Weekly Discussion 81: The Player-Market

[Troo]

5 hours ago, arthurh35353 said:

an additional way to earn 1 of the packs per month via an account wide reward would give you an entrance for non-farmers.

I like this idea.

[Grindingsucks]

5 hours ago, Troo said:

Hold on.. in Vietnam it is Dong. Trading a handful of Dong to acquire something is just how it works.

Dong is simply a medium that can be exchanged for goods and services & is used as a measure of their values on the market. No need to over complicate it.

It depends on whether or not you want the game mechanism to do something more interesting.  If you don't, then that's a totally legitimate position to take.  But, then, why not just call the units of currency Dollars (blue), Spiderbucks (red), and Denarius (Gold)?  Better yet, simplify it and just call it resources.  No need to over complicate it.

 

One could make the same argument about any other complex mechanism in the game.  In fact, (personally- this is just my opinion) I think it would be a more balanced, less complicated game, with more interesting team combat, if we didn't add IO sets and Incarnate abilities.

 

Why overcomplicate it?

 

Of course, as with all things, this stuff is a matter of taste and subjective opinion.  I was simply sharing my own.

[Snarky]

generally i like the auction system in City.  top notch.  compare to say...WoW....bottom toilet 

 

Very easy to understand.  1st sold, lowest asking price.  first buy highest paying price.  How can any auction designer screw that up...nvm...peeps...

 

My AH UI dtill does not load last 5 bids for crap. Fix that and makes it last 10 and you would improve an already well functioning system.

 

Props for merging salvage and seeding stuff as well.  You guys are great.

 

 

[Grouchybeast]

14 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

If you just want to make some money to fund an alt, then it is just a matter of taking 10-15 minutes to craft/convert even just 10-15 enhancements.  Doesn’t even have to be every play session. It can really be as simple as converting until you get something that sells for ~2m, which usually takes no more than 6-8 converters.

I don't even do this.  I just look at recipes as they drop, compare them to the crafted IO, and if it's profitable I craft them and sell them.  If there's high demand for the IO, and I can buy the recipe cheaply enough to be profitable, I might put in some bids for the recipes and salvage and craft more for as long as the niche exists.  I'm very old-school, I'm afraid. 

[thunderforce]

Hopefully uncontroversial:

• Just have the Merit Vendor warn you, with one of those "never show this again" tickyboxes, that stuff might be cheaper on the AH and it might be more efficient to turn your merits into converters/boosters and sell those. Yes, we can brainstorm more complex changes, but right now "new player earns merits" -> "new player spends 100(s) on ATO(s)" -> "someone enlightens new player who is vexed" is an open wound; slap a bandage over it.
• Better yet, cut out a lot of the merit derivative stuff by making merits directly tradeable on the AH.
• As a very definite stretch goal, match merit buy/sell offers on the AH up with special salvage buy/sell offers when possible.

Probably still controversial:

 

There's definitely MMOs out there with worse AH implementations, but the way the City hides almost all the information is terrible (and no, it is not how any real-world trading process whatsoever works) - and perhaps after a year of Homecoming we know that the way people make money isn't now by being more willing to put up with that, as it was on live, but by (eg) using converters to provide a service to other players.

 

Show us the buy offers, and let us "buy now". Show us the sell offers, and let us "sell now". Show us more than an eyeblink of price history.

 

This would not ruin "market PVP". In EVE, players can see the last year of transactions for any commodity, both as a simple list and in a wide variety of chart formats. They can see every buy offer [1]; see every sell offer. EVE is not short of cutthroat market activity!

 

[1] In the "region" they are in, yes, but the City's market doesn't have any idea of where the item physically is.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Part III:  The Philosophy of Homecoming's PDM

 

What makes the marketplace/economy in Homecoming different from that of Live or even, *gasp*, that of the other CoH servers out there?  Let's look at a few things (my memory of Live is hazy, so forgive me, but I'm making the assumption that Rebirth is a decent proxy):

 

a.  Fungibility/bucketing.  On HC, a level 20 recipe/enhancement is the same as a level 50 recipe/enhancement for the same item, in the eyes of the AH.  Well, not in all cases, but let's keep it simple.  Every IO that is available at a specific level is also available as an attuned.  Every piece of invention salvage is considered fungible with every other piece of the same rarity.  These changes are *HUGE* and frankly, quite brilliant.  I'm not sure what the intent was, but the outcome is extremely demand-friendly.   Sellers can no longer manipulate the market to the extent it was done on live.

b.  Seeded items.  Invention salvage is seeded at prices that are intended to be above the market clearing level, but are not onerous.  Hero/Vigilante/Winter packs are available, also at prices that are less than the current value of the component pieces.  Also extremely demand-friendly.

c.  Converters.  I left Live before these came on the scene, but I'm assuming again that Rebirth's policy is similar to that of Live.  So Homecoming did not invent converters, but they made them extraordinarily abundant.  In HC, 10 merits gets you 30 converters.  In Live/Rebirth, 10 merits gets you 1 converter, and you need to pay a fee for the conversion.  Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* converters.  If I could engage in statistical arbitrage in real life as simply and cheaply as I can on HC, I would be an extremely wealthy person.  But I do think they are ridiculously abundant, and that will be a topic for another time.

d.  AH slots.  I'm not sure what the limit was on Live, but I'm sure it was less than the 55 I get on a level 2 fresh out of training, and a LOT less than the up to 200 I have on most of my more developed character.

e.  Various QoL issues that continue to make things easier.  PvP recipe drops in regular play, conversion of inf to merits, etc.

 

These all make life extremely easy for the demand side.  As was said earlier in this thread, if you don't want to use the AH at all, you don't have to.  I have made "billion inf" builds based purely on drops that were converted.  You *can* do this, but it is orders of magnitudes times easier to use the AH.

 

Why did HC make these choices?  It wasn't for you or me.  This was a secret server with a relatively fixed population, and they wanted stuff and they wanted it easy and they wanted it now.  When they went public, they kept that philosophy, which I summarize and simplify as "Everything you want, quickly, easily and cheaply".  That's from the demand side, of course.

[Dracomicon]

I will add my voice to those in this thread that the player-market in this game is one of the best markets of any game out right now. I would propose the following changes:

 

-> 1 to 2 Month Average Displayed (Quick Fix)

The problem with not showing the last 5 bids and/or showing incorrect history might be a really big effort to correct. I think that a quick band-aid would be if you calculated from a database script the averages of the prices from the last month or so and placed that information in a hard-coded table of information not connected to the database. All you would need to do is display the hard table information maybe in a separate window. The script would be run right after server maintenance to update the data table once a month or so. This would give players that do not spend a lot of time in the market an idea of what the correct-ish prices should be, and by avoiding the database should not have the history display problems.

 

-> Market Tutorial

As suggested in this thread already, I think this should be a top priority. I have played for a bit of time, and after reading this thread, yesterday was the first time I bought converters with merits and then sold those converters on the market. I had a low-level character that for thematic reasons refused any help/loan from my other characters. I went from having 200,000 to getting some market seed money of 1,500,000 from selling converters. I then used that for salvage to craft the recipe drops I had been holding onto and 36 hours later I am sitting at over 10,000,000. This completely changes how I will approach my character building at the early levels without a level 50 sponsor footing the bills. 

 

[gameboy1234]

Just a quick UI note while I'm thinking about:

 

1. I wish I could drag and drop items stored in the AH  so I can reorder my storage.  I wish new items I add to the AH went to the TOP of the list, not the bottom.

 

2. I wish also that I could drag and drop my bids in the AH so to reorder them also.

 

Thanks!

 

[cloak3.141]

Full disclosure, I don't like video game markets.  I think they are largely out of place, especially in a super-hero themed game. 

 

If the market was removed entirely, and all enhancements were just handed out by contacts, I would find it a net gain on the experience.  I understand some people enjoy playing the market, but not every online game needs or benefits from a market.  Of all the video game markets I have interacted, the Homecoming version of the market, is one of the least annoying.

 

Actually balancing a market is a tremendous amount of work.  Unless one of the developers really enjoy that sort of thing, I don't see much gain in working hard to shore up a fundamentally flawed subsystem of a game about punching bad guys in the face. 

 

I advocate for doing nothing at all, it is the easiest way forward.  But the developers are doing this in their free time, so if one of them enjoys trying to make a working economic system, have fun!

[Marine X]

I think one of the best things Homecoming has that sets it apart are the SCoRE Market enhancements. For our size community it is huge that this part of the game works at all.

This suggestion is fairly simple:

If you go now to a Vendor or Base AutoDoc you get X price for DO/SO enhancement drops, About what you pay for them at a contact, but the market value of the drops on the Market are strictly supply/demand based. In other words, worthless, thank goodness we have room for a ton of enhancements per character or we'd be leaking "profits" everywhere before we have time to make a special trip to sell them. I realize that there are players who like USING DO/SO Enhancements, and enjoy that the prices are low, but they are also not always available. This means they have to often pay the vendors full price for them. Would there be a way to make it so the auction house would buy & sell SOs at say Half the vendor/auto doc price? Call it the Discount House, lol. This would make it worthwhile to bother selling them at the Auction House, and bolster the supply and variety of them available for Players wanting to buy.

 

 

[Saikochoro]

6 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

I don't even do this.  I just look at recipes as they drop, compare them to the crafted IO, and if it's profitable I craft them and sell them.  If there's high demand for the IO, and I can buy the recipe cheaply enough to be profitable, I might put in some bids for the recipes and salvage and craft more for as long as the niche exists.  I'm very old-school, I'm afraid. 

Absolutely nothing wrong with this method either. There are so many ways to use the market and they are all valid. 

[QuiJon]

Personally i hate the market and always have. I say find a fair fixed price for recipes and Enhancements like a hancer of winter or purple is worth 15m (cap winter lord packs to 15m to equal this) and appropriately lower their cost with merits. Cap pvp and ATO to 10m, then cap yellow to 1-4 million and orange from 4-6m depending on their schedule. So you get things you dont use you can sell them to make some money but not 2b a week money. And the prices are low enough that everyone can deck out any toon they want to with the same amount of equal effort without having to play markets stealing influence from other players.

 

Then you get rid of convertors as a commodity in the game. Sure you can use them personally, but no more sales they are account bound maybe. And the same thing with converted hancers. Yes you can buy convertors and use them to convert your own owned enhancements to whatever you want like now. However the first time you run the convertor on the hancer it becomes account bound. It can now not be sold or used by toons other then your own on that account. It makes convertors capable of doing what the intention was, to roll the dice on making something better or more useful for yourself, but removes the ability to use them to profit off turning crap into rare drops that again just net the abuser tons or rewards for little input. 

 

So yeah i think find a fair profit margin for the market and cap things at it. I know this means that things will always sell for the max but frankly if the cost is fair what does that matter unless you were trying to abuse the auction system to begin with. And stop making convertors more important then influence. Make it so they can be used for your personal use but not for profit. This game existed with out a market, it was never intended to have one. We all lived just fine going to the store and buying what we needed and selling what we didnt. There is no reason why a market that allows a few to make piles of influence doing nothing but converting and reselling should be allowed. The only reason why anyone would need to make 2b a week is because we allow things to be priced so highly that it can cost a billion to fully deck out a character. 

 

We didnt need that much when there were only SOs at set prices, and we could all make whatever character and max it out eventually we wanted. Dont see why we cant do that again if we get rid of the market money hoarders and keep wealth in the game a direct reflection of the time and effort that is put into playing a character instead of a couple billion fora couple hours of marketing. 

[Saikochoro]

23 hours ago, QuiJon said:

Personally i hate the market and always have. I say find a fair fixed price for recipes and Enhancements like a hancer of winter or purple is worth 15m (cap winter lord packs to 15m to equal this) and appropriately lower their cost with merits. Cap pvp and ATO to 10m, then cap yellow to 1-4 million and orange from 4-6m depending on their schedule. So you get things you dont use you can sell them to make some money but not 2b a week money. And the prices are low enough that everyone can deck out any toon they want to with the same amount of equal effort without having to play markets stealing influence from other players.

 

Then you get rid of convertors as a commodity in the game. Sure you can use them personally, but no more sales they are account bound maybe. And the same thing with converted hancers. Yes you can buy convertors and use them to convert your own owned enhancements to whatever you want like now. However the first time you run the convertor on the hancer it becomes account bound. It can now not be sold or used by toons other then your own on that account. It makes convertors capable of doing what the intention was, to roll the dice on making something better or more useful for yourself, but removes the ability to use them to profit off turning crap into rare drops that again just net the abuser tons or rewards for little input. 

 

So yeah i think find a fair profit margin for the market and cap things at it. I know this means that things will always sell for the max but frankly if the cost is fair what does that matter unless you were trying to abuse the auction system to begin with. And stop making convertors more important then influence. Make it so they can be used for your personal use but not for profit. This game existed with out a market, it was never intended to have one. We all lived just fine going to the store and buying what we needed and selling what we didnt. There is no reason why a market that allows a few to make piles of influence doing nothing but converting and reselling should be allowed. The only reason why anyone would need to make 2b a week is because we allow things to be priced so highly that it can cost a billion to fully deck out a character. 

 

We didnt need that much when there were only SOs at set prices, and we could all make whatever character and max it out eventually we wanted. Dont see why we cant do that again if we get rid of the market money hoarders and keep wealth in the game a direct reflection of the time and effort that is put into playing a character instead of a couple billion fora couple hours of marketing. 

Getting rid of enhancement conversion will only drive prices up. The caps you put for the various types are already pretty much the average anyway. Even for purples. I don’t spend more than 14-15m for my purples. Though I do put my bids in in advance. 
 

Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Taking converters out of the market would not fix anything. It would actually break the economy by drying up supply and driving up prices across the board. 

It is not unfair for people to make a lot on the market when they study it out and use it effectively. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I’m not even one of the people that makes anywhere near that much per week. Fair =/= everyone having the same amount of influence. Fair is deriving equitable benefit from similar actions.  
 

Absolutely anyone can make a lot of money off the market if they so choose. It is highly accessible in that it isn’t locked behind it optimized builds. People just need the information on how to use it. And the marketers are usually gushing that information out to anyone that will listen. 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Wobegone]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Taking converters out of the market would not fix anything. It would actually break the economy by drying up supply and driving up prices across the board. 

This isn't entirely true.  Yes, high volume commonly converted enhancements like Luck of the Gambler would skyrocket in price.  Just about everything else would drop significantly, as there would no longer be competitive bidding on yellow enhancements for conversion.  It's a mixed bag.  Those that take the time to convert can easily finance every build they want.  Those that don't need to find other means of gaining influence.  New players, aside from having to learn how to use the market with little or no help from game tutorials, find themselves looking at what used to be cheap enhancements going for millions.  I think the new SO drop changes was a step in the right direction for new players, and generic IOs are still cheap.   

 

I love the idea of a comprehensive market tutorial, but the (one time) reward for a new account should be significantly higher than what's been suggested so far.  

[Saikochoro]

23 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

This isn't entirely true.  Yes, high volume commonly converted enhancements like Luck of the Gambler would skyrocket in price.  Just about everything else would drop significantly, as there would no longer be competitive bidding on yellow enhancements for conversion.  It's a mixed bag.  Those that take the time to convert can easily finance every build they want.  Those that don't need to find other means of gaining influence.  New players, aside from having to learn how to use the market with little or no help from game tutorials, find themselves looking at what used to be cheap enhancements going for millions.  I think the new SO drop changes was a step in the right direction for new players, and generic IOs are still cheap.   

 

I love the idea of a comprehensive market tutorial, but the (one time) reward for a new account should be significantly higher than what's been suggested so far.  

Some enhancements may be cheaper, I agree, and I’m not trying to deny that. However, as a whole the market would get more expensive. Converters make all goods within a given category and level range basically substitutes thus enabling basically limitless supply. Purples for purples, ATOs for ATOs, PvP for PvP, and basically all others.

 

A level 31 yellow slow recipe can turn into the vaunted LoTG + rech. Or it could turn into the kinetic combat melee IO that you need to reach S/l softcap. Or it can be used to finish your set of thunder strike to get ranged softcap. It can get you basically whenever you need to go with enough converters even if those IOs recipes just aren’t dropping or if marketers decide to try to buy them all up in effort to manipulate the market. 

 

Without converters, it comes down to supply and demand. If for whatever reason a certain yellow recipe just hasn’t been dropping recently due to rng, but the demand for it has remained steady or even increased, then the price of the recipe will increase.  When all goods are no longer substitutes for each other through converters the market will have items that aren’t top IOs like LOTG that will also go up in price depending on supply and demand. 
 

Even worse, the real marketers would actually be able to corner sections of the market and manipulate the market to a much greater degree. Converters temper marketers ability to carve out markets and manipulate price. Converters are the great equalizer of the market in that they prevent monopolies and price setting. 
 

Converters enable people to create supply when there would otherwise be none. It tempers the entire market as whole. So, yes, some recipes may become cheaper, but that is completely up to supply and demand. The market as a whole (not just LOTG) though would suffer due to things no longer being able to substitute for each other. 
 

I do still think there absolutely needs to be a tutorial on market/converters/merits though. That is a must have. 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Kazuuk]

Honestly, with seeding, you guys have done a better job at managing the player market and controlling inflation than the live team ever did.  Outside of quality life stuff like a turorial for new players, I wouldn't mess with it too much (IE if ain't broke, done fix it).

[Wobegone]

37 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Some enhancements may be cheaper, I agree, and I’m not trying to deny that. However, as a whole the market would get more expensive. Converters make all goods within a given category and level range basically substitutes thus enabling basically limitless supply. Purples for purples, ATOs for ATOs, PvP for PvP, and basically all others.

For clarity, I'm not suggesting getting rid of converters entirely.  There's no question converters have lowered and stabilized the cost of the most expensive IOs.  There's also no question that most of the 'starter' set IOs have increased in price because of converters.  Also, after re-reading my post, I used a bit of hyperbole.  Yellow enhancements generally go for a few hundred thousand.   Yellow defense and resistance IOs are consistently over a million.  

Edited December 15, 2020 by Ignatz the Insane

[Grouchybeast]

49 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

This isn't entirely true.  Yes, high volume commonly converted enhancements like Luck of the Gambler would skyrocket in price.  Just about everything else would drop significantly, as there would no longer be competitive bidding on yellow enhancements for conversion.  It's a mixed bag. 

The side of the equation that never gets mentioned here is that players sell things as well as buy them.  And over the playing lifetime of a character they will have far more recipes drop than they will need to slot IOs.  The combination of level bucketing and converters have raised the value of cheap-to-craft yellows and also made the drops of lower level characters more valuable generally (rares are far more likely to be profitable to craft for a low level character than a high level one).  Characters can be genuinely self-funding through their own drops far more easily on HC than on live, even without considering the previous outliers like PVP uniques.

[tidge]

17 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

The side of the equation that never gets mentioned here is that players sell things as well as buy them.  And over the playing lifetime of a character they will have far more recipes drop than they will need to slot IOs.  The combination of level bucketing and converters have raised the value of cheap-to-craft yellows and also made the drops of lower level characters more valuable generally (rares are far more likely to be profitable to craft for a low level character than a high level one).  Characters can be genuinely self-funding through their own drops far more easily on HC than on live, even without considering the previous outliers like PVP uniques.

The above quote touches on the foundation of a couple of my beliefs about the game (and how well the market works).

 

Because of the plentiful amount of recipe drops, and the existence of converters & catalysts... no player "needs" to go to the market if they don't want to. It's more expensive to get things like ATO, Very Rare or PVP pieces without using the market, but from my PoV the market is saving us orders of magnitude of both time and "currency" compared with not using it.

 

A side effect of the above, is that (aside from simply accumulating them in bulk for a possible crafting badge run) there is no reason to hoard recipes in storage container. If you absolutely must hoard them outside of email, that's a perfectly fine use of the auction house... where you could just buy them when you want them, anyway.

[Wobegone]

36 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

The side of the equation that never gets mentioned here is that players sell things as well as buy them.  And over the playing lifetime of a character they will have far more recipes drop than they will need to slot IOs.  The combination of level bucketing and converters have raised the value of cheap-to-craft yellows and also made the drops of lower level characters more valuable generally (rares are far more likely to be profitable to craft for a low level character than a high level one).  Characters can be genuinely self-funding through their own drops far more easily on HC than on live, even without considering the previous outliers like PVP uniques.

This is true.  I only have anecdotal evidence to draw on, but one of my friends wanted nothing to do with the market...so he vendored recipes.  When it became clear his tanker was "cute but squishy" according to a teammate he quit and hasn't been back.  What if we get rid of recipes altogether and instead received enhancement drops?  Would that incentivize folks like my friend by simplifying the entire IO process?

[Grouchybeast]

8 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

This is true.  I only have anecdotal evidence to draw on, but one of my friends wanted nothing to do with the market...so he vendored recipes.  When it became clear his tanker was "cute but squishy" according to a teammate he quit and hasn't been back.  What if we get rid of recipes altogether and instead received enhancement drops?  Would that incentivize folks like my friend by simplifying the entire IO process?

You can always make a game more accessible by removing complexity, at the expense of making the game less for fun the people who enjoyed the complexity.  I like crafting, so it would make the game worse for me personally,

 

On the other hand, buckting recipes and salvage, and bucketing attuned IOs with unattuned has already vastly simplified the whole system.  I'm not sure if removing recipes would be that much of a change, now.  It could be worth considering, although probably out of the scope of this thread.

[EmperorSteele]

Display bugs aside, the only issue I have is that everything is either a) expensive or b) (essentially) vendor trash. It's hard to make a decent profit on anything that isn't a purple or a special proc/unique, so you kinda have to play converter roulette if you want to make some extra scratch. Is this really sustainable, only having a few dozen items (out of tens of thousands) that sell well?

 

My solution to this issue is elegant and simple: everyone gimme your monies plz!

[arthurh35353]

19 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

Display bugs aside, the only issue I have is that everything is either a) expensive or b) (essentially) vendor trash.

It would be nice to be able to turn vendor trash (or literally just things you trash because they are cluttering your inventory) for the rarer drops. Perhaps some sort of up-combine (perhaps via the auction house).

 

10 to 20 SOs maybe combines into a basic IO enhancement. 10 to 25 basic IOs recipe converts to a uncommon IO set recipe. 25 uncommon IO set recipes for a rare recipe. Maybe even 5 rares for the super rare AT/PVP/Event Rares.

 

It'd have to be balanced, but really right now a lot of things aren't worth anything, even to bother to sell. 

Edited December 15, 2020 by arthurh35353

[Yomo Kimyata]

40 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

This is true.  I only have anecdotal evidence to draw on, but one of my friends wanted nothing to do with the market...so he vendored recipes.  When it became clear his tanker was "cute but squishy" according to a teammate he quit and hasn't been back.  What if we get rid of recipes altogether and instead received enhancement drops?  Would that incentivize folks like my friend by simplifying the entire IO process?

As long as your friend knew that it was his choice to have nothing to do with the market, no one can keep him from finding an entertainment experience that he prefers instead.  I mean, I like playing chess, but I aesthetically don't like how knights move.  Sure, I *could* play chess without using my knights.  I know that's suboptimal, and I'm going to lose a lot.  I might even do ok.  But I'm not going to insist my opponent gets rid of their knights too just because I don't like them.  I'm probably better off just playing a different game.  But not backgammon.  That's the WORST!

[arthurh35353]

That's not really the same thing. It would be like you want to play chess or something like chess, but you have to farm/play "go" to buy upgrades for your chess pieces so you can play 'competitively' and 'fun' in the chess world.

Edited December 16, 2020 by arthurh35353