Materials market crippled?

okay, i have searched the forums to see if this has been adressed and i have not been able to find it.

here is my question:

why, oh why, do people sell things such as tanned hide squares to eachother at THE SAME price they can sell them to the trader...
it boggles my mind. why would they do this?
you would think that the trader sell price and the the trader buy price being about 10 g per unit appart, would make the p2p sell price about 15g per unit, considering the player to trader sell price is 10, what is the incentive to sell to another player at that price?

if potential buyers had to buy hide squares from traders they would have to pay 19-20 gold per unit.

if potential sellers had to sell to traders they would only get 9-10 gold per unit.

wouldn't everyone be happy if the sold to eachother at 14-15 gold per unit?

in my experiance, people all sell at 10 per unit. now granted, on sometimes the trader sell price is 9 per unit, so they are making a small profit, however when the trader sell price is 9, the trader buy price is still 19, why sell at 10?

it's like people are actively trying to prevent others from making profit? is that in fact the case?

im genuinly confused at this behavior, especially in such a greedy community...

It's called community spirit. People sometimes like to help other players by letting them buy cheaper than the trader would charge.

That's just how material trading is set up. Even if you could sell to material trader at 10g each (like iron sometimes) people will still only buy iron at 10g each because there will always be someone willing to sell at that price.

It's pretty much already said, but here's my take.

If everyone started selling over vendor price, they'd buy from vendors. If they sell under the price, they've actually created a new market by fencing goods cheaper then the in-game economy. Well, most would say this bad, undermining the in-game eco, but you know what? This creates a demand and supply curve, and the more money is pumped into trader mats below trader price, a solid market will be made, and also thus allowing cheaper mats to everyone in the long run.

OR, by just some penchant of luck, you caught the only guy selling them lower, he's still actually helping out to move towards a player-ran economy and not what stabilizes the in-game market.

Don't be confused at this, rather think of it as an opportunity. More player-wealth circulating, the better all-around economy is bolstered up.

I'm sure it wasn't meant to go that deep, but thats still my take why people still really do it, unless they wanted to drive the price on mats through the floor on vendors, which I doubt is the case.

--The Shim

you actually did confuse me.
i almost think we are agreeing though...
im definatly confused.

it's true that people will only buy at 10g per unit because someone will always sell that low. what im confused about is why someone will always sell that low. that person is hurting the rest of the economy.

there is no incentive for me to spend my time yelling wts tanned hide squares and looking foor people buying them if i can make the same ammount of money by selling them to the vendor. as a result, i make less money, and there are less materials in circulation.

it helps everyone to sell between the vendor buy and sell prices.
everyone wins.

currently only the buyer wins.
apparently uber rich characters can afford to sell at super low prices, but that hurts people who cant afford to, especially at low level, where salvage materials sometimes dont even break even.

so these rich characters i guess are trying to be nice by selling at low prices, and all i know is means there is no point in me tradign with other players. which seems backwards.

now, i hate to bring WoW into this because i regard WoW as a very different game, however, the economy in wow is a very good example of a stable, functional game economy.

in the wow economy players will always charge less than the vendor price to sell items

obviously it is the same in guild wars

why buy something from a player for more than you could buy it from a vendor?

in wow, people sell to other players because other players will pay more for items than vendors will

in guild wars, I sell to vendors, because with the eception of rare items, people expect the to pay the same or LESS than vendors do.

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I agree with you mostly, see my corrections, but we are on the same page.

--The Shim

okay, we actually are on the same page. i guess i dont know enough about economies to realize that it is helping to balance it out in the long run.

Hi,

Nice thread, I been wondering about this myself. I have nearly always sold my materials to other players for a *Fair-Trade* price.

By *Fair-Trade* I mean that the price the buyer pays is the difference between the traders Buy/Sell price.

i.e: Roll of parchment 200gp to buy from trader, 100gp to sell to trader, so I sell to player for 150gp.

It seems that when I want to buy materials, the player who is selling is asking for *slightly* less than what it costs at the traders. . . . and when I want to sell materials the person who is buying offers me *slightly* more than what I could sell to the trader. . . .lol!

Like I said I have sold 90% of my materials at a *Fair-Trade* price, and the buyers were happy enough, most of them polite too!

If you wanna avoid the lowballers just state your prices in your ad:

WTS - Rolls Of Parchment 150gp

and if you reply to someone else's WTB state your prices asap:

<Whisper Leeroy Jenkins> Hi, I have 300 Iron for sale, is 15gp each ok?

If push comes to shove, or your getting abused by rude players just sell your materials to the merchant and go do something more interesting!

Think about this. The price the trader sells craftables and runes for depends on the amount of materials supply players sell to them versus the amount of items sold to consumer players.

To try and reduce confusion lets use cloth as the example with a trader buy price of 50g. So the supply player has been collecting cloth and has lets say 1000 bolts of cloth he can sell.

He could sell to the trader in lots of 10 for 50g each. But if he does that the price at which the trader buys the cloth will eventually drop, possibly even to 30g. This will drop the price he is getting, it will also drop the price of the supply players who sell at 'fair market value'. I mean who hasn't seen the price of steel drop from 110g to 90g in a fairly short time.

So now lets say he has his 1000 lots of cloth and decides to sell cloth at the low end of fair market value pricing at 65g each, and is only selling to consumer players.

Now a third factor emerges here. How much time does it take him to click through 1000 lots of cloth to sell to the NPC trader and how long does it take him to sell at bottom end fair market value to players. Lets say it takes him 15 minutes to click out 1000 lots at 50g to the NPC trader and it takes him only 1 hour to sell at 65g to players (it might sell that fast or faster, or it could take a few hours of sell time). So it has taken him 45 minutes longer to net a 1.5k gain. That's not very good time spent to the harvester or farmer.

Now lets say he checks the trader sell price and sees that it is currently 50g. He decides he will allot 15 minutes to check various districts and find buyers. Anyone who is seriously buying in Droknars (or even ascalon though this is more likely a waste of time for him) would be an idiot not to take advantage of the opportunity to buy their cloth for 50g lots of 10.

This accomplishes a couple really important things:
1. It allows the supplier to limit the time they have to spend to try and get a return on their effort. It also really improves their product turnover rate.

2. They know they will get the price they are asking for without wasting time on haggling.

So 1 and 2 are imortant for the suppliers efficiency, but there is this number 3 that is also really important and something a lot of people might not consider.

3. By selling to the player and not the trader they are influencing the traders base sell/buy price. If enough of these supply harvester/farmers do this together, or if they set a trend to get a majority of people to do this then they could actually drive up the base price at which the trader sells/buys.

This is just my take on it. In the past I have always just sold to the trader unless the merchant buys for the same unit price. That way I wold get a little bit of a profit, but if the merchant buys at the same price as the trader, then I wouldn't supply the trader and hope price would go up (if enough people did this). Selling materials at the base trader buy price is really clever and something I think I will investigate. Hopefully it will bring material costs back up and make it profitable again. As it stands only parchment, steel, and deldrimor are usually worth the time. Occasionally some of the others become worthwhile but often aren't.