Incentivize crafting orders? - Phoenix Freeshard

As a relatively new tailor, armorcrafter and weapon crafter it surprised me how crafting 99% stuff is still losing money. While I don't think people should necessarily get rich off 99%, it feels awful to lose money on perfectly usable equipment.

Could anything be done in order to incentivize people having made to order items? Higher chance of MP's for craftorders? Less cost when doing craftorders? Removing craftable stuff from HZ?

I always liked the direct interaction between SC'ers and alchs and customers.

Mon 12 Apr 2021 9:12 AM by

Beckett

You are suggesting that the business model for the majority of crafters is changed to suit the business model you wish to use. Or your business model is given a "state" subsidy to the detriment of rival crafters who use the market for its intended purpose. The price of items on the market is driven by the player base, sellers will undercut each other driving the price down, and buyers will only be prepared to pay a certain maximum price for an item.

If you are specifically crafting orders for 99% items only then you will lose money unless the buyer is prepared to meet those costs, which is unlikely. Your business approach needs to change.

If increased MP chance or reduced cost is introduced for bespoke craft orders, every crafter will be doing craft orders only, even if that isnt actually true. The system would be abused.

Mon 12 Apr 2021 9:19 AM by giz0r

I think you're taking my words a bit too literally, and because of this, missing my point. I'm not saying the prices of a given item shouldn't be decided by the market, and I'm not necessarily saying crafting orders alone should be subsidized.

Again, I'm not crafting 99% for selling specifically. I just feel it's somewhat sad to see some 99% pieces actually selling for lower then vendor prices on HZ.

I don't want to dictacte how the market should operate. But right now, there's practically zero reason to comission a crafter. Other than SC (and occasionally an Alch) because of the way that works.

Personally, I just think it would be interesting to see how the market would regulate, and what a little more crafter to player interaction would come from this.

Edit: Oh, you commented on the MP part as well. I'm not sure how one would go about implementing that, and for sure, people would look to abuse this. Just as they do with every change. And I don't think you can argue people would only use commissions because of this, especially not if the MP cost is within margins, which is all I'm suggesting. Give people an option to save 5-10% and have a crafter do it while you wait, or buy it on HZ immediately for extra convience.

Tue 13 Apr 2021 12:44 PM by Centenario

At the moment, almost nobody is raising armorcrafting/weaponcrafting, cause the cost/effort is not worth the reward.
People have low incentives to go past 99%, and 99% is almost at the price of the salvage.
A good thing would be to keep the 99% utility but make the second highest quality be 90-94% so that the base AF takes a hit when you choose to not go for the 100% quality armor. But keep 32.5 max utility for those 90-94 (you decide) alternatives.
At the same time you need to devalue the purchasable alternatives. Make them 90% quality instead of 100% (epic dungeon sets) so that only craftable gear can be 90%+ quality.
Finally the ROG alternatives should also be devalued and be 85% - 90% - 95% - 100%

I also suggested to improve the weaponcrafting part:https://forum.playphoenix.online/get-involved/suggestions/29103-new-system-for-weapon-rvr-sustain-and-low-rank-catch-up

Tue 13 Apr 2021 1:16 PM by Sepplord

if noone is raising armorcrafting/weaponcrafting...then there should be no competition and lots of money to make

The issue with crafting in games (and it has imo gotten worse overtime) is that too many people do it. There are 7 professions right? Even if every player only has a single profession and everything is perfectly distributed, then there will on average be 6customer for the crafter +the crafter usage itself

The truth about crafting is that it only works, when not many people do it. If it is fun and useful and makes a ton of money, then everyone does it and the system topples over

Thu 15 Apr 2021 2:35 PM by joshisanonymous

Sepplord wrote: ↑
Tue 13 Apr 2021 1:16 PM
if noone is raising armorcrafting/weaponcrafting...then there should be no competition and lots of money to make

The issue with crafting in games (and it has imo gotten worse overtime) is that too many people do it. There are 7 professions right? Even if every player only has a single profession and everything is perfectly distributed, then there will on average be 6customer for the crafter +the crafter usage itself

The truth about crafting is that it only works, when not many people do it. If it is fun and useful and makes a ton of money, then everyone does it and the system topples over

I agree with your second point. There either has to be few people who do it or it has to be difficult/tedious for buyers to hunt for the lowest prices.

On the first point, there are people who raised ACing/WCing early on when it was profitable. I really have no clue whatsoever how anyone sells any armor of any type for a profit at this point unless you get extremely lucky and craft an MP in like your second or third try. People sell 99% often at far, far less than the materials, and then prices for MP of those same items are nowhere near high enough to make up for the losses on 99%. If a pair of 99% legs are 20g and an MP of those legs is 1p, you're nowhere near proftability.

The only other possibility I can think of is that people are getting their materials from salvaging instead of vendors. However, they'd have to be farming their own salvage items because buying them would still run their overhead up to the sell prices and you're running a risk of not getting as much return as you would by just tinkering. And, if you're farming salvage items to get materials to craft items that you can actually sell for a profit, then you've completely lost any benefit of raising a craft. I level up crafts so that I can make money without having to farm.

Thu 15 Apr 2021 3:33 PM by Beeblebrox

joshisanonymous wrote: ↑
Thu 15 Apr 2021 2:35 PM
The only other possibility I can think of is that people are getting their materials from salvaging instead of vendors. However, they'd have to be farming their own salvage items because buying them would still run their overhead up to the sell prices and you're running a risk of not getting as much return as you would by just tinkering. And, if you're farming salvage items to get materials to craft items that you can actually sell for a profit, then you've completely lost any benefit of raising a craft. I level up crafts so that I can make money without having to farm.

Farming your own salvage items for crafting is much harder now because of the change to type of drops you get. So my best farmer almost only gets cloth and wood. I don't understand what the purpose of that change is.

Thu 15 Apr 2021 9:25 PM by Jafeeio

The typical MMO player these days is way more of an achiever / completionist / allrounder / do-it-yourself player than 20 years ago. Even if it does not make sense financially, having the option to craft whenever you want and not being at the whim of the market is enough incentive to level up crafts.

I would love to have more opportunities for selling gear, but it goes contrary to the philosophy of the server currently. Gear would have to break or have tiny chances at getting cool and interesting bonuses (maybe a pve set and a rvr set) but I think that ship has sailed. The path of least resistance rules and spending any more than 3 hours to get a character templated is considered a chore

FWIW other mmos have way more "tension" when it comes to crafting because of the whole "stuff that I farmed is free" and people price accordingly, so you will see crafts that seem to have impossible profits way more in games like WoW. Right now you can still make a profit if you think in 100 attempts chunks. It's very hard to not make a decent profit if you are fishing for MP chain boots or gloves on Mid for example.

Thu 15 Apr 2021 10:50 PM by Kurbsen

need an app that creates a crafting order and then someone can craft the order and then it gets delivered to the buyer. Kinda like an uber eats but with daoc crafting. lmao.