On Jedi Covenant I've been trying to break into the consumables market the last couple days with absolutely no success. The long and short of it is that people are listing all stims and adrenals at less than the price of the components required to create them, so there's no profit to be had. Is this the case on other servers as well, or am I just looking at a situation where people are dumping all their extra consumables or flooding the market with the intention of driving out competition?

One thing to realize is that the expansion will be going live soon (4/9 for those who pre-ordered, 4/14 for the rest). All of those players are simply trying to dump their stocks. Consumables is a very lucrative market, just not before an expansion.

That's somewhat reassuring, but I wouldn't put it past an MMO population at large to be dumb enough to not factor in opportunity cost when pricing their goods, ruining it for the people who do understand how things work.

 

I've seen it happen before. People convince themselves that since they've gathered the materials themselves, that they're making more money with their crafting. Except that if they ran the math, they'd realize they would have made more money by simply selling the crafting materials.

Edited April 3, 2013 by cidbahamut

That's somewhat reassuring, but I wouldn't put it past an MMO population at large to be dumb enough to not factor in opportunity cost when pricing their goods, ruining it for the people who do understand how things work.

 

I've seen it happen before. People convince themselves that since they've gathered the materials themselves, that they're making more money with their crafting. Except that if they ran the math, they'd realize they would have made more money by simply selling the crafting materials.

 

Not saying I have not seen this type of behavior in this and other MMOs, but it invariably radically increases as an expansion approaches and more players tend to notice it.

 

And with consumables (and armor modification items) there is the "extras" to consider. Yes, per unit the materials cost more than what the specific item is being sold for. But when you take into account that approximately 20% of all crafts in the consumables markets are "bonus freebies" (you get twice the normal result when they are crafted), selling under material cost is still a net profit...to a point.

 

With this in mind, some crafters sell just below, at, or above material cost and focus on quantity versus quality - selling a hundred units at 1% average profit is the same as selling one unit at 100% profit. And one is more likely to sell those hundred than that one. So they sell more consistently resulting in a steadier income flow.

I just started getting into Biochem, I hope it is a successful trade. Any tips for someone who has never crafted in this game or any tips for a new Biochemist? Like what sells good, or best place to get materials. Edited April 4, 2013 by CaldaRaric

I can understand selling in volume and reducing profit margins accordingly, but I think we're well past that point when we're looking at items being sold for half the cost of the materials it took to create. If I recall the numbers correctly, Exotech Attack Adrenals took roughly 40k worth of materials to create and were selling for about 17k each. At that price point you're pretty clearly taking a loss.

I can understand selling in volume and reducing profit margins accordingly, but I think we're well past that point when we're looking at items being sold for half the cost of the materials it took to create. If I recall the numbers correctly, Exotech Attack Adrenals took roughly 40k worth of materials to create and were selling for about 17k each. At that price point you're pretty clearly taking a loss.

 

I think the crafters do need to make a profit and i refuse to take items at cost to them, but i also refuse to pay more then what the item is worth, i mean, there are alot of items being crafted in this game that can be crafted for as low as 1200cr per item and being sold for 8k-25k, thats just too much, especially for armorings, since then you still need to get mods and enhancements, which tend to cost roughly the same amount, such a massive pity.

 

I really do hope that the 2.0 commendations change actually results in increase drop rates, if that is the case, then i can finally avoid overpriced items on the GTN.

sell the mats instead