Question: Raise the Cap on Pyrite?

Everyone who is involved in the pyrite trade knows that there is a maximum TT cap on how much can exist at any given time.

MA put this cap in place, one can only assume, to maintain the viability of mining in pvp4, as well as crafting those enhancers.

This has now backfired.

Due to the heavy usage of enhancers during migration, a lot of pyrite has been cycled, and one or more avatars have been able to manipulate the market by stockpiling the available supply.

This has choked off the enhancer production market, as well as much of the mining in pvp4.


One would think that it would be against Mindark's best interests for players to either pay high markup (and therefore lose available cycling ped) for their enhancers, or worse yet, go without those enhancers and cycle fewer ped altogether.


The nerf/cap on the max tt was unnecessary to begin with at best. Would it not now be a good idea to raise that cap at the very least, so as to allow the market to function properly? Otherwise, those who choose to continue to use enhancers will be cycling a lot of ped into the hands of the market manipulators rather than into MA's pockets.

can we raise the cap on everything then? UL weapons, tools, etc for one

jqkill said:

can we raise the cap on everything then? UL weapons, tools, etc for one

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We are talking about consumable materials, not items. As far as items go, there was an old quote from Marco years ago pointing out that the availability of items was based on the population. Bigger population allows for more items.

could i request dianthus and iolite as well them, really need those too

What will prevent them resellers from holding onto any additional (reasonable) amount of resources? And unreasonable would push the market to the other extreme, from not being able to craft stuff to not being able to get a decent MU for it.

There is a cap on everything in EU, without it the economy would not work at all. So the economy is working well, just a problem that someone has so much funds he can buy the entire stockpile of pyrite.

Legion said:

There is a cap on everything in EU, without it the economy would not work at all. So the economy is working well, just a problem that someone has so much funds he can buy the entire stockpile of pyrite.

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There's no cap on lyst.

What I am saying is that the current cap on pyrite was a nerf to begin with. I think they may have ratcheted down the max available tt more than was necessary, and have allowed it to be easily manipulated.

Pyrite is up about 25% over normal price, not a huge change even though it drops less than sometimes in the past. Wenrex on the other hand, supposed to be one of the most used ark minerals and it's at 400% and almost never drops, making most of the stuff that uses it uncraftable.

I think the MA balancing manager (if one exists) is on summer vacation (all summer).

I agree... More Pyrite needs to start looting.

Once Migration is done we will see Output Amplifiers go back up in price and if the Pyrite market stays the way it is now, expect to see 500% enhancers

my guess is that they lowered the cap due to the lowered enhancer breakrate on unL guns

sledgehammer said:

There's no cap on lyst.

What I am saying is that the current cap on pyrite was a nerf to begin with. I think they may have ratcheted down the max available tt more than was necessary, and have allowed it to be easily manipulated.

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Yes there is when everyone upgraded there ships lyst went from 101% to 150% i made a fuck load off that.

Neil Stockton said:

Pyrite is up about 25% over normal price, not a huge change even though it drops less than sometimes in the past. Wenrex on the other hand, supposed to be one of the most used ark minerals and it's at 400% and almost never drops, making most of the stuff that uses it uncraftable.

I think the MA balancing manager (if one exists) is on summer vacation (all summer).

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I can't sell this wenrex when i'm on Ark.........

So its more a question of your dont put your orders in auction for the right price or for long enough!

InDaHouse said:

I can't sell this wenrex when i'm on Ark.........

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Well, for about a year wenrex has sold very well, snapped up on auction, and still the price keeps rising. It's got a low cap, there's really no other explanation for it.

put up same batch 2 weeks in a row and never sold put it on at 200% SB and never sold......

Scarcity is what gives a lot of things value if we're going to remove that scarcity then we might as well just sell every single item from the TT

addz said:

Scarcity is what gives a lot of things value if we're going to remove that scarcity then we might as well just sell every single item from the TT

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I'm not saying scarcity isn't necessary, but when either someone hoards, or as it has been suggested, MA makes something unnecessarily scarce, their job is to balance that. Pyrite is very unbalanced atm.

Lets just put a cap on how many of something people can have in storage. after that, it gets auto-TTed

sledgehammer said:

I'm not saying scarcity isn't necessary, but when either someone hoards, or as it has been suggested, MA makes something unnecessarily scarce, their job is to balance that. Pyrite is very unbalanced atm.

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Anyone remember the time crystals on NI? good ole' Meg had accused the players of hording the materials needed to craft the crystals when it needed drake hearts, and 10 other materials......
The crafters were trying to get enough for about 5-10 clicks to get a success, the success rate was bugged, not allowing anything to be made. All the crafters could do was think they needed a bigger run...
The NI Dev team had accused the players of "hoarding" the materials needed when the drop rate was in question. If you had 3 clicks of materials you were "Hoarding".... and people wonder why NI had to fire the team...

I think other players had hit the nail on the head, when they had mentioned a balancing team / manager... This seems like a normal fluctuation in the MU, I still see many pages of good amounts on the AU, ok the price sucks, but it is there.

There is no question Calypso has been favored over any other planet. Try to find the same resource availability on other planets with "common" resources needed as a staple for crafting. When you have 10+ BP's requiring an item, and you cannot get the correct amounts needed for a decent run, then i would say complaining is warranted. Wenrex for example has been nerfed due to the Arkadian items superiority in the market place.

It would be nice if MA had no Vested interest in any planet, and was fair and impartial to all.... In that situation, a balancing manager could correctly do its job. Too bad that's not the way it works

Chuck Wholrey said:

It would be nice if MA had no Vested interest in any planet, and was fair and impartial to all.... In that situation, a balancing manager could correctly do its job. Too bad that's not the way it works

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The only reason Calypso has consistent supply is because it has consistent demand. The other planets, especially Next Island, have failed to establish the critical mass needed to balance supply and demand.

That aside, the balancing aspects of other planets, other ores, or other resources is a bit off topic. I think the OP is trying to focus on a specific issue that affects all hunters who use damage enhancers which require Pyrite in the crafting process. Prices at 400% and higher for Damage Enhancers is completely unacceptable. By volume, hunting is the absolute core of this game... Everything else is secondary or tertiary.

The issue at hand is that MindArk implemented a cap on Pyrite so as to maintain scarcity and market value, rightfully so, but the problem is that a couple of people, one especially, are hoarding vast quantities of Pyrite. So if the system monitors unconsumed player held Pyrite, and one person has 10k+ TT value, it's a major problem because the drop rate is then substantially reduced, at which point prices start to increase, and thus the exploit is revealed for what it is... An exploit.

There shouldn't be a scenario where one player can hijack an entire profession by holding a critical resource hostage. The simple solution here is to raise the cap on Pyrite, at least temporarily

the problem whit the cap on pirite is freind or a certain group hold the major portion oh look im going to make a bunch of enhacers you guy go start to mine so we can get it back

win win situation that how some of the poeple are getting montly withdraw out of the game they now the sysmtem

So the demand spikes and you guys automatically blame the corresponding price increase on hoarders and the balancing team rather than just oh I don't know .... normal market forces?

I get the feeling that any logical argument I try to make here will be wasted.

addz said:

So the demand spikes and you guys automatically blame the corresponding price increase on hoarders and the balancing team rather than just oh I don't know .... normal market forces?

I get the feeling that any logical argument I try to make here will be wasted.

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Well, seeing as how unlimited weapons now consume enhancers at 1/2 the pace they previously did, wouldnt it be logical to say that there is a reduced demand for enhancers??

The market will send all the signals needed. If enhancers become too expensive they wont be purchased. Nobody has a right to enhancers at any specific MU. Declaring any MU "unacceptable" is really almost laughable.

If the MU is there it MUST be acceptable to someone or they wouldn't have purchased it at such an "unacceptable" MU.

These "manipulators" have a lot of ped tied up in a bet. Perhaps they have cornered the supply, but if given some time and high MU's put too much pressure on sales they just might find themselves sitting on a pile of pyrite that is dropping in price or can never be unloaded with any speed without crashing the very MU's they wish to capture.

Give it some time before calling Mommy.

Nobody in this game has a right to expect MA to move to protect their interests. Every time MA does someone loses. What right do you have to demand favor at other market participant's expense?

Boycott, refuse to buy...organize social pressures...do what you like. Every time someone hollers that MA has a responsibility to support the stratospheric prices of some items I want to laugh. None has any right to expect "official" protection of an investment. What about that player chomping at the bit to acquire one of those toys if only the price fell to an affordable range? If you buy some high priced toy at the top of a market cycle maybe you should have done better research before you bought it.

C'mon guys...quit hollering for Mommy to make little Tommy play nice. The less MA is involved in this crap the better...involvement is way too high already.

What about the guy that says "Wow, nice MU, maybe I should go look for some of this...."

Maybe some scrappy pvp'ers will want to come up with a plan to team up on these "manipulators"...lots of ways this *might* end without intervention by the powers-that-be.

Well MA is involved right now. They limit the supply of pyrite specifically to impact MU of the mineral and the items it is used for. In this thread people are saying that perhaps they got the quantity wrong and should rethink the numbers. I don't see anything wrong with making that a discussion point.

It's all very well to talk about letting the market take care of the situation and I don't entirely disagree but it's not that simple. I face this dilemma over a number of crafting ingredients. I can purchase at elevated MU, and take the loss in crafting or push up my prices and risk non-sales. Or I can choose not to buy, not to craft, hoping others do the same. Of course when I am not buying pyrite or some other high priced material and not making item x, then I am also not purchasing all the other stuff used to make that item, depressing the demand for multiple items and impacting the hunters and miners who are trying to sell their stuff at more reasonable prices. And of course when they aren't selling, they aren't able to buy my weapons.

Sometimes it really is the best approach to convince MA that some rebalancing is required.

KijkkiJikki said:

It's all very well to talk about letting the market take care of the situation and I don't entirely disagree but it's not that simple. I face this dilemma over a number of crafting ingredients. I can purchase at elevated MU, and take the loss in crafting or push up my prices and risk non-sales. Or I can choose not to buy, not to craft, hoping others do the same. Of course when I am not buying pyrite or some other high priced material and not making item x, then I am also not purchasing all the other stuff used to make that item, depressing the demand for multiple items and impacting the hunters and miners who are trying to sell their stuff at more reasonable prices. And of course when they aren't selling, they aren't able to buy my weapons.

Sometimes it really is the best approach to convince MA that some rebalancing is required.

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It may really be the best approach, where "best" is defined as your, or a select group's, pragmatic optimality, as you've explained in the quoted text. Far from oversimplifying the question, however, I think Stormdancer's post takes your point into account, and also addresses the question of whether such an approach might be justifiable.

When a change is made to Entropia, one group of players often benefits at the expense of another. The question is not whether we can describe the impact of a change on one group using positive terms, or even whether we can plausibly include many types of players in the benefiting group; after all, emptying NEVERDIE's PED Card and distributing it in CLD payouts would be beneficial to many. The important question is whether a change can be justified, and since we do see VUs having such drastic impacts on colonists, I would be bold enough to say that a pretty strong argument is needed for this justification.

KijkkiJikki said:

Well MA is involved right now. They limit the supply of pyrite specifically to impact MU of the mineral and the items it is used for. In this thread people are saying that perhaps they got the quantity wrong and should rethink the numbers. I don't see anything wrong with making that a discussion point.

It's all very well to talk about letting the market take care of the situation and I don't entirely disagree but it's not that simple. I face this dilemma over a number of crafting ingredients. I can purchase at elevated MU, and take the loss in crafting or push up my prices and risk non-sales. Or I can choose not to buy, not to craft, hoping others do the same. Of course when I am not buying pyrite or some other high priced material and not making item x, then I am also not purchasing all the other stuff used to make that item, depressing the demand for multiple items and impacting the hunters and miners who are trying to sell their stuff at more reasonable prices. And of course when they aren't selling, they aren't able to buy my weapons.

Sometimes it really is the best approach to convince MA that some rebalancing is required.

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I seriously doubt we are really that far apart in our views. I have some background in economics and in many ways this will always be a psuedo economy with MA making the decisions. I haven't had time yet to observe this all to the degree I will have in a few years . But, I think what I'm objecting to most is probably the time frame. At this point it doesn't appear anything like enough time has passed to allow for all the possible outcomes the market itself might decide are possible and appropriate.

I think the most distasteful thing about it all I find is the willingness to cry for protection without acknowledging that that protection will be an assault on someone else's interest. And I also question just who it is that can actually accurately predict all the ripples and ramifications of any intervention in a system this complex.

Such interventions tend to be rife with unintended consequences where the final result is determined by so many humans judging so many variables.

I say give the market some time to speak and then at least you have an unbiased consensus based upon the maximum number of people each making decisions he believes is in his own best economic interest.

It will be interesting to watch here, but in real life the VAST majority of market manipulations fail, UNLESS supported by a government and body of law. The "powers-that-be" are far and away the worst market manipulators imaginable and are responsible for more economic suppression than individuals or cartels ever could be.

Any time a single interest group gains undue influence with government and favorable market treatment ends up being legislated or dictated ....look out. Because EVERYONE *but* that group is about to get shafted.

This is a game of economics. The price hike is an effect of economics.

If you feel pyrite is getting too expensive, dont buy it.

HardWrath said:

Well, seeing as how unlimited weapons now consume enhancers at 1/2 the pace they previously did, wouldnt it be logical to say that there is a reduced demand for enhancers??

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Break rate on my aakas is 1 enhancer / 3020 uses, sample size so far 40k uses.

Can we raise the cap on how much ice-cream I can eat at once, please?