Other players vendors

[Asmodean]

Supply and demand do play a part in everything. Obviously the more you have of something, you probably want to get rid of some quicker, so you are willing to take less money for it. However, this is where it bites you (not you personally) in the behind. I like using kegs as an example, because there is generally not a huge markup in them. For example, if you take a greater healing keg, which costs 700 ginseng to make, that would be 3500 gold, plus the cost of the actual tool, so maybe 3600 or whatever. Yet people are selling them for under that. I understand, they can "make up" for it with the sale of their other kegs, which only take 300 garlic, or what not, but why? You could sell ALL your kegs at 4000, 4500, probably up to 7500 or so, and be making a good profit on all of them, not just most of them.

Part of the issue is supply and demand. Part of it is everyone CAN raise alchemy (or whatever other skill) to 120. Since you have more people making things (since they don't have to choose another more important skill), you have more competition.

I don't want to see price setting by any means. One of the things I've suggested multiple times over the years, is item sinks to combat this issue of supply/demand. If you have a use (other than selling), some item(s), you remove some from the game. Destash raffle is a perfect example. Bracelets of the magician are useful again, because by turning them in you earn tickets for a cool new item. So, that helped to create a market for something anyone over a few months old would never use.

I think the same can be said for powerscrolls, kegs, runebooks, spellbooks, or whatever else people tend to sell normally.

When pricing items, you have to price appropriately. (Not too high, not too low). If you don't have room to negotiate built into your prices, you're doing it wrong in my opinion. At 7500 per keg, if someone wants to buy 50 at once, you could maybe charge them 5000 each for placing a bulk order, and still be profitable. (And who cares if they are ordering from you to resell, since you know they will be charging more than your discounted price anyways). When kegs are priced at 3000, you just don't have the room to remain profitable, and I think that also plays into these issues of people buying and reselling. Also please don't suggest that I think kegs should be 7500. I just used that number to illustrate a point.

Mystic, your runebook example is a perfect one. 500% over your cost to make it. That is a reasonable price, and good business. Even if some others think it is cheap.

People often times in video games devalue their time. Or just don't account for it in the cost of their items. I'll use a classic one, "I mined the ingots myself, so they were free!". No, actually they still have value.

With those ingots you have 2 choices. 1) make something to sell, 2) sell the ingots. Well ok, you could keep them for later, but lets pretend you are either going to make something, or sell something..

Using made up numbers, lets pretend an iron ingot sells for 15 gold on exex. Now, if you are making a smith hammer, which costs 4 ingots to make, theoretically it costs 60 gold. (because you could sell the ingots for 15 each, 15 * 4 = 60).

EVEN IF YOU MINED THEM YOURSELF, IT COST YOU 60 GOLD TO MAKE THAT SMITHS HAMMER, BECAUSE YOU COULD HAVE SOLD THE INGOTS FOR 60 GOLD.

Now, you get 50 uses per hammer. 60 gold / 50 uses = 1.2 gold per use. If you don't take into account your time. (Yes, i also realize you could buy smiths hammers for cheaper from the blacksmith; maybe there is room here to do a price re-evaluation on stuff npc's sell and adjust them accordingly, i'll send a page suggesting this, or if +Nyx is still reading this, maybe she could mention it to the other staff).

But people don't look at it that way. They say well, i see people are charging 1 gold per use, but since I mined these ingots they were free, so i'll charge .50 gold per use and still be good! Technically they are right, but they are LOSING MONEY by not properly accounting for their opportunity costs, and the time they had invested into making the item.

I can make more gold by killing stuff than vendoring items. That being said, when i do sell items, i try to price them how I think its fair. I sell runic sewing kits for 1-10k / charge. When I was selling LRC suits and charging 100k, people would complain that I was charging too much. I typically use Polar kits, which i sell for 4k / use. So, if it takes me more than 25 attempts to make a full suit of LRC that adds up to over 100%, i'm actually losing money. On an unlucky streak, it takes more than 25 attempts to make ONE PIECE of that suit. Granted, I could get lucky and make it in 5-10, but that's not common at all. I typically make 5 suits at a time, and go through over 100 uses easily. Sometimes double or more. Yet, I'm charging too much, and 100k is way too expensive. So, now I just sell the kits for 4k / piece, and make more money doing so, instead of helping the newbies with LRC suits for 100k. Now they have to work their tailoring up to 120, get some +5 gear for best results, buy the runic kits, and hope they get lucky. Or buy from someone who doesn't value their time as much as me. Oh, my suits were also fully meddable, not pieced together from non mage armor platemail etc.

Everything on this game is FREE other than time invested. Please, value your time, and price accordingly.

[Yoda]

well said asmo.. ur quickly becoming my favorite