Idiots manipulating market

[Omega-202]

I am really confused by the responses in this thread.  I don't think Snarky or anyone else is arguing that this is some monumental problem that needs solving or that the current prices are absurd, when you look at the big picture.  I don't know where you all are getting that from.

 

The issue here is that someone is pulling a dick move that doesn't benefit them in any way and is just inconveniencing people all around.  

 

If someone goes to a movie theater and texts the whole time with the screen at max brightness, is it a big deal?  No, not really.  But people can definitely say and think that person is a jerk for doing so.  That's what this is.  Someone's being an inconsiderate ass and Snarky and others are justifiably calling them out.  

 

You all need to just let people vent sometimes, especially if it's about someone going out of their way to mildly grief the whole community.  

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

The issue here is that someone is pulling a dick move that doesn't benefit them in any way and is just inconveniencing people all around.  

How do we know someone is pulling a dick move? I for one raised my bids because they needed to be higher for my money machine to keep working on schedule. Pretty harmless and normal behavior. Do we know for sure that any actual dick moves have been made?

[Omega-202]

4 minutes ago, arcane said:

How do we know someone is pulling a dick move? I for one raised my bids because they needed to be higher for my money machine to keep working on schedule. Pretty harmless and normal behavior. Do we know for sure that any actual dick moves have been made?

Do we know anything for sure?  Uncommon salvage has been steady at 1-3k for over a year and suddenly shot up to 10k in the last few weeks with no apparent reason. 

 

To concludr that its just due to the cumulative effect of thousands of veteran players like yourself coincidentally all deciding to raise their personal price point in the span of 2 weeks seems unreasonable.  Occam's Razor and all.  Simplest explanation is that one individual is playing the system instead of thousands of individuals all trending up for no apparent reason at the same time.

[Snarky]

Hence the title of this thread...Idiots manipulating the market.

 

Look, we all gotta finance the army of alts we have.  I play a lot of content at 50 and craft/convert/sell for the vast majority of my income.

 

I understand people find niches in the market.  Some of these I think bring value to the market.  others?  prob not, but I get it.  20 bucks is 20 bucks.

 

I once in a while will be shopping for a purple and the market is sideways on one particular enhancer.  So.... I will grab another, convert and save myself some cash.  If it is truly lopsided I might even grab 5-10 more (rare, but I have done it) and convert, relist, and make a tidy profit.  I do not seek this stuff out.  But if I see a way to make 5 mil a pop on something I tend to not ignore it.

 

But this crap about uncommon salvage is petty and cannot be a very profitable venture time invested vs influence gained    therefore....IDIOTS.  Possibly griefers

[Luminara]

19 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Hence the title of this thread...Idiots manipulating the market.

 

Look, we all gotta finance the army of alts we have.  I play a lot of content at 50 and craft/convert/sell for the vast majority of my income.

 

I understand people find niches in the market.  Some of these I think bring value to the market.  others?  prob not, but I get it.  20 bucks is 20 bucks.

 

I once in a while will be shopping for a purple and the market is sideways on one particular enhancer.  So.... I will grab another, convert and save myself some cash.  If it is truly lopsided I might even grab 5-10 more (rare, but I have done it) and convert, relist, and make a tidy profit.  I do not seek this stuff out.  But if I see a way to make 5 mil a pop on something I tend to not ignore it.

 

But this crap about uncommon salvage is petty and cannot be a very profitable venture time invested vs influence gained    therefore....IDIOTS.  Possibly griefers

 

So it's fine if you're the manipulator, if you're the one driving prices up on something, if you can assuage your conscience with contrived justification, but other people doing it is bad.

 

Oh, yeah, this thread just became a lot more fun.  Where's my napalm...

[Bionic_Flea]

34 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Where's my napalm...

 

Squirrels stole it.

 

[Snarky]

31 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

So it's fine if you're the manipulator, if you're the one driving prices up on something, if you can assuage your conscience with contrived justification, but other people doing it is bad.

 

Oh, yeah, this thread just became a lot more fun.  Where's my napalm...

You do not know how to read for context and logic very well do you?

 

So very sorry.  A good High School or Community College may help

 

 

I am explaining that someone is spending hours, possibly days manipulating the market for very little return.  I also mentioned that I have flipped as many as 5 purples at a time (converting them to ones people were bidding on but not getting) as I randomly looked for a Purple for myself.  
 

You equate my activity in converting and selling to be the same as someone grinding out thousands upon thousands of petty transactions to drive ip the price on an item

 

Dam.  Never mind the college. You stupid

[Luminara]

6 minutes ago, Snarky said:

You equate my activity in converting and selling to be the same as someone grinding out thousands upon thousands of petty transactions to drive ip the price on an item

 

You're manipulating the market.  It doesn't matter which section, it doesn't matter what price range, it doesn't matter whether you do it for 5 minutes a week or 5 hours every day, you are manipulating the market, and claiming "I only do it a little, it's everyone else who's bad for doing it!" only makes you sound hypocritical, entitled and whiny.

 

30 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Dam.  Never mind the college. You stupid

I'm always delighted to receive advice on educational avenues and criticism of my intelligence from people who display spelling and punctuation deficiencies.

[Omega-202]

45 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

You're manipulating the market.  It doesn't matter which section, it doesn't matter what price range, it doesn't matter whether you do it for 5 minutes a week or 5 hours every day, you are manipulating the market, and claiming "I only do it a little, it's everyone else who's bad for doing it!" only makes you sound hypocritical, entitled and whiny.

 

I'm always delighted to receive advice on educational avenues and criticism of my intelligence from people who display spelling and punctuation deficiencies.

Nah, I hate to defend Snarky but this is bullshit.  There's a big difference between doing some marketeering, flipping a few enhancements compared to using a full server list of alts to capture the second biggest market in the game and drive it up 10x.  

 

If you're going to sit there with a straight face and argue otherwise...what are you doing?  You're not that dumb.  

[cranebump]

6 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Nah, I hate to defend Snarky but this is bullshit.  There's a big difference between doing some marketeering, flipping a few enhancements compared to using a full server list of alts to capture the second biggest market in the game and drive it up 10x.  

 

If you're going to sit there with a straight face and argue otherwise...what are you doing?  You're not that dumb.  

Can I argue not about the market issues, but that I AM, indeed that dumb?:-)

[InvaderStych]

Can we see the evidence in support of this being driven by a single player rather than [A Numerically Significant/Relevant Number] of players putting in BIN bids in large quantities?

 

<commentary removed in the interest of neutrality>

 

🤷‍♂️

Edited June 15, 2022 by InvaderStych
Made the number vague to avoid quibbling over the number.

[Omega-202]

6 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

Can we see the evidence in support of this being driven by a single player rather than [A Numerically Significant/Relevant Number] of players putting in BIN bids in large quantities?

 

<commentary removed in the interest of neutrality>

 

🤷‍♂️

That seems like a distinction without a difference.  The timing of the spike would suggest that if it is multiple people, they coordinated this.  So its either one person being an annoyance or a group of people being an annoyance together. 

 

If its a group, it actually sadder that multiple people think its a good idea to make like 30k per transaction (buy at 1.5k, selling right now at ~6k 'buy now', two 10x stack transactions to flip).  The margins seem minimal so they have to be doing it as a joke or something.  

[Sovera]

Ladies, ladies, no ad hominems. We're a small enough community to begin with and its easy to get mad and stay that way.

 

 

We should appreciate the crafters since there is no way we'd dispose of thousands of converters that are created every day.

 

As someone said it's a venting thread and as it was mentioned it is not terribly important (we type 10000 instead of 5000, not exactly a huge problem and none will go broke over it), but it's annoying.

 

Heck, at some point I was buying yellows for 50k because I would type 10k and it would not be bought. I just had no patience to faff around typing 15k, then 20k, trying to discover when and where the bids currently were at. Just like I try to buy something for 4 million and if it does not buy I just jump for 5 million instead of trying 4.1 mill, then 4.2 mill, etc.

[InvaderStych]

5 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

If its a group, it actually sadder that multiple people think its a good idea to make like 30k per transaction (buy at 1.5k, selling right now at ~6k 'buy now', two 10x stack transactions to flip).  The margins seem minimal so they have to be doing it as a joke or something.  

 

Not what I meant in the least.

 

5 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Heck, at some point I was buying yellows for 50k because I would type 10k and it would not be bought. I just had no patience to faff around typing 15k, then 20k, trying to discover when and where the bids currently were at. Just like I try to buy something for 4 million and if it does not buy I just jump for 5 million instead of trying 4.1 mill, then 4.2 mill, etc.

 

This is what I meant. Writ large.  50k is pocket change.  Hell, it is barely pocket change. 50k is a freaking rounding error in a lot of player budgets.  That's what, a handful of bosses at 50?

 

Not hard to imagine prices just going up from player impatience. It is just a game after all, and not everyone approaches it like it is the personal finances of their family and the house is on the line.  Not hard to imagine a surge just from people unwilling to wait.

Edited June 16, 2022 by InvaderStych

[Bionic_Flea]

Can we have a thread proving how dumb we all are.  Like with charts and data and stuff!

[Omega-202]

26 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Not what I meant in the least.

 

 

This is what I meant. Writ large.  50k is pocket change.  Hell, it is barely pocket change. 50k is a freaking rounding error in a lot of player budgets.  That's what, a handful of bosses at 50?

 

Not hard to imagine prices just going up from player impatience. It is just a game after all, and not everyone approaches it like it is the personal finances of their family and the house is on the line.  Not hard to imagine a surge just from people unwilling to wait.

Before the past few weeks, the price has kept pretty steady at 1-2k for months (or years), and has only trended down since the seeding.  Your alternate explanation is that suddenly, with no impetus, players have gotten impatient in the span of the last few weeks and just randomly decided to start jacking up their yellow salvage bids?  Yeah? Is that what you're suggesting?

 

If that's the case, why is rare salvage still south of 500k?  If players randomly got impatient en masse, why didnt that budge?  What about special rare enhancements like Perf Shift and Gamblers?  Nope, those are steady.  Purples?  Still south of 20mil, and i got a few nice bargain buys this week.  ATOs?  Still at 8mil or below.  Converters?  Still ~70k.  

 

So the only thing people got impatient with the last 2-3 weeks is yellow salvage...or someone or a group of someones is manipulating.

 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Omega-202

[Andreah]

I pause from eating popcorn while reading this.

 

First, I doubt there's market manipulation going on. I'm a fairly large scale marketeer, and I've tried just about everything, both on Live and on Homecoming. My opinion is that market manipulation at this magnitude and for this length of time would have to be done by a large team, or using quite a few bots, and would lose a lot of money. If they were succeeding, these hypothetical schemes could not be kept secret, or unnoticed by the devs, for long.

 

Second, to claim it is a "fact" that this is happening and it's punishable, then evidence should be collected and given to the devs. Otherwise, this is not 'fact', it's opinion, and at best "possible", not even "likely". From what I see, this are reasonable price change stemming from general market conditions. There's no reason to believe the price of salvage should be constant, long term. IMO, we should see a long term secular rise in salvage prices because a larger proportion of Homecoming's player base knows they're useful and bids for them off the market. Certainly I've done my best on my server in chat to explain to folks how to use the invention system, how to bid smartly on the market, and how to use converters to produce things they need. I have seen other prices continue to change as well. Boosters have been rising, because they're useful to more of the existing players who pimping their end game builds, and catalysts have been slowly falling because more people realize those are bad choices to use on anything but ATOs. We tell people this in help chat frequently. It adds up to a collectively more market savvy community.

 

Third, regarding flipping. It's a legit market activity. Flippers don't force people to sell game things, and flippers don't force anyone to buy them. If players don't like the prices flippers operate at, they should figure out their bid/sell points and squeeze them out -- it's not hard to do. Flippers exist because most people don't care enough to bother keeping the margins thin. And flippers actually perform useful services -- they even out sell and buy prices and they drain more influence out of the game economy.

 

Finally, the entire auction system is optional. If some players don't like it, they should stop using it. There's nothing there we can't get for ourselves from content rewards and currencies.  If we feel that's too expensive; well then, we're complaining the market isn't delivering us as fantastically good a deal as it used to.  But if we still use the market, then we must, at some level, realize we're still getting a very good deal out of it.

 

Back to my popcorn. 

[InvaderStych]

43 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Yeah? Is that what you're suggesting?

 

🙄

 

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking questions because this thread lacks anything other than anecdotal observations amongst swapped insults, wild opinions, and the occasional joke.

 

Order of magnitude explains why this is only impacting uncommon salvage - regardless of it being a natural moment in the market or some nefarious plot by a lone actor.  There's a big difference between 50k and 20mil.  It just as easy/likely for semi-casual players to shrug off a 50k+ BIN price as it is for someone with a bunch of free, inf, and alts to corner a market when the unit price is that small.

 

Maybe Rares could be pushed to 1mil this way, but far less likely.  What we wouldn't see is BIN bids driving a consistent price surge of this magnitude in 7 Figure unit prices.  There aren't as many players who can throw those out willy-nilly.

 

Also, at a lower unit price, the possibility of a wider swing from norm is higher than a 7or 8 figure unit price, where there is more room to overbid the norm before it starts looking outlandish.

 

We might see uncommon salvage go from 10k to 60k, but we're not going to see Winters go from 20Mil to 120Mil without an unnatural influence.  That would take a concerted effort by someone manipulating the market as the unit price is too high for BIN bidding to move the price that far.  That's the most extreme example, but I don't see it happening with the 8-10mil ATOs either.

Edited June 16, 2022 by InvaderStych
lol, math

[Andreah]

8 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

we're not going to see Winters go from 20Mil to 120Mil without an unnatural influence.

Not only that, but you can BUY reward merits for 1 Million inf, each. 100 reward merits buy a Winter-O. If Winter-O's are ever selling for more than 100 Million + market fee, I'll mass produce them.

[Zappalina]

Dear Prophet, You know what's happening?  Soon it will be GONE to the MERICANS! SoMEone is Dupen the Rarez.

Seriously.  (because I know how much that phrase is liked by this community) SERIOUSLY?

 

Mediocre Rarez are being Duped. I feel your pain the real world economy is stressful and then voila' there it is mediocre rarez - art imitating life (go figure).  I use the AE ticket vendor to run through a farm or just a regular AE mission (but I prefer a farm it seems just quicker) with the ticket option instead of regular rewards chosen, sometimes;  and purchase the precious(eses) *I made you a picture* that way.  You can win influence and tickets and purchase from the Ticket Vendor in the AE exactly what you would like.  *Winning!*

 

[Snarky]

i take it you are not part of "this community?"

 

and we are talking uncommon.

 

get on point nerd

[Zappalina]

10 minutes ago, Snarky said:

i take it you are not part of "this community?"

 

and we are talking uncommon.

 

get on point nerd

Are you flirting with me?

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

There's a big difference between doing some marketeering, flipping a few enhancements compared to using a full server list of alts to capture the second biggest market in the game and drive it up 10x.

 

Removing lower-priced purples from circulation leaves only higher-priced purples.  Replacing those lower-priced purples with higher-priced purples doesn't reduce the average price of purples, it increases the average price.  The market is thus manipulated to increase the price of purples.  This is the most fundamental principle of flipping.  Raise the average price by removing or restricting the availability of lower-priced goods.

 

The intent may be different (and i was not implying that @Snarky was doing this maliciously, so if that was what it seemed to be, i apologize (but i don't apologize for pointing out the hypocrisy of complaining about rising prices when one admits to raising prices)), the motivation may be different, the quantity may be different, but the result is the same because the activity is the same.  Whether it's purples or uncommon salvage, flipping increases prices as a direct result of the activity of buying low and selling high, and flipping is market manipulation.

 

The impact of flipping "a few" enhancements may be shorter-term than mass purchasing of an entire category of salvage and flipping everything at 5-10x the previous price, but even that's not guaranteed.  There is no control over player behavior.

[Troo]

34 minutes ago, Zappalina said:

Are you flirting with me?

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

Oh, yeah, this thread just became a lot more fun.

3 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

I hate to defend Snarky but this is bullshit.

 

[Troo]

@Luminara laundry day?