Inf Supply: Idle Speculation

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

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You make the assumption that there is a continuous stream of items listed just above the flipper's purchase price. This is FALSE.

Its pretty easy to see why, if there is a continuous input of items into the market at just above the flippers buy price they will never sell their item.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

GameMaster, a poster who had very little presence on this subforum but who was pretty well-known among broader forum regulars are the time as a rather intelligent person came here and pretty much posted a step-by-step breakdown of his experience manipulating prices. He sucked up supply, drove up the price, watched the market react, and sold his hoovered up supply. He discussed how profit-per-item changed through the course of the run, prior failed attempts, and how many times he failed before succeeding. He drew broad conclusions about conditions he reckoned most strongly affected likelihood of success in his approach.

This was something like 6-12 months after the market appeared in the game.

Most people posting in this thread spoke up in that thread, and none should therefore be claiming that manipulation doesn't happen or can't produce a profit. I have referred to that thread by GM in past discussions about this topic. All the argument appears, in fact, to be about how pervasive this activity is in practice, which spans some combination of how many items are being affected simultaneously, how often any items are affected, and for how long when they are affected.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

You may recall market manipulation was actually being called "griefing" by some on the forums.....

Originally Posted by Ironblade

Wow, gotta be 10 times by now that you or someone else has made a stupid comment along these lines. Flipping increases the lowest price for an item while simultaneously lowering the highest price; i.e. it narrows the price range.

Originally Posted by Scientist

Eh? When I see a price range on a drop I'm selling that looks like flippers at work, say

3M
9.5M
10M
3M
10M

I'll always list well above what the flipper is purchasing at, say 8M or 9M, and always sell it (unless the price happens to be crashing right around then, and when I come back its trending 1M-3M or something). I'm not competing with his purchase price, I'm competing with his sales price.

And if I'm doing the flipping, I'll always see some sales I didn't make, so someone is working in between my range. Meaning there is a continuous supply of items above my purchase price. If it gets *too* continuous, I move on.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

So most of the people who say "flipping doesn't raise the price" are talking about a notion of "the price" that represents an average of the low and high prices over some time window. In that model of the market, the perfect flipper collapses the price to that price and does not change it.

Originally Posted by Edana

It was a comment on the futility of your approach rather than the validity of the point.