EmperorSteele

I lol'd at this =)

Emphasis mine.

Complaining about general AE problems IS a thread-jack in a thread about a contest. There is some overlap, but honestly, what does it bring to the proceedings?

"Hey guys, let's have a contest..."

"WHY DIDN'T YOU FIX THIS BUG?!"

"...huh?"

Yeah, kind of a non-sequitur.

*flings rubber bands* shush you!

No they can't. If they already did all three, you can't get a respec as a reward again. And I've seen a small handful of posters who claim that they can only play at odd hours for short periods of time where getting enough people together and having that sort of time isn't tenable. But on a whole, you'd think plenty of people would have access to respecs in one form or another...

So, why are there over 170 bids for respec recipes?

Actually, you overestimate people's abilities. That IS a trick only marketers use, by virtue of the fact that if someone is doing that, they deserve the title, for better or worse.

And why do you people keep bringing up salvage? I'm not SAYING ANYTHING about salvage. But for the record, I just looked, and about 90% of the sales i saw were for an even number. So, don't mind me if i doubt your observational and intellectual abilities. I did notice that high-priced items had a higher chance of having an un-even bid number, but for the most part, the majority of bids ended in 0's.

Just because YOU don't bid-creep doesn't mean other people don't. But you're right, they do liek to bid what the last few people did. However, in an instance where they can SEE one just sold for 151511515 or whatever, don't you think they would have tried a bid closer to that before going up to 175M? Also, you've contradicted yourself. First you say "Tons" of people are smart enough to bid uneven amounts, but now you're calling them sheep? make up your mind!

So, are you countering this position or not? Hard to tell.

Some people have already done all three trials and used all their vetspecs. And with the announcement of free fitness coming our way, plenty of people want to get their builds in order or at least have an extra respec handy before the tsunami hits. And while you're right in that there could be a few extra people putting in respecs for sale at a high price, what, pray-tell, do you think someone is doing making multiple bids of 151etcetcetc for? Or are you going to tell me that over a hundred different people are making bids at that price point? Are you that dense to pick a fight that you're going to start trolling with an illogical conclusion such as that?

Respec recipes have more perceived value, plus who in their right mind would flip vendor trash? WTD are YOU smoking?

No, it's for vets who've finished the respec trials a long time ago and used all their vetspecs and freespecs, too. It happens, especially since every other issue introduces new power changes. Or are you going to tell me that getting inherent health and stamina (that you'll have to respec into if you already selected them as pool powers) isn't going to have ANY effect on anyone's builds? While true we'll get a freespec with the next issue, some people need to respec more than once to properly move enhancements around, and unless someone has Mids open on another screen, people are bound to make slotting goofs and will need to 'spec all over again.

Not everyone can do a respec trial, but aside from that, yeah, that'd be something fun to see, heh.

Except as others have noted, market supply is in a constant state of flux, especially on items like salvage. If there's none today there'll be plenty tomorrow. Heck, if there's none now there'll be some in an hour. You're proposing a scenario where something sells out and is never relisted. Also, if everyone got what they wanted, there'd be no one left to want it, thus demand would go down. True, there'll always be more demand, but there'll always be more supply to accommodate it, also.

No, you manage scarcity by providing more and making sure everyone gets what they desire at a price they are amenable to! True, this doesn't work in the real world as there are physical limits to how much of something can be physically created and shipped, but in-game, we have ~50,000 players doing missions and getting drops. I dunno how many actively participate in the market, but it's gotta be enough to get everyone what they want... that is if sellers were more willing to be altruistic instead of greedy...

Not if he could have had it for 150 Million, or less. I don't call paying more than he would have had to without the flipper's interference "benefiting".


All I'm doing is observing a trend. I see a sale for 151,115,151, i KNOW that's a marketer's trick, buying and listing for non-even amounts. And then there's 4 sales a short time later for much higher? Didn't those other 4 people see the bidding history and try the same amount? They probably did. And they probably bid-crept until they reached a number that was much higher than what they wanted to pay but that finally paid off. Which means 2 things: At the time 151,115,151 won the bid, there were NO HIGHER BIDS, strange for an item with close to 100 bids on it. But then the next 4 people had to bid at least 175M, even though there's 20 more on the market?

That item's being flipped, plain and simple. Most of the active bids are ones for ~151, and all the active "for sale" items are hovering around 175M. I can't see any other alternative. And for you guys to pretend this helps other people get what they want is, quite frankly, goofy.

Except that didn't happen, now did it? No, the 151M sale actually happened, with the next 4 being much, much higher. Now YOU'RE starting with the unsubstantiated "what ifs". Call me out on it, fine, but don't use 'em yourself.

But lead is nummy =(

But that's beside the point. No, see, it takes observation. Of actual data, available to all. The last 5 bids, frequency of sales, fluctuations in prices, number for sale, number bidding (the later two being shockingly stable. Gee, if people are buying all these recipes, where are the new ones coming from if it's supposedly so rare?) You're almost trying to claim that flipping doesn't exist. At least that's what it sounds like. All I'm saying is that flipping keeps items out of the hands of people who want them for cheaper. How's that not make sense, especially since everyone else has admitted that "flipping raises the price floor"?

Sure... they raise it out of the range of the people who have the most complaints against the market already. They prevent the market from working for people who want things quickly and cheaply.

You're missing the fact that there's over 180 bids, and that the price has climbed from 120 million since last week to a peek of 180 million now. Last 5 as of this post:

180M
155M
175M
175M
~151M (all today)

Why can't everyone get it for 151? Because some silly person bought it and relisted it for 175M. The flipper prevented someone else from getting that particular, specific recipe at that lower price. How's that doing the market any good? The only person befitting is the flipper. Even the original seller got shafted, because someone else might have bid a bit more instead of the bare minimum.

And who said i was being lazy or whining? My net worth in-game is close to 3 billion inf, so i can afford things, however I'm simply confused by the idea that people here posit that buying stuff and selling it for more keeps prices down. It seems to rely on "stabilizing supply" which "stabilizes prices", but the fact is if people who wanted to use stuff could get it for the price that a flipper or manipulator got it at, then no one would have to pay more than that cost, thus there'd be no further demand, thus the costs would be stable, and lower.

Now, Goat came in with an example I can sort of understand: badgers who unintentionally screw with market prices trying to get their badges. However, to assume that badgers are the sole cause of item destruction, and as a result price inflation due to lack of supply, would be laughable.

And i noticed that so far everyone's been discussing salvage. What about RESPEC RECIPES? Y'know, those things Smurphy made zillions of inf on by flipping? Or Purples? Maybe prices wouldn't be so high if everyone who wanted to equip them could have bought them by now, but were denied when someone else bought and re-listed.

On the theme of the thread, i'd make all items "locked" on the -second- character to own it. So you could have something drop and sell it, but the character who bought it or had it given to them couldn't get rid of it, short of destroying it. There'd probably end up being some hoarding (oooh, what if i need this eventually?!) but i doubt that'd do any more to raise prices than what flippers and manipulators do already.

I still don't see how buying something for X, then selling it for 2X, keeps prices DOWN. You've just DOUBLED the ASKING price.

Now, that won't stop people from bidding high. But it DOES stop people from having to bid above 2X just to get what they want if they only wanted it for X.

Also, regarding supply, bidding low on something and getting it is taking supply out of the market. You just deprived someone else of getting the item for that price who intended to use it. Then you relist it out of their price range. How is that keeping prices low?

We're complaining because this sets a BAD PRECEDENT. They're taking content out of free issues (or taking devs away from working on those free issues) to create purchaseable packs which, until now have been worth the extra cash.

Time was, an issue would give us new systems, new missions, new costumes, new emotes, new powers, etc...

Last few issues have been a couple missions and that's about it. Most of the new costumes and emotes we've gotten have been from booster packs. Now they have a pack that's $1 per emote.

I hate slippery slope arguments on principle, but what's next? A one-emote pack for 5 bucks? A pack that charges $1 per costume item? The next issue being delayed several months and being extraordinarily shallow and empty because they're stripping as much out of it as possible to make more boosters?

Where does it end? And if they're gonna start over-charging us for everything we used to get for free, can we at least go free-2-play so i can spend my sub money on the extras?