Informal Market Project/Survey

For folks that may not have read the entire thread, take a peek at post #109
to see my analysis of Category E. tl;dr There's nothing special about E and
it *should* be rolled into D (hence the two graphs).

In fact, I've flipped those graphs, so the "proper" one is seen first.


While I've presented this in the other thread (in Mkt Forum), given that the
data has slowed down to a trickle now, I'll re-iterate my analysis here.

First, the caveats, disclaimers, quid pro quos, addenda, and other "but..."

Blue's question "Is this data representative?" is a good one. My answer: Yes & No.

Yes: The data distribution appears to be log-normal, which is typical for studies
of income distribution and we have a pretty typical curve.

No: It's 157 accounts... We don't know how many accounts are actually in
the game (I'm using 100,000 for discussion purposes, because they don't delete
accounts, and past charts I've seen are typically around that number). On that
basis, we have a sample size of 0.16% of the assumed population -- the statisticians
will tell you (rightfully), that's "Not Good"

Some of the other (many) Caveats:

* Game Population: clearly affects total income in game. So, from the very outset
we're speculating hugely here... 100K? 10K? 50K? Who knows? Purely for discussion
I'm using 100K as a basis.

* Activity Ratio: Active accounts continue to make inf - Inactive - not so much.
Presumably, nearly all the accounts have some amount of inf on them, but what
ratio is still actively earning inf?

* Timing: A subset of the above point, accounts that went inactive prior to WW/BM
probably have a *lot* less inf on them than ones that went inactive more recently.
We know it's easier to make inf now than it ever has been previously, so there's
an element of timing that probably affects total inf in-game.

Forum Bias: I've said all along that I think forum posters are more informed,
more dedicated to the game, and consequently, probably have more inf as a whole
than the average population. As such, extrapolating these numbers out should
give us a theoretical maximum (ie. If forumites make more than average, the
full population shouldn't beat the number we'd get by using our data to represent
everyone).

Also, since I think the distribution curve itself is valid, we can speculate about
the full population by simply shifting the entire curve to the right and see what
we get.

Obviously, those are some pretty severe caveats, so honestly, the actual data
doesn't really help us very much to get anywhere near an accurate measure
(with any appreciable level of confidence), but, it can still be fun to guess.

SO... How much inf *could* there be in-game based on what we see here?

Actual Data: 157 Accounts worth 2.4263 Trillion gives us an average of ~15.45 Billion
per account. Multiplying that by 100K gives us a theoretical maximum of about
1.5 Quadrillion inf as our upper limit. I'd expect the actual amount to be much
lower than this.

If I take the sample percentages and drop them into a spreadsheet with a 100K
population basis, I also get 1.5 Quadrillion (not surprising - since in both cases
we're treating the sample as representative of the entire population).

If I apply Pareto terms, looking at the top 3 categories, we see that 28% of our
sample controls 87% of the wealth. So, if I take our average * 28,000 and divide
that by 87% we can get another estimate for the full population, which works out
to approximately 497.2 Trillion influence. This number seems plausible.

Category Shifting: Assuming forumites are wealthier, let's shift the categories,
right once, and then twice and compare those results. I don't think we can
shift it 3X for a simple reason: These days, one character who cashes 2 A-merits
for a LotG would, by itself, get into category F - it's just too simple to make
inf these days, to think the bulk of the population is any lower than G (imho).
As we shift categories right, I'll make A 1/2 of B and tweak the largest category
to get 100%.

Shifting once (ie. Mean in Group F instead of D/E) gives us ~706.5 Trillion.

Shifting twice (ie. Mean in Group G instead of D/E) gives us ~336.3 Trillion


So, looking at the various numbers (which are slightly different with today's
updates compared to the last time I did it), for an assumed population of 100,000
accounts, there could be anywhere between 336 Trillion and 1.5 Quadrillion
inf in-game.

Or, it could be some other number entirely, depending on what effects the various
caveats have on the data.


Cheers,
4


PS> At this point, I don't expect to add any more updates. It's highly
doubtful that we'll get enough further data to refine any of the uncertanty,
or cover any of the numerous caveats that can apply.

Thanks All for your input - it's been a very interesting project.

"Why" that you don't have a lot of Inf? If you're willing to learn, then visit the Market board. Characters that are not played a lot actually helps with Marketeering because you're not as concerned about keeping their Market slots clear for new activity and you can wait for your price to buy or sell to come around.

Well I can give you my own numbers on that, for the market at least.

I started playing with the market Thanksgiving 2011. (I had run stacks of cheap salvage to the vendor to generate about 100m in capital.) I started out making 20-30 million per day. By about December 8th I was up to 50 mil. Dec. 16th I had a good day, bringing in $415m. I kept it over a hundred for the next week or so, putting my rolling average around 115m over Christmas, despite taking a break for the holiday. At the end of January I brought my average up "for real" to about 115m. And the past week I've made 200-300 million per (active) day, bringing my 10-day rolling average up to 197m as of yesterday.



(Profit, of course, is calculated as sale price minus market fees minus crafting cost minus salvage and recipe purchase prices.)

Total profit to date: $6,164,826,707
Current sunk cost in recipes, salvage, crafting, and listing fees: $281, 265,912
Current total bid on new recipes: $435,783,790

(This is with one character, now up to 20 market slots.)

So there you go. Pocket change compared to the "real" marketeers, I know, but I think it gives a fun look at how the numbers can grow for a beginner. I've finished 4 basic level 50 builds now with the proceeds, and I have close to 2 billion stored away right now, not counting my working capital. I'm thinking about going after some purple or pvp sets next...

Originally Posted by Fulmens The plural of anecdote is not data.

I doubt there's anyway to even ballpark estimate that.

First, keep in mind that the market does *not* create influence. In fact, it
destroys it (while shuffing the other 90% around the population base).

It would be interesting to have some general transaction and inf volumes traded
on the market, but I think we can safely say "inf-generation" is less than zero
for it.

The only activities that actually create inf are: defeating mobs, completing missions,
finding blinkies and (some) badges, and vendoring goods.

How you would even begin to accurately determine quantities for those activities
(given the data we have access to) is beyond me.

Obviously, I'd be curious too. That said, the devs did give us an actual number
about a year ago - 56 Billion

Given that some individuals had more than that amount themselves, we laughed,
and figured the devs were off by at least a factor of 1000 - Go Figure.

It's especially amusing to me, that the handful of accounts comprising this survey
have more inf on-hand than the devs quoted for the entire game (by more than a
factor of 40).


Cheers,
4

Update: It's C and D now.

Well apart from the activities that effectively create inf out of thin air/real money like getting merits or large insps from vet rewards and super packs and flogging the resulting swag.

It could.
<wink wink nudge nudge>
Say no more.

Those items don't create inf unless you vendor them (and not much, if you do).