Whoever cornered the market

[macskull]

On 4/25/2023 at 2:50 PM, tidge said:

Salvage was seeded by the devs. I don't recall if anything else like converters or boosters were seeded.

In the past, the prices of the Winter packs was lowered for a short time, but that is no more.

Salvage is still seeded but the prices the seeded inventory is listed at is significantly higher than the going rate, so the seeded supply just exists as an "oh shit" backup. All the super packs are seeded since the old Paragon Rewards system doesn't exist anymore, and ATOs and super packs no longer drop as rewards from mob defeats.

[Herotu]

On 7/8/2023 at 6:44 AM, macskull said:

Salvage is still seeded but the prices the seeded inventory is listed at is significantly higher than the going rate, so the seeded supply just exists as an "oh shit" backup. All the super packs are seeded since the old Paragon Rewards system doesn't exist anymore, and ATOs and super packs no longer drop as rewards from mob defeats.

They could put the seeded stuff (specifically end-game rewards, i.e. L50 stuff) in the game as rewards for end-game (whatever that is) content.

 

I always liked the idea of funnelling players into doing certain content for certain rewards, but a lot of other players complain about it. That's why I came to the conclusion that tokens are the best way to do it. Tokens for the content you enjoy, but more efficient tokens for the thing the devs want to emphasise. But I've digressed.

[macskull]

On 8/5/2023 at 1:39 AM, Herotu said:

They could put the seeded stuff (specifically end-game rewards, i.e. L50 stuff) in the game as rewards for end-game (whatever that is) content.

There's nothing seeded on the market that could be considered "end-game rewards."

 

On 8/5/2023 at 1:39 AM, Herotu said:

That's why I came to the conclusion that tokens are the best way to do it. Tokens for the content you enjoy, but more efficient tokens for the thing the devs want to emphasise. But I've digressed.

That's, uh... that's the reward merit system.

[Yomo Kimyata]

16 minutes ago, macskull said:

There's nothing seeded on the market that could be considered "end-game rewards."

 

???

 

Hero and Winter packs?

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

???

 

Hero and Winter packs?

You can slot those enhancements starting at level 7, and you can buy the packs at level 1 if you have enough inf.

 

I think just about the only thing in the game that could be considered "end-game rewards" is Incarnate stuff (salvage, Empyrean/Astral merits) and those are all account-bound so they can't even go onto the market in the first place.

Edited August 6, 2023 by macskull

[Without_Pause]

Uncommon salvage is silly now. I saw multiple buys at 50k-100K. I spent the weekend adding storage for uncommons and dumping what I had in there and using it to fuel my recipes to convert. I rarely dual box these days, but at this point I can grab a couple 50s and blow through some content while working on their incarnate abilities. So congrats evil marketers, you've made me 'farm' again. 😉

[UltraAlt]

19 hours ago, macskull said:

There's nothing seeded on the market that could be considered "end-game rewards."

 

They shouldn't be seeded.

If they are "rewards", you should have to "earn" them.

[macskull]

7 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

They shouldn't be seeded.

If they are "rewards", you should have to "earn" them.

The HC market is functional enough that seeding isn’t needed (except for items which can’t be obtained any other way than through the market, that wouldn’t make any sense).

 

Locking rewards behind specific content  isn’t great because it shoehorns players into playing a specific way. Options are good and the Homecoming team has (mostly) done a good job with that.

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, macskull said:

Locking rewards behind specific content  isn’t great because it shoehorns players into playing a specific way.

 

That's the whole point of those rewards.

They are meant to funnel players into that content in order to get the related rewards.

[Hyperstrike]

On 4/23/2023 at 12:10 AM, The Robin Hood Initiative said:

Doesn't it take a lot of money to corner a market?

It's also impossible due to merit-based reward systems.

[Without_Pause]

14 hours ago, macskull said:

Locking rewards behind specific content  isn’t great because it shoehorns players into playing a specific way. Options are good and the Homecoming team has (mostly) done a good job with that.

How many Hamidon runs are done if HOs aren't tied to it?

[lemming]

3 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

How many Hamidon runs are done if HOs aren't tied to it?

I suspect a lot of people just run Hami for merits.   I tend to run a char thru to get some extra emp merits when they first hit 50.  If not, I tend to just get the reward merits.  HOs are a roulette reward.   Occasionally you'll get one worth more than 40 reward merits.  At least that's how I feel about it.

[Ironblade]

13 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

How many Hamidon runs are done if HOs aren't tied to it?

A ton.   I never take the HO.  It's 120 merits in like 20 minutes.

[Without_Pause]

12 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

A ton.   I never take the HO.  It's 120 merits in like 20 minutes.

Even if you factor in Live, I don't think I have done Hamidon 5 times. It might be 3, so I'm oblivious to the rewards outside of the HO.

[lemming]

53 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

Even if you factor in Live, I don't think I have done Hamidon 5 times. It might be 3, so I'm oblivious to the rewards outside of the HO.

Four Emp Merits or a HO for any level 50.

80 Merits for the first run of the day for a character.

40 Merits on subsequent ones.  (I think the timer is 18 hours, I don't know if the timer starts then, or after the second Hami?)

[macskull]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

Four Emp Merits or a HO for any level 50.

80 Merits for the first run of the day for a character.

40 Merits on subsequent ones.  (I think the timer is 18 hours, I don't know if the timer starts then, or after the second Hami?)

The timer starts as soon as you defeat Hamidon for the first time. I don't know if the Hive and the Abyss share a cooldown, but I'm pretty sure they do.

[Without_Pause]

On 8/7/2023 at 10:14 AM, Without_Pause said:

Uncommon salvage is silly now. I saw multiple buys at 50k-100K. I spent the weekend adding storage for uncommons and dumping what I had in there and using it to fuel my recipes to convert. I rarely dual box these days, but at this point I can grab a couple 50s and blow through some content while working on their incarnate abilities. So congrats evil marketers, you've made me 'farm' again. 😉

Started my day selling stacks of uncommon salvage for 500k-1m per stack. I am listing them for 1k and they sell instantly.

[lemming]

8 hours ago, macskull said:

The timer starts as soon as you defeat Hamidon for the first time. I don't know if the Hive and the Abyss share a cooldown, but I'm pretty sure they do.

I believe you are correct.   Probably can test this out for certain on Everlasting when there's the weekend Abyss Hami.  Do the midnight Hami in the hive, then the Abyss Hami the next day in the afternoon, then the 7pm Hami.   Should be on reduced rewards for the Abyss, but back to first run for the 7pm

[TheZag]

Abyss and Hive hami do share the same reward timer.  Ive ran both on the same character on the same day and the rewards were locked out.

 

[Andreah]

I think, over time, a backlog of unsold uncommons builds up between 1-25K or so, and supports a usual buy-it-now price in that range. However, f there's a big enough run on it, and that backlog gets depleted, then the buy-it-now-price goes up a lot. It will take a while for it to drop again since the supply is inelastic. 

[tidge]

I am a very uneven joiner of Hamidon Raids. I always take the 80 merits first, and then (because I don't swap characters) it is a coin-toss between the additional 40 merits or a HO. There are a small number of HO that I feel like "oh, that could go on any character", there are a small number of "those are valuable enough to hoard for specific builds", but the vast majority of them are either simply not useful for my builds or not valuable enough for other players' builds that buying them on-demand from the AH is fine for me. It's no secret what 120 merits can do in the hands of a marketeer; as I have written before: as a merit-rich player I see 120 merits as 1.2 ATO for a new character.

 

Every once in a while I'll take the Empyrian Merits, usually on characters I simply don't want to play in Incarnate Content.

[golstat2003]

On 8/8/2023 at 1:36 PM, lemming said:

I suspect a lot of people just run Hami for merits.   I tend to run a char thru to get some extra emp merits when they first hit 50.  If not, I tend to just get the reward merits.  HOs are a roulette reward.   Occasionally you'll get one worth more than 40 reward merits.  At least that's how I feel about it.

 

*raises hand*

 

I haven't run Hami for HOs since live. Once Purples and other advanced IOs became a thing I stopped caring about HOs. Even on the SF/TFs that give them, I always go for the merits.

 

EDIT: To explain further:

 

I can make more money off merits by converting them in to enhancement converters. Give me 800 converters (rought 6-7 hami runs) and I can make a billion in a week on the AH using converters. I've done it on multiple chracters multiple times. HOs became pointless to me once merits could be converted into converters. I can just convert, make the inf and just outright buy the HOs I need on the market.

Edited August 23, 2023 by golstat2003

[Ukase]

On 4/23/2023 at 8:35 AM, brasilgringo said:

Someone's cornering the market on PVP IOs by constantly bidding up all the recipe bids in increments of like 300K -- to the point where they've taken the craft-n-sell margin down from 60%+ to maybe 35%-40% now.  That's a lot of bidding across all PVP IOs during weeks, so I assume they have deep pockets and don't really care about margin (e.g. rather than up bids from say 2,000,000 to 2,000,010 like normal people, they jump to 2,300,000 to squeeze people out, then when you go to 2,300,001 they go to 2,600,000).  It's working for me, as having to sell 2x as many IOs to get the same profit kind of takes the fun out.  Quite a few players have the resources to do so.

I miss the days when the recipes sold for 2M or less. Takes a lot of patience to get that now. 

Thing is - I would enjoy it if recipes were 2.6M. Plenty of profit in that. 
3.2M or so after crafting, salvage. Converters - whether you use them or not depends on what you're trying to do. Just the big three, you're going to burn through a bunch. But if you're just crafting and placing them for sale for 5M...which is darn cheap for a pvp IO, historically speaking. Leaves room for the converter roulette guy to make some if they don't want to craft. Or the guy trying to finish his build and doesn't want to spend 7-8 for one of the big 3. 

I was seeing the Shield Wall's going for 4+M - the end/recharges, too! 
Even trash set PVP recipes were going for 3.4M 

That was fine over the MS even when crazy/drunk/blind/generous folks were buying them up at 15M. But at 7M, nope, not going to do it. 

What I found the most interesting was how many recipes were finding their way into the market. A LOT. Like 100 or so every 12 hours. and that was at my lowball point. Bidding higher would surely have gotten more, because I saw the higher bids in the history. I just don't think they were bidding for very many - which is how I got mine - at least, that's my thinking. 

I don't get pvp recipes every day when I actively play content (non-farm). Maybe when I farm, I might get one every couple of days. I guess...if I was farming all day, then yeah, maybe. Either way - someone was dumping a lot of pvp recipes in the market, more than I'm used to seeing - but then again, the MS event brought more players than I was used to seeing. 

It wouldn't surprise me to learn our HC devs have manipulated the supply ( drop rates) to keep prices low.  But that's pure conjecture. I've always been fairly lucky with the RNG when it comes to drops. At least, I've felt lucky. For all I know everyone gets that kind of "luck". 

[Hyperstrike]

On 4/23/2024 at 4:54 PM, Ukase said:

I miss the days when the recipes sold for 2M or less. Takes a lot of patience to get that now. 

Thing is - I would enjoy it if recipes were 2.6M. Plenty of profit in that. 
3.2M or so after crafting, salvage. Converters - whether you use them or not depends on what you're trying to do. Just the big three, you're going to burn through a bunch. But if you're just crafting and placing them for sale for 5M...which is darn cheap for a pvp IO, historically speaking. Leaves room for the converter roulette guy to make some if they don't want to craft. Or the guy trying to finish his build and doesn't want to spend 7-8 for one of the big 3. 

I was seeing the Shield Wall's going for 4+M - the end/recharges, too! 
Even trash set PVP recipes were going for 3.4M 

That was fine over the MS even when crazy/drunk/blind/generous folks were buying them up at 15M. But at 7M, nope, not going to do it. 

What I found the most interesting was how many recipes were finding their way into the market. A LOT. Like 100 or so every 12 hours. and that was at my lowball point. Bidding higher would surely have gotten more, because I saw the higher bids in the history. I just don't think they were bidding for very many - which is how I got mine - at least, that's my thinking. 

I don't get pvp recipes every day when I actively play content (non-farm). Maybe when I farm, I might get one every couple of days. I guess...if I was farming all day, then yeah, maybe. Either way - someone was dumping a lot of pvp recipes in the market, more than I'm used to seeing - but then again, the MS event brought more players than I was used to seeing. 

It wouldn't surprise me to learn our HC devs have manipulated the supply ( drop rates) to keep prices low.  But that's pure conjecture. I've always been fairly lucky with the RNG when it comes to drops. At least, I've felt lucky. For all I know everyone gets that kind of "luck". 

If you're looking for zombie-click type play?
Sure.

But pretty much everything you want is shallow with HMerits.
And it's far more stable than the market.

 

If I feel the need to massage my marketing e-peen, I can be patient.

If I just want it now?  I just get it now.
I've built up billions of Inf and thousands of HMerits.

[tidge]

Re: PVP recipes

 

I would never consider getting into the (crafted and/or converted) PVP corner of the market:

• PVP recipes drop across all levels of content 10 through 50+
• Sub-50 PVP pieces can be attuned, catalysts are trivial to come by
• There are relative few (percentage-wise) PVP pieces that I find valuable for my builds
• The cost of the rare components automatically raises the necessarily minimum selling price of the PVP recipes

There are a handful of PVP recipes that I low-bid-on to make sure my personal supply of those doesn't run out, but otherwise I'm crafting and converting PVP recipes as they drop (for my own eventual use).

 

I don't think the drop rate for PVP recipes has noticeably changed. My own guesstimate was previously that after about an hour of near-uninterrupted defeating of large enemy spawns (at level 50) I had a 50/50 chance of getting either a PVP or a Very Rare recipe. This hold roughly true for lower level content, except that below a certain level Very Rare recipes won't drop at all.

 

Another slightly annoying feature (that favors PVP recipe drops): Defeating even-level enemies in open-world zones (such as during the Anniversary event) the recipes will drop at/close to the highest level of the zone, not the player. I have gotten quite a few level 30-ish PVP recipes from defeating Anniversary enemies in lower-level zones.