What is considered "ebil" anymore?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-01-14 17:27 in The Market and Inventions
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And yet you don't seem to grasp that "unreasonable" profit is not the result of "market pvp, price fixing and flipping", but of people *actually being willing to pay that much*.|
Originally Posted by Humility
(Since people cannot seem to read, let me clarify this is specifically in reference to market pvp, price fixing and flipping. I don't begrudge anyone a reasonable profit for buying recipes and salvage and crafting for a reasonable profit or anything of the sort. Just malicious market fixing.)
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If I'm having a yard sale and some wide-eyed dude runs up to me with a wad of bills and goes "OH MY GOD I MUST HAVE THIS COWBELL I WILL GIVE YOU $500 FOR IT", am I supposed to go "no sir, that cowbell is only worth about $1, I would be making *far* too much of a profit, I must hold on to it until an old grandmother who *really* wants it comes along"?
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You never commented on my original reply to you but I'll just mention that this is exactly what my #2 was about. Those things are part of the minigame that is the market. The market minigame is competitive. It is not there ONLY for people to give things to each other for your definition of reasonable price, it's there for people to play a game. We are not making our millions off the backs of child labor in third world countries, we're playing a video game. |
Originally Posted by Humility
(Since people cannot seem to read, let me clarify this is specifically in reference to market pvp, price fixing and flipping. I don't begrudge anyone a reasonable profit for buying recipes and salvage and crafting for a reasonable profit or anything of the sort. Just malicious market fixing.)
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Sometimes things like cornering happen. On the stuff you describe as "garbage salvage" though, it does not last. It never does, because that stuff is just too common and the longer the prices are that high, the more supply is going to flood onto the market as people try to undercut each other to get in on the action, and very soon it's back to "garbage" prices.
Sorry if your kid doesn't enjoy waiting, but like I said in the #1 in my original comment, there are other ways to get it without having to play the market game.
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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That guy didn't happen to look like Christopher Walken, did he?
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Originally Posted by Silver Gale
If I'm having a yard sale and some wide-eyed dude runs up to me with a wad of bills and goes "OH MY GOD I MUST HAVE THIS COWBELL I WILL GIVE YOU $500 FOR IT", am I supposed to go "no sir, that cowbell is only worth about $1, I would be making *far* too much of a profit, I must hold on to it until an old grandmother who *really* wants it comes along"?
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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...wait, of *course*! Christopher Walken is trying to corner the market on cowbell! THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!
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Originally Posted by Quasadu
That guy didn't happen to look like Christopher Walken, did he?
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Bid low? Hmm, low to you may not be low to someone else. That term just doesn't stand true on alot of items. You disagree? Well, i've place some "low" bids on some purples. They have been idle since thanksgiving. How long should my "low" bids wait? Maybe until i level another 50? |
Originally Posted by Quasadu
You mean like telling them to bid low and be patient? Because that's pretty much the advice everyone has given, always, to this complaint. NOW, or cheap; pick one.
The low drop rates of common salvage. Okay. Yeah, it really is. |
And why can "now" not be "cheap"? Simple. There's simply not enough items for everyones toons and their alts....
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Except that's not what's happening. You're going around the region buying all the cowbells and storing them, creating a false scarcity for an otherwise common item then demanding $500 for the very few that you do allow to trickle onto the market.|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
And yet you don't seem to grasp that "unreasonable" profit is not the result of "market pvp, price fixing and flipping", but of people *actually being willing to pay that much*.
If I'm having a yard sale and some wide-eyed dude runs up to me with a wad of bills and goes "OH MY GOD I MUST HAVE THIS COWBELL I WILL GIVE YOU $500 FOR IT", am I supposed to go "no sir, that cowbell is only worth about $1, I would be making *far* too much of a profit, I must hold on to it until an old grandmother who *really* wants it comes along"? |
The example you gave would equate to putting up your salvage for 1K. Sure, lots of people throw 50K at it. But that is not the same thing as creating a false scarcity to drive up the demand so you can post at high prices.
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Originally Posted by Quasadu
The market minigame is competitive. It is not there ONLY for people to give things to each other for your definition of reasonable price, it's there for people to play a game.
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I'm not sure how many times I need to say this before people can grasp it. I have no real problem getting things on the market. I don't BUY IT NAO and I have plenty of resources to do whatever I need to. That doesn't mean the market has no room to be improved. However, as long as that change is in the hands of the players it will not ever happen. Why you ask, because on the internet you can be a tool and there isn't much in the way of consequences.
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Close... but no cowbell!|
Originally Posted by Quasadu
That guy didn't happen to look like Christopher Walken, did he?
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Looking back at your post history in this thread, Humility:
Your first post:
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Your second post:| Yep, it always sucks to have to explain to my kiddo that he can't make that [insert cool recipe] that actually dropped for him because some jerk wants to market pvp... |
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| Little kids get to have their play experience crapped on so some marketeer can go destroy a billion inf to feel special. |
Yeah, I can absolutely see where the confusion started. My bad. :P
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| Why you ask, because on the internet you can be a tool and there isn't much in the way of consequences. |
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Yes, but see, if I put up a piece of salvage that I got as a drop for 50 inf, and there are no pieces of that salvage on the market for any cheaper, and someone comes along and puts a bid on that salvage for 300k, then they get my piece of salvage and I get 270k (their 300k minus a 10% transaction fee). That's how the market works.|
Originally Posted by Humility
Except that's not what's happening. You're going around the region buying all the cowbells and storing them, creating a false scarcity for an otherwise common item then demanding $500 for the very few that you do allow to trickle onto the market.
The example you gave would equate to putting up your salvage for 1K. Sure, lots of people throw 50K at it. But that is not the same thing as creating a false scarcity to drive up the demand so you can post at high prices. |
I have no way of knowing if the person who bid is a multi-billionaire who doesn't care about any sum smaller than 1 million, or a wide-eyed 8-year-old who just put every last bit of Inf his hero has earned and then asked with tears in his eyes, "daddy, why do I have to pay so much to craft my new recipe?". Or if it's someone who typo'd one zero too many when they were meaning to bid 30k.
If I got 270k for a piece of salvage, it does *not* have to mean that I cornered the market on it. However, it *does* always mean that someone, somewhere, bid 300k on it. I'm not getting a choice in the matter. I don't get a pop-up box that says "someone wants to buy your salvage for 300k, let them? y/n". My sell bid is the lowest, their buy bid is the highest.
If you bid 300k on something on the market, you are saying in effect that having this thing is worth 300k to you. If you bid 100k, the bid doesn't fill, and you immediately cancel it and bid 300k, you are saying that having the thing *immediately*, right this minute, is worth 200k to you. You don't get to then say "oh but it's not *really* worth that much, it must be ebil marketeers or something". *You're* the one who paid the money.
If you don't think it's worth that much, then bid what you think it's worth - but, of course, if someone values the thing more than you, then they will get it first.
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This discussion is not about purples (the principle works for purples, but it's scaled up to higher numbers and longer wait times).|
Originally Posted by eryq2
Bid low? Hmm, low to you may not be low to someone else. That term just doesn't stand true on alot of items. You disagree? Well, i've place some "low" bids on some purples. They have been idle since thanksgiving. How long should my "low" bids wait? Maybe until i level another 50?
And why can "now" not be "cheap"? Simple. There's simply not enough items for everyones toons and their alts.... |
This discussion is about, to use Humility's words, garbage salvage that sells for 500 and spikes up to 300k. Those are the numbers I am referring to and "low" in this case would be that 500 figure.
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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Nope, but the old grandmother did...
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Originally Posted by Quasadu
That guy didn't happen to look like Christopher Walken, did he?
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Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a *real* useful invention. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...t-sarcasm.html
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Either way. The principal is the same. People always want to say, "bid low and wait". That doesn't always work. Even for salvage. If i bid 4k for an Alchemical Silver (which is like 4x the NPC value), itll never fill. Why is that? A profit would still be made, true?
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Originally Posted by Quasadu
This discussion is not about purples (the principle works for purples, but it's scaled up to higher numbers and longer wait times).
This discussion is about, to use Humility's words, garbage salvage that sells for 500 and spikes up to 300k. Those are the numbers I am referring to and "low" in this case would be that 500 figure. |
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Paying 500 inf for someone else's drop is a slap in the face |
Originally Posted by Quasadu
This discussion is not about purples (the principle works for purples, but it's scaled up to higher numbers and longer wait times).
This discussion is about, to use Humility's words, garbage salvage that sells for 500 and spikes up to 300k. Those are the numbers I am referring to and "low" in this case would be that 500 figure. |
Should at least pay 666.
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I never said anything about entitlement, so please don't attribute the words of others to me. I only said that the market does not work the way you seem to want it to work, and that's the way it is. |
Originally Posted by Humility
The market is what players make of it. In this case, a select section of the player base has decided to make it a competitive aggressive minigame regardless of what the rest of the player base wants. Some people in this thread talk about entitlement. So what entitles those select few to turn the market into something punitive to the player base who doesn't enjoy the "market minigame". What entitles you to take your fun at the expense of the play experience of others? There is plenty of evidence from both the forums and in game that plenty of people don't enjoy, yet plenty of marketeers continue to take their pleasure at the expense of others. Entitlement indeed.
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Yes, the players make it what it is, but that is only because the devs designed it to work that way. Incidentally, that goes for buyers, not just sellers. So when you wail and gnash your teeth about the ebil marketeers, make sure you direct a little of that toward the ones buying all our wares.
At any rate your argument sounds suspiciously like those who complain that they can't get their nukes/shivans/badges in a pvp zone because someone keeps killing them. And I think it's about as likely that you're going to get sympathy as those people do. Like it or not, the market minigame was designed with pvp in mind. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to set our own asking prices, or our own bids.
People who don't want to engage in the market minigame have been given many options to avoid it, including tickets and the various types of merits. those who don't enjoy the market are free to ignore it.
Incidentally, I dispute the validity of your "select few" assertion. Show me the data, then we'll talk about whether it's a select few or not.
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| I'm not sure how many times I need to say this before people can grasp it. I have no real problem getting things on the market. I don't BUY IT NAO and I have plenty of resources to do whatever I need to. That doesn't mean the market has no room to be improved. However, as long as that change is in the hands of the players it will not ever happen. Why you ask, because on the internet you can be a tool and there isn't much in the way of consequences. |
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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Because you are making up an absurdly low value and pretending that's what we're telling you to do. I am talking about relative values here, and you know it. I didn't say "bid whatever you want and wait."
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Originally Posted by eryq2
Either way. The principal is the same. People always want to say, "bid low and wait". That doesn't always work. Even for salvage. If i bid 4k for an Alchemical Silver (which is like 4x the NPC value), itll never fill. Why is that? A profit would still be made, true?
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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Absurdly to whom? You? 4k is still over what the DEVS and the NPC values it at. Now, if people wanna jack up the rates of it, well, that's a totally different story. Greed runs the market just as much as impatient people. |
Originally Posted by Quasadu
Because you are making up an absurdly low value and pretending that's what we're telling you to do. I am talking about relative values here, and you know it. I didn't say "bid whatever you want and wait."
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You didn't say bid whatever, you said, "bid low". Like i asked before, "who defines what low is"? If the rates are 55k, is 22k too low? If the rates are 100k is 55k to low? Please tell the people what "relative" pricing would be.
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Then I stand by my statements.| I'm talking about that kind of obvious and deliberate price fixing. That's not supply and demand. that's market pvp. That's the statement my participation in this thread has been based on. That's the piece of information you either couldn't be troubled to read, or decided to conveniently ignore. That is the premise for my statements. |
That is, in fact, supply and demand in this game.
You think it's "market pvp"? You go ahead and provide evidence. And "I don't understand why this happened" is not proof of "this happened through someone else's malicious intent".
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| Yes, alchemical silver is expensive. It's always expensive. That's not what I'm talking about. For someone who wants to attack me for not basing my statements on information, you aren't much interested in actually looking at the information my posts contain. |
For crying out loud, I have the proof that it ain't no such thing. See, I do a lot of antiflipping for badges. Which is to say, I buy hundreds of some common salvage, then list them all at 1 inf. 1 inf.
You know what? I have gotten as much as 600k for a stack of something that I listed for 1 inf. Now, let's walk this through. I list my 180 rubies for 1 inf. At this point, until the very last of my rubies sell, no one has to bid even 2 inf to get a ruby. No one. The only way you can end up buying someone else's rubies is if their rubies are 1 inf too.
So the people who are paying 200k for a ruby? That's not "market PVP". That's not "price fixing". That's "impatient buyers who can't be bothered to type a different number before clicking "make offer"."
The spread between lowest asking price and highest bid is often quite large in this game. Sometimes insanely large, especially with items where there aren't that many on the market. If there's under fifty of something for sale, then it doesn't take much at all for prices to jump from 500 to 500,000, because some guy left a listing up at 500k and forgot about it three months ago.
[b]Not "market pvp". Not "price fixing". You cannot "fix" prices in City of Heroes in any useful way. If the bids you use to keep people from undercutting you are close to your listing price, you're losing more money on market fees than you're making on markup. If they're not, then no one has to pay your asking price, they just need to leave bids in for five minutes.
Seriously, I've seen boresights going for 50k, left a bid up for 1,234, and had a full stack in under five minutes.
Unless you've got database transaction logs showing this "price fixing", I just plain don't believe it, and you shouldn't either.
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The "DEVS" (emphasis yours, but misleading) don't value it at anything. They set a vendor price generically without regard to the relative values of salvage, even though some salvage is used in high-demand recipes and some isn't.|
Originally Posted by eryq2
Absurdly to whom? You? 4k is still over what the DEVS and the NPC values it at.
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| You didn't say bid whatever, you said, "bid low". Like i asked before, "who defines what low is"? If the rates are 55k, is 22k too low? If the rates are 100k is 55k to low? Please tell the people what "relative" pricing would be. |
I feel like I'm watching someone complain that it's stupid to try to negotiate the price of a car with a dealership, because I offered them $5.95 and they wouldn't even talk to me. But that's pretty expensive for a hamburger!
You do, in fact, have to get some kind of sense of the relative values of goods to make good business decisions.
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Supposedly, people have done this successfully on uncommons. In practice, it doesn't have a lasting effect on anything that drops more often than people want it, because the rate at which they drop is too fast for a player to reasonably keep up.|
Originally Posted by Humility
Except that's not what's happening. You're going around the region buying all the cowbells and storing them, creating a false scarcity for an otherwise common item then demanding $500 for the very few that you do allow to trickle onto the market.
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In short, it's like that, only if you go for a walk in the park, at the end of the walk you'll have three cowbells you don't have any interest in, and you can just go list 'em on the market for a penny and maybe someone will give you 5 bucks.
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Find me a redname quote that says Alchemical Silvers are not worth 4k or I call bull. The only time a redname's ever commented on market pricing being an issue was when Castle said there was something wrong with items selling at the inf cap on the market and well above it off-market (though it's amusing to note that nothing's been done to remedy that "problem"). Also it's "devs" and not "DEVS." Next you're going to be telling us that a purple is only worth 10k because that's what a vendor will pay for it.|
Originally Posted by eryq2
Absurdly to whom? You? 4k is still over what the DEVS and the NPC values it at. Now, if people wanna jack up the rates of it, well, that's a totally different story. Greed runs the market just as much as impatient people.
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Originally Posted by eryq2
You didn't say bid whatever, you said, "bid low". Like i asked before, "who defines what low is"? If the rates are 55k, is 22k too low? If the rates are 100k is 55k to low? Please tell the people what "relative" pricing would be.
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Let's compare this to negotiating for a car. A savvy car buyer knows they can negotiate with a dealership, because that dealership wants their sale and are willing to take less than sticker price if it means a sale is made. Now, if I walked into a dealership and said "I'll give you $100 for that Camry, and that's final," I'd be asked to leave. Rather I'm going to do some research before I even go to the dealership and find out what the dealership actually paid for the car (in other words, the very lowest amount they'll be willing to sell it for) and negotiate up from there (a parallel to bid creeping in CoX). Eventually we'll settle at some price between the dealer invoice price and the retail price, and both parties will come away more or less happy. That's exactly how buying an item off the market in this game works.
@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."
"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."
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You really have no clue, do you?|
Originally Posted by Humility
Except that's not what's happening. You're going around the region buying all the cowbells and storing them, creating a false scarcity for an otherwise common item then demanding $500 for the very few that you do allow to trickle onto the market.
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To continue your cowbell example - I don't like that price of $500. Therefore I go off and magically create some cowbells out of thin air. Guess what! You can actually do that in this game! Imagine that!
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Another one with no clue. The devs and NPCs don't set any prices. The players do. It's called supply and demand. In the real world, this explains why gold is more expensive than tin.
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Originally Posted by eryq2
Absurdly to whom? You? 4k is still over what the DEVS and the NPC values it at. Now, if people wanna jack up the rates of it, well, that's a totally different story. Greed runs the market just as much as impatient people.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Look at the facts, people.
Fact: Farming AE drops AE tickets and Influence, no Salvage of any kind. You can trade in 560 tickets for a Rare piece of salvage, or you can roll for Commons at 8 tickets each. It would take a *long* time to roll out the equivalent of 1 Rare and carry it over to the market, especially for people who only have the basic 30-slot Salvage inventory.
Fact: A couple weeks before I19, another exploit was discovered in AE, which couldn't be fixed because the game was in a "no touching the code until the next Issue release" development state. High-level Common salvage reserves dried up and the prices soared from their usual 1-1000 inf to as much as 500k. High-level Rares fell from their usual 3-5 million range into below 1 million. When I19 was released and patched the exploit, high-level commons dropped back to dirt cheap prices with thousands available, and high-level rares shot right back up to 3-4 million.
Which is more likely?
1) Around the time the AE exploit started making the rounds, by sheer coincidence, all the marketers stopped fixing prices on high-level rares and went around fixing prices on high-level commons instead, which caused high level rares to drop to their "real" value. Once Issue 19 launched and patched the exploit, again by complete coincidence, all the marketeers at once abandoned the common salvage and went back to fixing prices on rares instead.
2) As the exploit started making the rounds, farmers moved to AE, and turned all their tickets into Rare salvage, causing a surplus of rares and a shortage of commons. Once the exploit was fixed, they went back to farming some regular map (Battle Maiden or something) and once again produced many commons and few Rares each reset.
This is just one example. I could name others in recent memory, like the massive crash on low-level salvage as soon as I18 came out and players were no longer rushing past levels 1-22 as soon as possible. Prices on the market have little to do with manipulation and everything to do with what parts of the game are being played by the majority.
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Ooh ooh, definitely number 1
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Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Look at the facts, people.
Fact: Farming AE drops AE tickets and Influence, no Salvage of any kind. You can trade in 560 tickets for a Rare piece of salvage, or you can roll for Commons at 8 tickets each. It would take a *long* time to roll out the equivalent of 1 Rare and carry it over to the market, especially for people who only have the basic 30-slot Salvage inventory. Fact: A couple weeks before I19, another exploit was discovered in AE, which couldn't be fixed because the game was in a "no touching the code until the next Issue release" development state. High-level Common salvage reserves dried up and the prices soared from their usual 1-1000 inf to as much as 500k. High-level Rares fell from their usual 3-5 million range into below 1 million. When I19 was released and patched the exploit, high-level commons dropped back to dirt cheap prices with thousands available, and high-level rares shot right back up to 3-4 million. Which is more likely? 1) Around the time the AE exploit started making the rounds, by sheer coincidence, all the marketers stopped fixing prices on high-level rares and went around fixing prices on high-level commons instead, which caused high level rares to drop to their "real" value. Once Issue 19 launched and patched the exploit, again by complete coincidence, all the marketeers at once abandoned the common salvage and went back to fixing prices on rares instead. 2) As the exploit started making the rounds, farmers moved to AE, and turned all their tickets into Rare salvage, causing a surplus of rares and a shortage of commons. Once the exploit was fixed, they went back to farming some regular map (Battle Maiden or something) and once again produced many commons and few Rares each reset. This is just one example. I could name others in recent memory, like the massive crash on low-level salvage as soon as I18 came out and players were no longer rushing past levels 1-22 as soon as possible. Prices on the market have little to do with manipulation and everything to do with what parts of the game are being played by the majority. |
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick