Farming killing the RMT'ers?
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2009-08-04 06:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Yes, and once we can set the difficulty to whatever we please it will be even harder for RMT'ers to make a living in CoH.
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I hope you're right. But presumably, they're able to produce influence with greater efficiency than before, too, which could be another reason they're lowering prices.
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And why do you need a billion influence?|
Originally Posted by TheSwamper
It wasn't that long ago that a billion influence was around a hundred bucks. Now it's down below $30, and keeps dropping. I read this as a good sign, in that the RMT'ers are getting more and more desperate to sell.
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| Also, with today's AE farming being so lucrative, it's easier than ever to earn large piles of influence, so I can't understand why ppl would bother buying it. I'm looking forward to a day when these money sellers are gone from the game. |
Farmers aren't solving the problem, they're creating the problem. Because of farmers dumping less used recipes on the market, when you get a drop, you can't sell it for more than the stores offer it for. Also because of farmers (who are the ones getting billions of influence through farming), buying the more used recipes on the market costs the billions that people are using RMT services to buy.
If farmers would stop doing what they do, two things would happen. 1) As the demand for valuable recipes and enhancements goes down, the prices would follow. You can't sell a purple Whiz Bango for a billion if no one has a billion. 2) As the supply of what are considered "crap" recipes dries up, the price would also follow, meaning that when you get a Pacing of the Wallaby, you could actually get something for it to put torwards buying the purple Whiz Bango you want instead of just dropping it off at the store or deleting it because you're in a mission. Prices would normalize towards the middle, making it easier for casual and normal players to get stuff they want.
Also, farming has other negative consequences as well. Because they "purple out" their characters a lot faster, they tend to have an advantage in places like PvP zones against others who are just casual or normal players. This, in turn, tends to make those kinds of players avoid those zones. I know that one of the reasons I don't like PvP is because on any given character, the most purple IOs I have is two; it's just not a priority for me, and the few times I've been in a PvP zone, I've been hopelessly outmatched. Not because of skill, but because I run into opponents for whom my holds hardly work, who do a lot more damage than me and take a lot less damage than me, etc. And, of course, let's not forget how stupidly dreadful it is that our broadcast channels are needlessly filled with "lf AE farm/members" drivel.
On top of that, how do you think that the RMT sellers are getting their influence? Farming. Do you think they're learning these skills on their own? No, they're using the very same techniques that are passed around within the farming community, a very "helpful" group of people who are more than willing to give them the knowledge of how to gather the stuff that they're constantly spamming us to try to sell.
Last but not least, it's not the farmers that are driving the prices down; they're not getting their influence from farmers. It is the easy availability of the influence. Look at it this way. If the devs release a new feature where you could play a mini-game and earn twice as much influence as you can in the same amount of time now, prices would drop by half again, even if it were completely unfarmable. Since the RMTers can pull in twice as much influence now, it lowers their own costs by half. Or put into a real life context, if you make and sell widgets for which there is a steady demand for $100, and suddenly an advance in technology allows you (and your competitors) to make widgets for $30, that would drive the price of widgets on the market to around 30% the price they are now.
And by the way, that is most definitely not a good sign. If I had my way, the RMTers would be selling influence for a dollar per. The higher the cost, the better, since that would mean that less people would be able to buy their wares, thus negatively impacting their business model. If we could get it so that it is prohibitively expensive to be in the RMT business, that would stop the RMT spam. As it is, even if it gets to a trillion influence for less than a dollar, all that means is that 1) influence has gotten to the point where it's virtually worthless, and 2) prices on the market have gotten so exorbitantly expensive (likely due to the farmers exploiting something) that casual and normal players simply don't have the opportunity to buy anything without engaging in exploiting the game themselves. That's not a good sign, it's a sign that your game is dead.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
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My only fear is that: once we're able to more easily produce two billion influence, the new poverty line is two billion influence.
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That's pretty much the tl;dr version of my post, and it's a 100% correct insightful observation that a lot of people overlook. |
Originally Posted by Slice_O_Pie
My only fear is that: once we're able to more easily produce two billion influence, the new poverty line is two billion influence.
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It's the equivalent of the U.S. Mint deciding to print a lot more money. It doesn't work, because it's not increasing the inherent value of stuff, only changing the exchange rate we're paying for it.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Raise the cap to a hundred billion! |
Originally Posted by Slice_O_Pie
My only fear is that: once we're able to more easily produce two billion influence, the new poverty line is two billion influence.
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@Lasher
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Originally Posted by Edgar Allan Poe
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
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You miss the other fallout from farming the MA -- because you get only inf and tickets from MA arcs, and the farmers are using all their tickets to get recipe rolls that they can sell in the auction house, they're not getting the salvage that they would be getting along with the other drops in regular missions -- but they still need salvage to craft the recipes they keep or buy. As a result, the supply of salvage in the auction house has gone down, since fewer people are putting salvage into the auction reserve, but the same number of people are trying to buy salvage. And, inevitably, we're seeing prices ratcheting up -- common salvage bid up to 35,000 - 50,000 inf, and uncommon salvage up to 100,000, when it might have, if badly bottlenecked, have gone up to 20,000 for common salvage and 50,000 for uncommon salvage. This is then followed by people seeing the prices the inf-rich farmers are willing to pay for salvage and jacking their listing prices, keeping the prices cranked to the sky because they a) don't want to lose their listing fee and b) figure that if someone's willing to pay 75,000 for common salvage, they should be getting 75,000, too.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
Farmers aren't solving the problem, they're creating the problem. Because of farmers dumping less used recipes on the market, when you get a drop, you can't sell it for more than the stores offer it for. Also because of farmers (who are the ones getting billions of influence through farming), buying the more used recipes on the market costs the billions that people are using RMT services to buy.
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I look forward to I-16 and the effect it will have on the markets. I'm under the impression that supply is about to outstrip demand.
srmalloy, I don't know about other folks, but come I-16, I'll have absolutely no reason to use the AE unless I want to go run someone's story arc. I'll be cranking through paper missions solo set for a team of 8 on the 4th difficulty and in doing so, will be dumping all the salvage I get on the market for 250 inf a pop. I won't need to make cash off of the market because I'll be capped out on inf from running missions.
I doubt I'm alone in this.
Be well, people of CoH.
EDIT: this is a reply to TonyV above. I thought hitting the Quick Reply button on his post would indicate such, but, apparently not.
What you're failing to take into account, Tony, is that those same farmers also supply a large portion of the good recipes to the market, including purples.
I also have to say that I personally find very little on the market that is beyond my price range for the toon I'm shopping for at the time, and I never farm. If I pass up something I want it's more often because I refuse to pay a ridiculously high price for the item, and instead just leave a bid and generally find it filled at some point. I haven't tried to purple out a toon, so I can't speak to those, but, most of my toons have close to 10 million by 10th level just from running story arcs, not farm arcs, in AE.
I also have a half dozen under 20 level toons who have made 20, 30, and 40 million from a single lucky bronze roll.
So, influence is easier than ever to come by in the game without farming. Which means the farmers are needed more than ever to supply the market. If you magically eliminated farming, and prices on the market dropped due to less influence being around, as you are proposing, you still will not get the recipes you want. Being able to afford them is worthless when there is no supply. Further, crap recipes that give bonuses almost no one wants will remain vendor trash, regardless of supply.
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At least we'll still have a badge for it |
Originally Posted by Slice_O_Pie
My only fear is that: once we're able to more easily produce two billion influence, the new poverty line is two billion influence.
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@Golden Girl
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Inflation is a fact of life in MMO's. Keep an eye on prices over time for any game on those sites and you'll see the same thing happening. The first few days World of Warcraft was live, RMT shops were selling at something like five bucks per gold piece. Nowadays it's more like one cent per gold.|
Originally Posted by TheSwamper
Like most everyone else who plays, everytime I log in, I have several influence for real cash emails. I always delete them, but I do keep an eye on the price, just as a way of seeing how the RMT'ers are doing.
It wasn't that long ago that a billion influence was around a hundred bucks. Now it's down below $30, and keeps dropping. I read this as a good sign, in that the RMT'ers are getting more and more desperate to sell. Also, with today's AE farming being so lucrative, it's easier than ever to earn large piles of influence, so I can't understand why ppl would bother buying it. I'm looking forward to a day when these money sellers are gone from the game. |
You're not seeing anything new, or anything that heralds the death of RMT.
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I'm not seeing the problem here. Yes, if you look at the last 5 sales you usually see some ridiculously jacked up prices. The fact is, though, I've been going for Field Crafter on one of my toons the last two weeks. I've put in my bids for recipes and for salvage. Any common salvage, with the exception of the always high prices Luck Charms, I bid 100 on. Uncommons, 250 (although I'm probably thinking of other toons, since I think all the common IOs just use common salvage). |
Originally Posted by srmalloy
You miss the other fallout from farming the MA -- because you get only inf and tickets from MA arcs, and the farmers are using all their tickets to get recipe rolls that they can sell in the auction house, they're not getting the salvage that they would be getting along with the other drops in regular missions -- but they still need salvage to craft the recipes they keep or buy. As a result, the supply of salvage in the auction house has gone down, since fewer people are putting salvage into the auction reserve, but the same number of people are trying to buy salvage. And, inevitably, we're seeing prices ratcheting up -- common salvage bid up to 35,000 - 50,000 inf, and uncommon salvage up to 100,000, when it might have, if badly bottlenecked, have gone up to 20,000 for common salvage and 50,000 for uncommon salvage. This is then followed by people seeing the prices the inf-rich farmers are willing to pay for salvage and jacking their listing prices, keeping the prices cranked to the sky because they a) don't want to lose their listing fee and b) figure that if someone's willing to pay 75,000 for common salvage, they should be getting 75,000, too.
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I log on the next day and all my bids are filled. Much of the time, I get a good percentage of the salvage in the time it takes me to go to my base and craft the stuff I just bought.
For that matter, all the common arcane salvage I could never buy for less than 5 digits before AE, such as Spell Scrolls and Ancient Artifacts I've been getting for 1 to 5 thousand. Even Luck Charms I haven't paid more than 25,000 for. Used to be I'd bid that and wait a week or more before I'd see it filled, if at all.
@Doctor Gemini
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I don't think it has anything to do with farming. I don't farm. I went from scraping by to fabulously wealthy about 1 week after I9 launched. |
Originally Posted by TheSwamper
Also, with today's AE farming being so lucrative, it's easier than ever to earn large piles of influence, so I can't understand why ppl would bother buying it. I'm looking forward to a day when these money sellers are gone from the game. |
Infamy is just so much easier to earn even since the market opened in I9. It's Marketeering that's killing the RMTers, not farming.
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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My PvP Corr 'needs' a lot of Procs and high end Uniques.|
Originally Posted by TonyV
And why do you need a billion influence?
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| If farmers would stop doing what they do, two things would happen. 1) As the demand for valuable recipes and enhancements goes down, the prices would follow. You can't sell a purple Whiz Bango for a billion if no one has a billion. 2) As the supply of what are considered "crap" recipes dries up, the price would also follow, meaning that when you get a Pacing of the Wallaby, you could actually get something for it to put torwards buying the purple Whiz Bango you want instead of just dropping it off at the store or deleting it because you're in a mission. Prices would normalize towards the middle, making it easier for casual and normal players to get stuff they want. |
"Casual" and "Normal" players can get their stuff if they simply list on the market, bid on the market and use some patience. I can't remember the amount of times I've heard people in my SG global channel go: "Stuff is too expensive!" Then I'll show them how to make inf from level 1 up, no more complaints.
People will always want the Purples, the LOTG 7.5 etc...they're high end drops usable in a variety of builds and situations. What may occur is that more Purples will ber produced with the I16 changes, lowering their price.
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| On top of that, how do you think that the RMT sellers are getting their influence? Farming. Do you think they're learning these skills on their own? No, they're using the very same techniques that are passed around within the farming community, a very "helpful" group of people who are more than willing to give them the knowledge of how to gather the stuff that they're constantly spamming us to try to sell. |
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| Look at it this way. If the devs release a new feature where you could play a mini-game and earn twice as much influence as you can in the same amount of time now, prices would drop by half again, even if it were completely unfarmable. . |
If Neuronia normally makes 5,000,000 per play session she will spend 5,000,000 (well, probably less as I like to have some inf sitting around) on the Market, etc.
If Neuronia normally makes 30,000,000 per session, she'll use that on the Market, SOs, whichever...if you want stuff to cost less then you need to produce more widgets. More widgets means lower prices for widgets until a new equilibrium is reached that buyers and sellers agree upon.
Also note you don't need the big items to function better. I've been getting Analyze Weakness sets dirtcheap and the 3% damage, 11% Accuracy and other bonuses are very nice...
Your mileage may vary.
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This is an impressive edifice of bent logic and delusion, even for you.|
Originally Posted by TonyV
Farmers aren't solving the problem, they're creating the problem. Because of farmers dumping less used recipes on the market, when you get a drop, you can't sell it for more than the stores offer it for. Also because of farmers (who are the ones getting billions of influence through farming), buying the more used recipes on the market costs the billions that people are using RMT services to buy.
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Farmers generate supply. That's all they do.
More supply = more availability.
More availability = lower prices.
Just as the specious "farmers make everything too expensive for the little guy!" argument is a crock, so is "farmers make everything too cheap, so you can't earn enough inf to buy anything!"
The "good stuff" is almost universally cheaper than it has ever been right now- the only exception are things you can't generate through the MA system, like purples.
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| If farmers would stop doing what they do, two things would happen. |
Why are purples so expensive right now?
Because all the farmers are in MA, not generating purples.
Watching you discuss the economy is like watching Bozo the Clown give a lecture on the Middle East peace process.
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Most capitalist models and ideologies are not based on selling stuff cheap because you can't use the money anyway. If the average farmer is capped on inf (avoidable by converting the inf into bids/items through the market), then they have no reason to take the time to sell salvage.|
Originally Posted by BillZBubba
I look forward to I-16 and the effect it will have on the markets. I'm under the impression that supply is about to outstrip demand.
srmalloy, I don't know about other folks, but come I-16, I'll have absolutely no reason to use the AE unless I want to go run someone's story arc. I'll be cranking through paper missions solo set for a team of 8 on the 4th difficulty and in doing so, will be dumping all the salvage I get on the market for 250 inf a pop. I won't need to make cash off of the market because I'll be capped out on inf from running missions. I doubt I'm alone in this. |
i doubt that this will make supply outstrip demand. i think that the majority of people farming AE will continue to ignore salvage rolls, and i suspect that's the source of the current salvage scarcity. People could be getting and marketing salvage now, but they just don't. I-16's added difficulty settings won't change that. Sure, those who are inclined to make the effort to market salvage will make a killing, but that's already true. Despite the popular wisdom that people and markets are completely rational (which, incidentally, is working so well in real life), it's often simply not the case.
Philanthropic gestures (such as selling salvage cheap just because you can) are rarely anonymous in real life. Selling salvage cheap is an anonymous act. inf-capped farmers unloading dirt cheap salvage out of the goodness of their hearts is a nice concept, but i have my doubts.
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You are not alone. Scrappers and brutes on both accounts chomping at the bit in anticipation of this change. And a similar plan, as well: dump anything I don't need onto the market cheap. The really good farmers aren't stupid, they'll understand that farming for drops and salvage is more profitable than just farming for INF in AE, once they can pad a map for 8 with no troubles.|
Originally Posted by BillZBubba
I look forward to I-16 and the effect it will have on the markets. I'm under the impression that supply is about to outstrip demand.
srmalloy, I don't know about other folks, but come I-16, I'll have absolutely no reason to use the AE unless I want to go run someone's story arc. I'll be cranking through paper missions solo set for a team of 8 on the 4th difficulty and in doing so, will be dumping all the salvage I get on the market for 250 inf a pop. I won't need to make cash off of the market because I'll be capped out on inf from running missions. I doubt I'm alone in this. |
Only downside I can see is that the low-level recipes might creep back up a bit: steadfast, karma, regen tissue- but the farmers who don't leave AE will still produce those, too.
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Originally Posted by BillZBubba
I look forward to I-16 and the effect it will have on the markets. I'm under the impression that supply is about to outstrip demand.
srmalloy, I don't know about other folks, but come I-16, I'll have absolutely no reason to use the AE unless I want to go run someone's story arc. I'll be cranking through paper missions solo set for a team of 8 on the 4th difficulty and in doing so, will be dumping all the salvage I get on the market for 250 inf a pop. I won't need to make cash off of the market because I'll be capped out on inf from running missions. I doubt I'm alone in this. |
exactly my thoughts.
i16 will revive my softcapped fire/sr brute.
With all due respect to Nethergoat:
Farmers farm in AE.
AE = no purples or salvage.
No purples or salvage = dwindling supply thereof.
Dwindling supply = higher prices.
Oh yeah, and
Cheaper influence (you KNOW someone's buying) = looser purse strings.
Looser purse strings = encouragement of higher prices (an AE baby who got to 50 in 2 days and then bought a billion for 30 bucks has no qualms about dropping 100M on something he wants).
1 billion inf is cheap these days, but it don't buy as much as it used to. I looked at purple market the other day and let's just say I'm real happy that my Ill/Rad is fully tooled. It would take a LOT longer to tool him out now.
Problem is, I now have a warshade, and he needs toolin' too...
I know a year ago i could work my tail off and save up my influence and get some purple sets.... now because of AE i cant afford 90% of them....
The supply goes down, the prices go up.... as everyone knows....
Add a Random Purple roll a lvl 50 for 9999 tickets?
No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded...
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There are two factors at work here: reduced supply of purples (as you correctly mention), and hyperinflation from the excessive rewards from those players farming in AE (as the previous poster correctly mentions).|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Why are purples so expensive right now?
Because all the farmers are in MA, not generating purples. |
Either one spells trouble for an economy, but having both is problematic.
But because there is so much inflation, anyone who sells anything in demand will quickly have millions. That won't be enough to get purples, but it will be enough to outfit them with more mundane things such as regular IOs or the cheaper IO sets.
Getting something in high demand doesn't take a lot of effort. The Bronze rolls provide a lot of high-demand items, and although you won't be able to unload most of the stuff you get, you'll likely get something worth tens of millions if you spend several hundred tickets this way.
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Since you can get rare salvage from AE for 540 tickets, and you can sell that rare salvage on the market for approximately 500,000 to 1,000,000 inf, that puts the "value" of a ticket at roughly 1,000 to 2,000 inf.|
Originally Posted by Gr33n
I know a year ago i could work my tail off and save up my influence and get some purple sets.... now because of AE i cant afford 90% of them....
The supply goes down, the prices go up.... as everyone knows.... Add a Random Purple roll a lvl 50 for 9999 tickets? |
That would put the value of a purple recipe at about 10 to 20 million. Before AE the high-demand ones were selling pretty reliably for 30-60 million, as I recall. That means the price really should be 30,000 to 60,000 tickets. But since you can't have more than 9999, that indicates that the devs don't think you spending that much time in AE.
The devs are encouraging us to play a variety of content. If you want purples, go to FBZ or some other high-level zone and beat on big spawns. Run missions on Challenge level 2 or 4. Purples will drop.
The ability to set your team size in I16 will make this moot -- many farmers will abandon AE for the same content they PLed on before its introduction.
Gold seller farmers are bad for the game. Player farmers are good for the game (aside from certain pollutants such as fill spam; which is about to be a non-factor anyway).
Why are player farmers good for the game? They make what you want to buy on the market cheaper, and more available. That's a pretty big positive impact on your game-play.
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The excess cash hasn't got anything to chase except purples and stuff tickets don't generate very efficiently (low level uniques, for instance).|
Originally Posted by Rodion
There are two factors at work here: reduced supply of purples (as you correctly mention), and hyperinflation from the excessive rewards from those players farming in AE (as the previous poster correctly mentions).
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MA has been an absolute bonanza for our friend the 'casual gamer'.
The price on most things has crashed while earning inf has never been easier.
Unless you want a purple build or are into PvP you're in the clover.
And neither of those things is the hallmark of 'casual' play.
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| Either one spells trouble for an economy, but having both is problematic. |
Most stuff is readily available & within reach of nearly everyone, while the super l337 stuff is less available and more expensive than ever.
I don't think things played out in the way they expected, but I think they got the result they wanted.
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| But because there is so much inflation, anyone who sells anything in demand will quickly have millions. |
Inflation has nothing to do with it.
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| Getting something in high demand doesn't take a lot of effort. The Bronze rolls provide a lot of high-demand items, and although you won't be able to unload most of the stuff you get, you'll likely get something worth tens of millions if you spend several hundred tickets this way. |
I ended up with a ton of tickets on an experimental level 13 mastermind who I was leveling solo in MA. Eight or nine hundred. I blew them all on the lowest level bronze roll and deleted everything except the level 10 Steadfast -KB.
Now that character is set for life.
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Like most everyone else who plays, everytime I log in, I have several influence for real cash emails. I always delete them, but I do keep an eye on the price, just as a way of seeing how the RMT'ers are doing.
It wasn't that long ago that a billion influence was around a hundred bucks. Now it's down below $30, and keeps dropping. I read this as a good sign, in that the RMT'ers are getting more and more desperate to sell.
Also, with today's AE farming being so lucrative, it's easier than ever to earn large piles of influence, so I can't understand why ppl would bother buying it. I'm looking forward to a day when these money sellers are gone from the game.