how would you revamp the entire economy and reward structure?
By
BBQ_Pork,
Posted on: 2010-09-15 16:03 in The Market and Inventions
What if it is Smurphy on a trial account messing with us?
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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TIP: Not everything is a Smurphy plot.
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Originally Posted by SwellGuy
What if it is Smurphy on a trial account messing with us?
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You too Fulmens? I actually admitted to being wrong when provided with actual facts. And you know how much about my actual experience? Low post count, or low forum popularity, do not translate directly to ignorance. It seems to be a popular ploy to just resort to being insulting because I have a higher threshold for reasoned arguments.|
Originally Posted by Fulmens
So, why does your ignorance trump my actual experience? |
Misaligned had a few good points about slots and turn over time, but since I've now been insulted three times by three different people. You can see why I don't bother with these forums.
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Originally Posted by DSorrow
I wonder why so many people have so much against high prices. It does not mean you have to buy at those prices, it means in more cases that you can sell at those prices and buy for less. Why aren't people happy?
Also, if you're bothered about paying 50k for a common salvage you clearly haven't marketeered enough to make any serious income. I occasionally pay 1mil for a common salvage if I just WANT. IT. NAO! 1mil isn't much, really. You can't even get full SOs for that on a level 50. |
/Shrug
You all have a nice forum. I'm history (again).
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Honestly, I think the people here are sick and tired of being accused of ridiculous things, then having those accusations carry over into the game. Personally, I very much dislike being called an ""evil flipper" when I join a team.|
Originally Posted by SargentWild
You too Fulmens? I actually admitted to being wrong when provided with actual facts. And you know how much about my actual experience? Low post count, or low forum popularity, do not translate directly to ignorance. It seems to be a popular ploy to just resort to being insulting because I have a higher threshold for reasoned arguments.
Misaligned had a few good points about slots and turn over time, but since I've now been insulted three times by three different people. You can see why I don't bother with these forums. Not being happy with the way things are, and being able to deal with circumstances are two different things. The market change I suggested was a QoL issue. Then things devolved regarding my definition of a flipper. My opponents, lacking the time, inclination, (or facts) resorted to insulting me. /Shrug You all have a nice forum. I'm history (again). |
Flipping salvage is possible in this game. Flipping anything and controlling it enough to price fix is not. Its just not feasible. You cannot control any 1 item with enough force to make it stay that way. Period. Ever! I wish there was, cause I'm super lazy and that would work well for me, but there is not.
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My favorite comment of his was his complaint about being insulted. I guess he didn't consider tossing out that we were BSing him as an insult that he fired first at seebs and then at me.
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Originally Posted by Misaligned
Honestly, I think the people here are sick and tired of being accused of ridiculous things, then having those accusations carry over into the game. Personally, I very much dislike being called an ""evil flipper" when I join a team.
Flipping salvage is possible in this game. Flipping anything and controlling it enough to price fix is not. Its just not feasible. You cannot control any 1 item with enough force to make it stay that way. Period. Ever! I wish there was, cause I'm super lazy and that would work well for me, but there is not. |
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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America weeps for the loss of knowledge.
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Originally Posted by SargentWild
You all have a nice forum. I'm history (again).
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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Random aside; my new boss at work legally changed his name to Knowledge.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
America weeps for the loss of knowledge.
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Emphasized for obtuseness.|
Originally Posted by SargentWild
Ok, my mistake. I figured that since most of these sets (Focused Smite, Smashing Haymaker, Cleaving Blow, Multi-Strike, Maelstrom's Fury, Ruin, Airburst, Detonation, Serendipity, Red Fortune, Harmonized Healing, Reactive Armor, Titanium Coating, Essence of Curare) are hard to get in a short time frame (1-2 weeks) at reasonable prices, they had recipes in other pools. Guess I have more reason to dislike market flippers.
Note: I'm fine with paying 30k to 50k for mid level set recipes. Any thing higher usually gets ignored. This attitude is mostly due to high prices on some ingredients. Cheaper ingredients would mean more money for recipes. I should also mention that I won't be getting a single set recipe for my 50 through the market, I'm using merits and AE tickets only. |
If you're only gonna shell out peanuts for things that make you about half as effective as the million-inf sellers, then why would anyone post them for sale for cheapskates like you?
Second, it's not true. None of these sets bar Red Fortunes and the max levels of Reactive and maybe Harmonized, Serendipity and Titanium Coating are expensive at all in recipe form. You can put those cheap-*** 50k bids out and grab any of those sets in two weeks' time. No one but no one flips these, barring Red Fortune and/or max levels of the other ones. The profit rate is so tiny that anyone who was clever enough to figure out they could flip them would realize their efforts would be better rewarded elsewhere.
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| I should also mention that I won't be getting a single set recipe for my 50 through the market, I'm using merits and AE tickets only. |
Here's what flipping does: Prevents people from buying low immediately.
Therefore, flipping = bad. =)
To put it another way, let's say you went to the grocery store for a can of soup. No prices are listed, but you talk to some store staff and they tell you the cans tend to go for 3-5 dollars a piece. Perplexed at not being able to get a straight answer, you grab a can anyway and go up to the cash register, where someone else is buying the same can of soup. You overhear that they got the can for a buck. Sweet, you'll only have to spend a dollar! So you get up to purchase your soup, and the person says "ten bucks".
"What?!" you say "But the person ahead of me got it for one dollar!"
"True, but they waited in line for 2 hours and bought it when we had a 10 second sale going on."
"Well okay, that's stupid... but the other store staff i talked to said it's be only 3 to 5 dollars, not ten!"
"That's the average price, true, but that SPECIFIC can costs 10 dollars. If you want a cheaper one, you'll have to wait around for a cheaper one to become available!"
"Well why're the cans of soup different prices?!"
"Because people stand in line for hours waiting for our ten-second sale, buy up all the cheap cans, then re-sell them back to the store!"
etc etc. I realize this does not accurately reflect a multi-seller market, but that's the perspective of someone who wants to buy something. They go to wentworths (the store) to get their can of soup, and are stimied because they can't pay what THEY WANT to pay for something (or even the last sales price) because someone else bought the last cheap one and re-listed in for twice the price.
Now they CAN place a bid and wait, but i guarantee prices would be much lower across the board if flippers wene't taking the supply and MARKING IT UP out of the prospective buyer's price range. It's too bad we can't stop everyone from flipping or manipulating the market for a week or two, I'd love to see the effect.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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And how do you guarantee this? You gonna make a bet? Provide some evidence? Seriously, this is not how markets work. Flipping reduces total inf in the marketplace, therefore, by definition, it pushes prices down. Steady activity also tends to equalize prices out.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Now they CAN place a bid and wait, but i guarantee prices would be much lower across the board if flippers wene't taking the supply and MARKING IT UP out of the prospective buyer's price range.
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A guarantee based on guesswork or speculation isn't much of a guarantee.
The fact is, the stuff marked up out of the buyer's price range has no significant effect, because no one can buy all the brass that shows up on the market. It doesn't matter whether there's one seller or five thousand who are asking more than you want to pay -- if they're asking more than you want to pay, they're not participating in the market.
Except, of course, that a big pool of sellers makes people assume that prices are going down and list new incoming stuff for less.
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... darn. I wanted to hear him explain how it's insulting when I say he's ignorant, but not when he accuses me of lying. | You all have a nice forum. I'm history (again). |
Think he's going to stick his head back in and go for the rare,difficult-to-acheive double flounce?
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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no it doesn't.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Here's what flipping does: Prevents people from buying low immediately.
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absent flippers prices fluctuate wildly depending on supply.
So, yeah, if you happen to be bidding when the tide is in you can get your widget for next to nothing. If on the other hand you're bidding when the tide is out you'll spend a ridiculous amount, if there's stock at all.
My original flipping experiment with ancient bones red side illuminated this very nicely. I watched for several days before dipping my hoof in. What happened was people were either paying nothing (which isn't really worth it to the seller, so supply was nearly always low) or they were paying 100k+ when there were just a handful left.
My impact on that scenario was to buy at a price point that encouraged people to list their junk (over the course of my experiment the # available went from a few hundred average to a few thousand average) and to sell at a price that ensured quick turnover.
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| Now they CAN place a bid and wait, but i guarantee prices would be much lower across the board if flippers... |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Will you stop cluttering this thread with concrete real-world experimental data? We're looking for baseless speculation and a strong sense of entitlement here!
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You want an idea of what salvage prices would look like without flippers?|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Now they CAN place a bid and wait, but i guarantee prices would be much lower across the board if flippers wene't taking the supply and MARKING IT UP out of the prospective buyer's price range. It's too bad we can't stop everyone from flipping or manipulating the market for a week or two, I'd love to see the effect.
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Circuit boards. This is a fairly common salvage, and is USUALLY cheap, but every so often the supply gets bought out and they sell for like 100k+. It's not worth the slots for anyone to flip for an extended period of time, but they're useful enough that they get bought out and deal with horrible price spikes. Also even during these price spikes you still see people occasionally buying them for like 500 or 1k or a few k.
That's what say, alchemical silver would look like EVERY DAY without flippers on it. Wild constant price spikes.
Basically, what the goat just said.
Culex's resistance guide
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The first rule of wentworths is: the market is not a store.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Here's what flipping does: Prevents people from buying low immediately.
Therefore, flipping = bad. =) To put it another way, let's say you went to the grocery store for a can of soup. No prices are listed, but you talk to some store staff and they tell you the cans tend to go for 3-5 dollars a piece. Perplexed at not being able to get a straight answer, you grab a can anyway and go up to the cash register, where someone else is buying the same can of soup. You overhear that they got the can for a buck. Sweet, you'll only have to spend a dollar! So you get up to purchase your soup, and the person says "ten bucks". "What?!" you say "But the person ahead of me got it for one dollar!" "True, but they waited in line for 2 hours and bought it when we had a 10 second sale going on." "Well okay, that's stupid... but the other store staff i talked to said it's be only 3 to 5 dollars, not ten!" "That's the average price, true, but that SPECIFIC can costs 10 dollars. If you want a cheaper one, you'll have to wait around for a cheaper one to become available!" "Well why're the cans of soup different prices?!" "Because people stand in line for hours waiting for our ten-second sale, buy up all the cheap cans, then re-sell them back to the store!" etc etc. I realize this does not accurately reflect a multi-seller market, but that's the perspective of someone who wants to buy something. They go to wentworths (the store) to get their can of soup, and are stimied because they can't pay what THEY WANT to pay for something (or even the last sales price) because someone else bought the last cheap one and re-listed in for twice the price. Now they CAN place a bid and wait, but i guarantee prices would be much lower across the board if flippers wene't taking the supply and MARKING IT UP out of the prospective buyer's price range. It's too bad we can't stop everyone from flipping or manipulating the market for a week or two, I'd love to see the effect. |
The second rule of wentworths is: the market is not a store.
Thirdly : You are confusing two types of market users. There are flippers and manipulators. What manipulators do is try to raise prices to earn more profit per sale. What flippers do is try to sell as many things as possible as fast as possible.
Fourth: What most people that complain about prices don't understand is that any given item has an equilibrium price. We'll use your can of soup analogy to illustrate. Can of soup sells as low as 1 dollar but can spike to 10 dollars. A reasonable price for a can of soup is 3-5 dollars. What a flipper will do is buy at 1-3 dollars and sell at 4-5 dollars. Flippers know that the cans of soup will not sell above 5 dollars very often, so they cannot be bothered to sell them that high.
Ruoh roh shaggy there is a soup shortage - flippers and manipulators have bought the fresh stock, but that is not the root problem - the soup delivery truck stuck on the highway for another couple hours. Now you won't be able to get soup for under 5 dollars for this time period - simply because the supply of low cost soup has not made it to the store yet. You can wait for the delivery or buy from some flippers for a reasonable price ( remember the lower prices are sales and discounts) or if their supply runs out you can pay twice as much from a manipulator.
The basic problem is the supply of super undercosted items is not constant - it varies throughout the week. Most people that complain dont realize they are complaining about undercosted items and they feel entitled to those lower sales/discounted prices.
It would be like you going to a shop the week after a sale and complaining about the normal cost of a can of soup. Sales/discounts are not always happening, therefore you cannot expect to get those kinds of low prices all the time, flippers or not.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
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I still don't see how buying something for X, then selling it for 2X, keeps prices DOWN. You've just DOUBLED the ASKING price.|
Originally Posted by Pitho
You want an idea of what salvage prices would look like without flippers?
Circuit boards. This is a fairly common salvage, and is USUALLY cheap, but every so often the supply gets bought out and they sell for like 100k+. It's not worth the slots for anyone to flip for an extended period of time, but they're useful enough that they get bought out and deal with horrible price spikes. Also even during these price spikes you still see people occasionally buying them for like 500 or 1k or a few k. That's what say, alchemical silver would look like EVERY DAY without flippers on it. Wild constant price spikes. Basically, what the goat just said. |
Now, that won't stop people from bidding high. But it DOES stop people from having to bid above 2X just to get what they want if they only wanted it for X.
Also, regarding supply, bidding low on something and getting it is taking supply out of the market. You just deprived someone else of getting the item for that price who intended to use it. Then you relist it out of their price range. How is that keeping prices low?
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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Realistically, you can earn 100 million influence a day with almost no effort. Prices should not be a problem for anyone. 1k, 10k 100k for a salvage - its all the same - chump change.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
I still don't see how buying something for X, then selling it for 2X, keeps prices DOWN. You've just DOUBLED the ASKING price.
Now, that won't stop people from bidding high. But it DOES stop people from having to bid above 2X just to get what they want if they only wanted it for X. Also, regarding supply, bidding low on something and getting it is taking supply out of the market. You just deprived someone else of getting the item for that price who intended to use it. Then you relist it out of their price range. How is that keeping prices low? |
If you don't make that kind of influence a day - take up running AE missions and alignment missions once in a while to pad your influence by selling good recipes /crafted IOs on the market.
If you are that poor that 100k is so penny pinching for you - you need to examine how to increase your influence gain.
salvage prices are minuscule compared to what you could earn if you wanted to bother trying. The market is not a store and the items are not always for discounted prices. Patience is required or you have to pay higher prices. Demanding that you should never pay more than 500 influence ( or whatever arbitrarily low value you want) is absurd in a pvp market place.
Stop being lazy and earn more influence or just stop whining. You are not entitled to under costed prices because the market is not a store. You could alternately attempt to understand how pricing and patience works but that is probably impossible.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
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Captain Super needs to make a pile of Widget X enhancements for the Widgeteer Badge. In pursuit of this goal he buys up nearly the entire stock of Statesman's Jockstrap salvage, leaving only a few wildly overpriced remnants on the shelf.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
I still don't see how buying something for X, then selling it for 2X, keeps prices DOWN. You've just DOUBLED the ASKING price.
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Kid Sidekick happens along, needing a Statesman's Jockstrap to craft the Hairy Eyeball recipe that dropped for him earlier. But horrors, there are hardly any left on the market and all of them are tremendously expensive! Kid Sidekick has to do without for now.
If only it wasn't for those dastardly badgers buying up and destroying all the cheap salvage!
Now, let us imagine that Captain Super is, rather than a destructive badger a productive flipper.
He buys up lots and lots of underpriced Statesman's Jockstrap salvage that would otherwise have been destroyed. He then re-lists it as a markup that lags behind what he knows the salvage is "worth".
So when Kid Sidekick rolls up with his shopping list he finds a plentiful supply of Statesman's Jockstraps available that are well within his budget.
That's how recirculating salvage at a small markup keeps prices down.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Oo, can I play too? I always enjoy reading these threads. When I started doing so I learned a fair bit about basic economics.
I think part of the problem anti-flippers have conceptually is that they imagine the market as static. There are 100 Alchemical Silvers on the market. The flipper comes along and buys 50 of them. Now there are 50 left. Reduced supply means the prices can go up, especially if the flipper relists half the supply at a higher price than they bought it. Evil flippers are raising prices.
The market is not static. It is a flow of stuff. Sometimes a trickle, sometimes a flood, depending on the time, the day, and a big dose of chance. There are 100 Alchemical Silvers. Check again in 20 seconds. Maybe now there are 50. Maybe 200. Maybe there are still 100, but they won't be the same salvage. Those are sold, and more have taken their place. As supply and demand vary, so does the price. It does this naturally, obeying simple, well understood economic principles. Since supply and demand can vary quite a bit, even moment to moment, so do prices.
It's important to remember this about flipping. If you want to make money, your buying price can't be too low, and your selling price can't be too high. You want fast slot turnover; bids sitting unfilled, or salvage sitting unsold won't earn anything. More than one flipper must compete, each one trying to bid just a little more, and sell for just a little less. These two things act to tamp down the extremes of the market, so the lower-end, wait-five-minutes price for salvage is raised, and the high-end, buy-it-nao! price comes down
Furthermore, regular supply is secured. You can always come to the market and get your Alchemical Silver for even less than the flipper is paying (by bidding a bit lower and waiting ten minutes instead), or you can buy-it-nao for the prices that will never hit absurd extremes based on unpredictable factors.
Of course, as a couple of folk have mentioned, this doesn't apply to most things in the market. There are far better ways to make money than flipping- flipping salvage is too much work for too little return, and most recipes have turnover that is too slow for attractive flipping.
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We'll have none of that logic nonsense here!
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Originally Posted by seebs
Will you stop cluttering this thread with concrete real-world experimental data? We're looking for baseless speculation and a strong sense of entitlement here!
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No, you've asked for twice as much.|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
I still don't see how buying something for X, then selling it for 2X, keeps prices DOWN. You've just DOUBLED the ASKING price.
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You haven't necessarily doubled the price people will pay -- they may pay more than the asking price, or they may not pay your asking price.
The only way it definitely has an effect is if you make both transactions, in which case, it keeps prices down by reducing the amount of inf on the market.
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| Now, that won't stop people from bidding high. But it DOES stop people from having to bid above 2X just to get what they want if they only wanted it for X. |
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| Also, regarding supply, bidding low on something and getting it is taking supply out of the market. You just deprived someone else of getting the item for that price who intended to use it. Then you relist it out of their price range. How is that keeping prices low? |
If I have a bunch of salvage, and I go to WW, and I see that some common salvage I have has zero bidders, I probably vendor it to make it stop taking up inventory space.
If I see there's a bidder, I probably list it at 1inf to make it stop taking up inventory space.
If the flipper hadn't been bidding, you wouldn't have been able to buy that item from me for any price, because I would have just vendored it.
So flippers increase the total supply that's on the market.
Now add in the fact that, since there are multiple sellers, they compete.
The net result is that prices are driven down. In the absence of flippers, you'd pay anywhere from 1inf to 1Minf if you wanted the item, and sometimes there wouldn't be a single one up for sale. Once the flippers start providing a consistent market -- one where people can always sell something and get more than the vendor will pay -- salvage becomes much more available, and prices tend to stabilize. Sure, there's still people paying more or less, but your chances of being able to buy something for a reasonable price have gone WAY up.
I'd rather have a 95% chance of being able to buy something for 50k inf than a 20% chance of being able to buy it for 50 inf, a 10% chance of being able to buy it for 100k inf, and a 70% chance that there are none for sale at all.
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Exactly!|
Originally Posted by Pitho
You want an idea of what salvage prices would look like without flippers?
Circuit boards. This is a fairly common salvage, and is USUALLY cheap, but every so often the supply gets bought out and they sell for like 100k+. It's not worth the slots for anyone to flip for an extended period of time, but they're useful enough that they get bought out and deal with horrible price spikes. Also even during these price spikes you still see people occasionally buying them for like 500 or 1k or a few k. That's what say, alchemical silver would look like EVERY DAY without flippers on it. Wild constant price spikes. Basically, what the goat just said. |
At one point, as an experiment, I got a stack of brass, then listed a stack of brass at 250k, and bid on a stack of brass at 500. A while later both orders were filled...
But that would be a STUPID way to try to make money, because in the week or so it took, I could have made more money by buying a handful of mid-range recipes and crafting them. Heck, I could have made more money by putting a few slots into bidding 150 inf on level 45 common recipes.
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And who said i was being lazy or whining? My net worth in-game is close to 3 billion inf, so i can afford things, however I'm simply confused by the idea that people here posit that buying stuff and selling it for more keeps prices down. It seems to rely on "stabilizing supply" which "stabilizes prices", but the fact is if people who wanted to use stuff could get it for the price that a flipper or manipulator got it at, then no one would have to pay more than that cost, thus there'd be no further demand, thus the costs would be stable, and lower.|
Originally Posted by Lohenien
Stop being lazy and earn more influence or just stop whining. You are not entitled to under costed prices because the market is not a store. You could alternately attempt to understand how pricing and patience works but that is probably impossible.
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Now, Goat came in with an example I can sort of understand: badgers who unintentionally screw with market prices trying to get their badges. However, to assume that badgers are the sole cause of item destruction, and as a result price inflation due to lack of supply, would be laughable.
And i noticed that so far everyone's been discussing salvage. What about RESPEC RECIPES? Y'know, those things Smurphy made zillions of inf on by flipping? Or Purples? Maybe prices wouldn't be so high if everyone who wanted to equip them could have bought them by now, but were denied when someone else bought and re-listed.
On the theme of the thread, i'd make all items "locked" on the -second- character to own it. So you could have something drop and sell it, but the character who bought it or had it given to them couldn't get rid of it, short of destroying it. There'd probably end up being some hoarding (oooh, what if i need this eventually?!) but i doubt that'd do any more to raise prices than what flippers and manipulators do already.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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This, here, is key. Supply is not static. It's a river. Any player, marketeer, flipper, farmer, whatever, only dips in a hand. It doesn't lessen the flow, which comes from every player in the game buying and selling. It's very, very difficult for any player to affect that flow. You're just hugely outnumbered.
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Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Also, regarding supply, bidding low on something and getting it is taking supply out of the market. You just deprived someone else of getting the item for that price who intended to use it. Then you relist it out of their price range. How is that keeping prices low?
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Gotcha.
1k items posted at 60k by flippers
1k bids posted at 11k by flippers
10 items posted at 50k by smart sellers.
10 bids posted at 45k by smart buyers.
All sale prices are above all of the bid prices resulting in no sale. It does however, create a market where some one can post a sale at <45k for an immediate sale, or purchase order at >50k for an immediate purchase. Actual prices would be all over the place, this example just shows how the sealed bid system can be used to lock in high prices, while smart strategy can still manage to make an immediate sale. The flippers inventory won't move until smart supply hits 0. Some thing that can easily happen during peak play times.
Have you considered running for public office? I understand they need people like you.