Catagories of Market Users?

I'm trying to understand how various types of Market-Users affect the Market. So first I would have to catagorize the types of users.
That's where I need your help, oh Ebil Geniouses!

I'm not trying to define thier effects yet, so please bear with me.
Here's what I got so far.

1. Vendorers. Buy Salvage and Recipes at less than what a vendor will pay, sell to vendor, repeat.

2. Flippers. Buy an item (or stack thereof) when they can get it cheaper than usual, repost for a higher price to profit the difference (minus listing fees).

3. Farmers / Drop-Farmers / Wealth-Farmers. Run missions primarily for the drops accumulated, sell the drops, repeat. XP gains are secondary to the main goal, which is wealth. If thier inventory gets full mid-mission, they will consider whether to delete something (the least valuable) to make room for more, or to leave to sell. Often will team only with thier other accounts, so that drops aren't split between them and strangers.

4. Power-levelers / "XP-Farmers". Run missions primarily for the XP, usually not leaving a mission for a full salvage/recipe/etc. tray because leaving would jeopardize the main goal: XP. They might delete a low-value item from inventory to make room for better, if they remember or are willing to take a few seconds off of DPS/XP-HR.
Usually prefer teaming with as large a team as possible, despite most of the drops going to others.

5. Lazy-Casual Users. Not concerned about maximizing profits or getting into the complicated details of how every part of the market works. Not likely to pay attention to market trends. They will post thier stuff low for quick sales, and only bid as high as they feel something is worth to them personally. If thier bid isn't high enough, they will either let the bid sit as they wander off to a mission, or pull it to buy something else. They usually won't pay "Buy It NAO!!!" prices, but will seek other, cheaper wares instead. (RL equivalent: The guy who puts money into CD's and a 401K, but never bothers to read the business/financial section of the newspaper, but reads the Comics and Sports instead)

6. Frantic-Casual Users. Similar to the Lazy-Casual Users. However, they will pay "Buy It NAO!!!" prices if they can. Sometimes prone to posting angry rants about how they HAD to pay 1 Million $Inf to get a Common Salvage they wanted, and unwilling to hear any advice or disagreement from the viewpoint they already have. Sometimes they will post some of thier wares at very high prices, trying to recoup thier earlier losses, but if thier sales don't go through they will likely blame the Market, Flippers, Marketeers or pretty much anyone other than themselves (for posting higher than the other players would buy it for).
(RL example: same as the RL guy above, but writing angry letters to the editor about "Those durn fat-cats in warshingtoon!", and investing his money in lottery tickets.)

7. Crafters. They buy (or recieve as drops) Recipes and Salvage and compare it to how much the crafted product will go for. If the crafted product will sell for more than the Salvage+Recipe+CraftingCost, then they craft it and sell it for the profit.

8. Badgers. Working on Crafting Badges (to get more Inventory slots and perhaps even the grand poohbah of crafting badges, the Field Crafter Accolade Power), they fit with the Crafters above. Except they might be willing to craft items for a loss, if those items are what stands between them and thier goal, MOAR BADGESSES!!

9. Non-Users. Playing the game presumably using only SO's and maybe crafting drops.

Okay, Marketeers.....Who did I miss?
(Also, feel free to correct my names and descriptions)

This sounds about right to me.

I suspect that Lazy-Casual Users are more likely to list sell high. (At least for valuable drops.) They're not in a hurry and don't mind waiting for good prices.

I have an issue with this categorization, but I'm having trouble putting it into words.

It feels, reading it, like... like everyone has consciously chosen the lifestyle they're most comfortable with. Or something. Perhaps it's that the groups are classified in such a way that you can't tell if there are missing groups or overlaps.

Maybe if you used two axes... Knowledge and Goals? Knowledge and Hunger for Wealth? something like that.

A vendorer would have fairly high Hunger for Wealth, or "obtain wealth" as a Goal, or whatever that axis ends up being, but probably low Knowledge (Because they're never going to make a lot of inf at a couple thousand per item.) On the other hand, I vendor to grab the first 100K or so on any new character.

I think there are a few different types that fall into "Frantic casual" and "lazy casual". They're low-knowledge according to your definition, but their goals may be different. Frantic casuals have learned enough to make money outside the market, and enough to know that they want TEH SHINIES, but are missing specific bits of market understanding. Lazy casuals... it seems like you're assuming that lazy casuals know "What things are worth" and sell below that. I'm sorry that I'm not being more clear here.

Badgers are a classic example of high-knowledge but with different goals than almost any other market user.


Maybe there should be a third axis- effort?

1.Vendorers. Low knowledge, high effort, goals: wealth.
2. Flippers. High knowledge [probably], fairly high effort, goals:wealth.
3. Farmers for cash: Unknown knowledge, high effort, goals: wealth
4. Farmers for XP: Unknown knowledge, high effort, goals: XP.
5. Lazy-Casual. Low knowledge, low effort, goals: Beat badguys up.
6 Frantic-Casual. Low knowledge, potentially high effort (?), goals: improve build to beat badguys up. (goals are definitely NOT wealth.)
7. Crafters. High-enough knowledge, low effort [IMO], goals: wealth.
8. Badgers. Very high knowledge, high effort, goals: badges.
9. Non-users. Low knowledge, zero effort, goals: beat badguys up.

I don't really like this classification scheme; hopefully it will spark a better idea from someone else.

I'd say that there's another category, maybe 'power gamers'.

When I look at your list, it seems that wealth is the main goal of the types of players listed here. That's the difference for a power gamer - it's not the wealth that matters, it's the game outside the crippled artificial economy of CoX. Wealth is a means to an end, where the other types see wealth as an end in itself.

Case in point, Nethergoat posted a thread called 'Temptation', in which he described a battle against the ebil marketeer in him. He had a character advantage, and had to resist the temptation to turn that into an economic advantage at the expense of character performance. I'd never make that decision; it just wouldn't occur to me.

These are people who destroy generic IOs when they replace them with set IOs instead of respeccing and carrying them to the market. They're an irrational part of the market because they'll spend millions more to buy it now, but only if it's something that will really impact gameplay - for example, I recently blew 15m on a kb protection IO so I could stay standing during a farm. I could've gotten it for 10m if I waited, but that would have negatively impacted my gameplay.

Careful ebil dudes. These guys are probably most of your high end customers. Putting in a 'bid' and 'waiting' for a purple rec is less fun than farming, so guess what they're likely to spend their time doing?

I think these are both quite good categories. I'd place myself somewhere between the categories Crafter and Frantic Casual.

I like to accumulate wealth, and also use it to improve my builds to beat bad guys up. Right now I have quite a few finalized builds in the live servers and a nice pot of influence, too, just waiting for another character to get ready for the IOing stage.

And what do I do while waiting? Accumulate wealth, of course!

Perwira: I would consider that high knowledge is effort one time; high effort is effort EVERY time.

Taking two imaginary examples: Player A crafts generics on two different characters, making ten million a day with three "cycles" each. That's around fifteen minutes a cycle, 45 min total, so about 13 million inf per hour of work.

Player B spends twenty minutes a day finding and crafting high end recipes, making 50 million a day. So about 150 million inf per hour of work.

Player B may have spent twenty hours learning the market... once. Those general rules result in ten times the inf per hour compared to player A.

I am a lot like Player A (I don't know WHY I still craft generics... like knitting, it's not exactly cost-effective, but I still sell about 40 a day) and also like Player B (I don't have numbers, but I'd guess it works out to 50 or 100 mil an hour.)

Hart: I may have chosen poorly when I said the goal was "Wealth." "Profit", perhaps, because there are a lot of people here who make a hundred million, spend it on their build, rinse and repeat. When you walk into Wentworth's, you have some goal, whether it be profit, acquiring something at a reasonable price, or buying something NAO.

It's hard to say that Smurphy, or TopDoc, or Mind4EverBurning are not "power gamers". At the same time, they approach the crippled artificial economy from a standpoint of considerable self-interest.

In other news: Is "performance artist" a large enough niche to make its presence known? things like "buying every luck charm and relisting for 1", or "buying out a common salvage and deleting all of it", or "trying to burn 10 billion in Wentfees" or even "trying to simulate a Casual Marketer"... these don't quite fit into any of the above categories.

I think 'Gouger' or 'Spiker' needs to be there. That's something different from flipping.

I also think 'Marketeer' needs to be on the list: people who know and play the market, utilizing a broad range of strategies and tricks to make their Inf and, notably, to make it as fast as possible. High knowledge, high effort, goal: (quick) wealth.

Also, 'Shifter', or something like that. Players who will operate differently depending on alt, level, time investment, and so on.

Personally, I shift around a lot, and go into periods of 'marketeer' mode on various characters at various times.

A behavior that might also be of note--I don't know if other people do this--but even when I'm not actively playing the market, I keep an eye on it, just 'cuz I find it interesting. There are a lot of items I routinely check on, even when I'm not doing anything with 'em.

Hydro: Would thinking of them as "roles" and not "players" avoid the need for Marketeer and Shifter? Not everyone plays the same role at all times; some people who start out as "frantic casual" come here and learn the benefits of strategic laziness, for instance. I will go through several different roles while playing the same character- starting my bankroll with a little bit of vendorer, then a little bit of flipper, then back to my usual crafting ways once I have a couple million to work with.

One little suggestion: change lazy-casual to laid-back-casual. It's less derogatory and I think more accurate.

The catagorization of casuals in the OP got a little ranty and off topic. I'm not sure where I fit in.

I refuse to pay buy it now prices. I get almost all of my salvage from AE tickets.

I look for IO sets primarily for set bonuses so I'll look through the list and buy recipes at levels where they are less desirable. I don't need level 50 everything, though I'll go for higher level ones where it's important, like getting a level 50 defense from red fortune if I have lower levels for the rest of them.

I bid low on recipes and usually get them if I wait long enough.

I've fallen prey to buyitnow! one once. I was like 1 recipe away from being capped to all positional defenses so I just snagged what I needed and crafted it.

I used to vendor on my lowbies to buy me DOs back before AE drove the prices of common salvage to ridiculous levels.

I don't flip

I don't go for badges

I have played tons of AE for tickets and rolls to make money

I activated my second account in preparation for I16 and plan on making a killing on selling drops I get from leveling my other account.

I've got about 500 million liquid and about 200+ million invested blue side.

I've got 400 million liquid and about....30 million invested on my main redside.

(those numbers don't include about 6 LotGs, a Numi, couple of miracles I got and slotted as lucky drops)

I guess my main goal has been to afford the build I want. So I work towards getting something to kick *** with, not just the simple collection of wealth.

While I'd consider myself a casual, I don't see my limited use of the market reflected well in any of the descriptions.

I don't farm MA or missions.

I have several characters levelling or in development, and I use them mostly to run task forces. Useful drops get crafted and used or saved for later. Useless drops get vendored or sold on the market.

When I need salvage for crafting, I solo story based MA arcs until I have enough tickets to roll for it or buy it outright. I never buy salvage on the market. Farming has devalued influence to the point that you can't afford anything on the market with the influence made in non-farm PvE play, so I don't even think about buying anything there.

When I have to roll at white salvage to get the piece I need, I either store the rest in a SG rack or sell it at the market, though I have qualms about that; most tech stuff and some magic stuff often gets vendored. I seldom have to, fortunately, because I keep a large store of white salvage in the SG base, and try to keep one of everything in the 45-50 group and a variety of lower level stuff on hand. Rare and uncommon salvage is bought straight up with tickets on an as-needed basis.

I hate having to random roll for white salvage and wish that it were available for straight up purchase. I never, ever random roll with tickets or merits apart from white salvage.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

I'm a lot like Heraclea, except that I tend to craft items that may be profitable.

I see the market as a tool to get the IO sets that I want for my characters. It's easy to make inf along the way, but wealth in and of itself is just numbers.

Since my approach is to use the market as a tool for acquiring product, my usage varies according to each toon's situation. A lower toon will engage in a bit of flipping (including salvage from AE tix), while my higher toons tend to do more crafting. And yes, I could simply transfer inf to my lower toons, but I enjoy the aspect of playing/earning at various levels.

Heraclea, I realize you're describing your playstyle, not stating a case for discussion... but

What about Speculators?

I know when Merits were going live, I hoarded about 3 bins of Pool Cs, waited a while then made a killing. Also made a boatload off Hami sales early on.

There are those (and I count myself among them) whose fun is in examining patches/new powersets, finding an IO niche and maximizing profit therefrom.

While I'd classify myself as a PLer/Lazy Casual I guess. I almost never complain about prices though, since I list low enough to get the next sale.
It really depends how bored/wanting to game I am at the time. I'll twiddle with the bids for stuff on salvage. If my bids aren't filled I'll just drop 4 million on an Alchemical Silver of 1 million on a Luck Charm, or hit AE and purchase stuff for resale.