Bloody Bolt Heads?

[Aeni]

Re: Bloody Bolt Heads?

I think a simple explanation is that crafter's are preying upon the greed and stupidity of players.

Generally, the average age of players in this game coupled with their woefully inadequate levels of mathematic abilities creates a seller's market.

A great example is that on our server, Shihei Toolbag goes for 300K a stack. I believe there's 12 stacks of Shihei in a bag.

Shihei is 8K a stack.

12 x 8K = 96K a stack.

So, for their stupidity/ignorance, theese players are overpaying shihei by 200K. There's always around 100 stack of shihei on sale but only about 8 stacks of toolbags.

It's a relatively painless process to bag the stacks.

Really...

[Turiel]

Re: Bloody Bolt Heads?

I don't really care how much the bolt heads cost as long as the finished product turns a decent profit. Which, for about a week after the status quivers were added, they did. Bloody bolt heads cost 350k~ a stack, yielded about 4.2 stacks of quivers, which sold for 150k~ each, meaning around 300k profit. Not tooooo shabby. But now, there are few woodworkers who are bottoming out the profit margin, moving stacks of quivers for 110k. Idiots! I just don't get why people kill their own profits so badly. ; ;

Same thing with stack of toolbags for shihei.

Say what you will, but its a lengthy process to use a stack of 99 bolts heads or 20 stacks of bast parchment, especially when you're making your own materials. The time it takes to craft the materials simply isn't worth 150k profit.

On Ramuh, btw.

[Sabaron]

Re: Bloody Bolt Heads?

Remember that Bloody Bolts are only 16 Woodworking to make, so low-skill could make them, but the money as with most low-level syntheses is in High Quality. You can get up to 99 out of them on a level 2 or level 3 high quality synthesis. This may be the reason why the bolt heads cost so much. A high level carpenter can charge a lot less for his bloody bolts than you can, so just like with beeswax you may not be able to see any benefit in crafting your own early in your carpentry career.

You can to +7 (?) on your High Quality meter by taking Woodworking to 100 resulting in +70%(?) chance of getting 66 per synth and 30%(?). I read somewhere that HQ caps were at +11 above the synth cap and that each HQ netted you a 10% increase in the chance to produce a Level 1 HQ, but my information may be incorrect, so don't quote me. If it bears out to 10%/22 for HQ2 and 10%/33 for HQ3 your average number of bolts per synth at a given tier is:
NQ HQ1(+11) HQ2(+22) HQ3 (+33)
27 = (33 * 0.9) + (66 * 0.1) + (99 * 0.0) + (99 * 0.0) = 36.3
38 = (33 * 0.7) + (66 * 0.2) + (99 * 0.1) + (99 * 0.0) = 46.2
49 = (33 * 0.5) + (66 * 0.3) + (99 * 0.1) + (99 * 0.1) = 56.1
60 = (33 * 0.3) + (66 * 0.4) + (99 * 0.2) + (99 * 0.1) = 66
71 = (33 * 0.2) + (66 * 0.5) + (99 * 0.2) + (99 * 0.1) = 69.3
82 = (33 * 0.0) + (66 * 0.5) + (99 * 0.3) + (99 * 0.2) = 82.5
93 = (33 * 0.0) + (66 * 0.5) + (99 * 0.3) + (99 * 0.2) = 82.5
104* = (33 * 0.0) + (66 * 0.4) + (99 * 0.4) + (99 * 0.2) = 85.8

* - You can do this with moon, day, assistance, gear, and heading all in proper alignment.

Please note that this all of the above doesn't take into account natural probability for High Quality which as far as I have seen in negligible. These values are provided as exemplar only insofar as that they show a possible ramping of production--not that it is the correct scheme. It also may be that I have been either A: to liberal with my application of Higher Quality or B: Too conservative. There are no warranties or guarantees. I'm sure that I'm incorrect at least in part, so if you have the information that I'm missing, please post it.

[EDIT: Added Below]

Since it takes so many syntheses to produce a stack of bolt heads and that getting HQ on Bloody Bolt heads is difficult at best (Alchemy-81) there will be no similar reduction in the price of the bolt heads.

As with all things economic, prices are driven by market forces. If bolt heads were cheaper, people would snatch them up faster than the crafters could produce them thus depleting the market. Whenever a given item is depleted, the person who puts the next stack on AH can basically name his price. Obviously, he can't price it in such a way as to make it unprofitable for bolt synthesis, so it is most probable that he will price his bolt heads for higher-level crafters--not for amateur carpenters effectively shutting out amateurs from production. This is a good thing because Beastman's Blood is not something that is easy to come by (thus it's price tag) and keeping newbie crafters out of such a market increases the amount of bloody bolts made from each synthesis resulting in better supply for those who use the bolts and keeping prices more reasonable on the consumer end.

[EDIT: Added below (this is the last one, I promise)]

With regard to the Toolbags/Quivered Bolts, I would consider these to be Luxury items. Let us examine the process in it's most refined form:

You need 12 Carnations and 12 Stacks of Munitions.
Carnations are low-volume sale on Windy/Sandy/Bastok AH, so you may not be able to find them and when you can, they are usually grossly overpriced. However, you can buy them cheaply at M&P in Jeuno. So we'll say that you buy them there.

1. Buy 12 Carnations in Jeuno--send to Mule in currently #1 Ranking city. If your bolts are not on your Jeuno resident character, you must log out now.
2. Buy/make 12 Stacks of Bolts. Send 7-8 of these to mule as well. Log out (maybe a 2nd logout if you logged on step 1).
3. Accept delivery of items above with #1 city resident character and log out.
4. Send remaining stacks of bolts to #1 city res. and log out.
5. Take #1 city res. to the circus and stack the munitions.
6. Take #1 city res. to the AH and mail munitions to the character who will be using them and log out.
7. Log in with user character and accept delivery of the stacked munitions.

It should be fairly easy to see why this procedure (what I would call a pain-in-the-a procedure) would make some people willing to pay a "Luxury Tax" on these pre-stacked items. People who don't have 4 mules really have no choice because choco-runs take a long time as do airship runs and this is time they could be leveling/farming. Other characters who have a lot of money and simply be willing to drop an extra 10-50k on someone for stacking their munitions and saving them the hassle.

Luxury items are rarely priced based on market forces. This is the reason rich people are willing to pay $80 for an ounce of salty fish eggs (caviar) or $100,000 for some dead guy's stuff (antiques).

[Aeni]

Re: Bloody Bolt Heads?

It should be fairly easy to see why this procedure (what I would call a pain-in-the-a procedure) would make some people willing to pay a "Luxury Tax" on these pre-stacked items. People who don't have 4 mules really have no choice because choco-runs take a long time as do airship runs and this is time they could be leveling/farming. Other characters who have a lot of money and simply be willing to drop an extra 10-50k on someone for stacking their munitions and saving them the hassle.

Luxury items are rarely priced based on market forces. This is the reason rich people are willing to pay $80 for an ounce of salty fish eggs (caviar) or $100,000 for some dead guy's stuff (antiques).

Your reasoning is flawed.

Anyone playing this game would already have at least 1 mule, if not more, on hand.

Anyone would be willing to spend 15min out of their time to travel (By airship) from one place to another to bag/quiver stuff themselves. If it (in the case of shihei) will save them 200K and aggravation with their inventory space, then that is priceless and worth 15min. I do not know of anyone that can consistently make 200K in 15min in ANYTHING.

And if you're a crafter, you're going to have mules in each city. It is not pain in the ass like you said. IT's more of a cop out reasoning for people to buy gil (Yes, I'm willing to bet most of these people buy their gils, how else can you explain their seemingly irrational behavior with gil that does not come easy for anyone?)

[Sabaron]

Re: Bloody Bolt Heads?

Your reasoning is flawed.

Anyone playing this game would already have at least 1 mule, if not more, on hand.

Anyone would be willing to spend 15min out of their time to travel (By airship) from one place to another to bag/quiver stuff themselves. If it (in the case of shihei) will save them 200K and aggravation with their inventory space, then that is priceless and worth 15min. I do not know of anyone that can consistently make 200K in 15min in ANYTHING.

And if you're a crafter, you're going to have mules in each city. It is not pain in the ass like you said. IT's more of a cop out reasoning for people to buy gil (Yes, I'm willing to bet most of these people buy their gils, how else can you explain their seemingly irrational behavior with gil that does not come easy for anyone?)

I don't necessarily know if that is the case....people pay a good deal extra for pre-packaged munitions on Asura, and there isn't any apparent rabid gil-buying going on. I checked that one site that sent all of the people from that one website (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to see just how much gil they have on and didn't see a dime (for Asura). For some servers, Carbuncle for instance, there is quite a bit of gil available. Stacking bolts for money isn't like some sort of instant gil machine... I've done it before and yes, you do get a good bonus from it. I am a goldsmith and alchemist, so I produce bullets for sale. It's much quicker to sell unstacked bullets because of the stacked bullets' prohibitive price tag, but I've had occasion to pre-stack them if it happens to be convenient. It takes a lot longer for them to move. People will give a sizeable tip to munitions stackers (not anywhere near 200k per stack, though) , but how often does even a big-time Ranger need to buy 1088 silver bullets/bloody bolts? It took me 2 months to shoot off a 12-stack of silver arrows that I made for myself (financed btw with stacked silver arrows sold in Jeuno)--granted I was playing RDM and I wouldn't consider myself to be a "shooty" guy.

If you are on one of the servers where gil-buying is big, I would be happy to get you a World Pass to Asura; of course you'd have to leave behind all of your worldly possessions ;-)

Perhaps someone who purchases stacked munitions would care to comment on why they are willing to pay more for convenience?

[EDIT: Add (I always have afterthoughts)]

I do agree with your position that people pray upon others greed and stupidity. Case in point: the recent Egg-stravaganza... There were merchants selling letter eggs for 30,000ea on the first couple days which is outrageous considering the number of eggs it takes to get an item and that each item is crappy. I prefer /shout as a method to protect the foolish. Most of those who purchase overpriced items are inexperienced or sheep-like people--the kind of people who blindly enter the same value listed on the Last-10 list. For instance, I have listed (thrice now) an item in a certain town for 100,100 and all three times the buyer has paid 150,000 even though this price is much higher than the Jeuno price. Some people don't even try to get a deal, and it's not necessarily because they're gil-buyers. Lots of Americans have Price Tag fever. They pay whatever the sticker says because it's more convenient than haggling. Case in point: American car dealerships with "Bottom Line" pricing. They won't even give you the option to haggle anymore (or if it is available, they simply prefer not to advertise it). That way they can dupe (even relatively intelligent individuals) out of a sizeable portion of real money--which cost the buyer precious moments of his/her own life to obtain. If it happens IRL then it stands to reason that it can also occur in simulated life such as FFXI.

[EDIT: Yet another add]

WRT greed, stupidity, and the foolishness of the average buyer--if FFXI serves as cautionary example to those who play the game that a seller may not always be giving them a "fair deal" perhaps this effect will make them more wary of merchants who engage in unfair business practices. I don't know about you, but I would prefer my kids to learn to be more money-smart in a fictional online game where their money is basically artificial rather than in reality where the lesson can be much more painful. I'm fully in favor of "evil" characters (esp. played by real people) in games. In the future I hope to see more possibility for ne'er-do-well characters--preferably arranged so that a person could play both bad guys and good guys (or anything in between) without fear of reprisal against their other characters (e.g. the player's account information is obscured at all times in-game unless he should choose to reveal it by stating the information Out-of-Character).


Cheers...