Gatherers and Hunters - Pricing on an OOC level

[Riev]

Again, playing FF14 and I noticed a little quirk:

Skins turn into hides by leatherworkers, which are then turned into items.
Skins sell for 1,500 coins a piece, and 3 skins turn into one hide.
Hides should be minimum 4500 coins a piece to make up for the cost.
Hides sell for 1,000 a piece.

Presumably, this is because people do not want hides, they want the skins because they want the xp you get from the crafting INTO hides.


I think Arm has done this previously, as well. People do not want TANNED chalton hide, they want UNTANNED chalton hide because what they're looking for is the failure to work on their skill. So when you're trying to price out how much to sell to someone, you aren't selling the chalton hide you're selling the chance-for-failure.

I know its a very OOC way to look at it, but its true. What do you think of this practice? Especially with some crafts where, say, the untanned chalton hide can turn in to 3 different tanned hides anyway. Would YOU want to buy the untanned hide for a more expensive cost, knowing it comes with a fail/skillup potential as well as may allow for more OPTIONS of crafting than a simple tanned hide?

[NinjaFruitSalad]

That's a weird paradox we have going on.

This might be a terrible idea (or too late seeing as the season is around the corner) but what if we had another type of artisan class that specialized in working with the REFINED goods, and not so much the raw materials?

[Riev]

To add, when I was playing in Salarr there were some crafts where the "base price" was calculated based on the coded cost of the materials, so that should be fine NPC/shop-wise.

My concern is if I, the independent hunter, am offering two dozen jozhal hides but my crew can pre-tan them for you.

Are they more worthwhile raw, so the BUYER can get potential skills fails, or are they more worthwhile tanned because they've already "passed the skill check" to become tanned items?

[Trevalyan]

If I'm a crafter or agent and I have the choice between getting cheaper refined products instead of ones I might lose?

I know why you'd want to train up your hideworkers, but at some point buying cheap is its own reward. But this is definitely going to be a concern as the new season starts up and people look for niches.

[Dresan]

Are they more worthwhile raw, so the BUYER can get potential skills fails, or are they more worthwhile tanned because they've already "passed the skill check" to become tanned items?

I guess the thing to keep in mind is there are cheap ways to train the tanning skill to a decent level without ruining more exotic or expensive skins. 

Surprisingly, I feel that not many hunters are willing to tan something when they can bypass any risk through selling the raw skin for a bit cheaper. I believe that hunters begin to try to tan themselves once the ability to sell raw skins dries up.

If the game had a junk shop that bought anything for 1 to 3 sid at most, I reckon some hunters would probably prefer to sell raw skins half the time as well.

A bit of a derail but also tied into over all costs is the ability to store raw goods, I am unsure if the game implemented decay to raw goods so people couldn't have stacks of bone, hide and, stone and wood just piled up in their apartment. Unsure how to realistically justify bone, leather or stone(extra tough) decay but still kind needed in some form, maybe aggressive bacteria or small bugs. 

A long time ago, I remember trying to cut a deal with a small clan on exotic raw goods that my character could provide, and I remember the player in that clan telling me that due to long gone players, they had more raw items of every single type stored than they had space or need at that particular point. A lost opportunity for both me and that other player unfortunately.   

[dumbstruck]

Unsure how to realistically justify bone, leather or stone(extra tough) decay but still kind needed in some form, maybe aggressive bacteria or small bugs.     

I would never play a crafter again if they started making bone (which lasts for millenia in desert conditions) and stone decay. Nothing like saying 'realism can absolutely go fuck itself' with basic materials just so that your hunter can sell more items.

[Dresan]

I would never play a crafter again if they started making bone (which lasts for millenia in desert conditions) and stone decay. Nothing like saying 'realism can absolutely go fuck itself' with basic materials just so that your hunter can sell more items.

This was the general sentiment last time something similar was brought but, but I do believe a health balance can be found between allowing ample time for a player to do something with the raw good and literally lasting for eternity.

[dumbstruck]

I would never play a crafter again if they started making bone (which lasts for millenia in desert conditions) and stone decay. Nothing like saying 'realism can absolutely go fuck itself' with basic materials just so that your hunter can sell more items.

This was the general sentiment last time something similar was brought but, but I do believe a health balance can be found between allowing ample time for a player to do something with the raw good and literally lasting for eternity.

Or literally between 'seasons' just go in and clear out all the items in clan compounds, then no one has to worry about every rock item in the game slowly turning to shit to solve a problem that doesn't actually exists or if it does is caused not by the fact that rock doesn't automatically disappear but instead the fact that this rock can come in by the thousands and can only make 10 things, each of which can only sell 5 copies of, none of which players want to buy.

Making rock disappear doesn't fix the actual problems with materials and the economy, it literally just adds more needless ooc levels to managing things.

[Dresan]

Yeah maybe seasons resetting everything will help for the first few months.

Unsure, I guess we'll see.

[dumbstruck]

Yeah maybe seasons resetting everything will help for the first few months.

Unsure, I guess we'll see.

That would be nice. And I get both sides of the argument there. You want to sell your stuff and that's reasonable. But things are already packed with useless stuff. Or stuff that crafters for the clan don't have the skill to know what it can make so it's just sitting. I just disagree on making rock and bone disappearing as a suitable methodology for how to address the issue.

[Agent_137]

Yes. Clear the problem items.

New GMH leaders could be told to pick a few things to keep from their warehouse and have the rest wiped, aka used virtually by the rest of the house.

By the same token, a house crafter with no materials and no contacts should be able to get some from their staffer so they have shit to do until they get contacts.

Forcing decay on the entire player base because houses have stupidly full warehouses is group punishment.


PS

a PC merchant who wants the practice or has people who need the practice can just communicate that and pay more for untanned until they don't need the practice. That's completely IC. Stocking untanned is completely ooc.  It'd rot and be smelly and have less value on the NPC market.   

Recipes that use untanned hide should be reported in the request tool so they can be fixed unless the output has untanned in the desc. 

[ABoredLion]

Another thing that could help with stacks of items existing is staff members over these clans having periods where someone important comes to a crafter and says, "Hey, I really need XYZ, do you think you can get your hands on that for me? It'd be a big favor."

Your stock gets cleared out, or you're on a hunter-contact fetch quest, to get that sweet sweet +respect from your superior, with more tangible benefits in some other way.

Potentially pay the crafter themselves within the clan some amount of coin which can then go circular back into the population. This could also see people buying tanned and untanned depending on the needs of the virtual clan in a given month.

[Riev]

That's a weird paradox we have going on.

This might be a terrible idea (or too late seeing as the season is around the corner) but what if we had another type of artisan class that specialized in working with the REFINED goods, and not so much the raw materials?

This ... KIND of happens with some of the subclasses? I play main crafters so I don't know off the top of my head but subclasses will often have "leatherworking" but not "tanning", meaning you need to find a tanner or buy them on the market.

However, many other crafts don't have this "refinement stage" as a necessary component. A Longsword with a ruby in its pommel may not require a REFINED ruby for its craft, nor would a scrab shell cuirass made solely out of shell. There is no refinement there.

Its a good idea, and a way to increase the idea of needing other players, but unfortunately the crafting economy isn't set up to be gather raw material -> refine raw material -> create with refined materials

[Feu de Joie]

Where is the option to donate or liquidate the raw items I have to further my House or Clan or Tribe? If storing of bulk items really is such a problem, we know the items, and an npc that buys those items can come with every clan and house specific for it.

A vacuum like that would allow independents a place to always sell (the clanned) and the clanned a place to sell.

At the VERY least, every raw item represents a few seconds of player time. 500 stone is someone trying to do something productive using the tools they have. Don't let their time rot, let it go towards representation. It's all just props anyways.

[Lizzie]

If you have an overabundance of a particular raw material in your clan store-room, just junk it all and submit a leader report letting staff know it was all used by a crew of virtual crafters in your clan.  There's no reason why there has to be 100 untanned chalton hides and 600 dusky black feathers in a store room.

[Riev]

None of this pertains to my original question and has now become about GMH crafting halls having too many materials.

I wanted to point that out, because it is barely related to what I wanted to discuss and I feel my conversation topic got trampled.

Thanks for the support and honest discussion.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

Well it feels a little hard to stay on point to begin with because the first thing you're bringing up is FF14. I don't think the practice makes any sense whatsoever though.

If we had something like a quality system where there was some objective way to tell what raw skins are what quality, and that translates into worked hides that are also some quality, there may be some merit to it. For example, a very nicely cut raw skin would be rarer and have potential to be made into a hide of extremely high quality. It would make sense for a high-quality skin to be worth more than a low-quality worked hide.

But on a 1:1 ratio of objective quality, it does not make sense economically for hides which take more time, skill, and chance of failure to be worth significantly less. Maybe slightly less, if there are simply lots of things to do with skins, and a hide is only one niche option. In that case maybe laws of supply-demand would justify it.

[Kavrick]

I think people forget about the teach command fairly often. Using it and roleplaying teaching someone how to do something not only is a more immersive and fun way to increase skills, but it also helps deal with the issue of people favoring untanned hides in order to skill up. I'd rather have a lesson from my superior as a bonding moment of sorts and enable character development over being in a room with a 100 chalton hides doing 'craft untanned into tanned' all day.

[Riev]

Well it feels a little hard to stay on point to begin with because the first thing you're bringing up is FF14. I don't think the practice makes any sense whatsoever though.

Interesting coming from one of the people who were staying on topic. I don't feel "mentioning FF14" made it any less focused, only to use as an example that this happens in current gaming as well.

Untanned items sometimes sell for more than the completed items because what you want is the XP they provide, not the completed item they make. And in THAT game, the system is set up for the "raw -> refined -> Completed Item" breakpoints.

So in Armageddon, would it make sense to sell "raw" items for more because you know they're a good method of "skilling up"? Similarly, would it make sense for a crafter to pay a higher premium for 'raw goods' because they need experience refining them, but the refined items aren't in demand?

[Roon]

I don't see a solution to it. Can't really make a rule that says people must pay less for raw goods. If they're offering more for raw goods, they'll be worth more. It's a natural byproduct of the fact that players are more interested in the skillgains from crafting than they are in the materials themselves. That's baked into the foundation of the crafting system.

I do think part of the issue is that the overwhelming majority of crafted goods are junk that nobody will ever want. At best, you might sell the products to NPC merchants until they have five of them and won't buy any more. People might buy those untanned jozhal hides because they want to branch something off of tanning, but the tanned hides they're left with afterwards are worthless garbage because they don't turn into anything for which there's any demand. It's vendor fodder at best, and since they're equally worthless to all the other crafters, every shop is soon filled up with jozhal trash. Then the hides are worth literally nothing.

The crafting system is kind of set up for a game that's way more simulationist than Armageddon really is. People want stuff that has coded functionality, like armor and weapons and poison cures. They might also want a really fancy silk dress because there are characters for whom that's an important part of the role. But cutlery? Baskets? Leather belts? Stone vases? These are either useless or so easy to get from the bazaar that the crafts that produce them are basically pointless.

[Dresan]

Untanned items sometimes sell for more than the completed items because what you want is the XP they provide, not the completed item they make. And in THAT game, the system is set up for the "raw -> refined -> Completed Item" breakpoints.

Its been a while since i played and longer since i played a merchant but i don't remember it being hard to max out the tanning skill even without having assistance from hunters. Maybe something has changed but do remember plenty of cheap skins being sold in shops.

As long as the price allowed me to turn a profit later, my merchant would have been willing to buy raw or refined good. I don't remember ever encountering a situation where raw good sold for more than the finished product.  Again training tanning to to max used to be easy enough.


That said, what hunter is selling tanned skins these days? Stalker has both tanning and leather working skills, so they don't need to sell anything but finished products most of the time. Scout just has skinning. And i dont believe there are any subclass with both skin and tanning, just one or the other.  Most crafting skills turn the raw good straight into items already, eg shell armor, bone weapons. Are you seeing this situation in npc shops or something?

[eska]

If I want my crafters practice tanning, I would buy lots of cheap hide like gortok or chalton. The rest I would prefer tanned, which would eliminate the chance of ruining the hide in tanning attempt. In order to grind tanning or crafting skills, almost everyone prefers cheap materials. I can't say anything about the NPC vendors, but find me IG for the tanned hides you have.

[Lizzie]

If I want my crafters practice tanning, I would buy lots of cheap hide like gortok or chalton. The rest I would prefer tanned, which would eliminate the chance of ruining the hide in tanning attempt. In order to grind tanning or crafting skills, almost everyone prefers cheap materials. I can't say anything about the NPC vendors, but find me IG for the tanned hides you have.

Another option now that the Byn has loosened its "what will we do/refuse to do" IC guidelines:

Put out a standing order with the Byn to bring in untanned hides whenever they go out on escort or other trips. The most common hides the Byn would have an opportunity to deal with are gortok, chalton, and raptor. This will give Bynners a chance to improve their skinning skill, and -slightly- slow their pace down so an escort from Allanak to the other side of the game-world takes longer than an hour.

[Athapaxis]

One way I can see this making IG sense... 

A tanned hide has more labor put into it, and it is also easier to transport.  It's less of a mess.

An untanned hide allows the GMH to tan it in using the processes they prefer.  Maybe you don't love the way that tribals tan chalton hide and you want to control that.   And it is also valid that you would want to have some raw ones to train your crafters on.

I can see them both costing the same amount because the hunter might prefer to transport them tanned just because of the convenience.  So yes more work for them, but also nicer to transport.