I love suckers that try to do that... taking money from people with this thinking is the easiest way to get rich.
There is almost nothing in this game that can be cornered as you are talking about. A few of the old lockbox ships perhaps cause they move so slow its not worth chasing the market.
When someone is silly enough to take something worth X and try and push it. There is always some one like me that picked up 100s of said item just waiting to see someone try what you are talking about.
For a real game exampl... a few days back some moron tried to push Constriction anchors to 3mil a piece. I made 30 mil or so selling them more at 1.5 mil each before they wised up. Considering I threw 40 or so of them in an alts bank space when they where selling for 50k each I found it fairly funny. The best ways to get rich is noticing early when someone tries to push something that is mostly worthless to a stupid price. Chances are they will by your stock under there price. (back in the doff money making days I used to lay price point trapps for market workers... and I would extract millions from them every day... TRIBBLE some market worker or even better a gold farmer out of millions can make your day... I once made almost 200 million on beta and tet particles in a day... all sold to one person who I assumed was a gold farmer that was pulling a triple shift or something.)
People do try that all the time... and if they push something like that they are very likely to end up having to by other market workers stock for 2x profit before they really have it cornered.
If it in fact stays there because there really is no supply... well that will self correct as well, because there are ways to earn everything in game. Its not like pass lockboxes are shut off like in some games. If constriction anchors for instance where really going to support a market of 3mil a piece, people would be opening that box again.
The most people can hope to do is hold a market for an hour or two... and for that to be profitable it has to be something that moves quickly.
You just gave damn near, a picture perfect example, of cornering the market on something.
No. He gave an example of how easy it is to prevent the market from being cornered on an item. :rolleyes:
Perhaps he was meaning I decide to put stocks of things away when there cheap.
If people haven't figured it out the easiest way to stay rich in a MMO is to stockpile a little bit of current event/lockbox items while there inexpensive.
I mean I spent around 2million on Constriction anchors, as an investment when they where selling at 50k. I wouldn't by more cause who wants to fill tons of bank space with them.
Things that stack are alot easier to stockpile. I love to use my stock to punish people that try to corner markets... it is also a super easy way to make money. From what I have read from all the rich people hate... what I do with my stock should make people happy. I hurt people trying to corner markets... come on that's funny. (and very entertaining).
Things like Ground Kit modules from lockboxs are great to stockpile. They don't sell very fast to be honest... but you can pick them up for almost nothing when they are the current box prize. 3-4 months later stuff you bought for under 100k will sell for 700k. I mean you can't dump 500 at once... but you can sell them a few at a time every day for months.
Once you build a stock like that you can just load up 2-3 alts sales slots... and cycle your stock out as income.
If enough people are doing the same thing... it makes it impossible for people to corner markets. Because there will always be someone willing to sell more and undercut you. Things will go up no matter what... imo its better if more people are holding stock. It means more supply on things that will run low in the game at some point.
No, he gave an example, of himself cornering the market on a specific item!
Read my edit of the above post, for a better idea of how cornering a market is defined as!
If you consider holding stock on things cornering markets... I guess your right.
Read my example though... I am not the person that pushed the market for those things to 3 mil. I noticed someone else doing it.
I sold a bunch at HALF what they where trying to push to... because I knew they couldn't allow them to stay on the market. They wanted to sell at 3 and make money... as they bought a bunch of them that they paid 1.5-3 mil for.
So they bought up the ones I posed at 1.5 (or around there) for a few hours. I would post a few at 1.5.... then one at 1.6
... Then one at 1.3
.... then a few at a stupid prises like 1,777,555
Cause the longer you can keep people like that thinking they are just buying some random persons one off listings... you can keep taking their money.
After a few hours the market crashed back to what they are worth... cause people started listing there stock.
The person that tried to corner that market... and make 300% markup... LOST. The people that sold there's him before won... and I won, cause I punished them for being bad.
He didn't corner anything. He has no control over the supply of constriction anchors. Only Cryptic can control the supply of them by limiting the supply of Vaadwaur lock boxes.
You didn't read the description did you?
You don't need to be in full control, to corner a market, go back and read the dictionary term for cornering the market.
"Anyone can make huge amounts on the exchange! They just have to have a good supply of seed money. And study the market long enough to learn how to spot trends, know what good prices are, and see when opportunities arise. And stockpile lots of items for sale months later. And have lots of storage space to do that stockpiling in. And......"
Yep. It's simple. :rolleyes:
(Oh, and "Enjoy playing Bloomberg Commodities Trader 2015, instead of Star Trek/WoW/<insert MMO here>" :P)
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disclaimer: I'm not complaining about prices. I know that I don't care to work that hard at making cash, so I don't feel envy/etc over all the things I won't be buying. I'm just constantly amused at market-gurus always saying how "easy" it is for "anyone" to have billions of creds pour into their hands.
You can delude yourself all you want about manipulating the market. This is a video game not the real world. Cryptic is the only party that controls the supply of everything in this game. We dance to their tune. They are the organ grinder, and we are the dancing monkeys.
Cryptic doesn't really control. All the "wiki" learners miss a key point. No economic theory takes into account the fact we generate wealth from nothing. There is no end to wealth generated. No controls. Wealth is made from thin air.
Arguments about economics in most games are a joke, money is generated with no limits. That's why "sinks" become a issue. Aside from small samplings (player base), in game economies suffer from the endless creation of currency, that throws any school of thought out the window.
Except it is. Example, the recent Delta Recruit event, plenty of people were paying stupid amounts for must-have-the-best leveling-up gear. Even-numbered marks, phaser and disruptor stuff in particular. I just used the storebought Mk3/Mk5/Mk7 stuff and sold any desirable drops. A million a day just from random junk, plus since I was running a Romulan I got 4 chances for SRO boffs (worth a couple million each) as I went. By the time it was done, 20 million with no outside help from friends or my other characters, no farming, no market games, no waiting on market adjustments, just simply playing and keeping 'whats going on right now?' in mind as I went. You want a lockbox ship or a plasmonic leech or something pricey like that yes you'll have to put in some work at it, but anything other than the the super-premium stuff, simply paying attention will keep you pretty comfortable.
The STO exchange does a pretty good job of pricing things.
Some things are quite expensive, but this is only because they are expensive to produce.
For example, to produce a lockbox ship costs on average 250 lockbox keys. Most boxes give out decent consolation prizes, so all lockbox ships aren't pegged at 250x the cost of a key, but nevertheless, it is fundamentally the odds of winning a ship and the price of a key that determine what the ships and other box loot are worth.
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Consider CrtDx4 of CrtDx3Pen weapons.
Manufacturing them is quite expensive. A crtD3 or CrtD2Pen Mk2 weapon costs about 3.5m. 3x omega fragments is about 4m, a 2x chance accelerator is 1.6m.
So, the cost to make a UR weapon with crtd3+random mod or crtd2pen+random mod is 10m ec.
only 1/4 of these will get the desired mod on average, so the cost to make a mk8 UR weapon with the desired mods is, on average, 40m ec. Sometimes it doesnt go UR, and this doesnt even begin to price in the cost of making it epic rarity.
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A bug ship/sheshar requires on average opening 100 promo packs to get. Promo packs are nearly 8m ec apiece, thats 800m ec to produce one ship.
Once again, the consolation loot of lobi and R&D packs prevents these ships from being pegged at 800m, but given that R&D packs are worth 2m, and 10lobi is worth about 1m. a sheshar needs to sell for about 500m ec for people to break even in the long term opening the R&D packs.
If the ship sold for significantly less, it would be a strictly money-losing proposition to open R&D packs.
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People sometimes ask, "why are things on the exchange so expensive?" The stupid person's answer is "bcuz there greedy!"
The smart answer, the right answer, is "because they are expensive to make."
In reality, the 'greed' of buyers is exactly equal to the 'greed' of sellers. They cancel one another out. Greedy buyers want to rip sellers off by paying the lowest possible price for a thing, greedy sellers want to rip buyers off by charging the highest possible price. This creates supply and demand curves, where the effects of 'greed' cancel eachother out, and a fair price is reached.
A price both parties agree to is the only fair price, since if one party did not agree, it wouldn't be fair.
Good thing I had tons of omega techs, to make all those fancy weapons!
Cost=time alone
Fitted 2 mains fully and, had plenty to sell, which they all sold.
Also, the time of my selling those UR & Epic weapons, there were none on the exchange competing so, I had my own market running and, I got to determine the market price for them.
This here is the biggest problem with listing fees. The most expensive, rare things stay expensive and get even more rare because people no longer post them on the exchange to avoid the list fees. They still sell them but if anything the prices go up because the supply of the item is diminished due to having to manually sell things over chat channels.
This is precisely what happened when Champions put in their listing fee. Within a week, every rare costume item was gone from the market. You can't find that stuff without shouting in zone chat now. It is terrible for the buyer to have listing fees.
That's a problem that's not unique to Champions. I've run into it on other MMOs that have a listing fee. At a certain level, the cost of listing without being certain the item will sell (and the item being valuable enough to not want to throw it out there at lower than you think you can get) leads to things 'worth' more than that level vanishing from the market.
Fees aren't necessarily the death knell of auction houses though. Sale fees are generally more fair than listing fees. You still take a chunk out of the money changing hands, but since it's not an up front fee, you don't TRIBBLE over the poor new player who got a good drop, and it also doesn't TRIBBLE over the power player who can simply go off-market with his stuff. The majority of people will suck it up and pay a sale fee for the convenience of not having to waste time hawking their goods like a street vendor.
But listing fees? Why would you go to all the work of creating a convenient auction house system to reduce the burden of item trade and then implement incentives to drive people back to the way MMO items were traded before AH systems were built? Listing fees are proposed by people who don't understand economics, and designed by people who don't understand systems theory.
(Oh, and "Enjoy playing Bloomberg Commodities Trader 2015, instead of Star Trek/WoW/<insert MMO here>" :P)
Market... and playing the market game is part of every mmo.
If it isn't your cup of tea that is up to you as a player. Some people honestly enjoy working the market. Some developers embrace that more like CCP does with EVE.
In Cryptics case they have an economy that works... I am not saying they are genius game designers and that the market is perfect. They are wise enough to listen to there owners though who understand how to create an economy. Crafting materials / doffs ect by giving them uses as there own forms of currency in projects and crafting... they have created a pretty lively economy. It is better then most MMOs and perhaps not as good as the absolute best out there. Still its pretty good. Taxes won't solve the "issues" as the OP sees them. In fact the only real issues I have with the exchange are some of the broken mechanics in the search... I would also like to have search by time expire back. Some winer got that removed as well because they fat fingered a lockbox ship or something. Regardless I loved using it to get the best deals... and when new stuff would hit the best way to see what sort of trade volume things would have ect... was to pay attention to how often they where posted ect. You can still do that but its to tedious to bother on most stuff.
That's a problem that's not unique to Champions. I've run into it on other MMOs that have a listing fee. At a certain level, the cost of listing without being certain the item will sell (and the item being valuable enough to not want to throw it out there at lower than you think you can get) leads to things 'worth' more than that level vanishing from the market.
Fees aren't necessarily the death knell of auction houses though. Sale fees are generally more fair than listing fees. You still take a chunk out of the money changing hands, but since it's not an up front fee, you don't TRIBBLE over the poor new player who got a good drop, and it also doesn't TRIBBLE over the power player who can simply go off-market with his stuff. The majority of people will suck it up and pay a sale fee for the convenience of not having to waste time hawking their goods like a street vendor.
But listing fees? Why would you go to all the work of creating a convenient auction house system to reduce the burden of item trade and then implement incentives to drive people back to the way MMO items were traded before AH systems were built? Listing fees are proposed by people who don't understand economics, and designed by people who don't understand systems theory.
In general games only need to add sales taxes if they want to dispose of excess currency in game.
So say a game is giving its players 100 million gold a day (from missions ect)... if the market is trading 40-50mil back and forth every day... (and the game is only eating 20mil a day, from vendors ect) the developer may decide they don't want people to stock pile gold to fast. SO they can either reduce the gold pay out every day... so that Inflation doesn't happen and make the game harder for new people to get into (cause everyone that has been playing is super rich)... or they can add a TAX on the sales, and make 5-15% of the market activity evaporate into nothing. (there by keeping inflation down as well).
Most developers do both... they control how much is going out and they add sales taxes. (or they reduce the amount vendors pay for trash ect).
My point is Sales taxes are just one of the many tools MMO developers use to reduce the over all amount of Currency in game. Seeing as they have lots of cash sinks and have nerfed all the "Easy" ways to load up on Created EC (like Drop limits ect) there is no need for a sales tax.
Taxes will never do what some people in this thread are hoping for. (reduce the cost of super rare things like High end weapons / traits / ships ect) All it will do is increase there costs... as people offset the tax with higher prices... it will also raise the costs on commodities like R&D materials... because people have a hard time figuring out sales tax / vs futures buying and selling... so you end up with fewer people working that market, and to be honest that would increase the costs overall not reduce them. (As most futures workers as I alluded to earlier... artificially keep those prices in line so they can profit in small bursts here and there.) A sales tax makes that super risky and in order to turn a profit you have to REALLY fix those markets.
People don't seem to remember that EC inflation *used* to be an issue in STO, a big one, but that it was addressed by the devs long ago.
They lowered the value of vendor trash from trash collecting foundry runs.
Before they made the changes, the price of keys had gone from 1m to more than 3m, with the price of all the lockbox loot being inflated along with it.
After fixing the vendor garbage, key prices went down, and have remained stable and slow moving.
A bit of inflation is fine, its healthy, it gives people a reason not to just stockpile ec. Just like in the real economy.
Deflation is a killer, and rampant inflation is bad. What we have, stable, slow moving minor inflation, its good.
I agree. I think the real problem is on the supply side. Some of the older, valuable, much desired items like the leech console and some traits are really expensive only because it's been a while since they were released.
It's not really that, all the lockboxes basically cost the same, you can get them for 10? dil each at different times in the year, and their exchange prices are pretty miniscule.
It's that the modern boxes have more valuable consolation prizes, so more of them get opened.
Look at the d'kora, its basically the only prize from the whole lockbox thats worth anything. So, people are less likely to open d'kora boxes, since they have to be realllllly lucky to win anything.
Cardassian and temporal boxes are a little bit better, both have one valuable consolation prize, a doff pack.
Compare with one of the modern boxes that has a ship, doff pack, traits, boff powers, R&D boxes etc etc. Its easier to win something from those, so people open more of them.
Yeah, it's late here, and I had a long weekend, so I could have worded my post better, but that's kind of my point. If there's 1 good item in an otherwise lackluster lockbox, that item will tend to be expensive because the EC value will reflect the risk the person opening the lockbox took to get that item. I think Cryptic should do a redo on some of the older lockboxes by replacing the t5 ship with a some T6 ship. That would allow newer players to get a temporary price cut on the wanted items and also give our local exchange ferengi a chance to restock for more profit later down the line. Unless I'm missing something, it's a win/win.
What they should do with lockboxes... is retire them once they get to be 3-4 back.
Then take all the unique items in those boxes and add them to one... Legacy Pack.
So all the time we would have the current box and the 2 previous.
All the older boxes would be in one big Legacy box, I would say perhaps even have the legacy box pull 5 base lobi instead of 4 (with the chances to pull more being the same as the newer boxes) This would give people a little extra incentive to open the "legacy" box... and mean things like maruders and galors would still get pulled fairly often.
What they should do with lockboxes... is retire them once they get to be 3-4 back.
Then take all the unique items in those boxes and add them to one... Legacy Pack.
So all the time we would have the current box and the 2 previous.
All the older boxes would be in one big Legacy box, I would say perhaps even have the legacy box pull 5 base lobi instead of 4 (with the chances to pull more being the same as the newer boxes) This would give people a little extra incentive to open the "legacy" box... and mean things like maruders and galors would still get pulled fairly often.
Interesting idea. Since they will only have T5 ships Cryptic could even raise the odds of getting a ship -- instead of the current 0.42% for 1 older ships, say 2% total for the 5 good ships in the pack.
That would get more casual players to open the boxes, and drive down the T5 ship prices so they are lower than new T6 lockbox ships.
That would get me to buy a few of the older ships that I look at now and think "115 million!? Nah, I'll get the Xindi Olaen instead."
Interesting idea. Since they will only have T5 ships Cryptic could even raise the odds of getting a ship -- instead of the current 0.42% for 1 older ships, say 2% total for the 5 good ships in the pack.
That would get more casual players to open the boxes, and drive down the T5 ship prices so they are lower than new T6 lockbox ships.
That would get me to buy a few of the older ships that I look at now and think "115 million!? Nah, I'll get the Xindi Olaen instead."
I like the idea of the legacy box having a higher T5 Ship pull rate... that would be an elegant way to deal with the obsoleted T5s.
They could also make sure there is always a major difference as well....
New boxes could have R&D packs.
Legacy could never gain R&D packs (even once the newer boxes go legacy)...
However to make up for that they could still have Mini Doff packs. However they should not drop one mini pack at a time but 3 instead. So replace all the mini packs with a "Legacy Doff pack 3-pk" then when you open that it would randomly reward 3 Mini packs (gamma / normal / fleet) Perhaps with another small chance to pull a full size pack. This would add some value to those mini packs. Burning a key on 5 lobi and a mini pack worth 120k is one of the most frustrating things in the game. (not that 3 makes it better... still lol)
I like the idea of the legacy box having a higher T5 Ship pull rate... that would be an elegant way to deal with the obsoleted T5s.
They could also make sure there is always a major difference as well....
New boxes could have R&D packs.
Legacy could never gain R&D packs (even once the newer boxes go legacy)...
However to make up for that they could still have Mini Doff packs. However they should not drop one mini pack at a time but 3 instead. So replace all the mini packs with a "Legacy Doff pack 3-pk" then when you open that it would randomly reward 3 Mini packs (gamma / normal / fleet) Perhaps with another small chance to pull a full size pack. This would add some value to those mini packs. Burning a key on 5 lobi and a mini pack worth 120k is one of the most frustrating things in the game. (not that 3 makes it better... still lol)
Im not sure why everybody seems to think t5s are so obselete. For lobi and lockbox boats they all get a free t5u bump and are very much competitive.. I just cracked my dkora out of storage the other day and still do a very decent 28k or so on it with un-upgraded mk xii spirals... And the recluse, wells, jhdc, and narcine off the top of my head are still pretty popular even with all the t6 stuff going around. My fed eng ate the traits from all the t6 boats she has access to and is in a t5fu avenger because it still performs very well. Until (if) we see a t7 im not sure any of the at least lockbox t5s are getting devalued any time soon.
Im not sure why everybody seems to think t5s are so obselete. For lobi and lockbox boats they all get a free t5u bump and are very much competitive.. I just cracked my dkora out of storage the other day and still do a very decent 28k or so on it with un-upgraded mk xii spirals... And the recluse, wells, jhdc, and narcine off the top of my head are still pretty popular even with all the t6 stuff going around. My fed eng ate the traits from all the t6 boats she has access to and is in a t5fu avenger because it still performs very well. Until (if) we see a t7 im not sure any of the at least lockbox t5s are getting devalued any time soon.
They are obsolete in an economic sense, which is the issue. (not that they are not usable to play the game).
They don't carry a trait, and for that reason alone they are worth less sales wise. The market for newer lockbox ships is greater. The primary market would want to use the ship for what it is... there is however a large secondary market that simply wants to unlock the trait and dock it.
The old T5s will never have this secondary market. So when you take the lower number on the market.. and more expensive acquisition due to most of them coming from lackluster boxes. It makes the fact that they sell for 20-200% more then the newer T6 ships hard to stomach for most people.
I mean yes I love my temporal science ship... that doesn't mean I think it should cost 3x as much as one of the newer T6 ships. However the games economy is setup in away where it will never ever sell for less then the T6s because it is expensive to pick one up. If you open those boxes you will loose 90% of the resources you use opening them, as the bobbie prizes in that box are terrible... the only thing worth anything really is the ship which is a 1% chance to pull. So its only natural that if I pull one I won't sell it for less then 200mil or so.
The issues we are talking about are economic ones not ones of viability in game.
Speak for yourself buddy. Personally I made 90 million EC this weekend from selling Kemocite II and a Plasmionic Leach with only mild price undercutting. This funded a whole new weapons array for my DSD and my fiance's D'Kyr. And consoles for both.
If people wouldn't pay hilariously high prices for lucky pulls, I'd never be able to afford that many Superior Tech Upgrades priced moderately even.
Comments
You just gave damn near, a picture perfect example, of cornering the market on something.
Damn near!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
No, he gave an example, of himself cornering the market on a specific item!
Read my edit of the above post, for a better idea of how cornering a market is defined as!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Perhaps he was meaning I decide to put stocks of things away when there cheap.
If people haven't figured it out the easiest way to stay rich in a MMO is to stockpile a little bit of current event/lockbox items while there inexpensive.
I mean I spent around 2million on Constriction anchors, as an investment when they where selling at 50k. I wouldn't by more cause who wants to fill tons of bank space with them.
Things that stack are alot easier to stockpile. I love to use my stock to punish people that try to corner markets... it is also a super easy way to make money. From what I have read from all the rich people hate... what I do with my stock should make people happy. I hurt people trying to corner markets... come on that's funny. (and very entertaining).
Things like Ground Kit modules from lockboxs are great to stockpile. They don't sell very fast to be honest... but you can pick them up for almost nothing when they are the current box prize. 3-4 months later stuff you bought for under 100k will sell for 700k. I mean you can't dump 500 at once... but you can sell them a few at a time every day for months.
Once you build a stock like that you can just load up 2-3 alts sales slots... and cycle your stock out as income.
If enough people are doing the same thing... it makes it impossible for people to corner markets. Because there will always be someone willing to sell more and undercut you. Things will go up no matter what... imo its better if more people are holding stock. It means more supply on things that will run low in the game at some point.
If you consider holding stock on things cornering markets... I guess your right.
Read my example though... I am not the person that pushed the market for those things to 3 mil. I noticed someone else doing it.
I sold a bunch at HALF what they where trying to push to... because I knew they couldn't allow them to stay on the market. They wanted to sell at 3 and make money... as they bought a bunch of them that they paid 1.5-3 mil for.
So they bought up the ones I posed at 1.5 (or around there) for a few hours. I would post a few at 1.5.... then one at 1.6
... Then one at 1.3
.... then a few at a stupid prises like 1,777,555
Cause the longer you can keep people like that thinking they are just buying some random persons one off listings... you can keep taking their money.
After a few hours the market crashed back to what they are worth... cause people started listing there stock.
The person that tried to corner that market... and make 300% markup... LOST. The people that sold there's him before won... and I won, cause I punished them for being bad.
You didn't read the description did you?
You don't need to be in full control, to corner a market, go back and read the dictionary term for cornering the market.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Its a good wiki... I like the quote right in the first few paragraphs.
Edwin Lef
Yep. It's simple. :rolleyes:
(Oh, and "Enjoy playing Bloomberg Commodities Trader 2015, instead of Star Trek/WoW/<insert MMO here>" :P)
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disclaimer: I'm not complaining about prices. I know that I don't care to work that hard at making cash, so I don't feel envy/etc over all the things I won't be buying. I'm just constantly amused at market-gurus always saying how "easy" it is for "anyone" to have billions of creds pour into their hands.
Cryptic doesn't really control. All the "wiki" learners miss a key point. No economic theory takes into account the fact we generate wealth from nothing. There is no end to wealth generated. No controls. Wealth is made from thin air.
Arguments about economics in most games are a joke, money is generated with no limits. That's why "sinks" become a issue. Aside from small samplings (player base), in game economies suffer from the endless creation of currency, that throws any school of thought out the window.
Except it is. Example, the recent Delta Recruit event, plenty of people were paying stupid amounts for must-have-the-best leveling-up gear. Even-numbered marks, phaser and disruptor stuff in particular. I just used the storebought Mk3/Mk5/Mk7 stuff and sold any desirable drops. A million a day just from random junk, plus since I was running a Romulan I got 4 chances for SRO boffs (worth a couple million each) as I went. By the time it was done, 20 million with no outside help from friends or my other characters, no farming, no market games, no waiting on market adjustments, just simply playing and keeping 'whats going on right now?' in mind as I went. You want a lockbox ship or a plasmonic leech or something pricey like that yes you'll have to put in some work at it, but anything other than the the super-premium stuff, simply paying attention will keep you pretty comfortable.
Good thing I had tons of omega techs, to make all those fancy weapons!
Cost=time alone
Fitted 2 mains fully and, had plenty to sell, which they all sold.
Also, the time of my selling those UR & Epic weapons, there were none on the exchange competing so, I had my own market running and, I got to determine the market price for them.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
That's a problem that's not unique to Champions. I've run into it on other MMOs that have a listing fee. At a certain level, the cost of listing without being certain the item will sell (and the item being valuable enough to not want to throw it out there at lower than you think you can get) leads to things 'worth' more than that level vanishing from the market.
Fees aren't necessarily the death knell of auction houses though. Sale fees are generally more fair than listing fees. You still take a chunk out of the money changing hands, but since it's not an up front fee, you don't TRIBBLE over the poor new player who got a good drop, and it also doesn't TRIBBLE over the power player who can simply go off-market with his stuff. The majority of people will suck it up and pay a sale fee for the convenience of not having to waste time hawking their goods like a street vendor.
But listing fees? Why would you go to all the work of creating a convenient auction house system to reduce the burden of item trade and then implement incentives to drive people back to the way MMO items were traded before AH systems were built? Listing fees are proposed by people who don't understand economics, and designed by people who don't understand systems theory.
Market... and playing the market game is part of every mmo.
If it isn't your cup of tea that is up to you as a player. Some people honestly enjoy working the market. Some developers embrace that more like CCP does with EVE.
In Cryptics case they have an economy that works... I am not saying they are genius game designers and that the market is perfect. They are wise enough to listen to there owners though who understand how to create an economy. Crafting materials / doffs ect by giving them uses as there own forms of currency in projects and crafting... they have created a pretty lively economy. It is better then most MMOs and perhaps not as good as the absolute best out there. Still its pretty good. Taxes won't solve the "issues" as the OP sees them. In fact the only real issues I have with the exchange are some of the broken mechanics in the search... I would also like to have search by time expire back. Some winer got that removed as well because they fat fingered a lockbox ship or something. Regardless I loved using it to get the best deals... and when new stuff would hit the best way to see what sort of trade volume things would have ect... was to pay attention to how often they where posted ect. You can still do that but its to tedious to bother on most stuff.
In general games only need to add sales taxes if they want to dispose of excess currency in game.
So say a game is giving its players 100 million gold a day (from missions ect)... if the market is trading 40-50mil back and forth every day... (and the game is only eating 20mil a day, from vendors ect) the developer may decide they don't want people to stock pile gold to fast. SO they can either reduce the gold pay out every day... so that Inflation doesn't happen and make the game harder for new people to get into (cause everyone that has been playing is super rich)... or they can add a TAX on the sales, and make 5-15% of the market activity evaporate into nothing. (there by keeping inflation down as well).
Most developers do both... they control how much is going out and they add sales taxes. (or they reduce the amount vendors pay for trash ect).
My point is Sales taxes are just one of the many tools MMO developers use to reduce the over all amount of Currency in game. Seeing as they have lots of cash sinks and have nerfed all the "Easy" ways to load up on Created EC (like Drop limits ect) there is no need for a sales tax.
Taxes will never do what some people in this thread are hoping for. (reduce the cost of super rare things like High end weapons / traits / ships ect) All it will do is increase there costs... as people offset the tax with higher prices... it will also raise the costs on commodities like R&D materials... because people have a hard time figuring out sales tax / vs futures buying and selling... so you end up with fewer people working that market, and to be honest that would increase the costs overall not reduce them. (As most futures workers as I alluded to earlier... artificially keep those prices in line so they can profit in small bursts here and there.) A sales tax makes that super risky and in order to turn a profit you have to REALLY fix those markets.
I agree. I think the real problem is on the supply side. Some of the older, valuable, much desired items like the leech console and some traits are really expensive only because it's been a while since they were released.
Yeah, it's late here, and I had a long weekend, so I could have worded my post better, but that's kind of my point. If there's 1 good item in an otherwise lackluster lockbox, that item will tend to be expensive because the EC value will reflect the risk the person opening the lockbox took to get that item. I think Cryptic should do a redo on some of the older lockboxes by replacing the t5 ship with a some T6 ship. That would allow newer players to get a temporary price cut on the wanted items and also give our local exchange ferengi a chance to restock for more profit later down the line. Unless I'm missing something, it's a win/win.
Then take all the unique items in those boxes and add them to one... Legacy Pack.
So all the time we would have the current box and the 2 previous.
All the older boxes would be in one big Legacy box, I would say perhaps even have the legacy box pull 5 base lobi instead of 4 (with the chances to pull more being the same as the newer boxes) This would give people a little extra incentive to open the "legacy" box... and mean things like maruders and galors would still get pulled fairly often.
Interesting idea. Since they will only have T5 ships Cryptic could even raise the odds of getting a ship -- instead of the current 0.42% for 1 older ships, say 2% total for the 5 good ships in the pack.
That would get more casual players to open the boxes, and drive down the T5 ship prices so they are lower than new T6 lockbox ships.
That would get me to buy a few of the older ships that I look at now and think "115 million!? Nah, I'll get the Xindi Olaen instead."
I like the idea of the legacy box having a higher T5 Ship pull rate... that would be an elegant way to deal with the obsoleted T5s.
They could also make sure there is always a major difference as well....
New boxes could have R&D packs.
Legacy could never gain R&D packs (even once the newer boxes go legacy)...
However to make up for that they could still have Mini Doff packs. However they should not drop one mini pack at a time but 3 instead. So replace all the mini packs with a "Legacy Doff pack 3-pk" then when you open that it would randomly reward 3 Mini packs (gamma / normal / fleet) Perhaps with another small chance to pull a full size pack. This would add some value to those mini packs. Burning a key on 5 lobi and a mini pack worth 120k is one of the most frustrating things in the game. (not that 3 makes it better... still lol)
Im not sure why everybody seems to think t5s are so obselete. For lobi and lockbox boats they all get a free t5u bump and are very much competitive.. I just cracked my dkora out of storage the other day and still do a very decent 28k or so on it with un-upgraded mk xii spirals... And the recluse, wells, jhdc, and narcine off the top of my head are still pretty popular even with all the t6 stuff going around. My fed eng ate the traits from all the t6 boats she has access to and is in a t5fu avenger because it still performs very well. Until (if) we see a t7 im not sure any of the at least lockbox t5s are getting devalued any time soon.
They are obsolete in an economic sense, which is the issue. (not that they are not usable to play the game).
They don't carry a trait, and for that reason alone they are worth less sales wise. The market for newer lockbox ships is greater. The primary market would want to use the ship for what it is... there is however a large secondary market that simply wants to unlock the trait and dock it.
The old T5s will never have this secondary market. So when you take the lower number on the market.. and more expensive acquisition due to most of them coming from lackluster boxes. It makes the fact that they sell for 20-200% more then the newer T6 ships hard to stomach for most people.
I mean yes I love my temporal science ship... that doesn't mean I think it should cost 3x as much as one of the newer T6 ships. However the games economy is setup in away where it will never ever sell for less then the T6s because it is expensive to pick one up. If you open those boxes you will loose 90% of the resources you use opening them, as the bobbie prizes in that box are terrible... the only thing worth anything really is the ship which is a 1% chance to pull. So its only natural that if I pull one I won't sell it for less then 200mil or so.
The issues we are talking about are economic ones not ones of viability in game.
Speak for yourself buddy. Personally I made 90 million EC this weekend from selling Kemocite II and a Plasmionic Leach with only mild price undercutting. This funded a whole new weapons array for my DSD and my fiance's D'Kyr. And consoles for both.
If people wouldn't pay hilariously high prices for lucky pulls, I'd never be able to afford that many Superior Tech Upgrades priced moderately even.