I am sort of in the market for one of these. Seems as reasonable option - so valuable thread for me. In the same time, anything above 30k for this is a big nono for me. Thats a point where I might start to think about getting one, before that (L) is the way. And at that point, it would still be pretty difficult to justify. Why?
Imagine:
30-60k for gun (mid tier level these days)
10-20k ped to cycle (so you can actually enjoy playing and also hold loot for MU, perhaps this is still low tbh...)
6k for some basic rings (triple that if decent rings)
500-1k TT for armor (assume you using L), decent armor is more likely 10k id guess.
To sum it up, the game economics is hoping for the middle player to have a minimum of 45k ped in the game. And we are not talking about any insane good gear here, is that reasonable? I don't think so. Prices did like quadruple for most of things and people just seem to be cool/okay with it.
Id prefer higher market activity/liquidity seems to be pretty low at the moment. Why is that? There is simply not enough people willing to deploy this kind of money/taking this kind of risk. My apology, but no matter how much id like one, these requirements just don't really work. Not sure what are the real numbers of players in EU, 4-5k active hunters according to entropialife, I'm small pewpew and I'm top 10% on monthly activity. Lets just naively assume that these top 10% of players will be willing to (considering) buy any of these sort of mid-level weapons. It is very very tiny tiny market with very little liquidity.
If you ask me, I think weapons should be more affordable and people should generally be interested in owning more than just one, but for that some big change would have to happen. I would rather see more market activity/liquidity.
The amount of items for sale speak clearly to me. The price is not right. We will know when it will be, unless resellers are able to scoop up everything and hold it forever without any punishment - call it dynamic economics if you will. (sure, traders are very important and nothing against them, but when it comes to low liquid markets... not good, especially... IF they decide to collude at any point))
Anyway, simple solution is to reward people on providing liquidity on the markets for UL gear. Lowest offer can collect something and then we can actually determine whats current market price and not just based on "I think that someone did sell it for.."
In the same time, I sort of have a feeling that ubers are having an absolute blast they perhaps never had in the history of EU rn? But correct me if I'm wrong