Player Vendors - high rent slow sales

[Atis]

Game markets are nothing like RL ones. Only basic supply/demand principle stays the same, motivation is not comparable. Mistake IRL might make you a homeless bum, mistake in game will make you shrug and grind some more cash or stuff to sell. trending products IRL make crowds crazy (see new iPhone lines), new meta items in PG will probably be noticed by 3 ppl at first. Basically, game market is always soft and safe, game economics better be planned with that in mind.

[Celtia]

In every game I played since EQ, economy is what drives the game to last. It is a big factor. When economy dies out, game does so with it (in most instances I have noticed). However, I am worried the economy style in this game is not a long lasting one, i fear.

I am loving this game. Even though I have been playing only since Steam Launch. I have been reading most of these threads about economy and the lack of due to player population, etc.

I think the problem why, is that there is no need for an economy in this game. Due to the fact that everyone can use and mostly need to use everything they get, via favor/crafting/quests. etc.

What makes economies actually work, is limiting players to only 1-2 crafts at a time (not including Industry), with a hefty cost in a way to switch out a craft. Also, somehow try to fail-safe where players can not create an alt for every craft. Almost all economies in mmo's do well when limiting crafts because then items crafted and the items needed will be in the market and constantly needed. Why I will never partake in Gorgon's economy because A) it takes A lot of hassle to even check every stand I am noticing. B) There is no need when every player can be self sufficient. C) Why master a crafting skill like weapon/armor in a sense when everyone mostly likely will level it up end game and no need to craft something more than once.

This is why almost every mmo limits crafting skills. Think about RL, if every person in the world can easily get milk and sold milk. Why would milk be for sale at stores.

my two councils.

[sudostahp]

In every game I played since EQ, economy is what drives the game to last. It is a big factor. When economy dies out, game does so with it (in most instances I have noticed). However, I am worried the economy style in this game is not a long lasting one, i fear.

I am loving this game. Even though I have been playing only since Steam Launch. I have been reading most of these threads about economy and the lack of due to player population, etc.

I think the problem why, is that there is no need for an economy in this game. Due to the fact that everyone can use and mostly need to use everything they get, via favor/crafting/quests. etc.

What makes economies actually work, is limiting players to only 1-2 crafts at a time (not including Industry), with a hefty cost in a way to switch out a craft. Also, somehow try to fail-safe where players can not create an alt for every craft. Almost all economies in mmo's do well when limiting crafts because then items crafted and the items needed will be in the market and constantly needed. Why I will never partake in Gorgon's economy because A) it takes A lot of hassle to even check every stand I am noticing. B) There is no need when every player can be self sufficient. C) Why master a crafting skill like weapon/armor in a sense when everyone mostly likely will level it up end game and no need to craft something more than once.

This is why almost every mmo limits crafting skills. Think about RL, if every person in the world can easily get milk and sold milk. Why would milk be for sale at stores.

my two councils.

I can count the number of crafting skills in-game on one hand that will ever turn a player a profit. In most cases, crafting skills here are a fun time/cash sink. Think of crafting as another way to spend money. The materials are important drivers of the economy, and since anyone can learn any number of crafting skills, demand for many crafting-related items remains high.

You're still new, so you don't know how much it's going to cost to get a combat skill from 50-70. It's going to force you to grind something, somewhere, to make it happen, an in effect also contribute to the economy.

[Tagamogi]

I can count the number of crafting skills in-game on one hand that will ever turn a player a profit.

Off the top of my head, I'd call leatherworking, carpentry, toolcrafting, tailoring, cooking, mushroom farming and transmutation all profitable. That's more fingers than most people have on one hand. Part of why I like the PG crafting system so much is that almost any trade skill can be profitable if you level it carefully. (Well, ok, I'd call brewing and cheese making fun money sinks at this point in time, but to me it feels that skills like that are more the exception than the rule).

What makes economies actually work, is limiting players to only 1-2 crafts at a time (not including Industry), with a hefty cost in a way to switch out a craft.

We may be talking about different things, but in my opinion what makes an economy work well is having a strong demand for items that are in strong supply. PG accomplishes that quite nicely by supplementing player demand with game-generated work orders. I guess you could argue that non-player work orders will drive up inflation over time, but that's a somewhat different issue.

[sudostahp]

Off the top of my head, I'd call leatherworking, carpentry, toolcrafting, tailoring, cooking, mushroom farming and transmutation all profitable. That's more fingers than most people have on one hand. Part of why I like the PG crafting system so much is that almost any trade skill can be profitable if you level it carefully. (Well, ok, I'd call brewing and cheese making fun money sinks at this point in time, but to me it feels that skills like that are more the exception than the rule).



We may be talking about different things, but in my opinion what makes an economy work well is having a strong demand for items that are in strong supply. PG accomplishes that quite nicely by supplementing player demand with game-generated work orders. I guess you could argue that non-player work orders will drive up inflation over time, but that's a somewhat different issue.

Leatherworking, toolcrafting, and tailoring aren't profitable if you account for the opportunity cost of the materials used to level them. Transmutation used to be a money maker, but since the nerf it's just a convenience. Cooking is questionably profitable, especially with the recent change to food costs.

Every crafting skill has fixed costs and variable costs.

Fixed costs are the training costs and recipe costs. To be profitable, the margin of the activity needs to compensate for the materials (variable costs) and the fixed costs. The problem with most crafting skills is that the margin is so thin that it's often negative. Cooking, for example, used to have decent margins. Now the only profit comes from work orders, and it just isn't worth the time compared to another activity. I say that it's arguably profitable since every character needs some level of cooking, so it's a skill that you're going to level anyway.

Toolcrafting and blacksmithing are perhaps the least profitable. Leathercrafting and tailoring benefits from some good-value work orders, but even then, the margins aren't great when you consider the alternative of just selling the raw goods. Even then, it'll take less than five minutes to find someone that will craft whatever you want, provided you have the materials -- you get the items for the work order, they get the xp, but you pay none of the fixed costs involved in that exchange. There are no leather or cloth goods that can be produced for less than what a vendor will pay, so work orders are the only choice.

[Tagamogi]

Leatherworking, toolcrafting, and tailoring aren't profitable if you account for the opportunity cost of the materials used to level them. Transmutation used to be a money maker, but since the nerf it's just a convenience. Cooking is questionably profitable, especially with the recent change to food costs.

At least for leatherworking, the leveling material cost is zero as long as you are willing to wait on work orders that match your current skill level. You still have to train the appropriate recipes, but given that medium to high level leather work orders make you thousands of councils per order, I don't think the training costs are a big concern.

Tailoring and toolcrafting are a bit more iffy since there are fewer work orders for them, but if you are willing to level slowly, they are not that expensive to level and the higher level work orders pay out quite a bit, even though their effort/reward ratio is less awesome than leatherworking's. Technically, you can also get an infinite supply of tailoring materials, as long as you are willing to spend the time to farm up the cotton yourself. (Possibly worth mentioning - I'm talking about leveling a skill as opposed to learning all available recipes. There a many lower level tailoring recipes I haven't learned yet and buying them all is definitely more in the fun money sink category.)

In my opinion, transmutation is a money maker just because it allows you to compress loot into fewer slots. The items themselves will sell for more than phlog, but if you are in the middle of a dungeon and out of room, phlog is better than not being able to pick up anything new.

Cooking ... I think it makes you money if you enjoy gardening. Since I don't like gardening that much, this was possibly not my best profit pick. The cooking work orders pay ok if you consider the base costs of the materials, but it can take quite a bit of effort to get everything collected.

[sudostahp]

At least for leatherworking, the leveling material cost is zero as long as you are willing to wait on work orders that match your current skill level. You still have to train the appropriate recipes, but given that medium to high level leather work orders make you thousands of councils per order, I don't think the training costs are a big concern.

Tailoring and toolcrafting are a bit more iffy since there are fewer work orders for them, but if you are willing to level slowly, they are not that expensive to level and the higher level work orders pay out quite a bit, even though their effort/reward ratio is less awesome than leatherworking's. Technically, you can also get an infinite supply of tailoring materials, as long as you are willing to spend the time to farm up the cotton yourself. (Possibly worth mentioning - I'm talking about leveling a skill as opposed to learning all available recipes. There a many lower level tailoring recipes I haven't learned yet and buying them all is definitely more in the fun money sink category.)

In my opinion, transmutation is a money maker just because it allows you to compress loot into fewer slots. The items themselves will sell for more than phlog, but if you are in the middle of a dungeon and out of room, phlog is better than not being able to pick up anything new.

Cooking ... I think it makes you money if you enjoy gardening. Since I don't like gardening that much, this was possibly not my best profit pick. The cooking work orders pay ok if you consider the base costs of the materials, but it can take quite a bit of effort to get everything collected.

You're ignoring opportunity costs when you say that cooking can make money if you enjoy gardening. You can make far more just by filling work orders for beets, barley, and corn, than you will trying to add value with cooking. Cotton is the same. You're going to make more selling raw cotton than you will by filling work orders for tailoring gear.

Great cloth pants pay 17,680 for 10. We'll ignore the industry bonus to work orders for now. That's 1,768 per pair of pants. How much does that pair of pants require to make?

2 redwall crystals, let's assume you get a good deal at 100 each.

Check my math here. This is a list of the components for that pair of pants. It's going to take 8 carded cotton, 6 perfect cotton, and a couple spider webs. The webs are negligible.

Let's assume you get lucky with the perfect cotton and get more than you will, statistically. That leaves 8 carded cotton, at 4 cotton a piece, so 32 pieces of cotton. A stack of cotton goes for 4k, so about 40.4 each. 32*40.4 = $1293. + 200 for the gems, so 1493. That leaves you with a profit of 275, or 235 if you count the cost of spider webs. That's 235*10 pants, so your profit is $2,350 every 30 days for that work order, and that's generously assuming that you get 6 perfect cotton for every 8 carded (which isn't going to happen in the long run). You're literally losing money on the opportunity cost of just growing more cotton. And considering it's a level 60 skill, you still need to pay off the fixed costs of training and the recipes. You lose money doing this, even with the industry boost.

Ninja Edit: It's totally fine if someone does this because they enjoy crafting and it's close to breaking even. In some cases, it's going to be worth it for the synergy point(s), but many crafting skills aren't an efficient use of time if you're looking to make cash. Look at brewing, I've plowed countless hours and close to a million (literally) councils into it. I think it's fun, and you've got to spend your cash somewhere.

(adjusted for item amounts)
Fine Cotton Yarn x2
--Carded Cotton x2
--Perfect Cotton x2
Coarse Cotton Yarn x1
--Carded Cotton x1
Voile Muslin x2
--Coarse Cotton Yarn x2
----Carded Cotton x2
--Cotton Thread x2
----Fine Cotton Yarn x2
------Carded Cotton x2
------Perfect Cotton x2
----Spiderweb x1
----Perfect Cotton x1
Cotton Thread x1
--Fine Cotton Yarn x1
----Carded Cotton x1
----Perfect Cotton x1
--Spiderweb x1
--Perfect Cotton x1

[Tagamogi]

You're ignoring opportunity costs when you say that cooking can make money if you enjoy gardening. You can make far more just by filling work orders for beets, barley, and corn, than you will trying to add value with cooking. Cotton is the same. You're going to make more selling raw cotton than you will by filling work orders for tailoring gear.

Yeah, sorry, discounting the cost of raw cotton was rather fuzzy-headed of me.

To me, cotton and vegetables are a bit of a gray area - I'm used to games where basically nothing you can do will prevent you from losing money when leveling crafting, either because of NPC material costs or because the materials are so rare that farming them yourself is unreasonable. Since gardening is a semi-crafting skill that allows you to get what you need in a somewhat decent time frame, I'm willing to let skills that depend on gardening materials slide a bit - you would definitely make more money if you stuck to just gardening, but you are not going to be automatically x amount of money out of pocket just for the privilege of leveling the skill.

But yes, for a proper cost calculation, the market cost of cotton should be counted. My math there doesn't line up with yours, though - I think you are forgetting that you get 4 cotton thread per combine and 2 fine cotton yarn per combine? Either that, or I'm skipping something - trying to count the correct number of combines needed is pretty rough.

Looking at the great cloth pants work order, I get:

10 cloth pants =

20 gems

20 fine cotton yarn = 10 carded cotton + 10 perfect cotton ( since each combine makes 2)

10 coarse cotton = 10 carded cotton

10 cotton thread = 2.5 fine cotton yarn + 2.5 spider web + 2.5 perfect cotton ( since each combine makes 4)
= (rounded up) 2 carded cotton + 5 perfect cotton + 3 spider web

20 voile muslin = 20 coarse cotton yarn + 20 cotton thread
= 20 carded cotton + 5 fine cotton yarn + 5 perfect cotton + 5 spider web
= (rounded up) 23 carded cotton + 8 perfect cotton + 5 spider web

So, total is
20 gems = 3000 councils ( redwall crystals @150 each)
8 spider web = 320 councils
45 carded cotton
23 perfect cotton

With the master level carded cotton recipe, it takes you 4 cotton per combine. I don't think a 50% chance to get perfect cotton is unreasonable, but for easy math's sake, let's say it takes me 50 combines to get the carded cotton plus perfect. That's 200 cotton, worth 8000 at 40 each.

So, total work order cost = 3000 + 320 + 8000 = 11320 councils

You cannot do the great cloth pants work order until you get industry levels that give you a 10% bonus to all work order, so the minimum the work order will pay is 19448, and possibly more if you are turning it in on a workorder bonus weekend.

Profit = 19448 - 11320 = 8128

Considering all the effort involved, if all you want is money, it would be faster if you ignored tailoring completely and killed some mobs for their loot instead. But I don't think it's fair to call it a money sink. If you do the two greath cloth work orders for 2-3 months running, you should recoup the cost of training the recipes and unlocking tailoring past 50, and turn ins after that point are profit. (You still need to get to 50, but theoretically your lower levels can be funded by very slowly doing work orders in a similar manner. )

Leatherworking is even nicer since you can easily grab piles of skins off the NPC vendors and there are more lw work orders per level.

[sudostahp]

Yeah, sorry, discounting the cost of raw cotton was rather fuzzy-headed of me.
Profit = 19448 - 11320 = 8128

Considering all the effort involved, if all you want is money, it would be faster if you ignored tailoring completely and killed some mobs for their loot instead. But I don't think it's fair to call it a money sink. If you do the two greath cloth work orders for 2-3 months running, you should recoup the cost of training the recipes and unlocking tailoring past 50, and turn ins after that point are profit. (You still need to get to 50, but theoretically your lower levels can be funded by very slowly doing work orders in a similar manner. )

Leatherworking is even nicer since you can easily grab piles of skins off the NPC vendors and there are more lw work orders per level.

Good catch on the combines. My math was definitely off a bit. Math is hard. I should've used a spreadsheet.

So it turns out this work order isn't too bad, and with the industry bonus, can net about 8k. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's 16k for both great cloth work orders every 30 days. Is it worth the effort vs just farming another four stacks of cotton? I don't know. Maybe it's worth it for some folks.

[Tagamogi]

So it turns out this work order isn't too bad, and with the industry bonus, can net about 8k. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's 16k for both great cloth work orders every 30 days. Is it worth the effort vs just farming another four stacks of cotton? I don't know. Maybe it's worth it for some folks.

Hm, if you do tailoring vs cotton farming, I think the time involved in making 10 pants is less than the time to grow 2 stacks of cotton. Of course, gardening also allows you to grow all kinds of vegetables in the same time, so it's hard to come up with a good equation.

I'd agree tailoring is not the most efficient way to make money. I was more objecting to the "money sink" phrase. If you happen to enjoy crafting, it's a pretty pleasant way to make a bit of spare cash. (Basically all my money comes from work orders, primarily leatherworking. I don't play that much, so being able to turn in work orders every 30 days works fine for me.)