Are we that hated?

Fair enough. I will note that the game promotes itself as a Superhero game, and that many people who play the game started playing specifically because it did not have loot.

Yes, OK, my post was being intentionally dense, which probably isn't a good tactic to take. Most people in the buy-it-nao crowd are unlikely to go through the thought process I laid out for them. I think that's what's happening, but THEY, or at least what seems to be their most common representation on this forum, do NOT seem to think that's what's happening.

Perhaps they're being more sophisticated than I give them credit for, and I KNOW that some are intelligent and thoughtful enough that they're not falling for such a simplistic trap, but I think many that start with "it was for sale for 1 million, and now it's for sale for 2 million" then continue their line of thinking with something like, "and then the next flipper buys for 2 million and sells for 4 million, and the next buys for 4 million and sells for 8 million, and soon prices are sky high on anything the flippers are playing with." Or maybe the slightly more sophisticated, "and if enough flippers do this over a long period of time, prices will obviously rise overall as people develop new expectations." But that's like jumping from step three of a logical argument to step 27. It's WAY too big of a logical leap. There is MUCH more going on here, whether or not you agree with a conclusion that flippers cause inflation.

Indeed, there was a lot of grousing when loot was introduced. I think much of the grousing was reasonable. The lack of loot WAS one of the things that made City of Heroes different, and for many, it was refreshing. I personally am very happy with the loot aspects of this game, and would probably have long since left had that not been added. But I can understand how many would be unhappy with it, a bit of bait and switch if you will, particularly if you've been around for a long time. I also think it would have been better for the game overall, based on the VERY small cross section of opinions I've heard, if the devs hadn't introduced purples and PvP IOs, or if they just had to, at least not at the level of rarity they currently have. Perhaps the game WOULD appeal to more people if drop rates on the rarest items were now increased. I don't want that, as I like a game that keeps me on the treadmill chasing after my shinies. For MY fun I'd prefer it take about twice as long to get to 50, for drop rates on many items (not purples or PvP IOs) to decrease, and for the influence cap to be removed so that the rarest and best items can find their equilibrium price somewhere north of two billion. I just don't think I'm in sync with the majority of the player base in that regard.

I also don't think people that level to 50 in a week and want to purple out right then and there represent the majority of the player base either. I think the average player is somewhere in between. Well, actually, the average player is somewhere off in left field, not even on the axis between these two viewpoints. The average player probably doesn't have a 50 and isn't worried about purples and PvP IOs in the first place.

Just to be clear, I didn't think you were being dense. What you were saying had, I think, great relevance to what A_F and I were discussing. I was just tying what we were all talking about back to the (quite a bit more irrational) logic some people have blaming marketeering for any price increases, no mater how macroscopic.

And I think you're spot-on in how some people take a more-or-less logical understanding of the 1st couple of steps and then leap to step 27, as you say.

As you've displayed no expanded understanding of the way the market works and have had multiple people who thoroughly understand the way it works explaining it to you, I can only conclude you have some personal issue holding you back.

Nah. I get skewed, inappropriate humor.

You apparently only got here shortly before i13 and the market changes brought on by merits. Some of these people have been utilizing the market this way since the market debuted (i9, May 2007).

They're doing no more and no less than you do when you buy or sell on the market. The only difference is that the marketeers are PATIENT. Again, you fail to see the differentiation between a MARKET and a STORE.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Do you even read what you're writing or is it strictly stream-of-consciousness?

Restaurant: STORE
WW/BM: NOT A STORE


Your being incapable of intelligently using the market in no way prevents you from playing the game.

You might be on to something were it not for the fact that THE SELLER DOESN'T SET THE SALE PRICE.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Why are you the only person who replied that failed to understand what was said ?


You keep saying that as if it were so.

Search the threads for a post by gamemaster ? He details the technique for creating a wave. It was a very nice outline of the technique. Perhaps after reading it you might chose to examine your assumptions, or the fact that you seem to be blindly repeating things you have heard without actually thinking about them.

Because the reasoning (and I'm being polite) behind what you said is flawed.

Then prove me wrong. PLEASE!

Why not simply quote or link to the pertinent posts?
Why should I do your work for you?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Can we just chalk this one up to perspective? From a flippers point of view (but Im really not a flipper at this point, Im a crapper) its the uninformed buying the item at his sell point that sets the price....and I can see how the buyer would think the opposite. While I disagree with the buyers hypothesis, my opinion doesnt change his perceived reality.

I doubt Gamemaster's posts are still available, as he posted that information long before we came to the new boards, and so I believe the old boards' purge would have eaten them.

However, I don't think that Gamemaster's posts showed what A_F is saying they did, except, as Werner indicated, for certain specific definitions of "price". The flipper does set the price floor for what you pay if you intend to buy a flipped good at the point in time where you are in buy competition with the flipper. This is not what I, for example, consider to be "the price" for a good, because I am willing to outlast all but the most persistent of flippers. Also, I rarely object strenuously to the price floor a flipper is setting - what I'm more often unwilling to pay is their asking price.

Basically Gamemaster layed out how you can cause a surge in prices for something that you can soak up enough of the supply on. The surge generally causes an increase in supply in response, as people who were not selling the good now start doing so. This causes the surge to be self-defeating on a time scale that's dependent on how infrequently whatever it is drops (or how many merits or average tickets it takes to create it). He outlined that the key to profitability in these schemes is knowing when to curtail your own buying and how to sell your inflated inventory in a way that doesn't collapse the price before you get rid of enough of it to profit.

I might have saved it somewhere. Edit: I guess not, and I can't find it on the forums, as suspected. That makes me sad, because it was a great write-up.

2 Billion one month started with nothing all of it via flipping salvage, regular play and nearly at that 20th transaction badge too.

I'd wear a monocle but my eyes are too weak these days and tea is a little to acid for my digestion.

So now just what constitutes intelligent use of the market for you ?
Don't bother I really don't expect you to acknowledge you were wrong.

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Well done.

Brief, to the point, completely out of context and misleading on what was said, and requiring far too much effort to put right.

Tell me how has the talking up the price of respec recipes been working out for you ?

I'll use my magical powers to tell you that when Issue 17 comes out, the price of Respecs will go down. After that, Respec recipes will rise in price. When Going Rogue comes out, Respec Recipes will go down in price. Several weels later they will rise again.

Clearly, my divine word alone will cause these changes.

So what?
The markets isn't in place to make everybody happy, it's there to facilitate the transfer of goods and provide an engaging mini-game for those players who enjoy such things.

With the exception of PO's it does a grand job at both those things.

The non-posting masses are just as likely to enjoy the market as not.
Or are you another one of those psychics who JUST KNOWS what the 'casual gamer' wants and feels?

You engage in it yourself, so that's good. At least we can't add 'hypocrite' to your lengthy rap sheet.

If every farmer in the game evaporated overnight, they would be replaced in the morning by a new group eager for the profits to be had from efficient drop production.

The structure of the system guarantees that SOMEbody will fulfill the role of supplier- whether it's you, or me, or some other random player is irrelevant.

We don't, so your paranoid extrapolation is meaningless.
The system provides enough incentive to guarantee that some % of the playerbase will spend their time feeding demand.

Your dismay over a system that does precisely the job it was designed for and which already has several 'failsafe' sources of alternative supply would be comical were it not so pathetic.

Interesting.

In essence, creating a *blip* on the market for a short term increase in the price. I acknowledge that this can happen. What I'm saying is such manipulations, on a long-term basis, are not effective in increasing the price floor.


Too bad. Would have been an interesting read.

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Reading Comprehension FAIL.

Here's what he said:

Now, you can interpret this to mean you specifically (I took it as the general you), but the overall point of the message isn't whether or not you can play the market. It's whether or not you can still play the game if you choose to play the market, suck at the market, or ignore the market completely. So, his point still stands. The logic is sound. If you can't understand that, just stop trying to argue it, because there's no way for anyone to explain it any simpler than that.

I don't play the market. I have no desire to play the market. But I do use it. As someone who uses the market and sometimes lets out audible sighs when viewing price histories, I can understand that the market is like this because it runs on economics. The most impatient bidders raise prices. You should be upset with them.

If I want something for a low price, I just bid for the price I find comfortable and go play the game. If I come back in a month and it's been bought, then cool. If not, I leave the bidding there, or move on. It wasn't that important to begin with. It didn't keep me from being able to play my toon effectively.

Now, I will say prices have gone up quite a bit in the past 6 months. Climbing to some pretty ridiculous levels. Again, this isn't because of marketeers. It's because demand is too high for supply. And supply is horribly low. Drop rates would be my suggestion for a fix.

This dovetails nicely with my own experiment flipping Ancient Bones.

Point. Game. Match.

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I suppose I could move the blessing of the zypher one spot over. Or perhaps there is someone who has 2 billion plus inf on a toon and likes playing musical chairs with a blessing of the zypher ? and has made screenshots available to me ?


Actually as high as I could go without slowing my sales.

I have no idea what normal is but I have seen guides and recountings that strategically fail to mention very important and rather valuable bits of information.

You will pardon me I keep that information for myself as I am still regretting making the comment that snowballed into the rare recipe project. Solace on that is that they seem to have a very good chance of getting it wrong.
Beats me but I haven't said that.

What I have said repeatedly is that many people don't like using the market in the game, their viewpoint and desires are no more or less valid than the people that do like using the market. Because the market is the fastest way to equip a character it creates a perception of need that it has to be used. Because this is a social game and there is a certain amount of requirement to keep up with the joneses that perception of need has a measure of reality.

For me, as a buyer that very rarely goes into "BUY IT NAO" mode, flippers indeed have raised the price or/and made me bid_creep/wait_for_fill longer. If they provided any benefit, it was for "BUY IT NAO" crowd and that is irrelevant in my case.

My one caveat would be POs- when something is so vanishingly rare that it inspires a true 'black market', it needs a tweak. As it seems unlikely we'll get a flowering of PvP population, liberalizing drop rates or providing some kind of PvP currency along the lines of merits seems to be called for.

That is pretty much the point though. Marketeers make out profit by lowering the prices that the BUY IT NAO crowd pays for items. If they all decided to be patient in their buying practices then our ability to make a profit would be severely curtailed.