Auction house system?

[Khromm]

My £0.02 worth:

First off, for those that only run on one screen and don't want to be alt+tabbing to get to the warframe.market site, if you're running Steam (and probably via Discord as well) you can just S#&$+Tab to bring up the overlay and access a web browser there. You can just shift+tab between that and trade chat and it's gonna be a fast thing. Do it myself, even though I run two screens, if I want to check a price quickly.

Secondly, if we're gonna be talking about an actual in game market outside of Maroo's and trade chat, ignoring the technical aspect for the moment (they'd probably need to have it run on a number of additional servers, then there's all the integration issues you can have, plus patches/bugfixes/major updates screwing comms between game and market server, just to point out a few) then so long as it doesn't work as an auction house but as an actual market, I'm all for it. Many posts above me have suggested things like keeping the MR limit on trades (which imo should definitely be a thing via any new marketplace), some have made claims in both directions as to whether DE would make more or less money from plat (to whcih I'd say just add a plat cost to putting anything up for sale for more than 24 hours, and have a market-wallet that players would need to feed and couldn't be touched for a week or two from first putting plat in from outside the market itself, which could possibly reduce the amount of chargeback plat gettting into the system as long as that period is longer than how long you can chargeback plat for - that trade tax would be an additional plat sink, meaning more plat sales if it took off, and if it failed and everyone went back to just trade chat DE don't really lose anything aside from dev time and server cost to run it on, which could be possibly be repurposed as another login or zone server). This could bring even more sales to the table, since the chance of ending up with a negative plat balance is tbh one of the only things that limits me in what I'm prepared to trade for in the current system, and I'd bet that's the same for a lot of players.

So far as the player economy would go, it wouldn't make that much difference in that you could still list your riven at 2000 plat, but if someone listed an unrolled for the same weapon at a lower price it just might take a bit longer for yours to sell, depending on item popularity and supply. Which is tbh much the way it works right now, just without a fancy UI.. Having an actual in-game UI for an auction isn't such a bad request, as it would in theory make it a lot easier to see what you're actually trading for. And if prices *did* drop with players ability to shop around properly, well there's always another item that DE could make scarce and allow players to trade in, and there are other things they could allow us to trade in for plat as well (for example, what if we could actually trade in cryotic, or oxium, or argon crystals - some people hate void missions, others despise excavation missions, everyone hates defection missions, but everyone loves Magical Trevor).

To be brutally honest about the situation, for myself, although I'd love to see a well implemented in game market, it's not gonna make or break the game for me. I buy plat when I get a decent discount and can afford it, or get it in the occasional prime pack, and due to the chargeback scams don't generally try to sell anything, since it's all to easy to get caught out, since you don't know where the other players plat came from in the first place. Having a decent IGM could give us more security in where the plat comes from, and would definitely make it easier to compare item prices, but it's not going to affect how I play the game or any of the enjoyment I get with the game at present, so it's something I can live without, and would rather dev time be spent elsewhere, with bugfixes/optimisations, frame development/refinement, and occasional new content (what are the odds they're already working on open world 3, an infested Mars map...?), than on a nice-to-have with so very many ways it could go wrong (which would cost more DE development time, along with support tickets for everyone that claims they got scammed in some way/lost plat because they could have sold an item for far more than they did by accidentally missing a 0 from the price etc). Should DE be able to dedicate time to such a system without detracting in any way from their other workloads, then great. Would love to see it. But outside of my fears of chargeback platinum, I won't lose any sleep over not getting it.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

On 2019-01-23 at 3:58 AM, Double_C said:

Back in the Void Key day's a prime part was worth so much more. actualy farming them (exept NyxP) was worth the efford.
nowadays primes arent that good for plat. only the riven's that overflow trade chat atm.

my Idea is to split trade chat for prime parts/mods and one for Riven mods. so you could actually read trade chat normaly

I agree but until DE realizes the harm that rivens have caused overall just filter out the riven keywords. Trade chat is so much nicer as a result.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

On 2019-01-30 at 9:46 AM, Atsia said:

As long as you can't AFK trade, then I'm seeing no real problems.

Why is having a passive trading system a bad thing? DE could easily request a minimum listing fee and then take a % of the total sale to make it less cost effective than trading but still provide a benefit to the seller. This would allow DE to remove currency from the market and save players time in the process. It's a win-win scenario.

[Makunogo]

Primes is still good money 😮 

 

[Makunogo]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Hiero_Glyph said:

Why is having a passive trading system a bad thing? DE could easily request a minimum listing fee and then take a % of the total sale to make it less cost effective than trading but still provide a benefit to the seller. This would allow DE to remove currency from the market and save players time in the process. It's a win-win scenario.

oh god no... Trade tax on plat. i would quit instantly. 

that is a huge step in the wrong direction. it  would also cause people to RAISE their prices in order to make up for the tax.

i dont think anyone wants to be coughing up more plat then necessary cause of a "Fee" that goes nowhere.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Makunogo

[BrenBlaze]

Still trying to wrap my brain around

On 2019-01-23 at 4:17 AM, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

I wish that they remove the ability to trade premium currency..

Not everyone gets what they want..

 

[Makunogo]

1 minute ago, BrenBlaze said:

Still trying to wrap my brain around

 

 pretty sure it was meant to be sarcastic... at least i hope so lol

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

1 minute ago, Makunogo said:

oh god no... Trade tax on plat. i would quit instantly. 

that is a huge step in the wrong direction. it  would also cause people to RAISE their prices in order to make up for the tax.

It would be 100% optional. And if players are going to raise their prices then they would be undercut on trade chat and waste that listing fee or take a lot longer to sell. You make it sound like having options is a bad thing just because you don't see the benefit. For players with limited time I could list my items and then reap the benefits later without having to waste time in trade chat. It's basic time versus money. I guess you have the time to waste.

[Makunogo]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)Hiero_Glyph said:

It would be 100% optional. And if players are going to raise their prices then they would be undercut on trade chat and waste that listing fee or take a lot longer to sell. You make it sound like having options is a bad thing just because you don't see the benefit. For players with limited time I could list my items and then reap the benefits later without having to waste time in trade chat. It's basic time versus money. I guess you have the time to waste.

a Fee at all is more then enough reason for many people to NEVER use it tho. thats not how one is going to attract people to it

but how is that any different from the sites we have? albeit there is no fee on those. so you may in fact be pushing even more people onto the "unofficial" avenues. 

players with limited time use warframe/riven.market because they know its reliable and quick. 

"set n forget " is what i tell people when i refer to these sites.

i almost never suggest the trade chat for buying/selling which WOULD support the need for a market. however putting a Fee is going to completly turn off a lot of people.

i am simplifying responding to the points presented. dont come at me with that underhanded commentary. thanks.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Makunogo

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

8 minutes ago, Makunogo said:

a Fee at all is more then enough reason for many people to NEVER use it tho. thats not how one is going to attract people to it

but how is that any different from the sites we have? albeit there is no fee on those. so you may in fact be pushing even more people onto the "unofficial" avenues. 

Again, having options is usually a good thing. So having an integrated and official market would be a huge asset for players as only a small portion actually use third-party trade sites. So basically DE gets their cut for access to a much larger population size. There is nothing preventing you from using a third-party market or simply listing items in trade chat either. Players can decide for themselves if the cost is worth the benefit.

Edited January 31, 2019 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[Makunogo]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Hiero_Glyph said:

Again, having options are usually a good thing. So having an integrated and official market would be a huge asset for players as only a small portion actually use third-party trade sites. So basically DE gets their cut for access to a much larger population size. There is nothing preventing you from using a third-party market or simply listing items in trade chat either. Players can decide for themselves if the cost is worth the benefit.

sure im all for options, but when that option is taking % of our plat ( and plat isn't that cheap unless u have a discount and by discount i mean 75% not so much the others) 

absolutely will deter a large amount (if not the majority) of traders. 

DE's Cut Is People Buying platinum.why do they also need to punish players for using a system of well Using that very platinum? 

i would actually like an answer to this question 

a fee  will 100% push a lot of people away from ever using it.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Makunogo

[Double_C]

2 minutes ago, Makunogo said:

sure im all for options, but when that option is taking % of our plat ( and plat isn't that cheap unless u have a discount and by discount i mean 75% not so much the others) 

absolutely will deter a large amount (if not the majority) of traders. 

DE's Cut Is People Buying platinum.why do they also need to punish players for using a system of well Using that very platinum? 

i would actually like an answer to this question 

a fee  will 100% push a lot of people away from ever using it.

got to agree on this, the plat you see in trades is 100% bought.
-Won free plat on a devstream? cant trade
-twitch prime? cant trade
-plat winner and got a redeemable code? cant trade

its all 100% our money. they taking that away from us is really really a EA thing to do
we got DE, and I dont want it to turn into a EA

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

1 hour ago, Makunogo said:

sure im all for options, but when that option is taking % of our plat ( and plat isn't that cheap unless u have a discount and by discount i mean 75% not so much the others) 

absolutely will deter a large amount (if not the majority) of traders. 

DE's Cut Is People Buying platinum.why do they also need to punish players for using a system of well Using that very platinum? 

i would actually like an answer to this question 

a fee  will 100% push a lot of people away from ever using it.

I'm not talking about a cut the size that someone like Valve takes. I'm talking more like 5% with a minimum of 1 platinum to avoid spam sales. The listing fee could even be credits. And if that is not enough, DE could cap the sales tax at 50 plat so any sale over 1,000 plat isn't charged more.

Again, DE needs to spend money developing the in-game market, maintaining the servers, answering the support tickets, etc. so there needs to be some cut above normal platinum sales. But in return I could sell items with minimal effort that have been sitting in my inventory with no benefit to me.

So is 100 potential plat better than 95 real plat? That is something you would need to answer for yourself. I'd rather have the 95 plat instead of having to deal with trade chat or agreeing to terms on a 3rd party site.

Edited January 31, 2019 by (PS4)Hiero_Glyph

[xyshift]

4 hours ago, Makunogo said:

a fee  will 100% push a lot of people away from ever using it.

There already is a fee / credit tax for every item traded. It could just be slightly raised for using a convenience item such as a marketplace.

The first few items put up for sale could even be free except for the credit deposit (would need to put up the appropriate amount of credits when you added your item to the for-sale window). If that item sells, there could either be an immediate small percentage off the top of that sale for the tax, or it could be a flat fee per item/number of items sold. If the seller or buyer didn't want to use the in-game marketplace, then they could still trade in person.

Many games charge as much as 30% in "sales tax" and something that high does indeed drive prices higher. If it's a smaller amount, more people use it - the smaller tax items add up and could even eventually be a plat-purchase driver down the road if a lot of people appreciate the convenience and are willing to pay a tiny amount per item sold.

[xyshift]

Another point I meant to make: seeing who is selling what would be needed. That way if you wanted to haggle, you could try contacting the seller. In other games, I've contacted sellers when their for-sale price was an obvious "make me an offer" or when I had just under the currency needed to purchase from the marketplace. It facilitates in-person trading just as much as via the marketplace, but provides a different way to achieve trading that some people would really prefer.

[Makunogo]

a credit tax is not a detrimental as a plat tax. dont think you were fully paying attention to what i was responding to. @xyshift

it was a PLAT tax for using a potential in game market, no matter how small that tax would be thats not something a lot of players would tolerate.

are you trying to justify adding a tax?

i think its very safe to assume nobody WANTS a tax on their purchases.

im aware some games tax their sales, and it utterly sucks. some games have even increased the tax for god knows what reason.

that is pure greed from those companies because that tax isn't going anywhere.

warframe.market the forums discord and other places already do everything you mentioned and do not cost anything. 

what do you think they will pick to use ? very likely any option to avoid any a tax on their trade as the aforementioned are already quite reliable

having people actually wanting to buy plat > having to force people to buy more because 30%(or whatever number) of what they are buying is going into thin air. and platinum is not cheap. by far one of the most expensive in game currencies i've seen. i could never buy plat with less that our max discount (75%) which i have once.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Makunogo

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

40 minutes ago, Makunogo said:

a credit tax is not a detrimental as a plat tax. dont think you were fully paying attention to what i was responding to. @xyshift

it was a PLAT tax for using a potential in game market, no matter how small that tax would be thats not something a lot of players would tolerate.

are you trying to justify adding a tax?

i think its very safe to assume nobody WANTS a tax on their purchases.

im aware some games tax their sales, and it utterly sucks. some games have even increased the tax for god knows what reason.

that is pure greed from those companies because that tax isn't going anywhere.

warframe.market the forums discord and other places already do everything you mentioned and do not cost anything. 

what do you think they will pick to use ? very likely any option to avoid any a tax on their trade as the aforementioned are already quite reliable

having people actually wanting to buy plat > having to force people to buy more because 30%(or whatever number) of what they are buying is going into thin air. and platinum is not cheap. by far one of the most expensive in game currencies i've seen. i could never buy plat with less that our max discount (75%) which i have once.

I think this is where the confusion is as it would only be a tax for the seller who is getting plat, not for the buyer. So the item is listed for 100 plat. The buyer pays 100 plat. The seller gets 100 plat and pays 5% to DE making it 95 plat.

[Falconer777]

11 часов назад, (PS4)Hiero_Glyph сказал:

So is 100 potential plat better than 95 real plat? That is something you would need to answer for yourself. I'd rather have the 95 plat instead of having to deal with trade chat or agreeing to terms on a 3rd party site.

I completely agree. I am willing to pay even more tax if a normal trading system, such as an auction, appears in this game.

[xyshift]

6 hours ago, Makunogo said:

a credit tax is not a detrimental as a plat tax. dont think you were fully paying attention to what i was responding to. @xyshift

it was a PLAT tax for using a potential in game market, no matter how small that tax would be thats not something a lot of players would tolerate.

are you trying to justify adding a tax?

i think its very safe to assume nobody WANTS a tax on their purchases.

im aware some games tax their sales, and it utterly sucks. some games have even increased the tax for god knows what reason.

that is pure greed from those companies because that tax isn't going anywhere.

Many have good reason to limit accumulation of in-game currency, and this is one way they can do so. It does suck for legit buyers and sellers, though.

6 hours ago, Makunogo said:

warframe.market the forums discord and other places already do everything you mentioned and do not cost anything. 

True, but only one of those is owned by DE - the forums. Those and trade chat would still be available to use.

6 hours ago, Makunogo said:

what do you think they will pick to use ? very likely any option to avoid any a tax on their trade as the aforementioned are already quite reliable

Have you ever gone down the list of sellers of something you wanted to purchase at warframe.market, and every person you tried to send a PM to is either offline or doesn't answer (if someone is in a mission, sometimes incoming PMs are hard to notice)? This gets pretty aggravating and you can end up paying a lot more for something because by the time you message player #17 the price has tripled. And many prices in trade chat are already more than double those at warframe.market so I guess you can avoid losing time trying to message someone and just go straight for overpaying if you go that route.

Sure, many will simply keep using what is available now in order to avoid a larger tax. Some won't mind it, though.. and if the tax is only slightly higher than it is now, it might actually work out fine as an alternative. To me, it's along the same lines as rushing something in the foundry - you do that when you want it NOW, and it costs you plat to do it. So someone who wants that mod NOW and doesn't want to try to deal/haggle with the seller at all could just purchase it from the marketplace and be on their merry way. (For the record, I don't normally rush things because plat is very precious to broke me)

6 hours ago, Makunogo said:

having people actually wanting to buy plat > having to force people to buy more because 30%(or whatever number) of what they are buying is going into thin air. and platinum is not cheap. by far one of the most expensive in game currencies i've seen. i could never buy plat with less that our max discount (75%) which i have once.

Yes, I was paying attention 🙂 I should have noted where I was talking about credits v. plat. And I was basically just throwing out an idea of how it could be done, if it was implemented. I'm not advocating one way or the other.. there are pros and cons to both sides.

I agree the 30% is ludicrous.. people still use those auction houses, though. In those cases it is not premium but in-game currency, which is sometimes a pain by itself as you have to actually work at farming it in-game instead of being able to buy it quickly. I would never advocate that high of a tax in premium currency. Maybe 1%, with a minimum and maximum limit per item or per 5/6-item trade.

The main problem I see is that it would take coding and maintenance of servers and databases at the very least, which would cost DE money and developer/support time. If it had a tiny bit of monetization for them and the players who want it are willing to pay that little bit of extra tax to get the feature they want, then it might be something that could work out well. Players who don't want to pay the extra tax could keep using the current trade avenues. Something simple like.. Marketplace charges 1% of the plat sale with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 plat per item sold for 20 plat or more (or per group of items from that seller during that daily trade). Items sold for 19 plat or less would not have a plat tax. Existing credit taxes would still be in effect and/or would be slightly increased from in-person trading amounts. Something along those lines.

I know a lot of players have said they wanted this, but I'm not sure they think about the logistics like the fact it would require permanent servers on DE's end just to house the data and make it accessible to everyone who wants to buy or sell. It would be a pretty large undertaking and I'm not sure the "juice would be worth the squeeze" as the saying goes.

[Poisonjack]

On 2019-01-23 at 6:17 AM, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

I wish that they remove the ability to trade premium currency..

Not everyone gets what they want..

I bet most money they make is due to Platinum being tradeable. Warframe has a very active player market, it would be financial suicide to cut this out.

[Falconer777]

14 часов назад, (PS4)guzmantt1977 сказал:

 Events that last only a few days, create a short term impact on the economy. Longer term events have longer lasting effects, like unvaultings. You are talking about a permanent addition to the economy. It's difficult to see what you find difficult to understand at this point. 

This is logical. But we are entering the realm of speculation. You assume that this addition will cause the collapse of economics. I guess not.
In essence, this is simply a faster way to sell. We do not introduce new currencies, do not change the rate of platinum, credits or ducats, do not increase the chance of dropping any resources, frames or weapons - in fact we are not doing anything that would trigger a sharp inflation, by and large.

Цитата

And I have explained that in return for your convenience, we will ALL suffer from the effects.

Again, you assumed it, not explained. I still see possible options for correcting the fall in prices.

Цитата

The prices of most items will crash under the current economic model if the proposal is implemented. 

Not the fact that they collapse. And one more thing - we will get more buyers, and more purchases, with a more convenient trading system. Many people hate shopping chat and often don’t buy anything simply because they don’t want to waste their time doing it. I myself refused the idea to buy a few things, because I was finally tired of this mess. A convenient trading system stimulates trade - by the way, this is also the basis of the economy)

Цитата

And yes, most sellers do want to sell for as much as they can get. But there are always going to be people who are willing to undercut your price, because some platinum is better than none. And sellers will always pick the lowest price for the same item. Those two basic principles explain why prices rapidly drop to the lowest limit. At that point what you want to sell for, becomes irrelevant. 

For a while, maybe. But then all the same the prices will go up. Or, developers can simply adjust the chance of dropping some items - and voila, the price will go up.

[Cuchullin]

The best alternative I can think of would be either a link to the warframe market in the orbitor that would still need people to be able to make the face to face trade. The alternative would be to have an event like auction once a week or month. How it work would in my mind relates to the Ostrans who if you know the lore around them are only a small segment of all the cledes who travel in merchant ships. If you have excess nano spores you can put them up in consignment with the option that if you want to sell to tenno only/ Ostrons only or both within a time limit or something. That way the market doesn't get flooded with any particular types withing a short time. Keeping in mind that this is just a passing thought feel free to discuss.

[Makunogo]

2 hours ago, xyshift said:

 

I know a lot of players have said they wanted this, but I'm not sure they think about the logistics like the fact it would require permanent servers on DE's end just to house the data and make it accessible to everyone who wants to buy or sell. It would be a pretty large undertaking and I'm not sure the "juice would be worth the squeeze" as the saying goes.

i just wanted to mention that DE has already put out their stance on this that it's never going to happen in case you didn't know. so i'm more or less just increasing my post count lmao.

however i dont think " we added some convenience now pay for it forever " is the best approach, and thats exactly what a tax would do.

it would be like paying monthly for your extra slots. on top of buying them, even if that was just 1p per extra slot ( or in this case Per trade, every trade. 26 trades a day- that adds up) its just a huge slap in the face.

to say they would need to tax the players in order for an in game market to work would be a very likely reason DE would NEVER add it in. as we clearly know DE's stance when it comes to charging plat indirectly. very likely would be considered underhanded tactics to them.

as for a credit tax, that is also completely unnecessary as trading plat has a credit *tax* already why do we need to be double taxed? 

you would do well in government /s

Edited February 1, 2019 by Makunogo

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

4 hours ago, Falconer777 said:

This is logical. But we are entering the realm of speculation. You assume that this addition will cause the collapse of economics. I guess not.
In essence, this is simply a faster way to sell. We do not introduce new currencies, do not change the rate of platinum, credits or ducats, do not increase the chance of dropping any resources, frames or weapons - in fact we are not doing anything that would trigger a sharp inflation, by and large.

No. Again the change is that you are increasing the potential number of sellers by a factor that is enormous. If you go from 100k to millions, that's over a 1000% increase. That means that your competition for the limited plat available online at any instant, is now enormous. Where you would have had a few people willing to undercut, you now have many. 

 

You will have not just made it harder to sell common items at the regular price, but guaranteed that it is impossible. There can be no doubt about this, it is basic economics. Supply and demand. 

4 hours ago, Falconer777 said:

Again, you assumed it, not explained. I still see possible options for correcting the fall in prices.

And there are also people who lack the basic understanding to grasp why simply printing more money so that everyone has more, destroys economies instead of helping them. It's all very simple but some people just don't seem to be able to grasp the concepts for some reason. 

4 hours ago, Falconer777 said:

Not the fact that they collapse. And one more thing - we will get more buyers, and more purchases, with a more convenient trading system. Many people hate shopping chat and often don’t buy anything simply because they don’t want to waste their time doing it. I myself refused the idea to buy a few things, because I was finally tired of this mess. A convenient trading system stimulates trade - by the way, this is also the basis of the economy)

No, we will not get more buyers. Buyers need to meet 3 basic criteria. 1) They must be interested in buying the item. 2) They must have sufficient platinum to buy the item. 3) They must be online to buy the item. 

1)Interest in buying the item is generally limited to people who don't yet have it, because unlike in some other games, our goods do not degrade and require the use of resources to repair or replace them. We have very, very few reoccurring needs. We have an unlimited capacity to farm items with the only limit on supply being RNG which, given enough players over time means potentially enormous supply. If everyone can list their items simultaneously, we're possibly talking millions of sellers offering identical items. 

2)This is a f2p game. The number of people buying platinum is likely to relatively small compared to the playerbase. The platinum cannot be manufactured in any other way by players, unlike in some of the other games that people have mentioned here. This means that it is in limited supply. The only way to get plat without buying it is to trade. Given the fact what you propose, the prices will fall, making it harder to earn plat, so many people will actually have less potential buying power. External control of the prices to ensure that the sellers make a certain basic minimum may sound like a great idea, but it isn't. No more than printing new money would be, or DE deciding to double everyone's platinum balance overnight. 

3)Take a look at the average numbers of concurrent online players. Most of the time the value is less than 100k players. This represents the maximum number of potential buyers at any instant. In reality, only a fraction of those will have interest in buying any given item. Only a fraction of those will have the platinum to do so. 

 

 

Yes making trades easier would stimulate trade. It will allow sellers to compete more. You would now be competing against millions of people all hoping to get some platinum. Many would be more than willing to list an item for slightly less than the current going rate. If you won't drop price to remain competitive, then you will not earn any plat. If you are willing to accept less, then you have shifted the regular price and soon they will offer slightly less, until the price bottoms out. Multiple people have expressed this on the thread at this point. Try to understand. 

4 hours ago, Falconer777 said:

For a while, maybe. But then all the same the prices will go up. Or, developers can simply adjust the chance of dropping some items - and voila, the price will go up.

No. The change you're proposing is permanent equates to saturation of supply in the economy. We just don't have as many buyers as suppliers for most common items. The sinks are not attractive enough to drastically reduce supply of most items, that's why the price of prime junk remains relatively constant. 

Adjusting the drop rate will adjust the future supply because for an individual, trying to obtain them its harder. But with millions of players the number of drops will still remain significant even when the drop rate is a fraction of a percent.

Also that brilliant idea of yours just made it harder for most players to earn platinum (as explained above). So now you will have fewer potential buyers. Great job, you've taken a bad idea and somehow, in an attempt to fix the glaring problem, made everything worse. You probably have a bright future in the government financial planning department of several failing countries around the world. 😧

 

Seriously, there must be a high school student with an economics text book who can explain the situation to you and maybe let you read a chapter or two? 

[xyshift]

2 hours ago, Makunogo said:

you would do well in government /s

...

Nah.. I try to see both sides of a question, so I would be fairly terrible at it.

However.. this sort of thing is why it's good to get lots of comments / views on things. I'm mid-MR range so I forget that a much higher amount of daily trades would be available.. and yeah you're right, that would add up quickly in the short term. It's also possible that it could even out with sellers getting slightly higher/lower prices over time and the small tax just end up being a cost of doing business there. Because why would you even go on such a marketplace unless you didn't mind the tax?

As a random example: DDO (Dungeon & Dragons Online) has 2 auction houses. One for gold and its in-game variants, taxed at 30% that comes out of the sales price AND requires a gold deposit when the item is listed for sale (returned with the proceeds if the item sells, lost if it doesn't), and the second one is strictly for listing and buying with their "shards" which are a premium currency purchased with DDO points. These points are earned per month if you are subscribed, and can also be purchased for real money. The points are used to purchase things in the store such as XP potions, skins, and the shards. So I guess the shards are more a secondary premium currency as they are used to purchase items in-game from vendors (hirelings, guild ships, etc) that you can't get with gold. They are not trade-able; the only way they can transfer to another player is via the shard auction house.

In that shard auction house, the tax is 1/3 the sales price in shards and you must deposit one shard to list an item (lost if it sells, returned if it doesn't). So if you sell something for 10 shards, you only get 7 for the sale and you lose your deposit shard. Even though it's a secondary currency, they are still expensive to purchase, so you'd better make sure you really want to sell that item and research the hell out of the best price to do it at.

This seems to work for DDO.. but even though they do have f2p, it's a bit different business model. And that tax rate is ridiculous on both the AH's.

The point being that an in-game marketplace between players that uses premium currency has been done before, and seems to do well despite having hefty fees. 

2 hours ago, Makunogo said:

i just wanted to mention that DE has already put out their stance on this that it's never going to happen in case you didn't know. so i'm more or less just increasing my post count lmao.

I was not aware of that, so thanks for letting me know. Like I said, I'm not pushing to have it implemented.. I just see why it's wanted and how it could potentially be done, while at the same time I see a lot of potential issues. Do you have a link to their response to this feature request? I'd be interested to see what they say about the whole thing. If they don't want to charge their player base a fee for a feature, then that's pretty cool.. although I think the players who would like this feature would also like DE to try to think of an alternative, as this subject continues to come up as something players want.