Oddly enough, there was a fascinating post on this from an actual economist a while back - I'm trying to find it...
What we're looking at here is a limited-supply economy, as applied to things like art, high-end mineral resources like gold, footballers (why?) and - up until recently - oil and property.
Because everyone knows the previous price thing X was sold at, very few people will accept less than that as a seller and few will want to pay more than that as a buyer, so there's a (relatively) stable market.
It's only when someone is desperate enough to pay over the odds to get something (eg: a collector's art item, VW shares, particularly nice shoes, dribbling borderline sociopaths who happen to know how to kick a ball) or take less to ensure cash liquidity (eg: property of late) that prices will see significant shifts outside that normalised band.
Is it time for the dance of joy yet?
I've mostly given up with IOs for precisely this reason. It's perfectly playable with SOs, and apart from a few, what I consider to be "essentials" (KB Prots on a fire tank for eg), I steer clear of Inventions for the most part.
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Well, generic IOs are cheap yet better than SOs. 
It's the sets that are expensive.
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It's the sets that are expensive.
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Yet they are so easy to come by 
People are impatient, if they have influence they'll keep raising their price until they get it. Its what i do, if i want it . . . i get it.
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There's far more cheap sets than expensive ones to be honest these days. Purples aside there are only a few sets that really cost 10+m a recipe.
Bottom line is if you want it bad enough you'll pay.
Failing that farm a bucketload of merits and get the ones you need
Thelonious Monk
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I've mostly given up with IOs for precisely this reason. It's perfectly playable with SOs, and apart from a few, what I consider to be "essentials" (KB Prots on a fire tank for eg), I steer clear of Inventions for the most part.
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Same here. The Merit system pretty much killed my interest in set IOs and I'm not even someone who goes for full IO builds. Just small things like knockback protection on /Fire toons or run speed increases for my Stone Tank.
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It's the sets that are expensive.
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Yet they are so easy to come by
People are impatient, if they have influence they'll keep raising their price until they get it. Its what i do, if i want it . . . i get it.
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Precisely why they are so expensive. So people farm to increase their wealth to afford these expensive recipes, which enable them to go even higher when they're bidding for something, and thus the spiral goes.
Let's not forget too that it's not only the recipes that are expensive. Alchemical Silver for example, which is one of the two items required for a lvl 35 Accuracy standard IO sells at around 30 - 40k. Five attack powers, two accs in each, you're looking at 4 mill just for that one component for STANDARD IOs.
Factor that in with the horrendous lag that I usually experience when trying to buy or sell anything in WW tends to make me avoid it.
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I love the prices of some of the Generic IO Recipes in game - I've seen them 10 or 20 times more than they cost to buy it directly from an Invention workstation.
I used to think the people putting them up for sale were crazy to do that... but then I noticed that they were being bought that day, every time.
Laziness and a lack of common sense will beat the economy any day (both here and in the real world).
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The maximun price of generic IO's for me is the crafting table price. I won't pay any more than that for them. Of course, being the cheapskate I am I'll hunt for a bargain on WW/BM.
Many IO sets have become obscenely expensive since the release of I13. I'm hoping it's just a market fluctuation but I won't hold my breath.
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Alchemical Silver for example, which is one of the two items required for a lvl 35 Accuracy standard IO sells at around 30 - 40k. Five attack powers, two accs in each, you're looking at 4 mill just for that one component for STANDARD IOs.
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That should be 400,000 inf, not 4 million. Although you're quite right that Alchemical Silver has been very high lately. I wondered if it might be due to the drop-off in Katie Hannon runs and the mid-level magical salvage they brought into the system.
Still, you can always put in a much lower bid and wait overnight. Or spend half an hour or an hour in Dark Astoria, which is what we've been doing -- collect magic salvage and make some progress towards the Pantheon boss badge at the same time.
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Prices -do- drop during the night, often significantly; I suspect it has something to do with the whole US-EU market sharing thing.
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Prices -do- drop during the night, often significantly; I suspect it has something to do with the whole US-EU market sharing thing.
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What's that thing? Explain please.
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Part of the problem is that there is no real money sink. Even with the 10 percent commission, there is constantly more money in the game than there was previously.
Hence, prices will be high for desirable and rare items, and will remain high, and get higher.
When I first started playing I thought 10 mill was a *lot* of influence. Now I don't get out of bed for less than 100 mill.
Some kind of sink is needed to bring the prices back down. We can't nerf drop values as that hurts new players considerably.
An easy answer would be a casino in pocket D with a 75% return rate, but I can't imagine that being implemented and it's a bit un-hero like ( perhaps red side then 
)
As for me, I'm mildly impatient with both selling and buying, but I do flip recipies sometimes. But, patience is a virtue. e.g. I'm picking up Lotg 7.5's at 35 mill once every couple of weeks, rather than paying 60 mill+ off the bat.
My ill/rad did cost over a billion though even with patience 
Fahie
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What's that thing? Explain please.
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The Aution House is shared between the US and EU. When we go to sleep, the vastly more numerous US players pile on and stuff the Auction House with transactions. Because they're throwing waaaaaaay more pieces of salvage on sale, the price hammers down during the night.
Then we get up and start playing, and the prices gradually creep back up as all the cheap US stuff gets bought out. At the time of writing this post, an Alchemical Silver was going for 100k, fgrom when I started in the morning at 20k. Compared to what the market looks like when we're awake and playing, you can put on a load of bids overnight and you'll get a bucket of bargains thanks to the yanks.
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The silly high prices are a pretty big problem for me.
I'm currently looking to kit out Sapphic Shock some. But looking at what recepies are costing, not sure that will ever happen.
She's going to need certain set bonuses for defense, and the sets which have the good set bonuses run for silly amounts. And none of them are purple. An Obliteration alone is like 300mil or so villain side, one recepie alone were like 180mil when i looked. And i need three for her. Melee sets Touch of Death and Makos Bite are also silly expensive. So are the Red Fortune defense sets and other misc sets i'd want to slot.
Then i poped over to hero side and looked there and everything was geneally half price or less.
Even placing low bids and waiting, they never go thru other than once a blue moon. I've had some bids up on a couple of Red Forune now for a month or so. The recepie i'm after has sold for 5-6mil on average, i've placed a 3.5mil bid and now 30 days laters, it's still not gone thru.
Part of me just wants to merge heroes and villain auctions. But that may throw the economy even more in the wrong direction.
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That should be 400,000 inf, not 4 million.
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*Fires "Ground Open Up and Swallow Me" Power.*
It's been a long week *ahem*
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"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
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I just use the yellow sets, cheap and effective!
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these. It might have been."
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eryq2 (again)
I do think flippers hurt the price. It's like price gouging that we felt with the gas a year or 2 ago. There's limited supply so someone with enough inf CAN determine the prices. I go buy the 1 available and resell. I can even buy that 1 and resell it again with ANOTHER set price. Now, the AVERAGE price continues to rise because people see what they have been sold at.
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Heh - this talk of 'oil gouging' makes me worried - the price and supply level of oil has remained pretty much stable, it was just the dollar that was more-or-less worthless.
Frankly, I find it rather horrifying that the States has become so insular that the only indicator that Average Joe Yankie had that their currency was becoming a bad joke was dismissed with a conspiracy theory about how OPEC was trying to cash in at American expense.
Little bit of politics, there, yes indeed...
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Little bit of politics, there, yes indeed...
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... ladies and gentlemen".
That's going back some. I deny knowledge of this quote - too late
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but its not jsut purple sets. its low level sets as well. I forget exactly which ones but from what I can remember when I was lookign for recipies last night on my 16th level scrapper:
steadfast protection (knockback resist) is over 20 mill
its either reactive or impervium armour that has recipies for over 10 million apiece for all levels , not just the higher ones.
this means, that players will have to either play the market or farm to supply enough inf to enable their alt to actually complete a fairly common set, let alone take advantage of the IO itself.
I've noticed that since merits came out certian lower level , more common recipies have shot up in price, while generic IO recipies and compelted enhancements are worth next to nothing (range and holds for example, though I think holds were always rubbish).
If it were just purples and the higher level recipies I wouldnt mind , but there is no way my lvl 16 scrapper can afford these without selling other recipies for extortionate amounts which just perpetuates the problem.
ideas to mitigate this problem:
dont show price history : not really fair to the seller or the buyer but would result in bid what you think its worth and not what you see others paying.
depreciating price: the longer an item stays on the market the lower the price. after 3 days, the price starts to fall by 2% per day until it is sold. if the seller wishes to keep the price up he can take it off the market , lose the deposit and pay fo rit to be listed again.
Market control: if the market sees a hike in the price of a recipie, it starts introducing those recipies into the market at a lower, more reasonable price at periodic intervals. that way buyers can either bid fo rthe hugely inflated prices or bid at a reasonable rate and wait for the market to make the adjustment. Sellers will have to anticipate this and price their recipies accordingly.
Yes, farmers feed the market, but currently some of these suppliers are simply gouging. I had a full set (spare) of winter's gift that I was going to give to another alt but when I saw the prices they were selling for I sold them and donated half the money to my alt and bought useful sets for both characters. But the winter's gift recipies are rare, so why are they sellign for less than low level , non-purple recipies. in this case, rarity which equals supply does not hold up to the supply/demand price setting ideal. so either winter's gift is the anomoly, or the markets are skewed.
wow, I waffled along there for a bit. sorry!
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Prices -do- drop during the night, often significantly; I suspect it has something to do with the whole US-EU market sharing thing.
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Are you sure of this EU/US Sharing the market?.
cuase i been looking at some specific IO sets somewhile back, and on my home server( Defiant ) they where very expensive, then i hoped over to Union and i noticed the prices where way lower on there( both done with Villians and Hero's).
49 level 50's(CoH/V), cant be arsed to list em all :P
QR
"steadfast protection (knockback resist) is over 20 mill" But as ebil US marketeers noticed, it's just 50 merits/pool A drop. 1 Posi run and you're guaranteed to get it one way or the other. Or, as someone suggested, just get Ouroboros and farm low-level arcs for it. In fact, I've got it once as a "natural" drop (yes, it's rare, yes made my week... But yes, not all random rolls are rubbish.)
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Are you sure of this EU/US Sharing the market?.
cuase i been looking at some specific IO sets somewhile back, and on my home server( Defiant ) they where very expensive, then i hoped over to Union and i noticed the prices where way lower on there( both done with Villians and Hero's).
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There are just 2 market servers, one for blues, one for reds. In fact, market maintenance downtime is as if it was US server, not EU server. Not sure how to explain that Defiant/Union discrepancy... Maybe someone bought a ton of the things while you relogged?
But if you have INF to burn it's easy to test for yourself... Make some ridiculous bid (1 mil for common vendtrash or something) and check the history on the other server. It ought to show up after some delay. (although, won't work on highly traded items...)
I have been reading this thread on the U.S. forums, and would like to comment:
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eryq2
Reged: 09/06/05
Posts: 439
50+ mil, NO TY.
#13078767 - 02/17/09 11:46 AM
No flaming req., just letting this out. lol.
I love enhancing my toons as much as the next man(or lady) but i refuse to pay upwards of 50, 60, 70 mil inf for 1 recipe. I'm sorry. (purples that is)
Orange ones are beginning to get on my nerves too at 20 mil per.
Sorry, had to let that out. Flame is you don't know what else to do. Just my opinions.
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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....part=1&vc=1
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eryq2 (again)
I do think flippers hurt the price. It's like price gouging that we felt with the gas a year or 2 ago. There's limited supply so someone with enough inf CAN determine the prices. I go buy the 1 available and resell. I can even buy that 1 and resell it again with ANOTHER set price. Now, the AVERAGE price continues to rise because people see what they have been sold at.
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UberGuy
When you see a price, do you immediately feel it's what you must pay? Because someone else might do so, why should you?
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I feel that ONE of the key determining factors here is that of inventory. This is not like the true market where people have to put food in their familys' mouthes. The ability to generate inventory space from nothing and the ability to retain items on the market indefinitely (by simply having the character place the item on the market and then leaving it - a "take it or leave it" pricetag, with no bartering) means that the seller is never in a difficult position. There is no real urgency to make that sale.
The weight of time is on the seller's side, and if the buyer doesn't want to afford it, the item will remain expensive forever.
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