No matter what the price of an item is on the GTN, if it sells, it is not over priced. Please, lets not get this game off to the start of so many other MMOs where people insist that something is over priced simply because its more than they want to pay.

If its overpriced, it will not sell and they will relist it at a lower price until it does sell. Market demand drives prices, not some arbitrary idea that you had about how they only had to click a button to get an item, therefore they should sell that item for cheap.

I'm a long time alt-a-holic, so I've usually had any tradeskill needed covered. The issue often times was that I had to take said alt out to farm a given item and compete with others after the same item. In TOR, with the crew skills, I can sit around in a cantina and send my crew off to farm things for me, so long as it's level appropriate and I have the credits of course.

I don't think people attempting to "corner the market" will be as much of an issue here, so issues with pricing will only affect people who don't have a given crew skill to farm it for themselves, or those that don't have time / patience / desire to level another character to farm an item themselves. The exception of course being instance drops that are unfarmable.

I also heard a rumor that auction fees made constantly reposting an item prohibitively expensive to people attempting to manipulate the market, but have no confirmation yet.

OP, have you ever complained about the price of gas but then bought it anyway b/c you had to?

Price gouging is illegal in the real world, but some people don't like to apply real world principles/ethics to games.

OP, have you ever complained about the price of gas but then bought it anyway b/c you had to?

 

Price gouging is illegal in the real world, but some people don't like to apply real world principles/ethics to games.

Unlike the price of gas, there is no one entity controlling and setting the price of item sales in TOR. Gas is legalized price gouging. A high item on the GTN is like the OP said, it will stay there or sell. What will determine that is more about how many similar items are up for sale and how much they are going for. The price will equal out, and sometimes you get a new trader on the network that has NO CLUE about what the value of what they have is.

If you happen to buy an item from him for 10% of it's actual worth, don't yell at him for undercutting the market, just realize that everyone is new at something when they first try it. Likewise if he has something up for 200%, he will realize his error eventually without the need to ream him out.

If you happen to buy an item from him for 10% of it's actual worth, don't yell at him for undercutting the market, just realize that everyone is new at something when they first try it. Likewise if he has something up for 200%, he will realize his error eventually without the need to ream him out.

I once relisted someone's item that was sold for a little less than half market value. Within 5 minutes I got a whisper demanding I give them more money.

Congratulations on teaching him an important lesson in life. LOL!

Seriously though, I'd ask to see his receipt, then stick him on ignore.

People aren't complaining about a price usually...they're complaining about gouging: When someone buys up available (usually rare) resources and resells them at a substantially higher price. When someone corners the market, it's a gamble, but stands to win them a huge margin.

While in the real world, it's illegal, it's kinda fun in games. People complain because it's not fair: Those with the credits to corner a market get to set the prices, but hey, that's business in a truly free-market society.

I know it's sound ideaology, but a completely free market will inflate to the degree that a person can feasibly farm resources and credits in a day's time. This creates a market of opportunity for the "gold farmers" and for people that play all day long.

People complain because gouging and cornering a market will inevitably create inflation. WoW is an example of how you can't participate in the market unless you spend more than "casual" play time online to earn a living in-game.

Be it what it is, there's no way to stop predatory pricing or gouging in a video game, other than "tokens" for the best commodities. The gold farmers and those that play 10+ hours per day will engage more than anyone else in the supply and demand of your server, and they will control the prices of your commodities.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you should at least see the other side of your argument for what it is.

I disagree Aethos. It doesn't take the purchse of in game money using real money to purchase things in WoW, it just takes some effort to make money yourself. My first mount in WoW all but bankrupted me, I even had to borrow about 10 gold from a friend.

By the time my alt was buying a mount, he had 3 times as much gold as was needed.

What saves MMO economies is a money sink. Something to keep inflation down by diverting in game currency away from the players. As long as TOR has sufficient money sinks, and ones that players are motivated to participate in, inflation in TOR will be managable and while prices may rise enough to be difficult for first time players to afford, by the time they're ready to roll an alt those prices won't be as prohibitive.

Sort of unrelated to the matter, but just a fun lil' story:

In the days of vanilla wow, there was this thing called a Black Lotus, used for all the flasks (very important for hardcore raiding). I recall it selling for something like 15 gold each on my server, fair enough. When I decided to migrate to another server for a new guild with friends, I got this idea to scout out the ah and see how the prices differed. Well, I noticed that on that server, the BL sold for around 30 gold. Cool, I thought, I'll make some money with those.

So I spent almost 5000 gold buying Black Lotus on my old server, and when I migrated, I almost doubled my money selling them away.

And in those days, that was a HUGE amount of money. Back when most people could never afford an epic mount for around 800 gold. Needless to say I was pretty much set for life. So there are some fun ways to "exploit" the auction houses in mmorpgs.

I disagree Aethos. It doesn't take the purchse of in game money using real money to purchase things in WoW, it just takes some effort to make money yourself. My first mount in WoW all but bankrupted me, I even had to borrow about 10 gold from a friend.

 

By the time my alt was buying a mount, he had 3 times as much gold as was needed.

 

What saves MMO economies is a money sink. Something to keep inflation down by diverting in game currency away from the players. As long as TOR has sufficient money sinks, and ones that players are motivated to participate in, inflation in TOR will be managable and while prices may rise enough to be difficult for first time players to afford, by the time they're ready to roll an alt those prices won't be as prohibitive.

You misunderstood me. Tokens are bindable forms of currency for in-game items that are gained from accomplishing things in-game, like "shoulders of the forgotten vanquisher" since you're familiar with WoW. As for gold farmers, I said that they can benefit because they have the thousands, or tens of thousands of in-game currency to corner a market and raise prices. I didn't mean that it's necessary to buy gold with actual money. I was saying that to participate in the market effectively, you have to spend a terrible amount of time farming yourself to be able to participate.

Aethos, I still don't agree. Gold farmers are going to be challenged in corning the market due to community.

If gold farmers insist on raising AH prices, most players will turn to guilds to buy materials, and gold farmers will go broke buying up materials and listing them at prices no one will pay because they have cheaper alternatives.

The problem with your assessment, IMHO, is it relies on gold farmers getting a monopoly over non-gold resources which just can't happen. Everyone is always free to gather every type of resource, and if nothing is selling on the AH because prices are being driven up, people will find other markets such as in-game chat or through their guild.

Even when AH prices aren't inflated it's still easy to make deals outside of auctions. I sold plenty of items in chat in WoW for the exact same price I would have listed them at on the AH.

While gold farmers can certainly inflate prices due to inflation, that gets back to my original point. With effective money sinks, you mitigate the damage of inflation. People who wind up buying gold don't just turn around and spend it in the AH, they use it at vendors and other NPC's that remove the money from the game.

Prices increasing has to do with the total available funds in the game world increasing. It reduces the value of the currency without actually increasing the currency you get from quests, from mob drops, or from selling stuff to vendors. That's how gold farmers damage economies, by letting that currency build up.

When effective money sinks encourage players to remove their money from the economy inflation is mitigated and prices will start to stagnate. They might stagnate higher than the developers had originally intended, but that gets back to my point about an alt. I didn't transfer money to my alt and still managed to save up 3 times as much as I had my first go around.

Aethos, I still don't agree. Gold farmers are going to be challenged in corning the market due to community.

 

If gold farmers insist on raising AH prices, most players will turn to guilds to buy materials, and gold farmers will go broke buying up materials and listing them at prices no one will pay because they have cheaper alternatives.

 

The problem with your assessment, IMHO, is it relies on gold farmers getting a monopoly over non-gold resources which just can't happen. Everyone is always free to gather every type of resource, and if nothing is selling on the AH because prices are being driven up, people will find other markets such as in-game chat or through their guild.

 

Even when AH prices aren't inflated it's still easy to make deals outside of auctions. I sold plenty of items in chat in WoW for the exact same price I would have listed them at on the AH.

 

While gold farmers can certainly inflate prices due to inflation, that gets back to my original point. With effective money sinks, you mitigate the damage of inflation. People who wind up buying gold don't just turn around and spend it in the AH, they use it at vendors and other NPC's that remove the money from the game.

 

Prices increasing has to do with the total available funds in the game world increasing. It reduces the value of the currency without actually increasing the currency you get from quests, from mob drops, or from selling stuff to vendors. That's how gold farmers damage economies, by letting that currency build up.

 

When effective money sinks encourage players to remove their money from the economy inflation is mitigated and prices will start to stagnate. They might stagnate higher than the developers had originally intended, but that gets back to my point about an alt. I didn't transfer money to my alt and still managed to save up 3 times as much as I had my first go around.

Good points, but I'm getting at the fact that people will still buy at the higher price....it's just the people that have time to farm all day and "make a living" so to speak, in-game. I only get about 2 hours a day, maybe.

I just ground out enchanting in WoW and had to spend weeks harvesting materials because our maket is so overly-inflated that only those with very big pockets can participate. (prices on my server place maxing out enchanting from 0-525 around 25,000gold). I agree that people will find other routes if they can't afford to use the market, which I was forced to, but how lame is that?! Granted, there's no real fix to the issue, but that's why it's a pain in the butt, and why people cry about it.

People aren't complaining about a price usually...they're complaining about gouging: When someone buys up available (usually rare) resources and resells them at a substantially higher price. When someone corners the market, it's a gamble, but stands to win them a huge margin.

 

While in the real world, it's illegal, it's kinda fun in games. People complain because it's not fair: Those with the credits to corner a market get to set the prices, but hey, that's business in a truly free-market society.

Well, the OP was talking about price sales. The fellow I replied to was talking about gouging, so I understand the difference. I really don't see where you are going to get gouging here though. What item(s) are you looking at that players absolutely "must have" like Gas, that can be effectively cornered and price fixed?

The diversity of gathering and mission skills and the various links they have to a particular craft make for an abundance of raw materials. Every crafter has the ability to fully self fund their own craft.

Rare schematics for your craft can be gotten through mission skills, so even if you don't get to buy the one up on auction you aren't forever locked out of getting it.

Likewise, it is useless to try and corner ANY crafted good, because the crafters will just keep making them and putting them out on the market as long as they can get the materials to craft it, which they can via their crew skills.

If there is some game world item that only spawns rarely and can be gathered and sold then there may well be an effective price fix opportunity. But for most things, I'm just not seeing the opportunity here.

You misunderstood me. Tokens are bindable forms of currency for in-game items that are gained from accomplishing things in-game, like "shoulders of the forgotten vanquisher" since you're familiar with WoW. As for gold farmers, I said that they can benefit because they have the thousands, or tens of thousands of in-game currency to corner a market and raise prices. I didn't mean that it's necessary to buy gold with actual money. I was saying that to participate in the market effectively, you have to spend a terrible amount of time farming yourself to be able to participate.

I have to agree with ialsoagree.

Currency sinks in the game help attack and mitigate inflation in the player economy. Much like a government pulling bills out of circulation when they print new ones. Inflation is the biggest reason for price increases over time in a player economy. Players stockpile currency and as the years drag on, it means certain goods become more expensive.

And I'm not really sure I see your point that you have to play like the gold farmers do in order to succeed. I was a regular player in WoW. Usually about 10 hours a week, with most of that raiding. But I figured out how to make a decent amount of gold (usually about 600g a night in the Wrath era, depending on the market at the time) with very little time spent. Maybe 10 minutes a day. A huge chunk of that success was by knowing what to produce and sell in the market, finding that niche and finding the best time of day to exploit it. It took time and gold invested to mix up my professions to do that, but I rarely did gathering, and bought almost all of my materials off the AH. It was enough income that I didn't have to worry about gold, as the most expensive BoEs tended to be in the 10kg range when a new patch hit. So over 2 years, I only took big hits to my bank account about 3 times.

When I did gather (no more than an hour at a time, because it was pretty dull), I used the AH to help guide me on what to gather. As a game matures, inflation actually helps out the new player who knows what they are doing. People are willing to pay more for materials, which means new players get access to more currency as they level to pay for skills.

The reality is that gold sellers aren't trying to corner the market, really. If they caused a lot of inflation, it means what they have to sell (currency) is devalued, meaning they get less real money per 'block' of in-game currency. That is counter to their goals. If anything, they tend to create deflation in a game economy when it comes to raw materials and random world drop BoEs by upping the supply. Their goal is to convert as much stuff as they can into in-game currency to sell, and if they deflate the market a bit in the process, it is even better for them because it means they can charge more.

In SWTOR, because certain materials only come from missions, it places a lower bound on their market price, and discourages farming them by gold farmers (as they risk taking a loss and eating into their inventory for sale). If materials become cheaper than running the missions, that excess stock will usually get bought up, but if materials get too cheap, mission-running suddenly looks pretty good. It is an interesting way to offer checks and balances to the market and ensure that inflation/deflation doesn't get too out of hand. How well it will actually work is still up in the air. I haven't seen enough activity to really form an opinion one way or the other.

OP, have you ever complained about the price of gas but then bought it anyway b/c you had to?

 

Price gouging is illegal in the real world, but some people don't like to apply real world principles/ethics to games.

No monopoly in game means price gouging will basically be impossible. If a competitor can make or find the same item, he/she has a right to sell it for less.

As for real world principles and ethics... I'm playing a Sith. My character tortures people because it makes him giggle, because he's bored, because it'll get him promoted, because he has the hots for Lord Zash and thinks electrocuting someone will help him get into her skirt. What are you talking about, ethics? It's a GAME! Want to sell it cheaper? Sell it cheaper and watch your item sell quicker than the other guy's. Problem solved. (Edit: Maybe you do recognize this. If so, please just take this as good natured, quasi-sarcastic agreement with the underlying principle.)

Good points Krevnik.

Again, I agree with the free market as-is, and I like some of the fail-safes that have been introduced in this game and others. Playing devil's advocate to see what people think of the traditional "game economy" and mostly, I'm just bored at work and CANT WAIT TO GET HOME to play this game.

Now I should get back to work. I have a lot to accomplish between now and quitting time.

cheers!

Good points, but I'm getting at the fact that people will still buy at the higher price....it's just the people that have time to farm all day and "make a living" so to speak, in-game. I only get about 2 hours a day, maybe.

 

I just ground out enchanting in WoW and had to spend weeks harvesting materials because our maket is so overly-inflated that only those with very big pockets can participate. (prices on my server place maxing out enchanting from 0-525 around 25,000gold). I agree that people will find other routes if they can't afford to use the market, which I was forced to, but how lame is that?! Granted, there's no real fix to the issue, but that's why it's a pain in the butt, and why people cry about it.

fwiw, if it takes you weeks of your time to farm the items yourself, then i would expect them to be fairly expensive on the AH, because it took someone else weeks to farm them so they can post them there.

i agree that people can and will try to corner markets by buying all of an item and the reselling it at a higher price. but the fact that something that takes you weeks to farm was too expensive for you to buy without farming doesn't really mean the item was over priced.

In SWTOR, because certain materials only come from missions, it places a lower bound on their market price, and discourages farming them by gold farmers (as they risk taking a loss and eating into their inventory for sale). If materials become cheaper than running the missions, that excess stock will usually get bought up, but if materials get too cheap, mission-running suddenly looks pretty good. It is an interesting way to offer checks and balances to the market and ensure that inflation/deflation doesn't get too out of hand. How well it will actually work is still up in the air. I haven't seen enough activity to really form an opinion one way or the other.

This is certainly true. High level exclusive Mats that only can be acquired from missions (Read: Treasure Hunting Gems) will have a lower bound on their prices. To the converse, the mission system also puts an UPPER bound on prices for mats available both in the open world and through missions (Ex: Archaeology) needed for leveling a profession. Raise those prices too high, and it becomes simply easier to spam the missions. That item will fail to sell.

It will be interesting to see how the economy plays out, honestly. I don't think that the same old theories that worked in WoW will apply perfectly in TOR.