GTN Pricing Out of Control

[Tsukodoshi]

Someone up there said supply and demand.... That sir, is what I would nail to the wall for being an excuse to be greedy.

 

If you can do it, and peeps are buying it- Why would they post lower?

 

If everything was moderately priced, human nature to have "more than the other guy" would implode and thus the GTN would be no more >.>

 

Btw- still going with greed here.

[kanare]

Cant w8 for people not to be able to steal resipy's and actully have to keep the value of them and people haveing to do the content to get the items / resipys , i cant w8 go bioware fix this !!

[Rezakh]

Someone up there said supply and demand.... That sir, is what I would nail to the wall for being an excuse to be greedy.

 

If you can do it, and peeps are buying it- Why would they post lower?

 

If everything was moderately priced, human nature to have "more than the other guy" would implode and thus the GTN would be no more >.>

 

Btw- still going with greed here.

 

Well, you're more than welcome to go design an MMO with a welfare system in place to help out the community. There are also games out there you can play single player where you can use console commands and make yourself rich with their in-game currency with just a few keystrokes.

 

The options are certainly out there for you and there are probably many more than the couple I listed, but perhaps its less likely a greed issue and more likely you may not understand how economics in MMO's work? I do not know, but I do know that when I charge for my goods, the prices may seem high to a few that do not understand the economic system, but the time and effort I put in for them matches the market value I sell them at and my listings almost always move.

 

If you want to play MMO's, there's generally no sort of welfare or bailout. The design philosophy for MMO economies is almost always very hands off, once the game goes live. So, you either make it or do without.

[Rezakh]

there's a simple reason why low level stuff is selling for as much as it currently does:

 

this game is older than a year.

 

 

 

it's got zero to do with f2p (f2p probably fastened the process a little, though)

 

 

most of the people buying these things are buying them for alts. they have lvl 50s who make their credits, they probably make a fortune with the GTN on their own, too. they can more than afford to buy overpriced stuff so their lowbie chars can always run around with better gear than is needed.

 

do they have to do that? no, of course not.

 

granted it's a little annoying for returning players or new player, but you have this 'problem' in every single MMO with a player driven economy (well, as player driven as it can be)

 

This has been happening in WoW and the difference in that game is that trade skills make very little money or operate at very high losses, where there's actually a lot of potential to make money off of crew skills in this game. WoW's economy is even worse, for various reasons that I am not going to take the time to point out, so why complain about an in game economy that's actually doing rather well. There are loads of niche markets in this game, and tons of opportunity for making money on crew skills.

 

So go out there, do your research, find some of this stuff and start making a killing, just be sure to diversify enough.

[thatghost]

Already mentioned, the highest prices I've seen on the GTN are for the Czerka crate- and yesterday was the first day since launch that I'd even seen any listed. Given the rarity of the thing the prices do seem justified.

[bahdasz]

sellers are getting more and more greedy. I realize that the prices would be lower in general if players weren't paying the prices

 

Welcome to capitolism!

 

You defined how the system works pretty well in your own post. Just because you don't like the prices doesn't mean that people won't pay them or that you have to; if you don't like the prices, don't buy the stuff, it's that easy. Either way, complaining won't do any good, and tbh, your complaint is ridiculous. That is like me saying "I want a new Mercedes CLK but I think the price is ridiculous and they should only cost 20K euro," and expecting Mercedes to go "Oh crap, dude, sorry about that, here you go... we'll just changed the price tag for you".

Edited January 27, 2013 by bahdasz

[UberRod]

I realize this probably isn't the reason in most cases, but when I was F2P, I would buy common items that another character needed and list them at about 3-4 times market value in order to transfer money. If they sold before I got around to buying them... hey free credits.

 

This doesn't make sense when you can send money in the mail along with items. If you are sending stuff to an alt, there is no need to list it on the GTN.

 

Unless you were sending to a character on the other faction that wasn't your alt, but it doesn't sound like you were talking about that. Unless as F2P you couldn't send stuff by mail. I'm a subscriber so don't know what F2P is stuck with.

Edited January 27, 2013 by UberRod

[dacentabaal]

Me personally.. im one of these "high priced sellers" but my resoning is 2 things..

 

1) The only high stuff I sell is the rarer of the goods

 

2) Supply and demand.. If someone is willing to pay a silly price for a rare item.. then a silly price it will have...ie

 

On the Progenitor last week I sold a RD-07A Vendetta chest for 3.5m credits, now originally I put that price on it but never expected to get that.. was more of a diplay price so people could look at it then mail/whisper me to offer a lower price that was reasonable (was only expecting offers of 1-1.5m at most).. however 25 minutes after putting it up for a usual 2 day auction it sold...prooving my point that if someone has teh credits and if after the product they will be willing to pay said price

[GalacticKegger]

people make the prices... you cant do anything against idiocracy XD

This. The law of supply & demand dictates that they who own the supply can demand whatever they want and expect to eventually get it. Edited January 27, 2013 by GalacticKegger

[bahdasz]

WTH is a resipy? And how are people stealing them?

[Keadil]

A lot of people price things specifically to target the fools using gold sellers. Due to this, more people end up using gold sellers and destroying the economy. There is no limit on greed in an MMO. If supply far exceeds demand then it will sit at that high price until some idiot buys it. If someone comes along with a lower, more marketable price, then it will quickly be bought up by the guy with the higher price and relisted.

[Zataos]

People are greedy and will gouge their own mothers if left unchecked, in this game there is no checks against the free market like there is in the real world free market (regulations), most of these people are living out their little rich guy fantasy online and there's basically nothing you, the player can do, the onus is on Bioware to insure that there's a adequate supply of items to keep this runaway inflation in check.

 

Unfortunately Bioware seems to care very little about developing a good player run economy in this game.

 

There is one person in particular on my server that I was unfortunate enough to have on my origin server as well, who is one of these people, they have dozens of alts and will buy up everything of a semi-rare line, such as Saber Marshal, Sith Champion or Sith Archon and list these items at 1000% mark up from the original price.

 

What can you do? not buy?

 

They do this for hundreds of items and it then causes every other fool that gets that item to list theirs this high as well, when at that point this person just keeps undercutting by 1k completely creating a artificial market for a item that has almost no way around other than to give up on buying or do this same market manipulation in order to afford what you want to get, which is the path most have chosen and where we are today with runaway inflation.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Zataos

[AsheraII]

A lot of people price things specifically to target the fools using gold sellers. Due to this, more people end up using gold sellers and destroying the economy. There is no limit on greed in an MMO. If supply far exceeds demand then it will sit at that high price until some idiot buys it. If someone comes along with a lower, more marketable price, then it will quickly be bought up by the guy with the higher price and relisted.

I find it really odd, why people would even bother with third party goldsellers and risk their account either locked or stolen in the process, not to mention their credit card emptied. Buy some Cartel Coins, purchase Cartel Packs, and sell them on the GTN as-is, so don't look at their contents. You'll get a better exchange rate than what those goldsellers offer. And Cartel Packs don't even offer the best exchange value!

[Diefenbaker]

You have an issue with the prices on the GTN, you take it up with the sellers. Or don't buy.

 

Supply and demand. Plus people who really want a certain something will pay almost any price for it. That's how it works.

[Keadil]

You have an issue with the prices on the GTN, you take it up with the sellers. Or don't buy.

 

Supply and demand. Plus people who really want a certain something will pay almost any price for it. That's how it works.

 

It's not supply and demand. That actually makes sense.

[Jeweledleah]

This doesn't make sense when you can send money in the mail along with items. If you are sending stuff to an alt, there is no need to list it on the GTN.

 

Unless you were sending to a character on the other faction that wasn't your alt, but it doesn't sound like you were talking about that. Unless as F2P you couldn't send stuff by mail. I'm a subscriber so don't know what F2P is stuck with.

 

you cannot send money as free to play player, and as prefered status, I believe, its limit 1 item per mail (instead of 8 items you get with subscription)

 

that said - people selling vendor items is not SWTOR exclusive. for example

 

every year around Christmas, in WoW there's a several weeks long event - Winter veil. one of parts of the event is to give "santa" milk and cookies.

 

milk is sold at pretty much every innkeeper for something like few coopers per stack of 5. people (me included) have sold it successively for 1 gold or more PER SINGLE ITEM. auction house is literally few yards away from an inn. and this happens. every. single. year.

 

pretty much all crew skill items can be farmed through crew skill missions. people might think that its cheaper to buy them then send their characters off (and/or faster) they might be in a hurry and uninformed. I'm not surprised that they get taken advantage off. and I cannot blame sellers for creating supply for existing demand.

 

some of the prices, I don't like. some I'm willing to pay, because I don't feel like making an effort to farm the item myself (or don't have time for it) some times i say - screw it and go farm anyways, because the prices are just ridiculous. sometimes, I go without. most of my characters are using whatever color crystals with appropriate stats were cheapest that day on the market (usually blue). stats are stats.

it all comes down to choice. if the prices get too high, people stop buying and sellers lower the prices, because at the core - they want to make credits and you can't make credits of your listings if you don't sell.

[craic_fox]

It takes time and credits to level your crew skills. You can't measure the value of an item simply in terms of the quality level of the materials used to make it. Many mat sellers understand the value of what they're selling; 8 Rubat and 2 Shadowsilk are very easy to come by, but they can be used to craft a Dark Acolyte's Robe that can sell for 15K. The canny seller can set such a high price on the item because he knows it's one of the few lowbie SI robes that isn't a vile tabard designed to make your inquisitor look like a checkout operator at the Sith supermarket. The canny mat seller knows that and sets his prices accordingly.

 

I might balk at the price of a stack of some compound but I know I can still turn a good profit from the items I'll make using that compound. Sure, I'm paying a high price for the convenience of getting those mats immediately but the sums still work out. Obviously, the higher cost of those mats is going to be reflected in the prices of what I'm selling, but I'll lower the prices if the stuff doesn't sell or if I need to undercut a competitor. Still, I'm running a business not a charity.

 

Once you've made a little bit of profit, then prices that seem initially over-inflated start to look more reasonable. The difficulty is in getting over that first hurdle. When you're starting out you either need to make some smart/lucky purchases or else put in the time and effort to gather your own materials. You reap the rewards later. This is how it should be. Now there are some really silly prices out there, particularly on stacks of crew skills vendor mats. I just see those as a bit of entertainment - something to make me chuckle while I'm checking out the market. I'll never pay those prices no matter how much money I make, but I appreciate the humour (intended or not).

Edited January 27, 2013 by craic_fox

[annabethchase]

That is the part that bothers me. I am looking for items to give my low levels, but people are selling them for prices you would see for high levels. It makes no sense, so a person would need a high level toon just to buy the items for their low levels. It does not even cost that much to have my 50 craft stuff.

 

Nobody was able to buy this stuff on their first character. On your first character you spent all your money on skills and speeder licenses. With your leftover you might buy a couple of blues here and there.

 

Now, noobs are expecting to buy purples. They don't have a right to those items for a price they can afford. Purples are for alts, plain and simple.

[Eleven_eleven]

Nobody was able to buy this stuff on their first character. On your first character you spent all your money on skills and speeder licenses. With your leftover you might buy a couple of blues here and there.

 

Now, noobs are expecting to buy purples. They don't have a right to those items for a price they can afford. Purples are for alts, plain and simple.

 

Yep I spent like 600000 on gear that I liked for my alt, on my first char I rarely used the gtn but now that I have a 50 I can make money fast and but stuff I want.

 

The 50 lvl stuff actually costs less than some low lvl stuff.

[AsheraII]

The 50 lvl stuff actually costs less than some low lvl stuff.

That's mainly because a lot of the "newer" crafters think they hit gold by maxing their craftingskill, completely forgetting a few small details:

-Every player gets a free set of Tionese gear, which is better than most craftables. Yes, there are a handful of exceptions. Most people won't notice those exceptions though..

-There are relatively more lvl 50's running around than any other level, even though there are a LOT of people doing leveling content. All these lvl 50's craft, because they have little else to do with the materials they farm along the way. All these lvl 50's get random drops which they may sell on the market along the way.

-By the time people reach lvl 50, they'll want mostly moddable gear. And they want it for the cosmetics. Effectively, a lvl ~23 moddable item may be in HIGHER demand and yield a higher price than a lvl 50 (48) moddable item, simply because it looks better!

[Grayseven]

GTN prices vary greatly and it is simply because their exists people who have not idea of the actual value of what it is they are selling.

 

How many times to you see people on starter planets spamming chat trying to sell an item for an outrageous price just because it is of Prototype or Artifact quality? New players will often automatically assume that these items are rare and valuable simply because it is the first item of the type they have seen.

 

Also, how many of us have seen Cartel Market unlocks desired only by F2P players being sold by subscribers for more credits than a F2P player can have and use? These will never sell simply because the only people that need them can not buy them at the listed price.

 

This is all because players do not take the time to actually learn the value of what they are trying to sell. They don't check the GTN to see how much others are selling the item for and instead list it at a value several times higher than what others are listed for. They don't make the effort to learn the limitations of F2P or to stop by the Crew Skills vendor to find the vendor purchase price of something like Thermoplastic Flux.

 

Of course, this has also worked in my favor. Many times I have purchased items at significantly less than what I would consider its minimum value...especially crafting materials.

 

Ultimately however it boils down to one absolute truth:

 

There is nothing you need on the GTN.

 

Honestly. Everything sold on the GTN is available in game to every player willing to take the time and make the effort to get for themselves. I'm not taking Cartel Market rares into account because if anything screamed "don't need" it's those items but nothing outside of the CM is out of reach of players willing to work for them. If you feel the need to buy them instead of earn them you have no real right to complain about what players are selling them for. After all, they did the work.

[AsheraII]

Honestly. Everything sold on the GTN is available in game to every player willing to take the time and make the effort to get for themselves. I'm not taking Cartel Market rares into account because if anything screamed "don't need" it's those items but nothing outside of the CM is out of reach of players willing to work for them. If you feel the need to buy them instead of earn them you have no real right to complain about what players are selling them for. After all, they did the work.

This, it's going to take some effort obtaining desirable things. Whether you grind the materials for your crafting, or grind the credits to purchase the materials for your crafting, somewhere, somehow, it's going to take a little bit of effort.

 

Still, it's always fun to crash a market on some item or another. I usually grab every resource node I can while playing, even when I already have plenty of those in my inventory. The most extreme I ever had was 15 stacks of chanlon. So I seperated those into smaller stacks of varying sizes, and put those on the market for about half the going price at random intervals for a few days. Some of them were bought by the flippers, most of them were actually bought by crafters. When I was almost through my collection, the flippers finally started undercutting in an attempt to either work me out of "their" market or at least cut their losses and free up some of their own inventory space. I didn't care either way, it was just bonus income to me.

Edited January 28, 2013 by AsheraII

[Capetoider]

I can make out a lot of money from crew skills with gtn...

as i search the prices to sell (as i always end up a day with half the inventory with things to sell, i usually sell them for even few hundreds creds lower than the average I find... and when I find a bargain I flip...)

and i was thinking if one would make a guild of flippers they could actually make a cartel of some itens and be able to flip prices at their will (eg: few millionaires could actually buy all the mando iron and then sell it at a higher price than the most idiotics prices ever seen, and without other choices, it would sell!! the name of the guild would probably be The Hutt Cartel )

problem is: it is possible... not sure if legal, but lets say we are in a RP server and you are a BH or a smugler in a guild of BH/smuglers? would it be?

[Holinyx]

90k for a stack of grade 1 green materials is the worst i've seen probably. This stuff is ALL OVER your capital world. very easy to farm.

 

20k+ for crafting missions when there are 6+ pages of them.

[IndigoHawk]

Some people like the idea of others having a lousy experience with itemization because of what they perceive as a free market. However, the issue is with the GTN as a game design element for lowbies, not with free market economics. In a game, people are supposed to be able to get things and have fun. The real world is for budgeting and working to get what you want. As players progress in MMOs, the grind is supposed to increase, but it's supposed to start out easy, fun, and addictive.

 

Try thinking about it this way. If you were playing a single player game instead of an MMO, you would kill a few space goblins, get some credits, then go back to a shop and buy a slightly shinier blue stick to give you a sense of progress and help you defeat wormhole manatees. Some game designer and tester would have made sure that for a reasonable amount of time spent slaying space goblins, you could get cooler stuff and have fun itemizing. They would have made sure that the market works for the player with the effort the designers had in mind.

 

SWTOR is an MMO, not a single player game, but it still needs to provide people with a sense of progress and reward. However, in SWTOR, no one makes sure the GTN works for lowbies, that people can afford stuff from the GTN for their level after doing the quests/pvp/whatever at their level. If you leveled a year ago (when everyone else was new), supply was plentiful and prices were cheap. Now, GTN prices are expensive for lowbies. If you are leveling an alt, you can twink them out with money from your main's crafting/collecting/dailies/whatever, but if you're just starting out, you mostly go without or go broke. So, the GTN market is not nearly as healthy for lowbies as it used to be. Prices are for people to buy stuff for their alts, not for people who are just starting out.

 

If lowbies play long enough, they'll realize that they don't need to itemize much at lower levels, and that the gear from GTN for lowbies, regardless of how expensive it is, doesn't give much benefit for how little it helps and how quickly it will be replaced. However, that's like people realizing that the only way to win the game is not to play. And if you're making a game, teaching people to not play is a failed implementation of a design.

 

So ... no ... free market is not the main concern for lowbies. The GTN prices need to be affordable for lowbies so that they can buy stuff with the rewards they get while leveling up and have fun. However, just because GTN is broken for lowbies doesn't mean the game is broken for lowbies. SWTOR understands the difficulty with lowbie itemization using only the GTN and gives out commendations and plenty of quest rewards so that people can get by without needing the GTN to level up.

 

There is a difference between a free market and a broken market, especially for a market that's supposed to support players during a leveling experience.