RMT Manipulated Prices (No, Not AH Manipulation)

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RMT Manipulated Prices (No, not AH manipulation)
 Shiva.Vexarana
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By Shiva.Vexarana 2008-08-30 14:24:03
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I am talking about items such as a Stick of Vanilla, which sells from NPC's at ~540 gil each, but shows up in price calculations for crafting profits as hundreds of millions, all because of two people who wanted to show off their 150m gil.

For such items which have fallen prey to the old inflated economy where people wanted to show off their gil, it makes it a pain to actually calculate how much such an item would cost.

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I propose one of two things :

a) The database which is built every day/week/month to calculate profit margins is updated with the NPC prices, so if it NPC's for less, then it could include that. I.E.

Vanilla Bean Latte
Cooking (30)
Vanilla x2 2103812938 (540)

Profit -598342753 (200)

That way, for certain items which people buy from AH for convenience, people will still be able to see how much they will make, but for things that include Vanilla or other items like it, you will be able to see how much it REALLY makes you.

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b) The FFXIAH Administration goes into a select few pages and locks in their prices at the NPC amount. That way, vanilla would always be calculated at 540 gil cost.

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Either way, I would really like the profit calculator to be useful for these affected items at last.
 Ragnarok.Lateralusrules
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By Ragnarok.Lateralusrules 2008-09-01 10:48:53
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Hi,
Usually anything regarding NPC prices is shot down, as unfortunately it has too many varying factors (fame, regional vendors, supply etc) to be taken into account. Also - it relies on manual verification and testimonial rather than automated/accurate data.

It'd be nice though...

Regarding point b) How do you decide which items are eligible for this manual change? At what cutoff point do you say the AH prices should be disregarded?
 Lakshmi.Jaerik
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By Lakshmi.Jaerik 2008-09-01 22:42:20
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Our philosophy on such matters might be difficult to understand, but Lateralusrules is correct in this regard.

As a general rule, we tend to shy away from implementing any sort of feature which would require anyone to manually administer any part of the site's records. This would include keeping a human-managed list of special items of any sort. Even now, handling the roughly dozen new relic owner reports that come in per day takes a significant amount of time, and we would not want to implement any feature that would require us to spend more hours per day manually tweaking, policing, or administering data.

NPC prices are not available in any centralized record. They vary depending on fame, nation status, regional vendor availability, NPC supply at the time, and other factors. There are sites which list NPC prices for certain items, but usually for only a fraction of the literally thousands of NPC-purchasable items in-game, and again these are user-contributed reports and therefore not trustworthy to use in any sort of official formula. This site's primary philosophy was always to provide data which was never touched by human hands -- to not rely on user-contributed data for any core site feature in any way.

While many users offer suggestions of highly specialized rules and formulas for certain items, in certain sale rates, at certain times, in certain situations, in order to maximize the power of the crafting section of the site, we tend not to take them up on it. User to user discrepancies in opinion about the delicacies of each formula variable are impossible to manage in a way that would make everyone happy for every one of the 14,848 items available on the auction house.

The administrative overhead to constantly tweak and manage such a complex system is too great. Similarly, designing and managing a system that would allow users to configure their own formulae options would break the system of data partioning we have developed to keep a site with 314 million+ transactions records responsive and consistent for our users.

While I would never say never, at this point of the site's history we are highly unlikely to make any further modifications to the crafting section or its profit/loss calculations.
 Garuda.Littledarc
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By Garuda.Littledarc 2008-09-02 02:07:47
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honestly anyone that is going to be cooking anything with vanilla will know better. all you'd have to do is change one number in the equation to come up with the proper profit. thats a whole lot easier than changing the code for every item.
 Caitsith.Wendel
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By Caitsith.Wendel 2008-09-06 02:34:07
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Wouldn't it be just as easy to check the price yourself to find out the reality of the situation rather then become lazy and get someone else to do it?
necroskull Necro Bump Detected! [48 days between previous and next post]
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By Fairy.Xxnumbertwoxx 2008-10-24 13:31:45
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I dont trust the AH price on anything, it's up to you to do the research on something to see what the reasonable price is. Unfortunately, for stuff that doesn't sell too often and can't be vendor gotten, that means that you pretty much have to determine what an items worth to you.

I use ffxiclopedia to check vendor prices, that's pretty accurate within a few gil. Items that can be gotten from a vendor get horribly skewed on the AH in general (case in point, san d'orian carrots, a stack from a non guild vendor with max fame is 336/stack, on jeuno AH 3k/stack, I know a guy that makes a fortune flipping them actually, cause people are lazy).

If you're crafting, do your research first. If you're using the AH to purchase the bulk of your mats for synthesis, you're being foolish and wasting lots of gil. Not only that, but check the starter cities AH's, too, if something can't be gotten from a vendor. It's up to you to do the work to find the lowest bottom line...
 Siren.Antigod
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By Siren.Antigod 2008-10-24 13:38:39
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Wendel said:
Wouldn't it be just as easy to check the price yourself to find out the reality of the situation rather then become lazy and get someone else to do it?


Haha... Good one.

Most of the pages that I have looked at on here shows what the npc price is generally around.. in the comments section.. Plus, you could click the FFXIclopedia link and see what that site says. The only thing that I'd like to see fixed are the ninja tool calculations, and other things that stack to 99 that the site calculates weird. I mean, I don't really need it to be correct.. I know what I'm doing.. but, if you're gonna fix something.. fix that first because it is broken.
 Shiva.Yoldin
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By Shiva.Yoldin 2008-10-24 14:03:39
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just null the transaction when bought and sold from the same person
 Ramuh.Brahmdut
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By Ramuh.Brahmdut 2008-10-24 19:05:04
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why dont u just buy and sell it to friend or mule a few times yes it will cost u a bit of gil but if no one buy's it from the ah you can make like 10 sell's to you'r mule or something and you can fix the price
 Carbuncle.Tellahchan
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By Carbuncle.Tellahchan 2008-10-25 12:34:05
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its too bad that the profit margin formula is made useless by afew players
 Shiva.Jernau
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By Shiva.Jernau 2008-10-25 20:36:15
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What does this have to do with RMT?
 Ragnarok.Psyence
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By Ragnarok.Psyence 2008-10-26 01:15:08
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lol it seems the word RMT has become so mainstream that a bunch of new players think it means something like an insult "arrogant player with lots of gils who likes to show off" or something... lmao
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