The Market Value is not a Game

[Xavier_Jr]

If you think people are selling things too cheaply, just buy it all and relist..

Thats could make me a rich man ; however the universe will be affected. Because you could have only one happy person, but you can obtain one hundred persons sad and complaining and possibly leaving the game in the next months. Thats is not the idea. Because the logics from reseller is not a good idea for the game.

However thanks for your idea.

 

[Xavier_Jr]

Imagine IRL you go and order a car and 'toyota' comes back to you and says sorry we tried five times and we only got 1/2 a car and some residue ...that doesnt happen does it?? .... supply and demand only works when the production is a constant... but in this game everything is a variant ...

Dont forget the rule (studies) of 90% return rate based in TT at long term. Is not so variant as you say.

 

[Xavier_Jr]

Well I think the goal of this thread has been fulfilled. Put on the table, a real economic problem of our universe. And we could see different points of view. From hunters, miners, crafters, shop owners, and even, from street retailers. Now the thread is complete, what remains is that Mindark read all reviews, and evaluates how they can get something for the good of the whole community about this problem. Well .. thanks to all, dear friends.

 

[Hijacker27]

I still think that it's fine as it is. Lower prices aren't necessarily bad. Remember when things were expensive? People used to complain ALL THE GODDAMN TIME about how everything was ridiculously overpriced and out of reach for the mass majority of players. And now that the prices have finally fallen, you're complaining about how things are too cheap?

The market forces of supply and demand do their work, every time someone puts something cheap on auction, there's someone to buy it. If the buyers don't think it's worth buying, then it's not worth buying.

 

[DoubleWolf]

I've done a small amount of trading in my time, but mostly little one off deals from the auction that I notice opportunities on, like people listing items for far too cheap.

But I do far more selling than I do buying in this game, so I'm with Xavier in preferring higher markup on items. The high end uber stuff I still think is too expensive, but that's only because it doesn't really loot anymore. I think the drop rate on that stuff should be a little higher, which would fix the price issue right away.

at the end of the day if people cant support their gameplay time they will underquote to keep playing ... it's a game after all...

I think this is where the price dropping issue is really occurring. Some of it can be attributed to noobs making poor listings, but most of it is from impatient people that are desperate for a sale. And if you list it with a higher price, you run the risk of it not selling at all, and having to pay auction fees again to relist it.

It doesn't take much to understand the market. Being able to sort makes it even easier. You can watch some commonly looted items on the auction as they pile up and you can tell that there are people that have sorted the auction and then listed their items so they will have the lowest price. What they don't realize is that they are helping to kill the markup on that item, which they may end up looting in the future, and having to sell again.

Now you could always buy the item up and relist it if you think the price is too low, but sometimes it doesn't make sense to do. There's not enough profit in it after fees, and I don't really expect anyone to PAY money to try to fix prices. That wouldn't make sense either.

In the end, there's not really any education you can do, because there will always be new players coming in or players that don't speak your language that the message wont get to. The only thing that will change falling prices is a change in supply or a change in demand. It's basic economics. No amount of players making "proper" listings will have any effect, because the market forces are stronger than that. It's unfortunate, but that's the way the free market operates...

 

[Etopia]

one of the problem is all those ATH with TT food.
If someone get 100k+ of TT food , he will TT it , and then withdraw at least half of it.
If , those 100k was spread between 10 people , i am sure most of them would spend those 10k ingame to buy item , hunt , craft...
The big number is an open door that puch money out of game.

 

[Yquem]

If , those 100k was spread between 10 people , i am sure most of them would spend those 10k ingame to buy item , hunt , craft...
The big number is an open door that puch money out of game.

Excatly

Thread: Open letter for the...

 

[jdegre]

The market forces of supply and demand do their work, every time someone puts something cheap on auction, there's someone to buy it. If the buyers don't think it's worth buying, then it's not worth buying.

fully agreed. usually, all 3 main profession feed each other in terms of balancing but, even if you focus on just 1 profession, there is also an internal balance:

ore prices high -> lots of people mining since it is profitable -> market flooded with ore -> low price -> less people mining since it is not so profitable anymore -> market under supplied -> ore prices rising again -> ....

so, i also think it is fine the way it is. as the old saying goes: just watch the market, and adapt.

 

[GoNi]

Just a matter of supply and demand!

Why is Ruga, Dunkle, Maganite, Xermite still expencive ? Because there is demand vs low supply!
Why is P5a close to be TT food? Because there is high supply vs low demand!

Many crafters dump a big part of their products directly into TT, because there is no market for it! Supply is much to high! Or do you really think all this crafted OA-101 get used on a daily base? Sorry, there are not enough miners to do that !!!

Old style items, are only good if those offer an insane nice eco (way out of balance), therefor stay expencive (Imp/Mod FAP, MM, IMKII).
Other old syle items (PK gear) that offered insane DMG/sec can now be beaten by high end L items (craftable), therefor the demand for old style PK guns, goes down, therefor price goes down!

Look at armors!
TBird L drops like dirt, therefor demand for old style TB ul is low, price goes down.

There are only a few items ingame, where a high markup is logical, as said ultra eco old style items, that are way out of balance.

All other things will go down in price, due to oversupply or decreasing demand.
With every drop of an uL SIB weapon, the demand of the L weapon goes down, therefor price on the L items goes down.

You can look whereever you want, sooner or later the market will be oversupplied, therefor MU will vanish!
There is only very very few exceptions, where MU´s last a little longer at high levels.

Without a constantly growing playerbase, there is only one way for the MU´s and that is down!

 

[J D]

Market Tracker is Half the Problem

Where in any other economy does the item your buying actually tell you not to buy it... because someone bought one yesterday for half the price?

This will always create a downward spiral, because some one is always willing to sell something at under cost or under the price it sold for last week.. The problem is... That desperate sale goes on the public record "FOR EVER" and can dramatically affect the micro-economy.

 

[Mega]

Where in any other economy does the item your buying actually tell you not to buy it... because someone bought one yesterday for half the price?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hnoVqwkGo&NR=1


Can't wait for PCF to have the same functionality as EF used to.

 

[GoNi]

Where in any other economy does the item your buying actually tell you not to buy it... because someone bought one yesterday for half the price?

This will always create a downward spiral, because some one is always willing to sell something at under cost or under the price it sold for last week.. The problem is... That desperate sale goes on the public record "FOR EVER" and can dramatically affect the micro-economy.

You don´t compare prices IRL?
Well I do that on a daily base.
I always look where I can buy cheap to save me some €!
Its a necessity IRL, and with a little comon sense, you know what you should pay for your goods and whats definately overpriced and whats a bargain!

 

[mastermesh]

because the newbies dont know that them can selling his items in auction for himself without high loses. And second, when noobs and newbies sells directly his materials in auction using wrong or incomplete information,

MA should add a lot of tutorials to the auction for n00bs... should do same with banking system and many other systems in game. First time I tried to tame, I would have never been able to do it without reading some tutorials in the forums here (well at ef when it was around). Some people have been in game for years and still don't completely understand loan system in banks.

The problem is... That desperate sale goes on the public record "FOR EVER" and can dramatically affect the micro-economy.

Yes, that is a big part of the problem, and is also why I say that the market value is a game. If someone has a rare item, or newly introduced item, which has a low number of sales, say 20 or less, one or two runs through the auction can make that items market history go very high or very low quickly, especially if the said auction seller has a "friend" on the other end willing to buy. I suspect some street sellers use this sort of legal scam so to speak to cause market values to do what they want them to do -- lowering them if they want to do a lot of buying, and raising them if they want to do a lot of selling, etc. Having been a shop owner for a while, focused on blueprints, I see this sort of market manipulation happening a lot on bps. It's more noticible in this market then many others because tt value of bps is so low, so almost 100% of the market history is based on markup fluctuations.

 

[Amenophis]

The mid segment of the demand has gone fully "eco" . That means reducing all costs as much as possible while hunting MU mobs as much as possible. Consequently a fall in MU is expectable. However, there come the ubers with their eco allowing them to go a bit under the mark-up. This leads to a perpetual chase for the sale-off , hence a continuous fall during crisis. What happens in the long run to the mid hunters is that most of them go bankrupt selling lower than required by their costs, ubers to gain more tt as a difference from their eco and the massive tt inflows of the mid players, while the machine will have to "award" the MU merchandise amongst more competitors, hence less tt for say ... a looted gun or esi , also having a huge impact on the overall loot of the high-rollers.
Also , the tt pool seems to be "drawn" towards the entry levels. The "ingenuity" of old time hunters has died in favor of the "hunger" for MU, standing also at the basis of its collapse. Maybe some loot-tables have to be re-designed, some mobs changed, some probabilities altered.
The traders have long struggled against the falling tendencies, as much as they have struggled to acquire goods at convenient prices. This means the MU's have been strongly sustained by them as well till now, covering for the lack of "appetite" of the end-users. But this can't last forever. The machine has an old-fashioned manner of allowing waves of items/minerals to hit the market. But I feel these "supply waves" have been conceived mainly to cover the event of a stackable or item being purchased as a protection to market manipulation. However, when the market is already being sustained at increasing rate by the traders and resellers, I wonder how much time till some decide to give up "crediting" the demand and collapse it all. I fear the dimensioning of the markets has gone far off chart at this moment.

PS: the ingenuity I was talking about has reasons to succumb as a consequence to uber-loots being given to so many "out-of-the-box" avatars and a feel of overall loot getting worse. I think I explained the reasons for that feeling in a few lines above ... Anyway. I'm waiting for MA's yearly report ... eagerly ( as percent of Calypso's turnover is a measure of the real success of the "expansion" ).

 

[billairboy]

That low MU would be because of new players sell stuff too cheap is not the case. In the long run supply and demand will push prices up or down. Short term prices can move a bit up or down because of "undercutting", but undercutting is often an effect of bigger supply then demand.

 

[Harmony.]

In fact, the model of the game suggest to use the three professions. However, the reality is different. ET say to us that number of hunters is three times number of miners; and the number of miners is 1.5 times the number of crafters.
Probably is better to have the three professions; as i can see in your tracker, you have practice the three professions; and i can see too, that you prefer to be a crafter. That suggest to me, that may be recomendable to do crafting too at nowdays. Thank you so much!

Well in this case it just means i'm too busy irl and can't do much else then autocraft when i logon. Actually i find crafting the hardest profession to break even in. Even with buying stuff at very low markup, since you have to sell your stuff at 5-10% more then the MU for the ingredients which is very hard since there are a lot of crafters, and hunters/miners ask way too much for their loot

 

[kosmos]

I didn't read through the thread I won't lie. What I know for sure this service, universe, Game (?), is what you make of it. I approach it for what it is to me a service, but everyone else has their own take on it. Some here for fun and don't care about the market, some here for profit, and some just for the dream (waste life/time).

I do agree with you somewhat... However, as any psychologist will tell you, I don't think you trying to force your opinions on others is going to get you anywhere. All that does is create more frustration and stress for yourself, which in turn becomes a vicious cycle, creating even more frustration for yourself later.

Not trying to troll you but don't you do this with 90% of your posts about how shops are the best thing since sliced bread? When you point a finger 3 more point back to you.

 

[Marijuana]

My thoghts on this subject is that ...

MA is GOD-Devil in Entropia ! Duhh !

Hummm yeayea i am smoking Marijuana !
But i am right huh...

Rolling anothwr Joint.....

Mari

 

[Amenophis]

That low MU would be because of new players sell stuff too cheap is not the case. In the long run supply and demand will push prices up or down. Short term prices can move a bit up or down because of "undercutting", but undercutting is often an effect of bigger supply then demand.

This short term is not short anymore ... This supply and demand is actually supply over demand, with a demand that's being choked by constant supply, with stocks building up in the trader's storage and big wallet hunters/miners/crafters. The spenders have been decimated and now it's the time of the "L eco" segment to pay the bills. And they will pay as long as they can still squeeze a MU from whatever they produce , even at the expense of its decrease.
Dynamic, supply and demand, are all terms you like to use , but these terms have also associated extremes : downwards, stalls , crisis, blockage , lack of capital infusions. All of these come from human reaction to a system that fails to prove itself. That reaction is commonly known to be mistrust, caution. If this state lasts too long , it leads to quitting . Assuming MA is aiming at orienting the game towards the entertainment zone the requirements for "new-blood" would be overwhelming given the enormous turnover currently sustained by ubers and campers with the sole objective being profit/time.
Let me put it another way. Personally, I'm old enough and having enough situations to deal with RL to constantly torment myself trying to find workarounds for EU difficulties while growing my avatar. The rhythm of the growth has constantly went smaller during the last year. The time costs to break even have doubled during the same period, as the avatar cycles seem to have grown far more ample than before. I'm currently just playing for the sake of a new unlock, and that only when I got nothing better to do IRL. Lately, RL seems to have just about everything better to offer. Every little time another one like me does that, all the ubers/ath-es you will see will be payed by -1 active player. Guess what ? How many peds would you input in the ATH per minute while hunting big scips/chompers/mulaak's and how many would a beginner hunting daikibas with opalo ?
On the other hand, talking of the beauty of the gameplay, the input of new-blood has lead to countless kids joining this community, with everything that comes with that : scammers, mentally challenged, lack of principles and education, all leaving a bad taste in our mouths. Good surprises are so rare that they might actually require a separated section in the HOF panel . Something like ... " x has discovered common sense in y ! This has been recorded in the Hall Of Fame !". You have to get some uber dps just in case you get ks-ed by some other or get gang-banged by not-by-your-doing-aggro-ed mobs .
This is an economy that went very well with much higher mark-ups. They didn't seem to have bothered users at that time. How come they bother them now , being much lower ? Cause they surely bother me already as a mark-up provider. Seeing a full tt esi in the loot of an argonaut young and the size of the latest ath-es was a red marker for me . The real loss of tt is now so transparent that it gets scary.

And the question ... How much may greed feed hope and how much may hope feed a stomach ?

 

[valentin]

one of the problem is all those ATH with TT food.
If someone get 100k+ of TT food , he will TT it , and then withdraw at least half of it.
If , those 100k was spread between 10 people , i am sure most of them would spend those 10k ingame to buy item , hunt , craft...
The big number is an open door that puch money out of game.

MA know that and many player has told them that but as all we know they are driving the game like they want it and its no wrong with that.

1 ting i know it that this game has bad reputation in the gaming world and that should they do something about not to run with the myth that everyone is rich here, but seriously tackle with the "balance" and "dynamic" and make the game friendly so that the players are happy in here.

But anyway they have sold this game now so they dont give a FUxx about it anymore.

 

[mastermesh]

Something MA should add to item info screens on all items: a couple of stats that show how many items of this type are currently in game, and what number this one is... sort of like the numbers put on limited print editions... This number should fluctuate as things are TTed, or added to the virtual reality, etc. The database should have all of this info somewhere (hopefully)... this type of info would be useful in helping us know what is more rare and what is more common. It would help the RCE in a lot of various ways and help us determine true market values better.

 

[Carlito]

As all will understand the values of market of the objects that are traded in Entropia Universe is what guarantees that this virtual universe can work without collapsing. From there the preoccupation that causes me seeing that the values of market of all the resources and objects of this virtual universe go in free fall.
Is necessary to make note that although it is certain the quantity of players that practice the game is a decisive factor for the values of market of Entropia Universe things; I find that it is not the only one. That nowadays exist a problem of reading from the historical values of the market from the tools that the game offers us.
In some moment the players of the game have forgotten that the market values not only are established mechanically for the record of the auction; if not that fundamentally they should be established by oneself giving a value to the things that we sell considering our costs implicated in his obtaining or fabrication.
An example of this is the race to sell things which does the players take from reference the historical value and always put its price below this; without considering that the value of historical market reflects the average of all the available markets. There are markets that purchase and sell wholesale objects. And there are also markets that buy and sell retail objects. Both economies are not the same ones, if not that each one has and should have their own rules.
I believe that one of the reasons for the fall down of the prices is because most of the people doesn't make a distinction of both markets. Such that they mechanically sell their things below the market values allways. That doesn't help to the economy of the universe. Because it drives to the continuous fall of the prices fruit of the offer and demand, although the real demand is not falling in the same proportion. This way we can see that the MU of the mining amplifiers now is usually always bigger than the MU of the maters and ores of the game. Also the because the MU of the weapons and armors are usually always bigger than the MU of the hunt loots..
This situation is very dangerous. Because if something menace to the game is it. For this reason, I have two suggestions. One to Mindark that plans to future to make a distinction between the records values of market of the objects and resources bought wholesale and also for retail; and a second that the sellers in general don't determine mechanically the price of the object only for the historical; if not that they make calculation of costs. Example, if an ampli costs 112% and we also know that Mindark will charge to the long one 10% of what we play as commission; we should not offer minerals for example in 108%. Because that means that we will make collapse the economy more early than late. In front of this measurement, if one wants to sell something for less than 110% it is very preferable to throw the object to the TT, because to the long way is more beneficial for the economy in general of the game.
The market values process is not a game; for that reason we should understand their concept well and to take care we must to establish it in its real value, according to their costs, and not only that we place the prices looking at the historical one (MU-1), because the same one represents the average of the costs of great scale with the costs of small scale.

Very well said. Take the vehicles for example. The success rate is 33% for any manufactured item at best but sometimes can fluctuate to as low as 20%. Yet you continually see a free fall on prices like you mentioned. This in turn devalues not only the item but slowly kills th economy here. I remember the day when we had over 20 people bidding on a single item, good luck trying to win items anything under MU in those days. I see things headed towards a TT game.

 

[Carlito]

Something MA should add to item info screens on all items: a couple of stats that show how many items of this type are currently in game, and what number this one is... sort of like the numbers put on limited print editions... This number should fluctuate as things are TTed, or added to the virtual reality, etc. The database should have all of this info somewhere (hopefully)... this type of info would be useful in helping us know what is more rare and what is more common. It would help the RCE in a lot of various ways and help us determine true market values better.

Great idea!!!

 

[Carlito]

One tiny bit of information that could be provided in the ingame Market Analysis thinger is the actual number of the item being viewed ingame. This could add relevance to this feature. Currently what we see is how many have been sold in auction. A bolder step would be to include prices paid in shops, shop keepers and private trades. The information does exist or rather should exist. Just a matter of MA stepping up and providing some basic usable metrics ingame.

I agree

 

[MagicZelda]

My opinion.....

The problem with this type of economy is you can NEVER determine it based on the real world rules/laws of economy...
why.... simple because people (crafters) who recycle the peds dont co-rellate to manufacturers in real life.

You might be saying... "what the hell are you on about?"...well... think of it this way ... If i am a crafter and I manufacture a product each time I use the mats for it, I will be happy to sell that product in due time and even make a profit.... but because manufacturing doesnt return exact amount of products, crafters tend to undercut prices to keep going or to recycle for another run....

Imagine IRL you go and order a car and 'toyota' comes back to you and says sorry we tried five times and we only got 1/2 a car and some residue ...that doesnt happen does it?? .... supply and demand only works when the production is a constant... but in this game everything is a variant ...

Unless you have a system where you need a certain level of skill you cant manufacture anything, you just get res or when you do you do it everytime .... but that's not how the game is set up... so in other words doesnt matter how much people try to do graphs and MU research... shit always changes .... at the end of the day if people cant support their gameplay time they will underquote to keep playing ... it's a game after all...

Well said

 

[MagicZelda]

Keep it interesting

Here's a point to make. Making PEDs from the markets and not hunting/mining/crafting is as much of a challange and can be almost as rewarding as a nice return. If the game gave to much information about markets it would leave my brain very little to work out. As I am now almost 80% of the time trying to make profit (for fun not nessesity) I am finding it very rewarding battling my wits against the EU Economy.

Z
xxxxxx

 

[billairboy]

Very well said. Take the vehicles for example. The success rate is 33% for any manufactured item at best but sometimes can fluctuate to as low as 20%. Yet you continually see a free fall on prices like you mentioned. This in turn devalues not only the item but slowly kills th economy here. I remember the day when we had over 20 people bidding on a single item, good luck trying to win items anything under MU in those days. I see things headed towards a TT game.

All new things have high mu and then the mu comes down. Low mu is not bad in it self, but if the mu is constantly going down over a long period is not good. It's not good for the game if we have to high mu on all items, it makes it to expansive to play. MU stability is more important than high mu. If the mu slowly goes down on items it is no big problem, but of cource a situation with no mu at all is not good.

 

[Carlito]

All new things have high mu and then the mu comes down. Low mu is not bad in it self, but if the mu is constantly going down over a long period is not good. It's not good for the game if we have to high mu on all items, it makes it to expansive to play. MU stability is more important than high mu. If the mu slowly goes down on items it is no big problem, but of cource a situation with no mu at all is not good.

OFC the MU comes down on new items. I've been here 5 years, never i have seen MU fall by the hour at lightening speed like is does now. When something for example costs 200 ped to make and sells for 50, that is not normal. Sure your happy about it, and every other consumer here since there basically getting a steal on almost every time here. Virtual items used to be stable here, prices would not wildly fluctuate then crash. This is simply a buyers market supplied by gamblers.

 

[Slaiine]

This is simply a buyers market supplied by gamblers.

Bingo! You got it.

 

[billairboy]

OFC the MU comes down on new items. I've been here 5 years, never i have seen MU fall by the hour at lightening speed like is does now. When something for example costs 200 ped to make and sells for 50, that is not normal. Sure your happy about it, and every other consumer here since there basically getting a steal on almost every time here. Virtual items used to be stable here, prices would not wildly fluctuate then crash. This is simply a buyers market supplied by gamblers.

What costing 200 to make and sells for 50? don't belive that