A note on "outrageous" ship prices

[Hootuk Myrum]

Originally Posted by LawStanz It's hard for lowbies to make their way in an established game when most everyone else is max level. As a new player I was having a very difficult time finding and affording ships. My solution was to join a society, and the one I joined had the benefit of a shipwright that sells at cost +10%. Things are so much easier now. Now if I could just find other players my level and maybe even some RP, things would be great.

Seek out the Leeward Island Squadron.

[Hawke47]

I think prices will go down once account creation is back up and new players create a market for lowbie ships. At the moment, the majority of characters on the OS are lvl 50s or 30-45. For ship builders that means the only profitable choices are replacing PVP ships or making rates for fleeters. As someone stated in this thread ship building is harder than it used to be and takes longer, so people are having to make choices based on the current market.

[Rockwell]

I have faith in a free and competive market.

Ship prices have come down and selection will improve now that migration has been fixed and soon new accounts will be too.
This will improve the server populations and the economy.

The biggest threat to good access to ship deeds and everything else at a reasonable price is a lack of FT's engaged in the economy......this is directly effected by server populations.

And also there are some that are pushing for much more dangerous hauling (forcing it into the red), using smaller ships for hauling and reducing the amount of econ slots.
This would cause many FT's to do something else or quit altogether and dramatically reduce the supply of raw materials and goods.
Which would drive up the prices of everything including ships and limit selection.
Those advocating this are easy to find here in the forums.

[ramp4ge]

It's not just the ship builders, tho. It's the fact that ships cost so much more to make now.

When the game gets back to the point where it's accepting new sign-ups, I REALLY hope we see a serious attempt to bring in new players. And if this happens, then the price of low and mid-level ships MUST decrease. A LOT. By 3/4 in some cases.

Because there's no way in hell a new player following the storyline and side quests is going to have 40,000 dabloons at level 10 to buy a Curieuse Snow, or 50,000+ at level 12 to buy a Van Hoorne, a ship that used to cost 12,000 dabloons on average...

So either the income needs to go up drastically or the costs of shipbuilding need to go way the hell down. Back to where they were.

It's absolutely outrageous.

[Marcvs]

Originally Posted by TyroneSlothrop Don't complain about ship prices unless you've actually looked at the cost to build....and, just like the OP, factor in the fact that even a lowbie ship now takes over an hour of hauling. How much is your time worth to you? For me, unless it is for a soc mate, I'm going to charge the AH for the timesink of watching my ship sail around the OS at 40kts for a couple hours in order to build anything. You think I'm overcharging? Build your own Dolphin and see if it was worth it. (BTW, I only build lvl 50 ships for AH, lowbie ships only for soc mates, totally not worth my personal time) Reminder: the OP was about how much hauling is involved in building ships now that the recipes have exploded with goodies, and how a person's time can factor into the sales cost in Dbs.

Agree.

The idea of these ship changes was to drain the vets money (step 1) and therefore make it easier for new players to compete (most likely we will end up seeing all existing ships retired) and all ships requiring AH parts (step 2-3). The problem is said vets have so much duras and because they are vets they loose dura at a much slower rate so it ends up hurting the newbies more than the vets.

It will cost me around 600k + my time to build a san fernando, and given a i really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really hate hauling {especially with the new lower capacity and slower haulers} , im gonna mark it up quite a lot...

[Marcvs]

Originally Posted by The Dragonfly The plain Stralsund actually was ~9k, Stralsund MC was ~20k. 400% insane? Well, how about this. The click cost for 3 deeds of a plain Stralsund was 2k, now for 1 deed it's 32k. That's 4800% per deed (no typo!). Make of that, what you like...

Pfft what credit crunch

[ramp4ge]

These changes were bad for the game as a whole..

Maybe they won't impact established, super-rich players quickly, but they're really going to screw over new players or those that aren't super-rich..

A new player's certainly not going to get involved in PvP if they can barely afford their next ship as it is, and when they reach 50, assuming they stick around that long because they can't afford the ships needed to progress to 50, they certainly aren't going to risk their shiny new million-dabloon ship that they could barely afford in PVP..

A long time ago, someone thought it was cute to say "If you can't afford to lose it, don't use it."

Well, now, with these ship price changes, pretty much everything is too expensive to lose, and thus too expensive to use, for a new player..

The end result is going to be less PvP..Or at least less new blood in PvP.

Insurance might help, but as a whole, these massive price increases were bad for the game.