Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Bionic_Flea]

There is a price ceiling.  It is the vendor price in merits. 

 

Purples and WinterOs don't go much higher than 20-25 million influence because at that price you could buy it with merits. 

 

You can buy a merit for a million inf and you can buy 3 converters for 1 merit.  Converters sell for about 75,000.  So if you used 100 merits to buy 300 converters you'd get 22.5 Million (75k x 300=22.5M).  Even if the relative price of converters changes (and they have), nothing will sell for more for 100 million, the price you could buy 100 merits.

[MunkiLord]

I think Winter IO prices are likely influenced more by sale during the winter event. People loaded up on packs when they were cheap and a lot of the surplus supply has been used or sold or kept in storage. If the same sale happens again this year I expect prices to go down again for a few months. 

[MTeague]

3 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I think Winter IO prices are likely influenced more by sale during the winter event. People loaded up on packs when they were cheap and a lot of the surplus supply has been used or sold or kept in storage. If the same sale happens again this year I expect prices to go down again for a few months. 

Honestly, because of this, I don't expect that sale, or any like it,  to ever happen, ever again.

 

Do I have any kind of inside information here?  No, none at all.  This is hunch and guess.  

But from various postings I've read, the tone seemed to be that it was regarded as a mistake to slash the price like that.

And it's noteworthy that they did no such sale even on a temporary basis during Mender Derek's activation of the Winter Event.

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, QuiJon said:

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices. And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price. All purples are mostly around 20million now where there used to be some flex between the different types, all winters are around 20 million even though the drop rate on them is more like 1.5 per pack. ATOs stayed about the same got a bit more expensive if you are impatient. Any pvp IO is now atleast 10 million, most all procs and their sets have gone up dramatically in price, And over all converters have dropped. When all this went down converters sold for about 85-95k per pretty reliably and now i can log in just about whenever i want and buy them for like 65k. Which is a direct hit to those that "played the game" and used merits instead of farming in that one of the means they did make money on is becoming less of a gain for them. 

 

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items. I get that a change might have been needed but if the issue was that patrol xp boosted and screwed up the AE farm earning without requiring extra effort (50 down to 49) there were multiple ways to handle it beyond just nerfing the extra Inf.

 

For example, change the exemp rule so that you only earned the xtra influence if you were down at least 10 levels. Then you are argue you have made the game harder in that to earn the extra influ you would have to drop down far enough to lose at least your last 2 power choices and far enough to lose incarnate boosts and powers. You also could have just got rid of patrol xp for everyone. There is already double xp at will in the game, the idea of needing a "boost" off logging off really to me was obsolete to begin with.  So if that was the problem then remove it, or hell do both of these and then put it back in the game for everyone. Let me decide if farming at level 40 or 50 produces the most infl per hour and let people that want to shut down xp while playing the game running TF and such keep earning the extra as well. 

 

But no matter what, none of the problems that this change was suposed to have fixed has been fixed, prices still rising, people still farming. 

 If we are going on buy now prices: When I bought purples before they fluctuated between 20-23m. Now I can consistently get them for 17-19m. ATO were 9-10m. Now I can get them for 7-8m. LOTG + rech were 6-8m. Now I can get them for 5-6m. I will give you that this global does seem to fluctuate depending on time of day though.  Performance shifter proc was 3-4m.  Now I can get it for 2-3m.  The global bonus PVP IOs (shield wall, gladiator armor, panacea) were all 12-15m. I can get them for 10-11m now. I was able buy converters for 70k before the nerf easily.  From what I have seen prices have dropped pretty much across the board.  I used to be able to sell sudden acceleration knockback to knockdown for 3-5m consistently. Now I convert past them because I can get them for 1.5 - 2m. The only thing I haven’t seen change much is miracle + recovery, which has stayed pretty much the same. This is also from a selling perspective as well. 
 

That said, our own experiences are anecdotal. The devs have more information than we do I’m sure and they said that the nerf had the intended affect. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Parabola]

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices.

This has never been stated by the devs although it has been repeated ad infinitum by those unhappy with the change. The intent of the change was never to address wealth inequality, it was to address the problem that earning extra inf was unbalancing the ratio of inf to drops that was being added to the market. There are multiple posts in this massive thread where the economics of this have been explained but the very short version is that wealth doesn't drive inflation, pumping extra inf into the system does.

 

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price.

This is completely contrary to what I've seen. I know for a fact things like lotg have gone down in price because I have been trading in them before and after the change. For a while I was left in the position of having stock that was suddenly grossly overpriced.

 

But, as the above poster says, this is just my anecdote. The devs will have access to much more reliable data than any of us and they seem happy the change has worked as intended. 

[QuiJon]

1 minute ago, parabola said:

This is completely contrary to what I've seen. I know for a fact things like lotg have gone down in price because I have been trading in them before and after the change. For a while I was left in the position of having stock that was suddenly grossly overpriced.

 

But, as the above poster says, this is just my anecdote. The devs will have access to much more reliable data than any of us and they seem happy the change has worked as intended. 

The people who are claiming that prices have fallen are not looking at the bigger picture. Yes a LOTG Proc might have dropped 1-2 million since the change, however the price of the other 5 peices of the set have gone up 1-2 million a peice as well as the cost of just about every defense set that can be converted into LOTG procs. Just the same thing with PVP IOs. Yes the cost of pancea, shield wall, and some other high cost pieces might have dropped a bit, but over all the cost of lesser wanted PVP IOs have went way up as people become accustom to using converters more and more to get what they want. And this is really true across the board. Yes you can argue that some purples have come down but i found prior to the change i could get say a Absolute Amazement peice for like 15-16m where a Ragnorok might have cost me 22-24 million, now they are all 19-20m. 

 

So what i am getting at is if this change was intended to lower prices it really has not. Over all i think prices are higher then before, it is just SOME things that used to be more expensive are not quite as bad as they were. Which is likely not as a result of the farming infl change to begin with, but the result of people learning over a year or so now how to use converters to save themselves cash by buying crap and converting it to better stuff. As a result the gold stuff might have come down a bit, but if you are say an SR brute and need to load up 4-5 defense sets you are likely paying more over all because the 5 pieces of every set no one used to want have also now gone up in price. So you saved 2 million to people that wanted only the proc but cost 5 million more to people that wanted the actual set completely. 

 

And yes i get this is my personal experience. But being that i used to farm to get most of the expensive stuff i wanted or bought and stored like 150 winter IOs during the sale i would normally use converters on my drops to get the real expensive stuff to make a toon and then would just go AH shopping for the other stuff i needed. I find i am spending more on that other stuff now, and over all more money to complete the toon then before even when i am still not having to shell out the money for the purples or Winters. But your experience could vary but if the over all result of the changes are that prices over all have risen, then the change actually hurt the common player player base by taking it away, and then hurt it even further by taking away their option to raise extra cash as well. 

[Parabola]

My trading in lotg was actually in the three most commonly used pieces, not just the proc. I've seen prices drop for all of them. But as someone once said the plural of anecdote is not data, we just have to leave this one to the devs. I believe both in their good intentions and the economic principles they are following, but I appreciate not everyone is seeing it that way.

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 minutes ago, QuiJon said:

The people who are claiming that prices have fallen are not looking at the bigger picture. Yes a LOTG Proc might have dropped 1-2 million since the change, however the price of the other 5 peices of the set have gone up 1-2 million a peice as well as the cost of just about every defense set that can be converted into LOTG procs. Just the same thing with PVP IOs. Yes the cost of pancea, shield wall, and some other high cost pieces might have dropped a bit, but over all the cost of lesser wanted PVP IOs have went way up as people become accustom to using converters more and more to get what they want. And this is really true across the board.

You make a good point insofar as it does appear that people are more comfortable using converters, but I reject your premise that prices overall are higher.  I spend a lot of time in the AH in just about every single aspect of it, and I can comfortably say that prices are lower across the board.  

[Dazl]

11 minutes ago, parabola said:

There are multiple posts in this massive thread where the economics of this have been explained but the very short version is that wealth doesn't drive inflation, pumping extra inf into the system does.

This is definitely the majority of opinion of the computer game economic professors in this thread, but this isn't the real world economics. There is no central bank controlling the creation or circulation of game currency. I could generate 100 billion, but if I didn't spend it there would be no effect on the game economy. Since there is no central control of the currency no one would even know I had it except the devs. So it's mere creation can't effect inflation. Now if I used that 100 billion and bought everything at 100 million, I bet I would have an effect on inflation.

[Twisted Toon]

2 hours ago, QuiJon said:

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices. And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price. All purples are mostly around 20million now where there used to be some flex between the different types, all winters are around 20 million even though the drop rate on them is more like 1.5 per pack. ATOs stayed about the same got a bit more expensive if you are impatient. Any pvp IO is now atleast 10 million, most all procs and their sets have gone up dramatically in price, And over all converters have dropped. When all this went down converters sold for about 85-95k per pretty reliably and now i can log in just about whenever i want and buy them for like 65k. Which is a direct hit to those that "played the game" and used merits instead of farming in that one of the means they did make money on is becoming less of a gain for them. 

 

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items. I get that a change might have been needed but if the issue was that patrol xp boosted and screwed up the AE farm earning without requiring extra effort (50 down to 49) there were multiple ways to handle it beyond just nerfing the extra Inf.

 

For example, change the exemp rule so that you only earned the xtra influence if you were down at least 10 levels. Then you are argue you have made the game harder in that to earn the extra influ you would have to drop down far enough to lose at least your last 2 power choices and far enough to lose incarnate boosts and powers. You also could have just got rid of patrol xp for everyone. There is already double xp at will in the game, the idea of needing a "boost" off logging off really to me was obsolete to begin with.  So if that was the problem then remove it, or hell do both of these and then put it back in the game for everyone. Let me decide if farming at level 40 or 50 produces the most infl per hour and let people that want to shut down xp while playing the game running TF and such keep earning the extra as well. 

 

But no matter what, none of the problems that this change was suposed to have fixed has been fixed, prices still rising, people still farming. 

I have noticed a significant drop in the inf I get from auctioning recipes and salvage.

So much so that I've started vendoring my uncommon salvage.

 

I recall a time before the change that I made about 10M auctioning off my uncommon and rare salvage and all the set recipes I picked up during that days play time. (only a couple of hours)

Now, I'm lucky to get 2M

 

However, I don't really play the Auction game.

 

So, yes, some few enhancement might have gone up in price.

But, most everything else has dropped a lot.

 

And I'm not really complaining about it either.

I have one character that can still afford to get her level 25 basic IOs when she levels.

And she still has a pretty sum in her back pocket for when he reaches level 50 and starts getting sets.

[Parabola]

6 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

This is definitely the majority of opinion of the computer game economic professors in this thread, but this isn't the real world economics. There is no central bank controlling the creation or circulation of game currency. I could generate 100 billion, but if I didn't spend it there would be no effect on the game economy. Since there is no central control of the currency no one would even know I had it except the devs. So it's mere creation can't effect inflation. Now if I used that 100 billion and bought everything at 100 million, I bet I would have an effect on inflation.

Well, sort of. In the same way if you farmed until your eyes bled, set fire to the inf and sold all your drops for 1inf you would deflate the market regardless of whether you were earning inf at twice the rate or not. But this sort of activity isn't how anyone actually interacts with the market.

 

The market relies on an influx of goods that needs to be balanced against the overall buying power of the consumers. If the ratio of that buying power to the available goods rises then inflation is the inevitable result. The economic principles simply are what they are computer game or not. You can choose to not believe this but that doesn't make it less true.

 

Yes there is indeed no central bank. We are all engaged in printing our own money as we go about our in game activities. No-one is paying us from a central reserve, the inf literally appears out of thin air. Luckily we are also creating goods out of thin air too and the hope is that between those and the market fees things are overall kept roughly in check. That balance is all this change is trying to maintain.

[Lines]

1 hour ago, Crimsonpyre said:

This is definitely the majority of opinion of the computer game economic professors in this thread, but this isn't the real world economics. There is no central bank controlling the creation or circulation of game currency. I could generate 100 billion, but if I didn't spend it there would be no effect on the game economy. 

I'd say banks or governance isn't a requisite for economics. Economics is just the behaviours of trade - it's more observational rather than trying to manage anything. It's very different from context to context, but a lot of the same trends apply whether we were trading in dollars, influence or oxen.

[Saikochoro]

28 minutes ago, Lines said:

I'd say banks or governance isn't a requisite for economics. Economics is just the behaviours of trade - it's more observational rather than trying to manage anything. It's very different from context to context, but a lot of the same trends apply whether we were trading in dollars, influence or oxen.

You are correct. Central banks can manipulate the economy to certain degrees by using various methods. However, you are correct in that economic rules apply even when there isn’t a central bank to manipulate behaviors. 
 

I like to think of it this way:

 

Say a barter system was in place and there was no central bank. Let’s say potatoes are a commonly traded commodity.  Let’s also say there are 10 farmers who grow potatoes that are traded in a given community.  There will be some sort of equilibrium that is reached. The potatoes value will reflect the equilibrium of supply and demand and also the level of trust that the community in general has in the potato being universally desired. This will happen even without a government proclaiming potatoes legal tender And trades running through a banking system. 
 

Now let’s say 10 new farmers come and start growing potatoes. All of a sudden there is double the amount of potatoes available in the bartering community. Do you think the value of a single potato will increase, decrease, or stay the same if there are no other changes? 
 

It will decrease because there are more available.  It is human nature to devalue something when it becomes less scarce. People will start demanding 5 potatoes for  a 2x4 beam instead of 3 purely by knowing there are more potatoes in the system. It doesn’t even matter if the person holding the potatoes has more or less than they did before the new farmers showed up. It is a function of the overall supply of potatoes in the bartering community. All of this is done without a central bank. It is just human behavior that is reflected in economic principles. 

[Grouchybeast]

5 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

People will start demanding 5 potatoes for  a 2x4 beam instead of 3 purely by knowing there are more potatoes in the system.

It isn't that the people with goods will ask more, it's that people with more currency will pay more.  If the same number of goods are for sale, then the people with more currency will pay more so that they can 'win' the available goods.  This then pushes up the price for everyone.  That's it.  That's how excess currency drives inflation.

[EmmySky]

Now I want french fries.

 

😝

[Coyotedancer]

All of the Common salvage bits that Harry finds on his farm runs are now Potatoes.

 

I don't care what the little pictures look like or what the game calls them. In my mind they are ALL gonna be Potatoes.

[SwitchFade]

6 hours ago, QuiJon said:

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices. And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price. All purples are mostly around 20million now where there used to be some flex between the different types, all winters are around 20 million even though the drop rate on them is more like 1.5 per pack. ATOs stayed about the same got a bit more expensive if you are impatient. Any pvp IO is now atleast 10 million, most all procs and their sets have gone up dramatically in price, And over all converters have dropped. When all this went down converters sold for about 85-95k per pretty reliably and now i can log in just about whenever i want and buy them for like 65k. Which is a direct hit to those that "played the game" and used merits instead of farming in that one of the means they did make money on is becoming less of a gain for them. 

 

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items. I get that a change might have been needed but if the issue was that patrol xp boosted and screwed up the AE farm earning without requiring extra effort (50 down to 49) there were multiple ways to handle it beyond just nerfing the extra Inf.

 

For example, change the exemp rule so that you only earned the xtra influence if you were down at least 10 levels. Then you are argue you have made the game harder in that to earn the extra influ you would have to drop down far enough to lose at least your last 2 power choices and far enough to lose incarnate boosts and powers. You also could have just got rid of patrol xp for everyone. There is already double xp at will in the game, the idea of needing a "boost" off logging off really to me was obsolete to begin with.  So if that was the problem then remove it, or hell do both of these and then put it back in the game for everyone. Let me decide if farming at level 40 or 50 produces the most infl per hour and let people that want to shut down xp while playing the game running TF and such keep earning the extra as well. 

 

But no matter what, none of the problems that this change was suposed to have fixed has been fixed, prices still rising, people still farming. 

Patently false. Prices are down universally.

 

[Oubliette_Red]

On 7/20/2020 at 1:31 PM, Jimmy said:

You're correct. Reducing the total amount of influence entering the economy (without reducing drops) means there's less money available to pay for the same amount of assets. This results in prices going down (as we have now seen).

 

Generally the more expensive items are now more accessible to those with less money - meaning normal players playing normal content have less of a need to engage in farming (which is a good thing, because not everyone finds farming fun). We don't want to kill farming due to some inherent hatred for it*, we just don't want it (or any other type of gameplay) to be necessary - and of course that means that the relative value of farming compared to other activities will need to shift until there's a more equitable balance.

 

*This does not extend to AFK farming. Expect that to be mercilessly destroyed when we have the time. If this upsets you, please direct your complaints to someone who cares.

I'm just talking for myself here, but I don't perceive the market (or game economy / progression) to be perfect (or even close to it) right now. It's certainly better than it was, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Just the usual problem of our time and resources being very limited.

 

7 hours ago, QuiJon said:

But one reason that was given was that the creep in the cost of items on the AH was being caused by players that had all that farming money to spend and didnt care about prices. And yet since the change went through what has happened? Most everything i would seek to buy on the AH has gone up in price. All purples are mostly around 20million now where there used to be some flex between the different types, all winters are around 20 million even though the drop rate on them is more like 1.5 per pack. ATOs stayed about the same got a bit more expensive if you are impatient. Any pvp IO is now atleast 10 million, most all procs and their sets have gone up dramatically in price, And over all converters have dropped. When all this went down converters sold for about 85-95k per pretty reliably and now i can log in just about whenever i want and buy them for like 65k. Which is a direct hit to those that "played the game" and used merits instead of farming in that one of the means they did make money on is becoming less of a gain for them. 

 

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items. I get that a change might have been needed but if the issue was that patrol xp boosted and screwed up the AE farm earning without requiring extra effort (50 down to 49) there were multiple ways to handle it beyond just nerfing the extra Inf.

 

For example, change the exemp rule so that you only earned the xtra influence if you were down at least 10 levels. Then you are argue you have made the game harder in that to earn the extra influ you would have to drop down far enough to lose at least your last 2 power choices and far enough to lose incarnate boosts and powers. You also could have just got rid of patrol xp for everyone. There is already double xp at will in the game, the idea of needing a "boost" off logging off really to me was obsolete to begin with.  So if that was the problem then remove it, or hell do both of these and then put it back in the game for everyone. Let me decide if farming at level 40 or 50 produces the most infl per hour and let people that want to shut down xp while playing the game running TF and such keep earning the extra as well. 

 

But no matter what, none of the problems that this change was suposed to have fixed has been fixed, prices still rising, people still farming. 

I'll take the Dev's word, who would have access to the relevant information than the anecdotal info from a player who has a very narrow view of the market and influence excessive currency has on the market.

 

As someone who dabbles in marketeering, I've personally seen prices drop across the board for almost everything I look at, sell, or buy on the market.

 

[Ironblade]

7 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Absolutely nothing has gone down and most has continued to go up. This idea that you can treat a fake game with fake money with real economic principles is just not true. If they want to control price creep they need to set a ceiling on the prices for items.

It has not been my personal experience that prices have gone up.  To be fair, I NORMALLY place bids and expect to wait a day or two for them to fill.  Maybe the price for impatient people has gone up.  I can't say.

 

Basic economic principles apply in games just as they do in real life.  The conditions and parameters are different, but the principles still apply.

 

Price caps are never sound policy.  Price caps simply lead to shortages.

[Bionic_Flea]

I think it is fair to say that a lot of what used to be vendor trash IOs have gone up in price while almost all the big ticket items have gone down in price, or at least stayed flat.

 

I'd have to see some data on it but I suppose that it's possible that there are so many IOs that have gone up in price vs those that have gone down that it is a net increase in prices.

 

However, that also means that people get more money for selling junk and, in my opinion, should make the mythical casual player able to earn enough from sales of anything to make a good build without being a farmer or a marketeer.

[Lines]

Procs seem higher than they were and there are a few sets that have gone up, like Basilisk's Gaze. (I guess the 4-set recharge bonus is desiriable, but I don't see the current price point sticking). But mostly things have dropped.

 

It's no surprise to me that the purples are evening out against each other. I think that's an effect of converters. Perhaps if there were significantly more purple sets (and I'm not saying there should be) the prices would vary more. I imagine they'll stick at 20mil until the playerbase really dies out.

[Ukase]

17 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

 If we are going on buy now prices: When I bought purples before they fluctuated between 20-23m. Now I can consistently get them for 17-19m. ATO were 9-10m. Now I can get them for 7-8m. LOTG + rech were 6-8m. Now I can get them for 5-6m. I will give you that this global does seem to fluctuate depending on time of day though.  Performance shifter proc was 3-4m.  Now I can get it for 2-3m.  The global bonus PVP IOs (shield wall, gladiator armor, panacea) were all 12-15m. I can get them for 10-11m now. I was able buy converters for 70k before the nerf easily.  From what I have seen prices have dropped pretty much across the board.  I used to be able to sell sudden acceleration knockback to knockdown for 3-5m consistently. Now I convert past them because I can get them for 1.5 - 2m. The only thing I haven’t seen change much is miracle + recovery, which has stayed pretty much the same. This is also from a selling perspective as well. 
 

That said, our own experiences are anecdotal. The devs have more information than we do I’m sure and they said that the nerf had the intended affect. 

I agree completely with this. I have found the same price ranges myself. 

One thing that I found interesting (yes, I digress), the number of LotG 7.5% on the AH has dropped from 900-1100 to about 300-600. There is one or more players gobbling these up at the 5m price point and relisting them for a higher price. It can't be that much higher, or they're being very patient with all the competition...I saw them over the course of the past two days fluctuate from 4.8m to 8m. 

Obviously, it's a bit of speculation in my part that players are trying to drive the price point up with scarcity, but it will only ever work in the very short run, as too many people have access to converters. 

[Ukase]

13 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

You are correct. Central banks can manipulate the economy to certain degrees by using various methods. However, you are correct in that economic rules apply even when there isn’t a central bank to manipulate behaviors. 
 

I like to think of it this way:

 

Say a barter system was in place and there was no central bank. Let’s say potatoes are a commonly traded commodity.  Let’s also say there are 10 farmers who grow potatoes that are traded in a given community.  There will be some sort of equilibrium that is reached. The potatoes value will reflect the equilibrium of supply and demand and also the level of trust that the community in general has in the potato being universally desired. This will happen even without a government proclaiming potatoes legal tender And trades running through a banking system. 
 

Now let’s say 10 new farmers come and start growing potatoes. All of a sudden there is double the amount of potatoes available in the bartering community. Do you think the value of a single potato will increase, decrease, or stay the same if there are no other changes? 
 

It will decrease because there are more available.  It is human nature to devalue something when it becomes less scarce. People will start demanding 5 potatoes for  a 2x4 beam instead of 3 purely by knowing there are more potatoes in the system. It doesn’t even matter if the person holding the potatoes has more or less than they did before the new farmers showed up. It is a function of the overall supply of potatoes in the bartering community. All of this is done without a central bank. It is just human behavior that is reflected in economic principles. 

I feel the need to add to this. It's not so much that there are more potatoes making them cheaper - it's that the new potato vendors are driving the price of potatoes downward because if they don't have some other competitive advantage, they won't sell any potatoes, as the people would have no reason to stop buying the potatoes from the vendors they already bought from. They call it competition, and it's good for a healthy economy. At least - that's what "they" say. 

[skoryy]

16 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Yes a LOTG Proc might have dropped 1-2 million since the change, however the price of the other 5 peices of the set have gone up 1-2 million a peice as well as the cost of just about every defense set that can be converted into LOTG procs.

Reactive Defenses and Red Fortune are currently in the 2 mil or less range crafted, which sounds about right given that they're also a good source of +rech%.  And 2 mil isn't that much to write home about, honestly.

 

Meanwhile, I'm scoring full sets of purple recipes for less than 75 million.   I can pick up orange salvage for 450k on the regular, and yellows for 1k.  I loaded up an alt with 200 mil so he could finish off his two remaining purple sets, and he's going to have a good 45 mil or so leftover when he's done.  I can use that with my other savings elsewhere and hold that CC I've been meaning to do.  Heck, I could give out rewards in purple sets.

 

So, yeah, the market actually is deflating, regardless of how you're spinning it.

[skoryy]

11 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think it is fair to say that a lot of what used to be vendor trash IOs have gone up in price while almost all the big ticket items have gone down in price, or at least stayed flat.

 

I'd have to see some data on it but I suppose that it's possible that there are so many IOs that have gone up in price vs those that have gone down that it is a net increase in prices.

 

However, that also means that people get more money for selling junk and, in my opinion, should make the mythical casual player able to earn enough from sales of anything to make a good build without being a farmer or a marketeer.

This is also true.  Maybe less deflating than stabilizing as more players pick up on basic converting and marketing.