Salvage Speculation?

In the past few weeks or so, roughly since Freedom went live, I've seen a large
drop in salvage prices, and I'm wondering what market / game forces have lead to this.

FYI - I'm not wondering if that result is Good or Bad (it's irrelevant to me), but
what the causality of the pricing change is.

A few speculations I have (in no particular order):

I'm fairly comfortable with the idea that Rare (orange) Salvage price decreases
are most probably due to the recent prevalence of lowbie AE and CEBR types of
farming - where those players are exchanging tix for rare salvage, and thus
significantly raising supply of rares on the market.

With the most recent AE changes (no rez rewards, ambush DR), I'd expect that
activity to wane a bit now and rare salvage to gradually ramp up again in price.

Some of that activity may also be a factor in the price reductions of Uncommon
as well, but I'd expect it to be less than the rare segment, so I'm still wondering
at the drop there, where Carnie Masks, Steel, Symbols etc. are back to Vendor
price levels.

I don't have any idea what pushed Common prices down, although I'm aware of
some efforts by folks here to drop Al Silvers and a couple others down. But things
like Circuit Board, Spell Scroll, Runes and many others are also back in the Vendor
Price range, and I'm doubtful any of those efforts had anything more than a minor
(and temporary) effect.

I am wondering if there was a dev bump to salvage drops (I21), and I've seen
occasions on recent toons where they got double salvage drops (bug?).

I doubt it's attributable to iStuff as those have been run by L50s for several
months now - while prices still remained elevated during that period.

Another possiblity is that I21 has boosted the population (esp for former VIP
accounts), and I wonder if that activity is a significant factor (Freebs can't
use WW/BM so I doubt they're a contributor). I have no proof that population
did, in fact, increase significantly, but if it did, perhaps it's a factor.


So, what do *you* think has lead to reduced salvage prices across the board?


Regards,
4

lots of people have access to /auctionhouse. makes it much easier to dump salvage onto the market between missions.

Do Free/Premium players get salvage drops even without an invention license? The available information is unclear on that point but if they do that could explain a general price drop since Market access comes a lot earlier than invention access.

As I mentioned in another post I had been running the latest SSA very frequently, set to a team of 8 and was able to quickly fill all my base storage for both arcane and tech. Then I thought I'd take advantage and sell off the excess, when I noticed that some of the formerly expensive ones, like Alchemical Golds, were going for as little as 1,000. So much for a quick buck. I put in a bid for several hundred to take advantage, and I see the price has been creeping back up.

I'm sure this isn't the entire story, but I'm assuming I'm not the only one running that arc.

Lots of new powersets became available with i21. Players (Like myself) like to PL to level 22 (SO range) and run regular content - such as First Ward. With auctionhouse more widely spread, players can post salvage quickly and easily.

It's simply that there are more players in the mid-level range than normal. The big question is whether numbers will creep back up or stay lower.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.