The Flipper: Hero of the Markets

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

you can always count on Fulmens to rain logic on everyones parade!

>:e

Let me say that I agree with both of these sentiments before moving on to some questions.

If both ways of marketing hurt someone, why is the other "better"? Why is it that hurting the buyer is worse than hurting the seller? Both are most likely the same person. The net effect is the same. Scenario A) patient buyer "rips off" a quick seller who gets so little influence out of his sale that he can't afford current prices for item X they otherwise could. Scenario B) flippers compete against the patient buyers who now can't afford item X for the price they otherwise could.

If the net effect is pretty much the same, why are flippers bad and patient/intelligent buyers good, when both take advantage of the same thing: patience and intelligence? Is it because you (general you) don't flip and you are a patient buyer, so the flippers are the "opposing force" = bad?

ETA: I believe flipping overall produces the better result by ensuring supply and a minimum value for items. Stable prices are easier for (new) players to understand and keep track of, even though they might look high. If your argument is that "but they perceive them too high and never come back to market", the same can happen without flippers, too. The player comes to a market and sees an item going for anywhere between 1 inf and 20mil in the last 5, he bids up to 5mil and doesn't get it and calls the thing broken because someone else got the item for 1 inf and he didn't get it for 5mil. Stable prices at least offer the player a way to know about how far they are from getting the item. I believe wildly fluctuating prices put the players who don't want to spend time learning the markets off even more than slightly elevated but stable prices. Oh, and that kind of players seem to be the majority judging from multiple threads where people are raining hate on the flippers' parade.

One makes for a more pleasant game than the other.

Here's the thing. Unstable markets hurt random bystanders. Stable markets hurt only the people who were actively trying to take advantage of the unstable market. If you don't have any interest in the market, you're better off with a stable market -- meaning that stable markets are good for the huge majority of people who don't play the market and don't read this forum. Unstable markets can be profitable to people who want to play them, but even then, they're annoying -- and you can often make money more reliably in a stable market.

Basically, if I'm given a choice between making life hell for newbies and people who don't have the time or inclination to think about the market, or mildly inconveniencing a small number of people who don't care about the newbies and casuals... I'll take the latter.

It's not "buyer" vs. "seller".

Agreed. And then there's the other aspect of it: I suspect that, on the whole, the average price when flippers are around is lower than the average when they're not. Note that this isn't the same as saying that'd be true of the average prices of items that people are likely to flip compared to the average prices of things people aren't likely to flip. There are day traders in the stock market, but there aren't many people trying to day-trade regular, non-collectable, postage stamps... Because there simply isn't enough money involved to make it sensible. The stuff that's too cheap to bother flipping isn't cheap because it's not flipped, it's not flipped because it's cheap.

Realistically, it looks to me as though Alchemical Silver is really worth about 50k inf. Yeah, it's awesome being able to get a stack for 10k in a few days... But it sucks not being able to get any at all for under 100k when I just need one. Overall, the stable 50-60k market is better for me than wild fluctuations, at least when I'm in my role as "I just want to finish putting enhancements on my mastermind, is that too much to ask?"

Exactly as I thought, but different people benefit from different markets. A wildly fluctuating market is more pleasant for the person who is never in a hurry to get his items and knows what is a "realistically low" bid whereas a stable market benefits the people who treat the market as a store.


Me, too, but appears many players think that a wildly fluctuating market would be more newbie friendly, which is something I frankly don't understand. If I had joined this game today, I'd be much happier if the markets were easy to understand (quite stable prices) so that I could easily tell the value of most items. How the heck should I be supposed to know which piece of salvage is valuable if the prices shift between 1 inf and 3mil on a constant basis? What if my salvage was full, should I delete some to make room for possibly more valuable salvage? If every single time I visited the market and the prices of the salvage were hovering between a 20k range (say, 50k-70k or 10-30k) I could easily tell which of them was more valuable or if they had no value at all.



Certainly seems very much so. From what I've gathered, the anti-flippers think that the buyer gets screwed because of the flippers. If flippers didn't exist, they could get their stuff at a cheaper rate than what the flippers are willing to pay currently, provided they waited a few days at most. Then again, the seller would get screwed which seems to be something they don't mind at all.



Threads like this always remind me why I don't like economics in real life. People are stubborn and believe what they want, and because I don't have a degree in economics everything I tell them is non-sense, because their no-degree tells them the contrary. Then again, if I had a degree I'd be just another brainwashed citizen. Time to head back to maths land...

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

Anecdotal evidence. Sometimes referred to as "hearsay" or the "'person who' fallacy". It is inherently unreliable. Even if the anecdote is true, it could still be used to draw to a false conclusion. Especially as most anecdotes are remembered in the first place for being exceptional rather than ordinary.

Did I get it? I got it! Yay!

Huh? Brainwashed how?

Anyway, if you had a degree, you'd just be dismissed for being an "evil market person" or something. There's no end to the kind of rationalizations idiots make for things.

The flippers have always been there, but mainly on the level 40s for HH because those are most common and have the biggest market. I used to deliberately target the slightly lower level ones precisely because they were way cheaper and nobody seemed to be flipping them. This is a large part of what has changed. Again you talk about level 30 triages, max level.

My perception of this without any evidence to back it up is that there were always flippers/crafters, but there were few enough of them in the early days that they could exist in the best niches, and if you weren't buying the REALLY desirable items, you didn't see them. Now more people are market savvy, and so people are having to spread to more areas to make inf and the flippers/crafters are a lot more visible.

Would agree with you IF there was an in game constructive use for a recipe (like you could deconstruct it and get some salvage out or something, I don't consider the negligible amount of vendor inf to fall into that category). There isn't, a recipe and an IO ARE the same item as far as using them for anything other than making inf goes.

Maybe the forum cognoscenti use the terms precisely, but out in the chat channels the word flipper is used to describe both practices.

Brainwashed into believing what the government wants me to believe about economics.

They've found our ebil lair?!

Any argument about X changing the money supply affecting overall pricing needs to determine first just how big X has to be before it has an effect and just what that effect will actually be.

Real World example, increasing income taxes does not always or even usually increase government revenues.

I13:Merits
I14:Tickets
I18:Hero Villain Merits

They certainly seem to have been trying to provide the ability to not deal with flippers or the market in general to people.

Thats disingenuous at best.....the devs put alternate forms of supply that mitigate market interaction for those that dont want to deal with a consignment house. Flippers do not equate to the market, nor can you define the original intent.

Considering the source it's not that surprising.

I especially enjoyed the assumption that AE tickets are an anti-market tool as opposed to simply an alternative to regular drops for the players. Not to be outdone was the introduction of merits to thwart people running just one TF over and over.

But it does serve to illustrate the "thinking" of those who see the dark magiks of the flippers as the source of all the things in the market they don't like.

Well not everything. This is just play money. I'd never treat my real money the way I treat inf. Unless of course I could earn it as easily and quickly as I earn inf.

I love the way you missed what was said. I also like the way you try to say that flippers are not part of the market. While I can't divine the original intent I can certainly see the consequences.


Further proof that anything can be rationalized if you try hard enough? Or did you just fail to notice that you can make direct purchases with merits and completely bypass the market for recipes with them ? That tickets allow you to directly buy the salvage you want.

It may not have been their intent but between tickets and merits they put in a means where the market can be completely bypassed in a reasonably time efficient fashion. With HVMs they nailed that coffin shut.