Recently the difficult R&D materials have become easier to obtain - argonite and plekton and the price has come way way down. When I was grinding these they were 600,000+ per. The people posting them on the exchange, however, did not grind them. They have bought them and are messing with the market with their 999 stacks. It's unlikely anyone could grind out 30,000 argonite. It's probably not just 1 person but a number of copycats. If you ignore all the 999 stacks you can still sell quickly and easily. Just look for the cheapest single or stack of 10 or 100 for greens.
The important point here is that purple and blue are now quite cheap. This is good for some and bad for others.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
With every R&D in 999 stacks listed so cheap and in such abundance why would i spend 100s of millions of ec on ships for a reward that is completely useless ? There are more 999 stacks of blues and purples then there are of singles listed . So for the price of 1 lobi ship you could buy a years worth of admiralty rewards and save yourself the time and headache. So either cryptic needs to fix the exploit in the game allowing people to farm literally millions of R&D materials at ease or take R&D materials out of the rewards for the system . Im not going to waste my time or money on a system with worthless R&D materials for the reward when some exploiter can make them appear out of thin air. Ill just give him my ec instead of your admirality system . So fix the exploit already.
I really can’t believe what I read here. I suppose I have to reread.
Edit: I did, I still can’t believe it. What’s your issue Op and what does it have to do with the new admiralty system?
Dude, I play probably a dozen pve in the 2 hours I play each day and doff 9 toons in between. Your described amounts of crafting mats at the exchange are no miracle or exploit. Some offers are from me even since I sell those I don’t need in order to buy those I do.
The reason why I sell or buy them in 999 stacks at market price is that I want to do a trade as best as possible and the reason why I don’t line them up one by one is that I don’t want to play this game 2 hours and 5 minutes each day.
Carfting materials as rewards are not useless! If the rewards of the new admiralty system grand me more, thanks.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Yeah, and if maint timers get fixed before it goes live, we won't need that many ships. Currently there is a glitch that causes maint not to start until you collect rewards.
is that a glitch or WAI?, I guess in theory maint timers should start when the mission ends rather then when you collect the reward but is it possible to implement that.
perhaps a way around it might be to make the mission time include maint time so ships are ready as soon as the mission ends, only draw back is longer time before you can run missions with alternative ships perhaps.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Yeah, and if maint timers get fixed before it goes live, we won't need that many ships. Currently there is a glitch that causes maint not to start until you collect rewards.
is that a glitch or WAI?, I guess in theory maint timers should start when the mission ends rather then when you collect the reward but is it possible to implement that.
perhaps a way around it might be to make the mission time include maint time so ships are ready as soon as the mission ends, only draw back is longer time before you can run missions with alternative ships perhaps.
Actually borticus said it was a bug and that maintenance times were suppose to start when the assignment finished, not when you accepted the rewards. It has already been fixed on the Tribble server. Edit: I'm not sure if it was fixed yet, but the dev did say it was suppose to start after the assignment completes.
I hope Admiralty system will not reward just base materials, but something more interesting as well (catalysts & stuff, but also other unrelated things, just like there are doff assignments for materials and doff assigments for other stuff, equipment, weapons, doffs, boffs, commodities etc).
Otherwise it won't be that useful to people that don't really care much about R&D.
First off there isn't anything worth crafting, since the highest gear you can craft is purple MK 12. Which is so devalued now it isn't worth anything on the exchange, and if you you want to upgrade it higher it cost a ton of dil. So currently my R&D bank is totally full (all slots at filled - I kid you not), and that is just from doffing and just crafting a few consumables.
Second, are people seriously buying expensive ships just for the admiralty system? I have so many good sci ships that a Wells vessel I bought ages ago (unpacked) sold for 440mil which happened as soon as the system was announced. I don't see anything in the admiralty system that is worth spending 100's mils of EC on or getting Zen ships for.
I don't see your 60 999 stacks in screenshot.now add up how long it took you to do that. Its not rocket science there is no legitimate way to farm as many mats that are on the exchange. This isn't a 999 stack here and a 100 stack there this is 60 999 stacks all listed at exact same price which means same person.if you can't see that there is an exploit you are blind ignorant or using the exploit. And its not just 60 999 stacks I told you I've cleared the 60 999 stacks multiple times. And boom another 60 pop up. This is not someone farming queues.
There are more than 60 people playing the game. If it's possible for me to get one stack of 999 mats then it's possible that 60 of the thousands of people playing the game could. You're assuming all those stacks belong to one person, and that's likely not the case.
Also keep in mind that you can buy mat boxes from the C-Store. Every MMO that has micro-transactions has players who are financial whales that spend thousands of dollars on the game every year. It's very possible a good number of those mats came from C-Store boxes.
There are also players who farm free rewards on multiple characters every day. One person with a dozen characters could be stacking up 20 DOff science and exploration missions every day to get stacks of mats to sell on the exchange. They could also be running PVE queues on multiple characters - log on one to run a queue, then when that is on cooldown log on another to run the same queue. Do this with enough characters and you can be running the same queue over and over again with no cooldown.
Finally, there are players who find wheeling and dealing on the exchange more fun than other parts of the game. These players generally have more EC than most others and will buy up cheap things and resell them at higher prices. There could very well be some market manipulation going on with the R&D mats.
You are making a number of assumptions that simply aren't the case. There isn't one person who controls all the mats on the exchange. There are hundreds if not thousands of players who are flooding the exchange with mats because this is an MMO and they are very easy to get! That's it. If you're going to point and scream "EXPLOIT!" you need more than paranoia to back it up.
If you're aware of an exploit and know how to reproduce it, file a support ticket and let Cryptic know. But given how easy it is to get huge stacks of R&D mats between farming and micro-transactions the amount of mats on the exchange seems reasonable. In fact I think 60 stacks of 999 to be fairly low given their availability. I'm a little surprised there aren't over 400 stacks of 999 and you can't load them all at once in the exchange window.
Everything you see there except the catalysts and tech upgrades I got through drops from DOff missions and PVE queues. The 134 Radiogenic particles are entirely from PVE queues, same for the 39 Trellium-K.
It's not hard. Just DOff science and exploration assignments every day and do some PVE queues every day. Over time it accumulates. It doesn't surprise me there are stacks of 999 on the exchange. I only run a few queues a day. There are players out there who do them all the time, like all day.
If I can get stacks of 999 mats anyone can do it.
Given the number of cataylsts you have, I'd say you've been opening a ton of R&D packs. Perhaps in attempt to get special offer ships?
Either way, I got far more materials than that and even I'm not complaining. You can easily burn R&D mats with Science Starbase Donations. And you could easily burn up materials in crafting items and sell that to the vendor for some EC. You could give the cheaper materials to a new player to help them. Or worst case, sell it to vendors / trash them.
But the Admirality system will be a boon for a ton of players who have trouble earning R&D materials. Especially Very Rare materials.
No I bought the catalysts off the exchange. I've been getting my crafting levels up. I have level 15 ground weapons, level 15 shields, and level 5+ everything else. I'm working on engineering and science right now. I always use a purple DOff and enough catalyst to push the crit rate to 100%.
Why? I don't know. I haven't crafted anything or have any plans to craft anything. I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it.
Hey coldnapalm I guess you weren't aware of the abandon ship exploit Mr. There is no exploit. There just happens to be 60 people who at the same time every day list 1 stack of 999 at the same price the other 59 did makes a lot of sense. incase you are that stupid I have proof of the exploit but on these forums you can't discuss how to do exploits so until now I haven't. But I will point out a previous exploit that was fixed just so you can see exploits are possible its called abandon ship mini game.
Hey coldnapalm I guess you weren't aware of the abandon ship exploit Mr. There is no exploit. There just happens to be 60 people who at the same time every day list 1 stack of 999 at the same price the other 59 did makes a lot of sense. incase you are that stupid I have proof of the exploit but on these forums you can't discuss how to do exploits so until now I haven't. But I will point out a previous exploit that was fixed just so you can see exploits are possible its called abandon ship mini game.
Right... if you have actual proof send a message to one of the devs or Laughing Trendy....
OP I am willing and able to get all those 999 stacks out of your hand for free. Just send them to me and you can make room for newer stacks, yours seem that have or are about to expire, so I am a shopper of old stuff so give them to me. It will make you feel better and will bring a smile to your heart.
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
The R&D system has been around for a bit more than a year now, and you don't seem to grasp the concept of simple math. Now let's assume people farm these mats only through doff assignments, and let's assume two of the 17 assignments kicked off each day for 365 days, and no crits or fails. Just with this a player would have per toon:
Duranium, Hydrazine, Magnesite, Trionium, Hexaflourine, Tritanium, and Verteron = 3650 each
Thoron = 5475
Now add crits, the other mats giving doff assignments (Voth sphere and archaeology), daily PvE, and the R&D weeks/weekends, and you can see people easily could have farmed way, way more. Nothing here to complain about. If you hate the mats so much, play the MK II beam lottery. You'll get a [CrtD]x3 or [Dmg]x3 every so often and make a nice profit out of desperate DPS players.
^ dude you are messing up my strategy, he does not like those stacks I want them. feel free to mail me all your unwanted stuff @ (edited, I dont want people say I am begging for stuff, I am just joking witht he OP). I am planning on developing a new weapon that requires all your unwanted stuff.
Post edited by mayito2009 on
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
^ dude you are messing up my strategy, he does not like those stacks I want them. feel free to mail me all your unwanted stuff @mayito2009. I am planning on developing a new weapon that requires all your unwanted stuff.
Sorry dude, but OP seems to think there is some sort of mats conspiracy going on. Had to talk some reason.
^ dude you are messing up my strategy, he does not like those stacks I want them. feel free to mail me all your unwanted stuff @mayito2009. I am planning on developing a new weapon that requires all your unwanted stuff.
Sorry dude, but OP seems to think there is some sort of mats conspiracy going on. Had to talk some reason.
lol A new chapter of STO "The Dark Mats Conspiracy" LOL
Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall receive. Rabboni
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
^ dude you are messing up my strategy, he does not like those stacks I want them. feel free to mail me all your unwanted stuff @mayito2009. I am planning on developing a new weapon that requires all your unwanted stuff.
Sorry dude, but OP seems to think there is some sort of mats conspiracy going on. Had to talk some reason.
lol A new chapter of STO "The Dark Mats Conspiracy" LOL
The R&D system has been around for a bit more than a year now, and you don't seem to grasp the concept of simple math. Now let's assume people farm these mats only through doff assignments, and let's assume two of the 17 assignments kicked off each day for 365 days, and no crits or fails. Just with this a player would have per toon:
Duranium, Hydrazine, Magnesite, Trionium, Hexaflourine, Tritanium, and Verteron = 3650 each
Thoron = 5475
Now add crits, the other mats giving doff assignments (Voth sphere and archaeology), daily PvE, and the R&D weeks/weekends, and you can see people easily could have farmed way, way more. Nothing here to complain about. If you hate the mats so much, play the MK II beam lottery. You'll get a [CrtD]x3 or [Dmg]x3 every so often and make a nice profit out of desperate DPS players.
Keep calm, and play on.
How does that explain 2 and 3 pages of argonite and many of the other desirable materials like z particle. We're talking 30,000 plus z particles and argonites. I put it to you no one has ground out even 2000 argonites in this past year. Let's say they also spent $1000 on R&D packs for some reason. Wouldn't even be a drop in the 30000 to 60000 particle bucket it takes to put up 3 and 4 pages of these stacks.
It's hard to understand why people refuse to accept that a few future stockbrokers are controlling the price of all these particles. I would describe the behavior as gentle trolling - basically to do something just because you can and because people notice.
I assume the point is to buy up the undercutters and then gradually inch the stack prices up inch by inch. I haven't paid attention to see if they are inching them up. If I want to sell I just scroll to the 4th or 5th page to find the first real price and post for that. It sells quickly still.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
since you get dilithoum and exp from admirality. well yes its worth it. also buying cheapest mirror ships for its its also nice idea. buying lobi ships for admirality system... haha somebody got all admirality system wrong
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I got around 100 Radiogenic over 2 weeks during the Crystalline Event, just earning the shiny for 6 alts not from any extra grinding. Someone with no life (or a gold farmer) cycling alts through continuously could easily get over a 1,000.
So I challenge anyone to come up with a legitamate method to even farm 999 of each material with a full account of toons I bet you can't come close
It's called buying R&D packs from the C-Store and doing a whole load of STF's
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
I would say I have sold between 1500 and 2000 z particles. Probably 20,000 of each green. And still have a similar number in stock. This is from some very dedicated grinding. Note that that is still only 4 stacks of z particles. If I spent $1000 for some reason it would be around 3 more stacks for a total of 7. What about the other 53?
I've acquired around 300 argonite and plekton this past year. 300. Not 45-60,000. The $1000 spent on reward packs would grant an additional 400 or so (less argonite) not 40,000.
And even if these materials were all earned by the posters in game so what? The argument that they have been posted to fill up the first several pages of each material type just coincidentally and randomly - oh gee I think I will post these 10,000 mats in stacks of 999 for the heck of it today - is well beyond the absurd. Admit it for what it is a bunch of exchange trolls.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I discard or give away (for free) all the mats I earn. don't want them, need them and I don't care about EC. Ive probably discarded a couple dozen stacks in the last few months.
Also, its entirely possible some people are buying incomplete stacks (ie, less than 999) stacks, combining them into one 999 stack and reselling them. That would take only a few seconds of turnaround on the exchange and 0 grind whatsoever
While usually not with mats, and not with 60 stacks at a time the latter is whatI do every now and then: My inventory filled up with stuff that isn't vendor trash, so head for exchange. Look at the price situation. Decide whether it is way too cheap (buy stuff, wait for better time), slightly too cheap (sell but for higher price) or good for the seller (sell at current price). Since I am lazy I will enter the price only once and then just drag, enter (for "number of stuff"), sell.
And if you yourself have 7 stacks (yes, I know, "could have"), then you only need 8 more players to fill the 60 named here.
Of course, exchange trolls are part of the equation and will gather small batches well priced and resell them. But there's most certainly not some kind of "exploit conspiracy", just good old adamsmithism.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
So I challenge anyone to come up with a legitamate method to even farm 999 of each material with a full account of toons I bet you can't come close
Buy 500+ R&D Packs during Promotion events and open them all.
Then turn a profit by selling the boxes and/or mats in-bulk, depending on which one has more value based on some calculations. Which are then used to buy more Promotion R&D packs and selling off the unwanted stuff.
And there are players who have literally spent enough in real life cash or EC savings turning over the market this way.
Those times are also the best time to buy mats, as the spenders will flood the market with R&D Boxes and Mats.
Comments
The important point here is that purple and blue are now quite cheap. This is good for some and bad for others.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I really can’t believe what I read here. I suppose I have to reread.
Edit: I did, I still can’t believe it. What’s your issue Op and what does it have to do with the new admiralty system?
Dude, I play probably a dozen pve in the 2 hours I play each day and doff 9 toons in between. Your described amounts of crafting mats at the exchange are no miracle or exploit. Some offers are from me even since I sell those I don’t need in order to buy those I do.
The reason why I sell or buy them in 999 stacks at market price is that I want to do a trade as best as possible and the reason why I don’t line them up one by one is that I don’t want to play this game 2 hours and 5 minutes each day.
Carfting materials as rewards are not useless! If the rewards of the new admiralty system grand me more, thanks.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
is that a glitch or WAI?, I guess in theory maint timers should start when the mission ends rather then when you collect the reward but is it possible to implement that.
perhaps a way around it might be to make the mission time include maint time so ships are ready as soon as the mission ends, only draw back is longer time before you can run missions with alternative ships perhaps.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Rayzee
excellentawesome#4589
torgaddon101
raeat
Actually borticus said it was a bug and that maintenance times were suppose to start when the assignment finished, not when you accepted the rewards. It has already been fixed on the Tribble server. Edit: I'm not sure if it was fixed yet, but the dev did say it was suppose to start after the assignment completes.
Otherwise it won't be that useful to people that don't really care much about R&D.
Second, are people seriously buying expensive ships just for the admiralty system? I have so many good sci ships that a Wells vessel I bought ages ago (unpacked) sold for 440mil which happened as soon as the system was announced. I don't see anything in the admiralty system that is worth spending 100's mils of EC on or getting Zen ships for.
There are more than 60 people playing the game. If it's possible for me to get one stack of 999 mats then it's possible that 60 of the thousands of people playing the game could. You're assuming all those stacks belong to one person, and that's likely not the case.
Also keep in mind that you can buy mat boxes from the C-Store. Every MMO that has micro-transactions has players who are financial whales that spend thousands of dollars on the game every year. It's very possible a good number of those mats came from C-Store boxes.
There are also players who farm free rewards on multiple characters every day. One person with a dozen characters could be stacking up 20 DOff science and exploration missions every day to get stacks of mats to sell on the exchange. They could also be running PVE queues on multiple characters - log on one to run a queue, then when that is on cooldown log on another to run the same queue. Do this with enough characters and you can be running the same queue over and over again with no cooldown.
Finally, there are players who find wheeling and dealing on the exchange more fun than other parts of the game. These players generally have more EC than most others and will buy up cheap things and resell them at higher prices. There could very well be some market manipulation going on with the R&D mats.
You are making a number of assumptions that simply aren't the case. There isn't one person who controls all the mats on the exchange. There are hundreds if not thousands of players who are flooding the exchange with mats because this is an MMO and they are very easy to get! That's it. If you're going to point and scream "EXPLOIT!" you need more than paranoia to back it up.
If you're aware of an exploit and know how to reproduce it, file a support ticket and let Cryptic know. But given how easy it is to get huge stacks of R&D mats between farming and micro-transactions the amount of mats on the exchange seems reasonable. In fact I think 60 stacks of 999 to be fairly low given their availability. I'm a little surprised there aren't over 400 stacks of 999 and you can't load them all at once in the exchange window.
No I bought the catalysts off the exchange. I've been getting my crafting levels up. I have level 15 ground weapons, level 15 shields, and level 5+ everything else. I'm working on engineering and science right now. I always use a purple DOff and enough catalyst to push the crit rate to 100%.
Why? I don't know. I haven't crafted anything or have any plans to craft anything. I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it.
My character Tsin'xing
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
The R&D system has been around for a bit more than a year now, and you don't seem to grasp the concept of simple math. Now let's assume people farm these mats only through doff assignments, and let's assume two of the 17 assignments kicked off each day for 365 days, and no crits or fails. Just with this a player would have per toon:
Duranium, Hydrazine, Magnesite, Trionium, Hexaflourine, Tritanium, and Verteron = 3650 each
Thoron = 5475
Now add crits, the other mats giving doff assignments (Voth sphere and archaeology), daily PvE, and the R&D weeks/weekends, and you can see people easily could have farmed way, way more. Nothing here to complain about. If you hate the mats so much, play the MK II beam lottery. You'll get a [CrtD]x3 or [Dmg]x3 every so often and make a nice profit out of desperate DPS players.
Keep calm, and play on.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
Sorry dude, but OP seems to think there is some sort of mats conspiracy going on. Had to talk some reason.
lol A new chapter of STO "The Dark Mats Conspiracy" LOL
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
+1.
How does that explain 2 and 3 pages of argonite and many of the other desirable materials like z particle. We're talking 30,000 plus z particles and argonites. I put it to you no one has ground out even 2000 argonites in this past year. Let's say they also spent $1000 on R&D packs for some reason. Wouldn't even be a drop in the 30000 to 60000 particle bucket it takes to put up 3 and 4 pages of these stacks.
It's hard to understand why people refuse to accept that a few future stockbrokers are controlling the price of all these particles. I would describe the behavior as gentle trolling - basically to do something just because you can and because people notice.
I assume the point is to buy up the undercutters and then gradually inch the stack prices up inch by inch. I haven't paid attention to see if they are inching them up. If I want to sell I just scroll to the 4th or 5th page to find the first real price and post for that. It sells quickly still.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I have toons with 2 - 3 stacks of 999 on each toons, not to mention 2 - 3 stacks of 999 sitting in the fleet bank as well.
factor in 3 stacks of 999 per toon x 10 toons = 30 stacks easy, and I am not a die hard farmer either!!!
These stacks, just came when they came by simply playing the game!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It's called buying R&D packs from the C-Store and doing a whole load of STF's
Exactly, many people do in fact buy these especially during some jackpot ship chance, not to mention several R&D weekends handing out more mats!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I've acquired around 300 argonite and plekton this past year. 300. Not 45-60,000. The $1000 spent on reward packs would grant an additional 400 or so (less argonite) not 40,000.
And even if these materials were all earned by the posters in game so what? The argument that they have been posted to fill up the first several pages of each material type just coincidentally and randomly - oh gee I think I will post these 10,000 mats in stacks of 999 for the heck of it today - is well beyond the absurd. Admit it for what it is a bunch of exchange trolls.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Also, its entirely possible some people are buying incomplete stacks (ie, less than 999) stacks, combining them into one 999 stack and reselling them. That would take only a few seconds of turnaround on the exchange and 0 grind whatsoever
And if you yourself have 7 stacks (yes, I know, "could have"), then you only need 8 more players to fill the 60 named here.
Of course, exchange trolls are part of the equation and will gather small batches well priced and resell them. But there's most certainly not some kind of "exploit conspiracy", just good old adamsmithism.
Buy 500+ R&D Packs during Promotion events and open them all.
Then turn a profit by selling the boxes and/or mats in-bulk, depending on which one has more value based on some calculations. Which are then used to buy more Promotion R&D packs and selling off the unwanted stuff.
And there are players who have literally spent enough in real life cash or EC savings turning over the market this way.
Those times are also the best time to buy mats, as the spenders will flood the market with R&D Boxes and Mats.
It's also legitimate.