Ok, I've had WAY too much caffeine so please bear with me.
Some players don't like the Market because it can be manipulated. Some players love the Market for the same reason. I don't like vendoring because it essentially destroys the item sold, removing it from the game forever.
But why? (Hold on...I'll get there...)
What if the VENDORS were represented on the MARKET?
A vendor is just a guy who buys and sells items at a set price right? He buys and sells to the players in his shop at a set price. But what if the Vendors then turned around and SOLD their surplus at the Market?
Here's how it would work (in my fevered imagination): A Vendor has an infinite amount of stuff to sell at fixed prices. However anything that he BUYS he then turns around and sells it on the Market. It appears on the Market as a regular sale just like any other player item. The price asked for would be determined by the price the item cost the Vendor and a random factor to modify the price. This last bit adds a certain amount of chance to the Market and prevents all of the prices from flat-lining. The random price would be anywhere from 110% of the purchased price to 1000%.
Now here's the kicker: If the Devs thought that the Market was too unstable then they could adjust the 'Vendor Factor' down, thus normalizing prices.
So if I get a (to me) useless drop I can go to a Vendor and sell it for $100.00 or throw it on the Market. But the Market price is below $100.00 and I have time to waste so off I go to the Vendor. I sell him my junk at $100.00 each. Then the game takes that junk and throws it on the Market for anywhere from 110-1000 bucks. This keeps most items in circulation. No there will still be some players who sell their stuff lower just because it's fast and easy so the floor price won't be $110.00. There will also be the occasional 'OMG gotta have it NOW!' buyer so there will still be chances to sell over price. The Vandor Factor insures that the prices on the Market will still average higher than the Vendor purchase price (thus keeping the Market interesting).
Basically the Vendors join the Market but they never BUY, just SELL. The prices can still fluctuate (if there are 20 Vendors and 10,000 players the Vendor portion of the Market will be very small) but now not was wildly. Plus there will be some items that are rare drops that NEVER get sold to the Vendor and will be strictly in the domain of the players.
Whew! Sorry...off now. Talk amongst yourselves...
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Not sure I follow completely...what determines the price at which the vendor buys any item.
Would it be some fixed priced like CoX had for SOs, DOs and TOs?
At any rate...so would the equivalent be a large cartel of marketeers, selling lots of "less than rare and ultra-rare" items, in perpetuity, at prices that way more often than not will be within a predictable range, in order to help stabilize market prices for everyone?
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How do you propose to set the vendor buy/sell prices ? This was suggested a long time ago, and the two schemes that were proposed for the vendor pricing, I broke and showed how to exploit after a couple of minutes thought.
Minotaur's conjecture: You can vendor buy stuff at a cheap price without hurting the market, but you can only vendor sell stuff at a very high price without either allowing people to exploit or destroying the market as a way of earning currency.
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The prices would be set just like the Vendors in CoX. Say all Common Recipes at $100, Uncommon at $1000 and Rare at $5000 just to pull numbers out of thin air. The idea is to provide some Market stability, and another source of supply, without wrecking the Market through too much artificial control.
Some people will still just throw their stuff on the Market for a buck because that's just how some people are. Those items will be snapped up by frugal buyers looking to get stuff for less than the Vendor price. Some people will feel (correctly or incorrectly) that their stuff is worth more and try to charge $250 for it when the Vendor price is $100.00. They'll get it sometimes because many people have more money that sense or patience in games and they're too lazy to run down the block to the Vendor. The randomness of the prices (what I called the Vendor Factor) provides for some fluctuation.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I don't see this doing anything much beyond filling the market up with all the junk salvage and recipes that people vendored because it wasn't worth more than vendor price on the market. So the vendors will have a zillion items listed at prices that no one will ever pay, because the players who listed their junk items on the market for 1 inf are still doing that.
At best, you recycle into the market the occasional valuable item that people sell to the vendor out of ignorance or carelessness (that 'Whoops, there goes my Purple!' moment). Plus, I guess you depress the market prices of the near-junk that some people sell and some people vendor. I'm not really seeing much of an advantage to the players?
The vendor having infinite amounts of items to sell? Hmm. I bet you know what I'm going to ask -- how are you planning to set the prices?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
Don't vendors usually have infinite items to sell? I don't remember any of them ever running out of recipes for DOs or anything...
The point of the thing is that people often sold stuff to Vendors that the Vendors themselves did not sell. You could sell Set Recipes that were never available at a Vendor. However you do have a point in that most of the time a player was selling to the Vendor it was because it was worth less on the Market. Therefore anything the Vendor sells on the Market (at a mark-up) will never sell.
Point taken. Next time I'll try less caffeine.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Although I managed once or twice (in several years) to sell TO's/DO's/SO's on the market, they were just not viable to sell on the market.
But because they were purchasable from the vendor, and people were *used* to getting them from the NPC vendors, the players rarely looked for them on the market.
The same thing happens in WoW. If its purchasable from a vendor, unless it is from just one or two vendors in the whole game world (or they only ever carry it in a limited quantity which does happen to them), then they will generally not sell on the AH.
I sold basic enhancements on the market all the time. Would list them for 1. This was so a new player (poor) could buy them cheep and save money or buy them cheep and sell them to the vendor to make a small profit to help finance their characters. And I know I wasn't the only one doing it.
I just never managed to do it... but I think that was because I never really put too much effort into trying to do it that way. *shrugs* Hell, I never knew if what I sold was to a low level character or to a high level character.
But then again, just by playing the game on a newbie, I was never strapped for cash to buy TO's/DO's/SO's. I also never used the market during the early stages of the levelling process (well, to be fair, I *couldn't* use it, because y'know, I had to *pay* to be able to use it).
The thing is, I am in the mind that *generally speaking*, if it is purchasable from a vendor, it wont really sell on the market (it might not even be bought by the group of people that you think it will)
Yes, it *can* sell, but that doesn't mean that it *will* sell.
*edit* Reading more on this, I find it interesting in that you sold cheap so that the buyer could later on flip the item (which is something that *some* people on the forum detest!).
I did the same, if I had spare slots. It was a loss on selling them to the vendors, but it was a nice thing to do.
I think it says a lot of about the CoX community that one of the thing people used the market for was 'charitable donations to the poor'.
Speaking of vendor items, Common IO recipes had some odd market prices. Very occasionally, and generally for the same small number of IOs (End Mod was one) the market price would be above the bench price. Never by very much, but that was always weird to see.
Also, the vendoring prices for high-level common IO recipes were ridiculous. Level 50s were causing enough inflation as it was, they didn't need to be getting 100,000 inf a pop for common IO recipes.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
There was a good market trade in some desirable common IO recipes, because the market price for those generally sat somewhere between the vendoring price and the bench price, which were a good spread apart. Of course, I think the idea was that people could have as many Common IOs as they wanted, so there were no rarity issues to worry about.
For the unwanted Common IO recipes, I think a lot of people dumped them on the market, again, for low level characters to buy up and vendor. It was a tedious way of getting started, but I did it a few times with characters I wanted to keep self-sufficient. It was a lot easier to sell the tutorial large insps, and start some crafting and flipping, but occasionally I'd do the market --> vendor run, just for variety. Especially when the gate to the RWZ was no longer level locked. Woo-hoo! Vanguard Quartermaster! \o/
(CoX - a game where people really did make their own fun :-)
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
Errr, I am talking TO's/Do's/SO's... never mentioned IO's.
About the only ones that I saw any potential for were the Level 51/52 SO's (or possibly the "mid" level ones, ie level 12/13, 17/18 none craftable enhancements).
Sorry, I thought you were talking generally.
I was just struck by the difference, though. DO/SO could both be bought and sold at vendors. Common IO recipes could be bought and sold at vendors (although the benches didn't buy back, I don't think?). For DO/SO that could be bought at a vendor the market was pretty non-existent. For some Common IO recipes, there was a pretty good market.
The both dropped frequently in combat. They both had about the same difference between vendor sale price and buy back price (25% of sale price for Common recipes; for DO/SO ~10-40%, and commonly 26% -- I wonder if that was how the Common recipe buyback price was decided?)
Was it that people who used DO/SO didn't like to use the market? Was it that people were buying salvage for Common IOs at the market anyway, so they checked the market for the recipes while they were there and bought if they could get them under bench price? Maybe it was just because SOs were so much cheaper than Common IO recipes, so they weren't worth the market slots? It would be interesting to know.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
I know that *part* of the limitation would be that once freedom hit, IO and market usage were not available to F2P players unless they paid for it (every month that they wanted it)
So that was a section of the playerbase already cut out of using the market to get "cheap" enhancements. Hell, you couldn't even guarentee that the premium players had market access.
The other thing is that we were so used to using vendors to get enhancements (either from a contact that you unlocked OR from general drops, and that the developers over the years had eased the influence earning problems (the hump around 30ish i believe it was), a player was not really going to be short of inf to get at least a set of SO's slotted out.
When I was a brand new player I read the posts on the old forum about the market and learned about this. I bought basic enhancements cheep and sold them to the vendor. This was part of marketing 101. This helped me a lot in the beginning. Later, when I had plenty I paid it forward by listing them low and giving others the same opportunity.
Could some people take advantage of this, maybe, but highly unlikely. For those that already had plenty of cash the profit of buying low on the market and selling to a vendor was not really worth the time and while they could list them higher on the market and make a profit, they could not reasonably list them for more than the vendor price, again, if they already had plenty of cash then again the profit was not really worth the time or market slots.
Not all flipping is ebil.
True, and personally I have *no* problem with flipping... especially if the person is selling the initial item for a quick buck themselves.
If someone can spend more time themselves to sell stuff for more of a profit, I have no problem with that. Hell, in Eve Online, there are people who just play the market, and their characters are set up *purely* for trading (ie, spending time to learn the skills) and hauling the stuff from one market to another.
I used to fill my trays (yes I purchased a second one) up with 50 SOs or common IOs for 1-5K each before respecing, that often paid for me to upgrade my SOs.
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Was really only pointing that out because it was pointed out that others might think this was enabling others to manipulate the market in bad ways. Some may, but there were many of us that used the market to help others. What good is having all that fake money if all your gonna do with it is earn more fake money and hoard it.
Not trying to hijack the thread but on a separate note. I rather disliked it when they made it impossible to trade with F2P people. When I just wanted to kill time I enjoyed watching the entrance of new characters and giving away expensive stuff to people with no vet badges, I preferred being the anonymous benefactor.
I liked CoH's market - free market style. Manipulation is manipulation, even if a game mechanic by vendors. I was not a fan of eliminating access by F2P players, but if you are to have 2 classes of player you have to have some benefit to the subscribers. But, in general, the F2P move was the start of CoH's final countdown but that's a different thread.
There was always a way to get your recipes - go, play, kill skulls...
GW2 has cool features to help players get upgraded gear. Map completion bonus (and you had to work for these) with rewards leveled to the zone/map. Dungeon completion rewards. Raid mob completion rewards (seem based on your participation into the event). So, these types of rewards have an increased probability of higher end gear (or for this game - blueprints).
Players that have the means and want the quick fix can go to the market and pay for it, and get rewarded for playing the market. The players that want to play for reward should have the option to do so and get rewarded for playing. The players that want it all now and cheap can go play WOW.
"it's a long road to wisdom, but it's a short one to being ignored." The Lumineers
The only thing better for the economy than hoarding game currency forever is deleting it :-) The inf-burning prestige race on Virtue was awesome.
That made me sad, too. I can see why they did it, because it restricts the options for gold sellers once it becomes possible to make free, infinite accounts, but it made it harder to help newbies. Hopefully, the plan for a 'box price' for CoT will made that unnecessary again, along with the tight restrictions on chat.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
No offense, but if they are going for a box price AND still limiting some chat options unless you pay/subscribe... that will leave a very bad taste in peoples mouths.
Whoops! Excuse my crappy phrasing. I meant that I hope a box price will also mean no restrictions on chat for new accounts.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning