City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

What to do about Market Blockers?

Adeon Hawkwood

By Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-03-16 10:40 in The Market and Inventions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fulmens View Post
... so did nobody want to discuss the part where level 20 IO's are "optimal"? I almost never use 'em- I can wait till level 22 for SO's, then 27 or 32 to Frankenslot.
I am more or less straight vanilla IOs plus w/e drops until I get to 50. Crafted vanilla IOs are relatively inexpensive when they are available.
Well, that excludes things like the Numi and steadfast uniques etc.

 

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Originally Posted by Fulmens View Post
... so did nobody want to discuss the part where level 20 IO's are "optimal"? I almost never use 'em- I can wait till level 22 for SO's, then 27 or 32 to Frankenslot.
Personally, I'll slot even level 15 IOs as I'm leveling up. They're good enough for quite a long time for me. And as I've said before, I've level 50s that STILL have lvl 25 generics (which are absolutely USELESS if you then try to exemp down and fight in bloody bay! They were less effective than TOs pretty much!).

Of course, I never bother filling every slot- it's just a waste of time when the performance difference will be so small. I fill them as I level up, slowly. It works quite well, and I never have to spend a bunch of time crafting.

Edit: If you were planning on replacing your IOs every 5 levels anyways, then slotting level 20s is pretty silly. In that case, I'd wait until 30-35! 35 is the first level that (generic) IOs are never worse than SOs.

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

 

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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
Of course, I never bother filling every slot- it's just a waste of time when the performance difference will be so small. I fill them as I level up, slowly. It works quite well, and I never have to spend a bunch of time crafting.
I would never in a million years be able to stand this. Which I think brings up an important point about things like this.

The assertion "performance difference [is] so small" depends dramatically about what baseline performance one is making that assertion relative to. For example, if one targets play on, say, settings +0 levels and a virtual team size of 1 player, then missing out on slots in powers is indeed probably not going to be highly noticable. If one plays on, say, +2/x4, then the performance difference in having something fully slotted and having it underslotted can be very noticeable. Fighting +2 and +3 foes with any alacrity requires a lot more of both DPS and DPE, both of which call for well-endowed accuracy, damage and endurance reduction. Fighting more foes than normal calls for good damage, end reduction and possibly recharge.

So if indeed you play on lower target settings than I do, then there's nothing at all wrong about what you're saying about relative performance. If you're playing on high settings though, I think I would have to disagree, on a fairly objective basis.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

 

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I prefer to team.

There, now the performance difference surmounts to a rounding error


Soloing, even with a good build, gets very boring very fast. If I wanted to just solo, I'd find a standard single player game, which'd likely have much better graphics, performance, and gameplay than any MMO. I do occasionally solo, but mostly because at times I just want to experience the story (like with the Praetorian content), and in those cases I'm not really caring about leveling up, or going through the missions fast.


If I'm wanting a character that can solo well, I'll put more effort into filling their slots, but even then there's things that just have a low priority- the powers like health that make a small impact on your to begin with, or boxing/kick if I'm picking up tough/weave, and lots of other mostly-crappy powers out there. Powers that are useless enough that the performance difference will be less than that amount of time it takes to slot the power.

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

 

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Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
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.
You're making that sound harder than it is. Most sellers are not planning to camp there by WW all day waiting for a high price. They have about 15 slots, and their salvage is too diverse to put it all in those slots, but their team is about to leave on another radio mission and their storage is full. If they don't empty it out, they might risk missing the next Mu Vestment or Enchanted Impervium that would have dropped.

What do they do?

A standing bid of 500 inf will scoop up most salvage such as human blood samples and the like.

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Originally Posted by all_hell View Post
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.
Except the prices aren't high in general. They're only high if you're willing to post it for a whole day.


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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
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).
Yes. You are right. It's the ratio of supply to demand that determines what should happen, but all of my arguments are still exactly as valid.

If there is high demand and mediocre supply, increasing supply is desirable. If there is mediocre demand and extremely low supply, increasing supply is also desirable. If there is mediocre demand and high supply, it's probably for the best if people are choosing to delete their salvage rather than sell it. If there is low demand and mediocre supply, then it is still for the best if they delete rather than sell.

However, what I'm describing is a situation where there is high demand and mediocre supply, but potential sellers are being scared away by low standing bids, motivating them to delete salvage that people actually want to buy.

 

Posted

I think it's a problem of the population of non-functioning characters vs. characters a person actually plays.

Salvage drops happen on active toons. But, if you're like me, you've got about 20 or 30 inactive toons spread out across the servers, most of which you never intend to play again, but haven't deleted yet. If I wanted to join in the profits, I could log onto those characters, and put out massive numbers of standing bids on a type of cheap salvage, say Temporal Sands. I could probably low ball over 10,000 of them a day, re post a few at an obscenely high price and then delete the rest.

Would it be polite of me? Certainly not. I'm ruining active players' play experience by preventing them from being able to sell on WW without waiting a long time (and probably holding up their missions team with repeated visits to the market). They'll just get tired of it and start deleting rather than travel half way across the zone to make 5000 inf. But, I make a tidy daily profit.

 

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
I'm ruining active players' play experience by preventing them from being able to sell on WW without waiting a long time (and probably holding up their missions team with repeated visits to the market).
Say what? How on earth are you blocking people from selling? You said that you were relisting yours at high prices so as long as they list for 1 inf less than you they will get the next sale. If your buying bids are still up they can opt to immediately sell to you and if not they can list for somewhere between your buy price and your sell price and they get the next sale.

 

Posted

Every time I go to the market, there's a lot of common salvage, going for cheap, with zero bidding. If I've got some of that salvage I don't need, and unless I definitely don't need any of my slots, I'll just delete it. High supply and no demand? Not worth a slot. If I do list it (either cause I've got extra slots, or there's bidders), unless it's going for 500,000+, I'm just going to be listing it for 1 inf. There's no profit to be made off of that stuff- and I don't care if I lose 4 inf on every one of those I sell! A single kill on a 50 will net me more inf that I'll lose over a month+.

At this point, I've no longer got any idea what point you're trying to make, or if you even have one beyond 'market BAD'.

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

 

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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
ISoloing, even with a good build, gets very boring very fast. If I wanted to just solo, I'd find a standard single player game, which'd likely have much better graphics, performance, and gameplay than any MMO. I do occasionally solo, but mostly because at times I just want to experience the story (like with the Praetorian content), and in those cases I'm not really caring about leveling up, or going through the missions fast.
I prefer to level up solo. It teaches me whether I really enjoy what the character can do, and I always want a character that can solo viably for when I cannot or don't want to team. I don't avoid teaming (except on new characters I am leveling up), and when I do solo, I do so knowing I'm bringing characters who can single-handedly face a large fraction of the entirety of what the team will end up facing.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

 

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
Would it be polite of me? Certainly not. I'm ruining active players' play experience by preventing them from being able to sell on WW without waiting a long time (and probably holding up their missions team with repeated visits to the market). They'll just get tired of it and start deleting rather than travel half way across the zone to make 5000 inf. But, I make a tidy daily profit.
I really don't understand why you think this is stopping people from selling.

To stop them from selling you need to buy all the stock and list it low, not high.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

 

Posted

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
You're making that sound harder than it is. Most sellers are not planning to camp there by WW all day waiting for a high price.
You still aren't getting it. People buying up the supply helps sellers. You never, ever block sellers by buying all the stock. You raise prices, which attracts sales.

Buying up supply "blocks" buyers, not sellers.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

 

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Originally Posted by sharker quint 1 View Post
pro tip: Sometimes you have to wait more then 10 secs for a bid to fill. Go do a mish or 2 and come back to collect.

oh hell naw!


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Originally Posted by Blue Lava View Post
I love how people who can read DONT.
As I said -- "" When you only have a limited time to play, its worth it for me not to wait 4 minutes until my bid of 2000 is accepted ""
Then do it before you log off in the evening and it'll be there the next time you log on. Nothing DEMANDS that you have to have it in your hot little hands RIGHT THAT SECOND.

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So waiting more than 10 seconds or going and running another mission while I wait is not an option I choose to use.. thus why I said what I said LOL
Just cuz I pays lots doesnt mean u haz to
Then the choice to be ripped off and pay high prices is yours. And the person ripping you off? YOU.


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PS - Always good to get a "PRO TIP" from someone registered on the forum March 2011 with 5 posts under their belt LOL
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PRO TIPS: Don't simply look at someone posting from their alt account and assume they're a newb. Also, note that forum registration data is NOT the same as the age of the account it is attached to. These tips should help keep you from making a fool of yourself....whoops!


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Posted

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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
I used to list my common salvage for just 1 inf (except a couple actually GOOD ones)
Not meant for you KK. But for others. Whether you list at 1 inf or 100 inf, you still pay the market minimum listing fee of 5 inf.

As such, if you list and sell something for 1 inf, you just lost money.


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Posted

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
Except the prices aren't high in general. They're only high if you're willing to post it for a whole day.
So the thing is less about the Market being broken and more about the Market not working fast enough to please you. A "whole day"....lol
Quote:
Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
However, what I'm describing is a situation where there is high demand and mediocre supply, but potential sellers are being scared away by low standing bids, motivating them to delete salvage that people actually want to buy.
If only there were some way to make sure that an item didn't sell for less than a certain amount. The Devs should give us a way to make sure that we don't have to sell our stuff for less than what we would like. I'll post over in the suggestions forum that the Devs let us decide for ourselves how much to list our items for so that we don't have to sell our stuff for too little.

 

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
I'm ruining active players' play experience by preventing them from being able to sell on WW without waiting a long time (and probably holding up their missions team with repeated visits to the market).
You wouldn't be making it take longer for them to sell their stuff at all. It's just not how the market actually works.
If you were offering a fair price you would be enabling someone to sell their item more quickly.
If you were not offering a fair price, your low bids would have no effect on the frequency of other players offering a fair price and thus buying the item.

 

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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
As such, if you list and sell something for 1 inf, you just lost money.
No way, man. You just paid 4 inf to have someone collect your garbage. That's not a loss.

 

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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
Soloing, even with a good build, gets very boring very fast. If I wanted to just solo, I'd find a standard single player game, which'd likely have much better graphics, performance, and gameplay than any MMO.
Now this attitude I find much harder to understand than that of a hardcore soloist. The hardcore soloists are at least playing a game that they like. You are playing a game you don't like, only because there are other people also playing that same boring game. Now that makes my head asplode.

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Originally Posted by all_hell View Post
No way, man. You just paid 4 inf to have someone collect your garbage. That's not a loss.
Now if only the city would collect my garbage for 4 inf, I'd be all set!

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Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA View Post
But, if you're like me, you've got about 20 or 30 inactive toons spread out across the servers, most of which you never intend to play again, but haven't deleted yet. If I wanted to join in the profits, I could log onto those characters, and put out massive numbers of standing bids on a type of cheap salvage, say Temporal Sands. I could probably low ball over 10,000 of them a day, re post a few at an obscenely high price and then delete the rest.
Okay, let's think about what would happen actually there.

First of all, let's say you have 30 level 50 toons you can devote entirely to the project. That gives you 480 slots you can fill with stacks of 10 bids. 4800 lowball bids.

People who come to the market will see your lowball buy price in the history. If you're offering a price they like, they'll list below it and you'll buy their Temporal Sands and you're both happy. If they don't like it, they'll list above it and your bids will not remove that supply from the market. Of course, you can put in higher bids to suck out that supply, but remember that those bids will then fill first, including the next 1 inf listing that someone throws on the market.

Anyway, let's assume that you fill your lowball bids and empty the low end of the price range.

Now on to part two. You delete most of your purchases, and list the rest high. Don't forget that if you're actually trying to make money, you need to factor in the buy price. E.g. If you keep 10% of the supply, then you need to sell it for eleven times more than you paid for it just to break even.

But that's okay, because you have the only supply. Except that, of course, any existing supply on the market your lowball bids didn't pick up will sell before your high listing, if their listing price is in the gap between your lowball bids and high listing. Don't forget the constant trickle of new supply coming onto the market from other players, either -- every single one of those has the potential to sell first if it's priced even 1 inf lower than your high listing.

So, you'd better put more lowball bids out there to catch that supply. I'd guess that, since you're completely removing supply by deleting it, that your lowballs are going to have to be a little bit higher this time, which means you'll have to delete fewer or list even higher to make a profit.

And, of course, anyone who sees your lowball bid figure in the last 5 sales can choose to bid 1 inf more and wait, and they'll get the next TS listed for less than that figure, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Meanwhile, every single Temporal Sands than goes onto the market at a listing price between your lowball bids and high listings is taking a sale away from you. Every time you have to take a break and your lowball bids run out, even more get by you. Your high listings will sit there, waiting for there to be not one single TS listed at a lower price, and for someone to buy it nao, instead of bidding a little above your lowball and waiting five minutes.

Does that seem like a reasonable description of how the market functions to you?

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Originally Posted by all_hell View Post
No way, man. You just paid 4 inf to have someone collect your garbage. That's not a loss.

Versus vendoring it for a couple hundred inf? Fee-free?


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Posted

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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
oh hell naw!
Hilariously enough, I listed some crappy common salvage on the market for 1 inf (5 items, i think), and there were 48 bidding (and like 10k+ selling)... and they didn't sell. I listed and sold several other items after that. Sometimes the market can make you crazy

(I wanna bid zero inf for something! )

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
Not meant for you KK. But for others. Whether you list at 1 inf or 100 inf, you still pay the market minimum listing fee of 5 inf.

As such, if you list and sell something for 1 inf, you just lost money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
Versus vendoring it for a couple hundred inf? Fee-free?
I generally move a salvage stack to the AH to see the current going price/bidders. Unless I'm low on space, it's easier & quicker for me to just list for 1 inf (so it'll move as fast as possible, and maybe help get me a badge... I've no idea what characters even have that one, admittedly), than pulling it off and then going over to the vendor and selling it. Plus, at most it's a few thousand difference... and while that'll add up over time, it won't add up to much.

I don't particularly understand being willing to list for 5 inf, but not 1 inf. Worst case scenario, you lose 4 inf. Alternatively, you'll be that much more likely if someone REALLY screws up and bids 2,000,000,000 inf for it. Plus, listing for 1 will move it slightly faster as well (which I care more about for the low value junk than 5k inf).


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Originally Posted by Daemodand View Post
Now this attitude I find much harder to understand than that of a hardcore soloist. The hardcore soloists are at least playing a game that they like. You are playing a game you don't like, only because there are other people also playing that same boring game. Now that makes my head asplode.
Although I enjoy a good head 'aslpoding (just look at my signature ), my usage of 'gameplay' is probably throwing you off. 'Mechanics' would probably be a much better way to put it... MMOs generally have much more primitive mechanics (such as what you do, or what your goal is, etc... think the difference between Praetorian content and i0 Paragon content) than other games (likewise, for games with both single player and multiplayer, the multiplayer mechanics are usually at least slightly watered down).

What makes up for that simplicity is the multi part of the second M in MMO. Other people result in the game having a social aspect (whether that's global channels, your team, or tells), which simply make the game more enjoyable. Back when one of my good friends still played CoH, if we were on different factions I'd be much more willing to solo, since we'd still talk in IMs while I fought through the missions.

So really, gameplay would be the wrong word to use, since the social aspect is a fundamental part of a MMO's gameplay. But, I've tried other MMOs, and I end up flat out not liking their mechanics (I much prefer CoX's power system over the fantasy MMOs skill system's generic attack skill lvl 3), as well as their community (whether it's because they make 4chan look mature and civilized, or because there isn't one!).

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

 

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Originally Posted by Grouchybeast View Post
First of all, let's say you have 30 level 50 toons you can devote entirely to the project. That gives you 480 slots you can fill with stacks of 10 bids. 4800 lowball bids.
The analysis is even simpler than this.

Logging in, monkeying with 18 or 20 stacks of stupid salvage, and logging out would probably take two to five minutes. Multiple by 30 characters and you have just spent 60 to 150 minutes.

How long could someone stand wasting an hour to two and a half hours a day doing something so totally boring, for so little actual profit? Two days? Three days?

Especially considering that they could make billions in the same amount of time flipping items of real value?

There might be people who try to force high prices on common items just for the hell of it. But they won't do it for long, because it's just too insanely boring, and there are so many trivial ways of circumventing their "block."

Common items sell for 200K a pop not because someone is trying to block the market, but because someone doesn't want to wait five minutes, or a day, or spend five or 10 minutes in AE to get dozens of pieces of low- and mid-level salvage.

 

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Originally Posted by Daemodand View Post
Now this attitude I find much harder to understand than that of a hardcore soloist. The hardcore soloists are at least playing a game that they like. You are playing a game you don't like, only because there are other people also playing that same boring game. Now that makes my head asplode.
I think it's perfectly reasonable. I both solo and team (although nowadays I primarily team) and I find that the gameplay is very different in the two modes. Soloing is a much more tactical game with a focus on resource management and positioning while teaming is more about rapid information processing. I enjoy both to a large degree but I could easily see that some people might prefer one style to the other.