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AH Price History - Boon or bane?Follow

#1 Apr 04 2005 at 8:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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496 posts
I'm probably going to get rated into oblivion for posting anything about the in-game economy but what the hey.. I've been thinking about this for some time and wondered if anyone wants to wax philosphical with me about something we all take for granted: The AH Price History.

First of all, as far as I'm aware FFXI is unique in giving us a price history at the AH. EQ and EQ2 have no such thing (I play them both) and I've been told it does not exist in WoW either. Clearly 3 MMORPGs does not constitute a majority, but I believe these titles make up the majority of MMORPG players, so humour me.

The Good
The price history of an item on the AH lets us know what kind of money our peers are getting from sales, and let buyers know what they can expect to pay. At the most basic level, buyers will be trying to drive the price down and sellers will be trying to drive the price up. The knowledge we gain from a price history is vital to what we put an item up for, as well as how much farming/crafting/questing/begging we have to do to afford something we need.

In EQ and EQ2 players have to bazaar everything. That means the price is stated, and only items that are on bazaar are listed at any given time. As a buyer I can easily get the lowest price. As a seller I can't hide behind an auction house and have to compete with stated prices. My understanding of WoW's system is limited, but it seems it is much like E-bay. If that is indeed the case, it is just like FFXI only there is no price history, only a statement of the highest bid so far on an item.

The Bad
When no price history is available you need to rely on other people selling an item you want to auction/bazaar in order to gauge the sale price. This means that common items will typically have regular competition in pricing while rare items will not. Imagine if you were to kill Leaping Lizzy and get her boots, then saw no price history on the AH. What would you sell them for? If you had no prior knowledge of the item it might be tough to choose a price. Shrewd players will realize that to have +3AGI/+3DEX at level 7 is unheard of among other pieces of equipment, and so you would sell it for a hefty sum. However, there are those who are not as shrewd and wouldn't dare sell them for more than a few thousand gil (since "Nobody at level 7 has 600K to buy armour" right?).

My point is that the inflation of rare items can be partially attributed to the existence of a price history. Because I know the boots, to use the same example, are worth 300K, but then I see that someone squeezed an extra 10K out of it, I will also sell mine for 310K or higher! Every time a buyer is willing to pay a little bit more to get the item it is recorded in the price history and the next seller will shoot for keeping the price at that new level. Without a price history there will still be a general awareness that leaping boots are worth more than leather highboots - a lot more! - but if I sell mine for 500K and you sell yours for 300K nobody is any the wiser. The price will not jump server-wide to 500K just because I ripped somebody off and you didn't.

The Ugly
I admit wholeheartedly as an artisan in EQ2 I dearly wish there were a price history to help me choose how much to sell items for, as well as what items will sell for a better profit than others. Nevertheless, because of the underlying behaviour of buyers and sellers, having a price history available at the AH makes it easy for prices to rise. My belief is that common items will be unaffected by price histories, but rarer and high-level items are the ones that suffer the most.

Was there inflation in EQ, despite the lack of a price-history? Hell yes! But truthfully it was the common items that were going up in price the fastest, which I believe drove the price of all items up (when the cheap stuff sells for more you need more money from rare/high-level items to keep supplying yourself with common items, right?). I believe the continous rise in price of rarer items, such as leaping boots, emperor's hairpin, brigandine +1, to name a few cases on my server, is more due to the awareness of what Joe sold ItemX to Bob for. If Joe can make 1.2 million gil off said items, so can I!

Anyway, post your thoughts. I only hope this can create some sensible discussion rather than turn into a karma-bomb/flame-war thread.
#2 Apr 04 2005 at 8:50 PM Rating: Decent
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409 posts
This is the 1st time Ive really thought about this sort of things, so thanks for making me think about something new today. :)

Given what appears to be occurring across (nearly?) all of the servers currently, you could argue that having no history would be a good thing to help bring prices down.
But in the normal environment, I would have to say that this is not a good thing .
Take for example the Brig+1.

Current sale price of 1.9 mil
I paid 1 mil about 2 months ago.
Do I think it is worth 1 mil? Yes.
Is it worth 2 mil? Im not so sure

Brig (normal) price of around 100k (If I remember rightly)
Is that worth 100k? Yes.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I think sale history is good in a normal environment, and I would have said a necessity for perishable goods (scrolls etc). Armour and Weapons less so.
#3 Apr 04 2005 at 8:55 PM Rating: Decent
hmm. well ive thought about this too. ( not much mind you) but i think having a player based economy suks ( i rather buy a item from a NPC store rsther than players.) but anyway i think if we allowed the company to set the AH prices and such we could all live a little better ( yea i no ur thinking im crazy) but if SE had control over prices then such items wouldnt be a hassle. The AH with its player standard prices allowed gil sellers to start runing us easy. in fact because we ***** ouselves with our greedy high prices ppl ( and u no who u r ) buy gil to get such items as " Erase , Leapin Lizzy boots etc." just my 2gil on the matter. ( call me dumb if u want its my opion :P )
#4 Apr 04 2005 at 9:44 PM Rating: Decent
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171 posts
That's a very interesting concept that i never thought about and definitely take for granted. I often find myself calling to my linkshell "I need a price check in Jeuno plz," never thinking twice about it (except hoping that someone is not busy and slinking around in jeuno). I suppose maybe people would camp more different NMs and whatnot never really knowing what sells best and what's going to yield the best money per time spent. However, in the case that it is a new NM added to the game, and you dont know what to list for, people i know have listed and sold to themselves for some menial amount of gil to show they have it. They are then contacted by prospective buyers, some serious and some not, about cutting a deal for the price of the item. Just a couple positives to go either way.
Rate up for giving me something to think about for a bit ^^v
#5 Apr 04 2005 at 9:50 PM Rating: Decent
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378 posts
i agree, as i am well aware of the f***ed up economy on kujata. (Leaping boots are 800k-900k now, and erase is 750k, even tho it used to be 300k and 300k.) I always try to lower the price, no matter how much it sells for. I was doing BCNM40, got erase, and check AH price history. I saw that i sold for 750k, so i put it up for 710k, lowering it 40k! But even the buyers dont try to buy as low as possible, they bought mine for 730k...

Anyways, I always try to lower the prices for everyone, because i know all the prices are connected. If price of itemx lowers by 20%, then maybe all items connected to it will lower 15%, and then connected to that, 10%, etc... and eventually you have a cheaper economy. And, maybe that one item you will need later on will be cheaper, because everything else lowered in price.

everything on kujata has gone up by a ********* here are some i can remember from the top of my head:

Wind crystals: 1.5k -> 3k [*2]
Fire Crystals: 2k-3k -> 5k [*2]
Dark crystals: 3k~ -> 6k-7k [*2]

Silk Thread: 10k per stack -> 20k per stack [*2]
Beehive Chips: 2k per stack -> 10k per stack [*5]

Darksteel ore: 5k -> 20k [*4]

Leaping Boots: 300k -> 800k [*2]
Erase: 300k -> 750k [*2.5]
Wind Torque: 700k -> 1.3m [*2]

Mahatma Hoppapolaupe (sp): 3mil -> 8mil [*2]
you can actually see this one on AH, the first price on the history was 3mil, and the latest one is 8mil
#6 Apr 04 2005 at 9:56 PM Rating: Default
ok my leaping lizzy boots still remain at 350-500k the Erase in any other AH but jeuno is 100k ( in jeuno its 1mil) and i still stand on everything should be sold in a NPC store or SE should control our AH ( or have limited bounds like u can sell it for X amount but u cant sell it for more than Y amount)
#7 Apr 04 2005 at 10:29 PM Rating: Decent
You bring up an interesting and controversial topic when you speak of supply and demand. The controversy that sprung up when players began to leak incredibly valuable secrets onto the internet for general consumption about Gardening.

Now, as I have heard the price of certain ores...Black ore in particular has dropped severely from where it once was. I was an avid gardener before I stopped playing (reviving in june) and I was harvesting crops of about 6 to 7 ores a cycle. I was selling these ores for about, I think 150k to 200k on bahamut each. These elemental ores were at one point extremely rare because few people knew how to farm them.

The first farmers had to experiment with hundreds of combinations to find out results...Then listen to the needs of crafters for what they needed. Now once the demand was found only these few farmers could supply so they could put the price where ever they wanted. They would want to keep the price high because of the effort they invested in farming these items.

Now of course one of these farmers might tell his closest friend...hey here is one recipe that is pretty good...He will tell him what to do, when to do it, and what to use it for. Now this friend may or may not respect his buddy's wishes to keep the price at the par in the AH. Now this person who was let into the farming world and did not have to put his share of the effort in might say, well you know, I want my money now...who cares...And he sells it for less.

Now he not caring as much for this secret as his laboring friends told more people. Eventually a lot of people knew, but you had to know someone to learn the secrets...Eventually someone got sick of it and posted it on the internet. Now everyone knows most of the secrets. Simultaneously the supply went up, and the prices went down. It is like the oil in the middle east...They limit the supply our gas goes up, they start pumping out more our prices relax...somewhat...

But from what you have pointed out I have noticed most in the gardening section of our economy.

Another question...As the game progresses more and more gil/items become available from mob drops and other sources...Could inflation become an issue? or is our currency regulated...With Gil sellers running rampant is it so farfetched?
#8 Apr 04 2005 at 10:58 PM Rating: Decent
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491 posts
As a crafter I usually buy as much of my materials from NPCs as possible (to reduce cost flucuations) and then look at the AH history to see if the product is profitable to sell. I try and deal with consumables as much as possible, so a 10 history AH isn't alot of information. Hundreds of stacks of crystals get sold each day.

People can unfortunately follow the AH very blindly. I made some Sardine Balls (fish bait) recently and ended up with an extra stack which I put on the AH. The recent history was all 900gil/stack with none in stock. I put it on sale for 500gil/stack since that is how much the fishing guild charges for it and it only cost me 250gil to make. It took a day and a half to sell and when it finally did it sold for 900gil.
#9 Apr 05 2005 at 7:01 AM Rating: Decent
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11,630 posts
It is very simple. The game has 2 item types.

* The items you want

* The items you don't want


The items you don't want you want to sell. You look at the history and how much is in stock to determine how much gil you can get for them. You want as much as possible to being able to buy as many things as possible that you do want. So on all items that are few, you put it up for more.

The problem, is that everyone does this, so that means everyone who don't want leaping boots raise that price. Everyone who want them sells their gold ingots for higher price to afford the leaping boots. Everyone who wants gold ingots sell the insect paste for as much as possible to afford them. Everyone who wants insect paste sell their moat carp for as much as they can so they can afford them.

Not exactly true, but you get the point. We don't care about eachother so we raise price on products we don't need ourselves to afford the items we want, but others raise those prices because they need to afford the items we just raised the price of. This is a never ending spiral that will continue forever. (Or until people figure out that if everyone stops raising prices, everyone will afford their items without raising prices.)

But the market does work a little. I've waited a year on the thunder pact scroll to become cheap and it is soon down to 80k, except I'm not really interested in paying more than 50k since it has no use right now (or the previous years)
#10 Apr 05 2005 at 7:11 AM Rating: Decent
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342 posts
I think the price history is a good thing, it makes the market more efficient. It helps people price things in the range most buyers will pay. If you didn't have the history you would have to create your own manually by checking bazaars and that is a lot of work.

In your example, if I farm Leaping Boots but I under-price them, somebody will probably notice this, buy them and then resell them for the current market price. This is called speculation and it is bad for the farmer. The farmer should be able to extract the full value of his work so tools that help him are well appreciated.

If, however, your goal is to get good items for cheap then an ignorant seller is what you need. You might get lucky and spot that great deal before a speculator does. I don't see this as combating inflation because speculators will push prices up to what the market will bear. If people have the cash they will pay.

I think the game should be about adventuring, selling the drops, crafting better gear and adventuring some more. I don't think it should be about buying stuff and selling it for more. So I would like a system where famers and crafters get as close to the market price as possible and the AH history helps with that.
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