A Perfect Roe and Cassiterite "come to jesus" talk.

Pomaikai · November 2015

Dear fellow crafters/traders,

We need to talk about pricing these days on a couple of items. Currently the math just doesn't work for these items, and as sellers we need to work together to fix it.

Perfect Roe is now selling for around 12k, while Psijiic Ambrosia is selling for 3.2k and the new gold food is selling for 3.5k each. I'm sorry, but the math just doesn't work here. Both of those items have other ingredients which cause us to actually lose money making and selling these items at the current pricing models. Well, unless we personally fish till our eyes bleed and we get lucky with the RNG. Either the price of Perfect Roe needs to come way down, or the price of exp pots and gold food needs to go up to 4.5-5k ea. I bring this here, because it's incumbent upon us to price one or the other accordingly so we can all make a modest profit making and selling these items, rather than slowly going broke at the current pricing models. If we all decide that 12k for Perfect Roe is fair now that it's used in two high end Provisioning recipes, and with its continues rarity I can see the merits in the price increases, then we all need to start pricing our products made from it accordingly so no one is losing their shirts making and selling exp pots and gold food.

A similar issue is occurring with Cassiterite gems and Cassiterite sand. Right now the gems are selling for 400-500 gold each, while the sand (you need 10x sand to make one gem) is selling from 95-170 gold each. The math just doesn't work at all here. The sand is too darned rare for it to be only worth 40-50 gold each, which means the price of the complete gems has to go up to a minimum of 10x the current price of sand. Complete gems can be extracted during the decon process, but in the 16 days since release with my playing a good 6 hours per day, I've only deconned 2 full gems and gathered 46 sand, and I'm a serial node farmer. I take forever to get places because I harvest every last node I come across, and I tend to not use my horse so I can be sure to find them all when I'm traveling. Therefor we need to make sure that we all put the prices for the complete Cassiterite gems to be at least 10x's the current rate of the individual sand.

Remember, as sellers WE set the MM's, and we need to make sure that we most definitely don't lose money crafting and selling things, and we all want to make a fair and modest profit on the items we craft. I'm not looking to rip people off, nor am I talking about price fixing. I'm talking about fixing a couple of very broken prices.

Comments? Suggestions? Concerns?

(Pass this along and share it with your fellow traders and crafters.)

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 · November 2015

Let the economy sort itself out, I say..

I believe the reasons exp potions are going for less than or equal to the price of perfect roe is that a lot of people had them lying around since the level cap increased. I believe, very shortly, the prices will even out.

Pomaikai · November 2015

Peel_Ya_Cap_517 wrote: »

Let the economy sort itself out, I say..

I believe the reasons exp potions are going for less than or equal to the price of perfect roe is that a lot of people had them lying around since the level cap increased. I believe, very shortly, the prices will even out.

Except, as traders and crafters WE'RE the ones who set the prices in our trader stores and therefor drive the MM meta. There is a point where we need to protect not only ourselves, but each other since MM's affect us all. We can do this without gouging. All I'm looking for, and I'm pretty sure this is true for everyone else, is a fair price that I can make some money on that will go towards upgrading my own character.

Fat-Larry-Makes-All · November 2015

Haha this was great, you just want the economy to adjust to your own personal preferences. Supply and demand bud. I'm making a killing selling perfect roe's.

I_killed_Vivec · November 2015

You seem to be complaining that you are being undercharged...

Weberda · November 2015

If you can't make what you think is a fair profit on something then maybe you try marketing other items. Price collusion is never going to work in this game.

Pomaikai · November 2015

No. I'm complaining that people can't add and multiply. I also am totally positive that I said I agreed with where the current pricing on Perfect Roe was heading. It's just that if the price of Roe increases, then the prices of the things it makes needs to do so as well.

Kelces · November 2015

Look at reality, do you see many logical evaluations there? I don't...

It's like many other stuff, most people unfortunately can't really dive into "realms of fantasy and wonder" these days, because they still have those bad aspects of the real world in the back of their head.

Khenarthi · November 2015

If people are willing to pay 12k for a single Perfect Roe, more power to them... if not, they can spend some time fishing.

Since everyone can be self sufficient in this game, it's hard to make a profit from being a crafter. Often the price for materials is higher than that of the finished product, so if your goal is to make gold, just sell the raw and refined materials.

EDIT: Also, maybe people just need one or two units of sand to complete their cassiterite stone? Then it would make sense to buy just the sand they need instead of a complete stone.

Scyantific · November 2015

Sounds like the OP is mad that he can't price gouge others.

myrrrorb14_ESO · November 2015

Price fixing is hard to do.

I decided a while back not to make the potions because of profit margin. There are a ton of them on the market selling for a low price and the mats are a bit pricey in comparison.

Free market is great. It took me out of the supply chain. Right now there's a ton of supply and very few people buying it.

poodlemasterb16_ESO · November 2015

I have 20 Psijic Ambrosia in my stock for my crew, that will never be sold. Every Perfect Roe I come up with over that is made into 4 Psijic Ambrosias and sold for 11,000.

I have 200 stacks of the rest so I undercut the market. I sell almost everything cheaper than the market normal and have a rapid turnover most of the time. I sell 200 stacks as well, at 1000g they turn over fast..

Pomaikai · November 2015

So here's a question. If it costs Zenimax more for employee salaries, equipment, upgrades, repairs, bandwidth, electricity, water, and rent than the game takes in, once the initial Venture Capital money is gone, do they keep the game going, or pull the plug?

I hear people go on an on about supply and demand, the market setting prices, and price collusion, but I don't think they mean what you think they mean.

All I was talking about was that traders and crafters need to be vigilant for fluctuations in the costs of materials, and adjust their prices accordingly for the final product. Companies do this every single day, and would go out of business if they didn't. You can't stay in business if your cost for parts exceeds your selling price.

If the costs of the components drop, then the price of the final product drops as well. MM's based upon old component costs are useless and should be ignored, regardless of whether the changes mean a new selling price which is higher OR lower.

acw37162 · November 2015

The word for this proposition is Collusion, commonly referred to as price fixing among other things.

Pomaikai · November 2015

It's not. I'm in no way, shape, or form advocating a specific price for these items. I'm just saying that they should be priced intelligently, and based upon what it actually costs to make them.

You obviously have no idea what either collusion or price fixing actually mean.

smacx250 · November 2015

Ambrosia has an artificial price limit in that the equivalent can instead be purchased from the crown store. As the gold price climbs, more sales will shift over to the crown store. In my guild, selling ambrosia has averaged about 140g more per unit vs. selling the ingredient mats individually, and it takes up only one store slot instead of three. Also, ambrosia has a demand base of potentially every player, where as roe is only desired by those who have the recipe and crafting levels to make ambrosia. So if you can make ambrosia, it is a more convenient way to get rid of those mats than selling them individually. Also, you can generally make a little bit more gold, as well. However, it would probably be difficult to justify purchasing the recipe based only on an expectation of making money on the ambrosia - you'd have to sell quite a bit before you would break even (based on my guild averages, about 400).

HebrewHatchet · November 2015

It seems like the recipes turned out to play a different role than you thought they would. Instead of introducing a way for a middleman to make a profit on somebody's fishing, the recipes are deciding who gets to make money on fishing. The fishermen with the recipes have found a great way to make money and they are controlling the market. It sucks that you can't be a middleman, but the fishermen are the ones making money, which, isn't really that bad.

poodlemasterb16_ESO · November 2015

No, it's great. I go level then ... ooo fishing hole, and I fish it dry. Sometimes there are lots and Dungeon fishing is my favorite. The little herds come through all killy and go ... what? I just keep on fishing, there's a rhythm to it, that's quite relaxing.

NBrookus · November 2015

There is no path to buy mats + tiny effort = big profit on Psijic Ambrosia. It's a money maker for fishermen who are also crafters, not one for resellers. You can price your PA at 4500g... good luck selling it when the market has settled into the 3100-3300 range -- or 2900ish after store fees. Yes, it sucks if you don't like to fish, but it is what it is.

Since everyone with the Orsinium DLC can get the gold recipe quite easily, I actually expect the price of Perfect Roe to go *up,* not down, since all of the sudden a lot of more people will have something they can craft with it. Maybe hold steady. Go down? Not unless the increase the drop rate of PR.

As for Casserite Sand, I'm picking up lots of it, more than enough to support crafting with it as a style material. Whatever other material grinds they introduced, IMO this one is balanced about right.

MilwaukeeScott · November 2015

Khenarthi wrote: »

Often the price for materials is higher than that of the finished product, so if your goal is to make gold, just sell the raw and refined materials.

+1

Weberda · November 2015

Pomaikai wrote: »

It's not. I'm in no way, shape, or form advocating a specific price for these items. I'm just saying that they should be priced intelligently, and based upon what it actually costs to make them.

You obviously have no idea what either collusion or price fixing actually mean.

The fallacy in your argument is in the cost analysis. It costs me nothing to make these items....except time. I do not buy the ingredients. I go out and work (farm) for them. As a result my in-game currency (gold) outlay for this stuff is zilch. So when I sell any of the finished product any gold I make from the deal is pure profit. As to the argument about what my time is worth - it's a game guys. Whatever I do when I'm in the game I do because I'm enjoying myself to some extent.

code65536 · November 2015

So if roe is 12K, and you want 4-4.5K to be the price of roe-derived consumables (i.e., 16-18K for 4), you're basically saying that you somehow deserve to make 4-6K for having the recipe and each click of the "Craft" button? (Assuming the costs of the other ingredients and negligible. And they are.)

LOL.

Sorry to break it to you, but the market doesn't work like that. This worked a long time ago, back when only a few people had the recipes and could basically charge what they want, but the Ambrosia recipe has since proliferated, and the other new recipe is easily available to anyone willing to trudge through a few short fetch quests. What you're seeing is basically the free market at work: it's placing the value of each click of that "Craft" button at around 1K or less, which, TBH, is more than fair.

Hell, for guildies and friends, I will craft for free if they provide the mats. So why on earth would they pay 16-18K for 4 pots when they could just buy the roe for 12K and give it to me or one of the many other people out there who offer similar free crafting services?

As for Cassiterite, the sand prices are way out of whack. I.e., they're seriously overpriced. I can easily farm 5 complete Cassiterite in a few minutes (you just gotta know where to look), and the prices of them are plummeting. The sands themselves aren't really selling at those inflated prices--they still sell now and then because there will always be clueless buyers. Hell, I often trash my sands if I'm out of bag space. They're junk, really.