Marketeering-Anti

Just need to get this off my chest, I was at first very excited that the markets were merging but now it would seem that this Global economy has all but taken the fun out of the game for me. I like playing my toons and building setting them out, but lately even the common salvage is going for such a high and unreasonable price that it's just plain frustrating to build toons. It's expected that we will pay a bit for recipes and rare salvage but these folks purposely marketing cheap common salvage is too much.

I really don't even want to build my toons any longer and if I don't build them why play them, and you see where that leads. I have spoken to many of the people that I play with and most share similar views on this subject. maybe this game is getting long in the tooth.

I mean I have been playing for a while, I have the means to make the inf in order to build what I need, but it is no wonder with an untouchable economy and unforgiving reward system that we do not retain more people in the game. If it weren't for the PVP-IO farmers there would be none on the market. As well I have run TF's and Trials out the wazoo and still as long as I have played this game cannot say that I have had enough purples dropped to me to make a complete set, I have had some don't get me wrong but now with the economy the way it is I would sure sell it before I would ever consider using one.

I am sorry but the Devs for not wanting people to farm are making this a farmers game that it pretty much all folks can do to get by any longer. All that aside the market needs looked at, it is out of control.

That's my grip and no I have no possible solutions this time only grief. but then again that's not my job, I would like to continue playing this game for a while but man every time I set foot in Wents, it hurts.

I think this belongs in the markets and inventions forums.

Past that, I couldn't disagree more.

Common salvage is cheap, and remains cheap. It spikes high when impatient people feel they absolutely can't wait even a short period to get it. There's also several effective and easy alternative ways to get it apart from bidding frantically high prices on the market. No one makes anyone bid those too-high prices except themselves.

No one needs purples or PVP-IOs. These are intentionally super-rare. Of course they're going to be expensive on the market, that's intentional. Not having them is not a sign of failure in any way; nor should anyone expect to gain full sets of them by random drops.

The Market itself is designed to be a competitive arena as much as a place to trade stuff. In that respect, it's not working incorrectly if it separates out "winners". That being said, if you manage your expectations and exercise some patience, the market will work very well for you, especially since the merge, to help you get a lot of cool, yet optional, stuff.

Blacier...just run some AE arcs and run some salvage rolls. What you can't use, you can sell at WW, and use the profits from doing that to get what you can use.

You can also do what my crafter does..she puts in some low ball bids on salvage she needs for her recipes way before she needs to craft them. Every few days I will check and they do indeed fill

And, of course you know that the high selling price of salvage can be used for your advantage. For a few days pay attention to salvage prices to get a feeling for the flow, then jump feets first into the bidding wars

Tip Missions will result in Hero/Villain merits which can get you the the recipes you need, and playing the tip missions will get you white and yellow salvage drops. Doing
AE missions will help you get the necessary orange salvage cheaply.

Hope I helped a bit.

Lisa

Yesterday I was finishing my field crafter badge. The fastest way to do that for me was tocreate level 10 Accuracy enhancers. I made like 300, with a luck charm and a boresight for each. So, if you logged on yesterday, and found the price high on those.....

To everyone selling luck charms and boresights yesterday, thank you, and you are welcome.

Doesn't matter I associate with some of the best of the best, and as usual the point is missed. Have a nice day to all.

Part of the reason common salvage does crazy every once in a while is simple supply and demand. The salvage is still needed for IOs that high level characters want to craft, but it doesn't drop from high level content. And what are lots of people doing right now? Right. High level content. The supply will naturally bias towards whatever drops at the level most people are playing. So, if they add a new round of powerset proliferation, or lots of new low-level missions, you can expect to see a surge in low level drops.

In the meantime, you have a couple simple options. First, run low level content and get the salvage from drops. You can either play an alt, or use Ouroboros. Second, use AE tickets and buy common salvage rolls. Third, place bids at what you consider a reasonable price, and go do something else. This works especially well if you do it before you log off for the night. (Or even the weekend.) In fact, if you place a bid for a stack or two of the "problem" salvage, you might come back to find that you even have extra.

And if the problem salvage is uncommon or rare, even better. You can spend AE tickets to buy exactly the salvage you want at those levels. If the salvage is *really* in demand, buy a few stacks of it with tickets and sell it yourself. You'll make a huge profit (in some cases whether you want to or not, if the item is really scarce) and other people get a chance to get the item "right now!"

James: One thing I'm not going to defend is the "hollow" market- there's always been a problem with supply at levels below max. I tried, and occasionally still try, to push some Pool C stuff out the door in the 30-35 range. But there aren't many people doing that, and throwing a couple hundred recipes [WHICH I HAVE DONE] out there solves less than 1/10,000 of the problem. Hopefully more than 1/100,000 of the problem.

Given that: people will always have problems affording the highest-end, purplest, stuff because there's only so much of it, and as TopDoc says "Other players can be very unreasonable." LEt's be honest, if putting 100 staples into your face got you a purple, there'd be a guide called "Tetanus and you" and there'd be circus geeks bragging about fully purpling themselves without ever stepping into Wents.

Now let's be honest about midrange salvage. If you're complaining about midrange salvage costs AND lack of ultrarares, there are three choices. You're bad at math, you love complaining, or you're being deliberately dishonest.

Let's say you pay too much for every piece of common you buy,and you pay 100,000 inf too much. You fill 100 slots (I think there are 93 on a normal character) and you use 2 common salvage on each slot. You're paying 100,000 inf above desired price for the Alch Silver. You're paying 100,000 inf too much for your Demonic Blood Samples, for your Improvised Cybernetics- You're Buying It Nao and you're throwing money around like it's nothing.

200 slots * 100,000 inf = 20,000,000 inf.

With careful shopping, that's the cost of TEN orange salvage. It's the cost of crafting those hundred IO's- if the IO's are level 40.

And it's ten percent of the cost of a single high-demand purple- a year ago. It's ONE percent of the cost of a high end build, such as you might fill with purples and PVPs - a year ago.

I'm personally going to guess you love being outraged. There may be a fourth option that I'm not seeing.

I love to complain about the market. Some may recall the great discussion of lastsummer. i still havent been back to that section of the forums lol. However, the OP sounds a tad bit whiney here. I posted above that i spent 100,000 per for 300 Luck Charms a couple days ago. Absolute truth. i think towards the end I was paying 75000 per Boresight. Yes, this drives the price up. Yes, this drives the available salvage down. I laughingly imagined people raiding their own bases for Boresights if they noticed what was happening. But the money flowed thru the game. What really hurt was the almost 1000 I/Os I burned over 3 days getting that badge. I think I sold about 20.

Meanwhile i have about 5 bill in 2,5 weeks pretty casually. started with 34 mill inf.
Mostly selling drops, rolling merits, rolling tickets and doing som hit and runs in a few niches.
Also if salvage prices bothers you that much leave low bids up and go do something else.

Does it make any sense at all to blame others for greed, when the only one that controls how much you pay for something is you?

Is it just me, or is that the dumbest thing ever?

If you're complaining about level 25-40 salvage...well its kind of highish at the moment. But you know why? Cause everyone is playing 50+ toons at the moment. If you want to craft stuff not made with level 50 salvage you'll have to either make inf, make tickets and convert to salvage, or directly pop that salvage with a level 25-40 toon.

Its not that complicated. One person's high prices are another's opportunity. Not that much "flipping" is being done...this is a legitimate shortage of mid-level salvage. Help out Fulmens and go pop some if you think its an issue.

The way to make inf on the market isn't by flipping salvage anyhows. Its by crafting recipes into IOs and selling the IOs. Anyone who is a serious marketeer knows this.

When I see people complain about the high price of common salvage, I know they're talking about mid-range salvage. And when I see people reply that salvage is cheap, they're usually talking about top-range salvage. And as others have said, the reason why mid-range is expensive and top-range is dirt cheap is that everyone is playing their level 50s. And while it's obvious that some marketeers try to manipulate prices as much as they can, cheap stuff remains cheap because there's too much of it. (Chaos's experiment weeks ago to do away with all of the Demonic Threat Reports on the market affected prices for less than a full 24 hours I think, and we were back up in the thousands for sale in just another day or so.) And scarce stuff is mostly expensive not because of manipulation but because there's not very much of it.

The two big "problems with the market" are not problems with the market per se: 1) People are mostly playing level 50 characters, so mid-range stuff is hard to come by (this was true before Incarnates because leveling has become so fast over the years, but it's quadruply true right now) and 2) Rampant inflation due to much more influence being created than destroyed -- which is also exacerbated by people playing their level 50s.

But I also think that a large part of the problem is perception. If I complain about the market every time I have to pay 50,000 or 100,000 for a piece of common salvage, and all my friends do the same, then I can eventually get very upset about it. But really, if I'm playing my level 50's (as most people are), then 50,000 influence or infamy is not that big of a deal. I don't worry about it, and therefore I'm not depressed about that aspect of the game.

But this is the first game I've ever played where I feel I can make my characters as tough as possible, where I can have everything I'd ever want, and I don't have to be part of a 50-member elite raiding guild to do it. And that's because of the kind of market the game has.

Life is hard, it's even harder if you insist on being impatient.