I don't understand the traders

As the title says - I don't get these guys at all. They are supposed to work ala supply and demand. However, the prices are always way off. For example, just now I recieved a quote for my obsidian shard - 100 gold. That same vendor was selling one for 4.5k.

Supply and demand curves in the real world set an equilibrium price for both sellers and buyers (assuming perfect competition). Yes I do know GW isn't the real world, but I'm confused as to the logic behind these traders. Why wouldn't the sell and buy prices be identical for any given moment?

Can anyone explain or link to an explanation? If not, any Anet lurkers care to comment?

Great game, said it before, will say it forever. Just want to understand it a bit better

Kongar

Why would there be traders, if they didn't make a profit?... Buy goods cheap, mark up, Sell for profit... Smells like simple Economics to me (traders have to make a living, after all).

Somewhere I read something that the merchants act on a modified supply and demand system. I'm not sure how how he prices items to sell, but when he buys them, the price will depend on how many he has in stock. If players are selling shards to the merchant faster than the merchant sells them to players, the merchant will pay less for the shards since he doesn't need as much, yet for some reason the selling price for the item from the merchant tends to be not as affected at all.

Hengist - agreed, I would expect some difference between buy and sell for a markup. But a 45X markup is a bit high lol

I was thiking - maybe the traders use a first in first out type system where they always sell the oldest material first, and never below the buying price? I can see how a coded rule like this can cuase a price rift. No demand because the price is so high, yet people still selling (thus driving supply up and price down). If this is the way it works Anet - you should seriously consider changing it. Traders should accept some price risk...

4,000% profit I wish I could manage that.

Simplest answer--something in the system is glitched. No way there are more shards than needed by the trader. And their price reflects that.

It's "glitched" alright. That's a nice way of putting it. The traders seem to get in a "overstock" mode sometimes where they drop their buying price on something first and it keeps going down until it hits the vendor price. Only then does their selling price drop.

It looks even worse in the dye market like the time a black dye was being offered by the trader at 6p883g but I was offered 1g for mine. Later the selling price was just under 5p but the buy was still 1g. One other time I watched the price of silver sit rock-solid at 800-something while the seemingly trader tried to balence the stock by gradually dropping the offer down to 200-something before I left.

Just a little advice from an ex-retailer. If something isn't moving, simply not buying any more won't sell the stock you have. At some point, I'd say long before the buy price hits 1% of the selling price in this game (let alone 0.014% as in my example) the selling price needs to start dropping.

The buy price fluctuates. The trader has a ton of obsidian shards sitting around, and people keep buying them at the advertised price, so he keeps selling them at that price. However, because people keep selling them to him, he has a surplus, so he's not buying them for that high of a price. As people stop selling to him and continue to buy from him, his buy price will rise very quickly. When it's at a reasonable level, everyone sells to him, and he develops another surplus. If people were to stop buying them at the price he advertises, the price would drop until people bought again, and then the price would rise again.

This happens constantly with steel and fur. Once, I was offered 60 gold for a piece of fur. I kept an eye on the market, and in under 8 hours the buy price was at 200 gold. At which point, I sold, and I'm sure a lot of other people did, so the price probably dropped back to 60 by the next day.

At least, that's how I understand it.

the problem in an MMO economy is you don't know the amount of the overall supply. It's not finite. So you will always have speculation and price spikes.

Yeah I don't think I understand them either, for a while there I had 'em figured out, but Arturo here just went and sold a black dye to the trader for 8k, whereas a week ago when I sold one to the trader I got a mighty 1g it said so I had to give it away to a lowly ascalon player. What's up with that?

Actually, you have managed that before. When you get an item for free and then seel it off to someone. I know that I've gotten 30,000% profit before

I went to try and sell some of my silver dye the other day. it was being bought at roughly 1k from the traders. I got a quote of 1 gold....

meanwhile, my red dye, which was being traded for half of that, was quoted at 263 gold. isn't silver both rarer and in higher demand than the red dye?

Last week's patch busted the economy so bad it could be either a mistake or there is a plan to turn the economy into a Diablo-style trading economy. Either way, it just plain sucks for the little guys trying to improve themselves and higher levels trying to get better armor. Eternal pharming for little reward means fewer players. Half of my guild is now on hiatus until it fixes itself.

I just explained that. Everyone was selling black dye as they got it because the price was so high. He got a surplus, and the price he would pay plummeted. People continued to buy black dye as normal, until the trader had a shortfall because nobody was selling to him, so he raised his buy prices. In order to keep up with demand, he had to offer tons of gold for just one dye. Now that everyone is going to be selling their black again, he's going to get a surplus and he'll stop paying much for it.

Anet just made the new economy extremely complicated, that's all. Hell, I don't even know if I'm right. My understanding of economics is basic at best, but the way I see it, it works out.

I'm not a trader at all. I had one black dye I got from a drop and I watched and waited until I got the best price. I was actually amazed the price was as high as it was. A few days ago, it was 3-4 plat.

And the price on selling black dye to the dealer sucked until recently compared to before the changes. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You didn't miss out on anything by not selling to the npc vendor. I watched the prices.

yEaH!! I sold a yellow dye to the trader for a measly 1g because I need to to clear my inventory. 1K would have been nice

Oh Well.. I did use my 2 remaining blacks dyes on my armor for my monk. Looks pretty darn good. Could have used more however, I used silver for the little touches. With my black and silver cape my "Little Dood" (Errr... my Monks nick name)

Arturo, I think you're kind of missing what I'm posting. I'm trying to explain why the prices are fluctuating so rapidly.

i think it does work on how many is in stock

take this for example

buying price selling price

scales 180 99
hides 250 60
cloth 220 40


this of course was not the usual case for these items but that's what they where one night and it left me scatching my head. there are times i've seen hides up to selling for 160 (i unloaded) then cloth went skyrocketing behind it.

its by far the strangest system yet and i wonder if its affected by the other servers as well. like the game works on a global market.

but if everyone was selling their black dyes to the trader, he would then have a surplus and the buying price should drop, shouldnt it? Since last week, the buying price has doubled and the selling price has still gone down. Doesnt make much sense to me.


Two weeks ago I sold a black dye to the trader for roughly 3.8k while he was selling for 5k. Now the buying price is at 9k and we're only getting 2.2 ??

The whole idea of trying to add an economic simulation to this game is going to ruin it. Games have tried, putting their entire emphasis on, to make a viable economic model. It's just not going to work. Fix the prices... meaning set them to a reasonable value and be done with it.

kind of like how the rune trader ran dry of sup divine favor runes for about 3 days.....now that was really strange