Just an observation on how cheap this market is.

[Murcielago]

Is it me or is everything significantly cheaper than Live? I just finished making my second build for Murcielago and it "only" came out to around 500m INF, this includes purples and PVP IOs so it isn't like I didn't use expensive stuff. Live this would have been a lot more, and I'm not the buy it now type, I will usually set my bids to the lowest of the last five. 

Edited August 3, 2019 by Murcielago

[justicebeliever]

It should be cheaper than Live...

1.) Seeded Salvage -> No Hoarding -> Lower Prices

2.) Better Drops -> More Items -> More Supply -> Lower Prices

3.) Enhancement Converters -> More High End Items -> Lower Prices

[Yomo Kimyata]

I think fungibility, as much as anything else, contributes to this.  No individual baskets for salvage, recipes, set IOs!  Converters are a very close second, and may take first if I really think about it.

[justicebeliever]

5 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I think fungibility, as much as anything else, contributes to this.  No individual baskets for salvage, recipes, set IOs!  Converters are a very close second, and may take first if I really think about it.

That's true...the market scaling for set IO's means no one can corner the market on lvl 50's or lvl 23's if you rather...good point...

[n00baka]

Also, the amount of Inf in the game now, vs when the Markets went live is much smaller. Many people on live had more Inf than sense when the Markets came online.

[DSorrow]

Everything is a bunch cheaper. I remember spending around 8 billion on my main's build back in the day when the +3% Def PvP version was going for 2 billion a piece. A couple of full purple sets, 5x LotG, some Hami-Os, a full set of Panacea with the Shield Wall / Glad Armor uniques and all the other toys cost me an arm and a leg. On Homecoming, I've recreated a similarly expensive Ill/Cold build I also had for around 700M.

[dasefex]

IMO the prices may drop even further. People are getting more merits and influence may lose more value. With the abundance of materials it’s going to be tougher to convert and sell. People buy from the market out of laziness ( not meaning that in a bad way). This is my opinion and I’m curious to see if anyone else agrees🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️.

[ed_anger]

5 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Everything is a bunch cheaper. I remember spending around 8 billion on my main's build back in the day when the +3% Def PvP version was going for 2 billion a piece. A couple of full purple sets, 5x LotG, some Hami-Os, a full set of Panacea with the Shield Wall / Glad Armor uniques and all the other toys cost me an arm and a leg. On Homecoming, I've recreated a similarly expensive Ill/Cold build I also had for around 700M.

Could you not buy IOs with merits as well, or was it only drops? (I’d left before IOs)

[Mr. Vee]

30 minutes ago, dasefex said:

IMO the prices may drop even further. People are getting more merits and influence may lose more value. With the abundance of materials it’s going to be tougher to convert and sell. People buy from the market out of laziness ( not meaning that in a bad way). This is my opinion and I’m curious to see if anyone else agrees🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️.

Some is laziness, but since the market attunes for free there's constant demand even by people used to crafting their own. I'm glad for the lazy though, they're the ones giving me 8 million for LOTG 7.5 when the entire history says 7.

[DSorrow]

27 minutes ago, ed_anger said:

Could you not buy IOs with merits as well, or was it only drops? (I’d left before IOs)

You could, but buying stuff with merits wasn't really a viable way to get a whole build (LotG +Rech and such were 200 merits each, IIRC) and I'm pretty sure purples and PvP IOs weren't available at the merit vendor.

[Seed22]

I have no idea how much any of my builds cost. I estimate anywhere from 50mill-300mill at most. My Blaster main has a lot of IOs that on live would run the build to over 8bill, but I think it only really cost 300mill. None of the builds I have really use purps. Except my stalker, and they're half-way IO'd and will probably be staying that way for awhile. Ive made 2 perma doms, one w/perma hasten too, for fairly cheap, and no purps. And just recently a perma AM/Hasten Rad/Rad def, which I luckily had a lot of 50s with the pre-req IOs needed for that build, saving me millions.

[Mr. Vee]

56 minutes ago, DSorrow said:

You could, but buying stuff with merits wasn't really a viable way to get a whole build (LotG +Rech and such were 200 merits each, IIRC) and I'm pretty sure purples and PvP IOs weren't available at the merit vendor.

They weren't, but you could get them with hero/villain merits. But they took forever that way. It was 25 h/v merits for a glad armor unique, e.g. So you're looking at one every two days from tip mishes and 10/week from running every signature arc mission if you don't want to spend any inf. An h/v merit could be bought for 50 merits and 20 million every 20 hours to make it a bit faster. But your toon was going to be parked quite a while if you were waiting to purple/pvp it out this way. There was a reason the alignment system barely affected the price of high end items.

[Myrmidon]

On 8/4/2019 at 9:47 PM, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

They weren't, but you could get them with hero/villain merits. But they took forever that way. It was 25 h/v merits for a glad armor unique, e.g. So you're looking at one every two days from tip mishes and 10/week from running every signature arc mission if you don't want to spend any inf. An h/v merit could be bought for 50 merits and 20 million every 20 hours to make it a bit faster. But your toon was going to be parked quite a while if you were waiting to purple/pvp it out this way. There was a reason the alignment system barely affected the price of high end items.

As opposed to $60-70 for SBOs that could be bought and slotted over the course of the 1-50 run.

 

For me, the money was a much better investment than the time needed for the conventional method once such was available.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 8/3/2019 at 8:21 PM, n00baka said:

Also, the amount of Inf in the game now, vs when the Markets went live is much smaller. Many people on live had more Inf than sense when the Markets came online.

I'm not so sure about this.  My memory of the market upon introduction was that when it started, it was perhaps hindered by ignorance of just how useful things like that Miracle Unique were.  Once all that set in though, it started climbing and kept climbing right up until shut-down.  I don't miss those days, you really had to be a market player to contemplate a good build.  Now, I can pretty much do OK just by playing the game.

[DSorrow]

3 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I'm not so sure about this.  My memory of the market upon introduction was that when it started, it was perhaps hindered by ignorance of just how useful things like that Miracle Unique were.  Once all that set in though, it started climbing and kept climbing right up until shut-down.  I don't miss those days, you really had to be a market player to contemplate a good build.  Now, I can pretty much do OK just by playing the game.

This is definitely a great point. I'm playing a lot of duos with a RL buddy I used to play with back in the day and he's been absolutely overjoyed with the availability of stuff through minimal marketeering. Back then, his builds were mostly uncommons, frankenslotting and cheap rares whereas now he's getting builds with rares, LotGs, uniques and such with the same effort. This is pretty similar to my view that there's been a "tier shift": what used to get you a really good build of rare IOs now gets you a top of the line build loaded with purples.

[Ukase]

It's not you. Things are clearly cheaper than they were on "Live".  (I have no idea why that time was referred to as "live")

There are all manner of forces at work to keep prices low. The new devs, for starters. They seeded the market with a lot of salvage basically capping the cost. 

 

Converters are definitely changing the game. I guess it's a good thing that someone can just take a lethargic repose,(for example) buy 50 converters and make an lotg 7.5% eventually. (and maybe they are unlucky and don't!) 

 

With recent drop in the price of converters, there will be an impact on how people spend or don't spend their merits. They may stop using merits to buy converters. At 75-85k, they may not shake out to be better than other options. For me, they've made certain parts of what I do more inexpensive - but the competition is fierce! The prices of what used to be a market I considered mine along for a while has now been flooded (that may be too strong a word) with 10% cheaper prices. I can still make a profit, but it's reduced that profit by 25%. Not terribly happy about that. 

However, given how things are going on other brands of private servers, where there is no /ah command, there is no p2w, no placing of tp beacons without paying a lot of prestige...well, I'll take what we have every day, at least until there's extended maintenance, then I'll play the easy salvage game with a farming brute. 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

17 hours ago, Ukase said:

The prices of what used to be a market I considered mine along for a while has now been flooded (that may be too strong a word) with 10% cheaper prices. I can still make a profit, but it's reduced that profit by 25%. Not terribly happy about that. 

 

That's great that you controlled a market at all!  There's a limited number of things to do in this fungible economy, and it's got to be rare to find something that no one else is meddling in.  Hopefully your profits will return.

[Ukase]

Thanks. I knew it was just a matter of time. I may have made the mistake of letting my ego get in my way. On a help channel someone insisted that converters were the best bang for the merit dollar. They were not, and still are not, particularly given their recent price drop. Silly me, I just had to explain precisely how. I should've just said, "oh, whatever you say". 

 

Eh, nobody's perfect. 

[Mr. Vee]

They may not be now (idk, i'm still buying converters for 100k when i need them from friends and hoarding merits like underpants against the ?????-apocalypse), but they certainly were for a good long time.

[Obus Form]

On 8/9/2019 at 6:13 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

That's great that you controlled a market at all!  There's a limited number of things to do in this fungible economy, and it's got to be rare to find something that no one else is meddling in.  Hopefully your profits will return.

Personally, I found there are 2-3 markets virtually left untapped (except by me).  For my own profit reasons I will not share  (>.>)     (<.<) 

 

All I would say is, with enough influence floating via bids in the market, it is very possible to corner certain markets because of converters.  When I say corner, I mean control about 50% of the supply by a single player via consistent daily bidding/selling/converting at regimented times of the day/week.

[Yomo Kimyata]

15 hours ago, tinygodzilla said:

Personally, I found there are 2-3 markets virtually left untapped (except by me).  For my own profit reasons I will not share  (>.>)     (<.<) 

 

All I would say is, with enough influence floating via bids in the market, it is very possible to corner certain markets because of converters.  When I say corner, I mean control about 50% of the supply by a single player via consistent daily bidding/selling/converting at regimented times of the day/week.

I have four major markets and a bunch of minor ones.  I consider myself in control of one of them: about 200-500 trade a day and I am buying or selling 95%+ of the trades.  It’s kind of a pain, since I need 120 slots free to keep bids and offers up.  The rest of them I’m content with skimming the cream of 50-250 sales a day. 

 

Controlling the supply of a market is trivial.  If you named an IO, someone could probably provide 100 in an hour and 1000 in a day and 10000 in three days.  At most.  Finding buyers for that 100, or 1000, or 10000 is my personal bugaboo.

 

I’m just trying to bask in my imaginary currency while I can.  I realized that I have until Labor Day to accrue my riches.

 

 

 

 

[SmalltalkJava]

5 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I have four major markets and a bunch of minor ones.  I consider myself in control of one of them: about 200-500 trade a day and I am buying or selling 95%+ of the trades.  It’s kind of a pain, since I need 120 slots free to keep bids and offers up.  The rest of them I’m content with skimming the cream of 50-250 sales a day. 

 

Controlling the supply of a market is trivial.  If you named an IO, someone could probably provide 100 in an hour and 1000 in a day and 10000 in three days.  At most.  Finding buyers for that 100, or 1000, or 10000 is my personal bugaboo.

 

I’m just trying to bask in my imaginary currency while I can.  I realized that I have until Labor Day to accrue my riches.

 

 

 

 

What is happening on labor day? 

Edited August 15, 2019 by SmalltalkJava

[Mr. Vee]

Yomo can only marketeer wearing white.

[Yomo Kimyata]

14 hours ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

Yomo can only marketeer wearing white.

To do otherwise is simply gauche.

[Heraclea]

I am still my old hoarding self.  I carefully save just about all of my yellow and orange salvage in my bases.  I use a simple filing system: I look through each salvage rack until I find what I need.  I don't farm, or rather, I farm task forces rather than AE farms.  I am finally levelling a fire/DB brute, so that may change.  I don't play for inf, either in markets or in farms.  I mostly buy recipes and ATOs with merits, because I have the merits, and they seem pretty pricey to me at the AH.