My idea of how to fix trader buyback prices

As many of you are aware, material prices that traders are offering when they buy items have taken a bad turn as a following this latest patch (7/13). Examples include fur squares, many dyes, many runes, and most other rare materials. For the items that are impacted, a trader will offer 10% or less of his own selling price.

How did this happen? I believe this is a side effect of the fact that traders have limited stocks of all items, combined with the current independence of buy/sell prices. I believe the way things work today is if lots of people buy items, “sell” prices go up, and if no one buys items, “sell” prices go down. The opposite holds true for “buy” prices. However, I believe either something got messed up in the latest patch (for a while there, many items were selling in 1+ platinum range, but buyback prices were set to 1gp), or there was an economic spiral that caused “sell” prices to creep up, while “buy” prices stayed down. Without more data than I have available, I cannot see why this has occurred.

What has happened in the short term is for certain items, no one wants to use the trader to buy or sell anything. Sell prices for things like black dye and fur creep up, while the buy prices do not keep pace. This would be somewhat okay if not for the fact that humans when selling try to use the trader prices as a guideline, resulting in an overall inflation in prices.

How can this be fixed? I believe the answer is as simple as setting “buy” prices to be a fixed percent of “sell” prices, and leaving everything else alone (i.e. forcing a stock check whenever someone wants to buy something, lowering prices when stock gets high, and increasing prices when stock gets low).

What should that percentage be? I personally don’t see the harm in making this percentage fixed at the max current percent (80%, based on some other posts I’ve read). Supply and demand should then kick in and prices would stabilize at the true “value” of an item. No uncontrolled inflation or deflation (assuming that the overall average of gold per person in the economy stays constant). I also can understand at setting this percent on the low end (in order to continue to make traders a gold sink), possibly as low as 50%, in order to keep those that want to avoid trading to humans (like myself) happy. To put this into perspective, a real “auction house” (one that does not take a cut of the trade) would be equivalent to setting this percentage at 100%.

Why do I want to push for a “fixed” percent rather than the current “variable” percent? From the many complaints I’ve seen, many people agree that system does not work, nor does it reflect a realistic economy.

Thoughts?

the problem with the economy is that ArenaNet never took the liberty of keeping track of how many of X(where x is a specific item) are available in the world. So they have no clue as to how many black dyes or gold rams hammers or whatever are out there....Without knowing what the max quantity for an item is it's nearly impossible to accurately build a system based on checks and balances....there is no balance.

It's impossible for the traders now to reflect a realistic economy...there's nothing for the trader to compare it against. So you want to sell 4 ecto plasms....A "TRADER" would say "ok...how many are there in the world and what am I willing to pay to obtain these 4"...if there are only 4 out there the trader would give top dollar for them....if there are 4,000...why would the trader give you top dollar for something he can get cheaper from someone else....problem is nobody(not even ArenaNet) has any idea what items are out there and at what quantity.

I agree, idea supported I find it quite annoying when I just found a black dye and I go to the trader to see what the current selling price is so I can give my customer a good deal. At one point I could purchase a black dye from the trader for 4 platinum 125 gold. I could only sell the dye to the trader for 1 gold wtf? I would also like to see this 'Supply and Demand' system changed or at least carefully considered.

Because the trader has no idea what's for sale. Knowing that there are X ectos in the world does nothing for the trader unless X is also how many ectos are for sale. That's a big difference.

I don't think (amount available) really matters, except when setting the initial prices. Once the system goes live, prices will fix themselves. If prices are too high, people will farm more of those items, selling more to the trader, ultimately resulting in excess inventory at the trader and thereby dropping prices. If prices are too low, the trader will run out of stock, and prices will therefore rise to meet demand.

Sure, setting initial prices will be somewhat important, as a small number of people may be able to take advantage of any ridiculously high or low prices on the onset, but I imagine such things will fix themselves quickly.

I agree with you. I was just pointing out why knowing how many of a specific item doesn't help anything.

everything is for sale.....you should know that living in this world. there isn't a single thing in this world that ISN'T for sale.

I think the main point he was saying is to use the traders to act as an upper limit for the player traders. That way the traders will have hard time spamming and forcing down the price of items that the traders deal with. Compare it to the current changes to the game the idea is not bad. (edit) It will still have the market for "Gold Max X with Y and Z" and such.

I don't know how I feel about it anymore to be honest if having a "false" cap in place or depend on live supply and demand.

I have 3 items (one with the "precious" tag) that I cannot use and I will not sell, they are those rare items I think were in Beta and were keep in the game because they are cool looking.

Unless you offer me 25 plat for then (and I am not advertise their sale) they will be wasting inventory space.

So someone that is actively acquiring ectoplasms for fissure armor is still willing to sell the same ectoplasm they need? Not everything is for sale. Not in the real world and especially not in an MMO where resources are, for all intents and purposes, limitless. Someone who needs and covets item X will not sell that item. And if he or she does, it will be for an extraordinary amount. In either case, keeping track of said item does not help the trader.

can they just fix the game back to when it was fun?
I didn't buy some "Sim-economy"... i brought a online rpg or whatever you want to call it. And when i kill some monster I expect something to drop, maybe not everytime, but certainly more than it is dropping now. also when i want to buy something it shouldn't cost me the amount of gold thats going to require farming to obtain.

yes...they will sell the item...just as you said for an extraordinary amount...but it IS still for sale.

keeping track of what is available in the world does help the trader...it helps the trader put a value on an items rarity. Thus far EVERYONE claims black dye is rare...if it's rare then why do I have 14 of them??? it can't be that rare...but nobody knows exactly how many are in the world of Guild Wars...so we'll just continue assuming black dye is rare without any solid proof other than "It doesn't drop for me". Its common practice for business to provide statistical information of what they sell/provide and in what quantity...the reason they do this is to keep track of what is available and what isn't...this is how they set a price for things(how much of it is available divided by how much is one person selling)

I agree, and that is exactly how I feel. This whole thing has made everything screwy. Just today I noticed that dye trader selling black dye for 9 platinum. What a joke, I checked it the previous day and it was only 6. The trader selling 10 leather square for 5 platinum, but offering me 800 gold for my 10? What kind of economy is this?

What I found even more messed up was that under this system I bought one glob of ecto for 4k. Wish the trader hadn't run out of stock that day...

I thought that the original economy was based on a buy price that was linked to the sell price. And Anet decided to get rid of that because of the possibility of abuse by heavy material traders?

I think that a percentage based on the selling price would be the best thing, however, there also needs to be a limit on how many items you can sell at a time, or the trader needs to recalculate his offer based on what the items will be worth once they buy all 4000 leather squares.

Matt

And sadly enough, nearly everything is for sale. There are exceptions, but for this illustration, yeah.

How does the trader determine (A) what an "extraordinary" amount is, (B) who will only trade for that amount, and (C) who will trade for less than or more than (A)?

The trader can't because it is a simple economic reality that something that isn't for sale is not part of the market. As an example, if someone's goal is to get fissure armor, they will not sell any ectoplasm or obsidian shards for any price because, if they do, it moves them further from their goal. This is a reality and keeping track of how many shards or ectos they have does nothing to serve the economy since it might as well not be there since said person will not sell it.

The system you're wanting is what we had prior to last Wednesday's price where the trader did, realistically, set the mean price. That was done by buying at 65-75% of the price the trader would then sell for. This was a good balance, as the OP correctly suggests. That way there was always a constant supply and also constant demand. Everyone wins.

This black dye inflation is not the result of people suddenly wanting more black dye (post patch). If you try to sell black dye to the trader he will offer you some tiny fraction of his selling price. This is the exact phenomena I mention above with spiraling prices caused by the large delta between buy and sell prices for the same item.

I think 80% of selling price is a bit extreme - it would slaughter the market even more (Item X costs 1000 to buy at trader, so if you have one, you can either sell it to trader for 800, or trade it for a limited profit of 200 MAX). I think 50% is a much more realistic valuation. And would make more sense with materials , to me anyway.

Oh, and slightly Off-Topic :
Just had to be put here - not EVERYTHING is for sale in this world. Money can't buy love, can't buy happiness - whereas in GW, arguably money CAN buy happiness, or at least the freedom to do whatever you want in the game.

I see your point about 80-100% killing the reason to sell materials to another human. I don't know, but is there a reason you'd actually want to sell commodities to other human beings if you didn't have to? What would be wrong with the idea of eliminating all the WTS/WTB spam for all materials and leaving the trade channel for other stuff?

This could just be me, but I find trying to find a buyer for my materials the least fun I have while playing this game.

I would like to know your mother price plz

what is with all the mindless trolling today?

What would be wrong with removing human trade in materials? The gap between the rich and the poor would grow even further. The majority of my current cash (not rich but not poor at the moment, 48k in storage) has come from selling materials. Not everyone finds Gold Max damage weapons, etc.

ok forgive me if someone already said this

what it seems that a.net did was make it to were when people bought an item from a trader the buy price went up and when people sold to the trader the sell price went down it now seems like the trade prices are not interconnected so as people sell to the trader the sell price becomes lower but the buy price doesnt lower as it should instead it stays the same and as people buy more it just goes up more and more

Off topic

umm i disagree with that while i agree money cant buy love well mutual love it can however buy happiness would a new car not make you happy???

I'm not sure I see the correlation... The better selling price would benefit rich and poor people at the same rate. The only person losing money at 100% would be the trader. From a macro perspective, you could argue that trading with humans has the same effect: if you want to buy something, you pay a human player an extra "cut" to compensate them for the time and effort it took to aquire that item.

I think it could be said that the game needs more gold sinks, but selling materials to traders at sub-market prices is the same as selling unsalvaged weapons at sub-market prices... Just like any free market, removing "middle-men" that take cuts generally benefits all buyers and sellers (it just hurts the middle-men - in this case, the trader).

This is going way off topic - so sorry, but I have to respond to this.

If you were a millionaire, and had everything in the world. Would money still make you happy? I have been thinking very deeply about "happiness" and what it is recently (long story) - and have come to the conclusion that deep down, happiness gained through money is only superficial and temporary.

I like the percentage; only that the percentage should vary based on volume, as Ensign suggested in another thread. For example, high-volume commodity items, like cloth should be a 5-10% profit margin; for these items, you want high-turn over to maximize profits. For expensive runes, however, the markup should be 20-50% since the turn-over is much lower. That said, the profit should always be between 5 and 50%, and never like 10000% that it is now.

Money would make me extremely happy by removing the worry that comes with not having enough. If I were a millionaire and had everything I need, so would my wife and two kids. This would be true happiness for me.

OFF TOPIC POST!!!!!!
(in case you wanted to read a relavent post to the main topic you can skip this one)

that guy above me has the right idea about it^_^



hey why dont we test that theory gimmy all your money and lets see how happy i get

But how would people decide what makes a high-commodity item? Take common trading materials : Cloth, Tanned Hide, Iron, Bones. All are avaliable in quite high quantities, yet have you ever managed to sell 250 bones to someone? I certainly haven't. Yet selling 250 Iron is INCREDIBLY easy.


Again, sorry to keep the off-topic element going, but:

I'm not a millionaire, far from it, but you miss my point entirely. The point I'm trying to make is that if you came into a huge amount of money, the happiness would not last as long as the money would.

Well if Anet keeps hell bent on punishing legitimate users rather than dishing out lawyer letters to those assholes on ebay, well then, sorry, I am out.

A company can't lose track of priorities and get overly obsessed with the wrong goals any more than Anet currently.