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Not sure where to put this, my apologies if the forum is unappropiate:
I recently figured out I had a KDF Alien Science Boff with Transfer Shield Strenght 3.. Checked the exchange and the only one there was listed for 29mil.
I know this is a rare power, possibly more than ASIF3.. But 29mil?
What is the approx value of this BOff?
I recently figured out I had a KDF Alien Science Boff with Transfer Shield Strenght 3.. Checked the exchange and the only one there was listed for 29mil.
I know this is a rare power, possibly more than ASIF3.. But 29mil?
What is the approx value of this BOff?
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The listing fee isn't aimed at bringing down prices, and won't do that. In fact it will probably raise prices on items that are meant to be sold. DStahl has said that the listing fee is aimed at keeping people from using the exchange for storage. This it should do. Expect to see fewer items listed once it goes into affect.
How about this for a fee system:
When an item is listed on the exchange, a fee is withdrawn from your cash, a percentage of the listing price (5% perhaps).
This fee is gone, no matter what.. So if you list an item for an obscene amount, and do not sell it.. You lose a percentage of that obscene amount.
So if you list a item for say 20 mil and doesnt sell it, you lose 1 mil credits.
If I'm only willing to take 20M for the BO, then I'll just jack my price up to something over 21M. Will that make you more likely to buy it?
And what is an obscene price? I've purchased two BOs for 5M each to get a specific skill. It was worth it to me. Is that an obscene price? What is an obscene price in a system that rains EC down on you just for participating?
A BO listed at 20M isn't really for sale - in my opinion - and is just there for storage purposes. The fee will discourage storage, and the BO will be taken off the exchange instead of being listed for the fee. The end result for people actually looking to buy a BO for less than "obscene" prices is that they won't have to look at any of them on the exchange.
Finally, I'm curious. Did you list the BO and at what price? Would you change the price if you had to pay the fee? If you had the fee AND a time limit, would you list at a lower price and chance not selling it, or would you wait until you were sure of your price? This is what makes real world economics so much fun.
The way the Exchange fee works is real simple. Either someone thinks a price as high as that is worth the item, or you'll loose the fee with no return at all.
The higher you price your items, the less likely they are to get purchased.
The lower you price your items, the more likely they are to get bought, returning your fee with profit.
The in-between is where market knowledge and a bit of gambling come into play. A paradise for the Ferengi amidst us.
Everybody will have to decide this for him- or herself, because everybody has a different amount of EC on his characters. I've been playing here since day 1, and neither of my characters has more than 2 million EC. Granted, this is due to me "wasting" a lot of time with roleplaying and stuff, but I still believe that the people who generate these ridiculous amounts of EC are comparatively few, and other players mainly just got rich by selling rare items to these "privileged" few people. That's not how a game economy can run, considering it leaves out the bulk of players.
"Obscenity" gets determined not only by peoples' pockets, though, but also by availability. Something that is extremely rare maybe really is worth that much. The problem is that in the Exchange there are currently items being offered at prices more than 10 to 100 times above their true value.
The reason? Because everybody else sells them at the same obscene price, too. Because people do not risk anything when offering these items in the Exchange. They do not have to sell. With the Exchange fee, they'll have to, or they will end up loosing EC. They will get an incentive to sell the item in question before the auction expires, so whilst low value items may rise slightly in price, I do expect to see a lot less ridiculously overpriced offers.
The Exchange will become a gamble to the seller and will have him calculate the likelyhood of making a sale, tailoring his offer more towards the general player crowd rather than hoping that some uber rich alt will buy it at the 20th time it gets placed. Some people might even find that interesting.
Given that said BO would not be offered for a normal price anyways, I guess this means that nothing would change - aside from the Exchange getting cleared of all those junk offers?
That's exactly the thing where the fee works. If there is demand for your product, you know you can sell it at some point. YOu have to ensure that you sell it fast enough that the accumulated listening fees don't ruin your profits.
So people have to be more careful. Something on the exchange at a price of 50M might not sell for weeks, and the listening fee cuts what you effectively get for it. In some cases, you might not even be able to afford the listening fee and have to reduce the price.
This means there is an additional risk-reward consideration to make, and many people will work to reduce the risk if they can ensure a reward.
The people that got rich in the current economy can still try to sell their rare finds at premium prices. But they won't do that for long, if no one else can afford it and the listing fee destroys their EC.
Market price inflation is never a good thing. It's about time something is being done against that - because new players often can't afford any good equipment on their tier. I only notice this now as I level a new character. Have you seen the prices for current green or blue Mk IV / VI gear?
If there is a listing fee, it should only be collected at the point of sale. With as limited as the features are currently in the exchange, it is not a service that I would be willing to pay for. There should be many more features, like the ability to counter-offer on prices, sort stackable items by cost per unit, and search BOffs by skills and attributes.
Easy.
28950000
Otherwise, there will indeed be an increase in the prices of things in general, because the supply will decrease as people selling marginal items won't waste their time. The EC that is earned through play won't be spent on the exchange since there will be fewer items, and prices will rise more. Inflation is pretty much inevitable when there is a ready supply of EC and nothing to spend it on.
For those who complain that new players can't afford the high prices on the exchange, I say bull. By the time someone reaches RA they are no longer new. Also except for a few items - mostly BOs - every weapon, kit, component, device, component and material is easily obtainable through some effort, from simply playing the game. The only people that "can't afford" something on the exchange are those that are in too much of a hurry to earn it one way or another.
So if what I'm selling is at risk of not selling on the exchange, I'll either take it to the black market for high profit items, or just take it to a vendor for marginal items. I'm more than happy to pay a fee if the time limit is extended to indefinitely. You consider risk/reward. I consider time/reward since the real component in all this is my time. There is no real risk involved.
It's not like they don't do this already, after all. I distinctively remember a thread about this in the Discussion forum.
Which would totally defeat the reason why the fee is there in the first place and -indeed- only cause the sellers to raise their prices, as opposed to actually having to try to sell the item, thus leading to reasonable prices.
No, that's not how a market works. When there is demand, supply will be created. If nobody offers a certain item, its value will go up, in turn creating an incentive for people to sell this. Then, the fee will serve as a safeguard to prevent too astronomic prices, because the seller will have a honest interest in selling the item. So the seller and the buyer will (ideally) meet somewhere in the middle. Which will be below the current standards.
In turn, items of lower value but higher occurrence will not be offered as often anymore (because even at the lowest price there is not enough demand to sell ALL of them), removing a lot of redundant auctions.
And this is how a market balances itself out. The Exchange fee is long overdue. You just have to compare STO's Exchange with other games' auction services (who have a fee) to see the reason, and that it will work out in the end (after one or two months of chaos).
So anyone below RA should simply not bother to buy anything from the Exchange, is that what you mean?
Yes, inflation in a game like this is inevitable, because it's too easy and doesn't have a relatively steady flow of EC from your characters - for example by ship repairs or maintenance cost or a wider variety of "moneysinks". But even if the Exchange fee won't be able to neutralize this problem entirely (which it won't), it will at least decrease it.
That might be connected to the speed with how fast you blast through the levels in this game. Using all your credits you have attained on T1-3 just to buy a single T4 item doesn't really seem like a wise investment, considering that it'll get useless on T5.
And yes, you do make a lot of EC easily in this game. But under no circumstance do you make millions before reaching RAdm. Well, except if you engage in offering overpriced items on the Exchange as well, and are lucky enough that an old veteran's alt will actually buy that rare Mark IV console for 800.000 EC.
A fee without the time limit is pointless in achieving what the fee is supposed to achieve, so I am not sure why you bring it up and what you want to say?
Yeap.. Its my hope that once crafting settles down, these parts will be cheaper.. Part of the problem is
1: The red samples used by people grinding
2: The red samples used in MK X-XI parts
If you wanna make any part, atleast 80k goes into the schematic alone..