On the nature of ebil and marketeering

Yes, it isn't a mysterious or malevolent phenomenon. It's a survival mechanism. Primitive humans were better off in packs or tribes. Our distrust of those we see as outside of our pack or tribe is just a natural side-effect of our instinctive desire to trust and support our tribe.

We're also prone to interpret our personal experiences as emotionally charged life lessons, rightly or wrongly. Back when personal experiences were limited to events like, "That black bear tried to maul me," our visceral response to personal experiences was a pretty darn good thing. Now, though, the world is much more complicated. The older I get, the more instinctive generalizations I find myself making, because this-or-that industry/company/interest group helped or harmed me -- or seemed to do. I have to make a conscious effort to try to evaluate each incident on its own merits, which can be difficult at times.

You mix all of the above together in the information age, and we can find a large group of like-minded people to form a virtual, echo-chamber tribe -- no matter how off-the-wall our views are.

Doesn't mean we're incapable of using reason to overcome (or if you like, retune) the filter of our biases (or our chosen tribe's biases). At least in Western society, most people are, I think, inclined to give the other side a fair hearing. Some people -- maybe even most people -- are, in fact, very reasonable about most subjects. But there is a temptation to listen only to those people you already agree with, and for the bulk of human history, those in power could and often did outright destroy all contrarian views or view holders.

Unfettered discourse is a wonderful, rare thing. It's also a comparatively new thing that humanity isn't necessarily hard-wired to like.

You're not one of us!

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Nice avatar!

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I'm shocked to hear that because I'm quite certain I have all the failings.

I'm a noob at this marketing stuff, but I seriously think that Marketeers have a minimal impact on the majority of the playerbase. A friends just started playing. i gave him 50mil on his first toon, and then he started a new one an d forgot that he could email himself inf. At around lvl 24 this cvame up, and i asked him what he;d been doing for inf. he said he'd just been listing everything he found, salvage and recipes, for 5 inf in WW (I told him that this was an easy way to get rid of it if he didn't want to bother getting into the market and IOs just yet) and he'd amassed enough inf that way to keep him enhanced just fine.

I think that the majority don't even know there are marketeers, tbh, in the same way that a lot of players don't know about the forums.

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I'm sure there must be. My class used handouts from the proff. So not sure where to point you. Did some quick searches and found a few interesting news articles but not the really good science itself. Hmm, I'll look around a bit more, see if I can't find a book and drop you a PM over the weekend.

But on change, this is one we all see, and as marketers we should keep in mind of our audience. Most people don't change, they walk in circles around the real issues and claim that because the west side of the building looks different from the east side, that now they are in a totally different place. Key example from my own life. I had a friend who spent years judging everyone and everything by how expensive it was. One day she said to me "I can't believe how shallow I used to be two years ago thinking real value was marked by prices. What really matters is people's opinion!" She still had pride/ego as her filter. Wealth and public opinion are really not significantly different. It is still a value system based on ego and competition. She thought she'd grown, but really all she did was turn in circles and describe the new view.

As Enalyios says though, change is possible. Logic is powerful and we can turn it inward. The subconscious does a lot, but we do have conscious control as well. You'll catch yourself making lots of little slipups because of habit, but once you start down the path of change, it becomes self-supporting by the very filtering process you are moving toward.

Let's keep in mind that there is no such thing as being INHERENTLY "morally ambiguous". It's YOU that's putting that label on it. You're discussing activities of which YOU disapprove.

no u

dem marketers ebil

I had visions of the cult from Hot Fuzz chanting "greater good" in unison. hehe.

The way I see it, anytime a person is upset about fairness in an online game, they need to really carefully look at themselves. Pretty much always there is some serious ego at work. Jealousy over what another person earned, or someone having a vet power, or getting better drops. These are all selfish and self-destructive feelings that have nothing to do with the game mechanics at all. Before changing the mechanics or even discussing them, first deal with the internal, non-game related problem.

Valuable discussions of mechanics do involve discussion of balance, and fairness. But it is balance between Defenders and Corrupters, not whether it is balanced that someone who plays 10 hours a day has the same in-game wealth as someone who plays 15 minutes per month. And valuable discussions of mechanics may be passionate, we all love our characters and take them a bit too seriously at least from time to time, but they aren't about personal attacks and personal wealth and personal benefit.

A thousand times no. The morality of "any" way of earning money is at the center of a multitude of political debates, whether or not they are framed in the political discourse as a morality argument.

Methods of earning cash which have, historically been considered morally wrong by some or even most humans:
Lending ("Usury")
Slavery
Capitalism (i.e., the capitalists gaining wealth from the workers' produce)
Imperialism
Development (i.e., the destruction of habitats or neighborhoods)
Marketing bodily harmful products (note the label: "sin" tax)
Exporting labor overseas (to make more cash for a company; nationalists find this a sin)
Unfettered trade (which includes much of the above; profitable for some, morally wrong for a host of reasons according to others)

A significant work in developing social perceptions comes from the work of social scientist Erving Goffman. He has many prominent works in the area, but one of his more noted works 'Frame Analysis' in 1974 lays a foundation that spurred pursuit by scholars in social psychology, pychological sociology and communication science.

The work of Fritz Heider goes back a bit further, to the 1950s, and centers on how human's process and make meaning of their experiences. His work in Attribution Theory is largely cognitive in nature but it sparked many avenues of pursuit from classic social psychology to data-processing, memory and brain functional models. There are many viewpoints, but those would be two prominent traditions to explore as roots and go where your interests take you.

Cheers

George Lakoff’s book “Don't think of an elephant” is an easy and accessible introduction to the area of cognitive science as it applies to “conceptual frames.” I highly recommend it. I think he would say it’s misleading to refer to the brains “logic centers” as if they were independent from the data-processing that comes before. The data-processing itself is in integral part of the decision making process, and as we know subject to all kinds of assumptions and prejudices.

Mind you, Lakoff is a political liberal and he’s writing the book from the perspective of “We have let the conservatives form the public debates on most issues of the day.” I don’t have a problem with this, but some people might find themselves not liking his examples of they go against your political ideas. He argues that if you enter a debate in which the other side has already “framed” the issue you are in for a rough time. You will have a hard time articulating your position because they concepts commonly used to discuss the topic will already reflect the opinions and attitudes of your opponent. You will end up implicitly supporting your opponent simply by using their language, metaphors, and ideas.

Let’s take an example of conceptual framing from this thread:

I completely understand this point and agree. I also think this way of framing the issue contributes to people continuing to believe that are victims. If I argue “I deserve something because of the time I spent” then I am implicitly agreeing with the model that “time spent should correspond to money gained.”

The potential counter-argument is “I work hard at this game and I can’t afford to buy any of the pretty enhancements you guys are able to afford. Don’t I deserve to enjoy this game too? Why should I spend a month saving up 10 million to pay the terrible markup you think you deserve for 5 minutes of crafting? It took me a MONTH and it took you FIVE MINUTES!”

Markets don’t know or care how long it took you to make your money, or how much you have. That information is completely and deliberately stripped out of the CoH interface, as it is in most modern markets. It continues to reside, however, in the brains of the people people who find themselves unable to purchase what they want.

I have tried several times to take someone who was complaining about the market and reframe it for them. “Yes, there are a thousand people with more money than you have. Those people want to give you their money. They want you to take the time to buy the recipe and salvage and make the enhancement for them. They will pay you millions if you can save them a few minutes of effort. Those people with more money are not a problem for you—they are an opportunity!”

One person, amusingly enough, claimed he did not want to do that because “he would just be contributing to the problem.” He really did not seem to get that to somebody who had 2 billion INF on their character, that 10 million actually is worth saving 5 minutes. I appreciate his desire to be fair, but from my perspective he was mainly choosing to remain poor. I think his underlying feeling was that making a profit is somehow, well, dirty.

Personal conclusion? People will be happier if they spend less time focusing on what they think they deserve and more on what they can accomplish.

Here's a link to one of many Lakhoff summaries:

http://blogcritics.org/politics/arti...ephant-review/

Bingo.

In many ways, the pure flippers are supported by the farmers, and it's all driven by inflationary pressures. If/when they decide to drain the money out of the system, there are going to be some major shocks indeed.

(grabs popcorn)

I can't wait! Change is fun!

All they need to do is not hide listing prices. If you could see what all IOs of certain type were listed at consumers could make better choices.

When is the last time you bought something in real life without knowing exactly how much it cost?

It would stop probably 99% of the market manipulation, cartels, etc instantly. There would be real competition between sellers, price volatility would fall dramatically and you wouldn't need a 1001 guides on how to use the market or make inf. No one needs a guide on how to use the Trading House in WoW and it gets hardly any (if any) complaints.

I always wonder who's idea it was to make the AH in CoH a blind bidding system. It was (and still is) a really bad idea.

But, it isn't a market like a corner store. It is more like an auction house... think ebay where the price is always different/changing based on the demands of other potential buyers.

I disagree with this, oh sure it would mean a buyer would pay my listing price as opposed to my listing price rounded to the nearest convenient round number but that isn't how I (or most marketeers) make money anyway. The fundamental issue causing a lack of price knowledge among players is not an inability to see the exact current prices, it's an inability to see what prices were when they were not around (i.e. what were the highs and lows over the last 24hours/7days). Showing the exact current price helps the BUY IT NAO buyer save a bit of inf but that's peanuts compared to what they could save with a 24hour bid, and exact pricing doesn't show them that.

No I don't just mean your listing IOs I mean all IOs of that type.

ie If there were 70 Mako's Bite Acc/Dam on the AH then the sale price for all 70 would be shown. A rational consumer would buy the cheapest one of course. It provides real competition though giving the buyer better market knowledge.

this competition already exists if the buyer cares enough to investigate prices.

I don't see requiring a tiny bit of effort from the buyer as a major imposition.
People who want deals can absolutely find them.

I much prefer being able to place my bid for the price I want to pay, and then go do something more fun. If the alternative is sitting in WW, waiting for someone to list an item at a price I like, and hoping that my connection speed and WW lag will let me get it before someone else does, then no, thanks.

Why not have all prices listed then? Doesn't hurt you does it? Why do you want to restrict the information buyers have?

Seems very protectionist and not very free market.

Not in the least. Informed buyers get that way only through effort - even in the real world.

And if I place my orders knowing I am not planning to get the item NOAW!! I almost always get the price I want - regardless of what the previous 5 said. But when I do want something NOAW, I can still sometimes get a bargain and if not, at least I know that I made the choice for my own reasons. The 'ebil marketeers' just spend the time to work in these spaces to optimize their gain - which is generally not nefarious or even contrary to free market realities.

I prefer activity to passivity.

This system requires meaningful decision-making for both sellers AND buyers as they engage in a dialogue on what Widget X is 'worth'.

Where in Another Game(tm) the input of the buyer is limited to scanning down to the bottom of the list and buying the cheapest Widget X on offer, CoH requires exploration if the buyer wants to get the best deal. Getting the best deal requires effort, which seems to me a better result for a game where the market is as much mini-game as mercantile interface.

It isn't the most efficient system, but it is definitely more engaging than "here's the list, buy the cheapest thing on offer".