Auction House fees: is there any point?

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:

I'm puzzled at the number of posters who seem to think Inf is forever, and doesn't disappear back down the hole for vendor enhancements and then pretty much die forever as part of each build. I don't see that any great number of players strip value out of one build to make the next, etc.

 

How much Inf does the slotting of, say, a well-buffed 50+3 represent? And in general, when does that valuta ever come back into the system?

 

Considering prices have stayed fairly stable since they nerfed double inf while exemplared, I'd say we're at a point where "goes ins" equal "goes outs" and there's really not much reason to upset that. Your suggestion seems like extra work to solve a nonexistent problem.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

What if we all bought out white salvage right before they short, causing a squeeze?

I sell all non-top tier salvage at my base vendor. Same goes for almost all non purple/pvp recipes. The rest gets dumped on the market for 111 inf because I know I'll get the top bid for it.

 

That's enough for me. Cuz I'm always *just* rich enough to fully kit out another alt at market prices.

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

I guess you'd have to be stuffed to the gills to exceed base storage + personal vault storage + toon capacity and use the AH... but it's nothing I've ever messed with.

The AH, email, and mule characters are the only places that you can store recipes in, though.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

How much Inf does the slotting of, say, a well-buffed 50+3 represent? And in general, when does that valuta ever come back into the system?

 

1.  I'd say that the days of "billion inf" builds are pretty much over, but I'd say that a strong build would cost roughly 500mm inf, plus or minus a few hundred mm.

2.  That entirely depends on how much you play that alt.  I can't remember what the current earning rate for farmers is, but call it 100mm inf an hour?  So roughly 5 hours?  

 

I'm just spit-balling here; maybe it's 5 hours, maybe it's 2 hours, maybe it's 50.  But your investment in a character is only dead once you stop playing it.

[Shenanigunner]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

But your investment in a character is only dead once you stop playing it.

 

Well... not really. Spent is spent; Inf into nonrecoverables is gone whether the alt is parked or not.

 

Anyway... gratz to those who noticed my observation was "ain't this weird?" and not "damn, this has to be changed!" 🙂

[Ukase]

Well...I'm not sure who thinks it costs anything to stash items in the AH. It doesn't. You aren't charged anything for placing items in the AH. We are charged a token fee for placing an item up for bid. If we priced it to high, we can remove it, place it for a lower price and pay a fee yet again. 

That's the whole point behind the fee - to encourage the seller to place the item at a price it will sell. (in other words - reasonably priced or cheaper) 

So..what's to be gained by removing the fee? 

Struggling players wouldn't have to earn a certain amount before selling a generous gift. So that's useful. 
Well-off players would become more well-off because they wouldn't pay fees. 

Eh, for me, 6 in one hand, half dozen in the other. Doesn't matter to me. I would prefer not to pay the fees myself. But I'm sure everyone would prefer to not pay the fees. But, I'd rather pay the fees than find some buyer outside the market, so it's worth it to me. 

[Shred Monkey]

19 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I sell all non-top tier salvage at my base vendor. Same goes for almost all non purple/pvp recipes. The rest gets dumped on the market for 111 inf because I know I'll get the top bid for it.

 

That's enough for me. Cuz I'm always *just* rich enough to fully kit out another alt at market prices.

I'm sort of like this... actually I'm the marketeer's favorite player.   I sell every drop I get for 11 inf.  And I buy everything I use at the pay it now price.  The only time I don't pay full price is if the AH is out, then I either use merits to buy the recipe or do an in set conversion.  I also don't farm, and the only form of "marketeering" I do is to use my merits and threads to buy stuff that sells at top value... and even then I list at sell it now pricing to get money quick. 

 

The secret to how I'm always able to buy what I want is that once I hit 50 and get fully built, I keep playing that toon.  I don't keep track, but I would estimate most of my fully built toons earn more then 1.5X their build's value in influence before I create a new alt.  

Edited January 29, 2021 by Shred Monkey

[nihilii]

17 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

The fee removes influence from the system. With how many people market and some to a fairly high volume the amount of influence removed I would venture to say is quite substantial. Of course it is not as much as the influence moved, but it isn’t supposed to be.

This is the most important answer in this topic IMHO. And the divergence of opinions largely boils down to whether you believe a 10% tax on every trade amounts to a big number or a negligible number in the end.

If you assume every item is traded once and only once, I can see how 10% might seem inconsequential. But there is more fluidity to the system than that. Dedicated marketers buy only to relist. And this isn't a sales tax / VAT situation where you deduce previous VAT paid, you pay a full extra 10% each step of the way.

 

Then, as DSorrow pointed out the tax has side benefits in terms of price discovery, limiting manipulation. Like macskull says, "institutional" caps on asset value also stabilize prices. All in all we have a nice little sandbox with enough volatility to play, enough liquidity nobody is priced out, and very very little inflation if at all.

 

Removing the 10% fee likely wouldn't devastate the markets but I doubt it would have any positive effect. Some IOs are already floating around their "system" caps so you wouldn't see change there, and instead the flows of extra influence should move towards more common IOs. So you might pay 5M rather than 3M for a Preventive Medicine for example. Because marketers are much more affected by the fees than standard players, it's possible any extra influence in the pockets of the average player wouldn't make up for the increase in these IOs.

[Coyote]

21 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

It's common when you poke at something taken for granted or otherwise never really considered;

 

Actually, the reason for some of the responses is that this HAS been considered. It's not just taken for granted. Come on, this is CoH, we have players who question and/or test ANYTHING. I assure you, I remember reading threads about the fees over a year ago.

 

This is not uncharted territory for discussion. I'm not sure if this is a dead and dismembered horse, or just mortally wounded at this point, but it's been considered, discussed, and re-considered.

[Coyote]

17 hours ago, parabola said:

We've got a thread on game balance and now this one on the market. We just need someone to open a new one demanding the removal of the aggro cap and we can melt the forums.

 

I'm thinking about opening one up regarding how the game is too easy because Defense is too high, and therefore IO set bonuses need nerfing. Think that'll do it?

[Yomo Kimyata]

13 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

I'm thinking about opening one up regarding how the game is too easy because Defense is too high, and therefore IO set bonuses need nerfing. Think that'll do it?

I think the problem is that there aren't enough numbers in a percentage system.  If we change the number of percents in a whole from 100 to 120, that should solve our defense problem.

 

Also, then people could actually give 110%, and we could get on them for not giving enough.

[The_Warpact]

15 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

1.  I'd say that the days of "billion inf" builds are pretty much over, but I'd say that a strong build would cost roughly 500mm inf, plus or minus a few hundred mm.

2.  That entirely depends on how much you play that alt.  I can't remember what the current earning rate for farmers is, but call it 100mm inf an hour?  So roughly 5 hours?  

 

I'm just spit-balling here; maybe it's 5 hours, maybe it's 2 hours, maybe it's 50.  But your investment in a character is only dead once you stop playing it.

This is true, I've noticed over the course of kitting out my 50s which is roughly one a week.

The prices have been dropping steadily, I just did a fender the other day and spent less than 300 mil, BUT, I had alot of the IOs stored in the base from farming. 

So dependant upon build design ATO/Purple/PVP vs regular the prices are cheaper. 

[tidge]

As I've written in the Market sub-forum, I consider the "300+ Minf" builds to be a corner case that is bordered by the walls of stubbornness and ignorance. I use the term stubbornness for thoughts along the lines of "I can only get enhancements for my build a specific way" (e.g. buy-it-now on the market) and ignorance to cover the those circumstances where a player is unaware and uninformed about alternate ways to get pieces for their builds.

 

Within Homecoming, there is a very small amount of enhancement space that requires market participation, but the Homecoming market  and merit system, in addition to drop-rates (catalysts, recipes, converters) and conversion rules makes it incredibly easy to play (multiple, per-character) builds that would have been out-of-reach for a huge majority of players on Live.  The Homecoming Auction House fees are demonstrably NOT standing in the way of this.

[Shenanigunner]

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

Actually, the reason for some of the responses is that this HAS been considered. It's not just taken for granted. Come on, this is CoH, we have players who question and/or test ANYTHING. I assure you, I remember reading threads about the fees over a year ago.

 

This is not uncharted territory for discussion. I'm not sure if this is a dead and dismembered horse, or just mortally wounded at this point, but it's been considered, discussed, and re-considered.

 

I didn't say I was the first to bring it up. And 'considered' is a slippery verb.

 

In the RW, people can be poked repeatedly on something and never actually "consider" it. Start by reviewing this thread and seeing what percentage assume I am calling for change, then arguing against the need for change (if not all but calling me an idiot for wanting it changed)... when I specifically said at least twice I wasn't. "Consideration" does not seem to be part of the thought process.

 

I find the fees absurd. But then, so are toons with giraffe legs and basketball breasts. End of story.

[Myrmidon]

18 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

  But your investment in a character is only dead once you stop playing it.

This.

[Grouchybeast]

The CoX market is pretty brilliant, really.  It's such a neat combination of simplicity and complexity that allows players to interact successfully with it at very different levels of investment in that part of the game.  And the HC tweaks have overall improved it even more.  (Like, I do miss being able to kit out a character with mid-30s set IOs on the cheap, but I certainly don't miss it enough to want to give up the improved liquidity, vastly lower prices, and benefits to lower level characters.)  

[Carnifax]

3 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

This is true, I've noticed over the course of kitting out my 50s which is roughly one a week.

The prices have been dropping steadily, I just did a fender the other day and spent less than 300 mil, BUT, I had alot of the IOs stored in the base from farming. 

So dependant upon build design ATO/Purple/PVP vs regular the prices are cheaper. 

I'd say most of my builds are 150 to 250. But I don't use many purples (just a couple of procs, maybe with 1 other) and, up until this Winter event, 0 winters. I've never gone "5 purples" on any char. 

 

So most of the expense is ATOs, LotGs and two PvP IOs. Even Catalysts are from drops.

 

I did Winter up my last char, a Fire/Claws Tank. But I'd bought a bunch of cheap packs and Winters IOs (got a bunch for 4.5 million which was nice). Still have a decent stash of them. 

 

Of course I don't kit out my 50s either. I kit as I go which spreads out costs. (And makes it more interesting for me, to the point that I usually don't bother with more than one lot of Double XP). 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Carnifax

[The_Warpact]

13 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

I'd say most of my builds are 150 to 250. But I don't use many purples (just a couple of procs, maybe with 1 other) and, up until this Winter event, 0 winters. I've never gone "5 purples" on any char. 

 

So most of the expense is ATOs, LotGs and two PvP IOs. Even Catalysts are from drops.

 

I did Winter up my last char, a Fire/Claws Tank. But I'd bought a bunch of cheap packs and Winters IOs (got a bunch for 4.5 million which was nice). Still have a decent stash of them. 

 

Of course I don't kit out my 50s either. I kit as I go which spreads out costs. (And makes it more interesting for me, to the point that I usually don't bother with more than one lot of Double XP). 

I'm the buy it crowd but I will wait if I know there is flagrant gouging occurring (like gas prices).

 

During winter I filled an enhancement table, which I've used a few but during summer/fall ill sell for max gain.

I have yet to buy catalysts or converters, they are so prevalent as drops during farms that I never do without.

 

I find that Inf is easy to get but I'm still a tight ass on spending in certain situations and I absolutely hoard.

Its almost as if I was born during the great depression. 

[Fingernailgun]

I long for the day that crushing impacts return to the live prices

 

Re: Sinks
Inf sinks are important, I think, otherwise prices would just continually trend up and never stop as more and more money appears with no where to go. However, the market is not the only influence sink in the game. Basic IO recipes, crafting costs, P2W powers, and superpacks are here too. I've spent maybe 4 or 5 billion in superpacks, which might surpase all the market fees all my characters have ever paid. I think there are too many influence sinks at the moment.

Edited January 29, 2021 by S P A C E S

[Bill Z Bubba]

29 minutes ago, S P A C E S said:

P2W powers

This. Now that I keep all my squishies fully stocked with defense amplifiers for mez protection, my inf stores have to be rebuilt on the regular.

[golstat2003]

Bottom line: The market on HC is 100 times better than what we had on live.

 

A build that cost me 1.3 billion the other day would have cost me several times more that on live.

 

I think all the sinks we have (including the fee) are fine as is. Nice thought experiment though OP.

 

Got us to see how many people in General Chat don't know jack s&(#e about how the Market works. (Which has been proven time and time again, don't ask General chat if you want a serious, thoughtful answer. You're more likely to be mis-informed or trolled to death).

Edited January 29, 2021 by golstat2003

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

don't ask General chat if you want a serious

There's a general chat in this game?

[Yomo Kimyata]

Another use of marketing fees is to help slow down or put some sort of a governor on flipping.  

[SwitchFade]

*twitch twitch*

 

🤪🤪🤪🤐🤐🤐🤯🤯🤯🤤🤤🤤💩

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Another use of marketing fees is to help slow down or put some sort of a governor on flipping.  

I think this is really important to emphasize. The listing fee is extremely important to stop people from listing items for too much in attempts to drive up prices. This can still happen, but they run the risk of losing the listing fee when they give up and relist at a more reasonable price. Without the fee they have no skin in the game. This would be a flipper’s dream come true as they would be able to put upwards pressure on prices without any risk. 
 

Granted converters and whatnot severely limit a flippers power to manipulate prices, but I don’t think we need to enable them.