Market griefing - enough already


Adeon Hawkwood

 

Posted

Case in point:

Clockwork Winders were going for 800k today.

Glad I didn't need one.

Just with the devs would view the market as a tool for all player, not a PvP minigame for a few.

Fortunately, with A Merits and AE Tickets I can pretty much ignore the stinking pile of offal.


Check out the Repeat Offenders network of SGs! You'll be glad you did.

 

Posted

To the original poster:

One player can only have 20 or so slots per level 50 character. That means each character can bid or sell 200 or so items at most. If they have 10 level 50 characters they can only corner the market on 2000 items. And when other people start selling the items for less than they're listing them for, the price will drop again.

In the end this can never be a serious problem because it's just too boring to sit around buying and reselling salvage. It's a stupid prank, not very funny and not very ingenious.

You can easily circumvent these jerks in just a few minutes, if it's that important to you, by just running AE missions and getting salvage with tickets. I would much rather have the devs spend their time adding real features to the system, and the GMs spend their time helping people with real problems instead of riding herd on nitwits.

If there are indeed idiots who are getting their jollies buying low and selling outrageously high, you're only providing them the feedback they strive for by posting here. If you would instead spend this time producing a bunch of salvage and selling it for reasonable prices all the griefers' slots would be clogged with overpriced salvage. And you would make a ton of inf when people overpaid for your lower-priced salvage.

This is how regular markets work, and it's why the devs won't do anything about this. It's a self-correcting problem.


 

Posted

I needed two Steel this weekend and noticed they were going for 1 million each at the time.

So I ran a quick AE mission and bought them both for 80 tickets each.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion View Post
Yeah having a little button showing more than 5 history or something would be nice as well.
While it'd probably destroy the market server (due to all the numbers tracking), what I'd like to see in addition to the last 5.

Median price in the last 30 days.
High price in the last 30 days.
Low price in the last 30 days.

Now these numbers could still be heavily skewed in low activity items. But they'd give us an idea at least.



Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun View Post
Case in point:

Clockwork Winders were going for 800k today.

Glad I didn't need one.

Just with the devs would view the market as a tool for all player, not a PvP minigame for a few.

Fortunately, with A Merits and AE Tickets I can pretty much ignore the stinking pile of offal.
800k is absolutely insignificant compared to the amount of influence you can make on the market in a day. With two A-merits you can buy a level 30 Numina proc, craft and sell it for around 200 million influence.

Cursing the darkness is fun I guess, but when you are surrounded by thousands of candles and people are throwing matches at you, your course of action should be obvious.


@Demobot

Also on Steam

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Demobot View Post
800k is absolutely insignificant compared to the amount of influence you can make on the market in a day. With two A-merits you can buy a level 30 Numina proc, craft and sell it for around 200 million influence.

Cursing the darkness is fun I guess, but when you are surrounded by thousands of candles and people are throwing matches at you, your course of action should be obvious.

This is like Steve Ballmer throwing chairs and ranting about the price of a cup of coffee at Starschmucks.



Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
This is like Steve Ballmer throwing chairs and ranting about the price of a cup of coffee at Starschmucks.

And on that same topic...


@Demobot

Also on Steam

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Demobot View Post
800k is absolutely insignificant compared to the amount of influence you can make on the market in a day. With two A-merits you can buy a level 30 Numina proc, craft and sell it for around 200 million influence.

Cursing the darkness is fun I guess, but when you are surrounded by thousands of candles and people are throwing matches at you, your course of action should be obvious.
OH trust me, I do the AMerit thing. And I'm not hurting for cash (but I'm not a multi billionaire in CoH either). And find other ways to work around the market PvP meme that seems to pervade all MMOs.

I curse the market because EVERY MMO I've seen sets the thing up as a mini game rather than a tool that should be beneficial to ALL players instead of a toy for just a few.

Though I admit that CoH has a far better market system than most I've seen.


Check out the Repeat Offenders network of SGs! You'll be glad you did.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun View Post
I curse the market because EVERY MMO I've seen sets the thing up as a mini game rather than a tool that should be beneficial to ALL players instead of a toy for just a few.
The thing is if an MMO is going to allow players to trade any items that they actually want and have limited supply of those items then you will, by default get marketeers. A market in an MMO does not operate with 100% efficiency and as such players who have the time and inclination can make money from it by moving it closer to 100% efficiency.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun View Post
I curse the market because EVERY MMO I've seen sets the thing up as a mini game rather than a tool that should be beneficial to ALL players instead of a toy for just a few.
I think you forgot the word "equally" somewhere.

If any player puts no effort into the market, he/she are not going to make the same as players that "toy" with it. Everything can be listed at 1 inf and you could make many times over the return (I put a purple up one day for 1 inf and got 500mill as an example - thanks to whoever bought it! ). You can sell the inspirations from the tutorial and make a decent amount for a starting toon. And so forth. You can make lots of inf with little or no effort and stick wiht the TO/DO/SO's throughout the game.

Now, if you choose to not use regular enhancements, but what those shiney sets, well, you have to put the effort in and/or be patient. You have alternate sources for everything - you can farm for drops, you can collect merits (regular or alignment), you can get AE tickets. You don't have to touch the market once. But if you want it NOW!!! and don't want to put in the effort, well, there maybe a price involved. Just depends on what you are willing to pay.

Every player benefits from this market.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun View Post
I curse the market because EVERY MMO I've seen sets the thing up as a mini game rather than a tool that should be beneficial to ALL players instead of a toy for just a few.
It can't be beneficial for anyone unless they use it.


 

Posted

Going by the first couple of posts- i like it tbh, it can be expensive yerr.but in return some things become cheaper which is awesome. bit of creativity in io'n ftw..tho the main stream io's will naturally be expensive yer


 

Posted

Monopolies, price fixing and 'cornering the market' are illegal in the real world for good reasons. They allow the people who have money to insure that the masses without must pay the price they want for goods.

Cornering Alchemical Silver is no different then doing so with real silver.

Yes, the market can be considered a mini-game. Not everyone likes to play it. Nor should they. Sadly if one like to play the IO/Set game or the min/max game the only realistic way to do it is with the market.

Making a store to sell common salvage at 10k or 5 merits or dome other set price would go a long way to allowing people who like to craft not be at the mercy of the 'haves' who monopolize specific goods in the market to price gouge the general populous.

Setting a fixed price for common salvage would also leave room with uncommon, rare and the other types of items sold for those who do like to do market wars with each other to gouge away till no one has an eye left.

I do sell my recipe drops, my salvage etc. Doesnt mean I like having to spend the time doing it to enjoy other parts of the game. I'd like to outfit a number of my characters in common IO's. Making the Inf to do so by playing market shenanigans is not fun for me, and as is evident in this thread not fun for a number of other people as well.

I was never particularly rich with playing WOW either. Despite that I could easily go farm the raw materials I needed to craft goods. Finding certain ore types could be a pain... but you could do it.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun View Post
This.

My ideal scenario is unified storage across my account. Storage size increases or decreases with the number of alts I have and the level they're at. If I delete an alt I lose access to however many slots I gain from them.

Mailing is nice, as you noted, but a royal PitA that would require excessive out of game record keeping to be truly useful.
Agreed. It is a pita to go find items x,y,z by looking though all my alts and then mail them to myself one at a time with the enforced wait time between emails and a 20 mails in your inbox max. Causes a whole lot of character switching. Wonder how much stress that causes on the systems?

Of course the 'Have's' with the big pockets use personal SG bases for their storage needs, again increasing the size of their pockets.

::Edit::

On additional thought, I would say a great deal of the problem is that when buying and selling items stack. In your fixed size character inventory they dont. (well yes it says you have 5 of item x, all 5 however count against your total, not just this is one stack like in the market) I believe that items stacked like they do in other games, while in the players back pack, that would help some by allowing individuals to effectively farm for themselves better and store up more common salvage easily.

I have several characters who do quite well with the arcane groups like COT. Who do mission after mission of them. I still never get Alchemical silver/gold except on rare occasion.

I wonder if some drop tables have been broken some place?

How high can you stack in the market?


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
Cornering Alchemical Silver is no different then doing so with real silver.
No, cornering Alchemical Silver is VERY different from real silver. In the real world silver is a finite commodity, it can only be produced by certain people in certain locations using special equipment. It is possible to acquire not only a monopoly on existing stocks but also (and this is the important bit) a virtual monopoly on the production of Silver as well (the only way a monopoly on production could be broken is someone discovering new deposits).

In game it is impossible to get a monopoly on production of Alchemical Silver. Anyone who wants to can go out and run a mission against a suitable enemy group and create alchemical silver (or use AE tickets to do so even more easily).

Even if you leave standing bids to try and buy up any new supply all someone has to do it bid 1 higher than you to break the monopoly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
I have several characters who do quite well with the arcane groups like COT. Who do mission after mission of them. I still never get Alchemical silver/gold except on rare occasion.

I wonder if some drop tables have been broken some place?
I haven't seen any evidence of it. I tend to get a relatively even spread of salvage although due to different rates of consumption the stuff I have on hand tends to be mostly the low value stuff (gee, I wonder why?).

Quote:
How high can you stack in the market?
10 items.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
Cornering Alchemical Silver is no different then doing so with real silver.
Except that it's impossible to corner the market on Alchemical Silver for more than a few hours.


http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

 

Posted

Without getting into the whole buy it Now issue or learn to market some have brought up. I can understand where the OP is coming from. There is some frustration when dealing with the market.

Personally I come from a point where I felt frustrated and just gave up and had to semi learn the market-fu. I'm a middle of the road guy and have been fortunate to fall into a dozen or more high end purple drops over the last few months along with having more Defense Cap toons that can handle 4/8 missions then I know what to do with. All which I am happy to say are NOT brutes,Tanks or Scrappers. I do AE when I need to buy some Rare salvage instead of spending the common 3 million for one. 20 minutes in a AE farm allows me to save 10 million.

My only want might be the PvP IO which grants +3 to defenses to free up some more slots. But as I said I'm soloing max setting for the game so I have no clue beyond trying certain TF solo what else I need to worry about.

But with all that being said to me I would rather have a system that allows me to combine salvages / IOs or to convert salvages and IOs into other sets. Even if it was at a loss of resources. Basically allow the ability to break down IOs made and premade and even salvage to some common denominator that I can recreate into something else I need.

I see that somewhat with incarnate system. Though I do think the trade is slightly a bit steep seeing it is pretty much a 4 to 1 ratio.

To me my big fear or issue I have with the market is when the item I sold as vendor trash today sells for 10x that amount on the market the next day.

Just too many things can make the market unstable. Players whim to buy out stuff for a goof. Some new farm. Some other game falling apart and getting a reflux of members back in, Some new expansion. Etc, Etc..

Add in the serious amount of time it really does take to slot up a IO character. I mean just having the build open and being in window mode to tab in and out of the game to make sure you didn't slot 6 instead of 5 in that power. I won't even include the time or respecs you might waste just trying to salvage what IOs you have in the build already because they have some value themselves as well.

End result between the market game and then the final time to respec you can be talking a decent 5 hours of time committed to respecing one character. I am not even trying to debate or discuss the waiting a week so as not to fall into the buy it now trap.

I think combining those 2 situations can add to the annoyance factor sometimes.

Even just slotting one power out for a new one is a pain in the backside. Let alone what it takes to do a full respec and the amount of cost invested sometimes.

How many people have created a build but just didn't notice or think that one IO from one set would be 10x more expensive then the whole other 5 pieces in the set combined. I know I fell into that trap once or twice. I had to stall the build just to get some merits together to buy the IO I was missing. I wasn't going to use Hero/villain rewards because those are just higher valued items. I would rather buy some LOTG +recharge or Numi +regen +recharge IO then spend those points on a 50 million INF item. Again with all the toons and TF I can run I always have some merit laying around or just short of what I need that one TF run will give me what I need.

Anyway my whole point of this long drawn out babble was, it is just not one thing that is an issue. I think if a player could do a respec in minutes instead of hours it would help a bit with this frustration. Your just getting beat up from both ends so its not helping the cause when your snagged on the IO purchase and your respec is going to take up time to set up.


1. Why Soft Cap is Important : http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011...important.html
2. Limits: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits
3. Attack Mechanics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics
4. Rule of Five: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Rule_o...e_Law_of_Fives

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
Monopolies, price fixing and 'cornering the market' are illegal in the real world for good reasons. They allow the people who have money to insure that the masses without must pay the price they want for goods.

Cornering Alchemical Silver is no different then doing so with real silver.
Except that one uses a limited resourse. Once you have all the silver in the world (not an easy task) you would be able to set the price as high as you want and no one could ever compete with you. Alchemical Silver however, will still continue to drop from mobs and people can still use AE tickets to get some as well. No amount of in game money will prevent others from bypassing your supply thereby making it impossible for a monopoly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
Yes, the market can be considered a mini-game. Not everyone likes to play it. Nor should they. Sadly if one like to play the IO/Set game or the min/max game the only realistic way to do it is with the market.

Making a store to sell common salvage at 10k or 5 merits or dome other set price would go a long way to allowing people who like to craft not be at the mercy of the 'haves' who monopolize specific goods in the market to price gouge the general populous.

Setting a fixed price for common salvage would also leave room with uncommon, rare and the other types of items sold for those who do like to do market wars with each other to gouge away till no one has an eye left.

I do sell my recipe drops, my salvage etc. Doesnt mean I like having to spend the time doing it to enjoy other parts of the game. I'd like to outfit a number of my characters in common IO's. Making the Inf to do so by playing market shenanigans is not fun for me, and as is evident in this thread not fun for a number of other people as well.

I was never particularly rich with playing WOW either. Despite that I could easily go farm the raw materials I needed to craft goods. Finding certain ore types could be a pain... but you could do it.
Yea I totally agree. Maybe they could set it up so you could get some random common salvage from AE for like 8 tickets or something cheep like that. They could even make it better by letting you pick the specific level range and type.


 

Posted

My answer to all this: SG storage

I simply dump my salvage into my SG base so that when I need it.. BOOM it is there.

I have three rooms: Common, Uncommon, and Rare...

I never understood why people join SGs and did not just create their own personal SG. All my friends and I have our own SGs, coalition with one another and all is well.

I cannot tell you the last time I had to buy salvage.... probably about 1.5 years ago. between storing and using the odd AE ticket to buy salvage it has not been a problem.

So before you go on a rant about how you can't do that etc etc... Being in a SG is your choice... Limiting your own personal storage capabilities is a choice...Needing salvage NOW is your choice... No one is making you buy salvage


 

Posted

@Fixxer:

Well speaking for myself my salvage needs significantly outweigh my salvage production, especially for low and mid level salvage (mostly due to working on Field Crafter). I stash some salvage away in base/vault but most of the time I buy it off the market either because I want it in larger quantities than I am likely to have in storage or to save myself the hassle of zoning into my base.


 

Posted

i buy most salvage for buy it nao prices since making inf is not that hard to get and i usually go + anyway.
When i started out i left low bids on salvage and managed to get it at lower prices.
Salvage moves really fast.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood View Post
No, cornering Alchemical Silver is VERY different from real silver. In the real world silver is a finite commodity, it can only be produced by certain people in certain locations using special equipment. It is possible to acquire not only a monopoly on existing stocks but also (and this is the important bit) a virtual monopoly on the production of Silver as well (the only way a monopoly on production could be broken is someone discovering new deposits).

In game it is impossible to get a monopoly on production of Alchemical Silver. Anyone who wants to can go out and run a mission against a suitable enemy group and create alchemical silver (or use AE tickets to do so even more easily).

Even if you leave standing bids to try and buy up any new supply all someone has to do it bid 1 higher than you to break the monopoly.


I haven't seen any evidence of it. I tend to get a relatively even spread of salvage although due to different rates of consumption the stuff I have on hand tends to be mostly the low value stuff (gee, I wonder why?).


10 items.
I saw prices today for alchemical silver over 500K.

It may, or may not, be possible for a single individual to tie up the supply consistently, it would be very easy for a SG or small group to do it.

With the merged market, were I to have each server full or nearly full of alts, parked them each at the AH and set bids for item X, I could have what 160 bids out per character?

Delete a lot once of twice a day resell some at gouge level pricing, ya it could be easily done.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
It may, or may not, be possible for a single individual to tie up the supply consistently, it would be very easy for a SG or small group to do it.
Except that the market isn't the only source of supply. I love the price of alchemical silver because I tend to get 1 or 2 drop every day. If I really need it I tend to pay the price because I've sold so much at the price that it doesn't really matter, but if I was opposed I would just run some content and one would drop.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
It may, or may not, be possible for a single individual to tie up the supply consistently, it would be very easy for a SG or small group to do it.
No it isn't. The game has around 70k players spread across 15 servers that are constantly buying and selling on the Market. So there's no way a single SG or even a coalition of several SG's can tie up the supply on the market consistently, especially when the supply is infinite. This isn't the real world where resources are limited. The game wasn't programmed to act that way.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
No it isn't. The game has around 70k players spread across 15 servers that are constantly buying and selling on the Market. So there's no way a single SG or even a coalition of several SG's can tie up the supply on the market consistently, especially when the supply is infinite. This isn't the real world where resources are limited. The game wasn't programmed to act that way.
Depending on the item, a group could tie up a niche in the sense that they could keep you from buying the item for less than they are willing to pay for the item.