Spiral Knights - Energy Prices are Unstable (40,000 CE reward for solution post #98)

Energy Prices are Unstable (40,000 CE reward for solution post #98)

267 replies [Last post]

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 00:52

Sinxeno

Legacy Username

The winner will be announced Wednesday, June 08th at 5:30 PM PST in Haven 14 south of the fountain.

I am offering all the currency on my account as a reward for solutions to these problems. See post 98 and 99 for details and post 91 for some inherent theorycrafting around a few examples of what is broken with the system. Plagiarizing will not be accepted.

Please post your "In Game Name" in your posts so that I know who is posting what in addition.

There will also be several small consolation prizes to posts that don't take the first place prize. Some consolation prizes will be items, crowns, and smaller amounts of crystal energy.

I have read and will continue to read every post for a couple weeks to narrow it down to the winners. I am pleased with the feedback so far and encourage people to keep up the good work.

Here is some food for thought while you compose your ideas:

What do you think about energy system is flawed and why do you think so? (maybe it isn't)
Do you think the interface of the energy system should be changed? How would you change it and how do you think it may alleviate the problem?
Do you think Three Rings should limit the power of the "big players" and if so, how should they limit it without ruining their own sense of fun?
What are people's thoughts on mini-games or gambling [what kind of gambling (UVs)] for crown sinks?

Remember to consider how the changes will effect each player and the business of Three Rings and Sega. They are here to provide a fun game in addition to running a business, so they cannot satisfy every player if it means that they cannot support their own costs. I also endorse any moderator or developer for feedback to see how they feel about the circumstances (I know it's a longshot). Maybe the game is working as they intended and does not require change, and I can respect that if that's how they feel.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 01:22

Sunless

This is a completely new and

This is a completely new and original topic of discussion. You would think someone would have brought it up before...

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 01:26

Letchi

Legacy Username

Plays with extra crown

Plays with extra crown profits made from selling CE*

Hmm*

I'm rather fine with that.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 01:32

Tive

lol

People complaining about crowns being undervalued when they are actually overvalued - priceless

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 02:57

Dirt

Legacy Username

Man, wouldn't it be whacky if

Man, wouldn't it be whacky if energy was somewhere around 20k? As if that could ever happen.

Oh, wait...

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 06:58

Tenkii

Manipulate them down to under

Manipulate them down to under 5k please ;V

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 07:37

Koloth

@ TenlkiOOO does NOT

@ Tenlki

OOO does NOT influence the energy market in any way. It is strickly controled by what players are willing to buy energy for and what other players are willing to sell them for. They have never on any of their games Y!PP or BH did anything to influence the actual price. If it is too much for you then don't buy them and wait until it is lower and stock up.

I would go into more but there are already some good guides to Crystal Energy and you, that describe how the system works and why OOO will never do anything to cap and/or lower prices for any reason let alone just because free loaders are feeling the pinch. If you want to influence the price down then get out a credit card, buy a ton of CE and then offer it for sell at the price you think it should be yourself. That is how the price will come down. It is all basic economics. When suppy is larger than demand the price comes down.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 07:45

ninjkabat

Legacy Username

Agh, why doesn't anyone study

Agh, why doesn't anyone study econ. Of course CE prices are going to climb: it's built into the system. One currency - crowns - is constantly undergoing inflation because when you play the game you earn more crowns that are created out of nowhere (monster drops). This is akin to a government printing money: the money you now hold is less valuable because everyone else has more of them too.

Also, when you play you're using up the other currency - CE. This means that the supply of CE in the whole Spiral World is constantly going down, and the supply only takes a leap up when people buy more CE with real cash, which really only happens on a scale to affect the CE market when they do a promotional event like the the Rose Regalia.

So, when you play, you're making one currency less rare and one currency more rare; of course the exchange rate between the two is going to keep shifting in one direction. Suck it up and just enjoy playing the game.

P.S. the one good note is that there is a theoretical limit, if we assume all players are making rational economic decisions. The limit is the point where it becomes unprofitable to purchase CE. However, as more players get to tier 3, where the levels give out quite a lot of money, this theoretical limit seems to be getting higher...

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 08:27

Senshi

Legacy Username

The Crystal Energy Market and

The Crystal Energy Market and You

@Tenlki : Anyone can manipulate prices down too, there are just fewer people interested in doing so right now. Just build up a line of undercut bids until people in a hurry for crowns start undercutting you, then remove your bids that have scrolled off the screen, rinse repeat.
Recommend not to push the offer to sell price of CE below 10% more than the offer to buy price though, or you may end up paying a lot of crowns to move the market. OTOH, if you maintain that gap, you can actually profit as you reclaim your CE on the other side of the market with a slight margin.

@ninjakbat: This is not correct; crowns are not infinitely growing and CE is not infinitely shrink, or the game would have a time when the market would truly crash (moving drastically up and down by ... oh... 10% ... is not a crash, that's normal market movement. Honest.)
Anyway, the price of CE depends on many things, but one of those is how many crowns are in circulation. Roughly speaking, crowns fountain from running the clockworks and sink into AH fees. The price of CE is probably rising as much from the drop in material and recipe prices as anything.

Lower prices yields lower fees, less crowns being taken out of circulation - crowns become worth less. Of course, there are dozens of other factors including people deliberately trying to pump up the price of CE, but that's a temporary effect.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 08:41

Tive

@ninjkabat

actually jelly king runs (just repeating the 2 stages) give the most crowns/time from my observations. and regular t3 stages barely give any more crowns than regular t2 stages, if at all. (at comparable depths of course).

(of course CE would have to hit well over 20k for the 2 jelly stages farming scenario to stop paying back the CE to run it...)

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 08:52

#10

keenmachlne

Legacy Username

OOO may not influence the

OOO may not influence the energy market at the moment, but at some point they're going to have to get involved if they want their game to survive. There are wealthy players who enjoy putting up walls of 100+ bids to buy energy at a time, ensuring that the market won't go below certain prices. I think it's stupid they're allowed to get away with this, but it doesn't particularly bother me because I'm well into t3 and can continue to profit with these increased energy prices. What this does do, however, is discourage new players from entering the game. Only so much profit can be made from 100 energy in t1. When new players are forced to pay so much for energy and not even be able to profit they're going to get frustrated with the game and quit. A constant influx of new players is what keeps games like this alive. Are energy prices at this point yet? Probably not, but if players are allowed to continue to manipulate the energy market like they are then the day will probably come.

I think the simplest fix is to place some sort of penalty on retracting bids after they've been left up for a certain amount of time. This wouldn't effect players who are simply trying to acquire energy at the best possible price but the players who put in hundreds of bids at a time to increase prices, only to retract them later and put a hundred more bids at even higher prices would be losing money in the process. Another potential solution is to simply place a cap on how many bids to buy energy one character/account/PC can have on the market at a time.. something like 5-10 bids at maximum that again, wouldn't handicap a player legitimately trying to play the game but would discourage these "trolls" from artificially increasing the price of energy.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 09:05

#11

Tive

@keenmachlne

Your "solution" (to a nonexistant problem, even) would only make the market react more strongly to intraday fluctuations in demand, as well as playerbase induced changes in demand, resulting in a more quickly rising CE price.

The solution to inflation of crowns can only be crown sinks as well as people purchasing CE. (=people who don't feel self sufficient on crowns alone=new players)

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 09:07

#12

Senshi

Legacy Username

Walls and penalties...

On the contrary, a penalty for retracting a bid will -severely- penalize players who are just trying to acquire energy. If I only have 14k crowns and want to buy a couple hundred energy, I put up a bid... and I get outbid and see the market is moving up. Now what? The player in this position now has to pay a penalty to relist and possibly get outbid again. A few crowns makes little difference to a market manipulator but a big difference to a player with little to spare trying to scrape together enough CE for some runs or for a crafting.

Now as for market walls, there are both high and low market walls up. There are 100+ offer market walls to stop the energy price from going to high. If there were -only- low market walls and not high, there'd be a problem, but that's not the case. Also, every player with crowns or CE to spare should consider contributing to the market walls. If you put bids in at 5-10% below today's energy cost and offers in at 5-10% above today's energy cost... if those offers are filled, you have a very good chance that the market will normalize again and let you cash in. If both your offers and bids are filled in a volatile market, you can make money while you sleep. Of course, it's not without some risk that the market will go up and -stay- up or go down and -stay- down, and you should place your walls further out to minimize risk but also minimize chances of actually filling your orders.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 09:42

#13

Drunkefox

Legacy Username

i just wnat to point out

The CE market is manipulated by players right? the price at which we are willing to sell and buy

but about for 1 sec what makes us want to buy more energy? because we need it for everything, and since OOO rised the CE prices on crafting now we need more energy rather than needing crowns as it used to be, so indirectly OOO is manipulating the CE market to rice its price on crowns and make buying CE more and more difficult...which is annoying and will make many many players buy CE with real cash instead....(convenient isnt it?)

now right after the patch in which crafting CE prices rised there was a lot of panic over the CE cost rising to unfordable levels thus many ppl (including me) bought CE out of panic and wit the idea of reselling it once the prises went up, causing it to actually drop. now that every1 is settled and calm again the rises are starting to rise, it was inevitable, and thus the old explanation of "the CE prices are higher but the recipes are way cheaper so if you use the money that was intended for the recipe it will cost you roughly the same"

lemme try and do the math *cost of recipe 25,000 + cost of CE to craft (8 * 5200) 40,800 = 66,600 CR to craft -excluding the 5000 cost to craft the item-

now the old way * recipe 45,000 + cost of crafting (4 * 4600) 18,400 = 63,400)

not too much of a change uh? wrong since you have to pay CE to use the elevators and everything else (which i didnt include since i dont feel like doing that much math) you will be paying more and more CR (assuming F2P player, CR are the source of your CE, so using CE meas using CR) making the runs less profitable, thus having to grind forever and ever after the end.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 09:47

#14

keenmachlne

Legacy Username

@senshi. Reread my post. I

@senshi. Reread my post. I suggested the penalty would be for retracting bids ONLY after they've been left up for a certain amount of time. If you place a bid and the price goes up you should be able to retract and try again penalty free. I agree completely and have no desire for that to be changed. This is designed to penalize the select few players who leave mass amounts of bids up for hours, even days, at a time, not the average player just trying to buy a couple hundred energy to make an item or run through a gate.

You're correct in that there are 2 types of walls, one, however, is both far more abundant and far easier to create.

Neither you or TiV addressed more favorable solution of simply capping how many bids you can have on the market at a given time. Is having a 10 bid cap going to inhibit you, me, or the average player from enjoying the game? I can't imagine it would.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 10:05

#15

Senshi

Legacy Username

Ah, well.

How much time? I like to put up bids in the hopes of the market going down overnight so I get discounted energy while I'm away from the game, that often has me leaving bids up for 24 hours or more. And if you can retract your bids within 48 hours, people will just refresh their walls. So either you hurt people looking for the best price or it's easily circumvented depending on the timeframe.

OTOH, a cap on how many bids you can have at once ... not so much of a problem. 10 bids might be a little low as long as it takes 800 CE just to craft one 5* item. 20 bids should be plenty for any regular playing purpose, that should let you craft a couple 5* items and still have CE left over for playing plenty.

Then again, large market walls can be market stabilizing (that is real market walls, not ones being watched and taken down and put back up to push prices around.) The current CE price is apparently just a handful of players pushing the market up sharply, but they can only push so far as market forces aren't pushing back hard enough to stop them.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 10:10

#16

Tive

@keenmachlne "Neither you or

@keenmachlne
"Neither you or TiV addressed more favorable solution of simply capping how many bids you can have on the market at a given time. Is having a 10 bid cap going to inhibit you, me, or the average player from enjoying the game? I can't imagine it would."

you suggest that the price should infinitely rise or fall in temporary demand spikes? herp derp
And the buy button would be a deadly tool with that change.

"You're correct in that there are 2 types of walls, one, however, is both far more abundant and far easier to create. " You mean CE can be purchased in reallife while crowns have to be farmed ingame? or you suggest crowns are still comperatively more abundant, hence undervalued?
Well either way, these walls are usually formed as responses to fluctuations within the day. (low CE demand in morning of my timezone, so I see the bottom walls at that time, high demand on evening, so I see the top walls at that time; because people anticipate to be able to sell at these points at different times of the day)

@Drunkefox
"since OOO rised the CE prices on crafting now we need more energy rather than needing crowns "
that's unlikely.
On average 7-10k+300ce were spent per 4->5* upgrade by the sheer amount of reselling. Now it's 30k+800ce. OOO should have the numbers prepatch and I also suspect they actually had to inject CE into the market in the past (market behaved rather insane for a couple of minutes at at least 2 times), so the whole binding change was made to strengthen the crown sink aspect of crafting.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 10:19

#17

SwordSaint

Legacy Username

u would need a decent bit of

u would need a decent bit of CE to manipulate the market. There is no incentive in doing that tho. in fact you probably loose money.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 10:33

#18

Senshi

Legacy Username

Uh...

There are people out there with CE measured in the 100's of thousands, but you only need CE in the tens of thousands to have a significant impact on the market, and there's -plenty- of profit to be made on it. Buy lots of CE when it's 4700 crowns per 100, drive the market up with moving bids, being careful not to acquire too much more CE when it's getting close to the maximum sustainable price, say 5300 crowns per 100 CE. Then sell off your accumulated CE while the market is still artificially high. For bonus points, use your last few thousand CE to drive the market -down- again so you can repurchase your CE to your original levels and have piles of crowns left in profit.

Of course you have to watch your margins and sell off a ton of CE at the inflated prices compared to CE bought and sold in moving-the-market tactics (although if you are careful you can make a few crowns even as you move the market).

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 11:43

#19

Sinxeno

Legacy Username

Volatile Market

I managed to raise the price of crystal energy from 4900 crowns per 100 energy to 5400 crowns per 100 energy in 10 minutes using more than one and a half million crowns. I am not alone when I say a lot of people have the potential buying power to simply overwhelm the system with how few bids are up sometimes. Although the price didn't cement at that current point, people had to wait a few hours before they could buy energy for a reasonable price again.

I am not asking for dire changes to the system, when it comes to the crystal energy auction interface. The real thing I am trying to point out is that prices are heavily influenced by artificial walls that are put up. If someone isn't carefully watching the market 24/7, they might not realize that someone put up 250 bids for 5200,5201,5202,5203,5204 (even though the previous last buy price was 5000). It is incredibly limiting to only see what the last bought price for energy was and only to see 5 potential prices to buy and sell at one time.

Essentially, you can do exactly what Senshi described in his post #18. The energy market can be treated like a more volatile sock market with minimal gains to be had on either side of the spectrum if you play your cards right. I wanted to see if manipulating the market was not only doable, but also potentially profitable. I was dismayed to find out that both are true, and I think one of the few solutions would be to show more than just 5 auction prices so you know if someone is actually trying to manipulate the price above the norm (or if it has become the new standard).

Also, if you limit the amount of auctions people put up, people can feasibly break down any barriers at that point by literally buying out the entire market at that point unless a few dedicated players stepped in to stop you. If one person has this much power to sway the energy market, imagine what an entire guild could do. That is my two cents.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 11:52

#20

Senshi

Legacy Username

Self-solving problem?

The more people that realize you can do this, the less easy it will become to do.

There are two ways to make money on the CE market:
a) Buy lots of a currency (gently) when the market is favorable (CE or crowns, whichever), then use 5-10% of your capital to force the market in the direction you want to go.

b) Assume other people are going to do (a) and divide your capital into speculative bids above and below the market, and let the 'type A' players do the tedious work of pushing the market while you take profits.

I encourage everyone to try making money in the market. The market is fragile now because there are not -enough- speculators and those speculators that are there have overwhelmingly large reserves compared to the average player. I'd love to see many more people making money on the market, and incidentally stabilizing it as they do.

(There's also c) ... when the gap between buy and sell is more than 2%, just buy ... and sell... at current trading values. This is tedious however, and doesn't make much money, and almost isn't worth mentioning.)

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 12:04

#21

Orangeo

I'm fine with the energy

I'm fine with the energy prices. If 100 CE cost's 5000, and I have the needed mat's, then I can sell a two star item for about 3000 crowns (4500 less than vendors) and break even. so If i sell it for 4000, i profit by around 1000. I can sell three star items that require a two star item to craft for around 16000 (19000 less than vendors) and break even, so if i sell it for 18000 I profit by 2000. That seems fair, as long as people raise the prices they sell things for in the auction house.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 12:16

#22

Senshi

Legacy Username

Crafting Prices...

You have to look at the prices people are working with when they are crafting with mist energy and considering it zero-value and buying only the mats. There will always be a substantial number of people with alt accounts crafting that way (though with many items not enough to keep the price down, I guess the 75 cent option was taken away early enough to not -totally- undercut the crafting market.)

Still, not all crafters are tied to energy prices, and that will have an effect. Because of the way equipment binds, though, you can't -play- on that Mist Energy with your regular gear so everyone is tied to energy prices for exploring the clockworks and crafting high-* items.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 12:24

#23

Drunkefox

Legacy Username

@TiVVV34

"On average 7-10k+300ce were spent per 4->5* upgrade by the sheer amount of reselling. Now it's 30k+800ce. OOO should have the numbers prepatch and I also suspect they actually had to inject CE into the market in the past (market behaved rather insane for a couple of minutes at at least 2 times), so the whole binding change was made to strengthen the crown sink aspect of crafting."

im srry but i cant quite understand what ur saying >.>

u saying that before the patch the money spent to get a 5* was 7-10k +300ce because u could buy the stuff premade and then just upgrade...? but now we are forced to buy the recipes and craft it ourselfs and thus its a crown sink since every1 has to but the recipes? (i hope i did understood)

in any case it is true that now there will be a lot of crown sink since evry1 has to buy their own recipes but the energy sink has also grown, so since for the value of a currency to change there must be another currency to compare it with, both currencies sink has grown at the same time so the value of both increased... in other words nothing happened right? but we can clearly see ingame that the cost to buy more energy is rising so imo the CE sink was larger, plus this changes made many players angry and most of them said they wouldnt buy any more CE with real cash thus the flow of CE that enters the game has decreased but the CR supply hasnt so CE is more rare and expensive in the long run.....

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 12:41

#24

Drunkefox

Legacy Username

a suggestion.....

make it so u cant post more than 10 offers....

i.e
you post 10 offers of 4900 CR, while this offers are still up you cannot make any more offers
if you get out bid u have the option to retreat ur offers and only then you can offer again
if your crowns gets sold you can post another 10 offers and so on and so forth.

this way there wont be massive 100-200 offers walls so the market can fluctuate properly
even if your the richest player there is, 1k CE should be enough for you to craft an item and go lvl it up in the clockworks, and if its not enough then you can post another 10 offers once those are sold.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 12:54

#25

Patito

please explain

I don't understand how 'market walls' are a bad thing or lead to higher prices. Can someone explain that to me? I don't see any indication that putting a system in place to hinder the creation of large blocks of bids will somehow magically lower the cost of CE. Is this all predicated on the assumption that market walls allow people to manipulate prices?

Also... regarding post #18... it's not nearly as simple as you indicate. There is a natural ceiling of sell orders for CE that you have to contend with. You have to wait for that ceiling to rise as you raise the buy order price. Market walls are also often seen in the sell order column. How are you people so sure that market walls aren't actually keeping the cost of energy down?

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 13:43

#26

Senshi

Legacy Username

@patito

It is absolutely that easy to manipulate the market price of CE... -provided- that you do so within a 20% or so margin of its natural price. Of course, if you go too far, natural market forces will kick in and push you back as other players see an opportunity for buying or selling.

And market walls mostly keep prices stable, but moving market walls can be used to push the price up and down. A block of 100 bids is much more likely to get other players to overbid or undercut to get a shot at their order being filled. Once you've got 'real' bids just past your wall, you put up another wall and when the first wall is out of the visible window you can take it down - it has done it's job which is to scare the market higher or lower.

Naturally a low enough market makes people more likely to run the clockworks for crowns than to sell off CE, and a high enough market pushes people into buying CE for cash or playing only on Mist Energy ... or just spending more time in the auction house raising funds with materials, but in any case, takes pressure off of CE prices until they return to more acceptable values. Those real market forces do strictly limit the price of CE. Which is why the sky isn't falling - yes you can easily push the price of CE around by 10% or 20% ... but it's hard to push it by 50% or more.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 14:14

#27

keenmachlne

Legacy Username

Patito, did you read

Patito, did you read Sinxeno's post? He detailed how, by himself, in TEN MINUTES, he was able to increase the price of CE by over 500 crowns using the market wall tactic.

There are absolutely no safeguards in place to stop people who are wealthy enough from manipulating the price of CE at their own will.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 18:56

#28

Tenkii

Proof (Screenshot)

At first, I thought he was just saying things, hence my first pseudo-request to "manipulate it" back to normal.

Kept reading on, and it makes sense.

But for a brief glimpse, I saw energy prices go from 5.1k down to 5k, and this is what I saw:

http://i.imgur.com/WkO3U.jpg

>__>

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 19:02

#29

Sunless

Indeed. It's an artificial

Indeed. It's an artificial wall. There's really nothing that can be done about it, community wise.

While on the developer side, any interference will automatically, excuse my language, cause a [scrap]-storm that would make the post-patch outrage seem like a drizzle. Of course, that's just subjective speculation, but I think it has an inkling of truth to it.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 19:08

#30

Providence

Legacy Username

People. During the preview,

People.
During the preview, 100 CE cost as much as 20,000 crowns.
Things can only get better now that there are more people playing and buying, adding more CE to be sold.

This spike you're seeing is probably people who want to fight Snarbolax or need to craft equipment associated with Snarbolax. Give it a few days and it should die down again. Note that there are a lot of people who want to buy at around the 5k level----that's how much energy is worth to them. Sell lower if you honestly think it's not worth that much.

Remember that in games, as in life, energy and energy prices are always both essential and volatile. You guys really shouldn't be surprised by this anymore.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 19:35

#31

Patito

if it's so easy...

... make it go down. It's not an artificial wall, if people can buy into it. More importantly, this problem will go away when one of two things happen... enough players start playing that walls of 200 evaporate in a minute naturally.... or the price is 'manipulated' to a point where people have a hard time outbidding them.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 19:46

#32

Sunless

It's not an artificial

It's not an artificial wall.

But it is. Its effectiveness and longevity doesn't change the fact it's a wall deliberately made to keep prices from dropping. Even if it was useless, it would still be an artificial market wall - just an ineffective one.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 02:37

#33

Raul

It's a artificial wall

It's a artificial wall designed to keep the prices at what THEY want, I heard people talking about it in game. It's a highly ingenious plan to get rich, too bad we have caught onto it and now they are making up excuses on why it's "legal" to do so, because it's a player controlled economy. What you are essentially doing is creating a fake monopoly price point, knock it off and knock off the damn arguing. Stop taking advantage of the system by doing this. I have seen it MANY, MANY, MANY, a time while playing. Honestly it should be a PERMABANNABLE offense.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:01

#34

Eeks

@tenlki > But for a brief

@tenlki
> But for a brief glimpse, I saw energy prices go from 5.1k down to 5k, and this is what I saw: http://i.imgur.com/WkO3U.jpg

There is really nothing trollish about that. I think that what people don't understand is that the right column (supply) is controlling the price on the left column. If you can sell 100CE for 5283 crowns, you end up with 5177 crowns after the 2% transaction fee. At this point you would be very dumb NOT to buy more CE @ 5k since you could make 177 crown profit on each transaction cycle assuming you could get orders through. Because of this it is really rare that you'll see the left prices fall more than 2% under the right column.

This is also the reason why a player with a large sum of money can push the prices way up. If you go on the trade tab you can basically buy as much energy as you can afford with the left button. This is eating orders off the top from the right column on the market tab which will raise the hard exchange rate. From here "fake" orders can be buffered in on the left side to meet the hard exchange. what you saw in the morning was most likely someone trying to be a hero and throwing their CE at the problem. Unfortunately it works both ways. If you want to push the price up you have to buffer orders on the left side and hope it holds. If you want to push the price down then you have to eat into the orders on the left and put a bunch of cheap offers on the right side. In the case of your screen shot, someone needed to make a "wall" of 5100 offers on the right side and hope that it stuck.

I think the issue here is that anyone with enough CE to both push the orders on the left down (buy selling on the market tab) and buffer 200+ orders on the right column (on the trade tab) has nothing to gain from doing so. It is unlikely that we'll ever see the exchange drop down outside of it happening naturally IMO.

BTW I think limiting the number of offers to buy on the left side could help a little but someone could still burn through the buy energy button on the trade tab to push it up and if offers are limited to sell on the market tab then nothing will be able to stop it from rising. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but people have been putting in huge "walls" at 5300 on the sell tab and that has been the only thing stopping the crown exchange from going over 5200

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:10

#35

Pawn

I agree.

I agree with Skype. It is gaming the system in a manner that infringes upon other players.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:18

#36

Pawn

It sucks.

People have all their wealth tied up in CE and when prices start to drop their wealth's value goes down. It becomes less effort to put up walls and force an artificially high value to their wealth than the effort it would take to simply sell high and buy low.

For everyone that believes this game runs on true economics, does it not seem a little strange to you that the wealthiest people in CE who don't need energy as badly choose to "buy high"? Of course, they aren't buying at all, they are simply increasing the value of what they already have by stating that they would pay this much for it.

It's really a bunch of B.S. The devs should step in and fix it somehow.

Also, with the starter pack coming out, CE prices should have dropped. In fact, they went down for about exactly 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Then artificial price walls were slammed into place and the climb marched on.

UNLESS SOMETHING IS DONE ABOUT THIS, CE PRICES WILL NEVER GO DOWN TO A NATURAL LEVEL OF EQUILIBRIUM.
AND MAY SIMPLY NEVER GO DOWN AGAIN AT ALL (UNTIL THIS IS FIXED).

p.s. To those who say this is not a real problem...if this many people think it is a problem of this magnitude then it IS a real problem.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:28

#37

Sunless

does it not seem a little

does it not seem a little strange to you that the wealthiest people in CE who don't need energy as badly choose to "buy high"?

Nope. Sounds like America.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:43

#38

Pawn

lol

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 04:01

#39

Bigindian

energy was 4900 a couple days

energy was 4900 a couple days ago, now is 5300... 400CE increase... wonder if the runs profit increased too...

I'm using my mist energy to hunt 2* UVs and then logout for the day...

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 04:49

#40

Senshi

Legacy Username

Hnhh...

@Providence : When gates cost 5 CE or -less-, the earnings per CE was totally different from post-beta, and when recipes cost 1/3rd what they do now and there was no auction house - there was virtually no crown sink at all. Beta prices are -completely- irrelevant, you might as well be talking about a different game. The CE market in the released game's economy has never been much higher than today.

@ the last half-dozen-posts - It's a completely open and uncontrolled market, anyone can influence it buy buying or not buying CE and selling or not selling CE at any given price. Posting large blocks of bids is natural market activity, not artificial. This is the nature of an open market system.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 04:55

#41

Tive

@Drunkefox

"in other words nothing happened right?"

OOO has the data so they probably made the Crownsink aspect stronger in crafting.

CE is increasing in cost because crowns were artificially deflated with the introduction of the AH*, when CE was still continually growing in value to find the place it balances with the average crown payout of the average player (the average player didn't reach "his" level of equip/depth yet). Of course this average player will get "stronger" the less new people join, and get "weaker" the more new players join.

*people had to stock up on crowns to be able to afford the good things on the AH. (personally I never had above 50k crowns on me before) and while bids are in place, the money isnt in the players' pockets either. (all of this is of course temporary, till everyone has an amount of crowns, solely for interchanging that amount with other people. it's not getting sunk (besides the 10% per auction))

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 04:59

#42

Shue-Donnym

now this is where i should put this

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg66ggT6ph1qcbctro1_400.gif
Makes me giggle every time.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 05:07

#43

Raul

@Senshi dude this has been

@Senshi dude this has been going on for a damn long while, throughout several updates and pre AH.

I've WATCHED it happen

They will post 100X and above bids for something and then a few sec/min later, after some more bids go in above what they were they drop it off the list completely. That is what we are talking about, not the ones that are x100 or higher but sit there for hour-days. Also some of them aren't even X100 anymore they have been lowering them because we caught onto their little plan.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 05:13

#44

Bigindian

@Senshi so the goal of this

@Senshi so the goal of this game is to have a open market simulator and sacrifice everything else for it?

I have nothing against people excited with speculation games but there are sites you can make that and even gain some skills for the real world:

http://vse.marketwatch.com/Game/Homepage.aspx

Why is this otherwise fun action game being stretched out for the sake of people who want to play little speculation games and by that affecting the ordinary player who wants to kill some monsters and craft some equips?

Is this the objective of the game? Cause if you have to sacrifice everything else for the holy untouchable real world market simulator then I think it is.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 05:24

#45

Tive

just my perspective

Let me tell you my fiew of the value of CE.

If I just feel like doing something with my mist energy but not really feel like playing,
A) I either craft and get free 8k+ (not counting the mats, cause I have em waste space in my inventory) with that from other players or
B) join jelly king stages to make flat 10k-15k of that 100mist (depending if I run the boss part or not). or perhaps a vanaduke run or 2.

I can do either of that for free on steam or for 5k crowns currently. both of it is rather profitable in a way.
And being able to get into jelly king parties isn't the hardest thing, so crown:ce price will correlate to it somehow. even if it's something basic like 80ce:7kcrowns because the majority of the farming players just run the full thing. It's still worth it after all, and a slight change of pace. From this I hope you see that it's good that there are players who can't run jelly king proficiently.
Especially for the people who can't farm jelly king proficiently.

CE:Crown price will allways correlate to what the mass of crown generating people get from their energy fueled runs on average, and how much CE they actually used
(in theory, if people only run on mist, they can afford to spend more crowns on CE then it actually pays out, because they only need the CE for crafting)

@tenlki
> But for a brief glimpse, I saw energy prices go from 5.1k down to 5k, and this is what I saw: http://i.imgur.com/WkO3U.jpg
that's probably someone who shares my view and feels CE is undervalued with the way things currently are. So he thinks it's a good deal to buy at 5k (heck I'd buy all your CE for 5k per 100 if you offered it to me right here; though I'm really low on ce AND crowns currently, lol)

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:25

#46

Shadoxlunik

"It is strickly controled by

"It is strickly controled by what players are willing to buy energy for and what other players are willing to sell them for."

Yes elsewhere have not stop to hear that the English people want up voluntarily the price , and it's up.

I do not know if this is the real reason, but the game is in the process of dying, and very very high speed...

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 12:57

#47

Algol-Sixty

I managed to raise the price

I managed to raise the price of crystal energy from 4900 crowns per 100 energy to 5400 crowns per 100 energy in 10 minutes using more than one and a half million crowns.

You can not have moved the energy market that much that quickly by just placing "market walls", someone would have had to clear out all the offers to sell CE from the right hand column. I don't know how much you spent on your fun, but it had a cost.

A "market wall" of one is often just as effective as a 100. I've seen the market one-up many many times. All that is happening is that the current bids are not at the real market clearing price. The solution to this problem is to add a bid increment to placing orders so that instead of moving by 1cr, it moves by 10crs every time someone wants to bid higher. That will cause the market to reach the correct clearing price much quicker, and it will reduce the buy/sell spread. The solution is *not* to add any sort of listing fee, that will just slow down the price adjustments.

As far as the debate on what the market prices is reaching, I still thing the solution to that is to create much larger material sinks and create additional crown sinks.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 15:13

#48

Senshi

Legacy Username

@iamah

No, that's not the goal of the game. You can buy CE for cash, collect crowns in the clockworks, and ignore the market entirely.
Or you can just buy your CE at the current price and treat it as a random price that is just there.
Nobody is forcing anyone to play the market game.

However, if you're interested in the market and watching it anyway, then go ahead and play on it and make some crowns. Market manipulation only works as well as it does because playing the market is -not- part of the game for more than a handful of players. When more people are speculating, the market will be less manipulable because market forces will be more strongly and immediately felt.

@wrs1864 ... I'm not sure market clearing price is all that relevant to why the price is manipulable. People have a very soft idea of what CE is worth... somewhere between 2000 crowns and 10,000 crowns. Manipulation works because people will still buy and sell roughly the same amount of CE anywhere in a 4500 - 5500 crown range. Only when it approaches one of those ends has it been correcting back towards the middle. It remains to be seen whether it's going to correct back towards the middle now or if the equilibrium price has actually risen. It's not a real commodity so its value is largely psychological anyway, inherently so, being based essentially on how much people are willing to grind for crowns (to buy CE, or instead of selling CE) before they choose an alternative.

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 15:47

#49

Jaouad

Legacy Username

I was really disgusted by the

I was really disgusted by the energy price at first, but then I figured that i had to adept to the prices. Playing less and use the AH more apropriatly.

Atm it's play less or pay to play. I might pay a little bit when i get the chance

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 20:03

#50

Bigindian

I spent more on this game

I spent more on this game than I spent on Guild Wars Trilogy. Except in Guild Wars I can play whenever I want, and there is more content than I can cover. It's becoming a repetitive, grind race. Game was worthy money but not so much. Living and learning.

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Energy Prices are Unstable (40,000 CE reward for solution post #98)