Spiral Knights - The depression is starting

The depression is starting

30 replies [Last post]

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:31

pkninja

Legacy Username

Well, it finally happened. 2 star items in the AH just became unprofitable to craft. Let's do some math on this:

2 star recipes cost 50ce to make, plus 400cr and mats.
100ce has been around/below 5000cr for a while now.
Half of 100ce is 50ce; half of 5000cr is 2500cr.
2500cr plus 400cr is 2900cr.

At minimum, crafting a 2 star recipe will cost you 2900cr, plus materials.

RAGECRAFTERS:
IF YOU SELL BELOW COST, YOU WILL NOT MAKE A PROFIT. EVEN IF YOU SELL IN BULK.

Can we get a patch that fixes this? Maybe, I dunno, only allow 2 auctions per player?

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:36

Syor

Legacy Username

Man

IDKWHY, but idiots keep setting buyout prices at less than 2500 cr on AH even though it sells as well as when 3k cr buyout. SERIOUSLY??!

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:39

Droganis

Legacy Username

Not sure about ragecrafters...

But for those just crafting off of mist energy (get on, build an item or two, log off) anything above 750 (vendor price) is kinda profit to them. Of course, that assumes lots of people playing that way, as opposed to ragecrafting. By the way, where did that term come from? Never made sense to me.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:41

Awesomest

Legacy Username

UVs

If you want a profit, craft something players DON'T spam for UVs.

Like 3-star items.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:46

Thoranhippo

Players do craft 2* items in

Players do craft 2* items in bulk to obtain rare UVs; their goal isn't profit at all, its getting nice UV's. They've got all the right to sell back the "useless" 2* equipements back at low prices if they want, personally I just sell them back to NPC for 750cr; the point is 2* equipments are worthless if they don't have interesting UVs. At least it is good for the newcomers, so I think there's no real biggy with that.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 07:58

jooozek

Legacy Username

This all happens because

This all happens because there is no history for for how much each item sold lowest/highest.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 08:09

ninjkabat

Legacy Username

I agree with Thoran: if

I agree with Thoran: if you're going to treat this game like an economy instead of, you know, a game, then you gotta understand price points. There is a huge supply of 2* items because of the people crafting for UV's, and the demand is pretty steady. I'm sure those people don't even mind selling at a slight loss of money because they've already obtained excess utility because of the UV's. The only way the demand curve will shift right will be if there's an influx of new players who are impatient and want to spend crowns to get to tier 2.

So, I wouldn't blame this on the auction house, I'd blame it on the UV system. And seriously, everyone needs to stop taking the game's economy too seriously. It's just a game. Study our real life economy if you want to write threads about "the end is nigh."

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 08:47

Bigindian

The more this game gets

The more this game gets stable, the more crafting is a dead business due to low prices. I crafted a bunch of popular 3* itens and get a nice profit, but the offer only grows, and the new sellers prices are dumb, they hurt they own business.

For a while I found a niche on a item that NOBODY was selling, I sold it for around 3 days, really good profit, way above the costs. Then people started noticing it and offering at dumb aggressive prices. Right now there are 2 or 3 offers around 50% of what I used to sell easily, and not even covering the CE costs.

So every market niche is getting occupied by new crafters that bring the price down way too fast and some prices are clearly from rich players hunting UV.

There's no way around it, some people can afford huge amounts of CE, and will fill their inventories with trash and then sell it for nothing.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 09:00

pkninja

Legacy Username

@ninjkabat

"Study our real life economy if you want to write threads about "the end is nigh.""

True.

"It's just a game."

Sure, albeit a broken one.

@Thoran

See, you're not breaking the economy by just dumping on AH. For that, I thank you.

@Awesomest
"If you want a profit, craft something players DON'T spam for UVs.
Like 3-star items."

3-stars have 250ce built into the price, plus 1400cr crafting fee = 13900 plus mats; I'm pretty sure we'll see prices below that soon.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 09:20

Majikos

What's happening is market

What's happening is market forces at work.

A big supply of 2* items (through people hunting for UVs or using their daily ME allowance) means prices are never going to get very high. The get-rich-quick days of crafting stuff and selling it on for a massive profit are pretty much over, the market'll reach a sensible equilibrium and life will go on. If you're canny and price things right you'll be able to turn a profit, but it'll be a modest one that adds up over time.

This is not a bad thing.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 12:18

#10

JCPedroza

Legacy Username

It already happened with

It already happened with recepies too. Selling 1-4* recepies for profit is a nightmare now, most people are willing to sell for a loss for some reason.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 16:37

#11

Syor

Legacy Username

you have people selling stuffs at 3k buyout

and then some idiot decided to put a buyout for 2.3k. What's that? stupid or dumb?

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 17:04

#12

ninjkabat

Legacy Username

a 2.3k buyout

A 2.3k buyout? The only explanation I can think of is a noob picked up a 2* item in the clockworks that he couldn't use, and decided he just wanted it to turn to crowns as soon as possible.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 17:10

#13

Syor

Legacy Username

really?

when there's like 4 of that price?
whereas there's at least 5-7 of 3k?

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 17:20

#14

Eeks

Nah. Keep undercutting each

Nah. The undercutting has been getting less and less frequent. I'm sure people just didn't realize the value of their items. The average cost on most items has been going up over the last week, at least from what I have seen.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 18:43

#15

Algol-Sixty

50CE doesn't cost 2k, it is

50CE doesn't cost 2k, it is free in the form of mist energy. You simply create an alt army of accounts, each generating 100 free mist per day. Then you can craft lots of these 2* items at 2k cr for a very nice profit compared with people who can't figure out economics.

Sun, 05/29/2011 - 18:46

#16

Pupu

Legacy Username

Except

Crafting alts running on mist~

Mon, 05/30/2011 - 04:35

#17

Tanonev

@wrs1864

Mist energy does not work that way. Just like OOO limits the number of non-paying Y!PP accounts you can make per computer, OOO silently links together the mist energy of non-paying SK accounts. Of course, since the minimum purchase is $0.75 here, it's less of a financial hurdle to create an energy factory; still, it's not as "free" as your post makes it out to be.

Mon, 05/30/2011 - 05:14

#18

Majikos

@wrs1864

Having alts solely dedicated to using ME for alchemy could quite easily be viewed as exploiting the system. Just saying.

Tue, 05/31/2011 - 23:25

#19

Starlight14

Legacy Username

Yeah, there are a lot of

Yeah, there are a lot of things selling for well under the cost needed to craft them, not even including materials. I could understand that, because people wanted UVs. But now I'm starting to see a lot of low and medium UVs that people are selling almost at-cost. I've even seen 2* high UVs going for 5k buyout. I guess I can't complain about those, though, I usually buy them and raise the price and make a tidy profit. But still, if even UVs aren't going to go for anything unless they're High or better, that's a real demotivator.

I'm not sure what they should do about it. I'd say to increase the material requirements or make it so that materials don't drop nearly as often, so that 5* is unchanged, 4* is slightly rarer/more used, 3* more than 4*, and so on. The end result could be an increase in the value of low-end materials (which is much needed, IMO), and an increase in the price floor for low end crafts that people spam. Or the end result could be an increase in value of low-end materials, and the price floor for low-end crafts could stay the same, which would devalue crafting even further. I don't envy OOO for being the ones that have to figure these things out, but hopefully they can come up with something.

Edit: Also, I consider mist energy to be the same price as CE. Because they're both used for the same thing, the price for CE is both the price ceiling and the price floor for ME. If anything, ME would be more expensive. In 1 hour, I could make thousands of CE working, or even hundreds playing the game. In the same time span, I would get, what, between 4 and 5 ME? But fortunately it's worth the same as CE because they perform the same functions. I can only assume the people that think ME is free just don't have any concept of their time being worth anything. It's kind of sad, especially when they try and justify it by playing the "it's just a game" card.

Tue, 05/31/2011 - 23:31

#20

Wtfbot

This reminds me of EvE

This reminds me of EvE online, you buy in bulk in one system and then sell in bulk in another. You and many other players are all doing this and the best way to make money is to keep beating your competition by 1 coin per unit. IF they are smart they will out price you buy the same amount, but ever once in a while, you get some stupid guy who doesn't care and will make a stupid buy out price.

Do you know what the solution I found to the problem was?

Buy everything that guy offered, and get him off the market fast. Then sell everything you bought from him. Maybe even send him a letter to try to reach a gentlemens agreement with a competition of see who can make the best profit margin.

There's a few problems with this market that don't apply to that game. Such as you can't really buy and sell with only one visable market, great part of EvE was buying huge bulks and transporting them way far away( even into really dangerous areas where supplies are really low for huge profits)

You also have to produce everything you sell and the aforablity of the items you are producing are skewed by many many factors. For one Energy cost, and the feeling you are making large amounts for UV's which lowers the value of the non-UV items tremendously.

These are just a few things, try switching up what you are selling, or try droughting and flooding( buy everything and make it your price if you can afford it.)

Tue, 05/31/2011 - 23:37

#21

Wtfbot

I'm not sure this works, ME

I'm not sure this works, ME only goes up to 100, and that's only about 5k per alt. It's also alot of transfering to do that on a mass scale, as well as the fact that you have to keep them all funded to mass produce even 3* items. And let's not forget second account share energy. You basically have to make a new account on a new computer at a new IP address to get multiples.

Let's just say something of that magnitude is more work then it's worth.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 04:39

#22

Algol-Sixty

OK, yeah, ME isn't *exactly*

OK, yeah, ME isn't *exactly* free, but it doesn't cost anywhere near what CE costs.

When you buy CE with RL money to get an alt account, you get CE too, not just the mist energy from then on so you are really just paying a small premium on the CE for lots of mist energy. Or, people with access to computer rooms/server farms/large blocks of IPs/etc. can create alt accounts without paying RL money. Sure, there aren't a lot of people doing either of these, but it doesn't matter, it just takes a few to drive prices down dramatically.

And, yeah, using an alt army to harvest mist energy isn't zero work, but you can make as much in 5 minutes crafting one item and selling it, as you can in an hour in the clockworks. Once you get your system down, I doubt it would even take 5 minutes per alt to manage your army. So, uh, to calculate the price of mist energy, well, 5min vs 1hr is 12:1, so ME costs maybe 8% of CE, probably closer to 4%. So, yeah, it isn't "free".

It isn't just crafting... Ever wonder why those upgrade slots on the AH often cost about half the CE costs? It is because you can quickly harvest 100ME, cutting the price in about half. Those you don't even need to buy recipes/materials for.

Personally, I don't think OOO should let mist energy be used for crafting, upgrades, or anything else that can be used in a matter of a few minutes. ME is fine for running gates, reviving, energy rooms, etc.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 05:43

#23

Tive

Or you get a job and get CE

Or you get a job and get CE even faster than ME. Hey, it's totally more time efficient here.

also yeah perhaps they should make crafting require crowns instead of energy, interesting idea. (edit: would just suck cause it'd remove any incentive I could have to still log on; and encourage new players to rather use 2 accounts to run dungeons than help with CE)

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 07:12

#24

Wtfbot

Considering it takes 22 hours

Considering it takes 22 hours to get 100 ME I'd say CE is always cheaper in every case. 1600 CE is like half a lawn mow, or 5 dollars out of $7 dollars you would make at your avergage minimum wage job.

ME is ALWAYS more expensive cause time when used effectively can equate to money.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 11:01

#25

Algol-Sixty

I was attempting to explain

I was attempting to explain to the OP how you can price things the way they are seeing them and still make a profit.

If you have a clue, alt accounts are neither hard to manage nor take much time, you can easily farm over 1600CE a day with them in far less time than it takes to mow half a lawn. For many people who are into computers, setting up an alt farm is fun, more fun than some parts of the game. If you are going with the "time working at a job is ALWAYS more cost effective" line of thought, you might as well not play the game. After all, you can buy crowns, materials, recipes and even equipment via the AH, and I bet you could hire the neighbor kid to play the game for you.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 11:48

#26

lawlz

Legacy Username

Say if a UV farmer paid for

Say if a UV farmer paid for 10 account at 0.75 each back in the days, he can now produce 1000 energy/day which can craft 20 2 star items. This is why 2 star items are cheap. As long as the UV hunter sells his items for over 1.5k CR, he is making money everyday that mist energy replenishes on his 10 crafting accounts.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 14:02

#27

Eeks

I never sell any of my 2*

I never sell any of my 2* items under 3200 crowns, most well above 3200 crowns. I sell through all my stock.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 17:17

#28

Arterra

the waiting game

Tbh I have seen my niche secret product been overstocked about a dozen times. However, every time it does, I simply use my mist energy to do jelly king instead of craft. As the price goes down and people lose money, people move away from the product. I am then allowed to comfortably sell again for modest profits.
Btw, I got to admit, 2* crafting is dominated by ragecrafters. No point in going there. If they are unable to sell their products at normal profit, they will at least try to recoup some losses so as to continue making items until they get their UV. Consider it the price of UV hunting.

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 20:08

#29

Cyberhaven

Legacy Username

i've never had problems

i've never had problems selling any of my equipment at a reasonable price in fact the only mistake 'ive ever made was not buying in bulk there was 5* everfrost mats selling for like 1.5k and i was like meh i only need like 2 and lo and behold the next day they were up to 3k then 6k and up and up and away. i felt like a noob -_-''

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 03:22

#30

Vendingmachine

Considering it takes 22 hours

ME is ALWAYS more expensive cause time when used effectively can equate to money.

The value of time is variable. An hour of time doing grunt work is worth $7 when that person is working. But, if someone is sleeping, eating, using the toilet or otherwise unable to work their time is worth nothing; earning mist energy while sleeping is quite the deal!

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