Costs

Elyse

This has probably been suggested and discussed before, so forgive me in advance.

It seems to me that many trade skills aren't really worth doing in terms of making gold. I haven't closely examined the numbers, but gathering/inkmilling for example - when inks are selling for 50% of Rurin's costs, it seems far better to hunt or do something else. I really enjoy gathering/inkmilling, so I still do it, but it's definitely not worth it in terms of time and energy.

But.... why not increase the cost of items sold by people like Rurin? Why not double the cost of any item that adventurers can readily create? By doing this, it creates a need for trade skills (which are open to everyone) and it encourages "house" mentality. aka, people working together and being reliant upon each other. 

Antonius

Increasing the price of denizen sold wares isn't going to magically make people value their time, which is the cause of this issue. People are willing to sell at prices which mean they're actually making a tiny amount of gold per hour, and that's not going to change as long as the players are responsible for both supply and demand.

Xaden

Antonius said:

Increasing the price of denizen sold wares isn't going to magically make people value their time, which is the cause of this issue. People are willing to sell at prices which mean they're actually making a tiny amount of gold per hour, and that's not going to change as long as the players are responsible for both supply and demand.

This.

Having done all of the math (about a RL year ago) on synthesising, I figured that at the then market price (5g per potash) that you could max out at 25 to 30k per hour (if you had gloves of extraction).

If I'm doing mindlessly boring stuff, I'd rather get paid more, so I hunt instead, which takes maybe three hours to do 160k.

Asmodron

Personally I never knew what was appealing of Achaean trade skills anyway. They seem so dull in comparison to other IRE.

As for Costs, as stated, increasing price wont make people decide to care.

Skye

For the longest time, even before I started milling my own inks, they were being sold at 50% off. I think some people are now aiming at 40% or 30% but the benchmark price has kinda already been set. Frankly the inks are the least of the problem because you will always have Rurin's prices to gauge by, so nobody will slash their prices by more than 50%. The real problem is the value of curatives, where there is no real threshold for measurement (rip Oakstone pricelist). There will always be someone willing to cut their prices, sometimes even in complete defiance of what everyone else is charging in the area.

I can't really blame the buyers for this sort of thing, it's only natural for a consumer to want to pay the lowest prices and get the best deals. I blame the sellers who fail to value their time and wilfully and shortsightedly pull their own prices and profit margin down for the sake of an immediate sale. Someone once tried to induce me to start a price war with another shopkeeper, I politely told them no instead of what I actually thought of them in my head.

Antonius

Asmodron said:

Personally I never knew what was appealing of Achaean trade skills anyway. They seem so dull in comparison to other IRE.

The appeal is self-sufficiency. The skills themselves might not be very exciting, but I enjoy being able to gather and make my own stuff, even if it would be more cost effective to just spend that time bashing and pay somebody else. Sometimes I just don't feel like bashing, but wandering around with my harvesting script turned on isn't such a big deal.

Skye

Xaden said:

Antonius said:

Increasing the price of denizen sold wares isn't going to magically make people value their time, which is the cause of this issue. People are willing to sell at prices which mean they're actually making a tiny amount of gold per hour, and that's not going to change as long as the players are responsible for both supply and demand.

This.

Having done all of the math (about a RL year ago) on synthesising, I figured that at the then market price (5g per potash) that you could max out at 25 to 30k per hour (if you had gloves of extraction).

If I'm doing mindlessly boring stuff, I'd rather get paid more, so I hunt instead, which takes maybe three hours to do 160k.

The reason why there are people willing to charge stupid prices like that is because how easy it is to put together an extraction/transmutation script. Synthesis is so much better at generating curatives because you only need 3 primes, all of which can be extracted from any of the given extraction environments. This allows you to finely control your supply of any particular curative and you can do it while 80% afk, at work, on the toilet, watching a movie, having lunch, whatever, you pretty much almost always meet your target quantity provided you don't get caught. A person who does this feels absolutely no impact on their time, so why would they worry if they're only earning peanuts?

People who are dependent on harvesting will tell you that they have good days and bad days, especially when demand for a particular curative rockets like during the Black Wave. I burned through all my reserves of moss, kelp and lobelia before the event was over to keep up with the demand, and you literally had to scrape through obscure single rooms to try and slowly top up your supply.

Klendathu

Hit your gold cap, then spend some time gathering, synthesising and transmutating @Xaden

Xaden

Klendathu said:

Hit your gold cap, then spend some time gathering, synthesising and transmutating @Xaden

That's one way to let you catch back up, I guess

Faur

Antonius said:

Asmodron said:

Personally I never knew what was appealing of Achaean trade skills anyway. They seem so dull in comparison to other IRE.

The appeal is self-sufficiency. The skills themselves might not be very exciting, but I enjoy being able to gather and make my own stuff, even if it would be more cost effective to just spend that time bashing and pay somebody else. Sometimes I just don't feel like bashing, but wandering around with my harvesting script turned on isn't such a big deal.

This. This is why I forged (before it became a trade skill (Still peeved about this)), and I transed everything I could. Self-sufficiency. I could (in theory) never have to enter a city if I felt like just being a hermit and kill everything I came across.

Elyse

Antonius said:

Increasing the price of denizen sold wares isn't going to magically make people value their time, which is the cause of this issue. People are willing to sell at prices which mean they're actually making a tiny amount of gold per hour, and that's not going to change as long as the players are responsible for both supply and demand.

I do see your point, of course, and your probably 100% right. However, whatever Rurin or other denizens have their prices set at determines the maximum an adventurer will pay and influences what adventurers will pay. Even now with inkmilling, people figured out their prices based off of 50% of the maximum. You're probably right though that eventually things will go lower and lower.

In terms of inkmilling and reagents, I think the numbers are all wrong though. I understand Jingo selling clay for dirt cheap, but fish scales should not be 6gp each, and buffalo horn should not be 18gp each. I think the same with Shark teeth. I do think if the maximum's were in a better spot, it would make earning gold in the trade easier.

TL:DR - I wonder if raising prices of denizen wares would cause such a dependency upon adventurer goods that it would create a more interactive and competitive market.

Nazihk

Dirt cheap curative prices are good for the game, and a competitive market where prices are higher would be bad for the game.

Curatives are an absolute requirement for participation in the game world. I am not at all anxious to go back to the days where "They can't afford much bloodroot, just spam paralysis until they're out of it" was a legitimate tactic. 

Atalkez

The market is this way because you have the ability to get materials as any class, there is no gate other than the small investment needed for the mineral trade skill.

On top of that, our marketplace is much more competitive than anything we see in the real world. While you have some companies in the same market, nearly all of them have a different appeal or aspect to push their identity to secure sales. In Achaea though, they're constantly undercutting one another to secure the sale, even at a loss. Gold in my hand is better than the gold I don't have anymore mentality.

I don't see it changing while Achaea maintains a free market economy where the players control the supply and the demand at the same time.

Jonathin

@Antonius
It's not that I don't value my time, it's that I value spite more.

Gwynrii

The main issue is that people waste their credits on tradeskills when it's not worth it. If you don't care about self-sufficiency, just don't get tradeskills. Let the tradeslaves do it.

Cooper

Agreed. At current market prices, there really isn't a tradeskill that can make more gold than you would get from bashing or questing during the same time.