Been wanting to write this post for a very long time but couldn’t be bothered having to read all the flames from the fanboys so put it on hold. We all want the game to develop and improve so we can’t expect everything to remain static (we all know EU is dynamic ). When MA flooded the market with new weapons and armour the prices of a lot of old school gear plummeted. Irl new products are brought out which ofc affects the price of existing equipment. The difference is that you know things are being developed. Also, there are usually defined timescales for launches such as Christmas and as a consumer you can make an informed decision as to what you want to purchase and when (or not). You don’t see a ton of new products all affecting the same market hitting the shelves at the same time without any warning and I don’t remember seeing anything about this in any EU roadmap. I could have saved myself a ton of ped however I did get the benefit of using nice gear so I don’t regret my purchases but I do feel let down due to the way that things were done. I followed MAs advice, invested in my avatar and then got kicked in the face because of the way things were implemented. Whenever I think about it, it makes me angry so I need the collective wisdom of the forum to help me chill out. Any thoughts?
MA does not tell any player about any plans that might change the market of 1 or multiple items. This is so that every VU every player got equal chances in winning or losing, depending on the change. When it comes to investments, every investment is different for each player. One wants to invest in skills, the other in gear, and others just want to invest in deed. In VU's, new items drop really fast, that's something to do with the coding MA is unable to fix yet. (like when an event starts and the first two hours the UL/rare items have already been discovered.) Personally, when it comes to investing in my avatar, I like to only buy what I need - I often fail to but that is a different story -. I have seen a few years ago weapons that were selling for 50k+ that are now worth 20k. A big expense needs to be thought about, and same with RL, you have the change of losing it, having it stolen, being worth less over time, you name it. The same is with items in this game. So in the spirit of investing, I think it is different for each player, but in the end every one must realize MA is 90% in control of the market, and when you invest you have to think about whether MA will or will not be able to screw you over in the long run.
Annoyed: Go and bite the head off a chicken - I picked this one When i invest in my avatar my philosophy is - I wont get the money back. I am glad they flooded the market with eco stuff, because in the long run - we need more players and not just to keep the current stuff with high value just my 2 pecs tho
The key is to know when to invest and when to either give up on your investment to prevent too big losses or "acceptable" losses. Never buy new items they have hyper MU - Loss is guaranteed. Patience is key but also depends on each player how much they are willing to spend for that particular thing and what they call a acceptable loss. For instance I bought a trauma IV amp back when they first came out for +2.4k. It was kinda 50% impulse purchase and 50% investment, but at the time acceptable price for me. Then after a few months the lowest it got was +1250 however I knew it was too cheap for it, so I waited a bit more and then sold it for +2k that to me was acceptable loss, considering I bought it when it had quite a bit hyper MU. The hardest thing I've found is to control the impulse purchases. Because when I badly want something I usually have bad patience. As with anything both in RL and in virtual everything drops in value with time. So it's normal.
It used to be that you could invest in your avatar and expect returns, but I don't think it's that way anymore. Just play for fun, and expect your investments to be invalidated at any moment.
I voted "more bunny ears please", because well... bunnies. More OT: however frustrating those 'surprise' floods can be, it's still a part of the game. It can also be viewed as an opportunity to play the market. Like the people who had a storage full of UNL TT stuff, made a good investment when all TT's were turned into L. The offer gets 'bigger & better' both IRL and in-game. The difference is that here we don't have an ordinary market, but more something like an isolated country, ruled by an all powerful government. So yeah, maybe also a bit "unsurprised". Changes that are more objectionable to me, are things that impact the basics of the RCE. Like MA circumventing players by selling directly. Which changes the dynamics of the different professions interacting/trading among each other. Or the killing off of professions, like in Beauty or MF. Those players invested in their avatars by skilling those professions, but after changes made (either by mistake, on purpose, or by technical boo-boo) their time and ped have seemingly been invested in vain. Meh, investing in your avatar is for many of us probably only advisable up until the 'fun value'. ps. Don't bite off chicken's heads: unless those birdies smuggle weapons into EU, I claim that they're innocent!
I will start with the mention that I'm brand new to the game, so my vision may be quite off and only based on similarities with RL or other games. I think there are three type of purchases we can make. First there are the passive investments - where the main (and sometimes only) goal is to generate profit, either by passive income or for expecting to raise in value. And the example I can think about here are CLDs (which were a great investment - both value went up and revenue is considerably higher percentwise than AUDs), AUDs (pretty bad one considering value went slightly down and income is considerably lower percentwise than CLDs), land areas, or, if you want, the UL old TT items. Then there are investments as tools to allow one to generate profit by using them - for example really eco weapons, finders, faps, whatever, the space ships - equus, privateers, motherships, etc. On these, it is expected that the net value would go down over time, as new options are introduced, but at the very moment they allow you to generate profit. The most important factor here is to consider how much use you can make out of them and if this would over-ride the value decline. Now let's presume (fictive numbers) that there's a certain weapon that costs 10,000 PED and is 1% cheaper than whatever else you could use, and in, dunno, one year price would drop to 5,000 PED, generating a 5,000 PED lose. Now, if in that one year interval, you was able to save (from being 1% cheaper) more than 5,000 PED (or cycling more than 500,000 PED) then you ended up with a net profit, otherwise you ended up with a net lose. So I think these investments are recommended only to people that actually do play a lot, cycle a lot of money, though affording to cover the expected natural price decline. And my personal advice is to think conservative, assume a 50%+ drop in price per year, and just see if the numbers makes sense for your game style. And yeah, you said IRL you kinda know the times when you can expect new goodies, well, there's kinda the same here too - they can only happen on VUs pretty much, which are four times for year, and I'm quite sure that no item would be made obsolete the very next VU - so you can safely presume that you'll have between 6 and 12 months during which the item will pretty much retain most of its value. Finally, there are expenses, items which we know we would end up loosing money buying, but which we buy anyway either because they make our live easier, more entertaining or because they give us bragging rights. And here things are quite simple - just buy whatever you afford to lose without regretting much and don't count them as investments, but just as expenses, which is what they are in the first place - like a car IRL if you want. And that reminds me of an older friend who loved playing poker and who told me once: "Alex, I have two advises for you about poker. First is that if after 30 minutes of playing you didn't figured who's the fool from the table, just stand up and leave. Second is to never bet more than you can afford and always count the money you're going with as money you spent for an entertaining night; that way if you'll win, you'll be only happy, while if you'll lose, it would be no tragedy; and not only that, but by removing the pressure from you, you can also enjoy the night more and actually have fun and also don't let others read your emotions and guess your cards."
Some interesting comments. Just to clarify so people don't go off at a tangent: - The investments in my ava were not made for the purposes of profit. - I spent what was affordable for me and I did it with no expectation of ever recouping all the costs. My post was me letting off steam about how powerless we are to stop MA crashing any market when they feel like it and ped raping us.
well it's mindark we're talking about. you can always hope for something to improve or change, but they will high likely not fulfil your expectations. your expectations will slowly but steady decrease, until you're just happy when they don't break or nerf anything.
Investments are what you make of them. just because people ask for particular prices, doesn't make it worth that much I'm probably stuck with the imk2.. but I am okay with that.. not that I want to sell it anyway. The way I look at it.. I locked in a lucky ath hit and la profits into a gun I can have for the rest of my eu career.
In the real world, we don't know if a god exists. In the virtual world, we do! And He maketh and He breaketh as He sees fit. We all signed up for it willfully (I hope).
