The Uber Fallacy

[Yomo Kimyata]

So, today I notice a run on uncommon salvage, which is not surprising.  Then I notice that there is none for offer under a certain level.

 

I also see that converters have well under 5,000 for sale and that you can drive a figurative truck through the bid-offer.

 

There are a lot of things on the AH that have a wide bid-offer percentage-wise, and I feel that generally they are things that people want when they want them, and consider them valueless otherwise.  In real life, I call that the Uber Fallacy.  People who want to get a driver complain at how expensive their rides are, how inconvenient it is that they don't have a driver exactly when and where they want it.  And then when I suggest that they become an Uber driver to take advantage of this clear market opportunity, they scoff because it is not worth their time.

 

I will admit, I only make markets in yellow salvage when I'm trying to build up a nest egg on a new character (although I've got plenty stored up) and I am definitely a better buyer than seller of converters (they would have to get close to 500,000 before I would consider selling rather than using them).

 

just observing.

[iBot]

I'm not certain the economic term for this but there is definitely something in human nature that causes the thinking: "I want this.  It is too much.  And I don't want to provide it myself."  Maybe one of our more learned colleagues can share some insight there.

 

I noticed an odd run on all salvage yesterday afternoon (my time).  I was selling off some stuff from my fire farmer and all of a sudden yellow salvage was going for 10-20k a pop.  Common was going for 500-1k or more.  Rare was hovering around 475k.  And this wasn't just a few pieces.  I sold probably 50 or so items before the buys started to level out at the normal values.  Then it spiked again about 45 minutes later.  Was very odd.  At first I thought maybe someone had accidentally added a zero to a stack of bids but I ran out of salvage before I saw prices drop down again.  Would be interesting to know what occurred if it was a batch of new players or if someone was just amusing themselves by placing high bids for salvage.

[Ukase]

I think it's got to be someone amusing themselves. 

But, what do I know?

I have tons of brain storm ideas,  Once, I thought - "screw this marketer. I'm not gonna play his game."  But, I did the math, and even at 50k per uncommon, the rare is still a better deal to make from 20 brain storm ideas. So, I went to my farmers and let them drop stacks of uncommon in the base for the other character that needed them. 

It's crazy. I have literally billions and can still make influence buying uncommon at the capped 100k price, but I refuse to do it. I wonder why I even market or farm anymore. Unlike Yomo, while I do give some away, it has to be my idea. I'm not going to just drop 20M because I got an email. When I do drop inf, it's a tidy sum, but it's almost always unsolicited. 

As for meeting this need for uncommons, the devs have done that already by placing caps on the price. That's why I never market with salvage. It's a losing battle. The sheer volume you'd have to deal with is more trouble than it's worth. I'm not trying to make the next billion 50k at a time, I'm trying to make the next billion 5M at a time. 

[iBot]

I tend to treat salvage as just inf that takes an extra step to claim.  Certainly not going to get rich off it.  When it sells on the AH for more than I can vendor it I see it as a net plus.  The spike in price continued through the weekend so I'm still puzzled as to why.  You'd think by now most people would either have a massive stash themselves or would have realized that there is no reason to BUY NOW at 500 a pop or whatever the price ends up.  Not that I'm complaining though.  A few months back it seemed as if common would not sell for anything more than 100 inf.  Which also baffles me to this day from way back on live.  Why would you sell something on the AH for less than you could vendor it other than not being bothered to head over to the vendor?  Such are the mysteries of humans.

[Sunsette]

Price spike I would bet is related to the fact that Homecoming's server functions have been slowed down indefinitely until the hosting is fixed, meaning that already low priority functions like cross-server salvage retrieval in AH buckets is extremely low, so people drive up the price for instant purchase on same-server.

 

I dumped out 5 characters' worth of yellow salvage at 1 inf to try to reset the market and ended up with a few extra million instantly

Edited June 29, 2021 by Sunsette

[Yomo Kimyata]

Actually, the price spikes are occurring exactly because you (and almost everyone) dumps their salvage at 1 rather than offering it somewhat higher in the market.  Those dumps will all go to the highest outstanding bidder, which right now is something a little over 500 inf.  But there's nothing on offer under 10,000, so anyone who wants to buy NAO can (and will) bid big numbers.  The bid-offer gap is really wide.

 

This isn't a problem, and in fact is an opportunity for profit.  The problem is that it is a miniscule opportunity for profit.  Even if you make a 10,000 inf net profit on 1,000 uncommon salvage over the course of a day (easily done), that's only 10mm.  I don't know about you, but that's nothing to me, and to many people.  I usually make that in well under a minute on my marketing alts.

 

I'm actually making (really wide) markets in yellow salvage right now for a few reasons:  1.  I'm starting up a few new alts, and I like them to earn their own way.  But that's a small impact since I move on to better ways after a few 100,000.  2.  I'm a net buyer on marketing days, and it drives me nuts to put in bids and not have them fill by the next time I log on that character.  So either I will put in higher bids, or 3. Sometimes I just get annoyed, figure out how deep the outstanding bids are, and just dump a few hundred or thousand salvage on the market so that my bids will fill.

 

 

[Ukase]

16 hours ago, Sunsette said:

Price spike I would bet is related to the fact that Homecoming's server functions have been slowed down indefinitely until the hosting is fixed, meaning that already low priority functions like cross-server salvage retrieval in AH buckets is extremely low, so people drive up the price for instant purchase on same-server.

 

I dumped out 5 characters' worth of yellow salvage at 1 inf to try to reset the market and ended up with a few extra million instantly

I could certainly be wrong, and very often am. But I am not under the impression the AH works this way. As I understand it, someone posts their salvage for auction at X price. On ANY of our 5 servers here in HC, whomever bids the most for that salvage gets it. Doesn't matter if the AH is slow due to duct tape procedures. It still checks each piece of salvage to see what the cheapest offer is to provide the piece or pieces of salvage to the highest bids. 

I will grant you that the AH may work more slowly due to this duct tape, but I don't think it checks the home server of the person posting and satisfies that bid and doesn't check the other servers due to duct tape. 

But, the transparency post about their duct tape solution could have stated things just as you said, but when I read it, that wasn't my take away. 

[Sunsette]

@Yomo Kimyata I'm not doubting you but I don't understand how posting my salvage at higher prices would have forestalled the price run. Like, best case scenario, wouldn't posting it at higher values either...

 

1. Still not be as high as the bids, so gets swallowed up anyway
2. Be too high for existing bids, causing people to bid higher?

 

🤔😵

Edited June 29, 2021 by Sunsette

[Yomo Kimyata]

1.  you are absolutely right.  Posting at any price that insta-sells has the same effect.

2.  It really depends.  In a real equilibrium market, there would be a clearing price between 500 inf and 10,000 inf.   but if you offered at something like 2,000, people who bid 2,000 would buy it, you'd get more than 500, they'd get less than 10,000, win-win.  Trades would print at 2,000, which would influence people to put bids and offers near that level.

 

The problem is certainly not your selling it at 1.  The problem is that the incremental bother for you to post it at 2,000 and hopefully sell it at that level or higher is worth far less than the 1,500+ incremental inf you would receive.  It's a drop in the bucket, and why would anyone bother?  So we get these big swings in price (which really aren't that big, right?  But people have conniptions when they have to pay 5-10 times what they used to pay, despite the fact that it is still practically nothing.

 

I've experimented with this in the past, on a small scale, but I am considering paying seeded priced for every piece of salvage I buy.  I mean, 250 for a common v. 10,000?  Practically nothing.  1,000 or 10,000 for an uncommon v. 100,000?  Almost nothing.  For rares, we start to get into real money but I'm just thinking out loud at this point.

[iBot]

Something still seems counter intuitive here though and maybe it is definite motivations are at odds with each other.  When I sell something on the AH I try to determine two things primarily: what is the maximum I can sell for and what is the minimum I will accept where I don't feel I cheated myself out of inf by not asking for more.  Same thing goes for when I buy something on the AH.  I want to know that I paid a fair price that wasn't inflated.  So then what is the driving force behind spikes in prices for anything on the AH and not just salvage?

 

So a hypothetical.  Let's say someone that lists common salvage on the AH decides that they will no longer accept any sale under 10,000 inf.  What happens?  Well human nature comes along and someone else decides you know I'll accept 9,999 inf and so on until the price drops all the way to 1 inf.  Same thing on the other side.  Someone bids 1 inf and they don't get what they want so they go to 2, 3, 4, ... etc all the way to 10,000 inf.  What then is the value of common salvage?  Is it the price that buys/sells NOW or is it the average across the entire margin?  The spikes have to be driven by impatience don't they?  But shouldn't impatience be satisfied at some point and prices settle back to what the general populace will bear?  Ultimately we the players decide the price of these things but being human we refuse to act collectively to keep the price artificially low because someone will always decide I will accept less or I will pay more.

 

No real idea where I was headed by with this other than to say that while I hadn't thought about the AH being connected to all the servers hence a larger populace for buyers/sellers I don't completely agree that a technical working of the AH would affect the pricing that dramatically.  Possible I am missing something more fundamental there so please enlighten me 😁

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 minutes ago, iBot said:

snip

 

This too is 100% correct.  I also behave in this fashion, which I would term economically rational.

 

What keeps things turning is that there are plenty of people who do not follow this path.  It is more important to them to sell something instantly or to buy something instantly.  This is also economically rational, because you have to take the inf value of time into account.  However, I feel that many people over value their time in terms of inf (or, possibly, I undervalue my time in terms of inf!)  If you think about it, every single trade on the AH has an active party and a passive party.  The passive party put in a bid or an offer that would not instantly transact.  The active party put in a bid or an offer that *would* instantly transact.  The active party buys or sells to the passive counterparty, and the passive person gets the better price (higher for a sale, lower for a buy).

 

My guideline is that if I am looking to sell a bunch of something and the first one transacts instantly at my price, I stop and ask myself if I am selling them too cheaply or if someone has a dumb bid in.  If the former, then I change my selling price to something higher than the last price.  If the latter, congrats, you just bought 50 Performance Shifter +endurances!

 

None of this is right or wrong, it just is.  But I'm pretty sure my way is making me more inf.

[iBot]

Agreed there and trade is always about what I value vs. what someone else values.  My line of reasoning was just that don't spikes have to be caused by buy NOW?  Meaning they cannot be driven by sellers placing items on the AH for very high prices unless those are the only ones listed.  And since players cannot corner the market on certain items why does the price of those items not drop to 1?  And yes I know there is an opportunity cost for everything in that I had to spend time to get it.  There must be some reward mechanism in our brains that gives us a nice dopamine hit when we have a successful transaction because I really can't think of why I don't sell everything for 1 inf other than because I don't want to because I know it is worth more than that but less than some other completely arbitrary value.  Oh darn... now I've gone cross eyed 🤪

[Ukase]

15 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

However, I feel that many people over value their time in terms of inf (or, possibly, I undervalue my time in terms of inf!) 

My father, a Dean of Economics (just so ya know he wasn't just some wise old fart), would say to me, "Time is more precious than money. I can accumulate money, I cannot accumulate time." 

But, the construct of time, while we're gaming is an interesting thing. I think a number of folks have a certain number of hours they can play, while another set of folks have...seemingly limitless time to play. I work remotely, and candidly, my "8 hour day" only takes a couple of hours for me. So, I do have a lot of time, if I so choose. But, between meals, exercise, family, I'm still only going to play so much. So time is important, but I detest the feeling of being "ripped off". It makes no sense to use brain storm ideas for uncommon salvage when it can be had for less than 125k. (5 brainstorms gets an uncommon vs 20 for a rare). So, 20 brainstorms are worth roughly 500k, making an uncommon (5 brain storms) worth roughly 125k. Yet, I'd sooner burn through them rather than pay over 5k for an uncommon. It's a loss, but the feeling of letting some marketer get over at my expense is a worse feeling. 
I've got ...sheesh...maybe 7000 (units of 20) of them on one of my accounts. Not like I'm gonna miss them, lol. But It's not like I'd miss the influence either. 

But, my grandmother who didn't even attend a high school, had no idea how old she was (no birth certificates in her country of origin - only a certificate of baptism) would tell me, "Every dollar you save multiplies to the bottom line. That means, if you save your money, that's time you don't have to spend working." 

So, there's some wisdom in not giving the AH your resources. As we "work" ( Play our characters), we earn inf. If we never spend any on the AH, it stands to reason we'll accumulate a lot more than if we were spending inf on the AH. But then...the idea of blowing 100 merits on a recipe...now that's really painful, when I know I can get converters and make a lot more than that recipe would cost if I'd bought it from the AH. 

Ultimately, it comes down to each person's preferred gaming experience. I have spent a lot of time on another thread trying to determine why someone would kill most/all when they could race through, get the merits and move on. And someone was kind enough to get it into my thick skull that all of us have our own preferred gaming experience, and it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. Wouldn't think it would take so much effort for something so simple to sink in a thick skull, would ya? 

Some genuinely detest the market. They think it should all be free, or they at least want to minimize time with the AH open, so they sell goods like lotg 7.5% for 1 inf, and then they overpay for the same thing 8M when they want one. Doesn't make sense to me, but hey, doesn't have to. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

22 minutes ago, iBot said:

Agreed there and trade is always about what I value vs. what someone else values.  My line of reasoning was just that don't spikes have to be caused by buy NOW?  Meaning they cannot be driven by sellers placing items on the AH for very high prices unless those are the only ones listed.  And since players cannot corner the market on certain items why does the price of those items not drop to 1?  And yes I know there is an opportunity cost for everything in that I had to spend time to get it.  There must be some reward mechanism in our brains that gives us a nice dopamine hit when we have a successful transaction because I really can't think of why I don't sell everything for 1 inf other than because I don't want to because I know it is worth more than that but less than some other completely arbitrary value.  Oh darn... now I've gone cross eyed 🤪

 

 I don't sell *anything* at 1 unless I am happy to sell it at 1 *or* I'm trying to figure out what the lowest outstanding bid is.  I for sure get a dopamine hit from figuring out the right price to sell it so as to maximize inf gain.  And that goes to @Ukase 's point as well.  At this point in my career, there is absolutely no point in me spending even one second of time making inf.  I have far more than I need, more than I can give away, and nothing to spend it on.  Yet I do because it's like doing a crossword puzzle -- it's vaguely intellectual and hopefully staving off full blown dementia.  Also I just cannot *STAND* the idea of letting any of the rest of you little ****@@$$ having any of my rightful inf.

[nihilii]

16 hours ago, Ukase said:

But, my grandmother who didn't even attend a high school, had no idea how old she was (no birth certificates in her country of origin - only a certificate of baptism) would tell me, "Every dollar you save multiplies to the bottom line. That means, if you save your money, that's time you don't have to spend working." 

I find it interesting how this sort of intuitively rational thinking that doesn't work so well in real life because we've decided playing with monetary policy is good... actually works perfectly in the CoH economy.

 

There is something truly beautiful to me in purple prices being roughly 17M inf today, just as they were roughly 17M inf one year ago. There's no complicated and cumbersome market architecture actively working behind the scene to guarantee a purple IO should be about 17M inf. Only the underlying mechanisms designed by the original CoH devs and refined with great success by the Homecoming team. Making influence both currency and store of value.

[iBot]

All very true and certainly lessons that can be applied across the spectrum.  Still it is an amusing area of human psychology which is really what economics is all about anyway.

[Yomo Kimyata]

26 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I find it interesting how this sort of intuitively rational thinking that doesn't work so well in real life because we've decided playing with monetary policy is good... actually works perfectly in the CoH economy.

 

There is something truly beautiful to me in purple prices being roughly 17M inf today, just as they were roughly 17M inf one year ago. There's no complicated and cumbersome market architecture actively working behind the scene to guarantee a purple IO should be about 17M inf. Only the underlying mechanisms designed by the original CoH devs and refined with great success by the Homecoming team. Making influence both currency and store of value.

 

It's really brilliant.  If I were a university student, there's a tremendous opportunity to write a really comprehensive thesis proving or disproving various economic theories.  Both traditional and behavioral.

[Sunsette]

9 hours ago, nihilii said:

I find it interesting how this sort of intuitively rational thinking that doesn't work so well in real life because we've decided playing with monetary policy is good... actually works perfectly in the CoH economy.

 

There is something truly beautiful to me in purple prices being roughly 17M inf today, just as they were roughly 17M inf one year ago. There's no complicated and cumbersome market architecture actively working behind the scene to guarantee a purple IO should be about 17M inf. Only the underlying mechanisms designed by the original CoH devs and refined with great success by the Homecoming team. Making influence both currency and store of value.

 

I mean, part of that is mechanics that absolutely can't translate to real life, and we're working with relatively small groups here. I would be *interested* to see what an economist says but to me the biggest thing I would take note of is just that it's healthier and more fun economy to participate in than most MMOs because it doesn't have the 'permanently bind' mechanic in overuse.

[nihilii]

3 hours ago, Sunsette said:

I mean, part of that is mechanics that absolutely can't translate to real life, and we're working with relatively small groups here.

 

For sure! Mostly, I'm happy to see we've slowly evolved from Live prices and harsh inflation to a relatively stable system, some thanks to changes the Live devs did over the years and some thanks to the Homecoming changes. There was effort in tweaking the parameters until they got it right, and it worked.

 

We have it pretty good indeed, and yet now that you mention bounded items I can't help but yearn for unbounded incarnate components. 🙂 I'd love to see how the market would develop around that.

[Myrmidon]

On 6/29/2021 at 5:17 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

The problem is that it is a miniscule opportunity for profit.

Correct. Why bother with chicken feed.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

Correct. Why bother with chicken feed.

 

Right, but since this is a player-driven economy (meaning that players supply other players), no one wants to be the chump who shovels out the chicken feed.  I doubt that the GMs thought about this when they seeded salvage, but yet another positive purpose that seeding served was to provide all that chicken feed, albeit at (relatively) high prices.

 

This is why I always react negatively to the people who want to only have rare salvage drop for them, since white and yellow aren't worth their time.  In my mind, you shouldn't get to only select the rares, because that's part of the mechanism that keeps whites and yellows coming into the system.  Even if selling them is only muscle memory or habit rather than any significant profit motive.  Also, sometimes I'm grumpy.

[Myrmidon]

I completely get just dropping things on the market for 1 Inf (I do that the majority of the time myself). It’s the micromanagement of Common/Uncommon salvage that just doesn’t make sense, since it’s a complete waste of time and there are much better ways to do that in this game.

[Troyusrex]

On 6/29/2021 at 4:58 PM, Ukase said:

But, the construct of time, while we're gaming is an interesting thing. 

Ha! Made me realise that I'll spend hours sitting here reading threads, but if I have to wait 5 minutes to get the IO I want it irks me...

[Yoru-hime]

19 minutes ago, Troyusrex said:

Ha! Made me realise that I'll spend hours sitting here reading threads, but if I have to wait 5 minutes to get the IO I want it irks me...

I have to regularly remind myself that nothing in this game costs as much as the "I want it NOW" impulse.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 7/2/2021 at 2:35 AM, Myrmidon said:

I completely get just dropping things on the market for 1 Inf (I do that the majority of the time myself). It’s the micromanagement of Common/Uncommon salvage that just doesn’t make sense, since it’s a complete waste of time and there are much better ways to do that in this game.

 

Specifically with respect to uncommon salvage, I micromanage it (on a very micro level) for two reasons.

 

1.  It's a good fast way to build up a couple of hundred thousand inf on a new character.

2.  I consume a lot of them, and I realize that it's a potential bottleneck in the AH.  I won't buy it NAO but I will buy it Soon(tm).  It's when someone starts messing with my Soon(tm) price that I get annoyed so I log onto an alt, dump yellow salvage until it's at my target, put in lowball bids to fill up my AH slots, profit slightly.