iostorms wrote:
I think with offline / out of house selling in place there would have been alot more sub-components on the market, and they would have been undercut/overloaded to the point that the pricing was relatively fair.
Yes, but fair for WHOM? It's certainly not fair to the crafter who spends hours making the subcombines to place his merchandise on the market at a reasonable price, only to find some idiot selling somethng that is worth 2sp for 15cp in massive quantities.
You ultimately wind up with massive deflation and no incentive to craft. This actually makes the original action unfair to the *buyer* as well, only indirectly.
Every time I place an App IV spell on the market, it's priced initially at 95sp (on Mistmoore). On our server, that is a reasonable price for an App IV spell in Qeynos, and I routinely sell out every night. It never fails... Every couple of nights I get a tell from someone who really wants a spell, asking me if I'll knock the price down to about 20sp so they can afford it. Just as I'm about to oblige (hell, I'm a nice guy, and I really like helping people out when I get the chance, as long as it doesn't put me completely out of business...otherwise, what's the point, right?) Anyway...just as I'm about to oblige the person and ask them to come to my house so I can pull the spell off the market for them, they put their foot in their mouth by "bolstering" their case with something like "...because I know it only costs you X coin to make".
BZZZZT! Wrong answer, but thank you for playing :) Come back when you have 95sp :) I don't SAY that to the person because I like to be polite. But I *sure am* thinking it. Why? Because that ONLY takes into account the cost of the materials! It doesn't take into account the fact that I spent 2 hours running around Peat Bog and Oakmyst Forest looking for Rough Malechite or Lead Clusters, and after all that time only have 6 to show for it on a given night. It doesn't take into account the fact that in order to guarantee my spells are "App IV" and not "App III", I have to refine my own Isonoid, a process which adds even MORE time to the crafting process. And it doesn't take into account that in order to make 20 spells to put onto the market at one time, I had to spend 3 hours in the crafting process (quite often that is all the time I have to play on a given day), ASIDE from the time I had to spend the day before in harvesting. And, lastly, it doesn't take into account that the low-level App IV spell you're wanting to get from me at cost didn't even give me crafting XP when I made it.
I'm a nice person and I like to help people out. I, too, know what it's like to REALLY NEED an upgrade and not have the cash for it. But I also like to think that the person I'm helping out has some appreciation for the blood and sweat that went into the sacrifice I'm about to make.
I will continue to mark my spells down to cost on an individual basis when a person really needs a hand up. But I just don't understand people who truly believe they have a *right* to purchase my goods for a small pittance above what it cost me to make them. That's really just not helping anyone.
In order for me to keep crafting, I can't just make back what I spent on the components. I have to be *truly* profitable as an incentive to continue crafting those low level App IVs that no one else seems to be interested in making. I need to go back to my merchant screen after a night of selling, and get THIS reaction: "Wow! It really was worth spending the last two nights dedicated to trade-skilling instead of leveling my character!"
Anything SOE can do to cut down on the number of people flooding the market with low-priced goods is one more thing that will keep me in business as a full-time crafter. And this game needs two types of people to be truly fun for all: 1. Full-time adventurers, and 2. Full-time crafters.