Hooray for Market Merge!

Read War Witch's post here

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=226820


I'm glad the devs changed their minds

Its gonna be very cool. Also we'll be able to use the email feature to send stuff from heroes to villains.....can finally outfit a villain now, or atleast I will in August when the GR expansion comes out

Yay! <3

@Tax E - RIP CoH 2012

Yay for cheaper prices on villains, that made my day

This just means there'll be more hoarding and prices overall will go up. People are stupid, the market doesn't follow normal rules.

Now don't flame me but there should be some sort of cap, the prices charged are something else T_T

There is a price cap. 2,000,000,000 INF for an item. It just happens to be that it's also the cap on what we can carry per toon. I've seen some of the PvP goodies going for that or more, and I can guarantee that the bids on a level 53 Hami-O are in that neighborhood to park large amount of INF.

If you institute a cap for a particular item, say 100 million for a LotG +RECH, then all bids for that particular piece will always be at the cap. Since people will know exactly what someone is willing to pay for an item, there is no reason not to charge the highest possible price. Or, you may run into a situation where people stop putting that particular IO on the market and instead will only trade it with players, conveniently circumventing the market altogether (a 'real' black market). As a general rule, price ceilings on things are a great short-term stop gap measure to deal with inflation. However, when suppliers can't get the full market value for their goods, they tend to either horde supply (as Crusha said) or circumvent the system. Either way, it's bad mojo for the consumers.

For lots of charts and graphs and mind-numbingly boring prose on the subject of price ceilings, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling

I suggest it right before bed.

If the devs want to drop prices they could just adjust the drop rate, increasing supply. Look at how the prices for costume pieces have bottomed since they increased how many drop.

A better idea than a price ceiling would be fixed prices for certain items. These items would still drop like normal and you could still get them just as you can now, but you can also pay say 200 million for LotG recharge.

People could still list them, but obviously for less than the fixed price. So you could get a bargain or just pay the fixed price or roll it merit wise or buy it merit wise or just get a lucky drop.

I agree with marketers that probably nothing will be done until they get a chance to see how the merger effects prices and supply. So I would guess nothing until October.

The issue with price fixing is that it essentially creates a store for certain items, so there's no point in even having a market. Certain items are expensive because they have high demand and low supply, and are therefore not available to everyone - which is, I think, the way the devs want it to be. If certain items aren't hard to get, they lose their value. It's the whole "carrot on a stick" thing - if the carrot is rotten, why bother trying to get it?

As someone who just got his 12 month Vet badge, I can tell you that no one is too late to enjoy this game.

I don't I/O every toon I have but I do have a fair number of I/O enhancments sets. I was able to stockpile about 1.35 billion in influence in just about 6 months of playing (since December).

That was without:

Farming Merits
Farming AE
No PVP I/O
No Purple Drops (I hear people get thess but I never have had one drop)
Playing my Level 50
RMT

I just played an embrassing number of alts and did TF's when one came around and did door missions. I crafted my drops and did a little marketing (limited to really just learning how to price and how to be a little patiant for bids to drop and stuff to sell). So I guess I feel if I could do it, then anyone could.

I'll never be as rich as the dedicated marketers who farm merits or AE or even those who get the lucky PvP drop, but I suspect I will hit the Inf cap at least once. Plenty of money to fund my alts with Common I/Os and still get a few Posi blast sets for the deserving blaster. Heck I even craft and buy to equip my sister's (RL) toons.

I look forward to the merge. It'll be nice to have more stuff available red side. Currently there are things you just can't buy red side due to the low supply. I've had decent bids on some recipes sitting for 6 months or more because there are just none for sale.

It will also be nice to be able to sell the pet recipes that drop on blue side.

I'm not sure exactly what'll happen to prices. As people mentioned elsewhere, the prices will be determined by player behaviour more than the merge. With so much to do in GR at all levels it's hard to say how that will affect the market, but the merge will give more users and more supply so that should be an improvement.

Regarding price caps, I agree with Macskull and the others. We can see how the current cap of 2 billion affects some of the PVP IOs already, but those are super rare and desirable, so they're kind of a special case. A lower cap would result in more stuff going off market, or having to wait in a line of hundreds for your capped bids to be filled.

It'll be interesting to see how the reboot of the market will affect prices.

I was actually talking about the salvage. People manipulate the free market system by buying up the supply and mete it out at ridiculously inflated prices. That's not capitalism and that's what I'm talking about.

The recipes are what they are.