For the sake of a healthier economy

While i was trying to boost up one of my characters i came across something that could need a significant change.

If you take a look in the broker, you might stumble upon various items that are stackable and thats not a bad thing sometimes for exobytes perhaps.

But if you look at other items, you see stuff like "Dark Raven's Gauntlet Box (185)".

Thats just unneccesary. No one needs 185 of those and its just wasted resources. On the other hand, i can understand if someone opened a lot of TC's and just wants to get rid of all those items at once.

So, what if we can actually choose to buy items from stacks for the price of 1?

Eg: Dark Raven's Gauntlets Box (185) for 55.500.000 or by pressing right on D-Pad (on console) "Buy 1 item for 30.000"

It would also come in handy to be able to sort by '"cheapest per piece" so that you dont have to check all those stacks for the cheapest offer or do the math manually before you want to buy the cheapest item.

This would benefit the economy because there are also items like Adaptive Augment Catalysts that are at such high stacks, that nobody needs them and priced so high that nobody would buy those. So overall this would benefit players for having more items available in the game and devs for having more players sticking around due to a more evened out economy.

Because generally when people are selling large quantities like that they're after a large sum of money at once. If you allow a player to just buy one or some the other player is going to end up being drip fed the money incrementally as people purchase the items, which is not likely to be something they want.

They would still be able to sell all at once if one person shows up, willing to pay for all. But in most cases it wont ever happen like in my example, wich is an actual offer currently on EuPs/Pc...

I've been asking for something like this for years now. They need to do something similar to Guild Wars 2 auction system. Everything stacks up to 999 or 9999 in the broker. And if you wanted x items for y price, you put in a bid or buy outright and when you buy things it will automatically point you to the lowest price item. That auction system is far better than the one we have now. I mean you have people that are selling Nth Metal caches for 1.7M each but they're are individual listings and there's pages of them. So in this example, if their were 25Nth metal caches for 1.7M/cache,, then it would be under 1 listing. And then you could go do that listing, buy each at 1.7 each OR you could buy the whole stack. This way would also drastically reduce the number of pages you have to scroll through on the broker.

Yeah I get your idea, I don't even necessarily think it's a bad idea, I was just thinking of what flaws it might have. The trouble to is the devs never seem to want to do too much with the broker because I get the feeling it's too heavily tied to needing an upgraded UI (but I could be wrong)

I think you're 100% correct. The UI needed some serious upgrading, and they even admitted that to us way back.

What kind of UI upgrades do you have in mind?

IMO The Broker needs the following.

1. More sub categories for stuff and a few new sub categories, such as Gear Boxes, Auras, Materials and break the base items up alphabetically or something into sub category groups, like A-D, E-G, etc with the ability to just browse them all if you don't click a sub group.
2. The ability to zoom into an item so you can see what it looks like. Raven's head gem is a perfect example. On a sprite body I can't even see it in the tiny preview window.
3. Materials need a preview option.
4. If we're talking wishes something more like Guild Wars 2's auction house would be far better than what we have now, if not showing what the last 10 of an item sold for would help overall pricing.
5. More info on base items, is it a wall item? a floor item? a ceiling item?
6. A scale for base items so you know how big they are. Easter Island head looks like it might be large, it's not very big compared to a character or other items. The clocktower window looks small in the preview.. oh that'll be a nice small window on my wall..NOPE it's HUGE. Absolutely frustrating when buying something that won't fit in your base well.
7. Renaming stuff to be more inline with each other but that's a whole 'nother post

Another thing the broker could use is the ability to type in page numbers, where it shows you the page number, to jump to that page.

While that sounds like maybe it would be handy, it also sounds like it would take a bunch of coding for something few would take advantage of.

First off, most bulk purchase items don't work out to be cheaper than the individuals (the exception might be TC gear when done in 100+ quantity). Look at OP food and cats. Any of them can normally be bought for say 5 million, yet you will see stacks of 3 for 20 million or 4 for 30 million. If you expect these same sellers to noodle out what the per piece price would be when making a listing you are severely over estimating people. I'd guess most have never been to Sam's club or Costco and don't understand bulk pricing. Likewise, many buyers who need to buy in bulk BUY these items because they don't care about the money, but just want to be done with their purchase quick. If you need 10 of an item, most times (see above) the price is cheaper to buy 10 of them one by one, however, scrolling down and finding someone selling 10 in a pack, regardless of price, is faster and easier. One item to buy...one mail to open.

The only way I see this working is to have a 'store' type option in the broker, where large bulk lots could be put up for a higher fee but longer listing time (like 2 or 3 weeks). Having to re-up that same stack of 185 gauntlets, set the bulk price, then the per piece price...every 3 days, would likely go unused. Now you could assume that the system would just split the math 185 ways, but again, the listing person would need to have the choice to either sell in this method or not...requiring some major changes in the broker system.

BTW...the broker makes absolutely NO money for DI, minus people wanting to buy additional broker slots...which this change would work against.

I don’t think it’s a terrible idea, but if the seller wanted to list those items separately at the ‘unit’ price, they would have done so, probably drip feeding 10 at a time onto the broker or whatever.

They also might potentially be setting the bulk price at a lower cost per unit than they would be willing to sell the items for individually ie as a ‘job lot’, which is their privilege.

Also you have to consider that if ‘nobody is going to buy 185 of those’ is a true statement then chances are the seller will break them down into smaller batches or single units in a future sale.

I sell certain items in bulk to shift them quickly when I think that short term market conditions are going to be at an advantageous level for selling for a short period of time, allowing people to buy just 1 item would undermine that strategy. I’m essentially saying to buyers, ‘you want this price, you have to buy 5 or 20’ or whatever - a common and accepted sales practice in everyday life.

In any case it is an established free market and I would not want to interfere with it without very good reason. In all these years where the 1b broker limit has become useless for the most valuable items, I would expect it to be unlikely that they would make a nuanced change such as this, when they either can’t be bothered or aren’t interested in something as a fundamental to the functionality of the broker as the maximum listing price.

Good list. I'd add one thing I'd LOVE to see, the ability to see 'like' items for sale. So you find a Xmas base item cause you know the name of one...press square or whatever (on kb) and you now see ALL of that year's Xmas base items. Find 1 collection piece, press square (again...kb...whatever) and you now see all 12 pieces of that collection so you know approximately how much each piece costs and what they are...assuming they are in the broker that is.

This would help when buying things you need but some pesky seller has sold it how they want. Like I wanna buy an Nth Metal detector but the only ones available are ten for ten million. Sure I'll buy a detector for 1 mil I guess but until someone decides to sell one for that price or lower I'm out of luck. This system would help and on the seller's end maybe your whole stack doesn't sell but you still get some sales at least.

Perhaps a way around this is the seller is given the option when posting their sale on broker as a batch you can sell in Singles or Full Order Only Yes or No? If they say no then they don't have to worry about their sale being broken up but it's also on them if buyers don't want to buy the whole thing either. It gives room for both sellers and buyers.

You are aware of the Augment/Exobyte system and the Workstation salvaging system, no?

If they wanted to sell singles they would have put it in the broker as singles. It is called wholesale.

On a side note, it is funny though, how everything else actually costs more in bulk lol. DCUO economy for you haha

Thats actually a good idea. Havent thought about salvaging that gear. The price for each exo would be 300k wich is average actually. But then its 185 players less that would get the cool raven handstyle for "free" or without having to pay real money, wich a lot of people dislike for obvious reasons.


Seeing all the comments made me realise once more that DC players hate to get forced into something. So, how about - instead of it being the standard - its just going to be a choice. A simple button to toggle on/off individual sales?

Any time I see this topic pop up I never see 'game wide wipe' wonder why that is?

But everyone wants a healthier economy lol

You know how much void goes for on xbox? 70-90mil from what I've been told by numerous xbox players.

Know why that is? Because they haven't had 2-4 money glitches ruin their economy like USPS/PC has. So if you seriously want change, then a money wipe across the entire USPS/PC servers needs to happen in 2021.

This means all stored money in mail, on alts every ounce of it. Leave ppl with 3k cash and refund ppls items off broker, and let it run its course.

I wouldnt mind a money wipe, but this thread had nothing to do with unequal bank accounts. Its more about how many items are available on the market.

This is only partly true.

Money comes into the economy when players kill things and when they sell things to a vendor.

Fewer players and a shorter game lifespan is the main reason things are ‘cheaper’ on X Box. For the same reasons, things are ‘cheaper’ on rns EU server compared to the US server.

Comparing prices on different servers is completely pointless.