On the nature of ebil and marketeering

No, but!

I'm a newbie myself. Only been playing about four months. So I asked a friend who's been playing for 6 years.

His advice:

"1. Punch dudes
2. Sell everything that drops on the market for 1 inf.
3. Get SOs.
Now you are balanced against the entire game at defaul difficulty.
Better than that will require more effort, but is also 100% optional."

As he observes, expanding on point #3:

"Get SOs. They were perfectly good for the first couple of years I played the game, and the game has not been made harder. And they're way, way, easier to obtain now than they were then."

Now, to be fair, I don't actually do this. I sort of enjoy marketeering, and I love IOs, so I spend time and effort on salvage and crafting. So here I am, 4 months into playing the game, and all my characters either have a ton of IOs, or a bunch of empty slots because I ran out of market slots for buying stuff. I have around 2B inf lying around. I'm not even trying very hard; 80% of what I do is just buy something I want, notice that the enhancement is more expensive than the recipe, and bid up, craft, and sell a stack of them.

But seriously. This game is not hard and you can have plenty of fun without even touching the market. If you want awesome phat lewts, you gotta put some time and effort in one way or another, but seriously, the devs have worked miracles making it easier and easier to do this.

And I bet you have to be at the gym in 27 minutes, too.

You argue that players play very casually, and that it's better for them to get a big pile of extra info that they can ignore?

Please. Give me more market information. I'm sure it'll stop my profiting. And while we're at it, don't throw me in that briar patch!

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Yep. I have a friend who basically never visits the forums who I've helped learn to use the market and the IO system in general. He doesn't really use the forums much at all, and I'm pretty sure he's never posted.

Another person around here was recently posting about his young son using the market and earning 100s of millions of inf on his own. Likely not a typical case, IMO, but I think still somewhat telling if true.

I'm quite suspicious of people coming to the forums (and who therefore by your definition are not the classic "casual player") who set themselves up as the spokesman and protector of the little people. It makes me wonder what they are selling.

Also, whoever uses the word fanboy first loses.

And again you ignore that it is in the so-called casual players interest to move inventory as fast as possible, because the natural pace of drops from playing the game is so high.

That's why AE exploits drive up the supply of rare salvage and drive down the supply of low salvage. It ain't because people don't know that low salvage would make them more money in theory; it's because when you're interested in beating up bad guys as quickly as possible, you don't want to deal with a gazillion low-value items every few minutes. They're basically burning tickets, on purpose, to manage their inventory space.

It is the anti-casual who insists that you can use alts to leave quadrillion listings up forever. I've been playing this game since launch. I enjoy the market not because I like to marketeer (I don't); I enjoy the market (and appreciate flippers) because I like to have an easy place to sell and items available to buy. Because, let me tell you, this game was much less interesting when there was no economy and no long-term build goals.

Period. Exclamation point. This is not a difficult concept. It's also the fundamental issue that anti-marketeers will not -- cannot -- address.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Yes, and happily, that means you can sell stuff to them of your own.

Jeez. You'd think the game forced people to commit to Buyer or Seller at character creation. The two are inter-related and mutually dependent.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

How does flipping fit this definition?

http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/wp-con...upplygraph.JPG

This is a supply/demand graph. Very basic economics. Flipping is rent seeking because it raises the price without affecting either the supply curve or the demand curve. It does not affect the supply curve since flippers themselves add no new IOs. Any IOs they place on the market were already before the flipper arrive. Flippers do not affect the demand curve because if someone were willing to buy the IO at the inflated flipper price they would (logically) be willing to buy it at the lower (pre flipper) price. So no increase in demand. The key point (and i'll be referring to this often) is that any IO a flipper lists will be more expensive then what they bought it for. This is very important and I'll expand on it later.

Since flippers do not increase demand or supply (ie improvement in value or productivity) but raise prices their actions are inflationary and rent seeking.

Now how does this hurt the CoH economy?

Take this rather basic example:

Assume there is an IO where the current sell price is 70 mill. While the prices move up and down they stay around this 70 mil mark. Now let say someone comes along as lists the same IO for sale at 30 mil. There could be a number of reasons for this, they could inexperienced, miss click, or just really desperate to sell. In any case now the market has a number of IOs listed at 70 mil and one listed at 30 mil. It's quite possible that people (due to limited time or laziness) people may well continue to bid at 70 mil. Due to it's low cost the 30 mil IO will sell very quickly (at 50 mil over price). The buyer does not care (they do not know) but the selling is overjoyed. This I have no problem with. The seller contributed to the market and got lucky, nothing wrong with that. With the extra funds the seller can use them to purchase IOs of their own.

Whats also possible is that a buyer bid creeps and snags the IO at 30 mil and they get a bargain. The seller does not care (they listed at that price) but the buyer gets a bargain. With the savings the the buyer makes they can also put that towards buying other IOs.

The market works fine.

Now the flipper enters the picture. The flipper knows that sometimes the IOs are sold at lower prices so puts in a number of low bids in order to catch a few. Eventually they buy said IO at 30 mil. They immediately relist that IO at 50 mil. Its lower then the market price so that's good right? Well actually no, it's irrelevant. The flipper has no control over the the 70 mil IOs. They will list at 70 mil regardless of what the flipper does. All the flipper did was remove one 30 mil IO and replace it with a 50 mil IO. Simply the same IO 20 mil more expensive.

Now imagine if, for example, all the 70 mil IOs sold out. The next IO up for purchase would be for 50 mil. Flippers claim they are lowering the price but if they weren't there the next IO for sale would be 30 mil. Flippers claim "but no one would of found out about it!". Well they found it didn't they? Who is to say someone else wouldn't of found if not for them? Either way the IO when sold is now sold for 50 mil instead of 30 mil. There has been no price reduction either short nor long term. The flippers increased the price.

Now you can say "but people can bid against flippers for the cheap IOs!" Indeed they can but they won't always win of course, especially if they are a large number of flippers. Every time the flipper "wins" the IO instead of the IO going into a build and thereby increasing that players ability to create more IOs from playing (ie the capital is put to use) it instead goes back onto the AH where it benefits no one. Once it is sold it no more effectively then the IO sold at 30 mil but now the buyer has 20 mil more for it. Whenever a flipper wins the market loses because every time a flipper wins the capital (IO) increases in price (lowering demand) and is delayed from being employed (ie creating more IOs in the future). This is why flippers hurt the market.

The interesting thing is how many flippers there are at a particular IO is somewhat irrelevant for how much it costs. As said before flippers do not have any effect on supply. It does not matter whether there is one, ten or a hundred flippers at a particular IO, only a fixed amount will be listed at the low price at any one time. How many flippers bidding has zero effect on this. What eventually drives flippers away from an IO is that so many flippers arrive that it takes too long to get successful bids so they move to another IO that is more time efficient. It's for the this reason you didn't see many flippers Red Side pre merge. Not because there was potential for abuse (there was) but because it took to long for that manipulation to have results. Flippers are in it for a quick buck not the long haul.

The key point to remember is that an IOs are always cheaper before flippers. Always, if they wasn't it wouldn't be flipped now would it? Flippers can't control what other people list but any IO they list will always be more expensive then for what they bought it for (unless they screwed up).

Some flippers may say "but we reduce price volatility!". This is true. They do it by removing the cheap IOs and replacing them with more expensive ones. Thanks flippers! With friends like that who needs enemies?

They also say "well we keep the moving fluid!" This is a spurious argument at best. Flippers have no effect on supply (as started before). All they do is raise a price of an IO. Any 1st year economics student will tell you that any increase in price (without an equal increase in value) leads to a reduction in demand. Remember the supply/demand graph from earlier? If you keep supply the same and increase price demand falls. Lower demand equals a slower market not a faster one.

Finally they sometimes say "we keep people's slots open!" This is true but now that you can mail IOs between characters this is far less of a benefit then it might of been. In addition the only people who tend to fill up there slots to such an extent tend to be the flippers themselves. It seems a high price to pay for such a minor benefit.

The fact is flippers provide a negative net benefit (since they do sometimes free up slots) to the market. The only people that get a net positive benefit from flippers actions are flippers. Everyone else is worse off.

You've provided a definition of Rent Seeking that one can apply to flipping.

So?

All you've done is said that you can call flipping something else. You haven't proven that it's bad at all, just asserted that the something else, in a different economy which has things like food and water as opposed to being entirely comprised of bugatti veyrons and yachts that turn into helicopters, is a bad thing.

Then you get all asserty about how there cannot be positive effects.

I know it's a big post, and it's clear you're very proud of it, but that doesn't make you right, nor does saying 'time to end this' do anything to further that. It shows us that you are resolute, that you are being decisive, and that you are embarking on what you think is a killing blow, but all you're showing us is your devotion to being wrong.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

His definition doesn't even fit.

Max procedes from the flawed premise that flippers do not (cannot, in his mind) increase either supply or demand. We know that increased movement of inventory is an incentive to sellers in the CoH economy, because players are severely inventory limited -- which means that supply is increased. We know that increased supply is an incentive to buyers to participate in the market, which means that demand is increased.

We also know that flippers cannot arbitrarily raise prices. In order to make a profit, the flipper must be able to buy low, but he also must be able to keep his asking prices low -- because the CoH market does not (contrary to Max's apparent assumption) sell your goods unless you have the lowest asking price. The highest bid is matched to the lowest listing in CoH.

That's why he's stuck with 14 Regenerative Tissues that he's not gonna sell anytime soon. And that's why, if he needs those market slots soonish, he's going to lose 49 million influence in listing fees. The dude doesn't know what he's doing.

Flippers benefit the market by increasing stability -- raising supply when demand is high, and raising demand when supply is high. In game terms, they make life easier for sellers who are inventory-limited, and make life easier for buyers who want items now. (Buyers are also inventory-limited, which is just one of many reasons that the impatient-bidding-prices we sometimes see on the market are not proof of irrational forces in the market.)

There is no magic button that any marketeer can push to raise prices. They cannot raise prices across the board, because -- as Max so helpfully points out -- they don't actually generate influence. They lower the inflating supply of influence through listing fees, in fact -- which is why StabBot's theory that flipping is the cause for the steady, across-the-board rise in prices cannot be taken seriously.

More flippers means more competition to list for the lowest asking price, which drives prices down. That is self-evident fact. Because you continue to ignore how the game's mechanics work, you cannot make an effective argument.

Further, and finally, the pre-merge Red-side market wasn't bereft of marketeers because they wanted a quick buck. It was bereft of participants because it wasn't active enough (a vicious cycle), which meant that you often couldn't buy the things that you wanted in a timely fashion, at any price.

See, having things to buy is sorta the point of making lots of money.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

How can you raise supply when you add no new IOs? You add no new IOs. Wait for that to sink in. How can you add the same IOs and say your increasing supply? It's gibberish. How can you raise supply when you add no new IOs to the market?

As for market slots. It's called email. Easy enough to run half a dozen toons at the AH.

More flippers does not drive the buy price down. You know why? Because you don't control what other people list that. How many flippers bidding makes no difference if no one is putting up the cheap IOs for them to buy. Flippers can bid whatever price they want. Go make a 100 bids for Regen uniques for 1 inf. Hell make a 1000. Make 10000. Do you think that will fall to 1 inf just because you bid for it at that price. Do you live in that much of a fantasy world? Is your understanding of economics that poor?

Apparently increasing demand, while keeping supply the same lowers the price. There goes 100 years of economic theory. Forget Adam Smith or Keyes, Obitus is going to change the face of economics!

http://www.mikeonads.com/wp-content/..._demand_11.JPG

There is a supply demand graph. Please show me how you lower the price without increasing supply. I really want to see it.

Okay, so flippers putting up bids for very low prices does *not* drive prices down because flippers can't control what people are willing to list at.

But flippers putting up items at a very high price *does* drive prices up, because flippers can control how much people are willing to spend on things.

Glad we got that cleared up.

Try looking up words like 'game' or perhaps a specific game like 'Monopoly'. But hey, keep flinging insults where your lack of reason finds a home.

Yep. Rent seeking profit. It's like how cyber squatters buy a website domain names cheap and sit of them trying to a get a much higher price later on.

In your first sentence the flipper can't effect the price because they do not have ownership of the capital. Since they do not provide the IO themselves they have to rely on someone else putting up a cheap IO for them to buy.

In the second sentence they do.

Ownership makes a difference. Can people bid lower for the newly priced IO? Of course. But increased demand with the same supply equals higher prices.

You spent all that space posting nothing new except the links to the definition of rent. After that, you went on to repeat things that have already been discussed in the thread. You showed only that a flipper raises the price floor, not the price that lies somewhere statistically between the price floor and price ceiling. You did not show that the flipper raises either the ceiling or the average/median/equilibrium value (choose whatever trend collapse method best fits). The current price floor, or any low-ball price that happens along for that matter, is not the item's "going rate" in market terms. It's a part of a statistical clump of data moving around some other number.

If the flipper did not change that number, then they did not cause inflation. Nothing you posted addressed that, and everything I just said above has already been discussed.

Does not raise the average price? Excuse me?

How does repricing low priced IOs at a higher value while not touching the top end not raise the average price? It does not effect the high end (the buy it naow price) true. Unless the IOs at the high end are sold out. Then the newly listed prices (who become the new market rate) are very much inflationary.

Remember too not everything is sold at the going rate. If it did there would be no flippers.

At no point do flippers lower prices. At best they are neutral.

This is a game.

When people see something is worth selling they sell it. So flippers raise the floor selling price so people like me will sell it. If it is too low I just vendor or delete it.

Keep in mind if you seriously have any real interest in discussing this and not making some statement that there are two ways to consider supply in the game. There is the supply generated by drops and there is the supply for sale on the market.

So rather than assuming you know more than everyone else here perhaps you may want to open your mind and read. You are arguing nothing that we haven't seen for 3 1/2 years.

Consider how most people play the game and then come to use the market. What you see as market problems caused by manipulation are actually caused by how players use the market as a store to buy things now and not use it with patient bidding.

The second fallacy most people then fall into when they get that is "well it's a game so I shouldn't have to work for these things". The devs disagree. If they didn't there would not be rare drops in the game. They also state repeatedly the game is designed around SOs which is what people don't have to work for. IOs are a luxury item in the game.

The third fallacy most people then fall into is in the mistaken belief that because they don't make influence as quickly as many other that those others are either farmers, flippers or inf buyers.

And it goes on. Rather than learning most people simply decide it cannot be done or it cannot be done "fairly".

I spent a year playing the game to purple my warshade combining drops with selling drops smartly with buying what I lacked smartly. I then spent 3 days just buying it now for my controller to purple out. So I know how to do it and I know how it is done and you are just wrong.

Average is not median.

You misunderstand. The claim is not that the flipper personally adds supply. The claim is that the flipper's activity attracts more sellers. Market instability dissuades sellers. Easily viewable price trends in the sale history make sellers who are not avid marketeers more prone to list their good at that trend price. They feel more confident that they can pick out a price that neither leaves them with an overpriced item nor sells for far less than its current worth.

What? What are you even talking about?

In order to sell goods, a flipper has to buy them. If they bid for 1 inf, they won't buy anything. They have to outbid other buyers. If I'm a flipper and there's another flipper, I have to outbid that other flipper to buy stuff. The other flipper is also selling, and if I want my purchases to sell, I have to undercut his sale price. If no one ever bid creeps to find our sale prices, then no, it won't matter. As a fairly high volume seller I can tell you that doesn't always happen near the price ceiling, and just one sale undercutting your sale price can leave you with a stack of inventory you can't sell for weeks or months.

I never said they don't touch the top end. I said they don't raise it. A flipper tends to collapse the low and high prices towards one another. A flipper hopes people buy their product at the highest price out there, but they list at a lower price in order to promote that their item is the one bought. If anyone actually notices that, the top-end price trends downwards.

I wonder how many would accept the volatility in exchange for lower average prices? Paying an awfully high price for some rather nebulous stability.

For your second paragraph, whats your point? I deny none of it. But the fact of the matter is every IO you flip is listed at a higher price then when you bought it. That's the very nature of flipping. Yet flippers are telling me they are lowering the price. This goes against everything I have been taught about economics and it really makes no logical sense.

How do they collapse the top end? The IOs still list at 'buy it naow' are unaffected.

Would the newly flipped IOs be cheaper then the top end? Yes. Would they be even lower if they weren't flipped? Yes.

Flippers raised prices.

I wonder if you would directly quote where someone told you that, because I reviewed the last couple pages (at 50 posts per page) and didn't find that claim. The closest thing I saw is that multiple flippers raises sale competition which accelerates price collapse, which is not the same thing as saying it lowers the price. (Just the price ceiling.)

There is no way to get around it. Flippers make profit from making the IOs they list more expensive then they were before.

They may well lower the price ceiling. But if they hadn't flipped those IOs the price ceiling would of been lowered even more (because flippers raise the price of every IO they list).

I addressed that. There is no guarantee that the sales will continue at the "buy it now" price. I sell enough stuff to know that's not remotely guaranteed. I list things lower than that and while I still make the high end sale plenty often I also find someone buys my good just above my sale price plenty often, too. We marvel on this forum regularly about how often people will overpay, but that doesn't mean it always happens.

In the very short term, if everyone who buys continues to pay "buy it now" prices, yes, they can raise the short term average price. Over the longer run of 10, 20, 50 sales? It's extremely unlikely.

I'm not guessing about this. I sell a lot of stuff, and I sell at the same kinds of prices a flipper would use, because like them I want to both maximize sale price and minimize time-to-sale. What you're describing doesn't match my experience.