I seen quite a few very bad trades with high expensive ships due to the fact buyers ware confused with a ship "normal" price. Not all people play enough to know what is the "normal" rate of a jhss, sheshar, anorrax or vonph.
Due to the fact that exchange limit is set to 500 many people try to take advantage and offer inflated prices like 1bil for a vonph. I don't see any logical reason for this not to happen.
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Don't give me any hooey about free market. The free market is where competition plays a role based on supply and demand.
The Vonph and Annorax are the first of these special ships that never made it out into the Exchange. And what I mean there is where the ships are listed and stay there for more than a few microseconds as the Robber Barons scoop them up for a non-value added resale.
Even the JHSS, JHAS, and Sheshar eventually settled back into the Exchange after going into the 'gray' economy beyond the first few weeks.
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.'
No mate they would not be forced, its one thing to hope they will and one thing to know they actually do it. In exchange there is a price competition that will make the price fall little by little. Also do you think one will risk 300-500m for a high prize to make only a small profit ? if you know the trading channels and even esd zone chat you will know this are exceptions.
Increasing the exchange cap will not drive all prices high, it will drove insane prices lower and limit the scams out there.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
The Exchange is put in place to prevent trade scamming, the fact we have ships priced so that they can never be in the official trade is absurd.
Mate you are mixing the problems. Ship prices are are generated by supply and demand and also by the amount of ec one need to risk to have a good chance at getting it. Also its in direct connection with the Game Economy.
My proposal involves increasing the exchange cap so that every player can find what is looking for at a non inflated price. You say that exchange should remain like that instead the economy should be somehow modified ( that's not gonna happen for a butload of reasons) or sellers should be censured and put to risk. After DR some prices became inflated because sellers stopped generating merchandise at usual rate (some stopped playing). Sellers are NOT the problem here without them there will be things in short supply or not to be found. Your no its a NO generated by hate ( of high prices) and not by knowing how the game economy and trade actually works. What you say will increase number of scams also.
You are forgetting a Key element. The demand for these ships isn't any higher than the bug ships were in the past. We all looked at 500 mil as being a ridiculous amount then. The issue is tied to the fact that keys are selling for 4 million a piece. So 500 million is less of an investment in real money than previously. if keys sold around 2 to 2.5 mil as they did in the past, we would not see these kinds of prices on ships because very few people would have the funds to purchase them.
sorry but I don't get it.
at the end of the day its up to the buyers to buy or not buy items if they feel the price is too high, if the sellers want to sell their items for 1bn even though nobody will ever pay that price they are free to do so but while buyers keep buying for that price sellers will keep selling for it and things will never change no matter where the items are sold.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Well said. There isnt any supply and demand for quite some time. In fact this is why all these greedy ferengi wannabes want the exchange to be over 500m. They control the key market and artificially drove the keys to insane prices (if you look at how much contraband is priced, and how much keys are after they make the conversion via large farms: contraband-dil-zen-keys you will get an idea about how much profit these ppl do) and now they want to do that with ships aswell to increase their profits even higher. In fact, if the exchange will be raised to 1b, they will raise the prices over 1b too shortly. Cryptic really should put an exchange posting fee to reduce ec inflation by actually deleting ec in big amounts.
Your idea with a 500m character limit is very good too since ppl will more then likely still use ec and the exchange and wont risk a trade between items where scams are very possible. But I dont think Cryptic will do that.
I bought one in the first day for 700m. Planning to get one more as i don't open boxes ( don't like gambling). I am not unhappy of high princes as long as they are justified but scams i don't like.
Mate i am not under any illusion i know, its a fact. There is normal price for ships depending whats the medium nr of trys to get that ship and the cost involved. People add a profit from reasonable to high and post the ship for sale. Thats normal practice.But limiting this to face to face trade will make people easy to be scammed like i seen and like one of my fleet mates payed more as he was under the impression that's the normal price. You seem unhappy with the fact that i want to let people post ships on exchange were prices are regulated/normalized faster by supply and demand and were scammers and opportunists are having a harder live. I am the one that don't get it, its not only about informed buyers but also about uninformed ones.I don't see any problem with that unless you have too much money to care or you ask 1bil for a vonph in chat so people think its the normal price.
To be clear Exchange is there for trade and to solve many of the problems i said, the only reason some ships are not on exchange now its the fact the game economy changed.
The game economy hasn't changed significantly. What we're seeing is normal inflation, caused by the fact that more EC is being generated than sinked. The game has too little EC sinks.
It is a big problem, because high value items have already gone through the exchange price cap and are fast approaching the EC storage cap. Unless something is done, EC will stop being a useful currency because the items' fair market value exceeds the 1 billion you can pay even in trade.
Inflation is part of the economy and also part of the problem; but i stand by my say that game economy has changed enough last years to see the request to increase exchange cap as a reasonable (temporary) solution to gray/unregulated direct trading market problem/inconvenience. This is how i see it, if the devs can somehow solve the more profound problem its fine also but this is a quality of life fix imo.
the point I am trying to make is if sellers want to sell an item for 1bn regardless of if that price is over inflated or not they will do it on the exchange if the limit is raised or off if it isn't, and if buyers are willing to pay that price they will do so on the exchange if the limit is raised or off if it isn't.
raising the limit will only have the effect of shifting these inflated prices from the chat to the exchange nothing else will change.
you might see many ships on the exchange for sale at 1bn and then 1 day you might get lucky and see it for 700m and buy it but that wont bring the prices down, that is just a 1 off like the one you got before and all the others will stay at 1bn.
there are 1000s of items on the exchange even now with overinflated prices even with the 500m limit, raising the limit would only make it worse.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Yes you can say free market and Joe should have done his research, but exactly how is Joe supposed to do that with nothing to compare Johnny's price to?
I personally find it very greedy that people are asking darn near the currency cap for certain ships and as such TRIBBLE the average player out of getting to fly ship. I also feel the current state of affairs puts far too much power in the hands of a few individuals to artificially inflate the markets and gives them too much power over the markets overall. There are people who will disagree with that and that's their prerogative. However overall we may as well increase the 500m cap to keep pace with the 1b storage cap.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I see your point but the opposite could be true like the player that sold you the ship for 700m, he might see that the others are selling for 1bn and list his ship for 999,999,999ec so you could have ended up paying much more.
he has still undercut the other sellers but not enough to make the prices fall dramatically and the chances of a one off bargain could end up being lost.
plus he has more chances of selling for this price as the ship will stay on sale for a week even when he is not in game.
and the problem is if an item is rare the likelihood of massive falls in prices is reduced due to the small amount for sale.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I understand what you say but i disagree. If you had enough experience in trades/prices and read what me and @repetitiveepic said, you would recognize the truth in our explanations.
I think you and others let fear of increased prices get the best of you on this matter. I don't deny there is a small change that prices might slightly increase but that ONLY in a very very long time and that will happen anyway. How long did it take for 500m to stop being enough ? now consider the same amount of time for 1bil ...lol the game might be dead by then.
Trying to stop fixing several problems for fear that something might happen and without a way of actually calculate it ... its wrong imo.
Like i said i still think my suggestion is good and i can say even a 750m cap increase can be enough for now. Its only nattural for the game exchange to keep in pace with game economy. A Ferrari is very expensive but one don't need to go personally to the factory to buy it. Free trade instead of gray markets is what i think is best for the game.
No mate the opposite is not true as a general rule, if you would know the exchange well enough you would know that this are exceptions not general facts. This don't work were is a constant supply (not to mention hot&new stuff) or were there suppliers know what they are doing (there are many that know the real value of items). Again you don't know the game economy and trade/exchange well enough.
In the current era of EC inflation (driven not by greed, but by a lack of effective EC sinks, plus rising Zen/dil rate) there is simply too much EC sloshing about the game.
Either give us an effective EC sink that will remove billions/trillions of EC from the game, or remove this artificial price cap which is hampering the effectiveness of the player market by disguising prices above 500m, creating uncertainty on part of bother buyers and sellers.
The limit is stupid and serves no useful purpose. It does NOT protect sellers from losing EC due to overflow. It does not change the fair market value of items either way (though it does make it harder for people to keep track of the fair market value of items that exceed it).
People posting items on the ex for absurdly high prices is not a problem. It simply means nobody will buy them.
Nothing will ever "force" players to sell high-value items cheaper. If they can't post it on the exchange for fair market value, they'll trade it directly. And that's not enough either, they will barter with items like keys instead.
The EC cap, the exchange limit, or any such arbitrary restrictions do not reduce inflation. Inflation happens because more EC is entering the economy than leaving it. Only ways to reduce inflation is to reduce EC produced or increase ways to sink it.
First of all i don't thing many people have lots of 999m things to sell and even if they do the solution is simple just move the high value item on a toon with no EC, i did this several times and it does the trick. This high value trades are again not that many and frequent to cause trouble for the seller. Changing the toon is the simple and most easy solution.
As an 2nd solution player cap can also be increased by 500m. But let me say this if a guy will let his money to be wasted by what you said it would happen anyway at one point. Any rich player knows how to deal with this you can be sure.
Also you talk about economy impact as if will immediately nuke the game. Like i said how long did it took for the 500m to not be enough ? and whatever if you like it or not prices will increase in the future and no matter the exchange cap imo.
I would like to make sure that all trades go through the official system to prevent scamming. I'm not 100% sure that raising the cap is going to do much more than make people think it is ok to price new ships at a billion.
Money sinks like making rep dailies more expensive would drain some, but I'm sure I am not the only person that has maxed them all. At that point, you don't really ever lose money.