Crafting Sale: Does anyone at PWE log in to their own game anymore?

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · May 2011

With the current gold price every single crafting material is still at least twice as expensive as the normal market price. For example I don't think there is any server where someone would be interested in buying gravel from the boutique for 27k each when catshops have it for 1.5k.

This type of sale is just sloppy and shows that PWE staff are out of touch with what is going on with their own game. While it is a player-run* economy, one would hope that PWE has some basic monitoring mechanism in place for the interest of their own players. Even if they don't monitor game conditions at all, anyone who has logged into the game in the last 2 months would know the crafting mat sale is not viable.

*This is not really true since on my server about 60% of the current gold price comes from the fixed NPC value of tokens which is not dependent on player markets.

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear · May 2011

I was wondering about that. When Hyper Stones are on sale in the Boutique, it is still cheaper to buy from the market.

In that sense, is the PWI company deliberately trying to scam the ignorant players?

Evanera - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Did you really need to ask this question Aste?

Lesthar - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Correct. The mats and herbs market is much established nowadays.
This would only work for those who do not want to harvest and not compete with others in terms of prices (to get the best rate and thus obtain mats easily... buy low, sell high). That said, whoever is unable to play PWI much and/or let his/her comp run overnight and wishes to be a successful crafter/merchant is a dummy... Oh sorry, I mean that everything involves some sacrifice.

To tell the truth, I make my characters gain coins by two ways, one is harvesting, the other is grinding. I occasionally express merchant, but I refuse to merchant as is, because I feel it is a waste of time (of course, I cannot make max profits out of this, and I learned to live with it).

And now, to return to the main subject, PWE does not care about market prices nor the state of the economy with that peculiar mat sale. Its goal is to bring some convenience to those with the mindset described in the first paragraph. Of course, with those prices, it is impossible to resell those mats for profit, since you will lose funds if you try to do so. And then, I am sure that countless people do not use such items and keep them in storage, to observe rate variations and make huge profit out of that. We have enough in terms of stocks. Bringing extra ones on an artificial manner is bringing no good at all.

And I wonder, who will spend money on those consumables -which you can get via plants/rocks or mobs in a virtually unlimited manner, good luck for the sprain and time spending though... I remind you- when they can buy PERMANENT items and resell them for an incredible margin (or gold, which makes it even funnier)?

My verdict (not aimed to troll GMs, but again, this decision irks me): Utterly fail sale.

truekossy · May 2011

Well, let's be honest here.

Mats have NEVER been worth the boutique cost and this sale simply makes that painfully obvious. If this was the old PWI, I'd suggest that they were trying to lower gold prices with a sale that they knew was useless, but it isn't and we still have packs on sale so... yeah.

As for the question posed in the title... well... do you really even need to ask that one, Ast?

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · May 2011

Discussion is fun :O

Tremblewith - Heavens Tear · May 2011

PWE staff never log in their own game, clearly. Gold over 1m a pop, sales that blow, bugs everywhere, medals taken away from players that worked hard, etc.

Aubree - Dreamweaver · May 2011

Posted something similar to this in maint thread. Even if we were talking special glue they are at like 30k each and can buy from players 20k each or less. Gold was about 500k then. I am in total agreement. I have lvl 8 all crafts but at the time I lvld my skills we did have a good mat sale then. A sale of 66% or 75% off or more would have been better.

Namari - Dreamweaver · May 2011

Aubree - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Posted something similar to this in maint thread. Even if we were talking special glue they are at like 30k each and can buy from players 20k each or less. Gold was about 500k then. I am in total agreement. I have lvl 8 all crafts but at the time I lvld my skills we did have a good mat sale then. A sale of 66% or 75% off or more would have been better.

Or even 80% off. That would almost tempt me to get level 8 BS on Destini so I can make TT100 weapons. Almost.

Esco did the math last night and he said something like 30k a pop for mats. Yeah, whatchu smokin' PWI?

Burnout - Harshlands · May 2011

This is because mats in this game are very easily farmable by free players or anyone who wants them.

Solution? Make the mats extremely hard to get and difficult to farm. For example, make it so you have to dig for at least 5 minutes to get items from each node. This way, monsters will repawn before the node is complete, thus you need at least 2 people in order to farm effectively. Then permanently lower mat prices in boutique by the 50%. People will start buying mats from boutique, and the ones who complain will still get "but you can farm it for free, it just takes a little longer".

Yulk_owns - Lost City · May 2011

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

With the current gold price every single crafting material is still at least twice as expensive as the normal market price. For example I don't think there is any server where someone would be interested in buying gravel from the boutique for 27k each when catshops have it for 1.5k.

This type of sale is just sloppy and shows that PWE staff are out of touch with what is going on with their own game. While it is a player-run* economy, one would hope that PWE has some basic monitoring mechanism in place for the interest of their own players. Even if they don't monitor game conditions at all, anyone who has logged into the game in the last 2 months would know the crafting mat sale is not viable.

*This is not really true since on my server about 60% of the current gold price comes from the fixed NPC value of tokens which is not dependent on player markets.

Answer is obviously no b:surrender

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · May 2011

To be fair to PWI, every time there's a Hyper Stone sale there are people who post in the forums and/or sale announcements about how they're going to be buying a bunch. The same thing was true back when there were Oracle sales.

There's no way we can really tell how large the idiot-contingent is, so maybe this sale generates a few extra shekels for PWI without having any negative effect for the vast majority of other players.

SaiKun - Harshlands · May 2011

Burnout - Harshlands wrote: »

This is because mats in this game are very easily farmable by free players or anyone who wants them.

Solution? Make the mats extremely hard to get and difficult to farm. For example, make it so you have to dig for at least 5 minutes to get items from each node. This way, monsters will repawn before the node is complete, thus you need at least 2 people in order to farm effectively. Then permanently lower mat prices in boutique by the 50%. People will start buying mats from boutique, and the ones who complain will still get "but you can farm it for free, it just takes a little longer".

Good lord, surely you're not serious? It takes me weeks to farm enough just to advance to the next level on manufacturing. It takes me 2 hours of farming straight just to get enough herbs to make pots to last me thru TT runs for that day. Making it harder with just put people off, especially those who actually level their manufacturing and not run FC all day to make record leveling speeds.

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear · May 2011

truekossy wrote: »

Mats have NEVER been worth the boutique cost and this sale simply makes that painfully obvious.

I think this is wrong. I remember it was cheaper to buy mats on sale when gold was 100k. That price was better (or about the same) as the market price of mats.

X_trigger_X - Heavens Tear · May 2011

I nominate myself for job of PWI Boutique Sales Manager.

TigerLily - Lost City · May 2011

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I think this is wrong. I remember it was cheaper to buy mats on sale when gold was 100k. That price was better (or about the same) as the market price of mats.

Yeah thats true. It could be slightly cheaper to buy mats during sale, but only rare mob drops like different types of leathers and oils. Was also back in 2008 and only at one or two occasions than gold started to go up making it to costly <_<

Thats still about 3 years ago, haven't they logged in since 2008 to check the economy? Its a bit worrying how clueless they are b:sweat

Lesthar - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Burnout - Harshlands wrote: »

This is because mats in this game are very easily farmable by free players or anyone who wants them.

Solution? Make the mats extremely hard to get and difficult to farm. For example, make it so you have to dig for at least 5 minutes to get items from each node. This way, monsters will repawn before the node is complete, thus you need at least 2 people in order to farm effectively. Then permanently lower mat prices in boutique by the 50%. People will start buying mats from boutique, and the ones who complain will still get "but you can farm it for free, it just takes a little longer".

No, just no. And then that will solve NOTHING. Some shops have saved so many mats to make coin that it makes your suggestion void and null (if mats would be rarer, they would first make it really costly and keep buying low and selling high. They would care less about boutique)... and on top of it, it would penalize those who farm mats for their own use (like SaiKun), and those who get meager coin revenue from selling them to shops (I admit once again I am in that category).

HexOmega - Dreamweaver · May 2011

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

To be fair to PWI, every time there's a Hyper Stone sale there are people who post in the forums and/or sale announcements about how they're going to be buying a bunch. The same thing was true back when there were Oracle sales.

There's no way we can really tell how large the idiot-contingent is, so maybe this sale generates a few extra shekels for PWI without having any negative effect for the vast majority of other players.

lol b:pleased herp derp

NeoLilyStar - Sanctuary · May 2011

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

With the current gold price every single crafting material is still at least twice as expensive as the normal market price. For example I don't think there is any server where someone would be interested in buying gravel from the boutique for 27k each when catshops have it for 1.5k.

This type of sale is just sloppy and shows that PWE staff are out of touch with what is going on with their own game. While it is a player-run* economy, one would hope that PWE has some basic monitoring mechanism in place for the interest of their own players. Even if they don't monitor game conditions at all, anyone who has logged into the game in the last 2 months would know the crafting mat sale is not viable.

*This is not really true since on my server about 60% of the current gold price comes from the fixed NPC value of tokens which is not dependent on player markets.

Most of what you say is true, but this sale does benefit a small group of people - particularly those with lvl 7 crafting skills and wishes to upgrade it to lvl 8 with the highest grade mats for the quests, and don't want to spend so much on those chests. At the current gold price and buy value, I think it's about 30k for a piece of superior leather. When I was upgrading my lvl 7 to 8 skills, I had a catshop set up in so many places buying those highest grade mats for over 20 k, even in world chat, but only manage to buy a few or none per day. This happened to be during 2x drops too, and I was averaging 2 superior leather per hour grinding on mobs in the heaven/hell place on the highest % rate mob drops. However, buying any other lower grade mats would be ludicrous.

Aubree - Dreamweaver · May 2011

Burnout - Harshlands wrote: »

This is because mats in this game are very easily farmable by free players or anyone who wants them.

Solution? Make the mats extremely hard to get and difficult to farm. For example, make it so you have to dig for at least 5 minutes to get items from each node. This way, monsters will repawn before the node is complete, thus you need at least 2 people in order to farm effectively. Then permanently lower mat prices in boutique by the 50%. People will start buying mats from boutique, and the ones who complain will still get "but you can farm it for free, it just takes a little longer".

Drop rate of specials is already too low. Drop rate in TT is good, but 3-2 and 3-3 drop **** like colored glue and not super etc.

SocialDesire - Archosaur · May 2011

um... so it's 15 mil each to level all my material based skills to 7... and i can let them hit 8 when i hit lv 99? 60 mil in all..... and there isn't one for runecrafting... b/c that would be stupid.....

paying 1 mil in coins for what 40 fine cut lumber..... so that's 25k each? Okay...... Glaze doesn't cost 15k each in a catshop, why am i gonna pay 25k each for Glaze?

I could see if they dropped it down to a 30 percent cost.... so 9 gold for a complete level up. yeah that might make more sence.... 9 million coins to get maxed Armor making! yay! oh wait... they wouldn't get that smart..... yeah i'm skipping on this sale too.

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary · May 2011

I thought this was a joke.

Then I opened the Boutique in-game...

I about died laughing.

Fishlips - Harshlands · May 2011

are we over looking some thing. I maybe wrong again . but its the crafting manufacturing skill thats a good buy in long run. it save time. it all lvl. dont need mats at all 15 gold nice price for all lvls.b:shutup

Aubree - Dreamweaver · May 2011

no point in getting lvl 8 anything except bs anyway. Not like they made anything to craft with it. But some people like craftin for fun, and really this sale doesn't help with that at all.

Congenial - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I think this is wrong. I remember it was cheaper to buy mats on sale when gold was 100k. That price was better (or about the same) as the market price of mats.

Oh my, the good old days when gold was just 100k. When venos were still wanted in parties for amp and soul degen. When barbs weren't threatened at 9x because of demon spark and APS sins and bms. The good old days when it's about fun in an instance, not about completing a run in 10 minues.

Ahem, I could go on and on.

PooRitan - Sanctuary · May 2011

think its a gold price cooldown sale.
but still, although the mats on the market obtained by ingame playing are cheaper, there will be people who buy them from the cash shop with real money.

ofcourse they could check ah daily, the different cat shop markets, do the math, compare, look around, gather day by day more mats until they finally can lvl their craft skill.

but many people make the choice of avoiding the long way by buying a shortcut. not to spend the time on the above described. which is some sort of decreasing the amound of choices and decision they have to make. if its to save time, which also has a value (speaking of oportunity costs) or to avoid getting a headache.

actually there are many examples of this behaviour in the pwi economy. best examples are many of the token items eg. flawless shards. some merachants buy tokens, make shards, sell them over catshop or ah for maybe 2 or 5% profit?
and since there are still people doing that there seem to be buyers.
who, for whatever reasons, prefered the shortcut and were willing to pay for it.

one may say "why the hell are they not maximizing their utility by going the cheapest way? its common sense?"
well
neoclassical man vs. aspiration seeker (behavioral economics), for the curious ones,
is one possible point of view to explain why people are no maximizing robots.

but meeeeh,
in the end its more or less a cash shop sale for the real money charging people.
ignore it if you are a f2p

Blancheneige - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

This type of sale is just sloppy and shows that PWE staff are out of touch with what is going on with their own game. While it is a player-run* economy, one would hope that PWE has some basic monitoring mechanism in place for the interest of their own players. Even if they don't monitor game conditions at all, anyone who has logged into the game in the last 2 months would know the crafting mat sale is not viable.

They ARE monitoring their game.

Proof here : http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=365942

b:laugh

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver · May 2011

Meh the only vega string and super glue i could find for a couple of days were 200k each, so I don't mind the sale at all.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver · May 2011

NeoLilyStar - Sanctuary wrote: »

Most of what you say is true, but this sale does benefit a small group of people - particularly those with lvl 7 crafting skills and wishes to upgrade it to lvl 8 with the highest grade mats for the quests, and don't want to spend so much on those chests. At the current gold price and buy value, I think it's about 30k for a piece of superior leather. When I was upgrading my lvl 7 to 8 skills, I had a catshop set up in so many places buying those highest grade mats for over 20 k, even in world chat, but only manage to buy a few or none per day. This happened to be during 2x drops too, and I was averaging 2 superior leather per hour grinding on mobs in the heaven/hell place on the highest % rate mob drops. However, buying any other lower grade mats would be ludicrous.

This. Its just a shortcut for those that realize that time can be money too. I mean if it takes that long to get once piece, and you could have been griding say dq mats/farming nirvana/selling heads etc instead then the cost is actually a little higher. Is the most cost effective method? By no means. But its not the worst sale that could happen either. :P

Yuniryu - Raging Tide · May 2011

Lesthar - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Correct. The mats and herbs market is much established nowadays.
This would only work for those who do not want to harvest and not compete with others in terms of prices (to get the best rate and thus obtain mats easily... buy low, sell high). That said, whoever is unable to play PWI much and/or let his/her comp run overnight and wishes to be a successful crafter/merchant is a dummy... Oh sorry, I mean that everything involves some sacrifice.

To tell the truth, I make my characters gain coins by two ways, one is harvesting, the other is grinding. I occasionally express merchant, but I refuse to merchant as is, because I feel it is a waste of time (of course, I cannot make max profits out of this, and I learned to live with it).

.

Try grinding at 81+ its a joke. Try grinding with seeker without bloodpaint, without blood paint i break even literrally, ever since that mantienace i cant multicleint anymore, it crashes.b:sad. Well i am going to cut down on leveling fc or any hyper activity and see if that would help my pocket, besides that i refuse to cash shop, and if i am poor i leave simple as that

.b:pleased

Yeah i dont merchant too, when i often merchant i end up losing money or using the item, henace my demon pearl, now everyone wants one but now i need it so i guess money well spent.

Lesthar - Heavens Tear · May 2011

Yuniryu - Raging Tide wrote: »

Try grinding at 81+ its a joke. Try grinding with seeker without bloodpaint, without blood paint i break even literrally, ever since that mantienace i cant multicleint anymore, it crashes.b:sad. Well i am going to cut down on leveling fc or any hyper activity and see if that would help my pocket, besides that i refuse to cash shop, and if i am poor i leave simple as that .b:pleased

Yeah i dont merchant too, when i often merchant i end up losing money or using the item, henace my demon pearl, now everyone wants one but now i need it so i guess money well spent.

Yes, I know what you mean. My highest character, my veno, is lv 73 right now (no, I am not interested in powerleveling or BH or hypers, thank you). My main source of revenues is from harvesting, especially herbs and low mats, but bullying huggy hares (I now hate them, darned gankers) for DQs and reinforced leather, works.
But again, you play as a seeker. Must not be fun at all.

Besides, I spend coins very sparingly... I even count my herbs for repair costs, but manage to gain more than I spend, except for exceptional purchases. I guess I got most of what I wanted, even a refined and sharded Cape of Tauren Chieftain (a dream I finally could realize). Time to go harvest more. b:avoid

Take care!

P.S.: I would not quit the game, I'd keep saving coins and accumulating them like a squirrel preparing itself for the winter... This is how I made my little bag of funds.

Crafting Sale: Does anyone at PWE log in to their own game anymore?

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