Do these guys work for OOTP?

[Quinta]

Originally Posted by chazzycat

It's more likely to be good old fashioned supply & demand than anything nefarious, IMO. This was bound to happen when they created the select missions using mostly brand new cards with very low number of cards in supply. Obviously the demand for FH toppers is sky high. Low supply + high demand = high prices, that's just basic economics.

Maybe. I think the phrase "just basic economics" here is not particularly accurate or helpful. There is nothing basic or particularly economic in markets within a game considering the people have widely varying interests, goals, and wealth.



If you pay attention to what actually happens in the AH you will see a lot of evidence of what can only be termed market manipulation (it is admittedly indirect evidence). That is what happens in "basic economics (real world) but is contrary to "basic economics" (theory/justification). The easiest way to see this is with not particularly valuable cards with a decent supply that seem to get cards bought up followed by higher prices. There is a lot of different motivations and things that happen in AH but ignoring the overwhelming amount of bad actors (or trying to do apologia) is not helpful. The problem is not "basic economics" but the problem is the buying of cards with the intent to sell at a higher price.



I will likely make a more formal post about a simple change in the next week or two that would, I propose, make things better without hurting anyone interested in the actual baseball game. That is, the buying of any card you already own should be eliminated. I cannot think of any baseball or real world need to include speculation purely on arbitrage. Please be clear I am not saying you cannot "own" more than one copy of a card--people who earn the card through packs/rewards should be able to have more than one and sell as they see fit. I will have more to say in a separate thread.

[chazzycat]

Sorry, but I can't agree. Saying that prices go up when demand is high and supply is low, is not "apologia". It's just how things work. By the way I'm not a card flipper (other than lives) so I don't really have skin in the game.

My comment was in response to the statement about CJ Cron card being so expensive due to "market manipulation". This card is needed for FH3 toppers, so I don't think it's really fair to write it off by saying "players have different goals" like there isn't universally high demand for the FH3 toppers creating upward price pressure on all components. Of course there is.

You may well be onto something from your observations...I'm not saying manipulation doesn't happen. It just doesn't strike me as the answer to "why is CJ Cron 100k?"

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Mikecouil

Market manipulation.

I bought a CJ Cron for 25K a week before the FH3 missions dropped. I finally completed the Colorado mission, because I wanted the topper Ichiro, and now I wish to sell my excess Cron card. The L10 is over 100K. I have listed it for 89K. Please explain to me how I am manipulating the market. Thank you.

[Ty Cobb]

"Market Manipulation" is the battle cry of those who slept through Econ 101 IMHFO.

[professor ape]

There are many of us who have a significant amount of points available with key cards that are in short supply. It is a tough recipe. Outside of the whales and the almost-whales, at this point there are a number of us F2P players who have finished all or most of the missions and are building banks. Right now I have over 600K banked with 170+ packs built up waiting for next week’s packable drop. It is a perfect scenario to drive inflation.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by Quinta

I will likely make a more formal post about a simple change in the next week or two that would, I propose, make things better without hurting anyone interested in the actual baseball game.

The 'actual baseball game' (and a superb one) is franchise mode. PT is a collectable card game with a baseball skin.

What you describe is 'part of the game'. Anyone can play if they play well enough. For example, compare myself with the professor. He started with $20 and I started with a lucky pull, and we both have spent no money since. We both, so far as I am aware, had only one large 'windfall' from a drop or tourney win. He has 600K PP and 170 unopened packs, and has completed all the missions to date. I have bugger all PP or packs and at current prices would need around 600K to complete the missions.

Why? Because he played the game that actually exists better than I did, by avoiding the mistakes and taking opportunities - including 'market manipulation' - that I either missed or was not in a position to do so. Had I the PP in reserve I would have bought as many of Selects mission cards as possible. I knew what would happen, and the opportunity to make a killing. But I didn't have the PP in reserve. There's nothing unfair about it. That's the game.. it's about collecting, dealing and selecting cards based on their numbers. Appropriate tactics might tip the balance between sustained success and intermittent failure; that's all.
.

[professor ape]

I guess my biggest things all year have been to only sell duplicates (with the rare exceptions described previously), to keep an eye out for cheap historical bronze and silver cards that I didn’t already own, and to focus attention on my Bronze tourney team. I’m not smart enough to do much more than that. ;-)

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by professor ape

I guess my biggest things all year have been to only sell duplicates (with the rare exceptions described previously), to keep an eye out for cheap historical bronze and silver cards that I didn’t already own, and to focus attention on my Bronze tourney team. I’m not smart enough to do much more than that. ;-)

The first was my biggest mistake. I grossly underestimated how 'easy' it would be to have FH3 completed on release, and hence sold a dozen or so relatively low value (at the time) cards to ensure I had a least enough of FH3 to stay afloat, gambling on where the best cards would be. Hence, while I had the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and so on I had to flog off PPs and TM2s from the likes of the Rockies and Rays to do it. Those cards are, of course, now more expensive to buy back, but while I had somewhat anticipated that I did NOT anticipate the accompanying rampant price inflation in the Selects missions for teams I had paid little attention to, which has made them unobtainable in the short term barring a major windfall in PP. I thought prices would go up, but not to the levels they did (50-70k).

Not a mistake I'll repeat.

[chazzycat]

Live spec is the force multiplier on your tourney income that isn't mentioned frequently enough here IMO.

Spamming tourneys is great, and proactively buying up historical cards you don't own already is very good strategy as well. You can just buy up a LOT more of them when you're making hundreds of thousands of PP each month. That is how you can make yourself a whale without hitting big on a lucky pack pull.