Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Latest Round of Price Whining

Seems to be a new wave of complaints about more recent price changes.

Focus: 1) Instance drop item prices dropping. 2) General use fighter items such as HEs and SRs costing more. 3) Nexus Removal stone price hikes.


I'll look at each of those individually...

1) Instance drop items - With the load of people farming instances, this is just simply "No shit, Sherlock".

Start flooding the market for an item that is only an occasional buy at best, there's too many, people have to lower their price to be more attractive for a sale compared to others.

The people complaining about this primarily are of course the instance farmers, since they're the ones losing money with each trip they make.

With any luck, instances will hit the point of unprofitably soon enough and the farmers will actually have to do something in the game instead.


2) Basic items (HEs/SRs/EnEs/MatEs/etc) prices going up.

I warned you people about this last year, but only few paid attention. The rest were too driven by greed to care. Now they're paying for it, and whining about what they did to themselves.

How were you warned? The boneheads that caused the sudden hike of silver prices from 2 to 2.5 are the reason for this.

I started a campaign to boycott these people. I along with others continued to sell silver at 2gc in an attempt to keep this from happening, as we understood what it would mean to the economics of the game to have such a hike on a base item.

But in the end, there were too many greedy boneheads. I have since had to accept the price hike as it became the standard.

You greedy boneheads who helped increase the cost of this one base item are at fault for all essie/bar price hikes. Even stuff not including silver.

And as such, you have no right to complain about price hikes of mixed stuff.

Silver increase directly caused price increases for HEs, LEs, and EnEs. And of course, silver bars.

Because silver became more profitable to harv than things like diamonds and iron, those things got harved less, until their prices also got hiked making them more profitable.

Which in turn increased the price of AEs as well as iron/steel bars, which in turn increased the price of S2Es, which in turn increased the price of hydro bars.

That one silver ore price hike caused price hikes around the board.


Add to this: The primary used essies such as HEs and EnEs give no chance of a rare item. This alone makes them less made than some other lesser-used essies. Fighters pushing to get these essies at lower prices get pissed when they can't, but don't grasp that they caused the hike selling silver for a higher price before, and there's not so many people providing these essies in the first place.

Matter Essies alone have seen a drastic hike due to both iron price increase and lack of quartz ings available forcing them all to be harved. (Anyone using the "well, there's places you can harv all 4 ings together" line to excuse wanting a cheaper price on these needs to be shot. The time it takes to make these is from the harving, not their location.)


So for things like HEs... the boneheads who increased the silver price, the lack of players massively making these, and the overwhelming need for them for fighters has all combined to increase the cost of them.

Similar combos of reasons can be found for other items as well.

Next time you wanna whine about the increased cost of essies/bars and such, figure out what you were doing when some of us were trying to keep this from happening by boycotting the 2.5gc silver sellers.



3) Nexus Removal Stone price drastically increasing.

I've read it all... there's people actually claiming it's the "greedy harvers" who find them that have caused this hike.

The truth: It's the buyers.

Many moons ago, I decided that Human 10 wasn't worth the cape and removed 3 to get Human 7 instead. At that time, I paid 350kgc each for the Human Removal Stones.

350kgc. This was less than 2 years ago.

Along came a bunch of gc buyers and such, buying up all these stones. Setting their bots to buy at the (at the time) outragous price of 700kgc, keeping that increasing as others battled to buy them as well.

Those price hikes? Certainly not the harvers. Those who find a nexus stone sell it at what they can best get for it. And it was the buyers offering to buy them at these prices, without the finder even having to set a price.

Those prices being offered to buy them just kept going up. Add to that, some other greedy types who'd buy them at the current high price on their bot, and sell them on the bot for yet another 100k. Again, not the person who found the stone's doing but greedy in-betweens.

A couple months ago I found a nexus stone. My very first and only in 2.5 years of harvesting with over 9.5million items harvested.

It sold for 950kgc. I set that as a buy-it-now price, but offered it in auction at 700kgc start. People hiked their bids directly up to 850kgc without trying lower first, until eventually the stone sold at the 950kgc after only a few hours available.

My fault as the person who found it? Hardly. Auctions allow those who are buying to determine the price. If it gets sold at an outrageous price, it's the player who bought it at that price to "blame", not me.

And these same players complaining about the nexus stone cost also tend to be instance-farmers, where we're starting to regularly see nexus stones come into the game. Funny, the price isn't going down because of them.

11 comments:

  1. The reason for silver and nex removal prices going up is the same: More demand than resources. If people are willing to pay 2,5gc for silver ore, of course sellers will sell them for that price. Same goes to nex removals etc. That's how market works.

    I completely agree with you at the reasons why nexus removals prices went up, but same goes to silver ore. It's different products, but the same reason why the price rose.

    Now there is even YUMI-harvesting shop at forums that sells silver at 2gc ea. But still it's really easy to sell it for up to 2,5gc ea at market channel. Why? Because mixers are "greedy" and want to have the resources as fast as possible and keeping the price up. If they just kept buying silver from YUMI shop, the price would go back down to 2gc ea.

    What I'm trying to say, it's pointless to find guilties for items prices rising. It's not just buyers or sellers that raise the prices, it's the market as a whole. You could have chosen to sell your nex removal for "good old price", 350kgc but you decided to sell it for 950k. Why? Because you wanted as high profit as possible and market gave you opportunity to put the price that high. AND there still was a person who bought it.

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  2. I do not consider auctions to be authoritative information for price checking, as in the end it is up to the player what gets paid for the item.

    I set my auction up with a 700k start (300k lower than what a nex stone was selling for at that point), offered a bin of 950k (50k lower than what it was selling for at that point). Both start and end price below the 1 million they had been seen selling for at the time.

    If I were only interested in gc, I could have tossed it on my bot at 1 million and someone would have bought it within 48 hours.


    I could have chosen to sell it that low (350kgc you suggested), but with a 99.9% chance it would just end up on someone else's bot to be sold at 1 million. Dropping the price that drastically opens the door to such middlemen, who would see that as a very easy 650kgc profit.

    A real market doesn't work that way, with one person selling something at such a drastically reduced price and there suddenly being a drop in the item's retail value.

    All that would have done was encouraged a middleman to buy it, and resell it at the price I did, if not more.

    Unfortunately setting prices has to be done in a manner that also avoids such "middleman" hikes.

    I tend to take that in consideration when setting prices on my bot, for example. I check the highest price seen that a bot will buy an item for, and the lowest it sells for on bots. And set my price some point on or between those two prices.

    That helps me to avoid overpricing, as well as underpricing to a point where someone will come along and buy just to resell for a profit (middlemen).

    Also thanks to that, my bot does in the long term assist in helping keep prices down, or at least stable. It's hard for other bots to sell at overprice when a bot like mine sells the same item for more reasonable prices. I've seen several bots drop their prices down to my level, and even gotten complaints from overpricers about me "undercutting" them by selling at a more reasonable market value.




    YUMI is a good example, I use them and hope to see them expand. However, YUMI at this point is very limited and it can take weeks to get just 10k of an item.

    If they keep their prices, it will also take them expanding so they have more workers and get
    orders done much faster before they'll have any noticeable impact on the market. (Just an observation, not an attack. I respect the YUMI workers for their attempt to reduce the prices some and hope it is successful in the long term.)

    As opposed to GenX, which got too big for its own good and thus greatly impacts harv ing prices. There are unfortunately those who use GenX's prices as the "market value". And because they consist almost solely of "just harvers", they're not particularly caring if their price hikes cause hikes on everything else.


    Just the presence of my bot has forced many bot prices to drop. I waged an all-out (though in the end futile) war on harv ing price increases.

    Those are not things I'd do if all I was interested in was gc.


    Short of Radu changing the rate of something drastically that it causes instant price crashing (not something he'd tend to do either), there's no real way to get prices to drop as drastically as from 1 mill to 350kgc as suggested.

    Getting the prices to drop requires a slow and steady drop to be successful. Selling a 1mill stone for 950kgc is a step towards an eventual lower stone cost. Dropping it to 350kgc would have had no impact with a middleman just hiking the price back up for their own profit.

    Unfortunately it also requires others to follow suit. I rely more on my bot now to try and force prices down or to be at the least stable, as it's on and offering 24/7. Overpricers can't fight that. (Granted, it also means my bot stock doesn't stay stocked long, hehe.)

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  3. If you're an instance farmer who submitted a response without your name, PM me (or message via gossip) in-game that the message is yours.

    "Responses which do not include your EL name will be rejected." as it states above the comment field. I don't censor, but I do expect people to stand by their words.

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  4. Get your thoughts straight before bahsing all them into a/d trainers/instancers.

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  5. Er... my thoughts are straight, sorted into numbered topics, and fully explained.

    Your response on the other hand is lacking any actual content, thus there's nothing to respond to.

    Never said anything about "trainers", as I a/d train as well, even if I am on a temporary break from it.

    Instancers, not a problem. I've done instances in the past.

    Instance farmers, messing up the game economy then complaining that they can't make it financially worthwhile because the prices on their drop items keep dropping due to market saturation.

    There's nothing unfactual about that.

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  6. Yes because the fault is SOLEY in instance farmers.

    We aren't the only ones who cause inflation among other things that screw up the economy. Blaming just the instance farmers is outrageous in my personal opinion.

    Most of us aren't the ones complaining about prices :D. It's the other people. "omg rdholams so cheap now and i spent so much on mine blah blah blah" That's what I hear a LOT. Most instance farmers the only things we really dislike in drop is..

    -Low GC
    -P2p Shop Coupon
    -MM removal

    Because why? P2p coupon is worthless as is MM removal. Low GC just sucks in general.

    What bugs me is how people like yourself included, think we're all super rich farmers and we make mil's doing this. Albeit I've made my fair share as has a few others - We aren't all filthy rich from it. I also do mix and do other things.

    To say you hope they become profitless in the hopes that we 'actually have to do something' Is a bit slanted in my opinion. What we are doing (instancing) Is our way of making GC as fighters. Was the same way with Yeti "farmers" and it got nerfed and now people want a nerf on instancing among other things or whatever.

    Why can't we be a pure fighter like you can be a jack of all trades and someone else can be a mixer?

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  7. Solely? Your ability to read only what you want to read is underwhelming... There's 3 bullet points above, and only the first had anything to do with instance farmers, and it only about instance drop prices.

    Hardly me "solely" blaming all economy problems on one set of people.

    Explain to me how #2, concerning the silver prices which in turn caused most everything else to increase (thus being the biggest economy hit of the 3 items) was blamed on farmers.

    Or #3, Nexus stone increases. While I noted the price has seen no radical drop since farmers started regularly getting them in instances, explain how I blamed them getting so costly on instance farmers.

    Oh wait, I didn't do that for either of those.

    Solely? If you can't be bothered to actually read, why bother responding?

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    As for "solely" being a fighter, I don't believe in that any more than "solely" being a harvester, or other skill.

    It tends to be the ones who "solely" do one thing that are the worst economy screwers. Fighters have shown their ability to hurt the economy, and just as well it was the ones who "solely" harvest that were mostly responsible for the silver price hike... they don't care that other prices increase because of it because they don't do anything else.

    So no, I don't believe anyone "solely" doing one thing is a good thing for the game.

    And well, why can't I solely be a ranger? A tailor? An engineer? A mage? Even a manuer? Oh right, it's not possible, every one of those requires another skill for income. Fighters are at no better in my eyes.

    You can be "solely" a fighter when I can be "solely" any one of those things.

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    As for instance farming being profitless, yes I look forward to that.

    Instances were originally intended to be occasional side fun. Those of us who think of them that way have sat around watching farmers turn them into something no longer worth looking forward to, killing the value of drops and eventually making it to the point where there'd be no value in doing them at all.

    You're ruining what used to be a fun side distraction for many in your own (collective) personal quests for greed.

    So yes, I look forward to the days when your (collective) greed attempting to farm gets you exactly where you're headed, a point where you'd actually lose money attempting to farm an instance. You ruined it for the rest of the players, you deserve no better than that.

    But as is the status quo for fighters, your only thoughts are of yourself, and not how your actions affect the rest of the players.

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  8. If these things were designed not to be done more than occasionally Burn, why did radu implement a way to do them more and more often? Invasion tokesn eliminate ALL time, scales can eliminate some time, even serp stones eliminate time.

    These things were designed to be done whenever and however people saw fit as long as they had the necessary means to do so.

    We farm instances, yes we do. But we're pure fighters who don't want to mix.

    Who do you think mixers sell too burn? Mixers might sell some ings to another mixer who will inturn mix it up but most of the time those items that are high in demand are demanded by your fighters.

    If we mixed SRs/Hes and other things like mixers did.. what would we need a mixer for? This is how it is. Mixers need us and we need mixers. Killing our GC flow, kills countless others.

    So who here is being selfish? Instances are already becoming less and less profitable. Notice more HE/SRs are on the market than when it all started? We aren't doing them as much and thus.. don't need as much to do it.

    My opinion anyway. See it how you wish to see it.

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  9. I don't see any harm if someone wants to be pure fighter. It would ruin the idea of "do what you want" -game if you are forced to do something that you think isn't fun.

    It's true that those "pure fighters" are raising the prices of essences etc., but I don't see it purely as bad thing. It's easy to get really good profit from your HEs even if you buy the (overpriced) silver from ebul harvesters.

    What comes to instance farming, I agree people farm them too much. But again it's not just "omfg they're ruining the instances from others!!". I see it just positive thing rdholams etc. are pretty cheap so more people can buy them. Actually radu ment them to be cheapish, not some yber expensive super item. Armors, swords etc. are already expensive enough so it's just good thing to get some cheaper items in game.

    Anyway I don't really understand why you are complaining about instance drop prices. If you think instances were made just for fun, what does it matter if you don't get good profit from them? Let's take PKing as an example, you lose loads of money, but still many people PK. From instances you can actually still get profit and even if the prices dropped little more, you still wouldn't lose any money.

    Anyway what comes to harvesters, I don't think HE etc. prices would come down even if the silver price was reduced back to 2 gc ea. There's already 2-4 gc "air" in HEs prices. I'm sure mixers wouldn't lower the price if (and when) fighters would still be willing to pay even 9-10 gc per HE.

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  10. Allowing reduction/removal of wait time for instances was never a good idea, and something I'd be willing to join in any suggestion to remove.

    That instances are becoming less profitable is your own fault for farming them. And it's a very good thing.

    SRs are regularly on the market because those and BRs are primary leveling items for potion. HEs... no, I haven't seen more on market in a long time.

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  11. Fighters generally get way too much handed to them on a silver plate in this game as it is. A/D are the fastest skills in the game to level at any level yet the majority of what gets added or changed in the game is a/d related. Even dailies, the only one that gives any really good experience is the fighting one.

    They don't need to ruin the instances as well for everyone else. Noone who just wants to occasionally instance can do it now without a loss thanks to farmers.

    The whining on how little the drops are worth these days from instances continues even now. Of course, it's the farmers whining. Their own fault for turning what should have been a side-pleasure into what they did. There's no pleasure in that, it's like 24/7 invasions, tiresome after a while.



    As for HE cost, 9-10gc HEs? I've never sold one for more than 8.25gc. They'll never be as readily available for purchase as other items simply because 1) there's no such thing as an EHE, some alchers mix more only things that give a rare item chance, and 2) not so many using them to mix to level alch. I'm a rare exception for that.

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