Anyone else see the occasional Romulan ale for 99 million credits ? Seems to me that folks are using the exchange as an auxilliary BANK with no intention to sell at all.
I have no problem with folks pricing things to sell at whatever amount they want, since I too am aa strong supporter of capitalism (yay capitalism!) but at the same time these things just clutter the place and arent there because someone wants that amount for it, but because they DONT want people to buy it.
I propose Cryptic put a listing fee for all items on the exchange to be paid up front. This would prevent folks using it as a bank but also would reduce crazy prices because it would make sellers think twice about their pricing before posting something because if they have to reduce price and repost they pay the listing fee again.
5% of the asking price seems fair.
Maybe a daily maintenance fee too

to keep items from just sitting there forever.
Comments
If we use your idea
You have a ton of rares and want to sell them.
You put up 20 for sale.
You see that some of the ones listed arent moving.
You decide to put up some others for sale.
Since there is a 20 item limit you have to take off some items.
You lose that 5%.
Maybe not a big deal but people will raise hell.
The exchange needs an overhaul if nothing other than the gui. Sort by price and such.
Also why do you care if people are using it for a bank?
I only care so long as the exchange doesnt have sorting options. Im trying to sell stuff so if people have a bunch of something up there that they dont intend to sell it clutters the search. Once they have more sort options in there I really wont care anymore. But it does make it harder to sell things.
If they used my system of a listing fee then there should be no item limit.
But otherwise I do think people should lose money if something they put up there doesnt sell. It probably didnt sell because it was listed for too high a price or just wasnt in demand. Again, however, with proper sorting options this wouldnt really matter would it ?
I'd also like to see an advanced search that can get results based on an items description text, price etc...
Sorting by item name and value is a must. The current set-up is complicated, confusing and allows for rampant abuse and errors. As a buyer you want to get the best possible deal. As a seller, you want your best possible deal to be obvious to all. Perfect simitry, just need to add the "sort by" in the programming.
Pardon me if this seems rude: Why do you care if people put things on the exchange for ungodly prices and leave them there for a month? How does that ruin your game so badly that you will come to the forums and gripe about it? Don't get me wrong and accuse ME of doing that. All the things I have on the exchange are reasonably priced, and I would love for some of that junk to get sold, but I don't see where it's your business how long we leave things on there, and what price we set them for.
if you could both sort by price of an item, and actually search the more complicated items by Mk (as it stands you can search by rank but you still have to sort through 100s if you're looking for a decent price.)
Stacked goods would be nice to sort by quantity as well.
The problem with charging someone a fee without having certain options in place would be foolish. Can't blame someone for overpricing something when you wouldn't be aware of the overpricing unless you sat through countless numbers of pages to conclude that.
An extra 20 slots of storage to be exact.
Simply put that without a proper filtering system it makes it a headache to find anything by having to wade through junk that should not be there.
A simple filter or sorting system put in by Cryptic and then I would fully agree with your stance, but right now it does affect people directly who are trying to find items to buy but have to wade through 100's of pages.
^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^ Exactly. Either a filtering system or a system that discourages junk posting.
Although that's a very valid concern but one thing you may be missing here: Since you can't technically trade credits to another toon, the exchange is the only way in which you can. Simply post something measly for an obscene amount of credits and then log into your toon to purchase the item thus effectively "transferring" those credits to the intended character.
Exactly, and since it is used as a means to circumvent a design decision by the developers, it should be considered an exploit and a system put in place to prevent it.
Although I don't totally agree with your comment, you are right about the exploit part. The devs should have foreseen the need to trade energy creds and done something about it before launch. Oh well, maybe that'll get patched too? Here's to hope!
Um, because there's no sort by price option, so people have to wade through pages and pages of crackheads selling white mk III gear for 100k credits to find something reasonably priced.
The alternative is muling. Which means every day will be a thread about "guy x stole my money instead of giving it to my other character" if people are forced to do so. Imho Cryptic was just lazy when not implementing the ability to mail money between characters, I don't think it was a deliberate design decision...
I believe they specifically WANT to prevent people moving creds from one account to the next to curtail the credits for cash sellers. Those folks would have a master account that is safe and never advertises that moves the gold to their dummy trial accounts as needed only when a sale is done. This way they only risk the trial accounts and only move coin there when a sale is done. If people cant move coin around well, not so safe then to spam.
@ kanid - Good point, I hadn't thought about that...
Exactly. If I want to put things on the exchange because my bank is full, new fleet bank tabs are over priced and I dont want to clutter my mail box - I will. Blame Cryptic's game design, not the players who put things on there. I actually suggest my fleet do this when we run out of space everywhere else. Generally I will put things at a very high price, but a price that someone could accidently click on or might be stupid enough to pay. Either way, win win for me
That's a really good suggestion. They already allow you to have all your characters be able to access your banked items. Why not just add the credits field to said bank?