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Why not help a lone bidder at Wentworth's get what they want?
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Because I'm too ebil
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even more satisfying than selling enhancements for a profit.
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If you just give me your influence it'll save you time you could spend playing the game to acquire more influence to give to me. I'll even tell you what I spend it on so you'll get the warm and fuzzy feeling 
If it is only worth 1,500inf to them then what's the point? I could understand if you saw something that sold for more but 1,500? That seems like a slap in the face to me.
Now, dont get me wrong. I like that you want to help other players. But who bids 1,500 and really needs/wants something? No one unless they want to flip it.
Just my thoughts on this. Maybe you could build more expensive or sought after things very cheap and try to drive the price down? How about flooding the markets with something like the luck charms?
... Nobody flips bonesnaps.
Someone with only 1,500 inf to bid hasn't figured the markets out yet. That's my guess.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
If you had Tonto with you, perhaps I could be persuaded...
Actually, now that I think about it, I AM the lone bidder (Razzle Dazzle lvl 16 acc/end, I'm looking at you). My brute would love for it to come in, but y'know, perhaps I'll level up a bunch and expand my possible pool.
President of the Arbiter Sands fan club. We will never forget.
An Etruscan Snood will nevermore be free
I suspect that many of those lone bids are people who are just throwing out bids in the hopes of catching somebody in a influence transfer. I remeber in the early days of the market people complained about getting their transfer intercepted.
To exemp down in Bloody Bay and still keep my set bonuses, I would throw up a 1500 infl bid on a recipe or enhancement in that level range. Why wouldn't I? I am the only bidder and there is 0 for sale. Should one happen to be posted for more, I just might bid creep to get it. It would be very unlikely for that particular recipe to drop amidst my leveling. Given the time it takes to out-level that particular set. Just throwin it out there.
I suspect that a lot of those lone bidders are abandoned alts.
I might be that lone bidder, sometimes
I have a bunch of lowbie characters that get played, these days, about once every 50 or 60 days. (My play rate is pretty low these days, will probably pick up again once summer's over.) I don't bother transferring inf to them or anything, not really worth it, and I like to start with the frankenslotting at a low level, teens usually.
So what I do is, before I log off one of them, I'll go to Wentworth's and put in a couple bids for some cheap acc/dam's or dam/end's or something. A lot of the time I'm the only bidder and there are none for sale. It doesn't bother me that it won't fill for a while, since it'll be a few weeks before I get back to it anyway. By the time I get back to it, it'll probably be there.
So, I don't know if I'm the kind of person you're looking to help with this, but you probably are helping me. So thanks!
You hit on my favorite reason to make money by crafting in MMO's. I would rather spend my time working the markets, jumping back and forth between WW and my crafting base; knowing that the common IO's I'm selling are helping others enjoy the game than spend all day farming AE's hoping to cash in big on some random drops.
One of the most satisfying market sessions I had lately was when I was posting some mid-level common Health IO's and the sales were closing about 30 seconds after I posted them. Realizing that someone was thinking "I hope I can find this for my next upgrade..." and they were able to get what they needed because I spent the time to understand how crafting works and to create the IO's was very cool!
My problem, however, with the "lone bidder" is that I tend to have a somewhat cynical view of such things. I worry that if I offer up something to them and they buy it for a couple thousand that they're just going to turn around and put it up for sale at 10x (or more) what they paid. I guess on the positive side, even if that's all they do, they're still advancing their goals because I helped out.
That's the attitude I have when I'm clearing random salvage off my characters for 9 inf each. Sure I know some of it will be flipped, but since it wasn't doing me any good, finding a "good" price for one Ancient Artifact (or whatever) isn't worth my time.
I am frequently a lone bidder on lowbie sets, especially redside.
I do however try to make it worth the persons while, and floor my bid at 5*Vendor or so. Having a last 5 shoing > Vendor is a long term incentive for more people to list, if more people list, more people may buy and hopefully reveive the non-50 redside market.
<--- is a dreamer, obviously
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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I am frequently a lone bidder on lowbie sets, especially redside.
I do however try to make it worth the persons while, and floor my bid at 5*Vendor or so. Having a last 5 shoing > Vendor is a long term incentive for more people to list, if more people list, more people may buy and hopefully reveive the non-50 redside market.
<--- is a dreamer, obviously
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I actually do this too. I don't bid 1500 or anything like that. The lowest I'll ever bid is 20,000 to 30,000, about 10 times what you'd get from a vendor for a level 20-30 uncommon recipe IIRC. I do want people to sell these things, since I want to buy them, and if they're all selling for 500, why should they? Probably makes no difference, but that's what I do anyway.
55,908 is my minimum bid for a recipe I'm going to actually craft. I consider it a mark of respect.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Just because someone is a lone bidder doesn't mean they aren't interested in flipping the item. Lots of people put out low bids on items in the hope to snap them up at a song then resell them. Maybe there is only 1 bid because they already bought 9 at that price!
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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JMaybe there is only 1 bid because they already bought 9 at that price!
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QFT
=)
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Glad to see the variety of perspectives on the idea of the "lone bidder!" I actually was kind of nervous about the topic a few hours after I had posted; I was thinking, "Eek! I do sound a bit dreamy on this--I'll probably get a slew of one-sentence replies concerning my naivete and utter stupidity or something like that." But I'm glad that this bit of philosophy has engendered a great discussion!
Mainly, I like helping out the lone bidder because of the principle of the act rather than the result. The lone bidder will never know who listed the item that they got, yet I know that it will help them in some way (even if they flip it, that's influence in their pocket that they didn't have before). It's an anonymous sort of charity, I suppose. It's kind of cool to be doing something decidedly not money-making among the heated bidding wars that often go on within the glassed walls of Wentworth's. Remembering that there is a human being behind every hero on the screen is an incentive for me to do stuff like this.
_~`Tanker Chicks Rock`~_
City of Heroes for New Players | Learn More about Austara
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I'll probably get a slew of one-sentence replies concerning my naivete and utter stupidity or something like that
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Fools! I'll destroy you all! Ask me how!
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
The Lone Bidder (a bit of Wentworth's philosophy)
It makes me so sad to see a listing for an item accompanied by "1 Bidding/0 Selling." (At first, I thought this was a possible bug, but after building and selling a Bonesnap enhancement to such a bidder on a listing, I found out otherwise.)
Before I found the mysterious group of lone bidders, I had been attempting to play the rather cutthroat game of "flipping enhancements:" buy a recipe for cheap, build it, and sell the enhancement for way more than recipe and salvage cost put together. I wasn't much good at it financially, since I was usually losing influence instead of gaining, but I was happy because I was getting enhancements to people who needed them.
But when I sold that first enhancement to the lonely last bidder left, I experienced a much greater joy--that of making something for someone else, no matter if I made any money off it. That first enhancement sold for about 1,500 inf, while it took much more to build, but it was so satisfying to see it sell, even more satisfying than selling enhancements for a profit.
I certainly haven't made any of my characters richer in influence doing this, but it makes me happy to list an enhancement and see it sell to someone who's most likely been waiting a while to get it. Who knows, maybe the piece I made helped someone complete a long-awaited set, or maybe they could buy it for much less than they expected since I listed it for a lower price?
My point with all this is that it's well and good to set your characters up with a nice cushion of influence, and certainly we all need some--I wouldn't kick as much butt in battle without purchasing Inspirations and Invented Enhancements! But sometimes, it's just awesome to do something for someone else, regardless of what we ourselves get out of it. Why not help a lone bidder at Wentworth's get what they want?
_~`Tanker Chicks Rock`~_
City of Heroes for New Players | Learn More about Austara