Marketeering-Anti

Market griefers, I mean flippers, are the cause of high prices. The devs need to do something about them. I'm tired of being forced to pay such high prices on IOs I need to make my build respectable.

I'm not going to try and fix the prices of any enhancements or salvage, that would be screwing over the casual players. Besides, there is already plenty of price fixing going on. Why would I want to add to it? That would just make it harder for the casual player to purple out their Warshade.

JamesDonner: I've got a character I just level-locked at 33, and another one coming online shortly. Do you want to place an order? [Something like twenty random level 33 Pool C's at 20 million inf each, or fifty random level 33 bronzes at... I don't even know, a million each? Lemme go find that "Silver vs. Bronze" thread.]

When it comes to Internet Superhero Economics, there is no joking around.

Well, sure if you're gonna use my actual statements against me it appears I'm messing around. But that isn't fair.

Annecdotal evidence to be sure, but worth a thought:

I logged on to my Storm defender who I haven't played since pre-ED (she's still five-slotted for damage). She had ~5,000,000 inf at level 39. So, that jives with what Obitus wrote above. I remember when they first introduced the various wings recipies, for a month or so they were "super expensive" at like 1,000,000 inf apiece.

I rememeber looking at the vendor prices for the level 50 common recipies and thinking "Wow, that's a ton of cash" in comparison to what else I was able to earn. Maybe that's part of the inflation?

The people that had inf in I8 fell into three categories:

1) Badgers going for the inf badges.
2) People who ran a chunk ton of big teams in PI. [Remember, 300 hours to level 50 was considered FAST in issue 2-7.]
3) People who saved up a lot of inf to convert into Prestige when bases went live, were disgusted by the conversion rate, and kept it. I knew two people who were billionaires before Issue 9- and I had no idea because it just didn't matter.

I agree that most of the inf is fairly fresh- there was 3 trillion inf (cash) in the whole game at the end of issue 8. Now there may be twenty times that much. But the main thing about inf is you have to spend it ten times to get rid of it. So it's not so much "Where did it come from?" as "how are we going to get rid of it? "

Oh my gosh, the entitlement mentality here from some is making me slightly nauseous. I've noticed for most of these people "reasonable" actually means "what I, personally, fell like spending", and it's crap. First, if somoene has an item, they own it, and they can sell it for whatever price they like. If you don't like it, no one is holding a gun to your head to buy it. There are all kinds of mechanics, like A-merits, that enable you to get these recipes without ever seeing the market. "But I don't have the time to do all thaaaat!" some people will whine. Well guess what - there's a pretty good chance the person selling it did do all that, and it's really sleazy to try to tell somone they are going to do the work, but YOU are going to reap the benefits. That's the real greed, forcing someone else to essentially give you something you didn't earn.

Second, this is just a game. It really is. If you don't get that purple for the price you want, or even at all, it will not affect your life in any real way.

Person A: "I have a Something. I could delete it, or vendor it. But, I'm willing to bother to put it on the market if I can get some meaningful amount of influence for it. Say, 100,000. After all, I don't have to sell it at all; it's mine, and I have free choice to keep it, vendor it, delete it, craft it, or do anything else with it I want. That's what ownership means."

Person B: "I need a Something. I could defeat enemies until I get one by luck, or using tickets, merits, etc. But if I can spend some of my influence on it, I would look for it on the market. I'm in a hurry, because I could get it a lot of other ways. So 100,000 sounds reasonable to me. After all, I have the influence, it's mine, and it's my free choice to spend it or not however I want. That's what ownership means."

Person C: "How -dare- you two have an agreed exchange without me setting your terms! I don't think a Something is worth even a fraction of that! I demand market price caps!"

What's amazing to me is that a seller is so easily accused of greed for deciding the price of an item he owns, but a buyer who desires to set the price of an item someone else owns is so often considered pure as the driven snow.

Seems to me we need a new definition of greed to reconcile that disparity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Thing I try to remember: Just because it's not new to ME doesn't mean it's not new to THEM. Like when I go into a hardware store, ask where the C-clamps are, and the guy looks at me like I'm an idiot. Because he already TOLD people where the C-clamps are. Fifty times. Just none of them were me.

I'd also suggest a tweak on the entitlement: it's not 'I've noticed for most of these people "reasonable" actually means "what I, personally, fell like spending", and it's crap.'

"Reasonable" usually means "What it cost six months ago." Or, if you're old, what it cost twenty years ago. I find it kind of annoying when a midlevel uncommon costs me either an afternoon of waiting or 350,000 extra inf. ("Six months ago you couldn't give those things away.") But you know? I can wait, I can suck it up, or I can get it myself. For some reason I never get it myself.

Although I am thinking of having Backup-Uncommon-Guy keep five of everything around and gleemail em to myself. That would save me like five million inf a day AND, far more important, allow me to feel a warm glow of superiority.

I'm kinda the opposite Fulmens. I'll happily drop 500k or a million on some piece of common or uncommon salvage to have it nao. Throwing influence around like that and not caring makes me feel rich. And I like that.

The main reason for the rampant inflation is the lack/low amount of inf sinks in the game. When the game originally came out the primary inf sink were SOs. I think they wanted prestige to be another inf sink, but that is insufficient as many people either don't run in SG mode or don't donate massive sums to their SG, or are like me and don't have an SG. People don't use SOs near as much as they used to. So what else is there to remove inf from the game? Most other MMO's that I've played have sufficient currency sinks to at least slow inflation. It still happens, every time Devs of any MMO increase supply without increasing amount of currency removed from the game inflation happens.

An interesting thing to think about, though, is that perhaps marketeers should be lauded and not cursed. What do most marketeers do with all the inf they make? If what I've seen in this forum over the last few days is any indication, they sit on it. They are in essence one more currency sink in the game removing millions, or more, of inf from the market each day. Yes, they are adding it to their own horde, and yes they may spend like a pirate fresh into port, but, unlike a pirate, they always try to increase or maintain their current hordes.

Think about what would happen if all of the marketeers went on a spending spree this weekend. Tens of billions, or more, of inf suddenly hitting the market and spreading out among people. You think prices are bad now, imagine after that.