Rune/Insingia availability at trader to affect drop rate

I've noticed of late that a lot of runes and insignia are worthless (i.e, you get the same amount for selling them to a trader as you do to a merchant), while others are still quite expensive. I think it would be good if the drop rate for items was modified based on their current availability at the trader. Before I outline my theory, I should mention that I think this would work well with a weapon upgrades/insignia trader too, and the rare scroll trader, but probably not the material traders.

Anyway. My knowledge of probability would probably be best summarised by the fact that I nearly refered to it as 'chance and data', which is what they called it in grade 6 for me, but still, here's my plan.

Say you kill a creature which has a chance to drop a rune. If that rune can be purchased at the trader for, say, between 1 and 5 platinum, then the normal probability of that rune dropping is used. If it can be purchased for less, however, then an additional percentage is applied to that rate, with a linear decrease from 100% at 1000 gold to 0% at 100 gold. That is to say, if the rune can be purchased for 1 to 5 platinum, and it normally has a 5% chance to drop, then there is a 5% chance it will drop. If it can be purchased for 500g, then it would have around 2.5% chance to drop, and if you can get it for 100g at the trader, then that rune WILL NOT DROP, until the price of that rune rises again.

Conversely, as the price of a rune rises above 5 platinum, I would suggest the drop rate of that rune should increase, perhaps doubling at 50 platinum and quadrupalling at 90 platinum or whatever the maximum is.

Again, I'm not good with probabilities and such, but I think something like this would mean the situation where I find a rune and just sell the armour fragment containing it without bothering to salvage it would be much less likely, and make runes seem more rare, special and magical, as they should be. It would also let rare runes be expensive, without making them /too/ expensive.

Eh, good in theory. But the fact is, no matter how little it drops NOBODY uses certain obscure insignas (virtuoso for instance). Even if they never droped again, I doubt prices would ever rise. Just cutting off production doesn't do anything to get rid of the huge surplus of those runes already. Nor does it somehow create demand for them just because they will be slightly more expensive.

Sorta an interesting idea. It would work if all insignas were truely "equal" but as it stands, price is determined by a) popularity (ie, warrior runes worth more then mesmer ones) and b) functionality.

The easiest way to implement this idea is for ANET to set a desired price range for each item at the trader. Every so often check the price against the desired range if the price is above the range increase the drop rate, if its below then reduce the drop rate.

But all this would do is allow ANET to fairly equalise the prices or runes that get used and fall within the same category. For instance ANET could set all sup runes to 10k, majors to 5k, minors to 1k and all the ones that people buy will reach those prices. But as HawkofStorms said, this won't effect the price of runes that nobody wants. It will however stop the less played classes from being cheaper than the commonly played classes, and if someone ever find a really powerful farming build (like 55 monks were when they first were created) then there won't be any price hike, meaning more people (especially the botters) will be able to quickly create and use them, meaning more inflation in-game.

/notsigned

so if a rune is unpopular, it'll never drop. That's what the OP is hinting at. If you want it, buy it at the trader.

Then again, Anet isn't the type of business to give people more of what they want in this game...

by doing something like this, you've now eliminated a lot of players ever unlocking things via PvE again, as stated some insignias will never get used or rarely used, if you set their drop rate to 0% because their worth is 100g, you've just stopped people who want to UAX via PvE.

/not signed, it'd be a good idea but since you'd be effecting someones unlocks for pvp this would be over all imbalanced.

Good points all, but this one especially so. Forget I said anything... < ^.^;>

PS. What's 'UAX'?

UAX means Unlocked All "X" (X being a variable for anything, UAS, unlocked all skills, etc). It usually means unlocking everything.

I suppose a minimum drop rate could be placed there to keep them dropping. And the algorithm could also be set to treat the trader out of stock as a "price too high" situation.

So the only downside I can see is increased server load due to this algorithm. So I have to ask why doing so would having a stable price in those items be a good thing ?