Is Market Inefficiency Causing Salvage Price Spiral?

[Yomo Kimyata]

There *is* a processing lag, but it's relatively miniscule and that doesn't seem to be what the complain is here.  You should always be able to buy something if it is listed and your bid is greater than or equal to where it was offered.  You should always *eventually* be able to buy something if you put in a bid and eventually someone offers it at or below your price *and there are no other bids higher than yours in the system*.  The problem is that at this moment in time, there are other bids higher than your in the system.  

 

Surely I cannot be the only one who has noticed that the number of bids for yellow salvage has increased by about 100k over the last month or so?  I find it more likely that it is someone who put in 200 bids on stacks of 10 on 50 characters than it is 10,000 people putting in bids on a stack of ten.  Definitely not me, that's way more clicking than I prefer.

 

It's like going into the Mercedes dealership and offering them $1000 for a new S-Class.  Maybe at some point that will be the best move for the dealer, but it's not likely.  This isn't too much of a problem, however, because you get free S-Class or equivalents just for playing the game!  The problem there is that you need to use the /AH to buy and sell to other players, and some people aren't comfortable doing so.

 

 

[Andreah]

46 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I find it more likely that it is someone who put in 200 bids on stacks of 10 on 50 characters than it is 10,000 people putting in bids on a stack of ten.

I don't track uncommon salvage quantities for sale and bid, but this is reasonable to me. Or maybe several someone's on fewer characters. But the mindset isn't mine, either. I could envision doing a short-term test, such as seeing what price I have to pay to buy 1,000 of them right away; but for a profit reason? Oof, no. The tedium would be crippling to me.

[tidge]

47 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Surely I cannot be the only one who has noticed that the number of bids for yellow salvage has increased by about 100k over the last month or so?  I find it more likely that it is someone who put in 200 bids on stacks of 10 on 50 characters than it is 10,000 people putting in bids on a stack of ten.  Definitely not me, that's way more clicking than I prefer.

 

The only other unusual thing I noticed in the market recently was that Converters had been sitting relatively high (my opinion) and then fell back to a price that looked as if they were being dumped at a higher rate than they had been (just previously) bought at.

 

I usually start to dump uncommon salvage when the individual stacks in a character's personal inventory get close to '10'... otherwise I'm generally using them to craft (recipes, or SG buffs). I do have an alternate strategy... keep reading. I notice the jump in prices, so I switched to...

 

Pulling the yellow salvage I had sitting in personal vault space or in the AH and dumping it on the market. The alternate strategy is to slowly build up these stacks for times when folks go cuckoo for yellow. It's peanuts, but I like to imagine that there is either:

• a single 'returning' (from live) player that has some crazy scheme to corner the market, after they've built their first full-kit farmer natch', or
• a relative newbie trying to follow a market guide and has decided now is the time to get their BInf ASAP via crafting uncommons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Herotu said:

Can we conclude that there's been a change in the type of player?

 

I can conclude that there is some Ebil marketeer out there manipulating the yellows from time to time.

It would take purchasing thousands of yellows to really cause a market change, and you really won't make all that much inf doing it comparatively.

Sure quick enough to set up over multiple characters I guess, but the time reward factor isn't all that much past getting people to talk about it in the forums.

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

10 million or so of that 10,021,032 is the original amount the devs seeded the market with at a price of 100,000.  That means the 21,032 is player supplied.  The closer that gets to 0, the higher the price tends to go until it will cap at 100,000.  If more people sold yellow salvage on the market, the price wouldn't fluctuate so much.

*Nods*.  It’s worthwhile watching that number if you are a buyer.

 

The 10mm number is also useful insofar you know you can buy all you want at 100k, and I assume the devs would seed more at that level if needed.

[Luminara]

7 hours ago, Herotu said:

Does the slow processing of players' orders cause prices to spiral?

 

Let's examine common salvage.  If players were starting with a bid of 250 and increasing by 1 every day, after four years the average sales price of common salvage would be 1711 inf*.  We don't even need to consider the possibility of players doubling bids daily, because if that did happen, common salvage prices would've exceeded the inf* cap after 24 bid doublings (beginning with a base bid of 250).

 

The fact that market prices have either remained stable or declined over time should've made it obvious what the answer to that question was.  The answer is plainly "No."

 

8 hours ago, Herotu said:

Look at how much Yellow salvage exists on the AH. At the time of writing 10,021,032 for sale. And yet the price is quite high. It's a failure.

 

That has nothing to do with code.  It happens pretty regularly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, look...

[golstat2003]

Yeah bothering with Uncommon Salvage is pointless. The amount of time to bid creep on that I could spent in a mission and might have had a purple drop.

[kelika2]

10 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Selling on the market is also quicker, so there is that.

nooooo

right click > e

whole stack sold at vendor.  after a nice farm i always pick out the rares and just quickly vendor the rest

[Without_Pause]

13 hours ago, kelika2 said:

nooooo

right click > e

whole stack sold at vendor.  after a nice farm i always pick out the rares and just quickly vendor the rest

You can list something at the AH pretty much anywhere. You have to actually be at the vendor to sell them your stacks. This is why I am saying it is quicker to sell them on the Market. 

[kelika2]

15 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

You can list something at the AH pretty much anywhere. You have to actually be at the vendor to sell them your stacks. This is why I am saying it is quicker to sell them on the Market. 

vendors are also pretty much everywhere

[Andreah]

It's still faster to click a macro with /ah in it than to go to the nearest vendor. The extra Inf you might get from a vendor isn't worth any distance at all. Heck, I'd delete all my junk if it were any faster than /ah. And I do when I'm in a mission and my salvage or recipes are full.

[Without_Pause]

7 hours ago, kelika2 said:

vendors are also pretty much everywhere

About the only vendor I use is in my base. The only vendor outside of that I can think of using in a really long time is one in Atlas as a newbie character stood next to one and placed stacks of bids on common salvage for 25 and dumped them to the vendor. 

[macskull]

On 8/23/2023 at 6:30 PM, kelika2 said:

nooooo

right click > e

whole stack sold at vendor.  after a nice farm i always pick out the rares and just quickly vendor the rest

I cannot believe I didn't know about this keyboard shortcut until I saw this post. I tend to run to my SG base to vendor enhancements, common recipes, and salvage between farming runs when I'm in the mood for that, and this saves me so much time.

[American Decoy]

On 8/24/2023 at 10:11 AM, Without_Pause said:

You can list something at the AH pretty much anywhere. You have to actually be at the vendor to sell them your stacks. This is why I am saying it is quicker to sell them on the Market. 

 

It is actually quicker to delete the common salvage in the AE mission farm to make room for better drops without taking time away from the AE mission.  You look at it from the viewpoint of selling common salvage to make a small profit, while the AE farmer is looking to minimize time away from the mission.

[Without_Pause]

5 hours ago, American Decoy said:

 

It is actually quicker to delete the common salvage in the AE mission farm to make room for better drops without taking time away from the AE mission.  You look at it from the viewpoint of selling common salvage to make a small profit, while the AE farmer is looking to minimize time away from the mission.

I don't think I have ever gained so much salvage that I needed to delete the common stuff without taking a break and thus dumping stuff in my base. Granted, I might do all of 2-3 runs. I might have done 4 or so a couple of times. Even before recent changes, I think 5 tunnel runs in an hour would be my max, and I simply don't have the tolerance for doing that stuff for over an hour. Not when I can plow through (farmable) regular missions. While yes, AFK farming is a thing, and I work from home, I prefer dual boxing and that tends to go against AFK farming.

 

FYI, based on current yellow salvage pricing, it simply has spiked far too much to say the market inefficiency is causing the issue. 

[lemming]

5 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

FYI, based on current yellow salvage pricing, it simply has spiked far too much to say the market inefficiency is causing the issue. 

It has been going on for longer than usual.  I just assume someone put in a bunch of bids at a high level.

Two billion would be enough to put 166,666 bids at 12,000 though that's 80-100 characters maxing out their auction bids.  Seems like a lot of effort for nothing but a weird flex.   Current number of bids for yellow is 259,387.   While I have been dumping my excess into the AH, it might take a bit of time.

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, lemming said:

Current number of bids for yellow is 259,387.

 

I realize that I may be one of the only people who keeps an eye on this, but that's well over a 200k increase since earlier this summer.  

[lemming]

3 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I realize that I may be one of the only people who keeps an eye on this, but that's well over a 200k increase since earlier this summer.  

I figured it was higher than normal.  I've definitely seen it where no one was bidding.  That's a huge number of bids taking up over 100 characters AH limits.

 

And it's not like it really does much since even if you don't have the right uncommon, you can throw one onto the market, get 12k and buy one for yourself at 12,001.  costing a little extra.  I just don't get why someone would do it.

[tidge]

17 hours ago, lemming said:

And it's not like it really does much since even if you don't have the right uncommon, you can throw one onto the market, get 12k and buy one for yourself at 12,001.  costing a little extra.  I just don't get why someone would do it.

 

This is the eternal mystery. *If* the player putting in all these bids on uncommons has complete knowledge(*1) of how the market works, how salvage is fungible, etc. then I tend to believe that there is an irrational motivation... something along the lines of "I did it for the lulz".  12 Kinf is roughly the vendor price of a level 50 SO enhancement (or one-eight the average vendor price of a level 50 IO recipe)... so this price isn't exactly hurting folks that only want a handful of yellow salvage at a time.

 

(*1) and inf. They also need inf.... and characters with AH slots.

 

I have a hard time quantifying my own assessment of how much value (lulz?) someone could actually get from this sort of exercise. I find it easier to believe (also without evidence!) that this sort of market behavior is being driven by player(s) with incomplete market house knowledge and a willingness to basically follow some "fire-and-forget" strategies for generating income. For example: if someone had a "classic AE farm character" they could generate a lot of Inf across several characters, and then might simply use that kitty to place bids on recipes and salvage in an effort to "generate" more Inf.

 

I have to say: I haven't noticed radical price swings on any fungible commodities (i.e. Enhancements, Recipes).... except that the period of really cheap Very Rare recipes seems to have passed! There are enhancement pieces I simply don't buy on the AH, mostly because I've stockpiled (from converter roulette) the types of pieces that go into most of my builds, and I am merit/catalyst rich. Converter prices are more-or-less at the low end of what I would consider to be "historically typical"... without converters it isn't really possible to leverage the AH to bring in a lot of Inf.

 

The only other dimension that I can think of is that there may have been a radical change on the supply side. I don't want to speculate (out of ignorance) on this because I have no idea about the relative numbers on either side (supply/demand) of the equation.

[Without_Pause]

At the end if the day, I think the simple factor is if someone is using a 12k uncommon to convert to a LotG IO, then that extra cost seems minimal considering what the IO goes for on the market. The longer the game goes, the more on-hand wealth the player base has. What's 12k when you profit anyway?

[Andreah]

I don't think it would take a radical change in supply. If, apart from the out of range high offers to sell and low bids to buy, the amount of yellows being posted to sell is under the number on average being bought, it would dry up the reasonable offers in the middle, and then the "buy it now" price would start edging up into the buffer of existing high offers to sell, and thus we have come to the point where, on occasion, one has to spike up well above 50K to get one immediately.

 

I would be very curious to see how many old offers to sell are still sitting there, just under the 100K seed price. (But not enough to buy everything below 90K out at 4am to do this myself :D )

[Andreah]

On 9/24/2023 at 11:00 AM, Paul Brosnan said:

Engaging with the complex, living economy is part of the game's unique appeal

Fun > Efficiency. <3 

[High_Beam]

This aint Eve Online. 🙂

 

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I too once thought prices were insane and market volatility made it broken, so I did a smol test.

I created a character

I mailed myself 500m

I played the character normally

No power levels, no farming, no radios

just regular quests at -1x1 (controller AT)

I bought what I wanted/needed immediately regardless of the price

I sold what I did not need at dirt cheap prices just to keep my inventory clear.

 

The end result?

I have every IO I need for my build & over 500m + a ton o merits.

There are lots of ways to make $$$ fast in this game

buy low, sell high

farm farm farm

merit conversion

but, those techniques while effective aren't necessary.

Just play the way that is fun for you, whatever that is.

because 

the real treasure are the friends you make along the way.

[Bionic_Flea]

On 9/28/2023 at 7:13 AM, Saiyajinzoningen said:

the real treasure are the friends you make along the way.