You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
Finally someone who gets it! Thank you! Of course, the Tycoons got it too, but keeps pretending they have no idea what's happening. *g*
~dramatic sailor moon poses~
Of course.....wealth, not to mention power, for quite some time, mind you, has never been honestly earned....it's either inherited and/or acquired through despicable means. The Red Shield...aka the Rothschild clan, became a super powerful banking cartel and financial entity way back when in the Napoleonic era by blatantly lying to everyone and buying shares cheap and making it big, and becoming the gang of weasels they are today (a more soft core version was Martha Stewart's so-called inside trading conviction...where her stocks, which was got a lot of, prior to her conviction, and sky rocketed after), or Bill Gate's anti monopoly violation back in the 1990's, not to mention the term known as "Black Shelving" where patents get bought, or acquired through...let's say dishonest means...to keep a status quo.....the Stan Meyer's tragedy being a prime example.
It's not supply and demand, it's not spending trends or so on....it's simply 4 little words:
I/we want more money!
And there's tons of folks who do it with little to no regard for laws, ethics, or life in some cases. And for every Enron, World com and Marth Stewart that gets caught, there's tons who get away scot-free all the time. They just simply don't twirl their mustaches in public for all to see....though it's getting to the point the average slob won't notice anyhow, because they only listen to what the television or someone with a position of authority says. ~shrugs~
'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.'
I'm tempted to load a stack of hypos for 20'000'000 next time I log in, just to see if some Space Rich tycoon buys it for the lols
tycoons become tycoons by being smart, not stupid
Misclicks happen. And since there is zero cost to post the item, there is really zero risk to doing such thing. They really should have a posting fee.
What would the fee pay for?
It would be an EC sink and thus keep inflation in check (at least somewhat)
It would reduce the amount auctions as a whole, because if you had to pay (say 10% of the listed price as a fee), you'd think twice if it's really worth it, putting something up for auction, since it might not be bought.
It would reduce the amount of scam auctions (you know, putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks) and joke auctions.
Personally i would like to see every item you bought from the exchange become bind to account, as soon as you bought it. Same with trading. You'd only be able to buy things you'd really need and we would finally be able to see what kind of
demand there really is for certain items.
People would still open lockboxes to get the rewards and should still be able to sell those if they don't like them, so that aspect would go unchanged.
Hang on for just a second there, guy, 'scam auctions', like you've written, are impossible on the STO exchange. No one enters the name or description of what they're selling. It's system-defined. The only thing the player has control over, is the amount of said commodity, and the price they want to sell for. So no, there is no 'putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks'. If you don't even understand that about the exchange, I can't give the rest of your notions credence either.
Cryptic would have no reason to impose a listing fee in the eay eBay do, for one very simple reason. It's because they wouldn't financially benefit from the currency being used to pay that listing fee. There is Absolutely No Way that someone is going to pay cash-money to list their space commodities. Not going to happen. And what good is X amount of dil, ec or even Zen to Cryptic? It's not like they can remove it from the system and monetize it
I don't mean this as a personal attack, so please don't take it as one, but you sound like someone who, when they can't afford the stuffz they want, so bashes the system, rather than putting in the work to earn the resources so they can afford the nice stuffz.
25'000 seed, and an understanding of how stock exchanges work, that's all you need to begin building your balance Once you've made your first million, you'll find it gets stupidly easier
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
I believe the advice of Acknowledged Ladies-man Dr. Sheldon Cooper, would be to offer you a hot beverage, while stroking your hair, and saying 'there there, there there' in a soothing tone
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
I believe the advice of Acknowledged Ladies-man Dr. Sheldon Cooper, would be to offer you a hot beverage, while stroking your hair, and saying 'there there, there there' in a soothing tone
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
I believe the advice of Acknowledged Ladies-man Dr. Sheldon Cooper, would be to offer you a hot beverage, while stroking your hair, and saying 'there there, there there' in a soothing tone
My chica, Latoya, often does that already.
Er, I mean
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Hang on for just a second there, guy, 'scam auctions', like you've written, are impossible on the STO exchange. No one enters the name or description of what they're selling. It's system-defined. The only thing the player has control over, is the amount of said commodity, and the price they want to sell for. So no, there is no 'putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks'. If you don't even understand that about the exchange, I can't give the rest of your notions credence either.
Scam acutions are a thing, luckily it's not a big thing though. Take for instance the Kelvin Dreadnought and the Kelvin Dreadnought Equipment bundle. When the thing first hit the exchange you'd see sprinkles of the latter, posted together with the former. People would only read Kelvin Intel Dreadnought and look at a price that would adequately priced and buy the wrong item.
It's equally possible to post a quantity of items with the same price as a similar sounding quantity of items (say you post a stack of 10 omega particles for the same price as someone that would sell you 100).
These 'tactics' rely on players being unattentive.
Scam may have been the wrong word, but it's a borderline situation.
I don't mean this as a personal attack, so please don't take it as one, but you sound like someone who, when they can't afford the stuffz they want, so bashes the system, rather than putting in the work to earn the resources so they can afford the nice stuffz.
Please stop being patronizing. I'm currently sitting at nearly 2 billion EC plus a selection of high priced ships in my bank.
It's not like the changes wouldn't hurt me, but i'm willing to see those changes implemented so that the game could be made more affordable for other people.
Hang on for just a second there, guy, 'scam auctions', like you've written, are impossible on the STO exchange. No one enters the name or description of what they're selling. It's system-defined. The only thing the player has control over, is the amount of said commodity, and the price they want to sell for. So no, there is no 'putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks'. If you don't even understand that about the exchange, I can't give the rest of your notions credence either.
Scam acutions are a thing, luckily it's not a big thing though. Take for instance the Kelvin Dreadnought and the Kelvin Dreadnought Equipment bundle. When the thing first hit the exchange you'd see sprinkles of the latter, posted together with the former. People would only read Kelvin Intel Dreadnought and look at a price that would adequately priced and buy the wrong item.
It's equally possible to post a quantity of items with the same price as a similar sounding quantity of items (say you post a stack of 10 omega particles for the same price as someone that would sell you 100).
These 'tactics' rely on players being unattentive.
Scam may have been the wrong word, but it's a borderline situation.
No, it's not a borderline situation. If someone doesn't see the difference when they look at sales listing, that's on them. Like I said, the listing and information is system generated, so I refuse to conflate that with a deliberately misleading sale on the part of the seller. I've made the mistake of clicking the wrong thing before, so do you know what I did? I re-listed it at the puchase price, and bam, it sold again in seconds.
Please stop being patronizing. I'm currently sitting at nearly 2 billion EC plus a selection of high priced ships in my bank.
It's not like the changes wouldn't hurt me, but i'm willing to see those changes implemented so that the game could be made more affordable for other people.
I don't know you or your ec balance, you just sounded like a new player complaining about The System being unfair, because they couldn't(yet) afford to pay for what they wanted. I shouldn't have given you the in-road of saying 'please don't take it personally', thus giving you the opportunity to get defensive about it. If you've got 2 billion ec, what do you care what prices other people list their stuff for? Or if other people get gouged? Or if there's a listing fee? You could afford to list items at the exact ec value and still not be losing money, so do you do that, or do you inflate the price to make more profit? You've been playing for four years, so lets call that half a billion ec a year, what routes have you been following to build that amount? Direct inputs of real world cash? Or playing the exchange as intended?
At the end of the day, that's between you and your conscience, but there's no need to get holier-than-thou and bite someone's head off, for pointing out the simplicity of the exchange, to someone who sounds like they don't even understand the exchange at all (like a new player)
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Hmm I have about 10 billion that just sits there because I hardly play any more. Maybe next Connie promo I will buy 7 to 10 and have a in game give away "you can haz my stuffs" event weekend
No, it's not a borderline situation. If someone doesn't see the difference when they look at sales listing, that's on them. Like I said, the listing and information is system generated, so I refuse to conflate that with a deliberately misleading sale on the part of the seller. I've made the mistake of clicking the wrong thing before, so do you know what I did? I re-listed it at the puchase price, and bam, it sold again in seconds.
If the prices of the supposedly misleading sale are so perfectly matched, i can very much presume that it was a deliberate attempt. Who gets hurt by it doesn't really matter to me. Someone pretty much always does.
If you've got 2 billion ec, what do you care what prices other people list their stuff for?Or if other people get gouged? Or if there's a listing fee? You could afford to list items at the exact ec value and still not be losing money, so do you do that, or do you inflate the price to make more profit?
I care because i want to play the game with other people. I see it again and again in my fleet. Player fluctuation is huge and the old guard is slowly going away.
New player come into the game and see all the shinies that they can get. Then they realize the real money implications behind those nice and expansive items and after 2 weeks will probably never come back. It doesn't matter that everything is atainable in game, or that you don't need any lockbox ship to play the game. To them the unattainability build this massive wall that they will never overcome and is a direct hindrance to their enjoyment of the game.
Then we have the old guard. They are a dying breed. I'd say 80% of them in my fleet have drastically reduced their playtime or quit alltogether. The reason most cite ist not content fatigue. It's farming fatigue. Where they could easily afford the odd lockbox or even promo ship in hte past, they can't and won't anymore. Again i've talked to a lot of them. It's either "this isn't Star Trek anymore, with the focus on ever shinier s**t", or "I invest as much time into the game as before, but only get a fraction of the value i used to get." (Even after adapting to the market, mind you).
I want the inflation to stop. The exchange is the biggest junction where wealth transitions, so it's the logical focal point to start implementing measures. Call them lazy, i call them easily implemented. Inflation would be reduced, value would remain stable over time and a sense of progression will be restored.
You've been playing for four years, so lets call that half a billion ec a year, what routes have you been following to build that amount? Direct inputs of real world cash? Or playing the exchange as intended?
First it was the doffs, now it's crafting. I don't play the exchange. I rarely undercut people, unless there is a time constraint put upon me. I was lucky, because i was the first one (or at least one of the first ones) to get Engineering R&D to level 15 and sold Superior Tech Upgrades en masse. The profit margin was great and i easily made a couple of billions doing just that.
I don't really do that anymore though. I haven't really engaged in the exchange for at least 2 years now. It's not worth my time anymore. Lockbox ships i can buy when i want and promo ships really aren't worth it considering their price/performance ratio. (Even if they are iconic or whathaveyou).
I haven't put any real money into the game since i bought my lifetime subscription during the beta, btw.
At the end of the day, that's between you and your conscience, but there's no need to get holier-than-thou and bite someone's head off, for pointing out the simplicity of the exchange, to someone who sounds like they don't even understand the exchange at all (like a new player)
I apologize if i came across as too harsh. It's just frustrating to see people in this thread with an obvious investment in the exchange simply handwave any problems with the current system away.
I must say i'm more in favor of a change in the trade mechanics anyways. The exchange fee was a suggestion and would need to be carefully balanced. Easy to implement (or lazy as some would say), but really hard to balance.
On the other hand making items bought of the exchange 'bind to account' would put more power into the hands of people that actually buy things with real world money ... which can be good or bad, depending on your inclinations. I tend to think it's a good thing. Reselling would be gone from the game. Items would only be listed for the value they actually have, dependend on their demand. They couldn't be used as an investment anymore and speculation around that would cease.
Hang on for just a second there, guy, 'scam auctions', like you've written, are impossible on the STO exchange. No one enters the name or description of what they're selling. It's system-defined. The only thing the player has control over, is the amount of said commodity, and the price they want to sell for. So no, there is no 'putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks'. If you don't even understand that about the exchange, I can't give the rest of your notions credence either.
Scam acutions are a thing, luckily it's not a big thing though. Take for instance the Kelvin Dreadnought and the Kelvin Dreadnought Equipment bundle. When the thing first hit the exchange you'd see sprinkles of the latter, posted together with the former. People would only read Kelvin Intel Dreadnought and look at a price that would adequately priced and buy the wrong item.
It's equally possible to post a quantity of items with the same price as a similar sounding quantity of items (say you post a stack of 10 omega particles for the same price as someone that would sell you 100).
These 'tactics' rely on players being unattentive.
Scam may have been the wrong word, but it's a borderline situation.
No, it's not a borderline situation. If someone doesn't see the difference when they look at sales listing, that's on them. Like I said, the listing and information is system generated, so I refuse to conflate that with a deliberately misleading sale on the part of the seller. I've made the mistake of clicking the wrong thing before, so do you know what I did? I re-listed it at the puchase price, and bam, it sold again in seconds.
When you list the equipment bundle which sells for 80 mil EC for 280 mil in hopes that somebody misclicks on your item because it will be listed for 20 mil under the lowest actual kelvin dread...yeah that is a scam. And if you misclick, good luck selling that misclicked item for what you just spent in seconds as you claim. And yes, this isn't just it could happen, I know of several fleetmates who did this. Because they were tired. Because they saw it and the arrow wasn't quite right and it clicked on the wrong item. Because a cat jumped on them. The thing is, even a 1% posting fee would stop this dead. Why? Because listing that item for 200 mil over what it is actually worth will now cost you 2 mil EC per attempt in hopes that somebody makes a mistake. That also means people using the exchange as extra storage will bleed EC and will maybe...just maybe buy more slots...so your idea that this will not monetize thing is false there. And finally, making the EC market have a sink to slow down inflation is in their best intrest if they want to grab new players. Nothing says why bother to a new player like joining an old MMO and seeing prices for stuff in the 100s of millions or billions when they are getting thousands of the currency per drop. So loss of players due to out of control inflation is actually a thing. And for the super casual crowd that this game generates, if the devs had any idea of what the hell they are doing over there at cryptic(and they don't), it should have been one of their top concern since f2p and their desire to grab the super casual gamers. They royally screwed that up at this point so having a sink for that reason maybe a bit too little and late...but still slowing down inflation should help the casuals who have something built up at this point.
But you're both presuming that the seller has listed it at that price just to trick the buyer. I don't deny that it's a gouge, if they're selling for that much above market, but it doesn't (to me at least) automatically translate to malicious intent (maybe it's just that humanitarian streak again, that Brunt would have my lobes for)
Take boffs for example. Any department or race you like. This happens with almost all that I have seen. Search for (for the sake of conversation) Trill Tactical. Suppose you actually want a very rare, that's going to take a few screens to get to. And suppose you want a female, that's going to take a few more screens to get to. So let's (again, for the sake of conversation) say that you tab through five pages and find the very rare females at, say, 12'000. No problem. But if you scroll down from Ms Veryrare, you'll still see uncommons and rares, listed at 12'000, 15'000 etc, and more. And then you can tab through a few more pages till reaching the next batch of very rares. And it'll repeat up in this pattern, till reaching the millions.
So those people who are listing the uncommons and rares over the price of the first batch of very rares: Are they then listing them at higher prices, hoping that people might equate price with rarity, or, are they just trying to gouge, in the hopes that someone will actually pay the asking price? Never account to malice, what can be attributed to stupidity
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Hmm I have about 10 billion that just sits there because I hardly play any more. Maybe next Connie promo I will buy 7 to 10 and have a in game give away "you can haz my stuffs" event weekend
That would be awesome #DibsOnAVengeancePlease
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Sellers cannot 'price gouge' you - unless - you pay them what they are asking for an item.
There is nothing in this game which is mandatory gear for a ship or away team except for one item: A competent player. I'd like to have a Vengeance Intel Dreadnought Cruiser very much. I'd also like to get a T'Laru. But I do not need them to play STO. A little self control goes a very long way. If I get one of either I will gladly use and enjoy it. A lot. But I do not enjoy the game less or feel disadvantaged because I do not currently have either one.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
Finally someone who gets it! Thank you! Of course, the Tycoons got it too, but keeps pretending they have no idea what's happening. *g*
~dramatic sailor moon poses~
Of course.....wealth, not to mention power, for quite some time, mind you, has never been honestly earned....it's either inherited and/or acquired through despicable means. The Red Shield...aka the Rothschild clan, became a super powerful banking cartel and financial entity way back when in the Napoleonic era by blatantly lying to everyone and buying shares cheap and making it big, and becoming the gang of weasels they are today (a more soft core version was Martha Stewart's so-called inside trading conviction...where her stocks, which was got a lot of, prior to her conviction, and sky rocketed after), or Bill Gate's anti monopoly violation back in the 1990's, not to mention the term known as "Black Shelving" where patents get bought, or acquired through...let's say dishonest means...to keep a status quo.....the Stan Meyer's tragedy being a prime example.
It's not supply and demand, it's not spending trends or so on....it's simply 4 little words:
I/we want more money!
And there's tons of folks who do it with little to no regard for laws, ethics, or life in some cases. And for every Enron, World com and Marth Stewart that gets caught, there's tons who get away scot-free all the time. They just simply don't twirl their mustaches in public for all to see....though it's getting to the point the average slob won't notice anyhow, because they only listen to what the television or someone with a position of authority says. ~shrugs~
^^^ this spot on targt
We humans are more like ferengi then any species in star trek, we lust for weatlh and power ,we are driven or it, we are passionate about it, and will stoop to the lowest levels to obtain it.
Look at the health care industry we have to pay to get our ills cared for, thats so ferengi someone sick? you have a cure? charge them every last nickel.
Imo the day humanity adopts and practices the rules of acquisition is the day we find some sort of inner peace as a species.
with that said the cap increase will indeed increase prices of certain items, could even increase prices across the board, sadly if the prices go up to sharpy it will chase away the more casual gamer...which the devs seem to have been doing since DR.
Hang on for just a second there, guy, 'scam auctions', like you've written, are impossible on the STO exchange. No one enters the name or description of what they're selling. It's system-defined. The only thing the player has control over, is the amount of said commodity, and the price they want to sell for. So no, there is no 'putting similar named items in the same price range and hope that somebody mis-clicks'. If you don't even understand that about the exchange, I can't give the rest of your notions credence either.
Scam acutions are a thing, luckily it's not a big thing though. Take for instance the Kelvin Dreadnought and the Kelvin Dreadnought Equipment bundle. When the thing first hit the exchange you'd see sprinkles of the latter, posted together with the former. People would only read Kelvin Intel Dreadnought and look at a price that would adequately priced and buy the wrong item.
It's equally possible to post a quantity of items with the same price as a similar sounding quantity of items (say you post a stack of 10 omega particles for the same price as someone that would sell you 100).
These 'tactics' rely on players being unattentive.
Scam may have been the wrong word, but it's a borderline situation.
No, it's not a borderline situation. If someone doesn't see the difference when they look at sales listing, that's on them. Like I said, the listing and information is system generated, so I refuse to conflate that with a deliberately misleading sale on the part of the seller. I've made the mistake of clicking the wrong thing before, so do you know what I did? I re-listed it at the puchase price, and bam, it sold again in seconds.
When you list the equipment bundle which sells for 80 mil EC for 280 mil in hopes that somebody misclicks on your item because it will be listed for 20 mil under the lowest actual kelvin dread...yeah that is a scam. And if you misclick, good luck selling that misclicked item for what you just spent in seconds as you claim. And yes, this isn't just it could happen, I know of several fleetmates who did this. Because they were tired. Because they saw it and the arrow wasn't quite right and it clicked on the wrong item. Because a cat jumped on them. The thing is, even a 1% posting fee would stop this dead. Why? Because listing that item for 200 mil over what it is actually worth will now cost you 2 mil EC per attempt in hopes that somebody makes a mistake. That also means people using the exchange as extra storage will bleed EC and will maybe...just maybe buy more slots...so your idea that this will not monetize thing is false there. And finally, making the EC market have a sink to slow down inflation is in their best intrest if they want to grab new players. Nothing says why bother to a new player like joining an old MMO and seeing prices for stuff in the 100s of millions or billions when they are getting thousands of the currency per drop. So loss of players due to out of control inflation is actually a thing. And for the super casual crowd that this game generates, if the devs had any idea of what the hell they are doing over there at cryptic(and they don't), it should have been one of their top concern since f2p and their desire to grab the super casual gamers. They royally screwed that up at this point so having a sink for that reason maybe a bit too little and late...but still slowing down inflation should help the casuals who have something built up at this point.
But you're both presuming that the seller has listed it at that price just to trick the buyer. I don't deny that it's a gouge, if they're selling for that much above market, but it doesn't (to me at least) automatically translate to malicious intent (maybe it's just that humanitarian streak again, that Brunt would have my lobes for)
Take boffs for example. Any department or race you like. This happens with almost all that I have seen. Search for (for the sake of conversation) Trill Tactical. Suppose you actually want a very rare, that's going to take a few screens to get to. And suppose you want a female, that's going to take a few more screens to get to. So let's (again, for the sake of conversation) say that you tab through five pages and find the very rare females at, say, 12'000. No problem. But if you scroll down from Ms Veryrare, you'll still see uncommons and rares, listed at 12'000, 15'000 etc, and more. And then you can tab through a few more pages till reaching the next batch of very rares. And it'll repeat up in this pattern, till reaching the millions.
So those people who are listing the uncommons and rares over the price of the first batch of very rares: Are they then listing them at higher prices, hoping that people might equate price with rarity, or, are they just trying to gouge, in the hopes that someone will actually pay the asking price? Never account to malice, what can be attributed to stupidity
In the case of boffs, what skills and traits they have actually matters for their selling price. So yes a uncommon boff could be worth more than a VR one. This applies to romulans and remans. If they have SRO or SI as a rare boff, they will cost more that VR boffs...by large amounts even. So yeah...wrong example.
And yes it could just be people posting things for bad amounts...but a usage fee will once again help eliminate that. And the uncommon trill listed for millions...yeah those are there for storage space. Usage fee will once again deal with those.
Ahhh, traits... That makes sense... I'd never looked at traits, I only ever really looked for abilities, or a type to create a particular character, which would involve retraining with skills of my own choice, I never thought to check traits as well, so thanks for clarifying that reason for me
Ahhhhh, so they're not being listed by someone hoping that some chump will actually pay hundreds of millions for a boff which could be had for a few thousand, but as storage space. Yeah, that makes sense, I never considered that people would be using the exchange as additional storage space
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Sellers cannot 'price gouge' you - unless - you pay them what they are asking for an item.
There is nothing in this game which is mandatory gear for a ship or away team except for one item: A competent player. I'd like to have a Vengeance Intel Dreadnought Cruiser very much. I'd also like to get a T'Laru. But I do not need them to play STO. A little self control goes a very long way. If I get one of either I will gladly use and enjoy it. A lot. But I do not enjoy the game less or feel disadvantaged because I do not currently have either one.
Sure, they can't gouge someone who won't pay the price, but if there's someone who will, then it is still gouging. Take the price for very rare Starfleet Klingon tactical females, for example. Last time I looked, there weren't any listed below several million ec, so that's a definite market cornering/gouging going on :-\
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
Finally someone who gets it! Thank you! Of course, the Tycoons got it too, but keeps pretending they have no idea what's happening. *g*
~dramatic sailor moon poses~
Of course.....wealth, not to mention power, for quite some time, mind you, has never been honestly earned....it's either inherited and/or acquired through despicable means. The Red Shield...aka the Rothschild clan, became a super powerful banking cartel and financial entity way back when in the Napoleonic era by blatantly lying to everyone and buying shares cheap and making it big, and becoming the gang of weasels they are today (a more soft core version was Martha Stewart's so-called inside trading conviction...where her stocks, which was got a lot of, prior to her conviction, and sky rocketed after), or Bill Gate's anti monopoly violation back in the 1990's, not to mention the term known as "Black Shelving" where patents get bought, or acquired through...let's say dishonest means...to keep a status quo.....the Stan Meyer's tragedy being a prime example.
It's not supply and demand, it's not spending trends or so on....it's simply 4 little words:
I/we want more money!
And there's tons of folks who do it with little to no regard for laws, ethics, or life in some cases. And for every Enron, World com and Marth Stewart that gets caught, there's tons who get away scot-free all the time. They just simply don't twirl their mustaches in public for all to see....though it's getting to the point the average slob won't notice anyhow, because they only listen to what the television or someone with a position of authority says. ~shrugs~
^^^ this spot on targt
We humans are more like ferengi then any species in star trek, we lust for weatlh and power ,we are driven or it, we are passionate about it, and will stoop to the lowest levels to obtain it.
Look at the health care industry we have to pay to get our ills cared for, thats so ferengi someone sick? you have a cure? charge them every last nickel.
Imo the day humanity adopts and practices the rules of acquisition is the day we find some sort of inner peace as a species.
with that said the cap increase will indeed increase prices of certain items, could even increase prices across the board, sadly if the prices go up to sharpy it will chase away the more casual gamer...which the devs seem to have been doing since DR.
But DR is The Best and PLAYERS LOVE IT!!!1
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
it's not just storage, it's also the only way for players who don't have the account bank unlocked to transfer EC between their characters
Ah, yeah, I've done that myself with small hypos. I only ever thought to use a commodity I wouldn't mind to lose if someone else did decide to buy it, I never thought that some of those super-high prices were 'bank transfers' #LearningNewStuffEveryDay
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
You have to understand that there are two sides to every price, the supply curve, which is a graph showing how many united of a given thing the people in the market are willing to sell for a given price, and the demand curve, which is a similar graph showing how many units of a thing the people in the market are willing to buy at a given price.
Are you really explaining 'Supply & Demand' again here?! What would we be without your great wisdom, O mighty Educator!
The other is to look at costs, supply, demand, evidence from the market, etc, and say "the market price appears to be: X, and that's what the item is worth, according to the behavior of all the different people making decisions about buying and selling the item."
And therein, deeply buried within a wall of text, lies the deception again, at "the market price appears to be: X." Because X is not a given number, but the price you put it on the market for yourselves! Circular deceit again: "We, the tycoons, put it up for 500 mil, the market now has it listed for 500 mil, therefore it's worth 500 mil. And now everything lower than that, we buy up again, and relist it for a 'market-price' we set ourselves." Riiight.
See, price-gouging in the STO is very easy. It's like a grocery store which sells all its milk for $100 a bottle/carton. Nobody is their right mind would ever buy their milk there, as they'd just go elsewhere... Ay, there's the rub: there is no elsewhere in STO! To protract the analogy, you and your ilk have scooped up all bottles for cheap, and relisted them all at $100.** Aka, you have done something that would be virtually impossible in RL. In real life, not being able to sell any at $100, you would have hasted to adjust your pricing, or be out of business the next week, if not sooner. But in STO you can, and you do. That's why all your generic 'education' about 'Supply & Demand' is fail (or, at least, only partially applicable to STO).
One approach might seem solipsistic, ignorant, or narcissistic, but I think it has less to do with defects of personality than from lack of knowledge. Because of this, I think that if you educate people, then anyone willing to accept education instead of reject it can learn and become better. And making society better, even space society, is a public service.
*Now* who's setting himself up as "the supreme authority"?! It's really a bit unbecoming, honestly. You're just rich. So is Trump. Get over yourself.
** You didn't list the milk at $1,000 a bottle, as then you'd have overplayed your hand. But you carefully set the price so high, that ppl can still afford it (albeit barely), and grudgingly have to buy it at the exorbitant prices, or have nothing at all. Well played!
That's the policy of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
Same thing with a comic/hobby shop in the small, rural town I live in. The only shop here, and some of the stuff is at least twice as much, or sometimes triple, yet he's the only shop nearby, and my town is literally in the middle of nowhere. The old robber even puts high prices on BROKEN collectibles like a Generation 1 Transformer that's missing an arm, a foot, no gun and looks like it went through a trip in a wood chipper.
Finally someone who gets it! Thank you! Of course, the Tycoons got it too, but keeps pretending they have no idea what's happening. *g*
~dramatic sailor moon poses~
Of course.....wealth, not to mention power, for quite some time, mind you, has never been honestly earned....it's either inherited and/or acquired through despicable means. The Red Shield...aka the Rothschild clan, became a super powerful banking cartel and financial entity way back when in the Napoleonic era by blatantly lying to everyone and buying shares cheap and making it big, and becoming the gang of weasels they are today (a more soft core version was Martha Stewart's so-called inside trading conviction...where her stocks, which was got a lot of, prior to her conviction, and sky rocketed after), or Bill Gate's anti monopoly violation back in the 1990's, not to mention the term known as "Black Shelving" where patents get bought, or acquired through...let's say dishonest means...to keep a status quo.....the Stan Meyer's tragedy being a prime example.
It's not supply and demand, it's not spending trends or so on....it's simply 4 little words:
I/we want more money!
And there's tons of folks who do it with little to no regard for laws, ethics, or life in some cases. And for every Enron, World com and Marth Stewart that gets caught, there's tons who get away scot-free all the time. They just simply don't twirl their mustaches in public for all to see....though it's getting to the point the average slob won't notice anyhow, because they only listen to what the television or someone with a position of authority says. ~shrugs~
^^^ this spot on targt
We humans are more like ferengi then any species in star trek, we lust for weatlh and power ,we are driven or it, we are passionate about it, and will stoop to the lowest levels to obtain it.
Look at the health care industry we have to pay to get our ills cared for, thats so ferengi someone sick? you have a cure? charge them every last nickel.
Imo the day humanity adopts and practices the rules of acquisition is the day we find some sort of inner peace as a species.
with that said the cap increase will indeed increase prices of certain items, could even increase prices across the board, sadly if the prices go up to sharpy it will chase away the more casual gamer...which the devs seem to have been doing since DR.
Not all of us, thankfully.
Wealth or power never really appealed to me, I find both rather repugnant.
The say they adopt the rules of acquisition, that's the day the world dies, because they'll be lobbing nuclear rockets at each other, and the survivors, like Mad Maxx, killing each other over the last barrel of oil.
Sure, they can't gouge someone who won't pay the price, but if there's someone who will, then it is still gouging. Take the price for very rare Starfleet Klingon tactical females, for example. Last time I looked, there weren't any listed below several million ec, so that's a definite market cornering/gouging going on :-\
I am not responsible nor accountable for what other players do with their resources within this game. I am not responsible nor accountable for whatever ridiculous lengths other players are willing to go to acquire something which is seen as "must have".
It is not my job to protect other players from their own willful lack of self control and stupidity. Nor am I supposed to be the Exchange Police so players charge only 1EC for that Mk XIV Gold Super Duper Whatchamacallit.
People want the overpricing to stop? That's easy. Stop paying. If it is on the Exchange, the player posting it for sale does not want or need it. There will come a time when the owner simply wants to get rid of the item. At this point, the price will come down. Again, there is no item or ship in this game which anyone has to have to play PvE at all. But all this sounds entirely too much like common sense. Which is apparently in very short supply these days.
If the fate of the planet depends upon you acquiring a Female Klingon Fed BOff and your existence will be have no meaning until you get this Penultimate Bridge Bunny, by all means look me up ingame. I'll be happy to purchase and gift one to you from the C-Store. Which is where most of them started from anyways.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
If the prices of the supposedly misleading sale are so perfectly matched, i can very much presume that it was a deliberate attempt. Who gets hurt by it doesn't really matter to me. Someone pretty much always does.
Fair enough, I guess there are some pretty sleazy people in the world, such as the losers who aren't Manly enough to entice a woman willingly, so have to resort to spiking their drinks and such. Thinking about it, yeah, there's always going to be those who try and exploit other.
I care because i want to play the game with other people. I see it again and again in my fleet. Player fluctuation is huge and the old guard is slowly going away.
New player come into the game and see all the shinies that they can get. Then they realize the real money implications behind those nice and expansive items and after 2 weeks will probably never come back. It doesn't matter that everything is atainable in game, or that you don't need any lockbox ship to play the game. To them the unattainability build this massive wall that they will never overcome and is a direct hindrance to their enjoyment of the game.
Then we have the old guard. They are a dying breed. I'd say 80% of them in my fleet have drastically reduced their playtime or quit alltogether. The reason most cite ist not content fatigue. It's farming fatigue. Where they could easily afford the odd lockbox or even promo ship in hte past, they can't and won't anymore. Again i've talked to a lot of them. It's either "this isn't Star Trek anymore, with the focus on ever shinier s**t", or "I invest as much time into the game as before, but only get a fraction of the value i used to get." (Even after adapting to the market, mind you).
I want the inflation to stop. The exchange is the biggest junction where wealth transitions, so it's the logical focal point to start implementing measures. Call them lazy, i call them easily implemented. Inflation would be reduced, value would remain stable over time and a sense of progression will be restored.
I guess personal preference, as I'm content to play the game solo. I'm lucky to be in a fleet managed by an fb friend, who was willing to let me in to make use of the facilities, but doesn't expect me to actually participate in group events. I've certainly put enough dilithium and other resources into fleet projects that I pay my way, rather than simply mooching a private starbase
Farming fatigue, I definitely understand. I have several alts created just to use as additional dilithium miners, and I do rather enjoy doing it, but by the same token, I do have to be in the right mood to sit down and get them all to mine their daily quotas (especially as I prefer trading for farming, and am trying to build ec, and find the exchange a quicker way of doing that
First it was the doffs, now it's crafting. I don't play the exchange. I rarely undercut people, unless there is a time constraint put upon me. I was lucky, because i was the first one (or at least one of the first ones) to get Engineering R&D to level 15 and sold Superior Tech Upgrades en masse. The profit margin was great and i easily made a couple of billions doing just that.
I don't really do that anymore though. I haven't really engaged in the exchange for at least 2 years now. It's not worth my time anymore. Lockbox ships i can buy when i want and promo ships really aren't worth it considering their price/performance ratio. (Even if they are iconic or whathaveyou).
I haven't put any real money into the game since i bought my lifetime subscription during the beta, btw.
Definitely money to be made in doffs from what I've seen, I just haven't reached the financial plateau to enter that market. Yet. Crafting, I'm wary of. I wouldn't want to make An Item, only to find no one wants to buy it Maybe when my resources are less deliberate in their allocation needs, I'll give it a try
I apologize if i came across as too harsh. It's just frustrating to see people in this thread with an obvious investment in the exchange simply handwave any problems with the current system away.
I must say i'm more in favor of a change in the trade mechanics anyways. The exchange fee was a suggestion and would need to be carefully balanced. Easy to implement (or lazy as some would say), but really hard to balance.
On the other hand making items bought of the exchange 'bind to account' would put more power into the hands of people that actually buy things with real world money ... which can be good or bad, depending on your inclinations. I tend to think it's a good thing. Reselling would be gone from the game. Items would only be listed for the value they actually have, dependend on their demand. They couldn't be used as an investment anymore and speculation around that would cease.
No harm, no foul I think if items become bind to account, it would be too much of a move towards real-world monetization of what is a F2P game, it wouldn't be well received. It would also pretty much nullify the need for the exchange itself, and it would just become a massive expansion of the C Store.
I think some of the flaws mentioned, like gouging, or people using it as free storage space, are simply things which need to be overlooked and ignored, in favour of the boons which the exchange brings, essentially, a whole new game-within-a-game, and a very versatile system for people to pick up the items they need
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Sure, they can't gouge someone who won't pay the price, but if there's someone who will, then it is still gouging. Take the price for very rare Starfleet Klingon tactical females, for example. Last time I looked, there weren't any listed below several million ec, so that's a definite market cornering/gouging going on :-\
I am not responsible nor accountable for what other players do with their resources within this game. I am not responsible nor accountable for whatever ridiculous lengths other players are willing to go to acquire something which is seen as "must have".
It is not my job to protect other players from their own willful lack of self control and stupidity. Nor am I supposed to be the Exchange Police so players charge only 1EC for that Mk XIV Gold Super Duper Whatchamacallit.
People want the overpricing to stop? That's easy. Stop paying. If it is on the Exchange, the player posting it for sale does not want or need it. There will come a time when the owner simply wants to get rid of the item. At this point, the price will come down. Again, there is no item or ship in this game which anyone has to have to play PvE at all. But all this sounds entirely too much like common sense. Which is apparently in very short supply these days.
If the fate of the planet depends upon you acquiring a Female Klingon Fed BOff and your existence will be have no meaning until you get this Penultimate Bridge Bunny, by all means look me up ingame. I'll be happy to purchase and gift one to you from the C-Store. Which is where most of them started from anyways.
Did I say that you were accountable or responsible for how people use their in-game resources? I did not.
You did, however, make the assertion that sellers can't gouge someone, unless someone pays them, to which I replied, that they can't gouge me because I won't pay their gouger prices, but that because someone else will pay their prices (there's always another customer) they are enabled in their gouging practices.
Telling people to stop paying, is an unhelpful suggestion, because, there will always be someone who will pay, because they want the stuff, more than they care about the moral point to not acquire.
You've completely missed my point about the vr Fed Klingon tac fem, and by resorting to diminishing terms to make it sound like a trivially throwaway item, which you can oh-so-nobly just gift, you're unnecessarily acting like a jerk. Completely missed the point. I don't want one. I already have one. One of the best boffs I have bought. No, the point I'm making, is that someone is cornering the market in that boff type (I've not seen any other boffs being sold at such a high price, without also being available for much less as well) and keeping that price out of the hands of casual players, and that I think that's a lousy thing to do. That's what I was trying to point out. And if it can be done with the Klingon bridge bunnies, how many other commodities are being cornered in this manner, just to keep stuff out of the hands of new or casual players?
"I fight for the Users!" - Tron
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Comments
~dramatic sailor moon poses~
Of course.....wealth, not to mention power, for quite some time, mind you, has never been honestly earned....it's either inherited and/or acquired through despicable means. The Red Shield...aka the Rothschild clan, became a super powerful banking cartel and financial entity way back when in the Napoleonic era by blatantly lying to everyone and buying shares cheap and making it big, and becoming the gang of weasels they are today (a more soft core version was Martha Stewart's so-called inside trading conviction...where her stocks, which was got a lot of, prior to her conviction, and sky rocketed after), or Bill Gate's anti monopoly violation back in the 1990's, not to mention the term known as "Black Shelving" where patents get bought, or acquired through...let's say dishonest means...to keep a status quo.....the Stan Meyer's tragedy being a prime example.
It's not supply and demand, it's not spending trends or so on....it's simply 4 little words:
I/we want more money!
And there's tons of folks who do it with little to no regard for laws, ethics, or life in some cases. And for every Enron, World com and Marth Stewart that gets caught, there's tons who get away scot-free all the time. They just simply don't twirl their mustaches in public for all to see....though it's getting to the point the average slob won't notice anyhow, because they only listen to what the television or someone with a position of authority says. ~shrugs~
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.'
Cryptic would have no reason to impose a listing fee in the eay eBay do, for one very simple reason. It's because they wouldn't financially benefit from the currency being used to pay that listing fee. There is Absolutely No Way that someone is going to pay cash-money to list their space commodities. Not going to happen. And what good is X amount of dil, ec or even Zen to Cryptic? It's not like they can remove it from the system and monetize it
I don't mean this as a personal attack, so please don't take it as one, but you sound like someone who, when they can't afford the stuffz they want, so bashes the system, rather than putting in the work to earn the resources so they can afford the nice stuffz.
25'000 seed, and an understanding of how stock exchanges work, that's all you need to begin building your balance
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
To some folks, that's fine for them.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
My chica, Latoya, often does that already.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Scam acutions are a thing, luckily it's not a big thing though. Take for instance the Kelvin Dreadnought and the Kelvin Dreadnought Equipment bundle. When the thing first hit the exchange you'd see sprinkles of the latter, posted together with the former. People would only read Kelvin Intel Dreadnought and look at a price that would adequately priced and buy the wrong item.
It's equally possible to post a quantity of items with the same price as a similar sounding quantity of items (say you post a stack of 10 omega particles for the same price as someone that would sell you 100).
These 'tactics' rely on players being unattentive.
Scam may have been the wrong word, but it's a borderline situation.
Please stop being patronizing. I'm currently sitting at nearly 2 billion EC plus a selection of high priced ships in my bank.
It's not like the changes wouldn't hurt me, but i'm willing to see those changes implemented so that the game could be made more affordable for other people.
I don't know you or your ec balance, you just sounded like a new player complaining about The System being unfair, because they couldn't(yet) afford to pay for what they wanted. I shouldn't have given you the in-road of saying 'please don't take it personally', thus giving you the opportunity to get defensive about it. If you've got 2 billion ec, what do you care what prices other people list their stuff for? Or if other people get gouged? Or if there's a listing fee? You could afford to list items at the exact ec value and still not be losing money, so do you do that, or do you inflate the price to make more profit? You've been playing for four years, so lets call that half a billion ec a year, what routes have you been following to build that amount? Direct inputs of real world cash? Or playing the exchange as intended?
At the end of the day, that's between you and your conscience, but there's no need to get holier-than-thou and bite someone's head off, for pointing out the simplicity of the exchange, to someone who sounds like they don't even understand the exchange at all (like a new player)
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
I care because i want to play the game with other people. I see it again and again in my fleet. Player fluctuation is huge and the old guard is slowly going away.
New player come into the game and see all the shinies that they can get. Then they realize the real money implications behind those nice and expansive items and after 2 weeks will probably never come back. It doesn't matter that everything is atainable in game, or that you don't need any lockbox ship to play the game. To them the unattainability build this massive wall that they will never overcome and is a direct hindrance to their enjoyment of the game.
Then we have the old guard. They are a dying breed. I'd say 80% of them in my fleet have drastically reduced their playtime or quit alltogether. The reason most cite ist not content fatigue. It's farming fatigue. Where they could easily afford the odd lockbox or even promo ship in hte past, they can't and won't anymore. Again i've talked to a lot of them. It's either "this isn't Star Trek anymore, with the focus on ever shinier s**t", or "I invest as much time into the game as before, but only get a fraction of the value i used to get." (Even after adapting to the market, mind you).
I want the inflation to stop. The exchange is the biggest junction where wealth transitions, so it's the logical focal point to start implementing measures. Call them lazy, i call them easily implemented. Inflation would be reduced, value would remain stable over time and a sense of progression will be restored.
First it was the doffs, now it's crafting. I don't play the exchange. I rarely undercut people, unless there is a time constraint put upon me. I was lucky, because i was the first one (or at least one of the first ones) to get Engineering R&D to level 15 and sold Superior Tech Upgrades en masse. The profit margin was great and i easily made a couple of billions doing just that.
I don't really do that anymore though. I haven't really engaged in the exchange for at least 2 years now. It's not worth my time anymore. Lockbox ships i can buy when i want and promo ships really aren't worth it considering their price/performance ratio. (Even if they are iconic or whathaveyou).
I haven't put any real money into the game since i bought my lifetime subscription during the beta, btw.
I apologize if i came across as too harsh. It's just frustrating to see people in this thread with an obvious investment in the exchange simply handwave any problems with the current system away.
I must say i'm more in favor of a change in the trade mechanics anyways. The exchange fee was a suggestion and would need to be carefully balanced. Easy to implement (or lazy as some would say), but really hard to balance.
On the other hand making items bought of the exchange 'bind to account' would put more power into the hands of people that actually buy things with real world money ... which can be good or bad, depending on your inclinations. I tend to think it's a good thing. Reselling would be gone from the game. Items would only be listed for the value they actually have, dependend on their demand. They couldn't be used as an investment anymore and speculation around that would cease.
Take boffs for example. Any department or race you like. This happens with almost all that I have seen. Search for (for the sake of conversation) Trill Tactical. Suppose you actually want a very rare, that's going to take a few screens to get to. And suppose you want a female, that's going to take a few more screens to get to. So let's (again, for the sake of conversation) say that you tab through five pages and find the very rare females at, say, 12'000. No problem. But if you scroll down from Ms Veryrare, you'll still see uncommons and rares, listed at 12'000, 15'000 etc, and more. And then you can tab through a few more pages till reaching the next batch of very rares. And it'll repeat up in this pattern, till reaching the millions.
So those people who are listing the uncommons and rares over the price of the first batch of very rares: Are they then listing them at higher prices, hoping that people might equate price with rarity, or, are they just trying to gouge, in the hopes that someone will actually pay the asking price?
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
There is nothing in this game which is mandatory gear for a ship or away team except for one item: A competent player. I'd like to have a Vengeance Intel Dreadnought Cruiser very much. I'd also like to get a T'Laru. But I do not need them to play STO. A little self control goes a very long way. If I get one of either I will gladly use and enjoy it. A lot. But I do not enjoy the game less or feel disadvantaged because I do not currently have either one.
^^^ this spot on targt
We humans are more like ferengi then any species in star trek, we lust for weatlh and power ,we are driven or it, we are passionate about it, and will stoop to the lowest levels to obtain it.
Look at the health care industry we have to pay to get our ills cared for, thats so ferengi someone sick? you have a cure? charge them every last nickel.
Imo the day humanity adopts and practices the rules of acquisition is the day we find some sort of inner peace as a species.
with that said the cap increase will indeed increase prices of certain items, could even increase prices across the board, sadly if the prices go up to sharpy it will chase away the more casual gamer...which the devs seem to have been doing since DR.
Ahhhhh, so they're not being listed by someone hoping that some chump will actually pay hundreds of millions for a boff which could be had for a few thousand, but as storage space. Yeah, that makes sense, I never considered that people would be using the exchange as additional storage space
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
Not all of us, thankfully.
Wealth or power never really appealed to me, I find both rather repugnant.
The say they adopt the rules of acquisition, that's the day the world dies, because they'll be lobbing nuclear rockets at each other, and the survivors, like Mad Maxx, killing each other over the last barrel of oil.
I am not responsible nor accountable for what other players do with their resources within this game. I am not responsible nor accountable for whatever ridiculous lengths other players are willing to go to acquire something which is seen as "must have".
It is not my job to protect other players from their own willful lack of self control and stupidity. Nor am I supposed to be the Exchange Police so players charge only 1EC for that Mk XIV Gold Super Duper Whatchamacallit.
People want the overpricing to stop? That's easy. Stop paying. If it is on the Exchange, the player posting it for sale does not want or need it. There will come a time when the owner simply wants to get rid of the item. At this point, the price will come down. Again, there is no item or ship in this game which anyone has to have to play PvE at all. But all this sounds entirely too much like common sense. Which is apparently in very short supply these days.
If the fate of the planet depends upon you acquiring a Female Klingon Fed BOff and your existence will be have no meaning until you get this Penultimate Bridge Bunny, by all means look me up ingame. I'll be happy to purchase and gift one to you from the C-Store. Which is where most of them started from anyways.
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
I guess personal preference, as I'm content to play the game solo. I'm lucky to be in a fleet managed by an fb friend, who was willing to let me in to make use of the facilities, but doesn't expect me to actually participate in group events. I've certainly put enough dilithium and other resources into fleet projects that I pay my way, rather than simply mooching a private starbase
Farming fatigue, I definitely understand. I have several alts created just to use as additional dilithium miners, and I do rather enjoy doing it, but by the same token, I do have to be in the right mood to sit down and get them all to mine their daily quotas (especially as I prefer trading for farming, and am trying to build ec, and find the exchange a quicker way of doing that
Definitely money to be made in doffs from what I've seen, I just haven't reached the financial plateau to enter that market. Yet. Crafting, I'm wary of. I wouldn't want to make An Item, only to find no one wants to buy it
No harm, no foul
I think some of the flaws mentioned, like gouging, or people using it as free storage space, are simply things which need to be overlooked and ignored, in favour of the boons which the exchange brings, essentially, a whole new game-within-a-game, and a very versatile system for people to pick up the items they need
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
You did, however, make the assertion that sellers can't gouge someone, unless someone pays them, to which I replied, that they can't gouge me because I won't pay their gouger prices, but that because someone else will pay their prices (there's always another customer) they are enabled in their gouging practices.
Telling people to stop paying, is an unhelpful suggestion, because, there will always be someone who will pay, because they want the stuff, more than they care about the moral point to not acquire.
You've completely missed my point about the vr Fed Klingon tac fem, and by resorting to diminishing terms to make it sound like a trivially throwaway item, which you can oh-so-nobly just gift, you're unnecessarily acting like a jerk. Completely missed the point. I don't want one. I already have one. One of the best boffs I have bought. No, the point I'm making, is that someone is cornering the market in that boff type (I've not seen any other boffs being sold at such a high price, without also being available for much less as well) and keeping that price out of the hands of casual players, and that I think that's a lousy thing to do. That's what I was trying to point out. And if it can be done with the Klingon bridge bunnies, how many other commodities are being cornered in this manner, just to keep stuff out of the hands of new or casual players?
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth