Coolness on Test

[Silnyil]

I would much rather have them start labeling no drop quest pieces with the classes who can use it - I'm tired of groups stopping to look up online every no drop item that drops.

Most LoY quest items and trade skill research component etc mark with class.

[andyhre]

Addendum

Increasingly, I think the premium put on gaming time is quite high. There is a type who comes into the Bazaar, shouts out a price to sell something, often well below the bazaar rate, and then heads out to kill. As a bazaar rat, I'll buy that and then provide "retailing service" offering it up for sale at a higher price, but one that is not going to expire when the person heads back out to kill baddies. My profit comes from a willingness to waste my life in the bazaar, both to know the resale opportunities, but also to be willing to have the bazaar alt on rather than the main.

Similarly, people will pay me to do their combines, even their no-fail combines. I can offer, say, spider silk at 8pp and silk swatches at 18pp. The swatches will sell much faster than the silk, even though, with certainity, every 16pp of silk is equal to 18pp of swatch. People will thus pay me 2pp per combine, even on this no-fail combine.

Somewhere in all of this, we could actually determine the market rate of game time - what the marginal player is willing to pay to play a minute more rather than do something dinky like click a post-trivial combine.

This doesn't explain why the robe sold for less than its components, but it goes a long way toward explaining the flip-side, such as the markets for Leather Padding and Silk Swatches.

[Xefin]

Well, I'm that guy, Andy. I just don't like being in the bazaar. I walk in, offer everything I'm looking to sell (tradeskilled or not) at prices that beat every trader present. Then I deposit my money, check the baz for a few component items. I know what I'm willing to pay, and if somebody has it at that price, great. Though I'm not really doing a whole lot of skillup-type stuff lately, when I was, I had the same attitude towards buying the pieces. I hated making 200 solstice robe attempts badly enough without farming the silk too. There are plenty of people in my guild who have great success with buy low, sell high. I just can't stand it

As for why does a robe sell for more than its components...especially with the high-end stuff, tradeskillers are often camping their own drops. If you need 4 rare items to make a great, say 50k item, and you have 3 of the 4 component items, why not pay 20k for the fourth?

There are also a few other issues at work here, one being access to components. Joe 250 tailor is a member of the resident uberguild. He's not going to even use the armor he could make with his components. The few people in his guild who want we he makes probably get the first couple free. Then maybe he sells a couple overstock robes for 20k. Then he hears that Bob 250 tailor, who's level 40 and guildless, is offering 20k for each PIECE of the robe. Bob and his friends are never going to see these items (or gear anywhere close to the mob drops Joe wears) unless Joe and his friends sell them to him. So suddenly the 20k robe disappears from the market, and you see the components.

The other issue is just ignorance of the tradeskill process. People who are "middle men" may have no clue what item is for what. They see prevailing prices and set their prices accordingly. Those people see the above example, remember the robe is 20k, component x is 15k, component y is 500pp, etc., without any regard for what the combination process is. The bazaar masters perpetuate the going rate.

[pennyrose]

You know, the kind of thinking described above always irritates me. I understand the logic of it, of course, but I always feel ripped off when someone buys my lower priced items in order to re-sell them at higher prices.

I guess I start from the attitude that we are all in this "world" together and we should help each other out when we can. I don't give things away, but I try to price them toward the low end or just high enough to cover my costs plus a smidgen of profit. My thought is the prices will enable players to improve their equipment without leaving them bankrupt.

I have to say that I find the notion of putting up a second trader with artificially low prices to force/encourage another trader to sell to you at a lower price strikes me as immoral. It may be what works in the big nasty real world, but this is Norrath and I like to think we're made of better stuff.

Pennyrose

[andyhre]

I should add that I only have one account and I haven't done anything with two-boxing to confuse, I was simply citing that as an example of how asymmetric information can skew the perception of supply and demand. I'm not sure where the morality lies in a world where we go out and kill for the sole benefit of taking stuff from critters, but I'm blessed with only having one computer, one account so I haven't had to cross that particular bridge yet.

And in the previously cited case of a quick-in quick-out seller, that person does not want to hang around until the end-user shows up. He/she wants a quick sale, wants someone else to worry about finding the best home for the stuff, etc. if people /auction that they only want to sell to an end-user, I'll respect that. if they "WTS quickly" and I can reprice and sell a day later to the ultimate customer, pretty much everyone wins, b/c the quick-in/quick-out guy is happy, I am happy, and if I hadn't done that, the ultimate customer might never have found the stuff in the first place, as it'd be in the bank account of the first seller, waiting for his next 10 minute trip to the bazaar.

As for buying low and selling high, sometimes there is value added and sometimes it's just making money from arbitrage. Gathering up small lots of one and two items and selling a larger lot clearly has value. I see people buying in bulk from me even when there are lower priced goods for sale in smaller quantities. If there is a market for "aggregation skill" that people want, someone should supply it.

Buying from someone who is already offering an item in bulk and then repricing that a bit higher is, admittedly, selfish. But it's not really changing the total process much.

Scenario 1: Someone is pricing commodity X at half the going rate. Tradeskiller walks in, sees the price, buys it. Does the skilling thing and is happy. Seller is happy too -- Sold all the stuff at the price requested. Everyone wins. I doubt in most cases the tradeskiller is going to say: "your price is too low, take this extra cash"

[Although I should note, I did do just that recently, to a quick-in/quick out person b/c his price was so low I felt bad and doubled it, to a point still below market but closer anyway...]

Scenario 2: Someone is pricing commodity X at half the going rate. Bazaar Rat walks in, sees the price, buys it. Reprices it to the low-end of the market range. Tradeskiller walks in and buy it. Everyone is still happy (though perhaps someone less so). The tradeskiller still got what he wanted at a price he/she wanted to pay. He/she didn't get a windfall, instead the Bazaar Rat did. So it is selfish in that sense, that the bazaar rat uses his/her knowledge to extract some happiness (and profit) from a situation where instead the end-user would have gotten the windfall. But the tradeskiller still does the skilling thing and is still happy. Seller is happy too -- Sold all the stuff at the price requested. Everyone still wins. The moment the person prices the goods "too" low, someone was going to get a windfall. And the other solution, to encourage the low priced person to raise prices just gives the windfall to the original seller.

So I am willing to concede that in this instance, I am not adding much value (other than perhaps if I keep my trader on longer than the first seller, I increase the chance that someone will find the goods they want, simply b/c I am on longer). But I don't feel this is anything other than exactly what a Bazaar is supposed to be. It's not a PvP area like an Arena, but it is a place in which buyer and seller come together and we all try to walk out with more value than we came in with. And even if a Bazaar Rat has repurchased and repriced and item, nevertheless, everyone in the process has happily (voluntarily) changed good for cash or vice versa.

Finally, I should say, at some level I offer stuff up for sale, I listen to offers and give discounts where I think they make sense, I'll drop the price to leave them some spending cash, etc. But in the end, I love the bazaar because it is a market, where if you don't want to pay, you don't have to (and in fact, in many cases, you really can go get one yourself -- go kill spiderling, wolves, etc.). And so it is a place where for the people who value the service, great services can be acquired. And people who excel at learning market ranges can "skill up" as well.

Quick Addendum: A lot of people also think selling "too low" is immoral, it kills the market for tradeskillers, etc. I think in the end the efforts to create caretls are going to fail, except for VERY high skill items, but that all of the supposed harm of unilateral activity pales in comparison with a price-fixing cartel.

[thrashette]

It's no mystery.

I wasn't referring to skill up items. I meant things like Hurricane robes (tailoring) and Hurricane Plate (smithing) where I can sell the parts needed to make one robe/breastplate for approximately 75,000 plat or sell the robe/bp for 15,000 plat. I will sell the parts. I don't understand why the parts sell (slowly, but they do sell) when I get laughed out of the room when I ask for more than 15k for the finished product

Here is your answer to that particular question:

The smithed hurricane plate and tailored robe are completely uncompetitive. Equivalent armor is available from both drops and from non planar trades.

A hurricane plate BP only sells for 15k because that's what nearly identical heraldic has been selling for for 4 months. And anyone who can kill a Storms Mini can to kill Derakor the Vindicator and get better.

And drops of pure rain sell for more than a BP because the 6 that make 1 breastplate can make 3 chain tunics which each sell for 5k more than the breastplate. Those tunics are way underpriced too, because they have to compete with easily farmable Tae Ew and low trivial Royal Velium.

A stormweave robe sells for 15k because a just-as-good robe MQ from Velious sells for the same. And Ornate Robe Patterns are the one piece that can actually be obtained in PoP without 50 people.

The odd bits sell for crazy prices because some obsessed idiot (=me) will eventually need one. Someone's birthday or anniversary is going to come along and I am going to need that one piece. I have essentially infinite platinum, so why do I care if it costs too much that one time?

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Now if Sony had a bit of sense in tradeskill itemization, the Storms robe would have 80% of the Ornate robe stats instead of 40% of it. And it would thus be a nice upgrade to people who have Velious gear. Ditto for the Storms plate compared to TOV Dragon armor.

But they don't, and it's not. Those items are thus not worth making, and will not sell for much.