What to do about Market Blockers?

I don't care if you pay a bajillion inf for Masterwork Weapons to avoid waiting but, ya know, there is a message that pops up when you've bought something whether you're at WW/BM or in a mission.

Ahh but you quoted me in your 2nd post on this thread even tho my post was nothing about multi-million inf items either...

No biggie.. Im done with this thread anyway.. Ill say it again... I put myself up as an example of why the OP might see large differences in price of salvage on the BM. Nothing more

And the first words of that post were: For larger amounts


RiF

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I've occassionally had something I needed to craft right then, usually when I'm about to have to log off and I have barely enough time to buy something, run into a base to craft it, and drop it into a bin or email it. Generally when I'm making something a different character is going to use, and I'll never remember who was in the middle of what to go back and check them later, and I can buy the salvage NAO in less time then it will take me to make a note, then log back into that character later, craft the thing, put it where I need it, and log back over to the character I really want to play. Its a tradeoff; for the extra 100k I spent on a piece of salvage, I can log over to a serious marketing character instead of checking that one again for whatever I was crafting and turn stuff over for much more Inf.

To the OP, it seems much more likely to me that you saw someone impatient and rich then someone trying to move a salvage price from 5 Inf up to 200k. People in the market forums have experimented with that kind of thing as tests, and it turns out there are much easier and safer ways to make Inf. I'm working on several builds simultaneously right now, including for a friend, and its time consuming enough that I've actually started buying enhancements rather than recipes for some lower priced items, even though I know I'm rewarding some ebil marketeer who is buying the recipes cheap and crafting the IOs. Curse you all and your convenient stocking of things I want to buy!!

In other words, spend a week doing my IO's at level 20. That [sarcasm] sounds like a lot of fun [/sarcasm]

I guess I'm just a moron. Here I thought I was playing a game that was designed to be fun, and it turns it was actually designed to be tedious. I'm bringing this up partly because I think the devs ought to take a look at it. Any practical solution they can devise that doesn't cost too much to implement will certainly help their bottom line. The market is kind of a core part of the game.


I should be clear that the problem is not me on the buying end. It's the seller who gets screwed. The seller just wants to get rid of the stuff so they can get more drops, but if the price is only going to be 5 inf per item, then he/she might as well just delete it and save him/her-self a trip. Usually salvage doesn't drop in stacks (sometimes it does, just not usually.) Nobody wants to tie up all 15 of their market slots selling "simple chemical" type salvages.

Right now, you have to kind of naive to put any of that stuff on the market, or you're going for a badge.

It's so hard these days to tell the difference between rhetorical exaggeration and complete idiocy, don't you find?

First off, a week? Seriously? Come on now. It'll clear up anywhere from a few minutes to the end of your play session, and will DEFINITELY be gone the next day. Just place the bids for the stuff you want at the end of one session, and then craft the next.

You do realize that the LOWEST seller gets the HIGHEST bid, right? I don't see how you could claim it's somehow bad for the seller if you know about that (they're more so indifferent to it). You also seem to be contradicting yourself, on one hand you're arguing for higher prices, and on the other you're complaining about higher prices!

People also sell common salvage for minimum inf ALL the time (hence why it generally goes for minimum!), I used to do it myself (it was less time than going to the store to sell), but since I came back recently I haven't bothered on many, since they often have tens of thousands in backlog with zero bids- I just end up deleting most.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I don't understand how the seller gets screwed by the situation you're describing. Unless you're defining "screwed" as "selling what they sold for cheap a lot higher". I really just can't bring myself to see that as the original seller being screwed in that way, since it's they must get no less what they listed the salvage for (minus market fees).

I do it because I'm going for a badge. I used to never list anything for sale under 10 inf. Now I have to list most High Level Salvage for under 10 if I want to to sell. Why? Not because of what you've described in your OP, but because so much of it is available. I produce (and sell) and buy a lot of common and uncommon High Level Salvage. I have a very good sense of how volatile the market price of any given piece is.

Only one item has been consistently freaking lately - Rubies. Demand for Rubies seems very high - there are never many for sale at any given time. I don't seem to produce noticeably less Rubies than other Arcane salvage, so I attribute this to high demand rather than low supply. I am not sure what people are crafting that demands lots of rubies - the things I use them for are kind of crappy things that I wouldn't expect a lot of people to want.

Arcane common salvage is usually more volatile than almost all Tech salvage, with the only relatively volatile Tech piece lately being Silver. Silver I think I understand - it's used in a lot of important Common enhancements. I am not sure if Arcane salvage is disproportionately represented in frequently crafted recipes or if people still produce more Tech than Arcane salvage. I find the latter a bit hard to believe these days, but there does seem to be something of an overuse (from a crafter's perspective) of foes that drop tech as opposed to those that drop arcane or both.

At that rate, I'd be making about 5 recipes a day assuming one play session per day. But at level 20 I have 30 enhancement slots to fill, 35 if you count the inherent fitness powers and rest.


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I'm bothered whenever I see market behavior that doesn't follow free market rules. I don't care which direction the price is deviating in. In an ideal market, if you're only getting 50 inf for your salvage, the reason is because nobody wants it. If you, accordingly, are motivated to delete it rather than sell it, then maximum number of people are going to be the happiest as a result of the decision.

On the other hand, if the reason you're only getting 50 inf for your salvage is because it's sufficiently valuable that other players are willing to give up precious inventory slots on their character's account in order to post low overnight bids, ...... and you decide to delete your salvage rather than sell it, then your decision is going to make a few people happy at the expense of the many. (Because the will of the many is for supply to increase.)

People who are really into playing the market really enjoy this stuff, but they are also a small minority of the playing population. If them having fun means everyone else doesn't have fun, then it would be very foolish of NCSoft to favor them.

Do you replace all your enhancements every 5 levels? That's just a complete and total waste of inf and time (I have multiple 50s with 20 & 25 level generic IOs!).

If nobody wanted it, you'd be getting zero inf for it. 50 inf shows that there's some level of demand, which, based on the level of supply (you missed that part ) results in a price of 50 inf.


Again, you don't seem to be really understanding what's going on here. You will never get less inf that you post the item for upon sell! (ignoring the market fees, of course) If you post an item for 50 inf... it's not going to be going to the people waiting over night, as their order will be filled the moment they place the order (assuming you posted it up first, otherwise the moment you post it if they place first).

I'm starting to think you posted this thread because you don't like market people.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

Yeah. That's what I'm getting at. At level 20, I need 35 IO's to fill all my enhancement slots so that I won't have to bother with DO's and SO's anymore. That's considered the optimal time to do inventions, because you get decent bonuses, and you can still build them with beginner level salvage.


"nobody" was meant to imply few people. I think most readers would have been aware of that.

If the price is 50 inf in a proper market, that would indicate that demand is low, and there's little benefit to be had by increasing supply.

If the price is 50 in a blocked market, that could be either because demand is low, or because it is high and a lot of people have placed large standing orders. If demand is high, then the best result for everyone would be to see supply increase. But the likely result is that supply will drop instead. That's a bad thing, because it makes more people unhappy.



I don't like people to ruin the market. Not all market people do that, but some certainly do, and I don't like those few.

Also, I think you are wrong about the standing orders. Even with all servers running full speed, salvage only trickles in at a somewhat slow rate. Certainly a "human blood sample" listed at 5 inf *would* be the one that gets bought when a player bids 200,000, but that is only *if* it doesn't get snatched up by a standing offer of 50 inf first. Odds are the two players (the one putting a human blood sample up for 5 inf, and the one bidding 200,000 inf) aren't going to post their offers at exactly the same moment in time, so the 5 inf offer will almost always be bought by the standing bids rather than the short-lived high bids. The 200,000 inf bidder will also probably end up buying from one of the standing offers.

It's true that all you have to do is post your bid and leave long enough for someone to put another item on the market, but if this trend continues, then fewer and fewer people are going to be bothering themselves to sell their drops.

I have no problem with doing it. Occasionally you'll get some hold up with a piece of salvage or two (generally because you're just being greedy during a drought), but that's never a problem for any sort of extended period of time- anywhere from minutes to hours that'll be cleared up: so just place those bids and do something else for a while, and they'll be bought on their own.

Or, equally likely (and much more likely for common salvage), the supply is VERY high. Very high supply means prices will plummet... with 50 inf being the reasonable amount.

Back when AE farming was still new and the biggest rage, the price of common salvage SKYROCKETED. Why did this occur? Based on your logic, that means demand INCREASED for those items... which wasn't the case. Prices went up because no body was rolling them! Everyone was trying to roll rares to sell on the market to make money (which caused the price of rares to tank, and the price of common/uncommon to inflate massively). I made a nice profit off rolling common/uncommon and listing them on the market (plus, I was improving the market ).


Your logic REALLY doesn't make any sense at all. I think you need to go to ParagonWiki and read about the basics of how this market works. Also, go to Wikipedia and read up the basics of Supply & Demand, because you're missing a whole half of that equation!

If demand is high, the prices will increase until an equilibrium is reached (there'll be minor fluctuations, but that's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, or for the person that can place bids overnight).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

Quoted because it bears repeating.

Salvage prices got ya down? Go run an AE mission.

I also am beginning to wonder if there's something you're missing about the market mechanics.

The price cannot be both "blocked" and 50 in this market. The only way someone can "block" in this market is by buying all (or most of) the existing supply. That means they have to buy well above the floor of 50 inf, up probably into at least the 1s or 10s of thousands of inf. They also have to keep doing that. Let's say they want to buy everything listed below 10,000 inf, because they want to try making the price 50,000 inf. They have to put bids out for 10,000 inf that buy up everything listed from 1 inf to 10,000 inf. In this situation, no one who sells and item will get less than 10,000 inf for it, no matter what they list it for. Frankly, when I see this happen, I'm prone to dump my supply rather than delete it, because I'm getting a lot more than normal for it by doing so.

I suggest you re-read my post on the first page since it actually alludes to why this happens. Supply and demand of a particular item will come in spurts as individual players check the market and add items or bids. Large and sudden price jumps are most likely to happen when a short surge of buyers overwhelms the current waiting supply. Unless there is a significant reserve the buy it now price temporarily goes up.

This is why people often advise waiting a few minutes when buying salvage, it means that you wait out the temporary shortage.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if the devs changed the market so that instead of executing orders immediately it had a moderate duration "tick" (say 15 minutes). The idea would be that you could put up bids or listings whenever you wanted but the sever would wait until the next multiple of 15minutes to execute them. Theoretically it should serve to dampen out the wild short term price swings in the market although in practice it might end up making things worse by eliminating the ability to bid creep.

I've randomly paid 100x for some cheap crap just for giggles as well.

Be sure to drink your

It would eliminate all immediate feedback. You wouldn't know if what you bid bought something or not until the next interval. You might have bid 20M more than required and you still wouldn't know until the next gate.

Edit: It would also reduce the ability to bid low and win by being the only bidder, because bidders would accumulate on items until the next window, at which time the highest bidders of the lot would win.

Overall, it sounds kind of horrific to me.

Sure, I'm not actually suggesting that the devs actually implement it I'm just using it as a thought experiment. Yes it would eliminate the ability to get bargins but in practice it should also move both the high and low prices towards the theoretical market price. The major issue would be that the lack of feedback could potentially send the high price out of control.

I think what you'd need is something in between, it only executes every 15 minutes but tells you if you will be buying one ahead of time. Of course THAT leads to the ebay problem. So to counteract that you'd need to make the spacing between windows semi-random at which point the whole thing just becomes silly.

i've sometimes felt sorry for all that lonely, neglected salvage with no bidders and spend a few minutes buying and deleting it at a somewhat randomly selected price that's at least twice what a store will pay.

i do this more often with low or mid level salvage. That way the odds are better that the one benefiting from my largess is actually a new player who has more need for inf.

It doesn't actually accomplish anything but amusing me. Which is enough since i play this game for amusement.

i'm always amused by people who claim that market behavior isn't following free market rules in a free market. i tend to suspect they're the sort of ideologues who actually believe that free markets (in which the participants are human beings) operate in a rational, logical manner. Any endeavor that involves human beings never operates in a truly rational manner.

The game is designed to be fun. Apparently some people define fun differently than you do. Some people find making imaginary inf fun, and one way they try to make imaginary inf it is by trading common salvage. Some people find cleaning out a market fun just because they can, or because it annoys them to see 10,000 of an item listed. Some people want to play mogul in their own mind and want to try to control markets. And some people are messing around in common salvage purely to cheese you off. Their fun is different from yours.

Now, if someone is griefing you in game play, you certainly have recourse, but if someone else is having fun by playing their own way in a sandbox that you don't even have to play in yourself, I think it's pretty doubtful that there even is a problem, much less one that the devs feel is a legitimate concern. IMO.

Regardless, if you want cheap common salvage right now, pop in a bid or two before you log off.

If you want to DO something about "market blockers" the things to do is to 1inf above the the "market blocker's" bid and then sell at at least inf less than the "market blocker." Then you can squeeze his profit margin and provide cheaper goods to the many.

This is true. The higher prices get, the less likely I am to sell my supply. I would much rather sell my supply for very low prices. If salvage sold at market for less than the vendor, I would sell all of my salvage at the Market. The higher and higher that "market blockers" jack up the prices, the more I will sell my salvage to a vendor. Free market theory totally backs me up on this one. The increasing inf being offered for a good decreases the likelihood that people will want to sell it. Totally makes sense to me.

Listen to this carefully, Norman.

I figure that out of the 36 different types of common salvage (3x low, 3x medium, 3x high; all 2x for arcane/tech), there are only about 6-10 that you cannot buy (in bulk) for less than vendor prices over a 4-6 hour period.

That's not saying you cannot SELL them for higher, but when I finish an evening, I vend most of them before I even check for prices. The marketplace is sick to death of mathematic proofs. They prove nothing!