I don't know much about economics, especially on sites like this where everything is virtual, so I'm just looking for some explanation about this.

I've seen a lot of items go from worth millions to worth thousands, all because someone decided to put an item for 500,000 sP in their shop instead of the current lowest price of 3,500,000 sP in shops. Not to mention, there are some items that the official price is, say, 1,500 sP, but they're selling for less than 50. Other sites I've had experience with fix this problem by having the game absorb more of the items that have severely depreciated in value, or preventing users from making such dramatic price drops because they'll crash the site's economy.

I'm wondering, is this a concern here? I'm not sure how the economics work, I haven't been around long enough to see if quests regularly take in a lot of really cheap items (which would make quests a bit too easy, IMO), and I'm still exploring other aspects of this.

I know it might not be my place to ask about the inner workings, it just seemed lopsided, to have so many items depreciate in value and with seemingly no way to knock the prices back up.

No, staff doesn't really control the prices of items. They used to watch SubQ invites, but not so much anymore. To use up the really severely devalued items, they add items to the Crystal Shop and things like that but no if someone decides to drop the price on an item just for shits and giggles they don't do anything about that.

Also yeah quests take in cheap items. I mean, no one is going to complete a quest for expensive things

I understand about the quests, I was referring more to severely depreciated items versus items that are cheap because they're supposed to be.

And I answered that as best I could. The quests thing was more of a side note.

It happens at times that the Subeta staff go into a huge "shopping spree" and will buy from lots of shops the items they consider that are TOO devalued. When that happens to you, you'll get an event for every single item they buy and the money won't go to your shop till but will be directly put on your hand. I don't know if I am clear but yes that does happen that they try to control the price of the items but it doesn't happen too often. :)

Edit : I remember that happened twice last year, not sure when but two days very close to each other. I would say probably in February or March... And before, I remember my boyfriend said they hadn't done this shopping spree in two years or something. So yeah, it is not happening too often, right.

I've been on here for over five years and I can think of three times right off hand when Subeta staff went on that "spree."

Well, two of them were for sure last year in Feb/March. Before that I hadn't created an account yet so I can't talk about it, just was refering to what my boyfriend told me last year when it happened. I wasn't there before so I can't tell myself honestly for the previous times.

Oh, I figured. I was only confirming that it's too few and far between right now. c:

Ah lol, my bad! I am not completely fluent in English so I don't understand everything and sometimes I am too literal...my main flaw I guess. :P

Hey, it's all good. I have no problem going back and explaining something I've posted most times.

It's good to see nice people like you. :) I am kinda scared of posting on forums normally because I am normally shy and also I don't want to be attacked like I made a mistake on some English word or something uhhh. Well, anyway I didn't take it badly when you posted. Well, thank you. Have a great day.:)

Staff does interfere in the market, but not in such a Comintern, socialist, or black-marketty sorta way. In the two years that the users above say that SubetaTeam (an NPC account) haven't been doing anything, they most certainly have been doing stuff. There have been changes in Vending and in NPC Shop restocks.

It is possible to fragmentize nearly every restockable item and buy nice stuff. This requires users to decide that they want to make the effort to get those items. If nobody wants to do this, then the bottom of the market starts looking really low.

It is also possible to recycle items at the Recycle Beast. Again, this requires users to decide that they want to make the effort to get the items he sells.

As for the 3.5MsP item then selling for 50KsP? In every item's history, there's a demand curve. So sorry, this One True Price, it is a lie. If the item was really truly worth 3.5MsP, then someone would buy up all the mistake-50KsP items and selling them at 3.5M, the profit-margin would be huuuge. There's enough sP sloshing around that this would not be very hard to do. At teh bottom of every page of Subeta you can see some teeny weeny tiny links "About Subeta". There you can see the average user has 13.5MsP. This is enough for that kind of thing.

I don't feel sad at all for those who think that they MUST get 3.5MsP for that item because it has some immutable price, and then don't get it. Maybe they should have thought to drop their price a half million when the demand was still high.