All weaponcrafters +1000 read this plz !!!

[Khalen]

I'm not gonna change my prices. I sell my ware for a fair price and am not here to rob people from money because others can't get enough orders to get some money out of it...

I rarely have 99% items in stock anyway so hardly sell any "cheap" weapons. You guys probably have a vault full of 99% you wanna get rid of with higher prices. Maybe that's where the problem is. Just basically only do orders and not make premade items everytime and expect people to pay the retries (or even more) for em then they actually costed...

Every crafter has his own right to determine prices. So be my guest if yah do I know where people go soon to

PS. Maramar nice calculation but it's flawed. You charge the retries again for the customer so why would any crafter make 99%s premade and sell em for order prices? Why wouldn't you just wait for an order and make it then?
And 95% hasn't quit you just don't know there alts

 

[Danamyr]

Originally posted by Faeldawn
Think im the only non-alb on this thread

Err...no

Interesting thread this - I have never seen such discussions in the crafters forum as it's always spammed with people selling stuff.

As you can see, my AC in both realms is nothing to shout about, but I raise it when I have the cash. I have not had a single order yet, but when I do I'll make the items for material cost+retry+10% profit. If people are not happy with that then they do not have to buy, but I will *never* sell at a loss. If that means taking longer to skill up, then so be it.

Great thread guys, agree with a lot of points, and good luck to you all in the future.

 

[Olgark]

Fixed prices pah.
Even now in Mid there are people being ripped off by crafters. One reason I have not yet bought any MP stuff for SCing. I would rather level up my own crafters than pay the extortionate amounts they want. For example I wanted a suite of gossimer ( af 20) cloth for my level 24 Bonedancer was given the price of 300 gold from my own guild. Looked out of the guild and got one for 30 gold.

People start to fix prices I will under cut them and sell at a much lower price.

 

[old.Garax]

I'm sure half the people who complain about weapon costs don't have a clue on how expensive the materials cost in the first place, most people would probably pass out if you told them that it had cost ~30-35p to get to about 1060+ in weapon crafting.

I tend to keep a very limited stock of weapons in vault, and thats only of late after i managed to trinket the stupid amount of seals i had. I'm perfectly happy to do MP orders, but i make sure people know that it's down to luck and i make sure i ask them for a fixed amount of tries to do before i even start (coz i feel a right cunt after blowing 5p on a MP order and only comming up with 99%'s).
As far as MP's and 99%'s go i normally do them ad hoc on a cost of first make + profit and then cost per retry + profit. The profit isnt huge, just enough to make sitting down for 10-15 mins worth my while (so sometimes people who are after a MP get a right bargain when one pops out within a few makes). I never try to make MP's to sit in vault as i find the whole MP making too frustrating.

IMO it all boils down to if people want a weapon they have to pay my costs plus a bit of profit, i won't do fixed costs as i'm not a charity who's just there to provide people with cheap weapons (after i have already paid so much to get my skill where it is) at a loss to myself. I'm always fair to people and i normally get a few orders per week, but if people dont like my prices well they are perfectly entitled to go elsewhere.

 

[Bleri McThrust]

I sympathise

When I first hit 1000 points and started doing orders I was gobsmaked and outraged by the premade's market . There was no way I could compete with the 300G 99% weapons. It wasnt as though there were a lot of LGM WC'ers then either. So I abandoned any idea of advertising my wares and made just for Guild and friends.

If I do an MP order (for said friends) I am guilty of advertising the 99% ones at silly prices within our Alliance. But this is mainly because of having given up the idea of getting rich on it. If I want to get rich Im better of salvaging than crafting TBH.

I have made a large loss on 1 item. That was an MP shield for a guildie. With the shield taking 147 retries I just didnt have the heart to ask the full price. However as he blew it up getting it SC'ed the next one is gonna cost him

It would be nice if there was a general pricing startegy (similar to the seals market, although charging a fixed price regardless of retries isnt the answer). Then the selling point would be Customer Service more than anything else. Is the crafter currently spending all there time crafting or does he do it occasionally etc ?

 

[parlain]

The in's and outs of crafting

Time=Money
Crafting=Money / Materials + Time


The reason why most crafters don't craft any more or just craft for friends is that there is next to no profit in crafting; as Pin says it's much more profitable just to farm drops and salvage or even farm diamond seals on Prince runs in DF if open.

The reason crafters craft, well at least the reason I craft, is as a favour to friends or just for the feeling that I am strengthening my realm; a person with a decent suit of SC armour is able to have more of an effect in RvR than without (without factoring in all the other usual factors etc.)

That and the community factor amongst the majority of the crafters (at least there was before I went away, might still be the same but haven't been back long enough to tell!) I remember the cunning days of palming off beggars that came to Camelot have changing my surname and sending them to Khalen; a tactic then copied by Kcini Yeroon and briefly Mishy ^^

Referring to the crafting discussions on pricing, items should really be priced under the cost of average materials that it would take to make it; things like MP or luck of the draw i.e. getting that 99% in one try is payment for the crafters TIME especially with fixed prices.

The idea of fixed prices is that buyers want no risk and since they want no risk they cannot present a claim to the rewards that may go with making that item, either making a 99% early or getting a MP; if they want the rewards they can claim the risk that goes with it and pay base cost +retry cost+ mark-up for time spent.
If someone orders a 99% from me they get a fixed price if it's in stock-if it's not I'll either give them the same fixed price and make it (friends) or say it's not and ask if they want it per retry; if they don't then depending on how much free time I have at that moment (and how much giv endo/slam/driving hassle I get from my guild) I'll either do it for them or politely turn them down; after all in the time it takes me to:

Log on my tailor or find one
Buy the materials and make the base cloth/leather or pay a mark-up for base items
Transfer those items to my Armourer
Make the piece

At cost price if it takes 6+ retries I lose money, 5 and I've spent ~20+minutes making it for nothing, less and I make a profit, and would have made more in a farming group.

All in all anyone who had delusions about getting rich from crafting is kidding themselves; I would have spend less cash and time lving to 800; hinging and giving someone 20-25P to make my MP plate suit than the money and time I have spent on my crafting.


Do I regret it? Not very often (usually when my MP attempts run into the 200+ mark)

Did I enjoy skilling up? When I had company it was lots of fun and it was a good break from the tedium of constant RvR or mind numbing PvE.

Did I make money from it? Hell no

Getting back to the original point: market forces will determine prices; if they are not to your liking either charge more or get out of the business

Sorry for the exceedingly long post-crafting is as near and dear to me as the satisfaction of bashing elphs d0rfs and twolls

Parlain

P.S. WARNING: those who done want to see maths look stop reading NOW!

How pricing works

99% It is general knowledge that your basic chance of getting a 99% item is 1/6 or once in 6 trys. This is an on average numbers as in on average it will take 1 in 6 trys to make your 99%; by no means is it an absolute value as will be demonstrated earlier.

The retry cost is simply the base material cost less the money you receive for selling the item back to the merchant; the cost of retrying to make the item; for most items this is circa. 25% and thus the most rudimentary on costing figures are based around cost price + 6 retries; or 150% mark-up on base cost price (6*25=150)

This is a slight error if working on this strategy though as the crafter does not take into account the original make; in effect you have had 7 trys (1st try plus 6 retries) so really the mark-up should be 125%

That’s the simple rule-here’s the reason why it works and why taking orders without stock is risky…

Percentages and probabilities are rarely this simple; looking at the probability analysis we find out the following

1st try 1/6 chance for 99 or 16.66% chance of it happening on 1st try

2nd try 1/6 chance for 99 or a 13.88% chance of it happening given that you didn’t get a 99 on the 1st try (probability of not getting 99 on 1st try multiplied by the probability of getting it this try = 83.33%*16.66%=13.88%); cumulatively this gives a %change for obtaining a 99% within 2 tries at 30.55%

3rd try 1/6 chance for 99% or a 11.57% change of it happening given that you didn’t get a 99 on the 1st or 2nd try (83.33%*83.33%*16.66%=11.57%) or a cumulative chance of 42.13%

4th try 1/6 basic; 9.65% adjusted for previous; 51.77
5th try 1/6; 8.04; 59.81

6th try 1/6; 5.58; 72.09

From these numbers you can see that every time a crafter goes off to make an item from scratch he only has a 72% chance of taking 6 try’s or less to make the object and only a 60% chance to make profit.

What happens next is that we multiple the chance to make a 99 at that particular try by the profit made at that point and reverse engineer the percentile figure to find the fair price to change

i.e. make on 1st try change is 16.666%, base cost is 100%; profit=selling price(in %) less base cost; weighted profit=profit*chance of it happening

Going though this process and determining the selling price where weighted profit=0 though trial and error =225% or the cost of the original item plus 5 retries.

To sum up; over time at this fair price the only profit the crafter makes comes from Masterprices; taking orders when and item is not in stock bears with it a basic 28% chance of losing money but a weighted fair price in the long run, which is why it's a risk to take 99% orders at this price

Phew! Thanks for reading

 

[Kurik BHM]

nice reading.....

i got a nice solution though...

just do like this:

http://www23.brinkster.com/tleilax/daoc/sshot009.jpg

 

[parlain]

Yeh next time you have a bad run...

BLAME KURIK!!!!

He's mashing the averages!

 

[Kurik BHM]

all MPs are belongs to me..

dunno what happend but somone set me us up teh MP :wink2:

 

[Thorarin]

Originally posted by Elric IA
The only way to do fixed cost is to have sufficient knowledge of the risk involved that you will either not lose money or that over a period of time the gains outweigh the losses. Unless anyone here is cleverer than me I would not like to try this with the Random Number Generator (RGN) we have.

For instance is there a separate RGN for crafting or is it the same one for determining critical hits, misses, evaddes in PvP and PvE?

Since it's a RANDOM number generator, that would make no sense at all, you only need one.

Flipping a coin and getting 'heads' does not increase the chance of getting 'tails' later on. The same goes for the ideal random number generator, and using the same generator for everything should improve the randomness of the generator for crafting purposes, if it makes a difference at all.

Personally I would like to see crafters have the ability to combine, say, 8 99% items into a single masterpiece, losing 7 items. I need to recheck my calculations, but I believe using 8 items for this and changing the base MP chance from 2% to 1.5% would result in the same average price for MPs, but a lot less variance, and thus a lot less risk for crafter and/or buyer. Also it would help get rid of those endless 99% stock items you will never sell before you get another MP order

 

[Khalen]

But in general there are hardly 99% premade these days... The only time when people have em are when they did a MP order and try to get some money back for em (to lower cost for MP for customer (at least in my case)) But nowadays I hardly wait for people who want 99% (did that earlier but the market is becoming a bit stuffed to stack my vault full with stuff). Personally I don't see what the problem is... People usually ask around if someone has a premade for sale if not they order anyway...

 

[Mundokar]

Originally posted by Olgark
Fixed prices pah.
Even now in Mid there are people being ripped off by crafters. One reason I have not yet bought any MP stuff for SCing. I would rather level up my own crafters than pay the extortionate amounts they want. For example I wanted a suite of gossimer ( af 20) cloth for my level 24 Bonedancer was given the price of 300 gold from my own guild. Looked out of the guild and got one for 30 gold.

People start to fix prices I will under cut them and sell at a much lower price.

Good luck on levelling your own crafters. This is just the kind of attitude that send a lot of crafters in hiding.

a. You underestimate the time needed to level a crafter
b. You underestimate the money needed to level a crafter
c. You underestimate the time (real time !) it takes to make a f....g fullset of MP armor

P.S. 300g !!! must have been a typo by your guildie, thats insane

 

[nerve]

Originally posted by Thorarin
Since it's a RANDOM number generator, that would make no sense at all, you only need one.

Flipping a coin and getting 'heads' does not increase the chance of getting 'tails' later on. The same goes for the ideal random number generator, and using the same generator for everything should improve the randomness of the generator for crafting purposes, if it makes a difference at all.

What people always seem to forget is that these numbers are generated by a computer algorithm, hence this CANNOT be compared to real-life 'flipping a coin', the latter being truely random, the first NOT (I don't care what every itty bitty programmer comes whining now about the random() function they so truely trust).

 

[gunner440]

i sell 99ers at 400-450g or retry basis depending on stock availability.

if not i just craft random weapons and keep the 99s to be sold later


dunno why you guys complain about not getting stuff sold

99 sabres LD GR and such sell like pancakes ^^

 

[Puppetmistress]

Originally posted by nerve
What people always seem to forget is that these numbers are generated by a computer algorithm, hence this CANNOT be compared to real-life 'flipping a coin', the latter being truely random, the first NOT (I don't care what every itty bitty programmer comes whining now about the random() function they so truely trust).

Actually there are enough ways to get a good random-number in a game like DAOC.

Perhaps it's not entirely like flipping a coin, but saying it's impossible to get a good random-number from a game like DAOC is bull.

 

[StormriderX]

Re: The in's and outs of crafting

Originally posted by parlain
Time=Money
Crafting=Money / Materials + Time


The reason why most crafters don't craft any more or just craft for friends is that there is next to no profit in crafting; as Pin says it's much more profitable just to farm drops and salvage or even farm diamond seals on Prince runs in DF if open.

The reason crafters craft, well at least the reason I craft, is as a favour to friends or just for the feeling that I am strengthening my realm; a person with a decent suit of SC armour is able to have more of an effect in RvR than without (without factoring in all the other usual factors etc.)

That's precisely why I quit heh.

 

[Thorarin]

Originally posted by nerve
What people always seem to forget is that these numbers are generated by a computer algorithm, hence this CANNOT be compared to real-life 'flipping a coin', the latter being truely random, the first NOT (I don't care what every itty bitty programmer comes whining now about the random() function they so truely trust).

If you had read my post, you would have known you could have spared yourself this explanation:

"...and using the same generator for everything should improve the randomness of the generator for crafting purposes, if it makes a difference at all."

Using the same 'random' number generator for multiple purposes creates effectively more random numbers for those purposes.

 

[nerve]

Originally posted by Puppetmistress
Actually there are enough ways to get a good random-number in a game like DAOC.

Perhaps it's not entirely like flipping a coin, but saying it's impossible to get a good random-number from a game like DAOC is bull.

I never said it was impossible to program a decent random number generator, I'm saying that I doubt VERY much that the CURRENT method, as in the one being used, is a decent one...

 

[nerve]

Originally posted by Thorarin
If you had read my post, you would have known you could have spared yourself this explanation:

"...and using the same generator for everything should improve the randomness of the generator for crafting purposes, if it makes a difference at all."

Using the same 'random' number generator for multiple purposes creates effectively more random numbers for those purposes.

And how do you know that isn't the case already ? Not that I see how this would affect results in any way...

 

[Carlos Bananos]

Are we all talking about that same random number generator that allows me to make over 300 102AF jerkins without a MP, and then 'magically' makes 4 MP hinges in a row?


Yea, it works gr8

 

[nerve]

Originally posted by Carlos Bananos
Are we all talking about that same random number generator that allows me to make over 300 102AF jerkins without a MP, and then 'magically' makes 4 MP hinges in a row?


Yea, it works gr8

'lucky' or 'unlucky' streaks are part of a truely genuine random number evolution. Without them, it would definitely NOT be truely random. Shows how much people know about random numbers, but still have an opinion on them...

I'd say, study up, or keep it to yourself...lot's of good documents on random numbers to be found around the internet.