The Monologue Thread

[Bananiac]

So, I have a questions about how these things work. I noticed somebody bying up lots of one of the Gaussians this week. Which is fine with me, as I am selling these at or above the market value (which as far as I can say is around 4-5Mil).

 

I assume these are not for personal use, but I fail to understand how this is supposed to make him a meaningful profit. 

 

Is it to eliminate supply, then serve demand at a higher going price? And would such behavior qualify as Market Manipulation? This seems to be kinda risky approach, cause people like me are just easily creating new ones and push them into the Market at our own rate. 

 

What am I missing here?

[iBot]

You aren't missing anything there @Bananiac all those could be reasons for what you are seeing.  Also, someone could be buying up ones to convert.  They could be buying them up but mistakenly set the bid amount from another set of bids they were doing.  Could just be the AH display bug.  As for manipulation I think we've come to the discussion consensus a few times in this forum that it really isn't possible on HC to corner the market on anything because of the way the AH works now.

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 hours ago, Bananiac said:

So, I have a questions about how these things work. I noticed somebody bying up lots of one of the Gaussians this week. Which is fine with me, as I am selling these at or above the market value (which as far as I can say is around 4-5Mil).

 

I assume these are not for personal use, but I fail to understand how this is supposed to make him a meaningful profit. 

 

Is it to eliminate supply, then serve demand at a higher going price? And would such behavior qualify as Market Manipulation? This seems to be kinda risky approach, cause people like me are just easily creating new ones and push them into the Market at our own rate. 

 

What am I missing here?

 

If anything in the Gaussian set was trading at 4-5mm, get on that horse and ride it as long and as far as you can.  I think of it as 1-2mm -- just about converter fodder.

[Ukase]

Yeah, even the proc rarely sells for more than 3m. It's basically a trash set. Hardly worthy of note. 

[tidge]

For me: Gaussian's is in the category of "should be worth more than it is valued at in the /AH", along with Thunderstrike. It doesn't mean I have a swarm of unsold ones, just that for a variety of reasons it isn't a set that is ever in demand. One of the reasons may be that the To Hit piece cons yellow (uncommon), but it is a rare.

 

I personally like the 6-set bonuses it gives, and in most click powers (Aim, Build Up, Chronos, etc.) the slotted recharge from the (attuned) set doesn't move the %BuildUp proc chances below 90%. I can completely understand skimping on slots in such powers (going with just the %proc and a Recharge), but on most of my builds the performance from randomly distributing those slots isn't improved as much as I miss hitting enemies (ehem, Moment of Glory Paragon Protectors).

[Yomo Kimyata]

8 hours ago, tidge said:

For me: Gaussian's is in the category of "should be worth more than it is valued at in the /AH", along with Thunderstrike. It doesn't mean I have a swarm of unsold ones, just that for a variety of reasons it isn't a set that is ever in demand. One of the reasons may be that the To Hit piece cons yellow (uncommon), but it is a rare.

 

 

On the demand side, your arguments are valid.  Most (more than half, I'd estimate) builds have one of more slots for to-hit buffs, and the Gaussian proc is probably the best choice for a single slot in Build Up or Aim.  The set bonuses are good to great all the way to 6-slots.  It's a good set.

 

On the supply side, it's just too easy to come by, so if any one tries to restrict the supply out there, they can (will?) be flooded by more entering the market.  And people have mostly gotten used to the current price bands and without a macro event to change the dynamics, I would expect any manipulation to have only short-term, if any, effects on prices.

 

I've often lamented the inevitable "death by ice" of the AH, since supply is essentially infinite, but demand is limited by new players and new alts.  But now I'm trying to come up with ways to spark demand, and I have an idea or two that I'll probably implement shortly.  It's a marketing job, and that is certainly not my strong suit.  If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

[tidge]

21 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I've often lamented the inevitable "death by ice" of the AH, since supply is essentially infinite, but demand is limited by new players and new alts.  But now I'm trying to come up with ways to spark demand, and I have an idea or two that I'll probably implement shortly.  It's a marketing job, and that is certainly not my strong suit.  If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

 

You can always try to motivate players to full-kit out their second and third builds. Outside of VEATs (every one), HEATs (multi-form/single-form), Masterminds (standard vs. petless/one-big pet) and builds for specific 50+ content (Attuned? BAH! Boosters FTW!) I have trouble motivating myself to do such a thing.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 It's a marketing job, and that is certainly not my strong suit.  If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

Oh my. Here's something I've been known to do. I will log in with 2 of my accounts and essentially converse with myself about the efficacy of a specific IO set on the help channel, and why it's a no-brainer. My alt will chime in with "Brilliant!" or some such. It is quite amazing how well it works. But, as you know, only for a short time. But then, I don't market it more than once, because I'm not in the habit of ever selling more than a few of any one item. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Ukase

[tidge]

21 hours ago, Ukase said:

Oh my. Here's something I've been known to do. I will log in with 2 of my accounts and essentially converse with myself about the efficacy of a specific IO set on the help channel, and why it's a no-brainer. My alt will chime in with "Brilliant!" or some such. It is quite amazing how well it works.

 

"It's Puppet Therapy. The Psychology world has come to recently embrace it after seeing it on Law & Order."

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

A short-cut that I use that may seem obvious is remembering that red IOs are all damage based (ranged, melee, st, AoE, etc.).  Two ways I've found that useful:

 

1.  If I am crafting a lot of purple recipes, I will generally convert until I get a red one (except the pet damage one).  There may not be a big discrepancy in prices between an Absolute Amazement and a Hecatomb (or maybe there is, I dunno), but I've found the damage IOs turn over a lot more quickly.  So if I roll an orange hold purple, I'll spend one or two more conversions to get something red.  This is more useful if you are doing a block of 30-70 than doing a few, but it really shaves some time off the process for me.

 

2.  If I am crafting a lot of uncommon recipes with the intention of turning them into rares, if I start with a red, I will almost always roll by uncommon first before rolling by category.  In many/most level ranges, a damage uncommon won't automatically convert to a rare since there are more damage sets, and therefore more uncommon damage sets.   I'd rather spend one or two converters to get something that will either be guaranteed to turn into a rare, or at least is a greater than 50% chance.  I cannot stand it when there are two rares and two uncommons in a category, and you roll by category 5-10 times only to switch back and forth between the uncommons (which is basically a 1/3 chance each roll).  It is a net saver of converters, but again has the greatest benefit if you are crafting and converting in blocks.

[tidge]

My own rule: Uncommon red recipes (especially Snipes, and Pet damage) ALWAYS get rolled into another uncommon before rolling into rares.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 10/2/2021 at 11:35 AM, tidge said:

 

I look forward to it. The additional EndMod sets added on HC certainly made the market here harder, but there are times when this niche looks downright weird.

 

Anecdotally: I still stick with one of these in Stamina for everyone of my characters, although I have done some experimenting with a few characters (that don't have extra slots invested in Stamina) to see if I noticed any difference between the %proc and simply slotting an IO EndMod (boosted, natch because of Inf). I had a couple of characters with large +MaxEnd boosts (accolades, sets, buffs) and I ran them across a lot of different content at many different levels... it felt to me like keeping the Performance Shifter proc was the right call for most cases. This was not a rigorous study by any means.

 

So, Performance Shifters.

 

I like markets that are big, BIG and the Performance Shifter proc is the one IO that anyone who is paying attention should have.  Everyone gets free Stamina, and everyone gets that free slot.  So early on I targeted Performance Shifters as a place to be, since I could reasonably expect that almost every new alt will get one in the long run.

 

So early on in HC, there were only two Endurance Modification sets in the 21-50 range:  Performance Shifters (rare) and Efficiency Adaptor (uncommon).  For the most part, neither set had the greatest set bonuses, and trading in EA was light.  Interest in Performance Shifter procs and End Mod were strong, End Mod/Recharge and End Mod/Accuracy were ok, and the Recharge/Accuracy and triple were meager.  So I dedicated one of my characters to the End Mod market (Sonic Screwdriver, a sonic/beam rifle defender) and put together three basic strategies:  1.  Buy lvl 21 EA recipes (and IOs too if they were cheap enough); craft; convert once by Endurance Modification to get a Performance Shifter; if a triple or R/A convert by set; 2.  Buy cheap lvl 21 Perf Shifter IOs (R/A. E/R/A. E/R. E/A) and convert in set to the proc or the End Mod; 3. Buy lvl 21 PS recipes in R/A and E/R/A; craft; convert in set.  Worked well and I considered this one of my 4-5 basic strategies.  Good for a couple of hundred mm profit every time I checked in, which was probably 2-3 times a week.

 

When HC announced the new End Mod sets, I was giddy.  I figured that diluting the pool would make it significantly harder to get Performance Shifters, and I didn't see a compelling story for the new sets except for the Heal proc, so I anticipated a run on Performance Shifters.  And I went all in.  I created a SG base and filled it with IO storage, and I bought, crafted, and converted nearly 2000 performance shifters.  I also stocked up on various recipes for another thousand or so.  When the update dropped, I converted a bunch of EA to get the new sets and started making markets.  Whee!  I love the price discovery process.  I traded a couple of hundred IOs that day for something in the 500mm to 1bn profit range.  And then I started posting my Performance Shifters for a 1-2mm markup.  At first, things went swimmingly, but then...

 

Sad Trombone

 

Supply kept coming into the market, and prices kept going back to normal.  Now, some of that was that demand for the PS had dropped because there was a case to slot other sets now.  But every time I tried to defend the prices, I kept buying more product.  Prices went back to normal.  Prices dropped *below* normal.  And I'm scratching my head.  Had someone else stocked up like I had, and was she gleefully smacking my bids?  Did I miss some easy conversion trick?  To this day, I don't really know but what I assume is that someone else was moving into the market and was willing and able to work for a lot less than I was.  

 

When overall demand started to drop (my estimate on how many new characters made per day dropped from 150-300 to 50-100), interest in the E/A and E/R went away, and I started having less time to dedicate to CoH in general, I dropped the niche from my regular rotation.  I can't say I *lost* any money, but eventually I liquidated my inventory for a much lower profit than I had intended.

 

I still check in every two weeks or so, and I'm still running a presence there, but my marketing time is generally set on significantly greener pastures than Performance Shifters now.

[tidge]

That is basically my view as well. I have NEVER gone in to make multiple Billions of INF, but I start my new characters with about 200 Kinf seed money and I as I level them up I expect them to be able to pay for their own build by level 50 (they get common pieces from the SG base of course) and to fund the next batch of seed monies. Early in HC, I definitely used the level 21 Performance Shifter market, but never more that 20 at a time. I moved away from that market when the new sets were introduced.

 

I always wonder if the depressed prices are in any way due to the End Mod piece conning as yellow, despite being rare. There are a few other examples of this (which require rare salvage to craft) that also seem to have weirdly depressed prices... although I admit that these are also in low-priority sets for most players. It's just that the EndMod piece is such a no-brainer for improving recovery and the boost to travel speeds.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

 

I always wonder if the depressed prices are in any way due to the End Mod piece conning as yellow, despite being rare. There are a few other examples of this (which require rare salvage to craft) that also seem to have weirdly depressed prices... although I admit that these are also in low-priority sets for most players. It's just that the EndMod piece is such a no-brainer for improving recovery and the boost to travel speeds.

 

There are two types of "yellow rares" as far as I can tell.  The first type (the "good" type) are in a rare set but don't require rare salvage to craft.  Ex:  Deflated Ego:  To Hit Debuff.  They are cheap to craft, and can be converted as rares right away.  The second type (the "bad" type) are in a rare set but do require rare salvage to craft.  Ex:  Perf Shifter End Mod.  These are rares in every way except for their color.  So, I don't think that the conning has any effect here.

 

The ones that really suck are the "orange uncommon", like the two Cleaving Blow recipes that require rare salvage but only craft into a really expensive uncommon IO.  I have not memorized the whole list of these yet, and I get so annoyed by them that I usually just delete them out of spite.

[Ukase]

For me - the biggest impact on the market, whether it be Perf shifters or other IOs was the big no XP/2xInf nerf. It really seemed instant that the prices of items that sold for 3m (Blessing of the Zephyr KB prot) suddenly were selling for 2m. LotG 7.5% that were selling for 8M, suddenly selling for 6-7M. 
Unbreakable Guards, Aegis, Numina Procs, Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc - previously selling for 4-5M, now selling for 3-4M. And sometimes less. PvP IO procs selling for 9-11M now selling for 8-9M. 

All because of that nerf. 

 I looked at the market and said to myself, "Self, these crazy HC devs had no idea what they were doing. Now, my huge stack of influence is now 10-20% larger because my inf now goes further than it did before!" 

Now, the divide between players like myself and the "casual player" is even greater than it was! They may not have to spend quite as much, but I can still rake it in, hand over fist, and I don't have to spend nearly as much either, making scale of certain niches even easier and done properly, even easier. 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

18 hours ago, Ukase said:

It really seemed instant that the prices of items that sold for 3m (Blessing of the Zephyr KB prot) suddenly were selling for 2m. LotG 7.5% that were selling for 8M, suddenly selling for 6-7M. 
Unbreakable Guards, Aegis, Numina Procs, Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc - previously selling for 4-5M, now selling for 3-4M. And sometimes less. PvP IO procs selling for 9-11M now selling for 8-9M. 

All because of that nerf. 

 

This is interesting to me.  I don’t remember it being a sudden change, but that could easily be my observation bias.  I thought I had seen long term secular price decreases before the fix (what was the date of it again?).  Personally, I’ve been pushing prices down on things for the past year or so on some of the items you mention because I’ve been making them in larger numbers.

 

But let’s assume it was instant.  Just thinking in type.  If prices instantly moved lower, that would indicate a big drop in demand or a big increase in supply or both.  It probably wouldn’t be a big increase in supply because if anything rage quitting farmers would be providing fewer (or the same amount) of raw materials.  So it would probably be demand driven.  Then, the decrease in demand could be fewer people building alts or everyone deciding to bid lower at the same time.  I feel the latter is unlikely, so my takeaway is that farmers instantly stopped making alts?  Just idle curiosity on my part.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata

[Siouxsie]

I would go with a decrease in demand.  There are still a ton of people playing, and of course we still make alts, but both are going to decline over time now that we're past the "OMG CoH is back!!!" period.

 

That's not to say activity is light since we see product moving all the time, just probably not at its peak, so people aren't buying the expensive IOs, then having to buy the super expensive IOs, then moving on to the I'm mortgaging the SG base level of expensive IOs because that's all that's available.

[Ukase]

Well...obviously supply and demand have impact on prices. But they don't impact things the way I would expect. Because supply is so simple to come by, and because of the way things are bucketed (a level 30 recipe being essentially the same as a level 50 recipe aside from the salvage used and crafting costs) there's never a true limit to supply. 
But, it's my theory, after the nerf, suppliers (and maybe it was you, but I don't think you're that shortsighted) started selling at a cheaper price. 

So, for the sake of discussion, why shortsighted? Because, for me anecdotally, the prices were what they were. There was no reason to sell more cheaply, other than in hopes of getting rid of them. But that begs the question - why make so many if you didn't want the going rate? Just list 'em for the going rate and wait for them to sell, as they will sell. So what if it takes another 6 hours? That's just my thinking when I see these things. It defies logic. 

From a cost accounting perspective, there probably is a price point where it makes more sense to sell 500 IOs at 3M rather than 200 IOs at 4M. After all, that's 1.5B vs 800M. Even with fees and such, you make more inf. But, you don't make more profit, and why spend all that time converting such things for less profit? Oh, I sincerely doubt it was you, Yomo, just based on that point. 

But, even if it was, no worries here. All of this is pure conjecture on my part and has no meaning in life, or even in game. I just find it all interesting. 

As for other root causes, the decrease in demand is probably the bigger culprit. For every vocally irked or upset farmer/player that used the NoXP/2xINF on these forums, there was probably a few that simply left for another server. I know Rebirth, despite being smaller still, got a noticeable influx of players from HC. I know because I was one of them, for about a month. But, I had to return to keep some of you in line! 

[Dazl]

I’m sure the experience/influence nerf put a dent into all that free wheeling spending. Kind of a double edge sword, couldn’t have all that evil influence out there but so much for all that profit from the “buy it now” crowd.

 

My farmer came online just before the nerf, so it didn’t have much effect on me (still think the nerf should have been limited to AE only). I only really use my farmer to level alts, and I don’t really make that many anymore. I might have a new alt project once a month or two. When I do get around to getting my IO’s I will try to spend as little as possible on them. Using what I have stockpiled or use converters to make what I need. I also have a ton of merits and will use them smartly to get some of the more expensive IO’s.

 

So maybe it’s just people making fewer alts.

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

Well...obviously supply and demand have impact on prices. But they don't impact things the way I would expect. Because supply is so simple to come by, and because of the way things are bucketed (a level 30 recipe being essentially the same as a level 50 recipe aside from the salvage used and crafting costs) there's never a true limit to supply. 
But, it's my theory, after the nerf, suppliers (and maybe it was you, but I don't think you're that shortsighted) started selling at a cheaper price. 

So, for the sake of discussion, why shortsighted? Because, for me anecdotally, the prices were what they were. There was no reason to sell more cheaply, other than in hopes of getting rid of them. But that begs the question - why make so many if you didn't want the going rate? Just list 'em for the going rate and wait for them to sell, as they will sell. So what if it takes another 6 hours? That's just my thinking when I see these things. It defies logic. 

From a cost accounting perspective, there probably is a price point where it makes more sense to sell 500 IOs at 3M rather than 200 IOs at 4M. After all, that's 1.5B vs 800M. Even with fees and such, you make more inf. But, you don't make more profit, and why spend all that time converting such things for less profit? Oh, I sincerely doubt it was you, Yomo, just based on that point. 

But, even if it was, no worries here. All of this is pure conjecture on my part and has no meaning in life, or even in game. I just find it all interesting. 

As for other root causes, the decrease in demand is probably the bigger culprit. For every vocally irked or upset farmer/player that used the NoXP/2xINF on these forums, there was probably a few that simply left for another server. I know Rebirth, despite being smaller still, got a noticeable influx of players from HC. I know because I was one of them, for about a month. But, I had to return to keep some of you in line! 

 

Heh!  First of all, no need to tread so lightly!  No insults are taken!

 

But in some cases, that's exactly what I did, and there are three basic reasons:  1. market PvP (lol), 2. volume/flow, 3. ignorance/apathy

 

1.  Your pricing strategy would be optimal if there was only one seller, or if every seller worked in collusion.  If everyone listed at 5mm, and everyone bought at 5mm, cool.  But if everyone is listing at 5mm, and I list at 4.99mm, then I make all the sales until I run out.  Of course, someone else lists at 4.98, and we get an uncomfortable annoying creep downward that is not transparent.  I rarely creep bids or offers -- I tend to change my prices in bigger blocks in order to get someone else to say, "well, I'll stay out of the market until they are done."

 

2.  But maybe I'm never done.  I like to do things in blocks, and I can usually get a block of 50 of something done before I get bored.  And keep in mind that a block of 50 doesn't take me anywhere near as much time as doing a block of 1 50 times -- there are economies of scale.  Sometimes that's 50 of a specific IO; sometimes it's part of a set, or whatever.  If I can spit out 50 of something in a day without too much effort, and I estimate that 500 trade in a day, then great, I'm going to price them where I think they will sell by tomorrow, and then I'm going to spit out another 50, and we are all good.  But what if only 50 trade in a day?  Let's say my cost basis is 2mm, and demand will pay 5mm.  I can list them at or around 5mm, and maybe I'll sell 50 but more likely I'll sell 10 and 40 will trade away.  So I made a profit of 3mm *10 units = 30mm, and I have 40 units still up for sale.  The next day I make another 50, sell 10 for a 30mm profit, and now I have 80 for sale.  Boo, this sucks.  Instead, I list at 4mm and sell all 50 units for a 2mm profit both days.  Instead of making a 30mm profit a day and holding on to excess inventory, I'm selling everything at a profit of 100mm a day.  Now, if you are not doing this frequently, then yeah, go ahead, put up 50 units and check back in a week or two later.  But if I can sell daily I will sell daily.

 

3.  Some of these markets I just don't know or care about, and I price things to move quickly *if* I have a lot more in the pipeline.  Let's look at an example I just did.  I cracked 50 lvl 20 Harmonized Healing IOs into Regenerative Tissue: Regeneration (6); Preventative Medicine: Absorb Proc (6); Preventative Medicine: Other (19); Miracle Proc (19).  My approximate cost basis for the first three groups is roughly 500k, and roughly 1.5mm for the Miracles (which is what is driving this); this includes the market value of the converters used.  Now, I realize that the other 5 pieces of the Preventative Medicine set probably have different trading patterns, but I don't care enough about it to learn.  I'm lucky I know the proc trades for more!  And I don't really care if I'm leaving some profit per unit on the table because I am moving 100% of the units.  All I care is that by tomorrow, I sell out of all of these (and I will) so I can do it again if I want, because I can very easily keep doing this in perpetuity.  It's just not worth it to me to try and squeeze out another 500k profit and then have my AH slots full of for sale inventory.

 

One of these days, however, I'll retire.  I've already cut my marketing time in half over the last 6 months, and I should ding a half trillion in cash very soon.  That's probably as good a place as any to stop.

[Black_Assassin]

I would say 500B is a good place to hang up the boots. However being able to use a T rather than a B after your net worth would be pretty pimp. 

[Ukase]

3 hours ago, Black_Assassin said:

I would say 500B is a good place to hang up the boots. However being able to use a T rather than a B after your net worth would be pretty pimp. 

Ha, I get it - but having large stacks of influence can be a bit annoying without a bank. I like stashing my inf in email. It's not like email has any other uses. I'm in the habit of crafting all the uncommon and rare and pvp and very rare recipes I get, and vendoring/selling the commons. I stash the purples...or I did, until my base filled up.  I had made a couple extra bases, but it got to be more of a pain than it was worth, logging in the proper characters to get the desired loot and distribute it. 

Yomo can speak for himself, but I think he stashes certain amounts on certain characters, always has a certain amount tied up in active bids, and has other amounts tied up in "Inactive" bids, the stuff on the AH that doesn't actually sell, or if it does, it routinely sells at a higher price than he's bid for it - kind of like those level 53 Hamidon enhancements that didn't exist in game until a recent patch. 

All that inf, it has to go somewhere. If it's not going to go in my email, then it should be on my characters. Because I don't want to stash mine on inactive bids, I now have to make new characters to hold it. So, for me, 6 trillion would be the very most I could hold - 3 accounts, each character on the 1000 slots holding the 2B inf cap. Obviously, that's not going to happen because if they carry around 2B, they can't ever get any more inf. It would take a loooong time to do that anyway. I like the game and marketing, but I don't think I like it that much! 

It gets to be a bit tedious coming up with a new character that I might actually want to play. The easier solution is to come up with a new account and just stash them in the email, making room for another stack of emails. But, then I worry about not thinking about the 3 per server rule limitation. Don't want to get in trouble over something so careless on my part, but I could see it happening with me not even thinking about it. 

[Ukase]

13 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

So I made a profit of 3mm *10 units = 30mm, and I have 40 units still up for sale.  The next day I make another 50, sell 10 for a 30mm profit, and now I have 80 for sale.  Boo, this sucks.  Instead, I list at 4mm and sell all 50 units for a 2mm profit both days.  Instead of making a 30mm profit a day and holding on to excess inventory, I'm selling everything at a profit of 100mm a day.  Now, if you are not doing this frequently, then yeah, go ahead, put up 50 units and check back in a week or two later.  But if I can sell daily I will sell daily.

To me, this is the part that I don't understand. Why not just wait? You make more and have to do less. If you're concerned that the volume will run out, you can still make them and list them. Not like they're gonna disappear. 

With PvP IOs, which is an area I deal with a good bit, I obviously see that I can put lowball bids for the recipes in at X, and maybe they trickle in, and in 10 hours, I'll have 100 of them or so. Then I can craft, convert and list them at the price the market has said it's willing to consistently pay. So, I do that. 

Now, do they all sell in 24 hours? Not all. Sometimes - a player like me or you, or just a casual player will enter the fray and start listing these same items for 10% less. Some list them at half my desired price. But one thing I do know - whether it's you, me or someone else, the demand is there. It may take a week, but by golly, it will sell! With 200 slots in the AH, seeing a dozen or even 50 still waiting for a customer is annoying, but I don't let it stop me. I will fill the slots, and my enhancement tray and check back every 4 to 6 to 8 hours, depending on my day and keep feeding the AH. I still see the impatient folks listing theirs more cheaply and getting their sales, but by the time it's all said and done, mine have all sold, and I made mine. I also had to spend less time doing that and got to play more. Rather, focus on other things, like accumulating transcendent merits. Nothing is worse than doing incarnate trials AGAIN because not only are you enduring the same content repeatedly, you're having to wait on other people repeatedly. I'm okay with a few minutes here and there, but standing in ouro or pocket d waiting for 10-20 minutes ...no, I'm not gonna do that. Love that there's more than one way to skin the figurative kitty. 

But hey, if it's working for you, and clearly it is, carry on, my good man. Not like I could stop you anyway, lol! 

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 10/5/2021 at 5:03 AM, Black_Assassin said:

I would say 500B is a good place to hang up the boots. However being able to use a T rather than a B after your net worth would be pretty pimp. 

 

0.5tn.  I can live with that.  Or maybe I work until 0.501tn and just round to the nearest trillion.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 10/5/2021 at 8:23 AM, Ukase said:

Yomo can speak for himself, but I think he stashes certain amounts on certain characters, always has a certain amount tied up in active bids, and has other amounts tied up in "Inactive" bids, the stuff on the AH that doesn't actually sell, or if it does, it routinely sells at a higher price than he's bid for it - kind of like those level 53 Hamidon enhancements that didn't exist in game until a recent patch. 
 

 

I'm happy to share my stash strategy.  Worst case scenario, someone figures out a way to take it away from me and then I get to start all over again!

 

I have four vault alts.  Each one of them puts bids of 10x 100mm on non-existent items, so 1bn a market slot.  Currently I'm all-in on one item so if those get re-released, I'm a little screwed.  It's happened before -- I got blindsided by the price cut on Winter Packs in 2019 (which was my fault entirely, and I made a lot of inf, so I can't complain); then I was invested in lvl 53 HOs until those were instituted.  So let's just say I try to keep my eyes on upcoming changes.  

 

I have a number of income-generating alts.  My standard path is to accumulate 1.2bn, then send myself an email for 999,999,999 and leave myself 200mm for working capital.  I'm constantly reinvesting.  Once a month or so I clean out my email stash and move it to one of my vault alts.  I trust the AH a lot more than I trust the email system, and I have definitely seen emails get lost or get delayed and delivered months later.  Plus, I've been told you can only have 100 emails.

 

I've got a lot of alts (maybe 150 or so).  Some of them are name place holders, and some are "challenge" alts (which don't use the AH), but almost all of the rest of them are self-funded.  Eventually I'll aggregate everyone's spare cash, but that feels like a daunting task right now.