The frustration of crafters

[timer]

Dear crafters,

I'm becoming a very frustrated legendary crafter and I think this could all have been avoided. I have been talking with some other legendary crafters, and I noticed the same frustration. Perhaps we should act mutually on this. What is it all about, well, let me try to explain it.

1/ First you decide to become a crafter. You craft for a couple of months, daily, and after 15 plat or so, you become a legendary 1100+ crafter. Congratulations. The money you invested could have been used for something else like a nice armour, spellcrafted and all with a nice weapon or staff, but no, you wanted to be a crafter, you are one now. OK, you are broke, but what the hell---> you are legendary

2/ Then you want to sell stuff, the high level goods offcourse. You notice that only 99% and MP stuff sells, the rest is no good anymore due to the spellcrafting requirements for 99%+ items. So, in addition to your already invested 15 plat, you have to create these very costly items, over and over again, and you have to hope for a 99% one. Sometimes, it comes after 1 retry, sometimes, after 24. This means 24 times over 1 minute of crafting, buying materials, selling the "bad' stuff to the merchant, etc. Bottom-line, you spend a lot of money. Count at least 5 plat to start crafting.

3/ Now the funny part begins. Price setting. Basically, if you need to try 5 times for a 99% piece, you can charge a 2 times cost of materials price. But, that's wishfull thinking, because most of the time, you need 6-8 retries and even more. Today, I use a 2.65 times cost of materials price for 99% items, which pays barely the costs.... For your info, a 2 times cost of materials means that a scale AF102 99% set costs 3.2p, 2.65 means it cost 4.3p, a big difference. With a 3 times cost of materials, you go over 5p.

4/ You try to balance carefully between cost and profit, and quess what happens, everyone starts flaming you're a profit maker, too expensive, etc, etc. Well, well, where is the fun in that ?

5/ If you are lucky, and sometimes we are, we get a MP. Until today, I've had 4 and I've sold them for 10 and for 12 times the material cost. Some say that's cheap (15 times is used alot), some say its expensive. Either way, the money I have today in my inv comes from those MP's, because I have no profit selling 99%.

6/ Then we have all those guys/galls who order suits they never collect. I have 4 in my vault atm, meaning that it is filled with suits, ordered from ppl who desperately needed it and really could not wait. No, I will not mention names, who cares after all ?

Well, I think that enough is enough. This has to stop. What can we do ? Some options maybe ?

1/ We can quit playing. We've had it. Enough is enough.

2/ Mythic could change the time needed to craft at 1100+ level. Why do we still need to wait over 1 minute for one item, that we have to sell to a merchant ? We could ask this via rightnow with a large number of ppl.

3/ Mythic could change the crafting interface in a way that we can select that only 99% items or above should be crafted using a long delay. The result would be that you would either have a 99% or MP, but the waiting time or money cost would be exponential.

4/ We could agree on "normal" mark-ups for crafted goods (99% and MP) and inform the community of this so that everyone knows that 2.65 for 99% and 12 for MP is a fair deal, or any other deal.

5/ maybe something else ?

Please comment on this. I think it's time to act.

Timer

 

[twist]

solidarity brother! Some very vaild points, my tailor makes no money from 99% or MP orders, the cash I have came from literally hours of trinketing or flogging tons of af96 leather to ACers for scale (tho every ACer has their own tailor now).

Appealing to Rightnow will do no good - it's Mythic not GOA who set the rules.

The only workable option is for all crafters to agree prices - but I wish you luck if you try to arrange that :/

Personally I now keep stock of 99% stuff and sell that only. If I get an MP then great but I'll only take MP orders if i'm bored....

 

[rayzor_e_w]

crafters don't get a good deal imo.

I hear of WC'ers making a loss on 99% Lvl 51 weapons, which sounds terrible. AC'ers selling full 99% sets for minimal profit.

A fair price is all crafters are after.

 

[rayzor_e_w]

and all them hours spent getting to lgm are no fun.

 

[vandar]

Aye, the market is flooded with cheap goods from people either selling 99% items from skilling up or peps who have 99% items from attempting to make MP or just plain silly peps.

I seems strange really how prices are down as lets face it, DF opens, EVERYONE goes to farm. Hence, the average Joe has enough cash to afford to pay 2-2.5 * cost.

I don't generally take orders from non guildies now as I can't be assed with setting a price of 2.5 * cost and they whinge I'm too expensive or setting 2 * cost and loosing money.

On the limitations of the interface, lol, I only started crafting to make my own MP stuff, made my scouts full MP, gave up on pally with 4 out of 6 bored (and skint )

Note to all crafters, don't sell cheap.

 

[Bellona]

Ive ust spend bout a month, and 22p on getting lgm wc, and i have vaults (2) filled with 99%, unable to sell it at a price where i can still keep my income positive.

since im rather new, im surprised that 3 times it has happend that people order, its done and they never pick it up, and neither do i get ym money, and if they have ordered a 99%, then im fooked, cause i will never be able to sell it to another for the same price.

and btw. people saying 400g is too much for 99% L51 weapons, as cabo pointed out in a ealier post. 3 tries on longdirks with 20% markup is 403g, thats more than a fair price for a 99% in stock, ive made some 99's from the start, and i easily get maybe 5-10 tries on those.

the frustration is a wide problem, thats exactly why i stopped spellcrafting for people, the only thing i do with it now, is making complete sets, 8 items with 5 point oc // 2000g

atm i am enjoying my wc'er, but if things continue and people still will be whining and flamming me for being expensive, then u can frecking roll your own crafter.

and a little example.. i made 2 MP longdirks in my time.

1. was on 46 tries = costprice 2.6p
2. was on 105 tries = costprice 5.6p

so selling the first longdirk for 3.5p ill earn 900g, but i acnt sell the 2nd for more than 3.5p either, so then i still loose 1.2p on selling those two, luckily this is not the case, as they are for myself/friends

 

[rolgar]

Good points Timer.

I'm LGM myself. But I don't craft anymore.
I don't accept any order. (I might consider a request)

In the tailoring business it is exactly the same as in AC.
99% suits are sometimes sold at or slightly abouve the materials price for 1 try...

When I saw that, I quit crafting. From that time I only craft for my personal use (and some exceptions for friends)
In fact if an unknown asks me for a suit, I say 8P for 1 try. Don't like my price, seek another or level your own.
Period.
Discussion closed.
And the first to flame about my refuse to craft => ignore list.

I don't expect anything from Mythic or Goa.
I don't believe it is possible to get all crafters organised.

/puts sewing kit in vault
Rolgar

 

[godfried]

Well i really think mythic doesn't have to change the crafting mechanism....
What has to change is the community. I'm for a few months a very active crafter now and i have fun, get appreciated and ppl are paying what they should without whining 'too expensive'. It was different a few months ago when max. price for a 99% wpn was 300 gp...Guess what happened? All wc'ers retired and ppl couldn't get the weapons as fast as they can now. Then we had a little conversation with the most active crafters in that time and decided to put our prices like this: 99% @400gp and mp's @3.5p (or with base/retry system). Most wc'ers use those prices now, only 2 or so are not doing that cuz they only craft mp's for guildies and are not interested in pricesetting so they dump their goods below 99%'s cost on market. If someone ever tells me ur price is too high then i say 'feel free to go to an other crafter' and i tell em what craftin' is all about for me....

So generally on alb/exc wc we came a loooong way but things are good as they are atm Just a pity of the 2-3 crafters who still sell at dump prices....

Cheers

 

[Draylor]

Theres nothing at all in this post that you couldnt have found out easily before you started crafting saving yourself alot of hassle.

1. Take a few MP orders, sell on the resulting 99s, problem of being broke solved.

2. 99% items come from MP leftovers - anything else is just a waste of gold. With very few exceptions (weapons for unpopular speclines mainly) theres no need to buy 99% items paying per-retry.

Oh, and with less than 10p of available funds I wouldnt even bother trying to craft. (Material cost for a batch of 20 AF102 chest pieces)

3. 99% suits are MP leftovers - pricing them any other way is not going to be accepted by those buying. Very few people would pay 3 times material cost for these now, theres just too many MP attempts being made.

4. Making a reasonable profit at fair prices is easy. If someone doesnt like your prices tell them to go elsewhere Had a great laugh the other day when someone decided my tailors prices were too expensive, so they had someone else make the items charging per-retry. They decided to whine at me when it ended up costing more. Not sure what response they expected, but I dont think "I did warn you - still think my prices are unfair?" was what they wanted to hear

5. In the long run selling MPs at 10 times material cost will leave you struggling to break even unless your getting very good prices for 99% items (see above - it wont happen)

6. Cash in advance from anyone you dont know well enough to trust. It doesnt have to be the full (expected) amount, just enough to ensure that if they do 'disappear' you can sell the items elsewhere and cover your costs.

The best solution to the 99%=junk problems would be to make MP items significantly rarer. But that would not be a popular change

 

[i-scream]

As a spellcrafter it's a bit different: I'm only interested in 99%, never interested in MP. Any way, I also have to make my retries, my maximum is 33 times to get a 99% and you know you need 24 jewels for a full suit.

I kept track of all my crafting. Until now I've made about 175 jewels at 99 % and I must say that the average number of retries is acceptable. I'm only crafting at the moment for guildies, cause spellcrafting is not really "the ultimate fun". My average time to imbue a full suit is about 4 hours. I absolutely need to be alone while doing this, I am always afk, I don't look at any chat, I am always anon and I really need to be 100 % concentrated because i don't want to screw up someone elses MP or 99%.

I've made up my own price list. When reading the boards, my prices are very acceptable. Other crafters might say I'm cheap, but since I'm only crafting for guildies atm, my price can be a bit lower.

When you have more than 1 crafter in the game, you'll always have differences in price. I think it's very difficult to make price agreements with the others. I would just suggest you to craft at an acceptable price, which sounds reasonable to you. If others find this is too expensive, they can go elsewhere.

If a crafter is crafting under a normal price, he can't do this for a long time.

Oh, and asking some money before starting seems very reasonable to me too.

 

[Noche]

Can not be happier that I chose alchemy tbh. Atm the price of mudane craftart is crazy all around, some VERY expensive ones and some extremely cheap ones.... Even alchemy got ppl who charges a VERY silly price (they earn like 15g for an ablative, go figure...), sometimes it´s extremely annoying when u used 30-35p (the old alchy when u couldn´t do those 1k special potions) to reach the ablative lvl with like 10p of loans to pay back and u must face those ppl ><

Price setting is really really hard afaik, even for alchemy (which at least in my realm is rare second to the hiding SCers), u got flamed coz ppl say it´s too expensive (it´s always too expensive for em), and u got flamed by ur own fellow crafters coz they don´t wanna sell at same price but lower to "sell more". (why can´t they understand that in the long run it ruins all the possible markets and saturates em) Competition is never good for crafters, a good example is tailoring which got far too much competition due to how cheap it can be lvled.

 

[Puppetmistress]

I gave up on crafting. I started Spellcrafting when we got it and already didn't like the sitting at the table for countless hours. At 800 SC'ing I was broke. Some guy (guildie) asked me to do his set and we argued about the fact I couldn't probably make it. Being 800 SC wasn't a very good start to do his 32/28 overcharge. We tried, and I succeeded. We tried again... again success..


Did some more SC'ing, skilled up to around 820 and noticed all the gems that are needed in most common templates are grey. I see no point levelling my SC'er any higher, screw peeps who want +25 stats and I tell them to let their focus-staves done by someone else

It takes me less then 2 hours to do a full set, so I am fairly fast. I used to be much slower but I found a rather good system: Load their SC-template in your calculator and run DAOC in Windowed mode. With some dragging of the windows you can see the names of the gems and run DAOC on top. Goes quite fast (for me).

4 hours for a full set is abit too long imo. That's, for 6 pieces, 40 minutes/piece or 10 mins/gem. I most often stock up on the required gem (Mon, Pal etc etc), a shitload of 'essence of life, ground draconic scales etc etc' and 50 of the third ingredient / gem. Then I can carry all stuff for 4 gems to the table and start crafting.

Helps alot if you clear your inventory btw before you begin

 

[Mishy]

So generally on alb/exc wc we came a loooong way but things are good as they are atm Just a pity of the 2-3 crafters who still sell at dump prices....

Well i dont take orders anymore... kinda lost the will to live after doing that for 6 months!

I will still do orders for guildies and friends, and if i do a masterpeice order then im one of these crafters who will sell at "dump prices" Simply because i want to get rid of the stock, and since the person paying for the mp order has already covered the cost of these 99% leftovers, its basicly pure profit when you sell these on.

When i did craft, i never sold pre-made stock because it simply cost me money, and only ever did per-retry pricing. I belive this is the only pricing system that is fair to the crafter, and if people refuse to pay that way, then they need to find someone else to make their items.

The crafting system designed by mythic is totally flawed. No one wants anything below 99% - if the whole quality issue was taken out of crafting, i believe then people can set fair prices, as everyone has the same base cost.

I think that if anyone starts crafting to try make some profit, then dont waste your time, its simply not worth it,

Level a char to 800 tailor, raise the metalwork to 800, then spend your time trinketing diamond seals.

 

[Elric IA]

Just make to order like I do. I do not have the cash nor the vault space to 'speculate' making weapons in the hope of 99%/MPs to sell on. If the chances were more predictable then i might do that but especially with weaponcrafting you can get MP hilt and blade and 94% weapon (roll on patch 1.63). Last big batch of MP left overs I had took nearly 3 months to sell.

I have had moaners who thought that a 7-8 try 99% is too expensive compared to MP leftover 99% prices but you tell them they agreed to the price and the fact you were doing retries in the first place. I have come close twice to informing GMs of serious moaners but a bit of hard diplomacy gets you the cash.

As for the 'must have the weapon now then do not log for 6 weeks brigade' then I always take down people's name and guild so I can pass on messages or find out about alt's names. I know your guild (Jupiter) are very good and have even posted on your forums to members that the weapon order that a member has placed with me is ready.

I have only had one person never reappear (and they still have not) and lost 500g on that one. It is a risk you may have to take although selling to unknown players.

Trinketing seals bought or gained through hunting is more profitable than crafting in general.

 

[Puppetmistress]

Originally posted by Elric IA
Trinketing seals bought or gained through hunting is more profitable than crafting in general.

Yup, so true (looks at his 800 tailor, not 1 skill point more and 800 MW/800 WW)


Not gonna go any higher soon, it's not fun to craft (imo) and the prices of armour are very good in my eyes. I wouldn't even mind paying slightly more if that kept crafters crafting.

But: I would be a thief of my own money if I bought cloth for 1,5 plat if someone else sells the same pieces for 1,2 plat.

It's not only the customer his fault, it's mostly the fault of crafters 'dumping' the market with cheap stuff and spoiling customers with their prices.

If you payed like X gold a few times for something you think it's normal and feel 'ripped off' if you suddenly have to pay X+Y.

 

[Gwizz]

There really shouldn't be a problem here whatever your needs..

I recently paid 5p for an MP + a 99% cloth set, reguardless as to whether I thought it was a rip-off (which I didn't)..the point is I had a choice, you either pay the asking price or go look elsewhere, if you get lucky & find cheaper then good luck, if not then go without..

At the end of the day if there's crafters out there willing to sell their wares to break even or make a loss then just as is RL their buisness will go down, for those like myself who tended to charge the going rate to make a slight profit then you'll find with SC the supply & demand is just too great. I recently needed a two week break from the game because I found 6+ hours SC'ing for customer orders everyday a total bore.

Bottom line for me is, when I start full-time SC again MY prices are going up & as said above the customer has his/her choice.."take it or leave it"..

Lastly, any moaners straight /ignore

 

[Simius]

Originally posted by Gwizz
I recently needed a two week break from the game because I found 6+ hours SC'ing for customer orders everyday a total bore.

Should get a spellcrafters union going, mandatory holidays and psychiatric bills paid for.

 

[Gwizz]

Originally posted by Simius
Should get a spellcrafters union going, mandatory holidays and psychiatric bills paid for.

*Funny

 

[Moody]

As a legendary WC, I only take orders from guildies. I tried for a while to craft for other people but 90% of the players fail to realise that 99% quality does NOT happen every 2 or 3 tries. And when you DO meet a nice player you pop a 99% after the 12th try and feel a jerk to charge them so much. I once paid 1.8 plat for a 98% sabre from Mishy because the 99% wouldn't pop. I didn't make a big deal out of that and dried my tears, but try and explain that to the leet kiddies when it happens.

Only stuff I sell to others are things I got in the vault, MP's I made while crafting for myself or if someone stands in Diogel broadcasting for 30 minutes without getting an answer because I'm too nice to ignore them longer.

I do take BG orders once in a while because it isnt that expensive and the customers are filthy rich wanting to ubertwink their BG infil.

And indeed people flogging 99%s leftovers from an MP order completely destroy the market for any craft.

 

[Mishy]

I once paid 1.8 plat for a 98% sabre from Mishy because the 99% wouldn't pop

ouch:\ 20 retrys+ aka Methos effect

 

[cathrine]

And at one occation, back when Mishy still was doing business, I'd him making 3 weapons for my infil. 2 came out as MP'es. You just never can tell.

 

[picard_locutus]

Originally posted by cathrine
And at one occation, back when Mishy still was doing business, I'd him making 3 weapons for my infil. 2 came out as MP'es. You just never can tell.

That's why I say allways charge by the number of retries and a preset % on cost and retry.
Let the customer know in advance and let them take the risk.
No way are we suposed to loose money by being "nice" and accepting orders. If u get an MP on a 99% order, ask if they want it for increased pay..

 

[Denisée]

The answer for me is very simple.

Crafting is a pain so therefor I use pay per try if I do not got it in vault. This mean I take "costprice+xx% profit". And before every deal I make sure the person are able to pay, I do not want to be leftout with MPs or 99%'s (as from experience I've found out I'm allways selling for loss then).

The price of the items you make are very different from time to time. Once I did craft a MP cloth suit for 2.2p, another time it cost me 4.6p. People who claim it is expencive will get problems getting items.

When I normaly take MP orders I'm left with 99% items, well that is ok since I sell them at a fixed prince very low. But if there should come someone and just ask if I got something in stock (since a few people know I do this) I'll just say 'no' regardlessly if I got or not. Reason for it is not to ripe of fellow crafters. I still remember when I was in that situation that it was imposible to sell 99% items with any profit at all.

So lets say someone want a lvl 51 great spiked hammer, well I check vault and don't got then tell him that I use pay per try. He ask for an estemated price, and I just tell him a price that I'll never go over even if I have to do 50 tries on it. We make a deal and I start craft. Ither I come out with the item after 1 or 2 tries or it make take over 20 tries. As for now I've had no problems in this way to craft because I make sure he is willing to pay nomatter the cost of the item. Ither he go away happy for getting a cheap deal (and as happen more than once pay me more than I ask for because he had set a price of how much he was going to spend on the item and it was far less than first espected) or he pay the price and accept the chancegame crafting really is.

For spellcrafting it is more harder to set the price. Normaly you can say 300g per item regardlessly from OC (know many do this) or mabe costprice+300g per hour (timeprice). Few I've meet do disagree with the prices because they buy items instead of craft themself.

I do whatever posible to avoid crafting normally because I know there is a chance that the price can be very high. Therefor I allways ask fellow crafters if they got anything in stock if I should need something for one of my characters.


My days as a crafter is over tbh, RvR awaits etc.
Now the only times I do craft I craft to try cap one of my crafters, there is notthing else to do for me in the craftignworld, sadly.
So ither I wait for a desent group with people I know know RvR to need me or I try make group if there are desent people around online that I know know how to play. I don't like pickupgroups so I'm ither crafting at the Alch table, Forge or Lathe while waiting for a group or making one myself.
- Only craft for people I know and it will most likely stay that way a while.

 

[cercela]

thank god for the new spellcrafting calc.

You type in how many retrys of each gem, tells you exactly price. And it will even mark it up how much you tell it to.

when i finally get lgm and start doing orders i'll be simple when asked to do an order.

I charge 1.5 times the cost, retrys included.

I think that price will be more then fair + profitable.

Whats really funny is I make most of my money know, because I say "Well you gave me a break so I'll just round cost up to nearest gold and charge you that" and people give me extra cause they are nice.

I told one guy "10g" he gave me 50 for the trouble. I guess when working with higher prices thats not so common though

 

[StormriderX]

Personally I find crafting to be highly unrewarding hence my retirement.

When I was crafting though I never ever made items just for stock purposes unless I had too much junk in vault. Otherwise I only crafted to order which meant I never made a loss.

Only way to go imo. People will buy cheapest item possible and your in stock items are worthless when someone who has a lot of 99% chest piece from a mp order, sells them for half the price you do etc.

 

[Rubric]

Basically i think the system is screwed. 3X for a 99 & 15 times for a MP. Thats a huge price hike for a 1% gain but the crafting system forces it upon you.

You could argue that nobody should make money from crafting as its all for the realm & if you want to make money you can from trinketing. Far more infact.

imo charge actual cost to make for any items. Or if people want to make a profit charge cost plus what you feel your time is worth. Or only do orders for MP's

I would rather pay more to someone like Elric than somebody else who doesnt have a great reputation or response time.

 

[i-scream]

Originally posted by Rubric
Basically i think the system is screwed. 3X for a 99 & 15 times for a MP. Thats a huge price hike for a 1% gain but the crafting system forces it upon you.

You could argue that nobody should make money from crafting as its all for the realm & if you want to make money you can from trinketing. Far more infact.

imo charge actual cost to make for any items. Or if people want to make a profit charge cost plus what you feel your time is worth. Or only do orders for MP's

I would rather pay more to someone like Elric than somebody else who doesnt have a great reputation or response time.

I'm sure you're not a crafter
To obtain a 99 % I do muuuuch more retries than what you say. I don't know for 100%, because I'm not interested in them.

Nobody argues a player may make profit by crafting, only non-crafters argue about that. It's clear that a crafter invested loads of money to get to LGM, not to speak about the time. Investment means you want something back. That could be just the pleasure of crafting (those crafters are rare), mostly they thought of getting at least their money investment back one day. I can't say Spellcrafting is amusing me, I can assure you it's a pain in the ass and if I can avoid it, I do so.

It is not true that everybody can trinket to make profit; I can't just because I'm a spellcrafter. I can't even salvage jewels, wheter they are drops or player crafted.

And if you want to craft at cost price, like you said in your post, why not. But I can assure you, you'll not be crafting for a long time.

This is not a flame against you, it's only meant to make you aware that things are not the way you see it. The best way to understand the crafters business, is to start a craft yourself and to level to LGM. Don't stop at 700 or so like a lot do, in fact crafting only starts at that level.

 

[Molten Lava]

What?

What is everyone talking about 2-3 time the cost for a 99%....on the last 250 lvl 51 items I got about 17% 99%.....selling them for 2-3 times cost would generate me a huge loss....do you guys really get 1/3 99%? am I doing something wrong?

 

[Whisperess]

Average for 99% qua is supposed to be 1/6 afaik.

 

[Draylor]

Re: What?

Originally posted by Molten Lava
on the last 250 lvl 51 items I got about 17% 99%.....selling them for 2-3 times cost would generate me a huge loss

Well 17% is exactly what youd expect - 1 in 6.

Most crafted items sell back to merchants for 75% of material price, so assuming thats the case average cost is roughly the material cost + cost of 5 retries: 1 + (5 * 0.25) = 2.25

Selling them for 2 times cost, or perhaps a little less, still allows for a small profit if you sell the 5 MPs youd expect to make in those 250 attempts for a decent price.

Of course when luck turns bad and you dont get any MPs this starts to get very expensive.