Deflation hits

[Mafdet de Leone]

There are many varying factors on the economics of EQ, just like RL. LOL No surprise there.

I'm sure ALL of them have had some impact.

In response to someone saying:

.I find that many people want to deal with the actual craftsman and not some bot toon

I use a bot for my vendor selling my alchemy & brewing. She's on 24x7, and ppl know her for both these things. I've gotten many special request for both drink & potions that I might not normally carry, or they want X more amount of some item (for self or guild) because they *know* that *I* am capable of making these things (on another toon) and sell for a fair price. And I try to always respond to questions and requests that ppl /tell me.

Heck, she's gotten numerous marriage offers, thank yous, and compliments from many many return customers. ROFL

Its my reputation on "her" that allows me to continue making and selling my wares. They don't care that she's a level 1 character, what they care about is what I can offer them.

I know that many folks miss the old EC tunnel. Personally, I don't.

I was there, it was fun, but it certainly didn't afford me a lot of stuff since it was either hawke my wares or go play.

Personally, I'd rather play. I want my interaction to be with friends, group mates, guildmates, and the ilk, and not haggling over price over SoW potions or Grobb.

And in turn, the bazaar has allowed me not only to sell, but also to purchase other items and spells I normally would not be able to afford. I certainly couldn't do that in EC. LOL. I guess it all feeds back into the economy as it should...

Andyhre, if you ever choose to do the paper in between playing EQ, lemme know, I'd be interested in providing info, if you want.

mafdetdeleone AT yahoo

[andyhre]

My two cents as a player.

I play my main in the morning before work, about 60-90 minutes a day. If I have made anything worth selling like some arrows or leather padding, I put it in the shared bank slot before I log over to my bazaar character.

My bazaar character was born in Flewithe, jumped to the bazzar, and has lived here life out there, except two accidents where she ended up in the nexus and needed a SoW to even move, overloaded as she was with Trader's Satchels.

She sells all day until I get disconencted, which is about half of the time.

When I get home, I stare at market prices for 20 minutes and see what I sold, get yelled at by my son and/or wife, and then "pop upstairs" now and again until I go to bed.

In the old system, I would know almsot nothing about the economy of E`Ci. In the current system, I feel I have a good working knowledge of a great deal of what goes on. Although I don't tend to speculate in armor and weapons, I could make money on the Wurmy price cycle, etc.

In the old system, I am certain I would be perpetually poor. I played for a few months with a PoP-and-basic set up, and it was only when I added Luclin that the game's depth became clear to me. I had been one of the newbies selling my Morning Dew for 5pp to the guy who auctioned in Gfay, and considered myself lucky. In the new system, I can understand demand and figure out profitable ways to supply it.

Having said that, I like the fact that sometimes customers and I have a chance to chat during my 20 minutes at the screen after work. I don't think the bazaar and a lack of interaction needs to follow. Ever sale that is made when I am /afk is a sale that would not happen in the old system, simply b/c I would be /afk anyway. It is clear that the bazaar system create a much creater supply simply b/c I can devote time to selling even when I don't have time to be home playing. But when I am at my screen, I talk to folks, etc.

An aside: If you really want to increase the value of the tradeskiller to the buyer, the game should allow a trademark. If I could stamp my arrows: "Shoot Longer and Straighter with Guiscard Arrows" or something like that, I'm sure I'd get tells whenever I am actually playing my main, asking me for more of those groovy, well-priced arrows.

Anyway, I do someday expect to find the time and inspiration to do something rigorous. One good start would be to think about a bazaar parser that I could use to start analyzing the spam prices and a way to efficiently grab the /bazaar window prices too. And perhaps to come up with a list of ten good items to map the prices of over time. Then if people do have ancient logs of the "old days" we could see what the average and standard deviation change was. And we could do this across servers as well, so it'd make a really nice regression data set. I might even convince a non-EQer colleague of mine to join in if I can entice him with juicy data.

[TheGiantOne]

Okay..

Been an auctioneer and seller in this world and many other games and this is what is happening.

The price of items has plummeted downward and expect them to go lower and lower and lower right to next expansion. It happens all the time. Not just prices on crafted items but on dropped items.

But herein lies the main problem the prices players are willing to pay are going lower but the people who provide the materials we buy (their prices are not going down at the same rate) so what happens is the following example:

You need 3 sets of materials for a absolute success so you can receive a bow. So taking that into consideration

OLD COSTS a 1 1/2 months ago. Took about 1 week to come up with 3 sets of materials then.

A stonewood compound bow: 30% success ratio
(2) Cams: old price 2000pp each
(2) String: 15k each
(1) Stonewood Compound Bow Staff 15k

12000 for cams
90000 for string
45000 for staffs
------------------------
147k needed for this bow a 1 1/2 months ago.

Now this bow would sell for 170k on a fast sale so you would make a fast 23k profit.

Now current costs

11000 for cams
80000 for string
30000 for staffs
------------------------
121k needed for this bow now to make one 100% chance.

You can sell this same bow today if you are lucky for 125k. Now who in their right mind is going to spend all the time collecting the parts for 3 sets of materials (btw which this time took 3 weeks) to make a possible 4k profit.

So we have what we call a Mexican standoff. The suppliers of materials want almost as much for the same materials now as they did 1 1/2 months ago but the players buying the final product want to pay less than our ongoing market prices.

But we have a problem. As we near the next expansion everything including this bow will go down in price (value wise) and there is no stopping it.

As one person put it, as each expansion comes out those who have GM's in various tradeskills will be the ones who most benefit the cycle 100%. Those who just have a master in the skill will maybe benefit 40%. Those with no skill up points in the trade will be buying our goods.

I have 4 GM's in 4 tradeskills and working on 5th now in tailoring however I did notice a pattern.

Fletching for about a week after becoming GM things sold like hot cakes then it graduially died off. Now am at point where I sell mostly cams and strings and bows to my customers.

Brewing..please I try not to laugh when I know how little we can make from brewing.

Pottery The market was all ready flooded with porting stones, steins and (totems for uber guilds). So no market there.

Smithing after I became a GM I could make sickles 1 out of every 2 attempts. At 1 point I had 60 just stored away but the market would not be able to keep up with me so I combined my talents in brewing, smithing, fletching to make items that were part of main combines that people needed for final product. And the good news is that there are not too many GM smiths on our server. Most give up when they hit around 220.

I found my place there. I make 20k-30k a day on a good day and on a slow day around 15k and most of the time am afk selling my wares.

PS...Ornate armor is killing us GM smithers and tailors left and right. We really can't sell armor for its real worth against what all the various ornate molds are being sold for.

Now I am working on tailoring as my 5th GM and will finish it in 1 week and then after that will do 6th and 7th in JC and Baking but I don't expect to make that much off those 3 skills.

Now however I will be a Grandmaster of all 7 skills before next expansion and can advertise 'your one-stop shopping place for most anything ya need made" I know LOL sounds like an old saying from real life but then again I will be lined up to make most anything by then.

You know the best idea Verant could do with those augument items that add stats to armors? Alllow them only on trade skilled made items ONLY. That would put some acceptance back into the tradeskills community.

[Shere Khaan]

I have been following this thread with great interest. I found my calling as a trader a year and a half ago, and enjoyed learning the bazaar and how the market moved.

The cycles are amazing and very interesting in themselves. It is intriguing to see the market drop before every expansion. People are tired of the game because of same content for a while, people are anticipating their current gear being outdated and flogging inventory, more drops becoming available from previous expansion as time has gone by. Regardless of the reasons though certain patterns emerge in the health of the Norrath economy.

Right now there is an oversupply of goods and anticipation towards the new expansion. Typically relese of a new expansion generates new game interest and markets pick up. Prices go down but by no means is it a spiral. Many times I have seen prices fall and people deem it is the end of the market and then it bounces back. OVERALL the prices will fall in the long term, but prices operate similar to the stock market (except opposite). The average will fall but peaks and ttroughs will occur from player influences and Sony game changing influences.

Two examples I can think of are Tae Ew chain and Windblades. Two quality items that are desirable yet saw the price deflate rapidly due to oversupply. What happens is the supply forces traders to drop their price in order to sell their goods when in fact the value of the item has not dropped in comparison. I bought a windblade for 16k 5 months ago, the supply dried up and the price bounced back to 50k - very similar to what is happening to ornate now that drop rates have changed.

The Tae Ew on the other hand is a player made item. The high price on the item attracted many people to trade in this product due to heavy supply of ingredients and high returns. Naturally this dropped prices fast (using tunic as a guide) from 40k to 4k in a very short time frame. What happened next was many merchants left this field and the price bounced back somewhat ranging from 5k to 8k depending on the day.

You can see these cycles in action. By and large you can predict the nature of merchants moving into various fields and the relative pricing. Where you have to be careful is considering new input from Sony in the form of revamped zones and expansions. These have the ability to change a market irrevocably seemingly over night. It is very similar to technology markets IRL. One innovation can shift the market so old technology becomes out dated and halve the value.

I have started watching the market again closely now that we are nearing the new expansion. Not with the view of profit this time (ornate did that for me), more so curiosity as the market shifts to the new merchandise and no drop items. I have made a few long term bets and I would be interested to see if I picked the market movements.

Shere Khaan

[cewtye pie]

Well, on the subject of making money smithing, hehe, it's easy! Join a BoT group, kill kreigers till a named pops, loot the ornate mold, sell it for 40K. Take the 40k buy raw materials in the bazaar, combine into armor, put it up for sale, and presto! in just two short weeks you will have turned the 40k into 10k of cash from sold armor! You can sell the rest of your unsold product to a vendor for another 100 pp or so! Good stuff!

Seriously if you really want to make money off smithing, farm components and sell em in the bazaar. Kiting chromas in skyfire is one of the most profitable camps you will find in the game.

Personally i rarely ever smith any more. Its just too time consuming. Now that we made it into the elemental planes, I will prolly try a few sets of the farwater etc. But pretty much hung up my hammer for now! (

[Sulkano]

While all of the economic therories are indeed interesting, one fact remains: none of this is real. Trying to place an RL economic overlay onto EQ is like herding cats. The bazaar was added to facilitate the buying and selling of goods because we the player base were (in general) weary of the old EC tunnel markets...and it has. If it had been intended to be the cornerstone of SOE's version of an 'economy' (instead of just a perk to get you to buy the Luclin expansion) then some of the stuff being talked about in this thread would have been implemented. As it is...instead of a 'free market' we have a 'free-for-all market', where anything goes. None of this makes sense, because it doesnt have too...its a game.

[andyhre]

I just have to disagree, strongly.

It is make-believe, but the people behind the characters are real, they generally have a goal of prospering, getting stuff they want, etc. They aren't perfectly rational about it (nor are real people in RL), but the general trend works close enough for first approximations.

The NPC merchants are not economic. The Bazaar is very much so.

It's not identical to the New York Stock Exchange, but the same human behaviors rule both, perhaps in slightly difference degrees (I think Norrath has more altruism than the NYSE) but if you try selling items for a lot more than everyone else, you won't succeed. If you sell for much less than everyone else, you will sell quickly (possibly to a middleman who knows the market and sees a profit opportunity).

[Kingbobb]

There is no such thing as "real life economics," since the study of economics is an attempt to understand the operation of a market. it's all based on assumptions, using models. Economics isn't something like gravity. With gravity (or other "hard" sciences) you can very accurately predict what will happen (I drop the apple. The apple falls, unless something stops the apple from falling, like you catch it). If gravity behaved like economics, the apple example would go more like "I drop the apple, and it SHOULD fall, unless you catch it. But instead, it flies upward into the sky, and I don't have a clue as to why." The difference being that under the influence of gravity, the apple responds to a set of identifiable and for the most part static forces. In economics, not all the forces impacting on the apple are identifiable, and even those that are are not always the same. Economics is the same whether you talk in terms of the local supermarket or the Bazaar, or even the EC tunnel.

[andyhre]

Well, like all social sciences, economics gives itself a very hard challenge: understand and model human behavior.

When people are as predictable as apples, we'll have achieved our goal. Until then, it's a wee bit less exact.

[andaerice]

As if the falling sales prices weren't enough, tradeskillers will likely have to deal with increasing raw material prices

True on my server, and very annoying.

Spider/Spiderling silk: was 2-5p, now 10-15p
Zombie/puma/black wolf skin: was 1-2p, now 10-15p
Mushrooms: was 5g-2p, now 5-10p

and in bazaar last night, someone /auc's "Selling 45 silk swatches for 850pp! CHEAP!"

[Reflan]

Actually you can collude when any number of people are involved. All that is necessary is that they all desire the same thing.

My friend told me of an idea of his he called "implicit collusion." An example involves a poker game.

The guy new to the game is set upon like a piranha usually, if you're not worried whether he will come back or not. People play badly against them if they have to, raise him like mad, do everything possible to stick him. Such as, he starts with a pair of aces in seven card stud. Excellent. But awful if he never improves against other people who make two-pair, especially since he pretty much has to bet and raise everyone out so they don't make their hands. So when he loses, he will lose a lot.

The smart thing to do? If he has aces right at the start, you probably fold unless you see another ace out or are holding one and/or have a particularly good drawing hand(straight or flush) or perhaps unless you get two "live" pair(your cards aren't anywhere on the table or predictably in someone's hand somewhere). Perhaps you bet against him and raise to test if he really has the aces or is just full of baloney. Anyway, not to get too much into the details of strategy, but you basically get out of dodge if it looks like someone has the better hand. Makes sense, right?

New guy comes to game, implicit collusion sets it. EVERYBODY stays in when new guy has a high pair hand. It is not important that any one person beats him, as most won't, but that SOMEONE will. Then his money will be eventually carved up between the regulars after he is busted out of the game. So people will stay in against his aces with a weak pair with no kicker, with low straight and flush draws, with draws that are not "live" -- heck almost anything. They WILL raise when they don't have a hand and they WILL call, too. Because the new guy will be forced to lose cash at an astronomical rate if everyone makes him have a maximum investment against odds that have turned against him because of implicitly collusory behavior. His aces look great against a three-card straight or any other pair -- but against FIVE people drawing to straights and flushes, and everyone else drawing to a pair? Somebody is going to hit a straight or make two pairs most of the time. Who? It doesn't matter, as long as the new guy's money gets divided up among the regulars.

So, is this too small a group to talk about whether collusion can really go on among large numbers?

Go to any California poker casino. They have from dozens to literally 100 to 200 or more tables. Try not to look like the new guy.

[Arkaron]

Also seen in Brell's Bazaar:

Spiderling Silks: 20p each
Silk Thread: 20p each
Leather Padding: 20-38p each (actually somewhat reasonable, though trivializing padding isn't really difficult, so why not?)
Honeyberry, Lichen Clover, Cursed: 100p each

Assorted other LoY dye components are selling at a nose bleeding rate. All those players are going to accomplish are higher level players farming more areas.

[Aquila Swiftspirit]

I think there's an added complication in EQ economics. There are relatively fewer lower level people entering the game, and relatively more higher level people, including higher level people twinking.

That makes the time/cost of different things change. When Froggies first went live, you could barely walk in Innothule for the unlooted carcasses of stuffs. Many people made super twinks, buffed them up, and just hit anything and everything in sight.

These super twink folks don't want to collect spiderling silks or bone chips the way I avidly did as a fourth level desperate ranger (and later almost equally desperate druid). Accordingly, prices for spiderling silks and such have risen compared to what they used to be (I was lucky to get 3-4 pp a stack when I started). Also, travel was harder then, and a "high" level who came through GF looking for bone chips or bat wings got my stuff because I hadn't even heard of EC yet...

On the other hand, prices for high end stuff have (mostly) dropped for all the mudflation reasons people have mentioned. A LOT of people got very avid about tradeskills during the PotC earring craze, and even slightly latecomers (such as myself--pottery was 188 when my guild started working on them) made amazing plat. Also, people at the higher end game get tired of exping some and decide to do a tradeskill: they can afford ingredients, and don't care that much about selling the results. The Aid Grimel quest focuses them on specific skills....

I actually think the tradeskill market was artificially high during the PotC craze, and the second set of cultural armors (which rival Velious gear). I saw people selling stuff for 10-15 times the cost (counting failures), and that seems a bit excessive, especially on things that require no drops/foraging. (Don't get me wrong! I was happy to sell some pottery stuff for a lot of plat while I could.)

I have a personal threshold for making certain items... I won't make star ruby encrusted steins when the market drops below my threshold (and make them in small quantities, anyway), and it usually bounces back to about my threshold within a week of someone flooding through skill ups. My threshold seems pretty average here, because I see most folks selling them for about the same price over time, except for occasional floods (usually looks like one person is skilling up and dumping).

I don't make Golden Idols of Tunare anymore because I can't be bothered at their current prices, though I do occasionally stick different Golden Idols in my trade pouches if I'm goofing around with stuff. I keep a variety of faith/spirit/soul stones in the bags, one of each of the more common ones, priced at about my threshold... and I don't worry if I don't sell them for a goodly time.

I don't think plat is really that hard to come by in PoP; it may not flow like Seb, but there are still stuffs to sell off.

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Aquila Swiftspirit
These super twink folks don't want to collect spiderling silks or bone chips the way I avidly did as a fourth level desperate ranger (and later almost equally desperate druid). Accordingly, prices for spiderling silks and such have risen compared to what they used to be (I was lucky to get 3-4 pp a stack when I started). Also, travel was harder then, and a "high" level who came through GF looking for bone chips or bat wings got my stuff because I hadn't even heard of EC yet...

I'd be inclined to say that the reason spider silks are higher in price is not because people don't collect them. It's because they can make useful stuff now, as opposed to before PotC, when they could help you smith armour that was, at best, inferior to fear/hate armour and tailor 10% WR bags. Raise the demand for silks (through PotC, Aid Grimel, BD cultural armour) and the price rises. I suspect supply is fairly constant. And I still recover silks from vendors, even today.

[andyhre]

I know that spiderLING silk has gotten less common and more highly priced, since the drop list on spiderling changed a lot to add more stuff for the newbie quests. I've written on this in a couple of other posts, but the marked change in the E`Ci market for spiderLING silk is palpable.

For Spider Silks, I think all of the changes you mention pre-date my owning Luclin, so I don't know. On E`Ci, for as long as I've watched the market, 5pp-10pp seems the range on these silks, and for a while I made good money buying at 5pp, sewing into swatches and selling at 17-19pp. I've also seen high levels training everything in East Karana and then nuking it, presumably for pelts and silks

Now I am at tailoring of 131 and I am just accumulating for my heady kiola/ Wu's sessions, so I buy at 5 and don't resell. As I tended to be a major re-seller, I half expected a further increase as I lowered supply, but so far it seems my impact on the market price is neglible.