Criticizing auction house prices is silly.

[Riddikulus]

Yes they are. Plat farmers are the equivalent of printing money. The result is called inflation.

Plat farmers have to earn the money the same way the rest of us do... they are not the cause of the ingame inflation.

The economic problems within DDO are purely created by Turbine by "printing" lots of money without having very many ways of spending that money.

They tried adding a few things here and there (e.g. cash for additional pack and bank slots, the insane AH cut) but there is just not enough to soak in the cash thats being created... much more needs to be done before the economy will ever come into balance.

[Angelus_dead]

They tried adding a few things here and there (e.g. cash for additional pack and bank slots, the insane AH cut) but there is just not enough to soak in the cash thats being created... much more needs to be done before the economy will ever come into balance.

That would be a huge effort for a questionable improvement. It's better for them to mostly give up on balancing the plat-based economy, and simply interest other separate economies later.

That means a different currency which provides different rewards, such as was done with mod4 dragon scales and mod5 tome pages / shield fragments / tapestries. Of course there will be some interaction between the old plat economy and those new systems when players pay 1,000,000 plat for a single Shield Fragment or whatever, but that connection is optional.

[JacknCoke]

You know whats really silly....?



oh prob not.

[Hafeal]

/Remember people, "Buyout" is your friend. The AH is full of impulse shoppers. We want it, and we want it NOW!.
You lose nothing by putting a buyout and may even sell some stuff you normally wouldn't.

We were running the VoNs last week on Level 7 alts. So we're going over what we need and someone says "Everyone got a Pink weapon?"
Well sure enough there were a couple of people checking out the AH and saying "None had a buy out"
Impulse buy that would have sold if you had just put a buyout.
Something to remember next time you check your mail to find Auction Expired.

I agree and I believe in clearing inventory. Many items which I know are useful but not great I post for 1/2 list; if they don't sell, 1/3 list and I still get more than if I sold to the appropriate vendor since I don't keep a haggle bot. Great items I often send to alts or offer to friends and guildies. If none of that works, I usually will put it on the AH for 20% less than the lowest price for the same or similar item.

[Riddikulus]

That would be a huge effort for a questionable improvement. It's better for them to mostly give up on balancing the plat-based economy, and simply interest other separate economies later.

That means a different currency which provides different rewards, such as was done with mod4 dragon scales and mod5 tome pages / shield fragments / tapestries. Of course there will be some interaction between the old plat economy and those new systems when players pay 1,000,000 plat for a single Shield Fragment or whatever, but that connection is optional.

And you don't see a problem with that?

I find having to collect large quantities of various rare stuff in order to "buy" stuff highly irritating. I'm still sitting on 20 dragonscales of various colors because I've not wanted to pay the crazy AH prices to get a set and I _still_ haven't managed to loot enough of them to this day. It's one thing to have to collect 3 or 5 ... quite another to collect 25. Smacks of WoW and their honor tokens.

[Frodo_Lives]

It's not the insanely high prices on the AH that bug a lot of people. It's the insanely high prices of total junk that bugs people.

I understand a bloodstone, min level 8 power 5, or a kardin's eye being posted for millions of gp. I can see that someone who wants one bad enough will spend their plat on it. I may not feel it's worth it, but someone else might.

What makes me roll my eyes are the semi-useful items that aren't that great, or are not that hard to find being posted for way more than what identical items are already on the AH for. All these items are doing is taking up space and wasting everyone's time.

So if you want to post your +1 ghost touch light pick of slowburst for 100K plat go right ahead, just know that you'll be getting it back in the mail 3 days later.

[Falcone]

I understand the perception that some prices on the auctions are way too high. That perception is totally correct. The thing is, you can only see the prices for items still for sale, not those already sold. So here's the way I think of the items on the auction house: Every single item I can see is priced higher than someone has yet been willing to pay.

This is generally true on other virtual auction houses as well, but the benefit of ebay and others that we don't have in a direct way: you can see the Sell-prices for items. If you put an auction in your watchlist, you can see what it sells for in the end. Add that, and you might be able to see that the last 4 bloodstones sold for average buyouts of 1.2 million plat, with a high of 1.4. If you're thinking about buying or selling one, that gives you some pretty realistic information to guide your expectations. If all you can see is that there's one on the auction with a 1.5 million buyout, that's significantly less-useful information.

When all we can see are "not yet sold" prices, it's accurate (though incomplete) to perceive that those prices are too high for anyone who's seen them so far. That's why you can still see them!

[Riddikulus]

I understand the perception that some prices on the auctions are way too high. That perception is totally correct. The thing is, you can only see the prices for items still for sale, not those already sold.

While seeing sold prices might help to some extent, IMO it is an even bigger issue that there is no useful search function on the auction house.

You spend more time paging through items you don't want than anything else so sometimes you just grab something that's good enough while there might have been a lower priced item ten pages beyond.

If you could just do a keyword search for "bloodstone", "seeker", "vorpal" or whatever and get all of the items across catagories which have that attribute it would probably bring down AH prices all by itself due to the added visible competition. Not sure how to handle things like looking for +6 dexterity items, but just being able to narrow the search by "dexterity" would be a big help.

[Tanka]

Wrong on both accounts I hate the prices and have been here since the start and I have never had more then 200k pp it costs a bit to be a cleric, yes it might be easy to horde a lot of plat if you have lots of time to play. The price on the AH are insane but I dont think there should be artifical controls on it I just dont buy as there is really no item you have to have to be able to play, have fun and be an effective party member. and no item is worth 20 million gold

If you can't make more money than you spend in a given quest, you're doing it wrong.

Either it's bad party makeup or bad players, but any way you look at it, you're doing it wrong.

Elite is not necessary for a loot run. If you've got a a mediocre group, then you should consider doing it on Normal. You'll use less scrolls and you'll come out ahead in money.

[Cholera]

[...]
I get a good laugh almost every day going to the AH. someone thinks their item is totally sweet and posts it at some seriously crazy price thinking it'll sell (+3 frost burst daxe of pure good i think it was for 7million, please!).
[...]

I think it's important to remember that not every poster to the AH is honest. Many of the items (i.e.: keen scimitar disruption), to a relatively inexperienced eye, have the appearance of quality. Additionally, it is also important to remember that plat-farmers aren't spamming plat ads for the hell of it. Many players are actually buying it. So, connect the former with the latter and you end up with a wealthy segment of the player population ripe for exploitation.

[Stormanne]

Maybe its just me, but it seems that, while I never have enough plat on any one toon to buy anything "uber" off of the AH, I never have a problem with having the stuff I need. My main has effectively outfitted all of my alts with his pulls. My haggle bard sells any of the good stuff I pull for about 70% actual value. Heck, the only thing I've placed on the AH that comes to mind lately has been dragon scales and I know they've been flipped due to my low buyouts (usually sell in less than five minutes). Now, I haven't been here since lauch, close though, started playing in May of '06. I've seen the economy go from the LFM's offering good deals, to people putting up groups for nothing but trading (used to take place every Wednesday in the tent on the Adar server) to the Quijy Mart to the AH. They all have their pros and cons.

[McBadger]

I think we could sum up nicely by saying that if you realistically expect to be able to afford high end items off the AH you must also be adept at selling there as well. Some guys think up great builds, some guys play their heart out and amaze you, and some guys can turn dog turds into gold. It's a skill, and like any skill you have to practice and research. Right or wrong, for those of us who have done our homework and really enjoy working the market it's a slap in the face to hear people complain and try to play the plat farmer card.

[Vardak]

I think we could sum up nicely by saying that if you realistically expect to be able to afford high end items off the AH you must also be adept at selling there as well. Some guys think up great builds, some guys play their heart out and amaze you, and some guys can turn dog turds into gold. It's a skill, and like any skill you have to practice and research. Right or wrong, for those of us who have done our homework and really enjoy working the market it's a slap in the face to hear people complain and try to play the plat farmer card.

Ding Ding Ding .... we have a winner. I've been saying, trading is a draw to the game. Some like to PK, some like to RP, some what to be UBER, and Yes Virginia Some folks just want to be rich!

[jozzcooper2]

I think something that irritates folks about the auction house prices and brings forth the cries of platinum farmers and exploiters is when 40 identical items are listed, 30 within a certain range, 8 rather higher, and 2 at a bizarre, stupid price. Case in point: look at the tapestry listings. You'll find a complete set of twenty for as low as 130,000 gold. Keep looking and you'll see 15 for 300, 000...and 15 won't even set you up unless you already have some, in which case you probably don't need to buy them. Then...I see some guy has 20 for upwards of 500, 000 gold. What gives?
This is most noticeable in cases where there are a lot of the exact same item. Check out the +1 tomes, where I know I'll see that one or two people ignore every other listing and put theirs up for a million gold.
Someone in another forum remarked that these have the appearance of a platinum farmer who is hoping for a misclick by a buyer trying to choose the one after theirs.
I don't waste time complaining about what people want for their goods, but things like this just make me wonder.

[GlassCannon]

Trading on the AH is a skill, and one that takes undeniably vast amounts of free time.

The people who complain about the absurdity of the Auction House and its prices are usually Casual Gamers who get next to zero shot at the things they see posted.

What I find a bit off is +4 Handwraps(plain) posted for 2,000,000 gold with a 5,000,000 gold buyout. This happens EVERY HOUR with various silly and junk items as well as a +1 Vorpal Greataxe RR Halfling going for 15,000,000 gold with a 21,000,000 gold buyout.

If the clear and shocking stupidity weren't so frequent and plenteous on the Auction House, there would not be forum threads about it.



The constraints on the AH need to be set in place at a much stricter set of limitations. As it is, the player base is horribly mismanaging it.

[Hvymetal]

Monk items are going for crazy amounts right now, not that crazy mind you but there are a lot of people thinking that they can capitolize on this and are overestimating what this kind of stuff will go for. (While I on the other hand seemed to have underestimate it After decided I didn't like the way Monks played sold a Vorpal Kama of Backstabbing for like 200k PP I think, it sold pretty quick)

[Lorien_the_First_One]

ISomeone in another forum remarked that these have the appearance of a platinum farmer who is hoping for a misclick by a buyer trying to choose the one after theirs. .

Why do ppl always assume thats a plat farmer? Everything I've read on plat farmers indicates they work 8 or 12 hr shifts and get paid based on what they bring in. That means they get NOTHING from a 3 day post so why would they do it?

It's greedy/strategic players, not plat farmers.

[Hvymetal]

Plat farmers are the (insert terrorist network name here) of the gaming world, anything bad ever happens first thing I always see is "It's the plat farmers", followed closely by "The devs hate _____, cause they nerfed it".....

[Aesop]

Between Working, Sleeping, and the one two punch of Friends and Family... as well as my laid back game style... I don't quest as often as I could


My apparent lousy loot luck means that in those limited quests I don't pull high priced items hardly ever.


As such I don't usually havea alot of dinero to spend on the HIgh Ah Items like +2 Tomes, MFP, Skiver Tomes for my Wizard, anything

And while I'd like to be able to afford them taking the time away from the rest of my life and applying the energy to loot running just ain't gonna happen... so I suck up and deal


Aesop

[scampb]

We were running the VoNs last week on Level 7 alts. So we're going over what we need and someone says "Everyone got a Pink weapon?"

Sorry, stupid off topic, noob question. What is a pink weapon? I have seen them but don't what they are or what they do. Why do you need one for VON?