Returning from hiatus: I dun unnerstand teh marketz no moar!

This is exactly why they won't merge the markets right away, without making sure that some feature is in place to keep people from cornering the market on certain items. Yes, it's a game economy, but in a long standing and established MMO, our economy is held together by a need for supply and demand.

If we have the demands met by allowing cross-faction purchases, at first, people will rake in the inf. But, after a while, there will be too much supply and there will be less demand on certain items. That will cause HUGE drops in prices, making the economy substandard.

Think of it this way:

Every Winter people purchase a boat load of Winter's Gift Recipes. They list them on the market right away and people snag them up for 10,000,000 inf. Then they sit on the market, with little to no sales until the Winter Event is over. There was too much supply and not enough demand since those items were easily obtained elsewhere.

The Winter Event ends, cutting off direct access to the Winter's Gift recipes. Still, into February/March there is less demand for the items since most people stocked up on them. Some people stop playing, some people crafted them and used them... little by little, by July, the supply falls and the demand comes back. All of a sudden, the same 10,000,000 inf recipes are selling for 100,000,000 inf.

Now, if they merged the markets, it would be the same way, yet there would be less rebound on the demand. If villains supplied the heroes, and vice versa, after a while, there wouldn't be a point where one item would be sought after more than another. If there is no demand, there is no profit.

So, my question to you: Would you be happier if they merged the markets right away so all of your alts can be 10 times richer, or would you want the items you have to grow in value so that (if you're a longterm player) when it came time to sell it, each item would have a value of 10 times its current price?

Personally, I'd rather have the markets stay the same so I could have a longterm investment so, down the line, all my alts would have a steady source of inf rather than let it ride on a quick crapshoot. I mean, if I can get 10,000,000 inf. now that's great. But, if the same items are as rare with separate markets, it guarantees that my alts will never go broke.

But, if you're just a casual player, looking for the quick buck before leaving for 5-12 months, I can see where you'd want the markets to merge. But, the devs, and other longtime players of the game, wouldn't want that to happen because they expect the game to keep the supply vs demand ratio the same.

Man, I love to type.

First of all, I seriously doubt the assertion that villains would be 10x richer for being on the hero side. It's actually easier in many ways to be richer in absolute terms on the villain market, because so many things are more expensive. You have to sell more items on the hero market to make money.

Ultimately, much of that comes out in the wash. Villains make more money per item, but pay more money per item the buy on the market.

The failings of the villain market are:

• You can only get decent transaction rates in a narrow band near or at the level caps for items. It seems most of the people using the market do so at or near level 50.
• Presumably because not much sells away from level caps, not many people seem to try to buy there either. So even when you have something to sell which is good but in low supply, no one seems to bother looking for it, and your sale takes ages to go through.
• Overall transaction rates seem lower than hero levels, even near the level caps for items. This is likely because transaction volumes are not simply proportional to population. Having, say, 1/2 as many players is likely to produce less than 1/2 as much market use.

What so many of us want from the villain market is better functional utility, related to the last bullet point. I have had no problem inf capping multiple characters on the villain market. The issue is availability of lower-level items and the time it takes to buy things that are available unless you're constantly willing to pay "buy it nao" prices.

Also:
This is so wildly weird I don't even know what to think of it. Where on earth do you get the idea that all the demand will be met by demand? If that were the case it would have already happened on the hero market.

Hmmm, that's amusing. Most people objecting to merging the markets seem to think that Heroes will corner the market on everything since they're richer. The devs seem to want to wait to merge the markets until Villains catch up to Heroes. But in my opinion, Villains probably won't ever catch up to Heroes unless they merge the markets.

As for having even less demand on certain items, those are the items that nobody wants. They sell for crap now, and they'd sell for crap if the markets were merged. I'm missing a point somewhere.

I believe that the consensus of the forum regulars is that the markets should be merged. It also seems like the consensus among the market irregulars is that this is some ebil plot by the marketeers to fleece the poor. It's also one of those dead horse issues that we can't seem to stop beating.

As for the original question, merits and AE caused some upheaval, but it all seems to have worked itself out by now, and things seem calm again, and for the most part back to how they were a year ago. The main exception that I've noticed is that good purples (which don't drop in AE) have significantly increased in price. Also, top level rare tech salvage is now about the same price as top level rare magic salvage. I'm sure there's more, but those are the main things I've noticed.

Merits generally had the following effects.

• They almost certainly significantly reduced supply of pool C recipes on the market compared to the days of fast Katies and fast Edens. They produced greater normalization of rate of pool C production for time spent playing TFs.
• They probably had an additional reduction based on the fact that they can be hoarded on a very large scale. The game doesn't shove a recipe into your hands, and for many people who aren't sure how to best spend their merits the choice is just to hold on to them.
• They increased availability or at least access to a good chunk of recipes that cap out before level 50, like Miracles. Not all recipes get good representation in this, because rolling randomly at some level ranges doesn't give great odds of a big winner.
• They provided a certain degree of pressure valve for prices. However, I'm not sure this was a strong effect in practice. The people who seem most able to accumulate enough merits to use direct merit purchases to bypass high market prices already seem to be players who can earn a lot of money.

Tickets have had different effects. For a while, tickets were incredibly easy for everyone to produce in massive volumes. People were pumping recipes on the market in epic volumes. It was like everyone everywhere started running speed Katies that could drop recipes from any drop pool. (But not purples.) Then, in a series of nerfs and changes, the devs made it so the general populace no longer found this attractive or efficient. Right now, I think tickets are doing the following.

• Providing a way for a small percentage of players who still use the AE to produce high-volume tickets to produce supply of recipes below their normal level range. You can roll pool A drops pretty cheaply, and rolling in lower level ranges is actually cheaper.
• Definitely providing a price escape valve for rare salvage. You can buy non-random rare salvage directly with tickets, and can actually be faster to earn the necessary tickets than it would be to earn money over a couple million inf. I am fairly certain this is depressing salvage prices - since the AE stabilized, I haven't seen any rare salvage linger long over 3.5M inf, and most seem to stay in the 1.5-2.5M range most of the time.

Those items never got that expensive. I had the winters gift proc at level 14 listed through july or august and finally had to take it down.

No, I'm just saying that when there is one item listed on the market Heroside, and 50 of the same listed villainside, it means that the villains have easier access to the item. (Example: Arcane salvage)

If heroes get access to the villain supply, that means that the need gets met. The longer the need gets met, the more availability everyone has to the item. Heroes will turn around and resell the items while the villains are supplying and selling it too. It then creates more competition as to who can undersell the next person and still make a profit. In the long run, there will be too many of an item and it decreases its value.

It's not a guess, it's logic from real life. If you can make a $20 glass vase, and I can not, I can still buy the vase from you and resell it for $30. You see that I made a $10 profit, so you mark it up to $30. I purchase 50 of them for $30, you make 50 more and mark them up to $50. I say, "I'll just sell what I have. I'll have enough of a profit." However, with my 50 items for sale, and yours added to it, it leaves 100 of the same item for sale. The lowest priced item (mine) will sell before yours. So, to catch up and sell your items, you then have to lower the price to compete with mine.

So, if you take that and translate it over to items readily available villainside, if there is more supply than demand, the items have to be sold at a lesser value just to be able to compete.

Now, this won't be something that happens right away. People will profit, but after a while, the "rare" items will be less rare since there will be a steady availability to it.

If the markets merged, villains would make a quick killing on items because heroes, generally, have more inf. stored up. They were around over a year before CoV came out. There is also a MUCH larger hero population than villains. So, in essence, heroes (as a collective) have more inf. to toss around. Throw in hard to find items, and there is a greater chance that someone, heroside, will have more inf. to purchase the items.

If a PvP recipe sells for 500,000,000 villainside, the chances that a hero will be able to pay 1,000,000,000 is much greater than a villain. If this is the case, then villains won't be able to afford the same items they are selling. (Once again, heroes and villains as a collective. Not as individuals.)

Also, I never said that "all" items of demand will be met. The items that ARE met, and flood the market, ARE seen heroside. Take IO salvage, for example. Arcane was considered ultra rare since many mobs accidentally dropping the wrong salvage. Once the devs fixed the mobs, and added other ways to get arcane salvage (converting base salvage, Merits, MA Tickets, etc.) the prices dropped BIG TIME.

See, that's the problem. Everyone and their mother bought the 20% proc to resell... but almost no one bought the other 2 Winter's Gift recipes. The proc's were flooding the market where the other 2 were rarely listed. Go to the market now and look at the other two. 40-50 million each, currently, while the proc is 10 million. During both summer/fall double XP weekends, the proc stayed the same price while the other 2 went for over 100 million.

To see what I mean, open the auction window (I'm looking villainside at the moment), and select Recipes > Universal Travel > Winter's Gift. Keep the level range 1-53 and select "For Sale", so it can show you only what is listed for sale.

The 20% proc has 4 levels listed: 10, 20, 41, and 50 with a grand total of 82 of that type of recipe.

Now, look at Winter's Gift: Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range (Recipe). There is only one level for sale: level 50. There are only 5 of that type of recipe for sale.

Now look at Winter's Gift: Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/End (Recipe). Once again, only one level for sale: level 50. There are only 8 of that type of recipe for sale.

What does that mean? Everyone assumed that the 20% would be more valuable. They saw that other IO procs were hard to come by, so everyone stocked up. However, not many took the time to realize that these procs are steadily available. They weren't drops like the other procs were. They could be purchased at the Winter Event vendor.

The people that made a killing on the other two Winter's Gift recipes, myself included, saw that the 20% procs were already flooding the market before the Winter's Event ended. People mistakingly bought too many of one type of recipe, hoping that they would corner the market during the summer. Well, the exact opposite happened. Even now, the other two are hard to come by.

I was lucky to have made over 4 billion inf during the summer selling the other two recipes. I still have about 15 of each waiting to be sold before the next Winter's Event. Sadly, people will learn from this mistake and people will stock up on all 3 recipes, thereby reducing the prices of them all, drastically.

My example of the Winter's Gift recipe is the perfect example of my idea of why villain markets and hero markets won't be merged until they even out. Some people will make MAJOR profits, while others will be forced to sell a lung and kidney to afford the rare items. Then, once the rare items are easily available to all, the value goes down and can cause a flooding of a once rare item to become one of the least valuable.

They will never even out until some time AFTER they are merged, if that ever happens. In the short-term, I don't doubt that a merger would cause considerable disruption and I won't even try to guess what it might look like - because it doesn't really matter. We could have months of economic carnage, but so what? We got carnage when AE came along. We got carnage when merits were introduced. We got carnage when AE farming was nerfed. This would be just one more disruption to the economy. All of the other disruptions settled down. It would be foolish to assume that a market merger would be dramatically different and cause permanent damage.

In the long-term, I believe the game economy as a whole will be better off with the markets merged.

No, they won't, because heroes generally pay less than villains do. A villain trying to make a killing will be undercut by a larger body of heroes listing at lower prices.

At the same time some heroes will try to make a killing by selling at higher prices trying to sell to villains who are used to paying more, but few villains would pay more than they used to knowing hero prices are lower, and some will only bid lower knowing they can get a bargain.

Net result, prices end up somewhere between the two previous points. No one makes a killing except for the few people who have the wit and luck to ride any initial price disruptions due to abrupt shifts in purchasing. For example, hero-produced pet sets might see a surge in value.

So what? Assuming that happens (and I personally seriously doubt it will, because I do not believe the majority of active players hold immense hoards of money from ancient times before there was a CoV), they will be throwing some of that money at goods sold by villains.

The people who have huge gouts of money got it in one of two ways. They got it off the market, which everyone can do with equal alacrity in a merged same market, or they got it through farming or other activities. Come back when you can prove to me that villains can't farm up immense piles of raw inf. I'll be a long wait, since I've done it myself. Somebody produced all that inf villains are using to pay higher prices on the black market.


Heroes and villains never act as a collective. They act as individuals who sometimes have aligned market interests. Assuming equivalent production capabilities on the two sides, the collective is all-encompasing - villains and heroes do not compete as sides, they compete as individuals against all other heroes and villains. What matters is per-capita productivity, not collective productivity. The only time this model seriously breaks down is when one side or the other has a serious deficiency in what they can produce and nothing else they can do to make up for that. In a world of merits and tickets and especially with crossover characters, I cannot see such a concern as realistic.

Also, your example is unrealistic because it's backwards. Vilains would always be paying more for that kind of item.

Before the AE, prices for rare salvage was as high as 7M on both tech and salvage items. What's caused major price drops in rare salvage is the ease with which tickets can be used to buy exactly the rare salvage you need.

I really think your understanding of the forces behind the markets and how they interact is seriously flawed.

Two fallacies in one statement. For example pet sets, the supply on those equal is, but look at the demand. One cannot simply blame one side of supply/demand without at least accounting for the other.

The 2nd fallacy is that heros are somehow MORE locked out of arcane salvage that villains.
This is simply not true. An individual may choose to avoid arcane foes, but as a collective both sides have enough options to fight aracane droppers prtty much as often as they choose. In fact in certain level ranges blueside has a vertiable gold mine of arcane drops available, DA (20-30) and Croatoa. (25-35)

Interestingly blueside the low level arcanes are significantly higher in median price than the same items redside.


Take perfect and replace with heavily flawed.

The only way to even out the markets is to merge them. It is literally impossible given the different distributions of demand and the simialrity of supply that the two markets will align in any other way.

Villain - hero disparity at any given level is tiny according to the disparity of a level 50 hero and a level 12 using the same market. Why do 50s use the same market as 12s then ? Why are those 12s not shut out ?

Every single transaction on the market is both a purchase and a sale. Your arguments are heavily focusing on just the purchase side of the equation.

Wow that is mind boggling. Do you have any idea who the market is for these things ? Popping in 3 of these things to gain a 6% speed bonus and a 5% cold resistance seems over the top to begin with, paying 100 mill for the privilege seems like they have more dollars than sense.

Edit: I thought my lack of sales was due to the death of PVP and many many people making the procs.

I really doubt the mass exodus of PvPers after I13 had more than a negligible effect on the market. They might've had a disproportionate demand for purples (small segment of the population wants a lot of a particular type of item which is in low supply to begin with) before I13 but that certainly came to a jarring stop, and I'm fairly confident in saying most of the demand for PvP IOs probably comes from PvEers.

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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

It is impossible to "corner the market" on stuff with infinite supply.

I couldn't bring myself to read the rest of your post, but that whopper needed correction.

No matter how you read it, that its wrong.

If you read it as being a large and renewing supply, well almost all agricultural commodities are in the same boat and all have been cornered.

If you read it as a supply that will increase with demand oil is the counterexample

If that is to be read as literally infinite, then it is not applicable to any situation being spoken of and even if it were so all it would take is control of access to the supply.

The only thing I can take away from Arachnos's commanders post is that it is good to buy low and sell high and middlemen can profit from volatility.

This is exactly how I use tickets. I run TFs for merits, and unless there's a specific goal I'm saving for, I roll them for recipes. When I am not running TFs, I am usually playing MA and earning tickets.

Those recipes are then crafted with salvage. Useful ones are claimed by characters that can use them. Less useful ones are sold by a banker character who uses the proceeds to fill out other characters' sets. This way, the inf does not get spread around among multiple characters. Only real garbage rolls like sleep sets and pet damage get actually sold as recipes by the merit holder.

Missing rare or uncommon salvage is usually bought with merits, so the rolled recipes can be crafted at will. TF drops get crafted as well, and the worthwhile ones get crafted and used or sold.

Except it *IS* literally infinite because the 'supply' springs into existence out of nothingness. And it's blatantly obvious that no player can control another players access to the supply. How do you stop a player from doing missions or farming in AE?

Cornering the market is a short term strategy, not a long term one. If, for example, there are only 15 of a particular recipe for sale, it is quite feasible to buy up the entire stock. No more will be forthcoming until one drops for a player, and that drop is sold. The first is an entirely random process, and the second depends on the player's perception of the value of his bird in the hand. No supply of anything in the game is really infinite, given that there are a limited number of players with limited amounts of time. Eventually, someone will do this, and temporarily break the monopoly you established. But no one knows when.

There are alternatives to acquiring goods through influence on the market. You can buy set recipes straight up with merits. You can make do with SOs. These things put some sort of ceiling on demand; but to claim that a short term corner on a market item is impossible makes no sense.

And wheat springs from the ground, if you want more plow under more acreage.

At any given time there is an amount on the market, an amount in storage and an amount being produced. To corner a commodity you need

1. The reasonable certainty that what is not on the market is minor or the certainty you can purchase what comes on the market from storage.
2. The ability to buy up the bulk of what is on the market
3. The ability to set a floor price for what does come on to the market.

There are some salvage items on the redside market that look like they are under these tactics lately and there are the usual suspects on the blueside market still there .

In general attempts to corner a market anywhere only works because of an overwhelming perception that its not worth the effort to bypass/or break the monopoly. Crafting is a good example of this. If the crafter is sucking up the supply of low priced recipes its just not worth it to the consumer to wait a week for their lowball bids to fill so they can craft the item.