[answered] Why Are Unidentified Items/mythics So Desirable?

So this is something that's confused me for a long while, and with the recent increase in unidentified items being sold, I feel like I need to ask: Why do people sell/desire items that are unidentified? I understand that this massively reduces the cost for something being re-identified (as you're rolling once instead of re-rolling at a higher cost), however buying an unidentified item means that you can't see what stats you're going to get.

I don't know if the system is truly random in the way it picks identifications, but let's say that each item has pre-determined IDs from the moment it's picked up. Someone could find an unidentified Apocalypse with the worst possible IDs and sell it on without identifying it. This would mean the person buying it would be paying probably more than they should for a terrible Apocalypse they wouldn't normally buy. On the other hand, they could find the best possible Apocalypse and miss out on getting stacks of LE for it, selling it on unidentified and losing tons of money as the buyer can sell it to earn more money back than they spent. Of course, I can see why people would want to buy them in this case, but why would people want to sell them if they're just going to lose money?

I really don't understand why someone would want to buy an unidentified item, nor why someone wouldn't bother identifying it first before selling it. The possible scenarios I can see either IDing or not are:

1. The seller IDs the item and gets bad stats, so they lose money as it won't sell for as much.
2. The seller IDs the item and gets good stats, so they end up gaining more money than the price it would sell unidentified.

1. The buyer IDs the item and gets bad stats, so they've wasted money
2. The buyer IDs the item and gets good stats, which means the seller has missed out on money they could've earned from a good item.

Why would someone want to buy something they can risk getting bad stats on when they can instead buy an item they're certain has good stats? If you're buying a Memento with 4/4s Mana regen, you know that the memento you get is going to have 4/4s Mana regen. However, if you're buying a Memento that's not been identified, you don't know what stats you're going to get and you could easily get one with 1/4s. It's like going to a restaurant and paying less money for a meal where you could either get the whole meal or a slice of lettuce on a plate instead. Why not just pay the extra to be certain you're going to get the food you want?

On the flipside, why would someone want to sell something they can get much more money on from identification? Items with desirable stats are going to sell for far more than something which has uncertain stats, so why cut yourself short of money?

 

1. You get to feel the thrill of ID-ing a mythic.
2. You get to prank your friends with an unID mythic.

 

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Also, if you identify an item yourself, there is the chance that you can get something better than hunting around for something good, for a potentially lower price. It's certainly a large gamble, as if you fail, your money is gone, but you can do significantly better if you succeed. Not everyone will take the full meal if the price of the certain full meal is much higher than that of the chance. Of course, if the prices are similar (which they may be), there isn't much purpose except so that you may not need to spend as much time looking for one that meets your specifications.

 

True, but if the prices are similar, why not just buy the item with the IDs you want instead of leaving it up to chance to lose money?

Isn't that technically scamming though? If the price of the best possible outcome is lower than the price of a random outcome, it'd mean that you're overpricing an item that could be worth less than half the price.

 

Well, isn't that more reason to not buy unidentified items? As much as rules could be put in place, scammers still scam despite rules being against that. You're putting a lot more trust into a seller which could scam you out of your money. With the no-refund policy, a scammer could falsely advertise a mythic, scam you out of your money, and then get banned without giving you your money back. Sure, they're banned, but your money was banned with them, and you can't get it back because of the no-refund policy. At least when you're buying an identified item, you can see the item's name in the trade GUI so you know you're getting the item you're paying for.

 

Well, that makes more sense to me than paying more for something worse. Buying at the lowest-ID price or lower makes sense from a buyer's perspective (as they're not losing out on any money), and for a high-stock seller (More items, sell for less, less items, sell for more) it makes sense to attract customers and gain cumulative profit.

 

nothing like a little shameless advertising xD

 

For the same reason people love lottery tickets; they love the idea of getting more than they payed for, even if the chances are extremely low