Cornering the market out of control.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by YellowBelly, Aug 27, 2017.

  1. YellowBelly Augur

    On my server one or two people have the market cornered on almost everything. It's impossible to have fair prices with items so manupulated. Can the developers please look into some kind of market control?
  2. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Putting crazy prices up in /baz will eventually backfire.
    If it is too expensive, people will just farm the stuff themselves, If it is too cheap, people will buy it up and resell.
    Sooner or later the prices will match the actual value...
  3. svann Augur

    You can make a lot of money off of market controllers. Just find something you can farm that they are trying to control and put up a few just a little lower than they have. They feel forced to buy you out then you put up more. If you want to be tricky you could even make a few different bazaar sellers so he doesnt wise to your plan.
  4. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    @Svann's suggestion is spot on.

    The Bazaar is an alternative to you farming items yourself. The price of goods in the bazaar is determined by the price people are willing to pay. All prices are "fair". Artificially controlled prices are generally only reserved for things that your society/government deems necessary for survival, like rent, utilities and food. Oh, and health care, hopefully :) I haven't seen any "need" that would make me want DBG to control prices on any of the items in EQ, which is solely for entertainment.

    On the other hand, DBG already controls all prices by default: they control the supply (the rate at which items drop in the game). What you see is their intention, until they tell you otherwise. The more prices increase, the more Kronos they sell.

    Sticker shock seems to be a natural human reaction in life. Again, if we were talking about food or other necessities, I'd be all about having discussions about socialism. But I don't know if EQ is ready for that :)
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Drusi like this.
  5. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    How on early do you propose "market control" measures? You can't stop someone from buying up everything and putting it up for a higher price. If the price is too high, no one buys it. If people buy it, the price isn't too high.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Quatr like this.
  6. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    Abuse it to your advantage - I do it all the time to teach under cutters a lesson to match prices. I so enjoy slaughtering the market from the ridiculous prices people think they can charge trade skillers. I'm going to keep putting this out at what the market price should be you can't sustain buying all of the from me. You and your server wins :D
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Quatr like this.
  7. YellowBelly Augur

    The responses in this thread should show the devs just how out of control the bazaar is. As far as counter measures go how should I know? The devs get paid to make those types of decisions.

    If resellers are this good at manipulating video game markets maybe they should get a real job as a day trader or deal in crypto exchanges, Do something productive with their lives and leave EQ alone.
  8. Knight-errant Journeyman

    The bazaar is like a game within the game. If you put economic controls in it ruins the fun. And as others have mentioned, it auto corrects itself. Law of supply and demand will dictate the prices.
  9. Nolrog Augur

    A long time ago, a friend of mine did this. The dude eventually went broke buying out my buddy's stock every few days.
    Quatr likes this.
  10. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    If you are thinking you beat the "pro" sellers are probably being naive. You are either a) selling just under the the lowest existing listings, or b) selling at far below market value.

    If you are doing a), then you aren't doing anything special, you just sold your stuff for market value. You became a "pro" trader for a minute. Congratulations.

    If you are doing b), then you might be feeling good about yourself because you are donating goods to others for far less than they are worth. Of course, you are probably just giving your items to the "pro" sellers at a huge discount. You absolutely didn't make anybody go broke and you absolutely didn't teach anybody a lesson. That's making me chuckle even as I type :) Giving your goods away for less than they are worth doesn't teach sellers a lesson, it gives them more goods to sell.

    If you are on a "mature" server (that has been around for a while), and you can't afford things in the /bazaar for tradeskilling, then you most likely haven't played long enough (or recently enough?) to establish a pool of wealth that is on par with the AVERAGE people on the server. Buy a krono or go farming. Complaining about high prices is no different than complaining about the weather.
  11. Catty Lorekeeper

    The devs aren't going to look into anything. Since EQ began (even pre-Bazaar), people played the market. It was one of the many games-within-the-game.

    It is fair play completely within the spirit of the game. Of all the silly things people whine about in this game, I have to admit this is up there as one of the silliest.
    Quatr, Reynen and Perplexed like this.
  12. Bigstomp Augur

    Like others have said. The market auto-corrects. If things cost too much, well there you go. Easy money making opportunity for you. Go farm some and sell it.
    Quatr likes this.
  13. Act of Valor The Newest Member

    The invisible hand of The Nameless passively corrects the bazaar and it's prices.
    Quatr and Miss_Jackie like this.
  14. Scorrpio Augur

    It is all about the most valuable commodity in the game: time. Someone does not have the time to keep a trader alt up in baz when that time can be spent playing that account main - they will put their stuff for a lower price and move it quickly, likely to resellers.
    Someone does not have the time to keep checking baz for various things they need every 5 minutes, or go camp it themselves, if they want the stuff quick they will pay the high reseller price and be on their merry way. And that is the way of things. How do you propose to control it?
    Quatr likes this.
  15. Thrillho Augur

    There are far too many items in the game to have market control via devs. It's not just a matter of placing a maximum or minimum on items, which is more or less done via the merchants if an item is sellable to them. You would have to take in supply and demand for every item, and update that every day. It's not possible. And even if it were possible to do in the bazaar, no one is forcing people to use the bazaar - kronos aren't sold there anymore simply because the price of them is beyond the bazaar's capacity. If any other item goes beyond the bazaar's capacity, it goes into spamming the General channel.

    In terms of supply and demand, the demand for TS items skyrocketed when the Artisan's Prize came up. Worthless TS junk was now selling for 100k+ a piece - people didn't want to spend time farming old school stuff, and they had the money to burn if someone did it for them. 300+ TS skill was another boon for more TS items. Again, people are spending considerably more on junk that wasn't worth bag space a week prior. No one is going to farm this stuff if they can only get a few plat for it in a controlled market. It takes hours / days to farm just a single item sometimes - would you farm an item that long for just 20pp?

    With the huge demand for these items, plenty of long-forgotten supply locations were once again being farmed. When the Artisan's Prize came out, I remember finding a place that would let you farm thousands of [high end TS item] that was used a lot to get [tradeskill] to 300. Or [trophy] to max. Buyers were set up to buy 999 of this item at a pretty good price, and there would be a dozen or so offers for it. Farm and flood, and the market still hasn't recovered for that one item yet. A friend and I made millions of plat doing that before the resellers realized what was going on. And I still have thousands of that item to flood the market with again after the price goes up. It's impossible to expect market control from the devs.

    Tips for surviving in the baz:
    • Talk with the resellers. Their prices aren't just what they advertise - you can bargain with them, especially if you have a lot of items to move. Or if you're a constant supply for them.
    • Farm. Old stuff still sells well - plenty of TS items, plenty of spells, plenty of gear. Hunters achievements are a good way to get spells & twink gear.
    • Compare the /barter with /bazaar. Lots of folks don't check the two and you can make a lot by buying something in the baz only to immediately sell it to a buyer. Spells and augments were a common thing I looked out for, as their prices are always changing.
    • Don't put up all a full stack of items all at once if you're trying to be competitive. Selling 1-2 spells at a 10% discount is going to entice a reseller to just buy your stuff to get rid of competition. Selling 10 spells at a 10% discount is going to have a reseller drop their price lower than yours, and you can't compete with their stack of 40.
    Quatr likes this.
  16. Reynen Journeyman

    Good it should stay like this. If people want to take the time to control the prices and make a profit, good for them.
    Quatr likes this.
  17. Millianna Augur

    Anyone who doesn't think this is a problem then you have issues. There is an easy fix that's used in most modern MMOs. Restrictions on amount of plat and krono an individual ACCOUNT can have. No one will be able to micro manage 50 billion accounts.
  18. Catty Lorekeeper

    Go back 20 years and read exact same threads. Back when nobody had even a fraction of this plat.

    Anyone who thinks you can control this kind of thing in an open world has an extremely limited view of reality. Your arbitrary rules will only affect those who never participated in the first place.

    Just to engage, how will capping plat matter. If someone buys up all of the [Item X], what's stopping them. Driving prices up. Reducing supply. Increasing demand. This exists on Earth in EVERY country and culture regardless of currency powers.

    Markets correct. The items being controlled change over time. Same answer for 20 years: "Live with it or go farm"
    Quatr and Caell like this.
  19. Millianna Augur

    You certainly can. A plat and krono restriction for every account will make nearly impossible for 1 person to control the entire market place.
  20. Millianna Augur

    it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. There's already two huge restrictions in place. Bazaar plat cap and requirement of gold. Micro management of 50 billion accounts will also help.