Trade House Abuse or Good Listing?

zilogemax · January 2018

Hey everyone, I wanted to get your take on something I've been seeing a lot of lately. Whenever I'm looking in the Trade House for an item to buy or checking the prices for an item I might list to sell, I see several of the same people listing like a dozen of the same expensive item. I'll check back a little bit later and then I'll see that someone has provided the item for a slightly cheaper price than those same people who are listing dozens of those items in a row. Then shortly after that, I see those people delisting their stack of items then immediately relisting the stack for slightly cheaper just to keep their stack remaining at the very top. Personally I do not like seeing this frequently as it makes me feel that other people don't get a chance to sell an item due to flooding and continuous relisting just to remain at the top.

So what is your take? Is this a form of Trade House abuse or good listing practices?

zephyriah · January 2018

I can't judge if it is a good listing practice as it leads to a price war and everyone involved gets reduced profits, but it is certainly not any kind of abuse.

I will sometimes do this myself, if someone decides to undercut my price by a very minimum amount. If they list for a much lower amount or an amount below what I consider my minimum, I do not relist. If the price is much below my minimum, I will buy it and relist it at a higher price.

mchudo · January 2018

I share the feeling of abuse. When I am looking for something in the AH, more and more often I see one person listing dozens of same item so that one scrolls through those 400 items and sees nothing else but that one. Quite annoying. I usually go to buyouts as it mixes sales or look by keyword. I think it’s being done on purpose. Would be good to limit those sellers and their cheap tricks.

mebengalsfan · January 2018

It is called economics. Demand vs supply. With the changes to enchantments there has been a flood of enchantments on the broker, this drops the price. The change to refining has resulted in Artifacts being non-critical for upgrading other artifacts. Therefore the pricing of artifacts has also dropped. These two were good seller and fairly high in value. With the mob12b changes, it has resulted in lower pricing of enchantments and what not. These changes are actually good for lower IL players.

kreatyve · January 2018

It's a free market. The player base would not like it if the devs put too many limitations on the AH. There are plenty of other things to complain about.

zephyriah · January 2018

zilogemax#1503 said:

kreatyve said:
It's a free market. The player base would not like it if the devs put too many limitations on the AH. There are plenty of other things to complain about.
My original post was more of a question than a complaint and my last post was more of a suggestion on how you could improve this type of behavior. Free markets can be abused.

But, many of us feel there is no need to "improve" the behavior. I certainly don't think the suggestion would be an improvement.

As long as players can undercut the lowest listed price, players with higher prices need the ability to reduce their price, if they choose. No cooldown, no limit, no restrictions. A player can be undercut by multiple players and needs to have the ability to react to each one. The AH isn't a store with set prices and published sales, it is dynamic and changing.

abysstic1 · January 2018

First off let’s be clear This is not a free market. By definition a free market is “an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.”

In this system if you equate each seller of goods as a private business there are already many ‘restrictions’ placed upon the seller. For example you can not sell campaign currency. You have no mechanism to increase the amount of goods you can sell on the market. You are given a time restriction on how long an item is posted, before having to post it again.

Second the system in place was already engaged by individuals who observed it working on other platforms. They spent time and resources to maximize their position and holdings within this system. This in essence is a meta game, outside the boundaries of the intent of the games vision. I tend to agree that there are plenty of examples of competition in this market, and it is not controlled by one individual, even with current restrictions in place. At the end of the day it is a market, not a vendor. I don’t see where more regulation is going to improve the player base experience.

sgtpostal · January 2018

i think this has gotten a lil bit too far into opinionations... the original post had some key words in it that i have seen alot on the market as well.... hoardig: one player with a mass of said particular item posting an reposting henceforth "undercutting" others to keep theirs "top" causing a major lose to those who under said persons "top" listings. ya no aint no problem with that people do it all the time... i do it... but when a player has a mass of the same valued item and does it repeatedly with all the items... not really fair to those who "undercut" said persons item to get theirs "top". major ad lose to sell hurts market value of the item as well as progit after ah cut to seller

ravenskya · January 2018

The one issue I have with the AH is when a specific player or group of players lists the maximum number of items in a specific category at a higher individual price than someone selling two of them. Because there is a maximum number of pages we can scroll through it can completely clog the system visibly.

example 1 guy and his friends sells a single regular mark of potency for 10K, but they fill the screen with single mops so that the person listing 2 mops for 12K can't be seen on the AH.

That's not really free market because as a buyer I'd want to buy the 2 for 12 rather than the 1 for 10 - but I can't see the 2 for 12 because of how the AH is set up.

Still there are way worse problems with NW than jerks manipulating the AH

zephyriah · January 2018

ravenskya said:
The one issue I have with the AH is when a specific player or group of players lists the maximum number of items in a specific category at a higher individual price than someone selling two of them. Because there is a maximum number of pages we can scroll through it can completely clog the system visibly.

example 1 guy and his friends sells a single regular mark of potency for 10K, but they fill the screen with single mops so that the person listing 2 mops for 12K can't be seen on the AH.

That's not really free market because as a buyer I'd want to buy the 2 for 12 rather than the 1 for 10 - but I can't see the 2 for 12 because of how the AH is set up.

Still there are way worse problems with NW than jerks manipulating the AH

This is not true, if you sort by lowest buyout it will list the lowest price per item first. So, the 2 for 12K would be the first listing. Or possibly another something like 10 for 59,999. What ever the lowest price per item will be first then you just scroll to find a quantity that fits your need. Only if you use the default sort do you have this problem listing issue you described, so I do not ever use the default sort. I also like the expires in sort to find items that might be bid on, rather than a buyout.

ravenskya · January 2018

@zephyriah

I actually do have mine sorted by lowest buyout first. The problem is when the lowest buy out is 400 individuals of that one item that is actually a higher individual price per piece than the individual. I don't encounter if often, but I have seen it - particularly around when double refinement would hit - so I don't expect to see it as often any longer.

zephyriah · January 2018

ravenskya said:
@zephyriah

I actually do have mine sorted by lowest buyout first. The problem is when the lowest buy out is 400 individuals of that one item that is actually a higher individual price per piece than the individual. I don't encounter if often, but I have seen it - particularly around when double refinement would hit - so I don't expect to see it as often any longer.

Ok, "The problem is when the lowest buy out is 400 individuals of that one item that is actually a higher individual price per piece than the individual." is not very clear, quite confusing and is not at all the situation you described in "example 1" where the multiple item listing had the lowest per item price.

If the 400 individuals is the lowest price per unit, it should be the lowest listed items, if the multiple item listings are a higher per item price they should be further in. If the multiple item listing is the lowest price per item (What you described in "example 1", then they will be first in a lowest buyout sort.

mebengalsfan · February 2018

abysstic1#7048 said:
First off let’s be clear This is not a free market. By definition a free market is “an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.”

In this system if you equate each seller of goods as a private business there are already many ‘restrictions’ placed upon the seller. For example you can not sell campaign currency. You have no mechanism to increase the amount of goods you can sell on the market. You are given a time restriction on how long an item is posted, before having to post it again.

Second the system in place was already engaged by individuals who observed it working on other platforms. They spent time and resources to maximize their position and holdings within this system. This in essence is a meta game, outside the boundaries of the intent of the games vision. I tend to agree that there are plenty of examples of competition in this market, and it is not controlled by one individual, even with current restrictions in place. At the end of the day it is a market, not a vendor. I don’t see where more regulation is going to improve the player base experience.

If you get enough AD you can modify the behavior of the market. I know a few players that do this regularly and they do it to get better pricing on items that they will eventually buy the items priced below theirs and than increase the items pricing. However, if too many players put the item up for sale at a lower price point it hurts their effort to turn a profit.

A Zen sale for instance killed the pricing on Legendary mounts for the PS4. At one point Glorious LB mount were in the 15-25 million AD range and now you can pick up a Legendary box for around 5.5-7 million.

Players who bought up the legendary mounts at 10 million hoping to flip it for 18 million lost a few million in the process.

I know one player that sold all of his Trans and R12 enchantments late October and took a break but only collected his daily keys. When he came back he bought not R12 but R13 at the same price as he sold his R12s. He than opened all the LB he could based on the keys he collected and he ended up getting a Legendary mount. He ended increasing his IL between October and end of January by simply selling, taking a break and buying higher enchantments at the same price point as the ones he sold only months ago.

Just like the stock market, you have to know when to sell and when to buy.

deadlycode · February 2018

Something more ridiculous is that 10% tax that benefits no one at all lol

agilesto · February 2018

It does benefit the game and the economy as it's one of the major AD sinks.

kreatyve · February 2018

deadlycode#3788 said:
Something more ridiculous is that 10% tax that benefits no one at all lol

This video here describes the reason for that 10% tax and other various "money sinks", and why they are needed for a healthy economy in a video game. Honestly, I think the game could probably use a few more money sinks, especially the PC economy being what it is.

sgaddis13 · February 2018

As an Xbox player, I can tell you there is one name quite a few of us know. He's basically game-famous, and the reason why is because this player is rolling in AD. There are a handful of things he buys as soon as they're listed and he then lists them at a much higher rate. While it makes it more expensive for us when we're looking for those items, it doesn't really make me that mad, and this is why -

NW is a multilayered RPG. Most of us play it for the questing elements, so that is how we see the game, but there are some people who really, really like the economic part of it and that is the RP to their G. I get it. I'm not saying it is my favorite thing in the world, but I still understand why it's happening.

Now please note I am referring to those who buy and resale. The original seller is still getting their AD in that case. I do understand a lot of this conversation is about people who have an abundance of certain things and negatively influence the market by driving it down so that they always sell their item first. Those people I actually don't understand. Why would you drive the market down and lose profit? It's like listing a dozen things at one time. You create the average at that point. Of course you will be under cut.

But yes, this is a "thing,"I don't think there is a "fix," even if one is needed, which I don't personally think there is. It's part of the economic play.

minotaur2857 · March 2018

The devs could discourage this behaviour in an instant if they wanted to, simply reduce the discount in listing fee for VIP to 1% or 0.5% rather than 0 so it costs to do it. That they haven't indicates they're fine with it.

greywynd · March 2018

Remove VIP benefits at this stage and you could lose either income from players or the players themselves.

frogwalloper · March 2018

The niche markets that I frequent are pretty healthy.

As for undercutting prices....not too hard considering the vast majority of players charge waaaaaaayyyyyy too much - far more than most things are worth. I always auction things off at a fair price, so I rarely ever have items returned to me. Is some fathead buying it off of me and relisting it at a higher price? Maybe.
I don't know.

I don't care.
I don't usually look back.

To clarify once again, selecting Buyout sorts items by the lowest price per unit. Having some goober list a ton of overpriced individual items shouldn't be a problem - assuming players know about the sorting feature - which hardly any new players do. Maybe the starting tutorial about the auction house should demonstrate that.

Trade House Abuse or Good Listing?

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