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Selling (insert your item here) to the vendor removes that item from the game, an item that someone may have actually wanted.
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Someone did want it- me.
I wanted it to sell and turn a profit, other people may have wanted it for other purposes.
I won the bids, they didn't.
Oh well, that's how markets work!
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Selling something to the vendor also creates influence in the world that wasn't there before.
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What do you think selling drops on the market does?
What do you think defeating an enemy does?
You should reconsider your position because it doesn't make any sense.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
The counter point to that is common recipes are available to anyone and everyone at the worktable, and the use of 'full price' recipes rather than ones picked up for cheap actually burns through inf.
The resale to a vendor is approximately 25% of the 'buy from table' price.(25% but some rounding occurs)
For each table recipe used due to arbitrage, 75% of the buy price in inf has been removed from the game world. 100% bought - 25% to the arbitrageur.
Aribtrage, just like flipping is a personal route to inf, but actually a global inf sink.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
You bring up a good point Cat. I didn't think about that specifically.
To Nethergoat though:
your first argument, no you didn't want it. You wanted the money you were going to make off of it.
And your second argument, selling drops on the market does not directly create money, it creates supply, decreasing the value of said supply, indirectly increasing the value of currency used to purchase it.
Defeating enemies, and level 50 casual gameplay is a necessary evil. The game is fun, people want to play and get rewards for it. The money sinks are in place to counterbalance that.
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To Nethergoat though:
your first argument, no you didn't want it. You wanted the money you were going to make off of it.
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So if someone buys it and crafts it to make inf...?
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
They are a jerk hacker and have gone to the Americans!
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Selling something to the vendor also creates influence in the world that wasn't there before.
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What do you think selling drops on the market does?
[/ QUOTE ] Doesn't it just transfer influence from one person to another minus the 10% that is destroyed? I don't understand what you're trying to say with that point.
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To Nethergoat though:
your first argument, no you didn't want it. You wanted the money you were going to make off of it.
[/ QUOTE ]
So if someone buys it and crafts it to make inf...?
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If you buy it to craft it to make inf, yes, you didn't want it either, but at least you're selling it to a player, taking his/her money, losing 10% of it, and not creating money out of thin air. You're actually improving the economy that way, which is why I approve of marketeering, and marketeer myself.
edit: I feel like I should expand on my previous point. It's perfectly fine to want something for the sole reason of selling it to someone else for a profit, as long as that it's beneficial to the economy. That's capitalism. When you're selling an item to someone(the vendor) which pays you a price that has no regard for the market value of the item, the money they use comes out of thin air, and your item dissapears into obscurity and isn't used by its consumer, that's bad for the economy.
That'd be like selling your car to a guy(who has a money printer) for $100, no matter what condition its in, so he can throw it in the ocean.
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Selling (insert your item here) to the vendor removes that item from the game, an item that someone may have actually wanted. This isn't always the case, especially with slow sets and immob sets, but there is at least one Arbitrage guide that tells you to go after common IO's, which there is obvious demand for. Selling something to the vendor also creates influence in the world that wasn't there before.
Therefore, you are removing commodities from the game world, and devaluing the currency of the game world by basically printing money that didn't exist instead of getting money that already existed from another character for your commodity.
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With all due respect, this mode of thinking is completely wrong.
While it is technically correct that vendoring an item removes it from the game, it is
also correct that normal play creates new, cost-free ones as well.... Kill a mob, poof,
an item frequently, magically, appears from thin air.
Second, with respect to a common IO recipe, it is actually physically impossible within
the game mechanic to eliminate the supply. If every single player decided to buy every
common EndMod recipe from the market, and I want one 5 minutes after that happens,
I can *buy* one (or a dozen) immediately from a crafting table at a fixed price the devs
already consider reasonable. Same with SO's, DO's and TO's, created for my convenience
out of thin air by the store whenever I need...
Third, vendoring creates "money that didn't exist". Yep, that's true... So does playing
the game in normal fashion. On the other side of the coin, buying from a vendor removes
money that did exist. Market fees also remove money that already exists, as do tailors.
These raise the value of influence. I'm not seeing a problem here except, possibly in
terms of fine-tuning and balance - something I'd expect the devs to evaluate periodically.
Arbitrage tends to be an equalizing factor, not a destabilizing one imho.
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
One thing (when I was in an absolute pinch) I found to be easier then then buying recipes was buying high lvl SOs on the Market. You can buy a full tray for around $10k and sell for $200k.
These days that just chump change...but its a quick way to actually create your seed money.
FourSpeed said
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These raise the value of influence. I'm not seeing a problem here except, possibly in
terms of fine-tuning and balance - something I'd expect the devs to evaluate periodically.
[/ QUOTE ]
... I've been attempting to think about this and I think we are creating influence considerably faster than we're burning it.
I started a spinoff thread about it.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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To Nethergoat though:
your first argument, no you didn't want it. You wanted the money you were going to make off of it.
[/ QUOTE ]
So if someone buys it and crafts it to make inf...?
[/ QUOTE ]
If you buy it to craft it to make inf, yes, you didn't want it either, but at least you're selling it to a player, taking his/her money, losing 10% of it, and not creating money out of thin air. You're actually improving the economy that way, which is why I approve of marketeering, and marketeer myself.
edit: I feel like I should expand on my previous point. It's perfectly fine to want something for the sole reason of selling it to someone else for a profit, as long as that it's beneficial to the economy. That's capitalism. When you're selling an item to someone(the vendor) which pays you a price that has no regard for the market value of the item, the money they use comes out of thin air, and your item dissapears into obscurity and isn't used by its consumer, that's bad for the economy.
That'd be like selling your car to a guy(who has a money printer) for $100, no matter what condition its in, so he can throw it in the ocean.
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No, it isn't.
It's like selling your car in the newspaper to the best offer and you only ask for a minimum of $1 and the person buys it from you for $1 and sells it to a junk dealer for $90.
Your point is as ridiculous as saying I have to sell my recipe and salvage drops on the market and cannot vendor them as I choose.
The sellers who sell their drops for below the vendor prices made their choice for whatever reason. If someone else wants it, they can outbid you for it.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
[ QUOTE ]
... I've been attempting to think about this and I think we are creating influence
considerably faster than we're burning it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sure.
We have been since the game went live minute one. In the very early days, apart from
enhancements, there was nothing to spend it on, and I think the breakeven P/L point
was somewhere in the early L30's.
A few questions that quickly spring to mind:
1> Is the rise in inf supply accelerating?
2> Is this actually "inflation" per se?
3> If #2 is true, is this "inflation" problematic in the context of this game?
I've not read your other post (yet), but my off-the-cuff thoughts are these (in
Market Post #2 intent):
Looking at question number 2 first...
I think of inflation as the situation where prices are rising faster than the income supply
leading to reduced buying power.
I don't think that's the case here. Standard items (T/D/SO's, inspirations, costumes
etc.) are flat priced - to the best of my knowledge they've never been raised since they
were introduced so there's no loss of buying power on that front.
Further (at least in the several months since I've been back), there are a lot of items
that have tended to stay relatively flat (many common IO's for instance) barring 2X wkends,
major issue releases, significant market changes (no tf random drops / merits) that
have clear, but explainable, market impacts. I don't see this as "inflation".
There is no doubt in my mind that there *is* more inf in the game than any other prior time.
That would be true even without the market. In fact, just a simple (and extremely conservative)
napkin calculation using 100,000 subscriber base, playing 1 hour per day, with an earning
rate of say .5M / hr (1/2 of a casual L50) would generate 1.5 Trillion influence per month
for 5 years... That's 90 Trillion through very casual gameplay (less expenditures)even if
there isn't a market at all.
I don't know if it's accelerating though. The market basically just spreads that around
through the various servers, and along with sinking inf from fees, it doesn't generate
*new* money, but simply exchanges it with other players.
So, you've still got 1.5T being generated each month, flat fees for everything but the market
shinies, so increasing wealth seems unavoidable and increasing prices for coveted IO's seem
likely too under these circumstances...
So my gut feel is that I'd agree that income rate is probably much higher than expenditure
rate by a distinct margin (if my own toons are any additional indicator).
So, is it problematic? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't think buying power is in any way less
than it was earlier, and if we're making more than we spend (as I think we are from
question #1), our buying power is actually increasing, so until the hard inf cap comes
into play (stopping income for that toon), I'm not sure it's a problem from a player perspective.
Sure, the best things probably cost more, but there's more ways to gain inf now so it's actually
easier for players imho.
It may well be problematic from the Dev's perspective, but I'm not sure about that,
especially this far along in the game's life cycle. If they see it as an issue, then I'd definitely
expect more inf sinks (in whatever form) to come along...
I guess we'll see....
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
[ QUOTE ]
The first 'scheme' I ever worked on the market was vendoring recipes. I'd put in bids on ten stacks of level 50 IO recipes then run them to the Mutant store in Steel Canyon.
Nothing wrong with it at all, but for me the profits didn't justify the labor.
[/ QUOTE ]
I would like to state that, in my opinion, there is something wrong with Arbitrage, at least when it's practiced on a grand scale.
Selling (insert your item here) to the vendor removes that item from the game, an item that someone may have actually wanted. This isn't always the case, especially with slow sets and immob sets, but there is at least one Arbitrage guide that tells you to go after common IO's, which there is obvious demand for. Selling something to the vendor also creates influence in the world that wasn't there before.
Therefore, you are removing commodities from the game world, and devaluing the currency of the game world by basically printing money that didn't exist instead of getting money that already existed from another character for your commodity.
In the end though, it's only really harmful if the practice of this is on such a scale that it competes with the printing capabilities of farmers, or even casual gameplay of 50's.