GR and market ruminations...

Well, without hard price caps, it'd be nice if common and uncommon salvage never went over 2x the NPC vendor cost, and if rare salvage stayed under 1 million. However, that's mostly buyers bidding higher and higher.. Still, when i see 5 bidding, 500 for sale, and i can't get something for under those amounts, it's really quite perplexing to completely blame the buyers.

It'd be nice to not have to go to the vendor to sell 90% of all recipes to get a decent amount off of them, while having to pay millions (or hundreds of millions) for a select few recipes. The devs have tried to fix this with recipe weighting (so that a scrapper should never get a confuse recipe from a drop), but that doesn't change the fact that nobody wants most of the stuff available. However, none of this can be changed, short of convincing the majority of players that they WANT a set with -1.5% Xp debt reduction (Which is so very useful, especially at level 50!) or a tiny amount of mez resistance (What's 1% off of a 10 second hold amount to? A single server tick? SIGN ME UP!) over useful things like Recharge (mweh, i got all day, i don't need my powers up anytime soon), Regen/recovery (that's what rest is for!) or defense (I LIKE taking hits! it gives the empath on my team something to do!).

Basically we have a situation where there's a lot of crap, and a small amount of goods that everyone wants, who's supply is determined by random drops divided by the number of people willing to part with them. And then we have prices that are determined by people who are rich and impatient, which ruins things for everyone else. And then there are flippers, which, while they're a meaningful force in supply/demand/price, don't have quite the impact most people think. Still, I'd think that without flippers, Respecs and purps would be a little lower in price (granted AE had a lot to do with the lack of supply of these things, but who bought them all and put them back up for sale having forecasted a shortage?)

LT;DR version: it'd be -nice- if the crap sold for more, good stuff sold for less, and people wouldn't purposely or accidentally mess up the market, but it's unrealistic to think that such would ever happen. *shrug*

Do you mean a store that sells items at a price 2x the vendor or a hard cap on the price? A hard cap would cause shortages. A store would cause the price to be firm and no shortages. There's plenty of salvage being made, and AE cranks out common salvage at 8 tickets a pop. Players simply are too lazy to place it for sale.

Should all the "bad sets" be removed? Should the drop rate be increased? I believe the devs have set Numinas and other expensive recipes to have the availability they desire. Merit prices are that availability. If you do X merits worth of "work" you can have that recipe.

The current manner of item distribution is "he who pays the most gets the item." Alternatives are: he who waits the longest, random lottery, arbitrary decision making, no distribution, and store with fixed prices. Which alternative do you propose? Is there one I missed?


Flippers cause price stability and remove volatility from the market. Flippers are competitors. They make the lowest lows less low and the highest highs less high. For example, with respec recipes, if I didn't buy 100 of them...

At the release of Issue 16 there would have been 100 less purchased at a price of 66 to 100. The price would have fallen lower. More would have been for sale at that time.

. Sadly, it doesn't show the # for sale.

In the past few weeks 50 to 100 respecs have been placed on the market for sale. These have sold for roughly 200M. Imagine if those 50 to 100 had not been placed. Less Supply would exist. There would be less Respecs currently for sale. The current prices of Respecs would be higher. Check out the market on Respec Recipes as it stands now and think about my big sale.

Thus by flipping I made the "lowest low less low"... or at the release of Issue 16 prices didn't fall as much...
and currently I made the "highest high less high"... or prices aren't rising as high as they would have.

I knew prices would spike very low at one point (I16) and I knew prices would be at the highest at another point (immediately before I17) and profited by buying at a price ABOVE the lowest low and selling at a price BELOW the highest high.

Similar will occur with the release of every Freespec given out. However, the biggest spikes in Respec recipes occur in issue with Powerset Diversification. A significant amount of the player base rolls new characters. These characters are flush with Vetspecs and freespecs. These characters still produce respec Recipes though low levels tend to defeat less enemies. Now that this knowledge is widespread, expect the price to be relatively more stable with future freespecs. More competitors/flippers will buy when the market is full of respecs and more competitors/flippers will sell when they start getting more desired.

These two wishes are incompatible.

The price people pay for things reflects what amount of inf they value having them at. The price I can get from an NPC has nothing to do with what price I am willing to pay the market to get a piece of salvage. You illustrate that you understand this concept when you mention rare salvage at 1M inf - no NPC will pay you 1M inf for a rare salvage piece, but you are willing to pay it, even though it's 200x what the NPC will pay you.

If NPCs sold salvage, it would be different, as Smurphy mentions. Then the market sellers would be in competition with the NPCs for the business of market buyers. Under the current regime, the NPCs compete with market buyers with for the business of market sellers. Level 40+ players win that contest hands down.

TL;DR: Players don't value pieces of salvage - even common salvage - at the prices that NPCs do. We value them higher, especially when we're near level 50.

No, i mean if somehow, some cosmological force prevented people from posting or bidding above certain amounts. That somehow, there would always be enough supply and buyers to maintain a fair, stable price (no one listing at 5 inf, no one buying at 30,000). Again, complete wishy-washy and never gonna happen =)

I think the bad sets should be given better, more lucerative bonuses. Not as good as purples obviously, but replace any instance of "xp debt protection" with S/L resist or something.

Merits and inf costs don't seem very equalized right now. If i did the STF enough times to buy a miracle with merits, i would -not- have gained enough inf from defeating baddies to buy it off the market. And while I agree with you in principle, that the good stuff should be rare or not come cheap, it IS the major complaint of most people that the good stuff seems terribly far out of their reach. And it does the market and merit system no good if people get fed up with its inequities and stop using it (which seems to be half the problem with the redside market. No one uses it, because there's nothing there, because no one uses it... ad infinitium).

Again, it would be -nice- if cosmological forces interveined to make enough people buy and sell enough of everything; I don't propose and alternate system =)

If you didn't buy 100 of them, 100 other people would have gotten what they wanted for a lower price than what you listed them for and used them they way they were intended >=. (well, ideally... in reality another flipper probably would have grabbed them, le sigh) Without flippers, the going rate would be 80 mil not 200 mil. True there'd be a few spikes, but since the mystical "casual player" wouldn't take the risk of their respec recipe taking up a market slot for more than a day, they' list it low so it could sell. Instead, knowing that flippers are out there, they price higher so A) a flipper can't get it, and b) they're secure in the knowledge that people will pay the going price shown in the last five, so they pluck it up for 30 more mil than they need to, which deprives a poorer player the ability to buy it.

Heck, even just having 100 extra bids on something drives up the price because people assume it's something in higher demand, which means more people are "supposedly' bidding at the price point shown in the last 5, which makes them bid higher, which drives up the price. It doesn't occur to anyone that it's ONE person biding for only 70% of the going rate. And even if someone were to try and bid low, they'd still have to beat YOUR "low bid", and they may not know what that is, so they may never get what they desire. All I know is these things used to be 50 mil, then YOU started flipping them. Now they go for 150-200.

Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. I'm open to the idea that without flipping they'd be even MORE ludicrously priced, but the direct evidence points to the contrary.(You can't say you've kept prices low when you're the one who bought all the low-priced ones to begin with) Though i'd like to see what would happen if NOBODY flipped for a 6 month period, though there's be no way to enforce that or prevent anyone from puposly skewing the market. *shrug*

I have a question about this. In your 2 examples it showed one bidding and one for sale with several sales happening over a 2 day period and you having a large stockpile bought.

I am not the most market savey(spelling?)person around but this appears like total price control by one person, not just the highs and lows. While this is obviously good for the stock controller I don't see how it is good for the market as a whole. You could inflate/crash the prices as you see fit. You could not create a total monopoly because you can't control the source but your whim could/would definately control the overall price for a time, Yes?

I'm in no way upset that you do this(not that I could do anything about it if I was) but I fail to understand how having one person controlling trade of a wanted item is good for an open market.


(Sorry if this is a threadjack)

That is correct. However, those people who purchased that at lower price would have done so near September 2009. Those items would have sold. Those items would be gone. As has been explained, after the release of an issue there is a higher ratio of Supply and Demand than before the release of the next issue. The items I listed for sale recently would NOT have been listed recently. There would not have been 100 being sold recently. There would be less supply. The same amount of people chasing fewer items. That means the prices today would be higher.

The forces of Supply and Demand prevent what you wish from occurring. As Supply goes down, as fewer items are chased by the same # of buyers, price rises.

In other words... we could NOT all work together and get everyone a Purpled out Warshade. We could NOT all work together and satisfy everyone's Demand for Luck of the Gamblers at 10,000 Influence/Infamy. There are only so many items in existence. Price will go to where Supply meet Demand. You cannot make people who have money simply not spend it.

Without flippers some people would be able to purchase their items for cheaper. The patient people who pay less. The impatient people would pay more.

Supply and Demand are curves. Supply and Demand are functions. Prices go where the two meet.

For example, for Respec Recipes, in September 2009, Supply and Demand might look like the following: Supply in City of Heroes is generally inelastic. Inelastic means as prices changes Supply does not change. Basically, sellers simply want to get the most money possible and they will sell at whatever amount that would be. This inelasticity is probably simplest to understand via example...

September 2009: Supply. Read these numbers to mean "At a price of X, Y Quantity are willing and able to be sold". I am making these numbers up as an example...

Demand, September 2009. Read this as "At a price of X, Y Quantity are willing and able to be purchased"
In this example, Supply meets Demand at 125M. The "Equilibrium Price" is 125M. Price, in general, will tend to go towards 125M. At prices below 125M there are more people willing and able to purchase than willing and able to sell. For example, at 50M there are 300 willing to be bought and 90 willing to be sold. There is not balance.

Fast forward to today. Demand has changed. People have fewer Vetspecs and Freespecs. So Supply is generally the same as above. Instead... Demand looks like the following:

Now Supply meets Demand at a price of 200M. Equilibrium Price is 200M. Price, in general, will tend to go towards 200M.

Here's where flippers come in. In the above example here is how I would operate as a flipper. I would purchase in September 2009 at a price of 130M. By purchasing items I am "increasing Demand". There are now more items willing and able to be purchased at that point in time. I am raising price in September 2009.

Today, I would sell my items. Selling items is "increase Supply". I would sell my items at a price of 190M, for example. If I tried to sell at 200M there would be more items willing and able to be sold than willing and able to be purchased in the whole of the market. Some items would not sell. I make no money on items that don't sell. I want to make money.

If you'd like, I can turn those into actual Supply and Demand graphs Then we can talk about things like price instability and how less competition causes prices to hover further around Equilibrium Price. More competition causes prices to be more stable, or stay closer to Equilibrium Price.

You can see how this works by looking at the Red verse Blue market. There are more competitors and more volume blue side. Prices on salvage tend to be more stable. Prices redside are less stable. There's more variance in price and more likelihood of prices spiking up or falling down.

Many people are pro-merger because they want more stable markets. Some people, Ex Libris was a vocal proponent, like the separate markets and like the more dynamic market.

One thing to note is that they are not (fully) controlling trade. All they are controlling is the minimum buy price, which is the buy price they are bidding at. They only "control" the sell price in the sense that this is the price at which they then re-list the items they sell. Any price between their buy and sell prices is fair game. You don't have to pay their listing price, but if you want to avoid that, you do have to pay at least their buying price.

Technically, sale prices above their sale price are also fair game, but this is generally unwise for competing sellers. By reselling a meaningful volume of supply at whatever price they are selling at, they tend to ensure that price is the (likely) price ceiling, because they undercut people selling higher than that.

In the pictures I posted I am not selling any Respec Recipes. However, at many points in time I am both buying and selling the same item. The respec example is one of the rare times where I sit on items. My normal flipping procedure is to buy and sell at the same time and and often as possible.

I cannot control the price while retaining profit. I can both inflate and crash the price. I cannot either inflate or crash the price at will while retaining profit. I know people who crash/inflate price for the fun of it while throwing piles of money essentially into the wind. Prices, naturally, go up and down. As a flipper I am merely riding those up and downs by buying at the "downs" and selling at the "ups." The 10% market fee is brilliant. It accomplishes so many things and is such a simple implementation. The 10% fee prevents many market schemes for being profitable.



Here's an old picture from an old article that serves as a good example. In the above picture a flipper might be purchasing at 1.69M and selling at 2.1M. This nets them a profit of 2.1M - 10%(fee) = 1.89M (revenue) - 1.69M (cost) == 200,000 (profit) per item flipped.

Let's go through an example of how a flipper might try to raise prices...

Plan: Buy at 1.69M like I am now and list them all for 20M.
Assuming that prices before were generally close to Equilibrium Price... if one tried to buy at 1.69 and sell at 20M one would likely purchase items faster than one sold items. This means that inventory builds up. For example, every day one might purchase 20 items and only sell 1. That's 1.69x20 = 33.8M spent per day and 18M gained (remember fees.) Eventually, one might be able to sell off their big pile of inventory and get a profit.

However, one doesn't really have "control" over the market. The flipper is purchasing items at 1.69 and listing at 20. Nothing prevents patient purchasers from bidding 1.7. Nothing prevents patient sellers from listing at 19. This competition beats the flipper. Other people can complete transactions within the flippers "zone of control".

The 10% fee is essentially a "dead zone" for flippers. Prices must fluctuate more than 10% for flipping to be viable. Flippers don't make a profit by purchasing at 100,000,000 and selling at 105,000,000. That's a losing plan. If you tried to control price on an item buy buying them all at 100M and trying to sell them all for 125M people would undercut you by bidding 101M.

Sure, you could make the prices spike like that. You'd throw away a lot of money in the process. Some people do that for kicks and giggles.

Some people do execute schemes like I've explained and make a profit. However, these are "get in and get out schemes". The longer the scheme tries to last the greater than chance of it blowing up in their face. For example, one might be able to buy out all the current outstanding inventory of a common salvage and then list it very high. One might be able to turn a profit by selling the items they purchased at an outrageous amount. However, eventually other people will start selling. Eventually, buyers become smart and savvy. One can only get temporary control by doing such things.



That's the best way to understand flippers. Think of prices rising and falling like the tide machine. Price goes up, price goes down. Flippers merely ride the tides. Flippers make the wave machine go "not as low" and "not as high."

Somewhere out there is a theoretical, never to be achieved, only an idea price called "Equilibrium Price". That price is where the wave machine is perfectly balanced. However, sometimes lots of people come to the market and want to buy the same thing. Sometimes someone dumps a huge volume of a certain item for sale. Different things cause prices to go up and down. The tide machine rises and falls.

Theyre fixes have been less than stellar. Not terrible, just meh. I have faith that the devs arent trying to bone us out of malice or a general disregard now that Emmert is gone, BUT because they are working on things many issues ahead of whats Live, and they dont/cant play the game the way we as players play this game that they lose sight of what is really best.

These are the same devs that honestly think that the heroside prices are higher than the redside. I just sold a lvl 40 lotg 7.5 redside for 250mil while being able to sell the same thing Blue side for 150 mil. I realize ive been out of school for a while, but im sure 250 is greater than 150.

These are the same devs that think making pvp available to everyone means inflicting another round of ED on pvp, changing the rules and offering overpowered PvP enhancments to the hardcores will encourage casual people to play.

Yeah mental I tell you.

Besides stupid, idiotic Rp reasons and actual technical reasons theres no other reason not to have a merged market. Hell, the devs actually need to merge a few servers, theres too few of us playing these days to spread everyone out over this many servers.

Merging the market may be a bad idea from a technical standpoint. My idea of unlinking and relinking the market is actually viable. Theres half as many redsiders as blue. We as a player base are fairly patient, we put up with that Jack Emmert and his glue sniffing 'Vission'. It will get us what we want. Sure itll make Smurphy richer in game items, but what doesnt make that crazy man more Inf?

Now to convince the devs to fix Tf/sf 's so he'll run more of those again.....


Ps, Rp'ers stick it in your Rp hole. Rp in the game, not about game mechanics. Two different things, maybe you can rp the difference sometime.

It's not embarassing if nobody hardly ever looks.

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