Lets use a real world example, the Vonph Dreadnought.
Every day I see people trying to sell them for 650m, 625m, 600m, and today, 575m. Usually only one of these is being advertised for sale at a time. Occasionally someone finds a buyer, but sellers appear to outnumber buyers.
Thursday, exchange gets fixed, what happens?
Guy A posts one for 1,000,000,000 for the lulz
Guy B has been trying to sell his for 650m, so he posts his for 650m.
Guy C has been trying to sell his for 625m, he posts his for 625m
Guy D has been trying to sell his for 600m, so he posts his for 600m
Guy E has been trying to sell his for 575m, so he posts his for 575m.
Guy C decides 'welp, im probably not going to get 625m, but maybe i can get 599 after the 575 one sells, so he post his for 599m
Guy F wins a vonph, he searches the exchange and sees the cheapest one is 575m, he posts his for 570m.
And so on, and so forth.
I'm not going to get into the whole debate as to if the raise in cap is a good or bad thing. I do see a flaw in your example though.
Player A posts his.
Player B posts his.
Player C posts his
Player D posts his.
Player E posts his.
Player A, B or even F buys player C, D and E's ships and reposts them for the 650mil price or higher.
Just because people post them for a lower price, there is nothing at all stopping a flipper from buying the high price items at a much lower price and reselling them at an inflated price, over and over.
Sure some will get sold at lower prices but as long as there is somebody(s) with many characters with 1bil ec on multiple characters, there is nothing that will force them to lower their prices, outside of them absolutely needing the ec to try to flip something else.
Raising the cap doesn't absolutely mean that prices will raise, or even lower.
As long as there is no fee for posting something on the exchange there is no reason for flippers to lower the price of whatever they are flipping.
Eventually rare ships will become even rarer and there will be somebody out there who will pay too much for them. It all comes down to if the seller is motivated enough to sell something as quickly as possible or for as much as possible.
I know that if I personally had the money to buy some of those ships now I would buy them and sit on them until the price of them went to a higher level than i paid for them, which they will eventually, outside of a new ship being made the makes them totally worthless.
it is difficult to sell them because they aren't on the exchange, not because of the price.
I am sure that the price doesn't help but the availability of the sellers has more to do with it than the price.
plus, the entire time you are sitting on them, you can continue to make money flipping other high volume items.
EC isn't exactly hard to make in the game. Just because you tie up hundreds of millions of EC in a few items doesn't mean you can't continue to make money.
Just because some people will start to list things for 1b doesn't mean that other people have to buy it. Don't buy it. Soon enough, after getting the item back when it doesn't sell by the sell-by date that the exchange has (1week? A few days?) They'll start listing that same thing for less, and continue to do so until they reach the price that someone will be willing to pay for it.
In other words, just because someone lists something for 1b doesn't mean it's going to sell. The seller makes nothing until it sells, so listing at 1b hurts no one (except probably the seller when it doesn't sell).
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
I doubt it will make them cheaper. They will be going up to 1b in price now. I just see higher prices.
That doesn't make any kind of sense though does it?
Vonphs already actually -did- hit 1b ec. I sold one for 1b ec, others did too.
The 500m ec cap hasn't made all ships become 500m ec in price.
The market price is a function of supply and demand. With super ships kept off the exchange by the arbitrary 500m cap, there is at any given time fewer of those ships available on the market. This is because people can only advertise them for sale while they are online, and only to people in the same zone or channel with them.
The exchange allows you to make persistant sale advertisements for your ships. So, even when you're offline, your ship is still part of the market supply. More ships in the supply, supply up. Supply up, demand same, price down.
Druk you use a ferengi as your sig and dont understand that "Greed is eternal" ?
Raise the cap and get higher prices why because "Greed is eternal" people want wealth and will do and act illogcally at times to get wealth even post rediculous prices for things that were once cheap.
Given the chance a person would charge a billion dollars for a blade of grass if they knew they could get a billion dollars for it.
"Khan Noonien Singh is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced. He is brilliant, ruthless, and he will not hesitate to kill every single one of you."
– Spock, 2259 (Star Trek Into Darkness)
I think people that are afraid that the cap is the issue that makes items get more expensive really are afraid of monopolists dictating the price, like if one person owns all the Vonphs they can sell all of them for ONE BILLION DOLLARS! Muhahaha
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
very simple have cryptic flood,i mean seriously flood the exchange with lockbox ships like the bug ship the annorax jhss etc etc....just for a month and just watch the prices drop like a safe on wilie e. coyote's head............
I think people that are afraid that the cap is the issue that makes items get more expensive really are afraid of monopolists dictating the price, like if one person owns all the Vonphs they can sell all of them for ONE BILLION DOLLARS! Muhahaha
Which is exactly what happens with some items on the exchange now. It's not necessarily one person either but a couple, or even a group that dictate the prices of some things. Unlike in the real world where price fixing is against the law, it's rampant in this economy. Guess we'll all see what happens in a few months, especially after the outcry for an EC cap increase happens and the people driving that get their way.
Which has almost nothing to do with the exchange cap at all.
Didn't say it does, I'm just trying to understand where the people are coming from, because even if you disagreee with the capitalist principles in STO, they still are real and can rather easily be understood even if you don't like them. So people repeatedly throwing their arms around, saying "everything is going to be more expensive now" (which as you pointed out is not tied to the cap at all) really fear, in my opinion, that some people will now dictate the prices which they already can. So the only conclusion I can come to is that now, thanks to the cap, they can see the high prices which before were only talked about in the trade channel. And since you see something more often it must mean it increased in abundancy, right?
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
One thing to remember is that when listed on the exchange, only the cheapest ship sells, whereas in private, you merely have to be the cheapest at that particular moment, in that particular channel.
There's a few things that could be done that would help the average player in today's STO economy, and improve everyone's exchange experience;
1. Boxed ships listed on the exchange should have a counter associated with them, which tells you how many unopened boxes are floating around in the economy.
It's one thing to talk about supply and demand, but with no hard numbers to back it up, you will always have malcontents.
This is important, in that a player could gauge which ships are in healthy supply and which are not;
For example:
A player sees 5 Vonphs listed on the exchange, but also notices, there are 399 unboxed Vonph's not listed.
He/she then may say, "No, not buying today, there's too much stock being withheld or not posted yet, I can get a better deal if I wait for busier listings."
As it is right now, if there are 3 or 4 ships listed, you never know how many are actually out there, and how many of them are being stockpiled/hoarded.
On the flip side, that player may see 5 vonph's listed, but notice, there's only another 22 in existence in the economy, he/she could then say, "Yeah, the the supply is actually quite low... I better get one now"
and a sale would be made.
This would be a good tool to get a better sense of what's actually in the economy, and whether or not the prices associated are fair and equitable. And whether or not there is price fixing coming into play.
Right now, it's as simple as "You want it, you buy it at that price" which doesn't make people feel at ease, and more often then not, leads to players feeling gouged, and frustration.
At least with the hard numbers, people could start to feel at ease. And have some idea whether a price is fair.
2. Sellers and buyers name/gamertag are attached to exchange sales. Agree with @beameddown on this point.
This is needed to in accordance with point 1, to discover who is hoarding. And to weed out bots, and exchange cartels operating unfettered.
Not only would both parties get an email displaying the sellers/buyers user name, the exchange would also list the buyers and sellers for each item sold/bought in the past 7 days.
It would be a running tally (over the last 7 days) on who sold, who bought and for how much. (They have this feature in other games)
This would expose hoarders, and Cartels, it would also give the player a reference on the going price for said item, over the last 7 days, they could then check this, along side of Actual Available supply, and come to a better conclusion of whether or not an item deserves the price tag attached.
----
Those are 2 things that need to be in place IMO.
We need clarity and transparency. These two measures alone would go a long way in cutting down on player resentment towards the 1%.
----
In regards to the cap increase, and whether or not it will lead to downward prices.
It's all in the supply provided.
3 or 4 Vonph's listed will NOT lead to lower prices of any significance. You'll have 1bil, 999mil, 998mil, 997mil.
while on the other hand, 3 or 4 PAGES of Vonphs listed, will undoubtedly lead to lower prices.
Currently, there is no way for the player to get a sense of what's actually available.
If we see premiere ships trickle into the market, it won't make any kind of difference for the buyer.
The only way the players will see a downward trend is if the supply is not kept artificially low.
We won't see any benefit if there are only 3-4 ships being sold at a time.
If there's 30-40 posted, then, and only then, can we even start talking about "fair" competition.
And I'm willing to bet ALL my EC, that we won't be seeing "page's and page's" of Vonph's for sale (where fair competition could take place), or any premiere ship for that matter. We will have a perpetual artificially low supply.
So it really wont change anything, except to make a ship seller's life easier.
Which is why we need #1 and #2. Desperately.
You see the Posters Name There is a modest Posting Fee based on how long the posting is for. You can post at a fixed price or You can post with a minimum price (starting price and let players bid against each other) There is a Fee levied based upon final selling price
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Fees don't make sense in a fake economy because there isn't anywhere important for fees to go.
It's not a bad idea I just think we can do better, although I like the auction idea.
How about real energy credit Sinks? I mean fleet projects for example could use energy credits. EC are mostly unattached from the NPC portion of the game, integrating them into the game better with more standard uses would help significantly and put them on more equitable footing with other forms of currency.
How about fleet projects take a few million EC? Maybe lessen dilithium cost to compensate. How about fleet equipment have EC cost as well?
FICTIONAL GREED, not normal greed with stacks rooted in reality, but the sort of greed that is unchained by any sort of repercussions in reality..
you want a fix?
I say 50k dil refinement limit on ACCOUNT total.. do away with the 8k a day per character that's bottle necking the BULK of the playerbase and benefiting the botters
I say LIST the name of the sellers OFF the exchange, (this would open the most eyes on who is stockpiling high end items)
I say LIST the names of those that are BUYING off the exchange in the key market (this would open the most eyes on the bot problem and key buying)
Pretty much why all the economic theory people are throwing on here is completely invalid (I do have an MBA from UCONN). In this game, greed pretty much kills the supply and demand argument. It would be awesome to see who is selling the stuff since I'm pretty sure it's a small cartel controlling the high end market.
Pretty much why all the economic theory people are throwing on here is completely invalid (I do have an MBA from UCONN). In this game, greed pretty much kills the supply and demand argument. It would be awesome to see who is selling the stuff since I'm pretty sure it's a small cartel controlling the high end market.
Isn't that futile in a F2P game? You can create unlimited surrogate accounts that have no ties whatsoever to each other, at least not in a way anyone but Cryptic themselves could tell they're related.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Lolz, I love those who have been in the " don't spend real money on this game" crowd wanting to make Cryptic impose different rules or new game mechanisms to keep people who DO support this game from charging what ever they want for something they purchased.
It isn't anyone's fault but your own if you don't have lockbox or promo ships.
When it comes time to sell my ships, I am going to bleed every EC I can from you.
I wonder why its only raised to 1B because without some solid money sinks, and there are none of those at the moment, we will need a 2B cap by the end of next year.
I wonder why its only raised to 1B because without some solid money sinks, and there are none of those at the moment, we will need a 2B cap by the end of next year.
Because the EC storage cap is 1 billion per toon, thats the maximum anyone could possibly pay.
Because if you know so much about the STO economy, why don't I see YOU in STO's Fortune 500?
Because I have a 12 day a week job already.
If i wanted to spend my free time making money, I would be spending it making money in the real world and not a bunch of 1's and 0's that are completely worthless.
I honestly don't understand the thinking of people who spend hours and hours trying to make fake money in a game when they can to do the exact same thing in the real world and actually make rl money. Of course that is outside of the gold sellers.
All it's going to do is make some people richer in the short run and cause EC inflation in the long run.
"I can now charge a Billion EC for the same ship I could only charge 500 million for before? Cool!"
Frankly, they should remove the ability to do 1 on 1 trades for the super rare ships. That way they're forced to use a max price of 1 billion EC. Otherwise, we'll just end up in an even worse situation down the road.
Out of a sea of whining and complaining finally something that makes SENSE. Well said and I support it
It's terrible idea and it is like those bad MMOs where cash shop items are all char bound.
One of the things STO does -extremely- well is their f2p system.
Not as bad as what the OP was happy with. In the short term you will see Annorax and Vophn going to1 billion next week. In the long term anything else that comes out in a box will be exchanged only on the "Trading channel" for over 1 billion. This is a recipe for disaster and at least from my end NOT grateful at all. Either remove ALL caps or restrict the trade market. Otherwise, people will keep on bouncing any ceiling CAP....human nature to be greedy or feregui-like.
Lets use a real world example, the Vonph Dreadnought.
Every day I see people trying to sell them for 650m, 625m, 600m, and today, 575m. Usually only one of these is being advertised for sale at a time. Occasionally someone finds a buyer, but sellers appear to outnumber buyers.
Thursday, exchange gets fixed, what happens?
Guy A posts one for 1,000,000,000 for the lulz
Guy B has been trying to sell his for 650m, so he posts his for 650m.
Guy C has been trying to sell his for 625m, he posts his for 625m
Guy D has been trying to sell his for 600m, so he posts his for 600m
Guy E has been trying to sell his for 575m, so he posts his for 575m.
Guy C decides 'welp, im probably not going to get 625m, but maybe i can get 599 after the 575 one sells, so he post his for 599m
Guy F wins a vonph, he searches the exchange and sees the cheapest one is 575m, he posts his for 570m.
And so on, and so forth.
The above is naive and unrealistic scenario. Probably would apply for lobbi ships and the like. However, there is no way you will see that for a Sheshaar, the temporal science ship or any future ship boxes that would be in short supply and VERY high demand....at most you would only see a "GUY A" for a long while before it goes to outside the exchange as in the trading channel.
Comments
I'm not going to get into the whole debate as to if the raise in cap is a good or bad thing. I do see a flaw in your example though.
Player A posts his.
Player B posts his.
Player C posts his
Player D posts his.
Player E posts his.
Player A, B or even F buys player C, D and E's ships and reposts them for the 650mil price or higher.
Just because people post them for a lower price, there is nothing at all stopping a flipper from buying the high price items at a much lower price and reselling them at an inflated price, over and over.
Sure some will get sold at lower prices but as long as there is somebody(s) with many characters with 1bil ec on multiple characters, there is nothing that will force them to lower their prices, outside of them absolutely needing the ec to try to flip something else.
Raising the cap doesn't absolutely mean that prices will raise, or even lower.
As long as there is no fee for posting something on the exchange there is no reason for flippers to lower the price of whatever they are flipping.
Eventually rare ships will become even rarer and there will be somebody out there who will pay too much for them. It all comes down to if the seller is motivated enough to sell something as quickly as possible or for as much as possible.
I know that if I personally had the money to buy some of those ships now I would buy them and sit on them until the price of them went to a higher level than i paid for them, which they will eventually, outside of a new ship being made the makes them totally worthless.
I am sure that the price doesn't help but the availability of the sellers has more to do with it than the price.
plus, the entire time you are sitting on them, you can continue to make money flipping other high volume items.
EC isn't exactly hard to make in the game. Just because you tie up hundreds of millions of EC in a few items doesn't mean you can't continue to make money.
In other words, just because someone lists something for 1b doesn't mean it's going to sell. The seller makes nothing until it sells, so listing at 1b hurts no one (except probably the seller when it doesn't sell).
Druk you use a ferengi as your sig and dont understand that "Greed is eternal" ?
Raise the cap and get higher prices why because "Greed is eternal" people want wealth and will do and act illogcally at times to get wealth even post rediculous prices for things that were once cheap.
Given the chance a person would charge a billion dollars for a blade of grass if they knew they could get a billion dollars for it.
"Khan Noonien Singh is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced. He is brilliant, ruthless, and he will not hesitate to kill every single one of you."
– Spock, 2259 (Star Trek Into Darkness)
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Which is exactly what happens with some items on the exchange now. It's not necessarily one person either but a couple, or even a group that dictate the prices of some things. Unlike in the real world where price fixing is against the law, it's rampant in this economy. Guess we'll all see what happens in a few months, especially after the outcry for an EC cap increase happens and the people driving that get their way.
Didn't say it does, I'm just trying to understand where the people are coming from, because even if you disagreee with the capitalist principles in STO, they still are real and can rather easily be understood even if you don't like them. So people repeatedly throwing their arms around, saying "everything is going to be more expensive now" (which as you pointed out is not tied to the cap at all) really fear, in my opinion, that some people will now dictate the prices which they already can. So the only conclusion I can come to is that now, thanks to the cap, they can see the high prices which before were only talked about in the trade channel. And since you see something more often it must mean it increased in abundancy, right?
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1. Boxed ships listed on the exchange should have a counter associated with them, which tells you how many unopened boxes are floating around in the economy.
It's one thing to talk about supply and demand, but with no hard numbers to back it up, you will always have malcontents.
This is important, in that a player could gauge which ships are in healthy supply and which are not;
For example:
A player sees 5 Vonphs listed on the exchange, but also notices, there are 399 unboxed Vonph's not listed.
He/she then may say, "No, not buying today, there's too much stock being withheld or not posted yet, I can get a better deal if I wait for busier listings."
As it is right now, if there are 3 or 4 ships listed, you never know how many are actually out there, and how many of them are being stockpiled/hoarded.
On the flip side, that player may see 5 vonph's listed, but notice, there's only another 22 in existence in the economy, he/she could then say, "Yeah, the the supply is actually quite low... I better get one now"
and a sale would be made.
This would be a good tool to get a better sense of what's actually in the economy, and whether or not the prices associated are fair and equitable. And whether or not there is price fixing coming into play.
Right now, it's as simple as "You want it, you buy it at that price" which doesn't make people feel at ease, and more often then not, leads to players feeling gouged, and frustration.
At least with the hard numbers, people could start to feel at ease. And have some idea whether a price is fair.
2. Sellers and buyers name/gamertag are attached to exchange sales. Agree with @beameddown on this point.
This is needed to in accordance with point 1, to discover who is hoarding. And to weed out bots, and exchange cartels operating unfettered.
Not only would both parties get an email displaying the sellers/buyers user name, the exchange would also list the buyers and sellers for each item sold/bought in the past 7 days.
It would be a running tally (over the last 7 days) on who sold, who bought and for how much. (They have this feature in other games)
This would expose hoarders, and Cartels, it would also give the player a reference on the going price for said item, over the last 7 days, they could then check this, along side of Actual Available supply, and come to a better conclusion of whether or not an item deserves the price tag attached.
----
Those are 2 things that need to be in place IMO.
We need clarity and transparency. These two measures alone would go a long way in cutting down on player resentment towards the 1%.
----
In regards to the cap increase, and whether or not it will lead to downward prices.
It's all in the supply provided.
3 or 4 Vonph's listed will NOT lead to lower prices of any significance. You'll have 1bil, 999mil, 998mil, 997mil.
while on the other hand, 3 or 4 PAGES of Vonphs listed, will undoubtedly lead to lower prices.
Currently, there is no way for the player to get a sense of what's actually available.
If we see premiere ships trickle into the market, it won't make any kind of difference for the buyer.
The only way the players will see a downward trend is if the supply is not kept artificially low.
We won't see any benefit if there are only 3-4 ships being sold at a time.
If there's 30-40 posted, then, and only then, can we even start talking about "fair" competition.
And I'm willing to bet ALL my EC, that we won't be seeing "page's and page's" of Vonph's for sale (where fair competition could take place), or any premiere ship for that matter. We will have a perpetual artificially low supply.
So it really wont change anything, except to make a ship seller's life easier.
Which is why we need #1 and #2. Desperately.
You see the Posters Name
There is a modest Posting Fee based on how long the posting is for.
You can post at a fixed price or
You can post with a minimum price (starting price and let players bid against each other)
There is a Fee levied based upon final selling price
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
It's not a bad idea I just think we can do better, although I like the auction idea.
How about real energy credit Sinks? I mean fleet projects for example could use energy credits. EC are mostly unattached from the NPC portion of the game, integrating them into the game better with more standard uses would help significantly and put them on more equitable footing with other forms of currency.
How about fleet projects take a few million EC? Maybe lessen dilithium cost to compensate. How about fleet equipment have EC cost as well?
Just a few ideas.
Pretty much why all the economic theory people are throwing on here is completely invalid (I do have an MBA from UCONN). In this game, greed pretty much kills the supply and demand argument. It would be awesome to see who is selling the stuff since I'm pretty sure it's a small cartel controlling the high end market.
Isn't that futile in a F2P game? You can create unlimited surrogate accounts that have no ties whatsoever to each other, at least not in a way anyone but Cryptic themselves could tell they're related.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
It isn't anyone's fault but your own if you don't have lockbox or promo ships.
When it comes time to sell my ships, I am going to bleed every EC I can from you.
Enjoy the game!
Because the EC storage cap is 1 billion per toon, thats the maximum anyone could possibly pay.
And yes, they should raise that, too.
And add EC sinks.
Not as bad as what the OP was happy with. In the short term you will see Annorax and Vophn going to1 billion next week. In the long term anything else that comes out in a box will be exchanged only on the "Trading channel" for over 1 billion. This is a recipe for disaster and at least from my end NOT grateful at all. Either remove ALL caps or restrict the trade market. Otherwise, people will keep on bouncing any ceiling CAP....human nature to be greedy or feregui-like.
The above is naive and unrealistic scenario. Probably would apply for lobbi ships and the like. However, there is no way you will see that for a Sheshaar, the temporal science ship or any future ship boxes that would be in short supply and VERY high demand....at most you would only see a "GUY A" for a long while before it goes to outside the exchange as in the trading channel.