Originally by: SonOfAGhost

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The point remains though that NPC trade goods are the logical entry point for starting traders to grow their captial so as to be able to move into the player goods market. That's what I used it for and I think it's a shame that aspect of play has been effectively removed, seriously gimping any new players that aren't inclined to combat and/or production.

What happened to the official word that it may take up to 5 days after the 'fix' for prices to normalize and then prices would cycle over the course of 1 day? A month on and prices still haven't completed even 1 cycle.

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Originally by: FireFoxx80

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Been a month. Still nesrly impossible to buy/sell NPC trade goods at their optimal prices.

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Originally by: Delwynndwn Siele

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I would imagine that there are many more trading NPC goods than those who are posting here. Given that newcomers are probably taking whatever advantage they can find on the NPC market, the trade goods may rarely ever get to their optimal prices.

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Originally by: FireFoxx80

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Been a month. Still nesrly impossible to buy/sell NPC trade goods at their optimal prices.

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Originally by: SonOfAGhost

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It's obvious that you have no concept of the massive volume of goods available for trade on the NPC markets. Not to mention that it has never exactly been the most exciting aspect of gameplay so very few entered into it even when it did work. Take my word for it (being a fairly new player myself) the problems with the NPC markets have nothing to do with newcomers overloading the system. From conversation in corp chat I'd be so bold as to estimate less than 1% of those that finish the tutorial even try it.

Of course if you'd spent even a few minutes looking at the NPC market, you would have known that before you posted

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Originally by: SonOfAGhost

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The test order of soil I put up in Lulm at the optimal price has still not gone through in 29 days! What happened to the official word that it may take up to 5 days after the 'fix' for prices to normalize and then prices would cycle over the course of 1 day? A month on and prices still haven't completed even 1 cycle.

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Originally by: Eralus

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I think the prices never getting back to 'optimum' is EXACTLY what the hotfix was intended to change.

"Optimum" prices used to happen right after downtime - so pepole would trade for those, with people who happened to be on after downtime getting a chunk of change, and prices would continue to depress, until downtime again, when they'd jump back up.

Now, prices don't jump back up all at once. They go up a bit, and on the WAY to optimum, somebody else, even though the price isn't optimum, thinks the price is 'good enough', so they make the trade and the price goes back away from optimum again.

So, if the prices are not getting back to optimum, it's because other traders are 'better' at trading than you are, and are 'winning' the PvP that is trading.

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Originally by: SonOfAGhost

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I realize this has become a long thread and understand your choosing not to read all of it. Suffice to say that in earlier posts I demonstrated that prices are never reaching optimal even on orders that are getting no player interaction. (Which is actually most orders given the thousands of assorted trade good orders in the game.) The only orders I have seen anywhere at optimal price since the 'fix' are those that weren't being traded with at all prior, usually due to low volume and/or margin.

To be clear the only trade goods I still hold are 1 test order and assorted loot items. My continued interest in this matter is for future traders who have lost the logical entry point to that profession by CCP nerfing it.

For those following the saga, my soil test sale has still not gone through (there has been 1 other sale to this point) and NPCs are still selling spirits for ~16 isk more than they are buying it for.

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Originally by: Pang Grohl

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I'm begining to think that the criteria for price movement on NPC orders is a lot more complex than earliers dev responses & our observations are revealing. In order to play with the system a little bit I found some nicely ignored NPC orders to try a little price manipulation on. What I found is that a)buy orders that have low or irregular traffic don't react to sales in the same way as busy buy orders (a couple increased in price instead of decreasing as expected) b) low traffic sell orders move towards optimal much faster than high traffic sell orders c) buy & sell orders are reacting *less to partial sales than prior to the change to NPC orders.
*edit

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Originally by: Pang Grohl

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After playing more with this last night, I believe that the severity of price fluctuations may be related to the number of unique traders acting against an order. One of the orders I was trying to manipulate was traded against by another player, and the price shifted dramatically where my trades were only causing small shifts.

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Originally by: Oriella Trikassi

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The 'wrong way' price shift following the first sale has been there all the time. If you have a stockpile then it results in a double sale. I have no idea what causes it.

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Originally by: Pang Grohl

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Friendly NPCs? The beneficial price movement happened to me at stations where I have fairly decent standings, and happened on several consecutive transactions. Wouldn't that beat all, if there was some kind of corelation?

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Originally by: OneSock

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Seems to me all the decent margins have dried up. All the large buy orders are worthless and the only good ones are for 60 or 120 units. That's nuts. They could at least put in more of a spread, ie. some at 60 units, some at 1200, some at 6000 some at 12000 etc.

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Originally by: SonOfAGhost

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The spirits I was trading in Metropolis are STILL more expensive to buy than sell at most stations (including ALL the high-sec stations with volume). The test sale of soil has also still not gone through as price has still never reached optimal.

Do people still doubt my initial assesment that prices now take months/years to fully recover rather than daily or at most 5 days like we were told?

I've seen comments in new threads since the last patch that already thin profit margins have been further nerfed in this latest patch. Combined with the total removal of ALL courier missions other than event agents (which aren't listed under a corps agents tab making them hard for new players to find).

It's really starting to look like CCP doesn't want new players to have any options other than combat. Are they seriously trying to pull an SWG and dumb-down the game to one size fits all? Lets hope these nerfs to non-combat entry-level activities get reversed soon. It was already harder for new players become competitive in manufacturing/trade than it was to get started in combat. Why make it harder by repeatedly nerfing the stepping stones?

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Originally by: Von Traeger

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Has anyone noticed that after this latest patch that NPC order quantities have also gone down? Several of the commodoties I trade in regularly have gone down by thousands of units per order.

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Originally by: Karash Amerius

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Maybe the isk faucet was getting out of hand?

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