RagManX

You don't know that item would have been there for 1M when you went to buy it. What if someone else wanted it for 1M, paid 1M, took it off the market, slotted it, and went about playing the way they wanted to play? When you come to the market, instead of 1 IO for 1M, there are 0 IOs, and no amount of inf will make more be there for you to purchase. What the marketeer has done is offered to a buyer willing to pay 10M that there is 1 IO on the market purchasable for 10M at a time when there might otherwise have been 0 IOs on the market.

To farmers, crafters, marketeers, and quite a few others, there is no discernible difference in the price of 1M and 10M for an IO. Unless I'm buying to resell, I don't consider 50M to be much more expensive than 10M, so why would I even notice the difference between 1M and 10M? There are a whole lot of players richer than I who don't even see the difference between 10M and 50M. Resellers provide them a service, and do it rather cheaply for most items on the market.

It's good to visit this forum and get to restock my marketears a little bit. Things were running rather dry this year.

RagManX

About a year after the markets went live, I did an experiment to see if I could earn a profit by buying high-demand, moderate- or high-priced salvage and listing it for less than I purchased it for. I quickly got bored by the experiment. I mostly settled on buying orange salvage for about 1.3M which most people purchased for 2M. I would set my bids, logout, and play an alt or just not play. Then the next time I played I would collect my purchases, immediately relist for about 1.12M, and leave them. After only a few days of this, I had nearly 3 times as much inf as I had started with, and I never listed a single thing for more than 10% below what I paid for it.

There are times I have abused the market for lulz (like when I purchased all but 7 of a common, cheap salvage and deleted them except for the last 3 which I sold for enough to earn back everything I invested in the lulzperiment). But even when I try to do things to help others, people frequently insist I take their "hard-earned" inf. I sent someone 6 LotG +rchg IOs last month (4 level 50 and 2 level 25). They asked what I wanted for them. I suggested they just have fun with free toys, but said if they felt they had to pay me something for them to just email whatever they wanted. Next time I logged in, they had sent me about 30% more inf than I could have gotten from selling the IOs. I give +stealth, Miracle +rec and Numina +rec/+rgn IOs away to random characters with few or no vet badges at least 2-3 times a month. I earn stupidly excessive amounts of inf by marketeering just so I can do stupidly generous acts periodically and stupidly lulzomatic salvage wipes when it catches my fancy.

When I bought over 4000 salvage that had no bids in March, my starting purchase price was 87,223, and I stopped when I couldn't buy for less than 4M. The next two or three purchases were in the 8-10M range, but then there was a purchase for 3 inf. Yes, 000,000,003 inf. Within 30 seconds of my stopping my purchases. So I paid hundreds or thousands of sellers far more than the salvage would normally go for. I unloaded a few million on a few sellers. After I stopped, somewhere between 1 and 3 people "had" to pay (for values of "had" equal to "chose") about 1 million times what the salvage was "worth" otherwise. So am I ebil for depleting the supply, and if so, would those thousands who made big profits agree?

And let's emphasize this BS: Because when I listed everything for less than I purchased it for, I apparently forced them to pay 40% more than I purchased it for? I see the real lulz here. I'm not the source.

RagManX

I knew that, but had planned on not talking about it.

RagManX

And unlike real life (for most people), if you go broke in game, you can go kill bad things for a few minutes and start on the market all over again...

RagManX

Having participated in the "Buying all of <insert_item_name>" market sprees, I was worried that this would be a rant against someone like me. However, when I did it, I deleted everything I purchased rather than relisting it at a crazy high price. Glad to know that what I did isn't griefing. I'd hate to be viewed negatively.

Even though I'm clearly not a griefer, I still don't care for the above suggestion.

RagManX

You don't need a scale if you're just checking to see if it weighs as much as a duck. Just throw the whole thing into the water and see if it floats.

Cautionary note: Attempting this might lead to the market turning you into a newt.

RagManX

I realize others have commented on this, but I just wanted to add a minor note. I don't know who is doing it, but I know there are actually quite a few people who buy a fair amount of the "junk" sets, as I have a few characters who have gotten rich just using the less-prized sets as the machination of their wealth building enterprises.

RagManX

This is such an excellent suggestion. Why aren't more people supporting this idea? I, for one, have been asking for years now for exactly this. My suggestion is 100 million, although a few genius others suggest 10M or even 1M as the cap.

RagManX

I call it the "Chance to do nothing" proc. My recollection is when it procs, it is a mag 1 disorient effect, which doesn't do anything to minions or higher. I believe it will actually stun an underling, but I can't see any value to that. I have 5-6 of these procs stored from drops my characters have gotten over time. I keep hoping something will be done to make them worthwhile. Tried putting one in some of my Nrg brute's attacks, but it does so little, if anything, I can't tell that it's even there.

RagManX

Only 95% of level 50s struggle to afford basic SO enhancements. The remaining 5% manipulate the market to make sure no one can buy anything on the market while simultaneously being the only people using the market who successfully sell anything.

RagManX

http://twaggies.com/2010/07/no-081-phirm/

RagManX