@Rabbitfly As the last dev post cleared things up with regard to the summoned arrow damage, I'd no longer term this a "nerf". The basic problem in the past with arrow supply in the game is that no Woodworker in their right mind will craft them. You have calculated the fuel costs as 30G, but don't forget the cost of the other raws. Assuming you make 25 arrows each time, and you need 88 combines to fill a 22 slot quiver, then you will also need the following raws: Adamantine x 88 - 2s each which is 1.75G total Rosewood x 88 - 7s each, which is 6G total Hanging Root x 88 - 10c each, which is 10s total (amount may be different on your server) Rounding off, call it 8G in raw costs. Sure you can harvest the raws yourself but then you have to factor in the time spent, and also the loss of cash as you'd be able to sell them yourself. So, the cost for a quiver of arrows is 38G, let's call it 40G to be really generous. Now we come to the serious cost....the time taken to make. As a Woodworker, it's going to take me at least 1 minute per combine if I'm some sort of super crafting god who has the RNG on his side. That's 1.5 hours I spend making the arrows. And how much profit do I get ? If I sell them for 40G then it's none by the sounds of it. That's the reason why there is no market for player made arrows at the moment, the demand is there, but the supply isn't. So we're left with either summoned arrows, or vendor bought arrows. Both of these have horrendous monetary costs to the Ranger (as oppsed to the Woodworker). The fact that the devs intially were going to nerf the summoned arrows meant that we were faced with having to switch to vendor arrows to keep our DPS. If we're going to switch to vendor ammo then, you also need to factor in the Ranger's costs for that hour of adventuring earning the money to buy the arrows i.e. how many arrows do I use adventuring to earn cash to buy arrows to go adventuring ? Anyway, as things stand I think the devs have now got this fix nailed so that everyone (Woodworker and Rangers) are happy. Reducing our arrow consumption is the key, and this means that Rangers can summon enough arrows and still do exactly the same DPS as before. Instantly you have a massive money sink removed for Rangers. Sure, there is going to be an intitial period where a Ranger has to build up his stocks on summoned arrows, but I bet most Rangers have a few put by. Now that consumption is lowered, a few days after the change goes live they will have got their stocks up enough to not worry about it any more. The second aspect of the change is to make it less time consuming for Woodworkers to make arrows. This looks like this is being done by increasing the number in a combine by a factor of 4. This would mean it now takes me 30 mins to supply myself for a raid, rather than 1.5 hours. However, the real beauty of both of these changes when taken together is because my ammo consumption has been reduce from 2000 to 500 or so, and it now takes me 1/4 of the time to make those 500 arrows, it's actually only 5 combines which is about 7.5 minutes tops. If it takes me about 10 mins to restock myself for a raid, then I'm not going to use summoned arrows any more and will go for player made every time. So, I get a DPS increase. In fact, as arrow crafting is so much less painful, I'll make a load of spare ones and stick them on broker for other Rangers and non Rangers to buy. Hey, that sounds like the devs fixed it to me ! Message Edited by EQ2Magroo on 02-01-2007 02:20 PM - Made it make more sense. Fingers are faster than brain I'm afraid. Message Edited by EQ2Magroo on 02-01-2007 02:20 PM
Removed due to faulty statement based on hasty reading @Magroo yes it did clearify this (however it was allready clearified had everyone cared to follow a link posted by another poster) Message Edited by RabbitFly on 02-01-2007 02:15 PM Message Edited by RabbitFly on 02-01-2007 02:19 PM
EQ2Magroo, And most importantly, I'll be making arrows to sell that people will actually want to buy. I'd still like to see some ranger feedback on what kind of pricing would be consider fair however.
I did mention earlier that I thought anything above 2x of your cost would be a bit high.. in pure fuel costs it's around 1g 40s per craft, which then is 1s 40c per arrow. So to be fair to both rangers and woodworkers I guess I would like to see a price around 2.5s per arrow. Which is then 2.5g per craft. Now this might sound low to begin with, but I figure alot of rangers want to go crafted arrows with the changes, and therefore you will see people filling quivers when they buy. Netting in about 55g per quiver. Any higher and I would have trouble buying it, the only problem is that this is only slightly over 1g profit per craft, and thats not even counting raws. So thats why I asked earlier if 1g profit per craft sounded reasonable to you? cause if it doesn't then I still tink they should up the recipes a bit more than just 1 stack.
If a woodworker can make 1000 arrows in 20 minutes, and the consumption of arrows has been cut by 2/3rds, theres about to be (after GU 32) a million arrows on the broker priced just above the cost to make them. Woodworkers will then stop making so many of them since the profit is not there. Hopefully there will be some equilibrium reached so that woodworkers can still make money and rangers can still get cheap high-DPS arrows. I think it would be great if woodworkers could use rare wood to make stacks of 100 crit arrows or something that would increase autoattack DPS by 1.5 times or even 2 times.
Costs would be as follows: 1 x Adamantine Cluster- 2s each - 2s total 1 x Rough Lumbered Rosewood - 7s each - 7s total 1 x Hanging Root - 10c each - 10s total 4 x Acrylia Sandpaper - 34s, 56c each - 1G 38s total Your costs may vary on your server, but this gives a total cost of say 1.6G per combine (minimum is going to be 1.4G even if the other raws are free). So, assuming I get a pristine combine, and make 100 arrows, then it's 1.4G per 100. If our arrow consumption is reduced, and we're talking auto-attack only, then this is 7 arrows per minute I believe ? Factor in double shot and let's call it 10 arrows per minute. This gives us 1 stack lasting 10 minutes. So, for 1 hour of constant non-stop auto-attack firing, we would use 6 stacks of arrows. If I sell my arrows for 5G a stack (huge margin, but hey let's pretend I'm an alchemist here :smileyhappy: ), then this is a cost to the Ranger of 30G for 1 hour non stop raiding (no downtime, no talking, just one mob straight after another). In reality you'll have downtime to wait for power, find the next mob etc. Let's call it 50%. So, a 2 hour raid is 30G arrow costs. If I'm making them for myself, then it's 9G. I guess the reality will be priced somewhere in between. I don't think that anyone should be worried about price gouging on arrows, but Woodworkers won't be making much money on them I guess. (unless my calculations are wildly wrong, please check !!) EDIT: Yes they were, got everything multiplied by a factor of 10 for some reason. Message Edited by EQ2Magroo on 02-01-2007 02:38 PM
Rothgar, I realize this probably got lost in the flames, but way back on page one I asked your opinion on a couple of items. I don't know if you didn't want to answer me or if you just got wrapped up with the flames. I stated... Rothgar, thanks for the update. This all looks pretty good on the surface, I sure hope it works out as planned. I'm still using my Grizz and my parses show my autoattack damage at around 30-36% of my total DPS. With a 6% decrease in auto attack using summon, if my math is correct, that'll be a bout a 2% decrease in total DPS with my current set up. Obviously those with higher DR bows will see a greater decrease. Is this in the ball park of how you envision the change? If so, I can live with this. We can use our summoned arrows for grouping and such and buy the crafted arrows for raiding. Which brings me to this... Buying crafted arrows seems like it'll be a must for the raiders who don't have the bows that summon the T8 ammo. This is good news, unless the cost is prohibitive. Do you think your new crafting ratios are going to help lower the market prices, or do you think we'll still be paying 6-7 gold per stack? I'm only asking because if the arrows are still going to cost us as much as they do now, or more, we are going to still be in the same boat. Well, only those of us who don't have the time to level up a T7 woodworker. Edit: I mis-spoke. We won't be in the same boat exactly since the CAs won't burn ammo. But I hope catch my drift. Message Edited by Gareorn on 01-31-200703:38 PM My first question was eventually answered, I think. But I'm more interested in your opinion on the market prices. Have you guys on the dev team done any analysis on market prices, and if so, what do you expect the market prices to be once the initial surge has passed?
Rothgar, so long as summoned arrows aren't getting nerfed in any way, shape or form, my original post on this matter remains the same: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
@Magroo Your cost calculations sound fine by me, of course as you mentioned it's differnet on almost every server. However your assumption of Arrow consumption is a bit out. Yes our arrow consumption will be lesser by alot, but not that much. Pure auto attack (with no delay, as your cas delay your aas from time to time numbers will not be correct also not taking in the matter of downtime) a medium equiped ranger should have a haste of about 50-70, with most longbows thats around 4-5sec delay. pure auto attack will still give us an arrow consumption at about 900 an hour with 4 sec delay. of course this will not be the actual consumption as it would not be much better than it allready is, as there is always a certain ammount of downtime and a certain ammount of delay. These numbers are just pure to give you an idea. Message Edited by RabbitFly on 02-01-2007 02:45 PM
To be honest, I don't know if 1gp profit is worth it to me, which is why I originally asked what you would expect to pay on the broker and on mail orders. I'm one of those crafters who mostly works by order, and I typically only ask for donations. Everything I sell on the broker is typically 2-3 times what it would cost me to make ie: if I were to buy the components what would I pay for them plus fuel costs. So if I were to list arrows at 3sp each on the broker, assuming no other competition, is that a reasonable asking price? Ideally, I'd prefer players order from me directly and pay me what they feel is fair. I also like this arangement because often times customers will send me a stack or 2 of various raws, saving me harvesting time.
I think the market will drive your asking price, and I think the market will be flooded with arrows. I think that whatever the cheapest woodworkers will accept for a profit is what you will have to sell them for because woodworkers will be able to make so many arrows in such short times relative to the new consumption rate.
well 3s is still a rather nice improvement from the 6s vendor arrows. the only problem is that it adds up very quickly for rangers.. at 3s per arrow a quiver is 66g, which is still possible to and better than summoning in most cases, but it's also still rather expensive. I guess it will show better once we can really see how much the CA change affects our actual arrow consumption.
There is no doubt the market will drive the price, but the fact is, at least on my server there aren't too many woodworkers and when many crafters hit 70, they stop crafting unless asked. I was 69 for months, since I had my last set of recipies. I finally dinged 70 last week while making totems and that put me at the 68th lvl70 woodworker on my server.
A little off topic here, but my interest is peaked. Actually there are six 2h crushing weapons available to you that have a DR of 90 or better. There are also 6 longbows in the game with a DR of 90 or better. And, the RNG is much better for 2h'ers than it is for bows. It seems you have a better weapon selection than we do. Maybe it's just my Ranger mentality, but I never understood why mages just stand back and cast. I've seen many stand back and do nothing when they run out of power. Heck, even if you have a bad weapon, and laying some wood on the mob only increased your DPS by a couple of hundred, why wouldn't you?
Just looking at what Rothgar wrote I can see my raiding costs going down to a quarter of what they are now, that will make me happy, and as a woodworker, I will be selling my arrows at a fair price once the changes come into effect, I dont see any major change on my DPS from what he said. Basically our cost will be the same as any other toon that uses a bow or ranged weapon, thats all I want, and to me it seems a beneficial change. I also think that alot of posters in this forum where very unreasonable about how they received the changes, seemed alot went off on their own little daydream, working their facts and figures and not really listening to what they where being told. The whole thing seemed resonable clear to me when I read it. Less cost in arrows, and benifits buying better arrows, think thats the way it should be.
You can thank Noel Walling for the recipe changes and ammo balancing. Chris Kozak made the code changes to remove the ammo requirements from the combat arts, so as you can see, it really is a team effort. I'm just a guy that has an interest in these changes because I play a Ranger. I checked with Noel and he said that for now, recipe costs will not be changing, the yield will just increase x4. So instead of 25 arrows for a pristine result, you'll get 100. In effect thats a nice cost reduction, but also has the added benefit of saving lots of crafting time. In terms of market price, there's really no way to do an analysis ahead of time. Every server has different market dynamics and we have to balance for PvP servers as well. I'm not sure that crafted arrows would see a surge similar to adornments. With items like adornments, everyone wants them in the beginning, then demand will slack off a little bit as people purchase them. With arrows, it may be more of a steady flow since they are a consumable. I would probably compare arrow market activity to something like repair kits or poisons.
