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PSA: Stop auctioning items below VENDORING cost

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  • officerbatman81officerbatman81 Member Posts: 2,761 Arc User
    To quote Sir Michael Cain, "Some people just want to watch the world burn."
  • dragonsbitedragonsbite Member Posts: 530 Arc User
    They understand it perfectly. People do sell for under what you get for vendoring the item. I've done it in the past and for 2 of the reasons Tacticalrook mentioned. Who knows why others do it. I'm sure there's lots of different reasons. We shouldn't be judging how other people enjoy playing the game.
    U.S. ARMY CAVALRY SCOUT/DRAGOON DISABLED VETERAN
  • thunderfoot#5163 thunderfoot Member Posts: 4,540 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    So if I get Really Kewel Mega Oblivion Quad Cannons Mk XXV as a drop in a mission, then what? Since I got the item for free my investment is technically zero. So if I price the item at, say, 25 EC on the Exchange, then my Return On Investment is 25 EC. This indicates I have made a profit, correct? Further, I have reduced my inventory clutter by one item and acquired a whole 25 EC towards the purchase of something I want or can use. While someone who wants or can use Mega Oblivion Quad Cannons Mk XXV has purchased the item at a good price.

    Ain't a free market economy a wonderful thing?

    EDIT: I suspect this was not a Public Service Announcement. In fact it smells entirely like a Self Serving Announcement. How do I know this? The aroma is remarkably similar to that emitted by a fresh steaming pile of bovine digestive system biological byproduct.
    Because now the OP will be unable to sell his fifty Really Kewel Mega Oblivion Quad Cannons Mk XXV at the
    price of...Dah Dah DAHHHH!:::insert Dr. Evil voiceover here::: One Million EC! ;P
    A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    Well I used to indiscriminately just 'Discard' stuff in the Replicators. Lately, I wait until I get to a 50% Vendor as I have no problems with Inventory space for a few extra minutes.

    It could be worse, at least the people who underprice are not the as*hats that put trivial stuff on the Exchange for hundreds of millions EC (and not as extra storage).
    '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.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • tacticalrooktacticalrook Member Posts: 810 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    ltminns wrote: »
    Well I used to indiscriminately just 'Discard' stuff in the Replicators. Lately, I wait until I get to a 50% Vendor as I have no problems with Inventory space for a few extra minutes.
    Still means you have to spend all the time required to get to a vendor and then get back to where you actually need to be. Depending on what someone is getting paid per unit of grind time spent in a particular place, the opportunity cost of the time spent stopping the train to make a round trip to a vendor and back could very well make that the last thing that person should do if their goal is to efficiently increase their space wealth.

    Realistically speaking, though, a large number of folks have such poor paying grinds they're doing for wealth building that stopping what they're doing to run to a vendor actually offers a momentary step up in pay. I can certainly understand how from their perspective it's a no-brainer, and how some of them have that type of enthusiasm that demands they "educate" others. Because of this, I doubt we will ever stop seeing this type of thread being reposted.
    /channel_join grind
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    Never an extra stop. Usually just to a place like the Bartender at the Starbase while I am there turning in Commendation Reports or on the way to the Research Lab or Mine.
    '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.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • dracounguisdracounguis Member Posts: 5,358 Arc User
    I help by cleaning the Exchange of these undervalued items then selling them to vendors. ;) Sure not a lot of profit, but a few thousand per warp core or ship shield times 40-50 of them I could find gets to be a nice profit. At least it was before the EC inflation got stupid.

    I think some players don't know that some vendors give you 50% instead of the replicator's 40% so price them vs the 40% on the Exchange.
  • bobs1111bobs1111 Member Posts: 471 Arc User
    Not saying this is one of these cases. I will tell you though that in these games some exchange works purposely tank some markets hard just to drive other players away from the market. I have plenty of times posted 100s or stacks of thousands of items at lower prices to drive market prices down. To either fill my own stock or just annoy people I am exchange PvPing with. Sometimes I will loose 20-30 million just for fun knowing it is annoying some other exchange worker to no end.

    And of course sometimes I decide to just post 100s of something cheap cause I am feeling nice... often happens when I am about to log out for a few weeks cause I have had enough. I'll drop a few going away presents till I'm back later. lol
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,114 Arc User
    fluffymoof wrote: »
    This is just plain dumb, people, as it gives your opportunity cost a negative value (opportunity cost meaning everything else you could have done with that item, including vendoring it).

    Technically the definition of "opportunity cost" is "amount of money 'lost' compared to the best possible alternative, either by paying too much or not getting enough" (and it could be extended to other resources than money). This means it can never have a negative value.
    rattler2 wrote: »
    Supply and demand. The more of an item is available, generally the less its worth. We see it all the time with lockbox ships. When they first start dropping they're 300 mil at least on the Exchange. Over time that price drops to as low as 100 mil.

    Market saturation drives the price down. So unless there is some hard coded wall for minimum price FOR EVERY ITEM IN THE GAME, people can sell items for 1 EC each if they wanted.

    Actually, demand is infinite - since vendors will take any amount at their set price. So in an economy ruled by the economic laws we learn at college, nobody would sell lower than that except for reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread (i. e. you assign a lost value you have to spend going to a sales place). There are similar reasons to not choose the "best" option in real life, who really would walk five miles to get milk 5 cents cheaper? Actually some may - the less money and the more time you have, the more inclined you would be to take that extra bit of work upon you. The more money and less time you have, the more inclined you are to spend it for convenience like "not having to care how the milk gets in the fridge". And then there are people who actually enjoy hunting down low prices, for them it's not only about the money saved but also about the hunt, a game if you will. So there is no "best" version to do it.
    Right click / discard is the fastest way for stuff that gets stuck in your inventory from 'loot' imo.

    IMO it isn't thanks to all the "are you really sure you want to discard this lovely peace of handcrafted Mk X Common console?" windows you have to close. Better to let it gather a bit and every so often use the replicator to sell it when your inventory becomes cluttered. Then you can one-click everything away insted of three clicking.
    My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 58,008 Community Moderator
    xyquarze wrote: »
    rattler2 wrote: »
    Supply and demand. The more of an item is available, generally the less its worth. We see it all the time with lockbox ships. When they first start dropping they're 300 mil at least on the Exchange. Over time that price drops to as low as 100 mil.

    Market saturation drives the price down. So unless there is some hard coded wall for minimum price FOR EVERY ITEM IN THE GAME, people can sell items for 1 EC each if they wanted.

    Actually, demand is infinite - since vendors will take any amount at their set price. So in an economy ruled by the economic laws we learn at college, nobody would sell lower than that except for reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread (i. e. you assign a lost value you have to spend going to a sales place). There are similar reasons to not choose the "best" option in real life, who really would walk five miles to get milk 5 cents cheaper? Actually some may - the less money and the more time you have, the more inclined you would be to take that extra bit of work upon you. The more money and less time you have, the more inclined you are to spend it for convenience like "not having to care how the milk gets in the fridge". And then there are people who actually enjoy hunting down low prices, for them it's not only about the money saved but also about the hunt, a game if you will. So there is no "best" version to do it.

    I wasn't referring to NPC vendors. I was referring to other players and the Exchange. The more of a particular item is up for sale, generally the lower the prices will creep. While higher demand items will typically sell faster, thus leaving the higher priced one up longer and thus keeping the prices of newly posted ones higher than if you had almost 400 of said item up for sale and the price is down to about 20k or less.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
  • catsmeatcatsmeat Member Posts: 106 Arc User
    When I'm crafting for a specific set of mods - I've gotten used to just posting my rejects for a pittance of their vendor value to help others and speedily clear my inventory. The loss in ec is laughably small. If someone wants to buy them to vendor, that's fine. I know from watching the sale mails that sometimes one player buys piles of them which make me think they are vendoring them, but I also often see them moving to one player which leads me to believe the item is going to be used, and that's great.

    I don't understand fully the money grubbing nature of some in game, I'm always flush on ec. Worrying about small margins on auction house items is insane. If you need ec your time and resources are better spent speculating on ships, keys, fleet modules, and top end crafting.
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,114 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    I wasn't referring to NPC vendors. I was referring to other players and the Exchange. The more of a particular item is up for sale, generally the lower the prices will creep. While higher demand items will typically sell faster, thus leaving the higher priced one up longer and thus keeping the prices of newly posted ones higher than if you had almost 400 of said item up for sale and the price is down to about 20k or less.

    Yeah, but NPC vendors are demand as well. So a price dropping below the value you could always get makes no sense from a purely economic way. Although, as has been said, convenience and other stuff may change the way you play.

    And I cannot claim to be even halfway logical about this myself. Unless strange circumstances happen, I'll keep my stuff in inventory until I visit my respective academy so as not to lose out on the 10 vs 8 ec per small hypo. At the same time when commodities were still needed for fleet projects, I would get them from the replicator, not bothering about going to, say, the fleet embassy to save. I am also often too lazy to craft minor stuff myself (boff manuals mostly), instead buying them way overpriced off the exchange. Probably has to do with "what I want to do now" vs "what I still can do later".
    My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
  • jorantomalakjorantomalak Member Posts: 7,133 Arc User
    fluffymoof wrote: »
    I just found two poor helpless souls on the Exchange who apparently have no idea how to price items in an MMO. they were selling items for BELOW the price it would be to vendor the item. This is just plain dumb, people, as it gives your opportunity cost a negative value (opportunity cost meaning everything else you could have done with that item, including vendoring it). You literally screwed your collective self over.

    Know the vendor price before auctioning something so you don't wind up with a negative opportunity cost. Either that or just vendor every item you get.

    Dumb? perhaps they were new players to STO , instead of being so condescending why not reach out and try to help them learn the game, teach them the ins and outs of STO maybe invite them to join your fleet or suggest a fleet to join.

  • spiritwalker1969spiritwalker1969 Member Posts: 406 Arc User
    @fluffymoof whilst I do see the reasoning behind your post and agree that these poor souls obviously may need some advice regarding STO economics, how can we ensure it happens?. Unfortunately, unless they visit the forums they might never learn the error of their ways or worse if they are simply "just plain dumb" then they might not even find the forums. That of course assumes that they even care about such things.

    Unfortunately, it does highlight yet again that whilst some areas of the game such as the ongoing genocide of all non-Federomulgon lifeforms are handled with in-game tutorials, other more "mundane" or support aspects are not. I suppose that without your faction leader sending you to sell his collection of tribble droppings to a vendor who then advised you place them on the exchange for better profit, then vendor vs exchange vs replicator oblivion vs airlock economics will remain a DIY study course sponsored by Quark (in other words work it out or the funny alien with the big ears will have all your money and the wallet you keep it in).
  • shadowwraith#9264 shadowwraith Member Posts: 379 Arc User
    most of the stuff other than standard common equipment don't have a vendor or a "vendor price" since vast majority of the stuff in STO is only obtainable from drops or missions.
    • Draal - FED, Saurian, LV60 - TAC
    • Mirak - FED 23c, Vulkan, LV60 - TAC
    • Ascaran Bloodclaw - KDF, Gorn, Lv18 - TAC
    • Melchiah - KDF, Gorn, LV60 - TAC
    • Ne'roon - KDF,Lethian, L60, TAC
    • Turel - ROM-KDF, Reman, 30, TAC
    • Elric - ROM-Fed, Romulan, L60, TAC
    • Richtor Belmont - FED 23c, Human,LV20, SCI
    • G'Kar - KDF, Gorn, L10

    USS Sharlin NCC79713 B (part of sheridans access code) - T6, Hestia Class Advanced Escort
    USS Babylon IV - T6 Krenim Science Vessel
    USS Brakiri - T6 Elachi Escort
    270?cb=20061004071055
    "I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star."
    "We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light."

    – Grey Council greeting
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,114 Arc User
    most of the stuff other than standard common equipment don't have a vendor or a "vendor price" since vast majority of the stuff in STO is only obtainable from drops or missions.

    Most of the stuff has a value associated (seen in the hover tip). Vendors will pay a certain percentage of that (up to 50% max I think) for that. So half the associated value is the "vendor price" talked about here. Not a price to buy stuff, but one to sell stuff.
    My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
  • ssbn655ssbn655 Member Posts: 1,894 Arc User
    OP a true wallet warrior out to help only himself. Sorry OP I will happily take a hit on the EC by undercutting not only the suggested price value of an item but to also stick wallet warriors like you with overpericed items that you will be stuck with and will instead help out others who may be just starting new to the game. So a big Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo you OP.
  • casualstocasualsto Member Posts: 672 Arc User
    People have been trying to sell overpriced stuff all the time. If the economy collapses on EC market, it will only be a fair market to be rebuilt. Plasmonic is 4m atm. Some traits are 200m. Out of random undisclosed reasons that some mentally-challenged people call "Demand and offer". Because some people watch Money Channel too much, but never seek the terms before copying the sentence.
    The person who wants to sell an item faster will sell lower. People who sell lower usually sell between one to a few pieces. And they really need the money. If you wanna make a buck like a big-TRIBBLE economist, buy those items and try to resell at your designed price, not cry upon the forums that you can't get space-rich as fast as you'd like.
    There is some sad fella' who has a "starwars meme" ment for trolling "F2pers begging" or something. That guy is way more embarrasing than this post. But the level of "field-intelligence" is the same to this post. Or as Mayweather's staff said "Most people don't know sh*t about boxing"... We can say "Most people don't know sh*t in STO, so they attempt to troll".
  • fovrelfovrel Member Posts: 1,448 Arc User
    I do not understand why there is a value on an item that no NPC pays to you; the vendor gives 50%, the Ferengi 40%. Put the 50% as the value and let the Ferengi also pay that price. I don't mind if the replicator pays 40% wich is 80% in my system.

    I would also like to see that the replicator can remove all zero value items, lockboxes, tribbles, whatever. Next it would be awesome if we could flag items for sellable or not.
  • zaichalzaichal Member Posts: 96 Arc User
    What I like to do on a new alt is take 100,000 from my account bank, then on that alt, buy up all the underpriced mines and mine consoles on the exchange. I haul them off to the vendor, then check for underpriced single cannons and other frequently underpriced items. Within maybe 10mins of effort, I've got the 100,000 ec back and enough left over to linger on the new alt until the next time I can be bothered to vendor exchange trash. Which isn't often.

    I'll play the game my way and you play it your way and no one will care either way.
  • fluorescentblackfluorescentblack Member Posts: 79 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    fovrel wrote: »
    Next it would be awesome if we could flag items for sellable or not.
    Yeah, that's a great idea. Lets go with the newest truest game model to go viral in the last few years where everything is always bound and nothing is sellable or tradable. Afterall, it is totally fair.

    This whole thread is either cake and eat it too material or people who see right through the OP's I'll intentions.


    Leader of The Temporal Guard and Temporal Defence Force
  • breadandcircusesbreadandcircuses Member Posts: 2,355 Arc User
    edited November 2016
    fovrel wrote: »
    Next it would be awesome if we could flag items for sellable or not.
    Yeah, that's a great idea. Lets go with the newest truest game model to go viral in the last few years where everything is always bound and nothing is sellable or tradable. Afterall, it is totally fair.

    This whole thread is either cake and eat it too material or people who see right through the OP's I'll intentions.


    You missed the "we could flag items for sellable or not." portion of that quote, and for some reason filled it in with "everything is always bound and nothing is sellable or tradable." Some games actually allow the former, making it easier to decide what you want to hang on to and helping to avoid misclicks without repetitive or cumbersome confirmations. Others enforce the latter as a means monetization; that can be counter productive, as many of the items that players pay for are valuable in part because those items are tradable.

    Of course, that's not really related to the topic at hand; where the OP is concerned: Meh. Some folks are undercutting, others are being charitable, some are feeling too lazy to walk to a vendor with their R&D failures, some are missing a zero, some are intentionally underselling to get you out of their market... and yes, some are ignorant of the vendor price of those items. All of these things happen in MMO's, and as you can see by...
    tousseau wrote: »
    But... How else am I supposed to make my EC, beyond profiting off of those under priced items?
    ...there are already mechanisms in place to address the issue. :wink:
    Post edited by breadandcircuses on
    Ym9x9Ji.png
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    I do not like Geko ether.
    iconians wrote: »
    With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.​​
  • breadandcircusesbreadandcircuses Member Posts: 2,355 Arc User
    I still can't wrap my head around the bizarreness of "i want to flag my items as unsellable after I sell them."

    Some people tried to explain it but it's so insane I just can't get a grip on it.

    I missed that one... who made the suggestion to "flag my items as unsellable after I sell them."? That's... not really the order in which such things work.
    Ym9x9Ji.png
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    I do not like Geko ether.
    iconians wrote: »
    With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.​​
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