why can I never find item modifications on the market ???

[Daawg]

As I posted in another thread......they put a lot of time into crafting but the day the game went live there were going to be no crafters to make anything so they flooded the market with cheap armor, and cheap mods from commendation merchants to make up for the fact that in the first few weeks their were going to be few crafters.

 

Now that there are crafters they are going to have to change the mods prices from the merchants or cyber techs are going to have a hard time competing with them as they want to charge 5k for a mod when a player can get one almost as good for 2 commendations.

[Karstedt]

For many of the already stated reasons, I don't offer much as a crafter (2 day limits, and economic viability mostly). I probably put up about 10 armor mods (I provide grade 3,5,8 mostly) per week between my two cybertechs, and though they sell, I could actually be making more on the materials...

 

Mostly, I just end up crafting for myself and sometimes giving stuff to people I group with though.

[pokota]

Think through the stupidity of what youre asking for in demanding that the rares in the game be made less rare.

 

At the same time, be aware that there are countless people who have invested the time and who ARE selling the items at a deep discount and making plenty of money doing it.

 

I hate to ask, but what the bloody hell are you talking about? Nothing you said had anything to do with what I said. Rares less rare? Wha ..? You really got that from me pointing out that there is often just as much or more profit in selling materials than in selling crafted goods? Really?

[Liralen]

It basically boils down to the opportunity cost being too high to make modifications, plus the fact that people can get blue mods for 2 commendations.

 

re: opportunity cost - almost everything I could do would make more credits, even making armor pieces. Armor pieces require the same mats as mods, but require 7 commendations. Theoretically, the market should be better. I made 3 blue armor pieces, grade 15 (level 35?) which haven't sold in two days, priced at the default GTN price. If I had sold the mats instead, they would have sold in a few hours, at a considerable mark-up over GTN default. Arguably, they are the only ones in the market at that level range, and the primary reason they haven't sold is that people have given up looking for them. But that's no comfort to me, since I have better things to do.

 

I'm keeping my cybertech at the same combat level as my friends, so I made an alt to play when they aren't on. The alt does not craft, but only gathers resources for my crafters. It's really sickening how much wealthier she is than the crafters. And I don't even sell the mats she gathers. I send everything to the crafters, and they sell any excess mats.

 

I like to craft, and will do so at loss for myself and my friends. But I generally won't bother as a money making proposition, if the mats would sell better, which they do in this game.

[Liralen]

I hate to ask, but what the bloody hell are you talking about? Nothing you said had anything to do with what I said. Rares less rare? Wha ..? You really got that from me pointing out that there is often just as much or more profit in selling materials than in selling crafted goods? Really?

 

LOL, I missed your post while typing mine. Exactly the same point it appears - there is no point in selling crafted goods to others when the mats make more credits.

Edited February 11, 2012 by Liralen

[Quiet]

I started cybertech on an alt because I could never find the modification/armoring that I wanted. Either there was none on the GTN and/or the commendation vendor did not have the one I wanted or had the wrong level of the one I wanted.

 

I also could not find the barrels I wanted, probably because almost no one is doing the armstech crewskill.

Edited February 11, 2012 by Quiet

[AHouston]

Before I get into it, I agreed with statements about the droid parts, bikes, ship parts, etc..

 

I can't say if it's been mentioned before or not, but there's also the lack of access to the GTN on 'levelling worlds' past DK. Balmorra, Taris, Alderaan, etc.. (Nar Shadaa is it's own evil, more on that in a minute ).

 

The point is, I have to make my character go all the way to the fleet just to put stuff up for Auction, when I left his butt out in the middle of a planet who needs him. That's pretty much why this former mods crafter left the scene. I made mods of a similar level to myself and put them up for auction and they always sold. The state of my server is pretty much top end gear for sale in mods. Synth has since caught on but good luck finding a color crystal you want or barrel or hilt, or mod that can't be gotten from vendor. Same with Biochem. Hell why don't people sell stacks of green med-pacs ? They are much better than vendor bought. I'd love to have some of the ones that heal your companion also.

 

I don't have time to level a ton of alts. either

 

Ok, Nar Shadaa.. You would think with a potentially larger market (pool of available buyers) that there would be MORE goods available but damn if anybody at all uses it on my server. I'm sure the clothes for Jedi and Smuggler only sell real well when you can't mail stuff cross faction. People talk about being limited to 50 items, but that is per auction house. You've got another 50 in Nar Shadaa baby. Why don't people use? Same reason why I hardly sell anymore. Access. People don't want to make it all that way.

[Amiracle]

Conclusion: Crafting seems to be based on a game with a longer leveling experience.

[VelnikSP]

Conclusion: Crafting seems to be based on a game with a longer leveling experience.

 

good quote

 

to fix, they would basically have to quadruple mat yields for missions, and cut the mission costs dramatically.

 

and fix the double jeopardy of TWO random rolls to get mats... IE first you have to have the mission on the list, THEN you have to succeed at the mission.

 

priority should be given to rich yields

 

and hell, take companion gifts out of the mix entirely for everything except maybe one or two mission skills. Diplomacy and investigation, maybe.

 

it is WAY too much work for the rewards.

[Knockerz]

The problem can be fix if BW were to make getting access to blue or purples schematics for non max level easier. I was trying to get a blue proc for 34 mod, if I recall correctly, and never got a proc, so I stop trying. It's just not worth the mats and effort to produce low level mods and probably max level mods too. The problem are commendation and lack level 50 mods. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is if they allowed max level mods. Either people farm a little and get their mods for free or pay a premium price to get their mods from a crafter.

[parmie]

Even my mid-teens level artificer has sold a couple of crystals from reverse engineering up to purple. Only for recommended price as a tester but they were both sold.

 

This is the key to making money at crafting, I see no point in putting up greens/blues.

 

It's been frustating but I've Reverse engineered at least one purple version for most level 49/50 ears and some of the armouring. It all sells for a reasonable price.

 

Crafters need to decide why they're in the game, those expecting big bucks will probably be disappointed, although for Cybers, ship upgrades are a winner, at best it's a supplementary income to questing, generated by your companions who aren't with you. And realistically you need to expect to have periods of frustation either with mat mission returns and/or reverse engineering failures before you get a money maker.

 

Recycle surplus mats into green/blue items to sell to vendors, they probably run at break even against mission costs.

[Kryptorchid]

Quick and dirty:

 

You aren't seeing item modifications on the GTN because it is faster, cheaper, and overall easier to just get them from the commendation vendors.

[Ofeogeous]

Ok people are getting carried away i think. Lets not over complicate things. The only problem with crafts and the market are the commadation vendors that make blues so easy to get for free that only purples are relevant. Remove the vendors or increase the cost or lowere the commadation drop rate, Then suddenly blues would be relavent when cradfted;

[Monoth]

As others have mentioned the costs of the materials is greater then the price people are willing to pay for the finished item.

 

You really can't have a Crafting system and NPC vendors selling similar items in the game, the NPC vendors pretty much lock down the pricing.... Take Medpacks for example I can only sell them for so much because at a certain point people will just buy the medpacks from the NPC vendors because there cheaper... Same goes for gear, you get so much gear from Loot / Quest rewards that it makes professions like Sythweaving and Armormech pointless...

 

It's a huge conflict.... MMO's need to either have a full crafting system where the crafters provide everything or you end up with crafting just being a novelty (time/credit sink)

[VenomByte]

I'm not saying they have to do this or do that, I can't tell any other player how to play the game. But my opinion is that they are no thinking through their pricing structure, and I hope they either change it or stop crafting. I have still made money by sticking with my same pricing structure, which is more than twice what they are charging. But I have stopped selling in the hopes they they realize what impact they have on the market.

 

This is what happens when the materials required for crafting items are fully farmable by the crafter - opportunity cost for the value of the mats is often ignored by many who don't understand economics too well, and they'll happily sell at what is effectively at a loss, thinking "The mats were free so it was 100% profit"

 

This can be prevented to a large degree by having crafted gear require mats from several different professions instead of one or two. Many items in WoW do this.

 

That aside, I also agree with all those saying that the cost of mats is greater than the demand for items, due to vendor/quest/daily gear. Very few items are profitable at present.

[Solmakala]

I have a artifice , cybertech , synthweaving, and biochem. I have a monsterous amount of mats from racking up so many missions via slicing (was my first 50 and I gave her underworld trading as well as diplomancy so I can give almost every toon slicing.) . I've unlocked lots of purple recipes across the board but still had little reason to put anything on ah(mainly due to slicing ^^) and most purples I made for my own alts and fu ture alts. If there were a actual crazy need for credits I'd bother to make and put things up.

[Ofeogeous]

You craft for yourself first to have better items cheaper and then for profit only second. In this game it was easier cheaper to spend my commadation then to craft. When i did craft it was to make purples in my stats first, because the game is saturated so much with blues and in my case also my stats. I never got around to making purples in other stats until lvl49/22 and even though i check the market and under cut the prices i see there, my items still arent selling.

[Battilea]

Ok people are getting carried away i think. Lets not over complicate things. The only problem with crafts and the market are the commadation vendors that make blues so easy to get for free that only purples are relevant. Remove the vendors or increase the cost or lowere the commadation drop rate, Then suddenly blues would be relavent when cradfted;

 

The OP's post isn't about why he cannot sell stuff. It is about why he cannot find things to buy. He is not talking about a demand problem, but supply.

 

And the whole "but comms" argument falls flat, for the most part, pre-50. People making barrels/hilts have a valid argument about it, but that's about it. Upgrading weapons and armor mods just takes too many, so armor mods can and do sell. And comm vendor enhancement selection is just poor.

 

And the lower levels who do make low level items back that up. They all pretty much say the same thing. They put stuff up and it sells, often fast. Even things that you can get for 2 comms. But they also state they don't put much up.

 

So shift your focus. Don't comment on why stuff won't sell, because that isn't the topic of this thread. And with that focus...

 

A large part of the problem is the GTN. For example, when I level a character, I rarely go visit the fleet. Which means I rarely have access to a GTN. So that means I'm not putting stuff up for sale. Then there's the max of 50 items, so those that do want to craft are encouraged to go for larger margin items rather than smaller margin items, the type that would be more likely to sell to people leveling. And the max 2 day limit, on top of it.

 

There's other factors as well, like the limits imposed by companions. Certain classes get hosed as to when they get companions. An IA, for example, is around level 30 when they get their 3rd companion. A person in the 20-30s is most likely to make stuff for people in the 20-30s, easiest access to mats, lacks access to higher ticket items, can make stuff for self, etc. But if he doesn't have the companions to do so, his ability is severely impaired. And you've got lower affection companions as well, which means fewer purple mats, if you decide you want to learn to make those items.

 

And then there's some stupidity in how many components items take. Some just take 2x as many as they should, like Mods. There's imbalance in the type of stuff used, like how Zal Alloy is used in equal or greater quantities than its T6 metal equivalent. And so on.

 

A lot of issues exist that serve to discourage crafters from crafting and putting items up for sale, especially lower level items. And that's why the OP cannot find things to buy.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Battilea

[Liralen]

The OP's post isn't about why he cannot sell stuff. It is about why he cannot find things to buy. He is not talking about a demand problem, but supply.

 

And the whole "but comms" argument falls flat, for the most part, pre-50. People making barrels/hilts have a valid argument about it, but that's about it. Upgrading weapons and armor mods just takes too many, so armor mods can and do sell. And comm vendor enhancement selection is just poor.

 

And the lower levels who do make low level items back that up. They all pretty much say the same thing. They put stuff up and it sells, often fast. Even things that you can get for 2 comms. But they also state they don't put much up.

 

So shift your focus. Don't comment on why stuff won't sell, because that isn't the topic of this thread. And with that focus...

 

A large part of the problem is the GTN. For example, when I level a character, I rarely go visit the fleet. Which means I rarely have access to a GTN. So that means I'm not putting stuff up for sale. Then there's the max of 50 items, so those that do want to craft are encouraged to go for larger margin items rather than smaller margin items, the type that would be more likely to sell to people leveling. And the max 2 day limit, on top of it.

 

There's other factors as well, like the limits imposed by companions. Certain classes get hosed as to when they get companions. An IA, for example, is around level 30 when they get their 3rd companion. A person in the 20-30s is most likely to make stuff for people in the 20-30s, easiest access to mats, lacks access to higher ticket items, can make stuff for self, etc. But if he doesn't have the companions to do so, his ability is severely impaired. And you've got lower affection companions as well, which means fewer purple mats, if you decide you want to learn to make those items.

 

And then there's some stupidity in how many components items take. Some just take 2x as many as they should, like Mods. There's imbalance in the type of stuff used, like how Zal Alloy is used in equal or greater quantities than its T6 metal equivalent. And so on.

 

A lot of issues exist that serve to discourage crafters from crafting and putting items up for sale, especially lower level items. And that's why the OP cannot find things to buy.

 

I agree. It's not the commendation vendors being too much competition that keeps my cybertech from selling mods. It's the fact that my opportunity cost is too high to bother with selling them.

 

There are too many other things I could do that would make more credits, the least of which is making armor pieces, which are more useful but require the same amount of mats. But even those aren't worth it, due to GTN hassles. Time is money, and using the GTN takes too much time, both on my part and the buyer. When I do use the GTN to sell stuff, I use it to sell things that provide a greater return for my time, and mods are the one of the lowest thing on my list. OK, so maybe the level 25 bikes and droid parts are even lower.

 

I also agree wrt to companion times. I've got toons that have cybertech, biochem, and armstech, so I could cycle through them. But none of them makes as much money as my non-crafter, resource gatherer only toon. Who doesn't even sell the resources, but rather sends them to the crafters, i.e., doing quests and killing things are the most profitable use of my time.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Liralen

[SilentKitty]

Have a lvl 24 BH that I wanted to get some armorings and mods for. All her Nar Shadaa-commendations that I got during questing went to getting her a orange headgear and it did not in any way, shape or form cover the rest of the need of commendations. I'm a storyplayer so don't like to do heroics unless it is with people I know.

 

So I went to the fleet, 10 pages of armorings. 1 green lvl 15 and 9 pages with lvl 45-50. Nothing for me. The same with mods, and weapons. So I fixed this the "easy" way.

 

The lvl 50 JK send money to the lvl 20 trooper on the fleet to buy gear on the Republic GTN. Luckily I could get a purple barrel for her and some other things, no implants or such. Then all of this was mailed to the lvl 25 smuggler on Tatooine who then flew to Nar Shadda to put it up so that the BH could buy it.

 

I would have bought everything on the Empire GTN if someone would like to sell things. Got lucky and found a green lvl 23 colorcrystal so she could upgrade the really old one she had before. That was the only thing for a char lower than 45 pretty much. Sure I can get things over from the republic via Nar Shadda, but I really would prefer to get it of the GTN and the Hutts really don't need more of my money when I have to go through their system.

 

At least the weapons-thing is fixed. Mailed one person that had put up a nr of lvl 45+ weapons so from now on I'll order from him. I guess that's the way to go for a low lvl char. Find someone on GTN that make high-lvl gear and pester them with mail, begging for them to sell stuff to you =)

 

Shut up and take my credits!!

Edited February 16, 2012 by SilentKitty

[_Flin_]

This is the key to making money at crafting, I see no point in putting up greens/blues.

 

This might be true on maxlevel, but when leveling this is just a waste. Costs more than the items are bringing in.

 

It's been frustating but I've Reverse engineered at least one purple version for most level 49/50 ears and some of the armouring. It all sells for a reasonable price.

 

Armoring? To the people who don't know about Ilum dailies?

 

for Cybers, ship upgrades are a winner

 

What exactly is the winner in selling items for a price that is less than it's material costs? Last time I tried, I sold Promethium for 13280.

 

And realistically you need to expect to have periods of frustation either with mat mission returns and/or reverse engineering failures before you get a money maker.

 

That much is true.

[SilentKitty]

I will most likely buy some lvl 50 stuff of the GTN because I don't see myself spending too much time with a lvl 50 char. Gearing them up for the end-boss of the class-q pretty much. After all the class-q's are done and no more conversations are available with my companions my main focus will be on a new char with a new class-story. I might dust of the old lvl 50 just to do something with friends every now and then but really, once I reach 50 it's pretty much over so no Ilium dailies for me. I don't do operations or such things either.

 

There are many ways to play this game =) I'm in it for the story. Which is why I really don't like lvl:ing a bunch of chars to sit on the fleet and act as my crafters. I would rather lvl their story in one go. Getting credits is not a problem, spending them on the other hand is a bit of a problem at lower lvl:s.

 

This is actually one of the reasons why I like this game so much. Have rl-friends that I play with who are very much into flashpoints and operations. The kind of people who had server-first's in another game that I won't mention. We whisper each other and have a really good time together, me happily storyquesting with my spanking new BH and they are doing whatever lvl 50's are doing. Every now and then we do a FP together, one that they know well so it won't be a disaster bringing me along since I'm not the meanest killing-machine out there. But then, that is not the point. When we go to FP:s the real goal is just having a laugh.

 

A storyplayer that doesn't do to many FP:s, heroic and such might very well be a customer at the GTN no matter the lvl. And if you don't do too many heroics you get less commendations. Which brings you back to the GTN. If you put stuff there, I will by it.

Edited February 16, 2012 by SilentKitty

[parmie]

This might be true on maxlevel, but when leveling this is just a waste. Costs more than the items are bringing in.

 

Why does max level effect whether blues/greens/purples sell? The point which is clear, is that if you craft greens and blues and expect large sales, don't.

 

Armoring? To the people who don't know about Ilum dailies?

 

Can't say that I asked them if they did Ilum dailies or not. I imagine it could just be level 49s. I guess not everyone likes to grind even if its not many to get an upgrade?

 

 

 

What exactly is the winner in selling items for a price that is less than it's material costs? Last time I tried, I sold Promethium for 13280.

 

I don't let myself be taken advantage of by those making money out of crafters, so I gather all my own materials. I've got two underworld trading bonus companions and they have a good rate of return on purples metals.

 

 

That much is true.

 

Everything I said is true, there is certainly a sub-community of players wanting to make money out of selling mats to proper crafters, so guess you have a fear factor that the materials market bubble will burst.

[Fubbik]

Making mods at midlevels for profit is not easy when you can buy a purple of equal level for almost no credits. Assuming you don't care about looks, it's usually quicker and cheaper to just go with purples (or blues). Sure, some might have a subpar stat, but it's usually a lot easier than trying to find sellers for 3 (or 4) different mod-slots.

 

People are too spoiled with AHs/GTN/similar to even consider making personal relations with crafters, which is too bad. Next time you need an upgrade (or just before), check who made your last one (assuming it was crafted), send a friendly mail to the player and ask if they have anything worthwhile to meet your coming need. Even if they don't have anything specific REd for the slot/level, your request might actually make them put some time and effort into getting something as they know they have at least one customer (and a potential market due to the request).

[VelnikSP]

good point, it's not like each server is overflowing with people.

I know on my server, someone that acts like a jerk usually cannot find a group anymore except for pugtards... everyone with a brain knows everyone else in a certain level bracket.