Tradeskills, Skillups, and the Economy

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

Currently, tradeskilled items sell back to vendors for much less than the vendor price for the materials to make them. For Jewelry, it's about a 50% return on the raw materials. For Alchemy, you get silver back for potions that cost platinum to make. This leads to people trying to sell the results of their skilling up at or below the cost to make them, preventing anyone from making any profit on anything but the very high end items (which are not used to skillup), and flooding the market with all the low and mid level items.

I suggest increasing the vendor buy back on tradeskilled items to slightly below the vendor cost of the materials to make them. This will encourage people skilling up to sell the successful combines back to the vendor, rather than dumping them to the market at no profit, allowing tradeskillers to charge reasonable prices (including some profit) for all items, not just the high end items.

If you want to keep the same cost-to-skillup, increase the failure rate for non-trivial combines to compensate (so for Jewelry, if you double the vendor buy-back, half the non-trivial success rate). This would have to be adjusted so it did not affect the current success rate of non-trivial-at-250 combines.

I think this change would be a good thing both for tradeskillers, as well as the economy as a whole.

 

[Spiritplx]

I have not done tradeskills on SoD, but from what I have heard, you do not fail trivial combines, ever. When doing higher end combines that require you to do a few different tradeskills to get the final piece, this is extremely helpful. On Live, you had the same sell back prices AND you could fail trivial combines. I think not being able to fail on trivial combines more then makes up for the lower buy-back prices.

Just my 2cp.

 

[taishar]

I have not done tradeskills on SoD, but from what I have heard, you do not fail trivial combines, ever. When doing higher end combines that require you to do a few different tradeskills to get the final piece, this is extremely helpful. On Live, you had the same sell back prices AND you could fail trivial combines. I think not being able to fail on trivial combines more then makes up for the lower buy-back prices.

Just my 2cp.

You didn't address anything in the original post... What does not failing trivial combines have to do with the fact that you can't make a profit on anything except the highest end tradeskilled items because people flood the market at extremely reduced rates so they can at least make some money back ?

By increasing the the trade in value and then increasing the failure rate by an appropriate margin, you keep the cost of working the skill the exact same, and yet, make it so that far-below-cost-sales stop. This allows a trade skiller to charge more, and possibly even be able to sell easier combines at a profit.

I think this is a great idea. The only problem I see is that the increase in the amount of failures would make the skill that much longer to raise (unless of course its possible to skill up on a failure?).

 

[AoiMasamune]

If this works, I think it'll only be a band-aid solution. The cost of tradeskilled items will go up, the cost of dropped items will stay the same, tradeskillers will have to lower their prices to compete with dropped items, the economy balances out much the same as it was. Once again it becomes a race to 250 with as little loss as possible, facing annoyingly low prices. This idea isn't bad on it's own merits, but something must be done with dropped gear as well in order for it to have it's full effect, methinks.

 

[Tempus]

You didn't address anything in the original post... What does not failing trivial combines have to do with the fact that you can't make a profit on anything except the highest end tradeskilled items because people flood the market at extremely reduced rates so they can at least make some money back ?

By increasing the the trade in value and then increasing the failure rate by an appropriate margin, you keep the cost of working the skill the exact same, and yet, make it so that far-below-cost-sales stop. This allows a trade skiller to charge more, and possibly even be able to sell easier combines at a profit.

I think this is a great idea. The only problem I see is that the increase in the amount of failures would make the skill that much longer to raise (unless of course its possible to skill up on a failure?).

I think you can skill up on a failure, it has been a while since I have seen it happen on my smith, but I remember some along the way (i think).

I think that every playercrafted item that requires farmed/collected components should sell back to the merchants at the exact same cost as the vendor bought components, and slightly below on the ones that can be all store bought.

In my opinion, you can then tweeak the number of combines per skill up or failure rate or both to keep the over cost of learning the skill the same, and help protect the market for smiths that intend to make a profit and not just get their cost back like so many seem intent on doing.

As far as dropped gear is concerned, do not underestimate the vaule of 2 aug slots on player crafted armor.

 

[Glamrin]

This seems like a good idea

 

[taishar]

The cost of tradeskilled items will go up, the cost of dropped items will stay the same, tradeskillers will have to lower their prices to compete with dropped items, the economy balances out much the same as it was.

The vendor price dictates the minimum an item is sold for on the open market. Increasing the vendor price insures that the economy won't balance out at the same place it was.

 

[Spiritplx]

You didn't address anything in the original post... What does not failing trivial combines have to do with the fact that you can't make a profit on anything except the highest end tradeskilled items because people flood the market at extremely reduced rates so they can at least make some money back ?

By increasing the the trade in value and then increasing the failure rate by an appropriate margin, you keep the cost of working the skill the exact same, and yet, make it so that far-below-cost-sales stop. This allows a trade skiller to charge more, and possibly even be able to sell easier combines at a profit.

I think this is a great idea. The only problem I see is that the increase in the amount of failures would make the skill that much longer to raise (unless of course its possible to skill up on a failure?).

Not sure if you read my post, but I was saying that NOT failing on trivial combines actually saves you money, and this is the reason I believe the sell back prices should NOT be raised. So yes, it did address the OP.

i.e. I think tradeskills are fine as is, and should not be changed with the suggested changes (omg other players disagreeing with each other!)

Also, I believe you skill up on failures, so increasing the failure rate would not affect raising your skill faster/slower.

 

[taishar]

Not sure if you read my post, but I was saying that NOT failing on trivial combines actually saves you money, and this is the reason I believe the sell back prices should NOT be raised. So yes, it did address the OP.

The original post wasn't about making trade skillers able to make more money. In fact, not failing on trivial combines doesn't even save the TSer money unless they're making an item for themselves. If TSers failed on non trivial combines, the price of items would raise to compensate.

But I digress.

The OP was about the flood of ridiculously low priced skill-up items on the market because vendor prices are so low -and what to do about them in a manner that keeps the cost-per-skillup the same.

 

[Tempus]

The OP was about the flood of ridiculously low priced skill-up items on the market because vendor prices are so low -and what to do about them in a manner that keeps the cost-per-skillup the same.

Exactly!

How can we keep the cost of skilling up the sme as it is now, but prevent the market being flooded with items sold at cost to players instead of vendors.

For a trivial item this would mean that if you make it and sell it to a vendor at teh cost of the vendor purchased materials, you would lose your ore, skin, gem etc and get the cost of your vendor purchased materials back. Basically it would be silly to sell a trivial combine item to a vendor, or to make one for any reason other that to twink an alt or try and sell for profit.

 

[Spiritplx]

Well....


If you go back and read my post, I say that you use trivial combines in other tradeskills to make ingredients for other combines which saves you money from not failing said combines. This is a good enough reason for me to keep the vendor buy prices down.

I suggest increasing the vendor buy back on tradeskilled items to slightly below the vendor cost of the materials to make them. This will encourage people skilling up to sell the successful combines back to the vendor, rather than dumping them to the market at no profit, allowing tradeskillers to charge reasonable prices (including some profit) for all items, not just the high end items.

The original post wasn't about making trade skillers able to make more money.

Sorry, maybe I missed his point, but I thought he wanted to raise buy prices to save the tradeskiller some cash. I assumed it DID have to do with making more money. On live, when raising all of my trades to 250, I failed many trivial combines that I needed for higher level combines and wasted a ton of money. Here, you cannot fail those, and this saves you a lot of money. If it is not about money, then just sell the items back to the store and take your loss. This will help the flood of these items.

Maybe it is just me, but I believe raising the vendor buy prices would indeed make the tradeskiller more money. Tradeskills are about spending money to make money. Again, I am not talking about making trivial combines for cash. I am saying that being able to not fail on trivial combines saves you a lot of cash, time, and clicking and for this reason buy prices should stay the same.

Sorry that that is my opinion on the matter.

P.S. I believe you have "make more money" and "make a profit" confused with what I am saying.

 

[Tryfaen]

How can we keep the cost of skilling up the sme as it is now, but prevent the market being flooded with items sold at cost to players instead of vendors.

Simple, make two tiers of items.

Tier 1.
skilling items
Decent merchant values
Little or no stats
Standard cost to make
Easy to make in large quantities(store bought items/few hunted items)(components more readily available)
players will make these for skill gain and sell them to merchants for a small loss

Tier 2.
premium items
Bad merchant values
Good stats
Expensive to make compared to Tier 1.
Harder to make in large quantities(requires more hunted items than store bought)(components not readily available)
players would want to sell these items to other players for profit.

 

[Tempus]

Well....


If you go back and read my post, I say that you use trivial combines in other tradeskills to make ingredients for other combines which saves you money from not failing said combines. This is a good enough reason for me to keep the vendor buy prices down.

Sorry, maybe I missed his point, but I thought he wanted to raise buy prices to save the tradeskiller some cash. I assumed it DID have to do with making more money. On live, when raising all of my trades to 250, I failed many trivial combines that I needed for higher level combines and wasted a ton of money. Here, you cannot fail those, and this saves you a lot of money. If it is not about money, then just sell the items back to the store and take your loss. This will help the flood of these items.

Maybe it is just me, but I believe raising the vendor buy prices would indeed make the tradeskiller more money. Tradeskills are about spending money to make money. Again, I am not talking about making trivial combines for cash. I am saying that being able to not fail on trivial combines saves you a lot of cash, time, and clicking and for this reason buy prices should stay the same.

Sorry that that is my opinion on the matter.

P.S. I believe you have "make more money" and "make a profit" confused with what I am saying.

If you adjust the failure rate of non-trivial combines, even if they involve the use of items from other tradeskills that are trivial you can mitigate your entire point. Even if you sell back a trivial combine item for the price of the vendor purchased components you still lose all value for your farmed / player bought items. And as it has been clearly stated above if the combine only uses only vendor purchased items then it should sell back for a loss. The problem with the market is not an over abundance of Tempering or Blue Ointments. It is the final end products that get made along the way when skilling up that people just dump back into the market severely under valued to try and recover their cost. With the failures in Non-Trivial armor you will never make money skilling up, but you can prevent them from screwing the market price of items into the ground.

 

[lynnettell]

The vendor price dictates the minimum an item is sold for on the open market. Increasing the vendor price insures that the economy won't balance out at the same place it was.

You're kidding, right? Another smith was selling items "at cost", and claiming cost was 170pp for small warp/ghost stuff. Well..... that wasn't exactly true. It was if you paid a boatload for ore. But I digress. This same item is sold to a vendor for... wait for it! 31pp. I've seen someone claim vendor price on an obsidian helm with double augs was 50pp. Nope. Vendors don't buy augments. I created the item, and it sold to vendor for 19pp, with double augs, or with none.

Prices on this stuff as far as smithing *has* dropped, but unless you have excess cash to vendor off your skillups, just to skill up, the buy back doesn't even include the rare mineral dust, mineral dust, and glass vials, which are the only items you can buy from a vendor on my example. It does not count the ecto, bone chips, and ore. All of which can be mined or farmed, even if you do all of that yourself, it doesn't add up to vendor buy back.

You will never see me put warp/ghost armor on listsold for 31pp. IMHO, it needs raised, but not to the point that it outweighs the farmed items or, in my case, mined items. Coming *close* to covering the vendor bought stuff would be nice though. You're still eating failures, and if close (not over) to vendor bought items combined, then no one will make trivial stuff to make money.

 

[Spiritplx]

That is a decent idea, but like I stated previously, tradeskills is about spending a lot of money to make a lot of money. Also, you can do tradeskills in quests and other things, so they are handy to have for other aspects. Making items with little to no stats to "practice" skilling up is a pretty solid idea, however.


Maybe we should change it back to having trivial combines fail so everyone here can see how lucky they are with how it is now.

 

[Tempus]

That is a decent idea, but like I stated previously, tradeskills is about spending a lot of money to make a lot of money. Also, you can do tradeskills in quests and other things, so they are handy to have for other aspects. Making items with little to no stats to "practice" skilling up is a pretty solid idea, however.


Maybe we should change it back to having trivial combines fail so everyone here can see how lucky they are with how it is now.

No one wants to make skilling up cheaper, we are trying to prevent the market price being lowered by players fire selling their successful combines from skilling up at or below the vendor component cost.

EDIT: Sorry the first font was a tiny bit bigger than I had intended

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

Simple, make two tiers of items.

This makes skilling up easier. That wasn't the intention of this suggestion, and I don't think that's something that the staff (or many if not most players) would want.

Sorry, maybe I missed his point, but I thought he wanted to raise buy prices to save the tradeskiller some cash.

Yes, you missed my point. The point is to stop the market from being flooded with the items being sold at cost.

Maybe we should change it back to having trivial combines fail so everyone here can see how lucky they are with how it is now.

This has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. Please stay on topic and stop shitting up threads.

 

[Spiritplx]

I honestly don't understand what you are asking for then. You don't want vendor buy prices to be raised? I thought you wanted vendor prices raised like you said in the OP, my fault.

 

[lynnettell]

No one wants to make skilling up cheaper, we are trying to prevent the market price being lowered by players fire selling their successful combines from skilling up at or below the vendor component cost.

I'm guilty of driving smithing prices down, because I figure out what my prices are, without buying ore. I have two 250 miners, I do not buy ore. Now, as it stands, for example, small ghost/warp armor. My vendor buy back is just over half of what the vendor bought items (rare mineral dust x 3, mineral dust x 2, limestone/coal x 3, and components to make glass vials). Again. This does *not* take into account ectoplasm, bone chips, or ore, which can be farmed or mined.

I'm not seeing where a problem is that instead of half price, I would get 75-90% of what my vendor only parts would be. I would make no money off of trivials, I'd still have to farm/buy other items. And I would still eat vendor bought components on failures while skilling up, not to mention my time mining, and/or farming or buying other drops.

 

[Tempus]

I honestly don't understand what you are asking for then. You don't want vendor buy prices to be raised? I thought you wanted vendor prices raised like you said in the OP, my fault.

Ok currently, people are selling the successful combines that they get lucky with while skilling up at the bare minimum cost not including farmed materials to other players and driving the market price down to that cost. What he is proposing is that by increasing the vendor by back price to the cost of the vendor bought components or even 95% of that cost, then people would sell them to vendors instead of players thus reducing the market supply and creating a ZERO SUM effect for those that are selling their items for cost to player, and only helps to benefit those that are actually trying to make a profit by holding their items to sell to players.