The opening poster is correct, I sell on Harbinger and I have been in a race to the bottom with at least one individual that I caught attempting to manipulate mat prices, then induce headfakes/prices surges - He'd push gear pricing lower and lower, then buy up all isotopes so that smaller sellers would be cost-inhibited to craft more as he then bought up all the gear and resold at 5X the price.

I played him by using his strategy to my advantage via a handful of alts selling mats high while buying low on my main seller, he was doing the same thing every night at around the same time, prime time, when buying surges.

This went on for over a month, finally he whispered me, threatened he'd push prices so low I'll go broke, that he has "hundreds of billions in credits" at his disposal (um...credit cap for subs, 4.3 bil?)

He also boasted that he resells the cheaper priced Harbinger gear on other servers, tried to convince me to sell to him direct.

At this point, I copy/pasted his name & filed a ticket, which as we all know, is farting in the wind.

Solution, stop allowing resellers, only the maker's legacy should be allowed to sell/resell gear crafted by alts within that legacy, - reality : nothing will be done.

Harbinger exemplifies why Bioware does as little as possible until it's too late, a single guild has exploited Conquest for over a year by exploiting the fact that removed members' conquest points remain, allowing them to continually remove/replace alts & stack points on every planet every week.

They've ignored that cheat for at least a year, despite whole guilds leaving the game, so I highly doubt this'll get their attention.

.

Vercundus: I wonder how will this latest change for isotopes impact the economy. They are in almost every high end schematics.

Isotope prices will definitely go up a bit. Fortunately for myself, before BT/TE were "changed" I did those flashpoints to get all of my characters (22 of them lolz) to GC Rank 50. By the time I was done I think I had around 1,400 isotopes. A lot of it was done during the double cxp event so the grind wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been normally.

I still have around 700 isotopes left after crafting a bunch of stuff, but does this put me at an advantage? I guess, but I won't sell them. I don't need the credits and all of my characters have 246 HI / BA / MO / EN / EA / IM. For now I'm holding onto them (a.k.a. hoarding).

When it comes to crafting in MMO games "Crafting's like a box of schematics: You never know what you're going to get."

KC

There are so many weird things going on on The Progenitor's market at the moment, I don't know what to make out of this anymore. Not just shady looking things, but also stupid things or things that just make no sense at all.

The worst, of course (but that is not the topic here) are the ridiculously high prices. Just yesterday I saw someone selling one low level purple gem for 400.000 credits. That is, one single gem. Why do people do this? Or why do people put supplements on the GTN for 2.000 credits when it costs 800 at the vendor?

What about those mats sellers who sell 20 times 1000 mats of the same kind at the same time? Can I assume these mats were botted? Or are people dropping off their jawa scrap? How much unused scrap is there in the game by now?

What about those dye sellers who sell 40 times the same dye at the same time for less than half of the current market price? Is this just an aggressive scheme by a new force in town trying to push away competitors? Or are these mats obtained illegally?

Honestly, I don't get it and I don't know what to make out of it. It unfortunately effects my motivation to craft (and play) though. This situation has started earlier this summer. I haven't noticed it before. And I play the GTN game for 5 years or so. There was always competition, but it used to be kind of predictable. I knew the usual peeps and their prefered GTN-style. But nowadays, I am just confused by what is going on. Is there a scheme, is it an exploit, is it just a rookie mistake... etc.

I wonder how will this latest change for isotopes impact the economy. They are in almost every high end schematics.

On the Harbinger, a few days before the change I looked at isotope pricing and they were running around 62k a piece. The day of the change they were already up to 85k each. Now this might just have been normal fluctuation.

The opening poster is correct, I sell on Harbinger and I have been in a race to the bottom with at least one individual that I caught attempting to manipulate mat prices, then induce headfakes/prices surges - He'd push gear pricing lower and lower, then buy up all isotopes so that smaller sellers would be cost-inhibited to craft more as he then bought up all the gear and resold at 5X the price.

 

Attempting to manipulate GTN pricing/corning the market is NOT a sign of a currency seller, which is what the OP was concerned about. This has been happening since MMOs launched 25 years ago. Players on this forum have done as much many times over.

 

I played him by using his strategy to my advantage via a handful of alts selling mats high while buying low on my main seller, he was doing the same thing every night at around the same time, prime time, when buying surges.

And that is why it never works: someone catches on and breaks the cycle.

 

This went on for over a month, finally he whispered me, threatened he'd push prices so low I'll go broke, that he has "hundreds of billions in credits" at his disposal (um...credit cap for subs, 4.3 bil?)

um...4.3 billion per characters. If the player has 40 characters that's 160 billion credits.

 

He also boasted that he resells the cheaper priced Harbinger gear on other servers, tried to convince me to sell to him direct.

 

At this point, I copy/pasted his name & filed a ticket, which as we all know, is farting in the wind.

 

Solution, stop allowing resellers, only the maker's legacy should be allowed to sell/resell gear crafted by alts within that legacy, - reality : nothing will be done.

 

so if I see a REALLY cheap something that I KNOW will sell for more, I cannot buy it and resell it? That's stupid.

 

Two days ago someone posted a couple of artifice crafted color crystals at values below what it costs to craft them in the first place. I bought them and resold them. This was not a case of mistakenly posting at default price, but it is possible that they missed a zero, but I cannot be held responsible for my competition not making sure of the price they post at. The original seller got what they posted it for, and I got two items to sell for less than what they would have cost me to craft myself.

 

And if someone wants to purchase what I post at what I consider to be reasonable and fair prices and attempt to sell them at an even higher price...more power to them. Chances are though that they will not sell those items for what they think they are worth, because I am just going to reproduce and repost new items at the reasonable and fair price.

...snip

There are so many weird things going on on The Progenitor's market at the moment, I don't know what to make out of this anymore. Not just shady looking things, but also stupid things or things that just make no sense at all.

 

The worst, of course (but that is not the topic here) are the ridiculously high prices. Just yesterday I saw someone selling one low level purple gem for 400.000 credits. That is, one single gem. Why do people do this? Or why do people put supplements on the GTN for 2.000 credits when it costs 800 at the vendor?

 

What about those mats sellers who sell 20 times 1000 mats of the same kind at the same time? Can I assume these mats were botted? Or are people dropping off their jawa scrap? How much unused scrap is there in the game by now?

 

What about those dye sellers who sell 40 times the same dye at the same time for less than half of the current market price? Is this just an aggressive scheme by a new force in town trying to push away competitors? Or are these mats obtained illegally?

 

Honestly, I don't get it and I don't know what to make out of it. It unfortunately effects my motivation to craft (and play) though. This situation has started earlier this summer. I haven't noticed it before. And I play the GTN game for 5 years or so. There was always competition, but it used to be kind of predictable. I knew the usual peeps and their prefered GTN-style. But nowadays, I am just confused by what is going on. Is there a scheme, is it an exploit, is it just a rookie mistake... etc.

This kind of thing happens on the Harbinger as well.

Regarding dye modules....did you know that the average cost to craft even the highest grade dye modules is only around 16k...not accounting for crits? Point is that even if they sell at 20k they are still profiting. And that is when I get out of those markets and wait, because I know that those sellers will eventually drop out of the market and prices will return to "normal".

Regarding materials...depends on what grade and what material.

I produce 1500 blue slicing mats a week. I try to sell them in stacks of 100 five stacks at a time. So I post three to four times a week. But if I don't post for a week or two - i get forgetful of these things on occasion - I will easily have three or four thousand in my inventory. Only slightly less are grade 10 blue diplomacy materials. I am far more diligent about all grades of TH blue gemstones, but I could easily acquire a few thousand of one grade in short order.

Grades 8 and 9 gathering skill materials have been in VERY high demand for the past six weeks as we have had two "craft quest" weeks, and a third is rapidly approaching and a fourth not too long after that. Grades 8 and 9 materials are easily farmed. But there's also jawa scrap to consider as players have been hoarding it for the past year hoping they could be used for grade 10, which is less and less likely to happen. So they have all these jawa scrap tokens and decided to use them for profit...taking advantage of this period of high demand.

And while I work toward the next craft quest I have several characters that cannot contribute and so they run lots of slicing missions while I am not using those materials, and then low and behold I have several hundred purple mats just waiting for me.

My overall point is that there are perfectly reasonable and legitimate explanations for these types of events. But OTOH it could very well be currency sellers. The problem is that there is no way to know for certain and therefore there is little to nothing BW can do about it.

There are so many weird things going on on The Progenitor's market at the moment, I don't know what to make out of this anymore. Not just shady looking things, but also stupid things or things that just make no sense at all.

 

The worst, of course (but that is not the topic here) are the ridiculously high prices. Just yesterday I saw someone selling one low level purple gem for 400.000 credits. That is, one single gem. Why do people do this? Or why do people put supplements on the GTN for 2.000 credits when it costs 800 at the vendor?

Some could be just not understanding the market, or what's a fair price, but it really all comes down to greed. I know someone mentioned to me buying crafting things like travella cloth from the npc merchant and selling it on the GTN for more. Not everyone knows there's a vendor that sells things like travella cloth. Not everyone seems to realize there's a decoration merchant that sells guild banks, cargo bays, legacy banks, etc either. I see people selling these for far more than the cost of the Prefabs, if you bought them off the GTN.

What about those mats sellers who sell 20 times 1000 mats of the same kind at the same time? Can I assume these mats were botted? Or are people dropping off their jawa scrap? How much unused scrap is there in the game by now?

 

What about those dye sellers who sell 40 times the same dye at the same time for less than half of the current market price? Is this just an aggressive scheme by a new force in town trying to push away competitors? Or are these mats obtained illegally?

I've listed 20-30 dye up at the same time and undercut by a large amount. While 20-30 is not the norm I always undercut by a lot. I undercut, because otherwise if I play the penny undercut game, I sell a lot less sometimes none that day. I undercut because I disagree the current prices are "fair." I undercut because if I'm not selling something I'm not making credits. If I'm sitting around with too much inventory that I cant make more dyes to sell I'm losing out on potential market sales.

I can make them easy and in large bunches because I spent time finding an efficient gathering route, gaining some fair rating on my companions, (Higher rating is more criticals which doubles dyes, not to mention reduces overall crafting time. Translates directly to more dyes in less time), and using my time efficiently. For instance I set all my companions to craft dyes when I'm logging out. Why? This is the most time intensive part; I might as well do it and let the time pass when I am not around anyway and continually run the shorter duration missions for materials while I do play.

I've gotten mail from time to time complaining about my strategy. People suggesting I penny undercut because otherwise I'm ruining the market. It always felt like attempts to get me to price collude, so I ignored the advice. Especially so since I often thought the price the person wanted to collude at was unfair to the customer.

I've seen people buy up all my low priced things to resell. Depending on the market I usually then list up a fair bit and penny undercut, then list more at my normal low price. The low price stuff sells fast: high volume low profit. The penny undercut stuff sell slows, but at higher profits. You can essentially play both sides of the market that way. Also stops people from trying to play futures market or whatever you want to call it while I do all the actual work.

Now you might argue that I can't make credits this way, but I've a few hundred million sitting around and I've plenty of nice things. Granted I mostly craft when I'm playing, but I like it. It's fun, so *shrugs*

I really didn't want to write this here, and I imagine there must be others who don't want to or didn't for the same reason: I've essentially given out my tactics to possible competitors. But I felt it was necessary. It's a game. I want others to play and have fun too since this is a collective effort. It will only thrive and grow so long as we have players.

So, not all us undercutters and such are gold sellers, if any are even, we're just ruthless dye crafters and etc. I welcome competition. I'm also susceptible to flattery if someone wants ideas on how to get started.

My little group of gold.farmers (jedi covenant) has somewhat settled down. The main one is still active. It recently changed selling characters. Named with a couple of alt special character, Y with a squiggle at the top. Im guessing it.realized it was being tracked by a lot of the legitamate crafting community members. Will be more.difficult to hunt down....

Considering going on a propaganda campaign against em, probably would not effect much. Even if peeps were aware, lrobably wouldnt change clicking on the cheapest crafted item by 1 credit.

Ash