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.

[WuTang]

Personally, I appreciate people who play the market. They keep it active.

 

I make inf every way possible and yes the market is the quickest way. AFK farming might be in the running because you don't actually have to man the bot, so it is efficient. Active farming is what I do when I don't have much time or might not be able to commit to a team. And then there is just playing the game.

 

I'm not the richest by far, but I want nothing just the same.

[Troyusrex]

My market playing is making items and listing them. First, I'll just forge anything I have all the ingredients for and throw it in the ah. Sometimes I'll buy a ton of cards and open them and sell the proceeds. This is very good, but a lot more painful since getting things out of email was throttled. Takes forever to get 1,000 converters, for instance. I used to have a macro that just sat and clicked the mouse but that doesn't work so well now 😞

[American Decoy]

8 hours ago, Troyusrex said:

Takes forever to get 1,000 converters....

 

There are days that I go through those 1,000 converters.  I am glad that I can help the market economy with my purchases. 

[Zect]

On 2/24/2025 at 3:54 PM, Andreah said:

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

 

Let's take a look at my original assertion:

 

On 2/18/2025 at 2:40 PM, Zect said:

Flipping undeniably causes prices of flipped items to be higher than they otherwise would be.

 

Inflation is the broad and sustained rise in prices over time. The HC market does not generally have inflation, as I observed. However, that does not change the fact that flipping causes prices to increase, for - and this is the key part - at least some market participants some of the time.

 

Items have two prices, a lowest sell price (ask) and highest buy price (bid). Let's say an item has an ask of 5000 and a buy of 3000. A marketeer who knows the bid and ask accurately can put in a bid for 3100, and when it fills, list it at 4900, for a profit of 1800 inf sans fees.

• A buyer previously need bid at least 3000 to have their order filled. Now it is 3100. They pay a higher cost.
• A seller previous need ask for at most 5000 to sell their item. Now it is 4900. They too pay a higher cost because they earn less from the same sale.

(Notice that the simultaneity of the buy and sell transactions is irrelevant: they could be 10 years apart, and it wouldn't matter. Any market participant who interacts with the flipper's bid and ask pays the price.)

 

This is where people start getting confused, because some might say, 

• "I don't have to adjust my bid/ask to match the flipper; I can just wait them out." (This is your simultaneity argument.) However, the fact that it is possible for some players to take advantage of price volatility to avoid paying the costs listed above does not change the fact someone else may pay them. If, for example, I pass a law that says seatbelts are no longer mandatory in cars, some people will choose to install and wear seatbelts nonetheless, and be unaffected by this law. However, it would still be correct to say that my law will increase accident fatality rates, because it is the driving population as a whole we look at.
• "If the bid has gone up but the ask has fallen by the same amount, does it make sense to say that prices have increased". Ans: yes as a whole. We see that the buyer and seller in my example above are both paying a price. A different buyer who is willing to pay the ask (the buy-it-nao price in oldschool marketeer terminology) pays a lower ask. However, everyone else is paying more. If a minority pays less but most people pay more, it would still be correct to say that prices in general have increased.

Let's say you aren't convinced by any of this. The clearest indication that flipping causes prices to be higher than they are otherwise (for at least some participants some of the time; I hate sounding like a broken record but this is necessary to avoid being nitpicked to death) is to look at the flipper's account, which consistently gets money without producing goods. The market does not create inf, the HC economy pays no interest, and there is no inflation, so where does that inf come from? It is paid by buyers and sellers in the market. Ergo, the market as a whole (but not necessarily any one player individually) is paying more than it otherwise would have to. Arguing otherwise violates every rule of accounting.

 

Marketeers, since the era of live, have been very hesitant to acknowledge the fact that flipping takes money from the market without producing goods. The reason is probably that people, and this frequently includes marketeers themselves, conflate any mention of "higher price" with "inflation"; and the word "inflation" has a severely negative perception among non-economists, so marketeers have been keen to avoid it. Getting $ out of the market without producing goods also strikes some players as parasitic. However, as I previously noted, flipping is not necessarily a bad thing. Flippers likely do help the market function more efficiently by constantly keeping bids and asks listed. In other words, they provide liquidity, and are being compensated for that value they bring (even if it doesn't create goods).

 

-- A trillionaire marketeer

[twozerofoxtrot]

[Andreah]

I read it, and I feel dumber afterwards. Example, this bit: "They too pay a higher cost because they earn less from the same sale." They paid more because they were paid less.