Some questions/comments about finding and buying things

[Robbi]

My friend and I have been playing this game for a few months now. We are currently at a level of Breer 4's for our weapons. We are finding it harder and harder to find replacement weapons the higher up the ladder we go. It seems like there should be some sort of central search, like in other games, of all things being sold in the game. But all we can find is the Auction, and you can't even filter/sort that to help with your searches. Are we missing some big secret? It's getting so difficult to find replacement weapons now that we begin our search for the next replacement weapons as soon as we've purchased our current weapons. Every time we come back from a hunt we search the auction in the hopes we'll find something before our weapons run out. Today our luck ran out. We have just enough left in our guns for maybe one more hunt. We have nothing to replace them with.

It seems as if MA is overly greedy (given the cost of ammo, the fact that we have to buy and rebuy so many things, etc) but then they make it so hard to do what would ultimately give them more money. Even the malls at PA and TP don't seem to have any central listing of items available that one could consult. All we can do is tediously walk in and out of every store on every floor searching the shelves and clicking on each shopkeeper we come across. Sidenote: And what is up with being bounced back when trying to enter some stores? If we are not allowed access wouldn't some sort of indicator across the opening make more sense than "well I don't know.. just try to walk through and see if it lets you".

Why is there no central search engine listing of even just all the stores and their types of merchandise and positions in the game? We have run across countless shopkeepers in the most remote locations during our travels. Given the fact that it can take a long run to reach most of them, even if we had bothered to write down all their coordinates, without any sort of means of telling what they have, it would be a monumental task to run to each of them to see what they were selling. How can they have any sort of business at all.

And this is really more of a rant What is up with some of these auction entries and prices? The game says an item is worth seventy five ped and the person is selling it for six thousand ped?! Or a limited gun that has maybe 20 shots left in it being sold for 4ped? Do people really buy these things? And if so, why?

To me, if a game is going to make it necessary to use a very limited window of items to do the tasks it presents, it should make those items available somehow. I think a central store that sells everything the game has to offer (while allowing others to undersell that if they wish to and have the resources to do so) would make the game much more balanced, playable, and at the same time remove this absolutely insane price gouging.

As an example of what I mean regarding the ability to search for your items, take SecondLife. I don't want this to get into a which is better game kind of post. I play both and I love both for different reasons. I mention it solely because I think they got it right when it comes to retail. In SecondLife, if you want to find something, you can find it.. and a hundred other similar items... in seconds.. without having to move an inch until you are ready to go to that store. There is an ingame search (you as a retailer can be listed for as little as 30 Lindens (their monetary unit) a week which amounts to about 1/10th of a us dollar) There is also a website called xstreetsl run by the secondlife people where you can find hundreds of thousands of additional items. Advertising is free to retailers but you do pay a nominal commission when you sell something. And you don't even have to do a 'run' to get the item. You just click purchase and it's delivered to your inventory. Wouldn't this be great to be able to do this here? No more spending literally hours of game time searching for or running to the things you need.

Anyway, we have just finished another long unsuccessful search of an auction and 6 floors of stores and came up empty handed. So I apologize if this post has a negative tone to it. We are now going to have to restrict our game play to not much more than logging on to search the auction and run from store to store to store until we get lucky and find weapons again, at which point we can resume playing the game for a few days more until those weapons run out.

[CyberPunk]

Unfortunately there is no way to search like you're asking about, perhaps try making a thread here on EF in the "buying section" or try standing in Twin/PA asking to buy the item(s) you want. Once you find someone to sell to you, add 'em to your contacts and they may be able to help in the future too.

Also, entropedia.info has some stock listings of shops that works for me on occasion, give that a look as well.

[Oleg]

Firstly, once you get to a certain level you need to select your weapons based on a number of factors, one of which is availability.

So if you are having trouble finding M4a, stick to the M3a which I believe is easily available, or the looted Riker series (I don't use laser rifles so I'm not entirely sure what the current market for these is like)

Are you maxed on the M4a, or in the learning period? If you are still in the learning period then you are sacrificing efficiency by using the M4a instead of the M3a or Rikers which you'll be maxed on.

For crafted weapons I find it's best to try to find a shop that has a regular supply of what you commonly use, rather than using auction. I would recommend Mchammer's shop in PA Mall, Floor 2 (not sure if he has M4a though).

EDIT: According to Entropiabay, Mchammer does stock M4a.:
http://www.entropiabay.com/detail.asp?id=11328. You might find that site useful for locating other items too.

[Robbi]

well this is very discouraging... found a couple guns that we could upgrade to and take a slight performance hit but people are just off their rockers here with prices.. I found a FireForge 8000 that the game says is worth 115 ped (would be using twice the bullets per shot I am now but I'm getting so tired of this mindless searching that I said fine, I'll do it. Until..... I see the price. The game says it's worth 115 ped but this guy is charging over 1600 ped!!!!!! What's standard default retail markup in the world.. 10%? This guy is charging well over 1000% markup!! He wants to make over 1000% profit on a single sale! How sad is that. This unfortunately is not uncommon either here in EU. I found one just before this one that the seller wanted over 900% profit on a single gun.

[Oleg]

Originally Posted by Robbi

well this is very discouraging... found a couple guns that we could upgrade to and take a slight performance hit but people are just off their rockers here with prices.. I found a FireForge 8000 that the game says is worth 115 ped (would be using twice the bullets per shot I am now but I'm getting so tired of this mindless searching that I said fine, I'll do it. Until..... I see the price. The game says it's worth 115 ped but this guy is charging over 1600 ped!!!!!! What's standard default retail markup in the world.. 10%? This guy is charging well over 1000% markup!! He wants to make over 1000% profit on a single sale! How sad is that. This unfortunately is not uncommon either here in EU. I found one just before this one that the seller wanted over 900% profit on a single gun.

The FireForge is an unlimited weapon, it's a completely different market to the (L) weapons you have been buying up to now. The markup for the good ones is high, but you only pay it once. With (L) weapons you pay markup every time you need to buy a new one. Most unlimited weapons will perform very poorly at low skill levels though.

[Jorak]

I sort of understand the OP's frustration at the Auction system..

would it really be so hard to have a search field that allows you to type in part of an item name e.g Riker and have the auction screen list only entries containing that word? I know many other MMO's have such a feature and it cuts time spent looking for equipment down to minutes..

maybe VU10 will bring such helpful things when it comes..

[Calin]

From the teaser we were shown of VU10 auction it looks like we will be able to do some sorting in there. This won't be much help if the weapons are still hard to find.

If they would let a couple of component bp's drop more we'd be able to find the guns we need easily.

[Staffas]

Originally Posted by Calin

From the teaser we were shown of VU10 auction it looks like we will be able to do some sorting in there. This won't be much help if the weapons are still hard to find.

If they would let a couple of component bp's drop more we'd be able to find the guns we need easily.

didnt marco comented this with that it was just a grafical update with some smaler functions added and with no search function installed?

For OP:
dont go for an unl weapon yet, you will pay way to much for the amount of dmg you can make with a weapon like this. you need alot more skills before you can use them properly.

for the shortage of weapons, well it is hard sometimes to find what you are looking for, especially the breer M4a. for me this was the hardest carbine to find when i was skilling up too. It will get easyer when you can use the Isis LR32 that i think would be the next gun after the breer M4a.

Most of the shopkeepers that are not placed in a mall/shop (those that you find on a plaer owned Land area) are stocked with ammo and bombs, not with guns.

for the pricing situation, well every player can list the items that they want to sell for any price that they want to, so be careful when you buy something so you dont click accept and spend all your peds on an item that you would normaly not pay more than 50ped for example.
MA/FPC does not limit the price of items at all, in fact, what you see as the auction history is only what an item has been previously sold for, this does not ahve to mean that it is worth that much, not to everyone and not to you.
the oldschool unl weapons (that does not max untill lvl 100) is a good example, for someone that is lvl 100 this weapon could be worth alot more that it would be for you atm, this is because that person can handle that weapon at max efficiency, while you can not, yet.

Best way to find what you are looking for is to either find a shop that have a steady suply of the item that you are looking for, maby even contact the owner of that shop and ask to place them on your FriendList so you can contact them directly if you need another one.
Or you can try to find a crafter here on EF that can craft the item that you are looking for, same thing here, you can add them to your FL both here and ingame for further contacts.

Gl to both you and your friend, it will get easyer to find what you are looking for later on, so tough it out for a few days/week and you will see that it gets better.

//
Eufrat

[DurakJung]

Originally Posted by Robbi

My friend and I have been playing this game for a few months now.

It does get easier as time goes on and a knowledge base is gained..

Just say you arrive in any city in the world and want to buy a certain item somewhere. U just cant go to it, you have to use phones, directories, transport and whatever other means of search tools to find that item. Next time you come to that city you find the item easier. Maybe the next time you go it to straight away. EU is somewhat like that.

In and out of EU there are many tools to find items. Entropia Forum has many different sites and ways to locate items eg as Entropia Bay which Oleg put the url in. good old paper and pen to write the shops down that sell the items u want.

Eventually you will have a knowledge base that makes things easier.

As for the markup basically like in rl it is the law of supply and demand. If an item is sold for a 1000% more than its tt value all that means is someone is willing to pay that price.

In the real world it is the same. eg one of the dearest items you buy is toilet paper. Compare a carton of toilet paper to some state of the art electronic item. How can a box of second grade paper be the same price as toaster keyboard camera. You can do without the camera but it becomes messy without the toilet paper. Pun intended.

Jung

[Legion]

Welcome to one of the main problems of eu, not even the old uber crafters are sort of keeping their shops stocked today sadly.

As for the searchfunction i totally agree with you, and the community has asked for this since the shops came into the game but naaw MA doesnt really care about such a trivial thing...

Now as for prices... There are several reasons why the prices are high in eu.
A lot of ppl are "greedy" in eu, but one has to be sort of as the game cost a lot to play so you need to squeeze out every pec you can from every sale.

But the main problem is that many miners chip out their skills which leads to them not being able to use higher level finders which lead to less rare ores being found which leads to higher markup than necisary on certain rare ores which leads to to darn expensive stuff to craft with.