So tired of people who don't know how to price things on the GTN

[Machshoot]

lol get mad nerds

[DarthTHC]

Not really. There are laws in the US against predatory pricing.

 

Doesn't predatory pricing apply only to items that are needed? Nothing on GTN is needed.

 

Also, the US economy isn't exactly (as in even close to) free market.

[SweKaiser]

Just wow, the self-entitlement of the OP.

If someone has anything too sell they can perfectly sell it in the GTN for any price they want. Its not up to you or anyone else what they wanna sell their item for, so give it a rest please and stop whining.

[Rafaman]

So... IMO, it is really simple, and in my view a good example of how a free market economy works. (not to worry, no long eco 101 lesson here.)

 

It isn't that people don't know, it is that they don't care. Many are just trying to get rid of the merchandise. Maximizing profit is not their aim. Getting in and out of the market as fast as possible is.

 

And yes, it works that was in RL too. It is the Yin and Yang of supply and demand. In a few days, it may be as long as a couple of weeks, the prices will stabilize as demand dries up. The quick buck artist will have left the marketplace and those who are only interested in the latest and greatest will be on their way out as well. The price will find equilibrium between supply and the demand and there will be some consistency, but only for a while. There will always be fluctuations but not as huge a disparity as when items first hit the market.

 

TL;DR: What Mal said.

[Screaming_Ziva]

I love these sort of discussions.

 

First, I'm going to buy some cartel packs when they first come out. Once I get what I want from them, everything else goes on sale. I don't care if I undercut or underprice -- I want it gone.

 

My thoughts exactly. If someone is selling something for 150k, should I undercut them at 120k to get my item sold or should I wait a week, or longer, and sell my item for 10k like most cartel items end up?

[Rabenschwinge]

That's called a monopoly and it's exactly what happens in a free market if one individual has enough resources to take control. An argument can be made for the resulting monopoly-controlled market no longer being free, but the original condition most definitely is.

 

The point is that the game, the extremely limited throughput of items, the limited offer time, makes it all too easy. Apart from the fact that there are no cartel offices that try to minimize such situations. A few million credits, a couple of days worth doing dailies, is all it takes. For items that are traded with a low volume it is the norm. A few things I'd like to suggest to improve the market in SW:TOR. And when I say improve I mean less arbitrary prices but a more natural balance between supply and demand:

A) Longer offer times up 30 days. (To many people trading in a video game is a burden, and a lot of items get lost in inventories or to NPC vendors when they aren't sold. This measure would increase the volume of the individual server markets)

B) No refunds of the offer fee on failed offers.

C) An overview of the last ten trades of the given item, including price, volume and time.

 

NYSE was a bad example, I confused it actually. What I mean was the mercantile exchange, where futures on goods are traded, such as 10 tons of september frozen orange juice concentrate. Even though the volume of those trades greatly exceeds the number of existing goods as well and is thus mostly speculative too...

Edited January 17, 2014 by Rabenschwinge

[Rafaman]

Doesn't predatory pricing apply only to items that are needed? Nothing on GTN is needed.

 

Also, the US economy isn't exactly (as in even close to) free market.

 

Exactly right. Predatory pricing only applies to items that are inelastic and needed. There are not substitutes for these items, eg. gas or electricity. And even with those items, despite regulation, there is still price gauging. Lol!

 

The US economy is.. "free" in comparison to most other economies but there is government regulation for good or ill (depending on what you believe).

[melodylane]

I agree with the op on this. I am what you would call lazy and I don't like doing dailies everyday to get credits it tedious and boring after you have done them over and over again. So I prefer to sell things on the GTN. So when the game went f2p I wasn't to happy about it but then discovered I could sell those ridiculous packs on the GTN. For a while it was a good source of credits you could buy maybe 5 packs and sell them for like 350,000 credits each maybe more. But then everybody else started doing it and now your lucky to sell one for 250,000 credits.

 

People put them up for sale for little or nothing on my server (JC) I have seen some selling for 200,000. Its silly you could be selling for 150,000 credits more but decide to low ball yourself and others in hopes of unloading your goods faster than everybody else As a result I only try and sell packs now once they become unavailable on the CM in the mean time I am back to grinding dailes

[DarthTHC]

My thoughts exactly. If someone is selling something for 150k, should I undercut them at 120k to get my item sold or should I wait a week, or longer, and sell my item for 10k like most cartel items end up?

 

Or you could undercut to 149,999.

 

Here's the secret to the economy in this game: When someone is going to buy an item they are going to buy the lowest priced one. It doesn't matter if it's lower priced by 1 credit or 100,000. They just buy the lowest priced one.

 

Take, for example, the various purple "28" augments. We typically see those on my server priced for 110k-145k. Recently a few ran out. The price on those jumped to over 200k. They sold. I know this because I sold a bunch at that price.

 

To reiterate: Lowest price sells, even if it's undercut by only 1 credit.

 

Then again, I love the dramatic under-cutters. I scoop up their under-priced stuff, sometimes wait and sometimes not, and re-post for tens or hundreds of thousands of credits more. And then they sell. If people want to sell quick and are willing to give up credits to do it, more power to them. And more credits to me. Everyone's happy, right?

[PlasmaJohn]

Or you could undercut to 149,999.

 

...

 

To reiterate: Lowest price sells, even if it's undercut by only 1 credit.

I despise that practice and will select the higher round number if it's available. If you're going to undercut, give me a real discount.

[DarthTHC]

I despise that practice and will select the higher round number if it's available. If you're going to undercut, give me a real discount.

 

There aren't many people like you.

 

It would actually be better for every seller if we never undercut at all. If everyone set their price the same as all the rest that are already there, then via random chance we'll all get our share and more credits overall will flow in.

Edited January 17, 2014 by DarthTHC

[Malastare]

For a while it was a good source of credits you could buy maybe 5 packs and sell them for like 350,000 credits each maybe more. But then everybody else started doing it and now your lucky to sell one for 250,000 credits.

 

Oh my god, you're right. That's so totally different than every other retail/trading situation in the world.

 

Wait. No. It's not. Its actually the most basic Economics lesson and such a fundamental concept that it is found in virtually any faintly-market-like situation.

 

The vast majority of people complaining here are motivated by selfishness and empowered by a lack of understanding. Now, the selfishness isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a seller, your primary motivation is to get buyers to give you money (instead of giving someone else money). Since you can't say that your Zeldrate is better than all the other Zeldrates, all you can compete on is price.

 

And it makes you sad when other sellers actually realize this and compete with you.

 

Aww.

 

The lack of understanding comes from the apparent ignorance of the supply/demand dynamic and (usually) an overestimation of the value of what you're actually selling. I know that there are a lot of people who really want the Dramatic Extrovert set. I find it... a little too far over the top. I wouldn't even look at buying it for more than 100k. Others are willing to pay 900k. Between those two prices, you'll have a range of people who are willing to buy, but they're always going to purchase the item with the lowest listing.

 

So, the more sellers you have, the lower the price goes. But lower prices mean there are more buyers. Buyers buy up the lowest listings, effectively raising the price, which reduces the number of buyers (beyond the reduction in buyers due the fact that they actually bought the item). There is an equilibrium there. If you can't see it, that's your problem, not the market's.

 

The problem here is that many people (OP and melodyne, in particular) fail to see the equilibrium point, and fail to set prices to take advantage of the behavior. This can be compounded by emotional behavior that clouds the correct evaluation of an item. Example:

 

Yesterday, the Dramatic Extrovert set was selling at a reasonably high price (on Ebon Hawk). The chest piece was selling for around 400-500k, with listings going as high as 900k. Someone put up a brand new listing at 680k. That was a waste of time. They probably told themselves: "This is cool. It should be selling for more." Maybe it should, but its not. At about the same time, someone else put up a listing for 210k. They either failed to check the current prices or just wanted to get it sold in a hurry. I happily bought the chest piece at 210k, and re-listed it seconds later at 420k, undercutting the next listing by 20k. It sold 15 minutes later, and when I checked again, there were two more listings at 435k.

 

At that point, the people listing at >600k are either not paying attention to the market or no understanding how it works. The buyers set the price at about 440k, and there was still plenty of supply at that price. There's little point in trying to sell higher than that. The people who refused to accept that price are the people who don't know how to price things.

[Malastare]

It would actually be better for every seller if we never undercut at all. If everyone set their price the same as all the rest that are already there, then via random chance we'll all get our share and more credits overall will flow in.

 

That would be a Cartel.

 

Yeah, they work in the real world, too, so long as you don't manipulate the prices too much and piss off your local regulators. Some players have tried to create cartels in this game, but the GTN commission actually makes them almost impossible to maintain without a large supply of cash. So long as everyone agrees to use the same price, it works. However, the moment someone lists an item at 2% less than that price, the cartel has to either decide to buy/re-list the item and eat the 1% loss (an estimate: 3% commission loss, 2% higher price), or let the lower listing get first pick on the buyers. In either situation, the lower-listing player gets their cash and walks away happy.

 

Since the Cartel can't control the supply, they can never keep control over the pricing. It's a fine idea, but it just won't ever work here.

[branmakmuffin]

Me too. It drives me nuts to see 66 armoring/mods/enh/hilts/barrels, and color crystals that require rare tier 9 purple components selling as low as 29k, or less, each. It's not even worth my time to craft anything to sell when the materials go for more than the item.

If the prices are so low, buy them and re-sell them. If you don't want to do that, then obviously the prices are not "too low."

 

It would actually be better for every seller if we never undercut at all. If everyone set their price the same as all the rest that are already there, then via random chance we'll all get our share and more credits overall will flow in.

Price-fixing works fine until someone decides they want to increase the volume of their sales. You can't make people follow the price-fixing rules.

 

Doesn't predatory pricing apply only to items that are needed? Nothing on GTN is needed.

 

Also, the US economy isn't exactly (as in even close to) free market.

There is no such thing, and can be no such thing, as a free market, as in "completely free of government or quasi-government regulation." Wherever there's a market, there will be forces seeking to impose some kind of rules on it, no matter how minimal.

Edited January 17, 2014 by branmakmuffin

[Screaming_Ziva]

Or you could undercut to 149,999.

 

Here's the secret to the economy in this game: When someone is going to buy an item they are going to buy the lowest priced one. It doesn't matter if it's lower priced by 1 credit or 100,000. They just buy the lowest priced one.

 

Take, for example, the various purple "28" augments. We typically see those on my server priced for 110k-145k. Recently a few ran out. The price on those jumped to over 200k. They sold. I know this because I sold a bunch at that price.

 

To reiterate: Lowest price sells, even if it's undercut by only 1 credit.

 

Then again, I love the dramatic under-cutters. I scoop up their under-priced stuff, sometimes wait and sometimes not, and re-post for tens or hundreds of thousands of credits more. And then they sell. If people want to sell quick and are willing to give up credits to do it, more power to them. And more credits to me. Everyone's happy, right?

Comparing crafted items and cartel items and how undercutting works really isn't a valid comparison.

 

For probably 95%+ of cartel items, there is a VERY limited window to get decent money for your items before they become virtually worthless. For those items, you WANT to sell within an hour or so of listing your item. If you don't, your item will be on page 3 with within hours of listing it. Like I said, I would rather sell something for 120k now and potentially lose 25-30k on it than sit on it for a week and sell it for 10k then.

[Fizzker]

...such as 10 tons of september frozen orange juice concentrate.

 

I love that movie. Especially Eddie Murphy does his job well.

 

Trem

[DarthTHC]

Comparing crafted items and cartel items and how undercutting works really isn't a valid comparison.

 

For probably 95%+ of cartel items, there is a VERY limited window to get decent money for your items before they become virtually worthless. For those items, you WANT to sell within an hour or so of listing your item. If you don't, your item will be on page 3 with within hours of listing it. Like I said, I would rather sell something for 120k now and potentially lose 25-30k on it than sit on it for a week and sell it for 10k then.

 

People coming into the market over time is irrelevant to the amount you should undercut.

 

If you undercut by 1 credit and the next seller comes along a minute later, he's going to undercut you.

 

If you undercut by 20,000 credits and the next seller comes along a minute later, he's still going to undercut you.

 

In both cases, every poster after you will keep undercutting the lowest price. In both instances, the only chance you have to sell your item is for the time it's the lowest price on the market. Which, in both cases, is the exact same amount of time.

 

The only difference is the amount of credits you get or give away. In the first instance, the number of credits you all lost was small. In the latter instance, it was much larger.

[ZETA_SCORPII]

This is a problem for Bioware, people will stop buying Hypercrates because they are making less than what they could be making if they just bought gold from the farmers. Some people will always buy crates but I don't think the numbers can sustain themselves. I made around 40 mil during Nov and Dec last year chasing "rare" items that returned to the market and that are now worthless. I won't spend the $600ish again on something that is not rare because I can just sell MMG's and Isotope-5 to get what I want and only have to pay my monthly fee. That's how I feel about the market.

[Nydus]

I ended up keeping a lot of my new merchandise in my cargoholds until things calm down and the market is less flooded with everyone dumping loot as fast as they can for as little profit as possible. Things do even out a bit with time, with less people buying the packs in the weeks to come. So please people, just think before you spam the GTN, it will help you in the long run.

 

Supply and demand, man . It is in the interests of the consumers that suppliers undercut each other.

 

But honestly, my personal opinion is that it is soooooo easy to get gear that this market will never function very well. I have very little sense of accomplishment when I craft anything, and (if I even bother to sell it) I generally just throw things up on the market at the suggested price.

 

And the whole "pay real money for hypercrates" thing just makes it a farce.

 

- Arcada

Edited January 17, 2014 by Nydus

[Quraswren]

Sorry OP - but just cause you want more doesn't mean you will get it.

 

I run my SWTOR GTN trading business (I love calling it that) to move product, not sit on it or over price it and it has made me well over a hundred million credits by moving items faster and undercutting.

 

I don't price things for you to make money. I price them to move and make me money. As long as it's even a decent profit, I'll undercut you every single time and every other seller as long as my product is moving and yours is not.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Quraswren

[MillionsKNives]

These threads entertain me every time they come up, which is about every other week.

[Infernixx]

I know that undercutting is part of MMO's, I've been playing them in one form or another for the past 6 years. That being said, TOR has to be one of the worse that I've ever played in terms of how dumb people are when it comes to economics. Take for example the release of a new cartel pack, like the Dogfighter/Wingman one. As soon as the packs unbind, everyone just spams the GTN as fast as they can to unload these products. In doing that, the gap between the lowest price and the highest price for a single item is absolutely comical. People spam refresh on a page to see if they have been undercut, and they in turn undercut, and round and round we go until a mount drops from 750k to 40k in the span of a couple hours. People may say " well the market balances out and items get sold for what they're truly worth ", but that's not really true most of the time. On my server, there are currently only about 9 tauntauns(the new one), and they started out this morning at 7 million, they're now being sold for 1.5 million. That's not really a fair price for an item that is quite rare. I opened up 4 hypercrates worth of packs, and only got one tauntaun, wouldn't you say that is rare? I am not entirely being selfish here, I am just stating that in general people need to slow down and price things properly. You end up screwing yourself over by undercutting so much that there's no point in even putting the item up for auction.

 

I ended up keeping a lot of my new merchandise in my cargoholds until things calm down and the market is less flooded with everyone dumping loot as fast as they can for as little profit as possible. Things do even out a bit with time, with less people buying the packs in the weeks to come. So please people, just think before you spam the GTN, it will help you in the long run.

 

I used to rage like this over the GTN and the flood of CM stuff.

 

When I got tired of raging, I simply modified my approach.

 

Now, I don't bother buying CM packs. At all. I realized it was foolish to spend real money on these packs when I can buy the unbound stuff a couple of days after pack-release and buy them for credits.

 

The last few days have been hilarious to me. I made sure to be online when the first of the packs and their items became unbound and saw a lot of stuff being listed for 7-8 million. Then a few million, then 900k, then 500k..

 

The key to making profit at this point is to snatch a low-priced item freshly unbound and immediately resell it over General Chat or relist it on the GTN while demand is high. Once the first few days have passed, forget about it.

 

Example: Snagged an Iraki Renegade for 300k on Wednesday night. Immediately resold it over Gen Chat for 800k. The next day, the floor cratered and the price dropped to 50k for the same mount.

 

Once the market is flooded by people who no good sense, pack up what items you have(preferably high-demand items) and stick them into a bank and forget about them for a few months until the packs in question are embargoed.

 

Other than the beginning and after they've been embargoed, you can forget about trying to make much money off of CM items anymore.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Infernixx

[ItachiZaku]

The problem as I see it, is that the OP got bad RNG on his crates and wants 7 mill for his meh mount but can only hope to get 1.5.

[Andryah]

On my server, there are currently only about 9 tauntauns(the new one), and they started out this morning at 7 million, they're now being sold for 1.5 million. That's not really a fair price for an item that is quite rare.

 

TaunTauns have NEVER sold for 7M+ (we've had a CM TaunTaun for weeks now). So your complaint is unrealistic for this item. It's a 1.5-3M item at best until much much later when the pack is embargoed and they become extremely rare listings. Right now.. they are not rare listings at all. Just not as common as many other mounts (which sell well south of 100K).

 

I opened up 4 hypercrates worth of packs, and only got one tauntaun, wouldn't you say that is rare?

 

And yet...others got one in their first handful of packs. What exactly is your point? That you are unlucky? Yes, apparently are.

 

I am not entirely being selfish here, I am just stating that in general people need to slow down and price things properly.

 

Yes.. yes you are demonstrating selfishness IMO. You only got one TaunTaun in 4 hyper crates. My guess is you have personal expectations as to how much credit return you should get from a hypercrate and you are not getting your needs met so you want to dictate to other players how they play.

 

You end up screwing yourself over by undercutting so much that there's no point in even putting the item up for auction.

 

Interesting. Because you post very clearly shows that your real concern is you feel they are screwing you over by their chosen play style. Own your feeling, not project them on others IMO. Tip: even on PvE servers the GTN is a PvP arena. Economic PvP.. but still PvP. Learn to play or you lose.

 

I ended up keeping a lot of my new merchandise in my cargoholds until things calm down and the market is less flooded with everyone dumping loot as fast as they can for as little profit as possible.

 

People looking to credit profit from their cartel pack play do exactly this. Why? because they have a price in mind for an item and they have no control over the free market dynamics of the GTN (SUPPLY VS DEMAND) other then timing. Market timing IS in fact how one profits on the GTN. Both for buying and selling.

 

Personally, I'm tired of people complaining about getting pwned on the GTN and by hypercrate /randoms.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Andryah

[Andryah]

The last few days have been hilarious to me. I made sure to be online when the first of the packs and their items became unbound and saw a lot of stuff being listed for 7-8 million. Then a few million, then 900k, then 500k..

 

The key to making profit at this point is to snatch a low-priced item freshly unbound and immediately resell it over General Chat or relist it on the GTN while demand is high. Once the first few days have passed, forget about it.

 

Example: Snagged an Iraki Renegade for 300k on Wednesday night. Immediately resold it over Gen Chat for 800k. The next day, the floor cratered and the price dropped to 50k for the same mount.

 

Once the market is flooded by people who no good sense, pack up what items you have(preferably high-demand items) and stick them into a bank and forget about them for a few months until the packs in question are embargoed.

 

Other than the beginning and after they've been embargoed, you can forget about trying to make much money off of CM items anymore.

 

100% correct IMO.

 

Infernixx understands the market, a market driven by the actions of many players, and by understanding can not only profit in it, but have fun in the process.

 

I make almost all of my credits by watching, understanding, and working the timing and price spreads in the market. It is both fun for me, and it serves the greater player base as well (because I buy and hold popular but not extremely rare items and resell them into the market under market rates later on, so I push prices back down on my server after embargo while still making a nice profit for my investments.)

 

And yeah... the GTN prices at hour 37-48 after a pack drops is the biggest LOL in the game for me.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Andryah