"I can't imagine how hard it will be for f2p crafters in the future."

Yeah it's been getting a little more difficult lately.
I'm kind of scared to think about the future.

brb, gonna copy paste my reply in the other thread.

EDIT: got it

"Yeah mission FSC gives insane rewards, but that only drives up the price of other markets, lest you leave CE alone. Because cr will be so abundant, all their precious UVs and such will collapse in the AH, which as bad as it sounds, is probably an alternative that those players can fix more easily on their own.

CR is F2P, so crash that system instead so that we ALL deal with the loss. That'll grab more attention IMO"

that's my view on how this could have been averted, or can be averted this time round. Since the conversion will remain the same, CR will inflate more, making the payouts worth less. At the same time, CE stays the same, so people, even the newer players, can still get more CE easier and such and yet those that have been playing have to make their own little crown sink.

Crown sink idea if this works --> Buy as many Deluxe supply packs as you can, resell to vendor, repeat.

Of course it wont actually happen, but it seems like a viable option

And yes im "in the moment" so I probably made flaws in the plan.

Just to address your concern in your edit, I think that as long as you have the means to play with real money, go for it. I fully support your desire to save time by supplementing or fully supplanting grinding with real money purchases. If you think grinding or however else you get crowns is time consuming and no longer fun, then the obvious solution is to find a way to make it fun for you.

(Btw, posting as an alt. The forum is on the fritz on this computer.)

In my opinion there are too many factors to accurately predict the price of highly desirable items. It mostly depends on who you want to sell to and your actual goal.

CR -- infinitely available, however time-consuming to acquire. Selling an item based on CR partially assumes that the buyer is a F2P or at least elevator pass player. To P2Ps, as the exchange rate rises, the item becomes cheaper to purchase with CE (or in effect real money). Selling at crowns means that you can sell to both kinds of players, and may even be desirable to P2Pers. The tradeoff is that you're left with cr, which in the market is less valuable but is consistent in value in the game itself.

CE -- for F2Ps or poorer P2Ps, CE is increasingly difficult to purchase. The entry rate is hovering around 7,400cr which translates to roughly 45 minutes - 1 hour or so of playing Clockworks or missions. To P2P, CE always remains constant (barring sales or promos).

Therefore, if you're looking to gain either cr or CE just to play the game (getting UVs, buying recipes, crafting, AH), crowns may be the better way to go. If you're looking to stockpile CE or have some reason to value CE over cr, then I would suggest CE.

To answer your last question, I would refer to what I just said above again. Selling at cr effectively means you're selling to F2P as well as P2P. If you base your price on the exchange rate of cr to CE, the cr price will rise as the value of cr drops. If you sell at CE, which is the exchange rate of CE to RLM (real life money), the price remains relatively constant.