likely same opinion.

[apog]

I think somewhere along the lines someone misread or misunderstood what I was writing. Whether that is my fault or not, I am unsure, but I will take the brunt of the blame. My original was saying these main items:

1.) Artisan eq is going to be cheaper than eq mob eq, and some basic rationale as to why.

2.) Since Artisan eq by it's very nature (not being as good as eq mob eq, not having any stats currently, mass production) is going to be cheap, those players who are saying that artisan eq should be going for extremely high rates are making an illogical statement. For example, one top player's statement that that shield should have been put on sales for 20M and nothing less.

3.) The questions I list in the first post are meant to illicit some sort of logical explanation as to why a piece of eq that there is not market for should go for prices that they obviously can't be sold for.

I am in no way complaining that we are getting low prices, and that is really the opposite of what I'm saying. I expect that we will get much lower prices for items where an eq mob will provide better equipment.

[apog]

I really can't believe my eyes here. Eqmaking is NOT that simple, and only small partition of players in this game will ever be able to do the top slot eqs.

I'm not really sure where this came from, as I didn't see anyone even remotely say that it was simple.

[yoz]

I really can't believe my eyes here. Eqmaking is NOT that simple, and only small partition of players in this game will ever be able to do the top slot eqs.

I'm not really sure where this came from, as I didn't see anyone even remotely say that it was simple.

in a nutshell:
it means that eqmaking is so complicated process and needs so much effort that topslot eq should NOT lose quality etc by time.

[arkady]

I think we are all agreeing here which is remarkably strange I do say, but I agree with the above posters that eqdamage as it stands in the game is prefect for the user base we have here. Also, I think artisan eq as it is in the game is wonderful as well and I wish all the merchants the best of luck in plying their wares.

[iluth]

Things will probably change for the better for Artisans once those gemmed enchantable eqs come around.

[solar]

Things will probably change for the better for Artisans once those gemmed enchantable eqs come around.

Yeah, sure...

[iluth]

Things will probably change for the better for Artisans once those gemmed enchantable eqs come around.

Yeah, sure...

Hmm well who knows, at the moment players either make their own eq or buy it from people who are capable of making it (even more so since the vaerlon smithy was broken) If the new standard of artisan made armour and weapons is going to be titanium (and with customisable stats) then maybe the people using fine steel armours and weapons will have something else to spend their cash on.

I know myself i need some better leggings and head prot, and there's all those centaurs out there also. Secondary characters is another consideration, since the primaries will likely have money to burn on them but cant buy them prestige eq.

Knowledge of what people need is probly the most important thing, i bought a fs full plate full helm (great q) for 50k from a booth, those things smith made would have cost a hell of a lot more than that. and i'm sure artisans could find some price for eq like that where they dont have to sell it so cheap, but can undercut the graemor smithy to keep players away from it.