Never admit to being a Marketeer in game...

[Octogoat]

On 2/18/2025 at 9:40 AM, Zect said:

Not personally. However, the marketing forum during the days of Live sometimes had a snobbish and frequently antagonistic attitude, which you can still see for yourself if you look at archives of the forums. During live, marketeers also added far less value to the market: there was no practical converter roulette, no level arbitrage (I buy a level 10 recipe and craft it for pennies, you buy it as a level 50 enhancement, and we cheat the crafting station out of 500k in crafting fees) and nonfungible items meant certain items were perpetually in shortage. Luck charms anyone? All this led to more frustration with the market and marketeers, quite a bit of it deserved, so I'm not surprised if some people from that era still carry a lot of resentment for marketeers.

 

 

Flipping undeniably causes prices of flipped items to be higher than they otherwise would be. When you buy something for X and sell it for X+Y to pocket the difference Y, the amount Y does not appear out of thin air: it's paid by someone who could've paid only X instead. This is not mutually exclusive with the observation that inflation in HC does not exist. While prices have generally remained stable or fell slightly, maybe they would fall more if flipping did not exist. Hence, lack of inflation does not change the fact that flipping skims money off the market, because many other factors also influence trends in price. Flippers do help the market function by constantly having buy orders out and stock ready to sell, however.

 

 

They may be doing a very unoptimized setup, farming with other players in a 8 person team coupled with badly played/built hitters or too many leeches. The reality is that the average farmer is pretty bad at what they are doing. In fact, I would go so far as to say the average person is generally terrible at their choice of activity whatever that might be: most people are fearful of knowledge and growth, content to do the bare minimum and unwilling to change. This can be immensely empowering, if you realize that it is very possible to excel when the average person is so bad. It will change your life to realize that with effort and drive, you can reliably place yourself in the top 5% of the human species in any field or endeavor. Luck and privilege are necessary to get into the 1%, but you can make yourself the nat 20 that nature rolled.

 

My farmer targets rikti missions it may not be optimal but I'm after fun as much as inf

[MoonSheep]

On 2/12/2025 at 7:34 PM, Andreah said:

And we don't even have inflation. We have very slow, long term, deflation.

 

very true - things are disappointingly cheap thesedays

 

i think all IOs being equal level across the market (or whatever the term is to explain that a lvl 25 IO is the same as a lvl 50 IO in terms of availability) is fine, but the ability to convert IOs should be disabled or limited

 

i want to feel like a champ when a rare recipe drops!

[Zect]

On 2/19/2025 at 9:02 AM, Andreah said:

Flippers can't just set any price they want.

 

Duh. Fortunately, that is not necessary to skim money off the market. All that's needed is for there to be a gap between the highest buy order and lowest sell order (and for that gap to exceed market fees).

 

On 2/20/2025 at 6:58 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I see a complete sea-change from Live with respect to the value of flippers, and in this case I'll define it rigidly as someone who buys all available supply at a given price and relists it, presumably at a higher price.

 

On Live, things were rigidly defined, and not fungible.  If you wanted to set a monopoly on level 10 Panacea E/R enhancements, that was pretty easy to do, even with the limited number of market slots and character slots.  

 

Nowadays, if you want to buy out an entire category and relist at a higher price, good luck, because the replacement cost of that inventory is astoundingly low.

 

You're using a different definition of 'flipper' than I would argue is traditional, but otherwise agreed. The HC market is extremely resistant to attempts to throttle supply. Fungible items are a big part of it, but also things like the presence of converters and the loot structure in general. I have a lot more market firepower on HC than I ever did on live, but it's not worth it to bother trying to artificially engineer shortages on items. Low-effort profiteering like making money off the bid-ask spread, 'painting' the last 5 or even just buying to craft/convert is simply far easier and more effective.

[Maelwys]

5 hours ago, Zect said:

You're using a different definition of 'flipper' than I would argue is traditional

I doubt that's on porpoise...

[Andreah]

8 hours ago, Zect said:

Duh. Fortunately, that is not necessary to skim money off the market. All that's needed is for there to be a gap between the highest buy order and lowest sell order (and for that gap to exceed market fees).

 

And so? How does that cause inflation, which was your original assertion?

 

And you do not have it correct. The highest offer to buy can never exceed the lowest listed sell. The moment a buy order comes in above the lowest listed sell order -- it sells. And whenever a sell offer goes in below the the highest offer to buy, it is bought. This is Market 101 stuff.

 

These margins above fees you speak of are not simultaneous -- which is one of the main benefits that flippers bring to the market -- stability of prices over time. Flippers connect impatient sellers and buyers together, doing each of them a service. The flipper has in abundance what the others do not, and is selling it to them -- "patience". The flipper is risking their stake on a bet that their sell prices will eventually be those low enough to sell through. And in a deflationary market, the chance they'll have to pull them, eat half the fee, and relist, possibly at a loss, is real.

 

[American Decoy]

On 2/24/2025 at 9:54 AM, Andreah said:

Flippers connect impatient sellers and buyers together, doing each of them a service. The flipper has in abundance what the others do not, and is selling it to them -- "patience". The flipper is risking their stake on a bet that their sell prices will eventually be those low enough to sell through. And in a deflationary market, the chance they'll have to pull them, eat half the fee, and relist, possibly at a loss, is real.

 

THIS!

 

The flipper is essentially the extra garage storage space for the market.