Global auction/market search discussion

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by golruul, May 14, 2019.

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  1. Spinok

    Spinok Avatar

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    You probably can have any education, but it would not change the fact that you need pretty big money to make a monopoly in profitable part of the market, and with current demand, you would return investments for a long time, are you sure you ready to invest money, with the chance to not get them back ?
    Another point your purchases will raise the prices significantly and 120+ level heavy grinders, miners, bots and etc will work only on you personally. You would be not only the trader, but you would also be wealth manufacturer... for guys you buying:eek:.
    And pls reread and try to understand what Spungwa talk about. If you can't understand smth that he told, pls ask questions - understanding while reading is a good skill.

    Did you hear Travis a few days ago? SOTA is a hardcore sandbox MMO, those type of games need global search...

    PS. You noticed specifically about sales bigger than 1000... Already scary to ask your average igg per hour rate, or igg per day ;)
     
  2. golruul

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    Let them monopolize. It's not going to shut the game down. Just like all the other things that happened that was supposed to shut the game down. Game's not down. Sky's not falling. All of this is pure drama.

    As before, the most vocal doom and gloomers are usually the one to lose the most if a change goes in. I'd bet good money that you're one of the people that are hugely benefiting from price gouging others. Global auction house would destroy a lot of your margins, so you're going to come up as one of the most vocal against it.


    Btw, I did find some more horns in Brittany Alleys from CiCi and bought them. I went around looking at each individual vendor, AS THE GAME IS CURRENTLY DESIGNED, and wasted 1.5 hours doing so. That's a absolutely terrible gaming experience. The game is NOT designed for third-party marketplaces or out-of-game chat (note that the trade channel is a very recent addition while mailboxes are a somewhat recent addition); that it happens doesn't mean the game is designed for it. It is designed for in-game individual (+ public) vendor shopping because that's what's actually in the game. That's the design and implementation. Period. And that implementation currently sucks, which is why I'm pushing for global auction house.

    You can't rely on other's charity to give you items. I don't want the charity, either. I want to give a fair price to someone in exchange for those -- and I did. Hoping the right people are currently on and looking at trade chat isn't the answer, either.


    Let's cut to the chase here. I'm very transparent with my motives and so can discuss the true reasons why I want/don't want something. I want the global auction house to (in order of priority)
    • Save loads of my time
    • Get lower prices for the vast, vast majority of the population, including me
    • Put in a large gold sink so inflation isn't as rampant
    What are your real motives for being completely against the auction house? No BS. Just list your real motives why you're against it.
     
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  3. Fenrus MacRath

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    I am jumping over 4 pages of this discussion, so if this has already been stated, My apologies. An economy is an organic thing. Its living. If any one person buys up all of the gold and doubles the price and makes a profit doing that, then the price of gold is too low and everyone should be selling it for that amount. Its the balance of supply and demand. The higher price will motivate producers to mine more gold and the supply will go up. At a critical mass , the market will saturate and prices will then decline until an equilibrium is reached. Its speculators who take the huge risks and make the profits or lose their respective shirts. That said, a global marketplace that links all vendors together will not impact that equation, other than streamlining the process. It is a simple case of Hume's amalgamation and capital . By making all of the goods available at an equal playing field (Not having to hike out to Bumfrick Egypt to check a gold vendor who may be selling lower than a busy urban center because of a less desirable / less accessible vendor, all offers can be accessed and considered. There is no one group or entity in this game that can keep up with a thousand miners cranking out gold if the prices warrant that. The collective will always prevail. I agree that it would be much easier and save much time (Time I could spend mining gold), if we had a global market.
    That's my 2 cents, for what its worth, as an economist.
     
  4. majoria70

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    If you like to do the searching that is fine, but you can also ask for it in trade channel. I check out our vendors anytime I see a request for an item on the trade channel.
     
  5. golruul

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    I'm actually not opposed to using the trade channel. However, sometimes I'm on at a weird hour and don't get any responses. That itself is fine, because the trade channel is just a supplement to the main form of trading via vendors. Ditto with forum posts.
     
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  6. majoria70

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    Well I agree about the trade channel and one has to advertise over and over and if you are not logged in it does not keep track of what was said to show everyone what was listed for the day. I think some thought to improving it would help. If someone advertises something it should stay at least 24 hours and the ability to mark sold would be great.
     
  7. Time Lord

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    Speedy Gonzales needs expediency without becoming caged :confused:
    [​IMG]
    He doesn't want to have his time spent caged, he wants to be adventuring :)

    "The Trump Card" in our economy woes it's not the Government, not the Seller, but the "SOTA Consumer". This isn't real life and all the gold sinks in the world won't get speedy out adventuring more often unless there's a drive through with pricing that reflects his level of adventuring enjoyment. The faster we can set him free, the more gold he's going to make and the more gold he can make the more he can spend. Taxing him through increased prices or through taxing his gaming time with hours of looking for items isn't going to more motivate the amount of purchases he's making, which is where the fuel comes from which drives all of our economy.

    When Speedy Gonzales is caged or hindered, he doesn't like our game because it places pressure on him to leave due to not having enough time in his real life to play the game at what he feels is a competitive level when compared to others who may have more game time.

    Free Speedy, get him out and adventuring as fast as possible to fuel the economy, or have our game suffer from having him conform to your economic laws through taxing his game time and squeezing his gaming means :confused:...

    Your game time repressive economic laws come at the expense of driving him away from our game, yet we need him to fuel our economy o_O...

    We're not overcrowded, we need more players. The faster we can get them to our game's more entertaining content, "the better!"
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  8. Ryodin Stormwind

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    Here would be my suggestions for the system. Some others have echoed similar sentiments.
    • Limit the search to a radius outward from the vendor. Enterprising vendors could pay an additional fee to increase their marketing reach (radius).
      • Tier 1 radius would be enough to show up in current town only.
      • Tier 2 radius would be enough to show up in surrounding towns only.
      • Tier 3 radius would be enough to show up in towns in the entire region (very large area, like 1/4 of the map or so).
      • Tier 4 radius would be enough to show up in any town on the entire map.
    • Don't list exact prices, but instead show relative from the median price of that particular item when the player isn't at the selling vendor. For example, if the median price of gold ore is 40g, and you have it listed for 50g, then the game would calculate that you have it listed for 25% higher than the median price. Armed with the information, the game could then give a broad suggestion to the player about the nature of the price.
      • Take into account trending information when looking at the values. What have players been buying it for in the last hour, day, week, or even month? Show a graph or graphic indicating this.
      • The interface could show a simple graphic that ranges in colors from green to grey to red (green being cheap, grey being neutral, red being expensive).
      • Or, it could be some kind of wording like (would need a scale the opposite spectrum too):
        • Market Value (maybe the differential is within +/- 0-5% of the median)
        • Pricey (+5-15)
        • Elevated (+15-25%)
        • Expensive (+25-50%)
        • Exorbitant (+50-75%)
        • Outrageous (+75%)
      • This system may become less useful for the more unique items like master worked and enchanted weapons/armor since it will be hard to compare them...I'm sure some decent metric can be figured out...
      • Additionally, the player could pay a small price to find out the exact cost of an item if interested. That fee could be passed on to the vendor, or just a sink.
    • Don't let players buy globally. Just tell them where the item is at, and still force them to travel to the vendor. This will still keep it personal with shoppers needing to visit vendors, and eventually really gaining confidence and preference in certain vendor's wares. We saw this in Star Wars Galaxies (before the dark times) where you could only search for vendors on the Bazaar system, but still had to travel to the vendor to purchase the item you wanted. It also forces the player to factor in the cost/benefit of traveling somewhere else to save a few gold coins on an item versus just buying it locally.

    I agree with many others that the difficulty in finding the goods I want in the price range I want, without visiting every single vendor individually, is just a massive turn-off and time waster. Additionally, being able to find items more expediently just makes it more likely that I will actually buy something with all the gold I'm hoarding. That benefits the entire economy.

    Overall, I think a global vendor search is a good thing. The real question is how should it be implemented to mitigate some of the damaging factors that have also been discussed. Information hiding and generalizing is a good strategy.

    This is the constructive argument we should be having rather than just poo-pooing on the entire idea. This isn't black or white in my opinion.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
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  9. Tailz

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    Yea! lol
     
  10. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    This is complex and well thought out, thanks. But there is still a LOT more that needs fixing (see my signature, for example) that is way more critical than people complaining that it's too hard to ask in Trade channels for items they want or for sellers to advertise their own stores.

    I'm out. RMT-fu is strong here and it smells awful.
     
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  11. Astirian

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    [​IMG]

    :)
     
  12. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    My point, exactly.
     
  13. Spungwa

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    This I half agree with. There is a glut of everything. But hiding supply does not fix that in the economy. I said half because I think there is a glut of EVERYTHING, even beetle carapaces. I know multiple people with thousands.


    Regards
    Spung
     
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  14. Spungwa

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    So now you are RMT BUYING gold to compete... That does not sound like a market PvP win to me. If you buy from a player it makes no real difference at a macro economics level. If you buy COTOs and sell that is a win for the game. I have never RMTed in any game, including this one.

    So that gives you the gold. Now you need the time to go to every vendor selling whatever you want to monopolse. Currently you only have to empty high traffic locations. With a global search and no remote buy you have go to all pots, including embedded, that sell that item. I think you under estimate the amount of time that would take.

    So now you are selling at a lose with a huge stock. Competition stops as you are selling at a lose. You bump price, for a time you make some gold, better hope that is enough to cover your RMT gold and sell at loses. Someone, as a global search will see and will start under cutting you again and cycle continues. You would only make gold doing this if the sales volumes are high compared to gathering supply time. Not something I would bet on in this game.

    As for banning, no I don't think banning would work. Banning people for buying stuff they put up for public sell on a vendor...... If you got banned for this behaviour I would be very confused.

    Regards
    Spung
     
  15. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Seeing the tension rising about the market PvP topic I might be swayed to actually support this darn idea.
    If I don't get useful real PvP I can as well join the market one hrhr.
     
  16. Spoon

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    Crowns are just another commodity. Any popular commodity have a link to real money due to the RMT factor.

    So if you don't worry about the rest you shouldn't worry about crowns either.

    Agreed.
    But that is not what was the original idea by Chris in the livestream that prompted this dialog.
    A search and go buy was suggested by players specifically to counter the idea from Chris.

    Like I've said uptopic, I have no problem with an easier way to find vendors.
    I'd prefer all Town Crier functionality that both, A) list all vendor names on the lots B) local item search and get vendors marked on compass. But I could live with a regional search as well.

    However the suggestion of public vendors, becoming global with remote buy has me really worried based on how commodities acquisition is designed. If they want to go the GAH route then they need to rethink a lot of how we gather resources, especially the tier 3 ones.

    If our resource acquisition worked like in EVE then I would agree with you.
    Where in SotA common resources work similarly and I agree with you there, it would be really really hard (and stupid) to try for a monopoly situation on things like wood and ore or basic crafted stuff.

    However for rare drops it is kinda easy and very lucrative and is happening on a regular basis already. You just need to be careful in selecting which ones.
    Dungeon rare drop prices for instance got manipulated between apr and may, even though there were tons of players out there trying to harvest them in the wild.


    Two-three alts, one day.
    Been done a couple of times by different actors/guilds in half a day when a handful of players act coordinated.

    The really organized traders already have alts set up in all the mayor market points so they only need to fire up enough of them. The good ones can alternate about 4 alts at the same time (1 loading, 1 closing, 1 trading, 1 running).

    Me I can only handle one and a half and poorly at that. Also my "can't be bothered" threshold is non-existent these days.


    Going from how you outline this I am guessing you two haven't done this in any other MMO nor attempted it in this one?

    I ask since the quoted comments omit that if you have carefully picked a good commodity then you'd earn income all the way through the takeover even while stocking up.
    This since you have listings going all the while at the new markup price. Also if players consistently see the new markup price then they will eventually get used to the new price and trade at that point.
    You just make sure that all traffic needs to go through you.

    For instance the trigger event for the crown topic that spawned this one was a single actor who trades lots of RMT and thus got a lot of igg stock at a good price. Then simply used that to increase the crown igg price by about 25-30%. (Which also diversifies the risk of igg trading through placing them in a less inflation prone commodity). This since the gold-per-crown hadn't followed the gold-per-dollar for a while.
    That started by simply buying out all the current stock on the existing crown traders and listing buy orders higher than them. Then when stocked up enough launching their own traders at the markup price, which got good traffic at the new price point. Leading to new markup buy orders and sell orders. Which triggered other players buying crowns all over to sell to the new actor who could then resell at the new price. Which means that a new equilibrium is formed.
    Sure there is a risk, but it was a minimal one since they got a good gold price and the currency rates was favorable.

    So if you do this regularly the risk is spread out and if you do it correctly the market will just adjust and reach a new equilibrium at the markup.

    However if you only do it once and pick the wrong commodity that can be replenished through more effort then you are in a world of trouble. Like when a guild last year tried to drive up prizes on scrolls, that was a disaster for them since scrolls is crafted, so everyone just stepped up and crafted more until they couldn't take any more at which point it went back to normal.
    While when the same thing was done to rare dungeon drops the market stabilized at the new higher price point recently.
     
  17. Spinok

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    Your example is bad, your used COTO as an example, try use your logic for other goods, which are can be got by the grind. Most of the goods are this type.
     
  18. Lars vonDrachental

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    I generally would like it more if there would be some actions involved instead of just paying some amount of money. If we had a dynamic system of simulated information transport e.g. by transporting quests I would suggest that this dynamic system would adjust the availability of vendor information in towns.

    E.g. in each NPC town is created a trade guild posts. (PoTs may have to place them as NPC building)
    At the trade guild you get quests to deliver messages to other towns to update the vendor info in these towns and you also get there info about the currently known vendor offers. (e.g. for 100 gold you can take a look at the list)
    Maybe for a fee of 25% on the sales price the trade guild will even deliver the chosen vendor offer to your mailbox if you are in a hurry and not interested in walking to the vendor to buy the item yourself.
    Once per day each towns trade guild posts generates a delivery quest to bring status messages to a central NPC town and a similar quest from that central NPC town to all other towns in the region. Maybe as some kind of easy start quests for new avatars or if that is not needed maybe instead carrying these info could create interests by strong NPCs hunting the mailmen to steal these information by killing them. (killed in a mail robbery random encounter or mail robbery siege szene = quest failed)
    If a seller is interested in customers he would do the needed quests himself or encourage others to do them to let as much avatars as possible see his offers.
    To make it "easy" the quest would simply unlock the info in other towns and there would be no need to update the info if you change your products but nevertheless I would suggest that all vendor information of a town are outdated and removed if the needed delivery quest was missed two times in a row.

    - If no avatar is delivering the status message from town A to the central town or reverse no-one will know what that town A’s vendors has to offer and also in town A no one would know what the central town has to offer. In town A the trade guild would just know the local vendor offers of town A.
    - If an avatar is doing the quest to deliver the status message from town A to the central town the vendor offer will be available in the central town and a request at e.g. a NPC trade guild would show items of the central town and town A combined. In reverse in town A still no one knows what other towns has to offer.
    - If an avatar is doing now additionally the quest to bring the info from the central town to town A in town A all known offers of the central town are known too. (e.g. vendor offers in central town, town B, town D; vendor offers of town C are missing because no one did the quest to bring info from town C to the central town)

    I generally like such simple visual indicators but I think that would just work in SotA if the devs would define a standard price for all resources and based on that calculate a reasonable price for all products…maybe even available for checking in some books like the novian standard price list. This of course would need changes like e.g. reducing the gold NPC are paying for your stuff.
    Because if they would make the calculation dynamic based on avatar sales the possibility to adjust the perception of item values in the current system would be too simple. Someone could simply place items for triple prices and sell them to himself thousands of times just to raise the dynamic base price without any losses except time. Within a short time the doubled price item would be visible as green = cheap. I’m quite sure enough avatars would trust these indicators and would buy the overpriced items.
    But of course they could also change the way vendors work by adding fees to trades to lower the benefit/possibility to adjust the base value of items.
     
  19. Rowell

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    I own a couple shops in Novia Market (Napar Goods, and Nightshade Inn).

    For my furniture prices at Napar Goods, I have a spreadsheet for costing components/materials based on the cost of raw materials...then mark up the price 5-10%. Fairest pricing scale. I don't care what my neighbors are charging, I don't try to under cut them. The price of my goods is the cost of the materials, plus 5-10% for my labor. Period. If that's too costly, sorry. If you want to buy my goods and re-sell them, fine...I'm still making the coin back for the materials and the cost to produce them.

    In regards to my weapons and armor..I make +6 to +9 gear. I'm not a high level crafter, like many others. I sell my items at a big loss at Nightshade Inn. Items with less desirable stats, I sell on a discount vendor for low level players to get decent items at a real deal. For items with pretty good stats, I sell on a separate vendor for something like 200g per "Plus" on the item (ie, 1400g for a +7 item). Way under the cost to make. Why? Just because... I know I can't compete with many of the 130+ skill level crafters out there. But I like making my own gear. Anything extra I have/make, I just sell to help people out. Again, if someone wants to buy them and re-sell them...great.

    Despite all that, I think some sort of town search or global search would be helpful. I waste so much time jumping from vendor to vendor, town to town, looking for a recipe or raw material. It would save time to be able to just search for "Maple Wood" or "Silver Ingot" or whatever. Personally, I could care less if someone wants to undercut me, or try to monopolize the market (which is difficult to do). I'll still sell my wares at prices that are fair. My costs are minimal; my gold/profits are almost exclusively used for crafting.
     
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  20. Fenrus MacRath

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    • Ryodin, I understand that you are looking for a middle ground that we can all live with, but if history has taught us anything, there are no 1/2 measures in an economy. Attempts at the latter simply cause exponential problems to occur and opens the door for mass exploitation in the gaps that are created. So many good points have been made on both sides of this argument and some quite unsound ones as well. 1st and foremost, we need a robust player base to actually have a real working economy. Without that, it will be retarded in its growth and much easier for groups to dominate it. This will, I believe lead to or at least move towards a total collapse of the system and possibly the game itself. 2nd , There are several vocal and active members of our community, who purchased towns and cities who will be against a global market, because it renders their very real investment obsolete in the scope of our economy. (Who would go to Novia market or Soryn Fields, if you could just access all vendors from any location?) Imagine your local shopping mall and think about what Amazon has done to that? .
    • That said, imposing the limits you suggest really would not facilitate the goal of the global marketplace and would certainly make life easier only for the groups currently engaged in arbitrage. (Buying low and reselling high). In order for it to work, we need free and equal access for all citizens to the entire market. We also have to consider the attractive quality that will present to new and prospective players. Thoughts?
     
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