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Normalization of the AH to avoid exloitation
vladious1977
Member Posts: 244 Arc User
I have a belief that the AH should be normalized and function like a real world market type of trading. Being that prices can only fluctuate 5 above or below the normal price to allow for competition but stamp out exploits. This idea is not new and has been implemented by many MMO's to stamp out the exploitation of the AH and to minimize the effect of the gold farmers dumping things on the AH for quick AD. I have the grounds in which it would work.
1. The price can only fluctuate at 5 percent either way of the norm. This allows for competition. If you are selling for more then 5 percent of the normal price anyway there is something wrong with you as no one will buy it. If you are selling for below 5 percent of the normal chances are you are trying to destroy the economy of that product in which case you are not about the right thing and should not be selling that low anyway.
2. When a price fluctuates for instance when everyone is selling 5 percent below the normal probably because the product was either made useless or got nerfed or gold farmers unloaded unloaded a lot of said product on the market then that 5 percent under becomes the new norm. The normal price would be adjusted and calculated according to what everyone is doing in real time so always know that when you list your auction that that the price given is the price that is the norm at that time.
3. The bidding system would remain untouched in this system to allow further calculations of the normal price. So if you chose to opt out of the scheme all you have to do is not put in a buy out price and allow the market take it's course. However the highest bid will effect the overall 5 percent pricing calculations.
4. Auctions listed would have not be effected.
5. This allows for better statistical data as well. As you can chart the price range and increase on given days. So smart players can look at history and say okay on Monday the normal pricing for this product is xyz and on Friday it jumps up to zyx. Yes I am aware you can do this now. Yet with a normalized market it allows for much cleaner data of what people are buying and selling for at any given date and time.
6. This also helps NWO better track cost/usage/data on a real time scale and can better avoid stunts like caturday or can tell when someone is flooding the market to exploit it.
Please note that you could sell anywhere in between the 5 percent high or low. Yet can not go beyond those highs or lows.
Yes the title is wrong my keyboard keys are stiff.
1. The price can only fluctuate at 5 percent either way of the norm. This allows for competition. If you are selling for more then 5 percent of the normal price anyway there is something wrong with you as no one will buy it. If you are selling for below 5 percent of the normal chances are you are trying to destroy the economy of that product in which case you are not about the right thing and should not be selling that low anyway.
2. When a price fluctuates for instance when everyone is selling 5 percent below the normal probably because the product was either made useless or got nerfed or gold farmers unloaded unloaded a lot of said product on the market then that 5 percent under becomes the new norm. The normal price would be adjusted and calculated according to what everyone is doing in real time so always know that when you list your auction that that the price given is the price that is the norm at that time.
3. The bidding system would remain untouched in this system to allow further calculations of the normal price. So if you chose to opt out of the scheme all you have to do is not put in a buy out price and allow the market take it's course. However the highest bid will effect the overall 5 percent pricing calculations.
4. Auctions listed would have not be effected.
5. This allows for better statistical data as well. As you can chart the price range and increase on given days. So smart players can look at history and say okay on Monday the normal pricing for this product is xyz and on Friday it jumps up to zyx. Yes I am aware you can do this now. Yet with a normalized market it allows for much cleaner data of what people are buying and selling for at any given date and time.
6. This also helps NWO better track cost/usage/data on a real time scale and can better avoid stunts like caturday or can tell when someone is flooding the market to exploit it.
Please note that you could sell anywhere in between the 5 percent high or low. Yet can not go beyond those highs or lows.
Yes the title is wrong my keyboard keys are stiff.
Post edited by vladious1977 on
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It's mostly how real trading work, the more you want to get rid of something, the better your offer will have to be so it takes less time to sell it. If I find an Artifact of Clogging Uselessness that I don't want, and i'm not an AH person, thus i'm not interested in micromanaging my trades, i'll just slap it on for some 20% less than minimum and get some quick cash.
A free market economy is NEVER the problem.
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There is no such thing as a "Free Market". What we call a Free Market today is anything but. Keeping the general public far from the knowledge of what is really going on behind everything you buy. It may have existed at one time but governments stamped out any trace of anything similar to a "Free Market". They had good reasons as do most MMO's that use this system.
and cutting prices is not bad. if someone can sell something for 2000 AD less than others, he should do it. better for the market. sometimes AH prices are just stupid, especially when there are only some items shown (some crafted blue items for example). they are totally out of reality. When someone cuts those prices by 500% to make a "real" price then he should just do it.
what they should do is removing all those 100.0xxxx AD HAMSTER or finally start with a default sorting order of lowest buyout price first. so anyoing to see items in AH that cost 5 AD being posted for hundreds of thousand AD and a starting bid of 1 AD only to be the first in the list because somehow the system shows highest AD buyout price first (what is a stupid idea).
It also makes no economic sense since prices are based on transactions. Listings of transactions mean nothing by themselves. Only the transacted price between a willing Seller and Buyer matters.
In the real world, markets like stock markets have trading curbs, typically implemented as Circuit Breakers on the volume-weighted transacted price movement NOT on the order price of all orders.
The Auction House, especially dealing in only one out of many currencies like in NW, is just one place exploiters and gold sellers can use because it is convenient. Even if a game had no AH, exploiters and gold sellers would still exist. If you had played since Beta, even in this game, you would understand this because of the "Caturday" series of events, where players were using anything to transact exploits, including Cat augment companions being sold for 1 gold...
This is a clear example of a proposal that has no benefits and many, many consequences, many of them unintended.
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If there is a problem at the moment with the Auction House system in NW, it is due to being able to list any item at maximum of 100M Buyout with no Bid and incur no meaningful cost. This creates many opportunists and makes transacting easier for illegal AD sellers. However, this can trivially be corrected, if they wanted.
Overall, the idea may be well-intentioned, but it's terrible in both not being able to solve the problem it's a suggested fix for, and by having other serious secondary consequences. Not least of which is that if we encumber the market with rules like this, you'll simply drive trading off it onto other means.
We could probably discuss and suggest many other market ideas (such as being able to post purchase orders, not just item offers) but I wouldn't support any of those at the moment, since our single biggest problem is getting very basic functionalities on the market to actually work consistently from one game update to the next; e.g., bid/buyout sorting. Give the devs time to get their market act together.
Um, yes it is.
I cant be bothered having a discussion about real world economy and why free market is just a different form of societal control and just exchanges one elite ruling cast for another. Not to mention the hamper it places of humanity-cooperation efforts, and true evolution of science and society... But so far as the gaming-market goes. It is a game, allow for people playing with semi-fake money if that is what they want. I consider it to be a facet of the game, much like DD and PVP.
Exactly. It seems like a system tailor made to benefit people who can be the first to post a particular item. Or those with the cash to buy up all the listings of an item and just set any price they like.
Famers would love it
I can think of 3 mainstream MMO's off the top of my head. I am not going to get banned by "advertising" other games just because you lack experience in MMO's. The most played MMO to date has a sliding scale as I mentioned and if you think that game starts with a W shows how little you really know about MMO's.
Are you a spammer?
Fact is the average user would notice no difference but people would not be able to list something for 100 million AD that is only worth 500 AD or gold farmers would not be able to fluctuate the price of the market what little damage they could do can be corrected in a second as all the data would be live and in real time so they can see abnormalities better.
Further people who love stats can get comprehensive stats on what is buying and selling and for how much and create nice market trends. So it would be more helpful then it would be harmful.
I played closed and things like "caturday" would be easier to spot and correct faster with this system.
I should have learned long ago that people would just rather cry about things in games and then complain about suggestions to people who honestly try to come up with some good ideas instead of complaining. Seriously every idea someone comes up with people complain about it yet the same people complaining about the ideas are the ones sitting in game whining and crying about the state of the game.
no. Setting price controls will lead to MORE abuse, via bankrolling of rare items, by these gold farmers you so dread. I suspect that's what you're actually aiming for, but I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't understand how a free market works, and how imposing drift limits will royally $#^& it up.
"I don't want to do the research to find the real value of an item, rather i'd like to limit and restrict how everyone can sell to make it so I don't have to research."
Since every patch, fix, etc.. .changes market dynamics dramatically, items can double in value relatively quickly. So what you would have is that no one would be willing to sell for the max price because selling so low would be idiotic.
System is fine. I am very annoyed when people undercut me by 10% when they don't have to - but I guess impatient children will be impatient children. Let them eat their own lost profits.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Something may be worth 500 AD to you, and possibly to many others, but there is no problem if someone wants to try and sell that same item for 5000 AD. If no one buys it the the seller will learn that he priced the item too high and he should then reduce the price on the item in order to make a sale. If, however, the item DOES sell at 5000 AD then it is possible that the initial price of 500 AD was too low.
It is not for you, nor I, to decide what is a "fair" price. Fair means different things to different people. Some people have more money to spend, others have more time. Some have a good guild to farm the high end dungeons for high end loot, and others are willing to pay for that loot.
I *am* in favor of doing something about the many listings of 100,000,000 AD, but not in the way that you have suggested. All they need to do is base the non-refundable deposit be based on the buy-out price (or at least partly based on it) instead of purely a function of the initial minimum bid. That will go a LONG way to reducing the number of exorbitant prices. I do agree with you that 100 million is a ludicrous amount of AD for any item in NWO. At the current exchange rate of 430 AD per zen that is approx 232,800 zen, or $23,280 (roughly, not counting sales and bonus zen, but the approximation will work to illustrate my point) worth of zen and I shudder to think of anyone spending that kind of money in an MMO, but some people have enough money that a purchase of that type for entertainment is not out of the question, how many of people with that kind of wealth are playing NWO and willing to spend it is a question to which we will most likely never know the answer.
Still no answer to my above question. This is a very important question because to put it simply, depending on who or what sets the "normal pirce" your system may be as exploitable as the current system if not worse. And ultimately it doesn't really work anyway since allowing for only a 5% difference in prices means that instead of having 400 of the same items ranging in price from say, 1k to 100 you would now have 400 items priced 1,050 - 950. Which totally negates the whole idea of supply and demand. If there are 400 of the same item then obviously there is no reason for them all to have to be priced at 1k.
If you let the players set the prices then your system simply changes the exploitive nature to first come first serve.
If you let cryptic set the prices then everything will be selling at stupid high prices since almost everyone will agree that cryptic has an overly inflated sense worth when it come to pricing AD items.
If you don't have, or don't feel you can offer citations, then I don't put weight into that part of your argument. It seems to me you're trying to set yourself up as an authority and then perform an appeal to it, and then hide behind not being able to to offer any citations -- I'm not impressed.
And, even if you did, that would still leave the possibility (or even likelihood) that those 'many' MMOs made bad choices in regulating their auction houses so. At best, we could look at those MMOs and try to see what consequences, good or bad, that regulation caused.
Finally, for those who're trying to argue the AH in an MMO ought to be regulated because of your real-world ideological predilections, please leave it out. Not only is that arguable, it's arguable in ways that lead to "The Lower Depths". This is a game. Some people may want to play unregulated market capitalist in it, and they're not wrong or stupid or evil or whatever for doing so.
The only things 'wrong' with NW's auction system are the bugs that are annoyances or especially, that can be exploited in it. It has features that I think it could benefit from, but they'll get to some of those in time. In my opinion, what it absolutely doesn't need is price regulation or intervention.
I suspect most of these listings are there to store items for "free" on the market instead of using up inventory/bank space. Requiring a non-refundable listing fee based on the buyout price would be my choice, too. Or just always require a Starting Bid. If it's left blank, let it default to 1 AD.
Some of those "Free Storage" listings might be from RMT traders or botters, and it would be a good place for the devs to be looking for them.