Economic TurmoilFollow

Yeah it sucks LvL 1 equipment cost like 1k now. Also sniper rings are up to arround 520k which is crazy. What i have noticed is that the Apples and Zooe kill alot in Yug Grotto because the orcs drop lizzy peices so they can jack the price up.

I noticed also that the price on the HQ1 lvl 14 rings has dropped in the last few months.

I purchased my Balance Rings for 20k a pop. The going price now is 13k. causing me to lose 14k on the deal when I did sell them.

In that instance though, I think that has more to do with normal supply and demand. More ppl with GS skill = more HQ1 lvl 14's = supply > demand. Bah.

I suppose the influx of so many new players from Europe might have something to do with it. Being a PS2er myself, I haven't been around long enough to experience the other influxes of new players (i.e. when those dastardly PS2ers showed up on the scene)

More experienced PC players take on that theory would be welcome.

Yeesh.

Anyone else notice I'm starting to sound like a group therapist in my posts here? Ending every post with a question.

"Thank you Tom. Does anyone else have a childhood story they would like to share?"

Maybe I should reconsider my career path... >.>

Thank you Bowser. What you say makes sense.

I myself never really encountered the group leveling phenomenon you mentioned, being myself a rather slow leveler (due to available time for play) so such thought didn't occur to me).

Following that logic, it seems likely that a lot of the fluctuations I'm seeing are involved with the influx of new players. Most of my price-flux experience centers around materials used in the lower tiers of SM/GS, so presumably the many of the newer players are experimenting in crafting.

Thank you for the detailed response.

Well, I've been noticing for a while that prices tend to fluctuate rather wildly. Crystals especially seem prone to this problem (because many people will specifically farm clusters when they see a high price for crystals, which floods the market quickly), but it happens for other items too.

It's become fairly common for me to put up an item for 10k (entire history shows 10k for the last 3 days, and it matches with what I remember the normal price to be) and then have it sent back to my moghouse later that week. The AH price will have fallen at least 3k, often driven by one person powerleveling his crafting and undercutting even below a profit margin.

Of course, those items would have sold at the current price given a little time, but instead of even undercutting by 100 gil, he undercuts by 1000, every time someone matches his price.

Also, keep in mind that if a low level crafter is trying to make any profit, he will often try to seek out items that he can craft at a profit (i.e., items with a relatively high current price). This is no problem for an individual crafter, but sometimes, multiple crafters will hit on the same item (you can usually tell because the number up for auction jumps by 1000+% literally overnight). With that big of a supply, cost falls pretty sharply until the surplus is gone. By which time the crafters have moved on to another item ... not that I blame them.

Obviously, there are a lot more factors that influence prices than just these, but just from those, it's easy to see why there could be such sharp price fluctuations.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that anyone can really do about these problem, and it does create a lot of instability for crafters and farmers both.

Lockheart, Light Crystals/Clusters price dropped sharply when SE nerfed the Rusty/Padded Cap fishing (I had a friend that made a LOT of money off of this, and he was more than willing to pay the inflated Light Crystal prices) that was creating a huge demand for Light Crystals. Light crystals still sell for more than pretty much any other crystal type, though.

Redacted, being as it was a rather boneheaded post.

[THJ] Nata

[Edit: Redacted]

Edited, Mon Oct 11 18:07:27 2004 by nataraja

Sorry its a little long, but i feel the needs to talk about this matter a bit i know its beating a very dead horse, but its the first time I've felt the need to talk about it.

The only thing that money seller affect are cornering the market on highly camped item like the Kote, archer ring and such.

People kept saying that just because someone buys gil that prices went up? Cause the "theory" is that if someone don't farm for their money they are less attached and willing to pay more. I think that if I pay a few hundred in real money that I'm gonna make it last as long as if I was gonna farm it. Yes buying gil caused sellers to exist, but which one came first? chicken or the egg.

If there weren't a demand for gil in the first place they wouldn't be here. Economic is about making use of limited available resource. Key word is limited: Gil seller compete with you in the name of their customer, it is as if you are competing with the buyer himself for that gil. Since this is a game and it can crank out resources infinitely, the limitation are the farming areas and the time to farm. Might not be fair that he can use a credit card and go watch **** and get the same amount of gil you are earning by farming.

But its can also be said, its not fair you have all that time to farm while they don't. "well if you can't farm the normal way, don't play" That statement is one of the more ingnorant statement out there directed at gil buyers. They pay the same amount to play as you, both have arguments and the reasonings to back it up. What give you the higher moral grounds? Its only a game afterall, some people call gil buyer losers: its like buying monopoly money. Some people looked at a person who farmed for 5 hours straigt and call him a loser, and need to go out in to the sun and get some responsibility. Which one is right?


The argument against gil buyers is

1. Injected money in to economy that aren't supposed to be there causing inflation

2. Took over resources that can be used by players for themselves instead of gil sellers profitting.


So campers are taken up farming spaces in zitah, hey if they weren't there, other players woudld've been there, the money already exist. These people farm 24/7 yet. But its also a fact that they DO NOT sell all the gil they made. Gil Buyers aren't all around you. Take the number of gil buyer you know and put it in a ratio with the numbers of player you now. What percentage is that? How much new money do you think they are injecting?

As for fish botter, they won't be driving up prices on AH anytime soon since they sell to NPC if its anything other than moats, and also the moat carp price have been the same for a year regardless of botters. So the argument about that is also moot.

All that's left is ofcourse the campers that corner the market on the highly valuable drops that is needed by someone like Ochiudo Kote. Money seller does not play a big part in this economy at all. When my bud bought his first sniper ring he paid 200k in Decemeber. Now sometimes it reached 500k. But did you noticed the number of players that have reached the level of sniper rings and are competing to buy the limited amount of snipers on sale? Sniper Rings aren't like your scale mail when you sell it back after you pass a certain level. Most people that buy Snipers intends on keeping it. Supply and Demand. Its still fluctuating up and down since I play NA PC released. If you look at it in the long run, the major fluct are when New players joined IE. PS2 or European, take a few months before it died down. Regardless of what some people think, Ochiudo and archer ring does not make the whole AH. Hence gil seller do affect the market, but its not as if they own the whole Fire crystal market. The items that they monopolized went up not cause some foolish gill buyers willing to pay more for them, its cause no one take the time to go outcamped them.

About the ores situation, have no one to blame but the Faqs on the internet that wrote Mining is good money. You noticed that as more and more players reach the stage where they won't get aggro anymore by Gusgen mob that they mine, in addition to the 6 gil campers that are there, the new miners and the old miners, alot of supply are gonna exist which drives down the price.

This AH works in patterns, up and downs and if you pay attention you will notice. Its only a game afterall, I'm not gonna wait until my astral ring price went up to 250k and sell it, if I need money i'll sell it at current price. It always seem like the stuff you just bought is more expensive than the list price and the sell back price is less. That is because of the leveling batch phenomenon I've mentioned above. People tends to buy items in batch and sells in batch, if you kept your old gears for at least a month after you finished with them , you will see that in that given months the price will fluctuate back and forth.

Well, I remember I paid 24K for my Nomads Mantle, and now they are selling for 39K... and I sold mine for 42k, I really didn't want to sell it but prices had skyrocketed and I wanted that 18K profit...

Prices always change, like right now, my level range of 30/31, since the dunes there has been a constant Tank shortage, but when I was a tank myself, there were 3 to every 1 tank needed. The game is very dynamic, like the real world because real people are behind it. It's the same with the markets, if people overmake an item, or over camp it, the price can drop. If people don't like people controlling a certain item, don't buy it. If they can't sell it for how much they are asking they will drop the price. One reason I love this game is that items are not needed 100% of the time, and users can always work around it, by buying a different arrangement of equipment or simply not buying it.

Welcome to Capitolism 101. LOL.

I would assume then that Wolf Mantles are seeing a price rise also.

Hey, I got a rate up. Thank you, mysterious benefactor. ^^

Lol then we'd lose money on the transaction fees alone.

I think on the whole my concerns have been alleviated. {Thank you.}