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No good/safe things left to buy in Entropia?

Legends

Legends

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Inherent Marxus Legends
Lately I have been feeling more and more hesitant whenever buying things in Entropia. It seems to me that while in real life, we are currently living in a world plagued by inflation where things are becoming more and more expensive every passing month, in Entropia, MindArk has managed to create a completely opposite situation; a universe where the price of almost everything is falling very fast. This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy.

The worst one quite obviously is amors and that was of course very predictable. Over the last 6 or 7 years, MA has introduced so many new UL armors and UL armor plate chains, I think a lot of us saw that this would likely flood the economy flush with lots of UL armors and cause some disruption. And now it is. If you need proof, look at the price history for Mutated Aurli Bones. It has crashed, hard. For the last decade it has hovered between 400 and 600 PED, giving us an average of about 500. Now it is worth less than half that; roughly 200 PED.

Further proof of prices of armors dropping, look at Mayhem (L) armor, we are nearing an average price of about 120% per part. Perseus, same thing. Perseus used to cost 145%, for almost a decade. What about the other popular mid-level armors like for example Angel (L), Tiger (L) and Martial (L)? A lot of the parts are now selling at almost Nanocube conversion rates, it almost not even worth listing on auction anymore. Who benefits from this? Certainly not the hunters who loot them. Does MA somehow benefit from crashing these MUs? I don't think so, I think it's in MAs interest to keep MUs up higher if at all possible. Why flood the economy with so many armors and crash MUs like that then?

And for Deeds it's a similar story. So many Deeds have been issued lately that it's now affecting other shares; Ancient Greece and Crystal Palace shares are both at their lowest ever on the history graph. Ark Moon Deeds too. Calypso Deeds are up probably only becausse of the split which artificially pumped up the demand for them. Somehow Ark underground is up, I have no idea why. But the general trend in Shares/Deeds remains that a flood of new shares into the economy is now causing a general decline in all share/deed prices, and so that is also not a safe place to invest in Entropia.

As for UL weapons, wow. Did everyone see those "almost" free Rare Tokens that were given out at Resource Mayhem? Do you still think that an expensive UL weapon could be a safe place to park your money?

The problem here is well, if it's no longer "safe" to buy anything in Entropia anymore, then why even play? MindArk used to be careful with this, for the longest time, it was safe to buy armor, it was relatively safe to buy Deeds; CLDs were going up nonstop for a decade after being released. Weapons were a pretty good investment for a while.

Tell me: Who benefits from these crashing prices? If players see the value of the things they bought drop month after month, does that encourage them to buy other, more expensive things? If new players observe this, does that encourage them to spend a lot for good UL items or Deeds/Shares? If trust in the game's economy evaporates, who benefits?
 
It's almost predictable. It's all due to decisions made by MA. I can see why they made those decisions. Nevertheless it surprises me that a game developer who has complete control of the economy and can play god never decide to look after player interests i.e. price staying same or stable for an item forever! this could be achievable. I guess it's not a priority for them.
 
To me the RT deeds have some real potential , as the 2 reported payouts were 1 pec and 2 pec.
Once codex drops there and some hopeful upgrades to fix broken missions , the population should be more than just sweaters and a few miners.
 
Inflation IRL generally speaking has probably lead to less money left for hobbies, and for most this game is a hobby, not an occupation, not a priority. Also, it is summer and many are taking vacations and that costs money, which has exacerbated the fall of market prices. MA has increased the amount of armors and weapons available, but I always see people here complaining that the game is too expensive to play, prices for good gear are too high, it is a niche game, etc. Perhaps MA is intentionally trying to lower cost of play to appeal to a broader audience.
 
To address a few points,

Firstly, the people who benefit from some of the armors being lower markup are obviously the people who purchase and are the end users of those items. Angel/Tiger/Martial (L) sets for under 105% sounds like an amazing thing for newer and mid tier players. Ditto for a lot of weapons at this range that move without a lot of markup. Trade off to this is not being able to consistently use the (L) sets at high tier due to breakage. I'm actually kind of ok with this as a trade off. I get that it sucks for some of the hunters that looted those items. When it comes to markup in a closed economy like this its pretty close to a 0 sum game where one player wins only as much as another loses.

Secondly deeds, CLDs have been going up in price for the longest time because they have offered the best % return compared to their price. AUDs seem to be holding some additional value above this return % as they aren't on the exchange and are still usable as collateral during item lending/renting. I go into a lot of this a bit more in my discord and livestream. Someone has been holding the AG share price high for a long time now even though the % return was the worst, CP shares also were slightly over valued and are now coming down to a more reasonable price compared to CLD and TI shares which are currently paying out the best return %. As to RT shares, who knows but safe to say that the activity there is currently suspiciously high we will see how this plays out over the next 6 months and make a call from there. I made a thread covering this a bit more using historic RT data here (https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/rt-share-price.300517/) but again we will see what happens after this initial interest spike passes.

Thirdly UL weapons seems to be heading back to around the price point that we were seeing just before covid. No surprise that during covid a lot of players with more time pushed those prices up but things are starting to settle a little. But truth be told UL weapons over the very long term have always eventually been power crept by newer better weapons and very slowly dropped value over time. To me it has always been again about balancing that cost against the cost of buying (L) over the same time period and also the added benefit of being able to use the UL version at higher tier on demand.

Overall I wouldn't honestly say that things are any better or worse than they were 12 months ago in terms of "safe" things to buy, the risk was always there we just seem to presently be on a bit of a down trend in the curve.
 
Legends said:
Tell me: Who benefits from these crashing prices? If players see the value of the things they bought drop month after month, does that encourage them to buy other, more expensive things? If new players observe this, does that encourage them to spend a lot for good UL items or Deeds/Shares? If trust in the game's economy evaporates, who benefits?
Click to expand...
Sure, I'd love to tell you! The benefactors of crashing prices are the folks who do not yet own an item but are interested in buying it, or who do not yet own the quantity of the item they prefer to own. Future buyers and sellers also benefit from thicker markets with improved liquidity.

If players see the value of the things they bought drop month after month, does that encourage them to buy other, more expensive things? Possibly. This practice is known as averaging down in financial markets.

If new players observe this, does that encourage them to spend a lot for good UL items or Deeds/Shares? Possibly. It depends on whether they take the earlier decline to be an indicator of bearish momentum or of the asset being oversold and reversion to the mean due. This holds just as well for the current owners deciding whether to sell, hold, or add to their positions; their earlier loss is sunk with regard to this decision.
 
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If the prices of armors are falling than its good thing... You probably talking about armor prices in point of view of reselling?
 
Great point! In perspective, we are still not at pre-COVID prices for some weapons and armor. The whole COVID situation was a MASSIVE boost to the Entropia economy; you could literally sell everything for a profit.

MA is still releasing more and more UL gear. People are sitting on so many mayhem tokens, that it's becoming a big problem. They need to create a token sink somehow. Could be a new item, or some sort of instance/gameplay that requires tokens to enter or something. If they refill the Mayhem vendor with weapons, the market will be saturated even more with however many weapons they put in there that are somewhat worth it.

On the other hand, people are finally ready, or at least forced, to accept a (substantial) loss on their gear, which is why some gear is moving again.

It will be interesting to see where prices will land eventually, there's going to be a new "standard". I see no reason why prices will go up tho, atleast untill unreal release. This year will be boring copy paste; migration, HW mayhem, Xmas mayhem, and maybe a mini mayhem in between. Then in jan/feb another sale marathon untill easter mayhem?
 
My thinking is along the lines of the extra value of my using something I haven't got yet over any loss in mu in the time I am likely to be using that item instead of something else (for whatever reason, including moving up to the next level).
There is thus usually at least some motivation for me to buy what I want to use even if I expect the value to fall, but within limits, of course.

I consider the price drop to be like a rental fee on what I actually own. Most of what I own has passed that criterion, i.e. I look at the price drop over time and see I'm still happy with the fictional 'renting'. I thus don't even need market values to stay stable, let alone rise.

For the universe at large, though, I can see that it's not a great look to outsiders that 'investments' aren't passively gaining in value from one owner to the next.
 
Cant see why prices would go up in the future unless there was a explosion of new interest but then again if they keep pumping out gear like no tomorrow there will be too much in circulation regardless. People may need to adjust there expectations that the golden days of gigantic item prices and printing ped reselling maby gone for good. And good riddance as its a big deterant for interested people looking in.
 
TheOneOmega said:
If players see the value of the things they bought drop month after month, does that encourage them to buy other, more expensive things? Possibly. This practice is known as averaging down in financial markets.
Click to expand...
Its the opposite of buying "more expensive things" as market falls.
You average down when, you bought 50 shares at (lets say) 5, and they went to 4. Now you buy 50 shares at 4, and your average price, you paid per share, becomes 4.5 (you averaged down from 5 to 4.5).
 
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Legends said:
Lately I have been feeling more and more hesitant whenever buying things in Entropia. It seems to me that while in real life, we are currently living in a world plagued by inflation where things are becoming more and more expensive every passing month, in Entropia, MindArk has managed to create a completely opposite situation; a universe where the price of almost everything is falling very fast. This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy.

The worst one quite obviously is amors and that was of course very predictable. Over the last 6 or 7 years, MA has introduced so many new UL armors and UL armor plate chains, I think a lot of us saw that this would likely flood the economy flush with lots of UL armors and cause some disruption. And now it is. If you need proof, look at the price history for Mutated Aurli Bones. It has crashed, hard. For the last decade it has hovered between 400 and 600 PED, giving us an average of about 500. Now it is worth less than half that; roughly 200 PED.

Further proof of prices of armors dropping, look at Mayhem (L) armor, we are nearing an average price of about 120% per part. Perseus, same thing. Perseus used to cost 145%, for almost a decade. What about the other popular mid-level armors like for example Angel (L), Tiger (L) and Martial (L)? A lot of the parts are now selling at almost Nanocube conversion rates, it almost not even worth listing on auction anymore. Who benefits from this? Certainly not the hunters who loot them. Does MA somehow benefit from crashing these MUs? I don't think so, I think it's in MAs interest to keep MUs up higher if at all possible. Why flood the economy with so many armors and crash MUs like that then?

And for Deeds it's a similar story. So many Deeds have been issued lately that it's now affecting other shares; Ancient Greece and Crystal Palace shares are both at their lowest ever on the history graph. Ark Moon Deeds too. Calypso Deeds are up probably only becausse of the split which artificially pumped up the demand for them. Somehow Ark underground is up, I have no idea why. But the general trend in Shares/Deeds remains that a flood of new shares into the economy is now causing a general decline in all share/deed prices, and so that is also not a safe place to invest in Entropia.

As for UL weapons, wow. Did everyone see those "almost" free Rare Tokens that were given out at Resource Mayhem? Do you still think that an expensive UL weapon could be a safe place to park your money?

The problem here is well, if it's no longer "safe" to buy anything in Entropia anymore, then why even play? MindArk used to be careful with this, for the longest time, it was safe to buy armor, it was relatively safe to buy Deeds; CLDs were going up nonstop for a decade after being released. Weapons were a pretty good investment for a while.

Tell me: Who benefits from these crashing prices? If players see the value of the things they bought drop month after month, does that encourage them to buy other, more expensive things? If new players observe this, does that encourage them to spend a lot for good UL items or Deeds/Shares? If trust in the game's economy evaporates, who benefits?
Click to expand...
I think this thread is mostly related to craftable armor, which, as far as i know, you specialize on.
Recent events, at least for me, strongly indicate that MAs view on crafting is of a residual (complementary) profession that gatherers could/should incur as a side chore. Like spending resources they hunted/mined and crafting some basic gear to complement their "main profession": amps for mining, queu damage enhancers for next session, maybe some L plate for odd, out of the regular hunt, and so on. And not as a 3rd big profession of the game.
Hence they gravitate, more and more, outside of crafting, for gear acquisition. Which is a weird situation to be in, since its the one that pushes MU.
 
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Legends said:
This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy.
Click to expand...
*** This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy to resell later.

Buying items I feel you should always price the item according to the use you can make out of it. If the price of the item itself drops, it doesn't matter as much if you have another way of monetizing the item (high-end weapon or armor for instance). If the only way of having any ROI on the item is reselling it, then yes, you obviously are not going to like the current market but this is not a game problem, it is a player problem...
 
Apart from a player problem also being a game problem at some point, I agree with you, as I posted above.
However, the overall question of what activities can be profitable (for example trading), is trickier in a downward market, and new stuff, new stuff, new stuff also feeds faster downward prices of the item itself if in larger numbers, as well as comparable items.
 
you talking about prices on UL gear about covid and precovid and all new players want good gear cheap etc etc. You forget though that precovid there was mu in hunting such as spleen,boxes and tokens. Now all those has 10% of the mu they used to have.Regardless of gear price none will keep grinding if there is no mu even with best gear for free.
 
And 2 major things that contributed to that is botting and mayhem system change.
 
Botting is not a problem for those that do it :p. Is simple economics that if you suddenly increase the supply many times more on market the prices will go down.
 
Super Spesh said:
*** This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy to resell later.

Buying items I feel you should always price the item according to the use you can make out of it. If the price of the item itself drops, it doesn't matter as much if you have another way of monetizing the item (high-end weapon or armor for instance). If the only way of having any ROI on the item is reselling it, then yes, you obviously are not going to like the current market but this is not a game problem, it is a player problem...
Click to expand...
This is so simple yet so complicated for some. It has to do with the risk appetite and risk tolerance of each individual I guess. If someone is only worried about the resell price or they are prone to change gear every other week, they should definitely stay L and stop tormenting themselves.
Players that usually are more concerned about the value of their assets should aim for cheaper options, like choosing melee / mindforce over ranged laser / blp due to having similar specs but smaller price.
Players that wish everything would be 10% of the current prices (no matter what those are) they should also understand that for that to happen the state of the game should be in such a way that a lot fewer people are willing to play it and it may not worth buying in at that point... just buy in with what you can affoard and enjoy the game as it is or move on to better things...

On price trends, nothing surprising, it's just supply and demand, people undercutting sales by 10k and MA is currently in the process of changing the META a bit. Some will quit every year no matter what, some will say they will quit but never do, some will just adapt and overcome. It's all part of the usual cycles in EU.
 
Legends said:
Non-sequitur comment; please stay on topic
Click to expand...

Korin Dante MDe said:
If the prices of armors are falling than its good thing... You probably talking about armor prices in point of view of reselling?
Click to expand...

Super Spesh said:
*** This causes me to feel that there is no longer anything left in Entropia that would be safe or smart to buy to resell later.

Buying items I feel you should always price the item according to the use you can make out of it. If the price of the item itself drops, it doesn't matter as much if you have another way of monetizing the item (high-end weapon or armor for instance). If the only way of having any ROI on the item is reselling it, then yes, you obviously are not going to like the current market but this is not a game problem, it is a player problem...
Click to expand...

I am not talking about reselling here, I am talking about the gaming experience for the average player. Probably 90% of players hunt and participate in the economy for the sole purpose of hunting. And I participate in hunting as well. Last year I bought some gear so I could hunt and skill mindforce and honestly, it sucks to see that everything I bought is worth a lot less now then what I paid for it. It wasn't always like this in Entropia, prices used to be a lot more stable.
 
Legends said:
I am not talking about reselling here, I am talking about the gaming experience for the average player.
Click to expand...
No, you are talking about your own experience. I am an average player and your experience is so far from "average" I cannot even understand how I could possibly relate.

Prices crashing across the board bring a huge smile to my face and a lot of other avatars I chat with in-game. Players are happy to finally be able to see gear close to being in financial reach.

You own multiple shops and have multiple thousands invested in this universe. How can you talk "for the average player"?

Give me a break!
 
Thats the problem of the "most" people who "invest" into items.

Just spend big amounts if you know what you do ,"know what you do" means : ahh i need this and that item to make this and that , never expect that you gona profit or Park your money in a item...
The value comes from the oportunity you see with the item

I beleave that it is a good thing right now that prices go down , we will see more players joining EU because of the fact that you can get a armor and a weapon to start out for "low costs"

Still Premium stuff like mod nano or unity series got a high Premium price

Release Videos on YT in order to increase the player base, go ahead and Support content creators, there are many who do tutorials but noone shares that to "noobs" share theyr Videos, sugguest the game to people you know, develop your own idea on how to fix your "business"

I remember i once bought a overpriced "infiltrator" set from your Shop, i didnt buy it because i loved the price... i bought it because you where the only person offering a whole set and that day i felt like doing some pvp, how do you expect people know what item to use if people never get to that Information.

This being said i beleave the game took the right direction,keep in mind you are part of this community and you influenced me doing a Video about a armor in entropia.


Keep it up :)
 
Super Spesh said:
No, you are talking about your own experience. I am an average player and your experience is so far from "average" I cannot even understand how I could possibly relate.

Prices crashing across the board bring a huge smile to my face and a lot of other avatars I chat with in-game. Players are happy to finally be able to see gear close to being in financial reach.

You own multiple shops and have multiple thousands invested in this universe. How can you talk "for the average player"?

Give me a break!
Click to expand...
Cycling 5ped/hr isnt the "average" for Entropia. Hence you are not an "average" player.
"Buying gear to skill up" representates an average playerbase in current hunting. And thats what @Legends is talking about. Its hard to recuperate losses, when you value skill > profit.
 
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