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I dont understand the economics of the exchange.
prierin
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
Having raised the appropriate R&D schools to 15 and FINALLY getting an Aegis DOFF I can now make the Aegis set. I was short a few things to make the components and went to the exchange to get them only to discover they were rather cheap (150-180K). I then did a search for completed components and again was surprised at how cheap some of the blue and purple components were.
This surprises me when I do a search for an ultra-rare Aegis engine, Deflector or Shield and see how expensive they are. The profit is enough to make a Ferengi faint. Was I just lucky in finding these items at these prices or is there a untapped market for Aegis gear?
This surprises me when I do a search for an ultra-rare Aegis engine, Deflector or Shield and see how expensive they are. The profit is enough to make a Ferengi faint. Was I just lucky in finding these items at these prices or is there a untapped market for Aegis gear?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You will forever be missed and never forgotten.
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And to the playerbase in general; a lot of you want to see more PvP being done. But how can that happen when new or fairly experienced players can't even buy the stuff they need to be competitive? You expect them to have lvl 14 epic equipment, but you charge such a ridiculous amount of ec for just 1 upgrade kit that they can't even afford it. Stop being make up your minds. Do you wanna be virtually rich (how sad that I even have to ask) or do you want to have a challenging PvP match?
Components are found in mat boxes. People get many of these from lock boxes, and then a whole sub-economy is born of people selling the boxes, people that buy boxes and split the stuff out and sell it, etc. Anyway, there are a lot of mats for sale and the bulk of them were not actually crafted by people ... because the raw materials are worth more than MOST of the components.
Its simple to understand if you know what is going on. People get free components, and they sell em, supply and demand drive the prices.
The price of most of the materials, components and resources alike, are also being driven by a few wealthy players who buy and relist them so the prices are usually artificially high via the monopoly strategy. If you can monopolize one thing for an hour, ppl start buying it no matter how goofy the new jacked up price is.
Getting better gear isn't a PVP vs PVE issue. It's an element with the game in general.
Also, you want things to be cheaper for you? Realize also that players want to turn a profit. The exchange works with what the market in STO says.
I will complete this set for my alt (my main has the complete Samsar set and my 2nd Alt is a Rom) and then, because why not, I'll make more and sell em.
Might as well take advantage of the market whiule it's there.
Can we disassemble items to extract mats? That would be helpful.
One thing to remember, you are seeing items that are FOR SALE..not items that were bought. I could post 10 Water Purification Systems for 10,000,000 EC - doesn't mean they'll sell.
another thing is how you sort the exchange. there are many cases where 1 item costs 50% more than a stack of the same thing. Buy the stack, peel one off, and sell the rest one by one and you end up with the item AND more money than you started with.
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to the guy that wants regulation ... fine but you should suggest a viable working way to do that. Limit the # of posts / day? Hurts crafters trying to sell their goods. Bind all exchange purchases to prevent resale? Would crash the whole economy for good ... nothing would be worth vendor price anymore ... and on top of that, prevents the above peeling off a stack for what you want. Fixed prices for each item in the game? Too much dev time involved. Just about every "fix" causes problems for someone.... and just about every "fix" can be twisted into profits, all you do is change the rules, and trust me, ppl adapt fast to that.
I freely admit to playing the exchange. Its extremely fast money. I can live without doing it too... its boring. Makes for something to do while eating or waiting on a stf or whatever, but half an hour of that is plenty at one sitting. As for being virtually rich... well, the ships and such cost a good chunk of EC. I spend it as fast as I make it.
Let me put it to from another direction ... you can do it. Every player in the game can sit there and try to buy and relist everything all day. Its a mini-game and credits are the score. If everyone did that, it would quickly become a madhouse and unprofitable. Its a different way to grind EC, is all -- and a more effective one than selling vendor trash. People gonna do what *works*.
I'm going to go with virtually rich. Why would I want to have any sort of PvP match?
But on the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes buy "undervalued" item and simply put them back on the Exchange at a higher price because I know people will eventually buy them. For example, Phased Biomatter Beam Array Mk XII seems to be in demand because every now and then when I seem them on the Exchange they sell for a relatively high prices. Over a period of time I purchased the [CrtD]x2 [CrtH] versions sell for relatively cheap and quickly purchased them. I then relisted them on the Exchange at prices I see them normally selling for and they are generally purchased within 3 weeks.
Though I have also sold gear relatively cheap on the Exchange just to get rid of them quickly like shields and warp cores.
It's entirely possible that someone or several people have chosen to monopolize the market, by buying up all the available stock and re-pricing it at some (usually significantly) higher value.
I saw this happen with the Mk XIII kit modules recently; every single one of the ones I was looking at doubled in price over the course of 7-10 days, including one which went up over 150%.
I would be inclined to believe that was due to natural market pressures, if there was any significant quantity available. The fact that at any given time, there was never more than 4-5 of a single kit module shows just how easy it was to corner that market for some easy profit.
At least the most expensive one, Rally Cry Mk XIII at upwards of 25m EC, is the most easily substituted with the UR Rally Cry Mk XII, which is functionally the exact same kit module.
If there are only a handful of each of the completed Aegis pieces up at any one time, and they seem to be tremendously overpriced as compared to the necessary raw materials, then it's entirely likely someone is actively controlling the market for them.
If there are dozens or hundreds of each piece, it would take a serious whale to control that market.
Over the past few years, I've seen multiple games adopt an economic approach tailored around allowing a handful of players to profit tremendously by doing nothing but sitting at the exchange.
Besides facilitating the gold sellers (because that's what they actively do while their bots farm), it usually leads to severe restrictions on the average player, as developers indirectly attempt to curb these MMO-traders.
Overall, I think the AH mechanic has reached a point in MMO gaming where it's more harmful than beneficial.
The odds of getting one from "Request R&D Assistance" are much lower than any of the other R&D doffs -- I've gotten 2 in 5-6 months with 9 alts, compared to stacks of the others.
Once you have that doff, you can only make 1 piece a day. For the (science 15) exotic particle gen console I could make 5 a day if I wanted to, using 5 cheap science R&D doffs.