It seems it's not easy to have a full T1 party all the way. New players run out of energy before hitting later stages and I've seen a post complaining nobody would join a late T1 run, as in a bug or something.

The market CAN and IS being manipulated. It's time for this to stop.

Just don't expect to see CE drop in price when there's more demand than supply for it at a given pricepoint.. (nor the reverse; crowns could be highly desirable at the current pricepoint, if the majority of the playerbase were new)

Aside from that it might be manipulated, but I couldn't tell considering I don't even play anymore.
(if I were still playing though, I'd buy 100 at 10k crowns or more if I had to, just to have reserves and because I have no use for Crowns)

edit: First time I've heard of a claim that running in a party gives more crowns. lol

I agree wholeheartedly that the increase in CE prices is NOT due to market manipulation. Those that claim market manipulation don't understand economics and the relative value of currencies in this game.

The market can only be manipulated if there is some sort of cartel-like agreement between ALL players who sell energy, an implausible scenario. Otherwise, the price is influenced by the supply and demand for CE and crowns (the relative value of each). It's a free market with a 2% tax on transactions. Plain and simple.

I disagree with the assertion that Snorbalax is causing the increase in CE. The reason I believe prices are increasing is twofold.

Firstly, the Auction House patch that increased crafting costs as well as making 4* and higher items bound on pickup. This I believe caused a gradual fixed increase in the cost of CE and will not be a problem in the long run (as in, it will not cause forever increasing costs of CE)

Secondly, the value of crowns decreases drastically as players reach endgame. This, I believe, is the BIG problem. Besides trading directly amongst players, how can crowns be spent? Three ways -- Buying CE, Buying recipes, and paying AH fees. To a player who already has 5* gear and no longer needs recipes or various stuff from the AH, the only real use for crowns is buying CE.
Thus, as a player reaches endgame, his value for crowns goes down. His value for CE remains the same; however, his RELATIVE value for CE (compared to crowns) goes up. Thus he buys more CE, and he pays more crowns to do it. As more and more people reach endgame (meaning as the game gets older), more players will spend a larger percentage of their crowns on CE, because there's no other real use for it.

Thus the price of CE will forever go upward unless there is a game mechanics change to address it.

The solution?
Endgame crown sinks.

Rotfl, yes, back up yourself by anecdotal evidence and even go as far as insulting people, gg.

Eradicats, you have to consider that not all iRL concepts are easily transferable to this game for the simple fact that the parameters between the two are vastly different. People are trying to maximize profits, yes, but you're underestimating the amount that the rich people can influence the direction of the market in this game. It's far easier to charge the price up because it comes at almost no cost to the perpetrators. In the common example that I used in my previous post, say that someone posts 100 buys at a certain price, forcing people to pay more for the same amount of CE, unless they're willing to wait close to forever to see their prices met. They might lose a slight bit of crowns in the process but not enough to halt their plans at all. Keep in mind that there are several people who do this, perhaps in concert, or perhaps not. Either way, each of their individual impacts have a profound effect on everyone and there is no question about that.

The only possible way I can see this changing is, as you said in your previous post, to make crowns more meaningful.

I see your point, Zeitgeist. Rich endgame players have a disproportionate influence compared to the majority, and thus can control the price because they know that they own a large portion of a highly desirable market.

However, I don't think that most of our rage should be directed at these people (maybe just a little of it...). A solution must come from the developers, and it seems we agree that some nice endgame crown sinks is the best way to fix the CE market.

Since the Auction House, running solo has become more profitable for me than in teams. I make about the same crowns either way, but running solo means I get all the materials, so I can sell more materials.

I agree with those who are spotting deliberate market manipulation. I suspect it's people who buy CE with real-world currency - and the Starter Pack sure makes that attractive - who then want to sell it for as much as possible. So, they sell a few hundred of their - what is it, 7900 for $20? - and then, as we've observed, they make buy offers at about 50, 100, 200 crowns above the top, and then they increment it by 1 until the lower offers fall below the cut. Regular Schmoes come along, wanting to just keep playing right now (running from D1 to D18 takes at least 140 energy, there's your "demand"), so they do the usual "add 1 to top buy offer" thing, and then the next market manipulator adds another 100 or so on top of THAT.

It really doesn't take much to get the market to "stabilize" at the higher prices they set. Once they've made it look for a few minutes like That's Just The Way It Is, enter the folks who are Almost To Emberlight! and can't bear the thought of giving up now and starting over from D9 tomorrow, and there's enough more people buying at the new prices to make it worth pushing the market again.

I think the developers could help curb this by allowing more rows of buy offers to be visible, so that market manipulators' actions were more transparent. They'd have to add 1 for that many more rows to push the lower-priced stuff out of view, and 20 rows of single buy offers at 1 crown increments may look more suspicious than 4. Another possibility is to make it impossible to top the current top buy offer by more than 1. That would at least require more crowns to significantly push the buys up.

I try to do my bit; I try to do single Tier runs, and then offer to buy CE at about 200 below the current market, and then I log off. But five days later nothing's come through because the prices simply aren't coming down. So if I want to save up CE at all (800 for that Vog Cub Cap!), I have to become yet another datapoint for those of you claiming "Well, clearly there's a demand for it at these prices; stop whining, you have no one to blame but yourself for being willing to buy it!"

Or else I need to pay actual money. Which may well be why the developers aren't going to be interested in countering the trend of deliberate market manipulation.

Explaining (respectingly making hypotheses on) why its happening is a fine thing for sure; but that doesn't bring any solution. I just stopped playing for a day, the average cost took another 10% increase.

i dont think they are that afraid of uproars considering they went through with the patch that led to the rage quitting of a good portion of players

It's far easier to charge the price up because it comes at almost no cost to the perpetrators.

The market can be pushed up at almost no cost because the market has been generally rising since the game went public and there is nothing to indicate that the market has reached the equilibrium point yet. I've watched the market, and most of the time, the "market wall" is a bid of less than 10 units, people bid up, and up and up because no one is buying and forcing it down. I've also seen market walls start at 10 units and gradually grow over a half hour to be 200+ units, and then later see the way torn down as the individual orders march right through it.

Stop trying to blame the problems with the game (no reason to buy crowns) on bogeymen/trolls.

Have you guys seen the the Barbarous Thorn Shield recipes going for 60K+ in the auction house? There's a set of people spending like crazy to get the new gear. This whole market spike is the same as it has been the last four times I've seen it when new gear gets into the game. The player behavior in the energy market has always been the same, don't assume that each block is actually the same person or even a single person. There's a rough two month cycle to these events.

The market in this game tends to trend to the most common and most profitable run. Do not be surprised when the market hits the ~8K range before it's at equilibrium again; at which point it will be difficult to manipulate upwards since there just isn't enough Crowns earned per unit Mist energy. Also, expect a bump again as the piercing update comes through and half the players realize they want new armor to deal with a fresh threat.

And don't worry. Next month everyone will probably complain about how the market has crashed. I love it when the market crashes, I bag so much energy for pennies. Until then, I just watch the for the boom and bust.

the fact that T1 players are making more and more crowns its also a problem cus the cr currency is being devaluated since recipe prices are so low the cr sink was decreased and now CE costs are increased so CE sink is greater

I find it hilarious how many people come out trying to "disprove" market manipulation, when there are dozens of people who have explained how to do, admitted to doing it, and tested it themselves.

I have yet to hear anyone claim that they have significantly lowered the price of CE. You are like the guy who claims that throwing a bucket of water into the ocean is what made the ocean wet. Making the price of CE rise is trivial and can be done just effectively with market "walls" of 1 order as 100.

>And there's no doubt it was a push by one manipulator, moving the same large block of 216 offers (well, the exact number changed from start to end, whenever his wall got nibbled at, but it was still the same number of offers taken down and put up again).

It wasn't just one manipulator. I can confirm that there was more than one person involved in what happened last night. The people involved probably sold 5-10k CE pushing the wall down so I'm not really sure how effective doing this to was to "[buy] however much CE [they] wanted to acquire at an artificially low price". I somehow doubt that they were able to buy back all the CE they used to push the wall down. There were orders being buffered downward at the same time that the person(s) responsible for the 200 block prepared to move the block down. Each time the block was moved, somebody else was selling CE to the offers to buy (I estimate 20-50 offers everytime) to push the offers to buy down.

When the person moving the 200 block pulled his block, all the buffer between 6900 and 6600 vanished. The price price to sell came back to 6900 almost immediately and the offers to buy began to outbid each other by 20-50 and came back up to 6800 in less than 10 minutes. I find it highly unlikely that they would have been able to buy back all the CE they used to move the wall down.

When they finally stopped and pulled the walls completely, I noticed that it had become way too risky to keep pushing the price down. Orders to buy at 6600 were coming in fast as people noticed the manipulation and wanted to take advantage of it. If the wall was kept up past the point where it got pulled, it would've basically been losing 100 crowns per offer sold even if the buy prices stayed stable.