Jump to content

Market Manipulation?


Thraka

Recommended Posts

So for the past few weeks on my server, I have been noticing some bizarre behavior in the GTN. I sell crafting mats fairly regularly, and there is a small group (or a player with a lot of alts) who is working extremely hard to lower prices.

 

It's not casual, or a mistake. It's the same names, over and over. They hit all price ranges(99 stacks, 20s, 10s, 5's, etc.) with undercuts of hundreds per unit, and in materials from all gathering skills. I have had them buy my stuff and reposted it immediately for nearly half price at times. This is a consistent thing, and has the effect has been to A) force gatherers to make substantially less money for their time, and B) to cause drastic shortages in the market at times.

 

So, what is the game here? Drive other gatherers out of the market, then raise prices with a monopoly? Seems a bad plan, since other gatherers can always resume gathering if prices improve. I can't quite work out what the use of deliberately bombing the market could be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So for the past few weeks on my server, I have been noticing some bizarre behavior in the GTN. I sell crafting mats fairly regularly, and there is a small group (or a player with a lot of alts) who is working extremely hard to lower prices.

 

It's not casual, or a mistake. It's the same names, over and over. I have had them buy my stuff and re-post it immediately for nearly half price at times. This is a consistent thing, and the effect has been to A) force gatherers to make substantially less money for their time, and B) to cause drastic shortages in the market at times.

 

I know some players who really hate the (as they see it) ridiculously high prices mats can go for and will sell at very low prices just to make a point and maybe help a crafter out.

 

also, it's not uncommon to see people under cut prices by a huge amount to make a quick sale or will list at the price the GTN suggests when you first place the items in the sales slot. I tend to look at these as rookie mistakes and am happy to snap up these deals a fast as I can.

 

However, what is weird is the buying at a higher price and then re-posting at nearly half what they bought it for... very strange.

 

I would think that they can't keep that up for long unless they have a huge credit reserve or make a lot of creds from other sources.

because the markets will fluctuate (sometimes wildly) I think all you can do is ride this one out. maybe they are trying to make a point or just having fun upsetting the market for a while.

 

if you can afford it, re-buy the mats at the lower price and then re-post at your normal price. see if they keep doing it.

you'll get the price you're asking and won't have to spend as much time farming. a total win for you.

 

again, I doubt they can keep this up long term but if you're careful and play it smart you might be able to turn this to your advantage - :cool:

 

hope this helps and good luck - :)

Edited by magecutter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Magecutter. If they are buying your product and then reposting at half price, buy it from them and repost it at normal pricing.

 

I know one person on these forums who would call that greedy, but I do not really care what he thinks :p

Edited by psandak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I can and do buybacks and buyouts. But I am trying to work out what this guy or guys are actually trying to accomplish. It would take a fairly serious investment and perhaps a counter-cartel to actually counteract what he is doing, though, so I am trying to work out his plan before trying to organize one.

 

I have not quite decided if this is a long term reduce prices and then raise them after building stockpiles, or if it is actually some kind of 'white knight' stupidity. Does anyone see a method to this? Does it follow any know 'plans' for commodities?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I can and do buybacks and buyouts. But I am trying to work out what this guy or guys are actually trying to accomplish. It would take a fairly serious investment and perhaps a counter-cartel to actually counteract what he is doing, though, so I am trying to work out his plan before trying to organize one.

 

I have not quite decided if this is a long term reduce prices and then raise them after building stockpiles, or if it is actually some kind of 'white knight' stupidity. Does anyone see a method to this? Does it follow any know 'plans' for commodities?

 

"'white knight' stupidity"... lol, had to laugh at that one - :p

other than trying to drive everyone else out of that market nitch or just screwing up the market for a while I can't think of any good reason to do it.

 

my guild leader is in a market fight atm with 2 or 3 sellers who want to control certain sections of the GTN. what they don't know is she has a huge war chest (well over 150 million in creds) and they really have no chance, long term, of ever driving the prices their way. (she also has several alts that do nothing but craft and gather and will sell under many different names in many different areas of the GTN, for her the credits just keep rolling in).

 

she has said she's seen this many times before and will either under cut them (even if it means a small loss) or buy up the deals they offer and stock pile the items till the market returns to normal or will do a combination of both until they run out of creds or get bored with the whole thing.

 

just like in real life the market is a long term endeavor. I wouldn't worry too much about this guy, and if he keeps buying high and selling low he'll end up bleeding him self dry. you can help bleed him if you can keep posting at your normal price and he keeps buying.

 

lastly, consider sending some polite in game emails to other people you know that sell in these areas, see what they think about it and maybe create the cartel you mentioned to deal with this guy.

Edited by magecutter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Magecutter. If they are buying your product and then reposting at half price, buy it from them and repost it at normal pricing.

 

I know one person on these forums who would call that greedy, but I do not really care what he thinks :p

 

I agree. Let's be honest if the are stupid enough to buy yours and sell it at half then let's be honest this is market manipulation that works in your favor. Because A) you already made credits from them buying it from you and B) you can now rebuy it cheaper and make more money on the exact same item.

 

Personally, if they are stupid enough to keep doing this then they are stupid enough to part with their credits many times over.

 

This also used to happen to me when I first started playing the thing is though I would just take the credits happily and list my units cheaper than them. Why? Because I always know on mats what the cheapest I can see it for is and still clear a profit (I have star-ships full of mats :)) so I will just go lower until the idiot purposely driving the market down can't make a profit and then when they get out I un-list my items and put them back at a point that myself and the rest of the regular sellers can make a good profit again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What investment do you need to drive these guys out of the market? They buy your amts for half your price thus you got your price, can buy your mats back again for half of it and relist it again for the original price whilst keeping that original 50% cut from them buying it off you in the first place.

 

What server and what mats as I'll be all over that lol.

 

If they are doing it en masse as in buying off everyone and yo ucan't afford to rebuy everything they've bought just post what server and mats in this thread and everyone who reads it will soon help sort the market out for you because who doesn't want to make 100's of thousands of easy credits off these people? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If they are buying your items purely to sell at a lower price... I would say they are people who have Bought game credits.

 

They want to get rid of the credits that have been just given to them, by cycling their purchased Credits with legitimate credits Via Under sale on the GTN, they dont get all the credits they originally paid for, but the credits they do own now, are not illegally purchased Credits.

 

and no.... i don't do it.... (i have done in WOW, but here i just use the Packs to make game gold by selling multiple packs for much cheaper than the GTN)

 

just my insights :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Buy at full; sell at half? Am I reading that right? Wow!! What a lolocaust of stupidity.

 

OP, I have to agree with everyone here. Buy your stuff back @ half price, and then sell @ full price. And be quick about it. If the guy(s) is/are stupid enough, then they will soon run out of credits, while you soak up profits. Or, if they aren't that stupid, they will see what you are doing, and stop doing what they are doing.

 

I wish I had your problem OP. That's just too funny :D LOL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, no, I don't believe they're buying your mats and reselling at half the price - I think you're wrong or lying though I'd assume just wrong.

 

As for selling at substantially lower prices.. I don't know what the actual prices are but I wouldn't be surprised if they're perfectly reasonable prices. What a lot of resource sellers think of as "normal" prices are actually quite atrocious if you expect anyone to be able to craft and sell their items for a profit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me get the conspiracy theory wheels going. :p

 

What if it's BIO-WARE trying to influence the market for their own reasons (trying to speed up OR slow down gear progresion).

 

Just a thought but, who knows???

 

Too bad they don't have those reason on Red Eclipse. I'd love something like that. :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, no, I don't believe they're buying your mats and reselling at half the price - I think you're wrong or lying though I'd assume just wrong.

 

As for selling at substantially lower prices.. I don't know what the actual prices are but I wouldn't be surprised if they're perfectly reasonable prices. What a lot of resource sellers think of as "normal" prices are actually quite atrocious if you expect anyone to be able to craft and sell their items for a profit.

 

Well, the way some have expanded on it, yes, it would be unlikely. What I said was that I see pushes that at times are as much as half of normal price at times. When I have seen my own stuff bought and reposted lower it was about 20-25% lower, and not often.

 

As for what is 'reasonable', that's defined by the market itself, and varies. But as an example, turadium on my server hovers around 2k/unit. You see variation, of course, but 2k is around average. What I have seen lately is the typical mild undercuts one would expect, 1-5%, say, jostling for top position, and then suspect sellers coming in and posting small stacks for, say, 1500. That is doubly strange because typically, smaller stacks ask higher unit costs, and it is also a big undercut.

 

I theorize that maybe these are folks who don't actually gather at all, and who put out 'seeds' to pull the market lower, then buy a lot of materials at a low price to post back when the market comes back up. I have no idea if this is working for them or not, honestly. It may just be someone experimenting. Time will tell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, When I have seen my own stuff bought and reposted lower it was about 20-25% lower time will tell.

 

I would seriously doubt that someone is buying a material at a higher price just to sell lower?! if you were attempting to seed the prices lower you use your own materials then buy out everyone that came down with you... but saying that it would be risky in case it does not reach it's high again in a reasonable time... people will see this variation and expect the lower price every time and may bring the price down globally. Unlike EvE this game does not have any hard market data so everything is really speculation....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let me see... someone running a hugely unprofitable business that nonetheless always seems to have an endless supply of cash... when that happens in the real world we call it "money laundering". It could just be someone messing with the markets for fun though - there are plenty of players with hundreds of millions of credits out there.

 

I've also seen market wars over personal grudges. When the level 50 black-* crystal schematics became learnable, 2 crafters on The Red Eclipse got into a feud and started an undercutting war that lasted literally weeks and must have lost them both a fortune, selling crystals for 20K or even less when mat costs were significantly higher. I can't complain though, it's how I learned all the schematics cheaply ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If they are buying your items purely to sell at a lower price... I would say they are people who have Bought game credits.

Err. I'm pretty sure that there's no serial numbers on those credits so this really doesn't seem possible. It really does sound like an effort to drive someone out of the market, but not a very smart one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds like you've got what I call an "Econ 101 Moron" and, I've dealt with something similar on my own server for a couple of months.

 

The way their theory works is that they post a bunch of stuff at a very narrow profit or slight loss in order to drive off everyone else and corner it. Once they think that the market's been cornered, they slowly raise their prices a bit, thus "ensuring" a steady profit.

 

This is how I messed with him.

 

I kept gathering and posting the results over and over again at a price that was reduced enough to force him to drop his price further to just under profitability. Costly in the fact that it tied up quite a few credits in mats that weren't going to sell for a while but, actually, I'll admit it, it was kinda fun. (insert evil grin here)

 

Granted, it took a couple of months but eventually, he got the idea, went away for a little while to rethink his position and when he came back, he was being far more polite to everyone with his postings by just matching everyone else. :D

 

See, their theory only works if everyone involved can't keep generating product with the click of a few buttons and a little bit of time. Also, admittedly, someone recognizing what they're doing and how to throw a wrench in the works doesn't hurt either. So, my suggestion is to settle in because this is going to take a while.

 

Figure out exactly how much your mats are costing you to generate and build up a few stacks.

 

After that you've got two options: either 1) do what everyone else has said and post them at your normal prices for him to snatch up and repost at a lower amount or 2) put them up for just over the amount it costs to make the stack which will force him to post at a loss for each stack. Either way, your goal for awhile isn't a profit but ensuring that he continues his slow march to the poor-house.

 

Granted, you're going to loose a little money for a bit which means you'll have to use other options for profit but you're ensuring that this bozo is going to either bleed himself to bankruptcy or get the point that playing fair's better for everyone. Either one isn't going to happen overnight but if you keep at it, one of them will happen.

 

Good Luck and hang in there dude! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dallayna, I think you are close to the truth of it here. I decided to engage fully today. I struck when the market was very short on stock, with other gatherers discouraged and holding their commodities. I bought out all of the tanking auctions, and posted sales ~ 20% above nominal to correct. The market responded quickly. Other sellers began posting in normal ways, slight undercuts or matches.

 

The suspects fairy quickly responded, posting 5's and tens about 20% below again. I bought those out as well. They responded again by trying to post at 10% below. I then undercut them by one credit. I successfully forced them to raise their prices, and denied them the opportunity to sell because I had significant inventory.

 

I decided against trying to form a cartel, and I am pleased with the results. The people I would have considered forming a cartel with simply behaved reasonably, competing with me on price without trying to totally tank the market. I am not trying to price fix, and I don't mind being undercut as long as said undercuts don't destroy the market and drive suppliers out. I am specifically trying to stop this seeding, and it has been successful so far.

 

I have a decent warchest, not infinite, but enough to stockpile a very large reserve of underpriced materials if need be. The biggest thing I notice is that I need to be vigilant, and I am heartened to see that the other traders seem to be responding well. I am not looking to corner the market, just to keep it at the point where we can all compete honestly with one another and make a decent profit.

 

Surprisingly, my warchest has expanded rather than contracted. This says to me that I am not unfairly manipulating the market myself, but rather correcting someone else's manipulation. Hopefully, the other sellers will take a cue from me and work together to punish these manipulators. So far, it seems folks are doing just thst.

 

I agree, it is a long term matter, but then again, I really enjoy this aspect of the game. Not a lot of people realize how much PVP is involved in playing the GTN. One has allies and enemies, forms strategies, and makes attacks.

 

I don't blame you a bit for feeling good about besting your competition, especially the ones playing dirty pool. It's at least as good as beating down a challenger in a warzone, and IMO far better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree, it is a long term matter, but then again, I really enjoy this aspect of the game. Not a lot of people realize how much PVP is involved in playing the GTN. One has allies and enemies, forms strategies, and makes attacks.

 

 

LOL, in a way the market and economy are the real pvp in mmos.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not casual, or a mistake. It's the same names, over and over. They hit all price ranges(99 stacks, 20s, 10s, 5's, etc.) with undercuts of hundreds per unit, and in materials from all gathering skills. I have had them buy my stuff and reposted it immediately for nearly half price at times. This is a consistent thing, and has the effect has been to A) force gatherers to make substantially less money for their time, and B) to cause drastic shortages in the market at times.

 

So, what is the game here? Drive other gatherers out of the market, then raise prices with a monopoly? Seems a bad plan, since other gatherers can always resume gathering if prices improve. I can't quite work out what the use of deliberately bombing the market could be.

 

 

I may very well have some of those names if we're on the same server. I look at the per unit prices and I, 95% of the time, undercut the lowest listed price. Sometimes by a couple thousand for the higher priced Items.

 

As for your choice "A" goes, I couldn't care less if I "force" the other gatherers to lower their prices. Often those prices are just ridiculous considered the effort involved .... bending over.

 

As for "B", that lies more with the buyer and their desire to see lower prices.

 

What's the game? In LARGE part because I know how frustrating it can be when you see things at artificially increased levels. And you know what it's called ...Greed. So yeah, I'll take a huge cut in profits just because I know I'm getting the product out at very affordable rates. Yes, it makes me feel good. The other part just wants to sell fast so I can outfit my characters. I don't want to "play" the market's ups and downs and wring every last credit out of it I cam. Sell fast and hard, and it's Christmas morning when the mail comes in.

 

Now as to the 'method', it doesn't do any good to put one or two stacks up. You need 10 to 20 stacks, priced low enough that 1) It sells fast 2) provides a decent profit 3) is not prices so high that another seller has time to undercut me leaving me with unsold items.

 

As for the buying and then reselling at less that you bought it for .. well that's just nuts. I always see someone selling at 23 per unit. Different stuff, but always at 23 per unit.

Edited by Trintric
added a line
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's the game? In LARGE part because I know how frustrating it can be when you see things at artificially increased levels. And you know what it's called ...Greed.

 

artificially increased levels? in an artificial environment?

 

and greed?

who in the world isnt greedy? is it those "greedy" capitalists who engage in that horrible pastime of generating a profit?

besides- it's always the "other" guy who is greedy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know which server you are on,

but I do know an economy-oriented RP-guild on VC.

Yes, you have read correctly. They *do* RP as economy-interested characters (brokers and the like) !

And, as a role-played character, there might be LOTS of reasons for irregular behaviour ... You'd have to ask the author/player of this character what the character's motivations are ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree, it is a long term matter, but then again, I really enjoy this aspect of the game. Not a lot of people realize how much PVP is involved in playing the GTN. One has allies and enemies, forms strategies, and makes attacks.

 

And that's what I actually hate of current markets :

 

The Gatherers could be controlling the markets - in RL - but instead, they are exploited. Think about ore mining in Africa, done by children, for example, or small farmers being on the brink to ruin, because they don't get as much money from those who buy their milk & crops to survive ... In the end, there's only HUGE CARTELS surviving, like Microsoft, EA, Oracle, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Monsanto, Czerka and the like.

 

The result in this is a severe lack of diversity. When only an Oligarchy Of The Few controlls EVERYTHING, then they not control EVERYTHING - which is power-hunger like Sith have - but they ALSO destroy any diversity. No innovation anymore, no new ideas anymore, because at the base, there is no-one left. Everything's destroyed and transferred into those MASSIVE companies.

 

My favourite example is the "diversity" in the PC operating systems market. Microsoft and ... well ... Linux ? What, if Linux wasn't there ? What's actually left of operating systems BESIDES Linux & Microsoft ?

 

Homebrewed operating systems just don't exist anymore. Except those done by criminals, maybe (one recent Trojan had its own ffile system implemented, actually).

 

Same goes for everything else. Monsanto controls the crops market (with a few other companies) Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are controlling things as well, the PC games market is being controlled by EA, Ubi, Bliizzactivision, and who else ? Not many, at least. And just imagine Indies weren't there. It's funny, isn't it ? How many homebrewed games are out there ? Same for car companies, media companies ...

 

Personally, I even consider the PC platform as an "degenerated gaming platform". No diversity, because a few genres pushed by a few firms control 99 % of PC gaming.

 

And, this destruction of diversity is nowadays even going on with animals & plants. If everything goes well, we'll have in 500.00 years 80 % of our landscape being controlled by an Oligarchy of a few companies whoi have patented and genetically engineered almost EVERYTHING that lives on this planet ...

 

Conglomerates are not good for

 

- diversity

- creativity

- innovation

 

Just look at Microsoft. Or at any other massive firm.

 

And now, they are buying out Amazonas areas for planting Soy. In Asia as well. And no-one cares whether Orangutans are destroyed by this. Money is more important than out brothers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...