Nemesis_Prime

Originally Posted by EvilRyu

Plus if you have sg base with the candle in it that can speed up the travel time significantly.

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike

And, as I have ALSO noted before, the seller isn't the one who determines the sale price of an item. The buyer is.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

An impressive defense of your theory, I'm sure everyone will agree with you now!

*thumbsup*

Originally Posted by Hydrophidian

Yes, I realize that's your opinion. I find your opinion to be ill-thought, based on nothing more than wishful thinking. I don't agree with your opinion.

Sell to whom? If everyone's buying merits with inf and then buying what they want with merits, who, exactly, will be going to the market for anything?

If there's a store--and that's effectively what you're proposing--there's little to no use for a market.

No, they are not.

Please keep in mind that, when posting on the market forum, you are likely addressing people who use the market, use it extensively, and use it successfully. I have multiple characters at or near the inf cap, and I don't farm. I am very well versed in the market, believe me. I wouldn't be able to make the sort of profit I make by misreading the market as grossly as you'd like to suggest I have.

I can list numerous examples of recipes that became "vendor trash" when tickets hit the scene, on both sides of the fence. Many of them are still dramatically reduced in price. Right now, I could vendor recipes at a profit that couldn't be touched for under 3-5 million pre-AE.

Merits and tickets have both had dramatic effects on the market and how extensively it's used. This should not be a surprise, as when you add alternatives to the market, people will use them as alternatives to the market.

What you suggest is yet another market alternative. I think there are enough market alternatives. And yes, it stands to reason that, if you add enough alternatives, eventually you reach a point where no one uses the market anymore. Because there's no need to do so.

Again, if something is deemed too rare, the way to address that is by changing its drop rate. The system is optional. There are multiple existing alternatives to the system. The system doesn't need to be altered any further to accommodate proclivities that are in direct opposition to the fundamental dynamic of the system. If you do not have to be informed and patient to get what you want from a market, then it's no longer a market.

It's a store.

Originally Posted by Smurphy

I understand that some people feel that items are too difficult to obtain and that some may wish they were easier to obtain. This opinion is subjective and it can't really be right or wrong. It's personal preference. If you are such a person who wants items more available to more players than you want increased drop rates. Desiring increased drop rates and more available items is a perfectly rational opinion.

Some of these other opinions are not so much on the "rational" side. My post will include math and economics. If you don't believe that 1 + 1 = 2 or in Supply and Demand than you might as well just stop reading. Let's save everyone some time.

When prices are "too high" at a certain price then Supply outweighs Demand at that specific price. By definition if at a specific price Demand outweighs Supply or they are equal than the price is not too high. When there is more Supply than Demand at a price more items are attempted to be sold than bought. In City of Heroes terms that means that the "For Sale" # will be relatively high compared to other similar items. I will identify some items where I feel that the price is "too high" and explain why application of Supply and Demand leads one to believe these items are priced "too high."

Redside Aegis +Psionic and Mez Resist Recipe level 50.
For Sale: 254. Bidding: 61. Last 5 200k+, 100k, 50k, 100k, 50k. This is a Rare Task Force/Trial Recipe. Comparing the # for sale to other items in the pool...

Aegis Rech/End/Res: 24 for sale, last 5 nearly all 1M
Celerity Stealth: 3 for sale, last 5 all 55M +
Dark Watcher Rech/End: 10 For sale, last 5 200k-500k
Mako's Chance: 11 for sale, last 5 all 5M+

The Aegis Psi Resist price is "too high". It has the symptons of an item that is priced "too high."

Let's compare that to some of the more expensive Task Force Recipes.
Numina Rec/Recovery: 2 For Sale
Miracle: 5 For sale
Luck of the Gambler: 30 For sale.
Is that a sign of overprice? Sort of.
I've got recent experience with this item. Within two days of I16 release I bought one at the prevailing market price of 190M. Currently the last 5 all say 165,555,555. The price has fallen since I've bought mine and likely a good portion of those 30 are listed "too high".

So here we have an example of an item that was "too high" but price is falling. The market is a self-correcting entity. When price is too high, inventory will build up because some sellers don't sell their item. Sellers compete with each other and want the sale. In order to get the sale some lower their price.
That's exactly what we are seeing. Supply and Demand at work on the City of Heroes market.

If you want to feel all adventurous and mathy you can calculate the average time it will take you to complete your build. First, calculate on average how many recipes of each type you gain per X amount of time. Then calculate the average expected value of each type of recipe. See how long it takes a player to get all the IOs he or she may want.

It's a long time. A simple perusal of some of the drop lists is all that is necessary to support this estimation. Look at these lists and identify in your own mind how many you actually want or more precisely how many are going to sell on the market for a substantial gain. In lay man's terms "you are going to get a lot of turds."
Pool A - Uncommon Drops
Pool A - Rare Drops
Pool B - Mission Drops
Pool C & D - Task Force and Trial

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

How so?

I look forward to your explanation.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

Gibberish.

Everything in the game is pegged to ONE currency- time.
Period.

Time is the only tangible commodity in the game.

Originally Posted by Heraclea

I've mentioned before: the basic problem is that we now have three (or four) separate currencies that are "backed" by different commodities.

Reward merits are "backed by gold" - they purchase recipes at a pegged rate.

AE tickets are "backed by silver" - they purchase uncommon and rare salvage at a pegged rate.

Inf is "backed" by recycled cardboard - it buys SOs, DOs, and TOs at a pegged rate.

The problem is that since i9 the goods bought by inf are largely obsolete; while not every character I play is going to be fitted with IO sets, most of them do try to replace SOs with generic IOs above level 30; they're at least as good, and you stop the bleeding trying to keep them in the green.

Thus, the trend has ever been to see the relative value of inf fall measured against the other two currencies and the things they can buy.

(Then, there are Vanguard merits, which are like an exotic currency, say Dutch guilders. You only need to acquire enough of them to buy the goods that are only for sale in Amsterdam. When you are done shopping there, you can't use them elsewhere.)

Only one of these currencies - inf - can be regularly traded to other players. Inf is the only currency that the market accepts, as well. The result has been that inf has tended to fluctuate, and hit a fairly deep low in i15. The value of inf relative to salvage has risen; relative to IO set recipes, it still seems fairly low. Holding inf is risky relative to holding merits or even AE tickets.

Those who subscribe to the reigning ideology of this forum will not acknowledge that there's even a problem. There is a problem, though. Those who defend the prices that come about on the markets ignore the fact that those prices are indeed out of reach if all the inf you get in ordinary game play - i.e. running missions and defeating mobs. They may not be out of reach to people who farm for purple drops, random rolls to sell, or the meta-game of manipulating the market. They are out of reach for players who play as intended.

I do think that dev action is needed to shore up the relative value of inf, by pegging it to a more valuable commodity than SOs. I'd allow the uncommon Pool A recipes to be bought with inf from a crafting table, just as generic recipes can be bought.