Are we that hated?

According to this thread, the people who play the market minigame "abuse it and drive prices out of control".

I'm not here to start another discussion on the idea presented in that thread. I've left my comments there. However, what struck me in that thread is how many misconceptions still remain about people who play the market. I guess since the PvPers were essentially hamstrung (practically driven out of this game) in issue 13, marketeers have become the new bogeymen.

We're the ones who are obviously manipulating purples prices to keep them out of the hands of the mythical "casual player". We're the ones who are responsible for the spikes in common salvage prices, and why the "casual player" is FORCED to pay 1 million for that circuit board. We're the ones that make it impossible for the "casual player" to fully outfit their character with all the IOs they want at level 50. We're the ones that cheat the system and have billions when the "casual player" may barely have 10 million when they reach level 50. We're obviously cheaters, swindlers and no good con artists. Worst yet, we're in cohoots with farmers, AE exploiters and RMT companies.

Of course what's never mentioned is the fact that almost all of us have given away our methods on how to become rich; that many of us have given away millions (billions) to other players just because we can; that the methods we use are based on observation, knowledge and sometimes a bit of luck - there is no voodoo or trickery and it can be replicated by just about anyone; that a large majority of the player base benefits in using the market, both in buying what they want and selling what they don't need - marketeers are not a small minority in this game, they may represent a large majority.

But of course, it's easy to lash out at the bogeyman when you don't understand or are too lazy to care. And unfortunately for us there are enough lazy or ignorant people to lend weight to their voices. Instead of making careful adjustments to a system, which is in large part working, they demand large scale, radical changes. RMTers have polluted the market and anyone with large stockpiles of influence/infamy is immediately suspect.

While part of me hopes that the developers will listen to reasoned voices and to people who understand the system, I can simply point to the travesty that is the current PvP implementation on what happens when mob mentality rather than knowledgable players weigh in how to change a system.

I thought this was just a game.

We are PvPers, but the Market is our battleground. We beat our opponents just as badly as veteran PvPers beat newbs in the Arena or zones. Veteran PvPers put a lot of time and effort into their characters, and most are perfectly willing to discuss tactics and such with anyone willing to listen. We put a lot of time and effort into researching the market, and we are perfectly willing to share our tactics with anyone willing to listen. Unfortunately, too few are willing to listen. They have learned through experience that whining and complaining will sometimes get them what they want. We need to learn what the rich people in real life probably already know. Poor people will hate us for being rich, just because it's human nature. It doesn't matter how we got rich, or how easy it is to get rich, in fact logic doesn't really have much to do with it. It is simply human nature to want more. It's probably a survival instinct. And with it comes resentment of those people who have more.

Not sure where to begin, since I'm not sure if you're trolling (god help you) or if you're actually serious (god help you even more). So I'll start at the beginning...

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Originally Posted by MeanNVicious They are 100% right. It's simply the truth. Rant on about economic mechanics all you want, and use it as an excuse to justify what you do. The simple truth is - if so many people didn't purposely flip with the intent to drive up prices for their own profit - the prices would be COMPLETELY different in our little market. And yes that means far far lower. Period.

People can't flip unless there are buyers willing to pay what they're asking. If everyone refused to pay 2 million for that Pangean Soil, no one would be able to list them for that much. If people were smart about it, they'd place bids for 1.5 million, or even 1 million, and let them sit a few days. Unfortunately people are lazy or just impatient, see the last 5 bids, and assume that's what the going rate is (which is never a good idea unless those last 5 bids are spread out over a significant period of time). So, the simple truth is - if so many people actually took the time to place reasonable bids instead of blindly bidding along with the last 5 - the prices would be COMPLETELY different in our little market. And yes that means far far lower. Period.

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Before you rant on about supply and demand think of this - when the market first came out - and there was zero supply of anything - you would assume that would be the peak of pricing no ? But it wasnt. Those prices were but a fraction of what we see today for comparable items (yes some new things exist but the top tier items were equally rare at that point in time). Marketeers have steadily driven up pricing on anything they could flip.

Inf prior to the market was essentially worthless past the mid-30s, because by that point you'd have enough inf to buy SOs every 5 levels for the remainder of your leveling career. It was sometimes an issue before those levels, or if you wanted lots of Hami Os and didn't have a build capable of getting them at Hami raids (or didn't have generous friends). When the market first came out, prices were low because people didn't realize how much inf was out there. Things like purples and PvP IOs didn't exist, and costume recipes were ridiculously expensive because of how rare they were (remember when those cost 10, 20, or 50 million?). The reason prices are different now is because of how much new inf is entering the economy due to changes to the game as a whole that have been made since I9 (debt reduction, debt cap lowering, bugfix for level 50 inf earning, XP curve smoothing, etc.). If the amount of inf entering the economy never went up, prices would've stayed the same, because no one would have been able to afford to pay higher prices. Do you actually think about these things before you blindly point fingers?

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People want and need to buy these things in our little closed market. The flippers are simply the ones setting the price. They prey on the want and need and exploit it for their profit. Without marketeers I guarantee you pricing would never have ever gotten near this point.

Flippers can't set the prices any higher than the population is willing to bid. If they've got a monopoly on a particular item (yes, this happens sometimes) they can sometimes artificially raise prices and keep them raised for a short period of time, but in the end they always fall to what they were before the manipulation. Don't believe me? I'll take a leaf out of Smurphy's book and give you the inf to try such a scheme. Still don't believe me? Buy a Luck Charm and list it for 200 million. No one will ever buy it, because that's a price no one is willing to pay. Why are the prices on some items "high" right now? Because that is what buyers are willing to pay. It really is that simple.

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Its just the truth. So many of you come here and brag about how you drove up the price on item "x" all the time. Revel in the mad profits you make by exploiting the system. You blatantly admit to it pretty much daily.

Some of say "hey, look how much this sold for!" Yeah, we just got a lot of inf off a sale because someone was willing to pay our listing price (and that's assuming we listed it near the price it sold at, which often isn't even the case). Many of my "big sales" come off items that are listed at 10-20% below the going rate. It's not my fault someone wants to pay me 10-20% more than I am willing to sell for.

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Those you call lazy arent actually lazy. They are just observant. And calling you out seems to make marketeers freak and go into massive self defense mode. Trying to defend what they do and say "its not us really...". When in fact it is, and has been all along.

No, they're lazy. They're certainly not the observant ones, at any rate - if they actually took a bit of time to read up on the market, using information we freely give away, which we admit hurts our bottom line, they could make inf like we do. They don't, however. It's not our fault they don't use the resources we provide them with. If you consider someone telling you the facts as they are to be "going into massive self-defense mode," then you should probably take off your tinfoil hat and open your eyes to what's really going on.

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LOL ... seriously WTF ?!

WTF, indeed.

My favorite part of the thread linked to in the original post is how Power doesn't want to be associated with the idea.

Your lack of understanding of what's actually going on does not equate to what you say being "truth".

Prices are high because there are lots of very rich characters in the game and lots of players who own them who are willing to pay huge gobs of money to get what they want faster (or be 1st to get it when it becomes available, for suitably rare items).

Flippers are not why prices are in the 100s of millions of inf. That's because people have staggering sums of money from playing the game and selling items to one another on the market, and items are rare and desirable.

All flipping does is close the price on where it was going anyway faster. Without the flippers, price migration tends to be slower. The prices go up anyway. All it takes for them to go up is for someone to pay a bit more to get something now, followed by sellers seeing that and setting their prices higher. Enterprising sellers will set high prices when supply is low and demand is high (few for sale, hundreds bidding) and once their sales go through (and it will) the price "floor" creeps upwards.

In I9, we got IOs, which make our characters stronger, which means they can defeat more foes faster. In Issue 11, we got XP smoothing, that not only increased the rate of XP in certain levels, but also increased rewards for over-level foes, which includes Inf/foe. In I14 we got the AE, which empowered rampant PLing. At the time, this inflated the number of 50s, poured vast sums of new inf into the market, and crushed supply of certain goods, like Purples. In I16 we got the ability for everyone to potentially form their own farms solo, followed immediately by a doubling of the inf/kill that level 50s earn.

More people are very likely playing 50s, and each one is better able to earn more inf/hour than ever before. A very conservative model of the game's level 50 population of 1% suggests that we are creating billions of inf/hour. The market serves to concentrate that money. You can imagine that people use it in tiers; I sell items that cost 1M and buy items that cost 10M. Someone above me is selling items that cost 10M and buying items that cost 100M, and so on. Most recently, PvPOs have been so rare and valuable, they have been commanding billions of inf in sale price. This bypasses the concentration pyramid and doles huge piles of inf from those who have concentrated it onto those who sold the drops.

All of this has led to an increase in the rate of influence pouring into the game economy, and things like purples and PvPOs have probably improved how it's spread around.

Anyone who disbelieves the above is simply ignorant. Someone declaring that it's kosher to ignore the game's overall economy, the market's mechanics, and basic economic theory is just mongering one's opinion with no foundation and is safe to ignore.

To call people lazy because they do't wanna do what "marketeers" do isn't right either. The only reason i use the market is to sell all the drops i get farming. I rarely even IO any more because of the prices.

I surely don't want to place a ton of bids and hope they fill on what some people think is "reasonable". Not everyone WANTS to run back and forth crafting and selling or looking for "niches". It's way too time consuming. I'd rather play a toon, then IO as i feel like it. If i want to IO at 35, we should have pieces to do that. We shouldn't have to wait til we hit 50 so we can get pieces.

It's up to the devs. They need to revamp the drop rate due to all the players and alts. Some people have servers full with bought slots. That's a ton of toons to IO if they choose to.

Yes, we all know how to make inf in WW. Noone needs a guide. Buy cheap, sell high. But i don't have the time to do that just to make inf. And i surely don't wanna have toons just to play the market. To me, it's a waste of time. I thought it was City of Heroes. Not City of WentWorth.

I don't really bother with flipping stuff to generate profit, but I'm not going to sell my stuff at a loss just because someone is crying that they can't afford it. I will list it so it will sell at a good market rate. If it's too plentiful I dump it. If supply is low and demand is high why would I shortchange myself, even if I don't need the inf?

If you think that everyone else doesn't think the same way, I'd like to see you list every single drop at 1 inf, regardless of rarity, demand or supply. People pay what they think the item is worth in a fair and open market. If an item does not sell at the price the seller is asking, then the seller must lower the price before that item will move. Creating a false demand will only work on a very short term since market manipulation is swimming against the tidal wave of hundreds if not many thousands of people going the opposite direction.

To be honest, the only reason why you're looking at the Auction House for your goods is because it is an instant fix, but it's only instant if you're willing to pay for it.

Alternatives exist to instant gratification...where do you think the sellers got it from? Looking for PvP IOs? Go to a PvP zone and get them. Looking for Purples? Find level 47+ enemies to fight. Looking for salvage? That stuff is everywhere or use tickets to get them. And of course task force merits are always available to get specific things that you want too.

The closest analogy I can see for the tirades against using the AH as it was intended to be used are players jumping into PvP without any experience or clue, getting owned hard and coming to the PvP forum to complain.

Yes marketeers are hated, and with some good reason. I marketeer in a smallish way and have made many billions doing it, but I target a few of my toons to spend 1BN+ IOing and most of the rest I try to slot cheaply.

What I notice is that the real bargains which I used to get with a lot of patience are much less frequent now. A friend got all 3 of the healing uniques for a total of <20M, I was picking up steadfast res/defs and -KBs for <500K each by putting bids in while a lowbie and waiting a few weeks. I also got all the HOs I required very cheaply, flipping has killed all that.

The reason the casual player complains about what the marketeers are up to blames the marketeers for a number of things that are really nothing to do with them.

The AE boom shortage of purples and consequent price hike was "all the marketeers' fault" and nothing to do with the fact that very few people were farming out of AE so very few purples were being dropped in the view of the uninformed.

Kinetic combats went through the roof "because of the marketeers" rather than people coming round to the view that on non defence based toons, S/L defence is at least as good as positional def.

So a lot of the prejudice against marketeers is through ignorance, but there is a small basis for a little of it.

Once, a marketeer punched my dog.