Economy Ground to Halt

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Zeddicus Zorander, Aug 8, 2018.

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  1. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    Or just mine for tin and sell it and be a millionaire in days....
     
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  2. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Yeah, after posting that my sale are down, things are back up again. I don't get huge sales, but I live in a reasonably well populated POT, mostly deal in materials and other gathered items, and sell slightly below market value, because tons of stuff sitting on a vendor doesn't do me any good. Well, below what I think market value is. I get lazy about looking around, and occasionally find prices have dropped below what I'm selling for. I do well with reagents, because I don't use a lot of them, and sell them for just slightly above what I could get selling them to an NPC. Though a recent run on rotting flesh and sulfurous ash have left my supply super low. But I have spider silk out the wahoo. I blew through a ton of wood stock after brewing went live, so that was nice, though I can't keep up with demand now. I don't sell a lot of ore, but I lowered my prices a bit recently due to the market, so hopefully that helps. Scrolls and repair kits fly off my vendors within hours; I sell only what I find at 60 a pop.
     
  3. Barugon

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    What game are you playing? Because there gear in SotA gets damaged and ultimately needs replacing.
     
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  4. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I don't know. I'm usually willing to forgive pricing; you sell things for the most you possibly can. It's pretty rare for somebody to have cornered the market on a thing in SotA, so you can't blame a seller because the buyer didn't look around to see what something cost elsewhere. If I intend to sell something regularly, I'll look around to see what the average price is. If it's a one-off thing I got as a drop, I'll usually just guess. I tend to guess low, but you never know. The first few artifacts I found I had way overpriced, because I didn't really know which were more valuable, so I was pricing based on what I'd seen artifacts going for, even though I thought I was listing them on the low end. But 99% of what I sell is stuff I got while playing, and I could honestly give two craps about what price I get for things I have no use for. I surprised the hell out of a neighbor when he mentioned being bummed about missing out on the cultist cloth armor telethon reward, and I just gave him the set I got. I don't use it, likely won't ever use it, and he wanted it. If it was super rare, I might have asked for gold, but eh. It was something I just happened to get, so I didn't particularly feel the need to charge for it.
     
  5. Woodchuck

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    Agree.

    There's no guarantee that someone will have reasonable prices for all items they are selling/ordering.

    As a buyer, the only way to protect yourself is to shop around as much as you can, and do this regularly to have a sense of the going market prices, in order to spot the good deals from the bad ones.

    It's a lot of effort and time for sure, so to each their own on this.
     
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  6. Woodchuck

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    Sure. I get that. Sometimes honestly people just don't know what to price things so they can price things badly.

    But i think we all know who the a-holes are in the game. Some of them are the big sellers in the game. They are very knowledgeable about prices. And true, if a seller didn't do their homework and bought something way overpriced, it's their own fault in the end. But you can't deny that the seller is also an a-hole to prey on such players.

    To me it's clear. There are some real a-holes in this game.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2018
  7. Adam Crow

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    You make some great points here, but that's a bit of an exaggeration. My crafting skills are not even close to 140 and I sell a ton of armor. In the 80-100 range you can make some very nice equipment. The additional points you get going from 100-140 really aren't worth the xp cost to be honest. It's all about marketing, vendor locations and knowing which options to choose for each specific item.

    Junk to one player could be perfect for another. Finding the options that work for more players can really help push more sales as well. If you create something that only works for one build, it's obviously going to be much harder to sell.

    Yeah, that's always a bummer. I personally never list any items with major repairs. Even if its an epic piece of equipment and priced fairly, most people won't notice the major repair and will be disappointed. I save those items to sell face to face so that I can explain exactly what the buyer is getting.
     
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  8. 2112Starman

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    Ya, I agree. I have gm in most crafting now and can make things that are like +10 to +12 pretty easy so thats what I use. Still even then I have put probably 6000-10000 gold into them myself (6K usually in silver and gold) and I have never found that I can sell them for what I put into them (mostly because 90% of them end up with lame stats from a bad enchant roll which only allows me to pick +40 health). So what I do is just use them for my own gear. I cant afford +16 gears for 250,000 gold and to be honest, I haven't found a PvE reason to need it. I farm at times now in Ulfeim (tier 8+) with store gear and no stats.
     
  9. 2112Starman

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    Most sellers seem to want too much for stuff. There is a bit of an oligopoly in the game for sellers.

    Since Im still selling of my massive trove of add-on store gear I bought to decorate my old keep lot that I sold, I basically for the past year took the price of 3700 gold per $1 I paid and throw it up on my vendor at that. Ive messed up sometimes such as thinking the Jabbering Birtha sold for $20 in the add on store and was retired, so someone recently told me about that and guess what, it didnt sell). I stuff sits for a long time then I'll go back up all the time, pull it off the vendor and drop the price a few thousand gold (but every time I do this I literally take a real financial loss, but I dont care because Im trying to off load stuff, not run a business). This works because stuff does slowly sell.

    Telethon rewards? I price them depending on how old they are. Usually start for months at $5 x 3700 gold per item of in game gold. If they are really old, the price goes up. Its insane that I find some of the new items on vendors at 100,000 gold when I have them up at 18,500 (although if its a really cool item in demand, Ill raise the price)

    But in the end, 90% of vendors I look at have stuff no one wants to buy or are dramatically over priced.

    Market forces should lower prices but the oligopoly kinda sets them. I always sell stuff for less then them and usually make the sale.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2018
  10. Elwyn

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    That sounds like the demand pricing on NPC vendors at work. It's not very well known simply because there is barely enough population these days for it to happen, but if too much of the same item is bought from an NPC, the price goes up for a while. That's exactly what happens on the first day or two of a release when a recipe is only sold in one place. It used to happen all the time shortly after persistence when people still hung around Owls Head. People were paying absurd prices for crafting fuels and possibly not even noticing.

    But the basic point is that some people don't know where to find, or can't be bothered to travel for, the recipes that are only sold in one or two places, so it's worth 1000-2000 for them not to have to run across the world. Nobody is forcing them to pay it, and some people just don't like running around the world. It's the only "regional economy" that has actually worked in this game so far. But I have also seen player vendors selling those recipes literally across the street from the NPC vendor that sells them.

    This game basically has open-world full-loot economic PvP, and opting out is as simple as don't buy anything from anyone you don't know. It's not quite EVE, but caveat emptor.

    Yesterday I saw a player vendor with maybe 50 such monthly reward items, all at 300,000 each. Of course a high price doesn't mean they expect to get it; it can also be a way of showing off stuff. Apparently.

    Nothing since last night, but the past few days it went from nothing to moderate. I finally had extra gold for the first time in maybe two weeks.
     
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  11. Sol Stormlin

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    It's possible that because of double XP, people are leveling faster thus able to get artifacts themselves and don't need to buy off others. One of the best ways to get good crafting XP is to mine. So more people are mining and don't need to buy the ore. Also you have those who will upgrade your gear as long as they provide the resources. And there is nothing wrong with doing those things. I'm not sure what everyone is expecting from everyone else. Half of the artifacts are crap because the benefits are negated by the negatives.
     
  12. kaeshiva

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    Personally a lot of people 'go around' the gold economy because its kinda ridiculous and inconsistent. Like the prices of raw resources exceeding the cost of finished products by 10x (at least for gear). While I'm willing to pay a reasonable markup on consumables if I don't want to make them myself, some of the prices out there are just ridiculous. I look at it and think, why would I pay that much for this item when I can go get it myself and make it far more quickly than I could earn the amount of money they are charging? I'm part of a small group of players who trade materials-for-output in most things and we just sell excess - at very, very cheap.

    I don't really have a problem moving things on vendors, even in my obscure pot, but I price it to move. I'm kind of a wholesaler in that regard, I know people are buying things and going and relisting it in their market town for more, and that's okay. I got my money and I can go about my day and don't have to do the vendor management thing or the price watching thing or whatever. I give myself a little margin and I'm good to go.

    And people have gotten wind of that, so now more often than not I have people setting up a pre-order or barter and we don't even use the vendor.

    The gear market though, I agree, is an absolute joke. Its not that we need more drains - the stuff isn't selling because its crap, not because people don't need it - it would not sell anyway because making crap is something anyone can do and there is far far too much of it languishing on vendors across Novia.

    What we need is more control over the crafting process so people aren't churning out crap. There's only so many "low level players" that "this piece of crap might be ok for" who might buy it at 5% of the creation cost.

    Its one or the other.
    We need something to do with the crap (IE, reasonable vendor payment for it, or give it to NPC blacksmith who rewards us with recipes, or some sort of turn in system) (Consumption)
    or
    We need to make a lot less crap.

    I recently upgraded my boots and ended up with over 50 pairs of unsuitable boots, half of which were "ok ish" and went on a vendor where they will sit for 6 months at 500 gold each until I get irritated with it and the other half of which I threw in a box against some future hope of something to do with them other than sell boots that have a craft cost of 6k+ (bronze) for 30g ea to the NPC.
     
  13. Kain Darkmoor

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    3000 hours in and I have never had to replace a piece of gear because it was broken to the point of not being repairable.
     
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