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I posed this one in another thread (well not specifically, but the whole "badgers/crafters burning supply vs other uses" issue) and got no good answer.|
Originally Posted by Roderick
OK, so here's the big question:
Goat spent a few hours of his time and millions of his Inf to give people more money than they asked for for items that they were selling. If he had been crafting hundreds of [Invention: Endurance Reduction (Recipe).50] to put into storage and take out as his characters reached level 47, would he be more or less evil than he is for deleting the items he chose to delete? |
I posit it matters not what the motivation of the *buyer* is (which is unknowable anyway, barring a confessional thread like this).
Demand is demand. The market responds the same regardless of player motivation.
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Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Went to sell some NMIs last night and they were all dirt cheap (<500inf).
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=P
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Dumple: Did you post them for 49K and wait?
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So there has been extensive coverage of three or four possible ways to prevent this catastrophe from ever occuring to anyone. |
You know what? You guys are right. Nobody died. Sure some people probably got frustrated yet again with the market being so screwy but a little frustration is probably good for 'em. Help them deal with it in real life. If a few more players throw up their hands and give up on the market, no big deal. More for all of us. I am sure some noble purpose was fufilled by doing this, I guess I am just too n00b to get why this was a good idea. So again- well done! |
I'd like to mention here that levelling isn't like getting hit by lightning. You can usually kind of see it in advance and plan for it.
... or is that crazy talk?
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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Are you not going to be able to feed your kids if you dont get an NMI? Really? Are you in any mortal peril? Is any task going to take you hours longer if you dont get one of these? Is Goat buying up all the excess so he can sell it back at a profit even? It is not even remotely similar. If the Goat was selling these you may have a case. |
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Its exactly the same principle. The guy selling flashlights has other things he can be doing. I live in a state that has antigouging laws that go into effect after natural disasters, hurricanes in particular. All they do is insure that additional supply of needed commodities is unavailable, and that the major suppliers get to work at their own pace.
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This would be more akin to Goat buying all the flashlights from the gougers and then lighting them on fire with a flamethrower while maniaclly cackling as another truck marked "Cheap Flashlights" pulls up for delivery. Its silly and pointless but not in any way detrimental to anyone with half a wit to look at the second truck.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
The conclusion you make about more people being satisfied by this than upset seems a little off. It's likely that for every item sold at the inflated price there were several people that tried to buy and went away discouraged .
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AND they were still dropping off of regular dumpy thugs. Funny thing, huh? |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Strange what happens when demand returns to 'normal'!
=P |
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Originally Posted by Fulmens
Dumple: Did you post them for 49K and wait?
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There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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an addenda:|
Originally Posted by Frogfather
I can accept you think Im off in that point, just as I think we have no idea how many were supplied to Goat, how many were destroyed and what the typical NMI demand flow is. But merely as a factor of inf theres far more inf going to people selling than the total amount ever spent buying over that span. When you factor in theres always a backlog of NMIs to be sold and Goat was creeping into that, Im certain more were bought than were being supplied. If thats the case then it only stands to reason that more people on the demand side were selling theirs than a typical night. If Supply is Greater than Demand and Goat Demand is Greater than Supply then it stands to reason (according to the Transitive Property of something or other) that Goat Demand is greater than Demand....therefore more suppliers were happy than demanders unhappy.....
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If we assume I'm right about the ~50 million inf *other* people spent on NMIs while I was probing the upper range of prices, I spent at least that much buying up the outstanding supply. So that's roughly 100 million inf spent on 'junk' salvage that started the evening selling for about 100 inf.
Nobody with money problems was buying *any* of the NMIs on offer past the first dozen or so stacks I deleted. Buyers willing to pay 500k+ for a garbage drop DON'T CARE ABOUT MONEY.
And anyone budget conscious has to be previously acquainted with the concept of placing a bid and leaving it up for a few minutes.
So my foray cost me and other rich people some inf we don't care about due entirely to curiosity & impatience and didn't impose any hardship on anyone else that isn't already inherently present in the market.
The rending of garments and pulling of hair over something this benign is genuinely hilarious and speaks to a profoundly shallow understanding of what markets are and how this one specifically works.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Funny story!
So I had a character that was parked at level 4 for my guide as an experiment. As I have opted out of that experiment, I had a friend PL him to 10 in AE so I could get the little bit of money he had on him.
I ended up with a few AE tickets and decide to random roll on bronze recipes. I listed all that I could (minus 1) for 1 inf. A few were deleted - oh well
When he was done rolling, he ended up with 14 tickets. I figured they were wasted anyways, so I rolled on common salvage. I picked high end arcane for no particular reason and got...
A Nevermelting Ice.
I chuckled about this. Then I went to the market, and being a truly evil marketeer, I listed it...
for 1 inf.
It didn't sell.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Ok, one more time.
It isn’t about NMI or any other particular thing that you manipulate the price of because you can.
It is about how people perceive the market and whether it is a good and reliable source of salvage or recipes and anything else, IN THEIR EYES. Despite opinion to the contrary, perception is important.
I certainly understand how the market works, I understand what you did. But maybe it has escaped your notice that most players do not understand this. An incident like this tells someone doesn’t understand the market or is learning the market or who wanted to buy or sell NMI that the price lay somewhere between 100 inf and 3 million inf, that scarcity of an item are only tangently related, and that prices are set by market demand only when someone with a lot of money isn’t probing the upper price range for fun.
Isn’t one of the things that almost every market guide preaches is to know the value of what you are selling so you can price and buy appropriately?
Learning the market as you know it means understanding the invention system, which items sell and why, having some knowledge of the intrinsic value of an item (Alchemical silver is good, whatever the price. NMI only valuable rarely) and a little knowledge of economics helps. When prices get crazy for no discernable reason it makes it harder for people to understand how the market works.
Almost everyone I have played in game with or chatted with or debated with on the marketing forum has been helpful and knowledgeable. Most express exasperation that people don’t understand how to make money on the market. So I don’t understand why you can’t see that messing around with prices because you can is a bad idea because it makes the market appear unreliable, incomprehensible and beyond the patience of most people to actually get much use of.
Of course there are other ways to get things. Those ways exist primarily because of the perception that the market is unreliable, incomprehensible and beyond the patience of most people to actually use effectively.
I am sure that many of you disagree with this and that’s perfectly fine. All I am suggesting is that if people don’t understand how the market works, things like this make it much harder to do so.
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Originally Posted by DevilYouKnow
Learning the market as you know it means understanding the invention system, which items sell and why, having some knowledge of the intrinsic value of an item (Alchemical silver is good, whatever the price. NMI only valuable rarely) and a little knowledge of economics helps. When prices get crazy for no discernable reason it makes it harder for people to understand how the market works.
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I have a decent idea of what IO sets are "good" and what are not. While this is one criteria for determining a niche, it really has a small impact on choices. Enfeebled Operation for example, has awesome def to smash and lethal. It offers not 1, but 2 separate bonuses to this effect. Yet, you can't give it away more often than not. Just because a set is used often does not make it a good investment.
As for salvage, I honestly have no clue what things "should" cost and neither do most of the people who play this game. White = 1 - 100,000 yellow = 1,000 - 15,000 rare = about 2mil.
That's the same amount of "understanding" you'll get from your average player and it works just fine.
What we don't get, what we just can't wrap our mind around, is the fact that Goat did this at non-peak times. He did it for fun. He had such a minuscule impact on a single piece of salvage that *could* have been selling for loads all on its own and you come storming in waggling your finger saying how this is bad!
Smack my hand with a ruler over something as stupid as this? I think not.
You keep coming in here ******** about people's perceptions and I keep telling you the same thing. You're wrong. You won't admit it - I don't think you can - but there it is. The perception of the people in this game is impacted infinitely times more by the non-marketeers jumping in line to screw each other over than anything the marketeers do. Yet, through people's continued ignorance and your persistence in agreeing with philosophies you know are false, you help to facilitate, and indeed you even go so far as to propagate these falsehoods for the multitudes you claim to be coming here and judging us.
You bounce from one argument to the next when you have them taken away from you. You ***** about what your time is worth, yet you sit here wasting your precious time trying to defend something that is neither true, nor relevant in any way shape or form. You ***** about perception of the masses, yet here you are feeding that perception by limply arguing that its true. You ***** about costs and fairness and how casual players get hosed - yet fail to acknowledge that goat got screwed (money-wise) while many players got a metric crap ton more for something that's worthless and his direct influence couldn't even impact the market significantly while he was doing it! I was able to bid and receive a NMI for 500 while he was having fun.
You complain about supply, then point out that your friends, who are clearly the ones who got hosed for billions in this scheme, delete the exact same pile of dog turd salvage that was being messed with.
You point out how lazy your friends are. So much so that you feel the need to store salvage for them. You enable them. You allow them to justify not spending 5k on something because you will supply it to them for free. Entitlement... again.
Your arguments are contradictory in their own existence. Your arguments hold no value beyond your screaming that there is a perception that you yourself are enabling. Your arguments are old, tired, and in the end will do nothing more than perpetrate your belief that marketeers are essentially evil and screw with the good, law abiding folks of the game every chance they get. Its a perception that you know to be false - stop spreading it as gospel truth.
Well, I am sorry that you don't like my opinion and you can't see any merit in my view.
You really should relax. I thought we were having a reasonable discussion, but based on your last post clearly I have offended you (and probably others as well). That was not my intent and I did not realize that hard bitten marketeers were so thin skinned. Lesson learned.
Good luck and good hunting!
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I have a small problem with this...|
Originally Posted by heffroncm
Disagree. The beauty of this consignment house is there is no time limit and no fee on bids. You simply put up whatever you are willing to pay for something, then come back for it later. Your friends are choosing to bid until they can get it immediately. No one is forcing them to pay more than 500 inf.
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I understand that it's a "consignment house not a "store", but it's the only damn place to buy some stuff.
Kinda like living in a small town with a nearby Walmart, If you need something you can't get at the convenience store down the street - then you're probably going to Walmart, or doing without.
Ok, so lets say your cooking for a party and a recipe calls for something you don't have. So, you hop in the car and make a quick run to Wal-mart. When you get there, they don't have the (for fun = lets say) feta that your recipe calls for, and your Greek in-laws are going to be there for dinner!
(And you have plans to go on an family-only TF, or ski-trip, or whatever afterward.)
What are you going to do ask for a rain-check?
Wait around for the truck to come in at 3am and hope there's some that shipment?
Would you really hand them some cash as a 'down payment' on the next shipment of feta & tell them you'll be back later to see if there was any feta in the truck?
Would you do the same if it was Hummus or Pita Bread, or... IDK - Doritos?
What if you found out that from now on - you'll have to buy everything (non-perishable) on a layaway program?
"Oh, you want wheat bread... Okay then sir, you can pay now and come back later and see if we've gotten it in yet - I know that's insane sir but its our policy now. Well sir, I suppose you could go make your own bread."
I guarantee you there would be people going postal - hence the frustrations with the Market, particularly with Common Salvage.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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Originally Posted by Cardiff_Giant
I have a small problem with this...
I understand that it's a "consignment house not a "store", but it's the only damn place to buy some stuff. Kinda like living in a small town with a nearby Walmart, If you need something you can't get at the convenience store down the street - then you're probably going to Walmart, or doing without. Ok, so lets say your cooking for a party and a recipe calls for something you don't have. So, you hop in the car and make a quick run to Wal-mart. When you get there, they don't have the (for fun = lets say) feta that your recipe calls for, and your Greek in-laws are going to be there for dinner! (And you have plans to go on an family-only TF, or ski-trip, or whatever afterward.) What are you going to do ask for a rain-check? Wait around for the truck to come in at 3am and hope there's some that shipment? Would you really hand them some cash as a 'down payment' on the next shipment of feta & tell them you'll be back later to see if there was any feta in the truck? Would you do the same if it was Hummus or Pita Bread, or... IDK - Doritos? What if you found out that from now on - you'll have to buy everything (non-perishable) on a layaway program? "Oh, you want wheat bread... Okay then sir, you can pay now and come back later and see if we've gotten it in yet - I know that's insane sir but its our policy now. Well sir, I suppose you could go make your own bread." I guarantee you there would be people going postal - hence the frustrations with the Market, particularly with Common Salvage. |
And if we applied real life to this scenario, when you went to Wal-Mart and they didn't have your ingredient, you would go outside and bonk a squirrel on the head and get that ingredient from it.
Video game here. Not real life. Thanks!
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Don't forget your AE foodstamps, where you can gamble that you will get feta. Oh yeah, and sell all the other food ingredients you got while rolling to Wal-mart and pay for the whole dinner, not just the feta!
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Originally Posted by Misaligned
And if we applied real life to this scenario, when you went to Wal-Mart and they didn't have your ingredient, you would go outside and bonk a squirrel on the head and get that ingredient from it.
Video game here. Not real life. Thanks! |
I believe the metaphor fails because Walmart was bringing feta out of the back and people were buying it at regular prices in the middle of the so-called shortage.
I mean, a LOT of people are really concerned with keeping anyone from buying up the salvage and yet are not actually willing to do anything about it.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
If I can't buy caviar today for cheeps, but I know there'll likely be a sale next week (or the week after, or the week after that...), I'll wait. Same for feta cheese or anything else that is basically an optional good. What, you need that feta for a party you're throwing that night, and you can't reschedule? And some schmuck is buying up & burning all the feta in your town? And Gouda's not good enough? Well, yeah, that sucks, feel free to complain full and loud. I'll even ignore the fact that there's a random chance some feta will fall into your hands from the sky on a regular basis, since you're obviously very unlucky as well.
By the same analogy, the only ppl impacted by Goat were ppl who were planning on running a specific TF/trial/whatever that was starting RIGHT NOW, w/a specific toon, that had a specific recipe that he needed right then & there, and that recipe needed NMI. If you fall into that category, feel free to rant & rave. No one else should give two sh**s.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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We don't have the duty to educate those that would plug their fingers in their ears when someone tries to actually explain things to them. The kind of people that trust Fox News and think Obama is a secret muslim. They are already lost, they are unteachable, they can hold whatever idiot perceptions they like, and in turn we don't have to care about them.
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Originally Posted by DevilYouKnow
It is about how people perceive the market and whether it is a good and reliable source of salvage or recipes and anything else, IN THEIR EYES. Despite opinion to the contrary, perception is important.
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Culex's resistance guide
Yeah, have to agree that the metaphor fails. You say Wentworths is the WalMart in a small town in that it's the only place to aquire some things. Fact is, there are a number of boutiques, mom and pop shops, and competing chain stores in Paragon that offer everything you could want. Reward Merits, Alignment Merits, and Architect Entertainment Tickets can get you everything you need if you don't want to spend Wentworth's prices.
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Originally Posted by heffroncm
Yeah, have to agree that the metaphor fails. You say Wentworths is the WalMart in a small town in that it's the only place to aquire some things. Fact is, there are a number of boutiques, mom and pop shops, and competing chain stores in Paragon that offer everything you could want. Reward Merits, Alignment Merits, and Architect Entertainment Tickets can get you everything you need if you don't want to spend Wentworth's prices.
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There's also the old plain SOs that are ALWAYS buyable, no matter what.
Culex's resistance guide
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Originally Posted by Pitho
There's also the old plain SOs that are ALWAYS buyable, no matter what.
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Heathen.
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He's obviously satisfied with American cheese.
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Originally Posted by Misaligned
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An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
I like Muenster, that's an American cheese. Or at least that's what wiki says.
Culex's resistance guide
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Really, the SO enhancement stores are much closer to a Wal-mart analogy than WW. WW is closer to ...well, an auction house, like Lloyd's of London. Having the expectation that Lloyd's will always have the merchandise you are looking for at the price you expect to pay is rather presumptuous, I think. Even though, in this case, there is only one 'type' of auction house and everyone in the world uses it to sell items...it's closer to eBay, really, but there is no brick-and-mortar version. Still, would you expect to find whatever you are looking for at the price you want to pay on eBay?
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Originally Posted by Pitho
There's also the old plain SOs that are ALWAYS buyable, no matter what.
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Save Paragon one more time! http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html
Petition to end shutting down CoH:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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If they think it's a store and they want it to treat is like a store they're destined for disappointment, whether or not I overpay a lot of players for their junk salvage so I can delete it or not.|
Originally Posted by DevilYouKnow
Ok, one more time.
It isn’t about NMI or any other particular thing that you manipulate the price of because you can. It is about how people perceive the market and whether it is a good and reliable source of salvage or recipes and anything else, IN THEIR EYES. Despite opinion to the contrary, perception is important. |
You and your ilk always ignore the one fundamental truth of 'outrageous' prices- they're FANTASTIC if you're a seller.
And when some crazy dude is wildly overpaying for 'junk' like NMI that's a major benefit to anyone who bothers to list it during the feeding frenzy.
maybe our hypothetical borderline mongoloid can't grasp supply and demand well enough to understand why THING I WANT EXPENSIVE NOW!, but presumably they'd have no problem embracing THING I SELL WORTH PILES OF INF!
And the one does not exist without the other.
The market isn't a store.
The end.
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| But maybe it has escaped your notice that most players do not understand this. |
I do know how it works and I happily share my knowledge with anyone curious enough to ask.
I don't concern myself with the incurious and uninformed.
The information is available, it's not like anyone is forcing them to stay ignorant.
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| All I am suggesting is that if people don’t understand how the market works, things like this make it much harder to do so. |
I'm not surprised that fact skimmed past you without being noticed.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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You think the rest of us are imaginary?
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Originally Posted by Misaligned
Video game here. Not real life. Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
You think the rest of us are imaginary?
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Prove that you are not just some figment of my imagination and we'll talk.
Truth be told, Im guessing Nethergoat made more people smile than cringe during his manipulations. And that should stick nicely in his craw.
Geez dude, comparing a want item in a video game to a need item for simple human survival (albeit in a temporary situation) is downright disingenous that does more harm to your position than good.
Its exactly the same principle. The guy selling flashlights has other things he can be doing. I live in a state that has antigouging laws that go into effect after natural disasters, hurricanes in particular. All they do is insure that additional supply of needed commodities is unavailable, and that the major suppliers get to work at their own pace.
The conclusion you make about more people being satisfied by this than upset seems a little off. It's likely that for every item sold at the inflated price there were several people that tried to buy and went away discouraged.