Forum Settings
       
1 2 3 Next »
Reply To Thread

semi-rant about silver and coralFollow

#52 Dec 16 2004 at 2:08 PM Rating: Excellent
***
1,930 posts
Well, I don' think you are talking to me.. but I will respond anyway. The only thing I sell on the market is raws. I sell them at the lowest price that is on there when I check. ALWAYS.

I never sell any loot I get on the market. I always sell to NPC's because it's insta-money. Then I can go back out and find more, effectively making more money than I would have if I sold it on the market.

We are sorta off the OP which is. Don't sell raws at extremely high prices that are required to make something you will need soon enough. If you do, you're doing nothing but contributing to the high price you will pay later.. Basically making you no money. That is all, I am not saying you can't do it, I'm saying I think it's dumb.
#53 Dec 16 2004 at 2:42 PM Rating: Decent
**
454 posts
Quote:
I never sell any loot I get on the market.


I think that's a mistake *if* you are able to leave your computer on overnight selling. What sells to a vendor for 3 silver could sell to another player for 30 silver. Unfortunately, I realize that most people cannot do this, and that does upset me.

But, to many people five gold is a lot. Many members of my guild have barely seen two gold at once and we're the third most wealthy guild on Kithkor! When your average person finds a coral, the 5 gold they could get with that is an amazinly huge sum. You can tell them to sell it for less... hey, I sold mine for four because the guy took the initiative to give me a /tell while I was merchanting and I happened to see it. But, as long as crafters are willing to pay 5-8 gold for a coral, that is what people will sell it for.
#54 Dec 16 2004 at 2:54 PM Rating: Excellent
***
1,930 posts
Quote:
I think that's a mistake *if* you are able to leave your computer on overnight selling. What sells to a vendor for 3 silver could sell to another player for 30 silver. Unfortunately, I realize that most people cannot do this, and that does upset me.


Agreed somewhat, I can leave my PC on all night and do just about every night, but it seems on my server people are only interested in raws. I make more selling goods to NPC's and having more space for raws than I do if I were to try and sell something for double what the NPC would pay for it.

Quote:
But, to many people five gold is a lot. Many members of my guild have barely seen two gold at once and we're the third most wealthy guild on Kithkor! When your average person finds a coral, the 5 gold they could get with that is an amazinly huge sum. You can tell them to sell it for less... hey, I sold mine for four because the guy took the initiative to give me a /tell while I was merchanting and I happened to see it. But, as long as crafters are willing to pay 5-8 gold for a coral, that is what people will sell it for.


You are certainly right about how much 2 gold is to someone. However, if you look again at what I am saying I have a problem with, you'll see my problem is not with the people who sell for 4 or even 5 gold. It's the IDIOTS who sell it for 15 and 20 gold, and then turn around and complain when you charge 16 and 21 gold for the finish.

I just want people to realize that it comes right back around to them, or at least it will eventually when they use the very same money they just made, plus some to buy the finish..

Again, I have no problem paying 5g I just want to not be criticized when I try and simply make my money back..

That's all I'm saying

Edited, Thu Dec 16 14:58:45 2004 by Jute
#55 Dec 16 2004 at 3:02 PM Rating: Decent
**
454 posts
Oh I agree totally! Some of the prices people ask for... you have to wonder where they're getting these numbers. The problem unfortunately doesn't stop with raws. People expect to charge high sums on intermediate crafted items as well. I can't pay 10 silver for a Burlap Pattern and make a profit off of chainmail armor that I make, its only one component of four for the finished good, but some people will still try to charge that much. The difference with these, of course, is that I can track down someone to make it for less.

I've even made it a point to charge low for spikes and sheets because of this, since I have several people in my guild who can supply me with eolith temper. 2 silver per is a very generous price, and I'm glad to help out other artisans while I make a small profit.

I think a lot of people are in the old EQ1 mindset where money is plentiful and that plat should be dropping from mobs. It isn't, of course, and the amount of money in supply right now is fairly limited.
#56 Dec 16 2004 at 3:07 PM Rating: Good
***
1,930 posts
agreed. It sure would be nice if someone was able to make me some Tetranoid without silver or coral. I bet what is going to end up happening is that SOE will eventually up the chance of getting some of the rares, particularly the ones required to make adept 3's.

I bet it happens in the next big patch. Or maybe I'm just wishfully thinking..

I don't mind the interdependance of tradeskills, in fact, I like it very much. But interdependancy on a player controlled market is different. It makes my Interim products extremely costly.....

Of note I saw an Adept 1 going for 35pp LMAO, I sincerely hope it was a mistake..

Edited, Thu Dec 16 15:07:48 2004 by Jute
#57 Dec 16 2004 at 4:16 PM Rating: Decent
***
1,576 posts
A little off topic but I was wondering if you've found a use for the loam biproduct produced from the reagent combine. The normal loams are used for making poison vials but I havn't found anything for loams made from rare materials.
#58 Dec 16 2004 at 4:53 PM Rating: Good
***
1,930 posts
Don't know but I shall look into it.
#59 Dec 16 2004 at 5:19 PM Rating: Decent
"Go out and harvest all day, and fill your bags. Get a friend, go in luminary Cache in Starcrest. He assigns you wholesaler quest, 15 items, for 48 Silver. By this time your bags are full for TONS of the quests. Have your friend trade you the items the wholesaler asks for 1 at a time, in all six spots however. So in three trade windows you have another 15 items you need for quest. Rinse and repeat. WHen i empty a whole bags harvesting i usually get tons of gold.... 15 items for 48 silver, if you're out there all day filling up your bags..You'll have tons of money

That my friend is how you make money, and if you dont want to waste the time with your friend trading you items for wholesaler quest, just broker them for cheapest price. LIke i said they all sell before your eyes, but youll make less money this way..either way it's not impossible, or even HARD to make money in this game.. you just have to ask around, and try and use a little ingenuity, rather than making long winded whiny posts on messageboards...."- Technina

One question: Should you have to go thru all that crap just to make a few silver?

You also reinforce my opinion that you need help, either thru a friend or a second computer account, to take full advantage of the system the way it is now. I know youy didn't intend to validate me but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Geee...I need a new car. Guess I need to first re-invent the wheel, get all the tools I need to shape the metal, get an advanced electronics degree so I can wire up my car, get all the assembling tools I'll need and put it together myself. Yeah, that's a great plan of action.

Or do I just go to a car lot and haggle a bit with the dealer whose already had people do all of that for me?

You have no way of knowing this but, while my skills might be sufficient to harvest tier three materials, I am only a 14th level Bard so it might prove a >bit< dangerous going into Nek forest or the Steppes at this time. Your point of doing the Wholesaler Tasks is a good one and, believe me, I do them everytime I head out. I think you'd agree though that some (say gathering Tubers) are much easier than others (gathering electrum clusters) so your profit margin will depend on which task you're given- and on how recently you've asked the wholesaler to give you a different task.

As for my 'long-winded whiny posts', as long as I see a problem (and one that PC-Gamespy also noted) you can rest assured that I'll be coming here and elsewhere to voice my displeasure. My $13/month is every bit as releveant as yours.
#60 Dec 17 2004 at 10:48 AM Rating: Good
***
1,930 posts
Well being the your skills increase with your lvl you aren't able to get tier 3 stuff yet. I am 18 and am just now able to harvest tier 3 lvl 90 req. 95 for foresting(odd but true).

just FYI


According to today's patch notes. Wholesaler tasks will no longer be able to be completed by buying from a broker :-(

That sucks. That's how I made a few gold..

Edited, Fri Dec 17 10:50:27 2004 by Jute
#61 Dec 17 2004 at 10:51 AM Rating: Decent
*
51 posts
Looks like they're nerfing the amount paid by wholesalers for harvesting quests in this big patch. This is good because broker mining is causing inflation, imo.

Furthermore, I sincerely hope SOE doesn't increase the drop rate on rares. They are meant to be rare. Rare means very scarce. If they were common they wouldn't be rare. If they made them common I would need them to make something else even more rare to satisfy my random reinforcement itch, but then people would whine to make those more common. I love the idea of rare drops. If they want to make an even more rare drop I'll be even more happy.



Edited, Fri Dec 17 10:55:34 2004 by drdeathbane

Edited, Fri Dec 17 11:37:56 2004 by drdeathbane
#62 Dec 17 2004 at 11:09 AM Rating: Good
***
1,930 posts
I don't mind rares either. I just see it hurting everyone down the road.
#63 Dec 17 2004 at 1:56 PM Rating: Decent
I just wanted to remind people not to knock people like Jute (and me, actually) for selling loot to NPCs. In my own experience, I've found that it adds more money to the economy than quests. From my previous gaming experiences (yes, FFXI, I admit), much of the problem seemed to come from how difficult it was to get money out of the game. I think the ability to make some money off of NPCs really helps keep things a bit more balanced and keeps IGE's hands out of our (virtual) lives. I'm thinking that, besides the disappointment of making my hard drive have to spin all night, SOE is doing a fairly good job weighing everything. You can sell loot to NPCs for a fairly good price, but cannot sell harvested materials. Keeps a player-run economy with some of the regulatory benefits you see from a server-side money system.

Plus, as Jute said, it's instant. Nothing like fast cash when you're an adventurer on the go.
#64 Dec 17 2004 at 2:22 PM Rating: Decent
^- in FFXI many of the gilsellers who work for companies like IGE sell items (Crab Meat) to NPCs because it sells A LOT faster that way, and its about 1/3 - 1/2 the auctionable price, which is pretty decent, and moves the items faster, but in EQ2 the NPCs buy items for maybe 1/5and lower of the market value.
#65 Dec 17 2004 at 2:38 PM Rating: Decent
Interesting. I was not aware that the gilsellers sold to NPCs. It would make more sense for them to recylce the money by selling it online, then directly getting it back by macro-camping the big drops and selling them for insane prices.

I suppose it doesn't really matter one way or the other. Things will be worth a certain amount based on how rare they are. More money in the economy will make the prices higher, but people will have more money. Inflation and deflation don't make a difference as long as the flux coincides with how much money comes from NPCs. If the prices rise but it's not any easier to get money out of the game, then it will turn into another FFXI.

This is why I approve of the balance between NPC-sellable items and items you have to auction/broker.

Really (I know this wasn't supposed to be a conversation about the market setup or plat-selling, but...), the only way to stop virtual money selling is to monitor every trade. If SOE sees one person coninuously farming items and giving the money away to random people here and there, it should be fairly obvious. Continously banning these accounts, while time-consuming, may actually be worth the effort. If there was a way to make money easy enough to come by so that there's no demand for these companies, yet still make attaining certain pieces of equipment more challenging to come by... But there's the rub, right? If there's no logical way to do that, I would assume trade-monitoring is the only solution.

As for the OP, yes, that's ridiculous. But people are really stupid. That's just how it is.
#66 Dec 18 2004 at 3:41 AM Rating: Decent
**
454 posts
I'm going to ramble.

Yes, the main thing that caused gil selling in FFXI was vendoring goods. Why? Because it created more money that wasn't currently in the system. There are two ways actually and this is one of them. They quintuple box or whatever entire groups and sell tons of things to NPCs to make money, then sell it online. Since it is literally created by them then it is more money in the economy that wasn't there before.

They did it through fish bots/caps for a long time in FFXI not through mobs, but in EQ2 it would be through mobs. In EQ2, however, if they find a "sweet spot" that's easy and gives lots of adepts or whatever that sell to NPC merchants, then they can actually shut off their xp and put in an 8 hour day of this making insane amounts of money. This is a very bad thing.

Creating new money is not good for the economy. It leads to inflation because with more money in the economy people can spend more on things. Now yes, if the money were evenly distributed then it wouldn't matter. The problem lies in the fact that it is not evenly distributed. Just like real life, the most money is actually in the hands of a very few. It's a x^2 curve; I've seen the graphs of SWG's currency distribution. So the have nots are very very out of luck, 50% of the population is this group.

The less money in the economy, the smaller the difference between the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Which means it will be easier (although still painful money-wise) for the poor to afford things. When there's a lot of money in the system, it starts to break down because the rich can drop what is a fortune to most people on something and not feel a thing. That's when you'll see coral going for 10 plat just because somebody will pay that for it, simply because they want it NOW and 10 plat won't hurt them much.

This is waaay down the road, though. I'm thinking in a year's time. This is why we have things like the broker to take out 19% of each purchase (it isn't 20%, not sure if that's a bug). That's what money-sinks are for, to try to even out all this money coming in. In the perfect system, money going out would equal money coming in. The more NPCs buy for, the harder it is to funnel all that money out of the economy.

The easier it is to get money, the higher prices will be. If I could go out and make 1 gold per hour easily, then that coral would be worth 10x as much as it is now, simply because it would be easy to find a buyer who would pay that much. Also, the easier it is for casual gamers to get money selling to NPC merchants, the easier it is for power gamers to run this into the ground, furthering the gap there. The easiest way to solve this is to make one time quests the best way to get money so they can't be run over and over again. They've done a fair job with this.

This is the reason they've been nerfing crafters selling goods to npcs. Because they don't want lots of new money coming into the system. And since most players are adventurers, the retaliaion will be slight if any for this.

But in short... um... new money bad. Recycled money good.
#67 Dec 18 2004 at 3:52 AM Rating: Decent
***
1,463 posts
Yeah but I want stuff, like a horse. And how'm I gonna get 2 plat unless new money enters the system?

I know you mean well, so I'm not tryint to trash you here. I respect your integrity - hell, you have more than me (I am after all an evil gnome). But I think yer bein' oversimplistic - it's faaaaar more complex. Players enter and leave the game. There are in fact money sinks like upgrades apts/houses (and horses and etc.).

The real danger is that companies hire hoards of overseas slave-workers to grind out plats to sell us for RL dollars so we can be insta-uber. Rather than clamp down TOO HARD on me, the average player - on my ability to grind out a little pocket change - I'd like to see Fony clamp down on ebayers. The problem is that this would require more effort on their part. But ultimately if money in this game has value to someone in RL, people will ebay plat - whole companies using slave labor in Asia will ebay plat ---> and if this really is a problem, the only way to stop it is to have undercover cops pose as buyers. Get who sells plat. Track them. Find as many accounts as possible - the companies' accts where they are hiding their on-lne plats. And then zilch em.

(BTW is it true that companies are hiring "slave labor" in various Asian countries to farm plats for EQ1? I've read it so many times... 10 million screaming Fippy Fans can't be wrong, can they?)
#68 Dec 18 2004 at 4:05 AM Rating: Decent
**
454 posts
I have no idea how they set up their busineses, but I've never actually heard of slave labor. o.O

As for the horses, they'll come. Money seems to accrue quadratically (sorry people saying exponentially when they mean quadratically is a pet peeve of mine that I can't get over...). The first gold is hard to come by. Next thing you know you've got 10, then 20, then 40, then a plat. All the while also getting gear that you want. It'll have to be a choice between a house and a horse, but I'd go horse myself.

Right now I've got 20 gold. I didn't start the first week of play, or the first week and a half. I don't play that much, and when I do I mostly run quests and goof off, as I'm only a level 20 Paladin at the moment (although I do craft, which is where I got much of my money).

I'm sure you'll be seeing your horse sooner than you realize. :)

I'm not saying its bad for new money to enter the system at all! I mean... then we'd all have 0 copper because that's what we started with. I'm just saying that there have to be incentives for those with lots of money to spend it in ways that take it out of the world. Housing is one of these things (although I'm not sure how many people are going to care...). Horses and other hefty purchases, like crafting stations for homes, even though these are a one time thing. Brokers are the main way.

So *eventually* it is necessary for money to be going out of the system at the same speed as it is coming in. But, the people maknig the money leave the system should be the rich and not your average citizen. :)
#69 Dec 18 2004 at 5:31 AM Rating: Decent
***
1,463 posts
The term "slave labor" is usually meant as more an idiom these days, although there are millions of literal slaves still in the world.

Like paying a worker less than a buck an hour - a worker who has no rights at all, etc. etc.

Seriously, there are accusations that one of the big plat-sellers on old eq had a rather large workforce in Korea or someplace farming plats day and night. They made quite a profit selling first-world players this game plat for real dollars. And those game economies went nuts. If you didn't buy plat from from some service, it was almost impossible to get into the "trading market" - it was doable, but man you had to spent a long time working your way up.

So we do want to watch how much $ floods in - but I don't think it should be done in a way that cramps my ability to grind out some pocket change for my chars. That's where I worry about Fony - I don't think they care about me. I certainly don't think they care if I'm having any fun in their world or not.
#70 Dec 18 2004 at 7:33 AM Rating: Decent
20 posts
It was said in an earlier post that your computing time while not playing needed to be spent doing other things rather than waiting to sale stuff on your merchant board. Well, while in your room EQ2 uses a lot less of your PC's resources. The game can be minimized by pressing Alt-Enter and then minimizing the window. You would then have complete access to your pc for whatever else you need to do. Perhaps this could help you.

Don't get me wrong. I do not presume to know your situation, (maybe you don't want people seeing the little EQ2 logo in your taskbar?) but this might help.
#71 Dec 18 2004 at 8:21 PM Rating: Decent
I can see the truth in the poster above's statement that the money supply will eventually (key word that) loosen a bit, if for no other reason than people will- eventually- upgrade their spells, skills and equipment sufficiently so that they can or think they can deal with any given situation. Once those upgrades to whatever level they feel comfortable are purchased, whatever coin they obtain after that point will be discretionary income. More information will come out over time that points out spots to hunt or mobs to hunt that have a greater probability of dropping good loot and people will begin to concentrate only on those Quests whose rewards are either good equipment, good coin or- preferably- both. In short, people will learn to level and get rich smarter and faster- eventually.

It's tougher on us who began playing right at the start because >WE< are the people who are expected to learn all the game's secrets and to pass that information on to the next generation of players.

Well, that or just bogart the information for ourselves and get rich in the process.
1 2 3 Next »
Reply To Thread

Colors Smileys Quote OriginalQuote Checked Help

 

Recent Visitors: 148 All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (148)