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Flux Crystal Market is being manipulated.


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#1 ss_jalex

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 06:02

I just looked and saw the following:
5,555 [Credits] 25 [Flux Crystals] 03:38 18/Jan/2009
...
5,500 [Credits] 50 [Flux Crystals] 03:37 18/Jan/2009

These were not the top offering prices but whoever has made them is manipulating the market and forcing the crystal price artificially higher.
The 3:37 entry would need to have 275,000 credits to be legit. Only the 16 highest players (out of 199,725 total players) even have that many credits. I hope someone from hunted cow sees this. I don't think it is fair for 99.9% of the players of this game to be paying higher credit prices than is actually realistic.
I think that if you make an offer to buy crystal, it should come out of your pocket until the offer is met, you cancel it, or it times out. No offer should be accepted if you don't have the gold to back it up. I think these two changes could get rid of fraud.

#2 RebornJedi

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 06:37

HCS needs to bring in some gold sinks BEFORE the price rises to much to have a good, natural rise instead of having top players being able to control the marketplace(not that they are, its most likely that theres nothing really important to spend gold on/sell fsp for gold for) but the top players have nothing to really spend credits on. forging, guild structures, and...inventing. not alot of things to spend gold on. they need to bring in more structures like stamina for gain, max stamina, enhancement to raise stats for pvp only, inventing structure to help with inventing or extracting. there needs to be a crystal draw where you pay credits to have a chance to win 5+ crystals. have a couple draws, say 10+ a day. that brings in crystals in the game and takes out credits. lotterys for crystals are good to have to help keep gold worth something.

 


#3 ss_loudog

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 06:40

I don't see what you have a problem with... What do you think Crystals and credits should be worth? Just because HCS set selling 1 FC for 1000 crystals doesn't make that the set price. The Crystal trading is just that, trading. I see the market value going even higher! Probably 10,000/FC. So sell your gold now. It's the only thing readily available in the game. You get it for just killing critters anyway and everyone else needs to sell at or near the same price. Only fluctuations you will see are when new content arrives and players need to use gold for various things like FFing, buying shop goods etc.

Wake up! It ain't that bad...

My two...

#4 ss_cyan

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 10:11

Edit, I just re-looked at the way the market works and reread the original post and now I'm confused.

If the market is being 'fiddled' with, rather than buyers playing a silly game to get the flux crystals first, then surely, eventually, people are going to stop requesting to buy there. Who wants to pay 10k + for something that is potentially easier to comeby elsewhere?

It would be nice to see where these requests are coming from to see if it is manipulation or just general interest.

#5 ss_jalex

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 15:50

The problem is: naked short selling.

Here's a scenario: I have 50 crystals and 10,000 credits. Say the market price is 1000 credits/crystal. But I put in an order to buy 50 crystals at 5000 credits. This costs me 2500 credits. Before I have to fill the request, someone else sees it and offers to sell a couple of crystals for 5100. Then somebody else raises the price and so on and so on. Eventually I can sell my crystals for 6050 credits apiece and earn a net profit of 300,000 credits rather than the 49,500 credits I would have earned selling them for 1000 each. In short, naked short selling is a benefit when you have something in demand. Offer to buy with your baseline price that you want to sell for, and then wait to sell until you can make the most profit.

I guess "whatever the market will bear" is a good phrase here, but if you are an average player, which I would assume most of us are, you will find it difficult to compete in a manipulated environment. It's even worse if most people don't realize that the market is being manipulated (which is what short sellers count on), because they will unknowingly contribute to the inflation. Folks that actually _have_ the resource (and are not naked short selling) don't see any problem as the values of their assets keep rising and rising.

I'm not an economist by trade and kinda had a hard time putting my arms around the phrase "naked short selling" when hearing it tossed around the real world but I get it now.

#6 ecolitan

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 16:07

This isn't naked short selling. This is covered short selling. But that aside, short selling only works (naked or covered) if the value of the asset will fall. Now, will the value of credits fall? Of course, because there is nothing to use them on. Good structures and special section of the TH are just waiting for ... something.

#7 centurion

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 16:14

they did make it so that you cannot offer with CR that you do not have, so to offer 50FC at 5000, you need 250000CR on hand. but if you do have that, you could cause short term rise in price if you do it when people are sublevelling. (no content) with new content, my guess is that you will sell all your FC at 5000. (at least now)

Generally it has been following about 100 cr/levels (right now, we have 50 levels) probably not exactly linear though and depends upon how many are sublevelling. day of new content, the price do drop fair amount. also, time of day makes a difference. it is very cyclical . so, if you want to play the CM market. go for it. :)

#8 RebornJedi

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 17:30

HCS needs to bring in some gold sinks BEFORE the price rises to much to have a good, natural rise instead of having top players being able to control the marketplace(not that they are, its most likely that theres nothing really important to spend gold on/sell fsp for gold for) but the top players have nothing to really spend credits on. forging, guild structures, and...inventing. not alot of things to spend gold on. they need to bring in more structures like stamina for gain, max stamina, enhancement to raise stats for pvp only, inventing structure to help with inventing or extracting. there needs to be a crystal draw where you pay credits to have a chance to win 5+ crystals. have a couple draws, say 10+ a day. that brings in crystals in the game and takes out credits. lotterys for crystals are good to have to help keep gold worth something.


whoa man, get your game terms right.

high flux prices are great. i can get more credits for my flux. very handy when the credits i gain from hunting leaves me with a loss from repairing... like now :|


lol i was never left with a loss from hunting thru ANY of the levels. more credits goes into the game then leaves it. theres really nothing worth buying with credits besides upgrading equipment and guild structures. im just suggesting ways to get credits out of the game, helps keep a slow gradual rise in crystal worth which im all for rising prices but whats the point of getting more credits for your crystals if theres really nothing worth buying with credits. let the crystals be cheap now for those players who play for free so its easier to upgrade and have fun, thus they will continue to play and the community will grow. they should of started this game with a crystal lottery or something. someway to spend credits for a chance to win some crystals.

 


#9 centurion

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 18:22

if you belong to a decent faction, you are already getting free buffs and decent ff'd equipment. Since higher levels earn more CR/mob the price of FC will continue to go up. if you are at top levels, amount of FC/day that you can earn has not changed much from early days of this game. until there is huge credit sink, I doubt we will see much change.


if you are sublevelling, you can go into a situation where earning is less than repair. if you are not sublevelling, this never happens.

#10 ss_dreevin

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 23:12

Sorry about some of the players luck but the farther the levels go the higher everything is. The result is the lower level players have a harder time paying the price for some of the gear and flux in the game. I wish they would have kept it as hard as it was. I do not play a game to have everything handed to me on a platter easy, I want to have to work for it. I am at level 50 and gear is more expensive forging it is more expensive repairing it is more expensive. So as a result flux crystals are going to keep going up in value to because of this. On fallen sword at one time fsp was not 50k from the cows and 100k+ on the market. It may be time to have the cows raise the price they pay out for flux not to try and make others lower the price they are paying for it.

#11 RebornJedi

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 23:19

Sorry about some of the players luck but the farther the levels go the higher everything is. The result is the lower level players have a harder time paying the price for some of the gear and flux in the game. I wish they would have kept it as hard as it was. I do not play a game to have everything handed to me on a platter easy, I want to have to work for it. I am at level 50 and gear is more expensive forging it is more expensive repairing it is more expensive. So as a result flux crystals are going to keep going up in value to because of this. On fallen sword at one time fsp was not 50k from the cows and 100k+ on the market. It may be time to have the cows raise the price they pay out for flux not to try and make others lower the price they are paying for it.


prices are going up on crystals because of the lack of crystals coming in, amount of gold coming into the game, lack of things to spend gold on, and amount of players requesting for crystals is far greater then those selling them, so the price of the requests will rise because no one is selling. these factors are what really determines the price of the crystals. HCS controls most of it.

 


#12 centurion

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Posted 17 January 2009 - 23:40

i remember selling crystals for 1k, but with CM working right, there is no need for them to offer the option of 1k/fc i doubt it will ever go down to 1k again. letting the market decide is good way.

#13 ss_barmuka

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Posted 18 January 2009 - 02:26

this is the action of 2 players no more. 1 player is lvl 23 and the other lvl 40 both are the only 2 who have that kind of cash on hand. i guess since they cant seem to lvl up they decided to ruin the flux market?

#14 ss_4xbig

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Posted 18 January 2009 - 06:20

Yes It may be manipulated because a high faction can take credits out of the faction, place an order for 55 or so flux, then deposit the credits back into the faction and not really want to buy the flux, therefore you can make the price higher sell some flux get the higher price for selling, then you no longer have to buy the flux for the high price because the credits are no longer avalible to buy the flux. But be able to sell your flux for a high price.

#15 ss_barmuka

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Posted 18 January 2009 - 06:57

i think maybe that HCS should limit individuals to 50 fc/day trading. bcuz then those 2 players(who are not even anywhere near cap lvl) can like idk go and um lvl up now?

#16 ss_guns4hire

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Posted 18 January 2009 - 08:59

Short selling could be halted in its tracks if people exchanged their crystals for credits at the lower prices in the market. Unfortunately this would mean exchanging your crystals for less than the market worth which is less than appealing for most.
Also perhaps crystals are undervalued anyway? Gold is infinite in supply, crystals are not, the price will continue to rise - simply supply and demand dictates that.
If the credits that enemies dropped was set at a maximum amount (eg 50credits) regardless of your level then the value of crystals would stabilize and settle. This would also slow the speed of leveling etc as it takes longer to afford objects, pay for upgrading etc... Not sure what people think of that idea...


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