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Comments
the comparison is very true, yet still no harm in letting 1-2 item contracts go even higher though since they just take 2 space out of 6 and selection is much easier for them imo.
but anyways has anyone found/calculated the optimum point for it yet btw? my guess is 40 is enough and kinda easy to keep/maintain for up to 3 item contracts too even. but that's just a wild guess without exact calculations.
about prizes btw, I'm starting to think it may be more related to "market upgrade" than "value" honestly. so don't give up just yet, until we know the max upgrade of market, there is still a good chance another new prize be unlocked.
the fact that you haven't gotten much of deco part contracts anymore is also a bit annoying btw, I wonder whats the reason. either way i still think we have not yet uncovered all secrets of this market though. well GGS sure ain't giving us any hint or help either though.
I have yet another reason for thinking the penalty for declining contracts must go away. That is flexibility. At a certain, between temp farms, the coop championship, the horses, and now this, you need more flexibility. But my stance that it is unnecessarily punitive should be enough. If this penalty is truly needed, GGS should be able to easily tell us what problem it solves.
I must be missing something, because the reason for the penalty seems pretty obvious to me. If there was no penalty, we would just pick & choose which contracts we like & get all 12 types up to value 99 (or whatever the maximum turns out to be) & then just stay there, skipping any awkward contracts & getting 25% bonus on selling all our goods. While that would be a very nice gift for us from GGS, it wouldn`t present much of a challenge. With the penalty in place, we have to fill contracts we may not particularly relish, if we want to get to the top bonus & remain there.
Clearly there are still some tweaks needed to the contracts we are getting, such as the excessive appearance of apples, which is making it more difficult than it should be at the moment. With 33 different items to choose from (37 if you include the distillery) there is really no need for large quantities of apples (or any other one item) to appear on 4/6 contracts, but I think once that issue has been addressed, its a pretty good system & has potential to be great fun & very profitable. :thumbsup:
Have you actually proven this for yourself or are you talking hypothesis? That would mean that everything you sold before the market came to gain your 8 mill is now processed through the market to get those 25 % on your sales, meaning at all times you get exactly the orders you need to sell all your excess and top end comodities = eradicating all direct sales completely. And that's excluding all special items contracts as their dollar reward is reduced. Bless you if that works like that for you.
@ Griffith: Very much agree. That's another part of my thinking which lead me to ask about the point/purpose of the market. If I really don't want those XP and HS, I decline even more contracts. If I accept them, all such trades I checked gave me less dollars then direct sale would have = baby dollar eater. Again, as in the case of opportunity cost, this loss is hidden and easily overlooked, becouse the "label" still says +25 or whatever %, but doesn't give you +25 % dollars. (And don't reason to me that it gives you dollars + HS or Exp etc. as that's not the point. The point is, that in dollars you lost.)
Here we encounter the difference in farm developement. For a little farmer like me with 2 apple orchards (L7 and L6) - to set the scale - there will not be much chance to fulfll 5-6 item contracts with just top end or excess stuff. So will either decline them all, or sell with the risk of dollar loss caused by opportunity cost = "baby dolar eater" for my level of developement. Actually there will not be much chance to fulfill 3-4 item contracts with exces/top end comodities only either (both empirically proven).
Some parts like combined rewards dollar loss still need to be properly calculated and confirmed to see how they work.
The main point or feeling I'm getting to after a few days of using Organic Market, and it again applies to my level of farms developement, is this: With so many hidden costs, with so little final dollar boost, with so much calculations and checks needed to make sure I run OM with proffit, I might actually be better off not using it at all for next year of gaming. @ Griffith: Now don't get at me again claimng that I'm not using the market "right", as this claim is "wrong".
EDIT: Let me ammend the above point and rephrase it: OM on my farm is nowhere near the position to quickly become a major dollar booster like flower shop, boat and bakery are and became at their time. OM is too "unpredictable" and too laborious to work with. I decided, after ample testing and analysing, that atm. the insignificant dollar gain I could get from it is by far not worth the amount of work I need to put into that to insure market's profitability. Hence it's use for me will be rather sporadic and rare, utilizing only easy to spot and non-questionable "gainers". (Subject to further testing and analysing - when I have time for that. Right now I have exceeded my "gaming time allowance" in multipless, so need to catch up with weightier matters.)
All this, and other info I've gained and read so far, seem to point in the following direction: OM at current make up is a very risky business for any low and middle "class" farmer, and only becomes profitable (if so at all) at leasure for highly developped farmers. In other words another L100+ feature. It's not a complaint, just an attempt for assesment. Again, subject to further testing and analysis later.
PS: Psicolix, I'm using your post but answering Griffith in part. So don't think I'm "targeting" you.
PS2: I think it would be usefull for these kinds of debates to have some rating scheme for farms developement to show where we stand, as this in a huge way influences our experience with the market and other features and would help us understand the market functionality better. OM certainly works different for L twenties farms then for L fifties or for highly developped production facilities packed farms. At times we might seem to contradict each other just due to this difference, while in reality we are not at contradiction at all, rather complementing each other from our different perspectives.
There are two types of product in the game, which I'll call Finished Products and Raw Materials.
Finished Products are those which can not be used in any further production process and are always sold - either through Farm Management, the ship, the market or the neighbours. They include all products made in the bakery and the shop, as well as pigs and donkeys.
Raw Materials are those which are used in further production processes, which in general will generate a greater income when they are used compared to simply selling them. These include all harvests from fields and orchards and most of the stables.
Any contract from the market which includes Finished Products has got to be a winner as I get 5% on top of the normal selling price plus a % bonus depending on the contract value (or 1% + bonus from the neighbours).
But contracts including Raw Materials are not so obvious. For example it is possible to make more income from processing Wild Flowers, but as the shop is much more profitable making other products (soaps) then selling wild flowers through contracts is more profitable.
Until now I have been selling all my apple harvests through the market, but I now realise that this is losing me money. It would be more profitable to transfer the majority of my apple harvests to the bakery for producing Apple Turnovers, and only allocate the excess to any outstanding market contracts.
Selling Apple Turnovers at the regular price every 26 minutes is going to earn a lot more than selling apples plus 5% plus bonus.
Because of the high volume of contracts demanding apples this means that I will only be completing one or two contracts every day (the ones which don't ask for apples usually ask for a high volume of pigs), so unless GGS balances out the required products I will not be making much use of the market.
I would like to see more contracts comprised mainly of finished products, but if any raw materials are included then they should be much more random, and of a lesser quantity than some of the apple contracts I have had.
I would also like to see a tab on the Barn Full screen so that I can allocate the excess from any harvest to a contract, as has been mentioned elsewhere. The current sliders are pretty useless because they only tell you how many you have and how many you need, but don't tell you how many you have allocated without some mental arithmetic.
You missed the secondary products.... On the Main & Gourmet farms these (until now) could not be sold, feed & fertilizer (& technically bi-products could be included) Now it seems our neighbours occasionally want to buy some of these. But on the flower farm, everything made in the distillery is also a secondary product & I don`t think they should be included on contracts at all. (I have sold liquid fertilizer & honeydew to neighbours). Since the update I have not seen 3 of the 4 distillery products on contracts, which is a good thing, but I have still seen Olive Oil.
Olive oil normally sells for way less than the olives needed to make it & it is not very practical to have contracts for Olives, Olive Oil & Scented Oil....Olive groves just do not produce enough Olives for us to sell some & to make enough to also produce Scented Oil to sell, if we are also selling off the Olive oil in the middle..... Maybe it was meant to have stopped being asked for, when they stopped the Essescences & the Aloe Gel...Lets hope so.
i did prove by myself.... let me try to explain... i'm now in the "MODE" of saving materials, i don't make and sell anymore. so i basically store EVERYTHING that a produce. so i actually DON'T do direct sell anymore.
as for the "price" of the bonus i posted they here. "1 Horseshoe=300", "1 XP"=5000, "1 Karma"=6000. that means if you have a contract of 1000 aples, the contract value is 1000x56x1,05=58.800. that contract will always have this "value", but if they offer "2 XP" the value will be 58.800-10.000(value of 2 XP) = 48.800
I basically make money by making eggs, aples, milk, and the bakery and store products... so all i have to do is some inventary management, i try to keep the bakery half full and my Barns ALL FULL. right now my MAIN cause of rejecting contracts is peach and the fist 6 intens of the store, if i see ANY of they the contract is rejected, INSANE amounts of flower farm are always rejected too... INSANE amounts of apple, eggs, milk, bakery/store high end products are ALWAYS good... i would LOVE a 100.000 eggs contract, with that every egg i make i would be able to sell for +5%plus20%
Exactly!!.... I don`t mind so much if the neighbours ask for them, especially the bi-products, but they need to get all the distillery products out of contracts imo.
David
Thanks for explaining:
First, we might have some terminology issues: By "direct sale" I mean selling through market management or upon harvest when exceeding barn capacity. That's how we normaly make dollars and we all do that. So I assume you make dollars not by "producing" eggs, bakery items etc, but by selling them - either direct, or through Organic market. Is that correct?
Second: I perfectly understand bonus calculations and related special items in rewards so no issue there. My point was that these "not-dollar-only" contracts incur loss in dollar management (when OM is considered as dollar booster only). We are "forced" to buy these HS, karma etc. for inconvenient dollars price, so it can hardly be considered a "dollar booster". We never see these dollars on our farm. In this case we get more dollars through direct sale. Btw I checked "prices" of HS on my farm and they differ from your numbers. Still have no idea what determines their artificialy given price - farm level? market level? floating based on whatever? .....Another aspect which needs further checks and comparisons making "profitability" assesment more complicated still .... But that's a side point for our purposes atm.
Third: I in nutshell follow the same procedure as you describe in your 3rd paragraph, just on much less developped farm so with a lot of limitations or on much smaller scale. Most of my produce is still directed at keeping the boat, bakery and flower shop working "non-stop" on most profitable products at most profitable scheme, so there's little leftovers for Organic market.
So let me rephrase what I hear you say, as I'm not sure I got that correctly:
Before CM you were making roughly 8 mil dollars on direct sale of eggs, apples, milk, bakery products and the last 2 flower shop products. (I suppose ther's some income from boat and other occasional sales like pigs etc too.) Now ALL these main sales go not through direct sale, but through handpicked contracts asking exclusively and exactly for the produced amount of above mentioned comodities, with roughly 25 % boost. If I accept that income from boat and other minor sales (if any) is marginal to your 8 mil gain, and ignore dollar loss on "not-only-dollar" contracts, than above is the only way to justify the claim of increase from 8 to 10 mill dollars. Is my reasoning correct and in line with your empirical data? Well it still doesn't seem probable, so I guess I'm missing something here.
Btw in line with my "second" point reasoning, In case those "not-only-dollar" contracts make big percentage of our fulfilled contracts, they will again significantly eat away from nominal 25 % dollar gain and make it much smaller. That would need to be assesed on large data sample to see how big reduction it brings. And only you can tell if that is marginal or big difference on your farm.
PS: Just to avoid misunderstanding: I'm not trying to confront or disaprove you. I'm trying to find out how much and on what conditions the OM can be profitable as dollar booster. We share similar view that HS, Exp and karma rewards are marginal, so dollar boosting is what I'm after.
The vendor puzzles me the most. The deals are always terrible. I have paid 150,000 for 10 chicken feed. Not super chicken feed, just plain old chicken feed. I have yet to have any deal from the vendor that would be good if you multiplied it by 10. So I am puzzled as to how they could have thought this was good. I was excited by the idea, so hopefully they will fix this.
NOT handpicked... that would be the "dream", but i do the LARGE ones.
let me try to explain with apples and Eggs, so you see my point... and i don't do the 100% precision math...
i have 12 apple orchards... so, i make about 40.000 apples per day.
if i would "DIRECT SELL" they... i would make me 2,24 Mill bucks....
BUT i use SOME of they to the bakery.... i usually do 20 recipes, thats 20x540= 10.080 apples. that increase they value by about 40% when i direct sell the product.
my profit with them was 30k direct sell, and 10k prduction = 1,68Mil+784k= 2,46 Mil..
i USED to get 2,46 Mill ONLY with thoose 12 orchard... Boat only make me aboou 500k per day...
now i can sell BOTH the "LEFTOVERS" 30k PLUS the Bakery products with a 25% increase... that means IF i have contracts to SELL ALL my 30k lefovers and ALL my bakery products, i will make 25% more... SO if i used to make 8 mil per day, now i can make 10 mil.
SO in this case i have to have contracts to:
30k apples
4320 apples pie (20X216)
i always have contracts to "sell" the 30K, i don't always have contracts to sell the apples pie... they mostly comes try the 5-6 contracts, and that why they are very important to me.
now imagine what i did with apples with EGG, MILK, ALMONDS, SOAPS and HONEY CREAM...
every day i make abouy 2 recipes of honey cream(950) and 12 recipes of soaps(360). that means that every day i have to have contrats for 950 honey cream and 360 soups. so i left they on the barn until one comes... IF i get a contract for 20.000 honey cream (never had one of thoose) that means for the next 20 days, my honey cream production will be sold with the 25% bonus... IF my barn get full i will have to direct sell they(without the market bonus of 25%)
AS for horseshoe, XP, Karma, they don't scale, that means if i have a contract of 1.000.000 mill with 10 karma points, i ONLY lose 60k silver. but i get the 25%(250 Mill). the % of dollar loss is very small.
If the contract says the reward is $12,427 then you are getting 5% over normal sale price PLUS another 16.12% which is paid seperately when you fill the contact. You will get 2 wads of cash one for $12,427 and another for $2,003 (You also get 2nd bonus amounts of any other rewards on the offer, such as XP, Karma, Horseshoes etc)
I assume that even in your case the reality is less then 100 % perfect as you don't always get the contracts you need. How near to that "ideal" we can get will vary from day to day based on what contracts the market offers us. Btw by "handpicked" I just ment the contracts you pick to fulfill from what the market brings you.
There's also some issues related to possible "opportunity costs" when you use multiple items contracts to sell your main seller, but that's a lot of calculating and "chance" factor is again in the game.
So I'll drop it here by concluding that all that imperfectness driven by "chances" will reduce our ideal gain somewhat, but not sure how much.
Eh, my fault. Shortcut in thinking. How could I have forgotten that. Thanks for correcting me. I deleted the edit as it was irrelevant and only confused the thread. See, I said I need a holiday, and it is NOW. I've posted too much already anyway. Guess my "forum posting" allowance has been exhausted and exceeded too.
if want to "permanently" remove the risk and not need super calculations, you have always the choice to "decline" every single contract that has "extra prizes".
and just sell excess items that have on you farm daily to the other "normal" contracts of market without rushing to complete them. and simply by even doing this can at least always make 5% more dollars on your excess items at least.
one may argue does 5% extra even worth it? well that may differ from player to player, but for me it is as PSI said too, I can easily make 500k-1mil more dollars daily from market by just doing that too. and 500k-1mil even at my lvl is considerable amount still imo, or better than nothing at least, since its not really even complicated to just sell "excess" apples or almonds or cherries or such items anyway.
what i mean simply is, imagine market doesn't even exist. just play the same way you used to do everyday. and then open market every now and then only and if there was any 1-2 item contracts that was asking for your excess stuff then make little profit, and if they weren't asking for what you have extra, then just reject them all and check some other time. this really isn't very complicated honestly again imo, but that's just my opinion ofc, and i mean no offense in it either honestly, just trying to stop you from totally hating a feature that is not too hard to get used to and is "better than nothing" always at least anyway.
I only have problems with 2 itens (apple pie) and Eggs. ALL the rest i can sell on the market. because even if in one day i didn't get any "GOOD" contract of soap, i can store my production for a few days...
I'm right now thinking on replace 1-2 duck for some peaches orchard... that way when contracts of apple pie and eggs come with peaches i can complete they... (that will solve my problem of not enouth contracts of eggs/apple pie)
"opportunity costs" is not a problem, because i have left over of everything... you will get when you have lost of surplus... take honey... i used to sell about 1000 honey per day (leftover), now i sell 1000 honeys in contracts that alow me to sell EGGS/Apple/Apple pie... theres no "Oportunity cost" i DON'T choose between use the honey in the store or sell in the market... i make enouth honey to do both. what i don't do is sell the honey alone, i ONLY sell they in contracts that have other things, UNLESS my barn is full... if i have 4000 honeys on stock, i will sell 2000 in one contract. its all about storage management. that why i say i get a 25% bonus, everything i used to produce, i can sell now for 25% more, EVERYTHING. the only income that don't go tru the market is the boat. thats only 500 Mill (not much).
i used to make 8-9 Mill per day... now i'm making 10-11 Mill, thats no a theory, thats my actual income.
I'm aware that there is a logical fault in the last part of my reasoning, but you have to excuse me for now as I'm too lazy to recalculate that just now and make it 100 % logically correct.
So, can we conclude that:
Have I missed anything crucial?
And thanks for nice and fruitfull debate.
EDIT: Btw I just checked that minimum boost for neighbours mentioned in fix anouncement, which I thought hasn't happened. It's part of the basic price, not given as that extra percentage lump of money, and it's amazing ............ well, sit down, as it might knock you to the ground ........... it's amazing ....... (trumpet sound) .......... complete 1 percent.
these are good :P
and if wanna suggest some solutions for it, then gavin's comment must be added too, such as "removing" or at least "decreasing the decline value-decrease penalty". as well as balancing the extra prizes to a more fair or interesting rate. (aside from karma maybe, since that one already i very good imo but yep maybe not very attractive or interesting to gold players at least) and as well as balancing the % bonus for higher value contracts and quantity of asked materials for "3+ items contracts" too.
And thanks for nice and fruitful debate x 2
Still getting absolute junk.......had him pop up on my farm 3 times this weekend and from the 3 clicks I received a combined total of 20 duckfeed and 10 chook. I guess the update hasn't fixed this issue OR the vendor is simply a money trap?
Just wanted to report that I clicked on my first vendor for $150k and received 10 premium honeydew - worth 120 gold. I had avoided these vendors due to the reported pitiful returns. Not even sure why I clicked on this one, but I am not unhappy.
Now Nafaru says that rejecting majority of contracts has never been GGS intention. Which means, orignal purpose for the market must have been loss.
Where do we take the audacity to play it disregardng the original purpose?
That is the only reason that I continue to take his deals, because I figure there may someday be a good deal in there. However, the cost is really the cost of that transaction plus all the times I pay 150k for plain chicken feed in order to get to the special deal.
i know its painful but you are our last hope lol, don't give up you are 1 value away from last quality color i think, which should be light purple color, and hopefully you will see/unlock the last extra prize(if it exists too) so that we see if it even worth it or not. (hopefully its gold)
2 cases:
1- for contracts that only give dollar as prize: yes you will get extra profit above the researched price even too, depending on the value/%bonus of contract. (from 5%-30%)
2-for contracts that give dollars + some other item as extra prize(karma point, horseshoe, etc): in these cases,
2-a- if the value of contracts be low, or if the extra prize be too big, then you will not make "dollar" profit, but will get some other items ofc for little sacrifice of bit dollars.
2-b- and if the value of contract be very high, or if extra prize be very small, you can still make some extra dollar + get some little extra prize too.
And, in the dark purple (80-99), I have never seen a different type of reward at all. I had seen karma, hshoes , and xps before then.
Edit: I just did some math. That is another 57 sets of turnovers, so it may take 3 days. 2 might be too ambitious. And it will mean that I can't do any egg or apple contracts during that time.
well we can be hopeful though, i don't really think they are related either honestly. but still the fact that only you have seen deco parts as prize(since not many players have reached dark purple either, including myself too), makes me think maybe there be another type of prize unlocked after lvl 100 value-light purple contracts too.
cause we have green, light blue, dark blue, dark purple, light purple(5 color)
and we have karma, exp, horsehsoe, deco parts, and ? (4 prize type so far)
makes me just feel like there should be another prize type too at least. even though its just a guess only. :S