Price Fixing in Bazaar

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Picaresque, Jul 27, 2015.

  1. Nolrog Augur

    Why don't you just keep making as many as you can and offer them for 200? You seem to have a ready buyer that will snap them all up.

    I fail to see why this is such a problem.
    Hiladdar likes this.
  2. Iila Augur

    You should talk to that other trader, you two seem to share a common ground of caring more about these spikeskin potions than everyone else, combined. It could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
    Mintalie, Sheex, Silv and 10 others like this.
  3. Picaresque Augur


    How did you know that Casablanca was my favorite movie of all time?
  4. Endless Augur

    I'm guessing you just want to sell at a "fair" price to people that will actually use it and not resell it for profit. Unfortunately, that's out of your control unless they added a feature where you can /block a player from buying from you. No doubt there are bazaar bots that scan prices in the bazaar and then buy low, sell high. When I was buying Castaway armor, I'd occasionally see prices that were much lower than average, either because the person want to sell it fast or was trying to just give a good deal to lower levels. Definitely a viable, but scummy way to make plats.
    Hiladdar and Picaresque like this.
  5. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    This is just buy and sell in the bazaar as many have said. Sometimes if you want to sell to end users and not resellers you need to price your items high enough so that it isn't worth the resellers effort to buy your stuff and resell it.

    About the only questionable practice I have seen is when someone uses bazaar features to block out other sellers unless the person is smart enough to change the Max Listing Per Tradder to something like 5 instead of 200.

    We have someone on Xegony who corners the market on Merchant's brew this way. They set up 4 traders all selling a ton of merchants brew then keep their traders as the most recently set up ones by starting and stopping trader mode throughout the day. The Bazaar starts listing the most recent traders set up first and has a maximum limit on how many items it shows. The person set up 4 traders selling brew and kept restarting their traders so no one else ever showed up selling merchants brew. After I started pointing this out in general chat they dropped their price from 250 a brew to 150 but have continued to try and block out other traders from showing up.

    Any time you are buying an item in the bazaar that there are MANY MANY of limit the items displayed per trader to a lower number then the default 200. I suggest something like 5 instead of 200. This way you will be sure to see all the traders selling that item and be able to get the lowest price. Happy shopping.
    Spellfire, Silv and Picaresque like this.
  6. Picaresque Augur

    I think Endless and Corwyhn have the gist of what drove me on this issue. Good discussion.
  7. Slasher Augur

    is the OP serious here ? Has he never heard of capitalism ? Buy low sell high ? What exactly sounds like someone is breaking a rule there ? He cant be serious is he ? Hes trolling i know it.

    Seriously man ? If you buy an item for 1p and sell it for 2p whats wrong ? Just from your OP I know who you voted for in 2012 :)
    Hiladdar likes this.
  8. Slasher Augur

    I see what you mean but there is obviously no rule being broken here.
  9. CrazyLarth Augur

    /ooc them in the pok problem solved
    Hiladdar likes this.
  10. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    " the only place to get Robust Shadow Essence is from the Willsappers in Grieg's End."

    incorrect, Vex Thal trash drops a notable amount.
  11. Stokjokr New Member

  12. svann Augur

    Thats arguable. Some corporate mergers and buyouts are not allowed to go forward. Thats not the same as saying they are illegal. You cannot do something is not the same as "if you do this there will be a legal penalty".

    But anyway, thats clearly not the same as buying out the stock of the competition to reprice it, which has never been said to be illegal or disallowed afaik - except in cases of disaster where it could be charged as profiteering. But that is a rare exception not a rule. In almost all cases it is allowed - which contradicts the person that said its never allowed.
  13. Tiqou Elder

    Never, ever play on FV :)
  14. Drusi Augur

    FV economy is so much fun to play around with.:)
    Trak not so much...

    I actually like it that there are people who keep steady traders on with maybe slightly expensive prices. Things like Skinspikes VIII potions are rather uncommon, so it is better to have them up at 250pp than have them squandered by someone who put up the trader up one time then forgot about them and moved them off trader.
    Hiladdar likes this.
  15. Hiladdar Augur

    Welcome to economics 101.

    The price for the Skinspikes floats based on the availability of the raw components, desire of someone to make them, and product demand.

    In your case, there is only one zone in which the farmed component can be farmed. That will up the price on the final product. It sounds like for that product, you set your price below market value of the item. The individual who sells them for 250 saw that, and bought you out.

    You could of easily set your price at say, 225.

    FYI the more buyers there are for a product in relation to the availability of the product the higher it will sell for. The more sellers you have of a specific product, the lower the price will be for that product.

    What is funny, is that I can jump on any mature live server, and find items for sale in demand by barters for more then what a seller is selling them for. Likewise, I find stuff that some players sell to in game vendors, that I can pick up for coppers that some player will pay several hundred PP. I also see some players selling stuff in vendor mode for way less then what a game vendor is willing to pay for them. It is just a matter of learning the server you play on, who the buyers and sellers are, and what the floating price range, and fixed vendor price is for different items, as well as which avatar specializes in what item(s).

    You have the same opportunity to make plat as anyone else, provided you educate yourself and put the effort into it.
    Elricvonclief likes this.
  16. Arwyn-RoV Augur

    Buy Low.. Sell High. Seems like market economics 101 to me. Price fixing would be a chunk of vendors colluding to keep item x at or above a certain price. My tradesman vendor does this from time to time when random person lists the stuff I make at a ridiculously low price. I'll go buy all the offending items.

    There's no harm and no foul here, ridiculous seller got his price, I got something I want for my own purposes. Roleplaying a businessman doing stock and trade.
    Elricvonclief and Hiladdar like this.
  17. Matari Augur

    I disagree with you, There trying to buy out the competition im order to keep prices high.
  18. Bigstomp Augur


    Easy to fix. Get rich selling stuff to them until they realize it's a losing game.
    Garshok and svann like this.
  19. Kravitz Augur


    This is so true but not ideal nowadays. I'd agree that farming the bazaar traders to find items people are selling for less than what a barter was asking for worked pre- Seeds of Destruction era (7 years ago?), but with how quickly you can farm diamonds/blue diamonds and other tradeskill stuff barters are willing to pay for. In 10 minutes, you can easily make 10k pp in lower zones mass killing mobs with a level 105 toon, or a wizard merc on ae setting.

    I still keep a barter up, but I only buy TDS/CotF rares and Krono's on my barter, then resell them back for Krono's, which is far faster way to get them btw and requires no time investment. I've bought plenty of them for 1mill pp each and resold it for 4-8 kronos.

    As for price fixing, its easily possible to do in EQ. This is because the bazaar is so archaic with the limitation of 100 slots per trader or 200 items to buy in barter, with close to a million tradable items. You can price fix anytime you want if you have the money for it. I've done it plenty of times, buy out everyone and hold a monopoly for 2-3 weeks at a time. Add to that unless you are running a trader/barter 24/7 , you can easily price fix items in this game as most people never get a chance to keep a trader/buyer up 24/7 as it limits playing other aspects of the game (holding your account hostage while in barter/trader). So there has never been an equal playing field in this area of the game when you consider the player base as a whole. Most servers only have 250 traders or so nowadays with close to 4000 active players a month.
  20. Arwyn-RoV Augur


    Yes they are. So?

    It could be that they are trying to protect their margin. Some people have no clue about what it takes to make tradeskill items.. or do the work to farm them.
    Hiladdar likes this.