What happened

[von_wilhelm]

The market has become a ghost town since the new missions.

[Badnewsgoonies]

Market seems ok to me but I know what you mean. By releasing the new missions and diamond packs at the exact same time there just wasn’t any perfect points left for auction. People were buying diamond packs (because they had value and also super fun imo) instead of using the points on auction and then flooding the auction with even more cards from those packs.

Prices seemed to drop but that didn’t matter nobody was buying anyways due to the low PP left. And on top of that with the new missions out that was even more points being spent elsewhere (except for the few mission cards that got a super boost in price). And the auction house was flooded with even more cards now from missions lol.

I think in a couple of weeks it’ll reverate back to normal. If you were looking to buy and had saved a bunch of pp you were in heaven. I was not one of the lucky ones :/

[BigRed75]

Yeah 'twas a good time. I now have just two cards left to finish off the White Sox missions.

[Ty Cobb]

I thought it was just me. Prices have become staggeringly idiotic as well. By that, I'm not talking about the inflation (though that also bugs me because I'm cheap) but the sheer number of dolts who think I'll spend 5k on an iron card to complete a standard pack mission. No, sir...I won't...and I recommend nobody else do it either. Just buy the pack, cut out the middleman, and watch these AHAH choke on their great big piles of points.

I'm beginning to believe it's Freudian with them anyway.

[HiDesertAce]

Originally Posted by Badnewsgoonies

People were buying diamond packs (because they had value and also super fun imo) instead of using the points on auction and then flooding the auction with even more cards from those packs.

/

You are in a very small minority if you think diamond packs have value compared to buying 20 standard packs for the same amount of PP.



They do not imo.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by HiDesertAce

You are in a very small minority if you think diamond packs have value compared to buying 20 standard packs for the same amount of PP.



They do not imo.

I'm inclined to agree with this, except I remember a while back when the first diamond pack special was released, developers mentioned that they were going for positive EV according to their numbers. No idea if that's still true, I suspect probably not, but "random diamond player" is a reasonably enticing offer. I still might favor the standard packs but I bet it's closer than you'd think.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by HiDesertAce

You are in a very small minority if you think diamond packs have value compared to buying 20 standard packs for the same amount of PP.



They do not imo.

It may not be the case anymore, but the first time there were diamond packs released, the developers stated that according to their number, overall the packs brought in more value than their cost. The reason was due to the lower number of diamond players and the higher value of those diamond players. Pulling one pack or even a few might net you a loss, but over a larger spread (as shown by their all pack analysis), the odds worked out against "the house". With the addition of more diamonds and the overall reduction of prices since that original diamond pack release, the odds may be back in favor of the house by now.

[Argonaut]

It's definitely a buyer's market. It's taken me days and days to sell some Diamond+ cards, and I still have at least 1 significant asset on the market for all my teams waiting to be sold.

On the other hand, I've also purchased John Henry Lloyd and SE George Sisler at screaming deals way below market value. But I need my other cards to sell before I take advantage of any other deals, a Catch-22 situation.

What we're experiencing now is classic market deflation. Taxes are very deflationary, and now that a lot of people are dealing only in high-value cards, the 10% tax is taking a heck of a lot of PP out of the market permanently. Add in very slow PP earning from achievements and not as much real cash coming into the game, and you have a recipe for continued deflation.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

It's definitely a buyer's market. It's taken me days and days to sell some Diamond+ cards, and I still have at least 1 significant asset on the market for all my teams waiting to be sold.

On the other hand, I've also purchased John Henry Lloyd and SE George Sisler at screaming deals way below market value. But I need my other cards to sell before I take advantage of any other deals, a Catch-22 situation.

What we're experiencing now is classic market deflation. Taxes are very deflationary, and now that a lot of people are dealing only in high-value cards, the 10% tax is taking a heck of a lot of PP out of the market permanently. Add in very slow PP earning from achievements and not as much real cash coming into the game, and you have a recipe for continued deflation.

I don't think we're experiencing deflation, just a drop in demand. Purchased PP and passive PP earnings far outpace AH tax.

[Argonaut]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

I don't think we're experiencing deflation, just a drop in demand. Purchased PP and passive PP earnings far outpace AH tax.

We don't know the exact levels of purchased/passive/taxed PP. But I wager a lot of that passive PP is being accumulated on ghost teams, never to be used again. The active players are definitely experiencing deflation, at least in the last couple weeks. Prices are down, and a lot of cards are not selling even at reasonable prices.

[Orcin]

Supply is still high from the diamond pack special. Demand is down because fewer people are actively building their teams and chasing missions. Summer is over, baseball season is in the home stretch, football season has begun, and the game has been out for quite a while. Whales are no longer fighting over every good card on the market and FTP players just don't have the points in enough quantity to suck up the excess supply.

Supply is up, demand is down, and prices go down. Simple economics.

[Badnewsgoonies]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Supply is still high from the diamond pack special. Demand is down because fewer people are actively building their teams and chasing missions. Summer is over, baseball season is in the home stretch, football season has begun, and the game has been out for quite a while. Whales are no longer fighting over every good card on the market and FTP players just don't have the points in enough quantity to suck up the excess supply.

Supply is up, demand is down, and prices go down. Simple economics.

Well that’s fine prices going down are not a bad thing whatsoever... the problem was there are less buyers atm and my guess is it’s due to the perfect points being spent on diamond packs and obviously new missions.

But it’s not truely a problem after a couple of weeks the points will build up again.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

We don't know the exact levels of purchased/passive/taxed PP. But I wager a lot of that passive PP is being accumulated on ghost teams, never to be used again. The active players are definitely experiencing deflation, at least in the last couple weeks. Prices are down, and a lot of cards are not selling even at reasonable prices.

Well, ghost teams also totally irrelevant because they don't contribute to AH tax.

It's important not to confuse deflation due to lack of demand with deflation due decreased available currency. Lots of players have good cards now, so the cards that went for 100k before just don't have the same market. The PP spending isn't just drying up, it could just be put elsewhere. For example, the diamond pack special and the recently released collections mean more PP went to lower rarities and to diamond packs, which also increased the supply, etc. People who aren't patient enough to spend 40k on players, or people who are bored and want some excitement after realizing their team has stagnated at a level, are more likely to blow points on card packs.

Card prices tend to decrease over time because the initial versions get bought at a premium by those who are willing to overspend for a more exclusive copy. Later, as more supply is introduced, prices decrease. Supply is being offered at a roughly constant rate, but demand is falling; there are not enough new teams who want all these medium to upper tier diamonds to match their supply. These things happen in virtually every Ultimate Team game at around this point in their lifecycle.

Market trends due to supply and demand, especially on the timescale of a couple weeks, are MUCH more impactful than AH tax. Obviously AH tax does something to the economy, and we'd see price inflation without it over time. But I doubt AH tax is the reason why we're seeing a price decrease on high-ish diamonds in the short term, especially with something as short term as a month or few weeks.

[Badnewsgoonies]

Totally agree with the guy above auction house tax servers it’s propose and whatever effect it has on the supply/demand is obviously consistent from start to finish. It’s not randomly going to effect things now in the 23rd or whatever week

[Argonaut]

Originally Posted by Badnewsgoonies

Totally agree with the guy above auction house tax servers it’s propose and whatever effect it has on the supply/demand is obviously consistent from start to finish. It’s not randomly going to effect things now in the 23rd or whatever week

I agree regular supply/demand is affecting prices. But I'm also saying that the tax is contributing to the deflation. My point being that a lot of F2P teams now are at the stage where they need high Diamonds or even Perfects to upgrade their team. So if you have to lower your price to sell, and even when you do sell the house takes a big cut, that'll cripple the PP of a F2P team. The 10% tax on a 60,000 PP card could be a whole week's worth of PP for the F2P team. Just the tax.

When F2P teams were mostly dealing in Golds and Diamonds, this wasn't as big of a deal. Yeah sure, 100-500 PP tax.. just get a couple of achievements and that'll be moot.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

I agree regular supply/demand is affecting prices. But I'm also saying that the tax is contributing to the deflation. My point being that a lot of F2P teams now are at the stage where they need high Diamonds or even Perfects to upgrade their team. So if you have to lower your price to sell, and even when you do sell the house takes a big cut, that'll cripple the PP of a F2P team. The 10% tax on a 60,000 PP card could be a whole week's worth of PP for the F2P team. Just the tax.

When F2P teams were mostly dealing in Golds and Diamonds, this wasn't as big of a deal. Yeah sure, 100-500 PP tax.. just get a couple of achievements and that'll be moot.

Thought experiment: In a typical week (or on average), do you think you spend more PP on AH tax (i.e. 10% of AH purchases) than you generate from achievements? How about this player who has 60kPP; how did they generate that? Because if it was from achievements/quicksells, they added a net of 54kPP to the economy.

Does any player spend more PP on AH tax than they generate in achievments + purchases? Do F2P players, whales, or in-between players spend more on AH tax than on PP purchased + achievements and quicksells?

Because this would have to be true for your claim of overall currency deflation to be true. And it would have the be true very frequently for us to see an effect that overwhelms PP purchases and player achievements/quicksells.

[Badnewsgoonies]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

Thought experiment: In a typical week (or on average), do you think you spend more PP on AH tax (i.e. 10% of AH purchases) than you generate from achievements? How about this player who has 60kPP; how did they generate that? Because if it was from achievements/quicksells, they added a net of 54kPP to the economy.

Does any player spend more PP on AH tax than they generate in achievments + purchases? Do F2P players, whales, or in-between players spend more on AH tax than on PP purchased + achievements and quicksells?

Because this would have to be true for your claim of overall currency deflation to be true. And it would have the be true very frequently for us to see an effect that overwhelms PP purchases and player achievements/quicksells.

Just playing devils advocate it wouldn’t be 54k profit if you pulled 40 packs and got that 60k card (let’s ignore the profit form the other pulled cards) it would be 20k profit but instead it’s 14k. A sizeable difference imo. But anyways I was just trying to look at it from his point of view I personally don’t think something like that would build up a deflation more just stay steady all year.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Badnewsgoonies

Just playing devils advocate it wouldn’t be 54k profit if you pulled 40 packs and got that 60k card (let’s ignore the profit form the other pulled cards) it would be 20k profit but instead it’s 14k. A sizeable difference imo. But anyways I was just trying to look at it from his point of view I personally don’t think something like that would build up a deflation more just stay steady all year.

I'm not talking about profit in an absolute sense, I'm talking about difference in total amount of PP in the economy. A claim of deflation is a claim about a decrease in total amount of PP in the economy as a whole. My argument is that the PP used to buy cards has to come from *somewhere*, and if you're going to claim deflation you need to explain how that PP sink in the AH overwhelms the PP generation of purchased points, achievements, and quicksells.

EDIT: Your point about packs is interesting, and relevant: What about if someone spends PP on packs? Isn't that PP gone forever?

This is a good point; packs remove PP from the economy, and add cards. The average quicksell value of the cards is less than the PP used to open the pack, usually by a large margin. So, Packs are deflationary. If anything this effect is more relevant than the AH tax on reducing card prices, especially once you add the supply generated by packs to the AH.

[Badnewsgoonies]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

I'm not talking about profit in an absolute sense, I'm talking about difference in total amount of PP in the economy. A claim of deflation is a claim about a decrease in total amount of PP in the economy as a whole. My argument is that the PP used to buy cards has to come from *somewhere*, and if you're going to claim deflation you need to explain how that PP sink in the AH overwhelms the PP generation of purchased points, achievements, and quicksells.

EDIT: Your point about packs is interesting, and relevant: What about if someone spends PP on packs? Isn't that PP gone forever?

This is a good point; packs remove PP from the economy, and add cards. The average quicksell value of the cards is less than the PP used to open the pack, usually by a large margin. So, Packs are deflationary. If anything this effect is more relevant than the AH tax on reducing card prices, especially once you add the supply generated by packs to the AH.

Nice yeah both your points makes sense especially the second one... I know that personally aha. Draw a big card say 400k and sell it. Thus taking away 400k from someone. Then if you used 200k on packs and ended up with duds (not unlikely at all) that have a value of say 80k then 120k is gone forever. Plus 10% for selling those cards on auction so another 8k gone if being technical and super hypothetical lol.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by Badnewsgoonies

Well that’s fine prices going down are not a bad thing whatsoever... the problem was there are less buyers atm and my guess is it’s due to the perfect points being spent on diamond packs and obviously new missions.

But it’s not truely a problem after a couple of weeks the points will build up again.

Speaking as just one individual, I'm a willing buyer who just doesn't understand why prices have not come down more given the lack of demand. If people want to keep putting up cards at and above the average buy price with such low demand and response, I'm not going to be the one that bites and goes for it. I'm happy with what I have until prices drop. It has for some players, but many of the players I'm wanting are still at least at and most usually well above the price they've been sold for in the past. So for those players, there certainly hasn't been any deflation or drop in prices due to lack of demand.

Maybe others are like me and are just waiting. And maybe the prices will never come down, but somethings needs to break to have more activity. It should be a buyers market given the lack of demand, but I don't think buyers want to budge when they see what a player has gone for in the past.