Market griefing - enough already
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-02-22 19:02 in Suggestions and Ideas
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Right, that is basically what flipping is. The thing to remember is that in order to do it for any significant length of time they are either hemorrhaging cash buying up stock they can't use or they are simply setting buy and sell points that are inside the normal range of values for the item but closer to the theoretical perfect market price.|
Originally Posted by all_hell
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.
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Originally Posted by _Zep_
I saw prices today for alchemical silver over 500K.
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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? |
Secondly let's look at the math for this. First let's assume you're not actually deleting any salvage at all (i.e. regular flipping). In order to break even on the transaction your sell price must be at least 11.1% higher than your purchase price (i.e. buy for 100 inf and sell for 112 inf). Now assume you're deleting 50% of the purchased salvage, in this case to break even your sell price has to be at least 122.2% higher than your purchase price (i.e. buy at 100inf, sell for 223 inf).
The point is that in order to make a profit there HAS to be a gap in between your sell price and your purchase price. What that gap means is that it's impossible to stop someone else from moving in and setting their own buy or sell prices in between yours at which point you are no longer controlling all of the transactions. Sure you can adjust your buy/sell points in order to get rid of them but that decreases your profit and they will just move back in with new prices, a cycle that repeats until you are at the "no profit" levels detailed above.
Now obviously some prankster could do it at "no profit" levels for fun but what is happening at that point? He's basically taking his money and distributing it to those who have salvage to sell. Yeah kinda annoying to those who want to buy salvage (since they'd have to go to the AE) but nice for the people with salvage to spare.
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| Delete a lot once of twice a day resell some at gouge level pricing, ya it could be easily done. |
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Or, maybe, just maybe people have noticed that the price of alchemical silver is high and as such but in long term bids to purchase what they need at low prices. In general anything that is desirable and in short supply has a lot of bids on it, it's the nature of supply and demand. Alchemical Silver is a particularly noticeable example since the price, while high, is low enough for most players to afford to place a large quantity of long-term bids and is needed in large numbers due to being a component in two important common recipes (Accuracy and Run) plus at least three popular Set IOs (max level Basilisk Quads, Kinetic Combat Dam/Ends and Impervium Armor Triples)|
Originally Posted by _Zep_
Of course, last I checked there were over 15k bids in for alchemical silver. Sounds like someone, or a group of someones, has decided to corner it to me.
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I'm sure some people are flipping Alchemical Silver (mostly because the high end price is kept relatively in check) but I really doubt there's any sort of cabal actively conspiring to limit the market supply.
The market is a two-way street. If the prices are crazy high, roll a bunch of common Salvage at the AE vendor and sell it. Make millions.
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Thanks for the pointless marketing exercise. You may or may not get them because someone is willing to pay more than you are. This is not an indicator that someone is cornering anything.|
Originally Posted by _Zep_
An easy enough test:
Put in 500 bids for item X at say 250 inf. Drop 500 of item X into the market, at 200 inf, pretty much all at the same time. See how many you get. |
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| Of course, last I checked there were over 15k bids in for alchemical silver. Sounds like someone, or a group of someones, has decided to corner it to me. |
I'll reiterate the point for clarity. As the market is not a closed or limited system, the ability to "corner" it doesn't exist. This is not to say the price cannot be manipulated. But you CANNOT corner it.
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| Read about the Hunt brothers. They didnt try to control production, they tried to control what was available on the market. |
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| Further the supply of any salvage in this game is not infinite, unless you consider people to be playing an infinite amount of time. |
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| Sadly the people who can answer this with facts, eg data mine who is buying and selling and in what quantities are not speaking up. |
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| Something else I havnt seen mentioned, this game like many others has gold farmers. A simple and easy web search will provide you proof of that. |
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| Known fact: people will do anything to make money. |
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| How do we know that a gold farming operation hasnt purchased 50-100 accounts, filled all their character slots and has a few people actively working said characters 24/7. |
If you want to spout random conspiracy theories, that's fine. Remember your own words. You don't have any factual data. Only wild theory.
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| It would certainly be less work and more efficient then paying people to grind influence. |
Even then, they still cannot corner the market. Nor would they. Sooner or later, they'd be stuck with someone undercutting them, eating all the profit, and leaving them with a bunch of worthless inventory.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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It is pretty clear that we have looked at the same thing and come to differing conclusions. We can quote rhetoric and so called proofs at each other all day and in the end it wont accomplish or prove anything. |
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Thanks for the pointless marketing exercise. You may or may not get them because someone is willing to pay more than you are. This is not an indicator that someone is cornering anything.
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Neither of us is in a position to prove what we are saying. You can not say for absolute certainty that goods on the market are not being cornered. I lack the data to prove it is.
Like the OP I am done with the discussion.
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The burden of proof falls on the person making the claim, not the one casting doubt on that claim. If a reasonable alternative explanation is presented for the phenomenon you are seeing, then you need to present evidence that your claim is true. We don't need to present evidence that our reasonable alternative explanation is true, because we aren't asserting that it is. We are only casting doubt on your claim. |
Originally Posted by _Zep_
Neither of us is in a position to prove what we are saying. You can not say for absolute certainty that goods on the market are not being cornered. I lack the data to prove it is.
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You cannot expect your claim to be taken seriously when you say "my claim is true, even though I can't prove it, because you can't disprove it!"
This is a basic principle of logic that Market Manipulation Conspiracy Theorists and UFO True Believers often ignore.
(disclaimer: all of the above pronouns are generalized, not directed at a specific individual or group)
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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No. I've looked at the things you've looked at, applied what I know of the market (and marketing in general), looked at the ancillary factors and come to the conclusion that you're incorrect.|
Originally Posted by _Zep_
It is pretty clear that we have looked at the same thing and come to differing conclusions.
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You simply cut out the middle-man and broad-jumped to a conclusion of High Prices = Corner Conspiracy.
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| We can quote rhetoric and so called proofs at each other all day and in the end it wont accomplish or prove anything. |
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| Neither of us is in a position to prove what we are saying. |
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| You can not say for absolute certainty that goods on the market are not being cornered. I lack the data to prove it is. |
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| Like the OP I am done with the discussion. |
Suffice it to say that there are people with a much better handle on how the market does and does not operate than you or even I. And they don't seem to agree with you.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt|
Originally Posted by _Zep_
Read about the Hunt brothers. They didnt try to control production, they tried to control what was available on the market.
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He is best known as a former billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brother William Herbert Hunt tried but failed to corner the world market in silver.[1]
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
There are two general problems with this. First off there is the simple fact that doing this is NOT a monopoly. All someone has to do is put in a buy order 1 inf higher than theirs and they get the next one on the market.
Secondly let's look at the math for this. First let's assume you're not actually deleting any salvage at all (i.e. regular flipping). In order to break even on the transaction your sell price must be at least 11.1% higher than your purchase price (i.e. buy for 100 inf and sell for 112 inf). Now assume you're deleting 50% of the purchased salvage, in this case to break even your sell price has to be at least 122.2% higher than your purchase price (i.e. buy at 100inf, sell for 223 inf). The point is that in order to make a profit there HAS to be a gap in between your sell price and your purchase price. What that gap means is that it's impossible to stop someone else from moving in and setting their own buy or sell prices in between yours at which point you are no longer controlling all of the transactions. Sure you can adjust your buy/sell points in order to get rid of them but that decreases your profit and they will just move back in with new prices, a cycle that repeats until you are at the "no profit" levels detailed above. Now obviously some prankster could do it at "no profit" levels for fun but what is happening at that point? He's basically taking his money and distributing it to those who have salvage to sell. Yeah kinda annoying to those who want to buy salvage (since they'd have to go to the AE) but nice for the people with salvage to spare. |
Ya know I just remembered the only items that can be manipulated in the way Zep is describing is the Winter's Gifts recipes. Supply is restricted to whatever can be grabbed up during the Winter Event so the rest of the year people have to pay thru the nose if they want them before the next Winter Event.
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Originally Posted by FlyingCodeMonkey
Having seen it happen plenty of times, I'm basically sick of the scenario where some small number of persons with a lot of resources and a lust for lulz decides to buy up all of (whatever) and relist them at higher prices. This especially applies to common salvage bits like Ruby or Nevermelting Ice. I'm sure it's fun for them, but I don't know why it's more tolerated than any other form of griefing.
What I'd love to see: some kind of account-wide market throttle on purchases. Basically, do some data-mining. Figure out what is the maximum possible number of X salvage that a person might need to fully equip a level 50 character, all at once, no matter how strange the combination of inventions and sets. Then set the throttle: your account may buy no more than 2x or 3x of that thing in a 24-hour period. Maybe that means a maximum of 50 or 100 Fortunes per day. As an IO manufacturer, I could live with that. Yes, craft badging would take a little longer. Been there, would be fine with that, too. So maybe it takes a full week to get all the craft badges. You can spend that same time getting the Day Job for Went's, so it works out. If that's too big a technical challenge, then administratively punish accounts that engage in market griefing with temporary bans. It should be pretty easy to identify the accounts and even distinguish them from badging, since they involve a huge number of Buy transactions and I'd suspect little or no corresponding crafting, along with the commensurate resell transactions and drastically-diminished supply. But, no. Instead, we have a transaction throttle. So if I sell a full selection of 22 items, and I click the "Get All Inf" button, I'm automatically locked out of the UI for ten or twenty seconds because the "Get All" collection exceeds the transaction threshold. Cool. |
on Saturday i bought up the whole supply of both brass and carbon rods, and kept buying them (on virtue). Not because of market manipulation, but to craft the last 300 recipes to get my portable crafting table. by the time i was done, the price for brass and carbon rods had gone from 50 inf up to 35k.
Took most of a day to do it too. I'd make the lvl.10 damage enhancements, then delete them, rinse and repeat. cost me (maybe) 1 or 2 mil inf to make those last 300+ enhancements.
I'm sure there is market manipulation going on, but i also suspect badgehunters might be doing it too.
No... i can't back your proposal.
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When I decided to get my portable workbench, I ran the last 5 of some salvage prices into the millions. But I wanted it NAO!!NAO!!NAO!!|
Originally Posted by Sprite Fire
on Saturday i bought up the whole supply of both brass and carbon rods, and kept buying them (on virtue). Not because of market manipulation, but to craft the last 300 recipes to get my portable crafting table. by the time i was done, the price for brass and carbon rods had gone from 50 inf up to 35k.
Took most of a day to do it too. I'd make the lvl.10 damage enhancements, then delete them, rinse and repeat. cost me (maybe) 1 or 2 mil inf to make those last 300+ enhancements. I'm sure there is market manipulation going on, but i also suspect badgehunters might be doing it too. |
Still though, for people who could wait longer than I could, the "actual price" was still whatever that niche's flipper was paying +1.
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Just a tangent but any time I see this I feel compelled to remind people that there is only one market - there is no Virtue market.
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Originally Posted by Sprite Fire
(on virtue)
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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That's called a natural monopoly and are to be expected in a free market and are ok. It's when a natural monopoly starts to do things to ensure that only they can retain the monopoly and prevent competition that it becomes bad and illegal. Even still there is only so much government regulators can do to stop such activities because a free market should be able to self correct itself. The problem is that most people are not willing to put forth the effort to self correct markets. It's why you still cannot buy a Dell computer without an OS or a different OS other than Windows. People keep buying them and Dell keeps making deals with MS so they can sell cheap computers to people unwilling to change, but insist that MS is evil, but still buy computers with their stuff on it.... (I'm not backing MS's tactics, just using it as an example and how it is similar to what goes on even in our virtual market)|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
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).
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Like others have said as well, supply here is infinite so players have an advantage against such activities.
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I also get tired of the extreme high prices on the market. I understand that it is a mini game and enjoy it when I get great prices for some of my salvage.
What I don't get is why I stop receiving, say, level 30 salvage when I am level 50. Shouldn't level 30 salvage be very common? That is why it is called common salvage right? Yes, I know I can ex down and get it but that is not the point. If it is common I should still be running across it. Perhaps the drop rates would be lower since I am facing higher villains/heroes but the occasional luck charm or alchemical silver should still pop up. The cold turkey cut off at the different levels is one of the reasons for the bottlenecks in the market. Having the drops at the higher levels may be an easy way to reduce the pressure. Besides, how many regular silvers do I need after a while?
I relate this issue to myself as I get older (gain levels in real life so to speak). While I was in college I may have had three to four candy bars and five to six sodas a day. Now I am much more responsible but I sill have a candy bar once a week and sodas at lunch. Their drop rates may be lower but they are still there and don't get me started on going cold turkey on soda's. Hubby can attest to the crankiness that follows.
Just my two cents
Wolf Bait
So your solution to there being less low level salvage is to create a situation where there is less high level salvage? Because every piece of low level salvage that would drop for high level characters means a piece of highlevel salvage won't make it into the game.
Sorry /unsigned.
Oh and just an FYI exemplaring down is not your only option to get low level salvage. You can also use AE tickets and Merits to get them, and they don't require any exemplaring.
I understand it is not a perfect solution. My reasoning for the suggestion is that at higher levels you typically have more money and your levels are not going any higher. You can afford to be a little more patient with the market. On one occasion I had a bid in for alchemical silvers and out leveled the need for them before the price dropped to where I could afford them. This could be very frustrating for a new player.
I did have a thought on another solution. Well, my hubby came up with this one so I need to give credit where it is due. Better recipe diversification by associating recipes to a player origins. Say if you receive an accuracy and you are a magic origin you would need a luck charm and spiritual essence to create it. However if you were tech origin you would need a bore sight and computer virus. Science could be human blood sample and brass. These are just ideas. I do NOT mean that there should be a ton of different recipes that should be dropping. Just when a particular player gets the recipe it would adjust to that players origin. I am not sure how difficult that would be for the dev's but I don't mind presenting them with the challenge.
Thank you for your suggestion about AE. I was enjoying the system last night. I am saving up for some orange salvage.
Wolf Bait
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If I may offer another suggestion. Have you considered making a character for a specific zone and turning off his experience? The game doesn't always have to be about getting to level 50. |
Originally Posted by Wolf Bait
I understand it is not a perfect solution. My reasoning for the suggestion is that at higher levels you typically have more money and your levels are not going any higher. You can afford to be a little more patient with the market. On one occasion I had a bid in for alchemical silvers and out leveled the need for them before the price dropped to where I could afford them. This could be very frustrating for a new player.
I did have a thought on another solution. Well, my hubby came up with this one so I need to give credit where it is due. Better recipe diversification by associating recipes to a player origins. Say if you receive an accuracy and you are a magic origin you would need a luck charm and spiritual essence to create it. However if you were tech origin you would need a bore sight and computer virus. Science could be human blood sample and brass. These are just ideas. I do NOT mean that there should be a ton of different recipes that should be dropping. Just when a particular player gets the recipe it would adjust to that players origin. I am not sure how difficult that would be for the dev's but I don't mind presenting them with the challenge. Thank you for your suggestion about AE. I was enjoying the system last night. I am saving up for some orange salvage. Wolf Bait |
I have several characters that are based on the idea that they have a city zone they protect so when they get to the right level I turn off exp and only play there. This has the advantage that they are always a source of that level salvage.
Just something else to think about.
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Another option is to use ouroborus. Either flashback to an appropriate level story arc and run that or flashback to a story arc in order to lower your combat level and street sweep an appropriate zone.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
If I may offer another suggestion. Have you considered making a character for a specific zone and turning off his experience? The game doesn't always have to be about getting to level 50.
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Thank you, I forgot about Ouro.
Hmm. Some people might view it as exemplaring down tho because they would be lowering their combat levels. I've heard crazier logic on the forums.
I have done some of the Ouro missions on occation. Usualy to get some back story that I missed. Doing it just for the drops just feels a bit grindie. The same with turning off the xp. That is a good idea that I would love to try for a charictor concept but the content would get old real quick.
The deffinition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 
For me it is not so much about getting to 50 as spending time with friends. However, when you do that, the end result is you end up with a few level 50 charictors. I have four right now. I even have builds planed out for three of them. Almost complete with my main!!! Just a few more hero point to go! I do end up playing her a lot so I would like to get a little salvage on her that I could use for the others. I see her as the big sister looking out for the younger ones. Though I am not sure how my name sake is related to speedy sprite other than she found it in the SG base one day playing on the ceiling fan.... 
I am starting to think my self into circles so I am going to stop before I get dizzy.
Wolf Bait.
You can always run some AE missions, you don't have to repeat the same one, and use your tickets for random rolls of common salvage and purchase the exact uncommon and rare salvage that you want.
Edit: disregard as i missed the comment about you using AE already.
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Well you got the right attitude on leveling. Your playing to have fun. As long as you can keep feeling that way you'll do fine. Not only will the levels fly by for you, so will the vet rewards and one day you'll look back and think that you can't believe you've been playing for 7 years. |
Originally Posted by Wolf Bait
I have done some of the Ouro missions on occation. Usualy to get some back story that I missed. Doing it just for the drops just feels a bit grindie. The same with turning off the xp. That is a good idea that I would love to try for a charictor concept but the content would get old real quick.
The deffinition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. For me it is not so much about getting to 50 as spending time with friends. However, when you do that, the end result is you end up with a few level 50 charictors. I have four right now. I even have builds planed out for three of them. Almost complete with my main!!! Just a few more hero point to go! I do end up playing her a lot so I would like to get a little salvage on her that I could use for the others. I see her as the big sister looking out for the younger ones. Though I am not sure how my name sake is related to speedy sprite other than she found it in the SG base one day playing on the ceiling fan.... I am starting to think my self into circles so I am going to stop before I get dizzy. Wolf Bait. |
An easy enough test:
Put in 500 bids for item X at say 250 inf.
Drop 500 of item X into the market, at 200 inf, pretty much all at the same time.
See how many you get.
Of course, last I checked there were over 15k bids in for alchemical silver. Sounds like someone, or a group of someones, has decided to corner it to me.
Read about the Hunt brothers. They didnt try to control production, they tried to control what was available on the market.
Further the supply of any salvage in this game is not infinite, unless you consider people to be playing an infinite amount of time.
Sadly the people who can answer this with facts, eg data mine who is buying and selling and in what quantities are not speaking up.
Something else I havnt seen mentioned, this game like many others has gold farmers. A simple and easy web search will provide you proof of that.
Known fact: people will do anything to make money.
How do we know that a gold farming operation hasnt purchased 50-100 accounts, filled all their character slots and has a few people actively working said characters 24/7.
It would certainly be less work and more efficient then paying people to grind influence.