excel-ent!

Quote Originally Posted by Fusionstrike View Post
I've been tracking the listing prices in CS for BSM pinks and thought I would share some of my data. Although one can draw some pretty simple conclusions from the data (and I do), it's mostly just a nerd-fest for people who like data and charts. I collected only data about str and dex sets since I play a dual spec bear, so sorry int gear users, I have nothing for you. Maybe someday I'll make an enchantress and start collecting those numbers too.

A note about methodology: I collected this data by recording the minimum listing price for each item at about the same time each day. My reasoning is that even though prices fluctuate throughout the day, sampling at the same time of day every day should smooth out any 24-hour cycles inherent in a game where there are definite peak and lull times for player activity. I recorded my data almost every day since BSM opened (only missed about 5 days) and always around 9-10am CST.

BSM STR set data

Here is a graph of the CS prices of STR set items starting right around when BSM first opened.

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Lowest price observed
  • Armor 2,000,000 on 11/17
  • Helmet 190,000 on 12/6
  • Buckler 340,000 on 10/26
  • Scythe 499,900 on 11/15


Some items of note
  • Armor, scythe and buckler all have their lowest or near-lowest prices around 11/15 and have generally climbed or flattened in price since then. For reference, crafting was added on 11/8.
  • Buckler has a general upward slope since 11/15, running counter to every other item and the usual expected trend of items getting cheaper over time.
  • Armor has been relatively flat, centered around 3mil, for the last three weeks after very volatile price swings since BSM opened.


BSM DEX set data

Here is a graph of the CS prices of DEX set items starting right around when BSM first opened.

Name: dex set prices.png Views: 745 Size: 25.6 KB

Lowest price observed
  • Armor 1,390,000 on 11/14
  • Helmet 225,000 on 12/4
  • Wing 190,000 on 10/25
  • Talon 115,000 on 12/6
  • Bow 299,000 on 11/18 and 12/3


Some items of note
  • Armor graph looks very similar to str armor graph, even down to the minimum around 11/15. I wish I could explain what was going on that week.
  • Dex items have a much clearer trend of getting cheaper over time than str items (except the armor) and tend to cluster together more in price than str.
  • Total cost for wing and talon are about the same as the bow alone, meaning both types of dex sets are about the same cost.


Red Diamond

Here is a graph of the red diamond price since crafting started.

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Not much to say here. It's the expected clear downward trend. It seemed to be dropping in price by about 100k per week for a bit, but may be leveling off now just above 400k. My lowest recorded price is 410k on 12/2.

Conclusions

I think I can draw a few conclusions here, some pretty obvious. Armor is clearly the rarest item drop and its prices have been pretty flat as a result. STR sets are more popular as seen by the relatively higher prices, which makes sense since any class that dual specs str is likely to buy at least the str armor and helmet.

What's not clear to me yet is the "bottom" price that the diamonds will find. It's too early to know if the prices have leveled off or will drop more. For fun, I added up the minimum prices I recorded for the 1H str set and the two dex sets (prices nearly identical for talon and bow sets). Here's what I came up with:

STR set: 3,030,000
DEX set: 1,920,000

One thing to note though is that I obviously didn't know what the minimum price was until the time passed, so to have actually gotten a set from this price would have meant knowing to buy the armor of either set about a month ago. If you pay today's prices, you tack on about another million for armor price inflation.

Also, if you take the lowest price for diamonds (i.e. today's price), crafting a set costs 410k x 7 = 2,870,000. I didn't post the data, but I tracked prices on recipes too so that adds about another 200k best case to the cost of crafting. So that means you can expect to spend about 3 million to craft the set based on today's prices (if you have to buy all components from CS).

So, that means the total cost of a crafted set is:
Crafted STR set: about 6mil
Crafted DEX set: about 5mil

Of course we shouldn't expect these prices to stay fixed, but this gives a good working estimate for crafted and uncrafted set prices now that they've had around a month to settle down.

One question you could ask is: should there be a red diamond quest introduced to help lower the overall cost of crafting? I don't know the answer, but from a purely economic point of view I can say that since crafting roughly doubles the cost vs. uncrafted set, there is a lot of room to open up the opportunity to a wider pool of players by driving the diamond cost down. Adding a quest would do this. Is it desirable to do so? Economics is only one facet of that question here; we must also take into account whether it would increase interest in playing, be good for those who already crafted sets, affect participation in the plat dungeon, etc.

Anyway, here's some data to play around with. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting or useful.