I'd just like to say, back in January/February..or well, whatever time before Tower was changed, 50 perms were everywhere. A 50 blue axe? 3gem. And 3gem back then actually meant something.
But I agree with Amber. Larger population, more people making money, needing gear, more people selling their previously farmed gear (or farm it because now there's a large pool of active people looking for gear)
But the problem is that no one needs money, so there's no incentive to farm.
An example of this is myself. I haven't farmed gear in a long time, I'm in relatively godly gear on both of my chars, have enough money to buy anything I need, PLENTY of mall points as well. At this point in time 50g would get me by for a long time. And even if I saw something I liked in marketplace and didn't have the cash, I could just run to OLT on my WL for an hour or two and I'd be fine. It's pretty simple, no one really needs money atm.
Personally I dont think that problem will be fixed unless there was a server wipe (I really don't want that to happen) or the cap raise. As new gear/weapons come out, suddenly people will have a reason to farm, to sell, etc.
And I'm not a fair judge of perms, I made a 70 perm in one day (my gear I already had for set switching/other things I found in storage), did DKL, and got bored, really quickly. I personally see no real point in perms, unless they can farm something that my glad can use. And now with the geo skin nerf..there's nothing I need a perm for (that 2.5% dmg/2% aim is really nothing..especially when a geo axe has a slower attack rate than a npc skin).
Apologies if I rambled on and didn't really make my point clear, pretty tired while writing this.