To see what i'm taking about, checkout the below post:
In Development:
These items are actively being worked on by the at this time:
* Adding a listing fee for the exchange
(
This is a quote taken from :
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=188886)
Please, please, please fight against this madness now.
During the course of the run of this thread some people have made bold claims as to what the exchange fee will acheive. Seeing how what is sought to be acheived is something positive and the fee is not I have the following
compromise suggestions to allow for fixing the following problems (thanks Eryxx for your post):
I have played other MMO's that have instituted listing fees for the exact same reasons as STO:
- reduce gold farming/currency selling
- reduce use as additional storage
- reduce inflated prices overall
Here are my list of ideas to address the issues that the exchange fee seems to be intended to solve (Without the need for adding a fee to excahange postings):
- Add an Auction House (with fees)
- Put a price cap on selling (Can't post for more than 300% of the items set value)
- Have a filter on the exchange which mearly HIDES items priced for more than 300% of their value (better idea than 2)
- Have a price cap per level (e.g. Top level items have no price cap, but each rank of equipment has a maximum post price)
*
Please Note: I don't
desire the immidiately above listed changes. However, I do feel that the above is a better way to acheive the aims listed by Eryxx (see above). As I see it the "Auction House" would exist for the purposes of keeping prices down and the exchange would exist for the purposes of people being able to freely, easily and unrestrictedly post sales.
Reciently a poster made a frankly brilliant point I would like to re-post it here:
The thing is the exchange can be influenced easily. If all of you that are in favor of fees to bring prices down actually ground daily and severely undercut the greed you would have what you want. Unfortunately everyone's idea of "fair" price is different. Some in this game think that anything more than actual value is too much while others think that if I had to play this game 300+ days just to get a nice Rare mk XI is worth 1000% then its actual price. Ultimately if cryptic wants to do something all they need to do is trickle material into the exchange at "reasonable" prices. I have little faith that cryptic will come at this in a incremental manner they are going to go over the top and drive all the players that actual play and grind missions to private trades or horde things in other accounts or in the mail which will bring about another change where mail will have an expiration and messages will auto delete after a period.
There have been some really good ideas for alternatives,
piwright42 proposed:
What I would like to see, eventually, is two markets. In the first market each sector has it's own local demands that are driven by the players that trade in that sector. This would be vendor driven. If a sector is flooded with too much of anything the prices for those items drop while items that are near absent have a "demand" placed on them that will naturally increase the price the less there is.
Fluctuations in vendor prices could make a really more vibrant market (and help adjust prices). If one month vendors where selling an item for 2000ec then the next month it was 1000ec the exchange prices would/should fluctuate and change with the vendor pricing. If there was a "market price" value posted next to items with an explaination that somewhere in the game the item could be sourced for price X people would know to look for the item at that price (sure this would crimp profits and up prices for items where the item couldn't be bought but it would make a difference and with varying vendor prices, changing day to day, whats expensive one day might be cheap the next. Even though its fundimental usefulness would not change).
Comments
Have you seen the exchange lately? Government has a role to play in the economy (Do you like weekends, workers comp, Social Security, clean water, and for business to be held responsible when they poison people? I do!), and Cryptic has a role to play in the Exchange.
I wasn't going to comment either way, until I saw this.
I'm Canadian, as a result I will absolutely vote in favour of government intervention if thats they way this is going to be framed.
Ditto ...eh.
Ummm. I don't quite think these are even remotely the same thing. When it comes to the exchange Cryptic is more like eBay than the government....
In any case, I am for cryptic's exchange fee.
When people are actively being hurt by ruthless capitalists.
However this is a Game. In which EC are stupidly easy to come by, of which there is an unlimited amount of.
This is also a game in which anyone -can easily become a multimillionare-. No one has to lose on the exchange. It's called list items yourself. Everyone's going to get money that way and get the gear they need.
I've blown probably in the upper double digit millions on multiple ships.
Each time I clear out my EC total I'm back over 13 million in under two weeks. If I can do it, anyone can.
I don't kerrat farm, or gold farm. I just save up my emblems and post a weapon on the exchange for a reasonable 5-8 million.
Consider me signing this petition. Do not change the exchange in this fashion.
I don't want to see the following.
Rare Boff skills disappearing and going to private selling.
Zone Chat being spammed by sellers
Weapons and etc being listed at -higher- values to compensate for the listing fee.
I had seen this before...
Add EC sink in game, not try to mess Exchange.
Let them tax it now, for all I care. When prices get more realistic It'll make me appear even richer.
Is there such players?
I can storage those 20 items faster ... using other ingame option.
So, what I hear you saying is, you want to pay money DIRECTLY for selling your goods? So your fully in support of, say me charging you 10 pounds for me to advertise you wanting to sell your own personal radio for 20 pounds?
NO.
Sure if the government wants to add 10% to the price you want to charge and cream it off the top. I'm down with that. Thats NOT however what Crptic are going to do now is it?
All this is going to do is make EC even HARDER to come by (and like a great post by another use, encourage grinding).
The word 'nerf' as used in MMO slang refers to a build or ability used by players being rebalanced to be lower powered. It does not refer to adding fees to the Exchange. It does not refer to changing visuals on a Veteran's reward.
It can also be used, by extension, to refer to for example, "Nerfing a boss", referring to that boss's abilities being rebalanced to be lower powered.
But exchanges don't have abilities that can be rebalanced. Neither do graphics for costume pieces.
You're doing it wrong.
I think if a fee is added to the Exchange depending on the price you put down. Basically the more you make the more they take so if the item does not sell your the one that is out because you priced the item too high. Not sure the logistics on how they will set it up whether the fee will be before or after the Sell but if they do set it up to where there is a fee for posting the item then i foresee the prices coming down on postings unless you have a highly rare items.
*facepalm*
Taxes curb inflation. This is a good thing.
Face it... energy credits are worthless as they are in infinite suply. Tax is the only form of monetary control that Cryptic can have over them.
Yeah because the "free economy" is working so well at the moment isn't it. The listing fee is a good idea IMO.
Awesome. Then there's no reason to be against the fee.
You don't even know what Cryptic are going to do beyond add a fee to the Exchange. You have no idea what that fee might be nor how it will apply. Your objections are based on nothing but fantasy and paranoia. After we've actually seen what the fee will involve there may be a point to objecting, but at this point you're just jerking your knee...
In my oppinion a person is fooling themselves if you think a charge for posting on the exchange will make very rares and rares any less valuable. It will just cost YOU more to sell YOUR stuff. YOU will lose money.
What person would say to themselves... humm, i'm going to have to pay to advertise this item.. I better make it cheaper!
No! They are going to think.. hey, I better factor the posting cost into the price!
Also, for the people who might be posting at rediculas prices. They aren't going to suddenly post at reasonable prices. The likelyhood is they just wont post period. So, you wont even SEE that Rare Mk X Turret AT ALL.
I would rather see it for 50 million. Know it exists and try and find or source it in game than just have my exchange search return no results EACH AND EVERY TIME.
Would be interesting to know what the intention was for Cryptic to consider this.
What was the desired game enhancing effect they wanted from adding this feature.
Is it going to be fun or failure?
The problem is however with the listing fee (unless it is a one time fee) is some items just don't move very quickly regardless of their value.
Tetryon is a prime example. Sure you'll get a guy like me every once in a while that buys it, but there just aren't that many guys that use it out there.
"So the price should be lower" Not necessarily, as the same if not more effort goes into getting a tetryon mk 12 blue, as a Purple Ap Weapon. I'm willing to shell out the cash for an advantage or desired traits on my weapons. The prices are reasonable, just there isn't really alot of people out there buying, even if the value is ludicrously cheap (100k for one of my mk12 blues. That only happened once every other time I shelled out 5 million or more). A fee would mean even at a cheap price a low moving item is going to be listed quite often.
(My record is 4 times on a given item) Eventually it gets to the point where Vendor Selling is better. Which hurts the market because that item is pulled out of circulation entirely. Which means, for me if I go shopping one day the odds of me finding my desired item are far lower.
Your joking right? You think charging people money brings down prices?
You think if I charge you a fee for selling your house your gonna say to yourself... hmm, I must reduce the cost? If you are, can I buy your house plz =D.
Completely agree.
And will a fee on the exhange make you post that weapon for any less? Tell the lovely people
if its going to cost you half a million creds to seriously over-charge for something, you'll either not list it or lower the price.
a hell of a lot of MMO's put a fee on listings like this, its a well practised method of combating inflation and also cuts into "goldseller" profits, not that i think that is much of an issue in STO anymore, but inflation is.
frankly the only people who benifit from there not being a fee are those generally driving up prices to insane levels.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=define%3Anerf&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
I quote from:
"Any update that lowers the effectiveness of an aspect of a game"
:P
A nerf is any way in which the game designer change an existing game element to make ppl currently using it effectively suffer to please people who are not. It VERY MUCH appplies.
Nope. Depending on the structure of the fee, it will make me raise my prices to compensate for the loss of income.
When I go shopping, I expect others will do the same, so I'll need more EC instead of Less.
That's just for weapons. And that's assuming I'm not shopping for a low volume item that has to be listed several times for me to see it in the first place.
Something else this is going to do which I briefly touched upon is remove items from the market. More and more people are just going to horde, or private sell their items which decreases the likely hood of me finding my low moving weapon considerably.
Where is your evidence that Taxes curb inflation? That is a massive generalisation (very government thinking).
What curbs inflation is changing the desirability, availability or level of necessity of a commodity. Anything else just changes how it is bought and sold to the "public" facing view.
You can tax petrol all you like, the likely hood is prices will rise until people are simply unwilling to pay. if it is the TAX that they are unwilling to pay then it is likely they will source petrol throuh ALTERNATIVE SOURCES (e.g. black market). For the ones who will not, they will just suffer without petrol. If everyone stops buying petrol, the petrol manufacturers would reduce their prices. Then, they are selling petrol for a living, we are selling items for a game. When its a game, and I have the choice of keeping a stonking item or selling it for less than I value it. Hell i'll keep it thanks.
True... But lets say for the sake of numbers you have a Blue Dual Beam Phaser bank Mk VIII you want to put up and i know they go for 1M+ now... lets say for the sake of numbers you list it for 1M they hit you with a 10% listing fee and then another 10% at sale. So you are now down 200k. Now lets say your a broke captain like me and you have only 150k in the bank and the new system projects the 20% fee's and comes back and says no way man you don't have the money to cover the fee's so now the only way you can sale the item is Spamming in General chat that you want to sale if for 1M... Then you get reported for spam... Like i said I don't know how they will set this up but if they do it strict I think it will change all the pricing on how people post items.
Listing fee, plus limited listing time.
If you don't price your wares to move in a single listing period then you are forced to pay the listing price TWICE, then THRICE, then.... FOURICE? I don't think fourice is a word, but you get the point.
So instead of posting your relatively rare BOff at 8 million and waiting for a sale and eating a fee if you don't, you'd be more likely to price your BOff at 4 million or less where it will more readily move.
Yeah, they're going to sell it to a vendor instead for a fraction of what they could still earn on the Exchange.
Alternate options, like spamming chat channels, takes a lot of time and effort. Greedy people overpricing garbage on the Exchange aren't looking for stuff that takes time and effort, they're looking for a get rich quick scheme that requires little-to-no effort.
Besides, the more people who overprice and list garbage who leave the market the better. Less clutter on the Exchange, and more room for my goods, and less for potential customers to sift through to find them.
This is the first sensible against. I can appriciate your point.
In the general principal i'm against. If they somehow found a way to make the fee fun to pay (like some kind of mini-game allowing u to avoid the charge) then I wouldn't object.