MA's manipulation of market value - overview and discussion

The higher the markup, the riskier the investment.

This is the single most important thing to understand about investing in the EU economy, on any level. You paid insane markup on an (L) item that is new, and new items are almost always overpriced. It happens in EU and it happens in RL (And no, most price changes don't get announced in advance in RL either).

The prices dropped, and you lost your risky investment. Meanwhile, many more people can afford choppers and will have fun using them - getting value (instead of seeking profit) - from them.

There are winners and losers whenever there is change - and change is fundamental to EU, or did you miss that lesson?

You can blame faceless bureaucrats at MA all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that you made an unwise and unsound investment, and lost. Did you really think MA would protect you?




Miles

Stutoman said:

I don't think people complain when there is too little of an item, infact i've NEVER seen a complaint over there being too few of an item. There are wishful thinkers who want one, but they don't go around saying "oh there aren't enough mod faps in this game".

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Hi I seen plenty of complaints about lack of supply on the forums and ingame for years and years.

Miles said:

1) I'm sure most gun manufacturers do R&D, and production tests. You think they just miraculously get it right the first time?
2) There are inefficiencies in all means of production.
3) So does raising the QR of a BP
4) I'm sure they would if they could
5) Not if you nuke it
6) I'll agree with that.

My point is not to debate, but to point out that it's a mug's game to run EU/RL analogies too far. In EU many things are completely unrealistic, while other things have artificial factors that help simulate RL conditions in ways that are unrealistic. But the economy works on supply and demand. MA never said what the MU on Choppers should be. MA has no control over what MU is set at. They do have overall control of the potential availability of items, but we all act as free agents within EU and they cannot control that, only influence it. This is quite like real life, where MA represents "outside forces and events" that influence the economy, but it is we as players who determine how to react to those forces.



Miles

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I don't neccesarily disagree with your overall analysis... however.

• once a company has it through R and D, they have it.... a small percent of inneficiency occurs, but it's under 10 percent. Raising a BP quality doesn't do that.
• People pay for stuff on spec value here far more than in RL
• If everyone loved the lottery, why are folks playing EU?
• Go nuke some deer.

lilac said:

I don't neccesarily disagree with your overall analysis... however.

• once a company has it through R and D, they have it.... a small percent of inneficiency occurs, but it's under 10 percent. Raising a BP quality doesn't do that.
• People pay for stuff on spec value here far more than in RL
• If everyone loved the lottery, why are folks playing EU?
• Go nuke some deer.

Click to expand...

I don't really disagree with your points, but I do think one must be careful drawing analogies with RL, some are valid but many are false or misleading. If pushed far enough, they will only prove that EU is indeed different from RL.

• Inefficiency is inefficiency - once we start debating the relative percentages of RL vs EU, I think I've proved my point.
• Certain types of people speculate wherever they can, and so they do in EU. The same goes for gambling, as the two are very closely related.
• If everyone loved French fries, why are people eating Candy?
• I couldn't even shoot a RL deer, let alone Nuke one

To me, this is a hobby, by definition a pointless obsession that consumes both time and money (More time than money in my case). But EU is many different things to different people, which is the beauty of it. No matter how much I deposited - I would never think of it as investing, and would not speculate - I would only be increasing my hobby budget, and my level of participation. I work under the assumption that I won't get anything back but entertainment, and if I ever sell out and leave, that cash back would be a bonus.

That, combined with patience and a long-term, big-picture outlook, makes for a more enjoyable experience, for me. It also makes me scratch my head head at the OP's actions and reactions, but I've given up on that now.



Miles

Very nice thread Stutoman!
And I like how you can actually bother to explain everything over and over again to everyone who didnt understand you after the first page

Did MA really increase the drop rate of the gugnirs or wasnt it just that all manufacturers wanted a piece of the markup so everyone decided to build them. with the intrest from so few people there's no wonder the price dropped so rapidly. very few players are ever gonna buy more then 1 chopper for personal use...
I did not pay much attention to manufacturing back then but that's what I always assumed... the small cars was just the same. supply and demand. at day 1 everyone wanted them. on day 2 the players that wanted them most and found the price reasonable had already bought them. 15% buys it then and then there's the 15% that sees that the price drops quick and they just wait it out until it's within their price range. leaving only the 20% of players left that has no intrest in paying for it

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you but I still don't think that this is the biggest problem in Entropia. teh fact that the player base is so extremly low that even the players that try to play really economical can still manage to get so low returns as 55-85% just because there's just not enough players filling the loot pool for the ridicilously huge jackpots. and that they're "unlucky" to miss the "loot waves" which appears as frequently as they can.


With a player base so small like it currently is Mindark really should try to make the jackpots smaller. Today it takes too long to fill the loot pools of the mobs.

ie: I hunted drones for 14-20 hours every day for more then a month with p5a+a104. I skilled my pistoleer from 25 to 47 and I never looted a higher loot then 200 peds just because there was just not enough players hunting them. It was me and about 3-10 others that was filling up the loot pool and I was never online at the right time of the "loot wave" just because it didnt come frequently enough. it was quite a dry drone season. only 3x ~10k loots and about 8x 600-900 ped loots dropped over a time of... 5-7 weeks or something

Mindark does not seem to understand that their loot system is completely broken. They could simply make the loot big loots 10-20 times smaller then they are now so the "big" loots 500-100 peds after divided would come more frequently people would start hunting more and some would use more un-eco weapons to kill them faster and people who used SIB weapons wouldnt face a guaranteed loss in money and everyone that tried to play economic would actually have a hard time to not go plus or break even.

but having a 10k loot on a mob that has an averege of 5 players hunting them 24/7 and they give lets say 85% return of 300 peds over 1 hour of play time (which is 45 peds)
just so 1 player can hit the 10k jackpot once every 2 days.
10k+ for 1 person is a total of 10k minus on everyone else.

This is nowhere near right but it's just a theory about how it works and no matter how it does work a bigger player base and/or smaller and more frequent jackpots would be alot better for everyone.
Another solution would be for everyone to hunt the same mobs but that's never gonna happen

this post might not make any sense, I'm too tired.

had there been an averege of 0.5-1 million players it would have looked so much different xD damn the game would be fun crowded but fun xD there's so much empty space on calypso without mobs or anything so there shouldnt be a problem... imagine Neas sweating troop though, haha xD but anyways. anyone who'd try to go plus would go plus because the circulation would be so high pace. and it wouldnt matter when you played, you'd always have a fair chanse to get a big loot.

I was actually gonna make some whine post about how much this game is garbage with MA not having a realistic look on things but after reading this post I can still see some of the potential this game can achieve.

too much crap to read, let me make it short for you.

Get on the right side of the trade.

Stop being cry babies!

Look at it from MA side.
Anyhole they make to allow players to make even one pec will be flooded by a mob of hungry slobs.
If you get rich playing then somone has to pay. Whos it going to be the new player or MA?
If you can do it; then every pimp can have a room full of child labor doing it or worse bots will take over the game.
Most play for fun. If you speculate you are not playing and its just not a good idea. Like you said its real money. Dont freggin play with real money if you dont intend to spend it for entertainment.
Mabye no one can figure out how to make a RCE work in MMO.

Look at it this way. MA build a cube [box] then they sell tickets for people to destroy the box with rocks the player who breaks it wins three free tickes to sell or try to win again and tripple up.
People buy the rocks and break the box. So MA patches it. sells more tickes and they break it again.
So MA rebuilds it this time stronger. Sells more tickes. This time the ticket holders bring bigger rocks.
See how this works. Yes a few lucky players will get what we all want. To break the box. You and I will have to put down are rocks and go look for larger ones and hope it will be our turn next. I may never break the box. It will be fun anyhow.
I just like throwing rocks. You want to throw rock for your RL work. Thats a fun dream. Good luck to you.

At this point, when the EU is striving to get out of years of stagnation of it's player base, (especially when many more planets are coming online), MA should have only one goal.................

Expanding it's Players Base.

And reducing the MU is one of the most important way to do it. It might hurt a few....but I think it's woth it for the sake of longer term goal

and here is how I tried to explain in a different post:

Infinity01 said:

One thing i've believed, it'd be much easier (in terms of money and time-spent) to make money in real than out of this game by anybody with reasonable education and Intelligence.

MA being in the red will make sure (and rightly so) that it gets its' return....and the best way to make it happen is expanding the player base.
To exapand the player base (mostly by retaining players ingame) MA needs to decrease the cost of play, and add more exciting content.
Now, to decrease the cost of play MA needs to decrease the MU or increae the TT return rate. But at the current number of player base it'd be hard for MA to give back more in terms of TT return (~90%). So hitting MU would be the best policy.,,

Personaly I think that's what MA is trying to achieve, and that's why we are seeing significant drop in MU on items used by midlvl and uber players. I'm speculating that this has adversely affected high end players as evidenced by lack of participations in WOF this year. Initially USA (the largest players base and last yr champion) was unable to find enough players to play in the main team. Romania (champion of 2009 WOF) is not participating this year. Portugal unable to field their team and walked away. All these, I think, in part are the result of declining MU, plus worldwide recesion.

If my above speculations are correct than it'd be even harder to make money out MU.... meaning by trading and playing high end in this game. The only option remains is owning a land and getting revenue from taxes. Translation ....you need to invest large sums of money to get money.... Money is not free .... period!

... just my 2c

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Gramuly said:

Look at it from MA side.
Anyhole they make to allow players to make even one pec will be flooded by a mob of hungry slobs.
If you get rich playing then somone has to pay. Whos it going to be the new player or MA?
If you can do it; then every pimp can have a room full of child labor doing it or worse bots will take over the game.
Most play for fun. If you speculate you are not playing and its just not a good idea. Like you said its real money. Dont freggin play with real money if you dont intend to spend it for entertainment.
Mabye no one can figure out how to make a RCE work in MMO.

Look at it this way. MA build a cube [box] then they sell tickets for people to destroy the box with rocks the player who breaks it wins three free tickes to sell or try to win again and tripple up.
People buy the rocks and break the box. So MA patches it. sells more tickes and they break it again.
So MA rebuilds it this time stronger. Sells more tickes. This time the ticket holders bring bigger rocks.
See how this works. Yes a few lucky players will get what we all want. To break the box. You and I will have to put down are rocks and go look for larger ones and hope it will be our turn next. I may never break the box. It will be fun anyhow.
I just like throwing rocks. You want to throw rock for your RL work. Thats a fun dream. Good luck to you.

Click to expand...

wtf are you even trying to say? rocks/boxes? if you're trying to say something about the loot system then you're in the wrong thread mate.

Infinity01 said:

At this point, when the EU is striving to get out of years of stagnation of it's player base, (especially when many more planets are coming online), MA should have only one goal.................

Expanding it's Players Base.

And reducing the MU is one of the most important way to do it. It might hurt a few....but I think it's woth it for the sake of longer term goal

and here is how I tried to explain in a different post:

Click to expand...

MA's goal is to get as many planet partners as possible, the player influx is down to the planet partners. Reduction of market value isn't what creates a player influx at all, all it does is show new people what happened to the money of other players, and also shows that there is a larger item to player ratio than before - because there is lower demand the price goes down. The number of virtual items in a game has nothing to do with player influx.

"MA: Here newbies come to our game, we have pixels for you to buy".... yeh right.

first of all , i'm a shop owner.



and i had prizes under market value in my shop what i did not know of as prices went up for some thing's.
even then it does not get sold.
why ? simple

its called auction.... global auction stands for easy shopping.

auction ok i'm fine with those in a shoppers mind.

in shop owners mind i have to say.
auctions should be terminated.

crafters need to make cantact with shop owners.
that way certain shop's get certain supply's of the same sorts. (spacialized shop's)
shopper need to see shops or trade on the streets.

but as auctions cant be terminated because MA will get the hell fire from all shoppers , MA should change it in local auctions.
the daily and weekly statistics should be removed from items.
and for sure it shouldn't be possible at all that it is possible to buy things in a auction from a other freaking planet.


why aint shops working ? hmmmzz why oh why

if ma was trying to drop the mu , they would be dropping more L items , not less

TT value should represent cost of manufacture

MA makes a game. They need to make a profit with that game in the real world. In the game world a fix for this mess would be to have the TT cost of an item represent the cost of manufacture.

When MA started this they said they would gaurentee TT value of all in game items and they still do. These TT values are scary to them because they have to cover that amount in rl dollars and cents if they close thier doors. They did not know in the beginning if project entropia would be any good. Now we see TT values of items higher than MA would ever have dreamed of because more people deposit and use the peds instead of make money in game from other players and withdraw the peds.

So MA could have items that are expensive to manufacture have a higher TT value then items that are inexpensive to manufacture. Items that would have a high cost to manufacture have high stats. (mod fap) items that are cheap have low stats (opollo solomate).

Guess what, this is what we are seeing in game now.

The other side of the coin is the supply of items. This is controlled by MA but in order to keep epic players happy, and keep middling players playing, and keep newbs interested in learning the game and sticking around, I believe MA should allow drops of high end items rarely and drops of inexpensive items more regularly.

Guess what, this is ALMOST what we are seeing in game now.

It is a valid complaint that some high end items drop too frequently and therefore the market price for them drops. MA needs to watch this. and adjust drop rates for items (and BPs of items) so as to level out the game for all.

Looking at the market value graphs I see your point. In my soc. we bye and sell at the weekly price, now I may move it to the monthly. My soc is small and we together don't have an impact on the global market. (2 or 3 transaction a month) but many who bye and sell often could impact the market.

So the fix: MA should watch what it drops and base the drops on item stats.
MA should not display the daily market values (they would still keep record of them to get the weekly and monthly).

Would an epic player throw in the towel because of the market flucuations, They (epic players) have proven over and over agian that they will stick around and play the game even while complaining about the market.

Would a middling player quit, no they have stuck it out this far and are working to become epic.

Would a newb leave after a few sessins because of the market. No they don't even know or understand the market yet. New players leave for many other reasons.

What we all have to remember is that MA gave usw a playgtound that we can enjoy while using our own money. We will not make money from MA, We can make money from other players, but that means that other players must deposit money so that it can be earned by players. The market can't be compared to Earths market but MA needs to moderate it so people keep playing.

Have fun out there and be safe.

Sidney said:

in shop owners mind i have to say.
auctions should be terminated.

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There's another way, and several people have posted the idea over the years, allow shops prices to show on auction.


I've seen how it can be implemented in other MMO's and its not impossible that it'll happen here one day.

Get rid of auction? EU goes on self destruct. Wont happen.

Mega said:

There's another way, and several people have posted the idea over the years, allow shops prices to show on auction.


I've seen how it can be implemented in other MMO's and its not impossible that it'll happen here one day.

Get rid of auction? EU goes on self destruct. Wont happen.

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also recently someone pointed out that ma admited somewhere on their website pp and ma keep the auction fees. looking at how many fees i know i generate in a month alone x that by 5000 or 10000 I would doubt ma would want that to come to an end.

kosmos said:

also recently someone pointed out that ma admited somewhere on their website pp and ma keep the auction fees.

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Can you remember where you saw this? i'm interested in reeading the source ...

My only concern with the Auction Data info is this: What happens to the BUYOUT PRICE and UNSOLD ITEMS PRICE ??. Do they get into the daily/weekly/monthly price calculation values?

Mega said:

There's another way, and several people have posted the idea over the years, allow shops prices to show on auction.


I've seen how it can be implemented in other MMO's and its not impossible that it'll happen here one day.

Get rid of auction? EU goes on self destruct. Wont happen.

Click to expand...

i know that would be self destruct , thats why i also stated that will never happen.
the auctions could be made local or planet based.

meaning that when you are at calypso you could only see the auctions on calypso or only on FOMA or arkadia and so on.
or even better just local city based.
each city their own auction.

and to quote the one above what happeneds with the unsold items and the buyout items towards stats

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1 buyout items are registered in the mark-up listings when they get sold as it's sold in auction.
2 unsold items are NOT registered in the mark-up listing as the item has not been sold.
3 items sold in shops are NOT listed in the mark-up listing (reason i do not know)


the mark-up listing is fully attatched on the auction.
and this listing is in some cases easy to manipulate.

here is the way to do it :

if you have a item so sell and the mark-up is a bit to low on it the only thing you need to do is put it in auction with a much higher buyout that no one will take it for but for a amount of ped that u have on your ped card.

then u go to a friend and give him the ped so he can buy it out of auction.
then your friend gives the item back to you again.
and there after u do the same thing again and again.

with items that ain't being placed in auction that much the prize will rise quickly.


this all means that the mark-up listing is not allway's reliable to depend on.
and i have seen this happen more then once.

CaptainMak said:

Would an epic player throw in the towel because of the market flucuations, They (epic players) have proven over and over agian that they will not stick around and play the game even while complaining about the market.

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Yes they would and infact this is one of the main reasons for many high end players leaving the game over the past few years. You're still in your first year so be cautious about these assumptions.

the market on some things will allway's be bad.

this contains the learner stuff mostly.
but some people are messing up the beauty preffesion and such aswell.


these people do everything for skill gain.
they make items that cost them 15 ped to make and sell them on auction for like 5 ped start bid.
and not one item , no they will put like 20 items in at once.
this means there is a left over heap of items so wat gets sold will be going for 5 ped only this resulting in price drop.
and it be taken hard time to go up to the normal mark-up again.

at the beauty proffesion we see the same.
there are now people that do everything to your avatar for like 2 or 3 ped.
as long they get the skills.
this cant be different then having a mayor cash flow in game and they are actually paying you to do your hair or what ever.
this resulting in that a whole market get's ruined to the ground.


is this possible to stop .............

NO that cant be stopped
why : its a game , the most people will have a certain amount of money a month a side for this game and that money may get used and no bother if it is spended in it's whole.


just my thought
not a happy thought though

I wrote a thread about this topic a while back.

Supply in EU is false because MA determines what drops and how much.

Demand in EU is false because MA determines what blueprints use which resources.


The supply/demand/real-cash-economy in this game is just an illusion.

Doesn't meant I don't have fun playing it though