This.

It's incredibly annoying and frustrating to search for an item, port to the right server, and run all the way out to the right house just to find that you can't buy the thing in the first place because the vendor has too much money on it.


For the rest of your post, when I came back four months or so ago, I bought another house on alb and listed everything I didn't think I'd need, on all my characters. A few weeks later I had over 80 plat, more than enough to do a few templates on the cheap. And that's from just a year and a half or so of playing the last time I started up fresh on Alb four years or so ago.

Sure, the new player's screwed a bit, but that's just how it goes. They can't expect to be competitive day one. It takes time.

 

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This is a 'sales pitch'. Nothing more noble than that. It's an attempt to 'fix' the market. It's not really a con, or a scam, or hussle. It's more like Morgash is attempting to have a 'summit' of all the sellers and farmers so they can discuss how to gouge the public with price fixing.


This is a virtual game. So 'fair market value' is completely abstract. There are no real concrete costs here to be calculated as overhead. So once again ' fair market value ' is nothing more than the sellers 'opinion'.


To say that items listed for 5 plat are worth 3x that much is nothing more than Mr. Morgash's opinion. The 5 plat price was set by an individual whose opinion was it was worth 5 plat.


To place value on an item you have to consider

1. The time you invested to farm the item.

2 The rarity/demand of the item.


There is no universal calculation to determine what your time is worth. That is something you come up with yourself.

There is no universal calculation to determine what rarity or demand is worth. Again, you determine that yourself based on your observations.


What we have is an individual who has successfully farmed, or purchased a surpluss of items that he is intending to sell at a considerable mark up with some market manipulation. Kind of a pseudo monopoly. The items for sale at 5p on merchants that are full of cash and therefore cannot be bought, have driven down the price of the same items on merchants that can still be sold/purchased from a merchant.

Now most of those items must be gone, or Morgash wouldn't be on here with his 'sales pitch'. To suggest to others that have these items, to raise their prices for increased profits for themselves, is not helping Mr. Morgash. So what is Mr. Morgash's motivation?


It is not a genuine desire to help someone other than himself to make more money. If that was the case. He could do that by just letting the prices be what he conisders to be 'artifically deflated' to stay that way. Because if I buy it for less? I have more money in my pocket. Same money in my pocket if I sell it for more.

So Mr. Morgash is not motivated to 'help' anyone out of the kindness of his heart, or obective 'honesty'. He is actively seeking to 'help' sellers. Which he is one of. And Mr. Morgash must have an angle or ace up his sleeve he is itching to play.

I suspect a surplus of goods he needs to dump, or he's managed to buy up all of the available items that will bring the biggest returns.


Nothing wrong with making money or turning a profit. Nothing wrong with ambition to raise capital to spend on wasteful leisure items.

But there is something inherently wrong with making money, just to make money, or to try and turn a larger profit, for no other reason than just because you can.

In a capitalistic market, it is allowed. There are no restrictions on it. Though in a free market their is no price fixing.

Even so, just because it is your right to do it. Doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. And there is no law in place that forces people to do the right thing.

But don't think for one second it is 'normal' or 'ok'.


It is akin to torturing dogs or cats, or even taking a magnifying glass to ants and spiders. Those may not be people, but those that take enjoyment from the pain and suffering and discomfort of any other creature, has a mental problem. ( I know vets that have killed several humans, and didn't have any trouble with the first one like many men do, and yet, they can't bring themselves to kick a dog out of anger because their having a bad day )


Same goes for people attempting to make money and increase the cost of items to increase their profits when the have no need of the money or profits.

It's a complete disregard for your fellow man, it's an intentional hardship for what? Personal entertainment?

It is entertaining to know you forced some guy to farm an exta 4 hrs to get enough plat to buy your item? wtf is wrong with you.


Really all of this is just inflation. If you keep selling all of the items at 5 plat, then you and everyone doesn't need a dragon hoard of gold to buy stuff. So there would be no reason to strive to gain bigger profits because you already have enough money to buy what you need.


and therein lies the crux. Hardly anyone considers themselves to have enough money, nor can they settle on how much money they need for what they need. Because most people always just want more. Plus, people like to exalt themselves over others, and display their good fortune, or luck, or malevolent manipulation as something they deserved, have a right to, and set's them aside as being 'better' or 'superior' than the common man.


And that's what we have here with Mr. Morgash. He doesn't like the fact that items are affordable. He doesn't like the fact that he isn't set apart from everyone else. That he isn't part of a small group of elitists that have more than the commoners. He doesn't like the fact that it is an even playing feild. He needs an advantage, and edge, he just needs to be better. Why people can't feel good about themselves without the need of knowing they got over on someone else I'll never know.

Mr. Morgash is going to claim his motivations are purely benign, and that he deserves the revenue he generates. Notice I did not say 'earn' tho Mr. Morgash will use that term.

In addition he will say "it's not for me, it's fore everyone, you can all get more money". But the truth is, it is not for everyone, it is for sellers only. No, we can't all be sellers, it is not possible. And that will be his angle of argument. Without buyers, there are no sellers. There is no argument.

And that's where we are, no large pool of buyers, no big demand. Inflated prices have driven people to roll their own farmers. So what we have is a flooded market of items, and sellers. And the prices have come down accordingly.

But Mr. Morgash feels his time is worth a great deal more than that, tho no ones time is more valueable than any other person's time. And how much time are we talking about? Is he trying to recover months and months of work?

NOPE.

He openly admitted that it only takes him 10 minutes or so to cruise for profits in the 10's of plats. So what's the need for these huge increase in profits if it is not time consuming for him? I mean 'time' is our 'gold standard' so to speak.

Oh, he will argue that he invested a great deal of time getting his pattern down, and learning the market. And I will give him credit for that, but he will never attach a value to that time, it will be priceless time, it will always be worth more and more so he can attempt to validate his prices. And he will never be specific of how much time, and will claim that it is worth whatever he can get out of it.


And what kind of person preys upon the time of others?

A few people mentioned inflation. Let's remember that gold is easier to come by than it was 6-7 years ago. If you want to look at causes of game inflation, it would have to start with increasing coin drops. Recently (like within the past 3 years) you have quests that aware anywhere between 100 to 1,000 gold. That was unheard of back in the day.

 

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I imagine its debatable whether or not the increased drops resulted in higher prices or if the increased drops were included because the prices had gone higher. I expect the later. This happens in any MMO though. Some people get very good at making money and they hoard it (having a big bank account is yet another way that people can see themselves as better than others).

Not the same game, but in Star Wars Galaxies it took me well over 8 months to make my first million credits at release. By the time I last played - a few months ago - there were people complaining that they could only store a maximum of 2 billion per character and some items sold for up to 1.2 billion credits (although those were extremely rare items). As bad as things might be for new players coming to DAOC, they are no where nearly comparable to a player arriving in SWG, although money is easier to come by here than it is there.

 

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Back in the day gear also didn't matter hardly at all. Especially since there was epic armor that damn near everyone used and shortly there after PCs could create full sets without being too pricey.


Apples and oranges

 

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I copied these two quotes to illustrate that just because an item *occasionally* sells at a certain value, does not mean that it is sustainable. The rate at which you sell is going to be inversely proportional to your price, regardless of demand. The fact that you are building up stockpiles means that at your current prices, you cannot sell your goods as fast as you are buying them. The market for what you are selling, at the prices you are offering, *does* exist, but the rate at which you can sell things off is limited by the size of that market and the availability of merchandise to undercut you. Liquidating your collection, at the price level you want, might take a very long time (and you would have to give up on a lot of the restocking). Even if you're making money on each item you flip, your costs still include all the things you've bought and held, that might take weeks or months to get rid of.

I certainly agree that there is some money to be made this way, and that people should be aware of the "dead" merchandise on the CM, but it sounds like in your case you might have overinvested in some of the "cheap" merchandise. The longer something sits on the CM, the more likely you are to be undercut. Pricing your merchandise higher results in it sitting for longer, and longer intervals between sales. Some of those folks undercutting you might be making more $$$ per day, simply because they're doing more volume. (And you could be helping them by absorbing the volume and driving up demand!) You might have them beat on $$$ per effort, though, it's just a matter of preference (and how much time / patience you have).

As an example: I used to buy every afrit essence that was priced at 500g or less, and ignored every stack above that. I saw stacks sitting there for weeks at a time at 750g, while every day I cleaned off the lower priced ones. For every afrit that sold at those higher prices, I probably bought 10 at the lower price. So, those selling the "underpriced" items might have made 5p in the same time window that you flipped one item for +250g. You invested less time, sure, but my point is that often there is no way to scale that flipping strategy to sell in volume. (Unless you're lucky enough to find a stack of a very underpriced, and in-demand item.)

 

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[colorurple] Lets keep the straw men out of this. [/color]


“. . .you make it sound like any regulation on the free market is automatically bad.”

[colorurple]I never said or implied any such thing. Also, this is a game economy we are discussing not the RL economy and we are not discussing the entire economy, we are discussing the OPs post about informing players they may be using inaccurate methods to determine the pricing of items that the players are putting on the CM. That is all the OPs post is really about. Not price fixing. Not cornering the market. Not an uncontrolled free market. And the OP was not discussing the entire game economy, just one aspect of it.


Also, I never said “it has to be 100% free market” in the game. It isn’t 100% free market in DAoC and never has been. (again lets keep the straw men out of this.)


If you are going to argue against my points, stick to my points and please do not make up things I never even implied.[/color]

 

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Apparently some of you idiots cant grasp it.You tell people so and so item is worth so much. They'll boost those prices. People will then be out of the best gear in the game because so and so wants 50p for a Stone Bone Choker. Then that person who doesn't have thousands of plat and is just starting out is left with nothing really. Can't compete in rvr because they dont have good gear or a good templates. So yes, it is greedy and you [moderated for baiting]

 

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If he and a handful of individuals owned all of such item and there were no other way to obtain it other than buying from them, then you have a point. But that's not the case here. People who flip (buy low, sell high) are relying upon someone buying said wares at a higher price. If they don't, then he has to lower the price. If they still don't, he has to lower the price more. If someone undersells him, he has to lower the price. The point being he has to have a buyer at the price he is selling in order to be successful. If people buy said things at said price, then the market is being set. But since he is selling something that people can obtain for free, he's not monopolizing the market and he is not cornering it. He's simply the starting point, and it's up to the consumer to decide whether the price is worth it or not.

 

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Well, said person who doesn't have thousands of plat can then sell his Bone Stone Choker that he got while farming for a Stone Bone Choker for 50 plat and buy the Stone Bone Choker.

Apparently economics (aka Greed 101 lolol) isn't a subject at Michigan. Good to know.

 

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