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TCS: Weekend Wonderland

When we left Aridia, I left my market up. I asked the locals if they wanted it or not and they said yes. So, I abandoned my mobile market to see how it did unattended. So far, it is doing well enough and it was one less thing for me to balance this week. In Saturday evening, I dragged myself to Jita, updated Eve Mentat and burst into tears.

Well, perhaps not tears. You see, Harpy prices made no sense to me. They were super high and my price chart was just a blank screen. I could not figure out why Harpy prices were raging out of control without a graph! However, Steve came to my rescue with his FuzzWork market graph. It let me see that the price spike in Jita was most likely due to it being Saturday. Because I didn't really know what day of the week it was I had forgotten my basic rule to never shop on Friday or Saturday in Jita if I can avoid it. What I was seeing was all the 'reasonably' priced Harpy's sold out and waiting for someone to complete their weekend sales run.

I felt a bit silly, but then I got an Eve mail to make me feel better.
"Well only a few weeks into my lowsec market project, and I have to say this is possibly the coolest thing i've done in eve. Seeing what the regional players, not to mention making money off people I can't contend with in space is awesome. thanks to you for writing about it, without which I would not have thought to try it." 
Back at the end of April, I was contacted with some questions on how I ran my market. I answer to the best of my ability. I do not think there is anything magical about what I do. I'm not a numbers guru. I base my method off of my observation of people instead of chasing after numbers. Its inelegant and not statistical but it seems to work out for me.

A lot of Eve's mechanics drown in their own solutions. And yes, many if not everyone at the top min/maxes and tweaks things to the finest of edges. But, there are a lot of people out there who just want to play and do well enough. Well enough to pay for what they want to do and invest in what they want to try. Well enough to feel successful but not owned by their projects. Well enough to have fun exploring a new side of the game.

I'm that type of player. I really, really, really want to be the utmost amazingest ever about what I do. In truth, I don't have the personality for it. While, I'd not call myself a casual player, I'm not hardcore. I'll call myself a serious player today. I take my game roles seriously but not enough to drain every drop of game play mastery out of them.

I think that's good. Eve can be played at whatever level one chooses but one does have to choose. It is very easy to get caught in the correct ways to do things. The best ways to do them. The most profitable ways. They drown out the fact that many people want to do it in a productive or successful way. Some of that is just an echo of the casual player discussions I have heard of late. Eve tends to run full steam towards the extreme end of things that peripheral users wonder if they are abandoned and newer players wonder if tehy can catch the train.

Or, I'm just projecting my feelings on everyone and indeed I'm the odd one looking to justify my existance. That is very likely the case. After all, I run around promoting a play style that is purposefully not maximized in any way. Still, it has its appeal. The conversion to the Cult of Reasonable prices shall continue.


Comments

  1. You're a witch. And I mean that in the nicest of possible ways.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I, too, enjoy your market posts. In fact, I've started my own little market project out in Solitude (without a jump freighter or carrier access It seemed like basing out of low sec would be logistically impossible). Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Solitude is starving for stuff that isn't marked up so enjoy!

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  3. It never occurred to me until reading your blog that it might be fun to set up a market. I've got three different areas picked out that are strong possibilities. I'm watching the activity now to make sure I wouldn't be poaching on someone else's turf. My goal is to put the market in an area where the locals currently have to go elsewhere to shop. I lived in a zone like that once, and having to go a minimum of 11 jumps through a fairly active FW zone (at the time) for shopping runs was occasionally annoying.

    I'm not much of a market PVP person, either. I want to have fun with it and make *some* ISK, but maxing out profits isn't a requirement or even anything I'd particularly pursue. And I don't want to cut in on someone else's livelihood, hence the interest in finding an area that's kind of a wasteland.

    I'm fully capable of running the numbers on minmaxing pretty much anything. It's not that I lack the technical wherewithal to keep up with the math. :-) And I can be competitive in *certain* areas of my life. Just not particularly this. I'm doing my own thing, and I'm happy with it. :-)

    I think what you're doing is awesome, and I bet it's inspiring more than a few people to try it out.

    ReplyDelete

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