Countering Market Inflation: Suggestion

Prices of posted Items at the market should be bumped down weekly (or bi-weekly) by 10% taking an item no lower than 30% of the original posted price. I have played other MMOs and when I came to COH I was very excited that there was no market to inflate. Time has past and that to has changed. I remember how hard it was entering a game that was new to me only to find the market inflation had place much far beyond the grasp of a new commer.

Inflation is a definite issue. But, the key underlying reason for it is that influence and infamy sinks soak up less infamy and influence than is being generated by those playing the game.

A real world analogue could be a nation that keeps printing more and more and more money, and putting all that "new" money into circulation as they print it; doing that predictably puts upward pressure on prices for goods and services in that nation.

In the end, price controls won't stop inflation.

I'll agree as things are money does not really leave the game often. I can't help but think there has to be a solution. The current situation makes it advantageous for folks to farm and the farming in turn worstens the situation. Example farmers farm pvp drops, so the devs lower the drop rate, the only most folks are going to ever get a single PVP set is to farm pvp, PVP non-stop or pay some fellow on line to give 2 billion to each of 6 characters so you can purchase 1 set! I have overheard conversations on teams where people new to the game are expressing interest in building a pvp and often enought I have heard players state that it depended on how much they were willing to pay on the character.
That was of course an extreme yet truthful example. This carries true for purple sets, numinas on down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Another_Fan There is very little I find worthwhile to list at sell it now prices, and the things I can't get a good price for I have no trouble deleting.

What value does an item have to sell for to be worth selling? The price does reflect the demand there are often set recipes I can't sell for 10 INF. It would be nice if my choice of melee sets was not limited to something greater than crappy but with in my price range. There are sets no one really wants. Would be nice if say for melee IO sets you had a choice of 3 sets that were equal but different & if the cheapest of these sets sold for 5,000 and the most expesive sold for 100,000 I don't feel as though the game would be cheapened at all.

The only real way to fight inflation is to increase the drop rate. If the demand is being met by drops, people will not be willing to pay such high prices. A low drop rate just encourages farming because that is the only way people can afford the going price for the high demand items. Some think that lowing how much inf people can earn will help, but even that will backfire. A good inf sink would be to have a vendor that you can buy the high demand items at a high price. That would also set a ceiling on prices because people wont buy at a higher price on the market then they would pay at a vendor.

Wait. "Prices of items posted" - I'm assuming you're talking about asking price. A few things -

First, the price put on there is the last price someone paid. You don't know if the "100,000,000 inf" someone paid for item X was because someone listed it at that price, or if it went to buy what *I* listed at 6 inf.

Second, if I want to get around this, I have three options -
(a) Relist, which would admittedly cost me inf,
(b) List higher than I want, because someone may pay that anyway and I'll have a longer timeframe where I'll get as much (or more) than I want, or
(c) Don't list at all and sell it off-market (global channels, forums, etc.) which doesn't do squat for the consignment houses at all.

(Oh, and DocArcus) -

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If they put in a personal apartment system and charged influence for it, it would suck up tons of influence. Especially if they put in a depreciation over time so that things bought will not return the same amount when sold.

Just add a little personal storage and a few other nifty things and people will be all over it.

Best counter for market inflation: Don't pay 2 mil for an Inanimate Carbon Rod.

Seriously, just stop paying the inflated prices... as long as someone does, those prices are never gonna change.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Mmm...

I am not sure if arbitrary reductions are the proper thing to do...

But I seen the effect of players with sufficient wealth to corner the market and sky-rocket the prices of items at the market.

So its a very good question on how to handle this, after all the real world stock market does have full time police organizations insuring this does not occur. How you simulate that in CoH? Frankly I am clueless how to do this fairly and effectively.

I think, a competitive environment to the market could serve as an external regulatory price control mechanism. There are several already in-game price control mechanisms, which perhaps needs to be further enhanced:

1. AE tickets:
You can buy orange and yellow salvage with tickets, both specifically what you want or random salvage results. You can get random recipes of any type (except purple) through random rolls.

Improving AE to let you buy white salvage would be a good idea, also having it where you can specifically buy recipes with tickets would also be appropriate, but the limit in tickets a player can have has to be drastically increased so a reasonable recipe to ticket exchange can be created. This could also resurrect the use of AE to some extent.

2. Merit System:
You can purchase any recipe (except purple) by trading AE merits, you could as well random roll for them as well.

I can't recall if you can purchase salvage through the merit system, but it would make sense if you could both specifically and randomly.

I believe the price in merits for recipes really need to be revised, while I agree the most complex and valuable recipe is worth 250 merits, some minor recipes should cost as little as 25 merits and have a good graduation of recipe prices beyond the 125,150,175,250 currently used; there should be more in between prices.


3. Vendors:
You can buy inspirations, and enhancements (Training, doubles, singles) from your friendly neighborhood contact or vendor, you can even sell your junk drops to them. Why not have them sell salvage and recipes as well? In fact they buy the stuff on the cheap from us, why not sell stuff for say ten times more than what they would buy from us? In a way, if you think of it, it would certainly place a cap on the market for stuff. While crazy, scalping priced items would cease to be available or would never get sold, one could still play the market, for we could sell recipies in the market for more than the vendor would buy them from us, and less than what we could buy the recipe from the vendor. What would be needed is what is the range of sell prices; that is how low the vendor buys and how high the vendor sells, to establish the player potential profitability in the market.


There may be other ways, any thoughts out there?

Hugs

Stormy

Why does people not understand that the players make the prices not the dev... -1 rep

I agree, at same time i can afford most of what I need, I was thinking of the new player base. When I entered Ultima Online and Ever Quest it was late in the game and most items were way outta my price range. I honestly would love to see this game thrive. That is where my greed comes in I want a large player base.