Basic Economics

Wow! Hecatomb 400 mil! Excuse me for being so surprised but I haven't played the market in a while (probably about to issues ago). WTH? What happened? I remember 40 mil for a Hecatomb. Basic economics dictates that demand is up, but why? Are a lot of people purchasing influence (personally that "chaps my hide")? Are the purple recipes being "randomly" awarded more often (then they should cost less)? Is it because of the new issue Incarnates? I'm playing the market as it dictates (never thought I would ever break 1 billion influence) but are we gonna have to knock off some zeroes eventually?

Is this inflation a sign of bad things to come? Will people cancel their subscriptions because they can't afford the time or influence to optimize their characters? Am i missing something about acquiring these purple recipes?

Just curious.

Maybe it's just me but anything like a Hecatomb, Armageddon, Apocalypse, etc...always did at least 200-400 million +.

Only purples that I've seen go for less than 100 million were things like the pet set, sleep, stun and maybe a few of the hold IOs....oh and the confuse set....

*shrugs*

The cause of the price rises is a combination of a few factors. In particular Merits and the AE drastically shifted the relative supply of items while Inf earning rates went up due to both the AE and a "bug fix" that essentially doubled inf gains for level 50s.

The net effect was that prices overall went up somewhat, the price of some highly desirable items (such as LotG 7.5%s or the special healing IOs) dropped due to increased supply. Purples ended up getting hit with a double whammy, in addition to the general increase in prices due to more inf coming in the ease of AE farming caused a decrease in the popularity of farming regular missions and a decrease in the rate of purple recipe production.

As for inflation the economy seems to be relatively stable for the moment so hyper inflation is not something I'm hugely concerned about.

Supply and demand.

1) Supply of inf has, in fact, gone up. Some of this was the doubling that has been mentioned, some of it is people coming up with much more efficient ways of farming, and some of it is many more people playing their level 50's, often on large teams [which generate more inf per recipe.]
2) Supply of most IO's has gone up. You can get a "task force" recipe for at most two Alignment Merits and random non-TF recipes for a handful of AE tickets. [Karma -KB has gone from 40 million to 5 million inf; I think it started around 10 million inf in issue 9, when 300 million bought you the best build in the game.]
3) Supply of purple IO's has gone up very little. There is no useful shortcut to get purple IO's: the cost in Alignment Merits is deliberately disproportionate. (In AM's, one purple is about the cost of fifteen Luck of the Gambler: Recharges.)

So that's the "supply" side. "Demand"- since more people are playing their 50's, on the harder Incarnate content, more people are trying to purple their 50's out. There are very few ways of burning inf other than paying 10% to the Market. So every inf farmed gets spent about ten times before it goes away. (all other ways of burning inf are relatively trivial, compared to buying a 400 M purple and burning 40 million in fees.)

Result: You have a LOT more inf chasing only a few more top-end goods. If you want anything other than top-end goods [see the Karma example] you will find prices have gone up by a much smaller amount. Orange salvage is still 2-3 million inf, which hasn't changed much since Issue 9.

Edit to add: Welcome back!

I have 10x the influence and earn influence about 10x as fast as I did back when Hecatombs might have been 1/10 the price. Not sure if that's atypical or typical, but for me, the TRUE price of top end goods in terms of time spent is about the same or falling. How many zeros there are in the price is just a number.

I remember paying 40 mil for Hecatomb too. Prices on purples made a huge jump after I14, when the farmers moved to AE farms. They're still going up steadily though. I just paid significantly more for an Apocalypse set a week ago than I did 6 months ago.

I like the prices purples are at, but that is because I haven't slotted any yet. I had one drop last night on a Lambda Trial and listed it on the market for 1 inf as a recipe. It sold instantly for about 350 million inf and I bought 2 sets of Kinetic Combats I needed.

Ah yes. Ye olde markete dayes.

*puffs pipe*

This thread has brought back memories of my first ever purple drop. It was on my first 50, who wasn't even 50 then. She'd just hit 48 and was fighting Carnies. I remember that quite clearly. A Ragnarok dam/rech, it was. It sold for 45 million and funded her entire build, with plenty left over. 'Course, these were the days before Reward Merits, before the ITF, even, when people ran Speed Katies and cursed their luck when they got yet another Sting of the Manticore or Crap of the Hunter.

Man, those days sure sucked.

... back when the expensive part of your orange recipe was the orange salvage? I remember it.

/e rocks chair back and forth

Makes me chuckle to think back to farming Wing Recipe drops back when they 1st came out and being boggled that they would go for 20mil. By far the highest priced items at the time I recall

Fairy wings used to go for 2 billion, and I was lucky enough to get one...but on test.