Because other people are willing to pay that much for it.
The real reason is that STO is a new game and the rates have not begun to equalize themselves out yet. There's no baseline so people are just throwing out any price with the hope that others will pay it; and since there's not a lot to do with ECs in the game yet, people have a lot of them.
I know, crazy isn't it? I can't complain too much, I'm with the rich crowd at the moment with a fairly decent 6 million EC, I know some people with 50million+ right now!! There's energy to be made if you dirty enough to sell stuff for crazy prices, all my exchange prices have been fairly reasonable though. The highest item I priced was at 500k for a really nice rare Mk VIII EPS console, but mostly I try to price everything way below the market average, not to undercut people but to try and lower the market to more reasonible levels, I mean I've seen people trying to sell basic "white" level items for 100k+ especially Quantums Torps..
I think a way to help normalize the market would be a price filter option. This way, people who post stuff for way too much will eventually
have to take it down in price before reposting it at a more reasonable price.
Eventually, people will figure out how little they're willing to sell their stuff for and will slowly increase their prices until people stop buying things at that price and it lowers down a bit again, and thus a basic value is determined.
At least that's how I'd like to believe it all works but TBH, I'm guessing that a select few with with waaaay too much money will by out all of the cheap TRIBBLE, resell it a ridiculous prices and do this until prices are over exaggerated and the market is borked. Ah capitalism!
It's pretty easy to gather EC if you put any effort into it, and the amount of effort is not much. This way people have a lot of EC to throw at things and this leads to items selling even at ridiculous prices and this leads to the prices not dropping. It's quite simple actually. I do sell everything I put into the exchange way below the average price. Others do this as well so yeah, hopefully this will start to have an impact on the prices at some point.
As long as people are willing to pay these high prices there will be others who offer them. A price filter option would be very good. I bought MKIII Phaser Arraysfrom Exchange and had a price span of 22.000 Credits from highest to lowest offer.
One other possible way is that the high prices are from Chars made by Gold Spamers to collect money.
Whether people realize it or not this is their chance to set the price for their currency and they do so pretty effectively. By finding the most effective way to farm credits they then buy whatever they can and set all the prices they can as high as reasonably, to them, as possible.
This way the economy automatically settles at an inflated level compared to what it would have been without their efforts. This instantly makes their farmed credits worth more in the game currency, real currency ratio.
If all the items are very expensive compared to what a player can make in a reasonable amount of time it not only make it easy for them to sell credits in bulk at a higher price, it also makes more players tempted to buy their product.
It's unfortunately that game economies are so easily manipulated, but that is the truth of mircoeconomics in a game like this. We can say that nobody should buy their credits, but people will anyhow.
The prices will come down, certainly, but that item that should have been 10k will now be 35k instead.
Not that I can prove it but it has been done in other games before but gold sellers often pass on their product in this manner. I saw a Mk IV weapon for over 100,000 credits put up. That is very suspicious.
But I agree, the prices are too high (EPS consoles, turrets, specifically).
just because in the tool tip it says an item is worth X amount of gold doesn't mean that it's worth that much in actuality. it's always common to have items sell for more credits than their NPC sale price
Not that I can prove it but it has been done in other games before but gold sellers often pass on their product in this manner. I saw a Mk IV weapon for over 100,000 credits put up. That is very suspicious.
But I agree, the prices are too high (EPS consoles, turrets, specifically).
It was probably needed for a Memory Alpha purchase.
Mandatory Economics 101 in high school would do wonders for the world. The Exchange definitely needs a way to sort by price, and there are some other features it could really use as well, but within the current framework it's actually working as it should.
If you're having trouble moving product here's a couple of PROTIPs that have come in handy for me. Might be more casual amateur tips, but whatever.
#1: If you are having trouble moving stuff, and aren't hawking junk (easily identified by large numbers of similar items priced on the Exchange at or just above the vendor sell price), take down your 3-5 oldest listings every time you visit starbase and relist them after re-evaluating the price. This will keep you on the front page of searches (which currently lists only the 100 most recent hits) and also helps you catch shifts in the market so you can price down and sell your stuff off before that item becomes too common on the Exchange, which can crash the price hard and make your once valuable product just so much vendor trash.
#2: Do a search for the exact name of your item when listing. Some have issues (such as "Impulse Engines Mk XYZ" because that also catches "Hyper-Impulse Engines XYZ") but for the most part this will show you what people will see when they are looking for what you are selling.
Mandatory Economics 101 in high school would do wonders for the world. The Exchange definitely needs a way to sort by price, and there are some other features it could really use as well, but within the current framework it's actually working as it should.
If you're having trouble moving product here's a couple of PROTIPs that have come in handy for me. Might be more casual amateur tips, but whatever.
#1: If you are having trouble moving stuff, and aren't hawking junk (easily identified by large numbers of similar items priced on the Exchange at or just above the vendor sell price), take down your 3-5 oldest listings every time you visit starbase and relist them after re-evaluating the price. This will keep you on the front page of searches (which currently lists only the 100 most recent hits) and also helps you catch shifts in the market so you can price down and sell your stuff off before that item becomes too common on the Exchange, which can crash the price hard and make your once valuable product just so much vendor trash.
#2: Do a search for the exact name of your item when listing. Some have issues (such as "Impulse Engines Mk XYZ" because that also catches "Hyper-Impulse Engines XYZ") but for the most part this will show you what people will see when they are looking for what you are selling.
Yup,
This works very well, and I agree on the commentary on Economics. The exact search and a bit of research on the resulting list gives you an idea of what things are going for. From there it's fairly simple to set your price or determine if the market is still inflated.
Just today I looked at the price of a few items I was having trouble finding and ... well I wasn't going to pay 10,000 a unit for anything until the economy normalizes.
I trust that, like CCP Cryptic has an expert on staff to oversee such matters.
As with most MMO's people think the objective is to get as much currency as possible due to their greedy nature...
Well that's a rash generalization, sometimes in a hyper inflated market it's more about participating in the market so that you can procure something that it ludicrously expensive without bankrupting yourself.
Since you include ALL games just look at Eve. Some of their high end ships really ARE that hard to make. It's not greed to work to obtain the ISK necessary to obtain the item just a reflection of how much effort is involved in creating the item.
Not always the case (and I really doubt it here) but it's hard to divine motivation in an open market.
WHY TO PEOPLE POST THINGS FOR 10,000 E.C. when they are only worth like 500 EC:mad::mad::mad::mad:
Coz people are using the exchange to transfer money between alts. Not to sell for real.
Like I listed a personal shield TRIBBLE issue for 24321 yesterday and bought it with my old character to get his money before I deleted him. I never tried to sell it to anyone but my alt.
WHY TO PEOPLE POST THINGS FOR 10,000 E.C. when they are only worth like 500 EC:mad::mad::mad::mad:
How do you come to the conclusion that something is worth 500EC? Cause it says so in the corner?
You must understand that if there's a demand for stuff then people will inflate the prices as they do in ALL MMOs. You may say that why is that white IV selling for 20k, Its because a lot of that stuff is used to advance yourself in Memory Alpha so there's a massive demand for it.
Anyway most the time its pointless buying anything on AH as most stuff can be grinded or gained through STOs simple missions.
What the Exchange needs is a better filter system, love and attention. It annoys the hell out of me how when I buy something, I am forced to re-search again. If I have searched through 6 or 7 pages then this can be quite annoying. Hopefully given time that will improve.
All I can say is: If people keep buying at those prices then there will always be massively inflated prices on the exchange. Supply and demand, plain and simple.
I know several people allready said this but... supply and demand. If you have something for sale that you cant buy for the "listed" price anywhere else then its worth what ever someone is willing to pay for it!
Comments
The real reason is that STO is a new game and the rates have not begun to equalize themselves out yet. There's no baseline so people are just throwing out any price with the hope that others will pay it; and since there's not a lot to do with ECs in the game yet, people have a lot of them.
have to take it down in price before reposting it at a more reasonable price.
Eventually, people will figure out how little they're willing to sell their stuff for and will slowly increase their prices until people stop buying things at that price and it lowers down a bit again, and thus a basic value is determined.
At least that's how I'd like to believe it all works but TBH, I'm guessing that a select few with with waaaay too much money will by out all of the cheap TRIBBLE, resell it a ridiculous prices and do this until prices are over exaggerated and the market is borked. Ah capitalism!
One other possible way is that the high prices are from Chars made by Gold Spamers to collect money.
Whether people realize it or not this is their chance to set the price for their currency and they do so pretty effectively. By finding the most effective way to farm credits they then buy whatever they can and set all the prices they can as high as reasonably, to them, as possible.
This way the economy automatically settles at an inflated level compared to what it would have been without their efforts. This instantly makes their farmed credits worth more in the game currency, real currency ratio.
If all the items are very expensive compared to what a player can make in a reasonable amount of time it not only make it easy for them to sell credits in bulk at a higher price, it also makes more players tempted to buy their product.
It's unfortunately that game economies are so easily manipulated, but that is the truth of mircoeconomics in a game like this. We can say that nobody should buy their credits, but people will anyhow.
The prices will come down, certainly, but that item that should have been 10k will now be 35k instead.
But I agree, the prices are too high (EPS consoles, turrets, specifically).
It was probably needed for a Memory Alpha purchase.
Even if you can't, I have no idea, it's not that hard for a EC seller to trade one item from a buyer for X amount of EC that the buyer has bought.
For example an engine battery for 1,000,000 EC.
stand next to the ship/person press trade, add EC and voila you have moved EC
If you're having trouble moving product here's a couple of PROTIPs that have come in handy for me. Might be more casual amateur tips, but whatever.
#1: If you are having trouble moving stuff, and aren't hawking junk (easily identified by large numbers of similar items priced on the Exchange at or just above the vendor sell price), take down your 3-5 oldest listings every time you visit starbase and relist them after re-evaluating the price. This will keep you on the front page of searches (which currently lists only the 100 most recent hits) and also helps you catch shifts in the market so you can price down and sell your stuff off before that item becomes too common on the Exchange, which can crash the price hard and make your once valuable product just so much vendor trash.
#2: Do a search for the exact name of your item when listing. Some have issues (such as "Impulse Engines Mk XYZ" because that also catches "Hyper-Impulse Engines XYZ") but for the most part this will show you what people will see when they are looking for what you are selling.
As with most MMO's people think the objective is to get as much currency as possible due to their greedy nature...
Yup,
This works very well, and I agree on the commentary on Economics. The exact search and a bit of research on the resulting list gives you an idea of what things are going for. From there it's fairly simple to set your price or determine if the market is still inflated.
Just today I looked at the price of a few items I was having trouble finding and ... well I wasn't going to pay 10,000 a unit for anything until the economy normalizes.
I trust that, like CCP Cryptic has an expert on staff to oversee such matters.
J.
Well that's a rash generalization, sometimes in a hyper inflated market it's more about participating in the market so that you can procure something that it ludicrously expensive without bankrupting yourself.
Since you include ALL games just look at Eve. Some of their high end ships really ARE that hard to make. It's not greed to work to obtain the ISK necessary to obtain the item just a reflection of how much effort is involved in creating the item.
Not always the case (and I really doubt it here) but it's hard to divine motivation in an open market.
Just saying'
J.
Maybe they are actually using auction house as a sort of storage space if bank runs out of space? Stupid prices ensures that the items arent bought?
Coz people are using the exchange to transfer money between alts. Not to sell for real.
Like I listed a personal shield TRIBBLE issue for 24321 yesterday and bought it with my old character to get his money before I deleted him. I never tried to sell it to anyone but my alt.
Simple answer: Because people are dumb enough to pay
How do you come to the conclusion that something is worth 500EC? Cause it says so in the corner?
You must understand that if there's a demand for stuff then people will inflate the prices as they do in ALL MMOs. You may say that why is that white IV selling for 20k, Its because a lot of that stuff is used to advance yourself in Memory Alpha so there's a massive demand for it.
Anyway most the time its pointless buying anything on AH as most stuff can be grinded or gained through STOs simple missions.
What the Exchange needs is a better filter system, love and attention. It annoys the hell out of me how when I buy something, I am forced to re-search again. If I have searched through 6 or 7 pages then this can be quite annoying. Hopefully given time that will improve.
All I can say is: If people keep buying at those prices then there will always be massively inflated prices on the exchange. Supply and demand, plain and simple.
Because people are paying it and making me millions in profit
Once there is too much stuff on there you will actually make more through a vendor anyway.