Cross-sever influence transfer?
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2007-03-08 09:32 in The Market and Inventions
I'm sorry but I just can't fathom why people are complaining that our new auction system will work like an actual auction does.
It's not designed for you to transfer stuff between your alts.
If you use it for such, your doing so at your own risk.
Centinull
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The weird thing is - if set IO's really turn out to be rare - as in "wait til Issue 17" rare, there's no way in hell they'll ever be at the consignment shop. No amount of influence will ever be enough. Yep, you guessed it, we've entered the realm of "Trade only". God, I hate those words. 
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Not necessarily true. Think about this. I am extremely likely to be interested only in some small number of rare IO's, out of the entire set of rares that can drop. While waiting for the ones I actually care about, I am quite likely to see a good number dropping that count as rare, but are no use to me. For example, my claws/regen scrapper has no powers that can meaningfully use a defense buff, and only one that can use resistance. Taunt? No use. Hold duration? No use. Buff Slow powers? No use. She could be waiting for a rare IO to slot into Integration, and see one or more going by that drop into Elude or Unstoppable, Tanker taunt, controller mez powers, and so on.
It's somewhat the same as the 51 SO's that drop from Hami buds. Again, these are used as an example to make a point, but of the "non-gang-of-5" 51 SO's I've dropped from those buds, about 90% statistically have been useless to me. Either due to origin mismatch or not being applicable for my powers.
In your scenario above, those are the ones that would wind up at Wentworths.
Scrappers are just like chainsaws. Somewhat hard to handle, EXTREMELY dangerous, and by far the most fun when wielded by the slightly insane.
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In your scenario above, those are the ones that would wind up at Wentworths.
Why, so you can give them away? Far better to hold on to them and trade them directly, since WentPrime punishes anyone trying to get a fair price.
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It depends. It's not giving them away if she posts them for an amount she's happy with, and actually gets, rather than some huge but fair price no one is willing to part with.
Now if she actually has someone she can conveniently trade them with, that's different.
But WentPrime is only a click away. When the inventory gets full, a lot of people are going to glance at their friends list, and if noone is on, off to Wents they'll go.
A lot depends on how often and quickly you can rebid on an item. If people are allowed to creep up on prices one inf at a time, they'll kill themselves doing it. If there is some kind of reasonable limit, nearly every successful sale will net you hundreds or thousands more than your asking price.
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It's not giving them away if she posts them for an amount she's happy with, and actually gets, rather than some huge but fair price no one is willing to part with.
It is "giving them away" if you are selling your drops for amounts that do not fairly represent the amount of effort required to obtain the item in question. If the market doesn't value Invention items in that ballpark then the market isn't worth using and/or the item isn't worth trading. (There are lots of real-life examples of things that take a lot of labor to build or find but aren't worth anything, proof left as an excercise for the reader.)
The only reason to sell a drop for cash is to earn cash that can be traded for a drop you want or need. If an item takes an estimated 20 hours of play to drop, the starting price ("retail", if you will) is 20 million inf, because you can earn that much in 20 hours. (Yes, that's only counting level 50s. Anyone below 50 doesn't exist as far as the market is concerned.) If you sell that item for 100K you're practically giving it away, and you're pinning your hopes that the person selling the item you really want is just as stu^H^H^Hgenerous.
If there is some kind of reasonable limit, nearly every successful sale will net you hundreds or thousands more than your asking price.
Thousands of inf? What are you talking about? I destroy trayfuls of DOs worth thousands because it's not worth my time to go sell them. It's not even close to worth my while to use WentPrime if we're only talking about thousands, and that's including the fact that you can teleport there.
People with visions of sugar plums and low prices dancing in their heads are in for some major disappointment. Once people have been burned enough times, which won't take long, anything rare (i.e. anything worth having) is going to get bartered or sold off-market.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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It's not giving them away if she posts them for an amount she's happy with, and actually gets, rather than some huge but fair price no one is willing to part with.
It is "giving them away" if you are selling your drops for amounts that do not fairly represent the amount of effort required to obtain the item in question. If the market doesn't value Invention items in that ballpark then the market isn't worth using and/or the item isn't worth trading. (There are lots of real-life examples of things that take a lot of labor to build or find but aren't worth anything, proof left as an excercise for the reader.)
The only reason to sell a drop for cash is to earn cash that can be traded for a drop you want or need. If an item takes an estimated 20 hours of play to drop, the starting price ("retail", if you will) is 20 million inf, because you can earn that much in 20 hours. (Yes, that's only counting level 50s. Anyone below 50 doesn't exist as far as the market is concerned.) If you sell that item for 100K you're practically giving it away, and you're pinning your hopes that the person selling the item you really want is just as stu^H^H^Hgenerous.
If there is some kind of reasonable limit, nearly every successful sale will net you hundreds or thousands more than your asking price.
Thousands of inf? What are you talking about? I destroy trayfuls of DOs worth thousands because it's not worth my time to go sell them. It's not even close to worth my while to use WentPrime if we're only talking about thousands, and that's including the fact that you can teleport there.
People with visions of sugar plums and low prices dancing in their heads are in for some major disappointment. Once people have been burned enough times, which won't take long, anything rare (i.e. anything worth having) is going to get bartered or sold off-market.
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It's several reasons contained herein that I have decided to create this. Wentworths
I have a feeling that for quite a long time most items that appear for sale in the auction house will be hugely inflated or down right wholly under priced since we really won't know what the 'fair price' will be on many items until the market stabilizes. That's why our discussion channel I think will be critical in conversing and educating players on what is fair and appropriate.
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Well, my highest level is 42, so I don't exist.
But if I DID exist, I'd say that since you are only going to trade/deal with other 50s anyway, it doesn't matter whether you use WentPrime to do so.
It's very likely that Wentprime will be for n00bs like me and the 50s will have their own exclusive off-market market.
I'm fine with that.
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It's very likely that Wentprime will be for n00bs like me and the 50s will have their own exclusive off-market market.
That won't happen either, because those of us with level 50s can (and will) pay millions for anything we want for our low-level alts. (Personally I don't plan to bother chasing IOs for any of my sub-50s but that's a minority opinion.) A player with a 50 can spend an hour to grab a million inf (or use one of the millions he already has), then take 100 items priced at 10K off the market. Keeping prices artificially depressed doesn't "level the playing field" between the 50s and everyone else. It just magnifies the already considerable advantage the 50s have in buying power even further.
You might be thinking that making WentPrime cross-server will create a such a large supply of items that no one will be able to "corner the market". That's true, no one will. But unifying the server economies also puts all the 50s in one place, too, which means it's a wash. Actually it isn't, it's worse than that, because the level 50 characters aren't evenly distributed across the servers. Merchandise is going to flow towards Freedom and Virtue, one of the many reasons why making WentPrime cross-server is doubleplusungood.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Keeping prices artificially depressed doesn't "level the playing field" between the 50s and everyone else. It just magnifies the already considerable advantage the 50s have in buying power even further.
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Actually, it does. So what, fifties can buy more than the lowbies. That is like complaining Bill gates can afford a house easier than you.
At least more people have a chance of affording something for 10k than 100k or 1 million.
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At least more people have a chance of affording something for 10k than 100k or 1 million.
No, they don't, because the level 50s can buy everything worth having without cracking a sweat.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
I think that it's possible that Kitsune and Leech are talking about stuff you wouldn't consider to be worth having-- standard IOs, common salvage. They may be looking at it as "I can pay 50k to not have to farm x, y, and z to make an IO that otherwise costs me only 11k to make."
However, if they think they are going to get Numina's Convelescence or possibly even costume parts for a level 30 character through Wentworth's for a few hundred thousand inf, well... yeah. Good luck with that.
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Eh, costume parts I can see - I mean, after the initial rush is over, I expect the drop rates on those to be well over the demand.
Rare and set IO's though, yeah, those are gonna get snapped up if anyone lists them low. Heck, on day one there'll probably be a hundred or more buy orders on Numina's from one million up up up and awaaaay!
That's a good point. Buy orders will likely make it so that the good stuff is never even listed at Wentworth's. If it is, it will immediately fill a buy order unless it's priced higher than them.
Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.
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Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.
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And I'll remember to only sell my items in Prime Time, so a good healthy backlog of LTB orders are up and I'll get the juiciest! 
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
Venture has a good point, but I see it working like this:
1- Level 50 Venture decides he wants to acquire and sell a level 30 special IO. Venture values this IO at 100 million inf, because he hates exemping down, and even exemped, he'd have to run 100 Story Arcs to get a rare Story Arc IO to drop (assuming a 1% drop rate for rares).
2- Venture pops into WentPrime for a look. None are available at the moment. He puts in a buy order...but for how much? The last 10 went for a paltry 100k, but what if another 50 gets the same idea, or there are already other buy orders in? He puts in an order for 30 million to seal the deal. Way above what a level 30 is going to offer, well below his actual limit. He's happy.
3- Clueless Kitsune9tails wanders into WentPrime and puts up the IO for sale right quick in between adventures. Seeing that the item is going for arond 100k, she sets her price at 80k to make sure it sells. Boom! It goes for 30 million! She is set for life and very happy. She runs off to start a costume contest.
4- Venture is notified of his buy, a steal at 30 million. He turns around and sells it to Taser for 200 million. Now he, Taser, and Kitsune9tails are all happy.
Now I do see the point that level 30s are never going to be able to buy this level 30 IO at this rate. But they are rare, so it's not like you can count on ever seeing one anyway. Instead, level 30s who find any rare that any 50 wants are going to be rich beyone their wildest dreams.
I can deal with that trade off.
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Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.
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And I'll remember to only sell my items in Prime Time, so a good healthy backlog of LTB orders are up and I'll get the juiciest!
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Is that the way it's working? Priority to the highest value on the buy order, or is it the earliest order that meets the requested value that gets priority?
If it's priority to the highest value order, then again, Venture is right about the good stuff going to the richest people.
Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)
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Is that the way it's working? Priority to the highest value on the buy order, or is it the earliest order that meets the requested value that gets priority?
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It probably is priority to the highest value buy order. Given that the devs have priority given to the lowest value sell order it only makes sense to match it up to the highest buy order.
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List of Invention Guides
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Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.
[/ QUOTE ]
And I'll remember to only sell my items in Prime Time, so a good healthy backlog of LTB orders are up and I'll get the juiciest!
[/ QUOTE ]
Is that the way it's working? Priority to the highest value on the buy order, or is it the earliest order that meets the requested value that gets priority?
If it's priority to the highest value order, then again, Venture is right about the good stuff going to the richest people.
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That's the assmption I'm working under. If it goes FIFO, then you want to get in early with that LTB order and lowball it as much as you can. You'll make a killing!
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
2- Venture pops into WentPrime for a look. None are available at the moment. He puts in a buy order...but for how much? The last 10 went for a paltry 100k, but what if another 50 gets the same idea, or there are already other buy orders in? He puts in an order for 30 million to seal the deal. Way above what a level 30 is going to offer, well below his actual limit. He's happy.
The problem with your theory is that neither I nor anyone else is going to do that. We won't even pay 1 million. If the last 10 went for 100K then that's the ballpark we're going to play in, because we don't HAVE to go higher. We all know the market punishes sellers for trying to get high prices so there's no reason for us to pay high prices.
The real problem is that rare IO won't be on the market at all. Whoever got the drop is going to be trying to trade it for one he can use, because the one he can use isn't on the market either.
Instead, level 30s who find any rare that any 50 wants are going to be rich beyone their wildest dreams.
No. That's what would happen if we had an eBay style system.
Someone upthread speculated about the market for common items. There won't be one. That stuff is common. Before long you'll have more of it than you know what to do with. Those of you who have played Magic: the Gathering know what I'm talking about -- people opening packs and throwing 14 of the 15 cards into the nearest trashcan.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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2- Venture pops into WentPrime for a look. None are available at the moment. He puts in a buy order...but for how much? The last 10 went for a paltry 100k, but what if another 50 gets the same idea, or there are already other buy orders in? He puts in an order for 30 million to seal the deal. Way above what a level 30 is going to offer, well below his actual limit. He's happy.
The problem with your theory is that neither I nor anyone else is going to do that. We won't even pay 1 million. If the last 10 went for 100K then that's the ballpark we're going to play in, because we don't HAVE to go higher. We all know the market punishes sellers for trying to get high prices so there's no reason for us to pay high prices.
The real problem is that rare IO won't be on the market at all. Whoever got the drop is going to be trying to trade it for one he can use, because the one he can use isn't on the market either.
Instead, level 30s who find any rare that any 50 wants are going to be rich beyone their wildest dreams.
No. That's what would happen if we had an eBay style system.
Someone upthread speculated about the market for common items. There won't be one. That stuff is common. Before long you'll have more of it than you know what to do with. Those of you who have played Magic: the Gathering know what I'm talking about -- people opening packs and throwing 14 of the 15 cards into the nearest trashcan.
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Insert any CCG.
Common stuff blows.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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Venture has a good point, but I see it working like this:
1- Level 50 Venture decides he wants to acquire and sell a level 30 special IO. Venture values this IO at 100 million inf, because he hates exemping down, and even exemped, he'd have to run 100 Story Arcs to get a rare Story Arc IO to drop (assuming a 1% drop rate for rares).
2- Venture pops into WentPrime for a look. None are available at the moment. He puts in a buy order...but for how much? The last 10 went for a paltry 100k, but what if another 50 gets the same idea, or there are already other buy orders in? He puts in an order for 30 million to seal the deal. Way above what a level 30 is going to offer, well below his actual limit. He's happy.
3- Clueless Kitsune9tails wanders into WentPrime and puts up the IO for sale right quick in between adventures. Seeing that the item is going for arond 100k, she sets her price at 80k to make sure it sells. Boom! It goes for 30 million! She is set for life and very happy. She runs off to start a costume contest.
4- Venture is notified of his buy, a steal at 30 million. He turns around and sells it to Taser for 200 million. Now he, Taser, and Kitsune9tails are all happy.
Now I do see the point that level 30s are never going to be able to buy this level 30 IO at this rate. But they are rare, so it's not like you can count on ever seeing one anyway. Instead, level 30s who find any rare that any 50 wants are going to be rich beyone their wildest dreams.
I can deal with that trade off.
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There's one flaw in that: Taser gets it right away, Venture never is involved, because Taser would have the highest buy order. You should probably change the 200 million inf to another rare IO that is traded for in that second market. That would fix it.
That's totally not a situation I have a problem with. I have a problem with this situation (which I outlined earlier, but have now added a step for completion):
<ul type="square">[*]Taser puts up a 200 mil buy order for Numina's Convalescence.[*]Venture puts up a 30 mil buy order for the same[*]Kitsune puts up a Numina's Convalescence for sale for 100k, Taser gets it[*]Captain Fantastic puts up a Numina's Convalescence for 35 million[*]Richie McRich buys it for 35 million (or some value near it because he made gradually increasing offers as much as is allowed by the system)[/list]
You've got a situation where two people offered IOs and two people were looking to buy them, and those four people *could* have been matched up, but instead the cheapest IO went to the highest bidder, thus allowing Richie McRich to come in and buy the IO that rightfully should have gone to Venture.
That's the problem I have with the current system. My problem with this specific system has little to do with the actual prices of things. However, I was trying to point out that Venture is right that lower selling prices doesn't mean jack for the good stuff, because you won't have a shot at them-- the people with 1 billion inf (they exist) will be placing buy orders that will be way out of your price range. If that's not a problem to you, that's fine, but it's a problem to those of us who don't want to inf farm all day for a month just to have a shot at an IO that gives +15% recovery rate.
I think this will be necessary because buy orders will become the actual means of obtaining the rare items via Wentworth's (if they are on there at all), and you will need to beat them. Meanwhile, people can farm 30 million inf in less than a week, so you better be doing so too if you want to compete for the good items. That's a problem with the ease of obtaining influence if you want it, but the ease of missing it if you want to help your SG with the base or play low level alts. The discrepancy is far too large, and the existing and planned money sinks aren't enough to prevent inflation from driving buy order prices for set IOs into the hundreds of millions unless they aren't very rare at all.
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Taser didn't get the IO in my example because he didn't drop by WentPrime and put in a buy order (his bad), but the IO trade works just as well.
Software to match the lowest order to the lowest offer is not a bad idea, but it may be a moot point if buy orders are filled instantly. In such a case, it would actually effectively be first come first served, with highest order being the 'tiebreaker'.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Well, okay, so in my example Kitsune9tails makes 80-100k, and you save several million inf. I'm still not sad and crying yet. Are you? 
Now in my example Kitsune9tails isn't trading her rare IO for another rare IO because she's not concerned about it; she can't use it herself, she's not teamed, she just wants to empty her tray. The last thing on her mind is taking an hour off from stuff she considers fun to haggle with some 50. So she just dumps the IO at WentPrime. Any money she gets over her asking price is gravy.
Friendly advice: if it is possible that people will be creeping up on prices from below, give your item a wierd random price like 81056 inf instead of 80k. You'll be glad you did.
An Ebay style system might also work, but it's a moot point in comparison to this system...level 30s aren't going to be able to buy anything that level 50s want anyway.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Someone upthread speculated about the market for common items. There won't be one. That stuff is common. Before long you'll have more of it than you know what to do with. Those of you who have played Magic: the Gathering know what I'm talking about -- people opening packs and throwing 14 of the 15 cards into the nearest trashcan.
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Except for those assembling a deck. Yes, eventually common stuff will be pretty worthless. But in the beginning players like you, who have money but not necessarily the time or the inclination, to gather all that common loot for all of their alts would probably be more prone to just buy it up than spend the time it would take to get the loot for 12 characters.
And I don't see what the big deal is if, as you said, Freedom and Virtue do buy most of the items up for sale. Honestly, if they're the largest servers anyway, chances are they'll be putting up most of the items for sale. I'd rather have a global market than per server because that only punishes the players on the small servers.
I don't expect farming to be an issue either. If you're going to farm a game, surely there are more profitable ones out there to do so in.
-edit- spelling